Taste and See - Psalm 34:1-8

Watch:  http://youtu.be/vYEXzx-TINc
Ever encountered a picky eater? Mikey evidently was one.  His brothers said of him and the Life cereal, "he won't try it, he hates everything."
Anita will tell you that she's been married to a picky eater for most of twenty years. When we first started dating, I will admit that I was ultra-picky. I was so picky that I wouldn't even eat macaroni and cheese, spaghetti with sauce, or anything cooked with a lot of spices. At that point, the only vegetables I was reading were green beans and corn (though Davey tells me now that green beans do not count as a vegetable, they are legumes--and I tell him I don't care, I'm still considering them a veggie).
I grew up loving of a steady diet of plain cheeseburgers, Pop Tarts, and peanut butter (with no jelly) sandwiches.  I was so picky it wasn't until middle school that I added pizza to the list of foods that I loved to eat. I’ve had been considered a picky eater most of my life.  That's one reason I know how to and love to cook.  When I was old enough to prepare my own meals, my parents would tell me that if I didn't like what they were fixing for dinner, I'd have to fix my own.  Before that I can't tell you how many times I out waited the old parental challenge of, "you're not getting up from the table until you finish all the food on your plate."  I also heard over and over again, "How do you know you don't like it, you've never tried it?"  I also wanted the address to mail what was left on my plate to all those starving children in China who would love to have what I was refusing to eat, so I could overnight ship it.
However when Anita and I decided to get married, I made the commitment to try at least one new food each year.  Amazingly, the variety of foods that I eat have expanded greatly, because, with the exception of Brussels sprouts and okra, when I tasted a new food I have usually liked it. Among those foods that I have tasted and liked within the past year are avocados, pimento cheese (though I am still picky about what brand I'll eat), tomatoes (that I’m now addicted to), and hummus.  Like Mikey trying the Life cereal, I tried them and liked them.
I know I am not the only person in the world who is a picky eater.  I have even heard a few of y'all described as picky eaters, often times by your spouses or friends. Sometimes, like me at times, it is because of a food allergy, other times it is simply because we are just being difficult about what food we are willing to put in our mouths. I imagine that there have always been people like us. I'm sure that many a Hebrew mom or dad, in the time of King David, had to say "try the turtle dove, you'll like it," or in the time of Isaac, "don't get up from the table until you've at least tried a spoonful of the lentil soup," or in the time of Moses, "if you don't eat your manna, don't come asking for anything else."
I'm thinking that David may have heard that kind of thing a lot from either his father, Jesse, or his mother.  Why? Because as he writes the psalm that we read this morning, he is trying to convince folks to trust in God for their deliverance, he challenges the people to "taste and see that the Lord is good."
When it came to facing dangerous and difficult times, David tasted and found the Lord to be good.  Time after time, as David placed his whole trust in God, he found himself delivered. As a shepherd boy, he found himself having to face off against lions and bears (1st Samuel 17) to protect the sheep. Also as a young boy, while his older brothers and the entire army of Israel were quaking with fear, David went toe to toe with the giant Philistine, Goliath. As he grew older and his popularity increased to greater than King Saul's, King Saul became jealous and plotted repeatedly to take David's life, David trusted in God, and twice passed on an opportunity to take Saul out when his back was turned.  David, in his experience, had found that God could be trusted to deliver His people.  David says, “try trusting in God for all your troubles, you’ll like it.”
My brothers and sisters, many of us fail to trust in God.  We live loaded down with anxieties and worries.  Rather than trusting in God, we live expecting the “worse-case scenario” to play out in whatever is going on in our lives.  Often we turn to something other than God to get us through those stressful times.  Some of us actually turn to eating because we are stressed out—searching out those comfort foods that we enjoy to give us peace.  Others of us may actually find that we are so stressed out that we can’t eat and enjoy anything so we skip out meal after meal.  Some of us may turn to drugs, thinking that high will help us forget any worries, or we drink our fears away.  Others of us may actually, as I once did, in times of stress, turn to tobacco.  I remember that feeling of getting stressed out and saying to myself, or out loud, “Man, I need a cigarette.”  These are only a few of the things that some of us rely on to alleviate our stress and anxiety.  And the truth is, we may “taste them” or “try them” and they may be good for a little while, but in the long run they are not—they leave our bodies suffering from either being overweight, undernourished, diminished brain function, failed liver, or blackened lungs.
I have to tell you, I am thankful that God got through to me before I hurt my lungs beyond repair.  I still remember it,  one day I was driving through Oxford, and I hadn’t had a cigarette in a couple of days because I wouldn’t smoke in front of our children and Natalie had been out of school and home with me all day for those two days.  I don’t remember what I was stressed out about, but I remember thinking, “I sure need a cigarette.”  Suddenly it hit me, I was trusting in the cigarette for relief of my problems and not Jesus.  The reality of that was like getting hit square between the eyes with a two by four.  Here I was, claiming to be a Christian, and I was trusting in a nicotine fix to save me from my worries rather than the One I claimed to be my Lord and Savior.  That was the day I decided to quit smoking once and for all, nineteen years ago this month.
My friends, why do we look for deliverance from our troubles in places that are not God?  They will ultimately fail or betray us.  What good does it do any of us to carry around our worry or anxiety?  Jesus says, “…can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”[i] 
David says that God will deliver us from our enemy. 
Jesus says worrying  is not worth it, God will provide all you need.
Paul puts in plain and simple:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, [nor wealth, nor poverty, nor difficult jobs, nor unemployment, nor good health nor cancer, nor success, nor failure] nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.[ii]
What is worrying us?  What is threatening us?  What are we afraid of?  What have we tried to alleviate that stress, worry, anxiety, fear?  Do we like living in that state?  Have those other things truly helped us through the difficulties without causing problems of their own?  Have we put our whole trust in God’s providential care, living with the assurance that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Him, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Him will never die.”[iii]
This morning, Christ himself invites us to His table and says, taste and see that the Lord is good.  He says, “Taste this bread and remember it is my body, broken on the cross that your sins might be forgiven; taste this juice and remember it is my blood shed for you that you might be freed from the sting of death; taste and see that I am good that I have defeated your greatest enemies—that there is nothing to fear because I have claimed you and freed you and nothing, nothing will take you from Me.”
Taste and remember, my brothers and sisters…
Taste and see, my friends, the Lord is good!
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!



[i] Matthew 6:27
[ii] Romans 8:31-39
[iii] John 11:25-26

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