Sermon Transcript
If you’ll open up your Bible, please, to the book of Psalms, if you brought a Bible. Book of Psalms, right smack dab in the middle of your Bible. We’re gonna look today at chapter 34, Psalm 34.
I wanna echo what Jocelyn was saying earlier during the announcement about the importance of please, please, please read your bulletin about those announcements about the all-church camp coming up in a couple weeks. We still have spaces and we’d love to fill up all of them. And the reason why we got a variety of spaces is because some of you people don’t like sleeping in tents. That’s okay. We have RV hookup if you know somebody with an RV.
We have a lodge available if you like kind of hotel kind of camping. There’s tent cabins if you’re more into glamping, glamorous camping. Whatever your style, there’s something for everybody there and for every budget and for every size family. We’d love, love, love to have you out there, and it’s gonna be a really cool kind of all-ages thing. And again, if you’re not able to join us, you’ll wanna make sure that you’re looking at the back of the bulletin for the announcement about what our schedule will be on Labor Day Sunday.
Okay, so you have Psalm 34 open.
I had the opportunity a couple weeks ago— I’m gonna hold on just a moment so I can set that down— had the opportunity a couple weeks ago to be at the happiest place on earth, Disneyland. Okay, yeah, I was— I wasn’t sure if anybody would say anything there. Disneyland. I love Disneyland. I love Disney World.
I love anything Disney. And we were there, and as we were there, even though I’ve been to Disney many, many times, there’s something I hadn’t tried that people are like You gotta try this, you gotta try this. I’m like, okay, finally. We tried it. It was great.
It was the Dole Whip. Anybody know what the Dole Whip is? Yes, okay, so some of you have tasted and you’ve seen that it is good. The Dole Whip is fantastic. It’s a frozen pineapple drink and it comes in different varieties.
It is just at the entrance to Adventureland there, just right next to the Enchanted Tiki Room. And it is— the Tiki Room, I think enchanted is the appropriate word. There’s 2 kinds of people in this world, those who like the Tiki Room and those who have no soul. I love the Tiki Room. It is enchanted.
I love the Tiki Room. My children scoff at me. My wife moves on ahead of the crowd. And we didn’t— we were there for several days and we did not stop at the Enchanted Tiki Room. But we did stop— I know.
Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot. But we did stop at the Tiki Juice Bar and we did get the Dole Whip. We tasted.
We saw that it was good. I brought some with me.
How many of you have never had a Dole Whip before? Jamie, you’ve never had one? Come on up.
Like, these are not fresh from Disney, like we found a recipe. Who else has not tasted one but would like to taste one? Here, tell you what, I’ll set it down here for you guys so you can be like little rats scurrying.
Okay, it may be like a little bit frozen. But anyone else want to taste one? Yeah, come on up. Listen, I’m just— the table is open. I don’t have one for everyone, but I do have spoons.
Preferably if you’ve never had one. Here you go. There’s some spoons. They’re a little bit frozen.
They’re a little bit frozen. Disney pun. I was standing outside in the sun like Olaf trying to melt. Hey, hold on here. Like, we got to get Mr. Fisher one.
Oh, okay. Yes, there’s one. Perfect. So let it melt a little bit, or you can go after it now. Now I put my finger in a few of them, so I don’t remember which of the cups those were.
Just sort of like a mystery snack, adds flavor and that sort of a thing. But I was trying to get these things to thaw, so if they’re not completely thawed, I’m sorry. You didn’t pay anything to be here today, so don’t complain. But I would like to know though what you think, because we followed the recipe and tried different things yesterday. I appreciate my wife helping me with that because that is not a gifting or skill set of mine.
But yeah, so let me know what you think. I hope that you taste and you see that they are good. We’re going to look at Psalm chapter 34, just meditating on verse 8 for a little bit here. Psalm 34:8, and it simply says this: Taste and see that the Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Let’s all say that together. Taste and see that the Lord is good. There’s a couple things I want to point out about this. Those 2 words, taste and see, are really interesting. First of all, they’re invitations, they’re exhortations.
Yes, they’re in an imperative tense, and so that means they’re sort of commands, but David, who wrote this, in the Old Testament is not barking out commands or orders like a drill sergeant. Any of you have a spouse or family member who anytime they taste something good insists that you try it and they shove it in your face and say, here, eat this, even if— I don’t have that. I was just curious if any of you have ever experienced that along the way. I love that thing whenever somebody tastes something that’s not good and they go, this is horrible, try this, and they stick it in your face. But taste and see here are exhortations, they’re invitations, right?
They are invitations for us to sample, to be like at Costco or Trader Joe’s where the person’s over there in the corner and they’re handing out the free samples. David’s experienced something really, really good and he’s saying, you gotta try this. I have tasted and I’ve seen that God is good. Now here’s a guy, David, who’s— listen, if you know his story, you know that he’s been through all kinds of challenges in his life. But yet he still says, taste and see that the Lord is good.
He’s inviting all of us. Whenever you’re looking for a good restaurant or you’re looking for recommendation, you talk to a friend, somebody who’s maybe tried something so that you can experience what they’ve experienced. Somebody’s seen a good movie, oh, like, you gotta see this, this is so good. You go on Yelp or you go on some sort of website to try to find recommendations about what is good. And David is just overflowing with joy saying, You gotta try this.
Taste and see that the Lord is good. Those words are also— I just wanna point out, taste and see are sensory words, right?
The word see there is not strange to us because we see other places where it talks about seeing God. But taste? Tasting God. What is that? What is he talking about?
And he uses, I think, those sensory words— I’m not in David’s mind, obviously, but I’m gonna guess that he’s using those words to help us relate to the fact that whenever we taste something that’s good, we remember it. And it’s something that’s intimately personal to us. In other words, he’s wanting us to have an experience, tasting, that leads to us realizing something, seeing. And over time, when you experience something and you realize something, you see it, it becomes a conviction in your life. So I want you to taste, I want you to experience that God is good.
I want you to see it. I want you to take it in, to savor it like you would a good meal.
And you will, over time, he believes, he’s completely confident that as we taste and see, we will see absolutely that God is good.
Similar to how if I taste a strawberry, I see and realize that it is sweet. If I taste chocolate, I see and realize that it is sweet or rich or bitter, whatever the kind of chocolate. If I taste a Dole Whip, I see that it is good. And if you ask me, is a Dole Whip good? I’d say absolutely.
Well, how do you know? Because I’ve tasted, and I’ve talked to other people who have tasted many times. I’ve seen that they’re good consistently. And that’s what David here is using these words, I believe, to be able to do. Here’s the deal though, not all of us have tasted and seen that God is good.
You ever tasted something that is bland, and so you season it with some salt or you season with something to bring out the flavor. Other times you have something and it’s good, but it’s seasoned with something you’re like, if that was out, if that was missing from the recipe, that would make this meal so much better because it’s been seasoned with something that’s not good. And for many of us, our taste of God has been seasoned with something from the outside, whether it’s anger, bitterness, something in your life that has caused us to lose our appetite for who God is.
You say the Lord is good to some people, they’re like, amen. You say the Lord is good to other people and they might say, what are you talking about? I’ve tasted and I’ve seen and he’s not good. What do we do with that? I had the strange experience a couple days ago of I was leaving the parking lot here to go pick up my daughter, well, to go get something signed actually, Raya’s, for my daughter Raya over at Homestead High School.
Had to sign some papers that I’d forgotten to sign. So as I was leaving, I saw a gentleman who looked lost, who was right outside the parking lot, and he was kind of wandering around. And so I just drove up to him and said, can I help you? Found out he was looking for some help in different ways. And so I just said, well, you need a ride anywhere?
So he said, yeah. So I said, hop in. And so as I was driving, I said, you know, like, where are you going? He said, where are you going? I said, Homestead.
He said, that’s where I’m going. So, all right, let’s go on down to Homestead. So as he and I were going, we just started talking. And I come to find out he’s one of those who I think we would, over time, if we spent time with, would say that the Lord is not good. The Lord has not been good to him.
He has several needs in his life, and as much as I tried to learn, I think he’s one of those that has had a bitter taste in his mouth for whatever reason. And I didn’t get to experience all of that. And we got to the school and he wanted to go a little bit further. So, all right, well, let’s go a little bit further. I drove him a little bit further.
Further, and then he just kind of shut down the conversation and found out where he wanted to go, and somewhere in Santa Clara. And so I dropped him off, and, you know, you good? Okay. And so I leave Santa Clara, and I’m going back by Homestead High School, but I get in the wrong turn lane, and I end up turning into the Kaiser Hospital so that I can kind of go through the parking lot because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. 3 minutes or so after I dropped this guy off, I there’s a knock on my window right there in the Kaiser parking lot.
And it’s a woman about this size, maybe late 70s, 80 years old. She knocks on the window and she’s going like this to me, kind of thing. So I don’t know what she’s saying, and I roll down my window and she’s speaking Mandarin, which I don’t speak. So that was hard to figure out what she wanted. But she said Wolf.
I’m like, okay, she wants to drive down to Wolf Road. So I opened up my door, she hops in, like this is literally 3 minutes after I drop off this guy, and I’m trying to have a conversation with her and it’s not working very well. But in the midst of— and it’s not her fault, it’s my fault that I, you know, in trying to communicate, I just found out that she was wanting to go to Wolf. I was happy to take her further, but all that she could say as she was in the car repeatedly was, thank you so much. God is good.
God is good. Thank you so much. 180-degree difference from the experience I just had with the other gentleman. And I don’t— again, I’m not judging. I don’t know his story, and I don’t know her story at all.
But you see how just vastly different everybody’s experience is. And when I dropped her off, she said, God bless you, God bless you, God bless you. Those are the words that I could understand. And I just, you know, until then I went on to Homestead after that. And it’s just a strange occurrence, but I think God maybe gave me that experience to remind me about How for some of us we question the goodness of God.
Is God really good? Many of us, in fact probably all of us if we admit it, have a contractual agreement with God. But it’s a very one-sided contract where one person fulfills their part, us. God, I will be a good decent person and then you in return will save my child. You will prosper me.
You’ll protect my job. You’ll heal my spouse. You’ll give me success. You’ll answer my prayer. The fact that God hasn’t ever signed our contract doesn’t keep us from believing it, right?
But when that happens, we begin to question, is God really good, or is he only good to some? Or is he only good some of the time? We question the goodness of God, and over time, because of those experiences, our taste, our experience of who God is, can be seasoned with all kinds of things.
I want to talk today about the goodness of God. This has been on my heart as I was just praying about what God would have me share. I just want to focus on the simple, plain fact that God is good, and I want us to remind ourselves of this fact. And if you’re here today and your experience has been something other than that God is good, that’s all right. I, I hope that you will come in with an open mind.
I hope that you’ll come with an open heart, but I realize that it’s not going to be me that convinces you that the Lord is good. It’s not. But I want to share a little bit about my own experience and hopefully some of your experiences as well, and this will resonate with, with us. And so let’s just pretend like we’re at Costco, right? We’re walking the aisles, you’ve got the free samples there.
We’re gonna taste, we’re gonna sample from the goodness of God today, and we’re gonna keep our finger there in Psalm 34, but we’re gonna move around a little bit. And if you’re keeping notes and you’re trying to follow the message notes, you’re gonna have a hard time because I changed this sermon like 2 or 3 times in the last 24 or 48 hours. So just listen and go along with it. Okay? First thing that I want to share with us is this, is that God is the standard and source of all that is good.
God is the standard and source of all that is good. Scripture backs this up repeatedly. We measure things by all kinds of standards, but it doesn’t matter what our standard is. God is the ultimate standard of good. Psalm 119:68 says this, you are good, about God, you are good, what you do is good.
You are good and what you do is good. So the Bible defines God’s goodness in 2 ways. His character, who he is by nature, intrinsically, not because you or I say he’s good, he is good. And secondly, by his actions. Who he is, what he does.
Who he is, what he does. He’s consistently good. He is good in what he does. He is good in who he is. He’s good because of what he does, and he does what he does— he does good because he is good.
They both complement one another, and I want to just focus on that idea. In Mark 10, Jesus had a young man who approached him with a question and said, good teacher— he used that word good— good teacher, What must I do to receive eternal life? What must I do to inherit eternal life?
Jesus, before answering his question, said, why do you call me good? No one is good except God. And Jesus here, I think, is making a point here. First of all, he’s pointing to the fact that he is God himself, because only God is morally perfect. Only God is good in all ways.
And Jesus is essentially saying, either I’m God or I’m no good. You’re calling me good, I must be God. He is the standard and the source of all that is good. We measure good in all sorts of ways. I had a good steak.
I saw a good movie. He’s a good friend. She’s a good friend. I read a good book. I had a good day.
How do you define a good day? Each of us would define it in so many different ways. And a lot of it’s just your own experience of it. Last Thursday, I had a good day for me. It was the celebration of my wedding anniversary to Shannon, but it was also simultaneously the adoption anniversary day for my oldest son, Tate, who’s 15 and a half.
We celebrate each of our kids’ adoption anniversary day. It was a good day. Got to play some golf. If you’ve ever played golf, the idea of a good day changes from hole to hole and from swing to swing. First tee box, I landed it on the green, my tee shot.
I was having a good day. Got par on the hole. Second hole, I was not having a good day.
But you start to take these things into consideration and you say, God, I was just aware in that moment of the goodness of God. I could testify God is good. Got to spend time with my son. Got to spend time later on with my wife as we went out to dinner together.
We saw a movie together, we got to have a meal together, it was a good day. And yet I was thinking about it, some of you here in the room and some, some that aren’t here in the room, I was thinking about Louise Brown, who’s our bookkeeper here at the church. Some of you may not know her, but we’ve been just as a staff praying for her for some needs that she has. She would define a good day in a lot different ways than I would as she’s dealing with her aging parents. I spoke with the gentleman yesterday at the Deaconess Tea upstairs in our family center that our deaconess has hosted, and I’m sitting next to a gentleman who I asked how he is.
He says he’s good. I said, how do you define good? He said, I’m here, aren’t I? So that’s a good day for him. He was there.
Thinking about my friend again who I picked up and how would he define a good day?
Some of you are dealing this week, right here, right now, with a diagnosis and with some medical treatment that you’re seeking. And there are people praying for you and I’m praying for you. You’ve been on my heart. And I’m just aware of the fact that each of us defines a good day in different ways. But ultimately, again, God is the standard for good because only he is truly good.
Only he is truly good. James 1:17 puts it like this, that every good and perfect gift comes from above. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Every good and perfect gift is from above. I want to point out a couple things about this as we think about God being the standard and the source by which we should define good.
We compare it to God. Just because something doesn’t seem good to us might not mean that it’s not actually good.
See, sometimes God lays before us things in our lives that we wouldn’t call good and perfect, but because they’re from God, they are. Because he’s good and what he does is good. Always. Consistently.
Whether my experience tells me that or my feelings say otherwise, he is. And this verse, James 1:17, about how every good and perfect gift comes from God points out a couple things to me. One, it says that God is perfect in his character and he does not need to be improved upon. He does not change and he doesn’t need to change. You and I need to change.
We need to work on our personality. We have flaws. God cannot be perfected. God cannot be improved upon in any way. He’s already good and perfect in what he does, and he does not change like the shadows.
He’s the standard of good. On top of that, we see that God is the giver of all good things, but notice it doesn’t say he’s the giver of all wished-for things. Maybe you’ve prayed about something and God hasn’t given that to you. And we say, God, aren’t you good? Well, maybe you don’t have it because God is good.
Maybe God hasn’t given you what you’ve wanted when you’ve asked for it because he’s good. And I, as a parent, can identify with that. We as parents know this, right? Just because our children ask for it doesn’t mean that it’s good for them. Or that that’s the best time.
I think God can lay out all kinds of things in front of us, but then we question the goodness of God because he didn’t give us the one thing that we really, really wanted. This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, guys. This is what the serpent did with Eve when she was tempted. He said, did God really say that you can’t eat from any of the trees? You know, God knows that if you were to eat, you would really benefit from that.
Making us question the goodness of God. It’s one of the enemy’s strategies. But God is the giver of all good things, and so if it’s from God, it’s good.
And it’s good because it’s from God.
And he doesn’t always give us everything that we want when we want it, but we can trust the fact that he’s good. The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers and those who were there to listen to him If you, as a loving parent, let’s say that your child comes to you and asks for bread, would you give them a stone? They ask for fish, would you give them a snake? And if you and I, because we’re not good, know how to give good gifts to our kids, how much more does a good, perfect Father know how to give good gifts to those who ask him? That’s who God is.
He is good in who he is and through what he does. I also want to point out through James 1:17 here, an important point is that what God gives us is good. And so when, when God lays something before us, sometimes we push away from the table because we’re picky eaters. God wants us to taste something. He wants to enlarge our palate, so to speak.
And we’ll say, I’ll taste this, this, and this, but I’m not interested in tasting this. Some of us are picky eaters when it comes to what God wants to lay before us.
And we refuse to taste and see what he wants to give us at that moment. Instead, we focus on the things that he’s not doing. Tim Keller, in his book The Reason for God, helps me as I sort of process what this looks like. We sort of assume that just because something doesn’t seem reasonable to us, then it therefore must not be reasonable. If we can’t think of a good reason why God might withhold something, then there must not be a good reason.
But why should that be the case? If God is truly good and he’s infinite, who are we to question him?
Just because we can’t think of a good reason for God to allow something doesn’t mean that there’s not. We can wrestle with that all that we want, but when your standard is the goodness of God, it brings us back to anchor ourselves in the fact that he is good and what he does is good. I also wanna talk about another truth that I think is really important as we think about the goodness of God. It’s that the goodness of God is not always a cool drink or a soft pillow or a Dole Whip. Sometimes the goodness of God comes in forms we may not recognize.
Sometimes he doesn’t release us from our circumstances. Sometimes he doesn’t provide relief in the midst of our turmoil or trouble. But he does that because he’s good. You see, God’s not good because he releases us from this stuff. God is good because he’s good.
He’s not good because he’s patient. He’s patient because he’s good. He’s not good because he’s generous. He’s generous because he’s good. He’s wise.
He’s good in who he is. He’s good in what he does. Another point that I want to bring out here, and I want to have you guys turn to the book of John chapter 1 here as we look at an important truth that I want to bring out before us, that tasting and seeing God’s goodness is an invitation and a choice. Tasting and seeing God’s goodness is an invitation and a choice. In the book of John, Jesus has an encounter with 2 guys, one named Philip, one named Nathanael.
In the book of John chapter 1, near the end of the chapter, Jesus has introduced himself and called to Philip and to some of the other followers, and he hasn’t yet met Nathanael, or Nathanael hasn’t yet met him. And in John chapter 1, verse 43, it says, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, follow me. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
Look here, verse 46. What does Nathanael said, Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? Nathanael asked. I just want to stop there for a moment and just pause and focus on this idea of, can anything good come from Nazareth?
Some scholars think that Nathanael asked this question because Nazareth had a reputation for sinfulness and immorality. This is why he used the term good. Can anything good come out of this? Other people think that he’s talking about the fact that Nazareth was geographically and culturally looked down upon. It was in the sticks, we would say.
It was not a well-traveled town. You didn’t go to Nazareth for anything. No one of distinction came from there. No one of importance lived there. It was not a cosmopolitan town.
Scholars think there were maybe 500 or so people that lived there. Can anything good come out of someplace like that? I used to live and work in a place called Hemphill, Texas. And you’d have to actually look this up to find Hemphill, Texas, because you don’t drive to Hemphill, Texas. You don’t.
When you want— when you’re living in Hemphill, Texas, a town of 1,200, where I was a youth and music pastor for a few years, when you live in Hemphill and you want to go to the city, you go to Broadus. Or you go to San Augustine. Which, if you’ve ever been to those places, are not really the city. Actually, if you want to enjoy a nice meal, you go to Lufkin, Texas, which is really the big city. That was 55 minutes away and had about 30,000 people there.
That was the big city. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? A place so culturally and socially insignificant and irrelevant?
And essentially Nathanael’s asking a question that we’ve all asked. Whatever your interpretation is of what Nathanael’s asking here, we’ve all asked the question. It’s probably a little bit of both.
But it’s this: can something significant come out of something insignificant? Can something good come out of something bad? Can redemption come out of wreckage? Can good come from failure? Can good come from being fired?
Can good come from unemployment? Can good come from bankruptcy? Can good come from teenage rebellion? Can good come from being turned down by the college you wanted to get into? Can good come from a bad grade?
Can good come from adultery, depression, death, disease?
Look here what Philip says in response to Nathanael’s question.
Nathanael said, Nazareth, can anything good come from there? Philip said, come and see. Come and see. Just like David, taste and see. It’s an invitation.
You’re not forced to experience God’s goodness, but if you come and see, or you taste and see, you will see that God is good. He is good in who he is. He’s good in what he does. And then it says, when Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, Jesus said of Nathanael, here truly is an Israelite. In whom there is no deceit.
How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!
Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You’ll see greater things than that. He then added, Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Jesus is saying Your mind is blown now. Just wait and see.
Experience my goodness and you will see that I am good, that I am a deliverer, that I am faithful, that I am full of love and compassion to all.
There are times whenever we question again the goodness of God, but Romans 8:28, tells us that we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose. God works. And you may be going through something right now and you don’t see God working, but he is working because God works for the good of those. And if you love him and are called according to his purpose, he’s working for your good right now. And he can take something dark and turn it into light.
He can take something harmful and turn it into something positive. Because he’s good. He’s a good Father.
See, a lot of us, our response again is to push away from the table, and God is saying, I want you to come and see, taste and see I am good.
How do we do this? How do we, how do we, how do we experience God’s goodness? I want to just give us a couple suggestions by going back to Psalm 34 again where we started, where it says, taste and see that the Lord is good. In the verses surrounding 34:8, in verses 9 and 10, it gives us some ideas, I think, that are practical ways for us to think about how we can experience God’s goodness the way that he intends for us to, according to his standard, his measure.
Verse 8 again in Psalm 34 says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing. Lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. There’s 3 things I want to point out from those verses.
They’re just simply, I think, all essentially saying the same thing: take refuge in him, fear him, seek him. See, each of us takes refuge in someone or something. When hard times come. And the things that we often run to are not good. They don’t measure up to God’s perfect standard.
It might be a friend, it might— some of us, whenever we’re going through a hard time, we numb ourselves with the internet or with our phones or with TV. Some people run to food, some people run to relationships. We all run somewhere, and God is saying, take refuge in him. Because he is good. That word refuge just simply means a safe place.
Where is your safe place? God is saying if it’s anywhere else other than God, you will not taste and see that he is as good as he says that he is. If you want to taste and experience the goodness of God, you take refuge in him. When hard times come, you run to him. This is an intentional choice.
I’m— Lord, I’m turning to you. And the easiest way to make God your refuge is to ask him to be. Have you ever asked God to be your refuge? God, will you be my refuge? Will you be my safe place?
And then you choose to run to him first. But he also goes on and talks about fearing him, fearing the Lord, seeking the Lord. These are again intentional choices. When it says to fear him, it’s not talking about cowering like we’re afraid of him, although there is a point of that. We fear who God is out of reverence.
We fear God’s judgment. We fear the fact that he is a righteous judge, that he hates sin, and that he judges sin. But we fear the fact that he is good. We fear the fact that he is infinite. We fear the fact that he is holy.
And above all, And that he sees into our life.
And when we seek him, very often we seek wisdom from other people before we seek wisdom from God. God, is this good for me? That, that should be where we seek the Lord. Seeking the Lord in his wisdom, seeking the Lord for his best in our lives, rather than running to somebody else to seek what God would want to say to us first. God can use people.
But ultimately, going to his word. How does God reveal himself in his word? What would God say to you by his Spirit into your life? And is it confirmed in his word? Because that’s the standard of good that God has for you and for me.
Take refuge in him, fear him, seek him.
Some of you today, God wants to enlarge your palate.
And you’re only willing to taste certain things. And he’s wanting to say, I want you to taste this too right now. And trust that I am good as you’re tasting that and experiencing that.
Some of us are just, again, plain picky eaters when it comes to the things that God lays before us. And we focus more on what God hasn’t given us than what he has. He’s good.
Seek him. Fear him, take refuge in him, and you will see that he is good. Let’s pray.
Father, I thank you for the invitation and the choice that we have, that you don’t force us to experience you. You don’t barge your way into our life and order us around, Lord, but we know that you are good and that you come in And that, Lord, you’re a gentle shepherd and that your ways are good. Your commands are good. We can taste and experience you.
We don’t have to just merely acknowledge you, that you exist. You want us to experience firsthand each and every moment of the day that you are good. And I pray that, God, maybe that today each one of us here in this room Would this week take time to meditate on this verse, taste and see that the Lord is good. I pray that we would chew on that and think about it, savor it. Lord, you’ve been good to so many here.
You give us material possessions, you give us food and drink and shelter, clothes and relationship, health, oxygen and life, Father.
But we thank you, God, that even when something comes our way that we’re not sure we can handle, that you are still good and you never change. That’s such good news. Father, I pray that as you’ve offered that invitation, that we would make the choice to take refuge in you so that we can experience your goodness, that we would take— make the choice this week to fear you, to recognize who you are, to seek you. In an intentional way, focusing upon your Son Jesus.
Father, if anyone here does not know you, I pray that they would call upon you, for we know that whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. This is an invitation to anyone, and we thank you for that because you are good.
So thanks, Lord, for our time together here today. As we go from this place, plant your word in our heart in such a way that we can recall the taste, Lord, of who you are and experience your goodness this week. We pray in your Son’s name. Amen. You can ask our worship team to come on up and
