A Biblical View of AI: AI Cannot Replace Meditation

Psalm 1 and the Christian Duty of Meditation

Please turn your Bible to Psalm chapter one. That can be found from page 448, if you're using the Pew Bible. Please stand when you have that. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on his law, he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Amen. You may be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the opportunity we have to meditate on it, to delight in it. We pray that it would be our meditation day and night. We ask that as we receive your word today, that it would be our meditation and our joy.

And we ask that as we learn of it being a meditation joy, it would be as we encounter it throughout the week, as we read it, as we reflect on the things that we have heard today on your day. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, we are still in the middle of the series on passages that relate to the modern discourse on AI. As I've seen people interact with different problems or different concerns that have arisen due to the changing world that we live in, there are a number of passages that come to mind that I believe are worthy of our contemplation, even worthy of our meditation as this one today.

Now, if you're wondering how many more we have left, this is the seventh one, and there will likely be just one more next week. But today what we are looking at is the fact that the Christian life is one that involves meditation, involves meditation, involves going to the word of God and studying it, receiving its truths.

Now, as there are new tools that offer to assist in the study of the word of God, this raises a lot of questions. Well, does this mean that the nature of study will change? And if so, what does that mean for the Christian?

Or moreover, would this almost replace study altogether? As I study the word of God, I have incorporated a number of techniques. I have downloaded a large database of many different Puritan works and different theological works, and I can have my computer sort through them all and report back to me which ones are most relevant to the topic I'm studying, et cetera, and it helps much.

But this raises a number of concerns. I believe a lot of these concerns are very legitimate, yet could be misguided. And then other concerns are very misguided because they misunderstand the nature of Christian meditation.

Reasonable Concerns About AI and Christian Study

So some of those concerns that are very reasonable, yet could be misguided, one of these is with the kind of results that you would get from AI, right? So if you're familiar, if you've used any of these tools, you know that there's an issue with hallucinations, right, where AI will tell you things that are just simply not true.

You ask for a quote and it just makes stuff up. There are issues with sycophancy, right, where it just kind of confirms the things that it thinks you want to hear as you talk to it. Now, those are very reasonable concerns.

However, often they are misguided when people don't understand the nature of the technology. For example, if you're doing what I described, using a database, it's not actually making stuff up, it's just pointing you to the things that are already there.

Okay, so reasonable concern could be misguided. There's also concerns about how this would change someone's ability to study in general, right? It could make people lazy, not willing to put in effort, could lower attention spans.

It could just, in all kinds of ways, make us less capable of keeping information and instead relying on things outside. Now, those are all reasonable concerns. Where that would become misguided is when you fail to recognize that that's true of any other tool that exists.

Okay, it's already the case that a lot of people will rely unnecessarily on search engines to look up passage rather than memorizing them and storing them in their own heart, or that people can already use the tools that exist to become lazy.

And so if new technology is treated as categorically different, that would be misguided, even though that is a reasonable concern. Okay, so reasonable concerns that could be misguided. Now, there is a concern that I believe that is entirely misguided, and that is the idea that AI could replace meditation altogether.

There are some who think that meditation on the Word of God is identical to the study of the Word of God. And so if there's any tool that you can use that would bypass a lot of the difficulty of getting an understanding, of getting a result, then you have bypassed Christian meditation altogether.

So that misunderstanding is that study is identical to meditation. These are not the same thing. And what is concerning about this is not just that someone who misunderstands this would fail to judge the world that we live in or understand the problems that they face and how they should think about new technology or anything like that.

The problem is if someone has that mind, chances are they already are not meditating on the Word of God as they ought. And so what I want us to know today from Scripture is what is meditation on the Word of God?

Our passage today is Psalm 1, but in particular, it is Psalm 1 too. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, he meditates day and night. What is it talking about when it talks about the law of God?

The Law of God as the Whole of Scripture

A lot of times in our modern culture or in English, law just means rules or just things with penalties attached to them, something like that. But what the psalmist has in mind here is not just rules. It is really all of Scripture.

In particular, the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Those are known as the law or the Torah. But for them, this is the Bible. This is just what they are using.

This is all of Scripture. Meditating on the law of God is to meditate on all of Scripture. Now, there are alternatives to doing this, and what are the alternatives here? Walking in the counsel of the wicked.

Okay, instead of the law of God, truths that are perverse to the law of God. Standing in the way of sinners. Sitting in the seat of scoffers. Notice that there are different postures that are described here.

Walking, standing, sitting. This is talking about a pervasive way that one would have his mind on things that are not the law of God or that are contrary to the law of God. But instead, to meditate is to replace all those things, standing, sitting, walking, and to in all ways, day and night, spend your time upon the word of God.

And what is that activity that is described here of meditating? In the Psalms, these different verses or stanzas, however you would describe the kola in poetry are set up as parallels to help you interpret these things.

It's very interesting because a lot of times in Hebrew poetry, the words themselves are not necessarily well known, but in setting them up as parallels, it helps you interpret. So what does it mean when it says meditate?

Well, it explains it right there in the previous part. It is to delight in the law of the Lord. Meditating is delighting in it. It's not merely studying it, but it is delighting in it. And when is this to be done?

It is to be done day and night, all the time. It's not reduced to the times when you just have the Bible open before you. It is something that happens all the time that you are supposed to be delighting in the word of God.

And what is the result of all this? The one who delights in the word of God, he's like a tree planted by the streams of water. He's prosperous, he's stable. He does not wither. We have that image of a plant that is large and stable.

And what about the wicked? Well, it's a plant that is as unstable as one could be. It's just the husks of grain that blow away or burnt up. The wicked are like chaff, the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The Christian life requires meditation. There are different things that might go under the name of meditation that are not real Christian meditation.

Pagan, Secular, and Hypocritical Meditation

First of all, there's the pagan idea of meditation, right? And that's either some kind of mindlessness where you sort of empty your brain and you just kind of fill it with empty thoughts, a big hum. A lot of times that is called mindfulness.

I find that very ironic that Buddhists describe their meditation as mindfulness in order to deny that it's an emptying of the mind. But the more I've studied Buddhism and listened to what Buddhists say, I don't see how it could be any kind of real mindfulness.

It is an intentional lack of focus that just kind of goes everywhere. And therefore it's a sort of mindlessness. So there are pagan forms of meditation. There are secular forms of meditation that just involve plain study, okay?

Taking in knowledge, okay? All kinds of students study all kinds of things that try to understand the world around them. Okay, that's a very secular kind of meditation. And then there's also a hypocritical kind of meditation where you do the Christian activities of meditation.

You read the Bible, you pray, et cetera, but there's nothing going on in the heart. So that is a kind of false meditation as well, a hypocritical meditation. One that would violate the third commandment not to take the Lord's name in vain.

The one who prays without really thinking about what he's praying. The one who reads without really thinking worshipfully of the one he is reading about. This is a misuse of God's name. And this is taking it in vain, not receiving it with the kind of honor that is due to it.

The Object and Activity of Christian Meditation

So what is the object of Christian meditation? Well, here it describes it as the law. Okay, so it is not what some people would have to be the objects of meditation. A lot of people will meditate, even in a sort of Christian way, on different truths about the world, on different truths about the things that God speaks of, where they examine the metaphysics of it, the ontology that is its existence, and the nature of it, and all kinds of logical properties about it, and things like that, the philosophy of it.

But really, anybody can do that. Even a non-Christian can do that. It's also not thinking about strictly moral things, right? If you contemplate civics, or you contemplate personal morality, or ethics, man between his neighbor, you can all do all that without contemplating the law of God too, because God has written the law in the heart in a natural way, in a natural way that every man has, and every man is able to think a little about these things, et cetera.

But what it has in mind here is not the natural revelation that God has given about this world, though that is from God, and that is good to think about in a way. True meditation recognizes these things in relation to God.

It is specifically thoughts that have to do with him centered on supernatural revelation, centered on the revelation that is not common to man, is specific to what he has revealed to his people in his word, and then even more so, specific to how he has revealed it to his people in their hearts by the Spirit.

So in one way, this sort of narrows the object of Christian meditation, compared to what someone might consider the object of meditation. They might consider it all these different things, but it's specifically those things that most directly pertain to God.

But in another way, it broadens it, because if you understand God's world properly, all things directly relate to God, and so if you consider them in their relation to God, then that could be, as you do that, a proper object of meditation.

Now, what is the activity of meditation? The activity of meditation, as I mentioned before, is not merely study. It is not merely getting the ideas, the truths into your mind. It is getting those truths into your heart.

Now, as I've mentioned before, when the Bible speaks about the mind and the heart, it's not really speaking about different things. These are all aspects of the soul, but they are distinct aspects. And so when I speak of the heart, I am talking about knowing these things, delighting in this truth in an experiential way and not merely an intellectual way, knowing propositions, knowing true statements, but experiencing that truth, delighting in it.

It is a matter of application to your own soul where you have applied that truth. You don't just know it out here like the demons do in Tremble, or even the demons know that God is one. But to know that in a way where it applies to your own soul and you are submitting to that truth and all that that would require of you, that is an experience.

It's not just a matter of application. It's also a matter of approbation. Okay, approbation means approval. It means love. Okay, it's just a matter of delighting in that word. There are so many scriptures I could point out there a lot in Psalm 119 that we just sang from that talk about the law being good and meditating on it.

One I wanted to present to you though is Jeremiah 15, 16, which says, your law was found and I ate it and it became to me a joy. Your law was found, I ate it, and it became to me a joy. Now, if you think about the different verses that you've heard in scripture that talk about the word being sweet like honey, et cetera, why is it that it so often speaks about the word as a matter of eating it?

Why is it that it speaks about eating it? If you think about your different senses, you know, sight, touch, et cetera, which one has a more direct association with pleasantness than eating, than tasting?

The primary thing that is supposed to happen in the taking in of the word of God that maybe other senses wouldn't capture as well, you know, the eyes can delight in something, but it's not quite like eating food.

You know, the fingers can delight in things, but it's not quite like eating food. There's something that is very immediate about the pleasantness of tasting something. It is the digestion and the delighting in that is most necessary in true Christian meditation.

That is the activity. And so as you ask yourself, why is that image just so frequently the image? It talks about seeing the word of God. Sometimes it talks about, you know, hearing the word of God, but why so often eating the word of God?

Separation, Repetition, and Delight in the Word

Well, that is a very intentional metaphor that it's focusing on. Now, what is this digesting and delighting in the word of God require? First of all, it requires a separation. Now, first of all, that is a separation from sin.

If you are like this man here in Psalm 1, and you are not like him, right, and you are walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of scornful scorners, how can you delight in the law of God?

If your delights, if your senses are filled with other kinds of worldly pleasures, how do you have the opportunity to delight in the law of God? You are delighting in the things that you are not supposed to delight in, and so you cannot delight in the things of God.

It requires a separation from sin. Now, in some measure, and at some times, it also requires a separation from good things, in some measure, at some times, right? You have Isaac in Genesis 24. He goes out into the field and meditates.

This is before Rebekah comes to him, and he meets her for the first time. He's meditating out in the field. He has gone to be apart. Jesus, you see many times, goes out to be alone with his Father. Why is this necessary?

Why is it good to be separate like this? Well, as you cleanse yourself from other delights, whether they be forbidden ones or even good ones at times, you are opening yourself up to receive special kinds of delights that your natural senses would be at war with.

Okay, you are opening yourself up to those other delights, and so at times, it is right to even pull yourself away from those things in order to meditate. It is, using this analogy of eating, is a palate cleanser, and if you ever go to a sushi restaurant and you get sushi, and they serve ginger and wasabi and soy sauce, and a lot of people don't know how these things work, so they put the, if you're not an experienced sushi eater, what do you do?

You put the ginger on the sushi, and then you eat it together. That's not how you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to eat the ginger in between different kinds of sushi to wash out your mouth of the taste in order that you can taste the different kind of sushi.

All right, this is what meditating does. It's where you go out and you kind of cleanse your palate in order that you can taste the goodness, the Word of God. A lot of the ways that people meditate are very contrary to this.

You know, you think about the, you know, there's a stereotype of the Instagram girl Bible study influencer, right, who, when she studies the Bible, where she's got her good coffee and she's got her blanket and she's got all these stickers and highlighters and stuff.

What is the idea there? She's filling her senses with all these different things that delight her, and as she's drawing in her Bible and coloring, is her focus really on delighting in the Word, or is it trying to fill her delights with all kinds of other things?

Now, there's nothing wrong with drinking coffee while you meditate on the Word of God, but many people, when they are thinking about the duty of meditation, they are not thinking about it as a duty to delight in something in particular, and so they're trying to bring in other things in order to make it a delight.

You know, you could use another analogy with this, and that is in musical worship, God commands that we sing, and you can use instruments to uphold the singing. You know, today we sang one hymn, acapella, others, we let the piano help carry it, and that's a good use of instruments in order to assist the singing, but a lot of people will use instruments in ways that compete with the singing and are trying to fulfill man with delights that are competing with the delights that he is supposed to have.

One thing I've mentioned, you know, I've probably mentioned this a few times before, but wind instruments, a lot of wind instruments require that you not be singing, right? So if you have a trumpet or whatever, you can't sing at the same time as playing a trumpet.

A lot of the instruments that people will use in worship will be ones that directly compete with their ability to do the thing that God has actually called them to do. Meditation requires a level of separation from the delights of this world.

It also requires time. It requires time to taste over and over again the goodness of the word of God, because it's not just about having consumed it once, it's about really having digested it. Okay, we are like cows.

You know how cows chew the cud? They need to chew it over and over and over and taste it over and over and over to sense it and digest it. That is what is needed. It's not just consuming it once, but it is an over and over and over kind of thing.

And this is something that is empowered by the gospel. Okay, this meditation on the word of God is not something that just anybody can do. It is something that only one who has been forgiven by Jesus and empowered by the spirit is capable of doing, is empowered by the gospel.

Meditation Empowered by the Gospel and the Spirit

I wanna walk you through a few passages. So please turn with me to Ephesians 5. I've got a couple more after this that I will have you turn to. But if you turn to Ephesians 5 first. Excuse me, I meant Ephesians 3.

Ephesians 3. I'll begin in verse 14. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit and your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

So what is this talking about knowing? It's something that transcends any kind of real dimensions. And yet you are supposed to know its height and its length and its depth and its breadth. This is something that surpasses knowledge.

How can you say it surpasses knowledge and also that you're to know this thing? Well, it is something that cannot be held within the mind of a man, but as it is communicated through Jesus Christ, one can experience it and know it through him, having his mind.

It explained in Ephesians 2 that we were children of wrath before we were saved by the mercy of Jesus Christ. Each one individually before he becomes, comes to faith in Jesus Christ, he's a children of wrath.

And so God's love for his people, it is something that existed before their salvation. It is by his own love that he sent Jesus Christ for God so loved the world, et cetera. Yet it is only through the mercy of Jesus Christ and forgiving us that we can experience that love, that we can truly meditate on it and know it because it is only by that forgiveness of sins that we are joined to Christ, joined to the vine, able to receive that life and receive that knowledge.

The kind of knowledge we're talking about here being the experience of his love. This is something that he has granted through the cross in giving us forgiveness of sins, that we can know what goes beyond all knowledge.

And also not just by the forgiveness of sins, but he has earned for us the gift of the Holy Spirit whom he has sent is by that spirit that we are joined to the vine. He is that channel of life that we receive from Jesus Christ.

And he gives us this knowledge, this experience. A couple more passages I would like you to walk through. 1 Corinthians 2, please turn to 1 Corinthians 2. I'll begin in verse four, excuse me, verse 10.

These things God has revealed to us through the spirit for the spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. All right, so if you read 1 Corinthians 1 and the beginning of 1 Corinthians 2, it's talking about the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God seems like foolishness to the world. Why? Because they can't receive it. The wisdom that God has is something that the world can't receive. It's something that God reveals how through his spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.

Verse 11, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the spirit of God. Now the analogy is there's, who knows what's going on in a man's head except for his own spirit?

And the same way, who knows what's going on in God's mind except for God's spirit? Well, we have, if you have God's spirit, you can know the mind of God. You can have the mind of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

It is through the spirit that we understand these truths. You know, all kinds of false believers, false professors, study the word of God are able to recite the doctrine of the Trinity sometimes better than a typical Christian, true Christian might be able to.

They can study all kinds of things, but apart from the work of the spirit in their life, they do not experience the delight in any of these truths. They don't have the mind of the spirit. Verse 13, and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

Now this is not just true in the intake, but also in the communication from one person to another. How is it that I get this truth that has landed in my heart into another's? Well, it's not by just mere propositions that are carried forward, but it's by those truths of the word going forward, being attended with the spirit of God in someone's heart that they would experience, that they would delight in that truth as well.

Verse 14, the natural person does not accept the things of the spirit of God. They are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Why is it that the average unbeliever cannot just reject these things entirely?

You need the spirit of God to accept these things. But then once again, even those who would accept them propositionally as true, have they really received these truths? Once again, the demons who shudder, who tremble at the truth that God is one.

Now there are polytheists out there. The demons have better beliefs than them. Why is it that that is not considered a real receiving of the word of God? Well, it's not a delight in the truth. It's not an experience of its goodness as the way as God has given this truth to man to be received.

It's only by the spirit who is the mind of God that you can receive these things. The spiritual person judges all things, but it is himself to be judged by no one. That means, right, if you have the mind of God, you can understand things.

You can understand them in relation to Christ. And those who would go around and mock the beliefs of Christians, they have no standing because it's not that they can evaluate these claims at a standard and just have a little less wisdom.

They're just not even categorically working with the same kind of understanding at all. They don't have the kind of knowledge that we're talking about here. This experiential understanding of the goodness of the word, the delight in it.

For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. You know, this is quoting passage from the Old Testament here. Who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

If you don't know the mind of God, you can't tell him what to do. If you have the mind of God, others can't tell you you are wrong. All right, the world has their wisdom. They think believers are foolish.

They can't say anything because they don't know the mind of God in order to tell the mind of God that he is wrong. If you have the mind of God, you're not subject to such judgment. Now that doesn't mean you can't be held accountable in a number of ways, but when it comes to the wisdom of God and knowing that he is good and that the cross is good, Christ crucified something shameful to the world is something that is joyful to us.

That cannot be judged.

The Spirit Writes the Word on the Heart

Second Corinthians chapter three, last one. I'm gonna take you to here. Second Corinthians chapter three, verse three.

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Okay, so God wrote his law originally on stone and in part that symbolizes a number of things.

It symbolizes the permanence of the law, all kinds of things, but in part it symbolizes that it's something external that doesn't actually transform on its own. The way that the law transform is not by its writing on stone, but by its writing by the spirit in the heart.

Verse six, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Okay, just sticking with study for your meditation, just learning these truths, learning the law of God, learning his things, all of that, it just kills.

It has no life in it. All it can do is condemn you as you have more and more understanding of him, but then stand without a real delight in his law. That just condemns further and further. It makes you aware of your condemnation as you realize more things, you're more culpable.

It can only kill, but when the spirit writes those laws on your heart, when reading them outside of you, he writes them inside of you, then that gives life. That's a wonderful thing. That is where real teaching happens.

That is where real meditation happens. These things being inscribed, engraved deeper and deeper indelibly, meaning in a way that cannot be changed on the heart. When someone weighs out a truth like this, yeah, maybe they change their mind later.

A lot of people do. When it is written on the heart and inscribed there, when you experience its goodness, how could you change? You couldn't. And the result of all this is holiness. It is holiness. It makes a man holy.

His heart by meditation is not just lifted up to understanding, it is lifted up to good heavenly affections. He rejoices in things that he should rejoice in. He mourns over the things he shouldn't mourn over.

Okay, he is filled with the right sort of heavenly affections. He's a holy man. If you ever meet someone who is very educated, you assume that they have studied a lot and that is a reasonable assumption.

And it is a right assumption. Every person you meet who is holy, you can assume that they have meditated much. Okay, an educated man, you can assume that they have studied much. Holy man, you can assume he has meditated much.

He has not just studied the Word of God, he is delighted in the Word of God. He has digested the Word of God. Now, consider how that applies to the question that we're asking ourselves about whether or not technology that makes it easier to get the answers to your questions about the Bible can replace this.

Well, there are different ways that you could believe. If you just believe study is meditation, if those are the same things, then you could say, well, yeah, I can just replace it and that I will just do that because that's the easier thing, et cetera.

Or there's a lot of people right now who recognize, okay, Christian meditation is something more than that, but I don't really know what it is and I think it pretty much is just study. And so they end up kind of shifting where it is, not in delight or in digestion, but rather in difficulty, right?

A lot of people think it's in the difficulty of the process. Maybe you remember when smartphones first came out, pretty common thing that you would hear in churches is certain people saying you really need a paper Bible.

If you are looking at it on your computer screen or you're looking at it on your phone, it's not gonna be the same. You're just not going to, you're not gonna take it in. And really what these people were saying is, I know it's not just study, it's something else, so it's gotta be the difficulty.

The fact that you didn't have to turn to those pages, that it didn't take you that effort that it's taking me must mean that you are not benefiting from it in the same way. And so they're trying to find that thing that it is and they've not landed on delight, digestion, but they've landed on difficulty and required that of people.

That is what it costs. No pain, no gain. And so there's some kind of pain gain calculus that has to go into this to determine whether or not that meditation is really going to be valuable for you. And if you think about the way that people are speaking of this, a lot of it seems very, not very thoughtful.

A lot of repeated concepts that do not seem to be evaluating these things in a much deeper way. I'll give you an analogy. If you've ever compared different Bible translations or looked into different Bible translations, one thing that you will find is when people talk about the NASB, the N-A-S-B, they almost always, in comparing it to other translations, call it wooden.

I don't know why this word always comes up. I love the NASB. I think it's great. I don't really see it as very different from the ESB. Now, a few times it's a little more literal. I think almost always in good ways.

I've hardly ever seen a time where it's just not understandable or something. But for some reason, I think it was maybe a marketing term that Crossway came up with when they were coming up with a competing translation or something.

This got to be the green light word and everyone started using the word wooden to talk about the NASB. It's a wooden translation. That is what a lot of people are using to talk about AI. They talk about short-circuiting, short-circuiting the mind and the study.

There's something that's not going to happen if you get to these answers easier. And they're trying to locate the value of meditation and the difficulty of finding it. Now, yes, it is true that if you have a more difficult process, you are probably going to internalize that thing.

That was difficult enough. You tell yourself, okay, it took me a long time to find that. I better lodge that in so it doesn't take me a long time the next time. Whereas if you're using a search engine or something and you can find it easily, you say, okay, well, I can just do that again next time.