 Okay, so we were looking at the process of meditation and why we are looking at these Hebrew words Haga and Siak is because meditation was practiced in the Old Testament. So how do we, when we are looking at these Old Testament scriptures, which are talking about meditating on God's word or meditation in general, how do we understand that? So we are looking at how did the Jews practice meditation. So those two words are descriptive of how the Jews practiced meditation. It would normally be where they would softly kind of repeat the words, whatever they were meditating on. So they are saying a prayer or they are repeating a passage from scripture, the Hebrew scriptures, of course, they would say it softly and they would normally rock back and forth. So it is this process of just repeating, repeating, repeating and in the process of repeating, you're bringing your mind to focus on that word that you are saying. Okay, and we'll just look at this definition that's here on the slide. So in usually in English, when we talk about meditation, it's usually just something that we're doing with our mind, right? So one way is to empty your mind, to come to a place of complete openness to receive anything that may come to you. But it's always usually thought to be just a process that is related to our thoughts or related to our mind. But here when we're looking at a scriptural use of meditation, it is also the use of your mouth. So you quietly repeat in a soft, droning tone. So the intention of repeating is to remove all outside distractions and to begin to focus only on that word that you are repeating. So if it is a Bible verse, if it's a verse specific verse that you've taken to constantly be repeating that verse. And as you're repeating that verse, your mind starts to focus on it. And you're also saying it, you're able to hear it right with your ears. So it's this process of speaking, hearing and focusing our thoughts on that single phrase or that single passage or verse from scripture. So this is something that comes from a Jewish prayer called Davening where texts were recited or prayers were prayed. And this is what I was saying where they rock back and forth and they are repeating a prayer or they're repeating a text from scripture in soft tones. You're not saying it very loudly. It's just for you to hear and for you to kind of focus on and confess upon your own life. So is this something anyone has practiced? Has anyone tried meditating in this way or have you already heard about it? I see Ndell had messaged earlier and Gertrude is thinking about scripture, meditation is the art of thinking on God's word. Right? Okay, thank you. So this is something that I will encourage us to do, especially as we're going through this class. And I'll ask you all to share about your experience on what you're learning, what you have taken away from this practice of meditation. So for us to understand what the process is, I'll probably assign something for us to do where we are meditating on a passage. You can pick the passage, but understand what the process involves. So when you're meditating, you're thinking about that passage, you're repeating it softly and repeating it a few times. Now the amount of time you spend on it is up to you. But the idea is that you're focusing on that passage. You're speaking the word and you're also hearing it. And the idea is in that process that that word gets sewn into your heart and takes root in your heart. So this is how we look at God's word, the process of meditating on God's word. It begins in our spirit. So as we are meditating on God's word, it is a spiritual thing that we are doing. And from our spirit, it is affecting our soul. So when we're talking about the soul, we are saying it's affecting the way we think. It's affecting our imagination. It's affecting our feelings and it's affecting our will. So the soul is the place where we make our decisions. The place where we view how we view the world, how we react to the world, how we respond to the world, how do we interpret things that are happening around us. So the way we think, the way we imagine, the things we desire, the way we make decisions, all of those things are happening in the soul. So we want what's happening in our spirit as we meditate to impact what happens in our soul. And then we want to see that impact our physical bodies. That means the way we live our lives. So we want it to impact the physical aspect. So from the inner man to the soul to the body. That's the process of meditation and the impact we want it to have. So there are three parts that we're going to look at in meditation. There's contemplation, visualization and confession. We look at each of those and what that means. But when we are talking about meditating on God's word, we may be doing any of these things. We might be contemplating the word. We might be visualizing the word or we might be confessing the word. We can be doing that simultaneously. We can be doing only one of them. We can be doing them in order, whatever it is. These are the three aspects of meditation. So we'll start with contemplation. Then we look at visualization and then confession. So contemplation is what you had mentioned. Can you tell me your name again? Sagar had mentioned when he meditates on God's word. He's thinking about a specific passage in scripture. So that's what contemplation is. Where you're thinking about a specific verse and you're really going deep into what is this verse talking about. What does it say about God? What does it say about me? How should it change how I live? What are some things I can do in my present day in the way I'm living? What should I do to let this word actually be the way I'm living? Are there any hindrances in my life that will keep this word from being fruitful or keep me from living in obedience to this word? So those are some things that we will look at. Someone can read Psalm 143.5 for us please. I remember the days of Holt. I meditate on all your work. I'm used on the work of your hands. Thank you. This is where we see here. I meditate on all works and I muse. That was the word that was used in the New Living Translation. It says, I think about what you have done. So this is where it's a mental exercise. We're using our mind to ponder on whatever we are meditating on. So we're meditating on God. So we're pondering on that verse or that passage. Let's use Isaiah 53, 4, and 5. We can open that. Can I read it, sister? Yes, please. Thank you. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we steamed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our inequities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed. Thank you. So let's just spend a few minutes. We're going to practice this. We may not, we can spend some time individually just looking at these words and thinking about what is this talking about. Okay. And then we'll share what any insights that you have as you've thought about it. I'll just give you say two or three minutes and you can just think about what are these two verses. Isaiah 53, 4, and 5 talking about and we'll share anything that we've learned. So any things you want to share as you were looking at those two verses? Any things that you noticed? It is like a prophecy that is like being foretold for what he referring to Jesus. So what he would be, it's like an exchange of what we deserve. He's taken upon himself. And it also refers to also we consider it as though he's punished by God. But it was the other way around that he was punished for our transgressions for our guilt and our inequities that we have committed. Okay. Yeah. So on what he's done because of which we are healed and we are made whole. Yeah. So yeah, a few important things that predicting what would happen, what Jesus would do talking about how we perceived it but what was really happening and then talking about the end result of that. The end result is us being made whole and us being healed. Anyone else want to share? Okay. So some things that we want to do as we are contemplating God's word is we want to look at what is the meaning of what is being said. Right. So what are the words that are being used? Here and now obviously we all have a different translation. So the English words being used are different but I'm just going to read from my translation. So it's saying he took my weakness. He took my sorrows. And then at the end it's saying I am whole. I am healed because of what he has done. And then it also says he took my sickness. Right. So what is the meaning of that? That he's taken my weaknesses. He's taken my sorrows. He's taken my sickness. What is the significance of it? Meaning what is the impact that that has on my life? If Jesus has taken all these things, what does that mean for my life? How can I expect that to change the way I'm living or the way I look at certain circumstances? If I'm in a difficult situation and I feel that I'm too small for that situation, how can this verse change the way I respond in that situation? Where I put my trust in Jesus rather than in my own strength or in my own power, my own ability to do something. So we look at the application of the verse. And we allow it to transform the way we think and the way we live. Right. So that is this process of contemplation. We are thinking deeply about that specific verse or that specific passage. We're thinking about what does it mean? What does the word itself mean? And then what does it mean for my life? How does it impact my life? How should I be living in obedience to this word? So we'll just look at some of these verses that we've quoted here. 2 Peter 1, 21. If someone can read that verse. We'll start with verse 20. So 2 Peter 1 verses 20 and 21. 2 Peter 1, 21. 20 and 21. Verse 21, For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. Thank you. So the word that's used here in the Greek is pharaoh. And that means they were born along, they were carried by the Holy Spirit. They were moved by the Holy Spirit to write the things that they wrote. So when we look at the scriptures, whatever is written, there's not something that the Holy Spirit just kind of forced the writers to write. The Holy Spirit moved them, moved their hearts, moved their spirits to communicate a certain message, but it was the human writers who actually wrote those messages. So even in this process of meditation, we are looking at the Holy Spirit moving us in our spirits, moving us in our hearts, in the things of God. So that it is a process where the Holy Spirit is inspiring certain things in us and we are responding to that inspiration. It's not something that is forced upon us. Neither is it something that we ourselves are trying to do by our own thinking, by our own imagination. So the Holy Spirit is the one who's teaching us, who's guiding us through this process, inspiring us, inviting us to new revelations of God, opening our eyes to new truths and then we can respond to those truths. So it's still left up to us to receive that or to discard it or to continue our lives in a way that we choose. We can choose to submit to that word or we can choose to walk in rebellion. We can choose to continue to live the way we are living. So there is the aspect of the Holy Spirit and us together in this process of meditation. Can somebody read John 16, 12 to 15, please? John chapter 16 verse 12 I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. Verse 13 However, when the Spirit of Truth has come He will guide you into all truth for He will not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will tell you things to come. Verse 14 He will glorify me for He will take off what is mine and declare it to you. Verse 15 All things that the Father has are mine therefore I said that He will take off mine and declare it to you. So we see here Jesus talking to the disciples and he's saying there's many things that I want to teach you but now is not the time, right? It's too much for you to understand it's too much for you to receive at this point of time. So the Holy Spirit will come and give you that understanding give you that revelation at a later time. So this is, we take this passage and we see that the Holy Spirit continues to be the teacher continues to be our teacher as we look at God's word that the Holy Spirit will continue to reveal things of God to us. So He will tell you everything whatever He receives from me everything that the Father belongs to the Father is mine. So the Holy Spirit is revealing the things of God is revealing the mind, the heart of the Father and the Son to us. So that's what we're doing in this process of meditation. And then let's just look at these three, last three verses Ephesians 4-23 Ephesians 4-23 you are at the mind must be made completely new. Okay so Ephesians 4-23 is talking about the renewing of our mind renewing of our thoughts renewing of our attitudes and Romans 12-2 Romans 12-2 and do not be confirmed to this word but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable in perfect will of God. Okay so here again it's changing the way we think but through that process of changing the way we think we're able to discern between right and wrong. We know what God's will is and when we know God's will then we're able to say this is not what God wants this is evil and what God wants is good so we're able to discern that between what is good and what is evil or what is pleasing to God and what is not pleasing to God and then Hebrews 5-14 Hebrews 5-14 but solid food belongs to those who are full of age that is those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Okay so this verse also talks about that discerning between right and wrong so that is what meditation does right it will transform the way we think it will reveal to us the will of God and it will help us in the decisions we are making in the small decisions in the big decisions to be able to discern this is the will of God and this is not the will of God so this is right this is wrong this is pleasing to God this is not pleasing to God so it is transforming our thinking and transforming the way we live as well so the first part of meditation that we looked at was contemplation and now we are going to look at visualization so visualization is to see something with our mind's eye right so not with our physical eyes but with our imagination now we see imagination being used a lot in the world through media through advertising where people are calling you to imagine a better life for yourself right when someone is trying to sell you something in an advertisement they are showing you something that is very attractive and they want to kind of grasp your desires, your imagination for your own life and they want to say this is the life you should have right so that is what actually we should be doing with scripture instead right so we don't do that enough with scripture where we are allowing God's word to capture our imagination where we start to desire to see God's word fulfill God's word have our bare fruit in our lives in the ways that God wants to do things in our lives so what does God want to accomplish in our lives how should our lives be transformed so that our lives align with what God desires for our life so we look at these examples that we have here Genesis 15 1 to 6 can I read sister? yes please Genesis 15 1 to 6 after these things the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision saying do not be afraid Abraham I am your shield your exceedingly great reward but Abraham said Lord God what will you give me seeing I go childless and the air of my house is elia of Damascus then Abraham said to look you have given me know of of swing indeed one born in my house is my air and behold the word of the Lord came to him saying this one shall not be your air but one who will come from your own body shall be your air then he brought him outside and said look now towards heaven and crown the stars if you are able to number them and he said to him how shall your descendants be and he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness thank you and Genesis 22 17 please Genesis 22 17 blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as which is on the seashore and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies thank you so you see in Genesis 15 this is the this is after God has called Abraham to leave his father's house and he's told him I'm going to make you a blessing to the nation so Abraham has left and he's come away he's not had Ishmael and God comes to him and tells him that you are going to have descendants as many as the stars God just doesn't say those words right he asked him to look up and look at this as this picture of he has an image in his mind and his promise that he receives is based on that image so God is using that picture to help Abraham imagine a new future a future that he's not yet seeing at present because he doesn't have any descendants at all right and so in Genesis 20 to 17 this is after Abraham takes Ishmael takes Isaac sorry to to give him up as a sacrifice to God and then God stops him and reiterates the same promise so I'm going to make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand in the seashore so the use of that language that using of those pictures is to help him visualize something that God is promising him that he maybe God could say I can give you a thousand children I'll give you ten thousand children but God is using these kinds of pictures to say that they won't be there be beyond your ability to number them and those pictures capture um Abraham's imagination right his imagination for his future his picture of his future um let's look at numbers 13 30 to 33 numbers 13 uh verse 30 then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said let us go up at once and take possession for we are well able to overcome it but the men who had gone up with him said we are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we and they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land they had spied out saying the land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature there we saw giants the descendants of Anak came from the giants and we like grasshoppers in our own site and so we were in their site so this is an example of two groups of people who have experienced the same thing but because of the way their imagination worked or the way they saw their uh saw their reality uh they responded to that experience in different ways right so we see in numbers 13 Joshua and Caleb uh and the 10 other spies so the 12 spies are going out to explore uh the land of Canaan and God has already promised to give them that land right so in Joshua and Caleb's mind they have pictured victory they have pictured that they are going to take this land because God has promised it to them uh but the other 10 spies uh they are looking at something that is real right the people there were giants but uh they have pictured themselves as grasshoppers in comparison to those giants are they really physically grasshoppers know right but that is the imagination that they had that is the way they saw themselves uh whereas Joshua and Caleb could see themselves as people who are able to fight this battle because of God who is on their site uh so that's where we look at how is scripture how is the word of God impacting our the way we look at things the way we imagine ourselves in response to certain situations that we are facing so we allow the word of God to capture our imagination to um to uh tell us the way we should think uh the way we should picture ourselves so that when we go into a situation we are responding in a way that is in line with God's promises right uh so just because of this one incident the whole future of that generation of Israelites is impacted like they all miss out on receiving that promise that God had for them that blessing that God had for them uh and so our imaginations can have a huge part in how we receive what God wants to give us and how uh we are able to fully experience the blessings uh that God has already promised to us okay so um we'll just look at these uh a few verses that are listed here and then we'll continue Deuteronomy 11 18 therefore you shall lay up these my words in your hearts and in your being and bind them up for a sign upon your hands and as forehead hands between your eyes thank you and Deuteronomy 6 8 and you shall bind them up as a sign upon your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes uh Exodus 13 9 9 and 16 it shall be as a sign to you upon your hand and as a memorial between your eyes that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth and for with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt 16 and it shall be as a reminder upon your hand or as a frontlet between your eyes or by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt thank you and the last passage Proverbs 4 20 and 21 a I'll read system my spine give attention to my words incline your ear to my sings do not let them depart from your eyes keep them in the minds of your heart thank you so um we saw in those first few passages the first few verses Deuteronomy and Exodus a physical act right so God was saying don't forget this law that I'm giving you these instructions do these physical things to help you remember so tie it on your hands tie it on your forehead between your eyes and these were things that the Jews actually were practicing so what was the idea was it just to have some outward symbols of God's word or what you all think was the idea behind it so that you will know how close you need to hold them up to how close you need to hold the word up to whatever the law and the thing that's how close yeah so to keep it always close to you important as as important okay to meditate on it sister to meditate on it okay to meditate on it okay yes so for okay Lucy shared to help in reciting so what they would do is they would write it and it would be tied up right on their hands on their forehead the idea was you are constantly reminding yourself of God's word and it's always something that is impacting the decisions that you're making so it's on your hands so every time you're doing something you're reminded of God's word like you may not be able to read it but you know what is written in those verses and so you're reminded of that as you're doing things with your hands but it's always also before your eyes it affects the way you view things so while that may be a physical act of tying it on your head the picture is to always allow your eyes to be seen through the word of God so your vision the way you look at the world the way you perceive the world around you is as per the word of God so the word of God informs how you are viewing the world around you how you are responding to the world around you how you are living your life daily okay so that is where we're talking about this thing of imagination it influences our perspective on the way we live our lives on the way the world around us functions is influenced by the word of God so we'll close with this last part on confession okay so meditating on God's word we talked about contemplation we talked about visualization and this last part is confession that is saying what God has said Joshua 1 8 which we read earlier it says this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth meditate on it day and night so there's meditation on it and there's also this process of speaking that's included it should not depart from your mouth you should constantly be confessing the word of God and we see in that Old Testament when we were talking about those two words of meditation that in that meditation they were actually speaking the word of God in the New Testament we don't hear so much about meditation we hear about confession so what does confession mean the Greek word is homologio to speak the same thing to ascent to accord to agree with so we're saying that we are coming into agreement with the word of God we're speaking the same thing as God speaks we are agreeing with what he says and we are coming into alignment with God's will for our lives so when we are confessing God's word what we are saying is I'm coming into agreement with your promises I'm coming into agreement with what you have said and I'm speaking that same thing over my life okay we'll just read Romans 10 17 Romans 10 17 so then faith comes by hearing and yearning by the word of God thank you so when we are speaking the word we are also hearing the word and so this is that process of increasing our level of faith when we are saying we meditate on God's word and we are constantly repeating that passage that we are meditating on we are also hearing that as we are repeating it we are also hearing it so we are allowing the word to not only be on our lips but also to receive it through our ears receive it into our heart and so in that process we are growing in faith we are allowing that word to be implanted in our hearts to take root in our hearts we are allowing ourselves to begin to believe that word to take hold of that word for ourselves and for our own lives so we end with this so what are the three things on meditation the three contemplation visualization and confession so contemplation thinking visualization seeing and confession speaking okay so those are the three parts of meditation we'll close here anything ask any questions are you all good okay let's take a break and we'll come back for the next class on New Testament survey at T11 thank you