Hidden in the Heart 120910
Series: Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer
Psalms M3: Sermon Notes (10 09 12)
Title: Hidden in the Heart
Big Idea: When we hide God’s Word in our heart, we experience purity and peace.
Props: EPIC, soil, water can, cloth, dye, water
Text: Psalm 119: 9-11
I used to work for a corporation in Tokyo, Japan. As I the rode subway to work, I saw that people who were fortunate enough to get a seat were sleeping. Perpetually overworked and notoriously sleep-deprived, Japanese “salary-men” (corporate soldiers) try to catnap wherever they can. Sometimes in order to push through their drowsiness at work they will take energy drinks: little cans in shape of a bullet so packed with caffeine, vitamins, and herbal supplements that boost your energy level. I remember one my colleagues saying, “If I take an energy drink I can work for 48 hours straight… then I need to sleep for 24 hours.” When I asked how come these drinks aren’t imported to North America? They’re illegal there—banned by the Food and Drug Administration.
Well, North America now has a kind energy drink of its own—Red Bull. Red will give you a boost, but then you’ll find your energy plummeting too.
We know from experience that what we eat and drink affects our energy levels.
And so it is in the spiritual realm. What we eat and drink—what we ingest in terms of spiritual food influences--determines how much spiritual energy and vitality we have.
Psalm 119 is by far the longest of all the psalms. The psalm is a poem organized around the consonants of the Hebrew alphabet and contains 176 verses.
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who served as a leader of the underground resistance movement against Hitler in World War II, was a student, he had a professor who said that Psalm 119 was the most boring of all the psalms--it was too repetitive. But it became a favourite psalm of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, as the repeated emphasis on the Word of God drew him to meditate more deeply upon the Word, to pray over it, and receive strength from God through it.
The central theme of Psalm 119 is that the Torah, which means God’s instruction, God’s revelation, or God’s Word, is the primary way in which God speaks to human beings.
In Psalm 119 we see that one of the main ways that we express our love for God is by keeping God’s Word.
In Psalm 119:2 we read:
Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart---
In Psalm 119:34 the psalmist asks:
Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
But in order for the Word of God to be obeyed, these words must become part of us.2x They must be collected in the storehouse of our heart and mind.
In Psalm 119:9-11 we read:
9 How can those who are young keep their way pure?
By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we are not simply scanning the Scriptures like we would a newspaper for information or reading a textbook where we are simply seeking to gain knowledge in order to pass an exam or for interesting facts like we might read a webpage.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we allow the Word to become part of us. Mary Lum (hold EPIC up) one of our board members in the September issue of EPIC shared how she takes time to soak in Scripture, just like new soil is soaked with water…
It means we let the word of God colour us like dye (use cloth and dye here).
Part of the way that we allow ourselves to soak in Scripture is by taking a brief passage from the Psalms or the Gospels, and meditating on it.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about how now that Joey, my son, sleeps through my rising, I wake up early, I go downstairs and I sit down to a very simple breakfast. I take my iphone and begin to listen to a selection of Scripture. Then I simply go for a walk in Queen Elizabeth Park which is not far from our house, or go to the beach. When I come to a passage that speaks to me, I will listen to it over and over again.
I have actually been going through 1 Kings, and I was impressed by God’s Word to King Jeroboam. He said, “I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it you, but you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes.”
It is a brief verse, but this week I just kept going back to that one verse in 1Kings 14:8 and hitting the rewind arrow on my phone, listening to these words: “My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what is right in my eyes. My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart...” I listened to it over and over …praying that this would be true for me… that I would follow God with all my heart.
One of the ways that we soak in Scripture is by taking a small passage and meditating on it, going over it and over it, holding it for a day, or even a week, or more. But our meditation of the Word is not for just that present moment, but it is something that we engage in so that we can store God’s Word in our heart for the future, as well.
William Thierry, a Benedictine Monk a Benedictine Monk who lived in the twelfth century, in his Golden Epistle addresses this matter. He says, “Some part of your reading should, each day, be stored in the stomach of memory enough to be digested. At times it should be brought up again for frequent rumination…”
Three weeks ago we saw how the blessed person, the person with holy luck, delights in the law of God and meditates on it day and night.
How is this possible? It is possible if we store the Word in our heart by pondering it, praying it, and even by memorizing it. Knowing something by memory doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to internalize it, but if you memorize the Word of God, you have the opportunity to access it and to pray it throughout the day.
From the time of Plato when writing was becoming more common in the world, he made the observation that writing was going to destroy memory. As soon as words started being written, oral traditions diminished.
Never has this been more true than in our day. I saw Eric Schmidt, the president of Google, interviewed by Charlie Rose. Schmidt said that with the internet there is less and less need for kids to memorize things like the names of capital cities as part of their education. True, but if the only means to recall something is to Google it or look it up in a book, we forfeit the gift of being able to internalize something and make it part of us.
Craig Erickson, an actor in our community, memorized Jesus' Sermon on the Mount for a performance. He described how it deeply impacted him--for example as the sermon became “part of him” he found himself less inclined to judge others and more willing to empathize with others. The Sermon would not have had the same impact for him if he had just read it as yet another script for possible acting gig, but memorizing it and reciting it again and again made the Word part of him and this in turn formed him.
When we memorize Scripture, we give ourselves the gift of being able to retrieve it, to meditate on it, to pray over it....
Extraordinary. I went on my first mission trip, as I completed undergraduate studies back in 1989. I was going to then Communist Romania which was under the iron-fisted rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. I remember driving up to the border in a Toyota station wagon, my heart pounding, as I was going to attempt to smuggle contraband Bibles, theological books and medicine across the Iron Curtain. I remember the border guard dressed in military fatigues, armed with a machine gun, announcing that he was going to inspect our trunk which I knew was full of Bibles and theological books. I held my breath and prayed. He miraculously got distracted. He told us to move on.
During that summer filled with harrowing adventures, I memorized Psalm 139. Let me recite part of it which I prayed again and again that summer:
Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Since that summer, I have regularly prayed the words of this Psalm—especially when I have doubted God’s presence. Memorizing God’s word is a way to hide it in our heart. The word “remember” comes from the root word “re” and “member” and the remembering something re-members us. It puts it back together.
In Psalm 119:9 we read: “How can we keep a young person pure? By living according to your word.” CHECK
And then v.11: “I have hidden my word in your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing it literally, like I did with Psalm 139. But we can also hide God’s Word in our heart by becoming so familiar with the storyline that it simply becomes part of us.
Near the end of the Book of Genesis we read about the story of Jacob’s son Joseph, who is my son’s namesake. We named our son Joey for the most part after Joseph in the Bible. (The fact that I really liked Joe Montana, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers was a bonus.) I have read the story of Joseph over and over again, and it never ceases to move me. Even though I have not memorized the whole narrative, it is in my heart. It is something I carry around with me.
When I was living in another city, I recall how a woman invited herself over to my house for dinner. She said, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring dinner for both of us.” I knew from a mutual friend she was interested in me and had asked my friend how serious I was with my current girlfriend, who was living in a different city. When she invited herself over to my house, I hemmed and hawed. Being too much of a people pleaser, I agreed that she could come over for dinner, as long as we also invited another mutual friend of ours. When the evening that we had decided on rolled around, this person who had invited herself over showed up alone. I asked, “Where is our other friend?” This person said, “She couldn’t make it.” I felt like I should not have had her come to my home; we should have been met up at a restaurant. At dinner, I must have seemed tense. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I am not going to bite you.” Later that evening, she expressed how she wanted to be with me, but my current girlfriend was standing in her way. She said, “I know I may sound somewhat forward, but I don’t get turned down by guys that I want.” I said, “I guess this is going your first experience because I am turning you down.”
I made a few hints for her to go home, by saying things like, “It’s Kinda getting late. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” She ignored the hints. And then around midnight, she began yawning, and saying, “It is getting kinda late. Do you mind if I stay the night?”
Yes. No—you can’t.
Looking back at our interactions there were times when I intuited a line was being slowly crossed. When this woman leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, which normally would not a big deal, but I felt a line was being crossed. I sense this is wrong, but there’s also honestly a part of me that wants to cross the line.
What helped in that situation to resist indulging in some kind of sinful compromise, what gave me a guard rail (to use KPs phrase from last Sunday) were the words of Joseph, when he had an opportunity to sleep with his boss’s wife, and he declined, by saying, “How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). That verse is in my heart. I recite it to myself and I pray it silently, and it gives me strength.
Having God’s Word in our heart can keep us from sin—the temptation to be unfaithful to partner.
But there are other temptations, as well, that may not seem so obvious. Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Life of the Beloved, (HOLD Up) says, "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection… Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing the Scripture, by meditating on it, and on rare occasions we may receive the Word directly by the Holy Spirit, as my wife Sakiko did years ago. In these ways we can hide God’s Word in our heart.
When her mother was pregnant with her, Sakiko’s father had expressed clearly he wanted a boy and not a girl and was disappointed that he had a girl. Then growing up, Sakiko’s father was so often absent from home because of his work. She grew up with a sense that she wasn’t wanted by her father.
Then out of the blue on day, on July 12, 1994, Sakiko had a sense that God was naming her Isaac. Sounds strange, I know. She didn’t get any explanation as to why she was being named Isaac. But, as she reflected on this and prayed over it, she felt God was saying to her, “You are a desired promised child.”
For 16 years, she has kept that word from God in her heart and it has helped her realize how much she is loved by God. Later she discovered that the word was not unique. Paul, in Gal 4:28, says those who belong to Christ are the children of promise. We are Isaac.
How do we hide God’s Word in our heart? By letting it become part of us, either by memorizing Scripture, or letting it become so familiar, soaked, to us that it guides us… As Sakiko did, pondering it in our heart.
We have been in a series called Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer.
Part of what the word “practice” implies is that there is discipline involved. There is something we have to actually do, practice; something we actually have to do.
How do we engage in a life of memorizing, meditating, and mulling over Scripture? One way to prepare for this kind of life is by cultivating a certain level of silence and solitude in our lives.
A few weeks ago when I spoke on Psalm 1, I cited William Deresiewicz. A number of people and asked me for the quote after the sermon. I know that many of you were away. So let me re-give part of that quote here:
In William Deresiewicz’s speech to the freshman class at West Point Academy he warned them that they would not be able to think deeply about issues if they were constantly being bombarded by Facebook messages, Twitter tweets, fiddling with their Ipod, watching something on YouTube. Then he said: “Here’s the problem with Facebook and Twitter and even the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now, you are constantly bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom: in other people’s reality; for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice [or God’s voice].”
If you want to hear more about this, you can download the message from our website from Psalm 1: Eat This Book.
As I said in that message, it is not a sin to use social media. We use Facebook and Twitter here at Tenth, as you know, to stay in touch. But if we are constantly exposing ourselves to social media, we will find ourselves marinating in other people’s thoughts and in the conventional wisdom of the day. We will find our minds immersed in a muddy, steady stream of trivia and trash, and we will not be able to hear our own voice—what the Quakers call Inner Light or God’s voice.
If you can’t memorize because your mind isn’t sufficiently alert, consider fasting….
Certain people, including pregnant women, young children, and people with diabetes should not fast from food, but if you are able to fast from food, you’ll find it frees up time for you to be in the Word and pray. When we fast, we realize how much of any given day is consumed by cooking, eating, and cleaning up after meals, and we find we have more space for God.
Fasting will help to clear your mind and opens you up in a unique way to God. I typically fast for a 24 hour period once a week (I begin my fast after dinner and then I skip breakfast and lunch the next day and break the fast with dinner). In the summer I may do a 3-day fast. Fasting may sound austere, but you can learn to love fasting. During Lent this year my wife said only half-jokingly, “You can’t fast--you enjoy it too much… If you want to give something up for Lent, give up fasting.” Contrary to what people assume, fasting can be a delight. If your body is not accustomed to fasting, at first you will feel hunger pains and physically weak. As you progress in a fast, you will also feel a sticky coating on your tongue—a sign that you detoxifying and likely some fatigue too. Typically in the second or third day of a fast your hunger will subside. As you become experienced with fasting you will feel an energy lift and clarity that will help you meditate on and memorize Scripture.
So to hide God’s word in our heart, we can take time for relative silence (unplug), we can fast, and look to Jesus who is the embodiment of all the wisdom of the Word. In the Gospel of John we read in the beginning was “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.”
You would think that if there ever was a person who didn’t really need to be in Scripture because he was so spiritually attuned to God, he was the embodiment of the Word, it would be Jesus; and yet he, more than any other person who has ever lived, was soaked in God’s Word. We read in the Gospels, when Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan.
And each time he was tempted, how did Jesus answer? He answered by quoting the Word of God, specifically God’s Word in the Book of Deuteronomy, a book he was obviously meditating and chewing over. When the Devil said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread,” Jesus quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 7:3, “It is written ‘People do not live on bread alone alone, but on every word comes from the mouth of God’.” When Jesus was asked to be spectacular and throw himself from the temple, he quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 6:16 “It is written : ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’.” When Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world by saying “if you will only bow down to me,” Jesus responds with Scripture and quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, “It is written: ‘Worship the LORD your God and serve him only’.” The Word, the Word, the Word.
The Word was alive in Jesus’ heart.
According to Dr. Roger Nicole, the New Testament scholar, when we look at the Gospels, 10% of all Jesus said came directly from Scripture (what we call the Hebrew Scriptures).
Jesus had God’s Word hidden in his heart. It kept him from sinning. He followed it perfectly. And as a result, as a perfect ,sinless human being, he was able to represent us, before God, he was able to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins on the cross so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
If we meditate on this, on the word made flesh in Jesus, and if we receive the forgiveness that is possible for us because of the work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, then not only is it right for us to respond by following the Word, but we will have the power to respond by living these words, “I too will keep your Word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
We can say, “LORD Jesus, as you kept the Word for me, so that you could be a perfect sacrifice for my sins, I will receive your forgiveness, and I, in turn, will keep the Word in my heart. I will follow the way of God and offer myself as a living holy sacrifice and pleasing to you.”
Let’s pray:
Do you want to follow God’s revealed will for you? His Word? You can do his by turning to Christ for the first time or in act of returning to him. In his presence you can say, “Forgive me for not keeping God’s Word, fill with your Spirit. As you kept God’s Word for me, help me to keep God’s word for you. Amen
Next Sunday our 5 week series Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer ends. So, next Sunday I would like to invite you to us join us in our movement to commit to spending time in Scripture and prayer for at least 15 minutes a day, four days a week as way to meet Jesus.
Psalms M3: Sermon Notes (10 09 12)
Title: Hidden in the Heart
Big Idea: When we hide God’s Word in our heart, we experience purity and peace.
Props: EPIC, soil, water can, cloth, dye, water
Text: Psalm 119: 9-11
I used to work for a corporation in Tokyo, Japan. As I the rode subway to work, I saw that people who were fortunate enough to get a seat were sleeping. Perpetually overworked and notoriously sleep-deprived, Japanese “salary-men” (corporate soldiers) try to catnap wherever they can. Sometimes in order to push through their drowsiness at work they will take energy drinks: little cans in shape of a bullet so packed with caffeine, vitamins, and herbal supplements that boost your energy level. I remember one my colleagues saying, “If I take an energy drink I can work for 48 hours straight… then I need to sleep for 24 hours.” When I asked how come these drinks aren’t imported to North America? They’re illegal there—banned by the Food and Drug Administration.
Well, North America now has a kind energy drink of its own—Red Bull. Red will give you a boost, but then you’ll find your energy plummeting too.
We know from experience that what we eat and drink affects our energy levels.
And so it is in the spiritual realm. What we eat and drink—what we ingest in terms of spiritual food influences--determines how much spiritual energy and vitality we have.
Psalm 119 is by far the longest of all the psalms. The psalm is a poem organized around the consonants of the Hebrew alphabet and contains 176 verses.
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor who served as a leader of the underground resistance movement against Hitler in World War II, was a student, he had a professor who said that Psalm 119 was the most boring of all the psalms--it was too repetitive. But it became a favourite psalm of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, as the repeated emphasis on the Word of God drew him to meditate more deeply upon the Word, to pray over it, and receive strength from God through it.
The central theme of Psalm 119 is that the Torah, which means God’s instruction, God’s revelation, or God’s Word, is the primary way in which God speaks to human beings.
In Psalm 119 we see that one of the main ways that we express our love for God is by keeping God’s Word.
In Psalm 119:2 we read:
Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart---
In Psalm 119:34 the psalmist asks:
Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
But in order for the Word of God to be obeyed, these words must become part of us.2x They must be collected in the storehouse of our heart and mind.
In Psalm 119:9-11 we read:
9 How can those who are young keep their way pure?
By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we are not simply scanning the Scriptures like we would a newspaper for information or reading a textbook where we are simply seeking to gain knowledge in order to pass an exam or for interesting facts like we might read a webpage.
Hiding God’s Word in our heart means that we allow the Word to become part of us. Mary Lum (hold EPIC up) one of our board members in the September issue of EPIC shared how she takes time to soak in Scripture, just like new soil is soaked with water…
It means we let the word of God colour us like dye (use cloth and dye here).
Part of the way that we allow ourselves to soak in Scripture is by taking a brief passage from the Psalms or the Gospels, and meditating on it.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about how now that Joey, my son, sleeps through my rising, I wake up early, I go downstairs and I sit down to a very simple breakfast. I take my iphone and begin to listen to a selection of Scripture. Then I simply go for a walk in Queen Elizabeth Park which is not far from our house, or go to the beach. When I come to a passage that speaks to me, I will listen to it over and over again.
I have actually been going through 1 Kings, and I was impressed by God’s Word to King Jeroboam. He said, “I tore the kingdom away from the house of David and gave it you, but you have not been like my servant David, who kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what was right in my eyes.”
It is a brief verse, but this week I just kept going back to that one verse in 1Kings 14:8 and hitting the rewind arrow on my phone, listening to these words: “My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart, doing only what is right in my eyes. My servant David kept my commands and followed me with all his heart...” I listened to it over and over …praying that this would be true for me… that I would follow God with all my heart.
One of the ways that we soak in Scripture is by taking a small passage and meditating on it, going over it and over it, holding it for a day, or even a week, or more. But our meditation of the Word is not for just that present moment, but it is something that we engage in so that we can store God’s Word in our heart for the future, as well.
William Thierry, a Benedictine Monk a Benedictine Monk who lived in the twelfth century, in his Golden Epistle addresses this matter. He says, “Some part of your reading should, each day, be stored in the stomach of memory enough to be digested. At times it should be brought up again for frequent rumination…”
Three weeks ago we saw how the blessed person, the person with holy luck, delights in the law of God and meditates on it day and night.
How is this possible? It is possible if we store the Word in our heart by pondering it, praying it, and even by memorizing it. Knowing something by memory doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to internalize it, but if you memorize the Word of God, you have the opportunity to access it and to pray it throughout the day.
From the time of Plato when writing was becoming more common in the world, he made the observation that writing was going to destroy memory. As soon as words started being written, oral traditions diminished.
Never has this been more true than in our day. I saw Eric Schmidt, the president of Google, interviewed by Charlie Rose. Schmidt said that with the internet there is less and less need for kids to memorize things like the names of capital cities as part of their education. True, but if the only means to recall something is to Google it or look it up in a book, we forfeit the gift of being able to internalize something and make it part of us.
Craig Erickson, an actor in our community, memorized Jesus' Sermon on the Mount for a performance. He described how it deeply impacted him--for example as the sermon became “part of him” he found himself less inclined to judge others and more willing to empathize with others. The Sermon would not have had the same impact for him if he had just read it as yet another script for possible acting gig, but memorizing it and reciting it again and again made the Word part of him and this in turn formed him.
When we memorize Scripture, we give ourselves the gift of being able to retrieve it, to meditate on it, to pray over it....
Extraordinary. I went on my first mission trip, as I completed undergraduate studies back in 1989. I was going to then Communist Romania which was under the iron-fisted rule of Nicolae Ceausescu. I remember driving up to the border in a Toyota station wagon, my heart pounding, as I was going to attempt to smuggle contraband Bibles, theological books and medicine across the Iron Curtain. I remember the border guard dressed in military fatigues, armed with a machine gun, announcing that he was going to inspect our trunk which I knew was full of Bibles and theological books. I held my breath and prayed. He miraculously got distracted. He told us to move on.
During that summer filled with harrowing adventures, I memorized Psalm 139. Let me recite part of it which I prayed again and again that summer:
Psalm 139
1 You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
Since that summer, I have regularly prayed the words of this Psalm—especially when I have doubted God’s presence. Memorizing God’s word is a way to hide it in our heart. The word “remember” comes from the root word “re” and “member” and the remembering something re-members us. It puts it back together.
In Psalm 119:9 we read: “How can we keep a young person pure? By living according to your word.” CHECK
And then v.11: “I have hidden my word in your word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing it literally, like I did with Psalm 139. But we can also hide God’s Word in our heart by becoming so familiar with the storyline that it simply becomes part of us.
Near the end of the Book of Genesis we read about the story of Jacob’s son Joseph, who is my son’s namesake. We named our son Joey for the most part after Joseph in the Bible. (The fact that I really liked Joe Montana, the former quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers was a bonus.) I have read the story of Joseph over and over again, and it never ceases to move me. Even though I have not memorized the whole narrative, it is in my heart. It is something I carry around with me.
When I was living in another city, I recall how a woman invited herself over to my house for dinner. She said, “Don’t worry. I’ll bring dinner for both of us.” I knew from a mutual friend she was interested in me and had asked my friend how serious I was with my current girlfriend, who was living in a different city. When she invited herself over to my house, I hemmed and hawed. Being too much of a people pleaser, I agreed that she could come over for dinner, as long as we also invited another mutual friend of ours. When the evening that we had decided on rolled around, this person who had invited herself over showed up alone. I asked, “Where is our other friend?” This person said, “She couldn’t make it.” I felt like I should not have had her come to my home; we should have been met up at a restaurant. At dinner, I must have seemed tense. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I am not going to bite you.” Later that evening, she expressed how she wanted to be with me, but my current girlfriend was standing in her way. She said, “I know I may sound somewhat forward, but I don’t get turned down by guys that I want.” I said, “I guess this is going your first experience because I am turning you down.”
I made a few hints for her to go home, by saying things like, “It’s Kinda getting late. Don’t you have to work tomorrow?” She ignored the hints. And then around midnight, she began yawning, and saying, “It is getting kinda late. Do you mind if I stay the night?”
Yes. No—you can’t.
Looking back at our interactions there were times when I intuited a line was being slowly crossed. When this woman leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek, which normally would not a big deal, but I felt a line was being crossed. I sense this is wrong, but there’s also honestly a part of me that wants to cross the line.
What helped in that situation to resist indulging in some kind of sinful compromise, what gave me a guard rail (to use KPs phrase from last Sunday) were the words of Joseph, when he had an opportunity to sleep with his boss’s wife, and he declined, by saying, “How could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). That verse is in my heart. I recite it to myself and I pray it silently, and it gives me strength.
Having God’s Word in our heart can keep us from sin—the temptation to be unfaithful to partner.
But there are other temptations, as well, that may not seem so obvious. Henri Nouwen, in his book, The Life of the Beloved, (HOLD Up) says, "Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection… Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."
Sometimes we hide God’s Word in our heart by memorizing the Scripture, by meditating on it, and on rare occasions we may receive the Word directly by the Holy Spirit, as my wife Sakiko did years ago. In these ways we can hide God’s Word in our heart.
When her mother was pregnant with her, Sakiko’s father had expressed clearly he wanted a boy and not a girl and was disappointed that he had a girl. Then growing up, Sakiko’s father was so often absent from home because of his work. She grew up with a sense that she wasn’t wanted by her father.
Then out of the blue on day, on July 12, 1994, Sakiko had a sense that God was naming her Isaac. Sounds strange, I know. She didn’t get any explanation as to why she was being named Isaac. But, as she reflected on this and prayed over it, she felt God was saying to her, “You are a desired promised child.”
For 16 years, she has kept that word from God in her heart and it has helped her realize how much she is loved by God. Later she discovered that the word was not unique. Paul, in Gal 4:28, says those who belong to Christ are the children of promise. We are Isaac.
How do we hide God’s Word in our heart? By letting it become part of us, either by memorizing Scripture, or letting it become so familiar, soaked, to us that it guides us… As Sakiko did, pondering it in our heart.
We have been in a series called Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer.
Part of what the word “practice” implies is that there is discipline involved. There is something we have to actually do, practice; something we actually have to do.
How do we engage in a life of memorizing, meditating, and mulling over Scripture? One way to prepare for this kind of life is by cultivating a certain level of silence and solitude in our lives.
A few weeks ago when I spoke on Psalm 1, I cited William Deresiewicz. A number of people and asked me for the quote after the sermon. I know that many of you were away. So let me re-give part of that quote here:
In William Deresiewicz’s speech to the freshman class at West Point Academy he warned them that they would not be able to think deeply about issues if they were constantly being bombarded by Facebook messages, Twitter tweets, fiddling with their Ipod, watching something on YouTube. Then he said: “Here’s the problem with Facebook and Twitter and even the New York Times. When you expose yourself to those things, especially in the constant way that people do now, you are constantly bombarding yourself with a stream of other people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom: in other people’s reality; for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice [or God’s voice].”
If you want to hear more about this, you can download the message from our website from Psalm 1: Eat This Book.
As I said in that message, it is not a sin to use social media. We use Facebook and Twitter here at Tenth, as you know, to stay in touch. But if we are constantly exposing ourselves to social media, we will find ourselves marinating in other people’s thoughts and in the conventional wisdom of the day. We will find our minds immersed in a muddy, steady stream of trivia and trash, and we will not be able to hear our own voice—what the Quakers call Inner Light or God’s voice.
If you can’t memorize because your mind isn’t sufficiently alert, consider fasting….
Certain people, including pregnant women, young children, and people with diabetes should not fast from food, but if you are able to fast from food, you’ll find it frees up time for you to be in the Word and pray. When we fast, we realize how much of any given day is consumed by cooking, eating, and cleaning up after meals, and we find we have more space for God.
Fasting will help to clear your mind and opens you up in a unique way to God. I typically fast for a 24 hour period once a week (I begin my fast after dinner and then I skip breakfast and lunch the next day and break the fast with dinner). In the summer I may do a 3-day fast. Fasting may sound austere, but you can learn to love fasting. During Lent this year my wife said only half-jokingly, “You can’t fast--you enjoy it too much… If you want to give something up for Lent, give up fasting.” Contrary to what people assume, fasting can be a delight. If your body is not accustomed to fasting, at first you will feel hunger pains and physically weak. As you progress in a fast, you will also feel a sticky coating on your tongue—a sign that you detoxifying and likely some fatigue too. Typically in the second or third day of a fast your hunger will subside. As you become experienced with fasting you will feel an energy lift and clarity that will help you meditate on and memorize Scripture.
So to hide God’s word in our heart, we can take time for relative silence (unplug), we can fast, and look to Jesus who is the embodiment of all the wisdom of the Word. In the Gospel of John we read in the beginning was “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and the Word became flesh.”
You would think that if there ever was a person who didn’t really need to be in Scripture because he was so spiritually attuned to God, he was the embodiment of the Word, it would be Jesus; and yet he, more than any other person who has ever lived, was soaked in God’s Word. We read in the Gospels, when Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness, being tempted by Satan.
And each time he was tempted, how did Jesus answer? He answered by quoting the Word of God, specifically God’s Word in the Book of Deuteronomy, a book he was obviously meditating and chewing over. When the Devil said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread,” Jesus quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 7:3, “It is written ‘People do not live on bread alone alone, but on every word comes from the mouth of God’.” When Jesus was asked to be spectacular and throw himself from the temple, he quotes Scripture, Deuteronomy 6:16 “It is written : ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’.” When Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world by saying “if you will only bow down to me,” Jesus responds with Scripture and quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, “It is written: ‘Worship the LORD your God and serve him only’.” The Word, the Word, the Word.
The Word was alive in Jesus’ heart.
According to Dr. Roger Nicole, the New Testament scholar, when we look at the Gospels, 10% of all Jesus said came directly from Scripture (what we call the Hebrew Scriptures).
Jesus had God’s Word hidden in his heart. It kept him from sinning. He followed it perfectly. And as a result, as a perfect ,sinless human being, he was able to represent us, before God, he was able to offer himself as a perfect sacrifice for our sins on the cross so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to God.
If we meditate on this, on the word made flesh in Jesus, and if we receive the forgiveness that is possible for us because of the work of Christ, the work of the Spirit, then not only is it right for us to respond by following the Word, but we will have the power to respond by living these words, “I too will keep your Word in my heart so that I might not sin against you.”
We can say, “LORD Jesus, as you kept the Word for me, so that you could be a perfect sacrifice for my sins, I will receive your forgiveness, and I, in turn, will keep the Word in my heart. I will follow the way of God and offer myself as a living holy sacrifice and pleasing to you.”
Let’s pray:
Do you want to follow God’s revealed will for you? His Word? You can do his by turning to Christ for the first time or in act of returning to him. In his presence you can say, “Forgive me for not keeping God’s Word, fill with your Spirit. As you kept God’s Word for me, help me to keep God’s word for you. Amen
Next Sunday our 5 week series Practicing the Presence: Meeting Jesus through Scripture and Prayer ends. So, next Sunday I would like to invite you to us join us in our movement to commit to spending time in Scripture and prayer for at least 15 minutes a day, four days a week as way to meet Jesus.
posted by Shigematsu at 7:52 PM
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