Main Point – God pours out unity for holiness and for eternal life

Have you ever met a family that actually liked each other? It’s a funny question to ask, but you know what I mean. There are some families that just really enjoy being around one another. Even after the kids are grown and they leave the house, everyone just loves getting back together for meals, for games, for vacations. They just genuinely enjoy each other. It almost seems surprising when you see it.

That’s because it’s becoming increasingly rare. Many families today have functional relationships. I need you here to help with chores or to feed me or we both just need a roof over our heads. But we don’t necessarily get excited about being together. A family that is united stands out. It’s a gift. Unity is an unusual blessing that not everyone gets to experience.

In our psalm this morning, God pours out unity on his people as a gift for them. It makes them unique among people. It makes them holy. And we’ll see that it isn’t only for some of the really good Christians that he gives unity, but it’s actually for everyone who has received eternal life.

Main Point – God pours out unity for holiness and for eternal life

Prayer

Psalm 133 is another short psalm, but it is clearly about unity. The concept of unity is introduced in the first verse then two metaphors are given for it

Point #1 – Unity is the fragrance of holiness (vs. 2)

READ VS 2

his is a really odd metaphor for us today. I’m sure upon first reading it most of us are thinking, “Ew”. A guy with an oily head, an oily beard, and oil covered clothes isn’t exactly an attractive image to most of us. The initial feeling is “If unity is like that, then no thanks!” But let me explain what’s happening here and why this is beautiful.

The Aaron referred to here is Aaron the brother of Moses. Aaron was set apart by God as the very first High Priest for the nation of Israel. He is going to be the one who acts as a mediator between God and man. That’s what priests do. But before he takes up this new role, Aaron has to be consecrated or ordained. They have a ceremony in which he is designated as the High Priest by God. Part of that ceremony involved mixing a very specific oil to be poured out. Here’s how it’s described in Exodus:

“The Lord said to Moses, “Take the finest spices… myrrh… cinnamon… aromatic cane… cassia.. olive oil. And you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer… You shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, that they may serve me as priests.  And you shall say to the people of Israel, ‘This shall be my holy anointing oil throughout your generations. It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person, and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy, and it shall be holy to you.” - Exodus 30:22-32

God asks them to create this complete unique blend of sweet-smelling spices that would have been extremely expensive. Cinnamon wasn’t something they could just walk down to the market and grab. None of them were. These were exotic spices that came from exotic places and therefore were very valuable. And they are only allowed to be used for one thing. This oil was for anointing priests only. It was not allowed to be used for any other purpose. If we would have kept reading in Exodus we would have seen that anyone who made their own or used it for anything else would be cut off from all of the people.

God wanted them to know that this oil was set aside for one thing. This oil was holy. Because this oil signified the people that God had chosen to represent him. This oil was the stamp of God’s approval that was only for those set aside for him.

Which means this oil produces a fragrance that you can only find in one place. And that place is on the head of the priests who have been set apart for service to God, those men who have been set apart as holy. It’s literally the fragrance of holiness. If this smell is in the air, it means that God’s people are doing God’s business. And our psalm tells us that this unique scent is exactly what unity is like. Unity is the unmistakable fragrance of Holiness. Or to put it another way, when you smell the fragrance of unity, you’re smelling the fragrance of God’s presence.

Now anointing isn’t something that we do anymore. I don’t suspect anyone in this room has experienced a literal anointing for anything ever. But I want you to consider this. We call Jesus the Christ and we call Jesus the Messiah. Both of those words mean the same thing. They both mean the anointed one. Because Jesus Christ was set apart as holy by God to accomplish God’s work, namely dying on the cross for our sins. Now we, as followers of Jesus, are called Christians. We are each little anointed ones. It’s right there in our name.

And as anointed ones, set apart as holy by God, we have a unique fragrance. We have the fragrance of unity. So that just as a traveler could walk into the temple area and smell the holiness and smell the presence of God through the oil, a traveler can enter  a gathering of Christians and smell the holiness and smell the presence of God through our unity.

Well that’s all well and good that unity is the fragrance of holiness, but what if we don’t have it. How are we supposed to get it? Our next verse helps us here.

Point #2 –  Unity is the fruit of eternal life (vs. 3)

READ VS. 3

We’re going to have to look closely at the words here to draw out what’s happening in this verse. First, I’ll explain that Mount Hermon is in the northern most part of Israel and is the highest mountain in the whole nation. It sits at about 9,000 feet above sea level and is often covered in snow. It naturally accumulates lots of moisture which makes its way down the mountain into springs that would feed the Jordan River which makes its way down south to the areas near Jerusalem. And this psalm says, unity is kind of like that. It’s like dew that comes from the highest mountains and makes its way to Mount Zion.

Why dew? If you live in a desert climate that isn’t receiving active rainfall for several months, the dew is extremely refreshing. The dew is what keeps everything alive. The people depend on the dew. And in a certain sense dew is almost magical.

Last year I was still living in Phoenix which as you may know is located in an extremely dry desert. And I remember one day trying to explain to a young guy who had lived in Phoenix his whole life what dew was. And he was just flabbergasted, “So it doesn’t rain or anything and the water just appears on the grass out of nowhere!?” “Yes, it does basically come out of nowhere.”

So the image of unity as a refreshing, life-giving, and almost magical dew is appropriate. As that feeling of being united with others can provide that same refreshment. But our verse here isn’t focused on the image of the dew as much as it’s focused on where the unity arrives and why it arrives there. The dew is falling on Mount Zion and why is it falling on Mount Zion? Because there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Unity has to arrive at Mount Zion because that’s the place that God promised life forevermore or as we might say that’s where he promised eternal life. What does that mean that God promised eternal life on Mount Zion? Mount Zion as you know is where Jerusalem is built and inside Jerusalem is where the temple was built. The temple was the place where God would meet with his people. God is the one who provides eternal life. Thus Mount Zion is the place of eternal life and therefore unity must arrive there.

Now I’m sure the connection between unity and eternal life isn’t very apparent to most of us. I know it wasn’t to me and I had to do some wrestling to sort out how they were connected. But consider what the biblical story is about. The Bible is a book about how to obtain eternal life. Sin has caused our hearts to be dead and the Bible tells us how we can be made alive and made alive forever.

But here’s the crucial thing that the Bible declares to us. You cannot experience life forevermore unless you are reunited with God. Man and God were perfectly united in the Garden of Eden, but when sin and death showed up that unity was broken. Now unless that relationship is reconciled, we cannot have eternal life. You can’t find eternal life without coming back to God. Listen to how Jesus phrases it when he’s talking to the Pharisees,

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,  yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” - John 5:39-40

Jesus says, “You can’t have life unless you come to me, unless you’re reunited with me.” The pursuit of eternal life is the pursuit of reconciliation with God and restoration of a unity that was lost. That’s why our psalm is able to say, “Of course unity has come to Mount Zion, because that’s where eternal life is. That’s where God and his people meet one another. Eternal life and unity with God always go hand-in-hand.”

But if you’re a critical thinker, and I know that you are, you might say to yourself, but Shane, this isn’t a psalm about our unity with God, this is about brothers unity with one another.

Yes, exactly, I’m glad you brought that up. Because when most people read this psalm they immediately think “How can we be more united with one another?” And instead of focusing vertically on unity with God, the focus becomes horizontal on unity with one another. And it comes out as “Can’t we all just get along?” This is the type of unity that the world seeks. Unity, not for a greater purpose, but just unity for the sake of unity. This is a “live and let live” type of unity. You do your thing and I’ll do mine and we’ll only ever interact by smiling.

Have you ever seen those “Coexist” bumper stickers? If you haven’t they were popular for some time, and they spell out the word “Coexist” by using religious symbols from all of the different world religions. They have the Islamic crescent, the star of David, the Christian cross and others. And the idea is, we should all be able to just get along. But these bumper stickers kill me. Because what they’re saying is “Don’t have any convictions at all. Don’t live your life in a way that is consistent with your beliefs. Treat everybody as if we’re all equally right and as if no one really knows what is true.”

This isn’t a call for unity around a common goal or purpose. This is unity around the absence of any sort of truth or conviction. This is a unity based on denial and ignorance. And it’s an incredibly flimsy unity. Because the moment anyone starts believing anything is true, they’re at odds with everyone else who wants to keep their head in the sand. That’s what unity for the sake of unity looks like.

So when the Bible calls us to unity with our brothers and sisters, it isn’t calling us to find this unity by looking horizontally at one another and saying “Can’t we all just get along.” Let’s look at one of the most famous passages on unity in the New Testament, John 17. Here we have Jesus praying to the Father on the night before he is crucified. And he prays that those who believe in him would be united.

“[I pray] that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us…” - John 17:21

Jesus wants all of his followers to be one. And I’ve heard this passage taught, “Hey everyone in the church, we have to be united. We have to love one another and be nicer to one another and get over our differences.” And they leave it at that. As if by sheer willpower, we’ll be able to look at the person across the aisle whom we can’t stand and suddenly we’ll feel unity with them.

But that’s not what this verse says. Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me, and I want all my people to be united by coming to be in us.” Their goal isn’t to aim to be closer to one another. Their goal is to aim to be closer to us.”

I’ve had the opportunity to do pre-marital counseling a bunch of times and one of the illustrations that is often used in marriage material is the marriage triangle. Here God is at the top of the triangle and the husband and wife are at the bottom two corners. And as both husband and wife aim to grow a closer personal relationship with God, they move up the triangle and end up becoming closer together as well.

This is exactly what Jesus is talking about and this is the means by which true unity happens among believers. Do you want to see unity in your marriage? Do you want to see unity in your family? Do we want to see unity in this church? Then the strongest way to build that unity is for you to start personally pursuing God with all your heart. Jesus didn’t suggest that we go out and do random acts of kindness to make people get along better. That will create a short-lived and flimsy unity. He doesn’t call us to ignore the truth and simply co-exist. Again, that makes for a paper-thin unity. Jesus calls us to be in him because in that way we’ll be deeply united in a way that can never be spoiled.

So when you consider the people in this room that you may or may not be united with, when you consider the people in this room that are different from you and that frankly you don’t enjoy being around, our psalm doesn’t call us to just go give them a hug that both of you hate so we can feel as if there’s some sort of unity. Our psalm calls us to go worship Jesus Christ. Go to the place where eternal life is. Go obey his commands. Go grow in your knowledge and love for him. And you’ll find that you and everyone else who is seeking God will bump into one another at the altar. And you’ll say, “You’re here because you’ve been transformed by Jesus Christ? Me too. Let’s worship alongside one another.”

This isn’t a flimsy paper unity. This isn’t a temporary imitation of unity. These people, the Christians who are in this room with you this morning, these are the ones whom you will spend eternity with. For the next million years as your heart grows to love God more and more, you will also grow more and more united to these people. There’s no use in trying to avoid them. God’s going to bring you together.

And that brings us back to our first verse and our final point. Unity isn’t something that we accomplish on our own, but it is something that is poured out and given to us by God.

Point #3 – Unity is poured out by God (vs. 1)

READ VS 1

The psalm’s first verse here tells us something that we already know. Unity is good and pleasant. We all know it’s good. That is, that it’s morally good. Unity is one of those things that you ought to do simply because it’s right. We all know that it’s pleasant. Not only is unity something that you ought to do, but it’s something that we enjoy experiencing. It makes us happy. Unity is both our duty and it is a delight. Yet we also know that it’s so hard to come by. Everyone intuitively knows that unity is excellent and yet we can’t seem to get to it.

Notice in verse 1 it says it’s “good and pleasant when brothers dwell together in unity”. This doesn’t necessarily only mean men and it doesn’t necessarily only mean people who are blood related with the same parents. It can be a bit broader than that. But it certainly means people who have something in common that ought to unify them. We still use the term this way today. You might say of the men you served in the military with, “These are my brothers”. A football or baseball team may refer to one another as brothers. People with a particularly difficult or dangerous job such as firefighters might refer to one another as brothers. The point being, your brothers are the ones who share some sort of common origin or common struggle with you that binds you together with them.

But as I mentioned, just because we ought to be unified with certain people does not mean that we are unified with them. When the brothers are dwelling in unity it’s good and pleasant, but implied is that there are lots of times perhaps even the majority of times when they are not in unity and it’s bad and unpleasant.

If you’ve been around church life long enough, you’ve experienced this firsthand. Christians are people with a common origin and common struggle. We are called together for the same difficult and dangerous job as brothers and sisters. This ought to unify us and yet all too frequently it doesn’t. We fight over petty things. We don’t enjoy being with one another. We speak poorly of each other. Even among brothers and sisters, unity is hard to come by.

But notice the first word of this psalm, “Behold”. It means look, look around you. The psalmist says, “Look around you right now. Don’t you see how beautiful unity is?” We haven’t mentioned this in a few weeks, but the psalms we’re studying again are called the Songs of Ascent. And they’re called that because three times a year for the appointed festivals, the Jews would travel from their homes to Jerusalem and they would ascend or go up into the mountains where the city was located. These are the songs they would sing while they were ascending for the festival. So as the people are all coming together on a journey to Jerusalem, our psalm says, “Look around you right now. Do you see that unity that I’m talking about? Isn’t it beautiful?”

I suppose the most comparable experience people might have to this today is when people travel to a stadium for a big festival, a concert, or a game. Say the Razorbacks football team has made the playoffs and they’ve done so well that they get to host the game at home. As the day gets closer, everyone in the state starts to get more and more excited. You start to see red banners go up all over the place and hogs are popping up everywhere. Then on the day of the game, people start descending on the stadium. They’ve painted their cars. They’ve got flags flying out their windows. They’re dressed up in jerseys and face paint. And on the way there perhaps they stop at a gas station and they see another car loaded with people dressed the same way. What do the people in these two cars do when they see one another? Obviously they honk, they point, they cheer, they start yelling “Woo Pig Sooie” for some reason. And every step closer to the stadium the fervor builds until it reaches an absolute fever pitch inside. Even though they’ve never met, these people are brothers united around a common purpose.

And this is what the people of Israel would have felt as they came together for the festivals. As they approached Jerusalem, they were seeing other Jews journeying to the same place for the same reason. The roads were getting heavier with traffic as the numbers grew. And as they sang these songs, more and more people would be joining in. And that’s why the psalm opens with “Behold!” He’s saying, look around you at this unity. Isn’t it beautiful? Behold how good and pleasant it is.

And why have they been able to experience this blessing of unity? Because God commanded it. God commanded that they go to Jerusalem for a festival three times a year. It was a gift from God that they would get to experience this type of unity. Unity is a gift that comes down from God. We see this in the rest of our psalm. In verse 2 the oil is running down, that’s the Hebrew word for comes down. It comes down on his beard and then it comes down on his collar. In verse 3 the same exact word is used for the dew that falls. It comes down on the mountains. He’s highlighting how unity comes down from above.

I hope you recognize this. Unity is a gift poured out by God. As one commentator I read put it, “True unity, like all good gifts, is from above; bestowed rather than contrived, a blessing far more than an achievement.” If we are able to experience unity here, it’s going to be because God blessed us with the gift, not because we worked hard to earn it.

So instead of concluding today by telling each of you to strive harder for more unity, I want to tell you to look around. Do you see the gift of unity God has given us already? Do you see how his call for us to gather, not for annual festivals, but for worship every Sunday is an incredible gift? He could have commanded Christians to stay at home and worship as individuals. He could have said that the best way to give him glory would be just to sit quietly alone and reflect on him. But instead God says, I want you to gather together. I want you to celebrate me together. I want you to sing songs in unity. I want you to have meals together. I want you to sit under my word together. This gathering is a great blessing poured out onto us by God. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”

Praise God. He has surrounded you with brothers and sisters who have the same passion that you have. He has given you the gift of gathering with them and joining voices in a way that makes you both sing louder and worship deeper. When you’re experiencing the greatest delights of Jesus Christ’s love, there are people you can cheer with. When you’re experiencing the greatest difficulties and are barely holding on, there are people who can lift you up and point you back to Christ.

What we’re doing here is wholly unique. This gathering, this unity, has the unique fragrance of God to it. Being united with your brothers and sisters, reminds us that we’ve been reconciled with our Father. We no longer live lives separated from God and his people in isolation. We no longer have to pursue imitation unity where we can be friends as long as neither of us opens his mouth.

Rather Jesus Christ has reconciled each of us to God and made us one body through the cross. We are no longer strangers, but are brothers and sisters, members of the household of God.

Prayer