Psalms 133 Unity is Pretty Neat

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Don Filcek, The Psalms of Accent; Psalms 133 Psalms 133 Unity is Pretty Neat

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.
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This is a sermon series on the Psalms of Ascent by Pastor Don Filsack. Let's listen in.
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Transitions that we've been going through as a church, we have some exciting news. We made an announcement a few months ago identifying the need to add more elders to our board, particularly in Kyle's absence and then in Zach's movement towards Indonesia.
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Because of God's call on his life and his family to go as missionaries, we wanted to add to the board.
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We have had two men come forward with interest in this, Bruce French and Mark Downing. If I could just presume upon you guys for a second, ask you to stand up.
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This is Bruce French back here. Mark Downing is over here. And these two gentlemen, just so that you can put a face with them, you guys can sit down.
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But I encourage you to get to know them over the next few weeks as we're going to be going to a process of voting on them.
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And I want to be clear to communicate to you, we don't do a popularity contest. It's not one or the other. We're voting on both of them.
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And so they both have stepped forward and said we believe that this might be God's call on our lives. And so it's our role as a congregation to affirm them in that calling.
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And so over the next two weeks, we're going to be hearing their testimonies up front and having them up here so that you can get to know them a little bit better.
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You can feel free to approach them and ask them questions or get to know them better, as I mentioned. Each candidate needs to receive an 85 % affirmation from the voting membership of Recast Church.
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So we accept ballots from anybody. If you're a regular attender here or you're here, I mean, you can feel free to fill out a ballot.
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But I just want to make it clear that it is 85 % of those members who actually cast a ballot that we're going to be counting up and tallying, along with this caveat that there are no disqualifying comments.
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Now, the ballot is not a simple one sheet, you know, a little quarter sheet of paper that says yes or no on each of the candidates.
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It's a long, it's a fairly long form, but it gives you an opportunity to give them feedback on the qualifications of eldership.
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And I love this process. This is something different than any church I've ever been a part of, but it's something that we started from the get -go.
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And that is that you get an opportunity to invest in them by actually sharing with them either concerns or ways that they've blessed you.
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There's both a positive and a negative opportunity there for you to say, hey, you know, I felt like this was a rough conversation or whatever.
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But it gives you an opportunity to give some feedback on their lives in the areas that they've impacted you.
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So I encourage you to take those. And ballots are available back there. Is Haley, is
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Haley in here? I think there's ballots available back there on the table this week. There definitely will be over the next couple of weeks.
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Encourage you to take those. And those will be, need to be submitted by Sunday, July 19th.
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So if you're here, if you're thinking, if you're a dates person, put that down. That ballot needs to be in by July 19th.
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And then we will tally those up and let you know what the results are. But I'm very grateful that God has granted our church godly leaders.
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And I look forward to what he's going to do as our board continues to grow in conjunction with the growth that our church has experienced over the years.
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So grateful for that. This morning, we're going to be looking at the 14th out of the 15
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Psalms of Ascent. These are all, again, remember, pilgrim songs written for the pilgrims going up to Jerusalem in ancient times.
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In our lives, the way that we interpret them and understand them as metaphors for our growth in Christ, growing in a journey towards God.
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How many of you would recognize that your life kind of mimics in some way a journey?
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Kind of like, have any of you ever heard the book Pilgrim's Progress? How that's like a journey of a man's life towards the celestial kingdom, towards the celestial city?
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That's what we, that's what our lives are like. And these psalms are all highlighting aspects of that journey.
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And they would have been literally sung on the road to Jerusalem in ancient times for the pilgrim going up to make his sacrifices at the celestial city.
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But they, we use them and now understand them as metaphors for our lives and the way that God is working with us.
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This is a short psalm. It's concise. It's poetic. And it's got one laser point focus.
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And that is this one word, unity. It is all about unity. It's interesting to me that Rob and I didn't plan it out, what he was going to be preaching on.
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He's going through the book of Philippians. I've been going through these psalms. So, but his message last week had a lot to do with unity.
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And so maybe with this passage this week having something to do with unity, maybe God wants to say something to all of us about unity, right?
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Whenever I see patterns like that, I go, that's not coincidence. That's not just by chance that last week
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Rob talked about unity and this week, and I didn't change, oh no, I've got to switch my text because Rob already talked about unity last week.
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So we don't need a double, no, apparently we need a double dose of this concept. Unity is a word, by the way, that when you think about it, you kind of understand what it means at first glance, right?
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When I say unity, you understand what I'm talking about? You get it? Unity, you know, things being together or whatever.
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But the more you analyze it, the more you think about where it comes from, what its source is, how it's manifested, what does it look like in our lives, the more you truly consider the heart of it, it becomes a bit of a fuzzy notion to us, becomes a little bit harder to define.
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Unity is not merely, not merely common purpose. Unity is not merely synchronized behavior.
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Unity is more than just a common appreciation for the same football team or working for the same company.
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How many of you know that? Working for the same company does not equal unity, right? As we dig into our text this morning, we will even find that unity is more than just a choice to get along with others, more than just a choice to get along with others.
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We live in a world that increasingly defines unity in terms of affirmation of others and the promotion of others.
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And I believe that the world's understanding of this word has likely crept into our thoughts about what unity means for us as a church.
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Does unity mean that we always get along? No, I don't think so. Does unity mean complete conformity that everybody walks the same way, talks the same way, acts the same way?
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No, no, that's not what unity is. Can two people have unity and still disagree?
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Well, what does our culture say about that right now? Absolutely not. What should we believe about that?
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Absolutely, we can have unity and disagree about things. So let's open up the
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Word of God and see what our Maker has to say about unity.
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So turn in your Bibles, navigate, open your app, whatever, to Psalm 133. Psalm 133, again, if you need a
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Bible, you can raise your hand right now, and one of these guys in the back will bring you a Bible if you don't have one.
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We do want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God on your lap just so that you can follow along and see that these things are coming from the Word of God.
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And if you don't own a copy of the Bible, then we ask that you just do us a favor and take one off that table on your way out, and you can take that home with you.
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You can also download an app. My favorite app is the ESV Bible. You can look at that in all the different stores, and it's available there.
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It's actually very searchable. It's one that I use almost daily. And so ESV Bible app is one that I recommend.
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But this is God's Word for us, Freecast. This is what He wants us to hear, a short word, but a powerful word, a poetic word for us here this morning.
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Psalm 133, a song of ascents of David. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.
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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.
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It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the
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Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to be together here with this church again.
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Father, I've missed them in the last couple of weeks. Father, I rejoice that you've called us together.
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Thank you for this beautiful day that you've given to us. And yet, many have sacrificed together, have sacrificed to come together to worship you this morning.
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Could be out on the links, hitting the ball around, or doing whatever, or mowing the lawn, or getting caught up in yard work, or whatever.
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But Father, I thank you for the opportunity to gather together with your people. Father, as we even now enter a time of praising you and worshiping you, we recognize that we live in a world that doesn't see things the way that we see things.
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We recognize we live in a country where decisions were made this week that trouble many of us.
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So Father, I pray that you will quiet our hearts, quiet our souls before you. Allow us to hear your word, and let your spirit have his way in our hearts and in our minds to calm us and bring about the rest that our souls need.
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Father, where we need conviction, give us conviction. Where we need encouragement, give us encouragement. But Father, I pray that you would receive our worship as your people this morning.
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In Jesus name, amen. Encourage you to get comfortable. Keep your Bibles open to Psalm 133.
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And you, having that Bible open in your lap helps you to kind of see the structure and the flow of what
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I'm going to be talking about here. You're able to see that the things that I'm saying are coming from the text of Scripture. Remember, if you need any coffee, or juice, or donuts, you can get up at any time during the message, as long as you're brave enough to come up to one of these tables and to help yourself.
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But whatever it takes to keep, main point is to keep our focus on God's word this morning. So if your chair gets in the way of that, then get up and stretch out.
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If your caffeine intake gets in the way, if you need to use the restroom to just get more comfortable, those are at the end of the hallway back here.
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But let's focus on God's word. King David is the author of our Psalm this morning, Psalm 133.
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It's told to us right there, a song of ascents of David. And he starts out the gate with enthusiasm about the song that he's written.
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Enthusiasm right away. He starts with this word, behold. Now, behold is a word that isn't always translated.
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Sometimes it's actually translated just by an exclamation point. Like some of the, if you're reading out of the NIV, I don't think it starts with the word behold.
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A couple of the different translations don't begin with that word, because they're like, that point, the point of that word is to put an exclamation point at the end.
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I like it that it's kept in the ESV. What I like to translate it as in its vernacular is, check this out.
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That's what David wants to say to us right away. Check this out, you guys. Get a hold of this. Grasp this.
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And some, again, leave it out. But I think it, I love it that it's in there. It's kept to show how excited
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David is to bring you and I along in some discovery, something that he's found. That's a relational excitement that's being expressed in this opening word.
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Behold, he says to you and me. Behold, see the things that I have seen. I want to bring you along in this.
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How many of you have had an enthusiastic, exciting thing that you wanted to share with somebody? You were really quick to go out and find somebody to share it with.
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It's like watching a sunset with nobody there to share it with. You want to find somebody to just share it with.
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You wouldn't believe this. You take a picture of it and post it on Facebook so you can share it with others, right?
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That's what Facebook is all about. It's this concept of check this out. A lot of times it's selfies and junk like that.
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But you know what I'm getting at. So David says behold. He wants to show us.
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He wants to share with us. And my hope is to preserve some of that excitement for us this morning in the text.
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As I've chewed on this text this week, I found it to be encouragement for my soul. I hope it is for yours as well. And what could easily come off as bullet points about the concept of unity has crazy significant application for our homes, for our workplaces, and most importantly for our church.
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David discovered, I'm going to say seven things about unity that he wants to pass along to all of us found in just these three short verses.
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But he uses picturesque language. He uses poetry and song to show us word pictures of unity.
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And I'm going to reduce it to a list, but it's not just merely a list. When we unpack this, I hope the power of the images get put back into this list as we go.
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Seven things. Those of you who are note takers, I'm going to say the list and then we're going to walk through it, and you'll be able to catch up and put them in the right place.
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But we're going to be looking at unity is good and pleasant. That's first. Second, unity is valuable.
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Third, unity flows down from God. Fourth, unity spreads out.
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Five, unity is life -giving. Six, unity is a surprise.
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And seven, unity is ultimately found through eternal life.
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What David is most excited about is unity amongst brothers. Notice he says that right away in our text.
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Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.
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It's important that he clarifies that. It's a pretty central point of understanding here to understand the nature of the word brothers here.
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What is he talking about? Unity and love among biological brothers is often commanded in the
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Old Testament that we ought to love our biological siblings, okay? How many of you knew that that was a command?
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That you should love your brothers? Okay, did you know that? And how many of you know that that's a challenge? Particular ages, particular phases.
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Those of you raising some kids might know what I'm talking about here. Sometimes there's not a lot of love between siblings.
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Sometimes it's great. Sometimes it's fun. And sometimes it's not so much. But it's a challenge.
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But the location of this psalm leads me to believe that what David wants us to focus in on is much more than just a biological relationship.
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He's going beyond the understanding of just love your biological brother and that's it.
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But in the context, remember this is a pilgrim song. This is about the masses coming into Jerusalem.
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The masses who would call each other brother and sister in the context of a covenanted relationship with God.
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Therefore, we are brothers and sisters in a similar way. So he is saying it is a great thing when brothers dwell together in unity within the covenant relationship of God.
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He is, I hope, as clear to you as it is to me that he's speaking so much more than just the family unit.
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He's talking about the covenanted together people of God who are in love with him and love each other.
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And it's a great thing when we dwell together in unity. It's important that David qualifies that unity as a unity among brothers.
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Because for him to just say unity is good and pleasant would not be true.
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That would not be accurate. Hear me out. To just strictly say, carte blanche, all unity is good.
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Is that true? We know that that's not the case. As a matter of fact, the scripture bears up that not all unity is good.
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There is an actual bad unity that can be had among humans. The Tower of Babel is a historical account of human unity against God, right?
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Isn't that the gist of that story? Humans, God says, go spread out and so they unify. He says, go and spread out and cover the face of the earth so they all join together in one huge building project to build a city against God, ultimately.
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And to say, we will achieve great things and God knows we'll achieve great things if we're together. So he told us to spread out so we're gonna be together.
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And so they were all unified together against God. Think about another unity. The crowds in Jerusalem on that one day where they all in unison, in unity of voice, shouted, crucify him.
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A bad unity? A bad unity. And anybody who's ever experienced peer pressure?
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Anybody here? Little bit? Oh yeah, that's just a teenage thing, right?
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That's just the teens. Only the teens experience peer pressure. No, we all know that we've experienced that even as adults.
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That pull towards conformity, that pull towards doing what everybody else is doing. And that, in essence, is also often, often a bad unity.
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And I wanna point out also, before we go through these seven things, that there is unity and then there is conformity.
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Unity on one hand, that this text is gonna talk about, and conformity on the other. And I wanna be careful to point out as we go through this list of seven glorious truths about unity that we are not speaking about conformity.
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Conformity, in essence, is artificial, fake, pseudo unity.
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Conformity is fake unity. Conformity is either trying to look like everyone else or trying to get everyone else to look like you.
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Or trying to get everyone else to look like a certain pattern or form. When we think about this in terms of human culture, we can think about the evils of, you know, you think about conformity, you can think of the evils of high bangs, spandex and mullets during the 80s.
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A sense of conformity, ew. But when we think in terms of,
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I mean, we can think of all kinds of cultural fads that have been predominantly moved out because of conformity.
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You know, one person who's cool does it and then everybody does it and then it's conformity. Everybody acting in the same way.
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But when we think in terms of spiritual conformity, the stakes get dangerously high.
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Now, mullets aren't dangerous, right? Spandex, eh, I don't know. But, um, but you know what
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I'm getting at. I mean, it starts to get dangerous when we start talking about spiritual conformity and here's why.
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If our unity here this morning, if the reason that we consider ourselves together this morning is primarily that the church is trying to get you to act a certain way, if that's the extent of our unity, or you, if we think of it in terms of you trying to act a certain way to fit in, if that's what unity is amongst us, then we have a problem.
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Because unity is a gift from God, according to this text. Unity is a grace.
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Unity is a blessing we receive, not something we produce. Conformity, conformity is something we try to produce.
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Conformity is a task. Conformity is work. Conformity, even a step further, is a task master.
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That you must work to conform, work to look like everybody else. Pick out the person that you think is the most spiritual in the room and then try to act like them.
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Right? That's conformity. Or have some notion in your mind of what you think a
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Christian is and then go out and act like that. Without any heart change, without any transformation, without anything coming down from God in you, but instead just trying to make it happen,
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Captain. You know what I'm talking about? Conformity on the one hand versus unity on the other.
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And so it's important to get that out. And what we're talking about here in this text is unity. And it is a unique thing.
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I think that, I hope by the end of this, that you see unity in a different light like I have studying this.
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Unity has often, in my mind, been something that we manufacture. It's been something, in my mind, that we manufacture by being kind to each other.
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We manufacture by doing nice things for each other. Or we have some kind of control over the unity of our church.
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And we don't. Unity is already here in our midst. Unity is a place in which we dwell at the foot of the cross together.
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It is a gift from God that already exists between you. Look around. Go ahead and I want you to, I want to take a minute and just look around at each other for a minute.
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Let's just look around. Look around at the people around you. You have unity together. You have unity because you are here.
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And if you have Jesus Christ with you, then you have unity. It's already here.
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And first of all, David identifies right away in the text that unity is good and pleasant.
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Good and pleasant. The reason this isn't one and two, you know, first one is good and second is pleasant, is that these are put together in the text, in the
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Hebrew text, in a way that couples them together for emphasis. They're basically the same notion stated twice.
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Like saying unity is goodly pleasant or pleasantly good. By the way, this word good is not an ethical statement as if it is good versus bad or good versus evil.
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It's good experientially is what David is saying. That's the nature of the word good here. That's the nature of the word pleasant.
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It's about experience of life. A lot of times we think in terms of very callous and rote categories of ethics.
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This is good. This is bad. But he's saying this is gonna cause a pleasant, a more pleasant life for you if you dwell together in unity.
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Unity is a good and pleasant thing. It brings about blessing in our lives when we dwell together in unity.
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But consider why would David even need to say this? How many of you could have said that before I mentioned it this morning?
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Unity is a good thing. Could you have said that? Raise your hand if you might have already had that notion before you walked in here. About six of us, six to 10, okay.
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I think most of us probably had some kind of a notion that unity is a relatively good thing, especially in a church.
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Hands go up more. Unity in a church a good thing? Okay, all right, more, 20. Of course, we know that it is more pleasant to be unified and at peace with others.
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Of course, we know that. But David, remember, is acting like he struck gold here. Behold, check this out, you guys.
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You guys aren't gonna believe this, he says at the beginning. Behold, I mean, oh my goodness, I found this.
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Hey, everybody, it's like David says, hey, everybody, gather around for a minute. Everybody, listen up, okay.
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Listen carefully. I'm gonna share with you the shining, bright nugget of wisdom that God has revealed to me.
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Are you ready for it? Here it comes. Unity is pleasant.
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Unity is pleasant. I'm gonna do something weird this morning, do something different. We're gonna say that together.
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And I'm gonna ask this group, you're the unity group. You're gonna say the word unity when we do this together. You're unity, not a small role, you guys.
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Yeah, small word, but not a small role, is. And over here, wow, there's more people over here.
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This is the pleasant group. And then you guys up there, you just chime in wherever. You can say the whole thing if you want up there.
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We're gonna say unity is pleasant. Okay, ready? One, two, three.
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Unity is pleasant. Let's do it again. Unity is pleasant.
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All right, excellent. Do you believe it? Do you live like it?
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Is it something that if I were to follow you throughout the day, or God does, does he believe that you believe that?
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The way that you treat and walk with others throughout your day. Unity is pleasant.
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But David needs to say it. He has to express it. And he has found it to be true in his life in such a way that he sees it as a nugget of wisdom that all of us need to take on for ourselves.
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Because he knows that every time we gossip, every time we slander, every time we put someone else down to make ourselves look better, we are in essence saying unity is dumb.
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Unity doesn't matter. And how often does our behavior reflect that?
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Versus David's straightforward statement, unity is good. Unity is pleasant. Now I mentioned that we don't create unity, but I think we can get in the way of it.
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We don't create it. It's already here. But we can crumble it. We can crush it.
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We can destroy it by the way that we act and treat each other. We need to be reminded that unity is pleasant.
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What makes for a more pleasant life? More unity. Being together with God's people.
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And at this point I'm tempted to give you a long list of things to do to make unity stronger in your life.
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But that isn't the direction that David wants us to go. That isn't the direction that under the revelation of the, under the inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit, that isn't the direction that David went with the text. So let's follow David instead of Don. And instead of launching into a list of 10 ways to increase unity in your life, let's go and see more images, more pictures, more definition, more salt on the tip of our tongue, desiring and hungering after unity.
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In verses 2 through 3, David gives us a couple of similes that are chock full of descriptions of unity.
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The first is the anointing of Aaron the high priest. You all know about that. I probably don't have to get into that in detail, right?
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Aaron, the brother of Moses, stood as the first high priest over Israel way back in the book of Exodus.
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And he was kind of the archetype of the entire priesthood. So often throughout Israel's history, a mention of Aaron is meant to evoke just images of the priesthood in general.
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So a reference here in this psalm during the times of David, David never met Aaron. They were separated by hundreds of years.
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He never met him. He wasn't there present when Aaron was anointed. But he's talking in some proverbial sense about the anointing of the priesthood and the inception of the entire priestly line.
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And David uses specifically the oil that was used on that very first priest's head as a symbol of the authority and the call of God as ultimately a simile, a metaphor for the unity of God's people.
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So the second observation comes from that simile about unity, and it is that it is precious.
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Like the oil that was used for the anointing of Aaron, unity is precious.
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It's valuable. It is a treasure that should not be squandered or taken for granted. The same could be said for unity that is said for love.
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You don't know what you've got until it's gone. We have unity.
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It's here. It's present. When you experience unity, when you experience fellowship, when you experience close community among believers, rejoice and thank the
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Lord, you have experienced a precious, valuable commodity. The third thing, unity comes from God.
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Unity doesn't come from us just being nice to each other. Unity doesn't just come from us being friends.
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Notice the terminology in the similes. The oil keeps running down. The dew of Mount Hermon falls down on Mount Zion, and the
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Lord there is commanding his blessings. Counter to what most of us think, we do not create unity.
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I would suggest to you that the best we can create, and in a real sense, on this planet, among humans, is uniformity or some sense of conformity.
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But that is never a great, long -lasting thing. Right now, the country of North Korea looks like a model of unity.
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And that model of unity is ultimately conformity. That has been created by years of abuse, torture, and mandatory conformity.
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See what I mean? What does it look like when we demand that people are unified?
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It gets ugly real fast, doesn't it? Some of you have been in churches where that's been the case, where there's been a demand for unity.
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And as extreme as North Korea might be as an example, I want to encourage all of us to be wary of any spiritual leadership that demands uniformity or conformity.
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My heart's desire is that we would allow room at Recast for the spirit of God to flow down and convict us where we need to change.
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I long for a God -given, Christ -centered, spirit -filled unity to be the reality of our fellowship here at Recast.
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And that cannot be achieved by me standing up here and giving you approved movies lists, or approved songs, or approved places to eat, or whatever.
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You know, a whole host of different things that I could tell you you must do, and that's producing conformity.
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That's not my job. My job isn't to tell you what movies to watch and which ones not to, but it's to give you the tools to discern.
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It's to give you the reality from the word of God that hopefully by his spirit and conjunction with the word, you draw some lines.
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I hope you have some lines. I hope you have some convictions. And I hope they're not very far from where mine are. That doesn't mean they have to be the same as mine.
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Unity is a gift from God. And I believe that we can and often do inhibit it. We do often get in the way.
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We can stifle it through sins of unforgiveness, through gossip, through slander, malice, envy, strife, quarrels.
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But in those cases, we are rejecting the gift of unity that God is offering to us, has already given to us.
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We are exchanging the pleasant and the good for the stressful and bad, and we do so. From time to time.
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But the fact that we can interfere with unity doesn't mean that we can manufacture it. If we think it's up to us to manufacture unity, we will come up with all kinds of worthless programs to attempt to get people to just merely like each other, right?
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Is that the point of our ministry? Our small group program isn't about getting people to just merely be friends.
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We hope you're friendly to each other. Like that's a great place to begin. But I hope that that's pretty common,
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I hope beyond the walls of this church, you're fairly friendly. If you're kind to people and nice and smile once in a while, even if they're not a believer, right?
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Man, that would be rough if that's not happening. Unity is not just about producing friendships here at church.
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Our small group program isn't just about giving you a friend, friend or two. Man, I just want a friend in the church, so I'm going to join a small group so I can have some friends.
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It's about providing opportunities for us as God's covenant people to come together each week to share in the common unity that God has granted to us, has already given to us through Jesus Christ.
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Not to create the unity, but to experience the unity that is already there. And let me just suggest to you that sometimes that unity looks like some difficult relationships.
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Sometimes I think unity is most glorified when you don't agree. Are you getting what I'm saying by that? Sometimes when you can be unified in the cause of Christ and you don't necessarily see eye to eye, but you still love each other.
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Do you get what I'm saying in that? That's a glorious and a beautiful gift from God that two people with different opinions can still love each other, be kind towards each other, still bring a meal when the other person is down or frustrated or going through hard times, or still celebrate when the other person succeeds.
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Why? Because we have this common ground at the foot of the cross where we recognize that we're messed up, they're messed up, and we come together in Jesus Christ.
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And as Rob mentioned last week, the real cool thing about unity is unity in Christ.
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That's the place where we all come together. That's the thing that unifies us all most, unity in Christ.
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Number four, that leads to the fourth conclusion about unity. Unity comes down from God, but unity spreads.
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Like the oil flowing down from the crown of Aaron's head, it runs down on his beard.
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Sounds like a messy thing. Anybody else kind of just like, kind of a little screamish about this, like getting oil in your hair? Does that sound like,
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I'm thinking how long do you have to wash your hair to get oil out of it? Like that's, that's what, there's where my mind goes.
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And then I'm thinking about getting in my beard and running down out of my collar. So that doesn't, but it flows down from the crown of his head, down to his beard, and then overflows over to his collar even.
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The simile is one of spreading and flowing. Unity among people, the people of God overflows in abundance.
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When we love one another, when we are considering others more important than ourselves, when we are taming our tongue, when we are speaking the truth in love, when we are following the steps that Jesus laid out for us in Matthew 18 for restoration and reconciliation, the firm love that we have for others grows and it increases and continues to flow outward to others.
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It's a beautiful reality. Unity is contagious. Isn't it good to know that peer pressure doesn't only work in the negative?
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Have any of you ever experienced peer pressure in the positive? My man, some of you look confused.
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Where you were going to go do something bad and somebody talked you out of it. I hope you've had that. Or maybe you were the one.
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You were the one, I know, you were the one coaxing the other person. But you've seen it in action because you're always getting people to do right, right?
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But it doesn't always work negatively. The adage that one bad apple spoils the bunch is not the image of the church.
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That is not the simile given. That is not the metaphor given in the text. The simile for the church is the precious grace -filled oil of blessing dumped on the head that falls down on all of us.
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Whether you find yourself being like a leftover morsel stuck in Aaron's beard or the flake of dandruff on his collar, the oil flows down to even you.
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Wherever we find ourselves in this image, the precious oil of unity flows over all of God's people, dousing us with a
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Christ -honoring unity. Bringing us all together. Fifth thing, unity is life -giving.
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Unity is life -giving. Unity is likened to the heavy dew that often fell on the slopes of Israel's highest peak.
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The highest peak in Israel is in the far northwest, Mount Hermon. And it's about 9 ,000 feet.
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And it's made for unusually fertile swaths around the base of Mount Hermon in the midst of what would otherwise be barren areas because it collects moisture from the upper atmosphere and then brings those down in rivers and streams down to the base.
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There's a fairly rich area right around the base of Mount Hermon. Unity brings that kind of life to what would otherwise not be an area of growth.
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Together in unity, we're able to use our gifts and abilities to serve others. In unity with others in the church, we are able to learn to trust and to be trusted.
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In unity, we discover that life isn't all about us. And when others mourn, we mourn with them.
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When others celebrate, we celebrate with them. In unity, we find a common purpose and goal of sharing the glorious good news that forgiveness and hope are available through the name of Jesus Christ.
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It's one of the beautiful things that our unity here in this room centers around one location, one central place, the foot of the cross.
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All of us who are in Christ have that one location in common. We have come to the foot of the cross.
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If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you are saved and you are bound for that eternal kingdom and for the city of God and the city of glory, and that is your destination, then
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I know one place you've been. You've been to the cross. And we together, having been to that location, can spur one another on to share that place with others, calling others in our community, calling others in our world to that location, to that place of humility and salvation and glory.
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Having that place in common is a glorious and beautiful thing. In an otherwise very lonely world, we come to a
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God -given unity where we realize that we are not so alone.
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We come to a God -given unity where we realize that it is not about, only about us.
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Just last week, I visited a friend's church over in Detroit. You know, obviously, I'm here most weekends, so I don't get a chance to travel around and hear my friends from seminary and from Bible college preach very often.
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And a friend of mine, three years ago, picked up a church over in the Detroit area. I've been wanting to get over and hear him.
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And last week, I got the privilege to go hear my friend preach. He's actually been here a long time ago, Ben Glupker. Some of you might remember him, but he came and preached in my absence one time.
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But I went there. The only people in the entire room I knew was him, his wife, and his four children.
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Those are the only people that I knew in that entire church. And yet, there was a awesome and glorious sense of unity that I had with those people.
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I'd never met them. I didn't know any of their names. But when we worshiped together, there was a sense of unity there that put me in common, in common bonds with them in a way that there are people that have been in my life for decades that I don't have that kind of unity.
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You getting what I'm saying? There's an instantaneous bond of unity together.
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We worship the same Lord. We have the same King. We're part of the same kingdom with the same cause and the same goals and the same affections and the same directions and the same principles and the same driving core value of love.
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A selfless love that's modeled by the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ. My challenge is just to take just a moment for you to think.
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Where do you find the most unity in your life? Where do you experience the most unity?
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It's a challenge. Some of us, if we are honest, we're sitting here and we're just subtly too cool for church.
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Just a little bit too cool. You know what I'm talking about? I think there's an attitude in our culture that is like the hipster culture and all of that kind of stuff.
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How many of you know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about hipster culture? You know what I'm talking about? There's a, there's a four. Okay, maybe
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I'm a little out. There's a, there's a sense in which it's like it's not, you know, church is, church is okay.
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It's starting to try to be more cool. But really, you know, I've got my group of friends out there or really where I find like the people that I have the best taste are out there.
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People that I, you know, just kind of connect with my people are there. Should it be that way?
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Is anybody in this room too cool for the others around you? I thought we came through the cross.
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I thought we came through that place where we all fell on our faces and recognized we got nothing to bring to this.
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We're zeroed out when we started this journey. That's the only way you can start the journey.
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Zeroing out at the cross and say I got nothing. I'm starting from square one. All I have is the spirit of God to guide me and he has graciously led us together to help.
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We didn't start with this, but he graciously brought us in. That we might share our gifts with others and others might share their gifts with us.
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Challenge you to think about where do you experience the most unity in your life? Because as I said, fifth, unity is life -giving.
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Sixth, unity is a surprise. You probably don't see it when you first read the text, but there's something that's confusing that starts to draw this out.
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That's in verse three. It says, unity, it is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.
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Now, without a little bit of a geography lesson, you'd be a little bit like, okay, that sounds great. Like apparently maybe
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Mount Hermon is one of the mountains of Zion or something, but it's not. It's removed by about 60 to 70 miles to the,
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Zion is about 60 to 70 miles southeast of Mount Hermon. How many of you think it would be pretty rare for the dew of Mount Hermon to fall on Zion 70 miles away?
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Is that how dew works? No. The answer is no.
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So, so something else, that's where the surprise comes in. It's the dew, like the dew of Mount Hermon, falling on the parched area of Mount Zion.
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Mount Zion is a fairly parched area. It's right on the edge of the Judean wilderness going out into nothingness, desert and craggy hills and dangerous places.
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The place where Satan led Jesus out into the wilderness to tempt him. That kind of wilderness.
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When we use the word wilderness in scripture, I hope you recognize, we're talking about barren nothingness with rocks and desert, not wilderness like the
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UP, okay? When we talk about wilderness in Old Testament and New Testament, it's a different kind of wilderness.
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What we're saying, David is saying, unity is like the rain of Seattle falling in Southern California.
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That's what he says. It's like the rain of Seattle. How many of you think some people in South, in South California might like the rains of Seattle right now?
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You see what's going on out there? Parched and running out of water in cities.
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Rationing water and he says, unity is like when, when abundant water falls where you didn't expect it.
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I've often said, again, you can feel free to look around, look around the room and it's a funny thing, but we're a ragtag collection of people.
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We really are. We're, we're blue collar, white collar, working mom, stay at home mom, homeschooling, public schooling, dropped out of schooling, mixed of, mixed up mix of people.
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What, what could possibly bring us all together? I imagine a sociologist coming in and doing a demographic study of our church and going, what?
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What? I mean, let's, let's, let's get down to the brass tacks. We have
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Ohio State fans here. We have Nebraska fans here. We have University of Michigan fans here.
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We have Michigan State fans all in the same room worshiping
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God. Joking aside, unity is a surprise, a glorious and beautiful surprise.
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Like David started by saying, check this out. He was excited about it, enthusiastic about it.
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Unity is pleasant, he says. And he is saying here at the end, it is found in unexpected places.
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It is life bringing, do falling where you didn't expect it to be. And lastly, number seven, unity is found ultimately through eternal life.
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As much as I was tempted multiple times in the writing of this message, divert off into 10 ways to maintain unity or seven things you can do to strengthen unity.
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I kept coming back to the text and realizing that what I believe David has wanted to communicate to us, he wants our hearts to take a break from striving and rejoice in the glorious, beautiful, awesome gift of unity that is right here, right now.
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He has bestowed it on his children. He has given it as a grace to us. I've already mentioned we cannot create unity, but only conformity.
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And so what can we do? What do we do if you answer that question that I asked earlier that I really don't,
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Don, I'm just being honest. I really don't feel a sense of unity. I don't experience unity among believers.
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Well, the end of verse three draws our attention to the place of Zion for a good intention, because David is going to suggest that I believe we come back to the cross.
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If you're sitting here today and you're saying, I don't experience unity. I don't feel unity. I mean, check it out and try to mine down deeper.
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I'd love to sit down and talk with any of you who find yourself there. And maybe, maybe there's a reason. Maybe there's a specific issue that's between you and another person that you're, that you're not really identifying that you need to make right or you need to reconcile or restore or something.
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Maybe there's some specific thing. Maybe there is a too cool for school kind of attitude that you've been espousing in your heart towards others.
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You look around. I think that's one of the things that Satan desires most is for you to look around and, and spurn others around you.
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In the screw tape letters, that's actually, how many of you know what I'm talking about when I say screw tape letters? C .S. Lewis wrote a book from written from the perspective of one demon to another trying to train him.
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And one of the things he tries to get his protege to do is to have his human who he's assigned to look around the church and make fun of them.
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Oh, look at what they're wearing today. Look at them. Oh, they're a big goofballer. Look at that. Look at that. I mean, they're not even intelligent.
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They're this, they're that, whatever. And that is one of the strategies,
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I believe, of Satan to try to attempt to get us to think that we're too cool for this unity that he has brought us into.
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We don't create this unity, but we come through the cross. The end of verse three,
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I said, draws our attention to the place of Zion, the place of the ultimate blessings of God, where he has ordained, where he has commanded, where he has appointed, where he has commissioned eternal life.
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The hills of Zion, the mountains of Zion are significant to your life and to mine. I don't think it's a stretch to mention that it was one of those very hills of Zion called the hill of the skull that sin was finally dealt with by the
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Son of God. That is the location where he dealt with sin once and for all.
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Just a little way off from the the central hill of Zion where the temple stood, just outside of the city walls,
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Jesus Christ earned eternal life by his death in the same area. And he rose again, securing eternal life for all who believe.
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The cross is the primary place of our unity. At that place, we recognize our own sin.
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We recognize God's great and immense love for us. And all who come to that place in humility and ask him to forgive them are brought together into this unity, a
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God -given unity. And so I would suggest to you that we often lack unity with our brothers and sisters in Christ experientially because we've strayed away from the cross, because we've let it fall out of our memory, or we've let it fade in its importance.
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We've wandered away into self -importance or the flip side, self -loathing. Notice both start with self, either thinking too much poor thoughts of yourself or thinking too highly of yourself, but both are self -oriented problems.
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There's all kinds of self -oriented stances that can remove our attention from the cross. And our tendency to wander away from the cross is one of the primary reasons we take communion each week at Recast.
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We do this each week not to make it a ritual, not to make it just something that we do at the end or not because we're hungry and, you know, lunch is a little ways off or whatever, but it's a weekly reminder that we need grace to stay in unity with God and in unity with others.
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We come to the table, we come to remember that God has called us to unity with him and to unity with others through Jesus Christ.
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He's not called us to conformity, to act apart, but to an inward transformation of our hearts.
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And if you're here and you have no love for others, just be a flat -out honest, I really, I really don't care.
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I came, I came for the show or I just came to sing some songs or I came because my mom told me
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I had to or I came here because, you know, it's just the right, I was raised to go to church so I figured
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I had to find some place to go. You really don't have love for others. Maybe you're here and you find an all -consuming self -oriented focus.
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I would ask you specifically to skip communion and come and find me and talk with me afterwards.
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Take a bold step. Come and let me know and we can talk through this. But if you're here and you recognize a
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God -given love in your heart for others, particularly others in the church that flows from the cross of Jesus Christ, then please come to one of the tables and remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for your sins.
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As he commanded, we take the juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. We take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us.
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Notice the word us. Blood shed for us, body broken for us.
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I encourage you to only come to the table if you come in full recognition that you are a sinner in need of a savior.
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God has brought us together, Recast. He's building his church, brought us together as Recast Church.
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Rejoice in the unity that he has provided for us. Refuse to get in the way of that unity. And can't really state it in the positive.
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I have to state it in the negative here at the conclusion. I want to tell you a bunch of great things to do, but I think that's just acting like we can make unity and instead just don't get in the way.
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Refuse gossip, refuse slander, refuse malice and envy and dissension and quarrels and factions.
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Somebody's offended, you go to them. You've offended somebody else and you recognize it and then go to them.
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Make it right. Make it right as soon as you can. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the unity that you have given us here in this room.
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I thank you just for even the sense of love and connection that flows from the foot of the cross.
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Father, we have received so much love and so much forgiveness and then we have an opportunity to extend that same love.
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And that same measure of forgiveness to others that has been given to us. Father, I pray that you would help us.
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And where there is disunity in this body, where there is a sense of us letting ourselves get in the way or sins get in the way or whatever it might be,
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Father, that you would allow reconciliation to happen as a result of this message. But Father, that you would help us to rejoice in this glorious and beautiful reality that you have purchased unity for us at the cross.
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Father, it's not something that we have to make or manufacture. We don't have to be a unity factory here. But instead, we are recipients.
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We are receptacle of your unity that you have given to us. And Father, I pray that that would be a reality here in our midst that we would tap into loving one another, putting others in front of ourselves,
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Father, and ultimately experiencing the pleasant and good life that you desire for this church. In Jesus' name.