(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the podcast on this January 11th, always a big day for us, the podcast, this podcast. Ask Pastor John turns 10 years old today. Episode number one aired on January 11th, 2013. And more importantly, John Piper was born on January 11th, 1946. He's 77 years young today.

So Pastor John, when you hear this episode, happy birthday to you, my friend. Thank you for this unforgettable decade on the podcast. And wherever you are today, enjoy that Butterfinger Blizzard to the glory of God. Well, we are talking Bible reading today. How do we turn our daily Bible reading into daily worship?

Early in the new year is a very good time for a refresher on this topic of how to get truth from our heads into our hearts. So we open up to Psalm 77. Last Wednesday, we saw how the Psalm teaches us to push past personal discouragement to get God's truth into our heads.

Asaph, its author, tells us to remember, to meditate, and to muse upon the deeds and wonders of God in history. Why? Because the central biblical strategy to escape the discouragements of life is through a conscious effort of the mind. That's what Pastor John said. And even when life hurts the most, we discipline ourselves to get truth into our minds.

And then once it's there in our heads, we need to get that truth down into our hearts. And today, Pastor John is gonna explain how he does that by illustrating the practice from his very own life in what I think is a pretty remarkable sermon clip you're about to hear.

Again, taken from his New Year's sermon on Psalm 77, preached back in the early moments of the year 2000. Here's Pastor John. - I know there are more obstacles to joy than absence of knowledge. I know that there are physical obstacles. I know that there are medical reasons. I know that there are family reasons.

And I know that there are hereditary reasons. In fact, Aaron shared with me a great essay or excerpt from a book by Richard Baxter, who was a great soul doctor 300 years ago, in which he was dealing with melancholy. That's the old fashioned word for discouragement or in its worst cases, depression.

And these old Puritans knew two things. They knew their souls and they knew their Bibles. The souls that they knew, they knew were connected to bodies and they knew these bodies were connected to, they didn't know anything about genes, but they knew about moms and dads and granddads and great granddads.

And they knew the William Cowpers who tried to kill himself three times. And they knew it was so of his parents and they knew it was so of his parents. And it wasn't too hard to figure out, hmm, something going on here physically, as well as family dynamics. And therefore, the most amazing thing about this essay was, he had practical guidelines for how to eat, how to sleep, how to exercise, certain kinds of, he said, for example, I shouldn't say this, I won't say it.

It's something about, something to do with the way you eat and the posture you're in when you eat. Can you believe that? Puritans telling people how to sit while they eat in order to avoid melancholy, in order to avoid melancholy. So please don't hear me unfolding this strategy of the Christian life as oblivious to the fact these matters are more complex than simply knowledge in the head.

But here's my question for me mainly, and I'll let you listen. When I say I have it in my head, this Bible knowledge about God, and it's not work, I'm feeling low still. My question to me is, when you say, I have my head filled with Bible doctrine or Bible knowledge, is that the same as what's being said here?

I will remember. Surely I will remember the deeds of all. I will meditate and I will, surely I will muse. And I have a feeling, have this little suspicion that American evangelicals are a very passive bunch of people when it comes to our emotions. They come on us and we're passive.

And we've been taught to think somebody did this to me or I did it to myself, but it's happening to me. And now, now what? Now what? And there's this absence of the great old biblical Puritan awareness. There's a strategy of life here. There's a war to be fought here.

There's a delight to be struggled for here. There's an intentionality and a purposefulness here. And if you have just a little mustard seed left under the weight of the darkness to do something, there are things that can be done here that might be blessed of God with. Verse 13, so I don't think, and I'm just talking to myself still here, John Piper, I don't think when you say, I know that about you, God, and it's not helping me, I don't think that's meditation.

I don't think that's musing. I think that's coasting. So what is meditation? What is musing? This is something different than saying, I've got lots of Bible knowledge in my head and it doesn't help. That's very different than saying, I will remember something that's in my head. I'll pursue it, I'll dig around in there until I find it.

And then what do you do? Okay, I found it, I've got it. Or maybe you have to dig in the Bible 'cause your mind's just not working well enough to remember. You go dig in there and you dig and you find it. Then what do you do with it?

Do you do anything with it? What is meditation? What is musing? Well, let me just draw things to a close with an illustration. I'll just do it out loud for you, okay? We'll do a little bit of this now. You just watch me do it. I will talk out loud what I would talk inside.

Suppose I come into year 2000 and I'm feeling absolutely like a failure. Last year was terrible. I hardly ever read in the Bible. I hardly ever prayed. I mouthed off over and over again in the wrong circumstances. Lust got all out of hand, blah, blah, blah. It was one awful year.

And I frankly feel worthless and hopeless as I enter the year 2000. So suppose that's where you are now. And you hear a sermon like this. You say, "Well, it didn't work. "It didn't work last year. "It doesn't work." I grew up in the church, for goodness sakes. My head's stocked full of Bible knowledge about the Exodus.

Doesn't work. All right, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. I remember a day 2000 years ago when on a Roman cross of execution there was the greatest, most loving, most kind, most gentle, most wise, sinless man that ever was hanging on the cross. I will call this to mind.

And he is suffering greatly. His head is thorned and his face is beat up. His beard is plucked out. His back is lacerated. Nails are through his hands and his feet. He can barely breathe. He has screamed himself hoarse and can no longer scream and is on the brink of death.

And next to him on either side is a thief. They have both railed at him, cursed him. Get yourself and us down if you're some big shot Messiah. And then I will call to mind that one of those thieves suddenly, inexplicably, awesomely looks over at this Christ and says, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." And I will call to mind where'd that come from?

He was cursing the Lord. He was making fun of this bleeding Messiah. Where did that come from? And I will remember the work of grace, the work of sovereign grace in the 11th hour. Here's a man who did nothing but wrong all his life, never had one act of obedience of faith, deserves hell and is about 20 minutes away from hell.

And he presumes to say, "Remember me." Remember you? I'll remember you, I'll send you straight to hell, right? That's what I do with people like you, thieves all their life long. I will meditate on the mighty deeds of Christ who looked over the nail on his right hand and said, and the plaintiffs didn't stop to move or stop moving for some reason, "Today, you will be with me in paradise." And I will not leave that and go off to my pity party and say, "It doesn't work.

"I've got that knowledge in my head "and it doesn't change anything." I will linger with that sentence. I will stay with that sentence. I will take hold of that sentence and not let it go until it blesses me. And it doesn't have to be long with that sentence for me anyway.

Today, you thief in the 11th hour with nothing to commend yourself to God whatsoever, you don't even have time to get out and obey and show yourself that you're real. You're gonna go straight with me to paradise. What kind of grace is that that I might be a part of?

- That is an amazing Christ-centered, cross-centered sermon clip taken from a message preached on January 2nd, 2000 on Psalm 77, titled "I Will Meditate on All Your Work "and Muse on Your Deeds." That's the title. The full message is in the sermon archive at desiringgod.org. A fitting word for us in these early days of 2023.

Thank you for joining us as we begin our second decade of APJ. Now, you can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast all at askpastorjohn.com. Well, Asaph is the author of Psalm 77 and he was so deeply despondent that he could not even sleep.

He says that in Psalm 77, verse four. There are physical dimensions to despondency and we are gonna look at those next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Friday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)