Meditating on God's Word: Psalm 1

Well this morning's sermon scripture reading comes from Psalm one this morning.

Psalm one, where we continue our series on growing in grace.

And so let me read now from God's holy word.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

And all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

We pray.

We thank you that you have revealed yourself through it.

And Lord, we pray and we ask that, Holy Spirit, you would enable this word to feed and to nourish and instruct us.

Spirit of God, we ask, we pray that we would not only hear the word, Lord, but that we would eat your words, that they might become something that become living words that work their way into us and out from us.

And so, Lord, we ask and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, as I mentioned, we're continuing our series on growing in grace.

Uh Pastor Tom began last week with uh preaching on 2 Timothy, uh, where the scriptures are foundational to our growth and grace.

And he reminded us that if we're not reading or studying the Word of God, then we shouldn't expect to grow.

The scriptures are foundational for our growth and grace.

And so we uh must apply ourselves to them.

And and the reason for that is the scriptures are God's self-disclosure, a revealing of himself, and because of that, they're profitable for teaching, for approof, for correction, and training in righteousness.

And so we uh we're reminded of our of our need to be in the scriptures to grow.

And the next week we're going to, uh Pastor Tom again is going to preach uh on prayer as another means of grace.

And yet this morning, our focus uh and our time together is on meditation.

And the reason for that is meditation in many respects is a bridge between the word of God and prayer.

It is, it plays this important role in our spiritual growth.

And I think many Christians uh know that they need to be in the Word.

They know that they need to apply themselves to it, but if they find themselves making slow progress in the spiritual life, it's often due to a neglect of meditation.

Philippians 2.12, we read, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Now notice it doesn't say work for your salvation, but work out your own salvation, which means that salvation is something that, although we have possession of, it is still something that needs to be to be worked out, to see the implications of this precious gift that we've been given, worked out into all of our through our minds and our hearts, into all of life.

And so that working out is the function of meditation.

And so we observe in the Psalm two different paths.

Two different paths.

One path leads to chaf, the other is a path of blessedness.

And when we read blessedness here, uh it's referring to the person who possesses this deepest and greatest fulfillment.

It's a fulfillment that penetrates with more depth and closeness than any circumstance or way of life.

And so the man described here is a representative example of a godly man.

He's not a perfect man, but he's a blessed man.

Which means that although he's imperfect, he seeks to trust the Lord for his joy and to repent of his sins with sincerity.

He's also a man who many would say has things backwards.

They would say that happiness is not found in God devotedness, but in being freed from that kind of life, they would say that the it's actually the people who are unshackled from thoughts of God who are the ones who have the most fun.

But that's the path of chaff.

Chaff, uh, as you know, is that uh papery protective coating that uh surrounds the likes of wheat.

And so if you were to throw up uh wheat into the air, uh the substance would come down to the ground, but the the heavier grain would fall down, but the chaff, that lighter papery texture, would would be subject to being caught on the wind and just blow around and be taken to and fro, blowing it away.

And so the idea here is that the this is the path of superficiality, of lightness, emptiness.

It's a path that lacks uh substance and fruitfulness with regard to God and his ways.

And and what we're told here is that that kind of way, that path won't stand the test on the day of judgment.

But the man in view here is blessed because he's come to see differently.

He finds deep fulfillment in knowing God and knowing his ways, that they are right and good.

And so this man has a secret that aids him in this blessed life, and that secret is meditation.

He meditates on the law of the Lord, he meditates on God and his word day and night.

And so let's define biblical meditation.

What is it?

Well, I and I do say biblical meditation uh for a reason, because unlike Eastern forms of meditation that that uh is different, biblical meditation isn't like an emptying of the mind.

It's not something where we empty our mind in order to attain to a certain experience or a certain state of being.

It's actually a filling of the mind.

And it's a filling of the mind with God's word and truth.

And so this word to meditate is actually a word that means uh to mutter.

Uh the word comes up again in the second psalm uh to describe the rebellious muttering of these kings that don't have any concern for God's ways and want to be uh uh removed from him and his ways.

And it's also used to describe the growl of a lion or the cooing or chattering of doves.

And so for that reason, some have benefited from audibly meditating, uh a quiet muttering to oneself.

And uh personally, as I've thought about this, I've found that there's something beneficial for me when I give myself to meditating in the Word of God uh to do that, to, because it it connects my thoughts to verbal speech.

And what I tend to find is that it can help things uh become more concrete when I have to take the thoughts of my mind and try to articulate them.

And so for that reason, I like to be able to quietly mutter or amuse to myself, as it were, when I'm alone or if I'm on a walk somewhere when I'm giving myself to this practice.

A muttering, a chattering.

And so meditation goes beyond just a reading or a studying of the word.

And it's not less than that, but it is more than that.

And so, whereas uh uh applying ourselves to the word of God is taking in, uh, meditation is really what happens when the word of God has already been taken in.

Meditation uh in that respect is like dunking a teabag.

Uh, you know, when you get a cup of tea and you get the teabag out and you you begin to dunk it.

After the first dunk, there's only a little bit of flavor that's extracted.

But the more you dump that teabag into the water, the more of the flavors begins to seep out and be extracted and to permeate the water to where it becomes nice and and and uh and strong.

It's uh it's like dunking a teabag, but it can be likened also to um cattle chewing the cud.

Uh it's a regurgitation of partially digested food that is then re-chewed and re-swallowed as it passes through the many stomachs of cattle.

But the idea is that it's something that may already be known to us or may we might have perceived, but we're turning it over.

We're allowing it to be pondered over in such a way that it brings more benefit.

We begin to see more of its application, we see it uh take to take more root within our hearts and our minds.

And uh my fear is that uh many Christians uh eat their food so quick that they get diet indigestion rather than uh proper digestion.

Uh they read through their Bibles without allowing enough time for it to digest.

And so it's not the person who uh reads the most who benefits most, it's not the person who uh even listens most that reaps the most.

I would say that it's better to hear one sermon and meditate on it than to listen to two and meditate on none.

For that reason, that meditation takes the truth, and by turning it over and chewing on it, it allows more of its flavor to seep into our minds and capture our hearts before we turn it over to the Lord in prayer.

That's the difference between reading the word and meditating on the word.

And so we see in the psalm, the psalm, a promise of meditation.

We see the practice of meditation and we see the pleasure of meditation.

First, the promise of meditation.

Um, we observe here in the psalm this beautiful image of a tree, and it's this tree is planted by a stream of water.

And this tree being planted by this stream is nourished so that it yields its fruit in its season.

And it's indicating two promises here.

The first is the promise of stability, and the second is the promise of fruitfulness.

This is a man who has a constant life source to nourish and bring stability.

By meditating in the word, he draws life from a source that runs deeper than the ebbs and flows of circumstance.

Uh his this this tree's leaves don't wither in the heat of summer because it it sends out its uh roots and and and it drinks up from this steady stream.

The idea here is not that meditation is an escape that detaches us from all the realities and seasons of life.

Uh it's not some kind of uh detachment from living in a fallen world.

This tree still experiences seasons of winter that bring uh frost and a chill to its leaves, uh, the fall winds, the heat of summer, uh, spring rains, but but it maintains through all of this a certain stability.

Uh scholar Edmund Clowney says this.

He says, Meditating does not help us to escape the problems of daily life, the frustration of the assembly line monotony, the anguish of a rebellious child, the burden and sorrow of a parent slipping into senility.

These are not to be left on another level while we escape into transcendent euphoria.

Rather, meditation perceives in the sorrow and the suffering of our lives the path of God's leading and seeks the insight to apply the promise and comfort of the gospel to the realities of present testing.

What he's saying here is that the seasons that we face are real.

The effects of life, the problems, the challenges of life are felt.

And we shouldn't discard that.

But but you know, we might feel sometimes I think, sometimes I think we might feel that that if only if God would bring us through the shortest route.

Avoiding certain seasons altogether, we'd be better off.

But even though God doesn't lead us in the way that immediately always is clear to us, we're stabilized as we look for God's fingerprints in our present struggles.

And by meditating on the promises and comforts of the gospel, we are able to find grace to meet us in our present need.

And that has a stabilizing influence, uh, the promise of stability.

But also the promise of fruit bearing.

Uh, this is a tree that bears its fruit in its season.

And this is a man who whose meditation on the truth of God's word leads to fruitfulness.

Uh, by drawing on this life-giving water, by being subject to the various seasons and trials of life, it leads to bearing fruit.

Uh, and what that means is that this is not a tree producing instant happy meals or fruit overnight.

I mean, this is this is this is a growth that comes about with time or patience.

Uh, you know, you think about how often someone might say to a child, wow, you're you're really shooting up at night.

And to that child, they're like, well, it's, I haven't noticed any difference.

But but the person who's acknowledging that knows that they've shot up several inches since they saw them last.

It's that kind of organic growth that while it's so uh so uh organic, um it takes time, it takes, it's gradual, and yet it still takes place.

And so this is a a growing that is noticeable over time.

Meditation is not a silver bullet, but a promise that yields spiritual fruit organically, progressively over time, as we apply ourselves to meditating on the steady stream of God's word aided by the Spirit.

And so the promise of stability and the promise of fruitfulness.

We also observe not only the promise of meditation, but the practice of meditation.

Uh, two observations here.

This is a man who takes the word in and who practices it daily.

Uh he takes the word in.

Some people I think are good at channeling uh water, but slow in producing fruit.

That is, they listen to sermons and they listen and read their Bibles, storing up truth, but because they don't meditate on it, they become reservoirs of information, but they lack a lot of the benefit that otherwise would be given to them.

I I once read uh reading without meditation is like eating raw and undigested food.

Uh like a good pot roast, if you've ever cooked a pot roast, the truth needs to be boiled down in the slow cooker of the mind and of the hearts to be of benefit to us.

Uh reading or studying is the food in the raw.

Whereas meditating is taking and pondering what is red until it melts our frozen hearts and they begin to drip drops of love.

And that's important.

A true meditation actually uh takes the truth through uh three doors.

It takes the it takes the it takes the it takes it through the door of understanding, the door of the heart and the infect and the affections, and the door of practical living.

Three doors.

And um and so in that way it's not just Bible study, you're praying, you're list.

It's it's it's a bridge between the two.

Working it in before we turn it over to the Lord.

Uh in my early years in Bible reading, I would often tend to open my Bible and I would read it.

Uh, depending on how much time I had, uh I would uh I would read it.

And and and in that respect, it would open the door of my mind.

Um but then oftentimes I would then close it and I would pray uh for whatever came to mind as a way of applying it, uh, opening the door, as it were, to practical living.

I knew it had to go somewhere, and so I would pray whatever came to mind.

But what I missed was the truth entering the second door of my heart, so that the truth gripped me and stirred me in a way that my heart was drawn nearer to God and then led me to carry out his will in a completely different spirit.

And you see, when we do that, we find that there's often a wrestling involved.

It's very common, I think, for Christians to avoid feeling their feelings about what they suffer.

And so sometimes that can take on a spiritual bypassing that that doesn't really engage the heart.

And when you be in yet, when you look at the Psalms, you you don't see the psalmist avoiding distress and fear and doubt.

He's honest about the state of his heart.

He's a man who takes in the truth and and he puts it to his own soul at times even, and and and and and he puts it to his soul.

He says, Why are you fearful, soul?

Why are you downcast, soul?

Why are you anxious, soul?

He puts the truth to himself.

And and so in meditation, when we when we put the truth to ourselves, we find nourishment as it engages our hearts.

So when we find ourselves depressed and we find ourselves distressed, when we're confused and when doubts creep in, when when sin looms large and we're prone to dwell on our failure our failures, we find that the Word of God has a joy for every sorrow and a truth for every situation.

And so what meditation does is it wrestles to fetch life from a truth in such a way that it speaks to us.

As the Holy Spirit takes it, we know that this is a word from God to us.

And so it aims to commune with God in our hearts, not just take information in with our minds.

And that's part of the mystery of the Spirit, uh, working with the word so that it becomes and takes on flesh.

And so um Edmund Clowney again puts it like this learning of Jesus is personal communion, not just textual instruction.

A lover cherishes every word in a letter from his beloved.

He does not just examine it as a document or file it from for information.

The Spirit of Jesus who inspired the scripture is the spirit who dwells in our hearts to bring loving communion with the Lord.

To be like a love letter given to you from him.

Not just to examine it like a document, but to receive and to warm your heart so that you draw nearer to him, you know of his grace and his favor.

You're warmed by his love.

One of those truths to me this week, the simple words in 1 Samuel 36, and David strengthened himself in the Lord, that uh those words have been a precious truth to dwell on for me this week and has spoken into some of my fears and doubts.

Uh God using his word to bring correction to me through this word, to bring comfort from his love, to bring encouragement, so that I'm drawn into a deeper trust and enjoyment and a sense of his nearness to me.

That's the benefit of meditation, so that it's worked its way out and it affects everything that we go on and do.

And so I want to tie uh this together by sharing the testimony of George Mueller.

Uh many of you have heard of George Mueller, who lived from 1805 to 1898 and was a f and was famous in establishing numerous orphanages, but uh more importantly than that, for relying on God for help in some remarkable ways.

And uh that's clear when you read of the life of George Mueller, but listen to his testimony about how and why to meditate on scripture.

While I was staying at Nailsworth, it pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, irrespective of human instrumentality, as far as I know, the benefit of which I have not lost, though now while preparing the eighth edition for the press, more than forty years have since passed away.

The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord.

The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man may be nourished.

For I might seek to set the truth before the unconverted, I might seek to benefit believers, I might seek to relieve the distressed, I might in other ways seek to behave myself as it becomes a child of God in this world, and yet, not being happy in the Lord, and not being nourished and strengthened in my inner man day by day, all this might not be attended to in a right spirit.

Before this time, my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as a habitual thing to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning.

Now I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it.

That thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed, and that thus, while meditating, my heart might be brought into experimental communion with the Lord.

I began, therefore, to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning early in the morning.

The first thing I did after having asked in a few words the Lord's blessing upon his precious word was to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse to get blessing out of it.

Not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated on, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.

The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication, so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.

When thus I have been for a while making confession or intercession or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all as I go on into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it.

But still continually keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.

The result of this is that there is always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, and intercession mingled with my meditation.

And that my inner man is almost invariably is sensibly, even sensibly nourished and strengthened, and that by breakfast time, with rare exceptions, I am in a peaceful, if not happy, state of heart.

Thus also the Lord is pleased to communicate unto me that which very soon after I have found to become food for other believers.

Though it was not for the sake of the public ministry of the word that I gave myself to meditation, but for the profit of my own inner man.

The difference then between my former practice and my present one is this.

Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible, and generally spent all my time till breakfast in prayer, or almost all the time.

At all events, I almost invariably began with prayer, except when I felt my soul to be more usually barren, in which case I read the Word of God for food or for refreshment or for revival and renewal of my inner man before I gave myself to prayer.

But what was the result?

I often spent a quarter of an hour or half an hour or even an hour on my knees before being conscious to myself of having derived comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.

And often after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or evening an hour, I only then began really to pray.

I scarcely ever suffer now in this way.

For my heart being nourished by the truth, being brought into experimental fellowship with God, I speak to my father and to my friend, vile though I am and unworthy of it.

About the things that He has brought before me in His precious word, it often now astonishes me that I did not sooner see this.

In no book did I ever read about it.

No public ministry ever brought the matter before me, no private intercourse with a brother stirred me up to this matter, and yet now, since God has taught me this point, it is as plain to me as anything that the first thing a child of God has to do in the morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.

As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time except we take food, and as this is the one of the first things we do in the morning, so it should be with the inner man.

We should take food for that, as everyone must allow.

Now, what is the food for the inner man?

Not prayer, but the word of God.

And here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it and applying it to our hearts.

I dwell so particularly on this point because of the immense spiritual profit and refreshment I am conscious of having derived from it myself.

And I am affectionately and solemnly beseech all my fellow believers to ponder this matter.

By the blessing of God, I ascribe to this mode the help and strength which I have had from God to pass in peace through deeper trials and various ways than I had ever had before.

And after having now above forty years tried this way, I can most fully in the fear of God commend it.

How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning from uh from what it is when without spiritual preparation, the service, the trials, and the temptations of the day come upon one.

This is a man who knew what it was to derive nourishment by the Spirit through meditation.

A man who was blessed, who faced a stability in all the trials and seasons of life.

And friends, there's no time like the present to live nearer to God by meditating on his person and his works.

Ask the Spirit to set your mind and your heart on Christ and His glory as you read the Word.

Ask the Spirit to come and to give you a palate for this kind of rich food.

None of this is possible to us without the Spirit, without His help.

And you know, there is nothing more sweet than to know that we can meditate on Christ.

The Word become flesh, to have our hearts nourished about the things that He has brought before us and His precious word, to be brought into fellowship with God and to seek and to have Him speak to us as our Father and as our friend.

As unworthy as we are of it, and therefore to find our delight in Him.

Oh, may our meditations upon Christ be many, and in so doing, may they prove to be sweet.

Amen.

Let us pray.

We thank you for your word that you reveal to us.

And Lord, we do ask and we pray, for we know that, Lord, we are prone to have minds that wander and hearts that often get distracted.

Father, we praise you and thank you for the power of your word and your spirit that can penetrate any cold and frozen heart with your love, with your word, with your truth, and with your grace.

We thank you that you're the God who can penetrate even the hardest heart and bring joy to even the most distracted mind.

And so, Father, we ask, we pray that we'd be people who experience more and more of the power that you would bring to us through your word.

That we would be given to meditate on it and derive the much blessing that you would give us.

We ask and pray these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.