Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Meditation

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

The word “blessed” in Hebrew is much richer than it is English. It means total fulfillment and well-being. How do we get that? The answer in Psalm 1 is that blessedness comes to a person who has learned to meditate on the law of the Lord. That’s an enormous promise. So let’s ask ourselves what we can learn about meditation, which is one of the disciplines by which we work grace into every nook and cranny of our lives. Psalm 1 teaches us four things about meditation: 1) the promise of meditation, 2) the principle of meditation, 3) the practice of meditation, and 4) the puzzle of meditation. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on April 7, 2002. Series: Psalms: Disciples of Grace. Scripture: Psalm 1:1-6. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

If you're a Christian, what does it look like for you to grow into the person God designed you to be? Over the centuries, Christians have looked to the Psalms to learn how to grow as believers. Join us today as Tim Keller preaches from the book of Psalms. The scripture reading this morning is Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, 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 will perish." This is God's word. We just finished a series looking at the marks of a supernaturally changed heart. And now we're going to start a series looking at the processes by which that comes about. Disciplines, means of grace. You see, Philippians

chapter 2 verse 12 has a very interesting verse in it that says, work out your salvation in awe and wonder. Work out your salvation in awe and wonder. Notice the text doesn't say work for your salvation. You can only work something out if you already have it. And the idea of working it out in awe and wonder means you're supposed to take the grace you've got, supposed to take the spiritual grace you receive when you unite with Christ by faith, and you're supposed to work it out into every nook and cranny of your

identity, of your relationships, of your behavior, of your life, everything. That's a grace. That's a discipline of grace. That's a way of doing that. Now, what are the ways that we can get that done? How are we gonna do that? How do we grow in grace? What are the means of grace? And over the centuries, Christians have looked to the Psalms, maybe more than any other one place in the Bible,

to learn about those disciplines. And we're going to start looking today at one. And we're starting with the first Psalm. And the claim in Psalm 1 is actually a little, it's easy to miss, partly because the first sentence is on the long side. Look what it says. Look at the claim. Blessed, now, right away, as we often say here, the word blessed in Hebrew is a much more rich word than it is in English. It means total fulfillment, complete well-being. All right, now how do we get that? Who does it come to? And the answer is, it comes to a person who doesn't do this doesn't do this, but look at what where the sentence ends

Total blessedness total happiness and fulfillment comes to the person who has learned to meditate Totally fulfilled absolute well-being comes to the person who knows how to Enjoy person who knows how to enjoy, meditate on the law of the Lord, that's the promise. That's enormous. So let's ask ourselves, what do we learn from this passage about meditation, which is one of the disciplines of grace, one of the ways in which we work out our salvation into every nook and cranny of our lives in awe and wonder. So there's four things we're going to learn about meditation from the passage. The promise of meditation, the principle,

the practice, and the puzzle. There's a puzzle to meditation we're going to have to solve if we can get all the great things out of it. So, the promise, the principle, the practice, and the puzzle. First, the promise. It can't take too long, but what is promised to a person Practice and the puzzle. First, the promise. Can't take too long, but what is promised to a person who learns this discipline is remarkable. Look at what some of the things are.

First of all, a person who learns this discipline will become a person of substance rather than hollowness. You see, the person who learns to meditate is like a tree versus like chaff. What's chaff? Well, chaff is the husks, the covering of the seed. In winnowing, the seed falls down and the husks are left. The outside.

There's a superficiality about every one of us. Every one of us, every one of us. We strike poses that we want people to think of us like this. We want to think of ourselves in certain ways and almost never is there an inner correspondence, at least not a complete inner correspondence to the pose we strike. We like to be considered confident. We're more scared than we look. We like to be considered insightful, sophisticated, and we're more dumb than we look.

In other words, even people who say, I'm an authentic person, I don't strike poses, what's that? That's what you wanna think. What's that? That's what you want to think. But are you? There's a hollowness to all of us. We strike poses, we have facades, we want others to think of us in a certain way, we want ourselves, we want to think of ourselves

in a certain way. Inside there's not a correspondence with the outside. And the secret to making sure that doesn't continue to happen, the secret to making sure you become a person of substance, a person of solidity rather than hollowness and meditation. See, it's like a tree, not like the chaff. Delight, meditation on the law of the Lord. Secondly, and here's another part of the promise,

we're also promised that we become persons of stability rather than being controlled and blown about by circumstances. So the second thing of course is the chaff is blown away, the tree is rooted, and this tree, you see, a person who's learned the discipline of meditation is not like a tree, just like a normal tree, this is like a tree that's rooted near a stream. See, trees that are just rooted have to have rain. They can't handle dry seasons. The weather better be okay or the tree is going to die. But a tree next to a stream doesn't matter about the heat, doesn't matter about the weather. It

would be great to have water. That would be great, great to have, I mean, rain. But it doesn't need, circumstances don't matter because the tree has direct access, meditation gives you direct access to something that makes you absolutely stable. I think it was Elizabeth Elliot who said, joy is not the absence of trouble, it's the presence of God. Joy isn't the absence of trouble, it's the presence of God. It goes along with what this verse is saying. It doesn't matter what is or is not in the air, in the weather. Circumstances don't matter. Meditation gets you in contact with, as it were, the water that is there when all other

waters dry up. It gets you into contact with the light that is there when all other lights go out. Stability. And then thirdly, the third thing that happens here is you become a person who grows through fruitless seasons. Now, it's not just that you become a person of substance rather than hollowness, it's not just that you become a person of stability rather than being blown about by circumstances, you also become a person who grows even through barren times. Now, if you first read this passage, there is a tendency to think that it's a kind of naive claim. Many people, I think, read Psalm 1 as a naive claim that basically says, good fortune for good behavior. If you behave

well, everything is going to go fine in your life. You know, right? Isn't that what it seems to be saying? In fact, doesn't it say at the end of verse 3, whatever he does prospers. And that certainly seems to mean that if you meditate on the law of the Lord and you delight in the law of the Lord and so on, then your life will go fine. But look carefully. It says, he's like a tree that, he prospers like a tree and trees only bear fruit in season even though the leaf doesn't wither. You see that in verse 3? What that is saying is

because this is a tree near the streams, it's an evergreen as it were, it's a tree that doesn't die. But all trees, no trees are always having fruit. All trees go through winter times. All trees go through times of no fruit, barrenness. And what does that mean? It means that fruitlessness, how do I say it? Seasonal cyclical fruitlessness is expected.

This is a very realistic song. To be fruitless means your goals, you're not getting to your goals. To be fruitless means your goals. You're not getting to your goals. To be fruitless means that you don't feel very useful. I mean fruitlessness means a lot of things and they're all pretty bad. But you see, a tree doesn't stop really growing. Maybe it looks like it.

In wintertime, the tree is putting its roots down deeper. It's getting thicker. And therefore, when the fruit comes back, it always comes back, it doesn't come back, it's not always there, but when it comes back, there's getting thicker, and therefore when the fruit comes back, it always comes back, it doesn't come back, it's not always there, but when it comes back, there's more than last year. The apples, there's more apples, they're bigger apples, they're juicier apples. In other words, what you have here is a promise that if you learn this discipline, it doesn't mean everything will go well, it doesn't mean it will always be raining, or it doesn't mean everything will go well. It doesn't mean it will always be

raining or it doesn't mean there won't be a drought. It doesn't mean that you'll always be successful. No way. But what it is saying is that you'll actually be growing through it. You know, don't forget Jonathan Edwards, well maybe you will, but every so often I get Jonathan Edwards' first sermon when he was 18 years old, and the three points to his sermon were, our bad things will turn out for good, our good things will never be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come. If you are a believer, your bad things will turn out for good.

The good things you have, like adoption and, you know, our relationship with God and all that, will never be taken away from you and the best things are yet to come. And that's what it's saying. Stability, substance, growth no matter what, increasing though cyclical times of fruit. All from this.

Now let's say, okay, well what is this? What is meditation? What's meditation? I mean, you know, that's interesting. What is it? Well, let's look at the principle. And here's what the principle is. The place of this psalm tells us something enormously important about the nature of meditation. The Psalms is the prayer book. You leaf through the Psalms and it's prayers mainly.

Prayers to God. But the first Psalm isn't a prayer. It was deliberately put there. It's deliberately put there as an introduction. The Psalms were assembled and it was put there in the very beginning. Why? And the answer is meditation is the intro and the preface to the kind of prayer that will turn you in

to a rooted, growing, changed person. There's a kind of prayer that is meditative prayer that is, in other words, meditation prepares you for the deeper kind of prayer that will really turn you into a person of substance, a person of stability, a person of growth and so on. What do I mean? Well, think about this. There's two kinds of prayer. There's calling prayer and there's answering prayer. If you think of a normal conversation, somebody has to start it. Somebody begins it. Somebody says the first thing. Somebody sets the tone. Somebody chooses the subject. Right? Hi, what about those Yankees? I can't watch them on TV. All right. So somebody has started the

conversation and, you know, in other words, the person who starts the conversation has quite a bit of power over that conversation. You can change the subject, but you have to try. It takes a little bit of effort. You can't just, so someone starts and someone answers. Now, there's two kinds of prayer. There's the prayer where you start the conversation. God, I need you. God, I'm in trouble. God, I hope you're there. I would like to have a relationship with you.

Those are all perfectly good. There's nothing wrong with calling prayer. But Psalm 1 is where it is because it's indicating to us that the kind of prayer that grows us fastest and grows us deepest is answering prayer. That means prayer in response to something God has said in his word. Prayer on the basis of listening to God say something. Prayer that answers, prayer that lets him start the conversation, that lets him choose

the subject, that lets him start the tone. That kind of prayer takes you in. That kind of prayer takes you in toward him. That prayer takes you actually into understanding your heart and understanding him much faster than the other kind. That's what this is about. Meditation means I'm thinking about what the law of the Lord is. I'm meditating. I'm thinking about what he says in his word.

Psalm one, and then the rest of this altar is prayer. That's what it's trying to tell us. In other words, when he says something wonderful, if I praise and adore him in response to that, if he says something convicting, and I confess my sin in response to that, if he says something convicting and I confess my sin in response to that, if he says something exciting and I ask God to receive it in response to that, I'm growing faster. I'm just growing faster.

Put it this way. If I go to God directly and say I feel guilty about something, oh Lord forgive me. I'm not going to understand to what degree my guilt is right and to what degree my guilt is false. I'm not going to understand how serious what's going on is. I won't, in fact maybe I feel guilty about something I shouldn't feel guilty about. All I know is I start the conversation and I ask for forgiveness and I might feel better.

But if he starts it, if he tells me something about my wrongdoing, if he starts it, that's the kind of prayer that takes you in deeper. And meditation is answering prayer. It's thinking about, reflecting on the text until you sense God saying something to you in it and then responding. And that's meditation. I want you to know that there is, that in the middle part of my Christian life,

hopefully I won't die tomorrow, which case it really would be at the end, but I'm assuming, since I probably will live a relatively normal lifespan, that in the middle part of my Christian life, which means over the last five to ten years, this has been the number one discovery for me. What I have always done historically was I would start with Bible study, which means I would see the truth. I would study a passage and there's the truth.

Here it is. I see what that chapter teaches that. I put it in my notebook, I close my book, now I know something, then I start my prayer list. That's sort of like saying, that's sort of like a tree saying there's the water, isn't that nice? High water and not drawing on it. Not putting the roots of the heart down into it.

And drawing it up into me. Meditation is not Bible study or just praying your prayer list. It's a confluence of the two. It's a bridge between the two. It's an overlap of the two. It's not, in fact, what's interesting is there are some meditations besides this. Some of the most interesting meditations in the Psalms is,

say, Psalm 42, where it says, Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Or Psalm 103, where it says, Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He forgives your sins, he heals your diseases, he crowns you with love and kindness. Who's the psalmist talking to? Praise the Lord, oh my soul.

Why aren't that cast down on my soul? He's not talking to God, and he's not talking to others. He's not saying, praise the Lord, all ye people. He's taking his own heart, and he's not talking to others, he's not saying, praise the Lord all ye people. He's taking his own heart and he's talking to it. In other words, what he's doing is not just saying, oh, isn't it interesting that this text says, my sins are forgiven, and then I move on to my prayer life. Oh no, meditation is saying to your,

you're getting your heart by the sort of scruff of the neck and looking at it like this and saying, how should you be if you're that forgiven? How should you live if you're that loved? How should you behave if you've been bought at such an incredible price? Look, soul, think, soul, think it out, soul. What are you doing?

You're not actually praying to God yet, but you're not just simply studying in a kind of detached way. You're meditating. You're listening and reflecting and communing in your own heart. You're thinking out the implications until it begins to speak to you

so you can answer God with it. That's pretty important. And that is not something that, as far as I know, the average person has learned to do. In a sense, I didn't learn to do it. Put it another way. Meditation is the way for you to make the Bible into a burning bush out of which God is speaking to you directly

so that you're amazed and you take off your shoes and you hit the dirt and you learn your name and you learn mission and you learn joy. So that's the principle. It's answering prayer. It's listening, learning to listen to and reflect on the Word of God. You're not just studying. It's going beyond it. You're not just knowing what it teaches,

but you're learning to hear it in your inward being until you sense God speaking to you and then you respond in prayer. You know, in other words, you're not, meditation is not saying, oh Lord, I feel very cold. It's meditating your heart hot. Do you know how to do that? This month, we're excited to let you know about a brand new resource based on Tim Keller's

best love books. Go Forward in Love, a year of daily readings from Timothy Keller, features a short passage each day from one of Dr. Keller's books to use for daily reflection. Each day's reading offers deep insight, Biblical wisdom, and spiritual encouragement. The passages are meant to lead you into worship, help you reflect on God's attributes, and encourage you to live more missionally. Go Forward in Love is our thanks when you give to Gospel in Life in November. To receive your copy, just visit Gospelinlife.com slash give.

That's Gospelinlife.com slash give. And thank you for your generosity, which helps us share the love of Christ with more people. Let's go on. Number three. We've seen the promise of it. We've seen the principle of it. Now let's talk briefly about the practice of it.

Now, how do you do this? And I would say there's three things we're learning here. It all fits into the metaphor. Notice that what is the metaphor? A tree drawing from its roots on streams of water is the image for what it means to meditate. And that means meditating is feeding on the word, not just studying it, not just learning about it, not just reading it. It's feeding on it spiritually, not just studying it, not just learning about it, not just reading it, it's feeding on it spiritually.

It's taking it on in, drawing it up into yourself. And the three things we learned for practice is what we're supposed to draw on, how we're supposed to draw on it, and when. What, how, and when. Be fast. Number one, what? The law of the Lord.

Now, why does it say you're supposed to put your roots down in the law of the Lord? Why doesn't it just say the Bible? Why doesn't it just say the Word of God? Some people say, well, maybe it's saying you have to meditate on the parts of the Bible that are law, you know, like Exodus. Maybe it's supposed to meditate on the Ten Commandments. Well, that doesn't probably, that's probably not what the psalmist is thinking. For example, there's a place in the New Testament

where Jesus says, have you not read in your law? And then he quotes a scripture passage, but it's from the Psalms. Now why would Jesus Christ call the Psalms law? And the answer is, the word law, the law of the Lord, is often used in the Bible to speak of the whole of scripture as authoritative. It's the way to speak of the whole of scripture as authoritative.

And this is, we're going to do, this is only another minute on this, but next week we're going to do the whole message on this. The scripture cannot just be, cannot move from being a text into being a word to you. The scripture will never move from being just a, you know, set of words on a piece of paper to a vehicle for an encounter with the living God unless you accept its authority in toto. That's what it's saying. Now you might say, why would that be? Well, here's why.

The Jewish writer, famous great Jewish writer of the 20th century, Martin Buber, said, unless you accept the scripture, you may read it, but you can't hear it. Unless you accept it completely, you may read it, but you can't hear it. And this is what he means by this. It won't be a living word from God unless you accept it in Toto.

In Toto, why? Well, if for example, you come to a place where you say, well, you know, I can't believe that. You know, I'm a modern person. That's primitive. We get rid of that. You can't wrestle with God.

Let me tell you something, if you have a great marriage, sometimes you wrestle. If you have a great friendship, sometimes you wrestle, you come at each other. You say, I don't think you're right. If you have any kind of real relationship, you wrestle. But what you have done, if you don't accept the Bible all in its entirety, if you take out the parts that offend you, what you've got here is you are in a sense creating a God that can't possibly ever wrestle with you. A God who is impotent. A God who can't knock you down, can't punch you in the chops. It's impossible.

In fact, let me go this far. In other words, it can't be a life changing encounter with God unless you see it as authoritative. You're not going to be able to draw anything up into it, out of it, unless you see it as authoritative. The great irony of what Buber is saying is, unless the Bible is law to you, it can't be love. Unless you see it as authoritative, it can't really come in and just prove to you what you don't want to believe, and that is how forgiven and how loved you are.

Let me put it this way. If when you feel modern, you reject ridiculous, pre-modern words in the Bible. How, when you feel worthless, will you accept the affirmations of God? When you feel worthless and you read something in the Bible that says you're not, you won't believe it. It won't be able to wrestle in, it won't be able to come in, it won't be able to change you. So the first thing we learn here, first how to in practice is

you cannot meditate unless you see the scripture as the law of the Lord. Not in the long run. The second thing is not what you draw on but how you draw on it. How do you draw on it? Now think about the image. Fruit comes from drawing on the water. What's interesting is that the tree is not a pipe. A pipe would draw the water, right? In at one end, and what would come out the other end? Water. But the tree draws water in at one end, and what comes out the other end?

Fruit. And what this means is meditation is making the word flesh. Meditation is making the word flesh. Meditation is making a principle a reality. And this is true both mentally you might say, it's both, it's true cognitively and emotionally. Cognitively it means like this. Meditation means sitting and saying, okay if that's true, what would it look like in my life? What would it look like in my marriage?

What would it look like in my relationships at work? How would, see, if that's true, the word, how would it become flesh? And you think out the implications. If that's true, how should I be feeling? And that's the second thing. It's not just only that the word becomes flesh cognitively,

it's also true that the intellectual becomes sense. When you meditate, you look and you say, God is loving. Think of that, oh my soul. God has sent his son, think of that, oh my soul. In other words, you think about it and you reflect on it until the word becomes something that you sense on your heart. You don't just know it, you see it. You don't just know it, you taste it. You don't just know it, you feel it. It affects you in the center of your being.

And so meditation is both mental and emotional, and it's taking something and turning it flesh, it's turning it real, making it real. Now how does that work? Do you know the word meditate can mean to repeat to yourself? The word meditate that's used here can also mean to plot or imagine or work it out. So for example, the way I do it is I use, I sometimes say this,

Martin Luther's three questions, actually four, he has a little way of meditating on every word until his heart starts to get hot. He calls it T-A-C-S. T means get the teaching. What's the teaching of this word? A is how can I adore God for this truth? C is what sin can I confess on the basis of this truth? And S, what can I ask God for on the basis of this truth? Adore, confess, supplication. Or put it this way, the way I do it is like this. I would look at a word,

I would look at a phrase, I would look at a sentence, I'd say, what's the teaching? Once I write the teaching down, I'll say, how great is a God? How great is a God that would say this? For example, how would you meditate on Psalm 1? For example, how would you meditate on Psalm 1? We have a delightful God. We have a speaking God, not a God who we can't know. You see, in other words, if Psalm 1 is true, who is God? How great is he? Secondly, if Psalm 1 is true, I'm lazy.

Confession. I'm undiligent. I'm neglecting something that the Bible says is absolutely critical to my future. Okay? And then supplication. Oh Lord, you know, make me a tree. I feel very chaffy right now. In other words, what are we doing? I'm just, how would you meditate on Psalm 1? Go do it. See? Ta-Ti-A-C-A. You do it, and you do it, and you do it, and you do it.

You work through Psalm, verse 1, you work through verse 2, you can work through word for word for word until your heart gets calm, your heart gets happy, your heart gets convicted, your heart gets energized until these truths become real to you and the water has become fruit, fruit in your life. Lastly, we learn about practice. When do you draw on it? When do you do this? Day and night.

What do you think he means when he says, what the psalmist says, on this law, he meditates day and night. What do you think he means when he says, what the Psalmist says on this law, he meditates day and night. Do you think he's trying to say a lot? No, he's saying in a disciplined way. Do it when you wake up, do it before you go to bed. Take a passage of scripture, meditate on it, talk to your soul about it, think out the implications of it, work it out mentally, work it out emotionally until you hear God speaking to you and then answer him. Do it over and over and over and over again. It may take a long time before you begin to even sense the

things we're talking about here. I mean, how fast do roots grow down into the river? Overnight? Of course not. But do it. And these things will be true of you. Now, lastly, there's a puzzle. We've looked at the practice, right?

We've looked at the principle. We've looked at the promise of it. But've looked at the principle, we've looked at the promise of it, but I want you to know that there is a big puzzle and there's a big piece missing. Verse three, pardon me, verse two. His delight is in the law of the Lord. Now I want you to think about this with me. Isaiah had a wonderful meditation experience one day.

He went into the temple and he'd always known that God was holy and had always known that God was righteous but on that particular day with the help of the Holy Spirit, he saw how holy God was and he saw how righteous God was. He was having a meditation experience. You know, a principle was becoming real to him. He was seeing the implications. He says, I'm a man of unclean lips,

which is pretty interesting for a preacher to say. And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. He immediately begins, so he has a meditation on the holiness and righteousness, the law of God, but there's no delight. It is not a happy experience. Read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is in the Sermon on the Mount meditating on the

law. What he's doing is he's making these principles into something that's very concrete. He says, you've heard it said, you shouldn't kill. He says, let's reflect on that. Where does murder come from? Well, murder is just a tree that's been watered and it has the proper conditions, but where did it grow from? It grew from a refusal to forgive, it grew from disdain, and therefore, Jesus says, if you look at another human being and say, jerk, rocker, fool, this is in Matthew 5. If you refuse to forgive another human being and you just stay resentful to them,

he says you're committing murder, you're harboring murder in your heart. He's meditating on the law of the Lord. He's thinking about the implications of it. He's thinking it out. He's thinking out the requirements of it. He's thinking it out. He's thinking out the requirements of it. He's thinking it out.

And it's not making us feel happy. So how in the world can this guy meditate on the law of God, think more and more and more and more and more and get happier? The guy who preached the sermon at my wedding, I'm not sure why he did it, but he preached on Psalm 1. And there was a place where he said, and I'll never forget it, he says the mark of a godly man according to Psalm 1 is not that he goes to church day and night, that he goes out into the street corner and proclaims the gospel day and night, that he, you know, that he

preaches day and night, but that he absolutely loves to have that he preaches day and night, but that he absolutely loves to have God come into his life and tell him how to live. He delights in the law of God. He likes to have God come in and cross his will and contradict him and tell him how to live. And he loves it, he can't get enough of it, day and night. And I remember thinking,

who in what, who would be able to be like that? I mean, what heart would be that submitted to God? I mean, that's ridiculous, that's impossible. Who in the world could meditate deeper and deeper in the law of God and just get happier? Well, there does seem to be one guy. Hebrews 10 verse seven tells us that when Jesus came into the world, he said, I delight to do thy law.

I delight to do thy will, O Lord. Thy law is written in my heart. Psalm 40 verse 8 quoted about Jesus in Hebrews 10, 7. I delight to do thy will, O Lord. Thy law is in my heart. Jesus Christ was saturated in the law of the Lord. He meditated on a day and night. We see him doing, in the morning, Mark 1. We see him doing it all night, in the evening, Luke 6.

And we see him on the cross when he said, My God, my God, what hast thou forsaken me? Quoting scripture. He was so saturated with the scripture. That's Psalm 22. So saturated, he had meditated on the scripture so much that everything he did was simply an outworking of his meditation.

He thought everything out, he lived everything out, he worked everything out. Well, you say, fine, that still doesn't make me feel any better. In fact, the more I think, I mean, that's Jesus. I can't live like that. How does Jesus help me? I mean, how does Jesus solve the puzzle of how in the world can you meditate on the law

of the Lord and find yourself getting happier? And the answer is this. Jesus Christ had a meeting with a woman at the Samaritan, a woman in Samaria, Samaritan woman at the well, John chapter four. And there he saw her drawing water and he says, you know what, wouldn't it be great to have water that you could draw on and never be thirsty again? Wouldn't it be great to have water you could draw on

and never be thirsty again? And she says, sir, give me that water. And Jesus says, you're looking at it. I am the water. I am the water you need to put your roots into in Jehan. Now how can he offer that to a woman who is that broken? How can he offer that to us? And the answer is because on the cross, he said, I thirst.

And the answer is because on the cross, he said, I thirst. He could offer this to us because on the cross, when he quoted Psalm 22, I just mentioned, here's what else is in Psalm 22, and you better believe he knew it. In Psalm 22, it also says, I am poured out like water. My strength is dried up. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death." He's experiencing chaff. He's blowing away. He's nothing but

a husk. He's nothing but dust. He's experiencing cosmic thirst. He's experiencing the complete absence of water, spiritually speaking. Why? Because he took the penalty that Isaiah felt that everybody feels the more you look into the law of God. You look into it and you see you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. Of course, everybody believes that golden rule.

And the more you meditate on it, the more it'll just be a dagger in your heart unless Jesus is The streams of water you have to meditate on here's why the more you meditate on him if you put your if you put your roots down into him the more you meditate on the fact that God made him sin who knew no sin that we might become the fact that God made him sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

The more you meditate on the degree to which you have been completely accepted because he has lived the life you should have lived, and he's died the death you should have died, then you can delight in the law of God. Then the law of God becomes something you do, not just to get into heaven, but surely for the delight of it, just to please him, just to look like him. Finally the law of God is a delight and only when you put your roots down, not just into

the Bible in general, but into the Bible which is about Jesus Christ, because he is what the Bible is about. He's what the word of God is about. Not only that, when Jesus says, I'm the living water, I want you to think of one other thing. Jesus Christ is the meditation of God. He's the Word made flesh. He's God.

You believe in God's wisdom? Look at Jesus. You believe in God's patience? Look at Jesus being patient. You believe in God's love? Look at Jesus being love. Jesus is the ultimate meditation of God. Jesus is, meditate on him, what he's done for you,

who he is to you. You'll finally get that stability. You'll finally get that substance. You'll finally get that growth. The ability to grow through anything. The ability to stay rooted no matter what. That's it. There it is.

Jesus is the answer to the puzzle. So, first discipline of grace, meditation. Are you doing it? Are you taking the time to do it? Have you even begun to think about it? I mean, this is the time of the year we try to get practical. So, do it in him, let's pray. Father, we thank you for giving us the time now in this part of the service to take the Lord's Supper to take it into our hearts

To take it into our lives We're drawing on What your son did for us on the cross We have some people here in this room that have never even touched and put their roots into Jesus, never really believed in him. We ask that you would help some people today do that. They never may be seen Jesus as the one who took our penalty, who fulfilled the law for us. And until he's that to them, the law will be an eternal despair and not a joy, not a delight.

Father, then there's the rest of us. The rest of us are in this situation. A lot of us, our roots aren't very, we've been planted by the new birth, near the streams of water, near the gospel, near your son. But we don't seem to know how to access these great things. We still are more worried than we should be.

We're still more resentful than we should be. We're still more troubled than we should be. These things aren't as real into our heart as they ought to be. We ask that you would give us help now because we've spent this time together by your spirit in Jesus' name, amen. Spirit, in Jesus' name. Amen. We'd love to hear from you. You can share your story with us by visiting GospelInLife.com slash stories. That's GospelInLife.com slash stories.

Today's sermon was preached in 2002. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel In Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.