The Divine Invitation to True Satisfaction Text: Psalm 34:8-10
Introduction: Two Feasts, Two Fears
We live in a world that is starving, but it is a peculiar kind of starvation. Our culture is not starving for lack of food, but for lack of satisfaction. We are surrounded by a smorgasbord of distractions, entertainments, and ideologies, each promising to fill the gnawing emptiness in the modern soul. The world invites us to a feast, but it is a feast of styrofoam and cotton candy. It offers tastes that never satisfy and drinks that only make you thirstier. The end of that meal is always indigestion, regret, and a deeper hunger than when you began.
The secularist worldview, in all its forms, is a worldview of want. It is predicated on envy, on covetousness, on the perpetual unrest of the soul that has no anchor. It trains men to fear the wrong things, to fear missing out, to fear what other men think, to fear economic downturns, and to fear being on the wrong side of history. This fear of man is a snare, and it keeps men chasing after the wind, always lacking, always hungry.
Into this frantic and famished world, the Word of God extends a different invitation. It is not a suggestion, but a command born of love: "O taste and see that Yahweh is good." This is not an invitation to a bland, religious duty. It is a summons to a feast, to an experience of the goodness of God that is as real and as palpable as honey on the tongue. And this invitation is tied to a different kind of fear, a fear that liberates instead of enslaves. The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and as we see in our text, it is also the beginning of true satisfaction. It is the only cure for the perpetual want that plagues the hearts of men.
This passage sets before us a stark choice. You will either fear God and want for nothing, or you will fear everything else and want for everything. You will either taste the goodness of the Lord, or you will spend your life tasting the fleeting, plastic pleasures of the world, which always leave a bitter aftertaste. The choice is between the lion that prowls and perishes, and the saints who fear and flourish.
The Text
O taste and see that Yahweh is good;
How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
Oh, fear Yahweh, you His saints;
For there is no want to those who fear Him.
The young lions do lack and suffer hunger;
But they who inquire of Yahweh shall not be in want of any good thing.
(Psalm 34:8-10 LSB)
An Empirical Faith (v. 8)
We begin with this wonderful, experiential command.
"O taste and see that Yahweh is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!" (Psalm 34:8)
Christianity is not a dry, abstract philosophy. It is not a set of rules to be grimly followed in the dark. It is a relationship with the living God, and it is meant to be experienced. The psalmist here uses the language of the senses. Taste. See. This is an invitation to personal verification. God is not asking for blind credulity. He is saying, "Put me to the test. Bring your life, your troubles, your hopes, and your fears to me, and see for yourself if I am not good."
To taste is to have an intimate, personal encounter. You can read a cookbook and know the ingredients of a feast, but that is a far cry from tasting the meal. Our generation is full of people who have read about Christianity, or have heard about it from a hostile media, but they have never actually tasted it. They have never partaken of the grace of God in Christ. The central act of our worship is to come to a table and to taste and see that the Lord is good in the bread and the wine. This is an embodied faith. Justification by faith is not a theory; it is the grace of God that enables you to truly enjoy the bread on your table and the wine in your glass because you know that God has accepted your works in Christ.
And what is it that we are to taste? The goodness of Yahweh. Goodness is not an abstract ideal floating in the cosmos. Goodness has a name. It is Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Israel. His goodness is not a sentimental fluffiness; it is His covenant faithfulness, His steadfast love, His absolute holiness, and His sovereign power, all working for the good of His people. To taste His goodness is to experience His deliverance, His provision, and His fellowship.
The second line of the verse tells us how this tasting happens: by taking refuge in Him. The man who is blessed, the man who experiences this goodness, is the one who runs to God for safety. He doesn't trust in his own strength, his own wisdom, or his own righteousness. He abandons all self-reliance and hides himself in the fortress of God's character. When the storms of life hit, when enemies surround you, when your own heart condemns you, where do you run? The world runs to distraction, to substances, to self-pity. The blessed man runs to God. Taking refuge in God is the practical action of faith. And when you run to Him and find safety, you have tasted and seen that He is good.
The Fear That Frees (v. 9)
Verse 9 connects this experience of God's goodness to a particular disposition of the heart: the fear of Yahweh.
"Oh, fear Yahweh, you His saints; For there is no want to those who fear Him." (Psalm 34:9 LSB)
This might seem like a paradox to the modern mind. How can fear lead to a lack of want? We think of fear as a source of anxiety and distress. But the Bible distinguishes between two kinds of fear. There is a craven, servile fear of punishment, the fear of a slave before a tyrant. But there is also a filial, reverential fear, the awe and respect of a son before a good and powerful father. This is the fear of the Lord. It is not the fear that He might harm you, but the fear of displeasing Him whom you love. It is a profound awareness of His holiness, His majesty, and His absolute authority, coupled with the knowledge of His covenant love for you in Christ.
This fear is the toggle switch of the soul. If you fear God, you will not fear man. If you fear man, you do not fear God. The fear of God displaces all lesser fears. When you are rightly terrified of God's awesome holiness and power, the threats of mortal men begin to look rather puny. What can they do to you? All they can do is kill you, which for the believer is a promotion.
And notice the promise: "For there is no want to those who fear Him." This is an absolute statement. It is a promise of complete sufficiency. This does not mean that the man who fears God will have a three-car garage and a stock portfolio that always goes up. It means he will have no ultimate, final, soul-destroying want. He will have everything he truly needs for life and godliness. His deepest desires will be satisfied in God Himself. Because he fears God, he does not want what the world wants. His desires are reordered. He wants God, and in God, he has everything. This is the secret of true contentment. The man who fears God is the richest man in the world, regardless of the size of his bank account.
The Folly of Self-Reliance (v. 10)
The final verse of our text provides a sharp contrast to drive the point home.
"The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; But they who inquire of Yahweh shall not be in want of any good thing." (Psalm 34:10 LSB)
The young lion is the biblical symbol of strength, ferocity, and self-sufficiency. If anyone should be able to provide for himself, it is the young lion in its prime. It is powerful, cunning, and at the top of the food chain. And yet, the psalmist says, they lack and suffer hunger. Their strength fails them. Their prey eludes them. Their self-reliance is ultimately a dead end. This is a polemic against every form of humanism and worldly strength.
The world tells you to be a lion. Be aggressive. Be ambitious. Claw your way to the top. Trust in your own abilities. But Scripture tells us that this path, for all its apparent power, ends in want and hunger. The most powerful and self-reliant people in the world are often the most empty. They have everything, and yet they have nothing. Their souls are starving.
The contrast is with those who "inquire of Yahweh." The posture of the believer is not that of a predator, but of a petitioner. We do not hunt for our own provision; we ask our Father for it. To inquire of the Lord is to seek His face, His will, and His provision in prayer and through His Word. It is an act of humble dependence. It is the opposite of the lion's proud self-reliance.
And the promise to these humble seekers is even more expansive than the one in the previous verse. They "shall not be in want of any good thing." God does not promise to give us everything we want, because our wants are often foolish and destructive. But He does promise to withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11). If something is truly good for you, in the ultimate sense, God will provide it. And if He withholds something, it is because in His infinite wisdom, He knows it is not a good thing for you at that time. This is a staggering promise. It means that the Christian, the one who fears and seeks the Lord, can look at his life, with all its joys and sorrows, its possessions and its losses, and say with confidence, "I lack no good thing."
Conclusion: The Satisfied Soul
So we are left with a clear choice. Will we pursue the path of the lion, the path of worldly strength and self-reliance, which inevitably ends in hunger and want? Or will we accept the divine invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good? Will we learn the liberating fear of God that drives out all other fears and leads to true contentment?
This is not a call to passivity. The man who inquires of the Lord is not lazy. But his work is done in a spirit of dependence, not of anxious striving. He works hard, but he trusts God for the results. He plans, but he holds his plans loosely, submitting them to the Lord's will. He knows that his ultimate provision and satisfaction are not found in the fruit of his own labor, but in the goodness of his covenant God.
The ultimate taste of God's goodness is found at the cross. There, God did not withhold His only Son, the supremely good thing, in order to save us. In Christ, God has already given us the greatest possible good. As Paul argues in Romans 8, "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" If He has given you Christ, can you really believe He will withhold any lesser good thing from you?
Therefore, come to the feast. Take refuge in Him. Abandon the self-sufficient pride of the lion. Learn to fear the Lord. Inquire of Him in all things. Do this, and you will find a satisfaction that the world cannot give and cannot take away. You will find that you lack no good thing, because you have God, and He is the fountain of all goodness.