A Word in Season: Meditate On These Things (Philippians 4:8-9)

Most of us are being subjected at the moment to a bombardment of news. Wherever we turn, whether it's televisions or radios or internet websites, there's a stream of material that is coming our way, much of which is deeply distressing and unsettling.

There's the news of the sweep of the coronavirus across the globe, across our own country, into our own regions. We're hearing of many who are falling sick and many who are dying. Perhaps the bad news is closer to home, friends and family who are succumbing to this or indeed other diseases.

Perhaps it's the griefs and the troubles that bubble up from within our own souls may be stimulated by some of what's going on around us. Many of our troubles and our trials may have little to do with the present circumstances, but still we are shaken, we are unsettled, we are distressed, we are beaten down.

Meditating on What Is True, Noble, and Pure

Our peace can so easily be broken, even the peace that we feel subjectively in our relationship with God himself. So what are we to do under those circumstances? If we're Christians, Paul has advice for us when he says in Philippians chapter 4 and verses 8 and 9,.

Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.

The Peace of God That Guards the Christian Mind

The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do and the God of peace will be with you. Meditation for a Christian is not emptying the mind but filling it and filling it with these things which are excellent and praiseworthy, full of virtue, things which are true and noble, things which accord with what God himself has said, things which are good and substantial, serious but sweet, the things which God has made known to us in the gospel.

We're also to meditate on the things which are just and the things which are pure, the things which God approves in his righteousness, the things that are not corrupted and twisted by sin in the way that other things may be, things which are lovely and things which are of good report, that which brings, if you will, a smile to the soul, even if not necessarily a smile to the face, that which brings us cheer, that which is a good testimony to us, things which are virtuous then, things which have this moral excellence to them, things which are praiseworthy, things which would win the smile of God.

Fill your mind, says Paul, with these things. That's not pie-in-the-sky Christianity, it's not head-in-the-sand Christianity. It's not a denial of the reality that is around us but it's a laying hold on the reality that is above those things.

And it's not just to fill our minds. Paul said, Even in a lockdown, even when we're shut in, these are the virtues that characterise a Christian's life. And when we live in this way, when we've got our hearts set on those things, when we've got our minds gripping those truths and when they're having an impact on our souls, then the peace which might otherwise be shaken, the peace which might otherwise begin to drain away, not just the peace itself, but the God of peace will be with us to establish that peace, to maintain that peace.

Trusting in Christ for Peace with God

We find it first, of course, by trusting in Him, by coming to Him as sinners, to rely upon His Son, Jesus Christ, to cleanse us from all our sins and to give us peace with God. And then that peace, in the midst of the troubles that are around us and the sins that bubble up from within us, that peace is to be established and maintained by a dwelling constantly upon the things which God has said and the things which please Him, things that He has spoken in His Word and grace that He has placed in this world.

So amidst the bombardment of all the bad news that we're hearing at the moment, amidst all the troubles that we may find coming up from our own souls, let us meditate on these things and do them and the God of peace will be with us.

Amen.