The Prophet's Diet: Sweet Word, Hard World Text: Ezekiel 3:1-3
Introduction: The Un-Acquired Taste
We live in an age of boutique sensibilities. Our culture is defined by what it will not stomach. Men have developed delicate allergies to plain speaking, to objective truth, to divine commands, and most especially to the authority of the one who issues them. We are connoisseurs of complaint, epicures of offense. We have trained our palates to reject anything that tastes of a transcendent standard, and to savor only the cotton candy of self-affirmation. The modern man wants a god, if he wants one at all, who will serve up a message that is entirely palatable to his fallen tastes. He wants a therapeutic deism that is all dessert and no main course, all sweet and no substance.
Into this effeminate spiritual environment, the commissioning of the prophet Ezekiel lands with the force of a meteor. God does not ask for Ezekiel's dietary preferences. He does not consult the prophet on whether the message is gluten-free or ethically sourced. He commands him to eat a scroll. This is not a polite suggestion. This is the induction ceremony for a messenger of the Most High, and it is a world away from the seeker-sensitive, felt-needs approach that has so enervated the modern pulpit.
The prophetic calling is not a career path you choose after taking a spiritual gifts inventory. It is a conscription. It is a divine commandeering of a man's life, his mouth, his stomach, his very being. Before the prophet can speak the Word of God, he must first be consumed by it. He must internalize it so completely that it becomes part of his very fiber. The message cannot be something he carries in a satchel; it must be something he has digested. And here we find a glorious paradox that our soft age cannot comprehend. The message Ezekiel is to deliver is one of woe, lamentation, and judgment. The scroll is filled with words that will get him ostracized, mocked, and hated. And yet, when he eats it, it is sweet as honey in his mouth.
This is the central mystery of faithful ministry. The Word of God, in its unvarnished, unfiltered, and absolute authority, is an indescribable delight to the man who submits to it, even when that same Word makes him an enemy to the world. To the rebellious, it is bitterness and poison. To the faithful, it is life and sweetness. This is the prophet's diet, and it is the diet of every true believer.
The Text
Then He said to me, “Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.”
So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll.
And He said to me, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.” Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth.
(Ezekiel 3:1-3 LSB)
The Divine Command to Ingest (v. 1)
We begin with the stark and startling command in verse one.
"Then He said to me, 'Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.'" (Ezekiel 3:1)
First, notice the address: "Son of man." This is God's favorite title for Ezekiel, used over ninety times. It is a constant reminder of the prophet's creatureliness. He is a son of Adam, a man of dust. This title emphasizes the vast gulf between the glorious God whom Ezekiel saw in chapter one and the frail vessel He has chosen as His mouthpiece. This is a foundational lesson. Ministry does not begin with self-actualization but with self-abnegation. You are a man, a son of Adam. You are not the source. You are a conduit. And of course, this title looks forward to the ultimate Son of Man, Jesus Christ, who was the perfect prophet, the very Word made flesh. He did not just eat the Word; He was the Word.
The command is blunt: "eat what you find; eat this scroll." God does not offer a buffet of options. The prophet is not to go out and forage for a message that suits him. He is to take what is given. This is a direct assault on all forms of theological creativity and innovation. The task of the preacher is not to invent a message but to receive one. The words written on this scroll were "lamentations and mourning and woe" (Ezekiel 2:10). This is not a message designed for popularity. It is a message of covenant lawsuit against a rebellious people. God tells Ezekiel to eat the bad news.
And the purpose of this ingestion is immediately stated: "and go, speak to the house of Israel." The eating is for the sake of the speaking. The internalization is for the sake of the proclamation. This is the inviolable sequence of faithful ministry. You cannot give out what you have not taken in. A preacher who does not first feed on the Word of God himself is simply a purveyor of religious opinions. He is a clanging cymbal. But the man who has eaten the scroll speaks with an authority that is not his own. He is not sharing his thoughts about God; he is delivering God's thoughts, and they have become part of him.
The Prophet's Obedient Reception (v. 2)
Ezekiel's response is one of simple, immediate obedience.
"So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll." (Ezekiel 3:2 LSB)
There is no argument, no hesitation, no questioning of the command's strangeness. Ezekiel opens his mouth. This is the posture of faith. It is the posture of a creature before his Creator. It is the simple, childlike trust that what God commands is right, and what God provides is good, no matter how bizarre it may seem to our sensibilities. When God says eat, you open your mouth.
And notice the beautiful divine action: "He fed me this scroll." Ezekiel does not snatch the scroll and stuff it in his own mouth. He is passive in the reception. God Himself places the Word into the prophet's mouth. This is a picture of irresistible grace. It is a picture of divine initiative. We do not come to the Word of God on our own terms. God must open our hearts and minds to receive it. He must give us the appetite for it. As Jesus said, no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. God is the one who graciously feeds His servants.
This act is a profound illustration of what must happen in every believer's life. We must come to the Scriptures with our mouths open, ready to be fed. We do not come as critics, to judge the Word. We come as hungry children, to be nourished by it. We must lay aside our own wisdom, our own preferences, our own cultural assumptions, and simply open our mouths. When we do, God is faithful to feed us.
Total Assimilation and Sweet Satisfaction (v. 3)
God then elaborates on the command, and Ezekiel describes the result.
"And He said to me, 'Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll which I am giving you.' Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth." (Ezekiel 3:3 LSB)
The command is to "feed your stomach and fill your body." This is not to be a superficial nibbling. This is to be a deep, thorough, all-consuming assimilation of the Word. It is to go down into the very center of his being. The Word of God is not meant to be an intellectual accessory that we wear. It is meant to be the very fuel that powers our entire system. It is to inform our thinking, yes, but it must also shape our affections, guide our instincts, and strengthen our will. It must be in our guts.
This is what the psalmist meant when he said, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You" (Psalm 119:11). This is not about rote memorization alone, though that is a good and necessary discipline. It is about a deep, metabolic absorption of the truth. When the Word is in your belly, it changes you from the inside out.
And then we come to the glorious result: "Then I ate it, and it was sweet as honey in my mouth." How can this be? The scroll is full of judgment. The message will bring him into direct conflict with his countrymen. The path ahead is one of hardship. So where is the sweetness? The sweetness is found in the very nature of the Word of God itself. To be in communion with God, to receive a direct communication from Him, to know His will and to be entrusted with His truth, this is the greatest delight a creature can experience.
The sweetness is the taste of fellowship with God. It is the sweetness of submission to a perfect and holy will. It is the sweetness of knowing that you are aligned with ultimate reality, even if that alignment puts you at odds with the whole world. The psalmist knew this taste well: "How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (Psalm 119:103). Jeremiah, another prophet of woe, said, "Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart" (Jeremiah 15:16).
The Gospel Diet
This entire scene is a living parable of the Christian life. We are all called to eat the scroll. We are all called to be prophets in our own spheres, speaking the truth of God to a rebellious world. And we must learn the lesson of Ezekiel's diet.
First, we must understand that the Word of God is not always easy to swallow for the world. In fact, for the unregenerate, it is poison. It exposes their sin, it condemns their rebellion, and it calls them to a death they do not want to die. The Apostle John has a parallel experience in Revelation, where he is told to eat a little book. It is sweet as honey in his mouth, but it makes his stomach bitter (Revelation 10:9-10). The sweetness is in the receiving of God's truth; the bitterness is in the prophesying of that truth to a world that hates it. We must not be surprised when the world gags on the gospel. We must not try to sweeten the message with worldly sugar to make it more palatable. The sweetness is for us, the messengers.
Second, we must cultivate an appetite for the whole counsel of God. We cannot just pick and choose the sweet promises and ignore the hard commands and the stark warnings. We must eat the entire scroll. We must fill our bellies with Genesis and Revelation, with Leviticus and Romans, with the imprecatory psalms and the beatitudes. It is all God's Word, and it is all nourishing for our souls.
Finally, we must find our deepest joy not in the world's approval, but in the taste of God's truth. The honey of the Word is the antidote to the bitterness of the world's rejection. When you have tasted the goodness of the Lord, the insults of men lose their sting. When your soul is satisfied with the richness of His truth, the empty calories of worldly praise become unappetizing.
The ultimate expression of this is found at the Lord's Table. Here, Christ, the Word made flesh, gives Himself to us. He says, "Take, eat; this is My body." He tells us to ingest the gospel itself. And as we do, we taste and see that the Lord is good. The cross was the bitterest cup imaginable, but for us who believe, it is the source of all sweetness. It is the honey from the rock. So come, open your mouths. Let the Lord feed you. Eat the book. Fill your soul with His truth. And you will find that even in a bitter world, you have a sweetness that the world can never take away.