[0:00] Some of you will remember that last Wednesday we began a short series on the Word of God and the way in which it is sweeter than honey.
[0:11] Sweeter than honey has been the sort of subtitle of this little series. And last Wednesday we looked at the example of Jonathan and the army of Saul as they were pursuing the Philistines and how the honey dropped in the wood and the trees.
[0:25] And Jonathan took forth of it and he ate and he was strengthened and his eyes began shining and being enlightened because of the sweetness and the sort of sugar rush that he had from the honey.
[0:37] And we said, this is like the Word of God which is sweet to our taste and a strengthening to our souls. And if we said that last Wednesday we looked at an opportunity missed because if Saul had allowed the people to eat they could all have partaken of the honey.
[0:58] But because they were at that time ordered to fast as they pursued their enemy engaged in great exertion and physical work because battle is hard work.
[1:09] It drains the strength and the energy. It wasn't perhaps the most practical of instructions. But all the people observed it religiously. But their doing so of course meant that they ended up sinning against the Lord at the end of the day because they were so famished.
[1:23] They flew upon the spoil. They slaughtered the beast. They ate with the blood. And they sinned against the Lord more. Whereas God had provided for them that which Saul in his misguided zeal withheld from them.
[1:38] It was an opportunity missed. But what we have here with David in the Psalms is what we might call an opportunity grasped. An opportunity grasped.
[1:51] We see it here in Psalm 119 where we read of how sweet, verse 103, are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
[2:06] Now elsewhere of course in scripture. Job for example says in chapter 23, verse 12, he says, Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips.
[2:17] I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Now necessary food is one thing of course. If we think of what's our necessary food.
[2:28] We might say well bread, potatoes, meat, vegetables, fruit, that sort of thing. And all these things are necessary for our nutrition and our strength. And so if you were to say to anyone, particularly somebody of younger years perhaps, what would you rather have?
[2:44] Meat, bread, potatoes, fruit, vegetables or something sweet? Then, you know, no prizes for guessing what they're going to go for. Would they rather have all this? Or in a day when there wasn't any chocolate or sweets or whatever, sugar hadn't been really discovered, people used honey as the ultimate sweetener, as well as a certain kind of preserving factor because it didn't go off.
[3:08] So honey was a highly prized commodity. People would rather eat honey than eat even their necessary food. So when David says that God's words are sweeter than honey to his taste, he's not simply saying that, like Jonathan in our previous example, if he partakes of it, then he is strengthened and invigorated and his eyes are enlightened and shining and so on.
[3:35] But also, it's a delight to him. You know, if you've just had a big meal and you're visiting somebody's house and the hostess might bring out, say, tea or coffee, a box of chocolates or afternates or something, and invite people to have a wee chocolate with their coffee or with their tea or whatever, then you might take it.
[3:53] You're not gluttling on it, but it's just something sweet and nice to finish off with because you already had your ordinary food. But that's just a sort of little sweetener at the end.
[4:06] And the sweetener is always a delight. And the honey is not simply necessary sustenance. It's a delight. It's a sweetener in David's life.
[4:17] How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! And elsewhere, of course, a couple of verses later, a very good point earlier, it says at verse 97, O how love I thy law!
[4:34] It is my meditation all the day. The whole of Psalm 119 is like a sort of a peon of praise and delight in God's law. Remember that David is saying this at a time when, yes, he is writing many of the Psalms, but, you know, the Proverbs and Solomon and most of the prophets haven't actually been written yet.
[4:56] And much of the minor prophets, the later prophets, they haven't been born yet. So what is it he's focusing on? The books of Samuel might be written to an extent, but not yet complete.
[5:10] The books of Cain's haven't been written yet. So what is it that he is delighting in? It is the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, possibly Joshua.
[5:21] It would be difficult to delight in the book of Judges, given the content of it, but certainly the first five or six books of the Old Testament, he is clearly having devoured and read and delighted in.
[5:34] That which God commands, David delights in. It is sweet to his taste. Now, the very same commands, if given, could be burdensome to somebody else, or a bind of law.
[5:49] Law's so fearful. We don't like the law. We don't like being bound with rules and regulations and so on. That doesn't say so much about the rules or the laws or commandments themselves, but it speaks volumes about us.
[6:02] Because our normal nature, our default position, our natural condition, is not simply neutrality, it is enmity against God.
[6:15] That is the condition in which we are born and conceived. In sin, that is a state of enmity against God. It is not neutrality. It is not simple indifference.
[6:25] It is enmity. So until such time as our heart is changed and we are brought to delight in the Lord, then that which seems to restrict our own personal choices, which, remember, will always be sinful choices left to themselves, that will seem a restriction.
[6:44] It will seem like a burn. It will seem like chains rather than ornaments. As some people, of course, do wear chains usually smaller with, as ornaments, gold chains or jewellery or whatever it may be, as ornaments.
[6:56] But this would seem like, oh, prison kind of chains. It would seem heavy, clanking weight, like a ball and chains. But only if what you delight in is its opposite.
[7:08] Now David here described, Acts 13, verse 22, where the apostle describes him here, in this way, says, when he had removed him as Saul, and raised up unto them David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.
[7:36] A man after my own heart. Now, why is David a man after God's own heart? Not because he's well behaved, or because he was good looking as a boy, or because he was such a capable king.
[7:49] He is a man after God's own heart, because David's heart is brought into line with God's heart. David's will brought into line with God's will. Because he is a man of God, he delights in the things that God delights in.
[8:06] You know, the enthusiasm with which David, throughout Psalm 119, and many other places in the Psalms too, delights in God's law and his commands. He just goes on and on and on, praising how brilliant and fantastic the law of God is.
[8:22] How love I thy law. It is my meditation all the day. You can choose any section of Psalm 119, and it will all be waxing lyrical about how brilliant God's law is.
[8:35] It is sweet to his taste, because he delights in the law. But it's not just like his daily sustenance, instead of the sort of porridge and old clothes, and bread and potatoes.
[8:49] This is like the sweets at the end of the meal. This is to his taste. It is beautiful. It is wonderful. This is an opportunity grasped.
[9:02] Now what we see here, of course, in these verses, verse 99, for example, I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation.
[9:14] I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts. Mindful, of course, that David is the ultimate prefiguring of Christ. These verses conjure up for us.
[9:25] They make us think automatically of it. The boy Jesus in the temple, with the teachers of the law, with the doctors of the law, sitting there, discussing with them, asking them questions, but it was clear, from his knowledge, from the perceptiveness with which he was asking particular questions, that he had more understanding than any of them.
[9:46] These verses are, if you like, prophetic. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for thy testimonies are my meditation. In other words, they're already in my heart.
[9:57] The word of God was already in Jesus' heart, because he was the author of it. And so when he came out with questions, as you know, say in a fellowship or something, people might sort of seek to sort of prod the discussion by asking the general gathering a question or something about some particular passage, or some particular doctrine or whatever.
[10:19] And it's not that they're trying to sort of quiz people, it's just they want to initiate a discussion. They want to sort of have iron sharpening iron. They want to see what people think and what they feel.
[10:29] So when Jesus is asking, the boy Jesus is asking all the teachers of the law questions and so on, he's not just testing them, but he is getting their input.
[10:40] How much do they understand? Could this child Jesus learn anything at the human level, as it were? From their accumulated experience. But his knowledge of the word will be greater than theirs.
[10:53] I understand more than the ancients, because I keep their precepts. So David here is steeped in the scriptures. And yet, we don't actually read in any of the narrative in 1st and 2nd Samuel, or the other 1st part of 1st Kings or whatever.
[11:11] We don't actually read of David anywhere, shutting himself away with the scroll. With the written word. Spending ages reading and reading and reading the scrolls of the word of God.
[11:23] Nor do we hear of him really sort of closeting himself away with the high priest who was reading the scrolls and reading the word of God. But he must have been. He must have been doing this all the times that it's not part of the narrative.
[11:39] All the time that it's not been in public. It must have been that which he delighted in, in his own time. In the privacy of his own bedchamber, as Jesus said, go into thy closet, shut the door.
[11:53] That's what David was clearly delighting in doing. Because he is devouring God's word. If he's coming out with all this waxing lyrical about how brilliant it is, he must be familiar with it.
[12:06] And he must be delighting in it. Now, David's heart for the Lord, we cannot doubt. There's a tendency for us, well, okay, a tendency for me, certainly, often to read what you have in the narratives in the Bible.
[12:22] And when the Lord is on people's lips a lot, you think, well, of course it's the Bible. Of course the Lord is going to be on people's lips. This is all about godly people. This is all about ancient times when people were conscious of the Lord very much in their lives.
[12:34] But if you actually read the Bible's narrative, you'll see that the Bible times are absolutely awash with godless unbelievers.
[12:46] Violent men, evil men and women who are quite content to follow their own way and practice appalling violence and deceit and old manner of debauchery and so on.
[12:59] Those who are the Lord's are rare precisely because they are the Lord's. They are the subject of the narrative because this is God's salvation history.
[13:12] This is the account of God's dealing with his people. So his people form the sort of focus of the narrative and the multitudes who have no interest in the Lord are only around the periphery, the fringes.
[13:27] I mean, if we're to go back to, say, a crisis in David's life, like 1 Samuel in chapter 30, where after he's been away with the Philistines and then gets sent back mercifully before the battle with Saul and Jonathan on the other side.
[13:42] And he comes back to Ziklag and they find that the Amalekites have completely, Amalekites, if I give a pardon, have completely destroyed Ziklag and burned it with fire.
[13:52] And all the people's wives and children were taken away. They wept until they had no more power to weep. David's two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jesuitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.
[14:05] And David was greatly distressed, for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters. But David encouraged himself, and the Lord is God.
[14:19] This is one of the lowest points in David's life. It's not just that Saul was hunting him in the past, or the Philistines were against him at times. These are his own people.
[14:30] This is his own men, his own chosen bands of people who joined themselves to him when Saul was still hunting David's life. These are the ones who were his own followers and loyalists.
[14:44] And these were the people who spake of stoning him. So this is a real low point in David's life, and yet he encouraged himself in the Lord.
[14:56] We might think, okay, it's a crisis. A lot of us turn to the Lord in a crisis. But this was the nature and the breath that he breathed, the oxygen of David's life.
[15:08] You go back to early in his life, from the encounter with Goliath of Gath, the first time, of course, when he is busy boasting against the Israelite armies and challenging one of them to a basically single combat.
[15:23] We read in chapter 17 of 1 Samuel, this is when David is still, at most, a teenager, probably only about 15, or perhaps younger. When we read verse 37, David said, this is to Saul, he says, you can't go out and fight this man.
[15:40] You know, he says, he says, well, you know, I kept my father's sheep, and a lion would come, and a bear would come. And he says, the Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.
[15:57] And Saul said unto David, go, and the Lord be with thee. And it's almost, you know, almost irony here, Saul saying, well, if your God delivered you before, hopefully he'll deliver you now, sort of thing.
[16:08] David was saying before, you know, how when he kept his father's sheep, there came a lion and a bear, took a lamb out the floor, I went after him, and smoked him, and delivered him out of his mouth.
[16:20] And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smoked him, and threw him. David is not saying, look at what a great warrior I am. Set me up against this Philistine, I know what I'm doing.
[16:31] No, he says, the Lord delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, and he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. He has confidence, not in himself, but in God.
[16:46] But at the same time, he knows that because the Lord is his strength, there's no point trying to gain artificial strength from Saul's armor and weapons. He has to be himself. He has to be himself under God.
[16:59] And so when the Philistine challenges him, and mocks him, we read David said, verse 45 of 1 Samuel 17, said to the Philistine, Thou comes to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield.
[17:13] But I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand, and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee, and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day, unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
[17:42] And all this assembly shall know, that the Lord saveth, not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands. Notice the focus throughout.
[17:54] For David, it is the Lord. The Lord will deliver me. The Lord will deliver you into my hand. The Lord will be seen to be acknowledged and glorified. And he will do this so that everyone will see that there is a God in Israel.
[18:09] And so we read a few verses later on after David has smitten Goliath with slinging the stone of him, with stunk down into his forehead. And then we read, he took his sword, he took his sword, that's Goliath's sword, drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith.
[18:27] And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled. Now I think, that's a little bit some bloodthirsty, unnecessary decapitation, your God's already dead. But remember, this is being fought out in single combat in the face of two armies who are some considerable distance apart.
[18:45] They see this young boy, and they see this huge giant who are about to close in combat, and then they see him sling a stone, and Goliath suddenly dropped. They don't see where the stone goes.
[18:56] They just see it suddenly, the giant falls. Now, he could just have been stunned, he could have been knocked unconscious, he might move, you know, but you see often in these portrayals when on television or whatever, people assume somebody's dead and they leave him, and then they move their hand and they get their weapon as well, and then all sorts of problems start.
[19:17] You think, why didn't they just finish them off? David finishes him off. David wants the world to be able to see he's not stunned, he's not fainted, he's not unconscious, he's dead.
[19:29] Look, here's his head. I've just cut it off. There's no question. And the Philistine armies and the Israelite armies can see, oh look, he hasn't just fallen over.
[19:40] He hasn't just been hit by his thumb. There's his head. David has killed him. He's as dead as dead can be. Now part of the message here with this is that the Lord, having delivered David out of the hand of the Philistine, doesn't just save a little bit, doesn't just save by the skin of his teeth, but rather as Hebrews 7 verse 25 says, he saves to the uttermost them that put their trust in him.
[20:09] Goliath is dead, as dead, as dead can be. And there's the evidence for the decapitation. It's necessary to demonstrate to the world, look, God did this.
[20:22] It's not how brilliant David is. David would be the last person to say that he himself is somehow the hero of this. It is God who delivers him. And since his boyhood, the Lord has been the breath that he breathes.
[20:37] The Lord is the sweetest name on his lips. The Lord is the strength of his arm. David encouraged himself in the Lord when he thought he was about to be stoned by the people.
[20:49] But again, when you look at what he writes in Psalm 19, a hundred psalms earlier, to the one we looked at, the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
[21:02] The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. That doesn't just mean making you able to see. It's rather in the sense that remember what Jonathan, when he took the honey before, how his eyes were brightened and he was strengthened.
[21:16] So it's enlightening the eyes because I've invigorated as I've got this kind of sugar rush of the Lord's commandments. I'm bright eyed here. The feet of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
[21:29] The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, given much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honey cold.
[21:41] Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them that it's great reward. This is a theme to which David returns again and again. The sweetness to his taste of the word of God.
[21:54] Now I forget which one of the prophets it is. Remember, one of the prophets, there are minor prophets I think, is showing a vision of the scroll written with the word of God and they say, eat it up, take it and eat it up.
[22:06] So he ate it up and it was in his mouth sweet as honey to his taste but then it made his belly bitter afterwards. And it was meant to indicate how God's word, it might be nice to receive but it's got a punch and it's got a prophecy of doom and judgment and so on for all who will not turn to the Lord.
[22:26] God's word is always going to be true and it's going to be true for those whose will are brought into line with his, whose heart is right with his heart and it's going to be true for those who remain forever at enmity with him.
[22:42] Now, of course, honey, we say, honey is going to be sweet regardless but when it comes to something which is a metaphor, the word of God is described as being like honey, sweet to his taste.
[22:57] Now, when we say that something is a matter of taste, we don't just mean whether it's sugary or whether it's spicy or whether it's pretty bland or whether it needs a bit of salt and pepper or whatever.
[23:09] When we say something is a matter of taste, what we mean is it is completely personal to every individual person. Some people like spicy food, others can't stand it.
[23:20] If people like curry, someone might get really hot like sort of Vingaloo strength and others and I don't know I want it really bland, I want it nice and sweet. Other people like plain white foods, others like rich and exotic foods or oriental foods or whatever it might be.
[23:36] It's all a matter of taste. And things being to someone's taste means it's highly personal. You have a perfectly acceptable food that is equally well prepared and one person tastes it and they think oh that's delicious, that's lovely and somebody else says oh no I don't like that at all.
[23:57] There's nothing wrong with fruit, it's exactly the same food. It is that the personal taste is different. If something is a matter of taste we mean it's personal to us, personal to somebody else.
[24:08] There's no accounting for it. You can't make somebody delight in the taste of something. Even if you were saying let's make it really sweet, let's put it in piles of sugar.
[24:19] Some people don't like sugary foods. Some people don't like sugary drinks. Some people might say oh it's way too sweet, oh it's too much away, I prefer something a bit plainer, or I prefer something savoury, or whatever, because each individual taste is different.
[24:36] So you cannot make somebody like something. The only person who can make somebody delight and find the words and the laws of God sweet to their taste is that the Lord causes it to become personal to them.
[24:55] Personal to their delight, personal to their taste, a personal relationship. Now, in cultures for example where as was the case in the ancient east and so on, and in our own country, in a former age to an extent, where managers were arranged.
[25:14] They were arranged by the parents or the relatives or whatever or by seniors in the community and sometimes people might not even meet their spouse until their wedding day and they'd be married and then they'd be expected to be together forever afterwards and that was it.
[25:31] Now, let's say people met on their wedding day and they got to know each other of course and of course that's had children together and all the struggles and all the joys and all the blessings and difficulties in life and then suddenly after say 30 years, they said okay, right, we're going to change a lot so since you didn't get a choice about this person being married, you can partner, nobody's going to judge you, you can just go your own ways, take your own assets with you and that's fine.
[25:59] Do you think they're going to think more? Or are they going to think, oh great, fine, I couldn't stop this person anyway, I never had a choice, it wasn't up to me, we didn't get a romantic sort of courtship and so on, just turned up on the day and that was it.
[26:12] Or do you think the fact that they have invested so much of their lives in this person, the fact that they have got to know their little foibles, their good points, their bad points, their strengths and weaknesses, the things they like, the things they don't like, they have children together, they have shared so many experiences, in other words, they have grown to love this person.
[26:37] Over the years they have grown to love them. They may not have been their first choice left themselves, but they have grown to recognise their virtues and perhaps they're not such good points but they have become invested in them.
[26:50] So much of themselves is now in and with this person and vice versa that to tail that apart would be destructive to their hearts, to their lives because they have grown to love them.
[27:05] And you see, as with so often the case in these ancient Eastern arrangements, it is the case that for God and his people, we are commanded to love God.
[27:19] We are commanded to follow and to obey. And our human nature will not initially delight in that because we are born and conceived in enmity against them.
[27:31] And I think, well, wait a minute, that wasn't my choice. I didn't want this person. I didn't want this God. But I'm being made to do it. I'm commanded. That's not fair. But the further we go on with the Lord, the more we come to know them, whom to know is to love, the more we become familiar with the sound, the sight, the taste of God's word and of his teaching and his guidance.
[28:00] And see, come to see, actually this does make a lot of sense. This is pretty good. This is pretty wise. I am much blessed by the things I'm doing. This is good rules for living, quite apart from any spiritual involvement here.
[28:12] Oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day. I choose to think about it all day, all night. And this is what David must have been doing in secret, delighting it, reading it, making it his business.
[28:27] But coming back to the fact that we command it. The more we go on with the Lord, the more we are involved in this relationship with the Lord, the more we come to recognise, perhaps without realising it, that yes, we love this Lord.
[28:44] Yes, we can't be without him. We don't want this relationship to be torn apart. We don't want to go separate ways. That would be like death to us. We need this God.
[28:55] We delight in this God. We have grown to love this God whom initially we were just commanded to love, but now we love freely. Remember what the people in Sychar said to the woman at the well, he says, you know, now we believe not just because of your word, but we have heard him ourselves and we see and recognise that this is the Messiah.
[29:17] It is sweet to their taste, just as God's word and his law is sweet to the taste of David, because this which is a matter of so much of personal taste, his taste, whose heart delights in the Lord, because he has been brought more and more into line with God's will, with God's revealed word, with God's cause.
[29:46] In Proverbs 16, we read at verse 7, when a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.
[29:58] Now, of course, David had many enemies, and all through the narrative of his kingship, he's constantly involved in battles and wars, and the Psalms that David himself, they speak of enemies around the whole time, they're constantly there, they're constantly around him, you know, he has to always be watching his back, you know, because the wicked have waited for me to destroy me, but I will consider thy testimonies, verse 95.
[30:26] And again, you know, the wicked laid a snare for him, verse 110, the wicked have made a snare for me, yet I heard not from thy precepts. Now, how does he manage to avoid the snare?
[30:38] Well, if somebody sets a mantra for you in a path that you are walking, if it's in the night that you are walking, you stand a very high probability of getting caught in it, of getting scared in it, breaking your foot right in it, and it clamping shut and injuring you, if it's in the dark.
[30:57] But if you've got light, if you've got daylight, you see, oh, there's a mantra, there's a snare, walk around it, take your steps carefully, you manage to see where you have to put your feet, you manage to see where to walk, because you have light.
[31:11] Psalm 105, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. David is able to see where he is going to avoid the snares, because the word of God gives him light.
[31:26] When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him, because they cannot get the advantage over him. But that Proverbs 16, verse 7, that's in a slightly wider context, of course, and just as we come towards an end here, let's just take the context of that from the beginning.
[31:46] The preparations of the heart in man and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord with the spirits.
[31:58] We all think we're trying to do our best and do right, but the Lord with the spirits. Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established. The Lord hath made all things for himself, yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.
[32:11] Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. By mercy and truth iniquity is purged, and by the feet of the Lord men depart from evil.
[32:25] When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be attentive to them. Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues without right. A man's heart devised his way, but the Lord directeth his steps.
[32:41] A divine sentence is in the lips of the king. His mouth transgresseth not in judgment. A just weight and a just balance are the Lord's. Ordinary business, ordinary dealings, God sanctifies it if it's right and true.
[32:56] All the weights of the bad are his work. It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness, for the throne is established by righteousness.
[33:06] Now, not all the chapters of Proverbs have the Lord, the Lord, the Lord, through them the way this chapter 16 does. But although they are the Proverbs of Solomon, chapter 1, verse 1 tells us that, and so they wouldn't be written yet in David's day when the Psalms are written, we have to consider, although yes, Solomon takes his wisdom from the Lord, especially the gift of the Lord, it's not enough just to have sort of spiritual vision and guidance for everyday life.
[33:36] You also need some kind of human example in front of you. Those who have gone before you, who do you suppose is Solomon's example of godly kingship?
[33:49] Who do you suppose he looks to the memory or the thought of? As our godly king should act. Well, of course, there is his father David.
[34:00] The forty years that David reigned, the way in which he kept the journeys in vain, the way in which he sought the Lord with all his heart. Solomon was not half the lad that his father David was, because he allowed himself to become distracted from the Lord.
[34:17] But David, delighted in the word, the teachings, the commandments of God although, this is coming back now to what we said at the beginning. We do not read in the narrative of Samuel or kings of David reading God's word.
[34:37] It's not there in the things that he does publicly in his public battles or statements or governings or whatever he does, but he must have done it. He must have done it in private.
[34:48] He must have done it in secret. He must have been reading it constantly. That's what the Psalms imply. It is his constant meditation day and night. When he's not executing his public office, when he's not, as it were, at work and on the job, his personal time, his private time, his time to himself, this is what he's delighting in.
[35:09] Other kings are delighting in their harem or their military parades or counting out their money or whatever. David delights himself in the law of his God. Although we never read of him doing it, he must have done it.
[35:24] Now, if you are to be a man of God or a woman of God in your business, in your daily life, in the way you conduct yourself, in your employment and public affairs, then it's not going to be because people see you going about reading the Bible the whole time and they look at the Bible.
[35:39] It's always in your face. But the way that you conduct yourself in public will be directed and will be fed and will be informed by what you are in private, just as David's life was.
[35:53] We don't read of him immersed in the scriptures, but nevertheless, he must have been because he said he took the light day and night. What you are in secret will produce the fruit of what you are in public.
[36:08] The witness you give publicly, the stand, the performance, if you like, the way you conduct yourself in public and in business and in daily life will be informed by what you are in private.
[36:22] How much the word of God is not only your daily fruit, but how much you delight in it. How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.
[36:39] Where Jonathan and the armies of Israel were concerned, it was an opportunity missed. In David's life, it is an opportunity grasped because it is clear from this time, from all the rest of the Psalms, he never missed a chance to turn to God's word, to read it, to be immersed in it, because it wasn't just life and breath and food.
[37:08] It was sweet to him, a delight to him. It was sweeter than honey because he was a man after God's own heart.
[37:19] Thank you.