Taste and see
Psalm 34
Main Idea: We can taste and see the Lord’s goodness by looking to Christ in every circumstance.
I. Recounting the Lord’s Praise (34:1-3)
David’s first impulse after experiencing divine deliverance (cf. 1 Sam. 21:10ff) is to call God’s people to worship the Lord together. This corporate worship involves blessing, praising, boasting, hearing, magnifying, and exalting the Lord.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.
~ C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms
The key to enjoying the Lord through corporate worship is humility (34:2); the humble are easily edified and make their boast and exaltation in the Lord, not themselves. “Who can make God great but those who feel themselves to be little?” (Charles Spurgeon)
Hebrews 10:23–25: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
II. Remembering the Lord’s Provision (34:4-14)
Rather than trying to provide for himself or take credit for his own deliverance, David acknowledges the Lord’s provision. He tells us the Lord provides for his people through:
1. Saving (34:4-7)
Rather than carrying the weight of our suffering, anxieties, and fears ourselves, those who look to God are made “radiant” (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18) as He protects us on all sides (2 Kings 6:15-17).
2. Satisfying (34:8-10)
Those who “taste and see” the goodness of the Lord and humbly take “refuge” in him will “lack no good thing” (cf. Matt. 5:6). “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” ~ Augustine, Confessions
3. Sustaining (34:11-14; cf. 1 Pet. 3:8-17)
The Bible isn’t interested in whether we believe in God or not. It assumes that everyone more or less does. What it is interested in is the response we have to him: Will we let God be as he is, majestic and holy, vast and wondrous, or will we always be trying to whittle him down to the size of our small minds, insist on confining him within the boundaries we are comfortable with, and refuse to think of him other than in images that are convenient to our lifestyle?... To guard against such blasphemous chumminess with the Almighty, the Bible talks about the fear of the Lord – not to scare us but to bring us to awesome attention before the overwhelming grandeur of God, to shut up our whining and chattering and stop our running and fidgeting so that we can really see him as he is and listen to him as he speaks.
~ Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
III. Recognizing the Lord’s Presence (34:15-22)
Though affliction will come upon both the righteous and the wicked, the Lord has promised to be near His people, especially when they are “brokenhearted” over life’s circumstances or “crushed in spirit” over their own sin (cf. Matt. 5:3.).
When pain and suffering come upon us, we finally see not only that we are not in control of our lives but that we never were. Over the years, I have come to realize that adversity… pulled those who already believed into a deeper experience of God’s reality, love, and grace. One of the main ways we move from abstract knowledge about God to a personal encounter with him as a living reality is through the furnace of affliction… Believers understand many doctrinal truths in the mind, but those truths seldom make the journey down into the heart except through disappointment, failure, and loss... the great theme of the Bible itself is how God brings fullness of joy not just despite but through suffering, just as Jesus saved us not in spite of but because of what he endured on the cross. There is a peculiar, rich, and poignant joy that seems to come to us only through and in suffering.
~ Tim Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
When these promises feel too good to be true or out of reach, we must look to the finished work of Christ. Though it appeared God the Father was absent as Christ was crucified, his intact bones (John 19:36) are a reminder of God’s steadfast love and deliverance, so that “none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”
