One of the most important ways that I deal with the inevitability of my own death is to focus my attention on the promises of God contained in the Bible. Nowhere in the world will you find more comfort, more assurance, and more compassion than you will find in God’s Word. The Psalms, though not the only book, offer a treasury of comfort regarding our mortality. One Psalm especially is key to this treasury. It is Psalm 119. The Psalmist, presumably David, writes the longest of all the Psalms with176 verses. The subject is God’s communication to man. There are nearly two dozen different titles for this revelation in the Psalm; precepts, laws, rules, commandments, directions, guides, instructions, and so on. The entire Psalm is an acrostic. The first 8 verses begin with the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, the Aleph. The second 8 verses begin with the second letter, the bet, and so on through all 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. Of course the letters of the Alphabet are the instruments through which God’s Word has been revealed to man, thus even the poetic acrostic serves to reinforce the focus on God’s written revelation to man.

In verse 103 David writes, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Chocolate is sweet. Candy is sweet. Sugar is sweet. Honey, of course is sweet. But how can the Bible be sweet? It can only be explained by giving you an example. The following are some of the sweetest words I know: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

I listened to the podcast of Dallas Theological Seminary’s chapel service. Donald Campbell spoke on the sweetness of God’s word. He (in effect) said that these sweet words should excite the taste buds of every person. If they don’t, your taste buds have been dulled by the saccharin of this world’s culture. He went on to quote James Montgomery Boice, who said, “to soothe bitter experiences of life, fill your heart with sweet verses like this.”

Chuck
“The Lord, all powerful, will destroy the power of death and wipe away all tears.” Isaiah 25:8