TRY IT…YOU’LL LIKE IT!
8/19/2003
Psalms 34:1-8 (READ FIRST)
· Each North American produces an average of three and a half pounds of garbage per day.
· Five million extra tons of trash is produced between Thanksgiving and New Years Day in the United States.
· The waste generated each year in the U.S. would fill a convoy of 10-ton garbage trucks 145,000 miles long – over half-way to the moon!
· Someone complained in an e-mail about the amount of food being thrown out by Wal-Mart while there are hungry people everywhere. After a little research, they discovered that McDonald’s does it. Martin’s does it. Grocery stores and convenience stores and fancy restaurants and hot dog stands do it. While people go hungry in the richest of all nations, stores and restaurants are destroying tons of edible food each day in America.
· According to United Nations statistics, the average North American consumes:
· 5 times more than a person living in Mexico
· 10 times more than a person living in China, and
· 30 times more than a person living in India
Let’s face it: We are spoiled! We have the best of everything. Our average local supermarket offers over 200 kinds of cereal alone to choose from! Only a very small percentage of Americans know what it really means to go hungry.
UNFORTUNATELY, WE ARE NOT ONLY PHYSICALLY SPOILED IN AMERICA. WE ARE ALSO SPIRITUALLY SPOILED.
Every weekend, thousands of Americans make the weekly Sunday morning trek to their favorite local house of worship. There is certainly no shortage of churches. In many cities, it seems that there is a “church on every corner.”
We have the best teaching material available in the best Christian bookstores on the planet. At Union, we can even say we have the best teachers. We have Christian radio stations, Christian Television (24 hours a day on “Sky Angel”) and Christian Music Concerts. We’ve got all kinds and styles of Christian music.
Some of us have computers with e-mail access and the ability to search the World Wide Web for anything and everything Christian imaginable. We’ve got the Bible in more versions than Baskin Robbins has flavors. We’ve got “Our Daily Bread” and Guideposts. We’ve got small groups and our own church website. And for the younger set, how could I leave out Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber from Veggie Tales? We’ve got it all!
And yet, our marriages are falling apart. 50% of the marriages in America end in divorce, including those who consider themselves Christians. Many Christian men, including a large number of pastors, are hooked on pornography. Our families are hurting. Our children and grandchildren are lonely.
We may have a church on nearly every corner, but many of them either sit empty on Sunday mornings or hold only a handful of gray-haired adults who are more interested in protecting traditions than they are in experiencing the power and presence of the living God. How can Christians living in a culture of such excess keep a healthy spiritual appetite? How can we get, and stay hungry for more of God?
Today’s Scripture passage from Psalm 34, is like a breeze of fresh air on a hot, muggy day. This short Psalm explains the many blessings of God to his people, all wrapped up in 22 verses. David writes that God will free us from fear (v 4), deliver us from trouble (6), guard us (7), show us kindness (8), supply our needs (9), listen when we talk to him (10) and redeem us (22).
But many of these blessings require our active participation. Psalm 34 also tells us what we need to do: first, seek him. Verse 4 says, “I sought the Lord and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.” Verse 6 tells us to cry out to him: “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord and was saved from every trouble.” Other verses tell us we must trust him (8), fear him (9), keep from lying (13), turn from sin, do good, and seek peace(14) as well as humble our hearts (18) and serve him (22).
I encourage you to read Psalm 34 every day this week, asking God to speak to you personally through these words. But the main verse I want to focus on this morning from Psalm 34 is verse 8: “O taste and see that the Lord is good…” This is the key to how we can get hungry for more of God and stay hungry for Him.
The first thing we need to do is to EAT RIGHT. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” – Ps. 34:8
One of the rules my mom had in our house when I was growing up was “Don’t eat a bunch of junk food before dinner or you’ll ruin your appetite!” In fact, the closest thing we even had to junk food in our house was sugar-coated breakfast cereal. Mom didn’t want us filling up on “junk food” because she knew if we did we wouldn’t have any room left for the nutritious meal she’d be serving for dinner. Being a good mom, she knew that Twinkies, cookies and chips did not have the same nutritional value as green beans, corn on the cob, salad – and occasionally the “dreaded Brussels sprouts.”
Her rule did not hurt my appetite. In fact, it made me even hungrier for the right things. The best things. The healthy food. Along about 6:00 PM, the smell of supper cooking would reach me and I would hang around the kitchen waiting ahead of time. Roast beef with mashed potatoes. Turkey. Chicken. Mom would say it was ready and I was like the “Road Runner.” And I would sit for the next 30 minutes or so and feast on a delicious home cooked meal.
David knew what he was talking about when he wrote, “O taste and see that the Lord He is good.” God is so good! God always has been and always will be the very best for us! The problem is, so many Christians today fill up on “spiritual junk food” that spoils our appetites for God! We’ll talk for hours to a friend via e-mail or the telephone but we don’t have time to pray. We’ll read the latest romance novel cover-to-cover or two daily newspapers, but we can’t seem to get interested in reading the Bible. We’ll sit for hours in front of the TV but sometimes it’s too much effort to get up and go sit in church for an hour on Sunday morning. (Maybe I should start passing out Doritos when we receive the offering!)
For the healthy Christian, there’s no substitute for the Bible and prayer. There are no shortcuts for those two things if you want to stay hungry. Many of us have no room left over for God in our spiritual bellies because we’ve gorged ourselves on things like gossip magazines and daytime soap operas. Every day God spreads out an all-you-can-eat buffet before us but we’re not hungry because we’ve been stuffing ourselves with what we think are more interesting fodder.
I realized a while back that I was substituting what I call “spiritual fluff” for the healthy stuff of God. Most of the time, I listen to Christian praise and worship music throughout the day at home and in my car. What I realized was that I was singing the words without feeling them, without even recognizing them as words of worship to my Lord. I realized that I might as well be listening to Country-Western or hard rock, since I was singing the words automatically and not as they were meant, which is to praise and worship Jesus Christ.
I realized I was watering down my appetite for God by using my music as a replacement for one-on-one time with Jesus, either in prayer or in His Word. We have no appetite left for God. Our lives are filled with so many things and yet, many Christians know full well that they are spiritually malnourished. The sinful condition of their private lives is proof.
You do know, don’t you, that it’s possible to stuff yourself and still be malnourished. Have you lost your appetite for the things of God? You’ve gotta’ stop snacking on the junk food! Give up the spiritual fluff! You’re spoiling your appetite. Save some room for the good stuff. Pull up a chair at the banquet table. “Taste and see that the Lord, He is good.” You’ve gotta’ EAT RIGHT.
We all know that along with good physical eating habits, we need regular exercise to be our healthiest. For spiritual health, we also need to exercise—by exercising our faith. James asks us in James chapter 2:14-17, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters,, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” And verse 24 says that a person is made righteous—justified—by works and not by faith alone.
I like Christian Comedian Mark Lowry’s form of exercise. He says, “I hate exercise – it’s too much work! I do one sit up a day. In the morning I sit up in bed…that’s half. When I lay down at night, that’s the other half!” Just as we are lazy in exercising our bodies, we are lazy exercising our faith, too.
When you work hard, you work up a good appetite. I try to attend a water aerobics class twice a week and on those days, I always work up a good appetite. Other times during the week I feel like I’m just eating because the food is there. But when you work hard and burn up calories, your body gets hungry. James says, “…faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” J.O. Fraser, a missionary to China once said, “Faith is like a muscle which grows stronger and stronger with use, rather than rubber, which weakens when it is stretched.”
Many of us are stretched these days, aren’t we? And too often when American “Christians” are stretched, they break. Our marriages are breaking, our emotions are breaking, and our commitments are breaking. Why? Could the reason be because we come to our churches and sit here like spiritual couch potatoes? When is the last time you learned something here in church and actually went out and did something with what you learned? In a recent survey the majority of Christians in America admitted they hadn’t witnessed to one person in the course of an entire year.
We march into our churches and demand, “Feed me!” But we never exercise our faith! The world is starving for answers all around us but we leave our Christianity at the church door. Oh, we’ve got all the workout gear. We’ve got our spiritual tennis shoes on. We’re like some guy who joined a health club, went out and bought expensive new cross-trainer shoes. New shorts, tank top and sweats. We’ve sat through several sessions on how to use all the different pieces of workout equipment. We can tell others how to use the equipment. (Some of us even think we know more about how to use the equipment than the pastor does!) But we never do anything! We never actually get any exercise. Our biggest workout of the week was coming to the gym on Sunday!
If you want to get and stay hungry for God, you’ve got to take your faith out of church on Sunday and give it some exercise during the week! It’s hard to stay hungry for God when you don’t ever attempt anything that makes you need Him. We need to step out of our comfort zones and try something so radical that we can only accomplish it with God’s help. That’s faith exercise!
I challenge you to work out daily with Jesus. He will push you. He knows what it means to be a champion. He’s been to the cross. He’s defeated death, hell and the grave. He knows what it takes to win the daily confrontation with sin. He expects greatness from you because He alone can look inside and see all your God-given potential. He will train you to see the world differently. He’ll push you past your own selfishness to see the needs of people around you. To understand the pain in their hearts. To love the unlovable. To see value in every life. He’ll develop a hunger for the things of God in you. You’ll begin to feel His passion for the lost. He’ll breathe the power of the Holy Spirit into you. Make you “more than a conqueror…” You’ll never be the same!
Have you lost your appetite for the things of God? You’ve gotta’ EAT RIGHT. Stop snacking on the junk food! Don’t spoil your appetite. Save room for the good stuff. “Taste and see that the Lord, He is good.” Is your spiritual life getting flabby? You’ve gotta EXERCISE YOUR FAITH! If you want to get and stay hungry for God, you’ve got to take your faith out of church on Sunday and give it some exercise during the week! Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
One perfect thing about LIFE and GOD is that we always have another chance. We can always start over. We can fall to our knees, confess our sins, ask for forgiveness and receive it, vow to correct our mistakes from this day forward, and “ taste and see that the Lord is good!”
In Old Testament times, priests kept fresh bread on the altar in the tabernacle. That bread was called “The Bread of the Presence,” which the KJV translates “shew bread,” or “show bread.” It was there to remind them of the presence of God and being fed by Him. But the bread was just for “show,” not to be eaten.
And then God sent His only Son to the world, to become a human with weaknesses and desires and temptations just like us, His children. But Jesus was perfect. And when He died as payment for the sins of every one of us, He gave us His very body and blood. Jesus Himself became the Bread of the Presence.
When we break this bread we are reminded of how the physical body and mind of Jesus Christ were broken on the cross. Jesus was beaten with whips that had metal balls on the ends of the leather just to buy healing for us! He was crushed and bruised for our deliberate sinfulness.
When we drink from this cup, we partake of Jesus Himself, all that He is and all that He has accomplished to make us wholly His. The cup represents His blood, poured out from the cross to cover all our sins. When we combine the two—bread and cup—we release God’s New Covenant life in forgiveness of sin. We break the power of sin in our lives and get a brand new, fresh start.
But when we eat this bread, we are consuming His broken body, which brings healing to our bodies and souls.
All of us who are in love and fellowship in the family of God, who do truly and earnestly repent of our sins, who humbly put our trust in Christ and who desire His help to walk in a new life, are invited to draw near to God and receive the holy gift of His Son, Jesus Christ.
I invite you to come forward to receive the Body and Blood of Christ this morning. As you break off a piece of the bread, reflect on Christ’s broken body given for you. As you dip the bread into the juice and see the white purity of the bread change to the color of blood, think about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross just for you.
O Taste and see that the Lord is good!
PRAYER: O God, by your grace we have become part of this family of faith. We have made a commitment to Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior. As we have tasted this morning, grant that we might renew our vows to one another and to the Christ whom we say we serve. Amen.
BENEDICTION: Go now with God:
Be not tempted to stay in the safety of known places.
Move with faith into action!
Move from where you are to where God points and know that you cannot go any where that He is not. Look to him and be radiant, so your faces will never be ashamed. Amen.
Sources:
Morris, David, “Meeting the Lord At His Table,” SpiritLed Woman,” Strang Communications, Aug/Sept 2003, p.59
Wilson, Wayde, “Getting Hungry”
“For All Who Minister,” Brethren Press, 1993.
