Meditates on the Word of God
Notes
Transcript
After the death of Moses the Lord’s servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’s assistant:
“Moses my servant is dead. Now you and all the people prepare to cross over the Jordan to the land I am giving the Israelites.
I have given you every place where the sole of your foot treads, just as I promised Moses.
Your territory will be from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great river, the Euphrates River—all the land of the Hittites—and west to the Mediterranean Sea.
No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. I will be with you, just as I was with Moses. I will not leave you or abandon you.
“Be strong and courageous, for you will distribute the land I swore to their ancestors to give them as an inheritance.
Above all, be strong and very courageous to observe carefully the whole instruction my servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or the left, so that you will have success wherever you go.
This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.
Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
We meditate so that we can carefully observe scripture.
Psalm 1:1–6 (CSB)
How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers!
Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
The wicked are not like this; instead, they are like chaff that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand up in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
The one who meditates will be deeply rooted.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and by him all things hold together.
He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.
For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds as expressed in your evil actions.
But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him—
if indeed you remain grounded and steadfast in the faith and are not shifted away from the hope of the gospel that you heard. This gospel has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and I, Paul, have become a servant of it.
What does first place in everything mean in your life?
What will you do this week to incorporate meditation into your Bible routine?