April 29

Day 46: Better than Honey

Proverbs 27:5-6 says, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy."

We all believe this to be true. In theory, at least. We usually don't like it when we're on the receiving end.

We all value honesty as an ethic. We also don't go out of our way to be challenged, let alone corrected, let alone called out. In fact, it's easy to resent the "wounds" a friend's honest words can cause. Instead of hearing honest truth, we can (at least initially) feel victimized.

The next verse appears not to fit at first blush; but it really does. Verse 7 says, "One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything is sweet."

Meaning (and fitting the prior verses) when we are full of compliments, more compliments don't help. In fact, the more compliments and affirmations we receive, the more we distrust even the giver.

When we eat too many sweets, we feel sick.

Too many kisses causes us to not want any more kisses.

By contrast, when we are "hungry" for God's truth; when we are motivated to grow and mature, we're open to all kinds of observation and input. Even the challenging stuff.

Truth is, most of us have not recently been challenged to think or do differently, especially in this day of social distancing. If married, our spouses are near by, and we cannot hide. So there's that. But, otherwise the challenges have been few and far between.

So we're all pretty comfortable with ourselves. Some of us have even enjoyed not having to interact with anyone we know will challenge us. Isolation provides that.

I wonder if some folks choose not to read God's Word, because of how it might reflect on them. We don't naturally want to be assessed.

Deep down, we really don't want to feel bad about ourselves. So it's hard to receive honesty from someone else, when we don't want to be honest with ourselves, right?

But the story of God in our Bibles does just that. It points to a holy and just God who created mankind in His own image. Those same people rejected His holiness in themselves, and rebelled. Each did their own thing. Each did what they thought "right" in their own eyes (Judges 21:25) Always has been. Still true today.

So the Father sent His Son, Jesus, to live in our place, die in our place, and be resurrected to new life, seated at the right hand of God, in our place.

Because we needed Him to do that for us.

And He's responding to those who are hungry - those who see who God is and what He's done through Jesus.

The hungry ones see themselves as convicted rebels who cannot climb out of their own rebellion, or their own death sentence. They see themselves as hungry, starving for salvation, that only God can give.

To understand we're hungry, we have to know the difference between being hungry and being satisfied, not with compliments and affirmations, but with saving truth.

And once we know we've been saved from "doing what is right in our own eyes," we want to be more and more like the one who paid the price for our salvation.

Who God is and what He has done now determines who we are and how we can live.

Sometimes, we're challenged when reading God's Word. Sometimes, God's Word is in the very thoughts and words of a friend who challenges us.

We don't need to be afraid of the "wounds."

They're better than honey!

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau