Let’s pray as we come to God’s word. Almighty God, we are so grateful that we can experience you. We can experience you in every aspect of our life. Please, might we taste and know something of your goodness this morning? For Jesus sake we pray. Amen. The psalms are just incredibly realistic about life’s experiences. You see, you could say, taste and see. And you know, I’m going to offer you some sweets at the end. And you think, it’s all very straightforward, isn’t it? But have a listen to verse two. You can have a look down if you’ve got it with me. Let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Or verse 18, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalms that are very honest about our experience. Maybe this morning or another morning, you have found yourself coming into church and your heart has been aching, your body has been aching, your mind has been aching, and you think, I’m struggling to be honest. I’ve got some vague recollection of God’s goodness, but right here, right now, I’m not really feeling it. Certainly not to the extent that some of the psalms present. And then maybe you come and you’ve brought yourself here, or you’re watching online and we sing that great hymn, how great thou art. And as the music swells and builds and we declare, how great thou art. How great thou art, it does something inside, you think, yes, I remember I have this sense, this deep, radical something within of the goodness of God again. And that is the experience that David is referencing in this particular psalm, that out of great adversity and trial, he has tasted something of God’s goodness and he’s going to cling to that. Sometimes it can be really hard just to jump into a psalm. You think, I’m just. What’s going on here? But if you realise that the psalms are having a conversation with each other, we get a little kind of heads in to what’s going on. So if you’ve got a Bible, the previous psalm, I just want to read two verses. Psalm 30, 316 and 17. It says this. No king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance. Despite all its great strength, it cannot save. But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him. And our psalm, psalm 34, is like a worked example of that. It’s like a worked example of kind of knowing that our own strength isn’t enough to carry us through. You see, as we come and we gather together. David’s encouraging us that we’re doing the right thing. Verse one. I’ll extol the Lord at all times. His praise will always be on my lips. I will glory in the Lord. Let the afflicted hear him rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all my fears. You see, when we come together week by week, as we hear each other singing and declaring God’s truth, it brings to mind, it renews within us that sense that God really is the one we can put our trust in again. We might not be feeling it particularly this morning, and yet we’ve sung some amazing truth that just lifts our eyes to who God is and what he’s done. But the psalm is working its way towards verse eight. David says, taste and see that the Lord is good. When is he drawing on this experience from? You? See, he said, gather, sing, rejoice together. Know the goodness of the Lord. But when did David most poignantly learned that goodness? We’re told in our little italic bit at the top of our heading. It’s when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech who drove him away and he left. You see, the situation was a bit like this. David was in Israel. He was the anointed king. But Saul still had lots of power and influence. Imagine this side of where I’m standing is Israel. And David has previously moved around different places in an attempt to escape from Saul’s power and grasp. David has become notorious because of his victory over Goliath. You might say, well, that’s the moment David knew the goodness of the Lord. But no, that’s not what we’re told in this psalm. David defeats Goliath and they start to sing a song about him. They say, david’s amazing. Saul, he’s pretty good. He’s killed thousands. David has killed tens of thousands. How do you think Saul feels about this? The answer is not good. Put it mildly. He tries to assassinate David, to take out his rival. And so David comes up with a plan. Nowhere this side is safe in Israel. He has to get out of Israel. He knows he can’t last there long. So where does he decide to go? Well, he crosses over the border into Gath. You say, okay, he crossed over to the border. Is it like going to Wales? Popped to Wales for the weekend. Well, there is one problem with going off to Gath, because a certain Philistine named Goliath, heralded from Gath. It’s a bizarre plan. And very quickly he’s found and taken to the king. Now, I don’t know if you remember the days when the US were searching desperately for Osama bin Laden, but can you imagine if he got on a plane, flew to the Pentagon and said, here I am? That’s pretty much what David does in this bizarre plan that he comes up with. It’s a really, really strange decision from him and all he has left is to pretend insanity before the king. And you can read about it in one Samuel, it works. And the king says, why have you brought this madman to me? Away he goes. Now, I reckon if the Pentagon had an enemy, they wouldn’t just be like, let him go. That’s a bizarre plan. And as David reflects on that experience, he doesn’t say, wow, I came up with a great plan. Oh, I came up with such a good idea. And it was great because I. Or, yes, I relied on my strength or my cunning. No, it’s a worked example that nobody is saved by the size of the army or by the ability of the NHS. Nobody is saved by the strength of the horse or by the amount of money that they put away for retirement. No, they’re saved by the Lord God. Have a look at verse six. David says, this poor man called, and the Lord heard him, he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and he delivers him. And what’s his conclusion? Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. It’s a complete change of perspective from David in a situation that he absolutely knew he could not get out of. Surrounded in an enemy camp, there’s no way they’re going to let him go. He’s the one that took out Goliath, and yet what happens to him? He gets to just miraculously leave. And from that point on, he is convinced that God is with him and for him. And as he reflects on it, he writes that psalm and says, that’s the moment that I tasted the goodness of God. And knowing that taste has transformed my life so that now, no matter what I face, I can trust God again. But you might say, well, if I’m not a Christian here, I’ve never tasted that. I can still kind of get out of things, can’t I? I might have had experiences in my life where I say, it just so happened that. Oh, it came to. That thing happened. Oh, I managed to get. And the psalm here is trying to reshape our perspective, rather than saying, oh, circumstance just happened or life just works so that. But instead to say, like a blind person opening their eyes, would you taste, would you experience the compassion and the mercy of God day by day by day? Would you know it in your absolute darkest moments? And would that carry you till you see him in glory? And of course, like every psalm, this psalm can be a psalm of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in that garden, before facing execution in the most brutal way, is able to cry out to the Lord, cry out, knowing I the goodness of God. And this series over the next five weeks, we hope, will just give us that sense of that perspective shift that comes from knowing deep down, deep within, really knowing the Lord God, tasting and experiencing. But I was thinking about this. When do I need verse eight, which really is the verse that I’ve been asked to think about. When do I need to taste and see the Lord is good? I don’t know how often you’ve moved house. I’ve moved house quite a lot over the last few years. Let me tell you, it is never without stress. Oh, my goodness. In fact, a friend of mine, I don’t know if this cheers me up or not, told me that if you have a suspected heart attack, one of the things they might ask you is whether you’ve moved house in the last six months. Well, I’ve got another five and a half months to go then. Gosh, it’s a very stressful thing. And one of the most stressful things is navigating the endless number of places you have to ring to sort out the fact that you’ve moved address. All you want to do is tell them, I used to live here and now I live here. It wouldn’t sound very complicated. Well, we hit an issue with our. I mean, it’s simple, small issue with our gas metre or whatever it was. And the hours over the last few weeks that I spent on the phone battling back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And let me tell you how I tried to resolve it. I. Well, I cracked on and I tried my best and that didn’t work very well. So I distracted myself with some other life admin that needed doing. That was fine for a bit. Then I came back to it and gave it another attempt with another person on the phone and another failure on my part to tell them the information they needed. So then I got a bit frustrated and a bit angry and I thought it’s not the best to do. Oh, okay. I’ll try and send them a message. So I typed out this carefully written message that was then immediately rejected by. Just went back and forth. And you know what I never did in the smallness of just trying to sort out the boiler and I never stopped and prayed. It was quite shocking to me when I realised it. I thought, why didn’t I take this small thing before the Lord, you see? Instead, I tried to solve it in my own strength. I was living out the previous psalm. I can do it. My resolve, my power. Instead, I should have said, there’s a good God who I’ve known in the hardest of times. Why wouldn’t he want me to talk to him about this? We’re encouraged to taste and see the goodness of the Lord and for that, to help us and change us in those little moments where we need him day by day, to be quick to come to him, to talk to him. That’s really what the rest of our psalm tells us, that those who cry out to him, well, they know his help in those times of distress. When I’m in distress, I need verse eight, but also when I see the world in distress. I was on the train coming back from a training thing in Brighton a few weeks ago and there was this lady on the train speaking quite loudly, quite quiet carriage, and it was clear that her mum was in end of life hospice care, that her teenage son was going off the rails, that her teenage daughter was in a relationship that the mum didn’t approve of. And she was talking to a friend and you could hear the friend speaking down the phone, just basically giving, I would say, pretty average advice to her. And my heart just went out to this person. I thought, what can I do in this situation? I wanted to share something of the goodness of the Lord with her because I thought, you’re going through the hardest of times. How do I get you to taste and see the goodness of God when we see that in our world? I’ll tell you what I did. I don’t think it made very much impact. I scribbled a little note and I said, look, I work in a church and if you want someone to pray with about these things, here’s my number and get in touch. But so many people in our world feel that distress and what difference it would make to taste and know the goodness of the Lord. I need it in my life, the world needs it in their life. And over the next few weeks, as we explore these different senses, we’ll hopefully see that the gospel changes every element of our outlook and our life. So if psalm 34 is a bit of a worked example. A worked example of tasting and seeing the Lord is good. I wonder if I could invite you to do your own worked example. You’re now wondering what I’m going to ask. It’s okay. I’m wondering if this next week you might consider sending me a message, writing me an email, leaving a message on a WhatsApp, whatever way you would like to. Chatting to me at the end to give me one case study from your life where you have known the goodness of the Lord. I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of meeting a few of you. There’s quite a lot of you actually, aren’t there? Big church. I’m still trying to get to know lots of people. Only been here a few weeks, but one of the things that would really be an encouragement to me is from your years of experience, those times when you have been in a tough place where your own resources haven’t been able to lift you out. And you say, I’ve seen and tasted the goodness of the Lord. And maybe as you prepare that message for me, send me an email, let me know who you are, invite me around for a cup of tea, tell me your story. You might think of someone in your family or a friend of yours who you could also pass that on to and say, do you know what? I’m looking back on this life experience. I think it was so different because I had the Lord Jesus with me, that he was walking beside me made all the difference in the world. See, I wonder if what this psalm is trying to tell us to do. It’s a bit like when you go to the restaurant. You go to a fancy restaurant, maybe you’re brave and you order a dessert that you wouldn’t normally order, something just a bit unusual for you, and it comes to your table. You’re there with someone else and you try a little bit, and your eyes open wide in astonishment. You say, this dessert, gosh, if I’d known this was on the menu, I would have ordered it every time. This is such a good thing. And what do you do naturally? You just extend, say, would you like to try a little bit? You must try it. It’s so good for so many here. That has been your story as I’ve met with a few of you over the last few weeks. You’ve said, when I became a Christian, it’s like everything changed. It’s like my whole reality was reordered. I tasted for the first time, I saw for the first time, I experienced for the first time, verse eight, the goodness of the Lord. And so if that’s been you, would you send me a message this week that would be so encouraging to me? Would you write me a little message? An email? Would you leave me a voice message and tell me one story, one example? Then my job is going to be to try and remember who’s told me what. That’s going to be a challenge, but I’m up for it if you’re up for it, too. And as we head towards a close, let me just say there will be some sweets on the way out. The werther’s original. The issue is, if you are nostalgic for Werther’s original and you think I’m going to hoard onto that memory from my childhood when I had a beautiful moment with a parent or a grandparent or a friend, and they gave me a werther’s original and it stuck with me. It’s resonated with me. And the way to keep onto that is just to eat one every five minutes. Every five minutes, I’ll have a word that’s original. That would not be my. I’m no GP, but that would not be the health advice. Okay, that’s not my suggestion. But this. This you can dive into deep and long, day by day. There’s no limit to knowing the goodness of the Lord. And as we gather and sing in a moment and we lift our voices again, we can say, how great thou arthem. Maybe I’m not feeling it today. Maybe actually the sorrows and hardships of the world are crushing me. David’s honest. That happens to us from day to day, but that as we corporately come together, we can say, God, I’ve known your goodness. I’ve tasted that sweetness and I want that again in my life. If you have a Bible, let me encourage you. Just look down to verse eight as I read it one last time, David says to all of us today, again, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who finds refuge in him. Let me pray. Almighty God, we thank you that when we know Christ, our whole reality changes. It is like having our eyes opened for the first time. And we thank you that that invite to come to you again today is one that we can joyfully accept. Lord, we know there will be many things this week, this month, this year, which will be hard. And yet we pray that knowing you, knowing your goodness and your protection would guide us through. And we look forward and long for that day in glory when we see you face to face. Amen. Enjoy your word. This original YouTube.