The Word Of God Transforms Us Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Meditation is the means by which the Bible can actually reprogram our minds and cause us to live happy, productive lives.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, when we hear the word meditation, some think of Eastern mysticism. Yes, of course, and the reason they think of that is because in the Eastern religions, meditation is huge. People are always taught to meditate, but meditating in the Word of God is something different entirely. Here's the difference. In the East, they tell you to empty your mind.

That's dangerous, can even be demonic. But the Bible says that we meditate on the Word of God. In other words, we have content.

We're thinking about ideas, specifically God's ideas, how different that is and how necessary it is for our transformation. I'm so glad for the many people who stand with us here at Running to Win. We are listeners supported. Thanks in advance for helping us.

Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Here's what you can do to find more info. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com.

Click on the endurance partner button, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337. And now let us listen to God's Word that we might learn to meditate in it day and night. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that Yogi Berra is known oftentimes for having made very witty statements. One of them was this, that when you come to a fork in the road, make it. Simple fact is that we know that all of life is basically a fork in the road. Every day we are making choices. Some choices are important, others are of lesser importance, and therefore they may not have permanent significance. The choice that I'm going to speak about today has eternal importance and significance.

It is the choice to choose the right path. If your Bibles are open to Psalm 1, and I encourage you to turn to Psalm 1 if you're watching online or if you're listening by way of radio or whatever other means you may be hearing this sermon, would you turn to Psalm 1 if you're in a place where that can be done. Psalm 1 is a psalm in which we see a contrast, a powerful contrast.

It has to do with a choice. Psalm 1 speaks about two men, two paths, and two very different destinies. Let's listen to its words. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. 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 that yields its fruit in its season.

Its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Two men, two paths, two very different destinations. There is the path of the righteous. There is the blessed path. There is also the path of the wicked, and it is the path that leads to destruction. We come to a fork in the road, and we had better take the right path. Now what I want to do today is to show you how you and I can be transformed by God's word, specifically how we can take the right path, so to speak, and what is involved by that, and therefore this message could have permanent, eternal implications.

I mean that sincerely. It can have implications for young people and for older people as well as we begin to think about that which is most important. Let's begin by talking about the issue of discernment, and I'm going to speak about steps. Let's use that word, steps on the way to the path of prosperity and blessing.

What are the steps? The first is simply this, have discernment. What the psalmist speaks about here is being able to say no to wrong ideas, to evil, to the wisdom of the world, and having the courage to be able to say that word no.

Let's read the text. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. What he's saying is that you and I are going to be in an environment where we can be enticed and lured in the wrong way. Here are sinners, here are those who are on the wrong path, and we decide to take a walk with them, and we say to ourselves, I'll walk with them for a little ways, and then I will keep on walking and leave them behind. But we begin the walk, and then the next step is suddenly we stand when they stand, and finally we sit where they sit, and we find ourselves amid scoffers leading us astray.

The psalmist wants us to understand the progression. There is a progression. First of all, there's association. You walk with them, and then the next thing is you're standing. Now you're identifying with them. Association, identification, and finally they're saying, let's sit down and let's have a beer and let's discuss things, and suddenly you find participation. And what you have is then they begin to introduce you to wrong ideas, and pretty soon you're perhaps into drugs, into all kinds of evil things because of the impact of the influence of your friends. And there you are. Someday I'm going to preach a message about influence like this, but I need to emphasize right here that what I see in the text is the fact that I have known many good kids raised in fine homes and fine churches who got into the wrong group, and they were influenced because of the tremendous peer pressure, and they ended up going the wrong way, and we say to ourselves, how could that happen?

Right here it explains it. They began to walk. They stood, and then they sat in the council of the wicked and in the seat of scoffers, and they became a part of them and imbibed their values. I've long ago said that the reason that college kids lose their faith often in college is not because of the intellectual arguments.

It's because of peer pressure. And blessed is the person who can say no to the council of the wicked. And by the way, that council comes to us in many ways. It can come to us through television.

It can come to us through the books we read, by the things we see, and of course, most importantly, by the friends whom we adopt. Say no. But you say, but I don't have power to say no.

Where would I find the strength? And that's where I'm going to speak to you now about discipline. And this message could really be summarized on the basis of Romans chapter 12 verse 1. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Psalm 1 tells us how that mind can be renewed. Your mind is very powerful. Your mind, for example, everybody thinks.

You say, oh, no, no. I had a roommate one time who didn't. Well, he maybe didn't think your thoughts, but he did think. In fact, you know, there's some evidence that we think all the time, even when we're sleeping. Sometimes we call them dreams.

I'm sure I told you about the pastor who dreamed he was preaching, and then he woke up and found out he was. So that's a different experience. A simple fact is this is interesting. Your mind is not matter.

If it were simply calcium and phosphate, we'd have no human responsibility. To put it clearly, your mind isn't just brain. In fact, let me shock you and say you don't need a brain to think.

Tell that to your teacher tomorrow morning. You don't need a brain to think. Someday you're going to die, and your brain will disintegrate and turn back to earth and to dust, and you'll be more alive and you'll be thinking more clearly somewhere than you've ever thought before, because your mind, your soul is powerful. As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.

You are not what you think you are, but what you think you are. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could become spiritual by osmosis? Go to bed at night whenever we wanted to, and during the time when we are sleeping, God is working in our hearts and developing our spirituality, and then, you know, we wake up in the morning and suddenly we have a hard hot for God, and we're on this path of sanctification.

That is a dream. It's not the way it happens. Discipline. You must be committed to giving God and the Word, as we shall see in a moment, time and energy and focus. That is absolutely essential.

Sorry. Can't happen any other way. The meat and the milk of the Word must enter into your soul. And Jesus made it very clear that if our minds are empty, if they are allowed to be empty, then what happens after that is all kinds of ideas and demons come in, and we ask ourselves the question, how can our soul be strengthened?

How can our mind be renewed? Now, there was a man by the name of George Mueller. George Mueller had orphanages in England, and he decided that he would run them without ever asking for money. That's the way in which God led him. He had hundreds and actually thousands of answers to prayer. I mean, the kids were hungry.

There was no food. People stopped by whom he didn't ask to stop by. If you've ever read a biography of George Mueller, you really ought to. Now, God led him that way. It's not wrong to ask for money. The Apostle Paul asked for money. When it comes to the ministries of Moody Church and Children's Ministries, I often ask for money.

I like to ask for money that I, of course, have nothing to do with in the sense that I am committed to helping ministries and helping those who are sharing the gospel. But that's the way George Mueller was. But every morning, and I have to summarize here for lack of time, he would get up early. And by the way, discipline involves getting up a little earlier than you do now. You have to prove the power of mind over mattress.

You just need to do that. And he would get up early and he would pray. For 10 years he did that. But after he prayed, his thoughts were still anxious. He was thinking about all kinds of things, and his heart was not at peace.

But you know, he had to go to work just like you and I have to. And then he learned something. He says, before my practice for at least 10 years was to give myself to prayer after having dressed in the morning. But now there was a transformation of his thinking. He saw that the most important thing for him was to read God's word, to meditate on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed. And while meditating on the word of God, my heart would be brought into experimental communion with God. And then he goes on to say that this transformation, he says invariably within a few moments, my soul has been led to confession, thanksgiving and intercession. And by the way, the next message in this series is going to be on how to use the word of God when you're praying. And he says, I discovered that as I turned these verses over in my mind, that there was food for my soul. The result is, he says, there was always a good deal of confession, thanksgiving, supplication, intercession that grew out of it, but my soul was satisfied.

Now, what is food for the inner man? He asks, not prayer, but the word of God. And here again, not simply the reading of the word of God so that it passes through our minds as water passes through a pipe, but considering it, pondering it, meditating on it.

Let me ask you something. What is your first responsibility before God? Oh, your first responsibility you say is to pray it's to do this or to do that. The first responsibility you and I have is to be satisfied with God. When you're satisfied with God, saying no to temptation is pretty easy. When you're satisfied with God, it doesn't matter all the circumstances that swirl around you, because at the end of the day, your soul is satisfied with the Almighty. Something like John Piper, who is kind of famous for having said that God is most glorified in us when we are satisfied in him.

I think I quoted that correctly. How do we get there? We get there through meditation. By the way, you know, there are people who read the word of God and we've all done this, and then we close the Bible and we have no idea what we've read. You know, somebody said, you know, my mind is like a sieve. Well, okay.

I would say this, that even a sieve gets some cleansing when water flows through it. This is the only place I'll ever have the opportunity to tell you this true story. I was on tour when I was a young professor in Canada, and this guy and I, we were in the home of a widow, and she asked whether we wanted tea and we said yes. And this dear lady, she was so nervous. She was shaking.

Why? I don't know. But what she did is she took the tea leaves and she put them into the cup. And then she took the hot water and poured it through the strainer into the cup.

Are you all following this? Of course, on top of the cup, you have swirling around all of these tea leaves. And we began to laugh because we had had a long day.

And have you ever been in a giddy mood when just anything makes you laugh? And we had to cover for ourselves. We didn't want to embarrass her. And then we strained the tea through our teeth to get the leaves out. And we enjoyed it. But even that strainer with clear, hot water flowing through was a lot cleaner after she used it that way than before, I'm sure. So even if nothing sticks, it's still of benefit. That's not God's will.

The text says that we should meditate in the law of God day and night. D.L. Moody said that whenever he hoed potatoes, he had to put a stake in the ground as to where he had hoed because he did such a poor job you couldn't tell the difference. I can identify with D.L. on that point.

Never was a great one for hoeing gardens. And the problem is that's the way we read God's word. So the next step, the next step is meditation. In his law, he meditates day and night.

You cannot meditate unless after you have read God's word, there is something within your mind that satisfies your soul and will occupy your thoughts all day. Of course, we can't be thinking about God's word all day. We've got jobs to do.

We've got business that needs to be attended to. But it is amazing how often our minds will go to God's word throughout a whole day when we begin the day with God. And we have spent five, 10 minutes, 15 meditating on the scriptures, which is our first responsibility that our souls might be happy in God.

You say, well, how do you meditate? All that you need to do is to simply ask the text some questions. You know, there I speak about analyzing. You analyze, you say, what does this text tell me about God? What does, well, let's look at Psalm 1. What does this text tell us about God? Well, it certainly tells us that God is faithful to his people. He blesses those whose hearts are perfect toward him, who meditate in the law of God, that the way of the transgressor is a way of deception because God knows their ways and they are like chaff that the wind blows away. It teaches us about God. Is there a promise to be believed?

Absolutely. If you meditate day and night, you will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. All there is in the text. Is there some encouragement to you? Is there some way in which God has spoken to you? Is there in the text something for which to praise God?

Almost always there is. And next week when I preach the next message, I'm going to give you some examples, some further examples of how to meditate. You analyze, you personalize. Let me tell you this. Don't ever close the Bible having read it unless there is some food for your soul. Well, my friend, this is Pastor Luther. And of course, I certainly hope that you listen to Running to Win next time when this message continues and when we give you more information on the importance of meditating in the Word and how to do it. We're so glad for the many who support this ministry. I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone who listens to our Spanish version of Running to Win. I need to tell you that we are heard on more than 100 stations in Central and South America, all because of people like you who support this ministry. She writes and tells us how this ministry has enabled her to get over and to deal with bitterness. Well, it's one story among hundreds of people whose lives are changed, all because they are listening to God's holy Word. Would you consider helping us? Would you join what I like to call the Running to Win family?

That is people who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Here's what you can do to find more info. You go to RTWOffer.com. As you might guess, RTW stands for Running to Win, but it's all one word. RTWOffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button, or if you prefer, call us at 1-888-218-9337.

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Click on the endurance partner button, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Bob listens to Running to Win on WFCM in Murfreesboro, Smyrna, Tennessee. He has a question concerning communion. He says, I attend a small Southern Baptist church. Today we began taking communion to our members who are confined in local nursing homes. We were questioned if we should be doing this, and if we did, would we be violating the Word of God?

Can you please shed some light, thoughts, and wisdom with me? Well, Bob, I don't think that you're violating the Word of God at all. You know, the Bible tells us that we should have communion, and if you have people in nursing homes who are believers, most assuredly you can share communion with them. As a matter of fact, I'd even take this a step further and say that it is not necessary for the pastor to do this.

After all, as a Southern Baptist, you will know that one of the distinctives of Baptists and Protestants in general is what is known as the priesthood of the believers. So you can go there in the name of the Lord, and you can bless people, use scripture, remind them of what they are doing, that the cup, of course, represents the blood of Christ, and the bread represents the body of Christ. And as people contemplate that, as they give thanks to God for the redemption that there is in Jesus Christ, they'll be edified. Something else that will happen, it will give you an opportunity to connect with them, to pray together with them, and to bless them.

So I would say, go in the name of the Lord and share his blessings with others. Another wise word from Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Next time on Running to Win, join us to learn more about the new minds we can have when meditating on the Scriptures. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.