“Butter and honey shall he eat that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.” (Isaiah 7:15). Just what is the butter and honey that enables one to do this? If it were a product that could be bought in a store we would all do as the merchant in the parable who was seeking goodly pearls. When he found the one pearl of great price, he sold all he had and went and bought it. This man was looking for a good thing. Surely the knowledge of howl to refuse the evil and choose the good would bed a tremendous asset on the race for eternal life.
Fortunately, the Bible does not give us symbols such as butter and honey without giving us clues to their meaning. Psalm 119:103 reads “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” Ezekiel chapter 2:9 and 3:3 says “a roll of a book was therein,–Then I did eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.” Proverbs 24:13-14 tells all who would be sons of God, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb which is sweet to thy taste; so shall the knowledge of wisdom he unto thy soul; when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.” “Eating” the words and instructions of God can change us into entirely different people.
Psalm 81:16 says “with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee”. This thought may be from Deuteronomy 32:13-14. “And he made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock, butter of kine,.” Verse 4 of this Psalm tells us the Rock is God whose ways are perfect. Christ also is referred to as the Rock in 1 Corinthians 10:4. We must feed on the Rock, God and Christ whose words are as one, for they are as butter and honey, or knowledge and instruction to us.
Job 29:6 gives a puzzling reference to butter until we consider it awhile. “When I washed my steps with butter and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” This cannot be literal for anyone to w ash his steps with butter would he to invite a disastrous fall every time he used them. Psalm 55:21 tells us that the words of his mouth were smoother than butter. The picture given here is that of putting the words of God before our steps or path to make the way smooth, that we might walk with God as did Noah. Enoch and a host of others -righteously and blamelessly.
Psalm 18:30-40 pictures a man of faith with the shield of salvation being trained for God’s warfare and then pursuing and vanquishing his enemies. Paul picks up this thought in some of his letters. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the whole armor of God. You don’t need armor if you are not willing to do battle. Walking with God implies action. Wrestling against flesh and blood implies vigorous action. Sucking honey from the rock again implies a strong pulling action. While God has given us the Bible it often requires a powerful effort many times repeated to extract the true meaning, just as the repeated sucking action of a baby will eventually empty the bottle and the infant receives nourishment from what it has taken in. Constant study of the Bible will enable us to keep the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God highly polished and ready for use in preaching the truth. Hymn 276 exhorts as follows:
Ho! reapers of life’s harvest, Why stand with rusted blade
Until the night draws round you, and day begins to fade?
Why stand ye idle, waiting, For reapers more to come?
The golden morn is passing; Why it ye idle, dumb?
Thrust in your sharpened sickle, And gather in the grain:
The night is fast approaching. And soon will come again.
Thy Master calls for reapers, And shall he call in vain?
Shall sheaves lie there ungathered and waste upon the plain?
Has the blade of our sword or sickle rusted with time? Do we stand idle, letting others reap? Sheaves lie there ungathered–will we help bring them in?
Having our feet shod with the gospel of peace will move us to action, but we know that not all have their feet shod. Nebuchadnezzar’s image had feet of part iron and part clay. Iron of strength—clay of weakness, or of the flesh. This indicates a divided kingdom or state of affairs. We cannot walk righteously and blamelessly with God if the kingdom of our body, that we alone control is divided, between fleshly desires and spiritual desires. We must use the power of the word of God to thrust through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life–the carnal mind. Christ tells us that he who conquers will be granted the right to sit with him on his throne as he himself conquered and sat down with his Father on His throne. Those who do not conquer will weep and gnash teeth, when they see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God and they themselves thrust out. Conquering involves continuous action. Though we may on occasions “lose a battle”—-as David did—may we like David “win the campaign.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One