What does the Bible say about meditation?

• Joshua 1:8, "This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night."
• Psalm 1:1-2, "On his law they meditate day and night."
• Psalm 19:14, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer."
• Psalm 63:5-6, "My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night."
• Psalm 77:6-12, "I commune with my heart in the night; I meditate and search my spirit. . . . "
• Psalm 119:11-16, 148, "I treasure your word in my heart."
• Psalm 119:97-102, "Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long."
• Isaiah 30:15, quietness and trust are your strength
• Isaiah 31:4, "The Lordof hosts will come down to fight upon Mount Zion and upon its hill."
• Luke 2:16-20, the shepherds are told of Jesus' birth by the angels
• Romans 8:5-6, set your mind on things above
• Philippians 4:8, think about praise-worthy things
• Revelation 3:20, "I am standing at the door and knocking."
• Revelation 10:9, the scroll is like honey

Sermon ideas about meditation

See also Scripture Meditation or Sermon

Eugene Peterson used to have a dog that would work his bone while also growling with pleasure. Peterson found this remarkable. The dog would worry the bone, make throaty sounds over it, and then bury it. Later, he'd dig it up and work it again. Peterson tells us all about it in Eat this Book, his reflections on meditating over Scripture.

Peterson points out that in Isaiah 31:4 a lion "growls over its prey." It's that same word (hagah) used in Psalm 1 and in Psalm 63 for "meditating" on the law of God. It turns out the Bible is worth growling over. It needs to be chewed on, savored, digested. It needs to be treated as food for the soul. It's God's Word, and God's Word gives life. We have meat to eat that the world does not know.

Meditating in the ancient world was likely done out loud, or half aloud. Muttering was involved. You would read the text and converse with yourself about it. What is the author saying? What does he mean? Why does he say it this way? What is he leaving out? Is this deliberate?

The subject of meditation as presented in Scripture is God, God's Word — especially God's law — and God's remarkable deeds. These are rich subjects. Think of God as presented in Scripture. God is remarkable there, so surprisingly fierce, so surprisingly tender. Some of what the Bible says about God, and what we meditate upon, is deeply familiar. God is the powerful creator of the heavens and the earth, calling galaxies into existence just by speaking a word. God is a faithful provider, a lover of the wayward, a redeemer, always out to save. In fact, when the Scriptures speak of God's greatness, they speak less often of God's sheer power and more often of God's amazing grace. God saves the undeserving, and people marvel over it.

But the Scriptures also give us a portrait of God we would never have guessed. Sometimes the portrait makes us squirm. Think of some of the biblical images for God. In the Bible God is lion and lamb, church and home, fire and water. God is not only a leopard, an eagle, and a bear, but also a moth; not only a parent, but also a child; not only a king and a warrior, but also a barber and a whistler (Isa. 7).

Or think of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The creedsgive us a symmetrical doctrine of the Trinity — one God in three coequal persons. You would never guess from this tactful portrait that in Scripture the triune God is, so to speak, a bachelor father, his single son, and their agent. That's God.

Meditation on God is soul food. So is meditation on God's Word. God's Word in Scripture, read or preached, is meant to be pondered and absorbed. Pondering is a deliberative activity. It can't be rushed. You read or hear a Bible story or psalm, and then you mull it over. In Psalm 139, the writer says God is inescapable. God knows not only what I say, but also what I think. God knows not only what I said, but also what I almost said. Yet the psalmist does not regard his transparency to God as frightful or offensive. He says it's "wonderful" (v. 6). Why is this? It's very much worth pondering.

Or you read a story about Jesus, and it gets you to thinking. In Mark 5 Jesus heals a demon-possessed man in the country of the Gerasenes.The man has been thrashing around in a graveyard, shrieking and bruising himself. He's been shackled and chained, but he tears his constraints to pieces. Jesus sends the demons out of this poor man and into a herd of two thousand pigs (a lot of pigs), who then stampede over a cliff into the ocean and drown. The Gerasenes hear about all this and come out to see their wild man, finding him "sitting there, clothed and in his right mind; . . . and they were afraid" (v. 15). You meditate on this story. Why were the Gerasenes afraid? And why did a couple of thousand pigs have to be collateral damage of an exorcism?

Often when Scripture speaks of meditating on God's word, the subject is specifically the law of God. C. S. Lewis devotes a chapter to this in his Reflections on the Psalms. He says he found himself initially surprised that the psalmists find God's law to be sweeter than honey (Ps. 19:10). Isn't this a little strange? One can understand that you would respect and obey God's law, but smack your lips over it? Find it "finger-lickin' good"? Lewis ponders this and concludes that what the psalmists have in mind is the order, intricacy, and moral beauty of the law. It reveals the order, intricacy, and moral beauty of God's own mind. Moreover, the law is utterly reliable as a guide to human flourishing. The law says, "Don't do this. It'll wreck you." Or, "Do this. It'll make you thrive." Here God's law is totally trustworthy. It's rooted in the very creation itself.

In Psalm 77, the author muses over God's "mighty deeds." No doubt he has in mind especially the Exodus, God's mighty deed of deliverance from slavery in Egypt. But the psalmist or later writers could add God's leading of Israel to the promised land, rescuing people from exile, raising up judges and prophets, and much else. Christians meditate on the mighty acts of God in the incarnation, teaching, miracles, atoning death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, plus the miracles of Pentecost, and the acts of the apostles, which are really the acts of God. And Christians ponder that perhaps God's mightiest deed still lies ahead, when God will "gather up all things" in Jesus Christ, ushering in the majestic state of shalom for which the ages have longed (Eph. 1:10).

Meditation on God's mighty deeds is a feast for the soul. It nourishes us to think of how God has saved before, how this predicts that God will save again, and how God's mighty deeds reveal God's saving love. God is a Savior through and through. Salvation is God's specialty, what God is good at, what God is known for. Salvation is the centerpiece of God's reputation. Jesus' own name means Savior.

Finally, we should see that meditating on God's word and works is an intimate form of communion with God. We place ourselves in God's world, under the authority and majesty of God's Word, and let God nourish us there. We are children of God with our mouths open. We need to be fed. Meditation is therefore not just advantageous, but necessary. We'll go hungry without it. We need it to amend our lives, as required by God's word, and to fuel us for loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves.