The Scripture reading this morning is actually coming from
Psalm 119. We're going to be looking at
three different verses. It will start on page 4480
start, but we'll have to flip at least one time.
So if you want to flip over to 480 looking at Psalm 119, Psalm
119 verse 15 says this, I will meditate on your precepts and
fix my eyes on your ways. And Psalm 1/19/23 says this.
Even though Princess sit plotting against me, your
servant will meditate on your statutes.
And then if you flip over to Psalm one, 19148 says My eyes
are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate
on your promise. This is the word of the Lord.
What's going on in Port City? Family and friends.
How are we doing? Good.
My name is Tanner. I'm one of the pastors here.
It's an honor to be with you. I remember years back I came to
Faith in college and I went and sat down with the ministry
leader of the the ministry that helped lead me to Faith.
His name was Brian. I was like, Brian, why should I?
Why should I keep coming here? Like, what is the point of this
ministry? Why do you do your job?
Like, help me understand, Like I get Jesus, but what is this?
And he was taken aback and he was like, all I want for you is
that when you're 65, you love Jesus more than you do right now
and that you can handle life. You can handle the punches it's
going to throw the temptation, the anxiety, the the good
things, the bad and everything in between.
And through it all, you come out on the other side loving Jesus
more than you do right now. And I was like, that sounds good
to me. And I that just helped me
connect. Like, why are we here?
And in some ways, like if you're wondering what is port city
about, that's really all we want for you.
I promise you our full agenda is that you love Jesus at the end
of your life more than you do right now.
And y'all, a lot of life is going to happen between now and
then. Life going life, OK, you won't
get punched in the mouth. You are by life and you're going
to you're going to deal with the temptations of prosperity at
times, anxiety and all these things.
And one of the only ways that you're going to make it and
become that person that loves the Lord at 80 or loves the Lord
at 68 or whatever it is, is if the word of God is just miles
deep in you. Like miles deep that God's word
lives in you, swims in you, and you just love it.
You eat it and you take it into the very depths of who you are.
So that's what this sermon series is all about.
We looked at reading the word. We looked at storing up the word
this week as meditate on the Word.
And next week is live the Word. OK, so I want to pray one more
time and then we're going to dive into talking about
meditating on the word. Pray with me, our Father.
I thank you that Brian told me that all those years ago, and I
thank you that he was part of that in my life.
I pray God you would give us just the privilege of being that
for others. And just as a community, we
would be a part of what keeps one another walking with you for
years to come. And and for those who don't know
Christ here, God that they would see something in you hear
something from you that just just changes them.
God, my mind is just drawn to to first Peter where it says like
newborn infants long for milk. We should long for your word.
So God, I just pray you would gift this church that.
So Father, what we know not right now, would you teach us
what we have not, would you give us and what we are not, would
you make us? And let the words of my mouth in
the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.
And everybody who agree with that said Amen.
Y'all kids don't appreciate food the way adults do.
Have you ever noticed this? Think like a toddler, OK, when
it comes to your mind, a toddler with food, what comes to my mind
is the cup covered in some kind of way with goldfish in it.
There can be liquid of some kind in that bowl and they are just
running around the room and they get what they need when they
need it, but it is gross. They don't appreciate it.
OK. And here's the thing about kids,
you can increase the quality of the food you give them does not
change their process. It will get goldfish level
treatment. Even if you put a steak on the
plate, there's nothing like the first time you were scraping
steak into the trash can with like a pound of ketchup and
you're just like, Lord, how did we get here?
OK, And I'm not spending my money.
I'm just going to give them goldfish and we going to eat the
steak. OK, Because adults, we know
better, don't we? We know the greatness that is
steak. We eat less the day leading up
to the steak. We plot, we plan, we drink, we
sip, we savor, we put the movie on so we can enjoy the meal
while they watch it, OK? And leave us be to our steak.
All right? Now, why do I bring that up?
Y'all hearing the word, reading the word is like the food is put
before you. It's like the food is in front
of you but y'all just reading it or even just hearing it with
your ears is not in and of itself what the Bible envisions
as eating the word. OK, part of the assumed biblical
process of hearing God's word is meditating on it.
It's an assumed piece of the puzzle.
OK? The Lord says taste and see that
the Lord is good y'all. It is in meditation that it's as
if we are internalizing and getting the nutrients from God's
word. It is the way that the word
actually gets in US. You know they say you are what
you eat. We all that's true physically.
It's also true spiritually. We live in a day and age with
tons of access to the written, spoken, verbal audio word, tons
of sermons. You can listen to them all day
every day, but there is sometimes a disconnect between
how much we are internalizing, metabolizing it.
OK. And I think one of the missing
links is meditation. So my prayer for us that we
would walk out of here as Psalm one says, meditating on the word
day and night. OK, to get there, we're going to
talk about the definition of biblical meditation, the sources
for biblical meditation and the impact of biblical meditation.
If you are ready, let me hear you say I'm ready.
OK, let's talk about the definition.
We're going to read verses 14 and 15.
Check this out In the way of your testimonies, I delight as
much as in all riches, I will meditate on your precepts and
fix my eyes on your ways. OK, few notes here about
biblical meditation. Number one, in biblical
meditation, we fill the mind. We don't empty it in biblical
meditation. We fill the mind.
We don't empty it. I am saying the word biblical
meditation over and over and over intentionally because the
default in our current cultural moment is sort of the coming to
your mind, LeBron James in an app going on, you know, the Calm
app, OK, every of your top secular podcast people, whoever
that is, or maybe you don't listen to them, all of them
recommend to you that you meditate, OK?
And what they mean by it leans on, does that make sense?
It leans emptying. It leans more the the Eastern
view of meditation, which generally is rooted in emptying
your mind. OK, part of what's at the center
of that worldview is that you're emptying your mind because
you're trying to tap into some energy generally or some source
of something that you're emptying to enter.
OK, That is not how the Bible thinks about it.
I remember I ran into a guy in Southeast Asia handful of years
ago and he had come to faith in his 20s.
He literally just laid out the Hindu texts, the scriptures, the
Bible and the Quran. He just read them through.
He's like, yeah, this one's the most compelling and convincing.
Gives his life to Jesus. We're sitting here talking on
the street one day. And he said one of his greatest
joys of being a Christ follower was how meditation had changed.
It had gone from emptying an OM to a.
He was like, you don't empty the mind now you feel it.
OK. What?
What did he understand that the Bible knows is that in biblical
meditation you are filling your mind with the things of God, his
character, his ways, his law, his promises.
You are intentionally fixating your mind on the things of God.
And once you realize that, once you realize that meditation
isn't emptying, it's filling, it dawns on you.
You've been meditating kind of your whole life.
OK Think about the term premeditated OK?
Crimes are premeditated and held at a higher standard when it's
deemed you gave thought to that beforehand.
When we talk junk y'all? This is a bad confession
teenagers. Hope this has not happened to
you. I have hit send on text talking
junk about friends to the friend I was talking junk about when I
was 17 and then played it off and said no and just played it.
We are we are the and somehow we were still friends for a little
while longer. OK, we are a premeditated
people. OK, so once that gets in your
mind, meditation is the fixation of the mind, which your head
does. Your, your, your daydreaming is
closer to biblical meditation than emptying your mind.
OK, your your anxiety you're swirling around the same
thoughts is actually pretty close to what the Bible has in
mind for meditation. Second thing, in biblical
meditation, we fill the mind because the heart has been
captivated. OK, The reason we read verses 14
and 15 together was that he said, I delight in your
testimonies as much as in all riches.
And then he says, I will meditate on your precepts and
fix my eyes on your ways. There's this idea that we fix
the mind because the heart has been grabbed.
OK, so your heart loves. Your mind fixates on what the
heart loves. OK, you send your mind in search
of and swirl around what you love.
So if you're not a follower of Jesus here today, just hear
this. Meditating on God won't feel
natural to you, nor should it. And I'm not advocating that you
can. You can meditate your way into
relationship with God. It's sort of backwards of how
the Bible thinks about it. Our fixing our mind as followers
of Jesus should flow from our love of Jesus.
It's like the heart gets grabbed and yet still takes work as
we'll talk about, but the mind should more effortlessly follow
for the Christ follower. Y'all.
There was a time where all of my meditation was the next jump
shot that goes in the next person that liked me or what
you're what you're daydreaming tends to be is Kingdom building
or Kingdom preserving, right? What is anxiety but just a
distortion of meditation? It's just swimming around the
same things. You fear losing something.
What if that happens? What if the conversation goes
this angle? You are just circling it over
and over and over. That is how all of us were
before Christ and He came in and chose to save us, chose to
reveal Himself to us, show, show us that His love is better than
that which we fear losing or gaining.
He, He dislodged our heart from lesser things, OK, and grabbed
us and pulled us to Himself. So to the Christ followers, this
should be natural. Amen.
Emphasis on should because we too just fixate on what we fear
losing, don't we? And we fear things and we, we
want to build our little kingdoms.
But at its essence, all biblical meditation is, is fixing our
mind on what our heart has been captured by.
OK, third thing in biblical meditation, we fix the eyes of
our heart on the ways of God. That's what you're doing.
You're fixing your eyes. As verse 15 said, I would
underline that if you're using your Scripture, fix my eyes on
your ways, somebody say fix my eyes.
Our culture understands this. OK, our our culture has been
deemed the attention economy. OK, I'm not a huge fan of
ranting like we live at the worst moment in history.
All there's nothing new under the sun.
But I will say what's unique about our current cultural
moment is the monetization and the gamification of your
attention, which leads to your addiction.
You know, like all of that is currently going on on the
screens and stuff is highly addictive processes to literally
make money off your attention, right?
Y'all do know there was a time where the phrase like and
subscribe was not a thing. All the kids are like what?
What did we do before like and subscribe?
I remember when it first came out during like COVID time and
the the YouTube videos, just the outrageous nature with which
they'd be like like and subscribe and the bells and all
the things. But y'all, what is like and
subscribe other than fix your eyes on our ways.
When we put out videos, be the first to see them when we drop
products, be the first to get them when we give out insider
things. You've got to like and subscribe
to get entered in to win. You see what I'm saying?
And then we just hope you forget that you ever subscribe.
But you are fixing your eyes on our ways.
Whether you like to or not. Our culture gets fix your eyes.
So we're not talking about. I just want to be really clear
because this can happen sometimes with what your brain
thinks is a spiritual conversation.
We think preacher man is saying I need to start meditating, not
what preacher man is saying. Preacher man is saying you
already are. We live in a world of fixing our
eyes. That's what we do all day, every
day. You are a human being with the
agency to choose that which you are meditating on.
Amen. Somebody.
So Psalm 119, verse 148 says this.
It says my eyes are awake before the watches of the night that I
may meditate on your promise. As you are reading through Psalm
119 over and over and over throughout the series, hopefully
what you're feeling is this back and forth between this is
natural and I have to work at it.
This is natural and I have to work at it.
I want this, but you better make me want this or I'm not going to
want this. We were talking about this in
our quick class earlier. How can you talk about something
like it's automatic, but if God don't help you, it won't be
automatic and I'm like welcome to walk out with Jesus.
OK, here's my heart. Lord take and seal it.
Because even if 99.9% of me wants you, the point O1 will
dominate me if you don't help me.
OK, so yeah, there is AI will set the clock to when I will
will meditate on your precepts, your promises, your ways.
Fourth thing about biblical meditation, in biblical
meditation, we linger on God. We linger.
Somebody say linger. I remember the first preacher
that kind of taught me about biblical meditation, dude named
Eric Mason. Sometimes we put some of his
books out there and he talked about how the the Hebrew
understanding of the word meditate was pretty close to
what cows do with grass. OK, now I don't know the last
time you watched the cow eat grass.
It's pretty disgusting and fascinating because they are
just constantly doing it constantly.
They are all the kids in the room.
I need you all to give me the best chewing slow side to side.
Like imagine your jaw like a nice.
It's got to have a little rhythm to it, but not too fast.
It's got to be like like there's one part that's fast, but it's
so, so, so, so fast through. OK, that's like watching a cow.
And then just imagine just deep green grass on just hanging off.
OK This is what a cows body is doing.
It eats the grass for up to 7 hours a day.
The grass goes into their stomach which is a multi layer.
There's tons of dynamics to a cow stomach.
It comes back up as could could I, I don't even know how to say
the word right. OK, comes back up and then they
keep chewing it, OK. And the more they chew it, the
more the enzymes are released that their body actually gets
the nutrients. From what I saw in this process,
by the way, is called rumination, which is what your
mind is doing all the time. It's ruminating, spinning
thoughts round and round. And the idea here, y'all, is
that your soul is the cow. The cow's jaw moves 40,000 times
in a day, up to 13 hours of ongoing to 17 hours of ongoing
movement. So to meditate on the Lord is
for his character to be the grass.
That makes sense. So let's be clear, you're
already moving your soul 40,000 times.
You're already ruminating, right?
The question is, what is it? Right.
And again, if you're not a Christian, it's not some path,
OK, that's not what I'm trying to give you.
But if you're in Christ, we have our agency over our meditation.
And when God in his ways is the source of your meditation, it's
going to change your life. And the one thing you've got to
get in your head, because I use the word linger, somebody say
linger. One of the things that will keep
you from a life of biblical meditation is if every second
has a job, which is what every podcast is telling us to do.
Does that make sense? Every second has to make you
more money or build you something.
So the more you think like that, the more it's going to be
difficult to just linger, to just be with God, to just know
him, to just love him, to just ponder who he is, which is what
we're about to talk about. Does that make sense?
So one of the assumed mindsets that's got to get in you is that
being with God and meditating on His ways is always worth it,
even if you can't one to one, what it correlates to in your
character or whatever. He's God, meditate on him.
Let's talk about the sources for biblical meditation.
And I'm trying to be practical as we go as opposed to 1 moment
where I'm like, here's how to do this.
It's just kind of just kind of as we're going, I'm trying to be
practical. There are three sources for
biblical meditation. The first one is the essence of
God, just who God is. Just meditate on a junk like
he's eternal. Every time you turn on a light
switch, God doesn't have an internal light switch.
He's just been on like you can meditate on through the, the,
the people of old, the, the Christian tradition before us,
they would just look at stuff and think about how it relates
to the Lord. I'm stable when I sit.
God doesn't sit. God's always stable, you know,
like they would just flow with how everything before them could
go back to who God is. Or you could take a a biblical
concept about God's essence, like his omnipresence, which
means God is always present everywhere.
Always present everywhere. Matthew 123 They shall call him
Emmanuel, which means God with us.
OK, so you just be the cow with God with us in your head.
God, you're with us, God you're with us.
God, you're with me, you're with me, you're, you're with me.
Are you always with me? And this is what happens.
A biblically meditating mind becomes a biblically lived
world. Here's the idea.
What your meditation source is shapes your imagination.
OK, a mind of biblical meditation will lead to a life
of biblical imagination. So here's what I'm not saying.
The more you process who the Lord is and begin to meet with
Him through biblical meditation, you can, with 100%
epistemological certainty, say what God would say to you in a
moment. You can't know that for sure,
but the more what you're meditating on shapes the world
you live in. OK, so let's take God with us.
God, you're always with us. You were with me today when my
boss gave me some criticism. Is that true or not?
OK, you were there. I went into reaction mode right
away, started firing back, started feeling hot in my body.
I don't even remember that mess. So let's replay that.
You have permission to use your imagination to think about where
was the Lord there. OK, God, I got reactive.
I got this, I got that. You were in the room, God, you
weren't in the podium, you weren't in the desk.
This is not pantheism. But you were there.
That's what your word says. You are with me.
So where were you, God? What would it have looked like
to not get defensive right then? What did you want me to know in
that moment? And just processing, what might
the Lord want you to know? You're my son, you've got
nothing to prove. Do you know for 100% certainty
that's what he's saying? That's not what I'm saying.
But does that seem consistent with what God would want you to
know as his child in a moment where you're getting chewed out?
Seems pretty consistent to me. OK, Lord, you are with me.
You love me. I didn't handle that well.
Not going to beat myself up. I have to see them at 8:45 AM
tomorrow when I walk by the office.
Lord, what is you being with me look like when that happens,
y'all, the more your mind is meditating on the truths of God
and it actually becomes conversation with God.
Now we're actually living with him, which is the whole goal.
The goal isn't the knowledge you get, it's the life you get with
God. Does that make sense?
That's the whole goal is to take these truths and live with God
through them. Second source of biblical
meditation is the gospel of God. So we've got the essence of God,
we've got the gospel of God. Y'all, Gospel just means good
news. Gospel just means good news.
Y'all, the good news of the Bible is that God has eternally
been Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now let me tell you what that
means. It means that there's never been
a moment where God was bored. He did not create us out of
boredom. He is not needy.
He is not insecure. OK, God did not create because
He was empty, but because He was overflowing.
God doesn't redeem us because He's needy, but because He's
overflowing. The essence of His character is
the gospel where He makes sinners righteous.
The righteousness of God is revealed in that He makes
sinners righteous by sending the Son full of the Spirit to bring
us back into relationship with God.
The Father sent the Son to bring you back into God's family so
you could just meditate on the cross and the great links to
which God has gone to purchase you, to buy you back to Himself
so He can live life with you. That is what will change your
life, y'all. That's what will keep you from
chasing and meditating on other things.
When you realize that God went to those great links for you and
nothing else cares for you like that, the more you ponder that.
Because I will say this, if you're not a Christian, one of
the evidences that God is starting to starting to pull on
your heart is your relationship to God's word.
When you don't care is you don't even remember.
Like some of y'all sat through sermons for years and you act
like you ain't never heard Jesus loved you.
That church probably told you Jesus loved you.
I good chance you didn't care. You weren't listening, right?
That was me. But all of a sudden your ear,
you just start hearing stuff like did you know God wrote a
book? It's called the Bible.
Yeah, Yeah, he did. He did.
It just starts to break in a little more frequent.
And now you're thinking about it a little bit and now it's
getting in you and you're, you're really pondering these
truths. And then one of the evidences
that you're saved is instead of tolerating God's Word or just
being distracted away from God's Word, now you crave it.
So your relationship to God's word will change.
If God is drawing you is one of the evidences and one of the
means by which he will draw you to himself.
The third source of biblical meditation is the promises of
God, the promises of God. So the essence of God is just
who he is. The gospel is what he's done.
The promises are what he says he'll do.
Now, good Bible teacher Asterix, the promise has to apply to you
family. So when you go promise chasing,
please do it exegetically faithful, OK?
That just means know what you're talking about.
And there's a lot of promises in the Scriptures that do apply to
you, and they apply in different ways at different times.
So just sit under good Bible teaching, be in Bible studies,
know what websites to go to. That's what community is about.
We're doing this together. Run it by somebody.
I have to do that. Here's one, OK, Psalm 138, verse
8. The Lord will fulfill His
purpose for me. The Lord will fulfill his
purpose for me. King David said that the Lord
will fulfill his purpose for me. What would it do in your life if
you swam in that truth, If you chewed on that like some some
grass until it was miles deep in you?
The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.
The Lord will fulfill the, the Lord will like you think you got
to do everything and it'll just make you just, just just chill
out, just just a little bit, OK, just a little.
You'll be like, ah, the Lord will fulfill his purposes for
me. Now, don't mean you stay in bed
and eat, you know, eat food and watch Netflix, OK?
But it's just this idea of who's at the center of your world.
The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.
When you don't hit your goals, God's plan is moving forward.
The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me.
And it's just, we know these truths.
There's so many promises in Scripture that we just say we
know, but we they haven't been internalized, they haven't been
metabolized. They're not a part of you.
You haven't eaten them. Are you with me?
OK, let's talk about the impact of biblical meditation.
The impact I got three. Number one, our prayers get
realer. Our prayers get realer.
One pastor a couple 100 years ago, he said that meditation is
the halfway house between the Word and prayer.
It's kind of like you got to go through it to get to prayer.
The idea is that when your soul is really taking in the word of
God, OK, and really grabbing it, you just open your eyes and look
around and you're like, the word is here and my life is here, the
world is here. So there's a gap there.
And what many of us do is we're like, and we don't pray because
the gap doesn't feel like it applies.
You, you don't care, you don't. There's something about the gap
we're like, well, there's nothing I could do or God must
not be good. And we just settle for those
surface level either confusions or you know, there's some
legitimate stuff to work out there.
But y'all, the point of you still being on earth and not
being just taken to heaven when you got saved is to live in that
gap. The whole goal of your life is
with God in the gap and he wants to bring you into it and feel
what he feels, know what he knows and live with him.
And what you're going to do is you're going to get mad, you're
going to get frustrated, you're going to get confused, you're
going to cry, you're going to beg, you're going to plead,
you're going to scream. And that's what the Bible calls
praying. OK, but that's not many of our
experiences with prayer because we think this, this is I heard
one guy do this one time with prayer.
We're just like, we learned the cadence and the words.
We're like Amen, and it's like we're just we're just the
motions, man. We just learned this is what you
do and some of us believe some of it, right, But yo, biblical
meditation is part of how you wrestle.
Like wrestle that thing. When you wrestle with God, you
going to lose, but the good news is you come out on the other
side different part of what he wants is you to wrestle him.
He wants to change you. But some of us, we get to the
wrestling mat. We're like I'm good, I'll watch
you know, but the point is the wrestling.
Does that make sense? Prayer is how we go to war with
what God is saying in the midst of a broken world.
Second, our circumstances no longer dictate our joy.
Look at verse 23. Even though Princess sit
plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your
statutes. I might say even though I just
want you to think about that multiple not just a Prince, even
though a Prince, no, even though prince's imagine multiple world
political leaders using all of their energy and power to chase
you down. OK, they are plotting on your
downfall. It is possible, even though
that's going on for you to be in your head swimming with chewing
on fixated on who God is. I don't know about you.
That's not always my experience. If the pressure turns up just a
little bit. I don't even have no, I don't
even know a Prince, but in my life I will get fixated on
protecting my little Kingdom or building it and I just when the
pressure comes, you tend to look down, right?
You tend to just you panic and some of that's human.
It's understandable. It's natural in some ways, but I
just I read this verse and I'm like, I want that so bad.
I want to be the type of person that when the pressure of life
just turning up, my eyes are on the Lord.
And that's possible. It's possible.
Family. I hope that just gives you joy
as you hear it. Third, third, impact.
Our ways align with God's ways. Our ways align with God's ways.
The way the New Testament thinks about the process from you
hearing the word is just hear and then obey.
That's what James says. Be not a hearer only, but a
hearer and a doer of the word, right?
Or Jesus, the one who hears these words of mine and does
them will be like a house built on the rock, right?
So if we can't think of right now one verse that makes as big
of a deal of meditation maybe in the New Testament, why am I
harking on it? Why does Psalm 119 talk about
it, y'all? I would argue it's an assumed
part of hearing. Are you with me?
It's an assumed biblical understanding of what it means
to actually hear the word of God is for it to get in you.
Does that make sense that it's just an assumed thing?
The way my brain has been thinking about this week is I've
thought of two islands right next to each other.
You got the hearing island and the doing island and some water
in between. The assumed biblical bridge is
meditation. It's how that word is getting in
you. Are you with me?
It's how. It's how it's coming to life, so
to speak. In the Western church, yo, we
have so much access to the word of God.
You got access to 300 translations on your phone.
You know people in our world are still walking miles to go hear
the word and guess what they're doing on the way back?
They're meditating on the one sermon they heard.
We will listen to a sermon radio station all day every day and
not meditate on none of it. Guy a couple 100 years ago said
I would take one sermon meditated on over 100 that we
listened to at 1 1/2 speed. That's my version of what he
said. OK, they didn't have 1 1/2 speed
yet, but for some reason we think just hearing more hear,
hear, hear all the time. But what the Bible means by hear
is let what you're hearing get in you.
And that takes lingering, It takes considering, it takes
pondering, it takes rumination, it takes just sitting in it.
Had a old chess coach. We were all trying to get better
back in the day and we would just play each other all the
time. He's like, you're only going to
get no better. All y'all do is play each other.
Said just review one game for like 30 minutes.
Stop you don't play 30 games for one minute each.
How you going to get better? And that's sort of what what the
the the Western church can feel like sometimes and somewhat even
learning more information through the sermons can feel
like a game a little bit. I want to learn more and I like
I like learning you all. I'm a preacher.
I love it. But the goal is that we're
actually getting that word in US.
Psalm 11959 says this. When I think on my ways, I turn
my feet to Your testimonies. When I think on my ways, I turn
to your testimonies. OK, so check this out.
What's going to happen? The more you are drinking deeply
of God, eyes lifted, seeing Him. When you turn your eyes down to
your feet and your ways and look at your life, there will be an
automatic alignment. You will be so filled with who
He is. You're just going to look down
and be like, Oh well, that's out of line and you line it up.
What we tend to do is we're staring down and we look up and
we just keep going. So we've kind of got backwards
what the Bible is assuming we're supposed to drink deeply of the
Lord, glance at ourselves, drink deeply of the Lord, glance at
yourself, deeply of him, glance at yourself.
I don't even need to tell you. Finish the sentence with me.
We tend to drink deeply of self and glance at God.
And that backwardness shows itself in many of our lives.
Y'all, we are invited to just drink deeply of who he is and
what he says is true and what reality is.
I want to call you as we we start transitioning towards
closing to meditate on the word of God day and night.
And y'all listen, this is going to look different for different
people in different seasons. And sometimes we're storing up
things and meditating on things you're going to need later.
And sometimes again, don't think towards what end.
Just think, get in on a process, OK?
It's going to look different based on your life stage, your
career, all the things, but God is going to change you.
Some seasons he's challenging you, some seasons he's just with
you. Some seasons he's exhorting you,
some seasons he's rebuking you. OK, that's what the word does
according to Second Timothy 316. But what's consistent is the
Word's presence in your life, the Lord's presence through his
Word by the Spirit, so that the impact, the way the means will
will vary, but the Word's role won't.
Does that make sense? So what I want to call you to is
just anchor in your mind right now that you are going to be a
meditator on God's Word, that that's who you're going to be,
that you're going to reorientate your life, your meditation
towards who God is. And Ezekiel 3, there's this cool
image. I can go read Ezekiel 2 and
three, but Ezekiel was a prophet and the Lord literally says,
take the scroll and eat it. And I think that's a great
image. She's like, now you're going to
go speak my word because you ate it.
And that's sort of the idea is what is in you is what will come
out of you. To my students in the room.
Does anybody remember getting their first callus?
Did anybody get a callus right with a pencil?
Anybody. Am I crazy?
I remember this. OK Pastor Will likes to make fun
of me because the way I hold my pencil is like one step away
from holding it, just like with a whole fist.
But I remember being in like first or second grade and just
my finger hurting. We were writing so much.
Then one day I look down, I got this giant bump where I hold my
pencil and I'm like, what's that?
Daddy said that's a callus. Said, what's a callus?
And in my dad's way, this is basically what he told me.
It is your body reacting to something external being applied
to it over and over and over. And guess what happens?
A callus is evidence that now that external thing is kind of a
part of you. That's what a callus is.
It's so assuming and making an adjustment based on that
external thing being applied to it over and over and over.
It's making room for it, right? My finger now still got the
little bump. It's slight, but it's more than
the other finger and it's still, I remember the day, yo, some of
what I'm calling us to is stuff we do all the time.
It's applying an external agent to you.
It feels external at first, but eventually it feels like it's a
part of you. Does that make sense?
It's the process of just over and over and over, and it
becomes a part of you. To the Christ followers, I hope
this is just a joyful thing. And I want to end by just giving
you an example. What does look like in my life
this week? OK, look at verses 44 and 45
with me. That's what it says.
I will keep your law continually, forever and ever,
and I shall walk in a wide place, for I've sought your
precepts. Somebody say wide place.
I love this imagery of wide place.
One sister in our church recently said she felt like the
Lord gave her a soft place to land, and this one made me think
wide place to stand. Beautiful thing about the
gospel, y'all is you get a soft place to land and a wide place
to stand. I don't know about you, but
sometimes life can feel like you're on a tightrope and
there's crocodiles in water right under you and if you
misstep, you're falling. If you say the wrong thing, if
you don't parent those kids perfect, That's how they going
to end up. If you don't friend right, they
gone. If you don't do something right
in your marriage, this everything that is going wrong
in your life is your fault because you misstep and you
didn't walk the tightrope, right?
So when I just read those words, wide place to stand, I just
whoo, it's like my shoulders just released nitrogen or
something. I don't even know if that's
physiologically right, but you know what I'm saying?
It's just like, whoo, it's just wide place to stand.
Do you believe you stand on wide place right now?
Believer that in some kind of way, even though you're
imperfect, you can't blow it. You can't.
You don't believe that a lot of the time, at least I don't.
I feel like I'm one false move away from ruining everything and
we could get into your story and why that is, but sinners tend to
feel like it's all on them. It's one of the biggest lies sin
gives us is that it's our job to be in control of everything and
have a God complex. Y'all, you're not God.
You stand on a wide place not because you have a lot of skill,
but because the Lord put you on that because he's the rock.
Y'all. The good news of the gospel is
that you get wide place treatment not because you found
some Oasis, but because God found you.
Y'all. What's amazing about the Bible
as you get into it is Psalm 8 tells us, OK, is that it makes
sense that we should meditate on God.
He's God, he's eternal, He's awesome.
Why does God give any thought to you and me?
That's the question. As Psalm 8 says, what is man
that you are mindful of him? Y'all, the beautiful thing is,
you don't serve a God who's demanding that you better
meditate on him. You're serving a God if you're
in Christ, who's inviting you to get up out of staring at
yourself all the time, which is what's making you miserable.
Get obsessed with Him. And He has already gone to great
lengths through His Son on the cross to show you that He loves
you and He's thinking of you. He thinks of you before you ever
think of Him. He loves you before you ever
turn towards Him. And if you're not a believer,
y'all, nothing you're meditating and giving your life to right
now can compare to that. And you're invited to trade it
in, to trade in these false lesser things for the one God
who thinks of you, mindful of you.
Let's pray together, our Father. Your word says that you know the
blessed life is 1 where we're not walking to the counsel of
the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sitting in the
seat of scoffers, but our delight is in the law of the
Lord. On His law we meditate day and
night. God, there's something there
that we're so drawn to. Part of our flesh wants to make
it something we're good at. I pray nobody's hearing this.
This isn't about a skill. This is about a life invitation
to live with you, God, who's mindful of us.
God, you are mindful of us. That is so mind blowing that you
who are so infinite would give thought to us God, and want to
empower us and help us and give us a wide place to stand.
So Father, I just pray for the believing family in here.
I just pray joyful meditation being the cow chew and the COO.
God, you would give them the verses, the promises, the
character, the just imaginative permission to just store up your
word in their heart that they might not sin against you, and
that they would meditate on your law day and night.
And God, you would just unleash joy in them for years.
Keep us Lord, don't let us go. Keep us.
Let us be those 80 year olds on rocket chairs one day who just
love you no matter what life throws at us.
I got to pray for the unbelievers in the room.
I pray that your word would go from just being brushed off to
breaking through, to just absolutely bulldozing God and
that they would surrender, that they would give their life to
you. So God think for this time be
glorified, we pray in Christ's name, Amen.