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!
Comments
Post a Comment