O taste and see that the LORDis good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.
To taste and see is to know by personal trial that God is good, as directly as food is known by tasting, and not merely by hearing or believing what others report. The Lord Himself is good and gracious and worthy of great praise, and that goodness can be truly experienced and known. Blessed and secure is the one who trusts in Him and takes refuge in Him, finding deliverance from fear and trouble, provision of every good thing, and assurance of His love and delight to bless. That knowing is experimental religion, felt in the renewing of the heart by divine grace, for merely knowing truths, promises, warnings, and the remedy for sin without acting on them and seeking peace with God is not tasting. Whoever has so tasted has something to tell, inviting others to come to Him and bearing witness to what God has done.
Invitation to Taste
Taste and see is knowing the goodness of the Lord by personal experience, as direct as tasting food, and not merely hearing or reading or believing what others say about Him. The invitation is to test for oneself the reality of God's Word and the truth of His promises rather than depending on the word of another. That proof by experience is open to everyone, educated and uneducated alike, and His promises never fail and can never fail. As those who trust draw near to Jesus and rejoice in the fullness of His love, doubt and darkness give way to the light of His presence. Without feeling the renewing power of divine grace in the heart, a person may know religious truths and promises and warnings and the remedy for sin yet remain unmoved, unwilling to seek peace with God and failing to act on what is known, and such knowledge only increases condemnation.
To taste is to humble the soul before God and to seek Him with the whole heart. It is more than hearing about Him or merely observing Him, and it calls for turning to Him. That turning is acting on the light received. The experience can begin now, as He puts a new song in the mouth.
The call stands in a passage of praise for God's deliverance, where trust is joined with fearing the Lord and with confidence that those who fear Him will lack nothing that is good. Its lesson is to magnify God and speak gratitude rather than dwell on trials with complaint. Every verse of the psalm holds an important lesson of His tender regard for those with subdued, contrite, humble hearts, His righteous judgment, and His mercy on those who fear Him from generation to generation. The same setting teaches His scattering of the proud, His putting down of the mighty and exalting of those of low degree, and His filling of the hungry with good things.
The Lord celebrated here is good and worthy of great praise. The goodness to be tasted is shown in His invitation to the world to come to Him for salvation. It is shown in His help for every repentant and contrite person and in His personal presence through the Holy Spirit among the church.
Goodness and Trust
The Lord, Jehovah, is good and gracious and worthy of great praise, and His goodness is something to be personally experienced and known rather than merely heard about. Blessed is the person who trusts in Him and takes refuge in Him. Seeking and trusting Him brings assurance that He hears those who seek Him, delivers them from fear and trouble, provides what is good for them, and gives cause for praise and gladness. That trust is joined with fearing the Lord and with confidence that those who fear Him will not lack what is good, and the one who has trusted Him knows from experience that He is good. Turning from sin to the living God opens the way to experience that goodness by receiving life from Christ, the source of salvation.
By faith those who trust prove the reality of God's Word and the truth of His promises, and so come to know for themselves that He is good. This proof is open to everyone, educated and uneducated alike, inviting each person to find out personally rather than depending only on another person's testimony. His promises are always fulfilled and can never fail. As people draw near to Jesus and rejoice in the fullness of His love, doubt and darkness give way to the light of His presence.
Believing in Christ and receiving His transforming grace, not guesswork, lets a person personally experience and recognize the Lord's goodness. God alone leads such a person to recognize His mercy, love, and forbearance, giving faith that works by love and purifies the soul as the gift of God and the opening of the heart to receive the Word as the leaves of the tree of life. When gained, this experience fills the heart with His love, purifies the soul by obeying the truth, reflects Christ's virtues in mind and character, and leads the believer to trust the Lord Jesus as the lasting portion forever. A humble person whose character and way of acting are changed can thus know by experience that the Lord is good and become a fellow worker with Christ.
Through faith in Christ, who tasted death for all, people may experience the Lord's goodness, for the sinner's hope and salvation come only through the merits of the Redeemer. His abundant grace, goodness, and love are continually available like an inexhaustible reservoir and fountain continually supplied. His provision and great love are too wonderful to comprehend yet not too rich to enjoy, with height, depth, and breadth beyond human expression yet a privilege to enjoy. Empty human vessels may receive showers of Christ's grace until hearts are filled with all the fullness of God, expand, receive that love, and overflow with it.
Experiencing Christ's Goodness
Tasting comes by drinking in the spirit and freshness of God's life, which is coming to know His goodness for oneself. It is gained by beholding Jesus, contemplating His perfections and character, talking of Him with the heart aglow with God's love, and keeping Christ before the mind. That contemplation draws the heart to love Him and to accept His rule and teaching.
To taste and know that the Lord is good is to personally experience Christ's love in humbling Himself to die a shameful death on the cross. It is to experience the mystery of godliness by which fallen man, deceived by Satan and taking Satan's side, may be conformed to the image of the Son of the infinite God. Through the righteousness of Christ given to man, the fallen yet redeemed person is loved by God even as God loved His Son.
The call is an invitation to know that goodness by receiving life from Christ, the source of salvation. Through the provision made at great cost, each person may gain personal, experiential knowledge of God's love. It also invites worshipers to receive the Spirit of Christ so that their gathering, even on the Sabbath, may have a sweet, heavenly influence.
To taste is to know His matchless charms, to magnify Him as Redeemer, and to make Him present joy and rejoicing in this life. That joy looks forward to seeing Him, dwelling with Him through eternity, and being led beside the water of life in the kingdom of glory. The goodness so tasted proves true in affliction, for God's promises sustain under the fiercest affliction mortals can bear. They give freedom from fear in committing the keeping of the soul to Him until the day of His coming, as a child of God and heir of heaven.
That tasting produces hunger and thirst after more of the Holy Spirit and entire surrender of will and way and plans and ideas to God. It puts away self, self-importance, self-love, self-esteem, envy, evil-surmising, and jealousy. It leads to pleading for the Holy Spirit to come into the heart and abide, to keeping the way of the Lord, and to guarding words and deportment in Christ's meekness and lowliness of heart.
Tasting and seeing His goodness means recognizing and appreciating His blessings and responding with sincere thanksgiving and praise. This response comes from hearts softened and subdued, mindful of the precious love that redeemed them. Receiving blessings without valuing that redeeming love misses their deeper gift.
Changed Life and Witness
The heart that has tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord cherishes the love of Christ and is filled with freedom, light, and joy in Him. Such a soul is wholly turned toward God, with its whole desire set upon Him, drinking in the spirit and freshness of His life so as to come to know His goodness. Keeping Christ before the mind and contemplating His character and perfections draws the heart to love Him and to accept His rule and teaching, seeking wisdom and duty from Jesus rather than from people and searching His Word to learn His standard. To that soul truth is no yoke of bondage.
The one who has tasted and found the Lord good and who trusts in Him cannot bear to continue in sin or transgression. To violate God's law grieves such a person because God has so loved him, and love for God leads him to accept promised help, to stop disobeying, to flee to Christ, and through faith in Christ's blood to receive forgiveness of sin.
A person may taste that goodness while following God and yet afterward fall into darkness by yielding to sin, turning attention away from Jesus, and yielding to temptation instead of continuing to look to Him. Trusting in the Lord brings blessing, and after confessing sin such a one must trust God to keep His promise and forgive every transgression.
Those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good have something to tell others about what God has done for them. They invite others to come to Him and to Christ, like Philip after finding the Saviour, telling of Jesus and inviting others to know Him. Those whose hearts have been changed, as when those who left the Sanitarium could say they had tasted His goodness, bear witness to His goodness.
This experience requires knowing Him as Saviour, knowing that He has forgiven sins, and having a living connection with God. Only that living knowledge enables a person to speak truthfully of His compassion and love and to witness to Jesus, for nominal or merely casual faith does not supply it. Having experienced His goodness and salvation makes Christian hope and service desirable and leads to praise of God and to more decided witness that Christ saves those who come to God through Him.
Those drawn by His love and kindness are to lead others to the Saviour as the source of help. Tasting and seeing that the Lord is good obligates those who have it to tell of His goodness, to let praise come from human lips, to reflect the light given, to entertain no complaint, and to settle for oneself each day how to conduct oneself rightly.
Those who have so tasted have personally experienced Christ's love in humbling Himself to die a shameful death on the cross and the mystery of godliness by which fallen man, deceived and taking Satan's side, is conformed to the image of the Son and, through Christ's righteousness given to man, is loved by God even as God loved His Son. They are to place this picture of highest value in every discourse, hang it in memory's hall, utter it with human lips, trace it in life, meditate upon it, and make it the groundwork of all preaching and of every discourse. In this way they give hungry souls the bread of life and keep Christ constantly before sinners as their only hope of salvation, instead of presenting dry, Christless theories that God will not accept and that leave precious souls starving.
Mere Theory Is Insufficient
True religion is experimental, knowledge gained by personal trial in which the heart feels the renewing power of divine grace and learns by experience that God is good, and mere theoretical knowledge of religious truth does not meet what it means to taste and see. Tasting requires experiencing that renewing power for oneself rather than relying on another person's word or on merely hearing, reading, and believing what others say. Without that personal experience, knowing religious truths, promises, warnings, and the remedy for sin leaves a person unmoved and failing to act on what is known.
Believing in the wrath of God without earnest effort to escape it is not tasting, nor is believing in heaven without sacrifice to obtain it. Believing in the value of the soul while its redemption will soon cease forever, yet without making peace with God, is not tasting. Reading the Bible without being alarmed by its threatenings or won by its promises, and approving what is excellent while following forbidden ways, is not tasting. Knowing a refuge without using it, knowing a remedy for sin without applying it, and knowing the right without any relish for it, is not tasting.
Those without this experience remain unwilling to seek peace with God and slow to heed the Holy Spirit's warning, reproof, and instruction. All such knowledge only increases condemnation. Having tasted the Lord's graciousness, a person is to desire the Word and grow through it as life-giving nourishment. Judas had abundant opportunity to receive that nourishment and could have formed a firm, Christlike character.
Those who have tasted His graciousness come to Christ, the living stone, and find Him precious as their sure foundation. To those who reject Him, He is a stone of stumbling.
To taste and see is to know by personal trial that God is good, as directly as food is known by tasting, and not merely by hearing or believing what others report. The Lord Himself is good and gracious and worthy of great praise, and that goodness can be truly experienced and known. Blessed and secure is the one who trusts in Him and takes refuge in Him, finding deliverance from fear and trouble, provision of every good thing, and assurance of His love and delight to bless. That knowing is experimental religion, felt in the renewing of the heart by divine grace, for merely knowing truths, promises, warnings, and the remedy for sin without acting on them and seeking peace with God is not tasting. Whoever has so tasted has something to tell, inviting others to come to Him and bearing witness to what God has done.
Invitation to Taste
Taste and see is knowing the goodness of the Lord by personal experience, as direct as tasting food, and not merely hearing or reading or believing what others say about Him. The invitation is to test for oneself the reality of God's Word and the truth of His promises rather than depending on the word of another. That proof by experience is open to everyone, educated and uneducated alike, and His promises never fail and can never fail. As those who trust draw near to Jesus and rejoice in the fullness of His love, doubt and darkness give way to the light of His presence. Without feeling the renewing power of divine grace in the heart, a person may know religious truths and promises and warnings and the remedy for sin yet remain unmoved, unwilling to seek peace with God and failing to act on what is known, and such knowledge only increases condemnation.
To taste is to humble the soul before God and to seek Him with the whole heart. It is more than hearing about Him or merely observing Him, and it calls for turning to Him. That turning is acting on the light received. The experience can begin now, as He puts a new song in the mouth.
The call stands in a passage of praise for God's deliverance, where trust is joined with fearing the Lord and with confidence that those who fear Him will lack nothing that is good. Its lesson is to magnify God and speak gratitude rather than dwell on trials with complaint. Every verse of the psalm holds an important lesson of His tender regard for those with subdued, contrite, humble hearts, His righteous judgment, and His mercy on those who fear Him from generation to generation. The same setting teaches His scattering of the proud, His putting down of the mighty and exalting of those of low degree, and His filling of the hungry with good things.
The Lord celebrated here is good and worthy of great praise. The goodness to be tasted is shown in His invitation to the world to come to Him for salvation. It is shown in His help for every repentant and contrite person and in His personal presence through the Holy Spirit among the church.
Goodness and Trust
The Lord, Jehovah, is good and gracious and worthy of great praise, and His goodness is something to be personally experienced and known rather than merely heard about. Blessed is the person who trusts in Him and takes refuge in Him. Seeking and trusting Him brings assurance that He hears those who seek Him, delivers them from fear and trouble, provides what is good for them, and gives cause for praise and gladness. That trust is joined with fearing the Lord and with confidence that those who fear Him will not lack what is good, and the one who has trusted Him knows from experience that He is good. Turning from sin to the living God opens the way to experience that goodness by receiving life from Christ, the source of salvation.
By faith those who trust prove the reality of God's Word and the truth of His promises, and so come to know for themselves that He is good. This proof is open to everyone, educated and uneducated alike, inviting each person to find out personally rather than depending only on another person's testimony. His promises are always fulfilled and can never fail. As people draw near to Jesus and rejoice in the fullness of His love, doubt and darkness give way to the light of His presence.
Believing in Christ and receiving His transforming grace, not guesswork, lets a person personally experience and recognize the Lord's goodness. God alone leads such a person to recognize His mercy, love, and forbearance, giving faith that works by love and purifies the soul as the gift of God and the opening of the heart to receive the Word as the leaves of the tree of life. When gained, this experience fills the heart with His love, purifies the soul by obeying the truth, reflects Christ's virtues in mind and character, and leads the believer to trust the Lord Jesus as the lasting portion forever. A humble person whose character and way of acting are changed can thus know by experience that the Lord is good and become a fellow worker with Christ.
Through faith in Christ, who tasted death for all, people may experience the Lord's goodness, for the sinner's hope and salvation come only through the merits of the Redeemer. His abundant grace, goodness, and love are continually available like an inexhaustible reservoir and fountain continually supplied. His provision and great love are too wonderful to comprehend yet not too rich to enjoy, with height, depth, and breadth beyond human expression yet a privilege to enjoy. Empty human vessels may receive showers of Christ's grace until hearts are filled with all the fullness of God, expand, receive that love, and overflow with it.
Experiencing Christ's Goodness
Tasting comes by drinking in the spirit and freshness of God's life, which is coming to know His goodness for oneself. It is gained by beholding Jesus, contemplating His perfections and character, talking of Him with the heart aglow with God's love, and keeping Christ before the mind. That contemplation draws the heart to love Him and to accept His rule and teaching.
To taste and know that the Lord is good is to personally experience Christ's love in humbling Himself to die a shameful death on the cross. It is to experience the mystery of godliness by which fallen man, deceived by Satan and taking Satan's side, may be conformed to the image of the Son of the infinite God. Through the righteousness of Christ given to man, the fallen yet redeemed person is loved by God even as God loved His Son.
The call is an invitation to know that goodness by receiving life from Christ, the source of salvation. Through the provision made at great cost, each person may gain personal, experiential knowledge of God's love. It also invites worshipers to receive the Spirit of Christ so that their gathering, even on the Sabbath, may have a sweet, heavenly influence.
To taste is to know His matchless charms, to magnify Him as Redeemer, and to make Him present joy and rejoicing in this life. That joy looks forward to seeing Him, dwelling with Him through eternity, and being led beside the water of life in the kingdom of glory. The goodness so tasted proves true in affliction, for God's promises sustain under the fiercest affliction mortals can bear. They give freedom from fear in committing the keeping of the soul to Him until the day of His coming, as a child of God and heir of heaven.
That tasting produces hunger and thirst after more of the Holy Spirit and entire surrender of will and way and plans and ideas to God. It puts away self, self-importance, self-love, self-esteem, envy, evil-surmising, and jealousy. It leads to pleading for the Holy Spirit to come into the heart and abide, to keeping the way of the Lord, and to guarding words and deportment in Christ's meekness and lowliness of heart.
Tasting and seeing His goodness means recognizing and appreciating His blessings and responding with sincere thanksgiving and praise. This response comes from hearts softened and subdued, mindful of the precious love that redeemed them. Receiving blessings without valuing that redeeming love misses their deeper gift.
Changed Life and Witness
The heart that has tasted and seen the goodness of the Lord cherishes the love of Christ and is filled with freedom, light, and joy in Him. Such a soul is wholly turned toward God, with its whole desire set upon Him, drinking in the spirit and freshness of His life so as to come to know His goodness. Keeping Christ before the mind and contemplating His character and perfections draws the heart to love Him and to accept His rule and teaching, seeking wisdom and duty from Jesus rather than from people and searching His Word to learn His standard. To that soul truth is no yoke of bondage.
The one who has tasted and found the Lord good and who trusts in Him cannot bear to continue in sin or transgression. To violate God's law grieves such a person because God has so loved him, and love for God leads him to accept promised help, to stop disobeying, to flee to Christ, and through faith in Christ's blood to receive forgiveness of sin.
A person may taste that goodness while following God and yet afterward fall into darkness by yielding to sin, turning attention away from Jesus, and yielding to temptation instead of continuing to look to Him. Trusting in the Lord brings blessing, and after confessing sin such a one must trust God to keep His promise and forgive every transgression.
Those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good have something to tell others about what God has done for them. They invite others to come to Him and to Christ, like Philip after finding the Saviour, telling of Jesus and inviting others to know Him. Those whose hearts have been changed, as when those who left the Sanitarium could say they had tasted His goodness, bear witness to His goodness.
This experience requires knowing Him as Saviour, knowing that He has forgiven sins, and having a living connection with God. Only that living knowledge enables a person to speak truthfully of His compassion and love and to witness to Jesus, for nominal or merely casual faith does not supply it. Having experienced His goodness and salvation makes Christian hope and service desirable and leads to praise of God and to more decided witness that Christ saves those who come to God through Him.
Those drawn by His love and kindness are to lead others to the Saviour as the source of help. Tasting and seeing that the Lord is good obligates those who have it to tell of His goodness, to let praise come from human lips, to reflect the light given, to entertain no complaint, and to settle for oneself each day how to conduct oneself rightly.
Those who have so tasted have personally experienced Christ's love in humbling Himself to die a shameful death on the cross and the mystery of godliness by which fallen man, deceived and taking Satan's side, is conformed to the image of the Son and, through Christ's righteousness given to man, is loved by God even as God loved His Son. They are to place this picture of highest value in every discourse, hang it in memory's hall, utter it with human lips, trace it in life, meditate upon it, and make it the groundwork of all preaching and of every discourse. In this way they give hungry souls the bread of life and keep Christ constantly before sinners as their only hope of salvation, instead of presenting dry, Christless theories that God will not accept and that leave precious souls starving.
Mere Theory Is Insufficient
True religion is experimental, knowledge gained by personal trial in which the heart feels the renewing power of divine grace and learns by experience that God is good, and mere theoretical knowledge of religious truth does not meet what it means to taste and see. Tasting requires experiencing that renewing power for oneself rather than relying on another person's word or on merely hearing, reading, and believing what others say. Without that personal experience, knowing religious truths, promises, warnings, and the remedy for sin leaves a person unmoved and failing to act on what is known.
Believing in the wrath of God without earnest effort to escape it is not tasting, nor is believing in heaven without sacrifice to obtain it. Believing in the value of the soul while its redemption will soon cease forever, yet without making peace with God, is not tasting. Reading the Bible without being alarmed by its threatenings or won by its promises, and approving what is excellent while following forbidden ways, is not tasting. Knowing a refuge without using it, knowing a remedy for sin without applying it, and knowing the right without any relish for it, is not tasting.
Those without this experience remain unwilling to seek peace with God and slow to heed the Holy Spirit's warning, reproof, and instruction. All such knowledge only increases condemnation. Having tasted the Lord's graciousness, a person is to desire the Word and grow through it as life-giving nourishment. Judas had abundant opportunity to receive that nourishment and could have formed a firm, Christlike character.
Those who have tasted His graciousness come to Christ, the living stone, and find Him precious as their sure foundation. To those who reject Him, He is a stone of stumbling.