A Taste of God's Love

Jesus, thank you so much for bringing us together, for giving us a reason to celebrate at this time of the year.

We want to experience your presence tonight, Lord.

We want to experience a taste of your love.

And we ask that you give that to us tonight.

We ask all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Well, out of curiosity, who would say that Christmas is your favorite holiday throughout the year?

Favorite holiday?

It's okay if it's not.

Don't feel bad if you didn't raise your hand.

There are a lot of good holidays.

Christmas usually ends up ranking number one when a large group of people are pulled because Christmas is kind of the mega holiday.

It gets more attention than any other holiday.

It has this ability to take the best parts of other holidays and claim it for itself.

So, Halloween, you get to decorate your yard.

At Christmas, you can do that to the nth degree.

Thanksgiving, you get to eat as much as you want with no excuses, no feeling bad.

You can do that at Christmas as well.

Fourth of July has amazing lights.

You can create a light show in your front yard and play it every night for a month at Christmas.

No one minds.

Christmas is intense, Christmas is it's big.

It's definitely my favorite holiday, and it's really hard for me to pick one aspect of Christmas that I enjoy the most.

If I had to, though, if I was pressed, being completely honest, I would say it's the tastes of Christmas.

For me, there are certain foods that I just cannot separate in my mind from the holidays.

I can't separate from Christmas.

My mom made mashed potatoes growing up every single Christmas.

Her mashed potatoes are 75% butter, 25% potato, 150% amazing.

I know the math doesn't add up, but if you use enough butter, miracles can happen.

It's so good.

And she lives in Missouri.

I'm not gonna be able to be there this Christmas because of that, and so I'm gonna miss out on those mashed potatoes.

But don't feel too bad for me because I'm married into a southern family.

And I'll never forget the very first holiday meal I had with my wife's family.

I was introduced to this concept many of you probably grew up with called a casserole.

Where I'm from in the north, we we like to compartmentalize our food.

We keep them separate.

There's the proteins, the starches, the vegetables.

But I found that if you take anything, put it in a pan, put, you know, uh cheese, cream, cover it in crackers, butter, bake it in the oven.

It is amazing.

It's amazing.

And so I've got I've got all these casseroles to look forward to tomorrow.

My favorite is uh this thing called pineapple casserole.

Does anyone eat pineapple casserole?

Okay.

The very first time I heard it, I'm not gonna lie, I said to my wife, that sounds disgusting.

Okay, it's pineapples, cheddar cheese, Ritz crackers on top, baked, just didn't sound that good.

And and then I tasted it.

She made me, I tasted it, and it's become a staple for me during the holidays.

But my favorite taste of Christmas by far is hot chocolate.

I love hot chocolate.

I'm not a coffee guy.

If you ever see me with a coffee cup, I'm drinking hot chocolate, right?

I'm a eight-year-old child.

I love hot chocolate.

And that's not hard because hot chocolate is really good.

It's actually a really difficult thing to mess up.

If someone makes hot chocolate for you and it does not taste good, something went terribly wrong.

Never let that person cook you anything, okay?

Because you should not be able to mess up hot chocolate.

I've never been that picky with hot chocolate, Swiss Miss, Nestle, some generic brand, add some marshmallows, that's a bonus.

It's it's amazing.

However, five years ago, that all changed for me.

Five years ago, a friend of my wife's gave us a few packets of Lando Lakes hot chocolate.

Now, my first reaction upon seeing this pouch was Lando Lakes, the butter people, right?

Hot chocolate.

I'm not I'm not sure what happened in that meeting when that idea first came about.

Hey, you know, we make butter, you know, the next thing you think about after butter, hot chocolate.

Like, no, not really.

But again, it's hard to make a bad cup of hot chocolate.

So we tried it.

I had hazelnut hot chocolate, that was the flavor I was given, and when I tasted it, my life changed.

I'm being serious.

It was like my eyes opened, and I thought to myself, this, this is what's been missing all these years.

This is what it is.

So we went to every grocery store we could go to to find as much of it as we could, and it was sold out at a few different places.

We made it to a Publix that had just put out a display, and we bought it all.

We bought it all.

The checkout lady looked at us like we were crazy.

She asked if it was for a party, and we were like, no, no, we don't have a problem.

We could walk away from this at any time, but we we need it, so please just put it in the bag and don't ask any more questions.

Okay?

And it was worth it, it was amazing.

All of you have a pouch of Land Lakes hot chocolate that's for you tonight.

There's five flavors.

Okay, you should so look at your pouch, see what flavor you got.

There's supreme chocolate.

Anyone get supreme chocolate?

Let me hear you if you did.

All right, thank you.

How about raspberry?

Any raspberry people?

All right, caramel or caramel, I don't think it matters how you pronounce it.

How about mint?

Any mint, all right?

And then the one that did me in hazelnut.

If you got hazelnut, there you go.

Hazelnut people are more enthusiastic.

It's okay.

The good news is this.

Number one, if you got a flavor that you don't like, just make friends with someone around you and negotiate a little bit, right?

Make a trade.

There's a few empty seats, so just go and and take one, leave the one that you don't like.

If you got hazelnut, you are favored by God.

So just know that.

So good.

It's all good though.

It's all good.

See, here's the thing.

I can tell you how good it is.

I can tell you that it's the best hot chocolate you've ever tasted.

And you may believe me, you may not.

You may look at me and say, hey, that guy seems like he knows a thing or two about hot chocolate.

Or you may say, hey, he's what, like 22 years old?

Uh, how much hot chocolate could he have had, right?

I'm 31.

It's not, I don't look 22.

I just wanted to feel like that for a second.

But but the truth is, you've got to taste it for yourself to know.

You need to go home, you need to put it in a cup, put some hot water in there, and taste it for yourself to know if it actually is good or not.

Just don't take my word for it.

Psalm 34.8 says, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

In other words, don't take anyone's word for it.

Don't simply believe that the Lord is good because someone tells you he's good.

Don't believe it because you were raised to believe it.

Taste and see for yourself that the Lord is good.

Experience how good God is.

Over 2,000 years ago, we were given a taste of how good God is.

Jesus came to this earth and he gave us a tangible, real taste of God.

Hebrews chapter 1, verse 3 says that the Son, Jesus, is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.

Hebrews 1:3

In other words, Jesus is the mirror image of God.

If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.

He is the clearest picture of God we will ever have.

If anyone has ever given you a picture of God that does not look like Jesus, that does not act like Jesus, that picture is incomplete.

It's inaccurate because Jesus is the exact image of God.

If we want to know how God feels about things, if we want to know how God would react to something, we can look at Jesus and we see the exact character and nature of God.

Jesus gave us a taste of God.

And man, what a taste it was.

Forget raspberry, forget hazelnut.

How about compassion?

How about acceptance, friendship, mercy, understanding?

Because Jesus gave us a taste of all of that.

Compassion.

In Luke 7, verse 11, the Bible says, soon afterward, Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed him.

Luke 7:11

A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate.

The young man who had died was a widow's only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her.

When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion.

Don't cry, he said.

Then he walked over to the coffin and touched it, and the bearers stopped.

Young man, he said, I tell you, get up.

Then the dead boy sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother.

If you're going through something really difficult right now, if you're dealing with pain, if you're dealing with heartache, and you wonder how God feels about your situation, look to Jesus.

God is overflowing with compassion for you.

If your heart is hurting, God's heart is hurting for you.

Just like Jesus was hurting for this woman.

God cares, he loves you, and he's so compassionate that he wants to get involved.

He wants to either fix your situation or give you the peace and the strength to get through whatever it is you're going for.

Whatever it is you're going through.

Jesus gave us a taste of God's compassion.

How about mercy?

In John chapter 8, verses 1 through 11, the Bible says Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the temple.

John 8:1–11

A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them as he was speaking.

The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery.

They put her in front of the crowd.

Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.

The law of Moses says to stone her, but what do you say?

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger.

They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.

Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.

Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, Where are your accusers?

Didn't even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord, she said.

And Jesus said, Neither do I, go and sin no more.

If you've ever wondered how God would react if he was standing right in front of you to your biggest mistakes, your most shameful failures, your most personal struggles, look no further than to Jesus.

This woman experienced mercy at the hands of Jesus.

He had every right according to the law at that time to have her punished.

But he chose to stand up for her, to stand with her, to stand against those who were accusing her.

That's the mercy that Jesus has for all of us.

Mercy is just one of the flavors of his love.

How about acceptance?

We could all use a little bit more acceptance in our life, right?

Jesus was full of that for sure.

Mark 2, 13 through 17 says, Then Jesus went out to the lake shore again and taught the crowds that were coming to him.

As he walked along, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the tax collector's booth.

Follow me and be my disciple, Jesus said to him.

So Levi got up and followed him.

Later, Levi invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners, which, by the way, are worse than reputable sinners.

There's reputable sinners, disreputable sinners, and then tax collectors, apparently.

They get their own category.

It says there were many people of this kind among Jesus' followers, but when the teachers of religious law, who were Pharisees, saw him eating with tax collectors and other sinners, they asked his disciples, why does he eat with such scum?

Pharisees really like to pull punches when they talked.

When Jesus heard this, he told them, Healthy people don't need a doctor.

Sick people do.

I have come not to call those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.

Jesus accepted Levi, also called Matthew, as one of his disciples, and Levi was the lowest of the low.

He was the least likely to be chosen for something like that.

He was such a notorious sinner that he was even considered worse than disreputable sinners, whoever those people are.

If you've ever wondered whether or not God accepts you exactly as you are, look no further than to Jesus.

He gave us a taste of God's acceptance.

How about understanding?

I often wonder if God's gonna keep forgiving me over and over again for the same mistakes because I make the same mistakes over and over.

I am what's called a man.

And we do that.

I mean, I know in my in my head I've been taught that God forgives everything, that his grace is unending.

But I just imagine sometimes I must get on his last nerve.

Forgiveness and understanding usually go hand in hand.

The more we can understand someone, the more we can put ourselves in their shoes, see life through their eyes, the more patience we naturally have for them, the more forgiveness we have in store.

But how could a perfect God have understanding for imperfect people?

How much understanding could he really have?

And the answer actually is a lot.

In Mark chapter 9, verse 22, this man comes to Jesus, his son is in desperate need of healing.

Mark 9:22

This man, oh, his son is in serious trouble.

And so he comes to Jesus, have mercy on us and help us.

If you can.

Not exactly a vote of confidence.

And Jesus picks up on that.

What do you mean if I can?

Jesus asked.

Anything's possible if a person believes.

And look at his response, I love it.

The father instantly cried out, I do believe.

But help me overcome my unbelief.

In other words, I do believe in you, Jesus.

Kind of.

I mean, do we do we sit up here and sing songs?

I sort of believe in you, Jesus.

I think you might possibly be amazing and real.

But I'm not quite sure.

But at the end of the day, sometimes that's where our heart is.

We do believe in God.

We do have faith in God, but yet there's a part of us that doesn't.

And how does God respond to that?

Does he understand that?

And Jesus responded to this man by healing his son.

Jesus understands you.

He lived life as one of us.

He was not God pretending to be a human.

He was not wearing a costume.

He became one of us.

So he could live life like we live life.

He understands you and he has unending understanding for where you are.

He will meet you where you are.

What about friendship?

Is your relationship with God marked by friendship?

And if it's not, would you like it to be?

Jesus gives us this option if we choose to take it, not to simply be the followers of God or the servants of God or even the worshipers of God, because Jesus came to this earth to change things.

And before Jesus got here, there were a lot of followers, a lot of servants, and a lot of worshipers.

But Jesus came to dynamically change our relationship with God, to give us a new relationship.

In John 15, we we see what that is.

Jesus says, I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves.

Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

You did not choose me, I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name.

You have the ability to be friends with Jesus, to know him, to be known by him, to have a close relationship with him.

Even if the place you're at right now is, hey, I believe that, but help my unbelief.

You can be friends with God.

Friendship is one of the flavors of his love.

Over 2,000 years ago, Jesus came here and he gave us a taste of God's love that was so intense, it was so good, we have been talking about it for over two millennia.

We will keep talking about it as long as there are people on this earth.

That's how good of a taste it was.

But we need to make sure, as people, that we take that taste for ourselves.

Have we tasted God's love for us?

In John 15, Jesus said, There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.

When we think of Jesus laying down his life, we naturally think of the cross.

But please know that Jesus laid his life down for you long before he went to the cross.

The moment Jesus was born, the moment he breathed his first breath, the moment his feet first touched this earth, he had already laid his life down for you because Jesus had a life before he came as a person on this earth that we couldn't even imagine.

He was in the perfection of heaven, he was glorified, he was worshiped, he had everything, he had unending power, and he laid all of that down to come here for us.

Jesus laid his life down for you the moment he arrived on this planet.

He gave you a taste of his love by laying everything down for you.

Psalm 34.8 once again says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.

And tonight I encourage you to taste and see that Jesus is so good.

Experience him for yourself.

As we worship, as we sing a little bit more tonight, taste and see.

Reflect on Jesus, experience his presence, his love.

And if you want that experience, if you've never had it before, ask for it.

And once you have it, by the way, just ask for more.

Wouldn't it be cruel if I told you after explaining how amazing this hot chocolate you have in your hands is, that it's discontinued and this is the last of it there is?

It wouldn't be a gift at that point.

That would be cruel.

That would be that would be a disservice.

When Jesus went back to heaven after his resurrection, God's love did not leave this earth.

He didn't spend all of God's love while he was here.

No, he just gave us a taste of God's love.

And there is so much more where it came from.

If you have tasted the love of God, ask for more.

Because God's love is meant for us to feast upon.

Simply ask.

If you'd like to stand up, we're gonna worship, we're gonna sing, silent night together.

We're gonna reflect more on what Jesus did.

But my prayer for all of us is that we would taste and see that the Lord is good.

So please uh bow your heads with me.

Let's pray as we worship him more.

Jesus, thank you so much for giving us a taste of your love.

Just like you said to your friends, we did not choose you.

No, Jesus, you chose us.

You came for us.

You're the one that pursued us.

That's the reason we're here tonight.

If there is one person, one person in this room tonight, Jesus, that has never tasted your love, I pray that that changes now.

And for all of us that have, help us desire more.

Help us become obsessed with more and more of you because there is so much more if we want it.

We love you, Jesus.

We are so excited to be together to worship you more.

Thank you for this chance.

Thank you for this family at His hands.

We ask all this in your name.

Amen.