The Habit of Meditating on God’s Word | Churchy Habits part 3
Scripture Reading: Psalm 119:33-40
I don’t know if you have noticed, but we live in bizarre times.
Right now, we live in a time that is shifting how information is stored, disseminated, and even more importantly, created. If you’ll bear with me for a moment, I want us to understand the scale of information access we have.
Before writing, some time before 3000 BC, everything was recorded through memory and speech. Oral tradition kept stories going from one generation to the next. It is difficult to track literacy rates in the ancient world, but it is safe to say the number of people who could read, even after writing becomes a thing, was very small.
Around 3200 BC, the Mesopotamians have a remarkable idea. Instead of trying to remember who bought what for how much, they start marking clay tablets with little symbols. They create a pattern that will exist for thousands of years:
Man records information — Man preserves information — Man retrieves information — Man transmits information
What changes over the millennia is how that information is recorded, preserved, and retrieved. Clay tablets turn into papyrus scrolls. Scrolls are much easier to produce, easier to carry, and easier to store. And so, writing moves from simple business transactions to royal inscriptions, legal codes, religious texts, wisdom literature, poetry, history, and mathematics. From 2500 BC to 500 BC, the Ancient World creates literature.
The great empires of the ancient world capitalize on their ability to consolidate knowledge and power to give us libraries. Most famously, the Library of Alexandria held somewhere around the equivalent of 100,000 books. These would be scrolls, and there is no clear understanding for how many actual scrolls existed in Alexandria, but the point is that in some time around 300 BC, Ptolemy establishes this library that will become the greatest storehouse of information in the ancient world.
It is an achievement not to be surpassed until 1450 AD when the printing press becomes accessible. It is no coincidence that around the same time Martin Luther was able to lead large flocks of people to question the authority and purity of the Roman Catholic Church, publishing houses existed in roughly 250 cities across Europe producing millions of books. And this doesn’t account for the rogue printers that produced pamphlets and other propaganda.
The published word not poured gasoline on the Reformation fires, it also fueled the Enlightenment and the next 500 years of scientific study, social conditioning, and human creativity. Then, in the 20th century, we get the radio, the television, and most importantly for today—the Internet. The first website appeared in 1991, and although Al Gore didn’t actually claim to invent the internet, it’s still fun to pretend he did.
Now, that was 35 years ago. It is fascinating to try and explain the world before the Internet to teenagers. How did we live without anything we needed to know not at our fingertips? From the 2nd century BC until its ultimate demise in the 5th century AD, the Library at Alexandria represented the sum total of human understanding within its hundreds of thousands of scrolls. The Internet, its network of millions of servers, now contains an unfathomable number of pages, books, and media.
And we haven’t even factored in AI yet.
Solomon said it best with,
Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12
The irony is that Solomon writes this centuries before the Library of Alexandria exists. Imagine what he would say today.
For the longest time, the wisest person was the smartest in the room. It was defined by their knowledge. What our new AI-driven world demonstrates is that knowledge and wisdom really are two different things. What Solomon described as “many books” is now billions of webpages, millions of books, endless videos, social-media feeds, podcasts, databases, search results—and now machines capable of generating more information whenever we ask.
So, what are we to do?
Solomon finishes Ecclesiastes with,
Fear God and keep his commandments.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
We have been talking about how Christians should organize their days based on Ephesians 5:16—“make the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” The first point was to intentionally organize it around the presence of God—remembering that wherever we go, the Lord is with us. The second point was to intentionally cultivate the habit of love for others. The greatest commandment has three parts: Know God, love God and love people. As we consider the priority of the Great Commandment, as we consider how we can make the best use of our time, and as we consider the evil days—the absolute Noah’s Flood of information at our disposal, then perhaps we should return to a very ancient notion—wisdom.
The goal of wisdom is not knowing everything, but rather knowing what is worth knowing—and to live accordingly.
Today we are looking at the habit of Bible reading—or to use a better phrase “Bible Intake.” This habit is not about checking a spiritual box. It’s certainly not about adding more head knowledge. It’s about returning to the source of wisdom so that we can navigate this bizarre world we find ourselves in.
To help us figure out how to cultivate this habit, I thought appropriate to examine Psalm 1. There are certainly a ton of other passages that speak to the Bible’s wisdom and life-giving power, but I want us to walk through the steps of reading a passage in order to glean wisdom. We will use the Four Senses that we discussed in Numbers. It just so happens that walking through Psalm 1 using the Four Senses will yield quite a bit on how cultivating a habit of Bible intake points us to wise living—even on a Monday or Wednesday morning.
The Blessed Life | Psalm 1
The first step is the simple one—read the passage.
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 is 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.Psalm 1
Now, the first Sense is the literal sense—what does the text actually say?
Well, Psalm 1 is a song. It’s poetry. It’s worth noting because the blessed man in verse 1 is “like a tree” in verse 3. He’s not actually a tree. It seems simple, but the Bible is filled with imagery, metaphors, and symbolism. Not everything is a symbol, but not everything is literal either. Recognizing the genre of the text helps us understand what to look for.
So, looking at the images and the structure, we can safely say Psalm 1 describes two ways of living — righteously and wickedly. Verses 1 through 3 describe the righteous life. Verses 4 and 5 describe the wicked life. And verse 6 brings it all together with the Lord as the final judge between the two.
Let’s start with the righteous life.
This person does not follow wicked counsel (verse 1) nor gives himself a position among sinners and scoffers. Again, it’s poetry, and it simply means that righteousness can’t be found among wicked things. Think back to “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” We build time in our days to rest in the presence of God because of the number of distractions that are in this world. Yes, we have to live in this sin-corrupted world, but that doesn’t mean we have to follow their advice or live as they do.
In contrast, verse 2 says the righteous delight is in the law of the Lord. Your translation might say “instruction of the Lord.” Either way, we are told to delight in God’s Word. The next section answers why. The person who delights in God’s Word is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields fruit in its season. Its leaves do not wither. All that this person does is prosperous. How can this be?
The tree is the person. The streams of water is the life-giving flow of God’s Word. God’s Word nourishes us like a stream of water nourishes a tree. We are able to bear fruit in our lives and maintain health because we are nourished by the Word. This is why the habit of taking a Sabbath rest is so important. We are nourished by God’s presence, and the more often we rest in God’s presence, the more nourishment we receive. Meditating on God’s Word is a primary means towards entering God’s presence.
God’s Word is direct access to the mind of God—His thoughts, desires, and heart are recorded on the pages.
Before we move on, let’s take a look at the other senses.
The second Sense is the typological sense—how does the text fit with the story of Christ?
First, we should observe this passage is in the Old Testament. That means we may not get explicit references to Jesus, but it will certainly point us that way. In fact, if we consider where we have seen the image of water before, we find God’s promise of His Spirit.
The prophet Ezekiel saw the vision of a trickle of water coming from the throne of God, and that trickle turns into a river that grows even more and reshapes the whole world. It’s a slightly bizarre vision (Ezekiel is famous for bizarre visions), but it finds fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus promised,
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
John 7:37-39
John does us the favor of explaining Jesus’ message. Whoever believes in Jesus will receive living water that flows “out of his heart”—that is, the Holy Spirit will reside in the heart of the believer. That stream of living water nourishing the tree will be inside the tree. God will nourish us from the inside out.
God places His Spirit inside the heart of the believer allowing us instant, direct access to the presence of God no matter where we are.
Think about what that means for a Monday morning. Or a Wednesday afternoon when the week has gone sideways. You are not trying to drive to a stream. You are not trying to find a quiet place where maybe God will show up if you do everything right. The stream is already there. Inside you. Because Christ is in you.
We can directly move to the third sense now, because the answer to holiness almost jumps off the pages. How does this reality move us towards holiness?
First, we recognize that we are holy vessels for the Lord God, if we trust in Jesus. When we surrender to the Lord in faith, not only do we receive forgiveness, we also receive life that is nourished by the Holy Spirit Himself. We have a spring of living water that nourishes us and flows outward.
So, when we talked about loving others as a habit, that is possible because the Holy Spirit enables us to do just that. As we are nourished, so then we can nourish others. That nourished life is the wise life that can redeem these evil days.
Loving God, loving people and living wisely become possible when we have God’s Holy Spirit and meditate on His Word.
When we allow God’s Spirit and God’s Word to transform our thinking, then our actions will follow. Holiness requires us to delight in the law of the Lord and to meditate on it day and night. Holiness, by definition, leads to wisdom.
Now, the last sense is called ‘anagogical,’ and it asks the question, “How does the passage point me to eternity?”
Well, if we keep reading the rest of the chapter, the psalmist does the work for us in verses 5 & 6.
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.
Remaining in a wicked state, to remain in our sin without the saving grace of Jesus, is the direct opposite of a nourished tree by a river. It is to be like chaff that the wind drives away—chaff, the leftovers of harvested wheat. Whatever was good and useful in the wheat has been removed, and the rest is only fit for the fire. And because there is nothing good, the wicked will not stand in judgment—they can’t survive the judgement.
They are lost for eternity.
The last line is dire for the wicked and lost, but it is amazing encouragement for the one who trusts in Jesus. “The Lord knows the way of the righteous.” The Lord knows those who belong to Him and who trust in Him. If you are in Christ, you can be sure God knows you very well. Whenever the doubts of God’s presence or His goodness creep up, God’s Word reminds us that He does care, He does see, and He does remain with you. And one day, the faith we exercise now will become sight. We will see our Lord face to face.
Review: The Four Senses as a Way of Meditation
Before we close today, I want to offer two more things. The first is a recap of the Four Senses. This tool will help as you meditate on God’s Word and take it to heart. Thanks to Travis, we have a great way to remember it:
The Literal Sense connects to the past—what did this text actually say to its original audience?
The Typological Sense connects to Christ—how does this point toward Jesus and the gospel?
The Moral Sense connects to Holiness—how does this move me toward a life that looks like Jesus?
The Anagogical Sense connects to Eternity—how does this remind me of where all of this is going?
I would advise you to take each step at a time starting with the literal sense because they build on each other. If we skip a step, it can lead to some bad interpretations or misunderstanding. But also, the senses tend to work together. You might even dance among the senses as you read, meditate, and most importantly listen to God’s Spirit as He teaches you.
The second offering for you is an invitation.
If we return to the Book of John and go back to chapter 4, we read another instance Jesus promised living water. This time, it was to a Samaritan woman drawing water from a well. This time is different for a few reasons. For one, she’s a Samaritan woman, and Samaritans are not looked at fondly by the Jews. They are considered half-breeds, religiously compromised, and socially suspect. Jewish travelers went around Samaria rather than walk through it.
For another, even in her own community she is an outsider. The time of day she is at the well is not normal. She is avoiding the crowd of ladies that go in the morning. The reason she is avoiding them comes to light when Jesus tells her to call her husband to join them. She doesn’t have a husband. Jesus says she’s right, and in fact, she’s had five husbands, and the guy she is with now is not her husband. Now, whether the multiple marriages is her fault, their fault, or just extremely poor luck doesn’t matter in this society. She is an outcast—probably cursed.
But now she is face to face with Jesus.
She knows — because her community has held onto this hope — that the Messiah is coming, and when he comes, he will explain everything.
Jesus looks at her and says, essentially, "That's me.”
The short version of the rest of the story is that she goes and tells her whole village the Messiah has come. They tell Jesus to remain a few more days so they can learn from him. After two days, the people say they believe in Jesus because they have heard for themselves. An entire village enters into the family of God because one social outcast was changed by the mercy and love of Jesus.
I have no way of knowing what will specifically will happen when you surrender to Jesus. I don’t know what kind of impact God will have on this world because you trust in Him.
What I do know, is that the one who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night, will be blessed. They will have a spring of living water flow out of them bringing life to their soul and the souls around them. They will bear spiritual fruit because they will be in God’s presence.
So, why should you read your Bible?
Because knowledge may be good. And wisdom is better. But life — the nourished, rooted, fruit-bearing, stream-fed life that Psalm 1 describes — that is the best thing of all.