Meditation
By John Hooper
A Holy Exercise of the Mind
The word “meditation” might well put the reader on guard. Meditation is usually associated with eastern mysticism and New Age religion, focussing on the human consciousness. It encourages us to close our eyes and think about our breathing, our body and its emotions, perhaps against the sound of a babbling stream, anything that will produce a calming effect to empty the mind of all those troubles and cares that weigh down the fraught members of modern society. It has nothing to do with a personal relationship with the true and living God, and it has nothing to do with the meditation of which the Bible speaks.
The words meditate and meditation are soundly Biblical, occurring twenty times in the Authorised Version of the Scriptures. Eighteen are in the Old Testament, fifteen being in the book of Psalms and no fewer than seven of these are in Psalm 119, which in itself tells us something about the proper focus of our meditation. The first occurrence, however, is in the book of Genesis. Abraham is “old and well stricken in age” (24:1), very conscious of the covenant promises of God and the need for the line of promise to continue. Isaac, the seed of the promise, needs a wife, so Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to find a bride for Isaac from among his own family. In verse 63 the servant is on his way home with Rebekah, and what is Isaac doing? “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, the camels were coming.”[Italics mine.]
Isaac’s example
Here, then, is the first direct mention in Scripture of meditation and it is not an instruction given but an example set. Notice how naturally it falls into the flow of the narrative. There is nothing surprising or unexpected about it. It is as though Isaac, as a spiritual man and given his present circumstances, knows exactly what he needs to do and he does it willingly, going out into the field in the cool of the evening. It suggests to us that Isaac was well practiced in meditation, that he was a pious Old Testament believer. It suggests too that it was a practice familiar to generations of pious believers before him, one that he had learned from his own father. Remember God’s words in Genesis 18 concerning Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment” (verse 19).
But what was Isaac actually doing in his meditation? Well, there is help for us in the original Hebrew word and how it is translated elsewhere in the Old Testament, using English words like mourn or even lament. This is unlikely to be the primary meaning here, but we do know that Isaac was still grieving over the death of his mother three years previously. Poor Isaac sometimes comes in for criticism over this but that is a little unfair. Many of us will know from our own experience that, as one writer has said, “The sorrow of our bereavements is one which never entirely leaves us.” So, Isaac may well have gone out into a field to mourn for her, but his mourning is interrupted by the sight of the camels and the arrival of his father’s servant with Rebekah. “And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (verse 67).
In Psalm 71 there is something that might take us by surprise: “My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long” (verse 24). The word translated here as talk is the very same word translated meditate in Genesis 24, so what is the psalmist doing in Psalm 71? He is meditating but it is a meditation that uses more than the mind and the heart. It has also pressed the tongue and the lips into service, teaching us that meditation is not necessarily silent. This is supported by other Scriptures where the words utter and speak are used (e.g., Job 27:4; Psalm 35:28 and Proverbs 8:7).
Perhaps this helps us to understand why Isaac went out into the field to a place of solitude, a place with few distractions, a place of quietness where he was able to talk alone and aloud with God. There he would also have been able to talk with himself. Yes, we might feel too embarrassed and self-conscious to talk to ourselves, but is that not what David does when he addresses his own soul in some of the Psalms? “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5; see also Psalms 43, 103 and 116).
Day and night
Are we able to find somewhere to meditate in this way? Not everyone has access to open countryside but perhaps we are able to go to a garden, a park, or a bedroom. David prayed, “I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.”(Psalm 63:6) Again he prays, “Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word.” (119:148) His eyes are open in the night; he is wide awake. It is as James Montgomery expresses it:
When in the watches of the night
I Thee remember on my bed,
Thy presence makes the darkness light,
Thy guardian wings surround my head.
Perhaps we are prone to lying awake at night and we find our troubles are magnified. Asaph knew something of this, “Thou holdest mine eyes waking: I am so troubled that I cannot speak.” (77:4) He is so troubled, so overwhelmed by the cares of life, that he is not able to meditate, he cannot pray. Have you ever felt like that? You know that you should pray and leave your burdens with the Lord, but you cannot speak, you cannot pray. Well, you are not alone because here is Asaph and he felt that way too. It is something that many of us have to bear.
But meditation is a task for the day as well as for the night. Joshua was to meditate in the book of the law “day and night” (Joshua 1:8). David gave voice to his own experience of this “O how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97). Consider too the man described in Psalm 1, “his delight is in the law of the LORD. And in his law doth he meditate day and night” (verse 2). As A.W. Pink has pointed out, meditation “was not to be an occasional luxury, but the regular discharge of a constant duty – ‘day and night.’”
Puritan practise
Do we know the meaning of this? Do we know the experience of it? Perhaps, like me, you feel you have hardly begun, but as we look back across the centuries of church history we find many whose lives were characterised by meditation and have much to learn from them. The Puritans in particular so ordered their lives that they made time for meditation and impressed the importance of it on their hearers and readers. It is a very precious and valuable activity of the soul.
Even the world knows something of the value of this. Who of us in our places of work has not heard of “reflective learning”? Transfer it into the spiritual realm and we have something approaching Thomas Watson’s definition of spiritual meditation: “a holy exercise of the mind whereby we bring the truths of God to remembrance, and do seriously ponder them and apply them to ourselves.” An earlier puritan, Richard Rogers, wrote, “Too few are acquainted with meditation, even though it is a beneficial help to godliness.” Another, Thomas Manton, said of the benefits of meditation, “Faith is lean and ready to starve unless it be fed with continual meditation on the promises.”
The Word of God
This brings us to consider the subject of our meditation. First, we must surely meditate on the Word of God, that Word so full of promises. In Isaac’s case it would have been the word that God had given to his father, Abraham, the word of the covenant, the word of the promise – see Genesis 12:1-3; 13:14-17; 15:13-16,18, and 17:3-21. In Joshua’s case it was the book of the law: “thou shalt meditate therein day and night” (Joshua 1:8). In David’s case we only have to read Psalm 119 to find that however he views Scripture, whether as the precepts, statutes, law, testimonies or word of God, always it is the subject of his meditation:
- verse 15 “I will meditate in thy precepts”
- verse 48 “I will meditate in they statutes”
- verse 97 “thy law! It is my meditation all the day”
- verse 99 “thy testimonies are my meditation”
- verse 148 “I might meditate in thy word”
It is one thing to read the Bible but quite another thing to meditate on it. Do we come away cold from reading the Word? If so, perhaps it is because, in the words of Thomas Watson, “we do not warm ourselves at the fire of meditation.”
What do we know of this warming “at the fire of meditation”? It is difficult in the rush of modern life to find a few precious moments of quietness and solitude in the day, but I wonder how much of that difficulty is of our own making. Is there really no time to take a verse, perhaps even just a word, and prayerfully meditate upon it before the Lord, reflecting on it, pondering its meaning and application to our own lives and circumstances, and drawing out the blessing from it? This would be time well spent.
The Person of God
Second, we meditate on the Person of God. Has today left us frustrated and unhappy? David had many such days but he knew the remedy: “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches” (Psalm 63:5-6). [Italics mine.]
Robert Hawker tells us that when Isaac sought the solitude of the field, it was “to have his mind disengaged from men, that he might be wholly engaged in devout communion with God.” Wholly engaged! What is our experience of such engagement with God? We might wonder if it is even possible in this day and age with so many electronic distractions demanding our attention, in addition to all the commitments of work, family and church. We are just so busy, or at least we make ourselves busy. But in all the busyness of life, is it not more important than ever to know vital, personal, real engagement and communion with God? It is especially precious to meditate on the Person of God in all His triune majesty and matchless grace. Notice how David describes it “My meditation of him shall be sweet”(104:34).
The Works of God
Third, we meditate on the works of God. “I will meditate also of all thy works, and talk of thy doings.” (77:12) “I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.” (143:5). We can be sure that Isaac too would have done this. His half-brother Ishmael was the work of man, the product of the scheming of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, but Isaac’s birth and life were the works of God. By grace, each one of us is the work of God and what a theme that is for our meditation. It takes us straight to our Lord Jesus Christ and, as Spurgeon once said, “When Jesus is the theme, meditation is sweet indeed.”
The blessings
How very different is the meditation that God calls us to engage in, when contrasted with the world’s notion. As Hawker says, true meditation is engagement with God, and this brings us to consider that meditation is not an end in itself. In medieval Christianity the life of devotion and contemplation was seen as the highest expression of spirituality. The monasteries were full of it, but meditation that does not change us is not true and Biblical meditation. The more we engage with God, the closer we draw to God. The more we meditate on His Word, so our life will grow in conformity to that Word. The more we meditate on Christ, the more like Him we will become. We only need to read Isaac Watts’ hymn With joy we meditate the grace to see the fruits and benefits of meditation on the Saviour. It brings solace to the weak and troubled soul, it makes the proud humble, and gives hope to the distressed.
Thomas Watson defined meditation as “a holy exercise of the mind.” This means that rather than emptying our mind, true meditation fills it with the very best, that which will benefit us for time and eternity. Meditation is not a way for us to forget our problems and trials, rather, it is the way by which we bring them to the only One who is able to help us bear them and bring us through them.
The boundary between meditation and prayer is a blurred one, but of one thing we can be sure. Meditation will lead us to prayer, which is engagement with God. Notice too, the goal of Joshua’s meditation in the book of the law. It was that he might “observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (1:8). David makes the same connection in Psalm 119, “I will meditate on thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways” (verse 15). Yes, meditation leads us into obedience, which in turn leads us on to spiritual prosperity and success.
Are we struggling in our battles with sin? If so, perhaps it is because we are not absorbing ourselves in the Person, the ways and works of our God? How can we claim His promises and experience the fulfilment of them in our lives if we hardly know what those promises are? How can we know spiritual growth and prosperity if we are not spending time with the Lord and in meditation upon Him? Richard Rogers wrote,
Oh, the great fruit and benefit we reap from meditation and private prayer! By these means the Spirit of God changes our hearts from their old ways and brings us into more affinity with the heavenly life. That which the men of this world find so irksome and distasteful, the Spirit makes easier and sweeter to our souls.
Meditation and self-examination
Perhaps we also need to ask the question, what is the relationship between meditation and self-examination? Is self-examination a part of our meditation? Well, according to the Scriptures we have looked at, it has to be said that meditation looks primarily outward, not inward. We look in and see the problem, but then we must look up. We look in to see our troubles but meditation takes us to the remedy. It takes us to God and to His Word. It takes us to the Saviour. We saw earlier that David addresses his own soul with expressions like, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5). That is David looking in, but it drives him to look up and to meditate on the things of God: “Yet the LORD will command his lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life” (verse 8). Again, we have to challenge ourselves, how much do we know of these things?
Meditation and faith
Finally, it is clear from the Scriptures that meditation is the fruit and evidence of a lively faith. That is the message of Psalm 1. Who is the man who meditates day and night in the Word of God? He is “the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.” If our heart is set in this world with all of its activities and demands upon our time and resources, we will have no desire to find time for meditation in the Scriptures.
Meditation increases faith. It fans the flame of love for God our Father and stirs up the desires of our heart after communion with Him; it increases devotion and submission to our heavenly Father; it draws us nearer to Christ, to His fellowship and to His likeness; it reveals the Spirit within and advances our assurance; it fills our time with good things; and best of all, quoting again from Thomas Watson, it “sweetly puts us in heaven before we arrive there.”