OPEN: Years ago, in an old stoddy community, a new doctor came to town. It was said he could cure anything and anybody, and everyone was amazed with what he could do - everyone except for Mr. Sweeny, the town skeptic.
Well, old Mr. Sweeny went to this ’miracle doctor’ to prove that he wasn’t anybody special. He went and told the doctor, "Hey, doc, I have lost my sense of taste. I can’t taste nothin’, can you help me?"
The doctor scratched his head and mumbled to himself a little, then told Mr. Sweeny, "What you need is jar number 47."
The doctor turned to his shelf of medicines and took down a jar and told Mr. Sweeny to put some of it in his mouth. Immediately, Sweeny spit it out, "This is gross!" he yelled.
"Well, Mr. Sweeny”, said the doctor, “ I believe I’ve just restored your sense of taste."
Angrily, Mr. Sweeny went home and fumed about his failure. But, one month later, he believed he had a solution to his problem, and went back to the doctor. "Doc,” he said “I’ve been having problems with my memory. I can’t seem to remember anything anymore!"
Now, Mr. Sweeny was very pleased with himself because he just knew he had finally stumped this new doctor and he waited as the doctor scratched his head, mumbled to himself a little. Finally, the doctor went over to the shelf with his medicines on it and said aloud “Well, Mr. Sweeny, I believe what you need is jar number 47..."
When the doctor turned around, Mr. Sweeny was no longer there… (pause for effect)
He remembered.
APPLY: It was said that this new doctor could cure anything. And he CURED Mr. Sweeny. Now, of course, Sweeny didn’t really suffer from taste or memory problems. His problem lay much deeper than that… but whatever problem he really had… this new doctor healed him of it. And what healed Mr. Sweeny was the memory of how something tasted.
The word of God teaches us that one of the best ways to fix things that are wrong in our lives and to heal the wounds of our souls is to “remember” certain things.
Many scholars believe that Psalm 42 was written by David in one of the darkest times of his life. Years before this David made a bad choice. He committed adultery with a beautiful woman named Bathsheba and as a result, he ruined her marriage and seriously damaged his own family. Now - because of that sin - he’s lost his home and his prestige… his son Absalom has turned against him. He’s been run out of Jerusalem and is in hiding in the wilderness.
(pause…) David has lost practically everything that has mattered to him.
Now he’s come to a cross roads in his life… and he has a choice to make. How’s he going to respond to this tragedy? And the choice David made is intriguing… because it’s not the kind of choice a lot of people make.
1. A lot of people respond to the tragedies of their lives by becoming angry at God.
They lash out at Him and deny His existence. They see God as somehow responsible for the hardship and pain they experience. Now in David’s case that was true - he had sinned and God was bringing a punishment upon him because of it. But many people who suffer aren’t being punished by God. But somehow they view as God as being to blame for their torment.
And because they blame God, they feel a need to hurt him. They become like a Mr. Sweeny and try to discredit the only one who can heal them. They become bitter, angry people, shaking their fists at the heavens forever attempting to hurt God by denying He exists. They cast away their faith thinking that this will help in some way to make up for their pain.
ILLUS: Shortly after the death of his wife a preacher named Arthur Gossip preached a sermon:
"I don’t understand this life of ours. But still less can I comprehend how people in trouble and loss and bereavement can fling away peevishly their Christian faith.
In God’s name, fling to what? Have we not lost enough without losing that too? You people in the sunshine may believe in the faith, but we in the shadow MUST believe it. We have nothing else."
Many people turn against God in their darkest hours… and I want you to know something. This is not an abnormal response to pain and tragedy. In fact, experts tell us that one of the major stages of grief is anger toward God. And I don’t think God is particularly offended by this. He’s a big God… He has big shoulders… and He does love us deeply.
But if this anger and bitterness were to continue for any great length of time it will hurt us and it will separate us from God’s love, mercy and healing.
2. Another thing David could have done… which he didn’t… was dwell on the sin that brought him to this point in his life.
A lot of people do this. They seem to sense that God is punishing them, and so they pile on as well, drudging up any past sin or indiscretion they can think of. That doesn’t seem to be logical, but it does happen.
ILLUS: Dr. Paul Brand is physician who deals with people suffering from Hansen’s disease - or leprosy. In an interview he was asked to give examples of people who had undergone this tremendous suffering. After he had cited some examples in detail, he was asked whether the suffering of these people had turned them TOWARD God or AWAY FROM God.
After some hesitation he said that there was no common reaction. Some, he said, grew closer to God, and others bitterly drifted away from Him. But the difference, Dr. Brand said, was based upon their attitude toward cause and response. Those who kept looking back, asking
"Why did this happen?
What did I do to deserve this?
Am I being punished?
Where is the justice in life?"
These were usually the ones who bitterly turn away from God and resigned themselves to fatalistic despair.
The sufferers who grew closer to God in their suffering were those who could put the question of cause behind them and focus on their response. They were the ones who could say to themselves, "OK, this suffering is terrible, and it hurts, and it isn’t fair, there is no justice, OK!! But now I face a challenge: Can I look ahead and with God’s help, seek to find His work, His glory, His goodness, in every moment of my life, both moments of pleasure and pain?"
Notice, this last group of people didn’t surrender to their pain.
They didn’t allow themselves to be consumed with guilt or despair.
They faced their terrible disease with courage and strength that the other group didn’t have.
Why? Because they instead of focusing of WHY they were suffering they focused instead on God. They built their lives around God/ they clung to God. And because of that, they received HIS strength in a very harsh point of their lives.
Now, I want you to notice how David responds to his suffering. He’s not angry at God
And he’s not dwelling on what has caused this tragedy in his life. Instead – notice what he says:
In Psalm 42:6 “… My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will REMEMBER you (God) from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon— from Mount Mizar.
In other words: I’ve lost my home, my prestige, my security, my family life has fallen apart, but I want to be healed of this pain in my life.
I want the great physician to make me well.
I want Him to restore me to health.
AND SO… I’m going to seek Him out.
“Like a deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after Thee” goes the great hymn that quotes the first verse of this psalm.
David continues: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Psalms 42:2
Where can he go to meet with God?
In verse 4, David says
“These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng.” Psalms 42:4
In order to bring God’s healing into his life, David remembers the “taste” of God.
He remembers going to “church”.
He remembers the way he felt when he was in worship.
He remembers the joy and excitement of being in the presence of other worshipers
Now, as much as I’d like to think that my preaching is the highlight of worship… it’s not.
Preaching serves its purpose in worship
Preaching helps us to focus on God’s will for our lives
But you can turn on the radio or the TV and get some pretty good preaching.
As valuable as preaching is to worship… that’s not our real purpose here.
Our real purpose here - is to “taste” … God (pause…)
When we sing our hymns/ choruses… they should help sense the sweetness of God
When we pray our prayers… the taste of God should be on our tongues
When we have our fellowship time… that should sense the flavor of God
When we gather at His communion table, we are literally eating in his presence
Each and every aspect of worship is like individual servings at a grand dinner and each part is designed to help us catch a different flavor of God.
And when we’ve been in worship… when we’ve sung the songs, and prayed our prayers, and eaten at His table and heard from His word… that meal we call worship – fills us… and nourishes us.
ILLUS: I read once of a letter to the editor of the newspaper and where someone complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday.
"I’ve gone for 30 years now," he wrote, "and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons. But for the life of me I can’t remember a single one of them. So I think I’m wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all."
This started a real controversy in the "Letters to the Editor" column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:
I’ve been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But for the life of me, I cannot recall what the menu was for a single one of those meals. But
I do know this: they all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me those meals, I would be dead today."
Essentially that’s what David is saying in this Psalm.
He’s in the midst of one most difficult times of his life.
He knows he needs God
And so he REMEMBERS the times when he tasted of God and that memory sustained him and it nourished him, and it gave him the strength he needed to survive.
CLOSE: It’s the flavor of God that makes all the difference to us. And it’s that taste of God that the pagan has never yet experienced… but if he ever did it would change him.
Every year at the liberal University of Chicago Divinity School (a liberal school of higher education), I’m told there is a picnic lunch held outdoors on a grassy area. And every year the school would invites a special theological giant to come and lecture the students and faculty while they eat.
One year they invited a Dr. Paul Tillich who spoke for 2 ½ hours "proving" that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book. And Tillich concluded that since there was no such thing as the historical resurrection the religious tradition of the church was groundless emotional mumbojumbo because it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus who in fact (he said) never rose from the dead in any literal sense.
He then asked if there were any questions.
After about 30 seconds, an old, dark skinned preacher with a head of short-cropped, woolly white hair stood up in the back of the auditorium. "Docta Tillich, I got one question," he said as all eyes turned toward him. He reached into his sack lunch and pulled out an apple and began eating it.
"Docta Tillich"... (he took a bite out of the apple)...
"My question is a simple question," (he took another bite).
"Now, I ain’t never read them books you read..." (he took another bite).
“and I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek" (he took another bite).
" I don’t know nothin’ about Niebuhr and Heidegger"... (he took another bite).
He finished the apple.
"All I wanna know is this: This apple I just ate - was it bitter or sweet?"
Dr. Tillich paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion: "I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple."
The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag, looked up at Dr. Tillich and said calmly, "Neither sir have you tasted my Jesus."
There over were 1,000 people in attendance that day… and they erupted with applause and cheers. Dr. Tillich thanked his audience and promptly left the platform.
It’s that “taste” of Jesus that makes all the difference to us. Those in the secular world don’t understand it or even want to accept it, but it’s that taste that makes us capable of standing firm in this world.
