What Is Your Soul Meditating On?

It's good to see you all. Hope you've had a great start to the summer, whether you've been traveling, whether you've been at home enjoying the rain. I'm excited to kick off this new series through the Book of Psalms. How many of you love the Book of Psalms? How many of you are trying to love the Book of Psalms, but it's too emotional for you, and you're trying to acquire the taste? I get it. For me, growing up, the only relationship I had to the Book of Psalms is that I knew it's what I would flip to in the middle of my Bible if I open it up right in the middle, and then as a teenage boy, it didn't really relate, but now as a pastor, somebody entering middle age with a lot of young children, I'm in the Psalms like every single day. I have grown to love this book, but I realize that it can be an acquired taste for some of us. Before we dive into Psalm 1, something I wanted to celebrate. If you've been attending around here, you know that we love to talk about something that we call COTMU. This is basically a discipleship school that we have created at our church for you, disciples of Jesus.

We love things like Bible colleges and seminaries, but we believe the local church is discipleship headquarters, and you shouldn't have to go outside of your local church in order to go deeper with Jesus, so we've started some programs, very long, intense programs. We have a year one program that goes through the story of the Bible, a year two program that basically goes through the story of you. You explore a lot of your story, similar to how God approached Hagar in the wilderness and asked her, where have you come from, and where are you going? That's really what year two is all about, and we've had a lot of people go through these, and I'm thrilled to say that already, so far, between years one and two this next fall, we will have over 400 people doing this. I think that's worth applauding. That is awesome. If that's you, if you're doing year one or year two next fall, just raise your hand. Let me see you. Awesome, I'm so excited for you guys. It's gonna be an incredible journey. If it hasn't been the right time for you, don't worry. We'll keep doing it. Our plan is to keep doing it until Jesus comes back,

because that day, we won't have a need for a theology class. Can I get an amen? But until then, you got some wonky theology that needs to get worked out, and we need to do this stuff together. I'm excited about that. I'm also very excited to dive into the book of Psalms. We're in Psalm chapter one. If you have your Bible, go ahead and open it up there. Psalm chapter one. I'm gonna be reading out of the ESV, and we'll dive in. 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. This is the word of the Lord, and we all said, thanks be to God. So this weekend, we begin this series through the book of Psalms.

It's gonna be 150 weeks. So in 2029, we will, it's kind of the world I grew up in. Anybody else, you were in like the Gospel of Luke for like, I don't know, three years. There's nothing wrong with that. We're not gonna do that with the book of Psalms. Not 150 weeks, we're gonna do 10 weeks. We've picked 10, and we've picked the first two intentionally. I will get to the reason behind that in just a second. This morning, we're obviously in Psalm 1. You may know this about your Bible, but this is not just a single book of a single kind. This book is actually a collection of books. Did you guys know that? Of all different kinds. There's history, there's narrative, there's law, there's gospel, there's epistle, and there's poetry, which is what the book of Psalms is primarily, really entirely made up of. So before we dive into Psalm 1, I just wanna give you some background information that you may or may not know about this book as we enter into studying it this summer. So I've already mentioned the number. There are 150 Psalms. You may not know that they are intentionally broken up into five different books. If you've read through the entirety of the book of Psalms, you've seen maybe the label book two, book three.

Most scholars believe that that's intentional, that that five-book shape matches the five-book shape of the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. So you could say that this is a Torah about prayer, teaching Israel how to pray. This book, although Psalms were written at different times by different people primarily linked to David and his story, they were compiled and edited by a group of editors or scribes, the Bible nerds of Israel. Maybe you didn't know that. Not only are there authors of these texts, but there are editors that kinda gave shape and form, and the final form of the book of Psalms as you have it in your Bible came to be when Israel was in exile. And if you read through it in its entirety, which we will do this summer, we've got a reading plan I'll talk about later on, you'll notice the movement or the shape. The front half is filled of lament and mourning, a lot of anger, and it moves to the second half of a lot of praise and thanksgiving. Does that not sound like life with our Lord? For Israel, this gave voice and shape to her desires and longings for a king to come. This was Israel's prayer book. I want you to think about that image this summer. This book was given to Israel to teach her how to pray.

And if this book was given to Israel, then it was given to Jesus. Jesus, as an Israelite kid, couldn't escape the Psalms, much like your house maybe can't escape Forrest Frank, and I'm all about Forrest Frank, filling the living rooms of homes nationwide. The Psalms were like that for the family of Israel. If they were going into Jerusalem for a feast, guess what they were singing? They were singing up by, no, they were singing a psalm. If you were sitting down for a meal with your family, guess what you were singing together? A psalm. Jesus couldn't escape this as an Israelite kid, and so it makes sense then that when we get to his ministry, if you didn't know this, he quotes from the book of Psalms more than any other Old Testament book. The New Testament as a whole quotes and pulls from the Psalms more than any other book. You put Jesus at a table with his friends eating a meal, guess what they sing together? A psalm. You get him in a conversation with religious leaders, guess what's coming out of him? A psalm. You put that man on a cross, guess what comes out of him? A psalm. You squeeze Jesus and the psalms come out. It's Israel's prayer book, which means it's Jesus' prayer book,

and because it was Jesus' prayer book, it means now that that is the church's prayer book. This is a part of what I like to call hand-me-down spirituality, as opposed to a DIY spirituality. You guys know what I mean by DIY? How many of you watch HGTV? What's ironic about DIY stuff is that you have to watch somebody else do it as you're doing it. So you're really not doing it yourself, and a lot of people approach their spiritual life this way. You get your counsel or your instruction from somewhere, that's an assumption underneath Psalm 1. Are we getting our instruction from that which has been passed down to us, or do we think we need to invent the wheel again? Friends, you do not need to invent the wheel again. There is a rich treasure chest that has been passed down through church history. Are there some skeletons in the closet of the church? Yeah, for sure. We're humans, we're sinners, we're imperfect. But I think a lot of God's people, especially when it comes to prayer, do not realize the treasure chest that has been handed down to us, and it's the book of Psalms. This book, if we will let it, will teach us how to pray.

It's done this for the church her entire history. One example, from the New Testament, the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter five. You've likely heard this before in reference to being filled with the Spirit. Look what Paul says should happen as a result of being filled with the Spirit. Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. How many of you, a little bit ago, as you were greeting your brother and sister, you greeted them with a psalm? Anybody? You have my permission to do that next week. Just come and just greet somebody with a psalm. This was not the exception for the early church, guys. This was the norm. It shaped who they were. It was such a part of who they were that when they came to gather, they couldn't help but say a psalm. If you've noticed these past couple of years, this is why we do our call to worship out of the book of Psalms. Why? Because we're just taking our place in this part of hand-me-down spirituality.

We're handing this on to the next generation. This book did not expire with Jesus. The Old Testament did not expire with Jesus. It got repurposed. It got reformatted. So we approach this book as Christians learning how to pray in our Messiah. Some examples throughout church history. Athanasius, the early church father, said most of scripture speaks to us while the Psalms speak for us. I love that. Thomas Aquinas in the medieval period said that the Psalter, that's what you call the entire book of Psalms, the Psalter contains the whole of theology. John Calvin called the Psalms, I love this visual, an anatomy of all parts of the soul. You wanna figure out the parts of yourself that you don't currently understand? Do you have trouble praying through pain or anger? The Psalms are an anatomy of your soul. They are given to help us understand ourselves in the presence of God. And the late, great Tim Keller, the Protestant pope, he's not the Protestant pope, I just made that up. There are other prayers in the Bible, but no other place where you have an entire course of theology in prayer form. No other place where you have

every possible heart condition represented. Did you guys know that? You can find every sort of heart condition in the Psalms. Praise, thanksgiving, lament, mourning, confusion, anger. All of these heart conditions are represented in. the Psalms along with the way to process that situation before God. Some of you are really good venters as Christians. The Psalms do not give you permission to vent. They give you permission to vent in the presence of God which reshapes that which you have vented. You guys with me? This is about learning how to express this stuff in the presence of God so that our inner life looks a lot like our Lord's. That's the invitation on offer with this book for 2,000 years. The Psalter has taught the church how to pray in every season. We must learn how to pray, but this morning, I hate to break it to you, we're not gonna talk about prayer because the book of Psalms does not begin with prayer. It begins with a meditation. This week and next week, we're talking about Psalm one and two that serve, think of them as like a gateway or a doorway, a threshold into the rest of the book which I appreciate. It doesn't thrust us into prayer and say, hey, figure this out. No, it orients us first.

So think of this week and next week as orientation. Today is very personal. What does it look like for us to be this tree? Next week will be very messianic. What does it mean to look forward to the king that we know has come but that is coming again? It's orientation this week and next. So if you've got your Bible still open, let's dive into the text of Psalm one. We're just gonna look now at the very first word or that very first line. It sounds familiar. If you know your New Testament, there was a rabbi that gave a sermon one time on a mount and he began his sermon with the way that this psalm begins. What is it? What's the word? Blessed. Blessed is the man, the ESV says. Now, I've been reading out of this ESV lately. I like how they translate this because it kind of messes with us. How happy is the one? Interesting. That Hebrew word that gets translated as blessed or happy is the Hebrew word ashre. Can you say that with me? Ashre. And this literally means how happy or how fortunate.

The idea that's going on here, the psalmist is going to present a vision of the good life. He assumes that you wanna be happy. He assumes that you wanna be blessed so he begins the psalm with this word to hook you. Ah, I would love to be happy. I would love to be fortunate. I would love to have the good life. So what does that look like? And the psalmist is not going to just present the path to get there but also a different kind of path to get somewhere that's not so great. And I appreciate the clarity of God in this way. Do you guys appreciate the clarity that God gives when he shows us the end from the beginning? You take steps down this path, this will happen. You take steps down this path, this will happen. That's a key to good parenting, by the way. God doesn't give us surprises in that sense. He tells us the end from the beginning. You eat from that tree, you will live. You eat from that tree, you will die. You obey me in the land and you will prosper. You disobey me and I will spank your butts all the way to Babylon. That's my paraphrase of what he tells them. He gives them the expectations up front. Build your house on the sand, this is gonna happen. Build your house on the rock and this will happen. The picture could not be any more clear.

The negative path is what the psalmist begins with. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners. Notice the movement changing here. It begins with walking in the counsel of the wicked. How many of you know that you do not have to try hard to walk in the counsel of the wicked by living in this world? You walk in the counsel of the wicked just by virtue of living in a world where the enemy's operating in the air that your flesh wants to believe in. You don't have to try hard for that. You walk in the counsel of the wicked and somebody who continues to listen to the counsel of the wicked begins to stand in the way of sinners. Their path is becoming more set and calcified, eventually leading to a seated position in the seat of the scoffer. You do not want to be labeled as the scoffer in the scripture. This is somebody who's so set in their ways against God that they scoff at God. You know anybody like this? Maybe it's happened because of things in their life, wrongs that have been done to them, but they have made the decision to begin to sit in the seat of the scoffer. You could call this a long disobedience

in the same direction. Leading to this position at scoffing and the psalmist gives us the end of this path. If you do this, if you sit in the seat of scoffers, verse five, the wicked will not stand when it matters. They will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. Sinners can only stand in the way of sinners. They cannot stand in the way of the righteous. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked would perish. The psalmist presents this in such a way that no sane person would read that and say, yeah, I choose that path. Ruin, yes please. Destruction for breakfast, I'll take it. Nobody in here, no sane person would say, I want that. How many of you are saying, I'll take whatever's behind door number two? What's behind door number two? A tree. Verse three. He is like a tree. Let your imagination go here. This is the power of metaphor. This is what the psalmist is trying to do. 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.

Just to unpack the promise here, to whet your appetite, the psalmist wants you to want this. What are we getting at here? In my own words, how I think about it. You are planted by an endless supply if you are this tree. That's the image of this stream of living water. In the desert culture, if you're a tree, you need to be planted next to that stream of living water. If you are outside of a stream, you will die when it comes time to die. But the picture here is you're gonna be fine because of what you're connected to, because of what you're next to. Your roots sink down deep and they extract the nutrients from this rich soil that leads to fruit at the appointed time. Fruit is all about an external reality that comes from your life. And how many of you know fruit comes in seasons? It doesn't come in every season, but in its appropriate season. And fruit comes out of your life when you have a vibrant inner life. That's the promise here. And I wonder how many of you are experiencing a vibrant inner life? That's the image of the leaf not withering. Even if it's winter, your leaf doesn't wither. That sounds nice to me because you're planted next to this supply and then to cap it all off,

you will have success in every endeavor. This is contrasted with the way the wicked who are unanchored, driven by the wind, lost in the way of the world, and unable to stand when it matters. I don't know about you, but I wanna be that tree. How do you become this tree? I've been skipping verse two. I wanna get to it next. This is where we're gonna spend the majority of our time. I'll read verse one again to set it up. 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, say with me, meditates day and night. This is where I want to spend the rest of my time because this is the hinge. This is the only thing we are given to do in this psalm. You wanna be like the tree, learn how to meditate. I'm convinced, and I'm saying this because I see it in my own life, that we in the American Western Church have lost almost entirely what it means to meditate, biblically speaking. Meditation, it's important to point out, is not the same thing as just reading your Bible. Meditation is not the same thing as listening to a sermon on the Bible. Meditation is not the same thing as taking COTMU.

Did he just say that? Yes, I did. It's not the same thing. What is meditation? Couple weeks ago, I'm gonna give you a picture to illustrate this. Couple weeks ago, our family did vacation. We went to Florida to the beach. We did it with my side of the family, a big family trip. I think all together we had seven kids under the age of nine, and it was awesome. It really was great, and that's not sarcastic at all. We obviously supply the most. We have four girls. It was a great trip, a lot of big family time, but one night, we wanted to have our own little family. Little family, you know what I mean? It's relative. Dinner, so we drove to a restaurant that we had heard about, about 40 minutes away from where we were staying. We get to this restaurant at dinnertime, and we learn we have to wait an hour. Now, those of you with young kids know that an hour-long wait at a restaurant is a death wish, and so we waited the hour. You pass bedtime, and then things just start to explode. There's no other way I can describe it, and you never know what's going to explode.

Is it your eight-year-old? Is it your two-year-old? Is it you? I don't know what it's gonna be. That night, it was our two-year-old. She started to explode, and we did the thing that I vow never to do that I totally judge other parents for, and that's give the child a phone with Bluey on it at the table. If I'm at a dinner, and I see you parents giving your tablets to kids, I'm totally judging you, and in that moment, I was judging me. I was like, ah, whatever it takes. So we gave her Bluey on the phone, but that didn't occupy her attention as much as the next thing. We decided to give her a lemon. So it's, you know, the adorable, cringey face they make when they first start to suck on the lemon, but then I kid you not, after she kinda got adjusted to the taste, she sucked on that thing for an hour. Do you know where I'm going with this? All throughout dinner, sucking on the lemon. All through the car ride home, sucking on the lemon. She screamed when we took that lemon away from her. Friends, that is meditation. Meditation is not like how teenagers eat pizza, where they don't even know what they just ate. You could've put something in that box that is in that pizza, they don't even know what it is,

and it's gone like that. Meditation is less like that, and it's more like hope sucking on that lemon. I wanna unpack this word, because if you will approach the text, if you will approach the Bible like this, what's the promise? I've already told you, you will be like a tree. planted by streams of living water that yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf will not wither, and all that you do you will prosper. What's the caveat? Not that you just read this text. Not that you just let the words pass by your eyes of this text, but that you eat it, and it sinks so down deep into who you are that it becomes a part of who you are. I'm getting ahead of myself. Y'all aren't ready for that. All right. The Hebrew word is haggah. Can you say haggah? That's the meditative, somebody had a lot of fun saying that word. Haggah. It literally means to mutter, to growl, or to speak under one's breath. It means to have something in your mouth and refuse to let it go.

Like a dog with a bone, or hope with a lemon, this is to suck on something for so long that other people think you're weird. What is it? What's the lemon for us? What is it that we're supposed to keep in our mouth? Well, according to Psalm 1, the person that keeps the Torah of the Lord in their mouth. Now, I don't want you to think about law as just the 10 commandments. How many of you have read David say, oh, your law is sweet like honey, and you're like, when I read do not steal, like, I don't feel like warm fuzzies, the 10 commandments don't really do it for me. First off, they should. It's not even just about the 613 commandments that are given to the Israelites in the Old Testament. A better translation here for what the psalmist is getting at is just the idea of teaching or instruction. Keeping the teaching or the instruction of the Lord in your mouth. Some examples to support this. I want you to begin to think about this book as food. Just like your body needs physical food to survive, so too does your soul need these words in order to survive. Jeremiah 3, 15, one of my life verses,

God is saying to a waywardless Israel who is wandering around before exile, he says, I will give you shepherds after my own heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. In other words, you've been walking in the counsel of the wicked. You've been chewing on things and therefore digesting things, false teaching, idolatry that you were not meant to run on. I'm gonna give you people who are gonna feed you with true knowledge and understanding. Jeremiah 15, 16, the prophet says to God, your words were found and I ate them. I didn't just read them, I ate them. Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart. Do you hear the Psalm 1 echo there? For I am called by your name, O Lord God of hosts. Ezekiel, another prophet. These biblical prophets, oftentimes, they would so participate in the word of God that they became a lowercase I incarnation, foreshadowing the uppercase W that is the word, the uppercase I incarnation. I know I butchered that, but hopefully you get the idea. These prophets, they so partook of the word of God that they became a word of God to these communities. Ezekiel said, son of man, or God says to Ezekiel, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll and go speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me this scroll to eat.

The scroll had God's teaching on it. He said to me, son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey. Speaking of that uppercase W word of God, Matthew chapter four, whenever Jesus is in the wilderness, you guys know this story? The tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, so what's Jesus doing right now? He's fasting, he is hungry. The enemy assumes and is trying to prey upon his hunger. He says, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. I think we ought to learn from Jesus here. He saw the words that come from God's mouth as actual nourishment for his spiritual life. Not just nice things to know, not just a nice memory thing that he did, he was actually feeding on the words of his father. The New Testament, the apostle Peter writes, and he compares teaching to milk. Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up into salvation if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Do you guys start to see it? How these words, we're meant to see them as food. Because if this is true,

then we need to be on a constant, steady, regular diet of tasting, eating, and digesting the words of God. And this, I think, is unfortunately why we have so many spiritually unhealthy Christians in the church today. Because reading the Bible is not the same thing as eating the Bible. How many of you have watched some food-related documentary in your life? Anybody remember Supersize Me? You still have nightmares about that one. Food Inc., any other documentary, and we're in this kind of cultural moment right now, and I think part of it is really, really good where we are becoming aware of what we are putting. into our bodies, and it is frightening some of the stuff that we have been putting into our bodies. Anybody would say, yeah, I don't like kind of what we've been putting into our bodies. Sidney and I will talk often about snacks, different things for our girls. I'll say, hey, can they have that? She'll say, no. I'll say, why? And she'll say, red dye 40. I'm like, oh, fine. You mention the word microplastics around certain people and you'll get lost for four hours. They've got all the stuff to tell you. I'm not saying any of that is bad.

I think it's good that we're aware of what we're putting into our bodies. But can I tell you something that confuses me when it comes to Christians? That we can have Christians who obsess over what they put into their bodies but ignore what they put into their souls. It is good to be aware of what we're putting into our bodies because we know that we are what we eat physically, but can I tell you what is else true? We are what we eat spiritually. And your soul has been trying to communicate something to you and you're not paying attention to it. It's easy to notice when we're having a physical reaction to something. And I want you to see that we need to not just pay attention for what's going on out there because we're taking in wrong information that could affect our mind. This affects our souls. Any sort of idea, teaching, news, instruction, or word we take in is doing something to our souls. We eat these things and then our soul attempts to metabolize it. And because your soul was designed to run on truth, beauty, and goodness, your soul resists and has a hard time digesting the counsel of the wicked. You are what you eat physically, but you also are what you eat spiritually.

And when you feed your soul the wrong food, your soul will start to let you know. You will begin to have reactions. Anxiety, depression, anger, bitterness, jealousy, envy, sloth, and greed. What if these didn't just have to be things you struggled with but they were signs that you've been feeding your soul the wrong thing? A few years ago, my family and I were at a different restaurant and I ate something that gave me what I learned to be called an anaphylactic reaction. If you don't know what an anaphylactic reaction is, it's basically a deathly allergic reaction. And I had that reaction to something I did not know could provide that kind of reaction and it was a kiwi. So context here, we were trying to get our oldest child at the time, Rose, to eat new fruit because homegirl just was not eating fruit. Like she wanted mac and cheese and chicken. That's all she would eat. And we would tell her, you will become chicken nuggets if all you eat is chicken nuggets. Kind of getting him in. And so we said, all right, or my wife said, Rose, I think if you're gonna try a new fruit, we need to get daddy to try a new fruit. And she said, Blake, have you ever had a kiwi? And I thought, no. Over the past 30 years of my life,

I guess I've never stumbled upon a kiwi and said I'll try that. So sure, I'll try a kiwi. So she, my wife, puts the fork into a kiwi, puts it across the table, I lean over, take a bite, and I kid you not, my mouth immediately started to tingle. And I thought, you know what, I don't know that I've heard people talk about that feature of kiwis. I don't know if that's like, hey, eat kiwis because it'll make your mouth tingle. My mouth started to tingle and then my throat started to do some stuff. So I started to panic, not trying to lose it in front of the younger girls. And so there was a Walgreens next to this restaurant. I went over to the restaurant, I went over to Walgreens, and I'll never forget the look on the employee's face when I opened my mouth to ask for help. I must have sounded like not a human because she just looked at me and pointed across the street at the urgent care. Ran across to the urgent care. My family doesn't know what's happening. Get to the urgent care, and it's like I've lost a leg. That's how fast these people are moving. They end up having to give me two EpiShots to calm my body down. I had no idea what was happening. Of course, when something like that happens, you go see an allergist.

So I go see the allergist. I'll never forget being in the waiting room with all the other first-time allergy patients. I was just about 30 years older than them. What are you in here for? Peanut butter. What about you? Kiwi for me. And I go see the allergist, take some tests, and he was kind of proud. He said, you're my first kiwi. I said, you're welcome. He's like, you're a, he didn't use these words. This is my interpretation. He said, you're a 10 out of 10 on the kiwi scale. Would you like to like slowly work the kiwi back into your diet? No, I'm done with kiwi. So this is not a joke. I better have no practical jokers after this. Send me kiwis or come up to me in the lobby. It has to stay away from me. I will stab you with my EpiPen. Why do I say all of this? It is easy to notice a physical reaction to what your body can't digest. For some of you, that's gluten, and on the behalf of all those who love and appreciate gluten, I just want to say I'm sorry. For some of you, it's peanut butter.

It's easy. who notice when our physical bodies can't take something in and we react to it. For some reason, we've stopped seeing the spiritual reactions in our soul as a sign that we've been feeding it the wrong thing. Our souls aren't designed to metabolize the counsel of the wicked and what the world has to offer. There is such a thing, make no mistake about it, as spiritual cancer, spiritual disease, spiritual allergies. Brothers and sisters, as one of your pastors, I just want to tell you, stop feeding your souls crap. And I use that word on purpose. It's not just things that your body can kind of manage. It is doing something to your souls. We need to meditate on better things. And I'm not just talking about pornography, the bad stuff. I'm talking about other stuff, maybe a hurt, a wrong that was done to you that you keep meditating on. I've been in counseling situations with people. And especially when it comes to wrongs that have been done to them and they've been hurt. They will say things like, oh, I've got, you're trying to help them. And they will say things like, I've got story after story about how they wronged me. In hindsight, what I wish I would have told them is, oh, so you've been meditating on that. You've been keeping that stored in a place in your spiritual self to bring back up often to chew on.

And it's in this way that it reminds me, as an Oklahoman, I have to go here, it reminds me of how a cow chews the cud. I lost my marker, there it is. So this is my one slide for this morning as a cow. How many of you are familiar with the process of how the cow chews the cud? Those of you that haven't, you're about to, this is an Oklahoma rite of passage, guys. Like, we gotta talk about this. So if you didn't know, a cow has a, the things you learn at church, a four-chambered stomach. Where my farmers and ranchers at? You guys could probably critique what I'm about to say. So we're just gonna say this is the four-chambered stomach of the cow. So we got some food here, and the cow is eating the food, puts it in its mouth. Now, some of you know how this works. When the cow first starts eating, whatever it is that it's putting in its mouth, it sends it down the esophagus, just like us, into a place called the? The rumen, not the stomach, the rumen. There's four chambers, the failure class. Come on, Oklahomans. This, by the way, is where we get the psychological term rumination. So what the cow does at this point is it doesn't break down and fully digest this food.

It breaks it down kind of halfway. It semi-digests this food, and then what happens next, Oklahomans? It sends it back up into the mouth where you get this mixture called cud, and it's partly what they used to have, partly what came out of the fermentation, and they do this, they enjoy this, until one day we enjoy them. Can I get an amen? Amen. Some of you have been storing the wrong stuff in your spiritual rumen, and instead of sending it out in a direction that I don't need to draw, through the deception of the enemy and the disorderedness of your flesh and living in the rotten world, that thing will come back up and you chew on it often. That thing that your spouse did years ago, you've kept stored, and maybe some of you are gonna realize this this morning for the first time. You've kept it stored, and that's why it keeps coming back up. You keep chewing on it. Maybe you've seen something on Facebook that upsets you, and instead of letting it go out a direction it needs to go out, you keep it stored because if you were honest with yourself,

you like chewing on that. You like chewing on this. We need to meditate on better things because when we eat and meditate on what the world has to offer, our souls suffer. When we eat, when we feed on, when we chew the instruction of the Lord, however, we begin to become like that tree. It matters not just that we read this book, but that we eat this book. Am I helping somebody? We need to approach this book differently than we typically approach it. So to conclude, I wanna get very practical and talk about how we do this. Let's talk about how we eat our food, like our physical food. What words would you use to describe the way we Americans eat our food? Would you use words like slow, methodical, savoring, lingering? No, some of you don't even know what you're doing while you're eating. If you could eat with a shovel, if that was socially appropriate, you would. Maybe you've experienced culture shock in other cultures traveling with the way they eat. Anybody? When Sidney and I have traveled,

we have been blown away at how long they take to eat. We eat our dinner and we're like, where's the check? But for our brothers and sisters around the world, they know how to eat a meal and slow down. Food experts suggest, this is gonna be convicting for some of you, food experts suggest a certain amount of times that we ought to chew our food before we digest. Anybody know that number? How many times should you chew? your food so that your stomach can digest it. It's between 20 and 30. Some of you average about 3.5 chews. Maybe even half a chew, like one chomp and that sucker's going down the esophagus and then you're waking up in the middle of the night like what's going on? It's because you're sending entire food groups like down your body and you're not processing it. Hear me, hear me, hear me. That is how a lot of us approach the Bible. We chomp on it once and then we get upset when it doesn't make any sense. We read a chapter once and we get upset at the Lord that the delight that he promised isn't happening. Can I tell you it's because you are just reading it and you are not just chewing it. Reading the Bible and chewing the Bible are two different things. We tune out a sermon because we've heard that before

instead of seeing it as an opportunity to chew on it. We're trying to eat the text like teenagers eat pizza instead of the way that hope ate that lemon, slowly, consistently, doggedly, stubbornly. Somebody should have to rip that verse out of your mouth. That's how tight you should hold onto it. I'm gonna give you a definition before we unpack this even further. I know we're running short on time. Biblical meditation, I would say, is the unhurried chewing of God's word. I'm gonna break it down as we close. How do we do this? First thing, slow down. Some of you are in such a hurry and a rush to get to the spiritual finish line that you aren't enjoying the life on offer to you today. Listen, you've got, Lord willing, a lot of time to dive into this book. Take CUTMU, we wanna help you understand the overarching metanarrative of this book. But when it comes to you in your personal time with the Lord, I just wanna encourage some of you to slow the heck down. It is okay, did you know, to spend one morning lingering over one verse? It could be one word, but if you extract, think about that one word as that lemon. What if you sat with that word for longer than you want to and you extract as much as you could from that word?

You can do that. Slow down. Meditation and hurry are incompatible. You first need to slow down, and then secondly, when you read, I want you to think about reading differently. I want you to read with Jesus. A lot of people struggle in their Bible reading, I'm convinced, because they functionally believe that they are alone while they're reading their Bible. If you haven't figured it out by now, Psalm 1 is first and foremost about Jesus, the one who perfectly meditated on the Lord's instruction, who was the very word of God. He says that he is the true vine. He gives living water. He is this tree, and by virtue of your faith in him, you are now grafted into this tree, so when we're talking about meditating, I'm not talking about just more willpower or trying harder, I'm talking about partnering with grace in such a way that Jesus is helping you with this. You guys tracking with me? So when you read your Bible, I want you to imagine this as the place where you meet with God. This book is not God. Did you guys know that? This book is not God. Some church traditions treat this book as God,

and it's not, like their functional trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Bible, and the Holy Spirit's like, man, why do I always get the shaft? Like, what's going on here? But this book is the place where we meet with him. My spiritual life changed when I realized this. I'd go through seasons when I felt kind of lost, listless, unanchored, and it's because I wandered away from the meeting place. Much like you and your spouse have a favorite date night spot, or you and your fishies, you and your fishies, you and your buddies have a fishing hole, maybe you and your fishies have, dang it. Dang it. Not gonna remember anything I'm gonna say. The text is where you meet with God. Read with him. You're not approaching this like a textbook. When I'm doing this, here's how it works for me. I'm reading something, and I'm asking Jesus, what do you want me to chew on? I could be reading a whole chapter, I could be reading a whole verse, but I'm looking for something to chew on. Some of you stop short after reading, and you never chew. So what we've done, you guys hopefully got

one of these cards when you walked in, yes? We put together a reading plan this summer for you to read the Psalms with Jesus. This QR code will take you to it. There are 150 Psalms, we've broken it up so that over the next 60 days, you get to read and pray through all 150. Now that might sound cross-grain to the idea of meditation, but it doesn't have to be. Because as you're reading, tomorrow, it's gonna be Psalms one through three. As you're reading, if I'm you, what I do is I simply ask Jesus, what do you want me to chew on? And he's gonna bring one phrase, one word, it could be one question, and after you read with Jesus, I want you to begin to chew on these words. What do I mean? Keep that sucker in your mouth. your mouth, roll it over, ask questions. For me, this week, it was around the idea of that tree planted by streams of living water. It just wouldn't let me go. Asking the Lord, what does the stream represent? Why is it that when the tree's next to the stream, all this other stuff happens? You're rolling it over. You're wrestling with your confusion. You're wrestling in the gap between what you know and what you don't yet know. You're chewing on it, and again,

this is different than just reading it. If you looked at a salad and you eat a cheeseburger, what is going to become a part of who you are? The cheeseburger. You could read a book about salads. You could watch a documentary about salads. You could listen to podcasts about salads. You could go to a conference about salads. You could get a salad tattooed on your arm. Do you guys see where I'm going with this? A lot of Christians do all of that about the Bible, but they never chew it and digest it themselves. Can I just say that a pastor chewing on a text is not the same thing as you chewing on the text. There is no such thing as secondhand nourishment. You have to put these words in your mouth and chew on them. My goal today has been to wet your appetite so that you want to do this. I do this for me and my own spiritual life before I ever do it for you. You need to learn to do this yourself. Chew these words, and when you do, you begin to delight. It's an acquired taste. So I just want to speak kind of in a fatherly way to those of you that have never used the word delight to describe your Bible reading. That's okay. Play the long game here. The idea is that as you continue to chew on these things, you will acquire the taste for the word.

This happened for me with another thing. So I had never drank coffee for the first 22 years of my life. I don't know why. I was tired in college, and I just never realized that there was a solution for my tiredness, and that's caffeine. But when I got my first job out of college, I thought, well, this is what you do. You get a job and you drink coffee for the rest of your life. And so my first job, some of you may know, was as an elevator salesman. Yes, I'm an elevator salesman turned pastor. Eventually, that industry, you know, it gets too up and down, and so I had to do something else. And I'll never forget, first week on the job as I'm just kind of looking at the rest of my life as working, I thought, well, it's time I drink coffee. And the mechanics at this company I was at, they would make this thing in a pot that I can only describe as gasoline. Like, that's the best way I could describe what they made. And it tasted awful. So I had to add enough stuff in there to make it the color of my skin. But I suffered through it because I valued something in it, and that was the sweet nectar that is caffeine. I kept doing it day after day,

and slowly but surely, I started to add less sugar, and I'm here to testify to you today that I now love black coffee. Can I get an amen for my black coffee lovers? But it took time. I had to acquire a taste, and this has been the same thing with my own Bible reading. Can I tell you, pastors don't just come out of the womb going, I love the Ten Commandments. That doesn't happen. I made a decision probably 15 years ago. Like, whatever it takes. This book is at the center. Whatever it takes. That one decision means I don't have to make a decision every day whether I want to read it or not. Does that make sense? Some of you are making a decision every day. Should I read it, should I not? Don't treat it like that. Make a decision right now that you're the kind of person who chews on this book. So whether you feel like it or not the next day, you do it. Why? Because of a prior decision of the kind of person you want to be. Find value in this. I just want to end with that image of the stream of living waters. Waters in the scripture are indicative of life.

Whenever God's people needed life, God would provide water so that they had what they need when they needed it. That's the promise. That when you meditate on this book and this text, it becomes such a part of you that you're always gonna have what you need when you need it. You're in a relational difficulty right now. Problem with your business employee or a coworker. I can't tell you that in 2 Timothy, Paul's got something directly for you. What I can tell you and promise you, that as you digest and metabolize these words, where does your perspective end and God's begins? You begin to delight and want the things that he wants. You become the kind of person planted by streams of living water that yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither and all that he does, he prospers. Would you please close your eyes, bow your heads. I just want to give us a second here. Spirit help us here. I want you to imagine your life as a tree. Now you may not be what someone is describing. So just be honest with yourself in the Lord here. He could be bringing up anything from someone to your attention. Maybe it's that your roots have not sunk down. You've got shallow roots. Don't feel shame about it, just be honest. Maybe you're in what you thought would be a fruit-bearing season, but it's not.

Be honest about that. Do you feel like your leaf is withering? Like you have a vacant, kind of dry spiritual life? Your inner life is just vacant. I just want you to sit with that. Spirit, help us here. Speak to your people. I just want you to wear your hat. Just ask the Lord what he wants you to know about that. Whatever he showed you, say, Lord, what do you want me to know about this? You may sense something now. If you don't, that's okay. Just sit with it in the coming days or so. He's inviting you. If you find yourself wanting this, good. That's why Psalm 1 is given to us. We should want this. Father, I pray for these people. I pray for my brothers and sisters, many of which, I'm sure right now, because I feel it too, Lord, we want this kind of life. We want it. But there's so many things stacked against us. The ways of the world, the device that's in our pocket, the hurriedness of life, so much of this, I believe, Lord, is from the enemy. Would you let us see it that way? Therefore, we can fight. We don't have to live this way.

We can do our quiet time without our phone present. We can fight to chew on a text, whether we're on a job site, whether we're a busy stay-at-home mom. There are ways to chew the text in our mouth, Lord. May us chew these words, whether it's a phrase or a word, this week, would you put it in our mouth, and Holy Spirit, would you help us see whatever it is that you're wanting us to see, so that as we process your words, Lord, we can see that the streams of living water wouldn't just be beside us, but they would flow from inside of us. This is your promise. We thank you for it, Lord. And all God's people said, amen, amen. Would you please stand to your feet? Like I said, that reading plan starts tomorrow. If you've already got your own reading plan, that's totally fine. I just think it sounds fun to read. Me and my oldest Rose are gonna try to do this this summer. Read through all 150 together, see what sticks out at you, and then chew on those. We're gonna have a prayer team up here. If you need prayer for anything, please come. They would love to pray with you. Before you're dismissed, I'm gonna pronounce a blessing over you.

We'll have the words on the screen. Let's say this together. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. God bless you guys. Have a great week. Thank you so much for watching this message from Church on the Move Tulsa. We really hope it encouraged you to take a step toward Jesus. Church on the Move is a family of churches in Northeast Oklahoma, each with its own in-person pastor. We love our Bibles, learning and community, and taking steps toward Jesus. If you live in the area, we would love for you to join us in person. For more information, check out our website at churchonthemove.com or we've got a few videos we think you might like. Check them out here.