“2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. ”
How can you tell if someone is the genuine article? Stories give us lots of ways to tell. In the Arthur legends, only the true king could pull Excalibur from the stone. If you can pull the sword from the stone, you are the genuine article. In Aladdin, only the diamond in the rough could enter the cave of wonders to find the lamp. If you enter the cave of wonders without being destroyed, you are the genuine article. It’s easy to tell the genuine article in stories, but what about in real life?
How can you identify the genuine article of Psalm 1? How can you identify the blessed man, the blessed woman? How can you tell if you are a blessed one?
Last week we saw that the blessed man doesn’t follow the wisdom of the wicked, he doesn’t live their lifestyle, and he doesn’t promote the world’s lies. But seeing what the blessed man avoids isn’t enough. A man can reject the culture’s definition of tolerance without being blessed. A woman can consider lying to be wrong without being blessed. You can’t tell who is blessed by only looking at what they avoid.
You need to look at what they pursue. You can tell if you are blessed by what you pursue. What we will study this evening is the sword in the stone. If you lift this, you are the genuine one and your crown awaits. What we will study this evening is the entrance to the cave of wonders. If you walk through, you are the diamond in the rough and the lamp is yours. You are blessed. You are the genuine article.
The blessed man delights in and mediates on God’s word. That’s how you tell you are the genuine article and that’s the claim of this sermon: the blessed man delights in and meditates on God’s word.
First: delighting. Second: meditating. We see the blessed man delighting in God’s word in the first half of verse 2. We see him meditating on God’s word in the second half of verse 2.
First: delighting. A woman can see the evil of sexual harassment, can recognize the evil of abortion, and lament the legalization of marijuana without being blessed. She is wise in what she avoids but that isn’t the only metric to identify who’s blessed. She must delight in God’s Word. “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord.”
Now this woman can’t simply add delighting in God’s word to life’s repertoire. God doesn’t inspect her heart saying, ‘sexual harassment is wrong, she’s got that right. Abortion is wrong, she’s doing good. Say no to drugs. Good. Oh, she doesn’t like the Bible. So close.’ Loving God’s word isn’t just one more work you add to get saved.
That’s good because she can’t manufacture love for God’s word. You can’t manufacture love for God’s word. Without the Spirit, no one delights in God’s word. Without the Spirit, no one can submit to God’s word. Romans 8:7-8, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
What about you? Do you delight in God’s word? “This is who I esteem,” God says through Isaiah, “he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” That’s the man who pleases God. He trembles at God’s word. He delights in God’s word. He is like the Psalmist, “With my whole heart I seek You; let me not wander from Your commandments! I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord; teach me Your statutes!”
Does the idea that God is willing to sit you down and explain your life to you in this word, to tell you how to live in this word, does that make you feel liberated or restricted? “His delight is in the law of the Lord.” Is that you? If not, you are not blessed. You are not born again because the born again heart has God’s law written on it. The born again heart craves God’s word the way a newborn craves milk. Doctors are alarmed by newborns who won’t nurse. Pastors are alarmed by people who say they are Christian but don’t delight in God’s word. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk,” said Peter, “that by it you may grow up into salvation - if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Have you tasted that the Lord is good? Then you will have a taste for His word. It will delight you.
We see this object of delight in verse 2, “his delight is in the law of the Lord.” By saying, “law of the Lord,” David wasn’t merely referring to what we Christians consider law. We tend to consider the do’s and don’ts of Scripture to be the law. We consider the Ten Commandments to be the law. David has more in mind than just delighting in commands. This word translated as ‘law’ carries the connotation of instruction and that’s how many Bibles are beginning to translate it. The blessed man, “delights in the Lord’s instruction.”
The instruction that delights born again minds includes the Ten Commandments, but it also includes Genesis 1. That means if you are born again, you in God’s creation of everything—the Rocky Mountains, caterpillars, and Neptune. You will delight in reading about how God helped a poor widow named Ruth during the despicable age of the Judges. You will find more delight in the fact that God used Ruth’s great-grandson David to bring moral order back to the people. You will find even more delight in the fact that God used Ruth’s descendent Jesus to bring moral order to your chaos. You will delight to learn whatever God is willing to tell you about Himself, about yourself, and about life. “His delight is in the instruction of the Lord.” Is that you?
You will delight in the instruction of the Lord if you see that it includes you. Born again believers see themselves in God’s story. Some people read the Bible and try to fit it into their story. They have their goals and their struggles and think God’s story, God’s word, should be tailor-made to their goals and their struggles. If they encounter a Scripture that isn’t tailor-made for them, they call it irrelevant.
That’s not how this blessed man reads Scripture. He fits his story into God’s story. He reads about Adam and Eve and says, ‘this includes me. I do the same stupid thing they did, and I deserve what they deserved.’ He reads about Noah and he says, ‘this includes me. The only way I can be saved is by fleeing to wherever God says is safe.’ He reads about the new creation and he pictures himself in that multitude from every tribe and nation. It’s God’s story and he sees himself in it. Do you read the Bible that way? If so, you will delight in God’s word because you see yourself in it.
You will delight in the instruction of the Lord if you find life in God’s word. “They are not just idle words for you,” said Moses, “they are your life.” “The law of the Lord is perfect,” said David, “it refreshes the soul.”
God’s word gives life, and it gives life because it takes you to Jesus. “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have life,” Jesus told the Jews. “These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”
You will only find life in the Scriptures if you encounter Jesus. You will only find life in the account of Adam and Eve if you see that they need Jesus and you need Jesus. You will only find life in the account of the flood if you see that while Noah had to flee to the ark, you need to flee to Jesus. You will only find life in the picture of the new creation if you see that this happy multitude is happy because they love Jesus.
The same goes for the preaching of God’s word. Unless I take you to Jesus, I haven’t offered you life. I haven’t done for you what Jesus did for those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” Looking back on that conversation those disciples said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” Their hearts were burning because they were exposed to life. They were seeing Jesus in the Scriptures. They were delighting in the law of the Lord.
Do you meet Jesus in this book? Do you meet Jesus when this book is preached? Have you found life in this word? Are you blessed?
If not, I beg you to keep listening. I beg you to keep hearing. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” I want you to be blessed. I want you to have faith. You can know life. You can have delight. That’s the blessed life. “His delight is in the word of the Lord.”
The blessed man not only delights in God’s word. He also meditates on it. That’s our second point: meditating.
What does it mean to meditate on God’s word? “On His law he meditates day and night.” If you don’t know what that is then you don’t know if you are doing it, and you don’t know if you are blessed.
So, what does it mean to meditate on God’s word? You meditate on God’s word when you do what cows do with their food. Cows chew their food multiple times. They chew, swallow, and then the first section of their stomach, the rumen, breaks the food down into cud. The cud comes back up and the cows rechew it. Dairy cows can spend 8 hours a day chewing their cud.
That’s what you do when you meditate on God’s word. You chew it swallow it and then chew it again. You can read this Psalm, Psalm 1, in about 45 seconds. That’s your first chewing. Basic comprehension of Psalm 1 is your first chewing. You swallow it and then you chew it all over again. You ponder it. You absorb it. You get all the nutrients you can from it.
That’s how God spoke to Joshua about meditating. After Moses died, God spoke to Joshua saying, “Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.”
You meditate by pondering God’s word with an eye towards obedience; “meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.”
That’s what I just did with you in the first half of this verse. I made sure that you understood the concepts of verse 2a, but I spent most of our time focusing our attention on what this word requires from us. I, “meditated on it, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.” I urged you to ponder whether you delight in God’s word. I took the concepts of David’s words and showed you how to rechew them. If you were listening and applying my words to yourself, you were meditating; “meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.”
Meditation involves asking probing questions. Ask yourself ‘how?’ You ponder ‘how’ in the fifth commandment by asking yourself how you can honor your father and mother this week. What can you do this week that will honor your dad? Asking and answering that question is meditating on God’s word. Showing that honor is obedience to God’s word.
You meditate when you ask yourself ‘why?’ You ponder why by reverently wondering why God would say this. If you are married, ponder why Paul wrote that the husband is the head of the wife. Don’t simply dismiss it because it is out of step with the current intellectual climate. Ask, ‘why?’ Why would an all wise God say that? Why would the author of marriage say that?
Meditation involves pondering implications. You read in Genesis 1 that we humans are made in the image of God and you ponder the implications. If you work in a nursing home, you ponder the implications of caring for these people who are made in the image of God. You remember the dignity they have by virtue of that fact.
You read in Revelation 21 that God will, “wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” and you ponder the implications. You ponder the implications for horrible memories that you can’t get out of your head. You ponder the implications for the tears you are not able to spare your children because you can’t control what happens to them. When you meditate, you ponder the implications.
Your thought life is to be filled with meditation. Your interior monologue is to be filled with meditation. If your thoughts were suddenly broadcast over a speaker for everyone to hear, David is saying that what should be heard is meditation. “On His law he meditates day and night.”
But you’ve got a job, right? You’ve got other responsibilities. You can’t just pull away to a quiet room and reflect. If you could, that would be great, but you can’t. That’s what Tevye thought in The Fiddler on the Roof. In his song, If I were a Rich Man, Tevye says that if I were a rich man, “I’d discuss the Holy Books with the learned men, seven hours every day, and that would be the sweetest thing of all.” Tevye was saying that you can’t milk cows and have the time to meditate on God’s word. ‘If I was rich, I could, but I have to work so I can’t. I can’t meditate on God’s law day and night and so now I feel like a bit of a failure.’
You don’t need a quiet room and open Bible to meditate on God’s word. You just need to take the thoughts that are running through your head every waking moment and focus them. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
You can do this at work tomorrow. Here’s how it looks in one situation. Imagine that your boss makes your job more difficult than it should be. Meditate on Colossians 3:23-24 while you are at work. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.” You meditate on that by refusing to put your focus on what drives you nuts. Instead you put your focus on doing that job like you were doing it for Jesus instead of for your boss. You choose not to put your focus on the fact that you wouldn’t do this if you didn’t need the money and instead you put your focus on what God will give you for serving Him, “you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward.” You are already thinking about your life when you are at work. Your mind is always clicking. Take charge of it.
You were thinking something when you walked into this sanctuary this evening. Do you remember what you were thinking? You were thinking something when you woke up this morning. Maybe you were hoping it was going to be cooler than yesterday. Maybe you were wishing you had another hour in bed. I don’t know what you were thinking but you were thinking something. The blessed man takes control of his thoughts and considers what God has to do with this moment in his life.
Doesn’t that sound like a blessed way to live? Imagine that your interior monologue, what runs through your mind, sounded like Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Would such thoughts make for a more soul-satisfying day? What is stopping you from thinking such thoughts?
I dare say that most of us have pretty discouraging thoughts running through our heads throughout most of the day. From the moment we wake up to the moment we lay down most of us give ourselves pretty bad news about what might happen, about what others might think about us, and about how we might mess life up. It’s little wonder that David says that the man whose thought life is in line with God’s word is blessed.
So how do you do this? If you are regenerate, if you are born again, you will want to do this. You will wish you could think the sort of things that Jesus thinks. You will wish you processed rejection the way Jesus processed rejection. You will wish you thought about human approval the way Jesus thought about human approval. You will hear Paul say, “we have the mind of Christ,” and you will want more of it.
So how can you grow in this? How can you better meditate on God’s word? Here are just three ways. There are many more but here are just three. First, pray. God inspired these words. He knows far better than any theologian, any pastor, any godly parent the payoff of this book for your life. “Open my eyes,” the Psalmist prayed, “that I may see wonderful things in Your law.”
Do you think you would be happier if you thought the way this book talks? God does. “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.”
All of that is in this word. Pray that you might see it. Pray that it would be so sweet to you that you would savor it. Pray that God would bring Scriptures to mind. If you are a parent with kids at home, pray that He would bring Scriptures about children to mind. If you are a discontent, pray that He would bring Scriptures about contentment to mind. Pray that your mind would be more like Christ’s. That’s the sort of prayer God honors. That’s part of praying in Jesus’ name. That’s praying Jesus’ will, “on his law he meditates day and night.” If you aren’t willing to pray, these other two directions won’t be of any help to you. Pray.
Second, drill deep in one Scripture. A few years ago, I had an incredibly difficult season of life. I meditated on Psalm 23 and I never got beyond verse 1, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” When I was overwhelmed, I would take myself by the soul and say, ‘okay Adam. Why? Who is in charge of this situation? The Lord. The Lord is your shepherd.’ When I felt like running from my problems, I would take myself by the soul and say, ‘Adam, you’re obviously not content. You are obviously in want, but the Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. Are you trusting that the Lord is shepherding you?’ You need to take charge of your mind. You can do that by just taking one verse and drilling deep. Most likely you already know more than enough Scriptures to drill deep for the rest of your life. Most of us don’t simply need more information. We need to meditate on what we already know.
A third way to meditate on God’s word is to obey one command and reflect. Take one command, “you shall not covet,” and make it your life’s goal this week to obey that command. When you see something you wish you had, remind yourself that you don’t need to covet because God satisfies. When you find yourself discontent with your spouse, remind yourself that you are on the road to coveting. Pray that God would give you contentment with what He has given you. Take that one command and make it your goal to obey that one command this week and then reflect. What did you learn about coveting? What did you learn about contentment?
You understand by doing. There is a world of difference between a boyfriend saying, ‘I love you,’ to his girlfriend for the first time and him saying it at their sixtieth anniversary. He understands what he says better. He has had decades to be patient with her, to be kind to her, to protect her, to believe her, to bear with her. He understands ‘I love you’ a whole lot better. You will understand what God says much better as you do it.
And the better you understand what God says the more you will delight in what God says. The two halves of verse 2 are mutually reinforcing. They build each other up. The more you meditate on God’s word the more you delight in it. The more you delight in God’s word, the more you will think about it. There is such a thing as spiritual momentum, “to the one who has,” says Jesus, “even more will be given.”
The more you delight in God’s word, the more you meditate on God’s word, the more you will become like Jesus. He is the blessed man, “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.”
With every fiber of his being, Jesus knew he was loved by the Father. He knew that God lovingly sustains everything with the same certainty that you know the sun will rise tomorrow. This was simply obvious to him. The fact that the Father’s love was better than life was blindingly obvious to him. How could it be otherwise? He delighted in God’s word. He meditated on it as he worked in Joseph’s carpenter shop. He was happy in God as he ate his meals. He had control of his mind.
That’s what I want for you. More importantly that’s what God Himself wants for you. He wants you to delight in what He says. He wants you to be satisfied and part of that is thinking His thoughts until they become your thoughts. Amen.