Methods Of Meditation On Scipture (part 2)

I want to mention the website here at this last break, which is biblicalspirituality .org,

biblicalspirituality .org. There are, as with a lot of places, there are hundreds of pages of free materials there.

You can download the handouts from the website there under the

Conference Topics button. Also, there on the home page, that's where you get the link to the secret, review of the secret.

There's a section on all my books there where you can order those, get information about those. There's a free sample chapter you can download for all the books.

There's a place for bulletin inserts. And there are dozens and dozens of those already formatted in Microsoft Word.

So they can be used as bulletin inserts or handouts and classes or things like that. I also have a newsletter.

And I'm going to pass around this legal pad in case anyone has an interest in that, if you don't get enough emails and other things.

I put things that I've written. Like the next thing I expect to put out is this review of the Tully book,

A New Earth, and some things others have written. It's not too long. But over on the left, the reason

I do this, over on the left, I put where I'm going to be speaking in the near future. When I started traveling like this, getting on 100 airplanes a year,

I realized a lot of people who used to pray for me every day weren't praying for me anymore. They're praying for their former pastor.

I mean, their future pastor, not their former pastor. Their next one, not their last one. So the idea of traveling like this without prayer was pretty scary.

So I trust there are some people praying for me and for you right now. Because my last newsletter said that I would be coming to Bethlehem Bible Church here in West Boylston.

So that's what I get out of it. I hope you get something of benefit, things

I've written, others have written. And in return, I trust that among the thousands of people who get the newsletter, some of those people pray for me and indeed pray for you.

So I'm going to pass this around. If you would just print all I need is first and last name and email address. And it is only by email.

But I ask this, that you go out of your way to print carefully.

You see your name and email address all the time. So even if you scribble it out, you know what it is.

Kind of like you ever have someone leave you voicemail and they give you the message and say, so please call me back at 502 -897 -4002.

What? What? Their phone number is so familiar to them, when they say it, they just blurt it out because it's just like second nature to them, forgetting that you've never heard it before and you're trying to write it down.

Well, sort of that way with your email address and your name. You know what your name and email address is, but I don't. When I pass this along to the woman who manages my website, sometimes she says, did you ask those people to write with their feet?

So please just go out of your way to print very carefully, because I don't know your name and email address. And I tell you what, when it comes around to you, if you can't read the one right above yours,

I can't read it. So send it back. I don't know who the person is you even need to send it back to.

You probably would. So I know many of you, you're not internet active or are just passing around. You don't have any interest.

But if you do, please print your name and email address on there. And if I forget that, just mail those sheets to me later on.

You can sign up through the internet, right on the home page, where my picture is, right underneath it, there's links. If you'd like to get my newsletter, click here.

It takes five seconds. First name, last name, email address, you're done. You want to get more junk email, we don't put you on any sort of list or sell it.

We want to ask you for money. Really, just what I told you, we'll send out. And it's about every six weeks, two months.

It's not very often. But you'll get stuff that I've written, maybe some others have written. And we also put, for those who care, some family news and notes, pictures of my wife in her beekeeping suit, and tell you how my blueberries are doing, and that sort of thing at the end, for those who care about us.

Like last year, I baptized my daughter. There's a picture of me baptizing her up there and telling the story about that and so forth.

But right on the front of that, on the left -hand side, is where I'm going to be speaking in, and that sort of thing.

So yes, biblicalspirituality .org.

I'll try to put it up here, though. You may not be able to read it from very far, but I have to use this board here in a minute. Obviously, www, and then biblicalspirituality .org.

Or if you don't remember that, just Google my name. I did find the other day, there's someone,

Don Whitney Ministries. And it's very different. Let me tell you.

You'll know you've gotten the right one. And you'll see my picture there on the front. It's a little rotating slideshow of three or four different pictures with my family and so forth.

So just Google my name, and you should find it there. biblicalspirituality .org.

Anything else there? All right, now we're going to talk about how do you do this thing called meditation?

And this does not pretend to be some exhaustive list. I don't believe there is one, but I do want to give you some different ways of doing this.

I use all of these some of the time. I don't use any of them all of the time. Some of these will appeal to you more than others.

And that's why I'm giving you so many. But the starting place is after you've done your

Bible reading, choose a verse or phrase for meditation. So if you're reading through the Bible, pick a verse after you're reading, and go back and meditate on that verse.

So it may be as simple as a verse or phrase that stood out to you. This is on the, you have a handout that has a gray rectangle at the top, and underneath that is a broad oval.

This one, all that is on here. So you're reading along, suddenly a verse just jumps off the page, grabs you by the throat.

Well, after you're reading, go back to that verse and meditate on that verse.

It's very simple. But sometimes you read and no verse really stands out. So pick a key verse from the passage.

If you're reading John 3, nothing really stands out, then what are the key verses? What are the big ideas?

Well, John 3, 3, unless a man is mourning in, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. John 3, 16 is a big idea.

John 3, 17 is a big idea. John 3, 27, a man can receive nothing unless it's been given him from heaven.

These are the big ideas. These are the theme verses. If nothing stands out, then choose the big trunks and branches of scripture, excuse me, the big ideas, so that you emphasize the major ideas, the big trunks and branches, not the more obscure leaves.

If God called your attention to an obscure leaf, meditate on that. There is great beauty and glory in some obscure leaf that God has created, if we'll pause to look.

But while all the Bible is equally inspired, it's not all equally important. This leaf is not as important as this trunk is, not that one leaf compared to that one big trunk.

All the Bible is equally inspired, it's not all equally important. For example, there's a verse in the law that says, though he is bald, yet he is clean.

Well, that's a verse that's become increasingly important to me over the years. But it's not as important as John 3, 16.

There's a verse in the law that says, if an unclean man spits on a clean man, the clean man becomes unclean.

Well, if some of you pastors here this morning aren't sure what you're gonna preach on yet tomorrow, there's a suggestion for you.

Now that's as inspired as 2 Corinthians 5, 21, but it's not as important as God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So all the Bible is equally inspired, it's not all equally important. So if you read a chapter, nothing really stands out to you as the one that gets your attention that day.

Just look and say, what are the big ideas? What are the key themes, the key verses here?

That helps us focus on the majors of Scripture and not the minors.

For we never think enough on the big themes of Scripture. We never think enough on the cross, for example.

So it's very simple, it's very subjective. There's no scientific way to do this. You just read the Bible. If something stands out, go back and meditate on that.

And if nothing stands out, then just pick a verse. It's all worthy of your consideration. It's all inspired.

So just pick a verse and go back, and there's profit in meditating on every text.

So having done that, how do we actually do this? Here's one method of several we're going to cover now in the last 45 minutes here.

What are methods? One way is just simply repeat the verse or phrase with emphasis on a different word each time.

Think of it as just sort of taking your text and squeezing one word of Scripture at a time.

For example, in John chapter two, this is where Jesus turns the water into wine. There's a wedding at Cana in Galilee.

Perhaps there was some relative because Mary's invited over there and Jesus is invited to be there. And as you know, they run out of wine.

And for some reason, the head steward comes to Mary and says, they've run out of wine. And she comes to Jesus and says, they've run out of wine.

And he says, what does this have to do with me? My time has not yet come. So Mary goes back to the head steward and says this, whatever he says, do you do it?

Now just think of the different angle you can get on that just by emphasizing one word at a time.

So just think of this as squeezing this verse one word at a time, whatever he says, do you do it?

Whatever he says, do you do it? Whatever he says, do you do it?

Whatever he says to you, do it. Whatever he says to you, do it.

Whatever he says to you, do it. Same words, but you got a little different flavor each time through, didn't you?

Anybody can do that. High IQ, low IQ, much education, little education.

Brand new Christian, the most mature Christian. Anybody can do that with profit.

Each of those words is inspired. And the benefit of this is it keeps you from rushing through the text.

And that's a temptation for all of us. Okay, I've just got 10 minutes here. All right, here's my verse, here's my verse. Okay, where is it?

What am I supposed to get out of this? What's the problem? Come on, what is it, what is it? This forces you to slow down and not overlook anything, but to look at every single inspired word in the text.

This is a method that will help you do that. Now, once again, if you're familiar with hermeneutics, you know that you can just emphasize one word and thus make the

Bible say something just the opposite of what it actually teaches. Well, the other side of that is called context.

And it's very important. What place does that word have in that phrase, that phrase have in that verse, that verse have in that paragraph, that paragraph in the chapter, that chapter in the book, that book in the

Bible. That's for another time. You don't have time to deal with that. I just want to acknowledge that.

But once again, there is no foolproof method of anything that's going to keep people from misunderstanding or misapplying the

Bible. That's just going to take time, line up online teaching, guidance when there is mistakes and so forth,

I acknowledge all of that. But right now we're talking about, I'm having to deal with every kind of Christian there is and having that Christian get into the word of God on a daily basis.

So with all those limitations, I'm just saying, here's a way that anybody can do. Just go through it, squeeze one word at a time.

Chew on this word and chew on the next word. And anybody can do that.

Anybody can do that. Here's another method. Rewrite the verse or phrase in your own words.

Now, surely I want to imply that we can improve upon the inspired original text. We certainly cannot.

However, this is a way to reinforce the text in your mind from his very earliest days.

We know at least by seven years old, Jonathan Edwards did all of his thinking, he said with a pen, his dad had taught him that. He never thought without a pen in his hand.

Well, similarly, by taking this verse of scripture and say, how would

I say that verse in my own words?

You have to understand it before you can say it differently. In other words, imagine yourself taking that verse and you wanted to send an email or a letter to someone in which you communicated the message of that verse, but you were not permitted to use the words of that verse.

So how would you say it? How would you communicate John 3 .16, but you couldn't use the words of John 3 .16?

Well, the process, okay, I take this phrase. How would I say it? Okay, I'll say it like this. All right, next phrase. How would

I say that? That process of deciding how to say it is meditation.

So it causes you to think about what it does say before you can say it differently. You can paraphrase it or communicate the same idea in another way.

Here's another way. Look for applications of the text. If you'll say to yourself,

I am not going to close my Bible. Until I know at least one thing

God would have me do with this text, you'll meditate. So you ask yourself, what should

I do in response? John 3 .16, how does God want me to do

John 3 .16? Is there something I'm to believe? Is there something

I'm to pray about? Something I'm to start? Something I'm to stop? Something I'm to say to someone?

What does he want me to do with this verse? The Bible says to become a doer of the word of God. Okay, how do I do

John 3 .16? How do I become a doer of this part of the word of God? This is the word of God, John 3 .16.

How do I do the word of God in John 3 .16? So if you'll say,

I will not close my Bible until I know something I'm to do in response, you will meditate. Here's another method of meditation on scripture.

Pray through scripture. One of the reasons I love praying through scripture, which is what we talked about last night, is that it is not only a method of prayer, it's also a method of meditation.

Some of you last night mentioned that fact, and I said, let's hold that till today.

And now you see why. I love praying through scripture. It's the best way to pray for me, as I understand it.

Biblical way to pray. But it's also a method of meditating on the text of scripture.

Because you're just, you take a verse, instead of reading it for two seconds, you think about it, talk to God about it, look at it again, think about it some more, pray about it some more.

You're just soaking in that verse, or that phrase, when you talk to God about it.

Now let me illustrate the point. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands, and the majority of you, I think we said, or at least half of you, were not here last night, so we'll keep that in mind.

I'm gonna ask you, raise your hand, but don't worry, I'm not gonna call on anybody. Just wanna illustrate my point.

First of all, let me ask you, if you were here last night, just raise your hand, up and down, all right. Maybe it's more than I thought, okay.

Of those of you who raised your hand now, I'm gonna ask you to raise your hands again in just a moment, if you can remember at least a phrase from what you prayed through last night.

You may not remember what Psalm it was, but you could tell me at least a phrase, if not a whole verse, that you prayed through last night.

If you can remember, let me see your hands. Look at that. That's a great majority of people who were here last night.

Now, I'm gonna ask for volunteers now. You don't have to tell me the verse. You don't have to say, well, I think it was Psalm so -and -so. Just tell me the phrase.

If all you can remember is, the Lord is my shepherd, I just want you to say, the Lord is my shepherd. So just call out, what are they?

What do you remember? My heart is not proud. The shelter of his wings.

The Lord reigns wherever you are. What's that? Wherever I go.

So forth. Glory of the Lamb. Okay. Someone else.

Loving kindness. Great word, yes. Walk in your way. Someone else.

Do not boast. In the back, back row. Okay, how frail I am.

Incline my heart. I heard yours already. Okay, good. Now, did you try to memorize that?

You did, you did. And I'm sure there are more of you, well, more of you raised your hand than volunteered.

You can remember a phrase that you prayed through last night. And folks, that was 14 hours ago.

And you've slept since then. And it was the tiredest time of the week, as we said, late on Friday night.

You spent how much time in it? I know you didn't spend more than seven or eight minutes. That was the total time. So I'm sure that what you just meditated, you just raised your hand about, that was just a part of that, right?

That was just one or two minutes at most of that seven or eight minutes. You actually enjoyed it.

And you didn't know you're gonna have a pop quiz on it. And here you are, 14 minutes later, you've still got it.

Which means you are able to take that and meditate on it, how often? Day and night.

Driving home here in a few minutes. You could just say, now, what was that verse from that Psalm last night?

Oh yeah, about how frail that I am. It was about his loving kindness.

And you can enjoy that. You can dwell on that. You can pray about that. You can meditate on that on the way home.

Isn't that great? Not only can you do this, you did it.

And you actually enjoyed it. And you did it in just a very brief time.

You still got it. See how easy that is? It has to be easy.

It has to be simple. Now, a child may not get as much out of it as an adult. A new

Christian may not as get much out of that text as a more mature adult, but they all can do it.

It's so simple. So I want you to be encouraged when you thought, well, I don't know if I'm really capable of meditating on scripture and all that.

You've already done it. And it stuck. 14 hours later, you were tired when you did it.

You've slept since then. You spent one or two minutes on it. You enjoyed it. And you still got it.

It's gotta be simple. And it's got to be doable by us. And it is. What a wonderful thing.

So once again, I love praying through scripture because in a very short period of time, your heart is kindled.

It moves you to real conversation with a real person. But it's also you're meditating on the word of God because you take that text, you think about it, talk to God about it, think about it some more, pray about it some more.

And let's say that that verse you just called out, let's say you did that maybe for a minute last night.

That's still 60 times longer or 30 times longer than you would have spent on that verse.

Because if you spent two minutes reading, two seconds, two seconds reading a verse about how frail

I am, and you go on, you don't remember it. But if you spend one minute thinking and praying about how frail you are, that's 30 times longer than otherwise.

See how doable this is? You can do this. You've done it. Way to go.

But you're not only praying, you're meditating on scripture. So that's why Mueller talked so much about that.

We mentioned him last night. He would walk, pray. He said, I realized that the greatest thing I needed was not prayer, but to have my soul nourished by the word of God.

And here again, he said, not the simple reading of the word of God so that it passes through our minds like water passing through a pipe, he said.

And we've already acknowledged that's just what happens. We close our Bible, we don't remember a thing. Moreover, the water pressure in that pipeline is increasing every day.

So we must absorb the water of the word of God. And that's where praying through scripture can help us do that.

So that after you've done that, if you drive to work, you can still meditate on it. Speaking of driving, let me pull a number of these things together here with that.

When you leave church, well, let me back up.

What makes the radio or CD player come on in your vehicle? The key, right?

The ignition. And most of us, you turn the key on, the radio comes on, right? Very few of us are in danger of wearing out the little on -off button on the radio or CD player.

It's just a habit. Turn the car on, music comes on, stays on until turn the key off, right?

You can hear the greatest sermon ever preached. And you walk out of here to the parking lot, you turn the radio on, turn the car on, radio comes on, and the greatest sermon in the world is down the pipeline.

And the Red Sox are here, or the

Patriots, or the Celtics, or the weather, or the news.

At least on the drive home, meditate. Perhaps discuss, if you have someone else in the vehicle with you.

In the early days of our country, they would go home, not only home, but at the table. They would quiz the children.

The children were required to repeat the points of the sermon. Well, at least on the way home, talk about it.

What did you hear this morning? What's one thing you got out of that today? What's one illustration you remember? Because otherwise, the investment of time you heard listening to the word of God, it's gone, and it can mean the greatest sermon ever.

You say, oh, I just can't remember very well. We didn't try. We had something else grab our attention.

And what was there was something that perhaps professionals, a team of professionals, spent uncounted amounts of money to grab your attention for 30 seconds and hold it, followed by another one where a team of professionals with a great deal of money worked together for weeks to get something to hold your attention for 30 seconds.

And you have a series of those, you're gonna forget the great sermon, or even the poor sermon. But the problem is it's lost.

Meditation has to be intentional. Again, my grandparents in 1919 went to church, heard a sermon, they were on a wagon coming home.

Not a lot of distractions, not any music or news. They could think if they chose to do so.

We have to be intentional. What a blessing. We can get traffic reports, weather and news instantly right there. But it can also keep us from focusing on the word of God, things that really last and matter.

All right, let us proceed. Here's another method, the Philippians 4 .8 questions. Now you have a handout with the

Philippians 4 .8 questions. I was reading through Philippians chapter four one day and came across verse eight, which says, finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on, you have a marginal note there, think on, meditate on these things.

And it occurred to me, the Bible explicitly says, think on, meditate on these things.

This is a good list of questions to use to aid in meditation. So I took these things that we're told to meditate on and turn them into these questions.

So whenever meditating on an event, an experience, a thing, an encounter, something outside of scripture, or especially scripture itself, ask these questions.

Remember we said with our definition, meditation can start outside of scripture, but you bring it to scripture, or you can start with scripture and bring it to life.

That's what I mean in this section here. But in either case, ask, what is true about this? Or what truth does it exemplify?

What I would normally do, but I'm not gonna take the full time to do it. What I normally do at this point is I'd have someone give me a text, which

I am gonna ask for in just a moment, and I would write the answers to these questions. So let me do more of an abbreviated version of this.

This is either, this either is usually, it's a great risk. It's either a total bomb, or it's a great illustration, but I'm gonna dare to try it.

Let's, collectively, we are going to become a brain. Each one of you is a brain cell. So someone give me a text, just to show you nothing up my sleeve here, no trick.

Give me a text which says, okay,

Romans 116, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it, the gospel, is the power of God and the salvation to everyone who believes.

Let's just stop right there, it goes on, but that's enough. I'm not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God, salvation to everyone who believes.

All right, if I was gonna use this method, I'd say, what is true about this? Well, that, you know, it's sort of an awkward question in one sense, what if the verse was

God is love? What's true about it? Well, God is love, that's it, you know. Or what truth does it exemplify?

So in this case, what truth is exemplified here, or what is true about this? Come on, brain.

Okay, that the gospel is the power of God and salvation, not what you do after you preach the gospel, or how you communicate the gospel.

The gospel is the power of God and salvation, right? Anything else you wanna emphasize there?

All right. All right, we should not be ashamed of the gospel, and sometimes we're tempted to do so.

Maybe you confess sin at this point. All right, gospel is sin for everyone.

What is honorable about this? Now, the word honor is not a phrase or word that we use a lot, though it's in the scripture.

About the only time we hear it today is it relates to the military, an honorable discharge, dishonorable discharge, but it's an important biblical word.

We're to honor our father and mother. Romans says we should outdo one another in showing honor. Proverbs says honor is not fitting for a fool.

I think we should teach this because it's a biblical idea. We should warn our young people about dishonoring themselves and their reputation.

Show them how to show honor to people, how important it is to be an honorable man, an honorable woman, and what that means.

So in light of that, what is honorable about, and if you need it in front of you, look at Romans 116. What is honorable about this?

It brings glory to God and honors God. It honors God. It's a method for salvation. Okay, it honors God to communicate the gospel, and to not be ashamed of it honors

God because it says that's the truth, this is the way people are saved. I'm not gonna dishonor the one who authored the gospel by being ashamed of it.

It honors God to be unashamed of the gospel. All right, you could write a lot more there.

Let's go on. What's right about this? All right, we know it's the truth for one thing, the only truth.

What is right about, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, it's the power of God and the salvation. It's not right to be ashamed of it, is it?

Right, yeah. All right, what is pure about it? Or how does Romans 116 exemplify purity?

What's that? Okay. It's the way of salvation.

And so that's a pure, it's the one pure way of salvation, right? You can try to work your way, but that's an impure way, isn't it?

It's not gonna get you there. The one pure way of salvation is the gospel. What's lovely about this?

Now, this is not a question men would ask a lot, probably. But why should we ask a question like this, men?

Why should we ask a question sometimes, what is lovely about this? Yeah, hold on there.

I'm asking now, why should we even ask a question, what is lovely? Well, because the

Bible says to. Philippians 4, 8 says, if anything is lovely, think on these things. So ask about it.

Okay, now, your answer. What is lovely about this?

Okay, it's the loveliness of the gospel that saves, not our winsomeness or our abilities, right? Okay, God is love.

Yeah, that people are saying, that's a lovely thing, isn't it? Is there any lovelier thing in the world than a center being made acceptable before God?

Great. Now, this was a little tough because different translations say different things. What is admirable, commendable, or reputation strengthening about this?

Some things you can do damage your reputation, some strengthen your reputation. Romans 1, 16, what's admirable, commendable, or reputation strengthening about this?

Yes. Okay, very good.

It is an admirable thing to be unashamed of the gospel, isn't it? Great, good.

All right, okay. Admirable to see

God has got a power. Our next word is excellent about this. Now, I need to pause here because when we use the word excellent today, we normally think of it as very good.

That was an excellent meal, meaning it was a very good meal. But excellent is a comparative term, okay?

Comparative term. Let me see what you have in your hand right there, in your right hand, the thing in your right hand. Yes, all right.

This is a pen. This is a pen. This excels this, okay?

I would be ashamed to use something like this, okay?

This is a real pen. Gets inked from a bottle like it ought to, okay? Excellent is a comparative term, okay?

We have a hymn. Love divine, all loves excelling, okay?

There's a love of a man for a woman. There's a love of a parent for a child. There's a love of a friend for a friend. Those are good and right and godly, but there is one love that excels all others.

When you compare them, there's one that excels all the others and that's God's love. All right, what's excellent about, well,

I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God and salvation in everyone who believes. There you go.

The power of the gospel does what nothing else can do, what the secret can't do, what totally a new earth can't do, what no philosophy, no other religion can do, only the gospel can do, very good.

Right, in itself, the pure gospel, again. That's right, or watering it down, very good. Yeah. This is on your immortal soul.

Yeah, it's an eternal impact. There you go. Now, look at that. We spent five or six minutes on that.

If we had written that down, I mean, you'd have pages of stuff. And how did we come up with all those insights, all those things?

We ask questions, kinds of things the Bible says we ought to think about. So there's a method of meditating on scripture.

Ask the Philippians 4 .8 question. Similarly, you can ask the Joseph Hall questions.

You have a list of these, the Joseph Hall questions. Now, Joseph Hall was a Puritan. He was an

Anglican bishop in Norwich in Northeast England in the late 1500s and early 1600s.

He wrote a book in 1607 called The Art of Divine Meditation. The Art of Divine Meditation.

I'm told it's recently been reprinted. It's only about 50 pages long. You can find it on the internet and print the whole thing, and it's worth it.

If you will go to Google, and you know, at the top on Google, it says you got four or five options here.

Web, images. What else? Maps, videos, news.

And then something like, then it says more. You click on more, then, you know, about 50 things drop down.

One of those is books. If you'll go to Google Books, type in The Art of Divine Meditation.

I think the whole, you can get a scan, photocopy of the whole book.

It's just 50 pages, so it's only probably 25 actual print pages. It's worth having. That book was like the secret in its day.

I mean, it went through some 80 to something different printings, which remember, the printing press has been in England for less than 100 years at this time.

So a book that sells like that is a blockbuster. Everybody had it. Everybody read it.

All the Puritan ministers would have read it. I think it explains a lot of their methodology. I think that one book explains why everything the

Puritans wrote or preached on, they did it to death. You know, I mean, they were just so thorough, it was exhaustive and exhausting.

And in that book, he has these questions. He'll have a question in several pages about that particular question.

I've sort of modified and updated them for our understanding and our sort of terminology.

But, and incidentally, let me add, you ever have to write a paper? You ever have to make presentations at your work?

This is an information -generating machine. So apart from meditating on scripture,

I mean, you have to be writing sermons, Sunday school lessons, this will produce far more information than you will ever use just by answering these questions.

But if you're taking notes on this, you wanna put by number one, this is by far the hardest but the most important question.

Because it's so hard, you tend to give up. But if you know it is the hardest, once you get that down, the rest of them are a lot easier.

But you need to know that it's the hardest and the most important. It is the key to everything else, because notice that you define or describe what it is.

If you don't know what it is, all the rest of them have to do with it. So if you don't know what it is, you can't answer questions two through nine.

So, once again, someone give me a text. Well, I need one verse in particular, or part of a verse, yeah, yeah.

I mean, we could illustrate that way, but it'd be more complicated. Let's just take, because I'm advocating, when you do your daily

Bible reading, you're going to read a chapter or three chapters, go back and pick one verse. Yes, in the back.

Okay, they worship me in vain. A lot more to that verse. These people honor me with their lips, their hearts far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching these doctrines, the principles of men. Let's just talk about that one phrase, though. They worship me in vain.

Okay, brain. Let's meditate on that using this. Let me get you started here.

Let me kind of do the first one to illustrate it, because it is the more difficult. And, of course, we have such a brief and concise verse here.

Let me see if I can do it on that particular verse, just off the top of my head very quickly here. It would have been more illustrative to take all two verses that relate to that, but let me see if I can do it in this condensed part.

Okay, well, thank you. Well, let me think on it just a minute.

I'm going to see if I can do it with they worship me in vain. Jesus says that some people worship

God in vain. Okay, there's my it. Let me write that down up here, because that's really what we're focusing on.

Here's my answer to question one. Jesus says that some people worship

God in vain. So, I'm doing number one.

I'm defining or describing, taking my verse I'm meditating on. I'm defining or describing what's there.

So, here it is. Jesus says some people worship God in vain. Second, what are its divisions or parts?

Do you remember that first method where we talked about squeezing one word at a time?

And the benefit of that was you don't miss anything. You tend to be in a hurry and overlook things that forces you to take every part.

That's really what this is. You want to take your it and atomize it. You want to break it down into every possible part so you don't overlook anything.

So, without being too pedantic here, what are the divisions or parts of this?

It's something, who says this is very important, right? Jesus said this. All right, what else?

He's talking about worship. Yeah, vain worship.

Okay. All right, worship God. You can literally almost take every word.

That's the whole point. So, you don't overlook anything. If some people, not everybody, although when we get to that, we say, well, everybody does sometimes, even

Christians, but some people worship him in vain all the time. Okay?

So, literally every word here just about, you could break down. And again, it helps you focus on each part of this.

What causes it? All right, in this case, we'd want to say, well, what caused

Jesus to say this? Context there, it was the Pharisees. Okay, so you'd look at the context in this case.

What causes some people to worship in vain? Substitute tradition for scripture, man's ideas.

Yeah. Their hearts cause them to worship God in vain. Their wrong view of God causes them to worship

God in vain. A number of things contributed to this, right? All right, what does, this is our it now.

What does it cause? Or what are the fruits or effects of this? Well, first,

Jesus said it should cause conviction, right? That should be to make sure, I don't want to worship God in vain.

So, what do I need to do? But, some people do worship God in vain.

What are the fruits and effects of that? Yeah, I mean, it can be a false sense of security, legalism, all sorts of things can come out of worshiping

God in vain, right? So, you see, we're branching out. We've got all sorts of things we've written just in answer to that, number four.

All right, number five. What is its place, location, or use? In other words, think of cubbyholes of thought.

Where does this fit in? Does this fit into my financial life? Does this fit into my married life?

Does this fit into my work life? Does this fit into my parental life? What cubbyhole or box does this fit into?

In one sense, it relates to all, doesn't it? And a lot of biblical truths are like that. In one sense, we could say it has to do with my worship life, right?

That's the real focus here. So, this has to do, this makes me evaluate worship, my worship life. What are its qualities and attachments?

If my it happened to be a data projector, I was gonna meditate on that.

What are its qualities and attachments? Well, its qualities are, what is that?

Some sort of plastic case, glass, electronics are qualities of it, electricity, light, heat, fan noise is one of its qualities.

What are its attachments? Well, it has a cord. It's usually attached to some supporting kind of thing.

So, that's what we mean. What are the qualities of that it? And if you have that it, what do you always have?

You always have a cord, you always have electricity. You always have something supporting it. This doesn't hover in midair.

It's always attached to something else. So, if this is our it, what are the qualities or attachments of this it?

Okay, it's a broad road of religion. What else? Qualities or attachments. When worship in vain, there's usually some tradition involved with that, right?

Some man -made kind of ideas or qualities of that. False anticipation.

Okay, a waste of time. If it's in vain, because it's in vain. There are often false idols.

It's not the right view of God. So, what kind of God are they worshiping? That's attached to that, isn't it? Wrong words can be.

Wrong motives, okay? What's that? Yeah, they're deceiving themselves as being acceptable to God.

They're deceiving others. There's a lot of stuff that can be qualities or attachments of that, right? Yeah, there's no benefit because it's in vain.

God is not honored. God is not pleased. Boy, you see how this generation is all sorts of...

It can be attractive to the flesh. Very good. All right. What is contrary, contradictory, or different?

In other words, often we learn what something is by saying what the opposite of it is. So, if this is what's contrary, contradictory, or different to this.

Worship in spirit and truth. The context immediately tells us there. Worship in spirit and truth is the opposite of this.

And all those things we just said, a lot of the opposites of those things.

God is pleased with the opposite, okay? So, we could spend a lot of time on that.

John 4, 24. All right, what compares to it? Now, sometimes we learn what something is by the opposite.

It's not this, it's not that. But we also learn by analogy, don't we? It's this is like this.

So, what compares to worship in vain? Yes. Worshiping false gods.

Anything else you can think of that's compared to this? I'm sorry? Idolatry?

Wasting your time compares to this. All right. What are its titles or names?

Idolatry is one title of this. False religion, false worship. Yeah.

Sometimes you talk about something, you say, you know, really what we're talking about here is the doctrine of so -and -so. There's a theological or historical title to it here.

False worship, idolatry, it's easy. What are the testimonies or examples of scripture? Okay, now we look at Baal worship, now we look at the

Pharisees. You see how those 10 questions, you realize how much information we just produced in one verse?

I mean, if you had written this out pages and pages, we spent 10 minutes or less on this. This is an information producing machine.

And the same thing will be true if you're gonna make a presentation at work or writing a paper for school. These questions can benefit you in this regard.

It'll make you think about things in ways you normally wouldn't think. Now, a lot of what we just said, you already knew, didn't you?

But what tends to happen is you'll produce so much information, one thing will grab you. One of those thoughts will be a zinger and stick in your soul like a burr.

But with the Philippians 4 .8 questions, with the Joshua Hall questions, what we've done is simply taken a preset list of questions and answered them.

So you can write these in the back of your Bible, you could print these off somewhere and laminate them, put them in your wallet, you could type them into your

PDA, you could make them a computer file, open it up, cut and paste those into a journal or something else and then answer them there.

But you know what the benefit of answering, of having a list of questions like this is for meditation?

It's a lot easier to answer questions than just generate information off the top of your head.

For instance, if I said, are we going to be done in about five minutes here, but before anybody can leave, take out a sheet of paper, before you can leave, you have to write a one -page essay about the chair you're sitting in, go.

That sounds like a professor. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. But what if I said this, you still have to write a one -page essay before you can leave, but tell me this, is the chair comfortable?

Why or why not? It costs so much money, so do you think that's a good value? How could it be improved?

What do you think about the fabric in particular, different color, different fabric, how can you know so forth? That's a little easier essay to write.

Now, I could say, do you have any special memories associated with that chair? Maybe your life was changed sitting in that chair.

You remember that very chair. God saved your child.

You heard a sermon that saved your marriage. You heard a sermon that changed your life sitting in that chair. You had a meaningful encounter in prayer in that chair.

And you could write about that. That's a lot easier essay to answer now, to write now, isn't it?

What's the difference? One thing, answering questions rather than generating information off the top of your head.

You go, your Bible, you read your Bible, you pick a verse, okay, I'm gonna meditate on this verse. You're sleepy, you're tired, you think, what am

I gonna meditate on? But when you have a list of questions, you just answer those questions. You've got a place to go.

It's easier to answer questions than to generate information off the top of your head. Come up with your own list of questions if you don't like these.

A list of who, what, why, when, where, and how questions. Some other questions, but it's a lot easier to answer questions than just come at something out of the blue.

Here's another method. Discover a minimum number of insights into the text, a number that you set in advance.

First time I ever did this, I was in end of Romans, I mean, Hebrews is at 12 there, for our

God is a consuming fire. And I said, I'm gonna set the bar at 10.

I'm gonna try to find 10 comparisons between God and fire. Okay, here we go.

Fire gives off light. The Bible says God is light. There's one. Fire gives off heat.

We speak of God as warming our souls, or warming our hearts, I mean, sometimes. So there's two, all right.

A fire sometimes is used for cleansing. In the law, some things were cleansed by water, some by fire.

We talk about a prairie fire cleanses the prairie. God is the one who cleanses our heart. Good, there's a third one.

Fire in the Bible is emblematic of judgment, the worst judgment. God is the judge.

Hey, I got four things there real fast. How come I got them so quickly? I already knew them, didn't

I? Have I learned anything yet? Have I grown yet? What does my flesh want to do?

Yeah, quit, smug in the satisfaction. I've come up with four comparisons between God and fire.

Aren't I something? But I set the bar at 10, which forces me to put my head back in the text and to keep looking.

I was doing this somewhere. I talked about this. By the time we finished, a few minutes later, somebody gave me this front and back, single -spaced comparisons between God and fire.

See, an infinite mind inspired that text. And there's always a lot more there to see than I've yet seen.

So believing, if I'll look, there's at least 10 things there, I keep looking. Now, this is real life.

I'm not gonna stop. I'm not gonna be there for three hours, stuck at number nine, sweating bullets. I gotta get one more.

I'm not gonna do that, but I'm not gonna quit at four. I'm gonna keep looking.

There's a famous illustration of a guy in the ichthyology class, study of fish. Being a biology, zoology kind of class, they have labs

Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. So they come in the lab. Prof puts this stinking, dead -from -outside -smelling fish out there, you know?

All right, class, for the next two hours, I want you to write as many observations as you can about this fish.

All right, has two eyes. Has scales.

Has fins. Stinks. I'm done.

Comes over and looks. Good, good. Keep looking. Two hours.

He writes a few more, longest two hours of his life. Finally, class is over. So they come back on Thursday.

Keep writing observations about this fish. Can I put a stick in my eye instead and go home?

Oh, he starts looking. And you know, after a while, he begins to see. You know, I'm not gonna lie. All those scales don't go in the same direction.

That's kind of interesting. You know, sort of a gradation in color. It's darker at the top, lighter at the bottom.

And those fins, you know, kind of do this webbing sort of thing like that.

That's interesting. So does the tail. Little rascal's got teeth. Look in there. After a while, he just writes pages and pages and pages because he began to see.

Folks, we have an infinite mind inspired every verse, and there's always more there to see than you've yet seen.

There's a legendary assignment in a Bible study methods class at Dallas Theological Seminary taught by Howard Hendricks.

I've had at least four of my colleagues have confirmed this illustration. He comes into this class, gives them

Acts 1 -8 in their English Bible. You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you should be my witnesses, both in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outermost part of the earth.

He said, now, class, I want you to come back tomorrow with at least 25 observations about this text.

Oh, by the way, in all my 50 -plus years of teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, I've never had one student who couldn't come back with at least 25 more, 25 of these.

So what are you gonna do? You're gonna get them, right? So they come back the next day. Did you get yours? Yeah, it took me three hours, but I got 25 observations.

You get them, class? Yes, prophet God. All right, your assignment for the next class is to come back with 25 more observations on this text.

And by the way, in all my 50 -plus years of teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, I've never had one student who couldn't come back with at least 25 more.

So what are you gonna do? You're gonna get them if they kill you, right? You don't even come back next year and say, in all my 50 -plus years of teaching at Dallas Theological Seminary, I've never had one student, except Dan Rathman, who couldn't come up with at least 50 observations on this text.

So they come back the next day, you know, like this. You get yours? Yeah, it's up all night, but I got them. Did you get them, class?

Yes, prophet God. Yeah. All right, your assignment for the next class is, and they hold their collective breath, you know, to come back with as many as you can.

Oh, good, they're thinking, I might come back with 51. Oh, by the way, the all -time record is over 600.

See you tomorrow. 600? Well, what are you gonna do?

You may not come back with 600, but knowing that some smart aleck did, you're not gonna come back with just 51, are you?

Knowing that somebody has seen 550 things in that text you've not seen convinces you there must be more there than you have yet seen.

So what do you do? You keep looking. Folks, an infinite mind has inspired every verse of scripture, and I don't care how familiar you are with it.

There are riches, there are insights, there are at least applications you have never seen before.

If you'll come with that view, you will continue to see. Well, time is gone.

One of my best illustrations are about this one here. If you just read one chapter, if I try to find a link or common thread, if you read many chapters from all over the

Bible, when I read through the Bible at the beginning of the year, I try to read in five different starting places, and they each have a different section of the

Bible. If five is too many, then read in the green, three in the green. You read equal amounts, you'll finish them all about the same time.

And so my illustration usually is, what if you read a chapter in each one of these, and they're completely unrelated, how do you do this?

How do you find a link or common thread between all the chapters that you read? Normally, this kind of terminology is bad, but it's a good thing here.

When I say look at those through a grid, first of all, the grid I would suggest being Christ.

In other words, look at all of these chapters. How can I find Christ in all those chapters? Or look at the

Bible Christocentrically. How can I find Christ? If this is Abraham offering up, and I'm in Joshua, I mean,

Judges here, Joshua kills a lion with his bare hands. I'm in Psalm 51. I'm in Sennacherib's invasion here, and Jesus heals blind

Bartimaeus. How do I see Jesus in all those passages? Or maybe

I look at my current crisis. It may be about being a dad. It may be about finances.

How do they speak? Now, maybe only two of them do, and none of them specifically speak of finances.

But maybe Psalm 51 convicts me to confess to God how I've been using my money. But even in the passages where I don't see any illustration or any teaching or any application, what am

I doing? I'm looking. I'm saturating in the text. I'm scouring the text, looking, is there anything here in the story of Abraham and Isaac that can help me with finances?

Is there anything there? I normally, I wouldn't go there because that's not a passage on finances, but God knew from the foundation of the world that my life would be in this place today, and he knew

I'd be reading these five chapters today. So I wanna look here to see if there's anything that affects me here.

If I'm gonna look at finances in particular, I go to the passages on finances, but in my devotional reading,

I look and say, is there anything here that specifically applies to my crisis today? You'll be amazed at how many things you will find you would not have found before because you weren't looking for them.

That there's some application, some illustration, something that will give you some insight to your current crisis, but you never would have seen it without looking.

Well, I'd like to say more about that, but I don't. This one, it could take another two or three hours to talk about that.

If you're interested, this is one of the five most influential books in my life. I think you have this information at the bottom of the page, don't you?

You don't? Well, then here it is. The Mind Map book, it's not a Christian book. It's not an anti -Christian book.

It's sort of like your lawnmower manual. It's not a Christian book, it's not an anti -Christian book. But this, if you think about this, if you look at it, just think of taking his method of putting down your thoughts and put your meditations on scripture down in his way.

It's a more graphical way. Some of you have seen this illustrated in other places before. It's just a different way.

Instead of words on lines like this, it's more of a graphical thing with pictures and color and that sort of thing.

Think of using his method of putting down your thoughts, your meditations on scripture. Write him down his way.

And that's the idea behind that. All right, let's come back to that person that we started with, who said,

Don, some days the best I can do is chisel out 10 minutes from my

Bible reading. And God knows that. God knows that some days I can't do more than that.

I work two jobs. I'm a single mom. I sleep five or six hours a night at best. And if I can get 10 minutes, some days that's the very best

I can do. And you're telling me that that's not enough. That reading alone won't do it.

In addition to reading, we have to meditate. That reading is exposure to scripture. Meditation is the absorption of scripture. But I only have 10 minutes.

This is a burden. You're making me feel guiltier. Because what I hear you saying is, if you'll do more, you'll be better.

I know that, but I don't have time for more. If you only have 10 minutes, don't read for 10 minutes.

Read for five minutes, and then do what for five minutes? Meditate for five minutes.

For it is far better to read less if necessary. Now you hear me, I'm not advocating reading less of the

Bible. In almost every one of my books, I advocate reading through the Bible on an annual basis.

Jesus said, man does not live by bread alone, but by what word?

What word? Every word. How are we gonna live by every word if we haven't even read every word?

So I'm advocating reading the Bible a lot. But on a given day, it may be necessary to read less in order to meditate more.

It is far better to read less if necessary and remember something than to read more and remember nothing, right?

Far better to read five minutes, close your Bible, I mean, and meditate for five minutes, then close your

Bible, walk away knowing you met with God, you heard from God, and you've got something you can meditate on day and night than to read three times as much, close your

Bible, and remember nothing. And it's so simple. Anybody can do it.

You just have to be intentional. So if you only have 10 minutes, don't read for 10 minutes. Read for five.

Meditate for five. You'll be able to meditate day and night. Let's pray together.

Father, I pray you'd cause each of these to be meditators on the word of God. As the Psalm says, in his law he delights, and in his law he meditates day and night, becomes like a tree firmly planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in its season.

Its leaf does not wither, and whatever he does, he prospers. Make each Christian here that kind of meditator on the word of God.