Locusts and Wild Honey
Judges 14:9 And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion.
Mark 1:6 And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;
He dipped his hands in honey and did eat and his mother and father did eat also. O God ever more give us mountain top experiences, fill us O God for does not your word say that your people will not be borrowers but lenders? (Spurgeon?)
In the Judges passage Samson dipped his hands in honey ate and then gave it to others. Simply put this is an example of a person receiving a blessing and passing it on to others. May God give us much honey in life to eat.
John the Baptist ate honey and locusts. If the honey symbolizes blessings what does the locust symbolize.
This week we want to show you that the God of the honey is God of the locust also. That God is just as pleasant and sweet in the high places as He is in the low places.
How do you eat locusts? Fried? boiled? raw? or with your fingers holding your nose tightly closed.
Life has its honey and life has it locusts.
Life has it sweetness, and life has its wounds.
Today I am not talking about wounds that weaken but wounds that strengthen and that are marks of vitality and life. We are comparing wounds to eating locusts along with our honey.
In the old testament there is a story of Jacob having a dream and in that dream he saw a ladder that went up to heaven, and angels were busy going up and down that ladder.
In the New Testament God gives a different picture of the ladder to heaven, it goes down and not up!
What are you talking about, Pastor?
The first step on the golden staircase is this:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. That is not stepping up it is stepping down.
Another: Matthew 5:6 Blessed [are] they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Eating locusts will make you hungry for something else. This also is not a step up but down in humility and hunger.
Another: Two men were praying, one beat his breast and would not so much as lift his eyes towards heaven and said, "God be merciful to be a sinner" The lower we go the higher we get!
Another: whoever comes to Me shall be broken.
Finally on the bottom stair tis written, "Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted."
There is a holy mourning. A blessed dourness, a sacred wimpering of which I want to speak to you today.
The mourning here Jesus speaks of is not the mourning of those who have just lost everything in a fire, nor those who have lost a loved one, nor those who have suffered physically, nor those who have suffered reverses and hardships, (though all these will be comforted if they seek Him)
No He is speaking of a holy mourning, He is speaking of the wounds of God upon a persons being, there are three of them, The wound of contrition, the wound of compassion, the wound of longing after God.
Most of this message is my own, but I must be honest, some of it is stolen bread from a lady preacher. She wrote a book 600 years ago, and I know not what she wrote in that book, save those three points I have just given you. Her name is Lady Julian of Norwich, and I know one other thing she wrote in that book: "This I ask without condition." "I ask this without condition, Father; do what I ask and then send me the bill. Anything it costs me will be all right with me."
Many there be which ask God for blessings, who asks God for wounds?
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend," says the Holy Spirit in Proverbs 27:6. And lest we imagine that the preacher or your neighbor is the one who does the wounding, I want to read Job 5:17,18: "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole."
Paul said in Galations: Galatians 6:17 From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. (Explain this text, that wounds indicate complete dedication to Jesus)
All great Christians have been wounded souls. It is strange what a wound
will do to a man. Here’s a soldier who goes out to the battlefield. He is
full of jokes and strength and self- assurance; then one day a piece of
shrapnel tears through him and he falls, and whimpering, beaten, defeated
man. Suddenly his whole world collapses around him and this man, instead
of being the great, strong, broad-chested fellow that he thought he was,
suddenly becomes a whimpering boy, again. And such have even been known, I
am told, to cry for their mothers when they lie bleeding and suffering on
the field of battle. There is nothing like a wound to take the
self-assurance out of us, reduce us to childhood again and make us small
and helpless in our own sight.
THE FIRST Wound IS THE WOUND OF CONTRITION.
Repentance is a change of mind. But that is just what’s the matter with us. We have reduced repentance to a change of mind. It is a mental act, indeed, but I point out that repentance is not likely to do us much good until it ceases to be a change of mind only and becomes a wound within our spirit. No man has truly repented until his sin has wounded him near to death, until the wound has broken him and defeated him and taken all the fight and self-assurance out of him
Contrition is a brokenness over sin. It is what Jesus called blessed mourning. The bible tells us the sorrow of the world worketh death, but Godly sorrow worketh repentance not to repented of.
Now there’s a lot of cheap and easy getting rid of sin and getting your repentance disposed of. But the great Christians in and out of the Bible, have been those who were wounded with a sense of contrition so much so that they suffered greatly that they had ever disobeyed God.
Ezekiel 9:1-11 explain this is a special protection for mourners.
THEN THERE IS THE WOUND OF COMPASSION.
If you are comfortable with the most of the world going to hell, you are too comfortable.
If that doctrine doesn’t trouble you, vex you, stir you to prayers and actions it is because satan has been busy putting his udder cream and soothing your wounds.
The wound of compassion will drive you to your knees and cause you to mourn for lost sheep.
You will mourn their lostness and your ineptitude to do anything about it.
5 loves and two fishes is all I have but what are they among so many?
There can be no filling until there is first an emptying.
O Jerusalem Jerusalem how I would gather you as a hen does her chicks.
Matthew 9:36 But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd, not as sinners that He couldn’t wait to get His hands around their necks.
Sympathy is your pain in my heart.
Compassion is deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.
It is a wounding, a holy suffering, a sacred commiserating,
Jeremiah 8:19-21 Behold, listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land: ... "Harvest is past, summer is ended, And we are not saved." For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.
Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go. God called people His people who were at the time servants of the devil. Too many have ice water in their veins about the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
The Wound of hunger for Christ:
Isaiah 64:7 And [there is] none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.
Following Hard After God! by A. W. Tozer
We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him. In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice to acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will turn away with tears to hunt some lonely place and pray. "Oh God, show me Thy glory." They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long in vain."
Zechariah 12:10-14 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for [his] only [son], and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for [his] firstborn. In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.
Well Christian do you bear on your body any of the marks of the Lord Jesus. O for sacred Holy wounds.
Close: Prayer for those who could say: Pastor I do not have the attitude about sin that I ought to have. But God has convicted me today.
Pastor I have not had compassion for others the way I ought to have had. God give me that wound.
Pastor, I have not longed for Jesus they way I ought to long for Him.
