Come Hungry!
When God Speaks • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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16 Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.
I want us to come back to Jeremiah because Jeremiah was a man who lived his life by God’s Word.
From the time that God called him, as only a teenager, He had placed His Words in His mouth.
9 Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
Now I thought this was an interesting concept, when Jeremiah says, “I found your Words and I ate them”?
I wondered what does that really mean?
What does it mean to consume God’s Word, rather than just to read it, or know it?
This is not a concept that is unique to Jeremiah, but one that we find all throughout Scripture.
3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
Matt. 4:4
8 “But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.” 9 And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it. 10 And he spread it before me. And it had writing on the front and on the back, and there were written on it words of lamentation and mourning and woe. 1 And he said to me, “Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” 2 So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. 3 And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.
103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” 10 And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.
To fully understand this idea of consuming God’s Word that is put forth in Scripture we must understand the unique way in which God has created us as physical and spiritual beings.
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Because man is both physical and spiritual, he needs more than those things that provide and protect his physical body, we also have spiritual needs that must be met.
One of the things that is most clearly implied from the idea of consuming God’s Word is that it provides essential spiritual nourishment.
God’s Word is to the soul of man what food is to the body of man.
Just as the body can’t survive for long without food, so the spirit can’t survive without God’s Word.
It provides nourishment. It provides sustenance. And without it, we ultimately die.
That is why God told Adam in the garden that on the day you eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die.
Because to neglect or to reject God’s Word, means spiritual death.
Personal Illustration:
2. The other thing that is implied from this idea is the need for God’s Word to be internalized.
The only way that God’s Word can be transformational is for it to be internalized.
It is not enough just to know God’s Word, we have to get God’s Word inside of us.
It must be consumed, received, taken in.
It must become part of us.
Steak:
8 Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
So, how do we do that practically?
How do we get God’s Word inside of us for Him to do His life transforming work?
One of the most effective, yet most neglected, ways to get God’s Word in us, is by meditation.
Not the kind of meditation that we see in Hindu and Buddhist religions, but the kind of meditation that is talked about in Joshua 1:8
“8 This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Biblical meditation is the practice of thinking about and reflecting on God’s Word to deepen our understanding and apply it to our life.
Meditation is taking what we have read in God’s Word and asking questions that will take us below the surface to see the true meaning behind it.
Questions like:
What does this teach me about God? His Character, actions, priorities?
What does this teach me about people? Our character, actions, priorities?
What do I need to praise God for from this passage?
What sins do I need to confess?
What promises do I need to believe?
What is God calling me to do in response to what I’ve read?
I would rather spend an hour in meditation upon one verse than read through 5 chapters.
A person that is not spiritually nourished and sustained by God’s Word cannot live out God’s Will in this life.
Now there is one thing that must precede our consuming God’s Word, and that is hunger.
There must be a spiritual hunger in our soul.
1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
9 For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
