Blessed By Unity

And now please turn in your Bibles to Psalm number 133. This will be our text for the message this afternoon, Psalm number 133. When you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word. A song of a sense of David.

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.

For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Please be seated. Well, let me pray. And if it be God's will, let me preach, our heavenly Father. Thank you again for this day, for this afternoon, for this gathering around Jesus Christ and his word.

I pray, Father, that the word would go forth from my mouth boldly and clearly and to the edification of those who hear, either to bring saints closer to the image of Christ, to bring sinners to repentance and to faith in him.

Use this time, Father, for the glory of him, our Savior. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Big question we can ask here from this text is, what is our view of the unity that we have in the church? What is the view you have of the unity that we should have in the church?

And another way to put that question is, what's the value that you place upon unity, upon our oneness as a body? What value do you place on it? What strain are you willing to give in order to achieve or maintain it?

Both of which could be very difficult for sinners who like to be independent, for sinners who like to have their own way. What's the value that you place upon it? Well, this afternoon in this short psalm, these three verses that we have in the psalm, we're going to get two different perspectives of this unity, and then we're gonna see God's view.

We're gonna see God's value, and God willing, as I show you God's value of unity amongst the brethren, which means brothers and sisters, when we see how he values it, we will see how we should. And repent where we've valued it too little, and strive to maintain it all the more where we think we've done enough, which is almost impossible once we get to the text.

And just by way of introduction, we do have these two perspectives. And the first perspective is sort of horizontal. It's what does unity mean? How does it play out amongst ourselves? What is unity like, or what should it be like on this level playing field, this horizontal world in which you live, and that's verse one.

In verse three, we get the vertical. We see how God looks down upon unity, and what God does when he sees this pleasing unity amongst the brethren, when he sees the church gathered together with that force that is almost unstoppable, a unified voice, calling out the praises of Jesus Christ.

What does God do when he sees that? So that's the horizontal unity amongst ourselves. That's the vertical, God's view of it, and then we'll go back to verse two, and we're going to see the value that is placed upon it.

So verse one, horizontal, us. Verse three, vertical, God. And verse two, the value that God Almighty places upon the unity. So one subject, and these two perspectives. Unity amongst God's people. And what we're going to see, and where we need to repent, and where we need to strive all the more, and where we need to look to ourselves and ask what have I done, what have I not done, what have I held back for this great cause?

Unity amongst the brethren. It is as precious in God's sight as is the intercession that brings unity between him and sinners. Now I've just given away the big idea of verse two when we come back to it, but I want you to have that in mind that this unity that this psalm is all about here is as precious in God's sight as is the intercession that God decreed in order that sinners could be brought to unity with him by the atonement of the high priest.

That's the view we're looking for. That's the value that we need to place upon this. And that's what unity must be worth in our view. For all the strain, for all the effort, for all the repentance, for all the self-humility that we need in order to achieve this.

Brethren, it's worth it because it's good to God. It's worth it because it's good for us. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. Unity is good, unity is pleasant, and pleasant can mean delightful, wonderful.

Goodness here, this word for good, how good and pleasant, just the common word for good. The Hebrew is tov, it's just good. Now the scripture does not say that, behold how grand and wonderful it is, how superlative it is.

And I think by using just this common word, good, it amplifies the quality that we're looking to understand here. It's just good, folks, objectively good. I'm gonna give you one example of how this simple word good, in Hebrew it's tov, this simple word that only means good, and really not a lot more than that, depending upon the context.

How powerful is that word? Think back to Genesis chapter one, when God created on days one, two, three, four, five, and six, and each day what did he do? He looked upon what he had made, and he said it was what?

Good. Same word we have here. Now how good was it when God made it? God, almighty God, perfect God, righteous God, holy God, all that he does is right. He only acts in accordance with his nature, which is perfection and holiness.

How good was creation? Brothers and sisters, it was good. And in the end, on the seventh day, when he had created man upon the earth, it was very good, and that's the only time that that word is amplified.

That's how good good is. I'm gonna circle back to our psalm. How good it is when brothers dwell in unity. It's just plain good. It's as good as the same word as the goodness of creation as God made it day by day by day.

This is what we're striving for. Something that's good. Something that is just objectively a positive thing. Now you know, when preachers preach about unity, we always have to make this apology. Well, by unity, I don't mean lockstep.

We're not a bunch of automatons. I always say that word wrong, I'm sorry, but you know what I mean. And so we make these apologies. By the time we're done apologizing for what unity is not, I can't tell you what it is.

I'm not going to apologize for what the scripture tells us. Unity. We come together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's unity. We come together, as it says in Ephesians 4, in one faith, one baptism, one Lord, one God the Father who is over all and in all.

That's the unity. That's why we come together in Jesus Christ. That's how we come together. That's unity being spoken of here. Is there diversity? Of course there is. There must be. 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12 would say that diversity is God's design for the church.

Our opinions are different on different things. Some of you are more premillennial than amillennial. We can correct that. But I'm not going to break fellowship with you over that because we have a unity that's greater than that.

And there's all these other smaller questions in the scripture that cannot be disunifying as long as we are locked together on the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the unity that we're looking for here and that is good.

That is good because we sing in a harmonious way. And I don't mean the quality of our voices. I mean the faith that we understand is one, is one accord, is one voice. As we sing the great hymns, as we pray together, it's good.

Just plain good. And it's pleasant. And here it's a little bit more subjective. Pleasantness is my own emotive response to this good thing that God has given us. And some of us are going to emote differently.

But here it's a little bit subjective. But whatever pleasantness looks like in you or in me, brothers and sisters, unity together is something we need to look upon that is good, so good that it needs no adjectives, it needs no amplification, just plain good.

And it's pleasant, it's delightful. Pleasantness, a frame of mind that we have that appreciates what we have. This word for pleasantness is not used very often in the Old Testament, only 13 times I could count.

And just a couple of examples. David's ode to Saul and Jonathan after they had died. He said that they were delightful and lovely. Now that's our word for pleasant. They were delightful, they were lovely to be with.

Now Saul had his problems, we know that. But remember in his Camelot period, Saul won great victories for Israel. He secured the borders, he subdued the Philistines. Jonathan was a great warrior, faithful to his father.

I should say faithful to God and loyal to his father. David says of both of them that they were lovely, these men who fought so hard for Israel. Job 36, 11, those who listen to and serve God spend their days in pleasantness.

Now there are more, we could go on with this. But you get the upshot. The upshot is that it's something sweet. Like David, this great warrior who had blood on his hands and yet he was Israel's sweet, delightful, pleasant poet.

What is this unity that we have? Look around you. Look how different we all are. Different races, different ethnicities, different countries, different jobs, different backgrounds, different everything.

Look upon us. Think of your personality compared to mine. Outside of Christ, would we ever get along? I mean, in something more than a surface and friendly way? And yet, what do we have here? The love of the brethren, as the Apostle Paul calls it, over and over again.

This miraculous work of the Spirit that draws together this diverse crowd and says you are one. You are one together in Christ Jesus, drawn together by that one faith, that one baptism, that one God and Father of all.

Now our view of unity and its worth has to differ from the world's view because our unity is something different than what we have outside these four walls where if you get a syllable wrong, you get canceled.

And there's something else that happens. I forgot the term. You can get canceled and there's other things they do that just completely throw you under the bus. Maybe that's the term I was looking for.

If you missed a syllable, if you missed a concept, if you don't agree with abortion and transgenderism wholly and completely, you don't agree with anything I stand for and I'm done with you. We can see this actually in where our government is not working today.

That's not the unity, excuse me, the unity they're looking for is this lockstep that would be antithetical to us as a church. They're looking for everything to be agreed upon completely. No opinions, no diversity, no variance.

We're not like that. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for a unity of being called as a body in Christ. Now we have a reformed platform in this church. Anyone who's come here and gone through the membership, the orientation meetings, knows what we stand for.

Not because it was written by these great men back in the 17th century, which it was, but because it tells us clearly what the Bible is. It gives us this foundation, these principles on which we stand because they explain the Bible to us.

On that we're unified. On that we come together as a church and that's from which we proceed. In so far and as long as we can continually look to the scripture, to the word of God, and make sure that what we're doing is clearly taught there, and then our confessions explain it well to us and put it in commoner language sometimes.

That's what our unity is. Not lockstep, not where we have to agree with each other on every syllable. Not where if you don't have complete agreement with me, I have none with you. The diversity here is a gift of God, but the unity we have, the love that we have for one another because of Christ.

That's a work of the spirit. There are people who like to argue. People are just always looking for that debate. I came across this word as I was preparing this message and I asked one of the brothers, have you ever heard of Eris, to be Eristic?

Of course he knew that, and he knew that there was a Greek goddess called Eris, the goddess of discord, and that's what Eristic means. Discord, always looking for that fight, always looking for that argument.

Well, I looked it up, of course, I only did it on Google. I didn't do a lot of detail, but there is a Greek goddess called Eris, and she's the goddess of discord, and I'm thinking, what kind of a religion is this that has a goddess of discord?

And then they have Pan, the god of panic. Who would follow this? Well, that's another story. Maybe I'll find a text to go off on that one someday, but Eristic is the opposite of what we're looking for here.

Oh, we can debate, we can have differences of opinion, but not looking for that fight. When I first came to this church, soon after I came here, I was being tutored in the ministry by the pastor, Pastor George, and I remember there was a gentleman in the church at that time where pastor could barely get the N in amen at the end of a sermon.

He was barely down the first step, and this guy would be up here with a sheet of paper and all the little things he did wrong and all the little problems with his word, and he was Eristic. He was always looking for that fight, always looking for that debate, and it's disunifying.

It's a low view of the value that we have of unity. Unity is good and it's pleasant. The opposite of unity is Eristic. I just wanna bring one proverb to your attention to show you God's view of the opposite of unity, and it's Proverbs 6, 16 to 19.

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him. One, haughty eyes. Two, a lying tongue. Three, hands that shed innocent blood. Four, a heart that devises wicked schemes.

Five, feet that make haste to run to evil. Six, a false witness who breathes out lies and pride of place in the sad list of things that God hates, the one that brings it all to the level of abomination.

Number seven, one who sows discord among the brothers. Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses. The Apostle Paul says, no, the church goes the opposite way. So then let us pursue what makes for peace, and if we added, if we put unity in place of peace, it would make very little difference in how we apply this.

Makes for peace slash unity and for mutual upbuilding. Hebrews 12, 14, strive for peace slash unity with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Now you see how this peace that we strive for, this unity that we're to have together is tied to holiness?

Holiness means separateness. We are holy. You individually are called a saint, a holy one called by God out of the world to be separate from it, but then made part of a body which is itself holy. Holiness has to do with unity also.

Called out, but called out together, called out as a people. Strive for peace with everyone for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Peter says, whoever desires to love life and to see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it. Strive after, prosecute peace, pursue it. And finally, Philippians 2, one through 11, which has to do, and I'm not going to read the whole thing for the sake of time.

You can read that for your homework. But this is where Christ set aside his own comfort for the needs of others. He put the need of you ahead of the need he had for himself in his humanity for comfort, for lack of pain, but you needed salvation.

You needed faith. You needed to be saved. And Christ put that ahead of his own needs, his own comfort. Now, of course, his great need was to accomplish his Father's will. That's the vertical level. On the horizontal level, he put your need to know the Father through faith in him ahead of himself, and so he went to the cross.

And I bring all this up to bring to your attention Philippians 2, five, which introduces this by saying, have this mind among yourselves, which is also yours in Christ Jesus, a current possession, a present act of possession, something you have now, the mind of Christ, by his spirit within you, by the word of God he's given us.

And then it goes on to say how we are to put others' needs ahead of ourselves as more important than our own, as Christ himself did. It's good and pleasant. That's horizontal. Now skip down to verse three.

It's like the dew of Hermon running down on the, excuse me, the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. The dew of Hermon falling down on the mountain of Zion, falls on the mountains of Zion.

On Hermon, Mount Hermon, there'd be great dew. And it's because of the topography and the climate. It was so cold at night and it got hot so quickly in that muggy environment that you get this great dew.

Not these little droplets that we get that evaporate really quickly. They could become little riverlets. And dew in that area is very important to the agriculture. It's critical to growing crops. And the idea here with Mount Hermon and Zion is that Zion didn't get its own dew.

But it benefited from Mount Hermon where the dew would actually become these little riverlets and come down and go south towards Mount Zion. But the most important thing here is these two geographical features.

Hermon in the north where the 10 tribes were that went into rebellion against Israel in Rehoboam's son, excuse me, Solomon's son, Rehoboam's day, and had been at war ever since. And here we have this picture where now the north, Hermon is benefiting the south with the dew that comes down.

Dew is another interesting word. Dew is a life-giving thing. To have dew means to have your crops growing. In Haggai 110, he says, "'Therefore, the heavens above you have withheld the dew.'". That's why they weren't growing crops.

That's why things were going wrong for Israel at the time because they hadn't repented. God withheld the dew. Zechariah, a contemporary of Haggai, he says, "'For there shall be a sowing of peace after repentance.

"'The vine shall give its fruit, "'and the ground shall give its produce, "'and the heavens shall give their dew.'". Dew is important for life. They couldn't grow crops without dew. And finally, Deuteronomy 32, two, in Moses' swan song, he says, "'May my teaching drop as the rain, "'my speech distill as the dew.'".

Life-giving. And so, this is God's view when he sees this unity. To him, it's like the dew of Hermon, where life is growing, where the church is growing, where brethren are growing together in unity.

And the peace has been made. Hermon, for the north, who used to, would often go to Syria and make an alliance against their brothers in the south, and Zion in the south. The picture is there, brothers coming back together, making peace.

Makes me think of Ephesians chapter two, where the apostle Paul talks about the wall has been torn down, the barrier has been torn down. The one that Matthew says, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, the curtain was torn from top to bottom.

Not somebody cutting it from the bottom, but way, way up there, torn. And what did that do? That opened the way to the holy place, where only the high priest used to be able to go, because now the way for unity between man and God had been made by Jesus Christ.

Pictured here, the brother, the unity now between former enemies, Hermon, Zion, Israel, Judah. That's the picture here. When God sees that, he commands the blessing of life forevermore. This is his view of unity.

Now let's see the value of it. Back to verse two. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. You have this picture of the first high priest, and he's being anointed, and not just given a drop of oil on his forehead and rubbed in like this.

No, he's got this abundant oil, it's flowing down on his beard, it's flowing down on his robes, and it's this beautiful oil. You can read about it in chapter 30 of Exodus. And it was to be put together only for the purpose of anointing in the tabernacle and the high priest, anytime that he was being ordained as high priest.

It was a special formula. God said it was holy to him. And if you ever made it yourself for any common purpose, you'd be cut off from your people. As you put on anybody who was an outsider of Israel, you're cut off from the people, you're no longer holy, you're no longer part of us.

God said it was holy to him. And here it is flowing all over Aaron. That's God's view of unity. So the idea here, and our value that we need to place on unity, just from that one verse in Psalm 133, is that God values unity so much so that he likens it to the intercessory ministry of the high priest.

That the high priest, when he goes in once a year and makes atonement for the people, and as it were, brings the people back to God, or brings the people to God by atoning for their sins. That's God's view of unity.

And how much more, brothers and sisters, do we have today? Because what's pictured here with the high priest, you think of him in his robes, you think of the beauty of those robes, you can read that in Exodus 28, this fantastic picture, and the incense burning, so everything is sweet and wonderful and lovely and pleasant as he goes in to make atonement for the people.

Now think forward to Jesus Christ, who didn't go into the holy place once a year and make a sacrifice, but once for all time sacrificed himself so that that curtain is torn, so there's no barrier between God and us, how much less must there be barriers between us and us?

Do you place that kind of value on the unity that we have? Are you willing to strive to maintain that? Or are you one who needs to achieve that? Both require repentance. Both require us to look at this psalm, to look at the cross of Jesus Christ, and say, I do not value this enough.

I have not striven with enough energy, I have not strained towards this well enough. If God says that the intercession of the high priest for the people is like the unity that he wants to see amongst the brothers, how high a value is that?

This high priest anointed with an oil that if you should misuse, you're cut off from the people. You are no longer one of them. You're no longer considered holy. Jesus Christ, on his cross, is the one who fulfills this.

Think of when he was anointed, before he went as our high priest to that cross. Conley was mentioning that in his sermon, or it was in Sunday school. I know he mentioned it today. The anointing that Jesus Christ received from Mary.

That's the value that God places upon us. One of the great benefits we have from the cross of Jesus Christ, one of, not the, one of, is this unity we have together. This oneness that we have. Brethren, it's not just a miracle that you and I can all get along and not just be friends, be brothers and sisters in the Lord.

That I could say with all integrity and honesty that I love this or that person. I truly do, as you do me, in a brotherly, sisterly, godly, and right way. How valuable is that? What a miracle is that?

Read 1 Corinthians 12 again. Read Romans 12 and see how diverse our gifts and our personalities and our backgrounds are. And yet, we're one in the bonds of love. So that's the psalm. That's the unity.

It's good, it's pleasant for us, it's sweet for us, it's delight for us. We must have this attitude, this emotive response to it. That's on our level. And when God sees it, he sees it as a life-giving thing, like the dew that allows the crops to grow and people to be fed, where one mount helps another mount.

And these two countries had formerly been at war. You and I weren't at war. We just didn't know each other. Now in Christ, we do. God commands life forevermore when he sees that here in the church. And finally, once again, the intercession of Jesus Christ as pictured centuries before by the intercession of Aaron, the first high priest, is likened by God to the unity we have with each other because of the unity we now have with him.

Brethren, we must raise our sights on this. We must value it all the more. No matter how much you value it, we can always strive for more. Are you good with unity? Stay there and keep pursuing peace with everyone.

And some of us need to look at this, and we'll have a chance in a few moments when we go to prayer and repent that we've not valued unity highly enough because we've not understood it. Perhaps you haven't.

But now you know that the cross of Jesus Christ is in a very great sense the price that God was willing to pay so he could look upon us with that pleasure and command life for more here in the church.

Amen? Heavenly Father, thank you again for your goodness to us, for the day you've given us, and for the unity that Jesus Christ has for us created. And I pray that we would value it with godly eyes, that we look to your scripture and know that this is good and pleasant, a miracle work of the spirit amongst us.

Father God, we thank you for this and pray that we would strive all the more to be that people pleasing to you. Thank you for Jesus Christ and his salvation and what you've granted us. In his name we pray, amen.