The test of experience.
"Oh, taste and seer" The glory of our age is its experimental science. The method of the old philosophers, against which Lord Bacon wrote, was to assume certain principles as true, and reason down to the facts. The new method, to which all the victories of modern science are due, is to reason back from facts to principles; first carefully observing, then testing your conclusions; first learning by experience, then verifying by experience. This method, which in human science is but some three centuries old, is the method of the Bible from the beginning. God has led his Church step by step; taught his children by experience (Galatians 3:23-26). The lessons of the Bible are the voice of experience. The aim of the Gospels, as of the entire Bible, is not merely to convey instruction, but to create a supernatural experience. And its invitation to each of us is to put Divine truth to the test, and make this experience our own. "Oh, taste and see," etc.!
I. IF YOU WOULD SEE, YOU MUST TASTE; AND IF YOU DO TASTE, YOU WILL SEE. Certainty is to be had, and this is the road to it. "Taste" is the most expressive image for personal experience. It is personal. Tastes differ. What to one is delicious, to another is insipid, to a third nauseous. To taste fully, you must not slightly touch with your tongue, but eat or drink—receiving its substance. So, in Scripture language, to taste death means to die. To taste God's goodness means to receive and enjoy it in heart-felt experience (Romans 5:5). For example:
1. God's goodness in pardoning sin can be known only by the pardoned sinner—by actual repentance and faith. Illust.: Matthew 9:2-7.
2. God's goodness in answering prayer can be known only by those who pray (Matthew 9:6). lllust.: Disobedient, spendthrift, runaway son, writing in sore extremity from a foreign land to his father. Under the sea, over the hills and plains, the wire carries the swift message, "Come home. Money sent. All forgiven." That son knows his father's heart as he never knew it before.
3. The goodness of God, revealed and stored in the Bible, can be known only by long study and diligent search (Psalms 119:97,Psalms 119:103). Psalms 119:72 would be unmeaning cant in the month of a good many Christians. They are on visiting terms with their Bible; know it as you know one whom you meet daily in the street and call on for a few minutes now and then. Spend a day with him in his home or yours, talking over your troubles, and you will learn what twenty years of morning calls would never teach.
II. EXPERIENCE HAS NO SURER LESSON THAN THIS: "THE LORD IS GOOD." The Bible is our great storehouse of experience (Psalms 116:1; 2 Timothy 1:12). Christian experience in all ages continues and confirms this testimony—the most remarkable body of practical testimony on record. Our lack of experience constitutes no reason for questioning the reality of this experience, or doubting the truth to which it bears witness. Truth is truth, believed or not. The earth went round before Copernicus was born; and still would, if all men relapsed into the old superstition that it is immovable. The world would be full of God's goodness, though all were idolaters or atheists (Acts 14:17). But personal experience begets invincible certainty (John 9:25).
III. IF THIS EXPERIENCE BE NOT YOURS, IT OUGHT TO BE; IT MAY BE. God offers it. These words are an invitation—a warrant. Beware of turning them into an upbraiding—a condemnation (John 5:40; Lamentations 4:2; Luke 19:42). Are you young, happy, prosperous? Thank God for his goodness. But he has better gifts, which will last when these fail (Matthew 6:19). Are you poor, friendless, sorrowful (Isaiah 55:1; Matthew 11:28)? Are you lost, helpless against temptation, burdened with sin? Oh, taste and see the goodness God waits to pour out upon you (Revelation 20:1-15:17; Romans 10:11-13)!