“This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall mediate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.”
– Joshua 1:8
This Verse Calls Us to Meditate on God’s Word
Oh, just start from the back of this verse, and ask the question. Would you like good success in your life? In your work? In your family? I think we all want good success. So maybe there’s a bad kind of success. I think probably so. There’s some kinds of success that are actually not good but I think we all want good success. Do you want your way to be prosperous? Do you want your way to be good? I think we all want that. So this is God saying, “I’ve wired you this way so that you would want what is good, prosperous, successful.” So what’s the key then? Verse 8 says this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, that you shall mediate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. Then you will make your way prosperous. Then you will have good success. It couldn’t be any clearer.
Joshua 1:8 Encourages Us to Soak in the Bible
The key to a prosperous way, the key to good success is meditating on the book of the law, meditating on the word of God, and being careful to do according to what you read. There. What does it mean to meditate? It means we don’t just read the Bible, we soak it in. We let it become a part of us. We memorize it in some ways, we reflect on it in every way. Let me encourage you in your Bible reading to meditate. Don’t just read through the Bible and check off a box. Meditate, reflect on the Bible. Reflect on what you’re reading. Pray according to what you’re reading. That’s kind of the whole point of this podcast. I think what we are doing is in part meditating on scripture and it’s a good thing to meditate on, not just for a couple moments a day but the Bible says here day and night, day and night.
Joshua 1:8 Helps Us See Success According to God’s Word
So God, help us to do this. Help us to heed your exhortation to Joshua, in Joshua Chapter 1, in each of our lives today. Help us to hear the book of the law, help us to hear your word, to soak it in, to understand it, to reflect on it, to apply it in our lives, to pray it, to hide it in our hearts, to speak about it in public and we trust that when we do, our way will be prosperous. We will have good success. God, we want that. We want good success, we want success that is good according to your word, not according to this world, and we want prosperity according to your ways, not according to this world. So we need your word to lead us. We need your word to guide us in your ways. So make us a people who are marked by meditation on your word, day and night. May it be so. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
