Psalm 15- Abide

 Psalm 15 - Abide

Psalms 15

Description of a Citizen of Zion.

A PSALM OF DAVID.

1 O LORD, who may abide in Your tent?

Who may dwell on Your holy hill?

2 He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness,

And speaks truth in his heart.

3 He does not slander with his tongue,

Nor does evil to his neighbor,

Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;

4 In whose eyes a reprobate is despised,

But who honors those who fear the LORD;

He swears to his own hurt and does not change;

5 He does not put out his money at interest,

Nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

He who does these things will never be shaken.

I’ve been meditating on this psalm, and the word “abide”, for several days. There are several other psalms that speak on this topic as well, and to of them are psalm 24 and psalm 61:

Psalms 24:3-4

3 Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD?

And who may stand in His holy place?

4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart,

Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood

And has not sworn deceitfully.

Psalms 61:4

4 Let me dwell in Your tent forever;

Let me take refuge in the shelter of Your wings.

Selah.

I’ve been dwelling on this subject for quite awhile, trying to figure out the whole concept of abiding with the Lord. However, this Sunday, we had a guest speaker who preached about hearing God. One thing that he said is that sometimes you can’t hear God until you calm down and take a rest. You can’t do it all on your own. This certainly applies to me as I always want to investigate every issue and find my own solution to every problem, but for some things, you just need chill out and wait on God. In this case, “abide” just means “abide”; to live with, to dwell, to remain and to just spend time with God. 

I’m especially guilty of overthinking every thing and trying to understand everything that can be known about a problem. However, with some thinks of God, is impossible for our feeble human mind to comprehend everything! We just need to lay back and rest, trusting in Him in all things.

That being said, there are a couple of mysteries about abiding. As they say, “Where the Old conceals the New reveals”, so let us look at what the New Testament says about abiding. The Apostle John in particular says a lot about abiding. 

So then, the first mystery is this: The psalmist asks the question “who may abide in your tent?” and answers in Psalm 24 with the statement “He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” But this raises the question of who is pure enough to abide with God? Do you have to have a perfectly pure heart to abide with God, or is it the other way round where abiding with God creates a pure heart? (Ps 51:10)

In the Gospel of John, chapter 15, he records the teaching of Jesus about abiding.

John 15:4

4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.

John 15:7-10

7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. 9 Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.

Jesus teaches that abiding with him is like a branch of a vine. There is a mutual aspect of this because abiding begins with Jesus love for us. But as we abide in Him, we receive that love and life and begin to bear fruit. In John 1, we see that the Spirit abiding with Jesus began with his baptism. (The Greek word menō [g3306 μένω] is translated remained here, but is the same word translated as abide in John 15.) 

John 1:32

32 John testified saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. 

So this gives us a picture of how we can begin to abide with the Lord. Jess voluntarily submitted to the baptism of John, and with His obedience, the Father blessed Him and sent the Holy Spirit to dwell with Him. This also applies to us as we can approach the Father, even in our present sinful position, and submit to His will and he will bless us a begin to abide with us,.

So the answer is that neither “abiding” nor “pure heart” come first, but they are mutually supporting activities. What comes first is our submission to the will of God, accepting His grace and salvation, and then pressing in to His presence to begin learning how to abide with Him. Then the more we abide in the vine, the more we bear the fruit of the tree.

Another related question is “how do you learn to abide with the Lord?” There are several answers to this question, but one that interests me, because it causes me lots of difficulty is this; the mystery of Christ and the church is modeled in marriage. When marriage is perfect, the love an unity illustrates the relationship between Christ and the church. This is abiding. I say that this gives me problems because I’m not even close to perfect at marriage! Not that I’ve not had a lot of practice, being married for over four decades, but there are lots of issues with abiding with my wife that I am still struggling to figure out. Still, I think marriage is a good workshop for us to work out how to abide in love with another person, and thus teaches us how to abide with Jesus. If I have problems with one, it’s no wonder that I have problems with the other, so pray for me!

The Apostle John has a lot more to say about abiding, but I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to study further on this. Some other interesting verses about abiding are John 5:38, 6:56, 8:31, 14:10 and 1 John 2:3-6, 2:10, 2:14, 2:24, 2:27-28, 3:9, 3:24, 4:12-15 and 2 John 1:9.

The passage in 1 John 4 is a pretty good summary of the concept of abiding with the Lord:

1 John 4:12-15

12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

We are taught here that love and abiding go together hand in hand and the the Spirit of God dwells in us and teaches us to love and to abide. Therefore, let us love one another, confessing that Jesus is the Son of God and testifying that the Father has sent the Son to save the world. It is this kind of love and abiding that will sustain us in this world and cause us to bear fruit that will testify to the world that Jesus is love.