O Come: Taste of His Perfect Love

Sermon Introduction

O Come: All you Unfaithful is theme song for sermon series

By Sovereign Grace Music, if you want to search for it on YouTube or Spotify

Each sermon of this series derives from a line from the song

First sermon … O Come: All You Unfaithful, talked abouit the need that God fulfilled by sending Jesus, which of course was the sinful nature of man

Second Sermon… His Promise is Peace, talked about the promise of Messiah in Isaiah, specifically Isaiah 9

Problem is that people misunderstood these verses about Jesus

They were anticipating a messiah that was going to be a military conqueror

And if you only read Isaiah 7-12 -- Isaiah 7:14 is of course the famous Immanuel verse, and Isaiah 9:6-7 is the famous “For to us a child is born” verse -- if you only read those four chapters you would kind of understand why they thought this

Those verses were prophecies of Israel’s fall as a nation, and eventual restoration...

So it would seem natural to conclude that Israel’s Messiagh was going to be a political/military leader

And to be fair, even the disciples thought this at first as well…

It never really actually says so in the Gospels, but you can certainly sense it in some of the things the disciples did and said...

For example there was the request from James and John to sit at Jesus’ right hand and left hand in Mark 10

And of course the disciples weren’t expecting Jesus to rise from the dead after he was crucified… despite the numerous times he taught that was going to happen!

So many people had that expectaion of what the Jewish Messiah was going to be...

Except, that expectation is shattered by what comes a little later in Isaiah... in chapter 53, which we know as the “Suffering Servant” prophecies

Isaiah 53:5 “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

Those prophecies talked about how Jesus was going to accomplish his victory…

The kingdom that Jesus established is not of this world

He was not coming to save Israel from the Assyrians, or the Babylonians, or the Persians or the Romans...

Jesus came to accomplish something even greater…

And so, today we turn to an interesting line from the song, “Taste of His Perfect Love”, which I believe is a natural extension to God’s promise of Peace

One problem with it though is that it is kind of ambiguous

You know what I’m saying right?

You hear song lyrics like that and you think, yeah that’s kind of nice… Such beautiful poetry!

Right? But you don’t really know what it means exactly… or at least you don’t really think about it too deeply!

We have to be careful with this type of thing… alowing words and phrases that we use to become common… you know what they call some of this right? “Christianese”

The line derives from two verses. One, of course is the verse that we read together and that I will be covering, Psalm 34:8 (which is later quoted in 1st Peter and Hebrews 6)

The second is from 1st John… Particularly, 1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

Now, we of course already went through 1st John earlier this year, which is why I chose Psalm 34:8 for today’s sermon, although as we will see, it will also cover the same basic idea

But anyway, the whole point is that an invitation was being extended to the Israelites, and to us as well…

Taste and See the Lord is Good

Psalm 34:8a “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”

… which is, of course an invitation to experience God’s goodness...

Today, we’re just going to cover “Taste”, of course because it is part of the song’s line we’re covering today...

But in a couple of weeks in the final sermon of this series we’re going to also going to be looking at “See”

But, I wanted to cover “Taste” today because it is kind of strange right?

How can you taste something that is not food?

Now of course, we know that this is meant to be a meatphor for experience

It’s fairly common in many languages… either for the concept of taste it self to be used, or the concept of different flavours… as a metaphor for exprience.

For a example, your can have a “taste of victory”

Or a “bitter defeat”

So all of that is to reiterate that to “Taste” of the Lord’s goodness, from Psalm 34… Or to “taste of His Perfect Love” from the song...

...is an invitation to experience God’s Goodness and his Perfect Love… which is really, at the end of the day, refer to the same thing...

That is, of course, of the salvation being offered by God...

As I mentioned already 1 John 4:18 is the verse that talkes about God’s perfect love… “18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”

In other words, God’s perfect love means that we don’t have to suffer the punishment that we deserve… the punishment demanded by our sins...

That punishment of course is death...

We all know Romans 6:23 right? “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now what’s really interesting is that the “taste” metaphor is also used to describe what Jesus did so that we do not have to face punishment...

Hebrews 2:9 “9 But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Isn’t that amazing? Jesus tasted death, so that we might taste of his perfect love...

Now, I don’t want to forget Psalm 34 here… because as I said, in terms of the salvation offered to us, “to taste of His perfect love” is synonymous to tasting the goodness of God…

And so, to make that clear, let’s have a look at...

Titus 3:4–6 “4 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,”

3 times… “Savior” or “Saved” appears… This is where the goodness of God leads… to salvation

And it’s a beautiful thing to experience…

It’s no wonder that the number one worship song in Canada and the United States right now is… what? Can anyone guess?

That’s right the Goodness of God

You know what my favourite part of that song is? The bridge...

Your goodness is running after, it’s running after me!

Such a beautiful thought… And very Biblical by the way...

One of the practices I would always encourage is to compare worship song lyrics to scripture...

And this line comes straight out of...

Psalm 23:6 “6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Now, I know it the ESV transation says “goodness and mercy shall follow me” me… but in in

Interestingly enough though, the song is actually a little closer in meaning to the original Hebrew… the Hebrew word that the ESV translates as “follow”, is “RADAPH”, which means “to pursue” or “to chase”

God’s goodness pursues us… it chases us all the days of our lives here on earth...

But so much more! The fact that God’s perfect love means we don’t need to fear punishment is just the beginning...

As Psalm 23 tells us… there is also a “forever” component of that as well… “I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever”

I heard what is probably the saddest rendition of the song “Goodness of God” a little over a year ago in October...

Marcia and I attended the funeral of a girl named Justine… who tragically passed away at a young age… I think she was only 19 or 20 years old

I taught Justine piano when she was a little girl… And her mom, Ate Heda was the administrative assistant for the Worship Ministries when I was an intern at Morningstar

So I got pretty close to their family…

Anyway, the final eulogy was given by Ate Heda… and close off, she chose to sang a few lines from the song “Goodness of God”, which was Justine’s favourite song...

As you can imagine, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, as she sang in acappela...

But at the same time, there was hope...

There was hope because we knew that Justine was already with her Saviour...

Which is ultimately the best place to be… that is the place where joy is complete...

Psalm 16:11 “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Now, the Goodness of God is of course an incredible topic to discuss

It’s wonderful to consider and to ponder… but how do we take that and put it into action?

Well, the next part of Psalm 34 provides us with a way to go...

Takes Refuge

Psalm 34:8b “Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”

Taking refuge in the Lord is a very natural way to apply the knowledge of God’s goodness..

Nahum 1:7 is another verse that connects this idea of God’s goodness with taking refuge in him… “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.”

And Psalm 36:7–8 connects it with his Love… “7 How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.”

And so, these concepts… Refuge in God… God’s Goodness... God’s perfect love… Are all interconnected...

The question is of course, how do we make this practical...

What can we do to practically apply this idea of taking refuge in God?

Well there are a number of places where we can take this…

But for today… or in fact, for all of 2024… There is one thing that I would like us as a church to do together to practically apply this...

In fact it is one of our Spiritual Goals for 2023...

That is, to be in the Word of God...

2 Samuel 22:31 “This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.”

Being in the Word of God is one of the simplest, most practical ways that we can do to take refuge in him!

I love what 1 Peter 2:2–3 “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

“Pure spiritual milk” is in reference to the teachings found in scripture...

Colossians 3:16 “16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Let’s read the Bible together in 2024...

I’ve given you these numbers before… It’s very simple...

The ESV Audio Bible is about 75 Hours long...

Which I know sounds long, but that translates to just 12 minutes of reading… or listening per day...

Can you do it? Can you spare 12 minutes a day to take refuge in God by being in His word?

Now, I mentioned, this is so important, that the council has actually made it one of the Spiritual Goals that we have as a Church for 2024...

We are praying for 45 of you to join in and read the Bible together...

Of course, you can do that on your own… many of you do this already...

But we want to make this as easy as possible… and we want to try to make this as easy as possible...

And so.. how many of you have the Bible app on your phones? Download it later and create an account...

And then, you can go to this link on your phones… and it should prompt you to open the app..

And when you do, you will be taken to an invitation to join a Bible reading plan...

“Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. It is true, it cannot really grow, for it is perfect; but it does so to our apprehension. The deeper you dig into Scripture, the more you find that it is a great abyss of truth."

Now, some of you may already be reading your BIbles regularly...

If that’s you then let me encourage you… take it one step further...

Psalm 119:10–11 “With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”