And so, I have opted to be a very focused text analyzer and reality lover, rather than being a widely read scholar. But I could wish that I read faster, and comprehended more quickly, and remembered things long enough that I could be a person who is both widely read and intensely focused on particular biblical texts. Now, I wish - I’ve dealt with the Lord a lot of times on this, and I’ve had to have him rebuke me because of my discontent. Now, what you pointed out in those tweets was that over the next six years of my seminary education (three years) and doctoral studies (three years), I found that my bent toward loving the reality that biblical texts were seeking to communicate and spending long hours staring at the texts - wrestling, digging, querying, praying - paid more dividends for me than if I had spent all of that time reading secondary sources. I think that everything I have done, written, or spoken has been shaped by the double grasp of God’s word in these two ways. So that double response to Psalm 119:97 - (1) loving God’s word and (2) meditating on God’s word - set the course of my life. I will analyze your law and press for definitions in your law until I squeeze from your law every drop of reality juice that I possibly can.” It awakens life and joy and hope in me.” And the other me took hold of the word meditation: “I will think about your law. One of me took hold of the word love: “I love your instruction, Lord. So when I read Psalm 119:97, “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day,” the two persons inside of me latch on to those two words. So I have always felt like I am two kinds of person in one: a highly analytical question-asker and a romantic pursuer of deep and authentic, satisfying emotional responses to what I see and experience. If you dissect something, you kill it first. I’ve tried not to.” But it is a danger it is. The other was a similar intensifying of my analytical bent toward probing, and questioning, and scrutinizing, and defining, and dissecting - all the while, as a lit major, knowing that Wordsworth had warned, “We murder to dissect.” I said, “I get that. One was the deepening and intensifying of my affections - my emotions, my heart response - to the good, the true, and the beautiful, and ultimately, of course, the highest good and the highest affections for God himself and his word. Lewis Stuart Hackett, my philosophy teacher Francis Schaeffer, indirectly and the whole English department, where I was a major, two things were growing in me, which relate to this text. Now, I think the first thing to say here is this: When I was undergoing an awakening to the life of the mind at Wheaton College between 19 under the influence of Clyde Kilby C.S. (Psalm 119:97–100) Awakening Heart and Mind I have more understanding than all my teachers,įor I keep your precepts. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, It’s more like, “Oh, how I love your instruction. Torah, the word for “law,” means, basically, “instruction.” So, if people have in their mind that law just means “rules” - that’s all it is it’s just rules, rules, rules - you need to get that out of your brain. And by the way, just a little comment here before we read it. So, they are very, very precious, and I hope they are to the folks who are listening or will become so. So I was wondering, Pastor John, can you don your biographical hat? Can you take a Bible truth and apply it with one life - in this case, applying Psalm 119:97–100 to your own formation? And a couple of years earlier, you tweeted this on the same text and said, “One true citation from God’s word may silence a whole semester of human speculation” (6/16/18). But I took heart from this verse that I could out-meditate them. “In my 20s I knew I could not out-read my liberal professors. Here are two of those tweets, both provocative. And on Twitter, you’ve cited verse 99 a few times. There, Pastor John, you talked about why, when we have so much good Bible scholarship, we still must be trained to study the Bible for ourselves. On the podcast we talked briefly about this text once, back in APJ 1533. The broader context of Psalm 119:97–100 is important too. This text proved vital to Pastor John’s early formation in ministry. Understanding God’s word rests on personal meditation, not simply in surrounding yourself with the sharpest academic minds. If you want to understand John Piper and why he does ministry the way he does, I think you must understand David’s bold claim in Psalm 119:99: “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.”
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