When Bitter Becomes Sweet

When you read through the Bible and come upon a tax that bothers you, you don't understand put a red mark next door and then later on come back and focus on those red marks say here's a portion of Scripture. I don't understand. I'm going to devote special attention to trying to understand these passages that are difficult. What a great way to learn, and I suspect that describes many of use this program. Serious students of God's word.

Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on the Saturday we went all of us at one point of come across diverse world passages in Scripture that we simply don't understand.

In recent weeks we've been looking at the hard sayings of Jesus and today Dr. RC Sproul turns his attention to the puzzling pronouncements of the Old Testament prophets what were thinking about. Here are those state's that we find in the Scripture that are hard that they could be hard for one of two reasons assaying can be called a hard saying because it appears to us, at least at first blush to be severe or harsh in that sense it's hard to swallow because these statements sort of jar son Joel Dawson harm our sensibilities and we recoiled from them. We read, for example in the Old Testament that God instructed the Israelites to institute the Marine which had to do with the wholesale destruction of the Canaanite nation, man, woman and child, and that just seems so far so severe and it seems to cast a shadow on the love of God and on the mercy of God and on the goodness of God. We say how we handle text like that there difficult there hard because they are severe to our senses. The second way we talk about hard sayings is that they are hard to unravel.

They are hard to understand, not simply because of their harshness, but because there difficult for us to conceive. Much of what the Bible teaches about the sovereignty of God and his sovereign control over human behavior, coupled with the responsibility that we have as volitional agents and being responsible for the choices that we may, we put those things together that's difficult and so we can call those sayings hard sayings now before we get into this, let me say one other thing, by way of preface. If there is a shortcut to accelerating your understanding of Scripture, the shortcut would be focusing your attention on the hard sayings I say when you read through the Bible and you come upon a tax that bothers you. You don't have to just be paralyzed and stop there and stay there forever.

Move on, but market and I say if you find a passage you don't understand put a red mark next to and then later on come back and focus on those red marks say here's a portion of Scripture. I don't understand. I'm going to devote special attention to trying to understand these passages that are difficult. What a great way to learn.

If you focus on the obstacles to your progress and remove them one by one.

You'll have this augmented understanding, but even more importantly are those taxes that jar your emotions and you read that and you say I don't like what the Bible says here put a big mark next to that one to those passages in Scripture that offend you that at first glance you disagree with those of the ones you really need to put your focus and your attention upon if you want to grow rapidly as one of two things will happen. You may discover that the reason why that text offended you or an homepage your sensitivities because you didn't understand. And after you delve into it and examine it.

Read the commentaries on it come to a better insight of what it means now your problem is resolved and you can move on. In the meantime you've gained new insight and new understanding, but suppose you check all the commentaries and you're careful in your examination of the text and you find out that you understand it exactly right that still makes you mad and you don't like it lives submit yourself to your husband, like that you say will put three checks next to the because that means one of two things. Either there's something wrong with the author of Scripture who wrote those words. There something wrong with Paul's thinking and Paul want to change or what something wrong with my thinking because here while I'm being critical of Scripture Scriptures being critical of me and if you want to grow in grace and sanctification find those places where you are critical of God. It might just be that these are the places you need to change your thinking and change your life. Now I'd like to ask you to turn to the book of the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament to the beginning of the second chapter of Ezekiel, you recall that in the first chapter of Ezekiel, there is Ezekiel's description of an incredible visionary experience that he hats that first chapter is kept Old Testament scholars busy for centuries trying to sort it out with this vision of the whirling marker bylaws and the highly imaginative view of the whirlwind and the likenesses of the strange creatures and the means of conveyance of this thing that has wheels within wheels that some have even tried to identify as an Old Testament appearance of a flying saucer but which we understand in the biblical imagery and literature that Ezekiel is having a vision of the transcendent majesty of God, as he appears in his chariot throne.

His movable throne which is covered with glory and has the ability to shoot out in all different directions and appear here and there and everywhere manifesting the appearance of God in his throne of judgment that having seen that vision in the first chapter.

Let's look and see what happens to Ezekiel in the second chapter the first chapter ends with these words.

This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. So when I saw it I fell on my face and I heard a voice of one speaking to listen to what the voice says chapter 2 verse one and he said to me, Son of Man stand on your feet and I will speak to you and then the spirit entered me when he spoke to me and set me on my feet and I heard him who spoke to me and he said Son of Man, I am sending you to the children of Israel to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against me, for they and their fathers have transgressed against me to this very day. They are impudent and stubborn children.

I am sending you to them and you shall say to them, thus says the Lord God and ask for them whether they hear or whether they refuse, for they are a rebellious house, yet they will know that a prophet has been among this may not be a hard thing for you but this is a hard saying for Ezekiel, because God says to Siegel. I am going to send you with my word to a rebellious house I'm going to send you to preach to people who don't want to hear your preaching. I am going to send you to minister to people who despise your ministry.

That's not an easy thing for any prophet to hear and you Son of Man. Do not be afraid of them nor afraid of their words though briars and thorns are with you and you dwell among scorpions. Do not be afraid of their words or dismayed by their looks, though they are a rebellious house.

I say that to a young minister who's about to be ordained and has to walk out on Sunday morning and stand before the congregation and say to the young man don't be afraid of their words and don't be afraid of their looks at everybody that's ever spoken publicly knows what a contemptuous look looks like coming from the audience or from the congregation. God says don't be afraid to them for you shall speak my words to them whether they hear or whether they refuse, but you Son of Man hear what I say to you, do not be rebellious like that rebellious house open your mouth and eat what I give you to hear what God saying he saying Ezekiel I'm sending you to a rebellious people and they are going to resist everything that you say you will be speaking my word.

They don't want my work. They rebelled against my word, but that's not your responsibility. Understand Ezekiel that the people who will be angered by this word are really angry at me because it's my word, so don't worry about what they say and don't worry about what they do you worry about Ezekiel don't you be rebellious, don't you join in this post that resists my word, then he says something incredible to him.

He says open your mouth and eat what I give you the when I looked there was a hand stretched out to me, and behold a scroll of the book was in it and then he spread it before me and there was writing on the inside and on the outside and written on it were lamentations and morning and will list to the hard say God says eat what I give you, and Isaiah looks and he sees this hand stretched out and in the hand is a school and the scroll is written on the front and on the back on the inside and on the outside. Ladies and gentlemen, the scroll is the word of God. Now it's a wonderful thing.

A joyous thing to announce peace to Jerusalem to declare the gospel that people here with great joy to announce the good news of God's promise of mercy and the forgiveness and redemption, and of his love.

That's not hard to do but the scroll that God gives to Ezekiel contains what lamentations morning and will it's all patent whose it's all hard sayings. That's all. The scroll has is hard sayings.

Moreover, he said to me, Son of Man, eat what you find, eat this scroll, and go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat that scroll and then he said to me, Son of Man, feed your belly and fill your stomach with the scroll that I give you. Let's stop right there for second God says I'm not just going to put this word in your mouth and have you taste it and spit it out. Nor am I asking you to chew on it for 10 minutes and then discard it. I want you to put it in your mouth to taste it took to it and to swallow it, and to digest it, I wanted in your belly and then I wanted in your bloodstream.

I wanted to be pervasive throughout your being.

I want you to ingest it and I want you to digest it so that this word of mine becomes a part of you. What word lamentations will morning and grief is the word that God feeds his profit. Here is where something radical and astonishing takes place so I ate and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness like this scroll of laments scroll of morning the scroll of grief.

The scroll of judgment. The scroll of the wolves of God is taken by easy kill and he eats it expecting an in palatable bitterness, something that will make him choke something that will make him gasp something that will make him scratch instead takes it and it has sweetness of honey, you could look at that in different ways is that this is one of these prophets who sadistic. He enjoyed place. Being a bearer of the judgment of God. He loves to go around and tell people how bad they are and how mad God is now. That was the personality of Ezekiel, or any of God's prophets.

They were men of compassion and men of immeasurable love, and yet God was able to make even his hard sayings taste as sweet as honey. I remember reading Edwards and his own personal struggle as a young theologian with the doctrine of God's sovereignty and of the doctrine of election and how he struggled so violently against this thinking that it indicated that God was arbitrary or capricious or unfair or cool, but he kept on trying to unravel this difficult and complex doctrine and things came to him in stages and and Edward said the first stage was. He finally became convinced in his mind that the Scriptures were really teaching a sovereign doctrine of election side and all I get up but I couldn't gainsay the Scripture was teaching this then he had an experience similar to that of Augustine centuries before when he was reading from the New Testament, and he read the passage you know about the immortal invisible only wise God and as he was reading that passage, the spirit of God so illumined the text that Edwards had this glorious sense of the transcendent majesty of God, and suddenly he saw the whole concept of God's sovereignty and of his election in a totally different light and he said now I was awakened to the sweetness of the doctrine. Boy can I testify that when I went through that same struggle, but now I see one of the sweetest messages of all the Scriptures the message of God's gracious sovereign election, which is an anchor for my soul.

And for yours and if we can get past all of the problems that we have to struggle with intellectually with that doctrine and come to rest with the God who is sovereign, that hard say which we initially recoil against is now as sweet as honey and we are delighted to swallow it to digest it and to get it into our bloodstream and so I hope it will be for all of the hard sayings of the prophets, and of Christ and of the apostles that though they seem hard at the outset by the work of God's gracious Holy Spirit, they will become for us like the sweetness of that's exactly why King David could say how much he loved God's word, he meditated on it day and night. You know when we struggle to submit to Scripture, we need to realize that were being tempted by the very first line, the serpent whispered to Eve, did God really say we find difficult passages in the Bible. Our response must be to believe and obey today on Renewing Your Mind. We've brought you the opening message from Dr. RC Sproul series the hard sayings of the prophets, and I hope you'll stay with us because RC will have a final thought force in just a moment about this very subject. Each Saturday we will return to the series but we'd also like for you to have it in your own library when you contact us today with a donation of any about the leader ministries provide you with the digital download of this five-part series, you can give your gift online@renewingyourmind.org or you can call us at 800-435-4343 well, as we've learned in this series there are difficult passages in Scripture, but there's really no need to be confused about what we read. We do need to read with proper understanding and so it's in that context that I went out with our camera crew and best folks on the street what they believed about the Bible say that the Bible is 100% accurate all the teachers was written very very long time ago, so the wording in some parts of it can be taken out of context is of course the context is way different now. I think it's really important to mix traditional values with new contemporary values. Okay, just callous. I didn't say stagnant.

I don't think the Bible should stay stagnant. I think it should railway people and I really have a lot of metaphors and I believe that a lot of different people can read it in a different way that I believe in the same family and me a bit and some things are not as eyelids so you find a friend right to be more activity you then and I think it depends. I think we people modified a couple times but the most important parts of the goods. It's people have been some changes in anatomy the work that I still think it's the read the Bible not know I am skeptical of organized religions run by men are human say. I think a lot of examples in history of people abusing that power and I think something is the word of God and relates are just doing what they want and so I kind trying to be more open-minded. Yeah, I think there's there's a lot of possibilities out there, and I try to explore them is the Bible 100% accurate all the teachers absolutely.

I think that's the as man grows in his wisdom he essentially comes to know that the Bible is true that science is more and more proving the truth of Scripture rather than the other way around. And so I believe that the Bible is God's word in its perfect. What we did here are some clearly bearded way, but we also heard some confusion and that's exactly why it's important to understand what were reading, so when you have questions about things that you read in the Bible. Another helpful resource for answers is asked linear. It's available 24 hours a day, Monday through Saturday and provide you the opportunity to ask well-trained staff members are legionary or theological or biblical questions. Hope you'll check it out when you go to ask.look@here.org and as promised, here's RC again. We have a word in our language that is the word bitter sweet seems to be an oxymoron does not, how can something be both bitter and sweet at the same time will it can't be at the same time and in the same relationship, but even those things that come to us initially closed and bitterness can under the agency of God's Holy Spirit become sweet to us and there is nothing more sweet to the Christian than his word, and so I ask you as we look at these difficult passages throughout Scripture to look for the sweetness to look for the beauty and the glory of God that stands behind because before God is truth is always sweet. It is always glorious. It is always wonderful. And when we recoil against it in the spirit of bitterness is because we haven't yet tasted to see that the Lord is good. Next week we will learn about a hard prophecy that Jeremiah had to proclaim over Israel and tell them that they were following a false religion.

It's a message that holds a warning for us as well. So we hope you'll join us next Saturday or Renewing Your Mind