Well this morning is One Sunday. What a thrill it is to gather as a single congregation and to raise the rafters with our singing and to celebrate the goodness of God who has made us all one in Christ Jesus. It’s also Stewardship Sunday as you have heard from Matt, and the deacons have selected a passage that, I think, brings together in a wonderful way the theme of Christian unity and a reminder of our mission as a church, in support of which we all must wisely steward our resources. So do please take your Bibles in hand and turn with me in them to the Old Testament scriptures and to Psalm 133. Psalm 133. If you are using one of our church Bibles, you can find that on page 519.
Now as I think back over the last – what – year and a half or so of the pandemic and all the tensions and the fears and the disagreements that we’ve witnessed, both in the community and sometimes, alas, even in the church, as I look at our still profoundly divided society right now, I hope you’ll agree that it is incredibly important for us on this Lord’s Day to stop and say loud and clear with great joy, with profound gratitude to God, that we are one in Christ Jesus. We are one – one family, one church, one people of God, one in this congregation and one with every other church and every Christian in every place on earth and in heaven. Our unity is precious to us, it is a witness to the world, and it is an enormous blessing to experience. And we are gathered here today to revel in it and to give thanks for it. And Psalm 133 helps us see why our unity is, or ought to be, so very precious.
You’ll notice that it begins with a title, a superscription. Do you see that at the start of the passage, at the beginning of Psalm 133? It is entitled, “A song of ascents. Of David.” That means this psalm belongs to a collection of psalms beginning with Psalm 120, concluding with Psalm 134, that form a sort of mini hymn book in the Psalter that was used by pilgrims as they went up to Jerusalem. Hence the language of “ascent” – “A psalm of ascents.” It’s a psalm of ascending or going up to Jerusalem, to the temple for one of the great pilgrim feasts of ancient Israel. And Psalm 133, together with 134, were likely used at the very end of the pilgrims’ time, at the conclusion of their visit to the temple in Jerusalem. David is here providing language for the pilgrim to sing about everything that being in the great congregation has meant to him. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.”
That first word is important, by the way. “Behold” – it is a summons, isn’t it – “Behold.” It is a call to understanding, an invitation to grasp and to see a vital truth. The unity of God’s people, he says, is objectively good and subjectively pleasant or delightful. “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.” “It was a delight to be there. My heart was full and I am blessed,” that’s what he’s saying. And the rest of the psalm, as we’re going to see, is designed to explain why. What is it about experiencing the unity of the people of God that is so very good and so very pleasant?
If you’d look at the psalm with me, you’ll notice in verses 2 and 3 two illustrations that David employs to answer that question. The first illustration likens God’s people to the High Priest, to Aaron, and the blessing of unity to the anointing oil that was poured upon Aaron when he was ordained to sacred office. And the second illustration compares the people of God to Mount Zion, to Jerusalem, the city of God, where the temple was. And the blessing of unity is like the dew of Hermon, falling on Mount Zion.
And all I want to do this morning is to look at those two images, those two similes, under three headings. First of all, we’ll consider unity and the Trinity in this psalm. Unity and the Trinity in this psalm. Secondly, unity and the new creation in this psalm. Unity and the Trinity. Unity and the new creation. And finally, unity and the church’s mission in this psalm. Unity and the Trinity. Unity and the new creation. Unity and the church’s mission. Before we get into all of that, as always, let’s pause and pray and then we’ll read the passage together. Let us pray.
Our Father, we pray now for ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying to the church through this portion of Your Word. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Psalm 133. This is the Word of Almighty God:
“A song of ascents. Of David.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”
Amen.
Unity and the Trinity
Let’s think first of all about the theme of unity and the Trinity in this psalm. Unity and the Trinity. You’ve been on pilgrimage. The holy city has been packed, bustling, jammed with visitors from all over the Mediterranean, all of them are gathered there for Passover. And together you’ve pressed into the courts of the temple and you’ve joined the great congregations. The Word has been read and proclaimed. Prayers have been offered. Sacrifices have been made. The praises of the sanctuary have thundered with joy and shaken the heavens. But now, now at last, the experience has come to an end. You finally come home after several days away at the festival. You walk into your kitchen, there are all your family and friends gathered around to welcome you back. You sit down, put your weary feet up. They hand you a nice, hot cup of Earl Grey tea and breathlessly they ask you, “Well? What was it like? What was it like in the temple, to be there in the great assembly, to hear the singing, to participate in this glorious worship? What was it like?” You pause for a minute to collect your thoughts. “Well,” you say, “it was like oil poured on the head. It runs through your beard. Gets in your clothes.” Hmmmm. Everyone blinks at you in confusion for a few minutes. “I think he’s finally lost it! Maybe heat stroke or something!”
The simile doesn’t really communicate all that terribly well to us, does it? If anything it sounds just a little bit yucky, kind of messy, a little unpleasant. Oil – you can imagine it, sort of trickling through your hair, running over your face, all over your clothes. No thank you! Who wants that? But before we gross out on the image and move on, let’s try and remember what’s really happening here in Psalm 133. This is the oil of anointing used in the ordination of Aaron, the first high priest, the brother of Moses. The text says in verse 2, if you’ll look at verse 2, the oil is “precious.” That’s actually the same word translated in verse 1 as “good” to describe our unity. So that ties the image, the metaphor of the oil to the experience of Christian unity. They’re both this good, precious thing.
You can read about the oil itself back in Exodus 30, verses 22 and following. It was lovely stuff made with liquid myrrh and cinnamon and cassia and aromatic cane blended with olive oil, carefully by a perfumer. It would have, no doubt, filled with temple with a beautiful, a delightful aroma. Unity, David is saying, is like that lovely fragrant oil so pleasant to breathe in, so sweet and delightful to experience. God told Moses in Exodus 30, “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. You shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy and it shall be holy to you.’” So this is special stuff, unique.
And the oil, of course, is meant to be a powerful image of the anointing ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is His work to make holy and to set people apart for the service of God. And so Aaron was symbolically consecrated by oil for his task as an image of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit who would empower him and work through him for the sake of God’s people. Unity, the psalmist is saying, is the special work of the Holy Spirit who consecrates us and makes us one and who sweetens and makes fragrant that unity so that everyone who sees it and experiences it will be moved by its loveliness, like a room filled with this fragrant aroma. Real Christian unity, the Holy Spirit wrought unity that the psalmist is celebrating, is compelling. It is attractive; it is beautiful. Like the holy anointing oil that was never used for anything else, this kind of unity can be found nowhere else but amongst the people of God, in the church of Jesus Christ, under the blessing of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. That’s the anointing oil.
Think about the high priest, Aaron, and all the other high priests who descended from him. The high priest, remember, was to be the representative of God’s people, Israel. He wore special garments and on his shoulders there were these two precious stones. On his left shoulder, the precious stone had six of the names of the tribes of Israel written on them, and on the right shoulder, the other six names of the twelve tribes of Israel. And then on his chest he carried a breastplate with twelve stones, each one with one of the names of the tribes of Israel so that he was shouldering the weight, as it were, of God’s people as he went into the temple wearing the priestly garments. And he carried them over his heart whenever he appeared before God on their behalf. And the anointing oil, Psalm 133 says, flowed down over his head, over his beard, and onto those priestly garments. The anointing reached from the high priest all the way, symbolically all the way to the twelve tribes whose names he bore and on whose behalf he ministered.
Now if the anointing oil is a picture of the work of the Holy Spirit, the image of Aaron the high priest here points us to our true and final High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 4:14, “We have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.” Jesus is the true High Priest, the greater than Aaron, who represents the people of God in the most holy place. The prophet Isaiah, Isaiah 61, promised one day someone would come who would be anointed not with physical oil but with the Holy Spirit in all His fullness. And so this one would say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.” And you may remember that this was the very passage from the scroll of Isaiah that Jesus read in the synagogue in Capernaum in Luke chapter 4. And when He had read it, He sat down and there was silence in the room. And every eye is glued to Him and He said simply, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the one Isaiah was speaking about. I am the anointed one, the one who has received the Holy Spirit.”
That’s why, in His thirtieth year, the year that the priests were consecrated by the sacred anointing oil, Jesus came to be baptized by John, you remember, in the wilderness of Jordan. And what happens? The Spirit of God descended and rested upon Him, consecrating Him and setting Him apart for His ministry as our great High Priest. As our High Priest, Jesus would make the final offering for sin once and for all; not the offering of blood from bulls and goats like the Aaronic priesthood did in an earthly temple. He would offer His own life, His own flesh and blood on the cross on behalf of all His people.
So just think about the symbolism here. It really is an amazing image. Where does our unity come from? It comes from the Spirit who unites us to the High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who bears our names on His shoulders and over His heart. Just like the oil that flowed all over Aaron and covered those precious stones on his shoulders and his breastplate with the twelve tribes etched on them, so also our unity, our oneness comes about because Jesus binds us together. He bears the weight of your name. He carries you always on His heart. And the Spirit that was given to Him flows from Him to us. His anointing anoints us. The sweet fragrance of holiness that belongs uniquely to Him as the consecrated High Priest, now adorns each of us and covers the stench of our filthy sin in Him. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s a beautiful image.
And before we move on, just to complete the picture, notice the repeat verb in verses 2 and 3. It’s translated variously as “running down” in verse 2 and “falling” in verse 3. It’s the same word. It simply means “to descend” or “to come down.” And the point is, this blessing, the blessing of sacred unity, it comes down. It comes down from God upon the people, like oil comes down on the high priest, or like dew comes down upon the mountains of Hermon. Where do you get this good, this pleasant experience of unity? You get it only here. It is the gift of God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit in union with Jesus Christ our great High Priest. Do you see the picture? What a precious gift we’ve been given. How good and pleasant a thing it is when brothers and sisters in Christ dwell in unity. It is our communion with the Father in His Son by the Holy Spirit, lived out and made visible, made fragrant and beautiful in our fellowship with one another. What a gift we have in Jesus our High Priest that He should make us one.
Think about it. We come from all sorts of different backgrounds, don’t we? Different ethnicities, different economic and educational backgrounds; some of us have really hard stories of loss and grief and pain. Others of us have lived a life of remarkable privilege. Some of us were converted much later in life after many years of wandering in rebellion and worldliness. Others of us have had the great blessing of never knowing a moment when we did not trust in Jesus. Men and women, young and old, boys and girls, rich and poor, black and white – our differences run deep and wide. We have many, many reasons to disagree and squabble and pull away from one another, but here we are, united because God the Father, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, has made us one in Christ Jesus. We are one. And when we come together as we are doing this morning, we lift our hearts with great joy because we’ve discovered what the world doesn’t know. The good life, the pleasant life, Psalm 133 verse 1, is found right here – united to Jesus our great High Priest, and in Him to all His people in every place. This is where you find it. Right here in the embrace of the people of God. Unity and the Trinity. Do you see it in this psalm? The Father sends the blessing in Jesus Christ, our High Priest, by the Holy Spirit.
Unity and the New Creation
Then secondly, notice unity and new creation in this psalm. Unity and new creation. Let me direct your attention to the second image, the second simile David uses to illustrate our unity there in verse 3. What is unity like? It is like “the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion.” Mount Hermon was known for its temperate climate, its lush vegetation because of its abundant rainfall. Mount Zion, on the other hand, not so much. And the problem is, that Mount Hermon is about 120 miles north of Jerusalem, north of Mount Zion. So the dew of Hermon never falls on Mount Zion, not ever. It just doesn’t happen. So what is the psalmist saying? “It’s like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion.” What’s he saying? That doesn’t ever happen!
I think he’s saying to his friends and family gathered around in the kitchen, wanting to know what it was like, he’s saying, “You know, being there, being together as God’s people like that, it’s like being on the mountain on a beautiful spring morning. And you go outside and the sun is low on the horizon, sending golden beams through the trees, glinting off the beads of dew that cover the grass. And the air is crisp and clean and you close your eyes and stretch and fill your lungs as the sunlight bathes your face. And just for a moment, just for a fleeting moment, you find yourself saying, ‘This must be what Eden was like back before thorns and thistles, back before toil and sorrow, back before sin and death.’” The unity of the people of God is like the world remade where Hermon’s dew does fall on Jerusalem at last and the dusty streets of Zion are transformed into the verdant boulevards of the garden city of God, the new Jerusalem, that descends from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. That’s what he’s saying. It’s a beautiful image, isn’t it?
You remember when God made the world, on each of the creation days, what did He say about His handiwork? He called it “good.” And then on the last day, Genesis 1:31, “God saw everything that He had made” – listen to this language – “and behold, it was very good.” Do you hear the echo of that language in Psalm 133 verse 1? What’s it like to live in the unity of the fellowship of God’s people under the blessing of the Spirit, united to the High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father sends down His grace? What’s it like? Behold, how good, how very good. It’s like new creation, glimpsed right here amidst the wreckage and the ruin of this broken world. It’s like Eden restored. Sorrow and sin and suffering forgotten, just for a moment or two, as we all together are caught up in the joy of the praise of God and we experience and taste His blessing. Haven’t you ever longed for a better world? Haven’t you ever ached for things not to be this way? Psalm 133 says you can glimpse that world, the world to come, right here, right in the middle of the wreckage and ruin of a world broken by sin. You can only glimpse it in the unity of the fellowship of the church of Jesus Christ.
Unity and the Church’s Mission
Unity and the Trinity. Unity and the new creation. Finally, unity and the church’s mission. Look how Psalm 133 ends in the second half of verse 3. “For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.” The “there” – “For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,” there He means Zion, the place of unity where God makes His people one. It’s the Church. He’s talking about the Church. “There the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.” There, in His Church. This is where you can find it. Not off on your own seeking spiritual answers, cobbling together some homespun notion of God. Not in self-help. Not in radical, expressive individualism. Certainly not alone watching on a screen keeping the church at arm’s length. Not anywhere in fact in this broken down world of ours. You can find it, you can find it in the fellowship of the local church.
Cyprian, who was a 3rd century father of the Church, is famous for this Latin phrase – “nulla salus extra Ecclesiam.” “Outside of the Church there is no salvation.” “Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam.” Our church’s own summary of Christian doctrine, the Westminster Confession of Faith, in chapter 25, endorses that sentiment when it says, “The visible Church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.” “Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam.” That’s what the psalm is saying too. Where does the Lord command the blessing, everlasting life? Where do you find it? You find it there. You find it in Zion. You find it where the assembly of the people of God gathers. You find it in the unity of the fellowship of the redeemed. There in the Church, united to Christ by the Holy Spirit, under the gift of the Father, there where you glimpse new creation ahead of time, there through the preaching of the Gospel, through the prayers of the saints, in the fellowship of the community, there through the means of grace, God brings people from death to life. New life, new creation happens in front of your eyes as He unites us to the Lord Jesus. And in Jesus, He unites us to one another. What an amazing, profound blessing is ours in the church of Jesus Christ.
But it does mean, of course, that the good and pleasant gift of unity that we are celebrating today must not be kept to ourselves. If this is where God commands the blessing, life forevermore, we need to go tell the world. We need to go and bring the lost. “This is where you can find life,” we need to say. You remember before the Fall, God gave to Adam a mission. Do you remember what Adam’s mission was? He was to fill the earth and subdue it. He was to extend the borders of Eden out until the whole world became a garden paradise. But of course Adam failed to keep covenant with God. He broke God’s Law and in him, sin shattered and destroyed the garden of God. But when Jesus, our second Adam, rose from the dead, He renewed the mission and He gave it to the church saying, “Go into all the world and make disciples, uniting them to the church by baptism and teaching them everything that I have commanded you. And I will always be with you.”
The Church, do you see, is the gate back to paradise. The Church is the path to Eden restored. The narrow way that leads to life always runs through the Church, and so our mission is to bring the Gospel to the nations, to extend the boundaries of the kingdom, so that more and more men and women, boys and girls, might join us and glimpse with us the new creation here and feel the refreshment of Hermon’s dew falling where it does not fall by nature, even on the dusty streets of this worldly Zion, and come to say along with us, “Behold, it is all very good.” Here, here we can see the world to come. Here in the sweetness of Christian fellowship, joined by faith to Jesus, we breathe the air of heaven. We breathe the air of heaven, and we want you and we want the world to come breathe it in with us, to fill your lungs with new creation air. That’s our mission. What a gift we have in the church? Have you been underestimating it, taking it for granted perhaps? Finding the church something rather dull, rather humdrum and old news? But do you see how the psalmist thrills at the thought of being together with the people of God?
Actually, that’s what makes this passage so very suitable for the theme of stewardship. After all, this gift that we have in the Church must be preserved and protected and advanced. If this is our mission, to invite the world into new creation, then we need to resource the mission. Don’t you long that others would come and taste and see along with you that the Lord indeed is good? Don’t you? So we go on mission. That’s why we do it – across the street and around the world. That’s why we give in support of the mission. That’s why we’re asking you today to consider your stewardship of time and commitment and service and prayer and finance.
Timothy Dwight, I think, captures the call to stewardship really well as he celebrates the great gift of the Church in his wonderful hymn, “I Love Thy Kingdom Lord.” Listen to what Timothy Dwight says. “For her” – the Church – “For her my tears shall fall, for her my prayers ascend, for her my toils and cares be given til toils and cares shall end. Beyond my highest joy, I prize her heavenly ways; her sweet communion, solemn vows, her hymns of prayer and praise.” He so prized the Church’s heavenly ways because he knew the reality of Psalm 133 that is being celebrated before us. He shed his tears for the Church. He poured out his prayers for the Church. He gave his toil and his cares to the Church.
I wonder, what does your commitment to the Church look like? What does it look like? Do you prize her and thrill to be with her, to belong to her? Do you breathe in the dew-filled air of Hermon, of Zion, of the new Jerusalem when you gather here amongst the people of God? If you do, don’t you long that the world would come and join you? And won’t you spend all and be spent to advance her cause? That’s what you’re being called to today. That’s what stewardship is really about. It’s not some abstract, faceless budget we’re asking you to support. We’re asking you to help us extend the boundaries of the kingdom that more and more may join us and say, “How good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together in unity like this.”
Let’s pray.
Our God and Father, how we rejoice that You have made us one in Christ Jesus. How, like the sweet fragrant oil that was poured out on Aaron, we have experienced the sweetness, the beauty of Christian fellowship where the Holy Spirit has come amongst us and the anointing that rested upon and consecrated and empowered Christ extends to all of us. And we receive the gift of the Father, and so we have fellowship in Christ with the Father by the Spirit and express it in our fellowship with one another. What an extraordinary thing we have here in the Church that we commune with the triune God Himself. And as we do, we get to glimpse the new creation. We get to breathe in the fresh mountain air of the new Jerusalem. O God, as we rejoice in that great blessing, help us to become freshly zealous, that those who live in the dark, broken rubble of a sin-ruined world, might come to join us in this new creation community that You have made. So hear our cries. Help us to be good stewards and to love Your Church and give ourselves for her. For that is what our Savior has done. He has loved His Bride and given Himself up for her. Help us as we follow Him, to imitate Him and do likewise. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.