21 Nov 2014 - King's speachless

So I went up to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll.
He said to me, “Take and swallow it.
It will turn your stomach sour,
but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey.”

Jesus knows what it is like to speak a word like this. He shakes up the comfort of "many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings."  Kings stand speechless before him (cf. Isa. 52:15). He "is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed" (cf. Luk. 2:34). So no wonder, then, many "were seeking to put him to death".

Yet even though he troubles the comfortable he also comforts the troubled. We see that "all the people were hanging on his words." This is the sweetness of the Word of God when Jesus speaks it. Of this, the psalmist tells us that "grace is poured upon your lips" (cf. Psa. 45:2). It is this part of the Word in which Jesus himself rejoices. He himself feels the sourness of judgment and wrath in his stomach.  He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (cf. Eze. 18:23). But when his Word is the occasion of healing, mercy, and forgiveness it is sweet. It is sweetness so great that it is song. It is so sweet that God himself "will rejoice over you with singing."

This is the encounter he wants to give us when he teaches us in his temple. Yet we tend to fill that space with our old worldly habits. We tend to bring our buying and selling with us into the temple. With that, we make it a den of thieves. God is meant to have this space reserved to himself so he can speak words which are sweet to our hearts. But if we insist on dragging the refuse of the world along with us into this space we instead hear the sour words of judgment. The solution is simple enough to describe. We must treasure his promise above and beyond anything the world can offer.

The law of your mouth is to me more precious
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.

If we can only truly mean this we won't make a place that should be a house of prayer into a den of thieves. When we don't try to comfort ourselves with these false comforts Jesus does not have to afflict us. When we realize that we need comfort and that Jesus offers us that comfort we come to him for it. We come with empty hands longing for what only he can give. 

Jesus then empowers us "so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God" (cf. 2 Cor. 1:4). He then gives us the same sort of word to speak that he himself speaks. It has both sweetness and sourness to it. Yet it is only sour if people insist that it be. As for Jesus so to for us the sweetness is worth the risk.

Your decrees are my inheritance forever;
the joy of my heart they are.