In response to a reader suggestion, I’ve figured out what Bible verses quoted the most here and will write a series about those verses. Today’s post is #1 of a top 10 countdown, starting with the verse quoted the least out of the 10 most quoted, Psalm 34:8.
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
In my Accordance[1] Bible notes for this verse, I wrote: “God does not shower us with blessing upon blessing until we are convinced He is good and then we turn to Him. We must learn that He is good by trusting Him and learning to walk with Him. We learn that repentance is a good thing.” To me, there’s a lot in this verse.
One thing is that we must be active in our relationship with God, rather than waiting around for Him to solve our problems. We must each “taste and see,” not “wait and see.” The Psalmist (David) is comparing knowledge of God to food spread out before us. Unless we act and decide to eat the food, we will never truly know how good that food is. This requires us to turn from what we would do otherwise, which may be sin, and turn to God for our refuge. Repentance is often a requirement for learning of God’s goodness; we don’t learn about it by going our own way. We must take steps in response to our trust in Him.
Second, we don’t learn that He is good through the experiences of other people, but through our own experience, which we can only get through acting. Often when we ask people what something tastes like, the answer is “it tastes like chicken.” This isn’t literally true, but it does tell us that taste is hard to accurately share with and communicate to another person. We only really know what something tastes like through personal experience, and we can only know how good God is through personal experience.
It’s also implied that if we don’t taste of God’s goodness for ourselves, we might misunderstand it. We might believe incorrect things about God that we pick up from other sources than Him. Sometimes these messages come from the secular world, but sometimes they even come from within the church, because nobody and no church (and no blog!) is perfect. We can only get perfect and pure information about God from God Himself and as you might guess, that means consistent private Bible study, prayer, and meditation.
“Tasting and seeing” is similar in the verse to “taking refuge.” This verse means a lot to me because it can be a reminder when life isn’t going well, or if I just feel like it’s not going well, that I might need to take a different approach or get a different perspective from God. The verse suggests that the man who does not take refuge in him is not blessed, therefore we should make sure we are taking refuge in Him. Only by seeking out His answers to our problems can we know Him and experience His blessing, which we should value over all other kinds of blessing.
So, dear readers:
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
[1] Bible software I use and highly recommend. Many of my blog posts start from notes I took in Accordance.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 