This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] These are the verses I've been looking forward to getting to in
Revelation chapter 10. This is day five of our look through this chapter and
this is the day we get to talk together about the power of God's Word in our
lives. There's an amazing picture, an amazing experience that John has in these
verses.

Let me begin this experience by reading for you verses 8 to 11. Listen to what
happens. "And then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more,
'Go, take the scroll that lies in the hand of the angel who is standing on the
sea and on the land.

' So I went to the angel and I asked him to give me the little scroll. He said
to me, 'Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour but in your mouth it
will be sweet as honey.

' I took the little scroll from the angel's hand and I ate it. It tasted as
sweet as honey in my mouth but when I had eaten it my stomach turned sour. And
then I was told, 'You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations,
languages, and kings.

'" This is the experience of John in eating the little scroll. Up until now as
John has walked through the seeing of this revelation he's asked a few questions
but he hasn't experienced it. Here he actually experiences part of what is
happening.

He takes this scroll, this book, this word of God and he eats it. Now this is
not some new picture. This is something that had been seen before in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel was told to eat of the word of God, the scroll. Jeremiah is told to eat
of the word of God and they literally were to eat of a scroll. As John is
encouraged here to eat of this scroll he's told it's going to be both sweet and
bitter.

Sweet, satisfying to the soul but also bitter. An unveiling of God's judgment,
of God's work. The incredible picture here shows us that the truth of this
scroll is personal truth and it has to be personally taken into John's life.

Did you notice John says to the angel, "Will you give it to me? " and the angel
says, "No, you must take it and eat it. " It's not something that is forced on
him.

He has to choose to actually take it and eat it and when he assimilates it, it
becomes a part of his life. This is about God's word in your life and in my life
also. Think about this with food.

I love what Ray Stedman says about this. He says this is what happens when you
eat food, is it not? It becomes you.

It's the way by which corn, beef and cabbage on Saturday night become Patrick
O'Reilly by Sunday afternoon. Doctors call it metabolism. They don't know
exactly how it works but they label it as if they did understand it.

No one actually knows how it happens. The food you ate this morning or last
night is now rapidly becoming you. You're going to wear it soon and it will
become visible on you and that's the problem that many of us are facing.

I love those words from Ray Stedman because they just picture what happens when
we eat food. It becomes your physical body in some strange way we don't
understand. And the picture here is that when I take God's word into my life, it
becomes my spiritual self.

It becomes who I am spiritually in my soul in ways that I do not understand. Now
as I said, the picture that's here, it's not a new picture. This picture comes
from the prophet Ezekiel.

Very similar thing happened in Ezekiel chapter 2 beginning in verse 9. All the
way through chapter 3 you see this happening. In Ezekiel chapter 2 he said to
me, "Son of man, eat what you have before you.

Eat this scroll and then go and speak to the house of Israel. " So I opened my
mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat and he said to me, "Son of man, eat this
scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it. " So I ate it and it
tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.

You have the sweet here and you have the bitter. In fact you really have three
things. The word of God is sweet, the word of God is bitter, and the word of God
is to be eaten.

Those are three simple truths in this passage. First the word of God is sweet.
It satisfies your soul.

Psalm 19 10 says, "The law of the Lord is sweeter than honey, than honey from
the honeycomb. " It is sweet. It satisfies who you are.

There is a joy in the words of God because you know the rightness of them. But
the word of God is also bitter. It reveals the judgment of God.

It shows what God is going to do here in the book of Revelation but it also
shows, we'll get to this in a moment, what God is about to do in our lives as
well. And the word of God is to be eaten. It has to be taken into my life
through regular study.

Just like I need a daily intake of food, I need a daily intake of God's word.
It's what keeps me spiritually healthy. It's what keeps me spiritually strong.

Now the amazing thing to me is what happens with the sweet and bitter here. This
is what I don't want you to miss. This prophecy that John takes into himself, it
tastes sweet at first.

These are promises of God as to exactly how God is going to work out, is going
to fulfill his promises, his purposes on this earth, how he's going to give our
inheritance to his people. So there's an element to that. There's a depth to
that that is awesomely sweet.

But when John takes it in, when he eats it, when he becomes personally involved
with it, it begins to turn sour, sour in his stomach. He realizes that this
isn't just a story about somebody else. He is, in a sense, part of this.

Not in the final result, but in the telling of the judgments that lead up to it.
He's a part of this. He's a part of this prophetically and personally.

First, he's a part of it prophetically. He has some news to tell that maybe he'd
rather not tell. I don't know about you.

I only want to tell the good news. I don't want to tell news like Revelation. It
will get worse before it gets better, but it's the truth.

And God says, I want you to tell the truth. So prophetically, there was a
bitterness along with the sweet, but also personally. John was involved in the
truth that he was telling.

Now, you and I, we experience this in our own lives when it comes to God's word.
God's word deals with you like that. You read a passage of scripture about the
great promises that God has for your life, the glory that he has for you, the
happiness that he has for you, the joy that he has for you.

And maybe immediately it's all sweet. You're beyond description. You're excited
about, wow, look at what God can do.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. But then as you meditate
on it further, as you take it into yourself, as you begin to digest this truth,
you begin to understand that God has some plans to change you as he gets ready
to do these things through you. I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me, but that means that Christ is going to be changing me.

You begin to get personally involved in God's word. And as I do that, and I'm
sure you have the same experience, all of a sudden I realize that there are
these cherished attitudes. There's these biases.

There's these bigotries. I'm going to have to lay aside. There are these little
things in my life that I want to hold onto that I'm going to have to lay aside
if I'm going to live out this promise of God.

They're bad habits. I've got to give up. And I realize it's not going to be
easy.

This is the pain of self-involvement. This is the hurt that comes in obeying
God's word. But it's all part of how God works.

It's part of the fulfillment of the sweetness of the promise of God. On the way
to the fulfillment of the promise of God in our lives, he has to judge the
things that are keeping us from living out those promises. If you think, wait,
wait, we're talking about the book of Revelation here and what's going to happen
to bad people at the end of time.

I don't want to talk about me. Well, let's talk about you and me for just a
minute. The judgment of God begins with the household of God, those of us who
are believers.

And as we saw in Revelation chapters one through three, especially chapter two
and three, as he talked about the church, God tells the truth to us as believers
and it is not always easy to hear. Sometimes it's difficult to hear. The Bible
tells us in Hebrews that the word of God is like a sword and it cuts right to
the division of soul and spirit.

And that can hurt sometimes, but it is the hurt of a surgery that in the end is
going to be healing, is going to cut out of your life that which is harming your
life. You see, at the end of time, God's going to judge this world and the evil
is going to be taken out of it. And there's going to be pain that accompanies
that.

Well, the truth of the matter is when God judges my life and he begins to help
me to live for that which is good and not that which is evil, the truth is there
is pain in that because I have to let go of the selfish in order to hold on to
the sweetness of what God wants to do. And I don't want to be unselfish. I don't
want to let go of those things.

That's the pain of being involved in God's word, but it's on the way to joy.
There is a grief in letting go of those things that we've held onto that we
think are our life. But on the other side of that grief, there's an
inexpressible joy in realizing that wasn't my life at all.

That was just some little thing, some sinful thing that I was holding onto that
I hoped was life that was going to take me down in the end. What's God doing in
your life? And we can think about the book of Revelation here and talk about
what's going to happen at the end of time and we will focus on that again this
next week.

But if I'm going to experience the truth of this book in my life, I've got to
ask what's God doing in my life? How does he want to judge those things in my
life that I don't want to let go of? How can I look to the sweetness of what God
wants to do and internalize God's word?

And even though there may be a moment of bitterness, realize in the end it's
going to make me more like Christ to listen to his word. Jesus, as we take a
moment to talk to you, we recognize, we realize that you're with us and that,
Lord, the pain that we go through sometimes as you're changing us, as you're
growing us, the discipline that you bring into our lives, it is not for the sake
of the pain or the discipline, it's for the sake of the growth of the change of
the glory of what you want to do in our lives. So thank you.

Thank you for how you work in this world through your word as we see revealed
here, but also thank you for how you work in our hearts through your word as we
see revealed here. Help us to spend time with your word and help us to trust
what you're doing in our lives through your word. Thank you that you are
faithful to us.

Thank you for the sweetness of your truth in the end. In Jesus' name we thank
you. Amen.

Don't miss next week, Revelation chapter 11. We're going to meet the two
witnesses, we're going to first come across a person known by the name of the
beast, we're going to hear the seventh trumpet, and we're going to see some
powerful things about worship from heaven.