One of the Verse of the Day this week on the Bible App was “for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 1:49). This verse puzzled me because in it you have two statements that do not usually follow each other, there is not even a correlation between the two, yet for Mary, the mother of Jesus who said those words, they were. When you read the Magnificat (Mary’s praise song), you see so many testimonies of God from Mary, it is as though she couldn’t help herself. In addition to these statements, in my reading of the book of Isaiah, the twenty fifth chapter seemed to evoke something similar, and it is that we do not keep to ourselves the goodness of the Lord for us. Indeed, when we are excited, overjoyed or simply happy, it shows in our lives, and we just want to tell it to the world. Seldom do we find in those moments people that shut us off because they do not want to share in our happiness, in fact, we are often so happy that we do not even care about what people on the receiving end say or think, we just want to share our joy with others. This is what Mary experienced, and this is what we see described in Isaiah. These made me realize that true worship stems from truth. Often times, when we exult the Lord and tell of His goodness to us, we simply restate the truth about who God is and what He has done. We do not make those words up; they are simply a confession of who God is. I learned that confession is truth telling from Jamie Winship. In today’s post, I would like to encourage us to tell the truth about God to ourselves and to others in order to deepen our worship of Him.
There are several examples in the Bible of true worshipers starting with the Lord Jesus himself and when you look closely at how people expressed themselves before the Lord, it boils down to their confession about themselves, their declaration of who God is and what He has done or will do. I suppose this is what Jesus meant when he said that true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23) as opposed to worshiping God through physical objects and places with no knowledge about the god you worship. True worship must be accompanied with truth. When you come face to face before a holy God, there is only one right answer, it is to humble yourself and declare your doom like Isaiah did: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). When you are able to see the LORD for who He is, you cannot help but proclaim His excellencies for they are too beautiful to keep to yourself. In this life, our aim is to “taste and see” that God is good to us (Psalm 34:8) . This “tasting and seeing” starts with us understanding more about Him and seeking Him in prayer. Like many beauty companies who offer a sample of their products to try before a customer can buy, Christianity tells you to “taste and see” that the LORD is good. It is a personal invitation to you to try before committing and the offer to leave is always available too. However, till date, those who have tasted the Lord and seen His goodness have never left Him for they have found the longing they carried fulfilled; they have found the lover of their soul. This same invitation is offered to you and I this morning.
Tasting and seeing presupposes small quantities, at least on the tasting side. Whenever engaged couples who are planning their wedding ceremony go to a cake tasting event, they are offered samples of what the baker can do, it is never the whole cake, for that would be ridiculous. The same is true with the LORD. When we taste the LORD, we are tasting a sample of Him; we are getting to know an aspect of who He is and believe it. Once we have done that, we can now “see” Him by seeing that aspect of Him we believe play in our life or the lives of others; sometimes, we might even be declaring that aspect in our lives to anchor our belief. This is how you taste something; you have to experience it for yourself and make a judgement about what you think of the thing you have tasted. The God of the Bible is not after any type of worshippers like Jesus told us above, He wants true worshippers; people that have tasted Him and seen that He is good; people whose soul pant after Him (Psalm 42:1); people who would rather be a door keeper in His house than dwelling in places of wickedness or having riches (Psalm 84:10); people who are willing to forsake all other for Him; indeed, people who would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died for them. Such are the true worshippers the LORD is after. How do we get to that? We begin by tasting the Lord, that is, we begin by learning something about the LORD. This is done through His word. The best place to learn about the LORD is by reading His words. God has left us His words for our good, for our understanding and it is the very weapon that allows us to fight our enemy the devil. When we taste the LORD, we are able to then attest to the veracity of what the word of God says about Him and that increases our faith. We then move from mere tasters to partakers. We move from having a sample, to having the entire cake, indeed the only time we are allowed to indulge and be a slave of something is when it comes to loving God through our Lord Jesus. Here there are no restrictions, no allergies, no consequences on our body, just pure delight. Having as much of Jesus as we can is what we need. The reality is, we will never get enough of Him! It will take us eternity to know God. To think that we will be having a fresher revelation of who He is every day is simply mind-blowing! I just love the fact that heaven is going to be marvelous and being saturated with God will be satisfying. Right now, it is hard for us to comprehend, and even harder to envision a life with the LORD where there is no sin, there is no hidden motives, a life where our worship is true, a life where we see Him face to face as well as He sees us, a life where our intimacy with God is deeper than any intimacy we have ever experienced, a life of true marriage where Christ is our true husband and we are the Bride. This should excite us and if it does not excite you, it only means you need to taste and see that the LORD is good. You need to come closer and get to know God. There is still time today to do that while you have breath, tomorrow might not be a given. The best way to taste and see the Lord is to know and believe that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). You see, you and I deserve God’s wrath because we are sinners and love to sin. However, when we sin, many of us do not realize we sin against a good and Holy God, a righteous and just God. This is the primary being against whom we sin, it is not against the person we committed the sin to, it is first against this holy God we sin. Being a holy God mean He is set apart, there is no corruption in Him, He does not sin and does not even have the seed of sin in Him. There is no darkness in the holy God. Therefore, He cannot coexist with sinners, justice must be done, judgement must be carried. Hence, Jesus Christ. By sending Jesus to die the death we deserved, God brought justice by punishing Jesus for all our sins that he took upon himself at the cross. Then, Jesus transferred us his righteousness and cancelled every accusation that stood against us at the cross (Colossians 2:14), Jesus gave us a clean slate and gave us eternal life. Because of Jesus, we can now enter the presence of God because we are righteous. Because of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we can now truly love God and experience his love. Does this sound too good to be true? Indeed, it does but it is true. All you need to do is accept Jesus as your personal Lord and saviour, as the master of your life, the one you owe your allegiance to.
Will you taste and see the Lord is good? The offer still stands today, do not delay any longer, do not overthink it, you do not have to be perfect, you do not have to look a certain way, or act a certain way or even put on a face to come to Him, just come as you are He has already died to make you clean. It is not the work of your hand that cleanses you, but it is the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. I pray you do not delay and accept Christ and once you have done that, continue to taste and see Him so that your worship will be in truth and in spirit. Amen!
A Word Aptly Spoken 