The Practice of Studying Scripture
[Editor’s note: This message was delivered at a chapel service of the University of Northwestern St. Paul on Wednesday, February 5, 2020]
If you have a Bible this morning, open it to Psalm 1.
Thank you so much, Justin, for having me here. I’m excited about the theme of this chapel series, and I’m really excited to speak on the practice of studying Scripture. And when it comes to this topic, I can’t imagine a better passage for us than here in Psalm 1. And you’ve probably heard this psalm before, but let’s just receive it afresh this morning. Psalm 1:
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,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so,
but are like 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.
This psalm is what has been called a “Wisdom Psalm” — which doesn’t just mean that the psalm itself is wise, but it means that it takes wisdom to understand it. If we’re going to see what God is saying to us here, we need God to open our eyes, which is why I’d like for us to pray again:
Father, we recognize that in this moment we need you to do in us what we cannot do ourselves. We need your Spirit to give us the eyes of faith so that we would receive the good you intend for your children. By the blood of Jesus, we ask, speak to us, in his name, amen.
All right, so the plan for the next 20 minutes is to simply make a few observations in Psalm 1. We don’t have time to get into all the gold here, but there are a few key things I want us to see, starting with maybe the most obvious: It’s that this passage does not tell you to make a practice of studying Scripture. Instead this passage shows you the kind of person who makes a practice of studying Scripture. The focus is not on the study, but it’s on the blessing that comes from such study — which I think is exactly what a Christian college student needs to hear. (And I’m saying that as a former Christian college student.)
This morning I’m not going to tell you that you should read your Bible more. Surprise! I know you’ve heard before that you should read the Bible, and I know you probably already think you should read the Bible more than you do — so I’m not telling you to read your Bible. Here’s what I’m going to do: I want to let Psalm 1 show you the kind of person that reading the Bible makes you become — and then we can let your God-given wisdom figure out what to do from there.
And I promise you this approach is not being Minnesota-nice passive-aggressive — in case you didn’t know, I’m not from around here. But this morning I just want to do what the Bible is already doing in Psalm 1. And Psalm 1 is saying:
Look at this person.
Consider this blessed man.
Pay attention to this happy human.
And when we do, there are few things we notice.
#1. Who you are becoming matters more than what you know.
And notice, first off, we’re told anything about what this person in Psalm 1 knows. You can read through all six verses and double check, but there’s not a word in here about how much knowledge this blessed man has accumulated. We don’t know what school we went to. We don’t know anything about his degree. We don’t know his GPA. We don’t know what he knows; we are just shown who he has become — because who you become is more important than what you know.
Education, which is what you’re all doing here, is mainly about formation, not information. The knowledge that you acquire has to count outside the classroom. We always want information to serve the formation. We want the good stuff that we’re cramming into our heads to shape the way we live — because the purpose really is the way we live, and when we understand that, it changes the way we do things.
It will change the way you think about your entire college experience. Every class you go to, every assignment, every book, it’s not mainly for your brain, but it’s for your soul — and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a biology class or a Bible class. Any kind of knowledge of this world is knowledge of God’s world — and that knowledge matters.
Ultimately, when it comes to the season of life you’re in as college students, everything you’re doing now it’s shaping you to be a man or woman who lives a life in this world and then dies.
That’s guaranteed for all of us. And you may not know where you’re going to live, or how long you’re going to live, but the key question is really the kind of living you’re going to do. What kind of man will you be? What kind of woman will you be? Right now, who are you becoming? That matters more than what you know.
And everyday that’s the fork in our road: Today, are you going to grow just a little bit more into the person you are in Christ? Or are you trying to forge some other identity? Are you yielding to God’s work in your life? Or are you hustling to do your own thing?
Who you become matters more than what you know. Who is this Psalm 1 man?
Well, here’s the second thing we notice:
#2. The joyful life is more careful than we might think.
This man in Psalm 1 is blessed. That’s the banner over his life. That’s the one-word description that sums it all up: he is “Blessed.” — which means happy. Fulfilled. Content. Joyful. The Psalm 1 man is living the good life. That’s what blessed means.
And check out the explanation of blessed that comes right after this. We’re told three things that this blessed man does not do.
He walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners;
nor sits in the seat of scoffers.
And each of these things appear to be things we must naturally pay attention to: we have to think about where we walk and where we stand and where we sit. Right?
My oldest daughter is in middle school this year, which is weird, because I remember Middle School like it was yesterday. Middle School is such a strange phase of life because you’re still a little kid, but then you’re kind of not — I remember in Middle School beginning to care about things I had never cared about before, like the clothes I wore and the impressions I made and the girls I talked to. (And that kind of stays that way until you get married. So hang in there.)
But I remember this one time in sixth grade toward then end of lunch one day, there was this girl a grade older than me, her name was Abby, and she was cute and all, and way too cute for any of my buddies and I to talk to her, but after lunch one day as her class was leaving, they all stood up and I looked at them all and saw her, and I saw that she had a slice of pizza stuck to her pants out of view from her own eyes. And it occurred to me that she had sat on a slice of pizza by accident … and I mean a whole slice of pizza … and when you think about this pizza, this was public school cafeteria pizza, so it’s a rectangle and it’s super messy, and of course I didn’t say anything to anybody about it, but I tell you what I did do: I stood up and checked my own seat, and everyday for the rest of my school life, I checked the seats in the cafeteria before I sat down. Always. I did it all through high school, because the life-lesson was clear: be careful where you sit or you might get pizza on your butt.
That’s as true today as it was in 1995, and also as it was in the 10th century BC around the time Psalm 1 was written. Watch yourself where you walk, where you stand, and where you sit.
I’m not sure how we started to equate joy with a carelessness. Somehow I think we’ve confused a happy life to be a haphazard life, but that’s no where close to the vision of blessedness and joy we see in Psalm 1. This blessed person is a person who knows what not to do. He knows how to say No to the counsel and the way and company of evil and sin. He knows how to say No to all the joys of this world that will always over-promise and under-deliver. He just doesn’t fall for it. The joyful life is more careful than we might think.
#3. Loving Scripture is the best way to read it.
Now in verse 2 we get into the positive explanation of this blessed man. We know what he doesn’t do, but what does he do? Well, verse 2 tells us that he mediates on the law of the Lord day and night. That’s his practice. He meditates. That’s the verb — but that’s not the first thing that verse 2 says. Notice how it begins: “But his delight is in the law of the Lord.” Before we’re told what the blessed man does, we’re told what he loves.
And I know I just said love, but the word in verse 2 is delight, and they’re different words — but a lot of times they can be interchangeable. Both are affectional language, and you can try this out: I would guess that most everything you love are also things you’d say you delight in.
I love my children — I’ve got eight! I love them; I delight in them.
In fact, can you think of one place in the Bible where delight and love are put side by side? … in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 3, at Jesus’s baptism, the Father said,
“This is my beloved Son [the Son whom I love]; with whom I am well pleased [I delight in him!]” (see Matthew 3:17)
God the Father loves and delights in Jesus.
What we delight in is what we love, and the Psalm 1 man loves the law of the Lord.
And depending on what English version you have, that word for “law” might have a little footnote that offers another translation. The Hebrew word is torah which most basically means instruction. It could be translated either way, either as law or instruction, but I think it’s good to think instruction here in Psalm 1. The psalmist isn’t talking about just the Ten Commandments in verse 2, he’s talking about the whole thing. This law or instruction is everything that God says. It’s the entire word of God that communicates all the ways of God from the very heart of God. It’s what David is getting at in Psalm 25 when he says:
Make me know your ways, O Lord; Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me. (verses 4–5)
Think Scripture. The Psalm 1 man delights in the revealed will of God to us in Scripture. He loves the Bible. And that’s why he meditates on the Bible day and night.
The only way the study or meditation or chewing on the words of Scripture is ever going to be a practice for you is if you love Scripture. Every habit that we form in our lives has a direct connection to our hearts because our hearts are what’s required to make it a habit. We don’t tend to keep doing things we don’t love, which means: if you want to keep doing something you have to persuade yourself to love it. We make habits of things that we consider lovable.
What about bad habits? Well, bad habits are what we call the things we consistently do which we know aren’t as lovable as we treat them. Bad habits are repeated practices of things that are unworthy of such repetition. And we get into them because they often come easy.
For example, it would be easy for me to make a habit of eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream everyday. Because it tastes amazing. It is less easy for me to make a habit of going to the gym everyday. Because it’s the gym.
And the only reason you end up making a habit of the gym instead of the ice cream is because you consider all the implications of the habit as part of the lovability. Because of all the benefits that exercise brings, the gym ticks up in lovability. Because of eating a tub of chocolate ice cream every night is detrimental to your health, the Ben & Jerry’s ticks downward — and it’s that lovability rating that drives the habit-making.
Now, what would be best, though — and I need you to dream with me a little here — what if eating the pint of ice cream gave you the same effect as going to the gym? What if you go to the gym and instead of treadmills they have rows of self-serve ice cream, and the dumbbell rack is like a topping station. Imagine that. That’s basically heaven.
And that’s pretty much how the Bible talks about the Bible.
Psalm 19:10 says that the instruction of the Lord is “More to be desired than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”
Honey back then was like the ice cream of today. It tasted good! It’s the kind of thing that’s easy to eat! Something easy to make a habit of! Scripture is like honey. But not just that, Psalm 19 says that Scripture gives life and makes you wise and imparts joy and trains you with insight.
So get this: Scripture is what gets your soul in its best shape, and it tastes like ice cream. That’s what the Bible says.
Now I realize that maybe for you, where you’re at, the Bible doesn’t really taste like ice cream, not even metaphorically. The Bible is a challenging book at times, and reading and studying the Bible as a practice can be challenging, but it is delightable. The Bible is lovable. Because the God to whom the Bible testifies is lovable.
In fact, the God to whom the Bible points is worthy of your greatest love, your upmost allegiance, your total worship. He is that glorious, that good, and often I’ve found that the best way to appreciate God’s word is to just remember God.
One of my favorite theologians in this guy name Kevin Vanhoozer, and he has this book called First Theology, and in it he makes this point that often people’s view of God and view of Scripture go hand in hand. People who tend to have a low view of God also have a low view of Scripture. People who tend to have a high view of God have a deep reverence for Scripture. And I think this bears out. It’s true. The higher your view of God, the more precious the Bible will be to you, and here’s the catch: the more you read the Bible, the higher your view of God becomes … and then the more precious the Bible becomes, and the more you read it, your view of God just gets higher.
That’s why he gave us this book. He wants us to know him. He wants us to think his thoughts after him. To know his mind. To understand his ways. To trust his heart. God shows us his glory in his book. And the blessed man of Psalm 1 loves the Book because he loves Who he meets in the Book. And so will you. Loving Scripture is the best way to read it.
And if I could pray just one prayer for you, it would be that God makes you love the Bible. I pray that you would love the Bible because you love God because he first loved you.
And I’m out of time, but this is the place where I’d like to end.
If we keep going here in Psalm 1 we see more about who this person is who delights in the law of the Lord, and he is put in contrast to the wicked. We see that there are basically two paths that lead to two outcomes. There is the way of the wicked, and there is the way of the righteous. The way of the wicked leads to destruction. The way of righteous leads to this blessing.
The way of the righteous, the path of blessing, is the destiny of this Psalm 1 delighter and meditator of Scripture — but we should not think of this as a kind of formula. Loving Scripture and meditating on Scripture is not this thing we do in order to achieve blessing from God.
Instead, it goes like this: the way of God’s blessing is to take refuge in God’s Messiah.
The Messiah is the true blessed man of Psalm 1. Now I believe all the Psalms are about Jesus, but I especially believe that about Psalm 1. Jesus is this blessed man, and can see that in Jesus’s relationship to Scripture:
Jesus is the Messiah of whom the Scriptures foretold, who even as a 12-year-old boy amazed the Jewish teachers by his understanding (see Luke 2:41–52).
In his temptation Jesus told Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
At the start of his ministry Jesus stood in the synagogue and read from Isaiah 61 and said: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:126–22).
Jesus told the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 6:39).
When Jesus was in Jerusalem, in the final week before he was crucified, he was in the temple everyday, speaking and enacting Isaiah 56 and teaching the people from the Scriptures, and “all the people were hanging on his words” (Luke 19:47–48).
That’s also when Jesus quoted Psalm 110 and told the people that the Messiah is not just David’s son, but also David’s Lord (see Luke 20:41–44).
And then after his resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, talking to Cleopas and his friend, Jesus showed them his glory in the Bible: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27
Jesus is the true blessed man of Psalm 1 devoted to the Bible because the Bible is about him, and if we’re really going to be blessed, if we’re really going to make a practice of studying Scripture, it has be because of him. Because we have fellowship in him. Because we abide in him.
That means we turn from trusting in ourselves. We stop hoping in our own strength, or resolve, or self-discipline — we stop, and we turn, and we trust in Jesus. We hope in Jesus. We become like the blessed man by first trusting in the Blessed Man, which is as Psalm 2:12 tells us, “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
Let’s pray:
Father, it is good to study and meditate on your Word. Thank you for your Word, and thank you, most of all, for your Word Made Flesh. Thank you for Jesus, and that as Jesus told us, the Scriptures are about him. So as we come to this Book, give us more of him. Show us more of his glory. Make Jesus be to us a refuge. We ask this in his name, amen.
