Deut. 32:13 – “He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock.”
Ps. 81:16 – “He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.”
To the natural person’s mind, does this not sound preposterous: Honey out of a rock? Suck honey out of a rock? Any scientist who studies rocks, any child who throws them, and any man who constructs buildings can tell you that there is no honey in rocks. But Almighty God, the highest authority of the universe, tells us in these verses and elsewhere that if Israel had obeyed God during their time of testing, they could have been replenished with the precious sweetness of honey. And it would have been found in, of all places, rocks.
And if the Lord would have done that for the millions of Israelites crossing a desert, what can He do for us Christians as we pant across the dark, gloomy, dismal places that life sometimes takes us? The unregenerate world around us contains no nourishment for us, not of any lasting kind. Life seems filled with the cold, hard fact of rocks on every hand. We grow weary as we, like the character in Percy Bysshe Shelly’s “Indian Serenade,” seek for some kind of nourishment as we tread our way to heaven. Years come and go; we grow older and find there is simply no spiritual nourishment for us in life apart from God. Like Shelley’s lovesick man, we sometimes think we have found love’s solace in some fleeting pleasure, so we madly pursue it like a young man pursues a maid: We sing to it, hoping to find lasting nourishment, but there is no honey in that rock. There never is. So, lowering our heads once more, we return to our weary journey, perhaps looking over our shoulder as the image fades, murmuring: “I arise from dreams of thee in the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright ….”
And then our Lord, the great Supplier, comes to us with honey out of the rock! We would never have expected to receive spiritual nourishment from such a cold, hard, dead substance. But He changes it and the hardness melts at His loving touch. We are refreshed with every sip of goodness, wanting more, finding that He is always there to supply needs and give us strength for the journey. Our souls are refreshed. The world is now not as filled with rocks as it was before. We begin to see signs of His life and the abundance He has prepared for His children, if we will but take it.
Oh, Lord, let us never lie down in fields of rocks, bitter at life, wasting away, pursuing shadows, and merely passing the years of our lives as a tale that is told. May we come to you each day and feast on your Word and the fellowship you bring! And may your honey out of the rock make us rise up with eagles’ wings, transcending the vain world we leave behind.
