Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (84 page)

But we are not left to the supposition and inference that it must be so; we know it is so. Our Lord is as the honeycomb, for he is sweet to God himself. The taste of the High and Holy One, who shall venture to judge? What the Lord himself calls sweet must be sweet indeed. Now the very smell of Christ's sacrifice, nay, I will go further, the very smell of that which was the type of Christ in the days of Noah, was so pleasing to God that it is written, "The Lord smelled a sweet savour, and the Lord said in his heart, I will no more destroy the earth with a flood." If the very smell of that which was but the emblem of the bleeding Lamb was grateful to Jehovah, how sweet to the divine Father must the Lord Jesus himself be in his actual sacrifice. Why, the very sight of the blood--and mark you, not the blood of Christ, but only the blood of a lamb slain in type of Christ--the very sight of that blood sprinkled on the lintel turned away the destroying angel from Israel of old, for the Lord said, "When I see the blood I will pass over you." Now if a mere glimpse of the type of Jesus' atoning blood be so satisfactory to the heart of God, what must the sight of Jesus be? for he has been obedient to death, even the death of the cross. If I had time I might mention the many ways in which our Lord is set forth in Scripture as being sweet to the Father; all the senses are represented as being gratified; the Lord hears his voice crying from the ground and answers it with blessing; he tastes his sacrifice as wine which makes glad the heart of God, and he feels his touch as the Daysman laying his hand both upon judge and offender. In every possible way Jesus is most sweet and pleasant to the divine mind. Hear how the Lord declares from the highest heaven, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." The Lord is well pleased for his righteousness' sake. Now, if the heart of Deity itself is satisfied and filled to the full with content, there must be an infinite sweetness in the person of the Lord Jesus. That honeycomb must be sweet with which the Triune God is satisfied.

Moreover our Lord Jesus is sweet to the angels in heaven. Did they not watch him when he was here below with careful eyes? When first they missed him from the courts above they flew with eager haste to discover where he was, and when they found that he was come to this poor planet, they made the night bright with their radiance, and sweet with their chorales. While he tarried here they watched his footsteps, they ministered to him in the wilderness and in the garden, and at other times they waited in their legions eager to deliver him if he would but have beckoned them to use their celestial weapons. When they saw him at last, ready to ascend, I can well believe that the poet's words are no fiction but describe a fact-

He was "seen of angels," and was very dear and precious to them. Surely he who attracts all those bright intelligences, and causes them to gaze upon him unceasingly, and pay him divine honors, must be sweet indeed.

Sweet is Christ, beloved, for it is his presence that makes heaven what it is. You are in a garden and smelling a dainty perfume, you say to yourself "Whence cometh this?" You traverse the walks and borders to discover the source of the pleasant odour and at last you come upon a rose: even thus if you were to walk amongst those fruitful trees which skirt the river of the water of life you would perceive a peerless perfume of superlative delight, but you would not have to ask yourself, "Whence comes this fragrance?" There is but one rose even in the Paradise of God which is capable of scattering such perfume of joy, and that is the "Rose of Sharon," that famous "plant of renown" which has diffused fragrance over both earth and heaven. Well may he be sweet to us since when he was broken like the alabaster box of precious ointment, he filled all the chambers of the house of God both above and below with an unrivalled sweetness.

If you want proof from nearer home let me remind you how sweet the Well-beloved is to his own people. What was it that first attracted us to God? Was it not the sweetness of Christ? What was it that banished all the bitterness of our fears? Was it not the sweetness of his pardoning love? What is it that holds us so that we cannot go, which enchains us, seals us, nails us to the cross, so that we can never leave it? Is it not that he is so sweet that we shall never find any to compare with him, and therefore must abide with him because there is nowhere else to go? Brethren and sisters, I appeal to you who know Jesus, are ye not satisfied? I mean not only satisfied with him, but satisfied altogether? Does he not fill and over-fill your souls? When you enjoy his presence, what other joy could you imagine? When he embraces you, have you any heart left for other delights? Do you not say, "He is all my salvation, and all my desire." My cup runneth over, my Lord Jesus, when I have communion with thee.

All the saints will tell you that Christ is most sweet and altogether lovely, and some of them will confess that sometimes his sweetness overcomes them, carries them right away, and bears them out of themselves. The eagle wings of Jesus' love uplift us to the gates of heaven, and this will happen to us even when there is nothing on earth to make us happy, and all without and within is dark. When the poor body is full of pain and every nerve is unstrung by disease, even then Jesus comes and lays his fingers amid the strings of our poor nature until, charmed by his touch, they pour forth a music which might teach the harps of heaven his praise. In his presence our heart is glad beyond all gladness; we are beatified if not glorified. Would God it might be always so. My dear Lord and Master is very sweet, but my lips fail me and I blush at my poor attempts to speak his praises.

One thing that proves how sweet he is is this--he removes all bitterness from the heart which truly receives him. The quassia cup of sickness is no longer bitter when a drop of his love falls into it. In his society, sick beds grow into thrones wherein the invalid does not so much pine as reign; the lonely chamber becomes a royal reception room, the hard bed becomes a couch of down, and the curtains are transformed into banners of love. So too, his love digs out of the garden of life the roots of the rue of care and the wormwood of anxiety. A man may be vexed with a thousand anxieties, but in communion with Christ he will find rest unto his soul. The delectable hydromel of fellowship with Jesus effectually drowns the taste of the world's bitterness. Saints in persecution have found the love of Christ cleanse their mouths from every taste of hatred's gall; they have been able to bear imprisonment and think it liberty, to regard chains as ornaments, to find the rack a bed of roses, and the blazing stake a chariot of fire to bear them to their reward. If a child of God were called in the pursuit of duty to swim through a sea of hell's most bitter pains, yet with the honied sweetness of Christ's love in his mouth would not so much as taste the sea of gall. As to death, we have learned to swallow it up in victory; surely its bitterness is past. Where else find you such delicious dainties? Where else such all-subduing sweetness? Jesus is bliss itself.

Thus have I shown sufficiently that facts have proved that Jesus is sweet as the honeycomb, but I detain you just a moment to notice that he is incomparably so. Honey, I might almost say, is not only sweet, but sweetness itself. Whether I am right or not in speaking thus of honey, I shall be right enough in saying it of Jesus Christ: he is not only sweet, but sweetness itself. We need not say of him that he is good, for he is essential goodness. He is not only loving, but love. Whatever good thing you may seek in the world you shall find it thinly spread here and there upon good men, as God deals out these precious things by measure; but the fullness of all good you shall find in Jesus Christ. He is not the sweet odour, but the ointment which gives it forth; he is not the rill, but the fountain from which it springs; he is not the beam of light, but the sun from which it proceeds. Honey is the conglomeration and compounding of a thousand sweets. The bees visit all sorts of flowers, knowing by a cunning wisdom denied to us where all dulcitudes are hidden: they take not only the nectar of the ruddy rose but also of the snow-white lily, and gathering ambrosia from all the beauties of the garden they thus concoct a luscious sweetness altogether unsurpassable. Even thus my Lord is all excellences compounded and commingled in divine harmony, a rare confection of all perfections to make one perfection, the meeting of all sweetnesses to make one perfect sweet. They said of Henry the Eighth that if all the lineaments of a tyrant had been lost, they might have been painted afresh from his life; and surely we may say of Christ that if all the sweetness and light of manhood had been forgotten, if all the love of mothers, the constancy of martyrs, the honesty of confessors, and the self-sacrifice of heroes, had departed, you would find it all treasured up in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Each bee as he performs his many journeys selects what he thinks best, and brings it to the common store, and I doubt not they have each a dainty tooth, so that each one chooses the best he finds. Oh ye preachers of the gospel, ye may each seek out the richest thoughts and words ye can to set out about my Lord. Oh, ye who are the mighty orators of the church, ye may utter the choicest language of poetry or prose, and so you may bring all sweets together, but you shall never match the altogether peerless sweetness which dwells in the person and work of Jesus the well-beloved.

Honey is a healthy sweet, though many sweets are not so. Children have been made sick and even poisoned by berries whose sickly sweetness has decoyed them to their hurt, but as for our Lord, the more you feed on him the more you may. Christ is health to the soul, yea, strength and life. Eat, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. Hast thou found honey? eat not too much, but hast thou found Jesus? eat to the full, and eat on still if so thou canst, for never shalt thou have too much of him.

II. Secondly--there are those who loathe the sweetness of our Lord. This shows itself variously. Some loathe him so as to trample on him, and this I find to be the translation given in the margin, "The full soul tramples on a honeycomb." God have mercy upon these boastful ones who persecute his saints, revile his name, and despise his gospel. If there be any such here, may sovereign mercy change their hearts, or a fearful judgment awaits them.

Others show that they loathe Christ because they are always murmuring at him; if they do not find fault with the gospel itself, they rail at its ministers. Nobody can please them. John comes neither eating nor drinking and they say he hath a devil; the Master comes eating and drinking and they say--behold a man gluttonous and a wine bibber. One man preaches very solemnly and they call him heavy, another mingles humor with his discourse and they accuse him of frivolity; one minister uses a lofty rhetoric, he is too flowery; another speaks in simpler style, he is vulgar. This generation like the generations which have gone before, cannot be satisfied, but it is Jesus they are discontented with. O ye carping critics of the gospel, you find fault with the dish but it is a mere excuse, you do not like the meat. If you hungered after the meat you would not molest the platter on which it is served; but because you love it not you complain of the dish and the carver.

Often this loathing is shown by an utter indifference to the gospel. The great mass of our fellow-citizens will not attend a place of worship at all, or if they do attend it is but seldom; and when they come they leave their hearts behind them, so that the word goes in at one ear and out at the other. The suffering Savior is nothing to them; heaven and hell are nothing to them; whether they shall be lost or saved is nothing to them. Thus they show their loathing.

Perhaps some here present loathe our Lord at bottom, and yet think not so. They attend to his word, but what is the attention? They care for Jesus, but they care so little that it leads to no practical result. Some of you after ten years of hearing the gospel are still unconverted, and after twenty years of the enjoyment of gospel privileges you still have never tasted the honey of the word. If you thought it sweet you would have tasted of it before now: you loathe it, or else you would not let it stand right under your nose untasted for years. You must be surfeited or you would not allow this honeycomb to lie untouched so long. You have meant to eat of it, you say. Yes, but I never knew a hungry man sit without eating for six hours at a table, meaning to eat all the while. No, he lays to as soon as grace has been said, and in your case the grace has been said a great many times, and yet you sit with the sweets of mercy before you and refuse to eat thereof. I cannot account for it on any other theory but that there is a secret loathing in your soul.

This loathing is manifest by many signs. There is the Bible, a book of infinite sweetness, God's letter of love to the sons of men. Is it not dreadfully dry reading! A three-volume novel suits a great many far better. That is loathing the honeycomb. There is the gospel ministry. Sermons are dull affairs, are they not? Now, I will admit that some sermons are dreary and empty as a desert, but when Christ be honestly and earnestly preached, how is it you are so weary? Others are fed, why do you complain? The meat is right enough, but you have no appetite for it for the reason given in the text. When a man loathes Christ he finds prayer to be bondage, and if he carries it on at all, it is a very dull exercise yielding no enjoyment. As to meditation, that is a thing neglected altogether by the godless many. The Sabbath with some persons is a very weary day, they are glad when it is over. I heard one say the other day he thought the Sabbath ought to be spent in recreation; upon which a friend replied that he wished he might find true recreation, for he needed to be created anew in Christ Jesus, and then he would judge the Sabbath to be the best day of the week. Alas, these dull Sabbaths and these dreary preachers, and this dull praying and singing, and all this weariness, are sure signs that you are full souls and therefore loathe the honeycomb.