Meditate on the Story of God

Psalm 1

Meditate on the Story of God

Intro hook:

• Every year, people read fewer and fewer books, and spend more and more time on their devices.

• A number of social critics are calling our generation “post-literate.”

• But the truth is: we actually read more than ever before in human history. We just don’t read books.

• We read text messages and emails and social media captions and news alerts and

billboards.

• In fact, we are visually assaulted by words every time we open our device or drive on the road.

• But this new kind of fast-paced, click-bait-y reading is literally rewiring our brains.

Our eyes are constantly taking in words. The issue isn’t whether we read. It’s how we read. Neuroplasticity is the foundational principle here.

Neuroscience tells us the brain is plastic—it physically reshapes itself based on repeated habits. Reading isn’t something we’re born knowing how to do; it actually builds neural circuits over time. And here’s the key: different kinds of reading build different kinds of brains.

Slow, sustained reading—like books—activates parts of the brain tied to focus, memory, empathy, and meaning-making. It trains us to stay, to reflect, to connect ideas, to imagine other perspectives. But fast, fragmented digital reading trains something else entirely. It strengthens scanning, speed, novelty-seeking, and task-switching. It rewards us for moving on quickly, not for staying long.

Over time, the brain adapts. We become very good at skimming—and very bad at lingering. Very good at reacting—and very bad at reflecting.

Add to that the dopamine loop built into our devices. Notifications, headlines, infinite scroll—they don’t reward satisfaction; they reward anticipation. The brain learns to crave the next thing. And neurologically, restlessness becomes the norm.

So we’re not illiterate. We’re what one neuroscientist calls “hyper-literate but shallowly formed.” This isn’t a moral failure—it’s a neurological one. We are being shaped by what we practice.

Which helps us understand why Scripture calls us to meditate—to slow down, to dwell, to chew on God’s Word day and night. Because formation doesn’t happen at the speed of a scroll. It happens at the pace of attention.

And what we repeatedly give our attention to, quite literally, forms who we become.

• It’s making it harder to read anything literary or slow or complex.

• Hugh McGuire, a literary critic, gave this insight in a Medium article about what we lose if we give up reading books:

• “Books, in ways that are different than visual art, music, the radio, or even love, force us to walk through another’s thoughts, one word at a time, over hours and days. We share our minds for that time with the writer’s. There is a slowness, a forced reflection required by the medium that is unique. Books re-create someone else’s thoughts inside our own minds, and maybe it is this one-to-one mapping of someone else’s words … that give books their power. Books force us to let someone else’s thoughts inhabit our minds completely.” —Hugh McGuire

The Bible is a collection of inspired writings that allows God’s thoughts to inhabit our minds completely.

• This is what the books in the library of Scripture have the potential to do — to “let [God’s] thoughts inhabit our minds completely.”

• The problem is that even if in our hearts we say, “Yes, I want that!” our brains have been neurobiologically malformed to read in a way that is fundamentally at odds with how Scripture was designed to be read.

• You’re thinking, “Scripture was designed to be read in a certain way?”

• Yes.

• Let's do a little Bible work.

Seam: I want to look at two passages before we make our way back to the main teaching text. First, let’s look at Jesus.

Turn: Turn to Luke 24.

• This story takes place right after Jesus’ resurrection. Two disciples are walking down the road. They are at a low point when Jesus comes up to speak to them.

Luke 24:25- 27

what a conversation that would be!!

Luke 24:32

Luke 24:44-45

Jesus’ thoughts were anchored and filtered by the Scriptures.

Seam: All I want you to notice in this story is what Jesus calls the Bible.

Three parts:

• He does not call it “the Bible.”

• He calls it “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”

• This was a very common 1st-century Hebrew way of referring to the Hebrew Bible, or what we now call the Old Testament.

• Because it was organized in three major divisions:

• The Law, or the five books of Moses: Genesis through Deuteronomy.

• The Prophets, starting with Joshua.

• And then the Psalms, which were also called “the writings,” because the main part was the Psalms, but it also included the rest of the wisdom literature and a few other unique works.

• This simple, three-part structure is how the Bible of Jesus’ day was organized.

• And in it, we actually get clues as to how we are to read it.

Seam: Next, let me show you two key passages in “the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms” that biblical scholars call “canonical seams” because they are the literary transitions between the three sections of Scripture.

• And the canonical seams show us how we are to read the library as a whole.

• They are Joshua 1 and Psalm 1.

• First, turn to Joshua 1.

• This passage is the seam, or link, between the Law (or the Torah) and the Prophets. Listen …

Joshua 1:6-9

• Notice that in between the Torah and the Prophets, there’s a short passage telling us how to read it.

How should we read Scripture? We meditate on it day and night.

• notice, there are benefits or formational outcomes when we meditate on it…strong, courageous, obedience, thrive (prosper, succed, break thru)

Seam: Now turn to Psalm 1.

• Remember, in Jesus’ day, the Psalms were the beginning of the third major division of the Hebrew Bible — the Psalms or the writings.

Psalm 1:1-3

Hinge:

• Did you see it?

• The language is almost identical.

• This is what Tim Mackie of BibleProject calls a “hyperlink,” where the authors of Scripture use a key word or phrase as a deliberate literary reference back to a previous passage in the canon.

• And these two “canonical seams” do more than stitch together the library of Scripture. They teach us how to read Scripture.

• The word used in both passages is “meditation.”

Meditation: Hâgâh to murmur; ponder, imagine, meditate, mutter

• In Hebrew, the word is hagah.

• It most literally means “to murmur,” likely referring to the ancient practice of reading Scripture in a quiet voice under your breath.

• Hence Joshua’s colorful line, “Keep [it] always on your lips.”

• Neuroscientists tell us this is hugely helpful for memory retention.

• Some people even argue that you should always read the Bible out loud, even if just at a whisper.

• But hagah can also be translated as “to growl over.”

• The word is later used by the prophet Isaiah, who writes, “A lion growls [and the word there is hagah], a great lion over its prey.”²

• Think of a lion and its prey; it’s very similar to a dog and its bone.

just gave a dog a bone a few days… She’ll sit chewing on it, gnawing it down, reveling in it, and she is so happy.

• In meditation, we do that with Scripture. We hagah it — we chew on it and get to the marrow of it.

• The Presbyterian Eugene Peterson, in his book on reading Scripture, appropriately titled Eat This Book, writes: “Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love.”

• He writes about the story in Revelation 10, where the angel has a scroll that is symbolic for the Scriptures; he gives it to John and says, “Eat it.” Not, “Read it.” Not even, “Study it,” but, “Eat it.”

• Put away your journal and pen. Pick up your knife and fork.

The Practice of Scripture involves Biblical Meditation.

• this spiritual practice is vastly different from the eastern meditation or other mindfulness.

• there are a few similarities, but they are inherently and motivationally different.

• Mindfulness teaches awareness without attachment; biblical meditation teaches attentiveness with allegiance—filling the mind with God’s Word, forming desire, and deepening relationship with Him. (more on the podcast)

We Practice Scripture Meditation to renew our imaginations not master a subject.

• The canonical seams of Joshua 1 and Psalm 1 are telling us that Scripture was designed to be meditated on.

• The BibleProject scholars call it “Jewish meditation literature.”

• That’s one of the reasons that it’s full of riddles and puzzling sayings and phrases with double meanings and complex plotlines.

• It’s likely why over a third of the Bible is poetry. Poetry can’t be read quickly. It forces you to slow down.

• And it doesn’t quickly give up its meaning. You have to meditate. You have to ponder it.

Seam: But this is hard to do in our fast-paced world. SPEED IS OUR DEFAULT

You cannot meditate on Scripture without slowing down.

• Again, we’ve been formed to read quickly. To skim the page and get what we need and move on.

• You may get a verse of the day as an alert on your phone and glance at it between text messages and that’s not bad.

• But Scripture was not designed to be read the way you read a news alert or a caption on a social media post.

• Or even the way you read a novel.

• It’s more prayerful.

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor, defined meditation as the “prayerful consideration of Scripture.”³

• Dr. Richard Peace of Fuller Seminary calls it “contemplative Bible reading.”⁴

• It is a slow, prayerful, reflective mode of reading Scripture with the goal of formation, not just information.

• But this requires us to retrain our brain a bit. You mindset matters and it requires you to practice.

Meditation helps us metabolize the Scriptures.

Are you a fast or slow eater?

Most health professionals recommend chewing each bite about 20 to 30 times—not because your mouth needs a number, but because digestion begins with attention.

every time you ponder and mutter the Scriptures, you are chewing on Truth. You are savoring it.

meditating on the word helps you metabolize the meatier portions

Sticky line: The first step for many of us in our practice of reading Scripture is to slow down and meditate.

• There is no one way to meditate on Scripture.

• But there is one practice that has risen to the surface over the centuries that many people find is the most helpful way to meditate.

• It’s called:

Lectio Divina

• … which is Latin. Lectio means “reading” and Divina means “divine” or “spiritual.”

• In the monastic tradition, monks and nuns would go off alone into the quiet, where they would read and re-read a passage of Scripture, slowly turning over each word and phrase in their minds and listening for God’s voice.

• This meditative mode of reading is different from study, which we’ll cover in the next session.

• If study asks, “What did this text mean to them, then, and how do we apply it to our life, now?”

• Lectio asks, “How is God coming to me personally through this text?”

• Now, we have to be careful here not to manipulate Scripture or allow the deceiver to manipulate Scripture as he tried to do with Jesus in the desert.

• We’re not asking for a new meaning.

• We’re asking, “What aspect of the original meaning is the Spirit wanting to directly impress into our own lives?”

• And lectio isn’t just for monks and nuns!

• But they have spent centuries fine-tuning this discipline.

• It was first popularized by Saint Benedict all the way back in the sixth century.

• Then in the 12th century, it was codified into a four-step process:

Four steps: Lectio (read), meditatio (meditate), oratio (pray), contemplatio (contemplate).

• First, you read (lectio):

• Slowly and intuitively.

• Often what will happen is a particular word or phrase or idea will just gently lift off the page. It will catch your mind’s attention or nudge you emotionally.

• Or, as you’re reading, a picture will enter your mind’s eye, or a memory from your past, or an idea will come out of nowhere.

• What’s actually happening is Jesus — the Word of God — is coming up to you as you read and is speaking to you.

• Then the next step is …

• You mediate (meditatio):

• You “chew” on it. You re-read it a second or third time and reflect on the connections between the passage and your life and what God may be saying to you.

• You may want to ask Jesus clarifying questions and enter into a dialogue with the Spirit of God.

• You want it to penetrate you deeply.

• Then we pray (oratio) what we are hearing back to God.

• And finally we contemplate (contemplatio), meaning we look up from the text into the eyes of God himself. And we gaze upon him, gazing upon us in love.

Recapturing meditation on Scripture is utterly essential to spiritual formation in the digital age.

• Unlike other popular forms of meditation, such as mindfulness meditation where the goal is more to empty your mind, the goal of biblical meditation is to fill your mind with the words and thoughts of God and to let them give shape to who you are and who you become.

• Which is why it is our practice for this coming week.

Seam: But! And this is very important — meditation is not the end of the process, it’s only the beginning.

Meditation should always lead us to incarnation (embodiment/obedience).

• Many teachers add a fifth step: incarnatio, or incarnation. You put flesh and blood on the passage. You translate the Bible into your life.

• Joshua writes, “Be careful to obey all the Law … meditate on it … so that you may be careful to do everything written in it …”⁵

• It’s not enough to just meditate on the Bible.

• You have to get it out of your head, and even out of your heart, and into your hands and feet.

• The Rabbis used to teach that you learn the Torah with your feet more than with your ears.

• Meaning, you learn through obedience. Faith is not an intellectual exercise of stimulation, it’s about physical embodiment.

• Psalm 119 compares God’s words to honey in our mouth, and it says this:

Psalm 119:99–100 “99 I have more insight than all my teachers because your decrees are my meditation. 100 I understand more than the elders because I obey your precepts.”

• In today’s language, “I know more than all my professors at university because I actually do what God says.”

• This line is a hyperlink back to Joshua 1.

• He’s saying, like Joshua, I meditate and I obey.

• In the modern world, we have this bizarre ability to divorce knowledge from practice.

• The social critic Neil Postman called it a “low information-to-action ratio.”⁷

• There’s so much information we’re inundated with all day long that we’re used to hearing truth and then doing absolutely nothing about it.

• This is devastating to our spiritual life.

• The goal is to get this library lived; to get it out of our heads and into the muscle memory of our bodies.

Ending:

• And if this sounds arduous or serious …

• Did you notice? The word used in Psalm 1 for the ideal emotional disposition to Scripture is delight.

• That’s what reading Scripture can become like for you. It may start out as an acquired taste or a discipline… It may be hard at first to slow down and focus.

• But as you retrain your brain to eat Scripture, to meditate …

• There is joy waiting for you on every page.

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Talk it Over (being honest & open with friends, a spouse, or your Group)

This week we looked at the importance of meditating on the Scriptures as an apprentice to Jesus. What is one idea from Sunday’s message that impacted you?

Read —Luke 24v25-27, v44-45. What are some observation about the passage?

How is a meditative reading similar or different from the way you currently read Scripture?

Read Psalm 1. Take note of what a blessed person does every day. How does that expand your understanding of what it means to live “blessed”?

What does the blessed person avoid? Take note: wicked, sinners, and mockers aren’t just labels; they reflect attitudes and choices that can pull us away from God. In your experience, what does it practically look like to steer clear of these influences?

Think about the creative analogy presented in verse 3. How is a person delighting in Scripture daily like a tree planted by water?

Meditation shapes our identity — our imagination, beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Can you think of a specific truth from Scripture that has transformed your life? Share that with your group.