The Refreshing Power of Unity

Listen Online:

Watch Online:

Transcript:

I wonder if any of you have experienced what I’ve experienced, if you’ve ever been on a long car trip, especially if you have kids, what it’s like when you’re still two hours from home and they decide they don’t like each other in the backseat. Anybody else ever experienced this? My dad is back there waving both hands.

Thanks. And they’ve decided they don’t like each other and the way they’re squabbling, you’re not sure you like them either. And you’re about to make it unanimous because they’re just fighting and fussing.

And he touched me. She looked at me like, I’m just going to drive off a bridge here and put a stop to all of it. No, I would never do that.

But you’re looking for some way to get the fighting to stop because it’s bad enough when it happens and you’re at home or you’re here at church. Or you can maybe send them to another room, but you’re stuck in a little metal box heading down the highway at 70 miles an hour. You know, the stress of traffic and trying to keep it between the ditches.

And there’s World War III breaking out in your back seat. And it’s just, it’s miserable. You just want the screaming and the fighting to stop.

And usually, in my experience, usually if we’re on the road long enough, they will get tired. Or something will happen or we’ll make a pit stop somewhere and it’s like somebody hits the reset button. And for a moment, you just go, because the screaming stopped.

The fighting stopped. Now, it never stops forever. But when you get that moment of a break where they’re actually getting along and at least pretending to love each other, it’s just a great moment of relief.

And you learn to enjoy it because you don’t know how long it’s going to last or how long it’ll be until the next one comes around. It’s a great moment of relief. And God tells us in his word that he intends for us to be unified.

And it’s a relief when God’s people are unifying. You may say, well, why did God have to tell us that? Of course, we know that we’re supposed to be unified.

We’re supposed to get along. Because you’d be amazed how many churches and how many believers seem to forget that. I’ve been in some business meetings, I can tell you.

You know, I saw a friend of mine on Facebook this morning posted that she said, instead of calling them church services, we need to call them peaceful protests against sin. I like that. I think if it was real, I think Ted Cruz tweeted something about protesting Satan instead of singing, so they’d be covered in California.

And I said something about as long as the business meetings are mostly peaceful, because They keep saying the riots are mostly peaceful. And somebody said, is that even possible? It is, but I’ve seen some business meetings that would have to be classified as mostly peaceful.

Because even in church, sometimes there are people that like to fight. There are people that are just not happy unless they’re complaining. And by the way, I’m not saying this because it’s you.

I’m not telling you this because anybody here is doing this. The best time to talk about things like this is when there’s not a problem. But the reason I’m bringing this to you is because as I’ve been studying over the last couple of weeks, what I was going to say to you today, it seems like scripture after scripture that I dealt with, the Lord kept impressing on me the theme of unity.

God’s word teaches us that his children, his people are supposed to be united. When the church comes together out, kind of like when the fighting stops in the backseat of the car, when the church comes together out of the conflict and the chaos that is raging around us in the world right now, and we’ll still be there when we get out of here today, and we’ll have to go right back into it. But when we come together out of that chaos, out of that conflict, and we can experience unity together, this harmonious fellowship that we experience is supposed to be a relief in contrast to what we experience in the world.

It’s supposed to be that moment where we can just go for a little while. And King David wrote about the unity of God’s people. So if you would, turn with me this morning to Psalm 133.

Psalm 133. We’re going to read the whole chapter this morning. Don’t panic.

Don’t let your heart be troubled, as Jesus would say. There’s only three verses in the chapter. It’s not like I’m preaching all the way through Psalm 119 or anything.

Psalm 133, and if you would, if you’re able to, stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. Psalm 133, starting in verse 1, says, Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron running down the edge of his garments.

It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore. You can go ahead and be seated. Now, a lot of us are probably familiar with verse 1 where it says it’s good and pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity, and then we get to verses 2 and 3 and think, well, that’s weird, so we don’t really quote that.

We’re not familiar so much with the idea of oil. I think if I had oil running down my face and into my beard area and onto my clothes, you know, that would be something I’m going to want to go wash off. And then the dew of Hermon, we’re not familiar with that.

But I went and did some research and some study into what exactly David, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was talking about. And what he’s doing here, it’s completely connected to verse 1 where he talks about the unity of God’s people. He is setting up a very vivid picture that Israel would have understood about the joy and the relief that it’s supposed to be when God’s people are united.

when we come together in unity. And this morning, I want to try to help you understand a little better what he’s describing so we can understand the importance of that unity. Now, David had, we don’t know exactly what point in his life David wrote Psalm 133, but we know from the story of David’s life that he had experienced a lot of pain and stress brought on by division.

Now, some of it was his own fault, but even when it’s our own fault, it’s not fun necessarily, is it, when we have that stress and chaos in our lives. he had been estranged from King Saul. At one point Saul was chasing him trying to kill him.

Actually at multiple points that was happening. He had led the country through a civil war. We tend to think that as soon as King Saul died David just became king and they lived happily ever after at least until Bathsheba came along.

But no there was a seven-year civil war that it took David to unify the country completely under his leadership. Israelites fighting against Israelites for seven years. He had faced numerous battles against all the countries around him.

That’s the reason why God wouldn’t let him build the temple and left it for Solomon instead, because David was a man of war. And he had seen his own family torn apart by conflict. I mean, just one conflict after another.

And so he looked at all of this. He looked at all the conflict he’d experienced throughout his life. And he said, it’s much better for people to live in unity with those around him.

He had experienced both things, and he said one is definitely better. It’s not, oh, there’s a trade-off here. Unity is definitely better.

We might think it’s obvious, but again, there are some people who don’t seem to realize this. There are pot stirrers in our world that just aren’t happy unless they’re stirring things up. And I experienced it growing up in school.

I’ve experienced it in church. I’ve experienced it in the workplace. Some people just are happier with drama.

I don’t understand that. I think they need therapy, but they’re out there. But for those of us who are in touch with reality, we need to realize unity is much better than conflict.

Now, I’m not saying a unity that says, I’m going to compromise on everything I believe just to go along and get along. That’s not unity. That’s surrender.

But if we can manage it, unity is preferable to any kind of conflict. So when David finally experienced a moment of peace, he was overwhelmed. He was overwhelmed by just how refreshing the unity was in Israel.

And so he told Israel, this is how things are supposed to be. So what was he talking about? Look at verse 1.

I want to take it apart piece by piece, not necessarily in the order it’s written, but in an order that will help us understand it. He talks about in unity in verse 1. Now, that means to be together, to be alike, to think alike, to be on the same page.

That doesn’t mean God’s people are ever going to agree on everything. Do we all agree on everything? Probably not.

we don’t all live alike, we don’t all vote alike, we don’t all eat alike. I mean, we just, there are differences. But where it counts in the person and work of Jesus Christ, we’re able to be united and be on the same page.

That’s what matters. And so God’s people, he wants them to be in unity, to be together, to be alike, to be agreeable, to be harmonious. And when you’re united around something that important, all the differences sort of fade away in comparison.

They become secondary. They’re not as important as what unites us. And so he wants his people to dwell together in unity.

You can dwell together and not be in unity, right? You live under the same roof and not get along. That’s not what he’s talking about.

He wants his people to be gathered and there to be unity there. I’ve seen churches that worship together that can’t get along. That’s the opposite of what he’s talking about.

And he says, brethren here in verse 1. He describes brethren dwelling together in unity. If you’re not familiar with the older English, brethren is another word for brothers, plural of brother.

He was describing relationships that exist among God’s people. There’s a unity that can be experienced only when we have a commonality that trumps all of our other differences. We can experience degrees of unity.

You know, I’ve had co-workers that were not Christians and didn’t have the same outlook on anything in life, but we might have had something in common and we were able to bond over that, but that bond was not nearly as strong as my bond with my brothers and sisters in Christ that I went to church with. And that’s just the way it ought to be. And, you know, I can walk into a political meeting and I have all these political principles in common with these other people in the meeting and we see things the same way, but that should not be as close as the bond between me and my brothers in Christ, right?

There is a unity that can only be experienced among God’s people. So understand when I say degrees of unity that we can experience with other people. There should not be one for a Christian that is a stronger bond than with those brothers and sisters in Christ that we surround ourselves with.

Because what we have in common in Christ is more important than any other difference. And it’s more important than what we can have in common over other little things. For David and those around him.

They were bound together by the fact that they were Israelites. As God’s people in the Old Testament, they were Israelites. They were part of the same covenant relationship with God.

And so as part of that covenant, they had this bond that they didn’t experience with the Gentiles around them. Like David could have found somebody in Egypt who liked the same brand of sword that he did, and they might be able to bond over that. But it’s not going to be and should not be as strong a bond as David would experience with those who are in the same covenant relationship with God as part of Israel.

And for us, that bond is the new covenant. It’s Jesus Christ. That’s where we experience our unity. Now, the other important component of verse one is he says to dwell together.

If unity means to get along, to be on the same page, there are some people that I’m pretty good at getting along with most people. Some of them better from a distance, Right? Do you have those people in your world that you like better from a distance?

Don’t anybody point at anybody. There are people that I like the description Mark Lowry gives. I’ll cry at their funeral, but I don’t want to go on vacation with them.

You can get along with people from a distance. It’s easy to get along with people when they’re out of your space and you’re out of theirs. That’s not what he’s describing here.

He’s not just calling his people to be in unity. He’s calling them to dwell together in unity. He’s calling them to be in close proximity, in a relationship, and still like each other, and still get along, and still work together.

I think I’ve told you this, but I remember the first time in our marriage, I told my wife after we were married, I like you. And she looked at me almost horrified and said, you’re supposed to love me. I said, well, I do, but I also like you, and that’s important also.

You can, you can, and some people, some people, they really like somebody as long as they see them at the family reunion once a year. It takes a special bond to be able to be part of somebody’s life day in and day out and still like them and still get along. As the church, as God’s people, we’re not called to be part of each other’s lives just on Sunday for a week and wave at each other as we’re passing, coming in and out of the room.

It’s easy to like somebody under those circumstances, but God’s word calls his people to have real relationships where they dwell together. I’m not saying everybody has to sell their houses and move into a commune, but you’re part of everybody’s daily lives and you still like each other and still work together. There’s a unity in Christ that allows us to live and work closely together and still love and like each other.

So he calls us not just to be united, but to dwell together in unity. It’s more than just being united from a distance. And he says it’s a good thing.

David was writing to describe that this was a good thing. So just how good is it? Well, he says it’s like oil and it’s like dew, which I know doesn’t sound like a lot to me or you, but let’s look at this and see how Israel would have understood it.

He compares the unity of God’s people to oil in verse 2. Now, the oil was a kind of a refreshing experience in a dry climate. I don’t know if you experience this like I do, but the last couple of years when it starts to get cold and dry in the winter, my hands will start to crack.

And that’s probably only going to be worse now that we’re washing our hands three times as often because of coronavirus. But Charla and I both experience this. We’ll wash our hands so much that they’ll just start to dry and crack and bleed and I can’t talk all of a sudden.

And they’ll just hurt. And some days they’ll be hurting starting in the morning. And I’m just thinking, I can’t wait until I go home and I’m able to put some lotion on them.

And you put that on there and it moisturizes them and the good stuff will start to help heal that. And it’s just refreshing because your hands are so dry. All right, imagine living in a desert climate like Israel and how dry your skin would be.

So they would anoint people with oil as a kind of refreshing thing. As I understand it, they would even pour oil over people’s heads. That to me does not sound like a fun thing.

That sounds like the start of a fight. But to them, that was a hospitable, friendly gesture. It’s something where they would go, oh, isn’t that nice?

Oh, it’s just, you’re running down their face. Isn’t it wonderful? But it was also a sign of God’s blessing and favor because he ties it to the high priest Aaron.

And the priests were anointed with oil. They were anointed with a special oil. There’s a recipe for oil in one of the Old Testament books.

I can’t remember Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy. It’s one of the, it’s somewhere in book two through five. I can’t remember.

But you can look it up. There’s a recipe for the oil God wanted them to use. And he says, but you can only use it for my purposes.

Don’t go and make it and try to diffuse it at your house. God will get mad. But there’s this recipe for this special oil that they were supposed to use to anoint the high priest. So when he says it’s like the oil running off the head and onto the beard, even Aaron’s beard, he’s comparing it to this special oil.

that was used to anoint the high priest for God’s service. And that was a picture of God’s blessing and favor. And so the picture that’s given to us when he talks about pouring the oil down, he says the unity of God’s people is like the oil pouring off the head and down the beard and running down the beard and soaking into the robes.

It’s telling us that the blessings of God are there in abundance, not just a little bit on the head, but running down the beard and pouring down all over the robes. God’s blessings are there in abundance when his people dwell together in unity. And also, again, remember that it’s something that they would do because of the dry climate.

It was a refreshing experience. Some churches wonder why God isn’t blessing them. Some churches wonder why the favor of God seems to be absent.

And they need to look no further than the division that exists among them. We get this picture that where God’s people live together in a unity that glorifies him. It’s not only refreshing to us in just an earthly sense of we can get along with one another, but it also invites God to bless the work that we’re doing and the relationship that we have.

And in verse 3, he compares the unity of God’s people to dew, to the morning dew. Now he says it’s like the dew of Hermon. I had to do a lot of study to understand what all this stuff was.

Mount Hermon is a mountain in the far northern part of Israel and there’s some unique features of its geography that that cause it to be different from some of the surrounding mountains and I don’t understand all the climate science behind why but apparently Mount Hermon because of some of these unique geographic features is uh is more moist I hate that word but it’s more moist than even Mount Carmel where Elijah had the showdown with the prophets of Baal which is not too far away from it. That mountain is dry, but Mount Hermon is covered with snow. The peak of Mount Hermon is covered with snow a good part of the year, even when it’s dry and hot everywhere else at lower altitudes.

The mountain receives regular sprinklings of dew, even when there’s no moisture anywhere else nearby. So up at these high altitudes, there’s just moisture rolling in constantly that comes down on the mountains. Mount Hermon has lush vegetation, lots of plants.

It has a forest on its on its slopes and it supports all sorts of animals that don’t necessarily thrive elsewhere. And that mountain is the source of the Jordan River. So this river that supplies so much water to Israel springs from Mount Hermon.

Now in contrast, Jerusalem, he talks about, David writes about Mount Zion here, that’s just outside Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is bone dry for a good portion of the year. But even when Jerusalem and Mount Zion are bone dry, Mount Hermon still has plenty of moisture. So let’s look at verse 3 again.

It says, it is like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. David says here, the unity of God’s people is like taking the moisture from Mount Hermon, where it’s there in abundance, and bringing it right down to Jerusalem where it’s absent and needed. Imagine taking all that moisture and putting it into a desert area.

It would change the entire landscape, wouldn’t it? It would bring life to the entire landscape. And that’s why David says, you know, it was there at Mount Zion that the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore.

I think he’s speaking in spiritual terms here, but he’s using that real world application. He’s saying, look at the wettest spot in Israel, basically. And imagine taking all that moisture and putting it in a place that’s parched.

And he said, that’s what the unity of God’s people is like. And so we see from these two examples where God’s people live together in unity, it’s refreshing. We see that God’s blessings are going to be there in abundance, and we see that God gives life and joy to his people when we’re united around him.

So the point of this passage is that God’s people should live together in unity, that we should strive for a harmonious fellowship. And we know what fellowship means, that it’s a stronger word than relationship. It harmony in a song.

These ladies play the piano and the organ, and a lot of times the way it’s written in the hymnal, there’s a four-part harmony there, and it just sounds so wonderful until one of the wrong notes is struck. I’ll sometimes come in before church, and just to get myself in a mindset for worship, I’ll sit here and play the piano, and there’s a lot of those wrong notes that are struck, all right? And immediately you know, oh, something’s not right there.

Harmony means we’re all doing our part. We’re all playing the role that we’re supposed to, and things are just good. So we should strive for that kind of harmonious fellowship as God’s people.

In the church, and I would say in the Christian community outside the church as well. David had experienced conflict, and he had experienced unity, and he told Israel, again, unity is so much better. It’s so much better.

It’s not even a contest. The unity is so much better. The church, as the people of God, then should seek unity. The church should seek to be unified in everything that it does.

Now again, does that mean that everybody’s going to always see eye to eye? No. Does that mean everybody’s always going to agree?

No. Does it mean everybody is always going to think alike? No.

And as a matter of fact, I think it’s dangerous if we all think alike on everything, because that tells you you’re not thinking for yourself, you’re letting the group think for you. But I’ve noticed God wires us all differently and we have conversations and somebody sees something I didn’t and it’s something we need to consider. And we’re not always going to see eye to eye on everything.

We don’t all come from the same backgrounds. We don’t all have the same perspectives. We don’t all vote the same.

And that’s okay. Think about some of the things that are tearing our country apart right now. Masks, the election.

Y’all, people are fighting over Trump and Biden. Even Christians are fighting over Trump and Biden. And I only bring this up because it’s one of the things tearing our country apart right now.

You know, there’s always been this kind of tearing our country apart. It’s gone on really since the days of George Washington. It’s been there all along.

I was thinking this morning, you know, we think this is just the most important, Everything going on in our arguments now are the most important things that have ever happened. So I got to thinking about 100 years ago, 1920, because everybody’s arguing over a few hot-button issues right now that are the end of civilization. 1920, the hot-button issue everybody was arguing about that was the end of civilization was the League of Nations.

When’s the last time you got into an argument with your neighbor over the League of Nations? When’s the last time you ever thought of the League of Nations? How many of you raised your hand and said, I don’t know what the League of Nations is?

No, I’m kidding. Benjamin, we’ll get there. Nobody cares about the League of Nations.

And nobody’s going to care about these issues in 100 years either. People fighting over Trump and Biden in 1920. Charlie, do you have a dollar?

I will give Charlie’s dollar to the first person who can tell me the two men who ran for president in 1920. Any takers? And you can’t look it up on your phone.

nobody cares they fought then but nobody cares okay the dollar the dollar’s over because I’m about to tell you nobody cares about warren harding or james cox anymore except historians people like me nerds most people they fought about it a hundred years ago and now no one cares here’s the thing we as the church can’t let issues divide us that nobody’s going to care about in a hundred years. And that’s not just politics. Color the carpet.

What time are we going to have services? This or that. Issues that nobody is going to care about in a hundred years cannot divide us when we are united about the only thing that matters in eternity, which is Jesus Christ. If we can get together on him, if we can get together on who Jesus is and what he’s done for us, then all the rest of this stuff just fades away because that’s the basis of our unity.

I’m going to skip a bunch of stuff that’s in my notes this morning. And I’m just going to emphasize that, that what’s most important is who Jesus is and what he’s done for us. That Jesus Christ is God the Son.

He’s the second person of the Trinity. He’s God who took on human flesh without giving up any shred of his godhood and came to earth to live a perfect sinless life so that he could be the ultimate sacrifice for sin so that he could shed his blood. He could be nailed to the cross in our place.

He could shed his blood and he could die for us to pay for our sins in full and then rose three days later to prove it. That’s who Jesus is. And what he’s done for us is to purchase salvation that we could never purchase for ourselves, that we could never earn or deserve on our own.

He did it because he paid for our sin in full. And now God offers it this morning as a free gift. If we will simply acknowledge our sin, trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior, and ask God’s forgiveness.

So this morning, if you need this forgiveness that forms the basis of our unity in Christ, if you’re listening to me talk about this unity that we have in Christ and this relationship that we have with God, and you’re thinking, I need that, this morning all there is for you to do is to understand that you’ve sinned God and your sin will separate you from him, not only now, but in eternity. Believe with all your heart that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for your sins in full and rose again, and then ask God to forgive you.