Taste and See

I want to enter into a time of prayer as we've been doing for the last month, just pausing and praying and just focusing on the presence of the Lord before we dive into his word together.

And there's this great verse, Mark 11, 24, that I'll be honest with you, it challenges me in kind of a kind of a backwards way.

When I see those words ask and believe, I don't necessarily recoil about that.

I think that's awesome, but we're invited by the Lord.

Jesus Himself said these words, encouraging us to ask in prayer and believing.

But the context of this verse is that Jesus had actually before this seen a fig tree that didn't bear fruit.

And he cursed the tree.

And then later on, when he and his disciples approached the tree, the tree was completely withered.

And the disciples were like, wow, like that's crazy.

And it is such a unique miracle that a tree itself would just completely dry up and wither so quickly the way that happened.

But Jesus used that as an opportunity to tell this to his disciples.

He said, If you ask and believe, you can do this too.

You can ask God to pick up a mountain and cast it into the water.

And if you believe, he will do it.

I think the reason I'm convicted about this passage is I find myself refusing to be inspired by it sometimes.

Because I want to just throw an asterisk on that and immediately say, I don't know that you really mean that, Jesus.

I don't know that you really mean that that could happen.

And I would tell you, we got our students in the room today.

It's fall break.

Uh, so small groups didn't happen for youth.

I love having our students, our teens in the room.

Um, I would say this specifically to our students.

Beware of outgrowing your faith.

Because it can happen.

As adults, we find ourselves saying, Yeah, but oh yeah, yeah, we should ask and believe that God can do the impossible.

But will he, did he, didn't he?

And we struggle with that.

I think that Jesus would want us to today begin as our baseline saying this.

I believe you can do anything, God.

I believe nothing is impossible for you, God.

And that's the baseline.

Don't put an asterisk on it.

Don't try to already explain away why that may not happen.

Start there.

And he's telling that to me over and over and over again.

Sherry and I got to go to the Cece Winin's concert and this past Friday, I think it was.

And I hadn't heard this.

Apparently, uh, she has shared this story many, many times, but she told the story about her brother Ronald.

Uh doctors came out, had been working on him, and they had pronounced him dead.

And CeCe's dad asked the doctor, Can we just pray for you right now?

And then go back and check on my son.

And that's what they did in that waiting room, in that family room.

Cece Wynan's dad prayed for the doctor.

Doctor goes back into the room, comes back out to the family, and he's alive.

Um doesn't make any sense, but he's alive.

I was um here, my wife is actually down at the Women of Joy conference right now in Pigeon Forge, and she's living her best life.

Like so many people, she was like, I say, I don't think you've stopped worshiping since CC Wining's on Friday.

You're just keeping it going.

All these wonderful singers and artists and speakers.

And so last night, Matthew West was in concert.

One of our favorite songs is Don't Stop Praying.

Um, if y'all love that song, you might know that the first very first three words of that song that I believe God laid that song on his heart.

It's been uh a mantra, kind of a prayer outcry for me and Sherry.

The very first three words of that song are what's your impossible?

And so I asked that of you today and me today.

What is it that you're already doubting that God might be able to accomplish?

What is that impossible that you're holding on into your heart?

And maybe for you, whatever it is, it was you already thought of it before I asked it, because that's that's the thing.

That's the thing that I've not seen God do yet.

That's the thing that it would just be amazing, it'd be miraculous if it happened.

This morning, before we get into the message, let's bring our impossible before Jesus Christ, who can do all things.

So let's bow together as we do that.

As we're bowing, I just ask in the quietness of this moment, and you might be watching, listening online right now, wherever you are.

You don't have to say it out loud.

But would you name your impossible to Jesus Christ who died on the cross and rose from the grave.

Help our unbelief, Lord.

Help our unbelief, because even as we name that impossible, I think sometimes we we think it's more of a wishful thinking prayer, like maybe it will happen.

I'm not sure it will, I'm not sure it can.

Father, right now, in this moment, based on what you have given us in that little verse in your word that Jesus Christ, your son, spoke to pray and believe.

Ask and believe, and it will happen.

So, Father, right now, we're just going to claim before you that we believe you can do anything, you can do all things.

So we lay our impossibles at your feet, and we have peace knowing that you have this, that you've got this, that you're at work for our good and for your glory.

We will watch and we'll see what you do next in your time and in your way.

We trust in you, Father.

We pray all this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

Thanks for allowing me to have that prayer moment together with you.

And like I said, you know, it's easy to, if we're not careful, to outgrow our faith.

I the older I'm getting, the more I'm realizing I got to get more like a kid who just trusts and who just believes and and simplifies everything.

We sometimes get a little bit too smart for our britches.

Speaking of childhood, Sherry and I were recently uh just randomly thinking about uh our kids growing up.

And with Halloween and trick-or-treat season approaching, we were just, I don't know why we even thought of it.

We're like, can you remember what our kids dressed up as growing up?

And I will tell you this, it proved once again that I don't know if this is what God gave a gift to our wives.

Sherry remembered every single costume.

Like we end up later asking Molly, and she named them like, you nailed it.

Like this year she was this, this year she was that.

I will tell you, I remember zero things that I that I dressed up as.

In fact, I've been meaning to ask mom and dad, like, what did I dress up as?

But I will tell you, I do remember the kind of costumes that I wore almost every year as a kid.

And it took a lot of deep research for me to find this photograph in some sort of resolution that makes sense.

I thought, I found out there's a name for this style of costume.

It's called a mask and smock costume.

It's the kind of costume that I could put on right now.

I don't have to change my clothes.

All I have to do is put on the smock and just put it over my clothes.

Some of them just tie it around your waist like an apron, some of them you stepped into.

It was made of, I'm quite sure, the worst environmentally unsafe plastic created in humanity.

I don't think it could possibly biodegrade at all.

And then this mask was held with a gray rubber band stapled to each side that would fail if you took your treatment for more than 30 minutes.

And the kind of sweating you would do under that mask was unhealthy.

You would have a rash on your skin after wearing this mask.

And every chance we get, we would pull it up to catch our breath, which is probably why the rubber band would fail.

So these were the costumes that we wore.

In fact, if you wanted to be Spider-Man back in my day, this was Spider-Man.

Now, I have a theory about this because this looks worse even than the mask and smocks look like.

I think what this set of parents did was we got the mask.

Let's just get a Spider-Man poncho and throw it over our kid, and they save money on that.

But that is not uh not a great Spider-Man costume.

But costumes have improved incredibly, haven't they?

Like whenever I see the little preschoolers and the Spider-Man, they look like a miniature Spider-Man with that suit with the muscles and everything.

We have come a long way with our costumes.

But I want to spend my time on one more little thing about trick-or-treating.

I will confess to you what my favorite candy that I would receive in my bag was, and I'm not making this up, it was this candy here.

Oh, okay.

I got people, I got people I can relate to.

No booze out there?

That's awesome.

Uh, I learned preparing for this sermon today, I always called them peanut butter kisses.

And then I was told, there's no way that's peanut butter kisses.

There's nothing kissy about that candy whatsoever.

And I thought, well, maybe it was called peanut butter taffy because it was dentally challenging to eat.

And but there was this little, like an eighth of a teaspoon of like real peanut butter in there that made it awesome.

And it turns out it is peanut butter kisses made by a company called Melster.

You're welcome.

I know you wanted to know that piece of information.

You don't have to Google search that.

Melster.

And I loved this candy so much.

I love getting it.

But now, and recently, this isn't a picture I just took recently.

Me and my wife took a little overnight trip down to uh Orlando and trick-or-treated at Disney World and came back home.

And I wake up the morning after we trick-or-treated, and my wife is sitting at this hotel table sorting her candy.

She has not grown up fully yet, guys.

She's separating the Skittles from the gummies, from the MMs.

And I just want to say, you know what?

That is better absolutely than the peanut butter kisses.

But I still like them.

They're still good.

Um, I'm let's talk about Jesus now, okay?

Let's turn this uh to spirituality here.

The reason I'm bringing this up is we've come a long way.

Uh when it comes to costumes, we've come a long way with the kind of candy that we receive at Trick or Treat.

We've come a long way and it's better.

We're seeing improvements and lots of things in life.

There's a hymn, one of my favorite hymns that I remember singing, uh we almost always sing it as a kind of a response song at the end of a service, is I have decided to follow Jesus.

And even though that's the name of the song, there's three words that are more frequently sung in that song than I've decided to follow Jesus.

And those are the words no turning back.

No turning back.

I will confess that in my brain, I thought of that as because you probably are thinking about turning back, but don't do it.

That's kind of how I took the song, to be honest with you.

But the older I'm getting, I'm realizing it's there's no I'm not turning back because why would I even dream of going back?

Why would I even think of it?

I want to read to you from Psalm 34, verse 8 to taste and see that the Lord is good.

Psalms 34:8

How happy is the person who takes refuge in him.

What a beautiful verse.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

How happy is the person who takes refuge in him.

It's like going from the old-fashioned, uh dentally challenging taffy that I used to get to the delicious nougat of a Snicker bar, preferably peanut butter Snickers.

And once you've tasted that, like, why would I, why would I go back to this when I can have this?

Our uh D groups that we launched this fall just recently finished reading through and journaling through the book of Galatians.

I want to read to you from Galatians chapter four this morning.

These amazing verses, I believe, convey this so well.

Starting in verse four, going through verse seven, it says, When the time came to completion, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave but a son.

And if a son, then God has made you an heir.

So I want to show you the comparison that the Lord gives us in this passage through the inspiration of the letter that Paul wrote to the believers in Galatia.

So there's two words that are being put beside each other in this passage, slave and son.

In the Greek, the word translated slave or sometimes translated bondservant is the word doulos.

That's how you pronounce that, doulos.

And as a slave or bondservant, and I want to pause here and say it this way too.

Our historical experts that have really studied first century history and even earlier would probably want to clarify a little bit here that slave and bondservant are actually a little bit different.

And it could even be sort of if you want to think of best case scenario, if you were a doolos in the first century, best case scenario is that you could be enjoying your life as a bond servant for a family.

That it's actually your livelihood to get to do that and it works out pretty good, and you're treated really well.

That's possible in the first century.

But in fact, I think that's very powerful to think about.

Yes, there was the dark side of it too that was really, really bad.

You were just property.

But then there was this other side of it where it was a positive experience.

But what's true about either one of those is that you're still working to earn your acceptance, to kind of earn your value, if you will, in that household.

The relationship you have with the people who you live with is completely based on obedience.

That you're just doing what you're told, doing what you're supposed to do.

And your future is absolutely uncertain.

There's no guarantees for will you be sane with this family?

Will you be somewhere else one day?

Will you get traded?

Will you get sold?

Will you be let go if you make a mistake?

If actually they're committed to keeping you, what happens when they die?

You're just kind of without them now.

That was the life of a doulos, a slave or bondservant.

And Paul masterfully says, That's what you once were, that's where you used to be.

But because God stepped out of heaven onto earth and put on human flesh, born of a virgin, dying on a cross, rising from the grave, if you put your faith in him, it changes everything.

You go from doolos to wijas, translated son, and it could also be translated child.

And that's a totally different type of relationship than the doolos relationship.

You are accepted unconditionally, it's not to be earned.

Your value is inherent, not based on your obedience.

Your relationship is based on an actual eternal, for the rest of your life, commitment by the Father, and your future is guaranteed.

You will be an heir.

This is what's interesting, and it's been well documented and preached quite often.

You may have heard this once already, but I'll share it again.

In the first century, when Paul wrote this letter, someone who was adopted into a family had more guarantees than a biological child.

Because the way the law worked, this child who literally was going to be destitute unless someone adopted him or her, when you make a commitment under the law of that day to adopt them, they need to make sure you there's there's no turning back, there's no returns or exchanges here.

And so they were like, You, this person will absolutely get an inheritance.

You could deny an inheritance for your biological child, but you could not deny the inheritance of an adopted child.

And and God is so brilliant in how He inspired Paul to write these words to convey that to you and me today, that when you begin to doubt your acceptance by God, that when you think somehow, some way you could do something to be kicked out of the inheritance of God, you can't.

As an adopted child of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, your future is guaranteed as an adopted child.

Jesus died and rose again so that I and you can be adopted into God's family forever.

As a child of God, I have freedom, and so do you.

Freedom.

I have the Holy Spirit of God living within me.

In fact, Paul says, that same spirit cries out to God, Ah, but Father.

There's something in our soul and in our spirit that even when we're not actively praying, we long for and we yearn for the Father.

I don't have to earn God's love.

I don't have to work to achieve his grace and mercy.

I'm forgiven, I'm loved.

Even though sometimes I want to go back to my past and feel shame, the Father says, What are you doing?

I took your sins and I cast it as far as the east is from the west, and I've remembered it no more.

There's no shame from your dad.

I do not have to fear God's judgment.

When I stand before him one day, I don't have to be afraid of that moment.

I do not have to fear the enemy.

Because he can't have me.

He's been defeated by Jesus Christ already.

No fear, only love.

I can have joy even though I will get sad sometimes.

It's not the kind of sadness that could ever take away my adoption as a son.

I can have peace even when life gets hard.

Because nothing can ever take away my sonship in the kingdom of God.

I can always have so much love that I can give it to others because as I continue to grow in my faith, I more and more discover how much love I've been given by God that's so undeserved, so unearned.

And when you catch a glimpse of that kind of love and really begin to embrace it and believe it, how can we not forgive others and love others the same way God has forgiven us and loved us as well?

He will always be with me all the days of my life until I see him face to face.

I didn't earn that.

It's not because I'm good enough to have that, it's simply because I believed in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And I called upon his name, as it says in Romans 10 13, and asked him to save me.

And he did.

And he will do it for anybody.

His next step invitation to every single human being on planet earth, every one of you in this room, everyone tuning in online right now, his invitation is Psalm 34 8.

Come taste and see that the Lord is good.

How happy is the person who takes refuge in him.

I want to ask of two things of you today.

First, perhaps this is what you need to hear this morning.

Finally turn and let yourself be adopted by the Father who paid for that adoption through his son.

Paid for it through his son.

He paid for it in his own blood so that we could all be sons and daughters of the King.

If you're here today or you're watching, listening online right now, and you've never had that moment where you stopped the direction of your life and turned and said, Jesus, save me.

I'm no longer living for me.

I'm no longer entrusting in anything else.

I'm no longer wanting to try to earn or deserve.

Like there's no way you should accept me, but you say in your word that if I turn to you, you will accept me.

Well, do it.

Turn to him, finally turn to him and let go of your fear.

Let go of your life of do loss, slavery, a bond servant, and enter into a life of freedom and undeserved eternal love from the Father.

Finally turn to him.

And then the second thing I would invite you into as a next step isn't once you do that, don't ever turn back.

Don't settle for less than the goodness of the Lord.

Once you've tasted and seen his goodness, how could we ever turn back?

But it is tempting to do that.

It's the very reason why God inspired Paul to write this letter.

Because he believes that's exactly what they had done.

They had tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and they're suddenly turning away.

They're sliding back into something that is less than God wants for them.

So I want to read just a few more verses past where we left off in Galatians 4, starting in verse 8.

Paul writes, but in the past, since you didn't know God, you were enslaved to things that by nature are not God's.

But now, since you know God, or rather have become known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elements?

Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again?

You are observing special days, months, seasons, and years.

I am fearful for you that perhaps my labor for you has been wasted.

What's really cool about this passage, it's kind of easy to just kind of keep going and not really stop and think about this.

But the believers in Galatia were mostly non-Jewish believers.

And the reason that Paul was adamantly writing this letter to them is some people had started going to church with them that believed that, okay, yes, Jesus Christ died and rose again, and we believe in him, but we also need to become Jewish too.

Jesus was Jewish, and so we kind of need to make sure we're doing Jewish things also, or he's gonna be unhappy with us.

Things like the circumcision of the males, things like what was hinted at in this passage, observing special seasons and years and days, just like the Jewish people did.

They had this very ritualistic thing.

It was in the Torah, this is what you gotta do.

You gotta observe all these festivals and do all these things.

It is the law that you must do.

And don't you kind of see how tempting it would be?

I think I would have been tempted by that.

As a churchgoer in Galatia, I'd be like, yeah, man, like Jesus died for me and I want to follow him.

I'll I'll do anything for him.

Like, so if you're saying I better observe these Jewish holidays or he's not gonna be happy with me, I'm gonna probably swallow that hook, line, and sinker.

Just the way I'm wired.

I tend towards legalism.

I run away from guilt.

I want to achieve.

And so the way I'm wired, I would have been, man, I would have been probably first in line and pushing others to do the same.

And Paul was so adamant in this letter.

Man, go read Galatians.

You can read it in like 30 minutes.

It's such an easy, quick book to read.

He was angry, Paul, man.

Especially at one point, they were doing the circumcision thing to become Jewish in order to earn God's favor.

And Paul was so mad at one point, he said in his letter, the people that are doing that, I hope they slip with the knife and mutilate themselves.

He was angry, Paul, right?

In righteous indignation, man.

That's how upset he was.

At different points, he said, For you to do that, you're basically falling away from grace.

The cross of Christ means nothing if you think you can do something to earn God's favor.

The cross of Christ only has value when it alone is the only way of salvation.

And that's great news, isn't it?

That is great news.

That is the gospel.

That's why his grace is so amazing.

And yet somehow, somehow, we just tend to turn back.

Like freedom in Jesus, I am accepted, I am loved, but also I'm ashamed, and I don't know if I'm doing this right, and I better do this right, or I don't know if I'm, I don't know if I'm looking forward to ever standing before God because I'm a sinner.

We just kind of slide back into that.

What I love about this passage is when I first read this part of the of Galatians, because they were Gentile believers, their past that they were probably slipping back into at times was more immorality, impurity, uh, living a hedonistic lifestyle, a lifestyle of seeking pleasure.

In fact, if they worshiped any Greco-Roman god or goddess, you were encouraged to live in immoral ways as an act of worship to appease those gods and goddesses.

So you would think Paul would be warning them like, don't turn back to your immorality and impurity and your drunkenness.

Don't turn back to that because you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good.

But he adds to it, and also don't get all legalistic and religious as if you can do something to earn the love and the grace of God.

That was his word to the Galatians.

They were being led back into slavery.

And God says, and I believe he's saying this to us today, don't ever turn back.

Don't settle for less than the goodness of the Lord.

As I was thinking about this for myself, I think what I will allow for me personally to sometimes cause me to want to turn a little bit more that way.

It's not it's not that I feel like I want to be legalistic again.

That can slip in for me too.

I feel like I'm I'm done with the pleasures of this world, although I do think that can slip in too.

I think, I think when my feelings don't feel the way they feel, I begin to doubt.

That's me.

I don't know if that's you too.

But sometimes I get surprised.

Well, I don't think I should feel worried or afraid.

What's wrong with me?

Why am I experiencing that?

Why am I feeling that?

Could that mean that I'm not in the right place?

And how do I get in the right place?

And and I think to some extent, when I feel that feeling of whether it be anxiety or a little bit of fear or doubt, when I feel that, what God is teaching me is don't spiral into that.

Rather than letting that take me down this path of being lost in my thoughts, just turn to him with it.

Just turn directly to him with it.

And say, Lord, I'm I just feel anxious today.

What I I don't I don't feel like I'm I don't have the value that you want me to have today.

I don't know if I'm being as useful to you as I want to be, and I feel like maybe, just maybe, I wonder if you feel like I don't have as much value.

Like just own that before the Father.

Like, God, sometimes I just don't feel like you could really love me the way I guess I really thank and hope that I am by you.

Taste and see that the Lord is good, and when something starts to pull you away from it, boomerang right back to it.

Like, God, you died for me, and I know your word says I just gotta trust what your word says, but today I'm struggling trusting what your word says.

Am I really that forgiven?

Am I really that accepted?

Am I really an heir of your eternal kingdom guaranteed?

And the answer to that by the authority of the word of God is yes, yes, yes, yes.

Want to say one more thing before we pray?

This is what I want to do.

I want to do this, I want to do this better, I want to do this daily, and so I invite you into it with me.

Live in and enjoy the goodness of your permanent chosen status.

Permanent, chosen.

If you put your faith in Jesus, that's permanent.

You were chosen, you were adopted, it does not end, it will not go away.

You're his, and nothing, as Jesus said, can pluck you out of the hand of the Father.

I think this is a great description of what it means to be a Christian.

Live in and enjoy.

Taste and see that the Lord is good and enjoy it and live in it.

Keep tasting and seeing that the Lord is good every day, even when times are hard, even when circumstances are not great, even when you fail, you turn back to him and you keep tasting and seeing that the Lord is good over and over and over and over again.

This is our life in Christ.

And if today you're here, or if you're watching, listening online right now, and you've not turned to him and moved away from doulos into wias, moved away from slavery into sonship, child ship, daughtership in the Lord, his arms are open wide, ready to receive you right now.

Turn and believe in him.

And if you have turned and believed in him, have you turned back?

Have you slid into a place where you haven't been really tasting and seeing that the Lord is good?

Come on back.

Slide back into his presence today and know that you are loved forever because he chose you and you've believed in him.

Let's ask him to help us do that as we pray right now.

Will you bow with me?

With every head bowed, if you're here today and you've not taken that first step of faith and asked Jesus to save you and forgive you of your sins, do it now.

Your prayer might be something like this Father, I believe, I believe that you sent your one and only Son to die on the cross for my sins and rise again so that I might live with you forever.

I want that, Lord.

Please forgive me of my sins and adopt me as your child forever.

Father, whoever might be praying a prayer like that right now, I pray that they will literally feel your presence entering into their very spirit and their life and their soul.

That they would feel the weight of their sins being lifted and cast away, that they would feel your love and your grace pouring over them even now.

There really is nothing like it, God.

There's nothing like you being present within us.

There's nothing like living in this peace of knowing that we're yours forever.

And Lord, maybe someone here today just needed to be reminded that those circumstances have shown up that are hard, though maybe they've made mistakes and slid away from the decisions you would have them make, that you are still their father, and you're inviting them to come back and taste and see that you are good.

So we turn back to you right now, Father, and we believe that nothing can ever take away what you've given us this great salvation.

We love you, Father, and we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.