Grandmother had a large collection of fine china, and most of these articles were kept in a locked room except for times when she entertained guests who could appreciate the worth of her treasures. She had stories to tell about how each piece came into her possession. Every week or two she would enter the room and carefully dust them off. If the grandchildren asked why they were not permitted into her sanctuary, she would say, “Because that’s where Grandma keeps her precious things.”1
Precious is a word we may use to describe anything that has cost us something to possess. It applies not only to material things, but also to thoughts and ideas. For the Christian, this is especially true of things the Lord has taught us from His Word and in the school of experience. If we are wise, we do not let everyone into our “sanctuary”; we do not “give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast [our] pearls before swine.”
The psalmist’s mind was obviously a very large sanctuary, so large that we may well believe that some of his words were prophetic rather than merely personal, and that He spoke of the Messiah rather than himself when he said, “How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I am awake, I am still with You” (Ps. 139:17-18). In “the days of His flesh” the Lord Jesus stored His mind with the Word of God and knew exactly how to apply it when occasion required. His mouth then became like a sharp sword, and with it He routed the enemy. (See Isa. 49:2 and compare Mt. 4:1-11.) Isaiah reveals something of the process by which this took place: “He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to hear as the learned” (Isa. 50:4).
Our minds too were designed to be a sanctuary for the thoughts of God. But before we were saved, many of the things we stored there were worthless and harmful. The renewing of our minds began at conversion, but it must be an ongoing process. It calls for conscious effort on our part. We all have to learn to meditate on the word that comes to us from God.
The meditation recommended in Scripture bears no relation to the “transcendental” kind, except that the mind is involved in both. In the transcendental variety the aim is to sweep the mental sanctuary clean without consciously selecting what is to fill it. Matthew 12:43-45 warns us that this may result in even greater bondage. Godly meditation, however, does not merely cleanse the mind; it enriches it with new and precious thoughts.
To many today it would seem that meditation is passé: it belongs to the monastery, or at least demands of us a discipline we are not skilled enough to undertake. We may tell ourselves that we are really not the meditating type. Of course, we expect the preacher to meditate on God’s Word before he preaches. We don’t want him giving messages he hasn’t thought through, but
for the rest of us—well, we really are too busy.
All of the above excuses are lies, and devilish lies at that. Take that foolish idea about “not being the type.” Probably this notion seems reasonable to our minds because we confuse it with in-depth study, and we have to agree that not all of us are called to spend hours in biblical research. But for meditation we do not need a concordance, a lexicon, or any other of the helps designed to tell us what the Hebrew and the Greek mean. King David was born in the days before Cruden or Strong, yet in his writings he speaks a great deal about the value of meditation.
Study can enrich our meditation, but it must never become a substitute for it. In fact, the two things are quite different. You have listened, no doubt, to preachers who are thoroughly evangelical and perfectly sound, but who nevertheless give sermons that are purely intellectual but hardly heart-warming. It is as if they served you a dinner from the refrigerator instead of the oven.
The writer of this article attended a Bible school at one time. It soon became apparent that my fellow students and I were all in danger of stuffing our heads full of knowledge and leaving our hearts untouched. The only way to overcome this, I found, was to take time to think about what Scripture said, apart from any of the subjects we were required to take. In this way I learned that even the study of Scripture cannot and must not be a substitute for meditation.
Perhaps the reader will object to what may seem a very fine distinction between the two disciplines of study and meditation. Let me point out that the Word of God (the common misinterpretation of 2 Timothy 2:15 notwithstanding) has very little to say about “studying.”
In fact the King James version uses the word study only three times. It tells us that “much weariness of the flesh” can result from it, and the other two references are not speaking of poring over books but rather mean that we should “make it our aim” to do something. For instance, “Study to be quiet” in 1 Thessalonians 4:11, in the New King James is correctly translated into more modern language as, “Aspire to be quiet.”
A good, though well-worn, illustration for the idea of meditating is that of an animal chewing the cud. A mouthful of food is ingested, but then can only be digested by regurgitation from time to time. This can be done and must be done with the text of Scripture if we would be wiser than our enemies, understand more than our teachers and be delivered from being subject to merely “traditional” interpretations. Please read Psalm 119:97- 104 and Joshua 1:8—and, of course meditate on them!
1 The writer begs forgiveness for including this story of a fictitious grandmother, though he has no doubt that many of this species once existed. Some may even still be alive.