Sweetness and Healing
Manuka and God’s Word
Thought 1
Honey is amazing stuff. It is sticky and sweet, the product of many bees doing the job God gave them, pollinating flowers and trees. In exchange, they steal a bit of the nectar to take home to the hive to feed the collective.
Honey is supersaturated with sugar, and it likes to suck water into it. When a microbe like a bacterium or fungus comes into contact with honey, it sucks all the water out. The organism shrivels and implodes on itself.
Additionally, honey tends to be acidic. Although deceptively sweet, it has a pH around 3.3 to 4.5. Other foods in this range that you might know include ketchup, mayonnaise, canned peaches, and canned tomatoes. Acid is very bad for many microbes because it weakens their cell walls making them more susceptible to losing water.
Even more amazing is that scientists lately have found honey to have curative effects against bacteria that traditional pharmaceuticals have a difficult time fighting. Two well-known types are manuka, coming from the tea tree bush in New Zealand, and sidr, from the sidr tree in Yemen. The bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa as well as two versions of Staphylococcus aureus — methicillin-susceptible and methicillin-resistant — are all destroyed by manuka or sidr honey. Additionally, even when the bacteria were hiding and reproducing behind a layer of slime called biofilm that makes it hard for antibiotics to work, the two types of honey can eliminate the bacteria.
Caution: Children under the age of 1 (and some sources suggest 2) should never be given honey. They can die if they ingest honey because they lack immunity to inactive spores of a common microbe (Clostridium botulinum) that can survive in honey.
Thought 2
In some places in the Bible, the Word of God that reveals His Will and His instructions for life is called honey, particularly in Psalms.
Psalm 19:9–11 is one of the first places in Psalms that this happens, quoted from the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition:
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true, they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Your servant is warned [reminded, illuminated, and instructed]; In keeping them there is great reward.
The next place is Psalm 81:13–16. Here, quoted from The Passion Translation, the Lord promises His people that He will feed them with His sweet truth if (a conditional promise) they walk His way.
O that my people would once and for all listen to me and walk faithfully in my footsteps, following my ways.
Then and only then will I conquer your every foe and tell every one of them, ‘You must go!’
Those who hate my ways will cringe before me and their punishment will be eternal.
But I will feed you with my spiritual bread. You will feast and be satisfied with me, feeding on my revelation-truth like honey dripping from the cliffs of the high place.
One final place honey is mentioned as analogy for God’s Word or God’s Truth is found in Psalms 119:102–104, again from the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition:
I have not turned aside from Your ordinances, for You Yourself have taught me.
How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through Your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.
Thought 3
We’ve explored the sweet analogy for God’s Word. However, two other passages come to mind.
The first is 2 Timothy 3:16–17. Paul writes about the purpose and power of God’s Word, quoted here from the Passion Translation:
Every Scripture has been written by the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. It will empower you by its instruction and correction, giving you the strength to take the right direction and lead you deeper into the path of godliness. Then you will be God’s servant, fully mature and perfectly prepared to fulfill any assignment God gives you.
In Hebrews 4:11–13, the Word of God is even harsher, likened to a two-edged or double-edged sword, as shown here from the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition:
Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell].
For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.
And not a creature exists that is concealed from His sight, but all things are open and exposed, naked and defenseless to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.
Synthesis
Sin is an impurity that destroys the spiritual health of man. Whether it’s the virus of anger or rage, the fungus of gossip or slander, or the bacteria of lust or addiction, man is being wounded by these things that he cannot fight on his own.
Therapy won’t help. Self-help won’t help. Pharmaceuticals won’t help. There is no help for the disease of sin in the absence of God.
Once we have accepted Christ’s death on the cross, we need the medicinal value of Scripture applied to the disease of sin.
Yes, initially the word of God is sweet — its poetry flows from the tongue, its images of heaven comfort amid trials.
But it is also powerful medicine — living, active, sharper than any sword — that can cut us deep. The medicine built into it under the inspiration of God’s precious Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and wrongdoing (John 16:7–8) as He leads us into all Truth (John 16:13), including those areas of sin that we must acknowledge exist so we can work on them with Him. It goes under the slime of self-delusion and self-justification to undercut our humanity and make us see ourselves as He sees us. He uses Truth so we can grow in sanctity, or spiritual health and holiness (John 17:17).
Even as honeys from manuka and sidr are being found to be powerful medicines with several curative substances within them for a host of microbes, the Word of God is a powerful balm against every variety of sin and has been for two millenia.
It’s all in there — we just have to seek it out. And its beauty is that, unlike the sun, the moon, and the curative substances in honey, God’s Word will never pass and fade away (Matthew 24:35).
