Meditate: Experience God's Word [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Though this book might be misapplied, misused, misunderstood, or altogether rejected, it cannot be overlooked, because it is the best-selling book of all time.

The Word of God. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series we've called Saver, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, an audio album called Saver. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries, either a CD album or a digital download of these audio messages. So as you listen into today's messages, go deeper as we send you today's special offer.

Contact us at pastorallen.org, that's pastorallen.org, or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on all of this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. Okay, you ready for some good news? The Bible is not so much God's gift to you for your information as it is for your formation. It is not so much God's gift for your instruction as it is for your infilling. And I want to invite you today into another facet of what it means to savor God, the name of our series, Savor, about being mindful of every blessing in the moment, each moment. And today, to talk about savoring Scripture. And there's no chapter in the Bible that speaks more beautifully eloquently about the delight in the Word of God than Psalm 119. And so I read a portion of this, Psalm 119 verse 97. Just listen to the psalmist's affection for the Word of God.

Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts, I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way. Oh, how I love your law.

Not law in the sense of legalistic religion, but the Torah, the whole of the Scripture. How I love the Word of God. Father told his son that he'd get him a car for his 16th birthday under three conditions, that the son would bring his grades up. He was making C's and D's. He said, if you make all A's. He said, and secondly, that you read your Bible every day. Son, he said, the Bible's going to change your life.

You'll just make a habit of reading it every day. And thirdly, if you'd cut that scraggly hair of yours. Well, 16th birthday rolled around, and the son said, I'm here to get the car, dad. And he said, here's my report card.

And he handed him the report card, and sure enough, all A's. The dad smiled and said, I'm proud of you, son. And the son said, and dad, I've been reading my Bible every single day. And his father said, you know, I've seen you in there with that Bible, and I'm so proud of you, son.

That's a wonderful thing. And the son said, so I'm ready for the car. The dad said, so what about your hair?

Still as scraggly and long as ever. And the son said, but dad, he said, I've been reading the Bible, and even Jesus had long hair. And the father said, son, you need to read that Bible a little more closely, and you'll realize that Jesus also walked everywhere he went. I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. I believe it is God-breathed. I believe that it has been inspired through and through. It most certainly has been the inspiration for the greatest art and music in the history of civilization.

It has been deemed to be so important that it has literally been etched into the columns and corridors of our nation's capital. It is a book that has been considered important enough that both the devil and Hitler misused it. It is a book that has been so controversial that nationalities have forbade it from coming across its own borders. Its translators have been martyred.

It has been burned, and it has been banned. It is confusing to the proud and makes sense to the little child. It is a book so important that they hold it in the courtroom and ask people to swear by it. And though this book might be misapplied, misused, misunderstood, or altogether rejected, it cannot be overlooked because it is the best-selling book of all time, the Word of God. But the Word of God is not just something to be studied in the sense of developing hermeneutical skills and interpretive scholarship, which is important. But the Word of God is something that is full of life, and so it is God's invitation to us to meditate on the Scripture.

I heard Chaplain Rodney Stillwell, a good friend and the chaplain of the scythe president of the jail ministry, speak this week. He was telling his testimony and how, as he began to emerge out of all the trouble of his rebellious youth and began to grow spiritually, that one of the people who helped him was his grandmother, a woman of God who was in the Word every day. He said he'd never forget the time that he came and picked up her Bible expecting, as he had heard of so many saints, that the Bible would just be full of notes in every margin and above and underlined and highlighted. He said, but instead he picked it up and looked and said there were no notes.

It was just clean from all ink other than the written page. And he went to his grandmother and said, I don't understand. He said, I thought you would have been taking notes over this and marking your Bible over the years. And she said, well Rodney, there are two ways to mark one's Bible.

She said, one is with pen and ink. She said, the other is with your tears. And she said, I think if you'll hold it to the light, you'll be able to discover the places where my tears have fallen, and those would be the passages that have comforted me most over the years. And it's that that I want to speak to you about today, about savoring the Scripture and marking it with tears, savoring the Scripture and marking it with the delight of a soul that is comforted and strengthened and nourished and blessed. And I love the Word of God and I want you to love the Word also.

Ever increasingly, I want to have affection for what God has spoken to us because in the Word is the life of Jesus himself. It's very interesting if you just took a look at the Bible compared to other ancient texts, one of the things that most people don't know is that in terms of just sheer reliability as an ancient text, it stands alone. Of all the ancient books, there's none like it. Plato wrote in 380 B.C. and the earliest copy that we have of anything that Plato wrote was 900 A.D., so there was a 1300 year time span. And we only have seven copies of those early manuscripts of Plato. Aristotle wrote in 350 B.C. and the earliest copy we have of anything he ever wrote was 1100 A.D., 1400 years passed, and we only have five copies of the early writings of Aristotle. And yet nobody would ever say that they consider it dubious whether Plato wrote what he wrote or Aristotle.

We just take it as fact. But you know the New Testament was written in 60 A.D. roughly, and the earliest copies we have start around 130 A.D., and this little time span of 70 years, it was still within the memory of the saints of God as we actually had the New Testament forming. It's amazing, and we have about 14,000 copies and fragments of the early, early manuscripts of it.

It's a very, very reliable book, and it's really more a library of books rather than a single book. There's a unity between all of the books and the Old Testament and the New Testament. The New Testament references explicitly the Old Testament 300 times, but implicitly refers to the Old Testament 4,000 times. What's interesting also if you ever wondered if the Bible is very reliable, what we have in our hands today, the Scripture was quoted in the early Christian writers that were writing between 95 and 150 A.D., let's say those writers like Clement's letter to the Corinthians, letters of Polycarp, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, all of this. There are enough quotes of Scripture in their writings to reproduce and reconstruct the entire New Testament other than 11 verses from 2nd and 3rd Epistles of John. Did you know the monks would copy every manuscript before there were printing presses? They would copy every manuscript with such detail to assure that not one word was wrong, that what they would do is that they would count every word in the manuscript, and then they would find the middle word in the entire manuscript of the entire Bible, and they would compare it to the original they were copying from and make sure not only had the same number of words, but it would have the same middle word, so it would be precise. The Word of God is, according to Hebrews 4-12, living and active.

It is something that is different from other literature. According to the Word of God itself, it is something that has life in it. Proverbs 4-20 says, my son, be attentive to my words, incline your ear to my saying, let not them escape from your sight, keep them with your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh. You know, the more I just come to realize that just the reading of God's Word is powerful, just hearing it, even if you didn't understand everything about it, but you just are, it's like taking nourishment in and it gives you life.

It's like taking in health and it gives you health. I got so tickled, I was at a conference this past weekend and a preacher friend of mine, Kenny Thacker, told me a story, just broke me up. He said that he has a grandson, I think he was eight, and he said the grandson with a mother, she sometimes would have at night a custom of listening to sermons, some of my sermons, online stuff, as well as Kenny, her father-in-law, and said, but the eight-year-old and nine-year-old, he began to have some trouble sleeping at night, and so she recommended to him also to listen to these messages and to help him fall asleep. And Kenny thought, well, that was just warmed his heart, you know, he just thought, maybe he's listening to some of my messages. And so Kenny went to his grandson and asked him about it and said, well, who do you listen to? He said, I only listen to you, speaking to Kenny, and to Mr. Allen. And so Kenny thought, I'm just, his heart was so warmed, his own grandson listening to his sermons as he goes to bed at night.

And his grandson said, here, look, and he showed him his iPod, and he had a folder there with all of my messages in there that he can listen to, and the folder was labeled real snoozers. So I'm just glad to be of service. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now. In a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program, and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment, every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries.

Call us at 877-544-4860 or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright.

So what actually is happening, of course, is that there's a family that's discovered a mystery. The Word of God is living, and it doesn't just speak of peace, it has peace in it. And you can take it in like you would take in breath, and that'll change you. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, John said. And the Word was God, speaking of Jesus, the second person of the triune God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made, and him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So Jesus is the Logos, John said, what the Greeks thought of as the ordering rational principle of the whole cosmos. And John said, I've come to understand that the Greeks think of as the thing that holds all together as the Logos. That Word is Jesus. So Jesus is the Word of God, and that Word became flesh, and God gave us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that living Word in written form. The Word of God is powerful, but not in the sense of magic, like a witch would use an incantation.

It is not magical in the sense of if you repeat certain phrases and do it often enough, or memorize it and say it in a certain way, that it's going to do what you want it to do. It's not that, but the Bible is powerful because it is light in and of itself. In the same way that light always dispels darkness, the Word of God always dispels the deceptions of hell, and therefore God himself in the person of Jesus fought the devil with God's own Word. It is written. The Bible isn't so much an instruction book as it is one big good news story. If there's one thing that I could lead you into your understanding of the Bible, whether you've been a Christian for a long time or you're just beginning to read a Bible, is to look on your Bible not so much as an instruction book, but as a wonderful story, an epic story of a God who came to rescue a people who had no way of rescuing themselves, and saved them, and did so at the cost of his only begotten Son. This is a wonderful epic story, and it's not just merely instructions for living. You know, when you read Psalm 119, and he says, your words are sweeter to me than honey. You know, that's not the way that you talk about the instruction manual for your car in the glove compartment.

The instruction manual is useful, but you don't say, I just meditate on my gas grill instruction manual all night long. But the Word of God is like a love letter, and it is a story. And no matter where you are in the Bible, you're in some facet of that story. That's why there's good news on every page, no matter what you're reading, or what cataclysmic event may have happened, or what stirring there might have been of evil against the people of God, or what even judges might even judgment there might have come. If you understand the whole story, then you find yourself in the middle of the story, and please read it as a big story.

It's all together. Leviticus is part of the story. Chronicles is part of the story. The Epistle of James is part of the story.

It's amazing. You see, we're moved by story. I was with an advertising expert recently, an Australian spirit-filled lady who was explaining about the power of story and advertising. As an example, she was talking about the way that universities are moving towards advertising. She showed an example of Western Sydney University, and it was a beautiful story. It depicted a war-torn region as this little boy, as the captions say, escaped as a Sudanese refugee, was welcomed into Australia, and as a teenager, taught himself to read and write, and eventually was accepted to the Western Sydney University, where he studied pre-law. Then he went on and became a lawyer. He then, according to the captions, is using his legal skills to help other refugees who are in great trouble. The story just ended, and all it said was unlimited. You just thought, okay, where do you sign up for that? Because a story moves you, you see.

No listing of the curriculum or the rankings of the school. Just get caught in a story. It's a story of how God has made it possible for anyone who believes in Him to become a child of God, and if a child of God, then an heir and a co-heir with Christ Himself, such that instead of being distant from an angry God, you are able to draw close to a father who has welcomed you into the family. That's our story.

I saw an image this week. It said religion says, I messed up. My father's going to be so mad, but the gospel says, I messed up. Better call dad.

Better call dad. That's our story. The one I want to invite you into is learning to savor God's word. It is like tasting and seeing that it's good. It's like chewing and digesting.

It's like that. Gene Peterson, in his wonderful book on reading the scripture spiritually, he said he had a dog in Montana that was free to roam the forest in the wilds of the area and would often come home with a bone, maybe a rib of a deceased coyote or something, and he described it. I know exactly what he was describing because I had a beagle for many years. He'd come proudly prancing around with some catch in his mouth, find a big bone or something, is just so delighted, and he'd hold that thing up and wag his tail and say how proud he was of it. And once he showed it off, then he would retreat to some private place in the yard where he'd start working on that bone. I love the way Peterson talked about watching his dog with his bone. He said he gnawed the bone, turned it over and around, licked it, worried it. Sometimes we could hear a low rumble or growl. What in a cat would be a purr? And after a couple of hours, he'd bury it and return to take it up again.

An average bone lasted about a week. Just chewing on it and turning it over and licking it and protecting it and growling over it. The reason Peterson shared this story is because he was blessed, as was I, when he discovered in Isaiah 31 verse 4 this verse that says, for thus the Lord said to me, as a lion or a young lion growls over his prey. And when a band of shepherds is caught out against him, he's not terrified by their shouting. So the Lord of hosts will come down to fight on Mount Zion.

And the reason it's a blessing is because that word for growl, here a lion rather than a dog, but that word for growl in Hebrew is hagah, and it is usually translated meditate. Alan Wright and today's teaching Meditate, Experience God's Word. It's in our series Saver, and we've got Alan in the studio with us here today, here in just a few moments with a parting good news thought.

Stick with us. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now. In a hurried worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program, and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness, living in the present is God's idea, and the Bible unveils the way. Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan in the studio here with us and as a parting good news thought for the day on meditate, experiencing God's word, and that really goes well with the whole theme of this teaching, savoring every word on the page. Well, sometimes Christians get worried about the idea of meditation.

They think it's going to be somehow linked to Eastern religion or something. Well, no, meditation was God's idea. And it really is the idea of turning something over in your mind in order to savor it, something in your soul. And I always loved what I heard Rick Warren say years ago. He said, people wonder how to meditate.

He said, it's not hard. Do you know how to worry? Then you know how to meditate. So it's like what worry is, but in a positive direction. Turn to things of God, the grace of God and goodness God. Let your reading of scripture become more like savoring a fine feast than it is wolfing something down in order to get on with your day. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.