I believe that this little book, of course, was the Word of God, and when we first hear it—when we first eat it—it is marvelous to us, it is exciting to us, and we try to devour even more of it, but if we begin to make it a part of our lives—begin to assimilate it; follow the processes of digestion—then we begin to see that putting it into practice is not always very easy.
Jesus said it was "the strait way, the difficult way, and few there be that find it." And in addition to that, we also find that this Word of God contains things within it that are very bitter indeed in terms of what it says in the book of Revelation—terrifying, painful, oppressive, horrible things described in symbolic language; agonizing deaths of many, many people. God is not at all pleased about it.
And of course, it can bring upon us a great deal of sadness as well. And so it may be good going in, but once it gets in there, we find it may be very bitter in application to our lives.
