We're going to read John 15, 1 through 11. We'll read Psalm 119, 9 through 16. Our sermon text today is Psalm 119, verse 15. We'll focus upon that. But first then, John 15, verses 1 through 11. Hear now the words of our God. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. Let's turn to Psalm 119. We'll read the second section there, verses 9 to 16. Here again, God's holy word. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. The grass withers, the flower fades. God's word endures forever. Amen. Please be seated. Let's pray. Our great God in heaven, we pray now that you would bless the preaching of your word. that this more topically oriented sermon would be of great help to all of us here. Lord, we pray that you would teach us to set our minds upon the good things of heaven, and that you would bless us with abundant fruit in this year. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, as you all know, it's January 3rd of 2021, which means some of you, maybe all of you, probably not all of you, have been setting some resolutions for the year to come. And often what this finds many Christians in is they are right on track on their yearly Bible reading plan three days in, but that often will change come February, March, and almost certainly in April. And while I'm not at all opposed to you guys reading through the Bible in a year, if you're able to do that, I'd commend it to you. I would have a different direction of an encouragement for you this morning. I was talking with a brother last week, and we were talking, and for some reason came up to this topic of Christian meditation. and realize that this is probably something that either we don't understand in terms of the terminology we associate it with pagan practice or perhaps something that many Christians are weak in and I thought that it might be of good help for us to consider at the beginning of this year a sermon on Christian meditation. What I'm going to do is I'm going to define for you what I believe Christian meditation is. And then I'm going to have four different aspects as I open up that definition and explain it to you. And then I'm going to apply it to you in terms of looking at some practical things that will help you this year to engage in Christian meditation. So I'm going to begin by defining this concept of Christian meditation. Christian meditation is the focused contemplation of the renewed mind. It's the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. We're going to be opening this up today, that Christian meditation is the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. A few notes from the scriptures, first of all. The Old Testament uses two different terms most frequently that English will translate into meditate. The first term is this word haggah, and again, I know the Hebrew means nothing to you, it's fine, but I'm just showing you there's a distinction between the terminology. That first word is the word that we find in Psalm 1, which is probably for many of you the most familiar reference to Christian meditation, where That man who's blessed, not walking in the ways of wickedness and sitting with scoffers, is the one who delights in the law, and upon the law he meditates day and night. And the concept of that term is something like to murmur or to ponder. That is, you can think about someone who's walking around kind of muttering to himself as he thinks over carefully the thoughts in his mind. So this first term really focuses upon that careful mulling over of a given topic. The word that we have in our text here in Psalm 119 verse 15, I will meditate on your precepts, is very similar. It's the Hebrew word siach. Again, not terribly important for you, the language there, but what it really means is it's something of mental preoccupation that often then will spill over into speech. You'll find often that the psalmist who is thinking about this meditation, this preoccupation of his mind, it either leads him to speak of the things he's thinking, or even complain to God about problems that he's facing. These two words together are used very closely. Psalm 143 verse 5, for example, uses both words in close connection with one another, where it says this in Psalm 143 verse 5, I remember the days of old, I meditate on all your works, which is our Psalm 1 word, I muse, which is our Psalm 119 verse 15 word, I muse on the work of your hands. Christian meditation, as I've submitted to you, is the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. This concept is also present in the New Testament only a few times, most prominently in 1 Timothy 4.15, where, again, a different word is used, of course, in the Greek, melitao, but essentially where Paul says, meditate to Timothy. Meditate on these things. Give yourself entirely to them. that your progress may be evident to all, and that these things upon which Timothy is to set his mind and to immerse himself are the words of faith and good doctrine. Meditation is to the soul, and I hope this isn't too crass of an illustration for you, but I think it'll make sense. Meditation is to the soul what marination is to a fine piece of meat. Meditation is to the soul what fermentation is to a fine bottle of wine, or what soil assimilation is to the roots of crops and of trees. You know, if you have any experience with marination or fermentation or assimilation, that these processes cannot be sped up or skipped if you want to maintain the same and full ideal effect. You can't hasten growing of plants. You can't speed up marination. It simply takes time and it takes patience. This is something that I'm afraid is sorely lacking in many of our lives. I was reading this morning in the foreword of the best devotional ever published, Voices from the Past, where the writer Richard Rushing cites from David Wells this statement. He said, the fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequentially upon the church. His truth is too distant. His grace is too ordinary. His judgment is too benign, meaning it's toothless to us. His gospel is too easy. And His Christ is too common. I want you, by virtue of this sermon with the Spirit's help, I hope, to be equipped to think about God's Word, and to think about how to think about God's Word, that God would not be inconsequential to you, but would be profoundly and eternally weighty and known. So we're going to look at four things, and then apply it with a fifth. The first is we're going to look at the work of Christian meditation. We're then going to look at the organ or the muscle of Christian meditation, then the object of Christian meditation, that is, what is it we're considering, and then finally the goal of Christian meditation. So the work, the organ, the object, and the goal. The work of Christian meditation. It is, as I defined it, the focused contemplation. This is, first of all, a necessary work, not for some Christians, not for a particular kind of Christian, but for all Christians. It isn't just for pastors. It isn't certainly just for monks. It isn't just for theologians. It is for all Christians. Again, look at Psalm 119, verse 15. You see the psalmist saying here, I will. I will do this. I am committing myself, resolving my soul to dwell upon and have a very careful response to the riches of God's Word because of the love of the God of the Word. It is possible, dear friends, to be a Christian and not to meditate upon God's Word. It is possible. It is impossible to be a mature Christian and not to meditate on God's Word, just as it is impossible to be a fruitful and abundant crop without proper, real, nourishing soil assimilation. It is an absolutely necessary part of every Christian life to have periods of time where you have a focused contemplation from the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. But this is, as necessary as it is, it is also simultaneously difficult. Any of you who have spent any time in prayer, as you seek to allot some time, and you go to your knees, or you go walk, or you sit, or whatever it is you're doing, you know that as soon as you begin to beseech God's favor, to seek God's face, that you are then continually bombarded with every conceivable distraction. You're pulled with this obligation, and you're reminded of that frustration, and then something happens out there that steals your time and your priorities again. Thinking is just like that. You'll see in your bulletin there that quote, the beginning of it from Robert Dabney, who wrote upon this very subject, that to hold the thought fixed upon the same idea is the highest function of the will. It is very, very difficult. And part of the reason for that is we have many hindrances that face us. And while I had by no means have an exhaustive list for you of hindrances to Christian meditation, I have two categories of hindrances that I'd set before you by way of help to you so that you can look out for them and seek to plan accordingly. There are circumstantial hindrances, that things happening around us, and there are moral hindrances, that means problems within us. Circumstantially, what we all know is, as Americans especially, with all of our technological advances, we are also an exceedingly busy people. We're constantly moving, doing, very infrequently, it seems in an increasing way, sitting still. There are circumstantial hindrances. Busyness is probably the foremost. We also are in profoundly distracted society. We're a very distracted church. We're a very distracted culture. There's constant interruptions, and there are advertisements, and there are these little devices that we, for whatever reason, call smartphones, even though that they have the opposite effect upon our minds most of the time. These things are great hindrances to a focused contemplation of the renewed mind. The remedy for a lot of these is simply the grace of discipline. That is, a careful approach, a thoughtfulness, a planning so that you might carve out time or you might be willing to blot out or stop your ears to the many distractions that we might have periods of time for the focused contemplation of the renewed mind of Divine Truth. But there are also moral hindrances out there. If you know your own heart, if you're honest with yourself, you know that a real problem with focusing carefully upon the truth of God's Word flows from your laziness. I was rebuked by an older, wiser friend of mine years ago, who asked me to do something, or asked me why I wasn't doing something, and I said, well, I'm just lazy. And he said, no you're not, you're stubborn. He said, laziness is not not doing something, it's refusing to do what is necessary. And he was right. Laziness flows from a sluggish heart that is actually stubborn in pursuing those things which are easier, not necessary. Another moral hindrance is carelessness. There's an unguardedness, an unwatchfulness in the Christian life, and this is a moral failure because Peter tells us to be circumspect. That is, live and walk in the Christian life with your head literally on a swivel, looking around, being careful. We need to be careful in our lives. but probably the most fundamental and underlying moral hindrance to the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth is just straight-up worldliness. We just think about the world, we care more about the world, our priorities are aligned for the world and with the world, and we don't value, I wonder, do you value the divine treasury of truth? There are more I'm sure you could think of, and I would encourage you to think through your life and wonder what is it that's keeping you back from a focused contemplation in my renewed mind about the treasury of divine truth. Thinking is a hard thing, as I said, and before I talk about the third aspect of the work of Christian meditation, I would just encourage you. I think a lot of you think that in order for something to be useful, which is what we'll talk about in a moment, that you must have some tangible effect. I am often aware of the fact that a long day's work for me might look different than a long day's work for you. It might actually involve me not moving more than five feet sitting behind a desk. But if you've had any kind of mental, spiritual work like that, you know it's difficult. You don't build a structure. You don't tear down a forest. But there's work involved. And what I want to urge you to understand is this kind of work that is of all Christians, not just pastors, is a useful work. We've talked its necessity, the difficulty of Christian meditation, but I want to put before you finally the usefulness of Christian meditation. Psalm 1 teaches us that the man who rejects the way of the world and who sets his mind decidedly and committedly upon the law of God, on that law he meditates day and night, what God's Word tells us is he will be fruitful. In all that he does, he will prosper. He will be like a tree planted by those channels of irrigating life-sustaining water. To be a meditating Christian is to be a fruitful Christian. Peter commands God's people to this very thing. Where he says in 2 Peter 1, after talking about the glory of the redemption purchased by Jesus and available in Jesus, he says, for this very reason, because he delivers us from these things, For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and your virtue with knowledge. And you grow in the knowledge of Christ by, among other things, the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth." And he says, if these qualities are yours and increasing, they will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a great usefulness to Christian meditation in fruitfulness and also in making the Christian effective in life. This is the promise God gave to Joshua in Joshua 1 verse 8, when he commands Joshua essentially to be a Psalm 1 man. As he takes over Moses' position, he says, the law of the Lord must be continually in your mouth, and if you do so, you will be effective, you will be prosperous in your work. To be a Christian who meditates upon the truth of God's Word is also to be a wise Christian. And actually, a wise Christian will be a safe Christian, not from physical danger necessarily, but from the spiritual pitfalls all around us. Proverbs 6 verse 20 says, My son, keep your father's commandment, forsake not your mother's teaching. And here's the imagery of meditation. Bind them on your heart, tie them around your neck. Let them always be present before you. And when you walk, they will lead you. When you lie down, they will watch over you. When you wake, they will talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching a light. There's a great usefulness to Christian meditation Though it might not look like you're doing anything, there can be a world of progress actually occurring in the mind and in the soul. And really the last reason it's exceedingly useful is that this is a, not the only, but a significant means God has given us to attain to Christ-likeness in our lives, to consider the truths of the Lord Jesus Christ. to consider his character, because no one more carefully and affectionately and thoroughly meditated upon the words and truths of God than our Lord Jesus Christ. And as we meditate on Him, we become like Him. Robert Dabney again says of this usefulness and fruitfulness of meditation, that the mind which has basked long in the light of some quickening truth, like the tropic of earth," meaning like those tropical places where you have all these wonderful paradise fruits. He says, the mind which has basked long in the light of some quickening truth bursts with the most vigorous and fruitful germs of purpose. The work of Christian meditation, it is necessary, it is difficult, but it is useful, and it is useful. It is the focus contemplation. Well, secondly, the organ of Christian meditation. the organ or the muscle of Christian meditation, where the activity actually occurs is, as I said in my definition, the renewed mind. It's the renewed mind. And what you need to first understand is that it is only possible for those who have a renewed mind, in other words, for those who are born again, to meditate upon the truths of God's Word. Because the un-renewed mind cares nothing for God's truth, cares nothing for the light. In fact, he hates the light. I want you to think about how you think for a moment. I want you to spend a time in your thoughts considering the resume of your thoughts in your life. And if you scan through that, will you find frequently, occasionally, or never, or rarely, thoughts of God? When your mind has time to wander or to move from one place to another, what is it that you actually think about? And if you find that in your life you're rarely or only very occasionally thinking about God, you need to ask yourself a question. Do I know this God? Because Psalm 10 verse 4 says, the wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God, and God is in none of his thoughts. While it is possible to be a Christian and not to have meditation as a consistent part of your life, it is impossible to be a Christian and never to think about God. You're either an unbeliever or you're living as one, and you need to repent, and you need to fill your mind with the truths of the Word of God. The organ of Christian meditation is the renewed mind, that is, you've been enlivened to think about other things. And the organ, then, of the Christian meditation, that renewed mind, it exercises itself as the activity, really, of the whole man, though it is working through the spiritual mind. The thinking of the mind absolutely engages the soul, but it is an exercise of everything. It is hard. It requires self-denial. We want to do what's easy. It's easier to sit and watch something than it is to think about something. It is. It's not to say that watching something is necessarily wrong, but it's easier. This regards the will. We need to choose what is good. It regards the affections. We need to want what is good. It's the activity of the whole mind requiring self-control. even of the thoughts. You are not the product of your emotions. You are not the product of your thoughts. You are called to be in mastery over those things as you live under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The organ of Christian meditation is the renewed mind. Thirdly, the object of Christian meditation. That is, what is the matter of the focus contemplation? To what does the renewed mind turn, and upon what does it gaze and fix its focus? Well, it is the treasury of divine truth. It's the truth of God. First, generally, it's the truth of God. Now, this is what makes Christian meditation diametrically different from and opposed to pagan meditation. The goal of pagan meditation, be it through yoga or through different kind of Eastern rites and different things, the goal of that is to empty the mind, to clear the mind of thought, to really think about nothing. But the goal of Christian meditation is actually to fill the mind with the truth of God. This is not for the pleasure of logic, and this is not to search out the different nuances of philosophy, though there are both of those things as you study the Word of God. The goal of Christian meditation, as we'll talk about in a moment, or the object of it, is the truth itself. What you are to do is set before your mind the wisdom of God, which is unfathomable. You set before your mind thoughts about the righteousness of God, which is unblemished and inscrutable. He said, before your mind, choose any attribute of God. Think about His holiness. Think about His sovereignty. Think about His glory. And what you will find is that there are unending riches for the mind to consider. This is why, just a few verses later down in our text, verse 18, Psalm 119 says, open my eyes. It's a plea. Open my eyes that I might see the wondrous things out of your law. The object of Christian meditation is, generally speaking, the truth of God. But particularly, it's the Christ of God. The particular focus, the desire, the goal, is not thinking about wisdom abstractly, righteousness abstractly, or attributes abstractly, but Jesus Christ personally, Jesus himself. The Bible describes Jesus in so many different ways. And this is a great call to you for faith. The Bible describes Jesus as the radiance of the glory of God. If God's glory is bright, Jesus is the brightness. It was Jesus who was transfigured on the mount, which so enraptured the eyes and souls of Peter, James, and John. But even that, Peter said, we have a better testimony. You don't have to go to the mountain. You can go to 2 Peter 1, and you can go to Luke 9, and the other places you can read about it, and you can set it before your mind, and think about the treasury of divine truth as it is in Christ Jesus. But particularly, the object of meditation is Christ on the cross, and Christ risen, and Christ ascended. When you go to the cross, you see His passion, You see his compassion. You see his grace. You see the wrath of God. You see his love. You see how, in every possible way, Jesus is, in fact, the altogether lovely one. He is the mystery revealed to man. On this side of the cross, I hope you can understand this and grasp this, having the incarnate Christ bearing our nature, risen from the dead, ascended into heaven, interceding for us, is a great help, actually, to Christian meditation. As Dabney again speaks about this, he says, our adoration is assisted by having its object both softened and defined for us. so that its severe glories are veiled without observing them and adapted to our feeble eyes. And what this means is it's as if God has made the sun, S-U-N, which if you stared at it, it would burn your eyes. He has made it so that we can look at it in a way where you can actually observe it, and this he has done through Jesus Christ. And Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. The object of Christian meditation is the truth of God generally, but Jesus Christ particularly, because Christian meditation is the focused contemplation of the renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth of which Jesus is the crown jeweler for you Lord of Rings people, the Arkenstone. That's who Jesus is. Well, fourthly, what is the goal of Christian meditation? Are you all called to be fourth century monastics and go sit on a post and think about these things all day? Well, that's not what the goal is. What is the goal? Well, I have three goals of Christian meditation. And the first is, the first goal of setting the mind in this way is the acquisition of the knowledge of God in truth. The acquisition of the knowledge of God in truth. And that is, you go out and with your own mind, your own hands, you take hold of the truth of God. And this leads not to speculation, this leads not to endless debate, this leads to true devotion. Knowing that ignorance of the gospel, for ignorance of the gospel there is hell to pay. But the knowledge of the gospel opens up the way through Christ into heaven's glory. Knowing something, acquiring the knowledge of God through spirit-directed, word-guarded Christian meditation is how a Christian comes personally uniquely to own the knowledge of God. I remember years ago, this had a profound effect on me, I remember listening to a sermon where a man was telling a story about an old Scottish woman who was, there was a new pastor that was going to be called to the church and she went to one of her elders and she said, please, sir, send someone who would tell me about Christ, not by hearsay. That is, he didn't just hear from somewhere else or someone else. He's not just taking someone else's words and putting them before a congregation. No, but he has sat at the feet of Christ. He has set his renewed mind to contemplate in a focused way the treasure of divine truth. You need to pray that I would not speak to you of Christ by hearsay, and that you might be able to speak to one another of the Christ you know, and of the knowledge that you yourself have acquired with the Spirit's help, according to divine truth. Just as a man ought to spend his life knowing and studying and learning about his wife, which leads to a greater and more heartfelt devotion, and a wife spends her life knowing and studying and learning of her husband and lives in devotion to him, so the Christian must live devotedly acquiring a real, practical, heartfelt and heart-filling, warming knowledge of God. The first goal of Christian meditation is the acquisition of the knowledge of God in truth. which leads to devotion. The second goal of Christian meditation is the application of the Word of God in power. It is not for mere consideration. It is not for ethereal thinking about different things. No, it's to apply the Word of God in truth, in obedience, and if the first point is directed to devotion, this is directed to Christian duty. to think about the words of God, the law of God, as the Psalm 1 man is to do, and as the Psalm 119 man says, I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways, that is so that he might walk in those ways. It is the Christian's duty to learn the way of Christ. What does this look like? Well, I wonder if any of you have ever taken any time to read the larger catechism's exposition of the Ten Commandments. And you see something like, you shall not murder, you shall not kill. And then you see, it seems like 74 lines of application. You might ask yourself the question, how did they get that from this? The way they got that was through careful, focused contemplation of their renewed minds upon the treasury of divine truth. And what they have bequeathed to us is a great help that we might know the will of God. We have a duty, and as we live in the frenetic pace of our lives, I wonder, as you go about here and there, and perhaps get wrapped up with the hectic nature of life, I wonder if you've ever sinned against your wife, or your husband, or your children, or your parents, or your siblings, or a co-worker, in what you did or what you said. And the response was, I just didn't even think about that. I didn't think that that was wrong. It takes the focused contemplation, the consideration of God's truth, that we might learn our ways, the good and right way, and that will settle down into the heart and work itself out in the life. The first goal of Christian meditation is the acquisition of the knowledge of God in truth, which leads to devotion. The second goal is the application of the Word of God in power, which directs the Christian duty. And the third goal, of Christian meditation is the apprehension of the glory of God in Christ. If the first point was about devotion, the second was about duty, this one is all about delight. It's the delight of the Christian to set his mind, to set her mind upon the crown jewel of the treasure of divine truth, Jesus Christ. And this we must do by faith. This you must do by faith. You might read things and think, I don't think of Jesus this way. That's what I think often as I read Samuel Rutherford. I'll even share something for you. As he was in prison, he would often talk about how nobody feasted like he did, and how nobody had the joys that he did, and nobody had the communion with Christ that he did, while he had almost nothing. And I sometimes wonder, how? How did he know this was because he delighted in Christ? Let me share with you something from his own meditations. As he writes to a friend, he says, He says, go where you will. Your soul shall not sleep sound but in Christ's bosom. Come into him and lie down and rest you on the slain Son of God and inquire for him. He says, I sought him. And what's the result? And now a fig for all the worm-eaten pleasures and moth-eaten glory out of heaven, since I have found him and in him all I could want or wish. Those things are not embellished. That's not an exaggeration. But I'm afraid for many of us, myself included, it extends above where my own affections lie. Because our delight in Christ is so low, isn't it? The apprehension of the glory of God in Christ is the great goal to delight in Him. It's the great goal of Christian meditation. I would simply ask you, you might not be here. You might not have experienced this, but do you want this? This isn't mysticism. This is Christian devotion. Do you want to delight in the Lord Jesus? Well, I want to close with some helpful, hopefully helpful, directives to you on a way to Christian meditation. How then do we go about actually doing this? How do you implement this? What needs to happen for it actually to occur? You might think that the work and organ and object and goal of Christian meditation sounds great, and maybe you're thinking, I want now to learn how to have focused contemplation of my renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. How do you do this? I'm not going to be able to tell you all the particulars because each person is different, but here are some attendant things that need to be in place. The first is you need to take time. You need to take time. You might immediately respond, I don't have time. That's not true. You have as much time as anyone else in this world. Now, there are different seasons of busyness. There are different seasons of intensity of work or responsibility. But what you do need to do, and I would urge you to do today, and as you think about this year, is take an inventory on the expenditures of your time. Where do you spend your time? How do you redeem the time? We have these devices that are constantly draining, are actually these black holes of time. We have entertainment that can be a black hole of time. We often can simply be lazy and just burn time. We often also have a lot of responsibility. The goal here, the application here is, in submission to Christ, take inventory of the expenditure of your minutes, and as Charles Bridges said, spend it as a miser spends his gold. Be careful with your time. Consider it. Carve out time. Plan to have seasons of focused contemplation of your renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. A second aspect that goes along with this time is you need quiet. You need solitude. All I could think about when I was thinking about this was my poor wife. It is hard for her, often, and probably hard for many of you, to find solitude. And I know this is the case. And God knows our frame. He remembers where dust. And we also have the constant bombardments of all things American into our lives, from phones and text messages and emails to whatever else. But what needs to happen in conjunction with the consideration of how you spend your time is, are you looking for and making opportunities for times of quiet contemplation? Now I'm not a huge proponent of using the term quiet time. I think it sounds very froofy. I don't like it. But there are times of focused devotion that you need to have. If that means considering going to bed earlier so you can wake up earlier, then do it. If your mind works best at night, do it at night. Find time. If you need to go for a walk to do this to get away from everything else, do it. If you need to turn off the radio or whatever else in your car, do it on your drives to work. Find the time for there to be a period of quiet that you might set your mind upon the treasury of divine truth. A third aspect to this, how does a Christian meditate? Time, quiet, and prayer. Prayer is in two different ways here. If you don't find it in your mind to be able to do these things, you need to pray. You need to ask God. Renew my mind. Strengthen my mind. Fortify my mind. Guard me from distractions. Lord, help me to set my mind on these things. Stir up my heart. These are things for which we need to pray. But also we need to meditate in our prayers. I wonder if you've ever prayed to God and simply told Him about these things. Tell Him about how He's been good to you. Tell Him about what you've learned of His faithfulness. This is part of the Christian life. Prayerful meditation. A fourth and very practical point here in how to meditate is a pen. And I mean a pen. A pen. Like, a pen. Not a keyboard. A pen. Best used with paper. I would urge you, Charles Spurgeon says that the pen is the scalpel of the mind, and I believe it was C.S. Lewis who back even in the day of typewriters said that there was even something different about the pen as typing out things. It slows the mind down, and it helps focus the mind, and I would urge you, even if you don't like, especially if you don't like to write, find yourself a journal, find yourself a pen, and begin writing about things, and maybe a very practical way you can do this. You can read through a chapter of the Proverbs. Go back through. I did this years ago. It helped me so much. Go back through. Choose one proverb. Choose one out of that chapter. Write it down. And then write 6, 7, 8, 10, 5, whatever many ways that this is applicable to you, that this could be applied in your life, or that it was epitomized in Jesus Christ. This is the beginning step. This is Christian meditation 101. Write it down. Use the pen to slow down the mind. End paper. But a last little help for you, time, quiet, prayer, the pen, is resolve. You need to commit to this. You need to exercise the will and the mind to commit to living a life and growing this year, this day, this month, in the focused contemplation of your renewed mind upon the treasury of divine truth. You need to recognize that divine truth is a treasury, and that it's worth considering. Well, while the music plays, I will wrap up our sermon. When I was growing up, I live not far from Antietam Creek and a couple of times a summer what we would do is we would drive out two cars, one downstream we'd leave and then we'd drive upstream a couple of miles and we'd unload our tractor-trailer inner tubes in a canoe and we would go into that creek and we would float our way rather lazily down the few miles until we came to the unloading point. It's a lazy drift of a ride. And I'm afraid that is how many of you and many of us think and live the Christian life. We are just simply drifting and being acted upon by the various currents of our world and society. What God calls us to do, and what Christian meditation forces us to do, is to begin rowing upstream, begin pushing against the currents that would steal your mind, and steal the fortification that God would call you to have in your mind. It is hard at first, and your muscles will burn, and your soul will be sluggish. Start small. God will grow you and increase your strength. Some of you have read the Puritans, and you read about them and you see how, how did they produce this? How did they even think about these things? It was the product of careful, believing, prayerful, and thankfully pen-immortalized Christian meditation. You're not called necessarily to be the Puritan of our age, but you are called to be Christians. And Christians are to have focused contemplation of their renewed minds upon the treasury of divine truth. And let me urge you then, let me urge you this year, for Christ's glory, for the good of your own soul, for the spiritual vibrancy of your family, for the good of your church, to resolve yourself to the pursuit of Christian meditation. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we ask you that you would strengthen our minds, that you'd forgive us for our laziness and our carelessness of mind and worldliness, and that you would enable us, O Lord, to set our minds upon the good things of heaven and the good things of Christ. Lord, we pray that you'd forgive us for the way we've wasted time And for not seeking out Your face as You've commanded us to, please use this sermon and exhortation to shape us drastically and dramatically this year, shaping us even into Christ. We pray in His name. Amen.