Meditating on Scripture (part one)

D I S C I P L E S H I P W O R K B O O K

Lesson 13 Jay Wegter www.gospelforlife.org

Meditating on Scripture (part one)

I. THE MEANING OF MEDITATING UPON GOD’S WORD A. Scriptural meditation defined:

1. “The activity of calling to mind or thinking over and dwelling upon and applying to oneself the various things one knows about the works, ways, purposes, and promises of God” (J. I. Packer, Knowing God).
2. Meditation is renewal of the mind by means of God’s Word. Meditating on Scripture is for every believer because each believer is called to a life of transformation. “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2).

B. Meditating upon Scripture is a spiritual discipline.

1. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, as a means of communion with God. Meditation clears one’s mind and heart of distractions in order to gain a clear vision of God and to let His truth make its full impact. Meditation is necessary in order for God’s truth to change and our mind, affections, and will (see Communion with God, by John Owen).
2. Meditation on the Word is an energetic spiritual discipline; it involves focus and concentration. Meditation often involves talking to oneself about God and what He requires. It often entails ‘arguing’ and reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief and back into clear apprehensions of God’s holiness, love, power, and grace (see Thought of God, by Maurice Roberts).

II. WHAT ARE THE STEPS FOR MEDITATING UPON GOD’S WORD?

A. Meditation is an extension of the application step of personal Bible study.

1. Meditation takes the application step of Bible study even further by asking additional questions of the text:

• How does this passage ‘feed my faith’?
• How may I move into greater love of the truth as it is taught here?
• What changes are necessary for me to bring my life into conformity with God’s truth?

• How does this passage give me God’s way of seeing life?
• How does this passage help me ‘build a case’ for obedience?
• How does this passage help me ‘build a case’ against disobedience?
• What errors, lies, and temptations are refuted by this text?
• What are the benefits of obedience and the consequences of disobedience?

2. Meditation on Scripture involves a determination to believe what God says and to do it. “Therefore, let us fear lest, while the promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard” (Heb 4:1-2).
3. Many individuals who hear God’s Word and even read God’s Word do not profit from it because they do not respond to God’s Word with faith (Heb 4:2). All genuine obedience springs from faith in God’s Word. Meditation allows the Word to feed our faith and fasten God’s truth upon our understanding and affections.

B. Meditation on Scripture is the cultivation of the love of the truth.

1. “Under the law it was an unclean beast that did not chew the cud; it is a corrupt heart that does not ‘chew [God’s] truth’ by meditation” (Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God). Only the person who has saving grace has joy in God’s truth. The heart of a true believer functions as a servant of divine revelation (his heart and conscience are ‘captive’ to the Word of God).
2. By contrast, the unbeliever does not receive the love of the truth (2 Thess 2:10). The natural man cannot delight in the commandments of God (Rom 8:5-8). Therefore in the heart of a natural man; no meditation on Scripture takes place. The unregenerate man keeps God’s truth ‘confined to a vault’ lest it be released to fill his life and have total sway, influence and dominion.

3. The believer’s heart is a sanctuary of God’s truth. “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates both day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers” (Ps 1:1-2).

C. Meditation on Scripture involves treasuring God’s Word in the heart (Ps 119:11).

1. Meditation involves the study and reflection upon the Word in such a way that we find our true riches in the Lord. By turning over the truth of God in our minds; it makes an indelible impression upon us—it becomes ours. We live in an age of superficial religion. Most folks have ‘borrowed convictions’. They have never made it a habit to treasure up God’s Word in their hearts—so that longing for the pure milk of the Word is their practice (1 Pet 2:2; 1 Tim 4:6; 2 Tim 2:15).
2. The Psalmist said, “I will meditate upon Thy precepts; and regard Thy ways. I shall delight in Thy statutes; I shall not forget Thy Word” (Ps 119:15-16). Only when God’s Word is treasured in our hearts will it put us to work (both in serving God and putting sin to death).

3. One must meditate upon Scripture if he is to be a doer of the Word (James 1:22-25). Our desire to please God will only be realized if we continually familiarize ourselves with God’s truth (Josh 1:8).

III. THE NECESSITY OF MEDITATING ON THE WORD A. The contemplation of the truth is our primary weapon in the battle for the mind.

1. Meditation has a goal: to induce trust, loyalty, devotion, surrender, obedience, delight, and love to God; and, all the while deepening our knowledge of God, our love of His truth, and our conformity to it. When believers meditate, they are always about the business of weighing the temporal against the eternal—therefore they are willing to suffer loss and deny themselves for the sake of Christ. Frequent meditation is required to do this weighing of heaven against the world; of weighing the value of knowing Christ versus earthly gain (Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, pp. 374, 375).

2. When the saint meditates; he is anything but passive; he is busy building a case for obedience and tearing down the beginnings of any argument for distrust of God. Meditation moves the Word of God from the mind to the heart; from the academic to application. It is a revitalizing spiritual discipline that we need to exercise daily. Because our lower natures are hostile to God’s gracious will; our minds need constant reorientation by the Holy Spirit (Peter Toon, The Art of Meditating on Scripture, p. 31).

B. Meditation is necessary in order to enjoy the kind of intimacy and closeness to God to which we are called (Jn 15:4; 1 Jn 2:28).

1. There are but two ways to draw near to God: by prayer and by meditation (William G. T. Shedd). Meditation is a necessary labor and a pleasurable discipline to be able to take delight in God. The reward of regular meditation is that we find God to be our chief treasure, to be trustworthy, and to be our highest good. Heart warming communion with God is not possible apart from the Scripture practices of prayer, worship, and meditation.
2. The three disciplines of prayer, worship, and meditation are closely related. Scripture meditation feeds and stimulates both prayer and worship. Meditation is our contact point for communion with God; and it is the very essence of growth in our knowledge of God. As we meditate upon the Word of God we are communing with the Lord. Those who meditate upon Scripture who are blessed with ‘divine disclosures’; God is pleased to manifest His presence where the true knowledge of Him is known, loved, proclaimed, adored, and exalted.

3. By the mind-renewing power of meditation we submit our minds to the mind of God. We are lifted above subjectivism (moods and feelings) to concrete thoughts of God. The effect is always to humble us as we contemplate God’s greatness and glory against our sinfulness and smallness. Meditation teaches us to think in the presence of God (Ps 19:14).

C. Whatever occupies the mind and heart will engage the will. Thoughts and deeds follow affections. Meditation equips the believer to navigate by means of Scripture.

1. There is no way to pass victoriously through this world of seductive idols without meditation (Ps 119:9-16). We may tell ourselves that we please God because our lives conform outwardly to His moral commands: but the real evidence in the soul of the saint is meditation (Ps 1:1-3). Our love to God is evidenced there first. Blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear (Matt 13:16). The meditating saint uses these faculties planted at regeneration for the purpose of meditation (1 Cor 2:10-16).

2. The godly man meditates so that he might praise God and tell of all His works (Ps 145:1-7). He considers the exploration of God’s wonderful works to be his blessed vocation in life. Those who do not meditate upon the Word of God will be blown away as chaff when the winds of judgment blow (Ps 1:4-6) (Toon, p. 31).
3. When the saint communes with God through meditation; he is trusting God’s Word. As a result, God’s love controls more and more of his decision making. We must come to know God experientially if we are to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

D. When the believer meditates on the Word; he literally preaches to himself the will of God; the wonders of God; the ways of God; and the works of God; and the Gospel of God.

1. Maturing Christians meditate upon Scripture—this involves building a case for obedience and building a case against disobedience. Here is the great difference between merely reading Scripture and actually meditating upon God’s Word. Scripture constantly joins divine commands to the benefits of obedience.
2. How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked (Ps 1:1). And Scripture spells out the consequences of disobedience. He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm (Prov 13:20). Through Scripture meditation; we learn to love the truth in order to be conformed to it. The Christian worldview is incredibly demanding. We must know the reasons for self denial; for daily taking up our cross.

3. To meditate upon Scripture is to familiarize oneself with the benefits of obedience and the consequences of disobedience. The growing believer learns to mentally wrestle and argue through the commands of Scripture. The divine “logic” for obedience must become the believer’s logic (Ps 101:1-5).

E. The secret to overcoming the controlling power of sin is in ‘deconstructing’ the lies that drive lust and temptation.

1. Hebrews 6:11, 12 tells us that we must show the same diligence as the saints who have gone before us—so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. We can only run the race set before us with stamina if we fix our eyes on Jesus and lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us (Heb 12:2). We ‘fix our eyes’ upon Jesus by meditating upon His excellence and perfections.

2. The lusts that seek to hold us are animated by lies. Scripture refers to these lie-driven lusts as the lusts of deceit (Eph 4:22). We use Scripture to unravel the lies that energize temptation. But this is precisely where we are lazy thinkers. We hesitate to actually exert the mental energy necessary to ‘out-truth’ the lies behind the lusts—but we must do this in order to succeed against sin.
3. The world has always offered itself as genuine source to satisfy our soul’s thirst. Scripture compares the world to a leaky cistern (reservoir) which can hold no water (Jer 2:13). God tells us that if one is a friend of the world; he is an enemy of God (James 4:4). To be a friend of the world is to believe the lie that the world is one’s true source. So antithetical are God and the world in terms of source; that to regard the world as source is to be an avowed enemy of God.

4. In our meditation we preach the truth to ourselves with enough conviction to drown out and expose the lie. The Christian must be on the offensive in this matter. He has no choice. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth, trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret (Eph 5:8-12).

5. This pattern of lust operating by deceit is only broken when work is done in the recesses of the soul. The lie must be excavated, exposed, and refuted through Scripture meditation. The Christian will have to preach to himself the boundaries which God has erected to safeguard personal holiness. Tear down the temple of lust with truth in order to build the edifice of purity—the latter replaces the former (Eph 4:22-32).
6. Solid biblical thinking formed during meditation. Happy is the man who knows the ways of the Lord; and wise is the man who knows how sin operates. Iniquity has a kind of life of its own—it permits no competitors; accepts no truce. It wants complete dominion. Sin can’t wait to initiate a coup; a hostile takeover. It will slander God in order to sustain its existence. It will publish the most horrific lies about God in order to seduce one sinner by its promised charms.

7. Sin is parasitic; like the cuckoo which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests. The cuckoo chick, upon hatching, pushes all the eggs of the natural mother out of the nest so that the parents’ food and energies go completely into raising the alien parasite chick. Sin behaves in a similar manner. It seeks to eliminate any competition for its host’s time, talent, and affection. Wise is the man who knows that sin never abides in a static position; it is either being conquered; or is conquering. We either overcome it or are overcome by it.

8. Sin gets its foothold by our doubting God. This is why it is so important to watch over one’s heart with all diligence (Prov 4:23). Our spiritual loyalty or treason begins with our thought life. It’s hard to surpass this bit of prose for illustrating the importance of thoughts: Sow a thought; reap an action; sow an action; reap a habit; sow a habit; reap a character; sow a character; reap a destiny.

9. R. C. Sproul reminds us, right now counts forever. Or as one pastor quipped, today you are becoming what you will be five years from now. This is why meditation is indispensable to our arsenal. Meditation enables us to ‘get the victory’ in the battle for the mind.

F. The maturing Christian has learned through meditation to be a ‘physician’ to his own soul.

1. He knows the particular kind of distemper that he is prone to fall into. He knows how to preach to his own heart. He sees temptation at a distance; he is aware of his vulnerability. He knows the appropriate biblical remedies for each disorder; whether laxity, guilt, presumption, self-righteousness, or discouragement.
2. The growing believer has learned to feed his soul on the precious things of God through meditation. He goes to God each day for delight. He feeds on grace so that he will never lack courage to run to God for new installments of love, acceptance, mercy, and grace (Heb 4:16). He keeps ‘building a case’ for obedience by focusing on the benefits of obedience. Those benefits include the 100’s of promises found in Scripture that are addressed to those who trust and obey the Lord (by way of example see James 4:5-10).

3. He nourishes his soul on the excellence of heavenly things; the things above (Col 3:1-2). He knows that to behold God’s glory by faith puts resolve in the will; it enables a man to trample upon all the world’s offers. Therefore he is intentional; he reviews his riches in Christ; he keeps going to Scripture to meditate upon God’s glory.

QUESTIONS:

(I.A.1-2) 1.) Explain why is meditation on Scripture for every believer?

(I.B.1-2) 2.) Do you study the Bible and meditate upon the Word for the purpose of meeting with God, drawing near to Him, and fellowshipping with Him? In light of communing with God, explain why meditation is both a spiritual discipline, and a joy.

(I.B.1-2) 3.) Read Jude 1:20-21. What role does meditation play in building yourselves up in your most holy faith?

(II.A.1) 4.) Read Philippians 3:7-11. Meditate on the passage. Select one of the bulleted questions in I.A.1 of your outline. Answer the question using the passage above.

(II.A.2-3) 5.) Read Hebrews 3:14 through 4:1-2. Comment on the connection you see between faith, obedience, and profiting from the Word of God.

(II.B-C) 6.) Read 2 Thessalonians 2:10. How does the love of the truth protect a believer from error? Explain how meditation deepens our love of the truth so that the Lord becomes our treasure?

(III.A.1-2) 7.) Perhaps in the past you thought of mediation as a more passive act. Actually meditation is a very ‘vigorous’ spiritual discipline. What are some of the actions that take place in Scripture meditation?

(III.B.1-3) 8.) Read John 15:4 and 1 John 2:28. In these passages the believer is commanded to abide in Christ. What role do you think Scripture meditation plays in our abiding in Christ?

(III.C.1-3) 9.) How does Scripture meditation assist us in the process of ‘smashing’ any idols of the heart?

(III.D.1-3) 10.) Read Psalm 101:1-5. Locate at least three of the phrases which express the Psalmist’s determination to obey God completely. What evidences in this Psalm prove that the writer meditates regularly?

(III.E.1-9) 11.) Explain what it means to deconstruct a lie.

(III.E.1-9) 12.) Read 2 Peter 2 in its entirety. Write down at least two truths from 2 Peter 2 which expose the world’s lies (false promises) about sensuality.

(III.E.1-9). 13.) Read Proverbs 4:23. What connection do you see between Scripture meditation and watching over the heart with all diligence?

(III.F.1-3) 14.) What is your understanding of the term, ‘physician of the soul’? After studying this portion of the outline; what activities do you plan to add to you Scripture meditation?