The Biblical Basis Of Meditation On Scripture

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I realized how easy it was to get stuck in a small town radio station. I'd seen a lot of people do that.
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I wanted to do national sportscasting. So I thought if I'd read Howard Cosell's book when
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I was in college, and he said the best training he had for his sportscasting career was his legal training. He left a $30 ,000 a year job as a lawyer during the depression to become a $500 a month sportscaster.
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Well, it sounded good to me. I could start at a big station, say I'll be your lawyer and your sportscaster. So I was going to enhance the resume.
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So I went to law school and absolutely hated every minute of it. But the Lord was using all that time before and during to call me to preach.
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So there is that story. Now, one difference, talking about the fountain pen thing, it's true that John MacArthur's big fountain pen guys,
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C .J. Mahaney, Dr. Mohler, a few others, but they're only in the new pens. Big difference as well.
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They're like new pens and vintage pens as we refer to them. I enjoy the new pens too, and I have five with me, but the vintage pens are the ones that I restore and use, and they're not into those, the kind that, again, those of you have the same color amount of hair as I do, know what you remember using those.
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So anyway, how many are,
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I'm trying to figure out many different churches. You're not from Bethlehem. Can I see your hands? You're not from Bethlehem.
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Is that right? Good grief. That's a majority of people here, I think. Okay, just churches and towns.
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Where are you from here? Bethel, Connecticut. Okay. Chelsea, Mass.
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Portland, Maine. PCA Church. Woodstock, Connecticut. Bass on this side.
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Douglas, Mass. What's that? Is that right?
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Pretty good for a Southern boy, huh? Holden, okay. Shrewsbury, okay.
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Yes. Okay. In the back. Okay. West Hartford, okay.
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Thank you. Well, great. It's a pleasure to have you here, and did
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I miss anybody? Yes. Okay.
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Rhode Island. Good deal. Well, thank you very much. Now, how many of you were not here last night?
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Can I see your hands? About a third of you. Well, last night, well, let me back up and talk about it this way.
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There are personal spiritual disciplines and interpersonal spiritual disciplines.
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Personal spiritual disciplines are the ones we practice alone. The interpersonal spiritual disciplines are the ones we practice with other
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Christians. For example, the Bible teaches that we should pray alone, but the Bible also teaches we should pray with the church.
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Bible teaches we should get into the word of God on our own individually. We should also do what we're doing here this morning, learn the word of God and hear the preaching of the word of God with the church.
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We should worship God privately. We should worship God with the church. Some disciplines are by nature personal, individual.
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Silence and solitude, often fasting, keeping a spiritual journal. Some are by nature interpersonal, preaching the word of God, fellowship or koinonia.
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The ordinances, we're not to serve the Lord's supper to ourselves in private worship, but rather that's a church ordinance.
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And to be like Christ, and that's the goal of these things, and to experience God through Christ through these means, it requires both.
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We all tend to lean one way or the other. Some of us think, well, I'll just take these personal spiritual disciplines and become an evangelical monk, so to speak.
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I don't need that ungodly half -committed bunch down at the church. They only slow me down anyway. So we emphasize that way.
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Others are more the other direction. And the error there is to think, well, if I'm at the church pretty much every time the doors are open, that'll somehow compensate for the lack of a devotional life.
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And it won't. Jesus, Dr. Luke tells us, often got alone to pray.
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But it's also Dr. Luke in chapter four who says, as his custom was, he was in the synagogue on the
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Sabbath day. So if there's everyone who would have a pass and going to church, that'd be
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Jesus, right? And yet that's where the people of God were. When they gathered together to learn the word of God and to worship
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God, Jesus wanted to be identified with those people. Those were his people. He did not want to be thought of as separate from the people of God as they gathered together.
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So he was there, though he had all these people he could have healed and all the people to teach and all the things he could have been doing, yet he was there, probably listening to a bad sermon and the misuse of the word he himself wrote.
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But nevertheless, he was there because that's where the people of God were gathered. Well, this conference is about personal spiritual disciplines.
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I've written a book on both spiritual disciplines for the Christian life that you mentioned a moment ago. That's mostly about personal spiritual disciplines.
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I've written a book called Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church about interpersonal spiritual disciplines. But this conference is about personal spiritual disciplines, the two most important personal spiritual disciplines.
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The second most important one is prayer. The most important is the intake of the word of God.
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And that's most important because it's more important for us to hear from God. And for God to hear from us. So as important as prayer is, it is second in importance to the word of God.
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There is a common and almost universal problem with both of these disciplines. Last night, we looked at the problem of prayer.
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And the problem is that we tend to say what? The same old things about the same old things.
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You don't have to do that very long before that becomes boring. And when it's boring, we don't feel like praying.
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We don't feel like praying, it's hard to make ourselves pray, right? Five minutes, seven minutes can feel like an eternity.
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Out of sheer duty and obligation, we force ourselves to pray, but yet our mind is wondering even most of that time.
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And we wonder, why does God need to hear me say this again? And argued that to pray about the same old things is normal because our lives tend to consist pretty much of the same old things.
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Your family, your future, your finances, your work or schoolwork, your church or your ministry and the current crisis.
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And thank the Lord, those things don't change dramatically very often. So if you're gonna pray about your life and your life doesn't change dramatically very often, that just naturally means you're going to be praying about the same old things most of the time.
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That's not the problem, that's normal. The problem is saying the same old things about the same old things, that's boring.
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And when it becomes boring, it's hard to make ourselves pray. Argued there's a simple solution.
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It has to be fundamentally simple because if prayer is required of all of God's people, then to pray in a meaningful, satisfying way must be fundamentally simple.
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Because if you, and again, presuming you have the Holy Spirit, no method of prayer will enliven prayer for those who don't have the
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Holy Spirit. But if you have the Holy Spirit, you have the desire to pray. We are by the
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Holy Spirit prompted to cry out, Abba, Father, we have this Father word orientation, this new heaven word orientation when we have the
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Holy Spirit. And yet, while that is driving against one side of our souls, colliding with that is our experience.
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And our experience is, yes, I wanna pray, I believe in prayer, but when I pray, it's boring, I guess I'm just a second rate Christian. But if with all your
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Christian advantages, and I speak of every person in this room who has the Holy Spirit, with all your Christian advantages of assumingly a
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Bible preaching and teaching church, and even apart from that, you have access to Christian books, Christian bookstores from your own church over the internet.
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You have the opportunity for Christian radio and Christian television, some of which is worthwhile. You have the opportunity to hear the best
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Bible preaching and teaching in the world 24 seven on the internet. Most of the Christian world doesn't have access to those things.
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And so with all those Christian advantages, if you can't have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life, what about our persecuted brethren in India, in the
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Sudan, in China, who have almost none of those things? I was on a mission trip once to the bush country of Kenya, and not even the pastor had a
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Bible. So would you say that those
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Christians there cannot have a meaningful prayer life? No, nobody would say that.
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In fact, we'd probably tend to think they probably have a better prayer life than I do. But if with all of our
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Christian advantages, if we can't have a meaningful, satisfying prayer life, what about most of the Christians in the world who have none of those things?
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Well, there's no one here who would say, because it's hard for me with all my advantages,
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I have to believe. That means almost no Christians in the world then can have a meaningful prayer life. Nobody would say that.
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You just say, I know when I pray, it's boring. I guess I'm just a second rate Christian. No, it's not true if you have the
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Holy Spirit. It's not true. It has to be complicated. It has to be fundamentally simple.
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God has children that are nine and 99 with low IQs and high IQs, very little education and a great deal of education.
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And the Bible in fact says, he didn't call many noble, many who are wise. So that means ordinary people like us and people from nine to 99, low
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IQs to high IQs, all have to be able to pray because God requires and expects and invites us to pray.
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So it's gotta be simple. And the simple solution argued was that when you pray, pray through a passage of scripture, particularly a
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Psalm. The Psalms were inspired by God for the very purpose of being reflected to God.
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The only book of the Bible like that. It was inspired by God to be given back to God in worship and praise.
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And so I argue that's the best place in scripture from which to pray scripture. Just take the words of the text, let them be the wings of your prayers.
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So you read, the Lord is my shepherd. Thank you, Lord, that you are my shepherd. Shepherd me in this decision. Shepherd my family today.
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Oh, great shepherd, make my children your sheep and so forth. Shepherd our under shepherd at the church.
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Please shepherd him as he shepherds us and so forth. When nothing else comes to mind, you go to the next verse. I shall not want and so forth.
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So we looked at that. Then we looked at the second best place, the New Testament letters. They're the second best place because there's just so much packed in almost every verse in one of the
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New Testament letters. Almost every verse suggests something to pray about. Then we looked at the narrative passages of scripture.
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So there, you have to back up and get the big picture. Rather than trying to pray microscopically over each text, you back up and get the picture, maybe the whole paragraph.
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You pray, what are the big ideas? And you turn those into prayer. And then we did the most important thing, perhaps all weekend.
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That was, had seven or eight minutes to actually try it with some feedback. That's where I wanna pick up this morning, just as further encouragement, further testimony.
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Just a few brief words of testimony from people who either, A, you didn't speak up last night, you would this morning, or last night you went home and you tried it, or more likely this morning you tried it and you would tell us how that went.
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So just a brief, few brief words of testimony about praying through scripture, whether it was last night or this morning, would be first.
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Did you find it helpful this morning, meaningful? Yeah, okay.
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More interactive, he said. The Lord's speaking to me and then I speak to him. This is God speaking, isn't it?
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Praying through scripture, as we said last night, is like a real conversation with a real person, because it is. But if it's only one -way conversation, and if it's you saying the same thing, it doesn't feel much very interactive, does it?
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But somehow we've gotten the idea that when we come and have a conversation with God, we have to do all the talking. And since we're talking about the same things, and we don't have the time or the creative energy to come up with different ways to say it, we end up saying the same old things about the same old things.
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It's all one way, it's all boring, because it's so repetitive, with the result that we find it hard to keep it up.
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From what we learned last night, you're delivered from the burden of thinking you have to say everything that's ever gonna be said when you meet with God.
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Let God initiate the conversation, and this is God speaking. We're not imagining God saying things to us, away with all that.
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Rather, this is God speaking. And like a real conversation with a real person, let him speak through his word, and then you simply respond to that.
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When you've said all you wanna say, like a real conversation with a real person, then what do you do?
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You let him speak. So you go to the next verse, and that's God speaking, and you were part of that.
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What if I asked you, I said, who's the one person in the world you would love to have a one -hour conversation with?
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And you told me, and I said, guess what? It's gonna happen. Tomorrow, you get to have a one -hour conversation with that person, ask any questions you want, full one hour, fully devoted to you.
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Well, tonight, you can hardly sleep with anticipation of that, thinking of questions you would ask this person, and so forth, and tomorrow, the moment comes, and it's everything you hoped it would be.
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And then afterwards, I said, guess what? You get to have another one -hour conversation with that person on Monday.
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The only caveat is, however, both of you have to say exactly the same things on Monday that you said on Sunday.
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Well, there might be a few things on Monday that you picked up that you didn't catch or remember on Sunday, but how long would it be if you had to have that conversation every day, how long would it be before you'd rather die than have that conversation again?
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Whereas tonight, you can hardly sleep with anticipation. Well, that's true, not only on a human level, but with the most fascinating person in the universe about the most important things of your life.
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You can be bored to death if it's all one way, because if it's all one way, it's gonna be the same old things about the same old things, but it was never intended to be one way, nor was it intended for us to imagine
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God saying things to us or to expect him to say new revelation to us.
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Rather, this is God speaking, open his word, take that as his word, and then make that a conversation, respond to what he says in his word.
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Someone else, how'd it go? Yes, yeah, she said it's more
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God -centered, more God -glorifying. Not just the repetition of here's my list again, Lord, here's what
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I want you to do for me. But rather, especially you go through the Psalms, so much of it is oriented in praise to God.
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Which incidentally, what do you do if you come to one of those many, many places in the Psalms where it says, sing to him, sing praises to him?
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What do you do? You sing. It's not just information to be understood and processed, that's command to be obeyed.
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So, especially, assumedly, if you're alone, sing out loud.
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Jonathan Edwards used to talk about singing forth his contemplation, sometimes just sort of like a chant.
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You know, whatever he's thinking about, he would just almost in the same tone, you know, sing that to the
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Lord. Or sometimes you might just sing the first verses of hymns that you know, or just spontaneously make up a song.
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And maybe that song will only be one or two verses long, verses one or two in the
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Psalm, but as brief or as long as it might be, spontaneous or whether it's a hymn or song you already know, sing.
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That's part of worship to the Lord. When he commands that, that's a command to be obeyed. Someone else, how'd it go?
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Yes, yeah, okay.
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Several admitted to that last night, that time just seemed to go very, very quickly. Instead of five to seven minutes feeling like an eternity, you know, it's only been seven minutes, it feels like it's been 70 minutes, but that the time went very quickly, even though it was late on Friday night and you could have gone a lot longer, couldn't you?
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Very easily. Good, someone else? Yes. Said she just wanted to go on, what does the next verse say?
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What does the rest of it say even after we stopped last night? So good, create a sense of hunger and anticipation. Good, someone else?
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Yes. Ah, good, isn't that great?
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Great, great testimony. Thanks, said went home last night, finished the psalm that we started last night, spent 20 minutes doing that, got up this morning, turned the coffee pot on, 15 minutes later, he realizes it's gone by.
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Refreshing, hadn't even had his coffee yet. He's able to pray for 15 minutes like that without coffee.
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And it's so simple, right? But nobody's gonna need any notes to remember how to do this again, right?
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That's why it's important. If you ever teach it, have people go through it right then. Good, yeah.
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You've got something to come back to when your mind does wander. Great, good, yes, uh -huh.
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Said I pray through scripture I can memorize. That will serve you well if you're in the car or some other setting like that.
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And I didn't mention last night, someone brought it to my attention this morning. Said, you know, you mean to pray this way all the time.
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I said, well, not necessarily, but you can do it far more than you think. For example, if I just right now said, okay, let's ask the
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Lord's blessing on the rest of our time here this morning, and I call on you to pray right now. Just almost any verse that pops into your head can be the starting point in the prayer.
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If you're in a hospital room, you're just talking with someone, you feel impressed to pray, almost any verse that pops into your head, the table blessing.
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You know, if it's Matthew 6, 33, just pops into your head, you know, seek you first. Lord, you know, your word tells us to seek you first.
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We, by being here this morning, wanna seek you first above all things. We wanna put you first in our life.
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Well, that's a little different than perhaps, you know, your automatic mode. You know,
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Lord, please bless our gathering this morning, this sort of thing. So almost any verse that comes to your mind, pray that prayer.
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In this case, it would have been God's blessing on our meeting this morning. Pray that through the filter of that particular passage.
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I illustrated that last night with my classes. You know, basically, you know, every class, it's, you know, bless the class.
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How many different ways can you think of to say it? But you pray, bless the class through 23rd Psalm. It's different than praying through Psalm 51.
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It's different than praying it through Psalm 139. So just almost any verse that comes to your mind, if just suddenly you're called on to pray, would you please ask
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God's blessing on our gathering or whatever? Just whatever comes to mind.
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If it's a verse that's just been, if you're in a church service, a school class, verse that you've just been studying, or whether you're just a guest at someone's house, or you go out to eat lunch, let's ask the
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Lord's blessing on the food. Would you pray for us? You know, Lord, it was for freedom that you set us free.
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Thank you for the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. And in his name, we freely enjoy this gift of food from you, and we ask your blessing upon it.
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That, I just, that was a spontaneous, top of my head. Never used that verse in prayer in my life until that moment. But I mean, that's how simple it can be.
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In other words, almost any random setting. It doesn't just have to be your morning devotional time, is what I'm trying to say.
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You can apply that anytime, whether it's scripture you've memorized, or you're just familiar with, just whatever pops into your head almost, start with that verse.
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And it will be different than any prayer you've ever prayed. It's not just the same old thing. Someone else?
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That is true, and that's a good segue for us to move on. I said the two most important spiritual disciplines, personally, were the intake of the word of God in prayer, and the intake of God's word as priority, where it's more important for us to hear from God than for God to hear from us.
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So as important as prayer is, it is second in importance to the intake of the word of God. But like prayer, where we almost all have a problem, almost all
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Christians quickly, their prayer life devolves into saying the same old things about the same old things.
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There is a similar problem with the intake of the word of God, and it's almost universal.
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And even among our most devoted daily Bible readers, the people who, by the grace of God, are committed to reading the
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Bible every day of their life if they can, whether it's a chapter, whether it's three chapters, but they're going to read, and it looks like this.
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They open their Bible, they faithfully read a chapter or more, and they close their Bible, and most days, if pressed, you would have to admit what?
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I don't remember a thing I've read, which makes me a second -rate
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Christian. And we tend to say, well, you know, it's getting older.
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Memory's not what it used to be. Or say, well,
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I never was too smart in the first place. My IQ wasn't that great, or I never had a real good education.
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Those things may be true, but that's not why you didn't remember what you read in the Bible. I have 22 -year -old geniuses at the seminary who have the same problem.
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So it's not age, it's not IQ, it's not education. Because once again, if God expects all of his people to get into the word of God, if God wants all of his people to profit satisfyingly, regularly from the word of God, that's on the one hand.
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And yet on the other hand, God's people includes nine -year -olds and 99 -year -olds, people with low
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IQs and high IQs, with little education and a great deal of education. How do you have people all across the spectrum, all being able to profit satisfyingly from the word of God?
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To do so, therefore, must be fundamentally what? It has to be simple, doesn't it?
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It's got to be doable by you, by me, by every
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Christian in the world. It has to be. Because there's such an incredible disparity among the abilities of people.
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And so to get into the word of God meaningfully, satisfyingly, must be fundamentally simple.
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And it is, but most people don't do that very simple thing.
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You might say to people, when was the last time your daily intake of the word of God changed your day, much less changed your life?
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And we know it ought to be more frequent than it is, right? But we condemn ourselves for not being.
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So I guess it's just me, I'm a second -rate Christian, I love the word of God, I'll read it every day the rest of my life if God gives me grace to do so.
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But you're right, I can't remember the last time it changed my day, mainly because as soon as I close it, I can't remember a thing
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I've read. I guess I'm just a weak, ineffective, second -rate Christian. No, the problem is not you, it's your method.
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And the method for most people is to open it, to read, read a chapter, 10 chapters, however much it is they read, and close it.
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If that's what you do, that was never intended to be the primary means of absorbing the word of God.
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It's the starting place. And apart from reading scripture, you're not going to absorb it.
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But reading is the exposure to scripture. Meditation is the absorption of scripture.
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And it is the absorption of scripture that leads to the transformation of life and experience with God we're looking for.
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It is meditation that turns information into experience and insight and change, transformation, intimacy with Christ, conformity to Christ, a conformity that's not just outward, but from the heart as well.
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That's what we're after. 1 Timothy 4 ,7, the theme verse from my first book,
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Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, the theme verse is discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. So the practice of carrying out this command, these ways that we discipline ourselves, this is designed to lead to godliness.
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We're not godly because we check a list and do these things. That's the error of the Pharisees. It's not the doing of them that makes us godly.
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It is when we rightly motivated, seek God through them. So we experience
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God. We are transformed into Christ likeness through the practice of these disciplines, rightly motivated, rightly done.
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And chief of which is the intake of the word of God. But most people merely read it and they close it and they don't remember it and it doesn't change them.
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And they say, I guess it's just me. Something's wrong with me. No, without meditation, it's not going to change you.
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And most people don't meditate. Plain and simple. Or to put it in the paraphrase of the words of the warden in Cool Hand Luke, what we've got here is a failure to meditate.
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It's simple. We are not meditating. We read and may read and read and read and read.
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But you read the first verse in a couple of seconds and then you read the second verse in a couple of seconds and you take two seconds to read the third verse and two seconds to read the fourth verse.
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I don't care how many of those two second episodes you have. You're not likely to remember or be changed by something you look at for two seconds, right?
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We tend to be affected by things we think deeply about. Not things we look at for two seconds.
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And the reality is we look at most of the great truths of God's word about two seconds each.
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No wonder you don't remember. No wonder it doesn't change us. The simple solution is to meditate on the word of God.
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But I don't know what some people are thinking. Don, what I hear you saying is this. In addition to my reading,
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I also have to meditate. And you know what? Some days the very best I can do is to chisel out 10 minutes to read the word of God.
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You don't understand. I have two jobs. I'm a single mom. I have more responsibilities than I can shake a stick at.
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And I'm doing good if I get six hours sleep. And so there are days the
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Lord is my witness. He knows that 10 minutes is the very best I can do. And what
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I hear you saying is that's not enough. You're gonna have to give another 10 minutes to meditate on scripture.
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I don't have 10 minutes some days, another 10 minutes. You're only making me feel guiltier.
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What I hear you saying is if you'll do more, you'll be better. Well, I know that.
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Every Christian knows that. If I do more spiritually than I'm doing now, I would be better spiritually than I am now.
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I know that. But I can't some days. God is my witness. I can't do more than I'm doing some days.
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Thanks a lot. I came here to be encouraged.
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You're making me feel guiltier. You're making me feel worse about my spiritual condition.
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I came here for help. That is not what I'm saying. And if I fail to remember to come back to it at the very end today, help me to remember to come back to that very illustration, that person who says,
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I don't have another 10 minutes. It's all I can do to get 10 minutes some days into the word of God.
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Let me, or help me remember to come back to that very illustration. What I'm talking about today is good news.
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It's a burden lifter. It's a helper. But I've talked about meditation enough to know that if I don't do this, there can be a lot of confusion.
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So let's clarify what we mean. And do you have handouts on this?
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Somewhere we have handouts. All right. We're going to start distributing these handouts.
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And in a minute, I'm going to give you a definition. But I'm going to contrast. You're going to have this on some notes here.
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I have to contrast what I mean with what I don't mean. Because I've learned that if I just say meditation, a lot of people will assume that I'm meaning something that I call worldly meditation.
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They'll think meditation is, well, that's what people on public television do when they're doing yoga and so forth.
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That's meditation. And they think you're bringing that into the church. They're not aware that meditation is a biblical word.
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It's a biblical command. And some people would be horrified, and rightly so.
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You're bringing that into the church. And other people would think, yes, that's what meditation is. And they're delighted you're bringing that into the church.
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I was an interpastor at a church in Kansas City years ago when I first came to Midwestern to teach there.
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And the deacon chairman had just had a heart attack. And the hospital had given him these relaxation techniques to lower his blood pressure and so forth.
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And it's basically worldly meditation. And his wife thought this was so wonderful, she had photocopied him and handed him out to everybody in the church.
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So she would have thought, oh, yeah, that's what meditation is. It's wonderful. Everybody needs this. Well, since there are often as many definitions of meditation as there are listeners,
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I need to make clear what I mean and what I don't mean by meditation. Worldly meditation says, empty your mind.
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Get everything out of your mind. That is not biblical or Christian meditation, which says we're to fill the mind, to fill the mind with thoughts of God, with the things of God.
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So there's a big difference between those two. And very importantly, worldly meditation desires mental passivity.
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Don't think. If you're thinking, you're not meditating, according to this view.
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A lot of Eastern influence on that. Whereas biblical meditation requires mental activity.
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With biblical meditation, you're trying to think. Now, you're not trying to think so hard as to give yourself a headache. I don't mean that.
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But you are intentionally trying to think of particular things. Let me see what you're getting there.
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Okay. All right, that's from last night. Actually, sort of related to last night.
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But when we finished last night talking about how to pray through scripture with a group, this is kind of related to that.
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Yeah, we're gonna, I thought everybody was handing out the same thing, but they're all different things. Okay. All right, so eventually you're gonna get this one.
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I think. That's the plan. Okay. And let's see what that one is.
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Yeah, that's totally, I'm not even gonna touch that one, the one that you're getting here. That's totally unrelated. That's a different conference.
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It's good. Yeah, it's great stuff. And maybe I'll do it next time. But that's not what we're talking about. And incidentally, while that's coming around, you'll see the website every once in a while, mentioned biblicalspirituality .org.
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If you've had any encounters with people regarding the book, The Secret, on the homepage of the website, there's a two -page review of that that I would point you to.
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We're gonna come to that in just a moment as it relates to worldly meditation. I'm trying to hope to get out in the next few days a review of the current bestselling book in America, Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, the one that Oprah has had the web seminars about with millions of people tuning into that.
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Both of those relate to this idea of worldly meditation. It's the reason I brought that up. Both of those advocate worldly meditation.
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Back over, wait, I'll just go on to this next one. Worldly meditation employs visualization in order to create your own reality.
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A visualization can be a good thing or a bad thing depending upon how you define it. Where does the imagination come from?
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Comes from God, right? So he intends for us to sanctify it, use it for his glory. If your church were going to build a new building, you'd visualize that building, wouldn't you?
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Even before you went to an architect, you would visualize what do we want the building to look like? How's it gonna be divided up?
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Is it educational space, worship space? Where will it sit on the property and so forth?
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You would visualize all those things before you had the very first drawings done. So that's a good thing.
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But worldly meditation employs visualization in order to create your own reality. That's a phrase that's been revived by the second best -selling book in the world last year,
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The Secret, outsold only by Harry Potter. But among adults, it would have been the best -selling book in the world last year and it was the best -selling book in the world for three times as long as the
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Harry Potter book was. Last year, though, Potter's book sold more copies. Fastest -selling book of its kind in history.
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We need one more here, I think. And the phrase, create your own reality, is in The Secret on multiple occasions.
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The view that you have your reality, I have my reality. Today, very much of a postmodern idea.
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And so it's sort of like this. Steve and I were walking out in front of the church here on the road and I said, watch out,
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Steve, there's a truck coming. And he said, oh, Don, that's your reality. My reality is the truck is not there.
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If that doesn't make sense to you, good. Yeah, that's what a lot of people believe, that you have your reality,
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I have my reality. What is truth for you may not be truth for me. You have your truth,
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I have my truth. You have your reality, I have my reality. And that through visualization and so forth, you can change reality, you can create your reality.
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The book, The Secret, The Secret is, according to that book, the law of attraction. And that everything in the universe vibrates at a frequency.
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And when you think about something, you are attracting that to yourself because you're on the same frequency and you're attracting it from the universe to yourself.
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So if you think about the right things, you will create, they will become your reality.
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You will bring them to you. So if you will think about, you think more, if you think about your debt, you're only creating more debt.
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You're attracting that to yourself. If you think about a wealth, you'll attract wealth to yourself.
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And so I guess the reason I got cancer was, you know, I was thinking too much about cancer. And I guess the reason why persecuted
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Christians, that happens, I guess while the people starving in Darfur and places like that and all that is because people attract that to themselves.
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I guess that's why people are raped and murdered and all that is because they attract that to themselves.
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Well, anyway, you can see some of the ridiculous extent to which the implications of that do go.
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But let me give you some exact quotations from that book, The Secret. You are
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God in the flesh. You are all perfection.
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You are all wisdom. The earth turns on its axis for you.
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The oceans ebb and flow for you. The birds sing in the trees for you. Look around, every beautiful thing you see exists for you.
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Sound familiar? Read Genesis three lately? And it's really nothing more than name it, claim it.
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Health and wealth, you know, as a prosperity preacher has been saying for years, with this exception, this will work for you because you're
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God. You will attract these things to yourself. I've always thought it kind of interesting.
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You know, what kind of God is someone if they have to be told they're God? Doesn't put a lot of confidence in their divinity to me if they have to be told that they are
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God. But nevertheless, that's the book your neighbors, friends, coworkers read more than any other book in the world last year.
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In fact, it's back in the top 10 again, in part because, I mean, thanks to Oprah again.
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But I have a lot of email. I got some terrible email, a hate mail just this week about my review of that from just the most incredible inconsistent thinking in the world.
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But very common, popular belief.
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I've got an email from two Christians who were fired because their boss was going, handed the book out to everyone in their business, said, this is the way we're gonna go.
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This is how we're gonna attract business and so forth. And they said, we can't do this, and they were fired. I've got an email from people saying their churches are studying the book, not to refute it, but to sort of Christianize it.
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And it's astonishing, the influence of this book. Well, it's happening again. It's being revived because of the latest book,
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A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle, which Oprah is infatuated with now. She keeps his first book by her bedside.
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It's one of the most important books she's ever read. So she's made a real hero out of him. And once again, it's a self -deification.
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And his big deal is being and living in the now.
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Very Eastern concept. You know, the only reality is right now, being in this moment.
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And it's a big mess. I don't wanna have to spend further time on.
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But, all of which is to say, there you are with some extremely contemporary illustrations of the popularity of this idea.
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Let me talk about the secret again. I went to Barnes & Noble to write a review. Had the book, read the book. The book, the phenomenon really started with a video on the internet.
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That was moved to DVD. Larry King had two programs on it. Ellen DeGeneres had a program on it.
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And so it's just coming all over the place. It came out in book form in November, a year and a half ago.
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And by Christmas, it was a bestseller. February's when Oprah had her program. The next day, it was a bestselling book in the world.
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And so I had the book, read it to review it. Was in Barnes & Noble writing a review. And I wanted to see the packaging on the
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DVD. And so I knew
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I'd have no trouble finding it because it's such a bestseller. In fact, this has never happened before. The book was number one. The audio version of the book was number three.
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So basically the same book was the number one and number three bestselling book in the country. So I knew
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I had no problem finding the video. It'd be right in the front door there somewhere. I looked around. I couldn't find it. Kept looking, looking.
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I didn't want to have to ask for it. I didn't want anyone to know that I was interested in this thing. But finally
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I went up and said, where is the secret DVD store? We're sold out. This was on a Monday.
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She said, Saturday, the store was full of people in here looking for all that. We had completely sold out.
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We had this huge special order come in. People were waiting for it. We announced our special order. The secret has arrived.
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We'll have it on the sales floor momentarily. It went just like that. Now Barnes and Noble is in business to sell books, right?
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And of all the books in the world they want to have, they want the number one bestselling book, right?
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Because that's the book you're going to make the most money on. The whole chain sold out of the book.
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Not one Barnes and Noble book in the country had the book. It sold like that. So I mean, this is the book your friends, neighbors, coworkers are reading more than any other.
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And so much of it has to do with this kind of worldly meditation. And so does the current bestseller,
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A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. By contrast, Christian meditation says, whatever is true, let your mind dwell on these things.
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Now that doesn't mean we can't use fiction as a vehicle for the truth. You know, C .S.
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Lewis stories and things like that. But the Bible says, whatever is true, let your mind dwell on these things.
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And we're to link meditation with prayer and action to see changes.
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So if you want a new church building, you don't believe that somehow if you would just, everyone would focus their mental energies that that building would appear up out of the ground.
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Rather, you pray for God to provide and then you go to work and break ground and raise money.
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You want to see someone converted? You don't just think that by your mental energies, if you could focus rightly and meditate on that, that the person would spontaneously be converted.
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No, you pray for God to save them and you share the gospel. So just very important contrast between what the world emphasizes is meditation and what the
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Bible calls meditation. There are four objects in scripture about which we are commanded to meditate upon.
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The overwhelming majority of them are references to scripture, to the word of God. So we're to meditate on the word of God.
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We're also to meditate on the world of God, on creation. You know,
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Romans one and other places, God has revealed himself in creation. So there are things about God revealed in creation.
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It's not the clearest revelation, but it is worthy of response and worship.
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In fact, it's enough that people are held accountable if they never hear the gospel. They're held accountable simply by the revelation of God given in creation.
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But the Bible explicitly tells us to meditate on creation. So we can look at a tree and in its beautiful splendor, say, what does that redbud tree tell me about God?
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Tells me God is an intricate creator. God is a lover of beauty. Well, how do
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I know that? Well, ultimately I know that because the Bible tells me so. But we can see that in creation. We can look at things in creation and say, how does that illustrate the glory of God in some way?
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The word of God, the world of God, the ways of God. The Bible tells us to meditate on God's providence.
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Why has God done what he has done? So the
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Bible tells us to think on those things. And then finally, the character of God. We're to meditate on God's holiness, on God's grace, on God's justice, on his mercy.
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We're to meditate on the character of God. But more than all, more than all the rest put together, in fact, we're told to meditate on the word of God.
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And that's gonna be our emphasis this morning. Meditation on scripture.
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So let me give you an analogy, or actually a definition here now. Meditation is deep thinking.
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Well, a lot of people say that leaves me out. Once again, remember, this has to be doable by everybody, right?
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God wants all of his children to meditate on scripture. So it has to be doable. So you might put in parenthesis there whatever deep thinking is for you.
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On really one of two things. On the truths and spiritual realities revealed in scripture.
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So meditating on the truths and the reality, spiritual realities revealed in scripture. Or on life from a scriptural perspective.
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And life from a scriptural perspective might mean creation. It might mean
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God's providences in your life. But we're to meditate on those things out there in the world through the lens of scripture.
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For the purposes of understanding application and prayer, understanding the scripture, understanding God's word, God's providences, and applying these things and praying about them.
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So what I want to point out to you that meditation can start really in one of two places. It can start with a
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Bible, and then you take it to life. That's the main way we're looking at it today.
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But meditation can start with life. It can start with that redbud tree. And you bring that to your life.
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What does that redbud tree tell me about God? Well, what that tells me about God, I need to apply. I need to worship such a
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God. I need to thank such a God. I need to be in awe of such a
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God. I need to realize how intricately God is involved in his creation, and so forth.
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So I can think about something outside the Bible, but learn to think about it biblically. I want to think about that through this filter, through this lens.
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That's biblical meditation. But mainly we're going to be talking about starting with scripture, and taking that to life.
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We'll start with this analogy here, and after this we'll take a short break. In this analogy, we have a teabag and a cup of water, hot water.
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Teabag here is the word of God. A cup of hot water is your brain. Now don't press this analogy too far.
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Any analogy pressed too far breaks down, of course. What happens if you dip a teabag into boiling hot water, and pull it right back out?
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Not a lot, right? A little tea comes out, but not a lot. You dip it in there a couple of times, a little more tea comes out.
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More times, more tea comes out. You put it in there and let it steep, it begins to do the work.
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Well, in this analogy, dipping it in there and taking it right back out would be like hearing the word of God.
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Dipping it in a couple of times would be like reading it. A few more times like studying it.
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I draw that analogy from the founder of the Navigators, Dawson Trotman, who had something called the word hand.
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The word hand. He said, the easiest way to have intake of the word of God is to hear it.
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You can sit there with your arms folded, your eyes closed, you can hear the word of God and profit from it. But that's the only way you get
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God's word. You're not gonna have a very good grip on it. If you read it, in addition to hearing it, that takes a little more effort.
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You have to look at the page, move your eyes back and forth and so forth. You've got a little better grasp of it, however. When you study it, that takes more effort yet.
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You have tools, flipping back and forth between things, but you've got a better grip on the word of God.
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If you memorize it, that takes a little more mental effort yet, but you've got a greater grip on the word of God.
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Thus far, we're talking about one dip of the teabag is hearing, a couple is reading, three is study, four is memorizing and so forth.
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But meditation is when you put that teabag in there and you let it steep. You let the
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Bible brew in your brain. And when you hear it, you should meditate on it.
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When you read it, you should meditate on it. When you study it, you should meditate on it. When you memorize it and so forth. And by doing so, you have a strong grip on the word of God.
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Instead, I've added the palm of application on that. When you hear it, you should apply it. When you read it, you should apply it.
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Well, when you let the Bible brew in your brain, like a teabag brewing, steeping in a cup of hot water, we know that it begins to tincture the water, that reddish brown color that we're familiar with.
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In the same way, when you meditate on scripture, it begins to color your thinking.
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It colors your thinking about who God is. If nothing else, reminding you again of the mercy of God.
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Coloring your thinking afresh about certain attributes of God. That he is a
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God who forgives those who come to him in Christ. And you afresh, are refreshed by the forgiveness of God.
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It begins to color your thinking about something you've done. Something you said to your family.
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Something you thought. It colors your thinking about that. It begins to color your thinking about a two o 'clock appointment on Monday.
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It colors your thinking when you meditate on scripture. But a teabag doesn't just color the water, what else does it add?
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Flavor. Gives taste to it, right? It is through meditation that we taste spiritual reality.
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We taste and see that the Lord is good. Through meditation on scripture.
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Spiritual information becomes experience to us. When we read that God is a merciful
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God, he is a God of forgiveness. When we meditate on that, we experience, we feel forgiveness in appropriate ways.
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We can in appropriate ways. We're to love God with every part of our being, right?
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That's the greatest commandment. Heart, soul, mind, strength. Meditation is that truth. It's inundating all of our experience, every part of us, so that it's not just we understand forgiveness better, we feel forgiveness.
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We rejoice in forgiveness. We're strengthened to serve
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God afresh by forgiveness. So information becomes experience in all the appropriate ways through meditation on experience.
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This is how we taste spirituality and not just encounter it mentally.
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When I was a seminary, I had a professor from Louisiana who would talk about the chicory coffee that they have down there.
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And he said it has such a strong taste to it. You have one cup of chicory coffee in the morning.
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And anytime the rest of the day you want coffee, you just drink hot water. It leaves such a strong taste in your mouth.
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You drink hot water, it just sort of instantly brews coffee again right there in your mouth. That's the way it ought to be with the
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Word of God. That's what meditation does for us. We taste it in such a way that we can taste it throughout the day.
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In other words, when you read it and close it, you don't remember it. You can't recall it later in the day.
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But when you meditate on Scripture, you can taste it throughout the day. And my own personal benchmark is this.
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If I can't remember something from the text as soon as I close it, I sure didn't meditate.
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But if driving to work that morning, I should be able to say, now what was that verse? If I'm in line at the drive -thru at lunch,
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I should be able, while I'm waiting, what was that verse this morning? Driving home, in the middle of the night,
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I wake up and can't go to sleep. All throughout the day, I should be able to say to myself, let's see now, what was that verse in this morning?
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And if I can't remember it, that's a very simple method of telling me I did not sufficiently meditate.
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Because when you meditate, you can remember it day and night.
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And the reality is, we are simply not meditating.