Taste and See (Psalm 34:8)

O taste and see that the Lord is good, happy are those who take refuge in him.

At one time or another, most human beings sense the need for something or Someone that is higher and mightier than themselves … for they are at their wits end, or their strength has failed, or they are in the midst of human suffering, or they see no purpose or hope ahead. Some will sadly suppress this search to their own detriment. Others will pursue answers and find encouragement.

We know well about Peter’s great low-point, when after three years of closely following Jesus he denied even knowing Jesus. Yet we know Peter was open to re-establishing his relationship with Jesus, and after the resurrection everything turned around for the better. We know that this very psalmist David experienced serious low-points himself in his life, and so the sentiments of this psalm (and others) come deep out of real life experience.

Psalm 34 certainly expresses such need in verses 4 and 6: “I sought the Lord” and “This poor soul cried”; but also expressed the end point of their search in these same verses: “[God] answered me and delivered me from all my fears” and “[I] was heard by the Lord and was saved from every trouble”. Verses 5 & 7 also express the good results that come from a successful search for God. When people sincerely seek out God, they will be found and delivered from wherever their fear has taken them.

This is at the same time an invitation to go further … and keep searching on … into a life of discipleship. There is naturally a temptation to just seek out God when at the bottom, and then forget about God when deliverance to the top arrives. This is no way to live, it has no real integrity, and it is of course quite disrespectful of God. The Psalmist, David, realises this, and on the basis of what God has provided in terms of help, suggests that there is a depth of relationship with God that should be very actively pursued (v.8) – “O taste and see that the Lord is good, happy are those who take refuge in him”.

Now we should note that to “taste and see” is a deliberate use of the senses. This is not just an intellectual search (so that we can understand more and argue better), but more so an experiential and experimental search. We cannot simply accept truths or religious practices and feel we have completed the search, we need to delve into God with our senses. We cannot borrow and adopt someone else’s faith, we must discover our own – one that stands up in the ‘cut and thrust’ and ‘ups and downs’ of everyday life. As a wise person said, “An ounce of personal experience is worth a ton of borrowed theology”.

So when on the search … we can try different forms of prayer, different approaches to worship, and various ways of studying the Bible, in an ongoing attempt to move closer to God and gain satisfaction with our spirituality. This is not to say faith is ever purely a personal matter – it is always interpersonal – but faith does start with each individual starting their engine and continuing to put fuel in their tank!

When we begin to “taste and see” all that God is, we experience the centrality of relationship. God existed in a community, a trinity, before the creation of the world, and it was through this relational community or trinity that this world was created. The greatest dynamic operating within this community of God was love, and it was the mutual love within the trinity that outworked into the creation of the world and all its features and inhabitants. So the energy of God is the relationship that exists between Father, Son and Spirit, and the output of these mutual relationships is love. So to “taste and see that the Lord is good” is literally to join the party – a party that has always been going on (within the community of God), a party to which we have certainly been invited (through the very fact of our creation), and a party that takes us to the very purpose of life … loving relationship.

It is in the very context of loving relationship, both vertically with God, and horizontally with all the others at the party, that we form the sort of trust and confidence that allows us to first survive, and then hopefully to flourish, in life – so our “taste and see” experience leads to (the second part of the verse) … “happy are those that take refuge in him”. As we align ourselves with God and press deeply into God, we sense that companionship [a companionship that first exists within God and is then shared with us]; and we also sense that Divine presence, that nurture, that creative coping mechanism, that redemption, that guidance, through which we can happily go forward.

Living in ‘refuge cove’ with God, is not about being in seclusion, far from it – but rather about living in society in a different way. In a New Testament context this means following in the Jesus way. This is about, as Paul tells us in Colossians (3:5-17), wearing the new clothes we have been given (as presents at Christmas and Easter), rather than wearing our old clothes that have become soiled and smelly.

Now, revealing Jesus through our lives, the very way we live day-by-day, lifts the possibility of God being noticed and appreciated. This goes back to that notion that looking to Jesus is the way to know what God is like. In this we read John 14:8-17. We point to Jesus, while Jesus points to God!! Or put another way, the Jesus in us points to the God who wants to love everyone! This is part of the commissioning of Jesus’ first disciples for their future mission – as they do the works like Jesus did, this reveals the God who is just like Jesus. The disciples, just like Jesus did, will be able to bring sight to the blind (e.g. John 9), and faith to the unbelieving. And this will all be possible because the disciples will and have received the Holy Spirit through which to become effective and fruitful.

So our “taste and see that the Lord is good”, becomes so much a part of us that we naturally desire others to experience God in the same (maybe even better) ways. We can represent God in our daily journey, through the resurrected Jesus living in us, in significant public ways, as well as in simple unassuming ways!