The Way of Life: Meditation | Psalm 1
Brian Hedges | October 20, 2024
A number of times I’ve had the privilege of taking missions trips to Africa, and on the very first trip to Africa I went to both South Africa and Zimbabwe and had the wonderful privilege of seeing Victoria Falls. You can see a picture here of Victoria Falls.
Victoria Falls, of course, is one of the largest waterfalls in the world. It’s been known as one of the natural wonders of the world. Locally there in Zimbabwe and in Zambia it’s known as Mosi-oa-Tunya, which means “The Smoke that Thunders” because it’s so loud. Indeed, these waterfalls can be heard from twenty-five miles away. There’s this huge mist that you can see for miles away, a mist rising from the falls, and we had the great privilege of seeing these falls and walking around the perimeter of the falls. As you do, you just get completely drenched, and the sound can be deafening at times. It was an incredible spectacle of sight and of sound, one of these great wonders of creation.
Now, sadly, something’s happened over the last few years, and because of severe drought the falls are no longer what they once were. Here’s a more recent picture of the falls. What once was this mighty spectacle of cascading water now looks like a canyon with just a modest trickle in comparison. That’s all been because of the drought in recent years.
I start with these images because I want to suggest that these two images can be metaphors for us this morning of two ways of living, two different possible kinds of life. There can be, first of all, a life like that first picture—a life that is characterized by fullness and abundance, by joy, by this vital, life-giving connection to God. Or we can live, even as Christians, another kind of life: a life of spiritual and emotional drought, a life that is mostly a barren canyon with just a trickle of the water of life, but nothing that you would describe as fullness of joy and abundant life.
We know from the promises of Scripture that Christ came to give us abundant life. In John 10:10 Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
Now, that language is kind of religious-sound language; that’s the traditional translation of that passage. But here’s the New Living translation: “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” That’s what Jesus promises to us.
I want to ask you this morning as we begin, which picture more characterizes your life? Do you feel like you have a life that is characterized by abundance, by joy, by vitality, this flourishing kind of life? Or do you feel like your life is just barely a life of surviving, spiritual drought? Is your life rich and satisfying?
That’s possible for each and every one of us in Christ Jesus, and I want us to think about that over the next six weeks, what this kind of life looks like and what are the kinds of practices that lead to it. I’m launching a new series today; it’s called “The Way of Life: Vital Practices for Your Spiritual Journey.”
Now, this is a departure from where we’ve been in the last number of weeks. We’ve been studying through the letter to the Hebrews, and we just went through a pretty significant chunk of this letter, Hebrews 8-10. In some ways it’s the most difficult part of that letter, and we finally got to the end of it last week, and we’re going to come back to Hebrews 11 in January. Hebrews 11-13 are a wonderful, beautiful part of Scripture, a very practical part of Scripture. It’ll be a great way to start the new year.
But I think it’s helpful for us to intersperse these heavier, expositional series through books of the Bible with more practical series, and this is going to be a very practical series. We’re going to look at some of these practices that can lead us into lives of flourishing abundance and vitality.
In some ways you could view this as a continuation of a series we did back in the spring called “Imago Dei: Restoring the Divine Image,” where we looked at how we have been formed in God’s image but deformed by the fall. Now we are in the process of being transformed into the image of Christ, becoming more and more like Christ. In that series we laid out in broad strokes the story of redemption and how that relates to you and I and our human nature as we’re being restored to the image of Christ.
But now what we’re going to do is look at the practices that actually help us along in that process, this process of restoration and transformation in our lives.
One of the reasons we’re going to do this series is because I need it. I need this series. I’ve had a very busy fall so far; I think I’ve given twelve different talks in October so far. I just came off of a very busy weekend, landed late Monday night after a weekend in California, and all week I feel like I’ve been in recovery mode. Where my mind is going and my heart is going is back to thinking about these kinds of practices and restoration of soul. What does that kind of life look like? That’s the literature that I’m reading right now, and I thought, “You know, this is where I’m going to be; I’m just going to share this with the church as well.”
Today, we’re going to start in Psalm 1. In fact, we’ll probably ground all of these sermons in the Psalms, because the Psalms give us all kinds of spiritual practices. We’ll supplement that with other Scriptures along the way. But today we’re going to start in Psalm 1. Of course, it’s the very first psalm. It’s kind of a foundational psalm for the whole book of Psalms, the psalter. It’s a psalm that uses this language, the language of the way. There’s a certain kind of way to live, so Psalm 1 is a fitting place for us to do that.
We’re going to read the whole psalm, six verses. For this series I’m going to use the NIV. You can read along with me in your own copy of God’s word or on the screen. Here’s the text.
“Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
“Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand 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 destruction.”
This is God’s word.
This is a very simple psalm, and I think we can break it down in this way. We’ll look at three things. I want you to see:
1. The Path
2. The Picture
3. The Practice
The path shows us that there is a way of life, a way that leads to relationship with God, a way that’s characterized as the way of the righteous; the picture is a picture of the tree, contrasted with the picture of chaff; and then the practice is this practice of delighting in and meditating on the law of the Lord day and night. Let’s look at each one of those things.
1. The Path
First of all, there’s the path. I want you to understand the broad structure of this psalm and what it’s teaching. The psalm is showing us that there are two kinds of people, that there are two ways to live, and that these lead to two different destinies. It’s a contrast between the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, the way in which these two different kinds of people live, and then the end of each one of these ways.
You can see this language in Psalm 1:1-2 as well as verses 5-6. We just read it, but just look at it again and just notice the “way” language. Verse 1: “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers.” Now, that’s three different ways of saying essentially the same thing, but maybe there’s a slight progression here from those who kind of walk in counsel with the wicked to those who actually then behave in those ways, and then a settled taking one’s place in the seat or the company of mockers. But notice that “way” language. That’s in contrast to the one whose delight is in the Lord’s law.
Then you see the two destinies in Psalm 1:5-6. “The wicked will not stand in judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over [or, as the ESV says, the Lord knows] the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.” It’s not only that the Lord watches over, but the Lord knows the way of the righteous, because he knows the righteous.
Now, take that language, the language of ways and the language of being known by God, and compare that with the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew 7. Jesus picks up on exactly this language from Psalms and from Hebrew poetry.
Jesus, speaking now, in Matthew 7:13 says, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Jump down to verse 21. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you—’” Again, it’s the language of knowing. “‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
So, just as in Psalm 1, in Matthew 7 we see two kinds of people. We see two ways to live. We see two final destinies.
Now listen, this is both a warning and an invitation for us this morning. We need to see this contrast, and we need to see that this is talking to us, this is speaking to us. It’s a warning. It’s a warning that there is a way to live that leads to not life but to destruction. There is a way that leads to perishing, that leads to eternal, irrevocable loss. That’s possible for every single one of us. We can be on the wrong way, and Jesus tells us that it’s the easy way. That is, it’s the smoother way. It’s the default way. This is kind of the default setting of our minds; it’s to go on the easy path. It’s the path that comes most naturally.
Notice this, that it is a way that can be filled with religious activity and even with a profession of faith, because Jesus says there’s going to be many “who say to me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we do many wonderful things in your name?’” and they list off all the things they’re doing. They’re busy in ministry, and Jesus says, “I never knew you,” because there was no relationship.
That’s the crucial thing. It’s the missed relationship with God. So this is a warning that it’s possible to be very religious and to be very busy, even in ministry, even in church, and to completely miss out on the kind of life that Jesus invites us to. That’s a warning, and there’s some urgency to that. We can’t measure our spiritual health by looking at our church activities.
So how do you measure spiritual health? Well, it’s seen in a vibrant, life-giving relationship with Christ. Of course, Christ himself says, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” So, at its heart, this way of life is the way of Jesus himself and knowing him.
So there’s an invitation here; not just a warning, but an invitation. It is an invitation to a different kind of life, a way of life that is characterized by the joy and the delight of knowing and walking with God.
Listen, this way is not easy. Jesus says it’s difficult. It’s difficult because it costs something. This is the road not often taken, but it is the way to the life of deep joy and satisfaction, and it can only be found in knowing and walking with God.
This is the kind of life that I think in our heart of hearts all of us are really looking for. You’re hungry for something this morning. You’re thirsty for something. You want joy, you want satisfaction; this is the baseline motive of every human being. We are seeking for whatever we believe will satisfy us, and we have a vision in our minds of what the good life is. What Psalm 1 is telling us and what Jesus is telling us is that the good life is the life that is found in a deep, vital, life-giving relationship with the Creator.
“Oh the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked or stand among the sinners or join with mockers.” That’s Psalm 1:1 in the New Living translation. “Oh the joys!” There’s a joy here. There’s blessing, there is satisfaction, there is life; but it’s found only in walking along this path. So it’s one reason this whole series is oriented around this language of a way of life. It’s a way of life.
As we’re talking now about spiritual practices, don’t mistake this. We’re not just talking about optional add-ons to an otherwise healthy Christian life—you could take it or leave it. We’re talking about the kinds of things that characterize a deep, authentic relationship with God. It’s not that we’re saved by these things—we’re saved by faith in Christ—but these practices are the practices of faith. They’re the way in which we put faith in practice in our relationship with the Lord. So there’s a path. That’s point number one.
2. The Picture
Secondly, there’s also a picture. I love this psalm because it presents for us not just these two paths, but it also presents for us actually two pictures, contrasting pictures of the life of the righteous person and the life of the wicked person. The picture it presents of the righteous is a very inviting picture. You see this in Psalm 1:3-4. They give us the two pictures; we’re going to focus, really, on verse 3. But let’s read those two verses again. It says,
“That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
“Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.”
That’s the image of the threshing floor, and as the wheat is threshed, the kernels threshed, the chaff is the husk that’s left over, and it just blows away. There’s nothing left. It’s of no value. It’s the remains; it’s the leftover; it’s the outer shell; there’s nothing of real value to that. You can’t do anything with chaff. That’s the wicked.
In contrast to that, the righteous are seen as this tree. This is a very vivid, evocative description of a person whose relationship with God is a thriving, flourishing relationship. Look at some of the characteristics of this good life as it’s depicted for us in Psalm 1 with the image of the tree. I’m using here the language of Dale Ralph Davis from his little commentary on Psalms.
He says this life is characterized by stability. This person is like a tree that is planted. There’s stability because there are these deep roots that keep the tree strong and stable. There’s vitality; it’s planted by the streams of water. It always has a source of nourishment and sustenance. There’s productivity; it yields its fruit in season. So we’re talking here about a fruitful life. This is the key to a life that bears spiritual fruit. You think about the fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, and so on. You think about a life that actually looks like a life of Jesus, that is characterized by spiritual fruitfulness.
There’s durability here. “...whose leaf does not wither.” And there’s prosperity: “whatever they do prospers.” That’s the description of the good life. This is the life that Jesus invites us to and that Psalm 1 invites us to.
You see that list and you might think, “Wow, that just looks too good to be true. What is this whole thing about prosperity? Does that mean (and Brian, are you now starting to teach) a gospel of health, wealth, and prosperity? If I live this kind of life, all my problems are going to go away, I’m going to be healthy, I’m going to be rich, I’m not going to have cancer? Everything is going to go well in my life? Is that what Psalm 1 is teaching?”
Of course, if you know your Bibles you know that’s not what Psalm 1 is teaching, because probably a full third of the Psalms are psalms of lament written by men who are in great trial and in great trouble, and yet they’re still walking in this way of the righteous.
There’s actually a parallel passage to Psalm 1 that I think fills this picture out a little more and gives us an understanding of the way in which this person is prosperous. It’s really interesting, because the metaphor is almost exactly the same. It was probably written several hundred years later. This is by the prophet Jeremiah. You see this in Jeremiah 17. I’m going to read Jeremiah 17:5-8. Again, you have a contrast.
“Thus says the Lord:
‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his strength,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.’”
Then in contrast, verse 7:
“‘Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.’”
Now, isn’t that interesting? It’s the same picture! Probably Jeremiah is meditating on Psalm 1, yet Jeremiah, as you know, suffered all kinds of trials in his life. And Jeremiah, meditating on Psalm 1, or maybe the Lord giving a fresh revelation but using the language of Psalm 1, this is given to us. Notice here that the picture is also of a tree, but this is a tree that does not fear when the heat comes and is not anxious in the year of drought.
In other words, the big difference between the shrub in the desert and this tree is not the environment. It’s not the circumstances. This is a kind of stability and vitality that is not dependent on outward prosperity in our circumstances.
In other words, when you get a diagnosis that yes, it’s cancer; yes, it’s Alzheimer’s; yes, it’s terminal; and when the finances are not there, everything’s tight, you’re barely making it every month; and when you find out that there’s some deep departure in the life of one of your family members, a deep departure from the Lord; or whatever the trial is, and we all face these things, you find yourself in a year of drought, you find the heat turning up in your life, you’re still prospering. The leaves are still green. There’s still fruit! There’s still vitality. Why? Because your root system is connected to this life-giving source of spiritual vitality. That’s the picture that Psalm 1 is offering to us.
Now, right there it’s something of a rebuke, I think, to us in a lot of our expectations of life. Most of us suppose that we will be the best version of ourselves when our lives are going well, right? When everything’s humming along, there’s money in the bank, the kids are doing fine, there’s no big health problems, the schedule’s just clicking. Everything seems like it’s in perfect balance. Does anybody’s life feel like that for more than about two weeks at a time? I mean, I get maybe two weeks like that a year, and then something else comes around, and it just doesn’t feel in balance.
It’s so easy to think, “If I could just get back to that, if I could just get back to perfect balance in everything, where everything is the way it should be, then my life will be fine. Then I’ll have this life of flourishing and spiritual vitality and so on.”
That’s not the picture that Scripture gives us. The spiritually flourishing person is the person who doesn’t cease to bear fruit in the times of heat and drought. He’s not characterized by anxiety when all around his soul gives way. Why? Because there’s something deeper giving stability to his life.
I tried to think of a good illustration of this. Maybe the best illustration I can think of is Joni Eareckson Tada. I know you know her story. At seventeen years old, she was injured in a diving accident in Chesapeake Bay on July 30, 1967, and it left her a quadriplegic. Here she is now, fifty-seven years later. It’s been fifty-seven years since that happened, and her faith in Christ is still vibrant. If you’ve ever watched Joni or listened to Joni, she’s very honest about her suffering, and yet her life is always characterized by a deep trust in the Lord and a deep, abiding joy in the Lord. Here’s what she says.
“Early on in my paralysis, and almost by accident, I unearthed an unexpected treasure. I opened the word of God and discovered a mineshaft. I dug my paralyzed fingers into a weight of incomprehensible glory, a sweetness with Jesus that made my paralysis pale in comparison. In my great joy, I went out and sold everything, trading in my resentment and self-pity to buy the ugly field nobody else would want, and I struck gold. After decades of using the pick and shovel of prayer and Scripture, my field has yielded the riches of the kingdom of heaven. I have found a God who is thunderous, full-throttled joy, spilling over.”
Now that’s the kind of life that you want. That’s the good life, a life that, even though it may be marked by some deep tragedy, you’ve still tapped into this deep joy, the joy of knowing God.
How do you get that? That’s the picture of the life you want; how do you get that? You get that through, of course, faith in Christ, but let’s put some shoe leather on that faith. It’s faith that is expressed through a way of living.
3. The Practice
That leads us to the practice. We’re going to talk about a number of different practices in this series, but this is the practice of meditation, as it’s called here in Psalm 1. We want to spell that out. What does it mean? What does it look like?
Look at Psalm 1:1-2 again.
“Blessed is the one who does not” do these various things—walk in step with the wicked and so on—but here’s the positive description in verse 2, “but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.”
Now, when you read “law,” don’t think Ten Commandments. That’s included, but the word here is torah, and it means instruction. It means that his delight is in the instruction of the Lord. It includes all of God’s revelation, but the Torah for the author of this psalm (perhaps David) was certainly the whole first five books of the Bible. But in light of the fuller revelation we have of all of God’s word, including our New Testament, this can be applied to all that God has revealed to us about himself, the fullest revelation of the gospel in Jesus Christ, and all the teaching of Scripture and of Jesus and of the apostles on how we are to live. This is God’s instruction for us. So when you read “law of the Lord,” think more broadly than the Ten Commandments or even the first five books of the Bible.
The psalmist here is saying that the blessed person, the person who’s like this tree, whose life is marked by stability and vitality and productivity and all these different things, this person is characterized by delight in God’s instruction and constant (day and night) meditation on God’s instruction.
What does that mean? What does meditation and how do you do it? Those are the two questions I want to ask here in the last ten minutes or so.
(1) What is meditation? First of all, we have to distinguish this from Eastern meditation. For some of us, we hear meditation and we think of Rafiki in The Lion King, right? You think of somebody sitting there with legs crossed, contemplating nothing, emptying the mind, entering into some kind of Eastern trance, or whatever. That is not what meditation means in Scripture.
In fact, Richard Foster wrote a great book on disciplines, The Celebration of Discipline. He says, “Eastern meditation is an attempt to empty the mind; Christian meditation is an attempt to fill the mind.” So we’re not talking about Eastern meditation, we’re talking about something that’s distinctively Christian, distinctively biblical.
I think we get a clue here when we look at the meaning of this word. It’s the Hebrew word hagah, and it’s a word that literally means to mutter to oneself. But it can also carry this nuance, this meaning “to growl,” like the growl of a lion.
Listen to Isaiah 31:4. “For thus the Lord said to me, ‘As a lion or a young lion growls over his prey—’” there’s the word. He growls over his prey.
Eugene Peterson—who, by the way, I wouldn’t necessarily follow everything Eugene Peterson says, but he’s actually quite helpful on this. He wrote a wonderful book called Eat This Book, and in that book he comments on the word hagah. He says,
“Hagah is a word that our Hebrew ancestors used frequently for reading the kind of writing that deals with our souls, but ‘meditate’ is far too tame a word for what is being signified. When Isaiah’s lion and my dog meditated, they chewed and swallowed using teeth and tongue, stomach and intestines. Isaiah’s lion meditating his goat (if that’s what it was), my dog meditating his bone. There is a certain kind of writing that invites this kind of reading, soft purrs and low growls as we taste and savor, anticipate and take in, the sweet and spicy, mouthwatering, soul-energizing morsel words, ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good.’”
That’s helpful. That’s giving us a picture of what this meditation is.
Here’s what I want you to get from this. Meditation is not merely Bible reading. It includes that; you have to read the Bible in order to meditate. You have to have something to meditate on. But meditation is more than mere Bible-reading. It’s more, even, than just Bible study. We’re not talking here about a merely intellectual, academic exercise. In fact, you can do that and never experience that soul-refreshing view of Jesus in his word that the hymn-writer spoke of. You can do the Bible study and miss the whole point and it not really get on your insides.
What we’re talking about is a way of engaging God and his word that gets to our hearts. There’s a delight here! This meditation is like a lion savoring its prey; it’s like a dog on its bone.
Let me give you another great quote. This is John Owen the Puritan. John Owen wrote this wonderful book, The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, where he lays out what it looks like to be a spiritually-minded person who meditates. He says,
“By disciplined meditation I mean the art of thinking of some chosen spiritual subject in an orderly, disciplined way. The aim of disciplined meditation is to arouse our hearts to experience a sense of love, delight, and humility.”
That’s also very helpful, and it’s getting at this combination of head and heart, mind and heart, in our engagement with God over his word.
So let me give you my definition. This is a simple definition. We could say meditation is the art of engaging your mind and heart in the contemplation of God and his word.
(2) How do you do it? You need three things if you’re going to do this. You need a time, you need a place, you need a plan.
It will take time. You have to set aside time to do this. This is not something you can do with merely five minutes. You have to spend a little more time on it than that. Now, I don’t want to set too high a bar. You don’t need two hours a day to do this. Two hours would be great, but you don’t need two hours to do this. Fifteen to twenty minutes of intentional, thoughtful engagement with Scripture can actually be a real kind of meditation, where you’re getting your mind and your heart engaged with the text. But it is going to take some time, and you’re going to have to think about the time to do that, whether that’s morning, maybe it’s evening, or maybe it’s a lunch break, where you’re setting aside twenty minutes or half an hour or something like that, some unstructured time where you have space to get into a part of God’s word and do this kind of thoughtful engagement with it.
You also need a place, probably a private place or place where you’re not going to be disturbed or interrupted or too distracted.
And you need a plan. You need a method. Let me give you a method. This is a method that Martin Luther gave to his barber.
Martin Luther had a barber named Peter, Peter Beskindorff. He asked Luther to teach him how to pray. So Luther wrote him a letter that is thirty-four pages long, and it’s a little treatise called “A Simple Way to Pray.” But it’s really teaching meditation, because what Luther is doing is showing how to use the word to lead us into communion with God and meditation. I’ll just give you one paragraph here that’s quite helpful. This is a wonderful little method. Once you get this, this is easy to apply. You don’t have to have the full quote, you just need the concept.
Luther said, “I divide each commandment into four parts.” What Luther did is he showed Peter how to do this using the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. But you can do this with any text of Scripture, okay?
“I divide each [text] into four parts, thereby fashioning a garland of four strands. That is, I think of each commandment as, first, instruction, which is really what it’s intended to be, and consider what the Lord demands of me so earnestly. Second, I turn it into a thanksgiving; third, a confession; and fourth, a prayer.”
Stop right there. That’s giving you a fourfold method for meditating on Scripture. It’s instruction. “What is this teaching me to do?” It is a thanksgiving: “What is this telling me that God has done? What can I thank him for?” It can be a confession: “Where do I need to confess sin because I’ve not done this?” And, “Where can this be a prayer where I’m asking the Lord to help me to receive this promise or put this command into practice?”
There’s the fourfold method: instruction, thanksgiving, confession, prayer. Luther goes on:
“These are the Ten Commandments in their fourfold aspect: namely, as a schooltext, a songbook, a penitential book, and a prayer book. They are intended to help the heart come to itself and grow zealous in prayer.”
Once again, that’s a beautiful description of what meditation is. It’s a heart coming to itself in relationship to God and his word. So there’s a method for you.
If you want something even a little simpler than that, I would suggest that you start with one book of the Bible, take one chapter a day, read that chapter, and then write some of your observations down about the chapter, including a practical application and a prayer. It’s a very simple method. It’s what I’ve been doing recently, and I’m going through the book of Psalms. I’m just taking a psalm a day, and I read the psalm, I write down whatever observations I have about the psalm, and I’m trying to think about application and think about prayer. I’ve found that very helpful for me. There’s your method.
Let me conclude in this way. We’ve seen what meditation is and how to do it. We’ve seen the path, the picture, and the practice itself.
Let me tell you a little bit about a man who practiced this. This is not a famous theologian, this is not somebody who wrote a book, this is not somebody who probably even knew who John Owen was, unless he heard it from me. This was my grandfather. His name was Arthur Hedges, also known as Zan-Zan—that’s how I knew him. He was a World War II veteran, he was a farmer, a businessman, a community leader, baseball coach. For many, many years he was a very faithful deacon in his local Baptist church in Amherst, Texas.
Now, here’s the thing about my grandfather. He was not an intellectual man. I don’t think he had more than a high school education. He got married when he was eighteen years old, right out of high school, and two days later left for World War II. Then he came back and he was a farmer. He was a very simple man.
But I don’t know if I’ve ever met anybody that was more joyful than my grandfather. I know I don’t know anybody who’s more generous than my grandfather to me personally. And it wasn’t just to me. He would give his shirt off his back to anybody that needed it. He was the kind of person who made you feel like you were the most important person in his life when he sat down and talked to you, because he was so interested in you.
He was a very humble man and he was a very loving and Christlike man. I had the privilege of preaching his funeral in 2020 when he passed away. All five of his kids said he was the best man ever. He was deeply loved by his family, by the communities around him. As I was thinking about my grandfather, I was thinking about this funeral. “What am I going to for his funeral?” It was the hardest funeral I’ve ever done. You know, the passage that came to mind was Jeremiah 17, the picture of this tree that’s not anxious in years of drought, this fruitful tree in Jeremiah 17. What’s quite interesting is that in the same service my cousin, John, who is also an ordained minister, also spoke in the service, and the passage he chose was Psalm 1.
It tells you the kind of man he was. Here’s a picture of him reading his Bible. He lived to be well into his nineties, and I think for probably the last ten to fifteen years of his life he was regularly just reading the Bible through, just regularly reading it through.
One of the things my dad told me when I was preparing for that funeral service was that he remembered as a teenager Sunday mornings especially, Sunday mornings in their household. This is what happened on Sunday morning: his dad would get up, he would put gospel music on, they’d get ready for church, and then his dad would sit in his chair in the living room reading his Bible, and my dad as a teenager got this sense that “Dad is communing with God.” That made an impact on my father.
Listen, friends. That’s the kind of life—you don’t have to be a deep theologian, you don’t have to read John Owen or any of the guys I like to quote, but there’s a kind of life available to you and me, a life of flourishing and vitality, stability, a life that will keep us strong, even in the times of heat, in the times of drought. It is a life of deep, personal, intimate relationship with God through his Son Jesus and through the Spirit, and it is a kind of life that is mediated through your faithful engagement with God through his word. That’s where you’re going to get to know him.
I want to end by inviting you this week: will you do this? Will you try this? If you’ve never done it before, start now. Pick a time, pick a place, get a plan, part of the Bible, and start reading and engaging your mind and your heart in the word of God. Some of you are doing this all the time, every week; some of you maybe need to renew it, because you’ve done this in the past but you’ve drifted away from it.
And perhaps some of you this morning have never had this kind of life. You don’t even know what this kind of relationship with God can be like. I want you to know that this is available to you. It’s available to you through Jesus, through the Spirit, and you can come to Jesus today in faith. Ask him to forgive you, to save you, to show you the way to live, and begin to follow Jesus. You’ll discover a rich and satisfying life, abundant life, life to the full. Let’s pray.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for the life that Jesus, your Son, promises to us and that your word holds out to us. It is the life we want. We are looking for satisfaction, we’re looking for deep joy and meaning in our lives, and ultimately it’s found in a relationship with you. So we ask you this morning to give us the grace and will and desire to pursue that kind of life with a deep and abiding faith in you.
We ask you, Lord, to speak to us through your word. Just as I trust you’ve spoken to us together, corporately, through the word this morning, I pray that you would speak to us individually and personally this week so that next Sunday as we gather there will be three or four hundred people in this building on Sunday morning who have met with God this week, who have heard the voice of the Spirit of God speaking through the pages of Scripture to their individual souls. There’ll be a little more flourishing, there’ll be a little more vitality, there’ll be more life than there was the week before. So Lord, give us a desire for that and the heart to pursue it.
Now, as we come to the Lord’s table, we ask you to continue to speak to us and to minister to us and to feed us. Nourish us as we taste and see that you are good. May the bread the juice be for us not just a memorial that reminds us of what Christ has done, but may they be for us today a means of grace, so that as we physically take the elements we spiritually feed on Christ and what Christ has done for us. We ask you to draw near to us in these moments of continuing worship. We pray that you would do it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
