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Episode NotesIntroduction
Welcome back, my friends. It’s always an honor to have you join me. I know there are so many resources out there, so when you listen to these episodes, I know you’re making a conscious decision to invest your time here, and I never take that for granted.
For that reason, we’re going to do our best to submit our beliefs, desires, and parenting to the Scriptures. This can’t be about my novel ideas and personal opinions. We have to let Scripture inform everything in our lives. If you’re new to the show, I hope you’ll subscribe and join us every week as we strive to glorify God in our parenting. As always, we have free notes, a transcript, and related resources linked for you in the description of this episode. We want to make it easy for you to actually learn what the Bible says instead of simply letting it wash over your ears. We should desire to be doers of the Word and not hearers only. That will require knowledge, understanding, and trust to put it into practice. So, let’s begin that process. Topic
I know today’s title could come across a little click-baity—“Good Parents Eat the Bible”—but I’m excited to show you just how biblically rooted this idea is as well as how absolutely essential it is to our parenting.
We know that the Bible uses a lot of word pictures, symbols, metaphors, parables, similes, and other figurative language. And God does this on purpose. Figurative language helps us better learn and integrate truth into our lives. God could tell us that sinfully hating someone is bad, but when He equates it with murdering that person, I believe the significance of the sin makes that much more sense to us. Jesus describes our personal discipleship like taking up our crosses and being metaphorically crucified on them. This imagery paints a very clear picture of the cost of discipleship. But unlike the previous examples which only appear in the Gospels, today’s topic is an oft-repeated theme in the whole of Scripture because God is trying to communicate something very important to us. But before we get any farther today, I want to invite you to partner with Truth.Love.Family. We are a non-profit ministry that seeks to equip dads and moms all over the world to better worship God with their parenting. We want to set these families free from the world’s very wrong thinking about parents, kids, and families. We want God to be glorified in every household. But we can’t do that without your support. We rely totally on the monthly gifts of our donors. For only $20 a month, you can help us reach more and more families with the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ and—beyond that—help them see how that Gospel can revolutionize everything in their family. Our goal is to raise $100,000 by September of 2026. September will mark our 10th year of faithful ministry, and it would be great to finally be able to be financially sustainable. We don’t need millions of dollars. We just need enough to continue creating the panoply of free resources, publishing books, and discipling families. If you believe in the work we’re doing here, will you please carefully consider how you can financially partner with us. We and countless families across the globe thank you. Okay, so why do I think that good parents have to eat their Bibles? 1. Meditations from God’s Commands to Others In Jeremiah 15:16 the prophet writes, “Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your words became for me joy and gladness in my heart, For I have been called by Your name, O Yahweh God of hosts.” Another prophet, Ezekiel, uses very similar language in Ezekiel 2:8-3:3, “‘Now as for you, son of man, listen to what I am speaking to you; do not be rebellious like that rebellious house. Open your mouth and eat what I am giving you.’ 9 Then I looked, and behold, a hand was sent forth to me; and behold, a scroll was in it. 10 Then He spread it out before me, and it was written on the front and back, and written on it were lamentations, sighing, and woe. 3:1 Then He said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.’ 2 So I opened my mouth, and He fed me this scroll. 3 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.” And then in Revelation 10:8-11 we find a very similar scenario, “Then the voice which I heard from heaven, I heard again speaking with me, and saying, ‘Go, take the scroll which is open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.’ 9 So I went to the angel, telling him to give me the little scroll. And he *said to me, ‘Take it and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ 10 And I took the little scroll out of the angel’s hand and ate it, and in my mouth it was sweet as honey; and when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. 11 And they *said to me, ‘You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.’” Let’s pull some observations from these three texts. A. God repeatedly uses the imagery of eating His Word. If nothing else, we can assume that the imagery itself is valuable since it’s used so often. And—yes—this imagery is used in more places than just these three examples. We’ll consider those in a few minutes. B. The imagery of eating is very natural and obvious to us. All humans—even infants—understand to one degree or another that they absolutely must eat and drink. Nearly everyone listening to my voice recognizes that eating and drinking aren’t truly about enjoyment or habit; it’s about nourishment. Without it, we die. Our bodies require an array of nutrients that it can convert and use in our bodies to keep us moving, heal our sickness, grow, and strengthen. When God uses imagery like this, we have to understand that He intends for us to understand the metaphor using common sense and the truths from His created World. Of course, we must be careful not to twist metaphors further than they were intended to be twisted. As an example, it would be inappropriate to stretch the imagery to the point where we’re trying to find a correlation in the process of “eating the Bible” to defecation. C. The imagery all agrees that eating the Word is good. Jeremiah describes it as joy and gladness, and Ezekiel and John both describe it as being sweet as honey. Before I move to the next point, I do want to address John’s bitter stomach. I don’t believe that this observation is designed to have us conclude that eating the Word is bad. Ezekiel tells us that his sweet tasting scroll contained “lamentations, sighing, and woe.” We can also conclude that John’s tiny scroll that he was supposed to prophesy to many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings would also be hard truth to swallow. The reality of the Gospel is a hard one. We prideful humans must recognize that we are spiritually destitute. We need to grieve over that fact. We need to be miserable and mourn and cry. Our laughter needs to be turned into mourning and our joy to gloom. We need to humble ourselves before God, and—for a prideful, blind people—that is a bitter message. So, I believe it’s appropriate to say that, yes, the content of the Word is heavy. It contains reproof, rebuke, admonishment, and warning. But like Proverbs 27:6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” Psalm 141:5 reads, “Let the righteous smite me in lovingkindness and reprove me.” Proverbs 20:30 tells us, “Stripes that wound scour away evil, And strokes reach the innermost parts of the body.” When we respond correctly to the truths in Scripture—heavy though they may be—it’s a sweet and healing experience. D. Eating the Word is a necessary precursor to sharing the Word. Just like we can’t benefit from a food until we consume it, we can’t benefit from the Bible until we read, study, and meditate on it. But then God steps beyond the metaphor He established and reveals in Ezekiel and Revelation that eating the scroll was necessary in order to be able to communicate it to others. Again, this should be an obvious conclusion. I cannot teach what I do not know. But, we really need to consider our own parenting on this point. Parenting is a teaching ministry, and the Scriptures are abundantly clear what the content of that teaching should be. We must be rearing our kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We’re to be His ambassadors to this world—starting first with our own homes. If we stopped right here, I believe we’ve looked at enough material—which when added to all the other truth we’ve studied on this show about the necessity and importance of knowing God through His Word and teaching it to our kids—we can conclude that the more we eat, the sweeter it will be, and the better we’ll be able to teach our kids. But there’s more. 2. Meditations from God’s Commands to Us A. God’s Word as Bread In Deuteronomy 8:3 we read, “And He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh.” It’s this passage that Jesus quotes in Matthew 4:4 when He said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” In John 6:35 Jesus, the very Word of God, proclaims, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst.” There is no life—there is only death—when we don’t eat the Bread of Life. B. God’s Word as Milk In I Peter 2:2 we read, “Like newborn babies, long for the guileless milk of the word, so that by it you may grow unto salvation.” I Corinthians 3:2 says, “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to bear it. But even now you are still not yet able.” There are truths in the Word of God that are easily digestible. God wants us to share that truth even with our youngest children. And we ourselves should long for it like a baby desiring sustenance. C. God’s Word as Solid Food or Meat Milk is best for babies, but we’re not supposed to only ever consume milk. Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” In Job 23:12, Job proclaims, “I have not turned aside from the command of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food.” Do we long for the solid food of the Scriptures like mature individuals who have their senses trained to discern good and evil? D. God’s Word as Honey In addition to the first three passages we read, Psalm 19:9-10 as well compares God’s judgements to delicious honey. “The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of Yahweh are true; they are righteous altogether. More desirable than gold, even more than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.” And Psalm 119:103 exults, “How sweet are Your words to my taste! Sweeter than honey to my mouth!” My friends, if we really were mature, passionate Ambassadors for God to our families, we wouldn’t have to forced or cajoled to spend time in the Bible. It would be sweet to us. We would long for it. This past Sunday, my pastor, Bill Hill was working through Mary’s Magnificat when he observed that as a young, Jewish woman, she would not have had easy access to the Bible. And yet, her exultation of God was so theologically rich because it’s clear that she pursued it and memorized it and meditated on it. Therefore, it should not surprise us that Mary—as frail and sinful as she was—was the young woman God chose to rear the Messiah. Yes, she parented Jesus. She had God’s command from Deuteronomy 6 emblazoned on her mind: “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your sons.” And though she, like we, was sinful, and though she failed to have God’s commands on her heart all the time as she should, and though she failed to teach them diligently to her sons, and though the Scriptures were not always as sweet to her as they should have been . . . that was still God’s expectation for the young lady who would mother the Christ as it is for us. And finally . . . E. Wise Obedience as Food and Drink In Proverbs 9:5 wisdom is being personified as a woman inviting people to a feast, “Come, eat of my bread And drink of the wine I have mixed.” In John 4:34 Jesus equates obedience to God's will—rooted in His Word—with food. He said, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” When we’re doers of the Word and not just hearers, we’re going to obey it. But we’re also going to share it with others. We can’t truly participate in the sweet nourishment of God’s truth and be unchanged. We won’t hide our candle under a bushel. We’ll live the Word and parent in the Word. Conclusion
It’s unavoidable, my friends, good parents eat the Bible. They consume it, chew it, and allow it to nourish them for the purpose of submitting to it and parenting in light of it.
None of us—including me—do this as well as we should. We all need to grow in this area, and I pray that we will all strive to cherish God’s Word as we should and parent in light of it. Please subscribe to this show and share it with your friends so they too can be challenged to fill their lives with God’s Word. If you need any assistance in understanding and parenting in light of the Scriptures, please email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894. We would be honored to walk with you as we have so many other parents. And please take a moment to visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate to sign up to become a monthly donor. All of your gifts are tax deductible and will go to helping us reach more and more parents with the liberating truth of God. And then join us next week as we talk about “How to Biblically Help Your Children Find a Spouse.” Admittedly, we could do a whole series on this topic, but this one episode is going to focus on the most important nonnegotiables in the process. I’ll see you then.
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