Proverbs 25:14-16

Pro 25:16

"Hast thou found honey? Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it."

Pleasures and Penalties

There is no denial of the goodness and the sweetness of honey. Not one word is spoken against the thing that is found, or against the appetite that desires it. We are not told that honey is a bad thing and dangerous to take; nor are we told that the appetite which desires honey is a bad appetite and must be crucified. Let us clearly understand this, because out of it will come the whole reasoning of the discourse. Honey is good. To eat it is perfectly proper; but the text tells us that we ought only to eat sufficient, because if we eat to excess we shall really punish ourselves. That is a wonderful law of nature. It is marvellous to notice how our appetites are our constables taking us up, arresting us with a strong hand, if we over-indulge them. The beginning is very good. You say it is impossible to eat too much of this, it is so sweet; and before the clock has gone half round you blame yourself almost for beginning the very feast which was so delicious.

There is a stopping-place in nature. If you go beyond the proper stopping-place, nature arrests you, and smites you with an unsparing hand. You profess to be lovers of law, and you call yourselves law-abiding. Prove your own words. It is easy to be law-abiding when there is no temptation to be law-violating. It is just where we are tempted to break the law that we require the exhortation to keep it. "He that breaketh through a hedge, a serpent shall bite him." How is it that there is always a serpent on the other side of the hedge? Who put that serpent there? Why is that serpent there? That serpent is the very security of your life. You would kill yourself with honey if it did not sate you. You would revel in license, not in liberty, if the serpent did not bite you whenever you exceeded the determined line of God. Be thankful for punishments; they keep the world sweet and pure. Be thankful that your appetite can be sated, and that sweetness turns to poison; that wine brings madness, and that self-indulgence brings the very de-humanizing of your nature. It is along that line of penalty that you find the security of your individual life, of your family relations, and of your social completeness and rest.

One would think that men did not need such an exhortation as is in the text. Yet it is precisely these commonplace exhortations that men do need. We require to be spoken to plainly right along the line of common everyday experience, and that book and that teaching will get the strongest hold upon us that does not pass over our heads in obscure mysteries, but addresses the middle line of life and that turns commonplace itself to the highest and noblest uses. What I want to teach is this: the satisfaction of man can never come out of anything that is finite therefore man himself is not finite in any sense that can bring his nature into insignificance and contempt. Man can only be satisfied with the very fulness of God, therefore man is immortal. From the very circumstance that honey sates and returns from the appetite that once it pleased, I argue that there is no satisfaction in things sensuous, in things material, in things finite; and that if we want rest, contentment, completeness, and peace we must find these in the infinite. Let us thus fearlessly apply the principle, and not handle it timidly. Apply it to the obtainment and possession of money. It is not in money to make any man rich. Men say they will be content when they have enough. Precisely. But what is enough? Name the amount, and say, That certainly is enough. So it may be in the distance, and whilst yet it is unobtained, but the moment you obtain the sum which you considered in your comparative poverty to be enough you will find that it is still too little. Much will have more, and more will magnify itself into more still. It is not in anything that is finite to satisfy that inward self of yours; therefore, that inward self is greater than all outward great things, and there is something in you that requires a keener and more delicious sweetness than any the hand can gather. It is difficult to make men believe this doctrine. We have had rich men amongst us who have preached it to us. The richest man in Europe was asked, "How does it feel to be a millionaire?" He replied, "It just feels as though you could pay twenty shillings in the pound." That was a man who retained his sanity; who kept his head upon his shoulders and his eyes in his head. But there have been men whose wealth has become their poverty, and whose riches have crushed them into the dust, in which they have spent their whole life.

Apply the principle to gaiety. The young life says it will be gay; it will not mope, it will not whine, it will see life, it will see the world, it will whirl through all the giddy dance, and will always be happy, with a new scene every day, with new surroundings week by week and month by month. Tomorrow shall be as this day, and more abundant. A brighter light shall make the face brighter still. That is the poetry; what is the reality? The young life returns from the evening toils and enjoyments weary, sated and, oh that continual headache! At first a headache only. The gas was too hot, the air was oppressive. It will be better to-morrow night. The next night comes, and, lo! on the following morning there is a twinge of heart-ache. Did that come of the gas, of the hot air, of the late hours? The headache might come from such causes, but this is a heart-ache. What do heart-aches come from? And do they come to young lives? Have they no pity upon the young, and fair, and happy ones? None. It is not in gaiety to make you glad. Hast thou found gaiety? "Eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it." I would allow some liberty. I am not an ascetic monk who would seek to shut you up in a hermitage or cell far away from all society. I like to see you glad. I fear to see the first wrinkle on the young, smooth flesh. I call it an enemy. I say, Could not this dear face have been spared the ripping and wrinkling of old time and care? I would have you enjoy life. Hast thou found enjoyment? Eat so much of it as is sufficient for thee, but know when to stop; be master of the occasion. Say to the tempter: No more; so far you are a friend and helper, but if you come one step further than this you become a foe and deadly enemy; go back till I call thee again. By all the faint hearts, by all the dreary lives, by all the blighted hopes, by all the wrinkled faces, by all the bent backs of those who have gone to find heaven in gaiety, I adjure you to eat only so much as is sufficient for you, lest you be filled therewith, and vomit it. What is the true meaning of these words? Eating and drinking in excess incapacitates the mind for realising the conception of immortality. Eating and drinking have only one day more, to-morrow we die! You can eat and drink until the poetry is killed in your soul. We have known young, fresh lives, full of dream and vision, take gradually to the eating of honey, and the drinking of wine, and the sating of animal appetite, until the eyes lost their speculation, until the head became distenanted of all great thoughts, and until the tongue once eloquent stammered and babbled, and only half told its foolish tale. Eating and drinking do not stop therefore, you see, at the body; they assail the mind. They go on until they bring down the daring wing of fancy, and the angel that is in the man is killed by the overfeeding of his body.

Let me ask one question; pray answer as frankly as I inquire. There is a man who has much cattle, which he feeds with the very finest food that money can buy and care gather together. His cattle live, so to say, in a state of daily luxury, but that same man starves his little children in the house. What do you say about him? That is my question. Let reason answer; let good feeling reply. I have stated the case in its naked simplicity. What is he? I will call him a base man will you? Yes. I will denounce him as immoral will you? Very well; that is precisely what you are doing if you are feeding your animal nature, and drinking yourself into a state of debauchery, and neglecting to feed the mind that makes you a man, and the sensibilities which distinguish you from the beasts of the field. Apply your own logic. But here comes the supreme difficulty. Men may have opinion without having faith. Men may give you a sound answer in the abstract, yet lack that peculiar something that turns opinion into courage, and sanctifies courage until it becomes faith. There can be no controversy as to whether overindulgence is good or bad. Bad for body and soul, bad for the family, bad for society. That is your opinion, but no man is saved by his opinions. Remember that your opinion is contra-dieted by your conduct. Opinion is to be passed through a process until it becomes faith. This is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith. An opinion may be expressed by a nod of the head. An opinion may be indicated by the uplifting of a hand, but it is in faith alone to answer temptation, to overcome the enemy, and to crush the serpent's head. Let me assume shall I do so? that some poor soul goes with me word for word, and says, "Would God I could turn my opinions into faith, what a different man I would be, and what a large life would open before me." So far, good; not an angel in heaven but will help you. It is not easy to go from opinion to faith. It is not easy to set the tempting honey and the tempting wine aside, and to say, No more. Any preacher that trifled with my temptations would be no preacher to me. I must hear one who acknowledges that mine is a difficult task, that mine is one of the subtlest diabolisms that ever tried to wreck a human life. It is easy for a man who never had any temptation to deliver a lecture to show you what to do. But we are talking to one another with the masonry of a common understanding. We are not talking metaphysics that lie millions of miles away from practical experience. But we are agreed that ours is a hard task, and we are agreed to ask God to overcome the enemy. Is that so? Then a beginning must be made; the final word must be spoken. When you speak that word you will create history upon earth and history in heaven. But it is hard. You will do it some day? That is an aggravation of your case. To postpone the fight is the success of the enemy. Now we are all in the same condemnation. The preacher is not a fine man and you inferior clay. We are all in the same position, there is no escape, we are in the same awful depravity; and if there be one voice only speaking, it is not a voice that speaks of itself, but takes up into its tones the thunder and the music of God's judgments and Christ's Gospel.

Then, with regard to others, I may say, How does God graciously conduct us into a conception of the greatness of human nature. He finds honey for us, and says, "See if it be in sweetness to satisfy?" And we eat the honey over-much until we know the agonies of satiety. We say, "No more of that It is sweet in the beginning, but it is as poison in the end. Never more will we touch that sweetness." God says to us, "Is it in wine to inspire?" And we take the wine, and the centres of nervous power are touched and titillated, and we begin to see figures in the air, and our voice acquires a new boldness, and we plunge into the conversation with suggestions that in our soberer moments we dare not have uttered. And we say, "This is the panacea, this is the true friend that will get us out of the darkness, and lead us up to the heights of true enjoyment." And we get more, and a cloud forms upon the mind; and more and gradually we stumble in our speech; and more and we lose our identity, and become worse than the beasts that perish; and we find that in wine is exhilaration, not inspiration; that whilst it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other, and it steals the senses which it at first excited. We find that it is not in wine to make the heart of man permanently glad. Thus, God sends us gold to make us rich. And we dig for it, and smelt it, and purify it, and make it into ornaments, and wear it; and at first we are as pleased with it as a child with a new toy, but at last we find that it can really do very little for us. It can only be changed at one counter. "Now," says God by his providence, "you see what you are, by seeing that sweetness cannot satisfy you, wine cannot inspire you, money cannot enrich you." Why? Because you are born in the image and likeness of God. It is the divinity that stirs within you; you cannot satisfy the divinity within you with honey, or wine, or gaiety. Who can satisfy the hunger of the soul with the grass of the earth? What is the argument? We are more than mortal; we know it though we cannot explain it. What we can explain is, of necessity, finite, and, in all probability, superficial. There is no other answer to the uprising of the soul in its noblest moods.

What, then, are you going to do? because you have very little time to do it in, whatever it is. And it gets shorter. You never knew an old man say that the years were so much longer than they used to be when he was a boy. Old men say that time flies. Men of experience say that their life is as a vapour that cometh for a little while and then vanisheth away. Old pilgrims, bending over their staves, tell royal Pharaohs that few and evil have been the days of their servants. So, whatever we are going to do, we must do at once. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." What say you? Who is on the Lord's side? I know what a battle you will have to fight You say, if it were not for many complications which you cannot explain, you would do all that is now suggested. The case is a difficult one, but there have been others in circumstances quite as bad as yours who, by the help of the grace of God, have done the thing which I want you to do. The best way to do a thing is to do it; explanation will follow in due time. They that do the will shall know of the doctrine. Now, what are you going to do? This is business; this is not pleasure. This is not a transient interview having no purport and no use; it is business. What are you going to do? Do not live the fool's life, or you will die the fool's death. I know there are others who say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." But you do not die to-morrow! If I were certain that you would die like dumb, driven cattle to-morrow, even then I should exhort you to be true and honourable and charitable, because virtue brings its own reward every day. But you do not die to-morrow. To die to live! The rich man died, and in hell he opened his eyes. We do not die to-morrow. We are not dogs; we have not been dogs in our life, therefore we shall not be dogs in our death. Moreover, the reasoning is false that says, "Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." You do not live to yourself; you have your wife, your children, your friends, and they go down when you go down. You cannot say a bad word in your family without that bad word falling scorchingly upon the youngest life in your house. You could not die in the ditch like a forsaken dog without that sweet little child of yours coming one day to hold down its head in unutterable shame, because of a father who murdered his own life, and insulted every instinct that gives nobleness to human nature. The case is not limited by your own personality. Fifty years hence men may sometimes have to blush for you. By the greatness of the case, by its far-stretching issues, by its intrinsic importance, I adjure you to look to Christ, who came to save just such as you. If you are lost, he came for you; if you are dead, he is the resurrection and the life; if you are leprous, so that no man dare touch you, he dare, he is your friend, your Saviour. His great heart-door stands open night and day, and he waits to be gracious. Come now. You have seen the world, and it is a lie; you have eaten its honey, and it brings sickness; you have drunk its wine, and it brings madness; you have tried its gaiety, and it brings sadness, and under the purple robe is an aching heart. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Note

"The diet of eastern nations has been in all ages light and simple. As compared with our own habits, the chief points of contrast are the small amount of animal food consumed, the variety of articles used as accompaniments to bread, the substitution of milk in various forms for our liquors, and the combination of what we should deem heterogeneous elements in the same dish, or the same meal. The chief point of agreement is the large consumption of bread, the importance of which in the eyes of the Hebrew is testified by the use of the term lechem (originally food of any kind) specifically for bread, as well as by the expression 'staff of bread' (Leviticus 26:26 ; Psalms 105:16 ; Ezekiel 4:16 , Eze 14:13 ).... An important article of food was honey, whether the natural product of the bee (l Sam. Proverbs 14:25 ; Mat 3:4 ), which abounds in most parts of Arabia (Burckhardt, Arabia, 1:54), or the other natural and artificial productions included under that head, especially the dibs of the Syrians and Arabians, i.e., grape juice boiled down to the state of the Roman defrutum , which is still extensively used in the East (Russell, 1:82); the latter is supposed to be referred to in Gen 43:11 and Ezekiel 27:17 . The importance of honey, as a substitute for sugar, is obvious; it was both used in certain kinds of cake (though prohibited in the case of meat offerings, Lev 2:11 ), as in the pastry of the Arabs (Burckhardt, Arabia, 1:54), and was also eaten in its natural state either by itself (1 Samuel 14:27 ; 2 Samuel 17:29 ; 1Ki 14:3 ), or in conjunction with other things, even with fish ( Luk 24:42 ). 'Butter and honey' is an expression for rich diet (Isaiah 7:15 , Isa 7:22 ); such a mixture is popular among the Arabs (Burckhardt, Arabia, 1:54). 'Milk and honey' are similarly coupled together, not only frequently by the sacred writers, as expressive of the richness of the promised land, but also by the Greek poets (cf. Callim. Hymn in Jov. 48; Horn. Obadiah 1:20; Obadiah 1:20 :68). Too much honey was deemed unwholesome ( Pro 25:27 ). With regard to oil, it does not appear to have been used to the extent we might have anticipated; the modern Arabs only employ it in frying fish (Burckhardt, Arabia, 1:54), but for all other purposes butter is substituted: among the Hebrews it was deemed an expensive luxury ( Pro 21:17 ), to be reserved for festive occasions ( 1Ch 12:40 ); it was chiefly used in certain kinds of cake (Leviticus 2:5 ff.; 1Ki 17:12 ). 'Oil and honey' are mentioned in conjunction with bread in Ezekiel 16:13 , Ezekiel 16:19 . The Syrians, especially the Jews, eat oil and honey ( dibs ) mixed together (Russell, 1:80). Eggs are not often noticed, but were evidently known as articles of food (Isaiah 10:14 , Isaiah 59:5 ; Luk 11:12 ), and are reckoned by Jerome ( In Epitaph. Paul. 1:176) among the delicacies of the table," Smith's Dictionary of the Bible.

Prayer

Almighty God, we cannot understand our life: it is full of mystery; so bright, so dark: now one long day, full of music and light and joy; and then suddenly a great gloom of midnight, in which we can see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, but pressure and despair. Yet we love to live. Even in our poverty and loss and pain and dreariness, there is a wondrous magic, a marvellous fascination in the very act of living. What is this life but a spark of thine own duration, a hint of what is meant by Eternity, a revelation of the beginning of Immortality? All life is thy gift, perilous gift! gracious gift! so difficult to be finite, so hard to be incomplete; so trying to see heights we cannot reach, and breadths upon which we cannot lay our little hands. Yet thou hast filled us with a strange spirit of ambition: we would know what is behind everything, above it, and below it; we want to read all the writing thou hast written upon the broad heavens, and we can hardly spell one word of it; yet the whole seems to mean God is light, God is love, God reigneth. These lessons are enough for us to know now. They are the first lessons; all the detail and meaning, and furthest, deepest, grandest music must come by-and-by. Help us to believe this, to live in this noble hope, and to wait for it with all patience, industry, and resignation. We bless thee for all the comforts of life. Thou dost give unto us our health, and friends, and opportunities of progress, and our highest faculties; thou dost feed the inspiration of the soul by continued breathings from heaven, and thou dost promise to our expanding capacity larger thoughts, bounties now undreamed of as to their wealth and continuity. We bless thee for all the religious feeling which makes us lift up ourselves from the dust and set our whole being towards the light of heaven. We are not beasts that perish; thou art not a potter who having made a beautiful vase will dash it to the ground and set his foot upon the pieces; thou dost not mean us to complete the contemptible journey from dust to dust too small a circle for the capacities and powers and aspirations with which thou hast enriched and ennobled us. This is not thy meaning. Thy purpose is other than this, whatever it may be, and however impossible to us to set it out in words. We feel the most of our religion: we feel our immortality. We would not have it explained; for then it would be a thing measurable and namable in equivalent terms: we would feel it, grope after it, have an inexpressible assurance of it, and touch all life's duties and sorrows with its peculiar with its heavenly dignity. Thou dost visit us in various ways, to chasten our life, too educate our spirit, and to bring us to thy meaning of manhood. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Help the bereaved to bear the stroke; give them light even in darkness, and in the dreariest of all silence may they hear a voice speaking to the heart. Thou dost take away, and none can hinder; thou dost close the ear to our appeal, and on tired eyes there softly lies the stillest of all slumbers. This is thy doing, and man may but weep, and wonder, and then resign himself, and say, It is well: it is better with those who have gone than with those who have remained, for they have gone forward to coronation, and we abide to plough and sow, in all winds and weathers, in all tumults and uproars; to continue life's little business and to be stung by life's keen pains. Give all who suffer the nobler view, the further outlook, the larger life that abolishes death. Whilst we live may we live well, wisely, simply, trustfully; and may ours be the blessedness of those servants who are found waiting when their Lord cometh. Fill us with thy Spirit Spirit of truth, light, liberty, and justice; make us rich with heaven's own goodness, make us strong men, and yet do thou cover all our strength with the beauty of tenderness; may our words be wise and firm, and yet may the tone in which we speak indicate the gentle heart, the loving spirit, the sympathising Soul. We bless thee for thy Son. O wondrous word! that God should have a son! we would see the Son: he may be like the Father; we cannot see the Father, we would therefore see his Son, for surely he will represent him, he will turn the speech of the Father into our mother tongue, and we may be able here and there to catch a word, and understand it, and to trust to such word for the larger revelation which is yet to come. We thank thee for the Cross. Once we did not understand it; it was to us grim and ghastly, full of all horrible feeling and suggestion; but now we see in it a new shape, a new thought, the very heart of God; the mystery of redemption by blood, and the mystery of joy through sorrow, and the mystery of mysteries, life through death. Now there is no death to those who see the Cross and cling to it and trust to it; the bitterness of death is passed, and when death itself shall come it will be but a momentary shadow, fleeting before some invisible but mighty spirit. The Lord come to us day by day, for the day would be blank which brought no God. Give us strength and courage. May we abide in the sanctuary of great principles, and stand for ever in the temple of truth, and know that all kingdoms, tyrannies, oppressions, wrongs, must go down: for there is one coming who is the Son of man. Amen.