E is for Experience-Psalm 34:8

Old Testament, Psalms, Sermons

Psalm 34:8, 1-22; 1 Peter 2:3

“Taste and see that the Lord is good.” “…now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Theme: There is a difference between knowing and tasting. Encourage others to “taste and see” that God is good when I taste and see and “feel” God’s goodness myself.

Key quote: “There is a knowledge that only comes through tasting. Five seconds of honey on the tongue will show you more sweetness than ten hours of lectures about the sweetness of honey. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’ Until God gives you a taste of his goodness in your soul all the theology (and Bible study) in the world will not give you a knowledge of his goodness that changes your heart and saves your soul.” John Piper; from a sermon: Job: Reversal in Suffering.

In the coming four weeks of our sermon series on Practical Christian Living–the ABCs, the plan is to consider the letter F in four words: Father (since it is father’s day next Sun), Freedom, Friendship and Forgetfulness. The themes of the last four weeks were: A is for Accountability, B is for Beauty, C is for Community and D is for Delight. Last week, regarding delight or happiness (Ps 37:4), we considered:

  1. God made man for himself (Gen 1:26-27).
  2. All of creation points to God (Ps 19:1; Col 1:16).
  3. No man can live without happiness (Gen 2:8-9; 1 Th 5:16).
  4. Man is unhappy when he settles for less (1 Jn 2:15-17).
  5. Man’s ultimate happiness is found in God (Neh 8:10; Phil 4:4).

Today we consider E is for Experience (Emotion), or the experiential or experimental life based on these questions:

  1. How might we taste and see that God is good?
  2. How exhilarating are our senses?
  3. Isn’t our world a world of sensory delight (even overload)?
  4. Why does God create a world that inundates our senses?
  5. Should we fear our feelings? Can they lead us astray?
  6. Are there not two ways of knowing: That honey is sweet and tasting its sweetness?
  7. Have you tasted God’s goodness? How?
  8. What is the knowledge that only comes through tasting?

I. How might we taste and see that God is good?

Ps 34:1-22 is David’s psalm of thanksgiving, where David was delivered from danger by feigning madness in the presence of King Achish of Gath (1 Sam 21:10-15). Derek Kidner divides this psalm as follows:

  1. Rejoice with me (Ps 34:1-10).
  2. Learn from me (Ps 34:11-22).

How might we taste and see that the Lord is God? Only when we realize from our heart what God has done for us, followed by what we do in response.

A. What God Does

  1. God delivers us (Ps 34:4, 7, 17b, 19).
  2. God hears us (Ps 34:6a, 17a)
  3. God saves us (Ps 34:6b, 18b).
  4. God encamps around us (Ps 34:7).
  5. God teaches us (Ps 34:11).
  6. God watches over us (Ps 34:15).
  7. God is close to us (Ps 34:18a).
  8. God protects us (Ps 34:20).
  9. God redeems us (Ps 34:22).

B. What Man Does

When we taste and see God’s goodness, we cannot but respond to him accordingly and concurently:

  1. We extol and praise God (Ps 34:1).
  2. We boast in God and rejoice (Ps 34:2).
  3. We glorify God and exalt his name (Ps 34:3).
  4. We seek God (Ps 34:4, 10) and call to him (Ps 34:6).
  5. We look to God and become radiant (Ps 34:5).
  6. We fear him and lack nothing (Ps 34:9).
  7. We control the way we talk and communicate (Ps 34:13).
  8. We turn from evil, do good, seek peace and pursue it (Ps 34:14).

II. How exhilarating are our senses?

 

Taste, smell and feel. In the movie Apocalypse Now (1979) about the Vietnam war, Robert Duvall, playing an American lieutenant, said, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Napalm is a highly incendiary jellylike substance used in fire bombs. He loved the smell of napalm because he associated this gasoline-like smell with victory. He believed that the more the Vietcong were bombed with napalm the sooner victory would be accomplished.

III. Isn’t our world a world of sensory delight (even overload)?

We all love certain tastes and smells. Isaac loved the smell of his son Esau. When he caught a whiff of Esau’s clothes, he said emotionally, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness—an abundance of grain and new wine” (Gen 27:27-28). I love the taste and flavor of my Starbucks coffee–Expresso or French Roast–with steamed milk every morning, often before praying! I have loved listening to Led Zeppelin for four decades…even if parts of Stariway to Heaven might be plagiarized. I love the smell of my wife’s hair…and the smell of my three cats, even though they have bad breadth! As I get older I love the taste of certain foods more and more: suckling pig, steak–rib-eye, well marbled, grilled rare to medium rare. I also love oysters, lobster and durian, the best fruit in the world.

IV. Why does God create a world that inundates our senses?

A sensory delight. God created us to enjoy without limit all of God’s creation through our five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. Why did God create this world to be a sensory delight? In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis expressed this eloquently: “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them… These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

V. Should we fear our feelings? Can they lead us astray?

Feelings vs. Reason. “It is true, of course, that people sometimes ‘follow their feelings’ rather than thinking responsibly. But it is also the case that people sometimes follow rationalistic schemes that run contrary to what they know in their guts (feelings) to be true. God gives us multiple faculties to serve as checks and balances on one another. Sometimes reason saves us from emotional craziness, but emotions can also check the extravagant pretenses of reason.” John Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Chap. 32, Resources for Knowing, 748-767, 2013.

Fear of our feelings. Despite our delightful world–created by God for his glory and for our enjoyment–we Christians often mistakenly think that we should NOT enjoy ourselves. We misunderstand or “over-zealously apply” self-denial (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23), the command to not love any loved one more than Jesus (Mt 10:37), or the command to not love the world (1 Jn 2:15-17). In doing so, we forget that all good gifts come from the Father (Jas 1:17). For the first two decades of my marriage I repeatedly told my dear wife, “Your feelings do not matter.” I meant, “Serve God…even if you don’t feel like it!” It is true that our desires, tainted by sin, can lead us astray (Jer 17:9; Gen 6:5). But it is equally true, if not more true, that our inherent desires–if refined by grace, Scripture and the Holy Spirit–will increase our fidelity and faithfulness toward God by increasing our enjoyment of God even through our feelings and emotions experienced through his good creation. God and Jesus desires that we love him experientially and emotionally with all our heart (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37; Mk 12:30), and not just out of duty and loyalty that is devoid of joy and excitement.

In light of our world that inundates us with sensory overload, what are we to make of this?

VI. Are there not two ways of knowing: that honey is sweet and tasting its sweetness?

Two ways of knowing: The difference between KNOWING that honey is sweet and TASTING the sweetness of honey. “There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There is a twofold understanding or knowledge of good… The first, that which is merely speculative and notional; as when a person only speculatively judges that any thing is, which, by the agreement of mankind, is called good or excellent… And the other is, that which consists in the sense of the heart: as when there is a sense of the beauty…or sweetness of a thing; so that the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. Thus there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former rests only in the head…but the heart is concerned in the latter. When the heart is sensible of the beauty…of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension.” (Italics mine.) Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be Both Scriptural and Rational Doctrine, 1734.

VII. How have you tasted God’s goodness?

My ears have heard, but now my eyes have seen. After Job met God, he said, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). Before this encounter Job knew God. But after this encounter, it is as though Job tasted God at a deeper and more intimate level. He came to know himself as one who is broken and needy. More than that he came to know God more intimately. He repented (Job 42:6) and was blessed even more than before (Job 42:12).

Only by God’s grace have I tasted God’s goodness. Sometimes I almost feel guilty that I am living such a charmed life of seemingly limitless and endless love, joy and peace (Gal 5:22). I know that the goodness that I “taste and see” is entirely God’s mercy, grace and blessing, none of which I deserve. Virtually every day, if I recount it, I can still vividly and experientially “taste and see” just how good God has been and still is through these events (to list but a few):

VIII. What is the knowledge that comes through tasting?

It is perhaps a far deeper level of knowing than simply knowing facts and knowledge and information.

“I will never forget that face.” As a doctor I have sadly witnessed numerous patients face the fact that their mortality is upon them. When I was practicing Oncology 2 decades ago, I once entered a hospital room to consult on a patient with terminal lung cancer. The moment she saw me, she immediately had the look of horror on her face as she repeated these eerie words, “I will never forget that face. I will never forget that face.” This almost creeped me out. Surprised, I asked her, “Why do you say that, maam?” She said, “You were the first person to tell me that I was going to die.” I had forgotten that I had seen her in the clinic many months ago. According to her I was the first person to inform her of her terminal diagnosis. Since that time, she lost much weight and became gaunt as the cancer spread. Though I had forgotten meeting her, she never forgot my face! The psalmist poetically describes our mortality as “walking through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps 23:4).

One who lives from everlasting to everlasting. The taste of death is agonizing for anyone and everyone. But because of our sins, all human beings without exception will some day experience and taste the horrifying and horrible power of death (Rom 6:23). But there is one who lives from eternity to eternity in the very bosum of the father (Jn 1:18, NASB) with life everlasting (Ps 90:2).

Christ tasted death for us. But for us, Jesus tasted death (Heb 2:9), so that we who deserve death may receive, experience and taste life everlasting. Jesus became poor so that we can become rich (2 Cor 8:9). Jesus lost his life as a ransom (Mk 10:45) in order to give us lives of freedom (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1). Jesus lost his sonship and was excluded from his royal family, so that we can be included and adopted as heirs and co-heirs of the kingdom (Rom 8:17). This is the gospel and the good news of the grace of God (Ac 20:24) that God gave us to live out in life and community, and to share with the world.

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