Is there any believer with more than a passing knowledge of Scripture who has not taken comfort in this verse:  “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psa. 34:8a)?  In His infinite love and mercy, the Lord has provided us with a plea containing an implied promise in words so brief that almost everyone who has read them even once can instantaneously remember them verbatim.  As this is no accident, should we not take the message of these few words to heart?

            “O.”  The exclamatory word O is not found in the Hebrew and as such has no authority.  But who can doubt that David’s plea as expressed in our translation accurately conveys the heart of God?  Does not the Spirit within us witness to our Father’s earnest desire that we should have the blessed experiential knowledge of His infinite goodness?  Can we imagine that God is lukewarm in giving this invitation?  Can we suppose that He is less than perfectly eager and earnest in His desires for us in this matter?  The very idea that God has such an attitude toward us should evoke an earnest and loving response from us.  He neither slumbers nor sleeps; His eye is always watchful; His ear is ever attentive.  Surely, we must sense the purity and intensity of His love for us in this invitation.

            “Taste and see.”  This is poetic language, verbal metaphors describing experience and perception.  The Lord invites us to wade into the life of faith.  We “taste” when we live by faith (“blessed is the man that trusteth in him” continues the text [34:8b]).  Ours is not to be a life of external religion, of intellectual theory, of steely cold principle.  It is to be the living, breathing experience of walking with the Lord, in the power of His strength, and following His direction.  David tasted and saw when he pulled the five stones out of the brook and ran to meet Goliath.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego tasted and saw when they defied the king and were thrown into the fiery furnace.  Peter tasted and saw when He obeyed the Lord, stepped out of the boat, and began walking across the water; the disciples tasted and saw when they began distributing the various portions of the five loaves and two fish.  Stephen tasted and saw when he fell beneath the stones of his angry fellow countrymen.  John tasted and saw when he was exiled to Patmos for the testimony of Jesus Christ.  In each case, their obedient faith brought them an intimate firsthand knowledge of the character and ways of the Lord.  

            “The Lord is good.”  Not all the experiences of a believer are pleasant.  The psalm from which our text comes reminds us later that “Many are the afflictions of the righteous” (v. 19).  How then can we be assured that in tasting and seeing we will discover that “the Lord is good”?  The same verse continues:  “but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”  When the deliverance involves a complete averting of pain or suffering (as in the avoidance of a car crash), we clearly and immediately see the goodness of the Lord.  When the deliverance involves the lifting of pain or suffering (as in the healing from sickness), we recognize the goodness of the Lord.  But when that deliverance entails ongoing trials (in one sense, Job’s trial never ended because he endured the loss of his ten children for the remainder of his natural life), the goodness may be less visible to the natural eye yet more vivid to spiritual experience.  Who has not discovered in a new way the tenderness of the Lord in the midst of a trial?  Who has not come to appreciate His love more in such circumstances than in the so-called good times?  On such occasions, who has not drawn on a strength, a grace, a peace, a comfort, a joy otherwise unknown?  And who at such times has not been compelled to exclaim with David that “the Lord is good”?  The walk of faith finds fellowship with the Lord to be infinitely precious.  Nothing surpasses such an experience.