In the mind of the Spirit everything points us to Christ – there is no compartmentalization, there is no “thing” that has significance by itself. Everything is connected and pointing us to a deeper reality, and the reality we are being constantly brought around to is the Person of Jesus Christ. He is the theme, the subject, the point of everything written, everything illustrated, everything taught, everything recorded in the Bible.
And so the Temple reveals something of Christ. The Sabbath day reveals something of Christ. The Promised Land reveals something of Christ. Every saint in the Bible reveals something of Christ. Every symbol, every type, every shadow, all points to a very real Person, a very real substance. “Of Him, through Him, and unto Him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). The natural interpretation of things, the historical view, is only the surface-level. The real riches, the real treasure, is found beneath the surface. You have to go deeper than the carnal, natural understanding, it requires spiritual seeing, spiritual discernment.
And so, whenever we come across something in Scripture like “The Secret Place of the Most High God”, we who are spiritual – who have the Holy Spirit as our Teacher – should be trained enough by the Holy Spirit to be able to recognize immediately: that is Christ. There He is. I see yet another dimension of Him here.
Let me ask, how can you make the Lord your habitation, your dwelling place? How is that possible? This can only be interpreted spiritually, it is absolutely impossible, and hardly conceivable, if we think of it naturally. How can the Lord be my dwelling place? How can I live in the Lord? Well, it’s like Nicodemus saying, “How can a man enter into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
How do we make the Lord our habitation? How can He become a place for us to dwell in? Well, it was a mystery for them in the Old Testament. They could go to the Temple, and they knew the priest could enter into the Holy of Holies, and perhaps that would be the closest anyone could get to dwelling, abiding, in the Lord, or at least, being in the presence of the Lord. But that was only for a few priests, it was not available to everyone.
Then we come to those wonderful words of Jesus in John 15, and we begin to understand. It is quite beyond human explanation. It remains a mystery, a locked door, until the Lord Jesus Himself comes to us and reveals the mystery and unlocks the door. He says, “Abide in Me, and I will abide in you” (Jn. 15:4). It doesn’t take a very brilliant person to make the connection between Psalm 91 and John 15. The language is the same. Read John 15, then go back and read Psalm 91 again. All those words – abide, dwell, live – they all mean the same thing. “He who dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” goes right together with “Abide in Me, and I will abide in you.”
Yes, this Secret Place where we abide is Christ. It is not some thing or some place outside of Christ, but a place in Christ Himself. HE IS THE SECRET PLACE OF THE MOST HIGH GOD. He is that place that has been prepared for us.
Now when we read Psalm 91 it takes on an even greater significance. If you hold on to Psalm 91 for physical protection I don’t mean to discourage you or anyone else from doing so; but I do encourage you to dig deeper and get hold of it for something far better. It is a spiritual refuge, a spiritual covering, a place where evil cannot touch you, because you are hidden in Christ. A place where the body may become weak and may even be destroyed, beheaded like John the Baptist, stoned like Stephen, crucified like Peter – but the spirit cannot be touched. The communion and fellowship and presence of Christ Himself keeps you in His own Victory, a Victory that survives everything else, that goes beyond your own mortality, beyond your years here on earth, and goes with you up and away and apart from the earthy and the physical and the temporal – on into eternity.
