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Scripture Reading: Psa. 90—92
I. To take God as our habitation, our eternal dwelling place, is the highest and fullest experience of God — Psa. 90:1:
А. Psalm 36:8 speaks of eating the fatness of God’s house and drinking the river of God’s pleasures, indicating that we can experience the Lord by eating and drinking Him — cf. John 6:48-58, 63; 7:37; 1 Cor. 10:3-4; 12:13.
B. According to Moses, the giver of the law and the writer of Psalm 90, we can also dwell in the eternal Triune God as our Lord — v. 1; 91:9; Deut. 33:27; cf. John 15:4; 1 John 4:15-16; Rev. 21:22.
C. To dwell in God is to have our living in God (Col. 2:6; 3:3; 1 John 4:16), taking Him as our everything; this is deeper than eating and drinking Him.
D. Book Four of the Psalms (Psa. 90—106) unveils the saints’ deeper experience of God in the identification with Christ, and it unveils God’s recovery of His title and right over the earth:
1. This indicates that our experience of dwelling in God paves the way for Christ to come to possess the earth so that God may recover His title (ownership) and right over the earth.
2. Without the saints’ deeper experience of God, God has no way to recover this title and right.
E. “The days of our years are seventy years, / Or, if because of strength, eighty years; / But their pride is labor and sorrow, / For it is soon gone, and we fly away” — 90:10:
1. If we take God as our dwelling place, we will realize that the span of our life on earth is brief and full of sins and afflictions — vv. 3-11.
2. We need to dwell in God, living in Him every minute, for outside of Him there are sins and afflictions — v. 8; John 16:33.
II. Psalm 91 concerns the saints’ identification with Christ in His taking God as His dwelling place — v. 9:
А. In their identification with Christ, the saints make Jehovah the Most High their habitation, dwelling in His secret place and abiding in His shadow under His wings — vv. 1-9.
B. This is the genuine oneness with God; here, we are constituted with Him, and we and God live together as one.
C. You and Your in verses 9 through 13 refer to Christ, as proven by the fact that verses 11 and 12 of this psalm are quoted by Satan in Matthew 4:6 in reference to Christ:
1. This indicates that in Psalm 91 it is Christ who takes God as His habitation, His dwelling place.
2. Thus, not only Moses took God as his dwelling place (90:1), but even the Lord Jesus, while He was on earth, took God the Father as His habitation.
3. Moses, the lawgiver, and Christ, the grace-giver, were the same in taking God as their dwelling place, as their habitation.
4. Thus, the saints (represented by Moses) and Christ are identified as one.
D. To be identified with Christ is to be identified with Him not only in His death, in His resurrection, and in His ascension but also in His taking God as His habitation.
E. If we would be identified with Christ in His death, resurrection, and ascension, we need to abide in Christ (John 15:4), and to abide in Christ is not only to remain in Him but also to dwell in Him, taking Him as our everything:
1. We abide in Christ according to the teaching of the anointing inwardly and according to the walk of the Lord outwardly — 6, 1 John 2:27.
2. In order to abide in Christ, we must keep God’s commandments, God’s charges to us, and be those who are submissive to God — 3:24.
3. To abide in Christ, taking Him as our dwelling place, and to allow Him to abide in us, taking us as His dwelling place, are to live in the reality of the universal incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God with the redeemed and regenerated believers — John 14:2, 10-11, 17, 20, 23:
a. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God with the regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, and glorified tripartite church — Rev. 21:3, 22.
b. The New Jerusalem is the tabernacle of God, and the center of the tabernacle is Christ as the hidden manna; the way to be incorporated into this universal, divine-human incorporation, the mutual abode of God and man, is to eat Christ as the hidden manna — v. 3; Exo. 16:32-34; Heb. 9:4; Rev. 2:17.
4. We abide in Christ so that He may abide in us by dealing with the constant word in the Scriptures, which is outside of us, and the present word as the Spirit, which is within us — John 5:39-40; 6:63; 2 Cor. 3:6; Rev. 2:7:
a. By the outward, written word we have the explanation, definition, and expression of the mysterious Lord, and by the inward, living word we have the experience of the abiding Christ and the presence of the practical Lord — Eph. 5:26; 6:17-18.
b. If we abide in the Lord’s constant and written word, His instant and living words will abide in us — John 8:31; 15:7; 1 John 2:14.
c. We abide in Him and His words abide in us so that we may speak in Him and He may speak in us for the building of God into man and of man into God — John 15:7; 2 Cor. 2:17; 13:3; 1 Cor. 14:4b.
5. If we abide in Christ by loving Him, by always rejoicing, by unceasingly praying, and by giving thanks in everything, He will abide in us to dispense His riches into us — John 14:23; 1 Thes. 5:16-18; John 15:4.
6. If we abide in Christ, we will bear much fruit to glorify God — v. 8.
7. If we abide in Christ, when He is manifested, we will boldly meet Him and not be put to shame and depart from His glorious presence — 1 John 2:28; cf. Matt. 25:30.
F. He, Him, and His in Psalm 91:14-16 refer to Christ; these verses are a prophecy concerning Christ:
1. Christ loved God the Father (John 14:31); He has been set on high, exalted to the highest place in the heavens (Phil. 2:9-11); and He is now seeing God’s salvation in the extension of His days in resurrection (Psa. 91:16; Rev. 1:18a).
2. In all these matters we should be identified with Christ; then we will live with Him and love God; thus, we will be exalted, and we will see God’s salvation in the extension of our days.
III. Psalm 92 shows the issue of the deeper experience of God in the saints’ identification with Christ in taking God as their dwelling place:
А. The first issue is that the saints rejoice in the great works of Jehovah (vv. 1-9); when we dwell in God, taking Him as our habitation, we see His great works in the accomplishing of His economy and rejoice in them.
B. Before we dwell in God as our habitation, we may be low and frequently defeated; a further issue of our dwelling in God is that our horn (fighting strength) is exalted over our spiritual enemies — v. 10; Eph. 6:10-13.
C. Another issue of our dwelling in God as our habitation is our being mingled with fresh oil, which signifies the consummated Spirit, who is fresh and present — cf. Exo. 30:23-25.
D. Still another issue of our dwelling in God, taking Him as everything in our living in His house, is that we are securely planted in His house and flourish in the riches of His divine life to such an extent that we bear fruit even in old age — Psa. 92:12-14.
