05.06.06

Reading the Bible (8)

Posted in Shorter Catechism on Reading the Bible at 8:45 pm by dowboy

The Lost Art of Christian Meditation

(II) The Practice of Meditation (I)

Read: Psalm 63:1-11

In 2^nd Century BC China, according to writings discovered in a Chinese tomb, the Qinghao plant was used as an anti-malarial treatment. However, it was not until 1971 that the active anti-malarial ingredient of Qinghao was isolated by Chinese scientists – it is called Artemisinin and is a very potent anti-malarial drug – an alternative to quinine. Countless other examples of ancient wisdom surface in pharmacology, where long-gone cultures used plants to treat complaints, only for modern scientists to isolate active chemicals from these plants showing just how wise our ancient fathers were. But it was not only in medicine that our ancient fathers have much to teach us. Ezekiel Culverwell, a Puritan who lived four hundred years ago and wrote the introduction to John Owen’s famous work on Meditation, himself wrote, “Meditation applieth, meditation healeth, meditation instructeth. If thou lovest wisdom and blessedness, meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, and so make use of these Meditations to quicken thee up to duty, and to sweeten thy heart in thy way to the heavenly Jerusalem.”

What I want to do this week is to give a pattern for our meditation – to first of all give, what I hope, are helpful hints to our meditation, and then to give some tried and trusted patterns which we may follow as we seek to control our minds so as to think in a Christ-like manner. Then I want to set us some homework – I’m going to give us a passage from Scripture; I want us to go away and spend the next two weeks studying and meditating upon it. Then I want us to come back and spend some time together working through our findings. But tonight, we shall look at the pattern for meditation. I want to look at three things – first, a time for meditation; secondly, the matter for meditation and thirdly the method of meditation.

1. Time for Meditation – if we are to classify meditation by criteria of time we find that there are 3 distinct types:

a. Deliberate – this is where we deliberately set aside a period of time, be it 10 minutes or be it an hour, to meditate upon some aspect of God’s Word. This may, or may not, be a regular event with us. It may be daily, it may be weekly, it may just be occasional. Such a deliberate time for meditation may be appended to our quiet times in the morning or in the evening; it may be during our lunch hour at work or college; it may even take the form of a walk in the park or the country. Whatever form it takes, we set ourselves to deliberately focus our minds on an aspect of God’s Word and steadfastly refuse to let our minds wander onto other things. We set ourselves to walk down a certain one way street and will not be diverted.

b. Day-long – this is where we go through the day keeping an aspect of God’s Word in our minds – whether in the back or in the forefront. Perhaps we have, in the course of our morning devotions, read a passage through which we sense God’s voice, and throughout the day we think upon what it means – when we have a morning coffee we take it from the back of our minds to the front of our minds, when we are doing some photocopying or sitting on the bus or train we mull it over in our minds. W.G.T. Shedd writes, ‘The avocations (a person’s regular job) of our daily life do not require the whole of our mental energy and reflection. If there were a disposition; if the current of feeling and affections set in these directions; how often could the farmer commune with God in the midst of his toil, or the merchant in the very din and press of his business?” Whilst not the same as day-dreaming, day-long meditation allows us, at our leisure, to let our minds wander in the richness of God’s Word.

c. Lord’s Day – the Puritans advised that the Lord’s Day provided prime opportunities for meditation. That day, above all others, is to be given over to the consideration and worship of Christ and His perfections – we hear the preaching of the Word where, I hope, we come to see Christ clearer – we attend the public worship of God where, I hope, we come to meet Christ through His Spirit – we, most of us anyway, do not have to go to work on Sundays – so what better day than the Lord’s Day for the pursuit of deliberate or day-long meditation?

2. Matter for Meditation – having said all that I have about the theory and time for Meditation, we now move on to discover together what these things are which we should meditate upon. All the time, we bear in mind that mankind is a meditating being, whether it’s daydreaming or mental planning, we all, Christian and non-Christian alike, engage in sustained periods of thought. The question is, what are those avenues of thought along which there is true blessing and prosperity for the Christian?

a. God’s Word – God’s Word is to us the means by which God talks to us and chooses to reveal some of what He knows about Himself and His ways to us. Meditation is the means by which we take what He says to us and think about it. So what areas of God’s Word are we to meditate upon?
i. God – God is perfect in all His ways. He describes Himself in the Bible through direct references, like 1 John 4:10 – “God is Love”, but He also reveals aspects of His character through the way He deals with we humans, like the narrative stories of the Old Testament. Meditating on the perfections of God can only result in us being sanctified and becoming more like Him. So in every text and passage, ask and meditate on what it says about God. After all, as our catechism says, ‘The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God …’
ii. Christ – in John 5:39 Jesus tells us that ‘these are the Scriptures that testify about me’. From Genesis to Revelation, Christ is set forth as Redeemer and King. Robert Dabney writes, “The immediate object … of our meditation is God in Christ.” John Owen writes, “To have our minds so affected with spiritual things as was the mind of Christ is the principal part of our duty and grace; nor do I think that any man can attain any considerable degree in spiritual mindedness who is not much in the contemplation of the same mind in Christ.” Christ is all in all to us as believers. As Christians, we bear His name. If this world, which is passing away, is worthy of our thoughts, surely this world’s creator and redeemer, is even more worthy! The man in love with his fiancée thinks much of her; indeed, at times, it may seem as if his thoughts of her become a distraction to other things like his work and leisure. The man in love with Christ thinks much of Him and such thoughts may at times get in the way of other legitimate activities.
iii. Salvation – God’s way of salvation is glorious enough for the mighty angels to want to know more. Eternity will be spent studying the brilliance of how much God did for us in Christ. According to Old Testament usage of one of the Hebrew words for meditation, x;yfi, we are told that “in the psalms, the verb is used by the psalmist primarily … for reflection on the saving deeds of Yahweh on behalf of Israel.” In other words, the saints of the Old Testament meditated on the ways in which Yahweh had delivered them from Egypt, sustained them through the wilderness journey and given them a land flowing with milk and honey. If the Old Testament saints, who never saw Christ on the cross, focussed their meditation on God’s saving work, how much more should we?
iv. Heaven – comparatively speaking, heaven is not that far away for any of us. However, heaven will be an eternal home where we shall see Christ face to face and we shall be like Him. It will be a Beulah land of eternal contentment and joy. Given how close heaven is, we should meditate much on it. John Owen writes, “Think much of heaven, as that which will give you a perfect view and comprehension of the wisdom, and love, and grace of God in Christ, with those other things which shall be immediately declared.” The man who has an exotic holiday booked for next summer thinks much of where he will be going. We have a truly other-worldly destination ahead, so let’s think much of it.

b. God’s Work – God mainly speaks to us in His Word, but He also speaks to us in His Works. God’s saints of old spent much time scrutinizing and meditating on His Works in order to gain a fuller picture of God’s Glory.
i. Creation – God has left an imprint of who He is upon His creation. The world in which we live bears the unmistakable stamp of an all-powerful Creator God. God uses the Creation countless times in the Old Testament, as does Jesus in the new, to point to different aspects of His nature. It is difficult to view the intricacy of a crystal structure, or the vastness of the universe without meditating on the God who framed them both. And such meditation is spiritually edifying. W.G.T. Shedd writes, “If the sight of the heavens and the stars, of the earth and the vast seas, has a natural tendency to elevate and ennoble the human intelligence, much more will the vision granted only to the pure in heart – the vision of the infinite Being who made all these things – exalt the soul above all the created universe.”
ii. Providence – God speaks to us through our providences – that is the way events come to pass in our lives. Now we must be careful not to interpret our providence without the light of Scripture, but the God who spoke to His people of old still speaks to His people today through their circumstances. Ask the question of the events of your life, ‘Is God trying to tell me something through this?’ It could be that through your providences, God is speaking to you to call you into full time service for Him. It could be that through your providences, God is calling you into deeper relationship with Him. Meditate therefore on your providences and don’t waste them.

3. Method of Meditation – having given plenty of topics, and there are a million others, upon which many’s a profitable hour may be spent meditating, how should we go about the actual discipline itself. Are there patterns we can follow which will help us to get the most out of meditation? I will put forward Thomas Boston’s method and then I’ll put forward my own:

a. Thomas Boston’s Method – this is taken from his collected works, Volume 4. I will quote almost verbatim, although running through it slowly:
(i) Take up a holy meditation on things that you see or hear, turning them to a spiritual use. This was the practice of Christ, to spiritualize worldly things.
(ii) Think and enlarge on the subject, as your heart may be affected and touched with it. Here I would advise you:

• To get suitable affection and relish of it in your souls.
• To bewail the want of that relish.
• To desire that of the want of which you complain.
• Confess your inability to do for yourself what you wish to have.
• Petition the Lord’s working it in you.
• Believe the Lord will grant your request.

(iii) Conclude with all thankfulness to the Lord, and committing yourself to Him.
As you can see, Boston’s method focuses on internalizing the truth upon which you are meditating and turning to the Lord for the perfecting of the desire in you to know more of it and His strength to put it into practice.
b. My Method – since meditation is such a lost practice, what I am now advocating is relatively untried, except by myself, so feel free to adapt the method or to jettison it completely in favour of another one. I am borrowing heavily from the work of Charles Hodge on the issue.
i. Meditate on the meaning – earlier in our series on reading the Bible, I ran through how we should study. I focussed on asking the text two questions: what does it tell me about God and what does it tell me about my duties towards God? I then presented a range of materials which we may find helpful in understanding what a text means. However, meditating on the meaning of a text expands and adds perspective to it. Meditate not in order to discover, but meditate on the discovery itself.
ii. Meditate on the application – meditation is principally about application. Analyse your situation in the light of the text and its meaning and ask how it applies to you. You might find that it points out an area in your Christian life which is completely lacking, or some sin which needs to be dealt with. You might find that it points to an aspect of God which you hadn’t figured on before and which, in your present situation affords you much comfort. You might find that it points to a way ahead out of a predicament you are facing. Whatever it is, do not leave your topic of meditation until you have applied as much of it as you understand to your day to day life situation. Now of course this partly renders meditation subjective, because whereas the text you are meditating on will have only one meaning, it will have a thousand applications; and those which apply to you may be different from those which apply to me. But that is exactly the benefit of meditation; it brings God’s Word into your very situation in a way that a preacher can’t do and a book can’t do. Only you know your situation, so only you are able to effectively apply God’s Word into it.
In other words, this very simple method of meditation asks first, what does this text mean and then what does this text mean for me? But as we are going through the meditation method we must use the following tools:

• Mind Control – we need to focus our minds firmly upon the task at hand and not let it be draw down other avenues. There will be time for those other thoughts, but one’s personal time for meditation is not that time. John Flavel wrote, “Let not your thoughts swim like feathers upon the surface of the waters, but sink like lead to the bottom.” Charles Hodge writes, “Cultivate the habit of controlling your thoughts. Do not let them be governed by accident or fortuitous association. Keep the rudder always in your hand.”
• Reading – this goes without saying, but you may find that meditation comes easiest to you when you are reading the Scriptures in your quiet time. You may want to read the Scriptures so slowly as to meditate and ponder every word and its application. However, wherever you are when you are meditating, keep a bible handy just in case you want to check on something.
• Praying – prayer is formal or informal converse with God. It can consist in a one way monologue where you pray for a sustained length of time, or it can consist in upward bolts and arrow-prayers, which, if they are linked with meditation, form more of a dialogue with God. Meditation is a time for listening to God’s voice through His Word and responding to that voice through prayer. Where you don’t know what a text means, pray about it. Where you don’t know how to apply it, pray about it. And when the answer comes, pray about it.

The next study will be in two weeks time. It will be devoted to working through an example of meditation. What I want you to do is to go away from here and meditate on 1 Peter 2:24 and then come back prepared to discuss your findings in small groups. You will find the relevant questions upon the printed sheets which you each should take away with you.
Like every other spiritual discipline, you learn to meditate by meditating, just like you learn to pray by praying and you learn to understand God’s Word by reading it. Do not be discouraged if you feel nothing as you meditate; the measure of your successfulness is not how much you feel, but how much you learn and how much your thought processes and life changes as a result of that. Meditation is a healing remedy which needs to be revived in our present Christian day and generation if we are to produce healthy, mature Christians who are in the world but not of it. I pray that you may glean much benefit from the adventure and discipline of meditation. AMEN

Permalink