John Eats God’s Word in Revelation
John Eats God’s Word in Revelation.
“The revelation of Jesus Christ…” (Rev. 1:1). John the Divine left no doubt about the purpose of his Book of Revelation. His very first words in his prologue were that his vision was an unveiling of Jesus. His baffling and otherworldly writings in this book were not primarily about future events, or the destiny of human life on planet earth, or all those mysterious activities in the heavenly sphere. John was writing first and foremost about the Person of Christ, and he intended everything in the book to point back to Him. Revelation was a lifting of the veil on the full identity and activity of Christ. It is a revelation of Jesus, from God, concerning Christ Himself. The Godhead is both the primary source of John’s vision and its main subject. Everything in this extended vision that came to John straight from heaven is to be understood through the prism of Christ. Regardless of how dramatic, puzzling or profound its contents, everything in John’s vision is intended to help us discover more of Christ and deepen our knowledge of and love for Him. All these events in Revelation that seem to pique the reader’s curiosity are nonetheless streams that are meant to lead us back to the River of Life. Perhaps it would do us all well if we continue to remind ourselves of Paul’s declaration as we read John’s vision… “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2). So then, we can’t let ourselves get too sidetracked, too stuck in the weeds, with these fancy special effects in John’s vision… the beasts and the dragons and the angels, the numbers and colors and gemstones, the symbols and metaphors and poetic imagery… After all is said and done in Revelation, St. John has composed an essentially Christ-centered book.
Gold Mine: Another way of looking at the book of Revelation is to strap on your miner’s helmet and search for Biblical gold. In John’s vision are many gold mines that have Jesus Christ as the source… Mines like His appearance in His glorified presence, the Logos of God, the seven titles of Christ, the words to the seven churches, the seven Beatitudes, and the many songs of worship that come straight to us from heaven! And there is more! Mining all the gold in Revelation will make us wealthy with His treasure for all of eternal life. But all those fancy special effects in John’s vision are only fool’s gold if they distract us from Jesus.
“Then the heavenly voice spoke to me again: ‘Go, take the open scroll from the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.’ So I went up to the angel who stood on the sea and the land and told him to give me the little scroll. Then he said to me, ‘Take it, and eat it. It will be sour in your innermost being but sweet as honey in your mouth.’ I took the little scroll from the hand of the mighty angel and ate it. Indeed, it was sweet as honey to taste, but after I had eaten it, my stomach turned bitter.” (Revelation 10:8-10).
Sweet and Sour Soul Food. The Scripture that John ate from the hand of the angel was bittersweet, and definitely not comfort food. It isn’t all that surprising that John was willing to eat a scroll, figuratively speaking, since John knew his Scripture, and he was well aware of the earlier prophets who did just the exact same thing: Jeremiah (Jer. 15:16) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:1-3). John realized that he was joining a special fellowship of earlier biblical heroes, and he probably was grateful to do what those two prophets had done. John knew he was in good company when he took that scroll and put it into his mouth.
Honey. Once again, John knew his Hebrew Bible, he fully realized that God’s Word, His revelation-knowledge, was likened to sweet honey many times in Scripture, for example… “The teachings of the Lord are to be more desired than gold, even more than fine gold; they are sweeter than honey and drippings from the honeycomb.” (Ps. 19:10); ‘How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103). In this case, God’s Word was sweet because it contained predictions of God’s holy people overcoming life’s battles, and the scroll revealed their destiny as finally becoming victors in Christ. These sweet words from heaven were no doubt intended to be a tremendous encouragement to John.
Bitter. God’s Word made John’s stomach curdle because it revealed the bitter judgments coming for those who rejected God. The Word also was difficult for John to stomach because God’s scroll announced the sufferings that God’s people would have to endure, the coming persecution for those who were faithful to the Lord.
Eating and Digesting the Word of God. When we read Scripture, it is not enough to simply highlight the memorable verses. It is not enough to underline the passages that pique our interest. It is not enough to read the Word and take mental notes that will be filed for later consideration. It is not enough to be a passive bystander who is fascinated by something he has witnessed. No, when we read Scripture, we open the Book, we pick up our eating utensils, and we eat like ravenous wolves.
“You cannot live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3).
FOOD: Any nutritious substance that people eat or drink in order to maintain life and enable growth. Any substance that provides nourishment for survival and nutrition for maintenance of life. Food is consumed in order to keep oneself alive and healthy. The Lord intends for us to move from the literal to the imaginative and consider how His Word is to our soul as food is to our bodies.
Imagination. The Christian faith demands an active imagination. So much that is read in the Scripture is actually meant to be a picture of something that we need to acquire through the imagination, something that is done figuratively and not literally. A literal action in the Bible might instead be an invitation to consider what that action represents. Something done physically is sometimes meant to teach us a spiritual lesson. An example is the eating of Scripture. Three different characters in the Hebrew Bible were told to literally eat the Word, to ingest it, and they did. In these cases of John, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, their rather unexpected action of eating the Scripture is intended to symbolize the importance of taking in God’s Word, right into our innermost being, fully digested.
Spiritual Digestion. What are these three mighty prophets telling us? Scripture seems to be implying that we all have a spiritual digestive system. God’s Word is something to consume like food, the nutrients of the Word chewed, swallowed, and broken down in such a way that the Word’s wisdom and life is spread throughout our whole being. We eat this spiritual food and we are nourished as it enters our blood vessels and spreads to our very nerve endings. Our soul hungers for the nutrients of the Word. When we eat God’s Word, we are participating in Scripture and not merely spectating from a distance. When we ingest the Bible, our spiritual life is full of life and growth and vitality. The Bible is intended to be assimilated to every cell of our spiritual being, giving us energy, purpose, spiritual substance. The Scripture is meant to be digested so that we can flourish in the Christian life. Swallowing the Word down our spiritual gullet is a far cry from simply sipping alphabet soup or munching on a word salad. Scripture is solid spiritual food.
“Readers become what they read. In the case of the prophets, witnesses first become what they say before they say it. The words of Scripture are transformative words, intended to get inside us, to enter our souls as food enters our stomachs, to do something in us, give health and wholeness, vitality and holiness, wisdom and hope. Eating the scripture is not simply thinking about it. We take it all in to nourish new life in us, feeding the energies of salvation.” (Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book).
Our spiritual digestive system might look something like this as we consume Scripture:
(1.) Open the mouth. Put your food on your plate, fill up your glass, be ready to dig in and enjoy the meal. Submit to the digestive process by placing the spiritual food within easy reach and lifting it to your soul’s mouth. We’ll never eat the Word if we don’t submit to the process and first open the Scripture for reading and consideration. We need to open our spirit to the Word like we would open our mouth for the food. As we open the Scripture to read, we open the spirit to eat. Remember Chesterton’s words, open your mind as you open your mouth, so you can close it on something solid. Like the Word of God, for instance.
(2.) Taste the Food. Enjoy the flavors, the aromas, the textures, the colors of the Word. Get a feel for the language, the way the words are put together and the scenes are prepared. Enjoy the vastly different personalities involved in Scripture, the history, the backdrop and setting. The process of eating is not meant to be painful or boring, but instead a wondrous meal to participate in. These are the words of the almighty God, and are important as well as interesting. Enjoy the reading as if you are at a healthy buffet. Notice the different flavors of writing: stories, songs, poetry, drama, humor, conversations, plotlines, demonstrations, visual aids and illustrations, imaginative metaphors. The Scripture has it all, just like one of those famous Swedish smorgasbords.
(3.) Chew the Food. Think about the words you read, ponder the ideas being expressed. Chew on it. The farmer’s term for a cow’s endlessly chewing its cud is ruminate. Process the spiritual food you are chewing like you would carefully chew on a tasty meal that you want to enjoy to the last tasty tidbit. One of the biblical words for chewing in Scripture is meditate. Eugene Peterson unpacks the meaning of meditate through its Hebrew word, “hagah.” That is the word used to describe a lion growling over its prey (Isaiah 35:4). To meditate on a passage is like a dog with its bone, a lion enjoying its meal, gnawing on it, getting everything he can out of that bone, “growling in pleasurable anticipation” over the Word. Meditating on Scripture is murmuring out loud as you process the words and ideas, working on it like a dog with a bone (Eat This Book, Peterson). Some thoughts to consider as we chew on the Word: Seek wisdom and understanding, not just facts and data; chew longest on that which will feed your soul; there is no expert in Scripture, so come as a child, teachable; don’t forget about your heart as you use your intellect and imagination; pray for the Holy Spirit as you are chewing. Pray and chew. Don’t limit yourself to letting others do your chewing of Scripture for you and then spoon feed you with it. Do as much of your own chewing as you can, guided by the Spirit. We find that the more we do our own chewing, the stronger our jaw muscles become and the longer we can chew for further passages.
(4.) Swallow the Food. At some point after the chewing, the Word has to be swallowed. Scripture needs to be accepted, believed, received into the digestive tract. Spiritual food requires a swallow of faith in order to be absorbed into the spirit. After all that thinking and chewing, we need to trust that the Bible is indeed the Word of God. Maybe the whole Bible doesn’t need to be swallowed at the same time. Perhaps a mustard seed of faith is all we need to digest the passage. As we find that a portion of Scripture has settled well and has proved truthful and trustworthy, our level of faith will take the next size up, from a mustard seed to a grapevine seed. And then, when we continue in this Word diet, we will discover that the nutrients from our spiritual food will nourish our soul and give us life, meaning, joy and a future. It all began with a swallow of faith. If someone asks you if we actually can swallow that Bible stuff, we can say, “Actually, yes!”
(5.) Exercise Daily. There are too many of us who are spiritually overfed. We don’t get outside and flesh out the Scripture. We need to put the Word into action, using the energy and insight that has been absorbed into our soul. Live out the Word. We cannot afford to be spiritual couch potatoes. Exercise the truth every day. Put some effort into letting the Word form your character and integrity and life purpose. Let the Bible affect your outlook on your life, your meaning for existence. Internalize the Word through spiritual digestion, and then externalize the Word by putting it into practice. We need to be doers of the Word, and not readers or hearers only. Maybe it’s time to turn off the religious podcast and love your neighbor. Perhaps we should file away those sermons and put the Scripture to good use. Instead of picking up another Christian self-help book, maybe we should put that book on the shelf and follow the light we’ve been shown. Christians are always in danger of being overfed and under exercised. Spiritual obesity only comes to those believers who gorge themselves on Christian input without practicing the truth that was just digested. Let the spiritual nutrition give you the energy to love the Word and live into the Word.
The Word Online? In this era of amazing advances in technology, there are sometimes unexpected consequences that turn out to be harmful to our Christian faith. One of these harmful improvements is the flood of believers who read scripture online, on the smart phone, on the computer screen. I’m convinced there should be a warning label on every one of the online Bibles… CAUTION: SKIM AT YOUR OWN RISK. So many of us now read the Word like we would read our emails or social media or the daily news. We skim the material hurriedly, superficially, carelessly. We skim the Scripture. Skim-reading the Bible doesn’t really bury the seed very deeply, of course. And in our skimming, we would be more likely to just skip over an important word or phrase without thinking, a word that could be vital to the whole passage. The fact is, the Bible is full of single words or short phrases that are too important to simply gloss over as if it wasn’t there. There are times in the Word when single words are intended to feed us, nourish our faith, stimulate us to think at a deeper level about the biblical text. The nastiest mental habit that has come from online reading is that it has helped many of us to skim words like that. Online reading has led to superficial reading, to becoming more impatient with any reading that requires extended mental effort. Online reading has led us to shallow thinking and intellectual laziness. So, if we were having a contest on what not to read online, certainly holy Scripture would win the contest, hands down. The online Bible is not the fresh bread of life, it is not living bread. Online Scripture is stale bread once removed, day-old bread that was left on the counter. Online Scripture is virtual bread, but not the real thing.
“Blessed Lord, who has caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior, Jesus Christ.” (Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1662).