Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Psalm 34: Taste and See Pt. 1 of 2

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

In this episode Jonny Ardavanis looks at David’s 34th Psalm. In this psalm David is going to call God’s children to “taste and see the goodness of God. Far more than mere doctrinal affirmation or intellectual assent, the Scripture calls us to experience for ourselves the goodness of God. Part 1 of 2. Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hello, my name is Johnny Artavanis, and this is Dial In. In this episode and in the following episode, I want to look at David's 34th Psalm. Specifically, we're going to be looking at the experience of God's goodness and how that affects the life of God's children. Let's dial in. I want to briefly consider some of the words in 1 Samuel 21 so I can set the scene for you. David is running for his life. He is anointed king of Israel by Samuel, and yet likely for the next 10 years, David is on the run. He is living in caves.

He's running from his father-in-law, Saul. 1 Samuel 23 says Saul sought David's life every single day. It's no surprise then that one of the most common names for God that David employs is my rock. When David had nowhere else to turn, running from his father-in-law, Saul, the Lord was his rock, his refuge, his protector, and his home. In 1 Samuel 21 10, it reads, Then David arose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish king of Gath. But the servants of Achish said to him, Is this not David the king of the land?

Did they not sing of this one as they danced, saying, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands? David took these words to heart and greatly feared Achish king of Gath. So he disguised his sanity before them and acted insanely in their hands and scribbled on the doors of the gate and let his saliva run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, Behold, you see the man behaving as a madman. Why do you bring him to me? Do I lack madmen that you have brought

this one to act the madman in my presence? Shall this one come into my house? Here's the scene unfolding for you. David fakes insanity and lunacy to preserve his own life. He salivates and spits and scratches and drools down his beard in order to demonstrate to Achish that I'm not a threat. I'm just an insane man. Then at the beginning of 1 Samuel 22, it says that then David gathers himself in the caves of Abdullam, and there everyone who was hurting and downcast and despairing was gathered to him. Now in the 34th Psalm, the superscript reads that this very Psalm was written in the aftermath of this scene. When David was running for his life, when he had the fake lunacy to preserve it, he writes the words that we will now consider. I love the Psalms. We live in a world of plasticity and posturing,

but in the Psalms, there is no stoic denial of emotion. The Psalms are full of real people in real trouble, crying out to God. In this Psalm, there are enemies, there are troubles, there are difficulties and fears, but in the midst of it all, the psalmist is going to bless the Lord at all times. David, in the context of what seems to be an embarrassing episode amongst the Philistines, is going to testify of the goodness of God. I want to look at the psalm in three scenes, if you will, in this episode as we focus on the theme of God's goodness. First, I want to look at the experience of God's goodness. In Psalm 34, verse 8, David says, O taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. This This is quite the confession.

David is saying that in order to be satisfied in God, we must taste his goodness. David is not merely affirming the doctrine of God's goodness. He has tasted the reality of it. God's goodness is not a foreign subject to him. He isn't borrowing from the experience of other people. We do that, don't we? We often live vicariously through the photos we see, the houses people live in, the vacations people take, and we almost act as if they were our own experiences. But David is not suggesting that

God is good from the perspective of someone else. He is recounting and retracing the testimony of God's goodness in his own life and then drawing others to do the same. David is calling on us to give the goodness of God a sampling. He says to taste. This means to examine the flavor of something. So how do we taste and see that God is good? Well, we see in this passage, one of the ways we taste and see God's goodness is by calling on God in our hour of need. David was in between a rock and a hard place. He had nowhere to go and had only one way to escape, and that was to cry out to God. It is experiences like this when you are in danger, when you are facing hardship or even enslaved to sin, and you cry out to God and he delivers you from

danger, temptation, or from your bondage to sin, that you finally taste his goodness. Let's examine David's expression together. In verse four, David says, I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. David is saying, in the midst of my despair and the darkness of the valley, God has heard my cry. Here, David does not say that God delivered him from trouble, but delivered him from fear amidst his trouble. Trouble was David's middle name. Yet there is this testimony of God rescuing him, not from his trouble, but from his fear. He continues in Psalm 34 verse five. It says they looked to him and were radiant and their faces will never be ashamed. The Bible says that there is something different about the countenance of those who can

walk in the midst of affliction, persecution, trouble, and distress, knowing that God is in complete control. Those who look to God don't find a cold shoulder, but a helping hand. When we see someone that is beaming with joy in their face, we often ask, what happened? Something happened. It's written all over your, what, face. And the same is true for the believer, even amidst their trouble. Every face is its own apologetic to the world around us. Those who would otherwise have their countenance dragged down have their countenance lifted up by God. This is why Christianity grows, even in the most hostile and persecuted nations. The Lord's goodness is written on the face of those who run to him. We are, as Paul says, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

David continues in verse 6 saying, This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all of his troubles. David says this poor man cried. He's been alone for a decade. Question for you. Have you ever felt alone? Have you ever felt isolated? Well, that's how David felt. And this is the style of prayer that David employs, the natural expression of pain. He wasn't articulate. He didn't wax eloquently. His prayer wasn't always artful and poetic. He wasn't always writing acrostics, but he could cry and the Lord heard him. The Psalms teach us that great prayers aren't always

long prayers and poor man's cries are powerful in heaven. In verse seven, David continues, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and rescues them. David understood that God is personally invested in protecting his children from the forces of darkness. You, as you listen, may be even unaware of all the deliverances in your life, but the psalmist knows I would not be alive today. I would not be where I am today unless God had delivered me. Every life, including yours, is a storybook filled with colorful pictures of God's providential

deliverances. And now in verse 8, we turn to the high point of the psalm, and I want to camp here for a moment. David says, once again, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Are you persuaded that God is good? Like really, really good, meaning that God is benevolent. He's kind. He's gracious, giving and caring to you. I want to examine God's goodness with you for just a moment. Can you reflect on God's goodness in blotting out your sin, in adopting you as his child, where your sin abounded, his goodness and grace abounded all the more? Can you recall the tracings of his providence and his leading in your life?

Can you remind yourself that God's goodness has never been prompted by anything you have ever done, and that God loves you with an omniscient knowledge of you. What does that mean? What do I mean by that, that God loves you with an omniscient knowledge of you? Well, this means that God's love for you has never been disillusioned because of the postured version you present of yourself. He knows you through and through,

and every nook and cranny of your hidden heart is exposed to God. And yet, in spite of knowing all of your failure and all of your sin, he declares and demonstrates his love to you all the same. We have many faults. He has forgiven them. We have many wounds. He has healed them. We have wondered, and he has brought us back to him. Maybe you acknowledge these realities doctrinally, but the psalmist is after something else entirely. He does not say agree and affirm that God is good. He says what? Taste and see. This is the language of experience. David says to examine God's goodness by tasting, to behold his goodness by seeing. David is going to employ

similar language elsewhere. He wants you to know that there is a realness, a sweetness to knowing God. The Psalms in Psalm 119, 103 says, how sweet are your words to my taste. And Psalm 19, verse 10, your words are treasured above gold. Yes, fine gold. And then it says, sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb. And Psalm 63 verse 5, the psalmist says, my soul is satisfied with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praise with joyful lips. This is what real faith looks like. Satisfaction in and the tasting and seeing of God.

David says, taste the goodness of God, meaning that we need to examine it, give it a sampling, and then he says to see. Now, I want to consider the question, what does it mean to see the goodness of God? Well, briefly, just a few things. We know David is speaking metaphorically. In Matthew 5a, we'll look at this in our next episode. Jesus will say, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. But to see God means a couple things.

It means, number one, to be admitted into God's presence. When someone says the doctor will see you now, it means to be admitted into its presence. And the same is true here of God. David says, oh, come into his presence, see his goodness, let him become real to you. You can affirm God's omnipresence, meaning that you know he is everywhere, but not be thrilled by that reality. The difference is seeing God. When you recognize and realize in your own life that your entire life is lived before the face of God and that you are in his presence. So secondly here, to see God means that you also apprehend his awesomeness and beauty. In John 14, 21,

Jesus says, whoever loves me will obey my commandments and I and my father will disclose myself to him. God discloses himself to his children in a satisfactory way that no fleeting pleasure ever could. Jonathan Edwards says this, to see God is this. It is to have an immediate, sensible, and certain understanding of God's glorious excellency and love. When we dwell here, Edwards says, we dwell at the fountain and spring of pleasure. Edwards is saying that the love of God is the manufacturing plant of pleasure. It is the most suitable entertainment, he says, of the soul of man. The greatest pleasures God has given to you, Edwards says, is to see him through the eyes of faith. And this is what will make heaven, heaven. To see God

is to apprehend God's goodness. Like Job at the end of the book that bears his name, after God had declared his goodness and sovereignty for four chapters, Job says, I have always heard the truth with my ears, but now, now I see it. He gets it. This is the type of seeing that Paul refers to in the book of Ephesians. He says in Ephesians 1.18, I pray that the eyes of your hearts may be what? Enlightened. Paul's prayer for the Ephesian church is that they would know more of all that is God and that they may know the hope,

the glorious inheritance they have, and to know his power. Paul prays, oh, please see it more. May the eyes of your heart be enlightened. Now question for you, who can taste and see that God is good? Well, not unbelievers. They don't see God.

Jesus says in Matthew 13, 13, seeing they do notievers. They don't see God. Jesus says in Matthew 13, 13, seeing they do not see. They don't get it. Only those who have been reborn have regenerated taste buds for Christ. Dead men cannot taste the food of the living. Unbelievers can assent to truth regarding the nature of God,

but they don't really see him. There are even those who have been educated in the truth who can declare the panoply of God's attributes, can cross-examine them in the scripture, can have their PhDs in theology, but with the eyes of their heart, they have never seen God. They've never actually felt like this is wonderful. Only the child of God can taste the goodness of God. So maybe you're asking, well, how can this happen in my own life? Well, the scripture teaches us that faith is the soul's eye that sees that God is good. Faith is the soul's palate that tastes that God is good. Martin Luther says, and this I call tasting. When I do with my very heart believe that Christ has given himself to me and that I have my full interest in him, that he beareth and answereth

for all my sins, all my transgressions and harms, and that his life is my life. And then he says this, when this persuasion is thoroughly settled in my heart. It yieldeth wonderful and incredibly good taste. Solomon, who had everything money could buy, says in Ecclesiastes 1.8, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, but there is a type of seeing that truly satisfies. It is the seeing of God. Truth is experiential, but it's possible to spectrum swing or one might say pendulum swing. Can we talk about this for just a moment? It's possible to respond to culture's overemphasis on the love of God at the expense of his other attributes, meaning that they diminish God's holiness and his justice and they promote his love. And you see that over and over again. Maybe you drive past a billboard. You see that it says, God loves you. And you instinctively

respond and say, yes, but he's holy. Over time, potentially, this is just personal and unique to me, but you can begin to confess God's love, confirm his love, sing about his love, yet lose sight of God's love in your own heart. You can lose sight of its taste. It is also possible to respond to church cultures over emphasis and abuse of experience at the disregard of truth by failing to appropriately declare that knowing God and knowing his precious word is indeed experiential in the sense that our relationship with God is real and personal. Many churches today, if you had to put a slogan on their culture of worship, it would read, come experience God. We'll turn the lights down low and crank the music up. And it's possible to respond to this inappropriate overemphasis of experience

by saying, there is no experience, just truth. We would do well in committing our lives and dying for the truth. But knowing the truth is never the end. Truth is the means to the end, and the end is knowing God. And of course we can't know God apart from his truth, but knowing the person of Jesus Christ in his word through his spirit is our aim. If your finger is still on Ephesians 1, I want to just look with you if you're looking at your own Bible at Ephesians 3.17. Paul says, so that Christ

may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Paul says in verse 19 that there is a knowledge that surpasses knowledge. More than mere fact, he says, we may all agree that there is indeed a difference, even in the scripture, between an intellectual understanding of truth with that of a spiritual understanding of truth. In 1 Corinthians 2, Paul says the natural person does not accept the things of

the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. Question for you, do you know what the natural unsaved person can do? Well, they can say God is good. But do you know what the natural unsaved person cannot do? Taste and see that God is good. Understanding in your mind is different from the sense of the heart that is cultivated when one relishes and feels the impact of the truth that they have received in their heart. As with Samson's lion, it is possible to have sweet honey inside a dead lion. Similarly, it is possible to have the information of the gospel inside of a dead heart.

Have you ever tasted the goodness of God? You could have your PhD in food science. You could understand the complexity of every gram. Yet if you have not tasted that food for yourself, you will starve and you will die. Alternatively, you may not know the macronutrients of a meal, but if you've tasted that meal, although you are ignorant of its ingredients,

you can know if it is good. And if you've tasted the Lord is good, you would say amen. And if you've tasted, you have not consumed the full meal. You want more. One of the surest evidences that you have tasted the goodness of God is if you desire more of God in your soul. William Perkins, the Puritan, says that one of the surest indicators that you have been born of God is that you long for more of God. David's words propel us to consider that if you reflect on the times you have tasted the goodness of God, is it possible that it has been after a time of great difficulty and distress? We often

drink from the cup of trials and tribulation before we have a renewed and deepened taste of God's goodness. Furthermore, the tasting of God's goodness, as we see throughout the psalm, is reserved for those who adequately fear and revere God. In verse 9 and in verse 11, David will say that he wants to teach people the fear of God. In verse 15 and in verse 17, we see that God's eyes are on the righteous. Do you want to taste and see God's goodness?

Well, the psalmist teaches us, then you must be resolved to part with sin. The profound blessing of tasting and seeing the goodness of God is never experienced by those who live a double life. Those with one foot in the world never wade deeply into the ocean of God's goodness. God is holy. He hates sin.

So if you want to taste his goodness, you must hunger and thirst for righteousness and then you will be satisfied. Then you can sing with a full heart. He lives, he lives. Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me. He talks with me along life's narrow way.

He lives, he lives. Salvation to impart. You way. He lives, he lives, salvation to impart. You ask me how I know he lives, and he lives within my heart. The psalmist teaches us, oh, happy is the man who takes refuge in him. The scripture issues a divine congratulations, a good on you, happy are you, to the man who tastes, sees, and runs to God as his refuge. Stay dialed in.