Psalm One: Meditate

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship

Sabbath, June 30, 2012

Lolo Jones is training for the Olympics this summer. Her events are the 60- and 100-meter hurdles. She dreams of running a perfect race. In pursuit of that goal she is making use of highly sophisticated technology—monitors on her body, super high speed video.

What the technology told her was that her left side was not quite as strong as her right side. So she and her trainers worked specifically to strengthen that side of her body.

They discovered that sometimes she landed with her center of mass slightly behind her lead foot, which would cause the loss of the tiniest fraction of a second.

The unaided eye could not have detected these things. Even ordinary video could have have picked it up. But using high tech monitors on her body and super high speed video, Ms. Jones was able to identify the problems and begin modifying her performance. (See Wired Magazine, July, 2012, pp. 114-122.)

One key to excellence in athletics is training. Practice, practice, practice. A second key is coaching, smart guidance. If you are going to perform at the highest possible level, you'll need input from outside yourself. You can't watch yourself run or dive or swim.

The same holds true in spiritual life. If we are interested in spiritual excellence, we will seek input from a wise coach.

Note these words from Psalm 1. (From the KJV just because I memorized it ages ago and like the way it sounds.)

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,

nor standeth in the way of sinners,

nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD;

and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,

that bringeth forth his fruit in his season;

his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The person who stays away from the influence of the ungodly and gives attention to the law of God will be like a fruitful tree.

A couple of years ago, Karin gave me a fig tree. It survived the first winter, but the next season produced only two or three years. So sometime in the middle of the summer, Karin put a lot of fertilizer on it. Within weeks it was starting to bud out new figs. I was astonished. I don't that I've ever seen such dramatic almost immediate response to fertilizer.

So now, we try to fertilize early in the spring and throughout the early part of the season. It's one of the rules for producing figs at our house.

How do we fertilize our lives so we produce fruit? What can we do to cultivate spiritual life, to enhance the quality of our relationships with God and other people? What can we do to build a better world?

According to these first verses of the first Psalm one key to enjoying a blessed life is to be picky about what holds our attention.

Do not walk in the counsel of the ungodly,

Do not stand in the way of sinners,

Don't sit in the seat of the scornful.

That's King James language. Here's the same list from a modern translation (The New Living Translation.)

Do not follow the advice of the wicked

Do not stand around with sinners.

Don't join in with mockers.

That's the negative statement. Here's the corresponding positive statement:

Take delight in the law of the LORD;

Meditate in his law day and night.

If you want a blessed life, a fruitful life, an optimal life . . . Take delight in the law of the Lord. Meditate in his law day and night. How do you do that? What does this look like?

The phrase, “the law of God,” refers to the entire body of instruction God has given through the prophets, poets, and priests in the Bible. This includes the Ten Commandments, and the Two Commandments, of course, and much more.

For us “the Bible” is roughly equivalent to what the Psalmist meant in his day.

David urges us to “Take delight in the law of the Lord. Meditate in his law day and night.” This is one of the keys to receiving coaching from God.

A while back I was doing one of my favorite things: I was visiting with a couple of young ministers. They are smart people, devoted to God and the church. They are scholars. I love talking big ideas with them. At our last visit, near the end of our time together, I asked them, “What have you guys done this week to cultivate your lives as saints? You are obviously cultivating your minds. That's good. What are you doing to cultivate your souls? “

There was a long silence. Then a bit of confused conversation. It's not a common topic in our conversation. Most of us have opinions on all sorts of issues—issues in the church, in theology, politics, health care, environmental practice, investment strategy. We are ready for debates.

Psalm One calls us to something different. “Take delight in the law of the Lord. Meditate in his law. “

“Taking delight,” and “meditating” is not the same thing as studying. Study cultivates the mind. It is important. Meditation cultivates the soul (or heart or character). When we meditate on God's law, when we delight ourselves in God's words, God's sweetness permeates our being. We enjoy God and are transformed in the process.

A couple of interesting conversations from campmeeting last week.

The first conversation: A friend of mine talked about the challenges of continuing to give care to a profoundly needy person. He's been at it for a decade. It taxes him to his limit and sometimes beyond. I am continually astonished at his generosity, his faithfulness, his heroic service. The other thing he almost always talks about when we are together is his quiet times out in the woods and mountains. He gets out into the beauty and quietness and meditates and finds refreshment for his soul. Meditation does not make his life easy. It does make his continued service possible.

The second conversation: A self-important Adventist bureaucrat told me about a new battle in Adventist prophecy-preaching circles. The “scholars” are fighting over the identity of the king of the north and the king of the south in Daniel 11. The bureaucrat cheerfully talked about his work to advance the “correct view.” In talking with this man, I heard a lot about study. I heard nothing about meditation.

Study may make us smarter regarding things that don't matter. Meditation makes us sweeter. And that does matter.

Study of obscure prophecies may enable us to articulate sophisticated-sounding speculations about the future. (This is not too far removed from fantasy.) Meditation will enable us to act wisely and effectively here in the real world, right now.

Psalm One urges us: Delight yourself in God's law. Meditate on it day and night.

Meditation allows the sweetness of God to permeate our minds and hearts. The world needs more people who are filled with the sweetness of God. Meditation allows God's wisdom to shape us. The world needs people who act out the wisdom of God.

Spiritual practices shape our souls. We come to church and sing songs over and over. With time these songs become deeply rooted in our minds. They sing themselves to us spontaneously for no apparent reason. This past week, snatches of three different songs kept running through my mind.

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

Lord, have mercy on me.

Hallelujah, grace like rain falls down on me

Hallelujah all my sins are washed away.

Everlasting, Your light will shine when all else fades

Never ending, Your glory goes beyond all fame

The songs are confident, bright, full of grace and hope. And when they were running through my mind, my thoughts are confident, bright, full of grace and hope.

For most of us listening to sermons for is a spiritual practice. The preacher is not giving us new information. He or she is helping us immerse ourselves in truth we already know. When we listen to sermons we are soaking in ordinary, common truth.

(Is it really new information that we are supposed to tell the truth, be kind and forgiving, keep the Sabbath and not kill? When I preach that God is love, is that new information? No. Rather we come to church for the purpose of basking in the old truths. We come to celebrate, to affirm, to savor the law of God, the instruction God has given through the Bible.)

Attending church is a vital spiritual practice. Psalm One urges us to build on it, to go farther. Delight yourself in God's law, meditate on God's law daily—all the time, in fact.

In actual practice people have found it very helpful to devote some time daily to savoring God's good words. Every morning before you head off to work, or every evening before you go off to sleep or every noon before you eat lunch—devote some regular time to contemplating God's law.

If you are like the church bureaucrat I mentioned earlier and you find prophecy interesting, be careful. Studying prophecy is not the same as meditating on God's law. Prophecy in Christian circles is usually focused on figuring out who the bad guy is. So whether you think the bad guy symbolized in a particular passage is the Pope or Muslims or the Russians or Chinese or communists or President Obama or Candidate Romney or Lutherans or the Illumenati—spiritually it's all the same. You will come away from your study congratulating yourself that you are not the bad guy and perhaps poisoned by renewed hatred for the people you think are identified as opposing God.

Make sure you balance your study of prophecy with ample, languorous meditation on the law of God—the law perfectly epitomized in the single affirmation—God loves—and the twin commands—Love God and love your neighbor.

There are many ways to “do” meditation. Here is one approach: Take a short passage of Scripture, for instance, Matthew 7:11. “If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” Read it, then use your imagination to amplify it, to roll it around in your mind.

If you had a million dollars what gift would you give your children? If your kid or grand kid needed something, what would you be willing to go without so they could have what they needed? How many nights did you forgo sleep to be presence with your sick child? How many nights would you be willing to be miserably awake if your kid needed you to?

Your own regard for your children is a window into God's regard for you. God is at least as nice, as generous, as forgiving, as merciful toward you as you could imagine being toward your children.

If you—plain, ordinary, unremarkable you—would be willing to lavish education, medicine, discipline, hours helping with homework, trips to Disneyland, or the hassle of dealing with a puppy . . . if you would be willing to this and more for your children, how much more will your Father in heaven do for you.

Spend time imaging what you would do for your children, then turn it around and imagine it as God's generosity toward you.

Then, after spending some time imagining this as God's affection toward you, bring to mind others in your life—family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. Not the whole world, but specific people that come to your mind as you are doing this practice of meditation. Imagine God's affection toward these others. Request that God show them his affection, give them the capacity to understand the richness of heaven's love. Ask God to demonstrate his love in their lives by providing for them concrete tangible blessings.

Once you have learned to pray this way for people you naturally love, then try it for the people you naturally loathe. Pray for politicians. Not for all of them generically, but for the ones you most despise. This will move you away from the company of the mockers.

A serious threat to the health of our nation right now is the way Christians are ignoring the counsel of Psalm One when we step into the political realm. We are nice at church. We are generous to our neighbors, then, when we step in the realm of politics we succumb to the temptation to join in with mockers and repeat their words via email and facebook. The most astonishing example of this was a ninety-year old elder who forwarded to his large email list a picture of a nude woman. The reason he forwarded it was because supposedly it was a picture of President Obama's mother, and the good elder was so eager to mock the president he couldn't help himself. So instead of hitting delete when he received it, he hit forward.

We all know—or should know—the Bible's stern condemnation of gossip. But somehow when it comes to politics we freely pass on every rumor, every juicy bit of slander, no matter how unrelated to actual policy. God expects better of us.

Psalm One warns against standing with sinners or hanging out with mockers.

Let me be very explicit: This passage warns against Rush Limbaugh. He is a superb mocker. His personal life is a case study in venal wickedness. He has a foul mouth. We may love it when he skewers politicians we disagree with, but that love rises from an unhealthy place in our souls. God calls us to higher, nobler forms of political discourse.

Blessed is the person who does NOT walk in the counsel of the ungodly or join in with mockers. I pick on Limbaugh because he is the most famous. There are plenty of other people on both sides of the political divide that are skillful at mockery. They are not our models. The Bible warns us away from them and their methods.

Let's circulate ideas about legislation we would like to see passed. Let's argue about the optimal way to structure government so that it protects without stifling, so that it brings us together as a genuine community without hindering private initiative and individual freedom. There is plenty of room for vigorous debate over optimal forms of government. There is no room for mockery, no place for character assassination. Obviously, we can't control the world's delight in mucking around. We can choose a better way for ourselves.

Let's delight ourselves in the law of God—that is the principles of life outlined in the Bible. This begins with refusing to join in with mockers and sinners as they heap scorn and abuse on everyone who disagrees with them.

Now let me turn from politics to something every trickier: home.

Parents, never mock your children. Do not mock them for being slow or stupid or noisy or careless or thoughtless or rebellious. Never, ever mock your children. There are times, of course, when you must correct them. You may need to pronounce stern words of condemnation on particular behaviors: “That is not right!” “That is unacceptable!” But never mock your children. And hopefully they will absorb the culture of respect you establish and refrain from mocking you when they are changing your diapers or answering for the hundredth time the same question you've been asking all day.

When we delight in and meditate on God's law we will be like fertilized fig trees, like well-coached Olympic athletes. Or in the words of Psalm One, we will be like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in season and whose leaves never wither. Whatever we do will prosper.

On the other hand, if we keep company with the ungodly, Psalm One predicts we will be like chaff—dry bits of grass—blown away by the wind.

God is watching the Psalmist declares. So the wicked will lose out in the judgment. And the righteous will enjoy the eternal favor of God. They will be and are already blessed.