“If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.”
– Proverbs 25:16
What a great verse. What a great reminder that God gives us good gifts. If you found honey, eat honey, enjoy honey; but only enough for you. Don’t keep eating more and more and more, lest you have your fill of it and you end up vomiting it. It makes you sick. This picture in this proverb is obviously bigger than just eating honey.
The good gifts God gives are to be enjoyed but not indulged in improperly.
The good gifts God gives us are for us to enjoy, without question. At the same time, if we indulge ourselves more and more and more; and we take far more than what we need or for what God has intended us to have in a way that is healthy, then it becomes very unhealthy for us. I just think about the culture that I live in, and the constant quest for more and more and more. Fill yourself with more. Get newer, bigger, and better. Get more. Store up more for yourself. Get more things. I mean, this is what I’m surrounded by, and so I need to hear this proverb.
Proverbs 25:16 Warns Against Self-Indulgence
I need to be warned that if I keep just filling myself with more stuff in this world, that it will be very unhealthy for me. That I need to be content with the good gifts God has given me, but not looking for more and more and more. I just want to encourage you to fight that temptation, that battle in your life, to constantly want more, to seek more, to try to acquire more, to enjoy more and more and more. In a way that actually is very unhealthy for our souls.
Proverbs 25:16 Reminds Us of God’s Great Gifts
God, help us, we pray. God, deliver us from self-indulgence, from over indulgence in the things of this world. We thank you for the good gifts you have given us; but we know these good gifts, when indulged in improperly, become very dangerous to our hearts. Right, I think about 1 Timothy, chapter 6, and these warnings we see in your Word against the love of money. A good thing that you give to us, but if we love it, and we want more and more, and we hoard it, and we keep it all to ourselves, or we try to get more and more of it; that it brings total ruin to our souls.
O God, help us to enjoy the honey we have, so to speak, but only that which is enough for us. Help us not to indulge more and more and more in a way that is unhealthy for us and unhealthy for others. Help us have a proper perspective on the good things you give us. Give us content hearts. In the process, free us from the love of, desire, for more possessions, for more money, for more pleasures; that actually misses the goodness you have designed for us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
