February 16, 2017 Show with C. Matthew McMahon on “The Puritans & Meditation”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of February 2017, and I'm in studio with my co -host,

Reverend Buzz Taylor, and it's great to have you back on the program,

Buzz. Thank you very much, good to be here. And today we have returning to the program

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, founder of Puritans Mind, and he is going to be addressing the

Puritans and meditation, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon. Thank you, Chris, thank you, Buzz, happy to be here.

It's great to have you here. Well, I think it'd be wise for us, even though this may seem repetitive, especially to those of our listeners who have heard you as a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron before, or if they already know this information, but I think it's very valuable to make it clear who the

Puritans were, because Iron Sharpens Iron does have people joining us as new listeners nearly every week, it seems, perhaps even more frequently than every week,

I just don't know about it. They may be listening and I'm totally unaware of them, but I know that we have, especially with the new airing of the program in a pre -recorded version on Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, we have a whole new batch of listeners, especially on top of that, since they air

Iron Sharpens Iron in prime morning drive time, 8 to 10 a .m.,

as well as 8 to 10 p .m. But who were the Puritans?

And I know that they're not cookie cutters of one another, there are some differences among them, but tell us who the

Puritans were, approximately what years the Puritans flourished, and what countries they came from, and some basic tenets about the

Puritans. Okay, okay, well, the Puritans were known as those who took the doctrine of the

Reformation, everything that Calvin and Luther stood for, everything that all of the

Reformers stood for in bringing back Scripture to the hands of the people and recovering it from the darkness of the day, they took all of those basic doctrines and they began to apply them to every single area of the

Christian life. Now, this spans a particular time period, because sometimes people will say, well, wasn't

Jonathan Edwards a Puritan, and maybe Cotton Mather and some of these others that were in America, they wonder where those dates fall.

Just to be safe, to keep in the actual Puritan timeline, it runs from about 1559, where the

Act of Uniformity was given, which required ministers in England at the time to use the

Book of Common Prayer for public worship and things of that nature. And it extended through about 1662, where again, an

Act of Uniformity was passed, and 2 ,000 ministers were ejected from their pulpits and from their churches as a result of the

Restoration under Charles II. And so that, it's a good hundred years or so.

Sometimes people will say, I can't believe that something this rich, this deep with such men lasted so long.

But the Lord, for whatever reason in his good province, decided that they would preach and teach and write during that time.

Probably the height of that particular era would have been the

Westminster Confession, the Westminster Assembly. In 1643,

Parliament called the Assembly of the biggest Puritan leaders of the day, and even some that were very well known, and they came together to produce a

Confession of Faith, something that would tie together England, Ireland, and Scotland under a

Directory of Worship, both for public and private, as well as a

Confession of Faith, larger and shorter catechisms, and the like. And they did that over the period of four years, and in 1647, we have the

Westminster Confession of Faith, and it sets down the basics of Christian faith.

You read it and you think, well, it's not so basic. It's very detailed. Some of the packed information in each one of the paragraphs of the

Confession, you just can sit there, which would segue very well into the topic today, and just ponder those paragraphs for hours on end, and all of the scripture proofs that they had for the

Confession, catechisms, and such. But the Puritans were, they were excited about the

Bible. They saw the Bible as supreme in every way, took the scriptures, and they wanted to apply those particular scriptures to every area of the

Christian life. There was no place that the scriptures didn't deal with in terms of the

Christian life. There is no sphere of influence. Not like our lives are a pie, and each one of those pieces of pies are something different, and one sliver might be our job, and one sliver might be church life, or something like that.

They saw the Christian life as a wheel, and the hub of that wheel was scripture, which pointed out into all the different spokes that actually held the wheel together.

And so they took scripture in that particular way, and set themselves to precisely and specifically, being as skilled as they were, apply it to the

Christian life in that way. So that's kind of an overview of the Puritan. And judging by the dates you gave, you would not include

Jonathan Edwards among the Puritans, even though he is frequently referred to as the last Puritan.

Yeah, they referred to him that way generally because his doctrine was mostly in line with where the

Puritans were thinking, what they came from, and such. So it's not that even though those dates give you the historical, ecclesiastical aspect of what

Puritanism was about in trying to purify the Church of England, that's what these men were trying to do, bring the

Church back to the Bible. But their doctrine, their theology, their understanding of scripture, it kept going.

I mean, it goes on for...we're talking about it today, because of how biblical they were.

So when we talk about Edwards, or we talk about people today who are

Puritan -minded, so to speak. One of the reasons why I have a Puritan's mind, the idea is that when you start reading them and you begin to study their writings, you come away with a mind like theirs, set on the

Bible, wanting to apply the Bible in all the various aspects of the Christian life. Well, now you know as well as I do,

I'm sure, that the common belief to the man on the street is that the

Puritans were very harsh and narrow, and all of that. That is a false caricature, isn't it?

Very much a false caricature. They were some of the most joyous, exciting people in the history of the

Church. I mean, how could you not be happy and joyful when the

Lord Jesus is your Lord, and God is your God, and you live to serve Him every day?

Now, the world will look at them and they'll say, well, they were opposed to fun, and they didn't dress in anything but black, and all of that kind of nonsense.

All of those things are caricatures. Whenever anybody says something like that, they just haven't exposed themselves to the actual writings of the

Puritans, and they're just listening to things third or fourth or fifth hand away from any truth to the matter.

These people were... If you want to equate holiness with something that's bad, that's why they're always characterized that way.

They were in pursuit of holiness. They wanted to be holy and follow what

God had said, be holy as I am holy. So that means that they were going to go against the grain of the world, but so Christians should do that today as well.

I want to give our email address. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com. If anybody would like to join us with a question, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. We have Tyler in Mastic Beach who asks, is it true that William Bradford, one of the first governors of Plymouth, is grossly misrepresented by secular historical scholarship?

Generally yes. Grossly misrepresented in a number of ways, and if you read

Banner of Truth actually published his writings in a two -volume set, which if you haven't read some of the writings of Bradford, that would be a helpful place to begin looking at some of the post -Puritan and early

American kind of writing. I mean he published everything from case in point, godly meditations on the

Lord's Prayer, godly meditations on the Ten Commandments. He has a number of pieces that specifically revolve around meditation, prayer, treatises on that particular aspect.

I actually, in thinking about the topic today on meditation, I actually didn't add in much of Bradford because I kind of stuck on purpose to the historical timeline of the

Puritans in England. But yeah, Bradford is a very devotional read and very worthy of anyone's time to read him.

And if you could compare and contrast the Puritans with the

Pilgrims and Nonconformists, are these just synonyms, or are there differences, or are they sometimes the same?

Well, the Nonconformists were the Puritans, both of those are sort of synonymous in the sense that they didn't want to conform to the specific laws being put down by both the

Queen and the Church of England at the time, so they were in nonconformity to that.

But once we get to the Puritans, that becomes a little bit different in the sense that the

Puritans looked at the giant monster of the

Church of England and they said, there's no possible way that we're going to change this, and so we're going to leave.

And so what they did is they became separatists. They spent some time in a couple of neighboring countries until they wound up being able to come to America, and so they separated from the

Church. Thus we call them Pilgrim, and so when they get to the New World, that's the difference between saying the

Puritans who wanted to stay in the Church in England and purify it, and the separatists who left and wanted to start over.

And the term itself, Puritan, began as a pejorative term by those who opposed them, didn't it?

Very much so. Actually before, as we discussed on the last program, before the word

Puritan actually came to light, the derogatory term was precisionist.

And I mean, even today, you know, you start talking with somebody who maybe they're a new

Christian, or maybe they are not a Christian at all, and they hear the way that you talk toward holding

Scripture, wanting to be more godly, wanting to be more holy, and they're just like, you know, you're just too intense that way.

The idea of precisionist was placed on the Puritans in that way, because they wanted to be precise according to what

God said, and they wanted to follow what the Lord said. So they were first known as those precisionists, and later they became known as the

Puritans because they wanted to purify the Church. And of course, although there are stereotypes about the

Puritans, as we were already discussing, there are exaggerations and caricatures and stereotypes, it is true that there were

Puritans that treated others outside their own communion with great harshness and hostility, like some of the

Baptists who actually were martyred by some Puritans, and of course the

Quakers and so on that were not treated very kindly by some

Puritans. Not to say that this is a universal thing, that they were all equally harsh and cruel and tyrannical by any stretch of the imagination, but those things existed.

They were sinners saved by grace, and if anybody was aware of their remaining sin, it was the

Puritans. Definitely, definitely. They were masterful at pondering and thinking through their position before God, pondering and thinking about the

Word, knowing how much of a sinner they are before the

Holy Majesty of God. Many of their meditations in general always begin with thinking about who

God is and then who you are before God. And we have

Joe in Slovenia. He is asking a question that I have not heard about this connection myself.

Well, I mean, there is some connection, obviously, because there is all the progressions that developed in protest against the

Church of Rome. We have different strains of believers that are a part of that, but Joe in Slovenia says,

I heard that there was a connection between Anabaptists and Puritans. Is this true? To what extent, how, if at all, did they influence one another?

Not really very much in terms of just, I mean, the

Anabaptists themselves, when they first sprung up, we generally call that time in history the

Radical Reformation. People that would have dealt with them would have been far earlier, like Calvin and Zwingli and many of those who wrote and spoke with the

Anabaptists quite a bit. But in terms of the Puritans themselves, that would have been much later. Yes, well, of course, there are even

Mennonites and others that call themselves Anabaptists today, but you're speaking about a specific group in a specific period of Church history.

And even when you're talking about the Anabaptists, they are not a monolithic group. There are all kinds of Anabaptists, some who had

Orthodox theology and others who were outlawed heretics, but there's a lot of mystery also because they were persecuted and a lot of their writings were destroyed and so on.

Well, thank you, Joe, in Slovenia. Please keep spreading the word to your fellow

Slovenians and abroad and beyond, I should say. Thank you for joining us on the program.

Well, I think we should now venture into the area of the

Puritans and meditation. This word meditation is a very popular word today.

You have all kinds of Gnostics and New Agers and Roman Catholics and Protestants who are adopting

Roman Catholic mysticism, who are in love with this concept of meditation.

And of course, you're speaking about something entirely different. If you could basically define what you mean by Puritan meditation and contrast it with some of the false practices that are actually dangerous and even border on, if not leaping over the border of occultic behavior.

Okay. Well, let's make it a little bit of shock therapy at the same time. Godly meditation, assuming that we're defining it the right way, godly meditation is a requirement to be a

Christian. People go, wait a second, I might not. People at that point kind of get bent out of shape and they think, well,

I don't even do that. I don't know what that is. You'll see as we talk about this, it's required as a believer to meditate and what that means.

Now, exactly what you just said, people don't like the idea of meditating because it reminds them of all the new age ideas and things of that.

Eastern religions, Buddhism, transcendentalism. Correct.

Correct. They picture a Buddhist monk chanting in a monastery, in some shrine somewhere, or somebody sitting having their eyes closed with their fingers touching, humming, and things of that nature.

Now, the demonic nature of that kind of meditation is not what biblical godly meditation is about.

So, those kinds of ideas, they try to impose them on themselves, seeking to empty their mind for personal calmness and, if you put air quotes around, connect with the universe in some way.

That is totally and completely in contrast and opposite of looking to fill up the mind with the thoughts concerning scripture, to the glory of God, which is where meditation is actually going to take place.

We can see really clearly, very quickly, that godly meditation, especially in the way that these historical

Puritans taught it, is something that we're not very much exposed to today because even in the last 30 years or so, there has been a total of one book published by, and it was actually by, as we were discussing earlier,

Don Quixote and Salideo Gloria, which was Nathaniel Renu's Solitude Improved by Divine Meditation.

Now, since the last few years, we've taken a number of those works, and we've republished a few of them.

We've republished Thomas Watson's works, The Saint's Spiritual Delight and The Christian on the Mount. We've done

Nicholas Byfield's The Rules of a Holy Life, Francis Rue's The Art of Happiness, Thomas White's Instructions for the

Art of Divine Meditation. We just recently did John Ball's A Treatise on Divine Meditation, and we have one by Thomas Jolly called

A Treatise on Heavenly -Mindedness. Whole books that guide the reader to understand what it means to have a successful devotional time.

And you say, well, wait a second. Successful devotional time? I thought we were talking about godly meditation. Well, there are three legs to that stool.

When we talk about having devotions as a Christian, or some people call it quiet time or things of that nature where the

Christian spiritually connects with their Lord Jesus Christ, it's accomplished in three different areas that the

Bible gives us. Accomplished by Bible reading, by prayer, and by meditation.

And so when we think about our devotions, a lot of times, especially today, we're looking for things that are fast and furious.

Give me the one -minute Bible. Give me the quick devotional. I want to read a little paragraph, a scripture verse, and I'm done.

But that is not what scripture, by any stretch, teaches

Christians in terms of what that devotional time is about.

Having that devotional time is not just a time of study, like studying in some kind of exam, or praying in the sense that God is just there to be asked for things that we need or want.

That's not what God biblically intended in having communion with Him. So when people think, you know, they think about devotions as just, well,

I read a little bit of the Bible. I say, if you pray, then I'm done. They've missed the spiritual discipline of what it means to have a time of devotion with God, which includes godly meditation.

And that's something that takes work. So it's not something that happens instantaneously.

Ezekiel Calderwell, he said, he actually wrote an introduction to Richard Sibb's works in volume seven, and he said this, spices, thinking about spices in a kitchen, spices are only sweet and they yield flavors when they are beaten into a powder for the cook to use.

They have to be worked on in order to become useful. So the idea that he's getting at, and he wrote the introduction to Sibb's work on meditation, is that Christians do that in thoughtfulness, in study.

Edward Calamey, in his work, which is in the midst of being printed now, he talks about a cow.

You know, have you ever seen a cow chomping on the grass in the field? He doesn't eat like we eat.

A cow, over and over, chews its cut. It processes every mouthful of grass so that it's useful as food to the particular nature of the cow's stomach.

So the Christian, with that continual contemplation, has to chew heartily on the word of God.

Calamey said it is the fuel that ignites and sparks his thoughts and ultimately is used in prayer to hold

God to his word. Because we often have a wrong view of what prayer is about, and all three of these things, reading scripture, meditating, and praying, all go together.

And so when we think about having a devoted, quiet time, we need to be thinking about the

Bible as more important than, oh, I need to have my devotions today. Let me just read a scripture verse and I'll go with that.

I got to get out the door. We need to be thinking of it like, Jesus Christ has communicated to us a love letter that's sent from him to us.

That's the idea behind that. So if we look at scripture like that, if we're so in love with our spouse or we've just fallen in love with somebody and they write us a note or they write us a letter, we really don't over that.

And the Bible should be that to us. So whenever we think about having a successful devotional time before God, it's not just Bible reading and prayer.

It's Bible reading, pondering what has been read, and then praying it back to God again.

We'll talk about that in a minute. But listen to Genesis 24 -26. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field in the evening.

So he had a specific time that he went out into the field in order to meditate. And the word meditate means it's a combination between praying and thinking and pondering.

It's all mingled together. And so for the word of God to be mixed with prayer and for prayer to be effective, there has to be some kind of meditating on what it is that we read, because prayer is going to then be fueled by what we read so that we know how to pray.

Because generally we think prayer is, oh hey, Lord, I need this, this, this, this, and this. Thank you very much.

But that's not what prayer is. There are supplications and there are petitions that we bring to Him, but it's more than that.

When we hit the doctrine of meditation in this way, we think about Joshua chapter 1 verses 8 and 9.

This is the central verse that Puritans will leap from. In fact, let's go to Joshua 1 verses 8 and 9 when we return from the break.

So don't forget where you left off there in Joshua 1 verses 8 and 9. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with C. Matthew McMahon and our discussion of the

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that's wrbc .us. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen.

If you just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, founder of A Puritan's Mind, and we are discussing the

Puritans and meditation. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And several of you are waiting to have your questions asked and answered already, but before we go to those listeners, let's return to Joshua chapter 1 verses 7 and 8 or 8 and 9.

I'm sorry, I had you on mute, brother, I'm sorry about that. That's okay, Joshua 1, 8 and 9.

The book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it, for then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success, have

I not commanded thee? So in this, a lot of the Puritans leapfrogged from this particular verse, which gives you a lot of information.

One, the word is not supposed to depart out of the Christian's mouth, which means that he has to have it in his head in order for it to come out of his mouth.

And he's told, Joshua, in this particular instance, is that he's supposed to meditate on it day and night. And then you have the hands wave up in the air and they go, are you saying that I need to meditate every minute of every day, in fact, day and night?

Well, Joshua gives a foundation for necessary directions about reading, memorizing, and thinking about scripture.

And Christians should exercise themselves in that every single day.

And this is not the only place, because we have lots of different places, like Psalm 1 -2, that he exercises himself in God's law day and night, that is constantly.

So in reading, in pondering what's read, they want to observe the most profitable things as they read, paying attention, marking down things that the

Lord says to them as they read, because they're having communion with him when they do that. And it's got to be so well known that the word of God is not departing out of their mouth, so they have to make the best use of it that they can for edifying themselves.

And they're instructed, while it is still called today, to encourage one another when they're in the assembly, when they're with one another at church.

So it's not only for the edification of themselves, but we're supposed to encourage one another, and they have to do that through the word.

So the word is going to inform them, and it's going to reform them, and it's going to cause

God to direct them in everything. So it is all the time.

It is constantly. And we find that happening with all sorts of the historical narratives that we have in Scripture.

Reading, considering, and praying caused the saints of old to be singled out as examples to us in those spiritual disciplines.

Like I said, Isaac, he had a quiet time in the evening in Genesis 24. Hezekiah, he, in his heart, in deep silence in Isaiah 38, says that he meditated on the things of God.

It forced David to ponder in the morning, even all day long.

Psalm 1, Psalm 63, Psalm 119. And it also says in Psalm 16 that he, by night, had secret thoughts of God.

It caused Paul to instruct Timothy to ponder the word of God. And for the saint, he even tells them in 1

Thessalonians 5 to pray without ceasing. All of these particular spiritual disciplines in this way are all set in the constant attitude that the

Christian is supposed to have. So even when Moses was about to die and he gave the law again, right before Joshua is instructed by God in the verse that we read, he says in Deuteronomy 6, these words must remain in your heart.

You must meditate on them, both at home and abroad, when you go to bed and when you rise up in the morning.

So there has to be a strategy for this, because if it's something that's done on a whim or somebody just kind of tries it out, there is no trying it out in this way, because God specifically says,

I command you to do these things. And so devotional time, our quiet time, needs to be something that's planned, and it needs to be something that's planned daily, and it's an exercise that's to provoke the

Christian to practice things in a holy manner. And what it does is, if we do it right, we have a zeal towards God in it, and it draws us closer to the

Lord Jesus Christ. You know, anyone who's listening, listening right now on the radio, the psalmist says, my heart waxed hot within me, and a fire kindled in my meditations.

Just think to yourself, when was the last time you felt that way? Because that should be something that causes us to feel like that when we commune with the living

God, right? A lack of, if you want to take it in the opposite extreme, Joseph Hall, one of the

Puritans, he said this, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said, a lack of fire, a lack of that holy zeal caused

Adam to fall, yes, and all of his children, into utter desolation, for no one considers deeply the things he ought in his heart.

If Cain had considered the curse of God and his heavy hand against the grievous sin he committed, he would not have slain his own brother.

If Pharaoh would have set his heart to ponder the mighty hand of God by the plagues brought against him already past, he would have prevented those which followed, including his own destruction and all of his army in the sea.

Medab and Abihu in Leviticus chapter 10, if they had regarded the fire that they put in their senses, instead of the fire that should have been in their hearts, zeal for God, they might have been safe from the fire from heaven.

I would tell everybody, read Gospel Worship by Jeremiah Burroughs on that particular scripture, which is what

Leviticus 10, one to three is all about. It's just 13 sermons on that one scripture. There has to be that holy fire in our heart that kindles our meditations.

Otherwise, we have what the Puritans would always call frozen affection towards the worship of God and the service of God.

So, you know, people will say, well, I don't really have devotions like I should every day.

I kind of do the one minute thing. Is that enough? No, that's not enough. You know, you can't, we can't neglect that devotional time because we'll overlook

God's will in our life, his works and the providence around us.

But at the same time, as we talk about this, people are like, well,

I really need to understand what this kind of devotional time needs to be, because if I don't understand it,

I'm not going to be able to exercise it with profit. And that's what we want to be able to do.

The Puritans would all say, every single one of them in every single book that they ever wrote on this particular subject matter says, listen, you can't know how sweet and awesome this godly meditation is without doing it.

You have to do it. It can't just merely be head knowledge of something done because it cultivates in you an experience with the

Savior centering on God's word. So if we're going to glorify

God and we're going to exercise ourselves in these three spiritual disciplines, reading our

Bible, pondering the word of God and praying, we're going to do that because we're thinking, okay, first in our head, we want to gain a higher degree of grace from God through Christ and the power of the spirit.

But secondly, we want to experience the benefit of it. And so Christians have to be able to practice it.

My friend, Pastor Ron Glass, who is actually one of the biggest sponsors of Iron, Sharp, and Zire, he is the pastor of Wading River Baptist Church.

And I edit his sermons for a radio program called the River of Life. And he was addressing the subject of biblical meditation.

And I think it may have been even a two or three part sermon series.

But I wonder if you agree with the way he contrasted biblical meditation, which would be, of course,

Puritan meditation, and the false meditation of the mystics and the

Eastern religions and the New Age movement. He said that most of the meditation promoted by false religions is the emptying of the mind, whereas Christian meditation, biblical meditation, is the filling of the mind with God's word, and outwardly, the communicating of the mind with God in prayer, so that there's an actual object, a focus of your mind.

It's not emptying your mind. It's actually focusing your mind on God and his word and filling your mind with his truth.

Would that be an accurate, contrasting way to describe the differences between Puritan and biblical meditation and the false meditation of the

Eastern religions and mystics? 100 percent, yes. All the

Puritans would say exactly that very thing. In the

Christian zone today, what we tend to have happen is that in the

Christian's mind, it's easier today to sit down and read a passage out of the

Bible. It doesn't matter even how long it is. It's just a whole chapter that they read, and then take some time to pray about things that may be going on in their life.

And when they think that devotions, in that particular way, are completed, they've missed exactly what your definition just was, because in order to pray effectively, you have to know what scripture says concerning the things that you're praying about, because it's not just,

I need, I need, I need, I need, I need, I need. It is really revolving around, and this is what all of the

Puritans would define prayer as, taking the word of God, forming it into an argument, and retorting it back upon God again to seal him in his promises.

That's what prayer is. So if we don't know or have in our mind what prayer is or what scripture says concerning those things that we need to have, we're not going to be able to pray effectively.

So that meditation is to fill up our minds, not to empty it, never to empty it.

God doesn't want an empty head. He wants someone that takes scripture and molds it over and places it in their mind and understand what they read.

And so when they get into really pondering, it's a commanded duty.

It's done day and night, as the psalmist says and Joshua says. It's done after we read the

Bible. So it's predicated upon the Christian reading scripture, and then it uses the content of God's word as its material or fuel.

So when you think about godly meditation, William Fenner, in his book,

The Use and Benefit of Divine Meditation, he said this, pondering or meditating is the settled exercise of the mind for further inquiring into divine truth and, don't leave this off, and affecting the heart with that truth.

He said we find four things in meditating on the word of God. One, an exercise of the mind.

Two, a settled exercise that dwells, remains on the truth.

Three, making further inquiry into what we understand. And four, laboring to affect our heart with it.

That is what serious and solemn thinking, considering the things of God, to the end that we might understand how much they concern us, and that our hearts might be raised to some holy love or resolution before God.

That's what the psalmist says when he says, oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.

There's a 50 psalms that say that. Almost that very same thing. So yes, it's taking and filling your mind with what scripture says.

Sometimes people will say, well, at that particular point, this is going to be difficult for me because I'm not a very smart person.

Well, there's no place in scripture anywhere where God says you only meditate on the word if you're a smart person.

He doesn't ever say that. What he says is he will be with you as you read, as you think, as you ponder to make it successful for you.

But you have to engage in it. You've got to be persuaded as a

Christian that you've got to seriously set yourself in this particular devotional time.

It might be that lots of people that are listening right now that they've neglected it, that they've never done it at all.

Well, at that particular point, okay, we need to grieve a little bit before God about our neglect of what he specifically commanded us to do, and we've got to make a conscious decision to accomplish what

God requires of us as professional Christians. That's why I said in the beginning to shake us up a little bit, this is a requirement.

This is something that God says, I want you to do this because this is for your benefit. And so at least once a day, we should be spending time with him in meditation, you know, marching up that spiritual hill, so to speak, to reach its top.

And when we hit the top, if we've meditated well, and we haven't even talked about how to make it good for us or make it profitable, but when we get to the top of that mountain, when we're meditating in the right way, what we find there is

Christ in heaven. That's where our mind goes in that particular way. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has a question for you.

It's not so much a question as a just, you were mentioning about praying the word back to God.

It seems like they really mastered the real teaching of the

Lord's prayer. Of course, a good portion of the catechisms are devoted to the Lord's prayer. But it seems like they figured it out because as I heard one guy referred to, most of our prayers are sending

God junk mail, because prayer is supposed to be from God's perspective instead of ours.

You know, we don't go to him to pray about Aunt Susie's ingrown toenail. We go there to pray about the advancement of his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven and his will being done and so forth.

It's very God -centered, not us -centered. I want to go to a listener question.

Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And by the way, it was a very wonderful pleasure meeting you finally face -to -face at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Tony, I met a number of the Iron Sharpens Iron listeners there at the conference, some of whom

I had never even heard from before, who had never even submitted a question to us, but were approaching me after recognizing my name from the name tag or recognizing my face from the internet.

They were encouraging me about how Iron Sharpens Iron has blessed them. But Tony in Rock Hill, South Carolina says,

Hi Chris, thanks for the show today. I wonder if your guest has paid much attention to the public school systems treatment of the

Puritan legacy and the key role they have played to discredit all things Puritan. The test study worksheet

I saw was so outrageous that after doing a quick Google search and some brief research,

I was able to sit my daughter down and completely dismantle all of the false statements on the sheet.

She was quite amazed at how far from the truth the school teachings were from how the Puritans actually lived and what they believed.

Thank you for your efforts to preserve the truth. Yeah, I'm glad she did that.

I'm glad she corrected that. You know, the secular world desires to bring anything that exalts

Christ into disrepute any way that they can. And I mean, we're dealing with the secular school system.

That's what they're going to do at every turn in every way. Part of our denomination, the

RPCGA, one of the things that we press is being able, as parents are able, to homeschool your children, you know, to teach them the

Puritans did. Well, for them it was a little different because the universities and such were actually founded to raise up minister.

And so when you have things like all the Cambridge schools and even Harvard, when

Harvard was first founded, President Thomas Shepard and President Samuel Willard, they were there to train ministers.

That's what the idea was. But now it's just like a beast wants to shred

Christians and shred Christian theology in every way possible. You know, let's let in Wicca.

Let's let in New Age stuff. Let's let in every abominable idea and atheistic thought that we can and barrage them with evolution and teach them from a young age that you can have two daddies or two mommies if you want.

All of that garbage is propagated by secularism, and the

Puritans would have stood adversely to all of it, obviously, holding steadfastly to the

Bible in that way. Yeah, that acronym you gave before for your denomination, that's the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly?

It is. Yes. We are going to another break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air as well with a question of your own for C.

Matthew McMahon, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA, and we look forward to hearing from you, and we do still have a couple of people still waiting for the questions to be asked and answered, and we'll get to you as soon as possible.

So don't go away. We will be right back after these messages. Don't go away.

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that's linbrookbaptist .org welcome back this is chris arnzen before we return to our interview with c matthew mcmann founder of a puritan's mind and our discussion on the puritan's meditation i want to remind our listeners of the urgency of iron sharpens iron radio needing new advertisers sponsors and benefactors to remain on the air as you know anybody who is listening to this program or has been listening to this program since its inception in 2006 you know that i hardly have ever done this this is not some routine thing until very recently where i have been nearly daily making this plea for advertisers and for donations but the urgency is so great i feel compelled to do so especially since some of my largest sponsors and largest benefactors have been urging me to make this plea to you please if you know of anyone who is a business owner or a professional person a doctor a dentist a lawyer a chiropractor perhaps they're a pastor perhaps they are a leader in a parachurch organization and they to your knowledge have the theological leaning that would appreciate what we discuss here on iron sharpens iron or perhaps you are this person please contact me at chris arnzen at gmail .com

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ironsharpensironradio .com and click support and you will have the address there where you can send checks thank you very much for putting up with me during this plea for support but we are now back on the air to discuss the puritans and meditation with dr c matthew mcmahon and we do have a listener in indianapolis indiana another one of the iron sharpens iron listeners that i had a chance to meet for the first time at the g3 conference in atlanta georgia that's erin from indianapolis indiana and she says hi chris great guest and show the past couple of years i've had success meditating by copying portions of scripture each day in order to discipline my mind from wandering or taking in my own thoughts or culture's popular thoughts is that a decent form of meditation and i almost said is that a descent from meditation but is that a decent form of meditation any additional techniques to meditate like a puritan yes yes we're gonna we're gonna talk about some of those but yes that's a anything that helps you to utilize your mind with scripture in that way in a number of other ways that the puritans would have uh did write about did talk about yeah a hundred percent great great way to do that great there's uh many years ago when i was in bible college one of the things that we had was a ring we had to make a ring for greek class it was a ring out of a coat hanger and on that ring every time we learned a new greek word or something that we needed to remember we would we would write it down something on the front something on the back give the translation and such and we put on the ring and the ring just kept growing and growing and growing and growing and that was a use for for us to be able to remember some of those words in that way so copying things writing things down the puritans were uh very they would exhort pastors for example to constantly be in devotion what they call devotional writing meditating and writing on the scriptures constantly take your pen well nowadays probably the computer or maybe a journal depends on what you like constantly writing things down uh copying things seeing things in front of your face in front of your eyes things that will help you remember those things and because just as uh your guest wrote in and asked this question or asked how that worked for her this is not something that simple it isn't simple it takes work but but here's the thing and every single one of the puritans would say this they they would say you're going to put your effort into whatever it is that you love so we're going to think about what we love and when christians spend time with god and commune with him they're realizing this special relationship that they have with him uh john owen he said he's got a little book called communion with god uh being of truth put that out it's part of his larger work but it's in a little paperback it's not completely on meditation but it's about communion and some of it has to do with that and he's like you know your devotional time is built on the foundation of jesus christ giving us access to the father by the power of the spirit so he's saying it this is an amazing thought that we have that sinners are allowed to have fellowship with the infinitely holy god of the universe he says that's an astonishing idea you know and like jonathan and david their souls were knit to one another in friendly love in spiritual things and things that we do with god these things are more eminent so when we have a devotional time with god even those work that we enjoy well that communion will then become precious to us and it will be every single one of the puritans in every single one of their works says the same things you're not going to give up godly meditation once you begin it and see its fruit you'll never give it up you'll never stop doing it because your mind then will be captivated with what you're learning about the lord jesus christ so there are there are about 45 works total 45 to 50 somewhere in there where the puritans specifically wrote whole books on this particular topic and uh one of the books that we we put out was the one by john ball and the one by ball is uh called a treaty on divine meditation and he says without the help you're thinking about i want this to be profitable i need to start doing it well the first thing he talks about is he's like well there's nothing that you can do by yourself you know the lord jesus christ says you can do nothing without me he said so the very first thing that you should engage in in order to make this profitable is to pray that the lord would help you and when we think about praying that the lord would help us we that's what we would do we would say oh lord you know uh help me in this i want to get better with meditation and the lord will honor our sincerity in that but this is how i mean and john ball and his particular work he uses all of these examples to help us really get an idea about what it is that we're doing so this is his prayer he says this is the way that you should pray or something he says quote something similar he says this oh lord it has pleased you to give me a mind that's ready and desirous to perform this holy duty for which i humbly thank your heavenly majesty i beseech you by your holy spirit to assist me in this that i might bring the same to a profitable and comfortable issue with myself you've charged me oh lord to seek your face that is your blessed and holy presence let my soul answer and say with your faithful servant lord i will seek your face oh cause the light of your face to shine on me enlighten my understanding strengthen my memory and sanctify my will and affection withhold my truant like heart that ranges from here and there from all trifling fantasies from deceitful dreams vain hopes and carnal fields and worldly cares where naturally and customarily get entangled keep it to yourself and to your law that it may wholly delight and solace itself in you and grant that this point that i now go about to think upon may be so settled in my memory and rooted in my heart that i may reap its fruit all my life long to your glory and on my own comfort and salvation through jesus christ now that's a prayer and you you look at some of the way that these guys prayed the reason that they prayed that way is because they really thought about what they were doing and he specifically makes mention here of the one scriptural idea that he happens to be pondering on so the christian is in their devotional time they might read a particular chapter but there's something that that pops out to them and so says pray like this ask that the lord would help you with that one point and begin to think about it and begin to muse over it and begin to ponder it and so it's got to be part of our devotions where we read scripture and then think of it because because it's necessary we in turn hearing god speak to us in his word we want to love him back you know the states that are in heaven they they look on christ right now in his infinite excellency and glory forever they spend all their time pondering in there they look on him as the first and best being they they see his excellence they see his glory and it satisfies them it's satisfying enough for all creatures what we the puritans all called the beatific vision you get to heaven that's what you want to see you want to see christ you want to see his excellency you want to see his glory but right now we live in the world and so on this world how do we see him we see him through his word and so our mind we have to take a specific time in our day where we dislodge our mind from the things of the world and we place our mind in communion with god and that's something that we should do daily for all of our life so we have communion with god in and through the word of god during the whole course of our life to continually be washed by the word in that particular way so some okay so some people who are listening they might think well it sort of seems like meditation is really just some kind of enhanced way of reading god's word i mean is there really a difference between reading it and pondering it well yeah there is there's a difference because reading it you thread it through your eyes and so you could even memorize it and know what it says but there's a difference between then understanding what it means and how it applies to you it's the application part that the puritans really pressed the christian to consider so when meditation is where christians at that particular point they go okay i need to do this with a serious intention and that's where they become serious about their walk with christ and because they not only just want to pray i need things they not only just want to read but now they're going to take the scriptures with it in sequence they call a serious intention of the mind to search out the truth of the word and settle it in their heart that's thomas hooker in his application of redemption talking about godly meditation and so it's a serious thinking filling the mind with the word so that the christian knows what concerns them personally and that their hearts might be raised and devoted more jonathan edwards has in his resolutions devoted more to god today than they were yesterday as jonathan ever says week by week this is i want to be higher in religion this week than i was the week before that's the idea we're always growing you know my wife and i uh sometimes interact with people that we've seen from many many many many years ago maybe from our college days or such professing christians and things and we knew them then and we see them today and in our conversation and interaction with them you see a little change you see a little growth you see you don't see that conformity that that growth that increasing in the knowledge of god increasing in passion increasing in desire the christian should always be increasing and the puritans in this idea of godly meditation said well that's one of the things that you can meditate on because you can think about are you growing are you becoming greater in religion this week than you were last week so our attitude towards it and thomas watson has a wonderful book i would encourage everybody to read it don kistler put it out silly day or many years ago and uh it's called taking heaven by storm and he says in this that the christian should have an attitude that reflects what jesus said in matthew 11 12 the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force so the christian is serious about that work serious about engaging in the work of thinking about god's word and meditating on his word now jesus speaks about us having a holy violence concerning the kingdom of heaven so it's not easy to live as a christian jesus says that we're supposed to take heaven by storm so we're supposed to be soldiers take no prisoners beyond the attack the enemies you know attacking us from without from within we have to be violent for the truth of the word you know and it's the it's the life of truth that they're pondering and meditating on thomas watson said truth in pondering heavenly principles is doctrine deduced from the word worked into the soul of the believer truth he says is the most glorious thing the star which leads to christ truth is pure psalm 119 it's compared to silver refined seven times psalm 12 it's the seed of the new birth john 3 it's the breeder of grace for those who feed on it first timothy 4 truth sanctifies as christ said sanctify them by thy truth truth makes christians free in christ truth is an antidote against error truth is the ground of the christian faith it gives them an exact model of their religion showing them what they are to believe take away truth their faith is lost what then should the christian be violent for if not for the truth they are bid to contend in agony for the faith delivered to the saint jude 1 3 if truth is gone then god's glory is departed from the church so we got to have this this kind of holy violence surrounding meditating on his word loving his word so much that we want to know it and that holy violence will then imply that the christian is resolved to do it and he has a strong affection for that word if you ask anybody right now just pause this thought for a second you ask anybody right now that's listening what's what's the last movie that you went and saw hollywood put together something and you went out and you saw it tell me about it who started it all they'd be able to tell you who started it and what was the theme of it they'd be able to tell you the theme what's the movie about do you have anything that you like yes they'd be able to tell you all about my late father would not be able to answer any of those questions good for him he was always asking during the movies who's he what they what are they doing why did she say that you know right right but today we are so inundated with wanting to leave our mind somewhere else and have something else do it for us and fill our mind most people would be able to say something about a movie or something that they saw and wouldn't be very difficult for them to tell us all about it but then you said well how are your devotions last week how is how is the way that you're thinking about the hollywood and the movies how is that translating itself down into your devotional time are you excited about isaiah 22 that you just read tell me about it are you excited about how prayer went for you yesterday how are family devotions your church life in that particular way and encouraging one another how is that you know we we tend for some reason obviously it's due to sin in various forms and degrees not to have a holy violence that way and we need to be resolved to do that some of the psalmist says david said in psalm 42 verse 2 he says my soul thirsts for god for the living god jesus said we have to hunger and thirst after righteousness like i gotta have it if i don't have it i'm gonna die if i don't have it so it's easy to speak about heaven itself but not necessarily get heaven in our heart in the way that it should be here that takes work and it takes considering who god is what he does daily i mean it's so easy uh to meditate on things that we are familiar with and that apply directly to our wants and needs even if they're spiritual it's very difficult for us when we start thinking okay today let's not just meditate and let's not just pray about all the stuff that we need or want but let's meditate and let's pray adoring god let's do that and that's what christians it's kind of like that you hear the record player screech it's like what happens at that point i'm just going to sit here for a half an hour and meditate on the infinite excellencies of christ on who god is not just what he's done we got the what he's done part down the lord jesus died for me the lord jesus rose from the dead he intercedes for me he sends his spirit all of those things that we we know and we experience because we know we need them but now we move and we say hmm let's just meditate on who god is to know him better reverend a question for you well yes i'm hearing you you speak of this um i know that one of the things that i have heard in the past and you know i don't know where but uh is that it was kind of in vogue when the puritans preached to preach over the heads of everybody like they were so intellectual that they were just way over everybody's head and nothing was practical but if this indeed was the meditation you know these practices were were the norm in puritan society they were probably not speaking over the people's heads they were speaking right to them right right a hundred percent so you know sometimes some of my friends and i will sort of you know kind of make a joke to one another and say you know if a lot of the ministers today went back in time they might not even be able to join some of the puritan churches in those days we sort of make a you know like make a little jest of that but then when you start really thinking about the depth of what it is that's preached and heard today in comparison to the depth of what is preached and heard in in the days of watson and owen and alamy and those guys it's light year in terms of a difference we we need to rally the truth we need to rally the christian church and say listen in order in order for you you want to see a reformation the reformation is going to happen or a revival a revival of religion a revival of religion will happen when individual christians first begin to incorporate what god requires of them in their devotional time and then put that into their family worship time and then put that into the pulpit and into our christian fellowship because it's going to start with individual christians saying i got to be serious i have to be more i have to be serious about what god requires of me i have a question i have a question before we go to the break and perhaps you could answer it when we return from the break as we're approaching a break right now at the risk of offending my dear charismatic and pentecostal brothers and i do have a lot of dear friends and brothers who are charismatic and pentecostal i don't mean to beat up on them some of them have taught me a lot in my life because some of them perhaps even most of them have lives that are far more godly than my own and they have left me a great example in a multitude of ways but having said that uh don't you think that the whole concept of their conception their definition of what speaking in tongues is all about lends itself to the mystical and eastern religions religions concept of meditation in that when they are praying a language that they don't even understand when they are praying a language that they think is an angelic unknown tongue they are really emptying their mind of any truth or facts or anything tangible that is from god that they can focus their attention on and fill their minds with if they are just for lack of a better term babbling nonsense even if they don't view it that way they don't understand what they are saying and they are going through almost like a very often a a trance -like state where they're speaking in a tongue they don't even understand and it's really in my opinion it appears to be that they are emptying their mind and when their mind should be used for a much more significant and biblical purpose while they are meditating but i'm going to let you respond to that when we return from our final break and if anybody else wants to join us on the air it's chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com and we'll try to get to as many of you as we can get to before the end of the program don't go away this is our final break and we'll be right back after these messages i am chris arnson host of iron sharpens iron radio here to tell you about an exciting offer from world magazine my trusted source for news from a christian perspective try world at no charge for 90 days and get a free copy of rc relationship between church and state i rely on world because i trust the reporting i gain insight from the analysis and world provides clarity to the news stories that really matter i believe you'll also find world to be an invaluable resource to better understand critical topics with a depth that's simply not found in other media outlets armed with this coverage world can help you to be a voice of wisdom in your family and your community this trial includes bi -weekly issues of world magazine on -scene reporting from world radio and the fully shareable content of world digital simply visit wng .org

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welcome back this is chris arnzen and if you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes in the next half hour to come our guest has been and will continue to be dr c matthew mcmahon we are discussing the puritans and meditation before the break dr mcmahon i presented to you a question about the way that charismatics and pentecostals many of them anyway worship god they go very often into what seems to be a trance like state while they are speaking in tongues or at least they think they are speaking in tongues and these are typically angelic languages in their description an unknown tongue not known to humans unless someone else in the congregation has the gift of interpretation but isn't this very similar or the results the unintended results of this really the emptying of the mind where you are not filling the mind with truth and you are not truly communicating to god with your prayer you are just zoning out with gibberish short answer yeah yes well even maybe a little more yeah a little more than that paul in ephesians 5 listen to what he says he says therefore do not be unwise right wisdom is the right application of knowledge so the questions here that he's instructing are to be wise don't be unwise but understand gotta use your mind what the will of the lord is and do not be drunk with wine which is dissipation but in opposition to being drunk with mind be filled with the spirit and then he gives them all sorts of things that they need to do now i'm not saying that when they're speaking in tongues they're drunk with their mouth drunk in that way but the corollary is somewhat similar in that when you're drunk your mind is affected so that you are not thinking in the way that you're supposed to be or in the way that god has commanded you to be the greek word even just drunk has connotations of being tipsy so the moment that it starts to affect your mind in that particular way the opposite is what you're to be which is filled with the spirit and how does that happen he tells them to speak to one another in sounds and hymns and spiritual song singing giving thanks admitting to one another and he gives all that all of these different things walking circumspectly not as fools but as wise redeeming the time as the days are evil so when you do i grew up in the in the pentecostal church for a time so i get to have opinions on it so as my co -host the reverend buzz taylor was for part of his ministry a charismatic pastor yeah yeah so it's like when you're engaged in the whole tongues idea it is utterly the exact opposite of everything that we've been talking about thus far in meditating on the word the only thing that you need to know if you go into any of the big charismatic churches in that particular way after the service they'll bring you into the tongues room where they'll teach you how to do it by starting out and saying who stole my bow tie or who stole my honda and they'll just keep doing it like this is a serious thing like really really what we remember doing that in the church itself they'll they would tell you if you need to be prophesied over go into this room you want to learn how to speak in tongues go into this room we'll help you with that and first there's no place in scripture anywhere where the word glossolalia exists any place that you see the word uh language or tongue in that way is glossized which means language it was a known language and so to give it to you practically in that way my saying yes but at the same time i remember being in the pentecostal school with the pentecostal teachers with the pentecostal students and all of the charismatic stuff that was blowing up at that particular time everything from rodney howard brown and laughing and rolling in the spirit all of that that was right at my time and so my my brother and i uh christian brother and i in that particular class on the holy spirit uh the president of the school was teaching it and we were reading this book that they gave us and we're you know the doctrine of the holy spirit so it all comes out of that and we were like we don't understand the very first line of the book says quote we get our doctrine from the maniches of church history on the holy spirit and we're like well wait a second wouldn't we get our doctrine from the bible why are we getting it from them to raise our hands in class and we say uh we don't understand is it that we're getting our doctrine from the bible from the maniches and he said well no we get it from the maniches we don't get it from doesn't actually come but it was told us outrightly and the book explained it that way that this is where it was because they were very mystic in that kind of aspect uh at that particular time but so the long answer could be assumed go right into the short answer which is you know there's no place in scripture anywhere that commends the emptying of your mind for any purpose and thinking that it's some angelic language or or any of that stuff uh there's no place in scripture where the angels talk and you don't understand them so i don't know where it is that they get this idea that it's some angelic language that nobody knows except for when paul says if we speak in the tongues of men or of angels or every time an angel shows up in scripture he speaks that everybody understands them so what language are they talking about in any case yes you you don't empty your mind your mind is always the mind is a terrible thing to waste in that way god says you fill it up you don't empty it you don't get drunk with it you don't make it tipsy you you be filled with the spirit in the right way which is walking circumspectly being wise understanding what the will of the lord is and that's where we get our doctrine of meditation from in being filled with the spirit in that particular way and relying on the spirit to do we have a well enough yes well and we have a listener on the south shore of long island cristobal and i it's been a long time since i took spanish but that is my name in spanish and i can't remember where to put the emphasis where they put the uh what syllable to put the accent on is it cristobal or cristobal i think it might be the latter but anyway cristobal uh or cristobal of south shore long island uh asks are you as concerned as i am that there are some even amongst the professed reformed faith who have become enamored with catholic mystic meditation and even forms of quaker meditation i would be concerned yeah because it's opposite to what this is the quakers got their name in their mysticism there would be no studying and i experienced this also at bible college where people would just get up behind the pulpit they would have not studied they would not have done anything and they're just expecting god to fill their mouth and so the quakers they're just expecting god to zap them in some way and they get this word or this something that they need to speak and they start to quake which is where their um name came from but the idea of i don't need to know what scripture says to i want to give you a word based on some kind of feeling it all of that is nonsensical from the puritan perspective um from the biblical perspective it's nonsensical uh you you wouldn't do that scripture is is very specific even with some of the things that we read right in the beginning meditate on his life day and night you know so um yeah i would be concerned if people are going in that direction wanting to disengage their mind in some way to be filled with some kind of ecstatic experience uh and meditate with something that they think is coming from god's realm or the spiritual invisible realm in some way uh god never says to do that ever uh that's part of what transcendental meditation does in some of the new age mysticism that tells you to separate it from your mind get your mind clear and let whatever the influences of the spirit realm or the universe come in touch with you and uh inform you in some way well the only place that god says that we are to be informed is through the propositional truth that's found in scripture and that's where we get informed so the more that we know about scripture uh the more we know about god his will his ways his providence and what happens around us by the way christobal you have won since we have never heard from you before you have won a free copy of the new american standard bible compliments of the publishers of the nasb and that will be shipped to you by our dear friends at cumberland valley bible book service cv bbs .com

cv for cumberland valley bbs for biblebookservice .com and thanks to todd and patty jennings owners of cumberland valley bible book service for shipping out all of our winners their free bibles books and other gifts that they win through submitting questions to our guests uh the uh i really want you to summarize before we run out of time before we know it over the next uh five minutes or so what you what you most want our listeners to remember and have etched in their hearts and minds about this subject before we take any more listener questions okay yeah i mean it's like on this particular subject it's so easy to run out of time really quickly in order to cover things but one i don't want christians to come away thinking this is going to be too hard i don't want to do it first you know uh in thinking about that you're thinking about starting to meditate on scripture in a particular manner um nathaniel reyno he's got a really good uh little bit of information in his work solitude improve where he says you know like what are things that you should start meditating on what are some things that you can think about to start have direction in that particular way what might be most important well like god's government of the world to meditate on that god's government of men uh mankind in sin the recovery of men in salvation uh eternal salvation through christ the redeemer uh meditation on the bible as the word of god and how that applies to you so even if the christian would sit down and say okay i'm going to start meditating for five or ten minutes every day and get used to this to begin thinking through it that's where they should start uh two two of the books that i would suggest is two of the works that we that we put out and are available uh thomas white's book instructions for the art of divine meditation and john ball's book a treaty of divine meditation both of them and this is what makes them not only valuable and just talking about hey we need to meditate but hey this is how you specifically do it that's what makes it so great both of them take time to show you okay we're going to meditate on the recovery of men through jesus christ how would we do that he gives you a page of things to think about in the scriptures surrounding that both of them do that so we i don't want people to go oh godly meditation is tough and you said in the beginning that man if you're a christian you need to be meditating on the scriptures and i don't do that and it seems really difficult it's that it's baby steps in the beginning but once you start thinking about these things and taking scripture and applying it to yourself day after day it becomes easier it becomes more profitable it becomes fruitful and scripture then becomes more exciting to you because you begin to understand more of what god is speaking to your heart about and then that fuels your prayer time you'll be able to have a profitable devotional time when you take the subjects that you're praying about uh meditating about and you start praying about them so in doing that you know i would tell people right right at the very beginning you don't have any resources you don't have any books you don't have any you have the bible read some of the psalms and consider god's attribute consider just consider who god is consider that his eye is always on us consider that he's holy holy holy consider that he is wise in all the things that he does consider that he's all powerful and how that translates into all of creation uh consider his mercy all of those things just take time to consider them and to ponder them one day will turn into two two days will turn into five and a year will go by and you'll think wow i've learned a lot of things as a result of meditating on these things in my personal devotion time don't you think you have to be careful about using your feelings as a litmus litmus test as to whether or not your meditation is true and biblical and honoring to christ uh people may think i have never felt closer to god than when i am speaking in tongues or i have never felt closer to god than when i empty my mind uh and and sit there and just uh meditate on nothingness hoping to be an antenna to receive something uh i never feel more spiritual or or more in the arms of christ and on and on we could go but these things these feelings can be very very deceiving can't they very much so which is why when scripture talks about what gives us delight and what spiritual pleasures there are for us to be had they are never divorced from how we concern ourselves with thinking about them now the says i will meditate in your precepts i will delight myself in your statutes you know he says uh delight yourself also in the lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart you want to talk about being filled and having a good feeling well feelings are informed by what you know and so it's not about emptying the mind it's about filling the mind getting excited about what it is that you understand about who god is do you think that second corinthians 10 5 has a lot to do with what you're saying today that we are destroying speculations of every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of god and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of christ yes there's there's some annexed truth to that paul is specifically talking about certain philosophies of the day that are that are side railing christian but annexed to that that every single thought i mean just thinking about everything every single philosophical thought every spiritual thought every thought that bombards us from the secular media from hollywood from the things that we see in the newspaper to the things that we see on the news or television or the things that we hear from other people who claim to be christian and they want to teach us their specific way we are to bring every thought into captivity to obedience to christ so that takes a lot of a lot of mind power to do that a lot of thinking and i know that you uh as we have announced you uh you run a puritan's mind ministry and that website for our listeners benefit is a puritan's mind .com

no apostrophe in that a puritan's mind .com what are the books that you offer and other materials that you offer that highlight what we are addressing today um we have a sister site to a puritan's mind it's called puritanpublications .com

and on that site there's a little drop down menu that says book categories and under there you will see a category called divine meditation and there are a number of works in there um some of them i've already mentioned that are wholly dedicated to divine meditation in that way and some of them have parts to that uh but all of those books are winners um in terms of they're helpful you want to change the way that you have devotional times uh john ball and thomas white will help you do that and in thinking about that on a puritan's mind itself um right off the front page there's a drop down menu under puritan worship there's a link for puritan meditation and what i've basically done there i've taken all of the best puritan work and not only do we have articles on godly meditation there but i've also outlined all of the best puritan works you can go on there and you can see an outline of richard allestry's work the whole duty of divine meditation and that would be in and of itself just be profitable for you in that way in order just to look at their main ideas and so those i think would be uh helpful as well christian in suffolk county long island new york wants to know what books do can you recommend from the puritans that are specifically best for those apprehensive to read things that contain antiquated language that would never wade through something that they find a difficulty to read yes very good question that is the purpose behind puritan publications .com

we take all of the works that we publish and we update them in modern english so that they are readable i believe in the very very very beginning we had two or three works that we didn't do that too just because we thought that they were important to get out but the rest of the works everything for example on that godly meditation page all of those are an updated language easier to read and still they don't lose the intention of the author the reason that we did it that way is we thought about it like this i want to be able to read it and i want to enjoy it and i can go read you know the old antiquated puritans and be excited about them but i want my wife also to be excited about some of these great works and so we update them in modern language to make them easier to read so regardless of whether you're a wife or you're a teen or you're a dad that doesn't have time to wade through 26 volumes and owens works and you want something that's going to help you that's a little sliver out on a particular topic that's that's what puritan publications is about it's updating them in modern language arnie in perry county pennsylvania wants to know do you have a documentary that you can recommend for those of our friends who are either unbelievers or just very wishy -washy in their faith who will never commit to reading a book a documentary sometimes on a dvd may capture their attention much more than a book that they will never even open do you have anything that you could recommend gosh and thinking about that off the top of my head i'll tell you what that is something in the christian repertoire that i think is sorely lacking um there are some there are some good videos uh online i think from i'm you know rc scroll ligonier has some stuff um i believe there's a couple of videos like the amazing grace video that had some good uh sections to it but like really really overall what what's what's been happening is that the christian wing of media has really been going out thinking how can we compete with hollywood movies let's make some hollywood movies that are christian based or faith -based or something like that but you know there's not a lot of documentary kind of pieces that way there were some old ones i don't remember who put them out but they were uh i think vision video was the name of it at the time they put out like wickliffe they put out huss they put out a very very short one on calvin uh maybe one or two on luther um there was one that was on the radical reformation in the anabaptist but like all the puritans there's nothing nobody's done that yet i i've heard that there's something that's going to be coming around uh that reformation heritage is working with some other groups trying to put something together on the puritans but that's a you you now have all the information that i have bb in cumberland county pennsylvania wants to know what do we know of any of the puritans wives were any of them writing anything in that day and age do you know of any significant figures from history who were puritan women uh there's a couple of books one is called women of the reformation um there's one that is absolutely fabulous uh called an uncommon union between jonathan edwards and his wife uh if you if you're looking for a good biography that way that book is so excellent um but there's not a lot of women writers in that day that wrote things for women uh that it just rested on the the shoulders of the ministers of the day so there's not a lot of stuff that way well uh any final words that you care to close the program with well i would just want to be encouraging i want people to be encouraged to fuel their devotional time by taking up godly meditation and not only read their bible and not only pray but really think about what god is saying to them through his word that you might profit more as a christian and and grow as a christian in the knowledge right paul says in the knowledge of our lord and savior jesus christ and i think when we do that the more acquaintance that we have with good godly devotion uh the more we won't want to let that loose that'll that'll be time that we won't give away it'll be time that we'll hold steadfastly because that little spot of time uh our eternity in many ways depends on that particular time and by having a solid devotional time and we diving into the things of scripture and the and learning more about who god is that knowledge brings us to the door of truth and it works that into our soul and it causes us to be better as edward said in religion now than i was last week so there's i think there's no better way to to end by saying he delighteth in the law of the lord and in that law he doth meditate day and night well i know that uh your websites are as we just said moments ago a puritan's mind .com

a puritan's mind .com and also puritan publications .com puritan publications .com

and i would love to have you back on the program in the not so distant future to discuss the preacher's charge and people's duty by john brinsley uh the the fine booklet that you provided for the pastors at my latest pastor's luncheon here in carlisle pennsylvania would you like to do that that would be great would love to anytime i get to talk about scripture in that particular way my mind is uh is actually in that vein quite heavily this year so uh being able to talk about john brinsley and that work absolutely well uh if you uh would like to find out more information as i said about dr c matthew mcmahon go to a puritan's mind .com

a puritan's mind .com or puritan publications .com puritan publications .com