Bittersweet

Published in the Omaha World Herald’s “From the Pulpit”

September 25, 2022
Reverend Eric L. Jay

“bittersweet”

Life is full of bittersweet moments.  Moments that carry with them both the bitterness of undesirable or unpleasant circumstances and wonderful experiences of joy and excitement.  Moments when past, present, and future seem to collide all at once.  Like a woman in the pains of labor giving birth to her child, dropping your children off on their first day of kindergarten or their freshman year of college then having to drive away, starting a brand-new job, moving somewhere you have never been before, or when the end of one relationship allows a new one to begin.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is bittersweet.  Bitter on the one hand because Jesus made it bitterly clear that every single one of us is sinful and wicked.  Hearing the truth that we are sinners and unworthy of salvation is a bitter pill.  That bitterness, however, is what makes the Gospel of Jesus so very sweet!  We don’t deserve salvation, and yet God is so merciful and loving that He did the unthinkable.  He put on flesh and blood and became man, to live the sweet life of faithfulness to God that mankind was created to live but failed to do, to taste the bitterness of the wrath of God and the death we deserve, and to defeat sin and death by raising Himself back to life.  How very sweet is the grace of God!  The Good News of Jesus is so much sweeter when we fully confess and fully taste the bitterness of our own sin and wickedness, the truth that we have done nothing, nor could we ever do anything to deserve God’s forgiveness and salvation.  Jesus Christ has done it for us.

Christ gave His body and blood on the cross.  He allowed all of Himself to be consumed by the bitterness of our sin so that through faith in His death and resurrection, we would consume the sweetness of salvation by faith in Christ and be truly satisfied.  To consume all of Jesus, we must be emptied of ourselves and submit all our life, all our thoughts, all our desires, and all of what we understand to be good and right to the authority of His Word.  As Psalm 119 says, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”

Consume all of Christ and be consumed by Him.  That is the only hope we have of tasting the sweetness of His salvation and escaping the bitterness of the judgment of God.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” – Psalm 34:8.