Turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Psalms again. We’ll be looking this morning at Psalm 133. Psalm 133.

Let me just say, as you’re turning there, that difficult or confusing passages of Scripture when studied to arrive at the author’s intended meaning for his original audience, in their context according to accurate historical, grammatical understanding of the passage, difficult texts are not impossible to understand. I say that because that’s not what the sermon is about this morning, and I want you to know in your heart though, you would not—my challenge to you would be don’t give up on difficult texts. They will pour out rich rewards. But the Bible does not yield its treasures to lazy Christians.

Having said that, we read Psalm 133 and we’ll pray that the Lord will help us this morning with this text. Psalm 133:

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.

Father, we would pray that you would help us this morning, Lord. Every letter of your word is breathed out by you for our benefit, God—every word on these pages. And Lord, we cherish all that you’ve revealed to us and pray that you would help us this morning. We have a room full of believers this morning, many of us crying out to you, God, asking you for one thing: that you would teach us from your word this morning. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

E pluribus unum. It’s inscribed on the scroll that is held in the mouth of the eagle on the official seal of the United States of America and the motto of the United States of America. The seal and the motto are on nearly every important document that our country creates. The seal of the President and the Vice-President. The seal of Congress. The seal of the House of Representatives. The U.S. Senate. The seal of the United States Supreme Court. It’s inscribed in all caps—which means you’re yelling—on almost all U.S. paper and coin currency, embossed on the edge of the one dollar coin.

E pluribus unum is a Latin phrase meaning “out of many one.” It was originally suggesting that out of the original thirteen colonies emerged a single nation, but in recent years it’s really come to suggest that out of many people and races and ancestries of those who have come to America and who are born here, we’ve emerged as a single people: the United States of America. Though we are different, we are one. And it shows the ideal of unity for which our country strives.

One nation under God, indivisible. And in many ways the idea of unity is at the core of American ideals and virtues and values. But really it’s not just an American thing, right? Globally, people recognize the value, the importance of unity.

Ironically, it’s rare that we actually see it. Instead, everywhere we see disunity. Disunity seems to characterize humanity. Maybe you’ve noticed this in your own life. Sometimes disunity can characterize our living rooms. So whether it’s people fighting over who got elected or seemingly silly disagreements with your siblings or your spouse, people getting along is hard. True unity sometimes seems impossible.

The reality is that while everyone everywhere seems to agree on the importance of unity, we deeply struggle with achieving it. And that raises some interesting questions for us. What are the characteristics of unity? You know, if we were to really kind of lay unity out for what it really is, if we all agree on its importance, then why is it that we rarely see it? And what’s the point of unity anyway?

And that’s where Psalm 133 comes in. So let’s just jump in, getting started here in verse 1, David begins by saying, “A Song of Ascents. Of David.” What’s a Song of Ascents? Well, there’s fifteen of them in the book of Psalms, namely Psalms 120 through 134, all of them having this heading: A Song of Ascents, which means, to put it another way, a song of ascending or literally a song of going up. It would sound weird if you said it that way, but it sounds weird when you say a song of ascents.

So, the question is, going up what? This is a song of going up what? Well, the city of Jerusalem was built on a hilltop, so as you travel towards the city, you’re literally ascending the hill. These songs were written to be sung by Jewish travelers as they make their way up the hill to Jerusalem for the three great festival feasts each year.

And here, in Psalm 133, “A Song of Ascents,” here David writes a song about the treasured value of unity. And in it he gives us five facets of unity that we’re going to look at this morning. Five facets of unity.

1.  Unity is Immeasurable

Number one, unity is immeasurable. Look at verse 1 and notice how David introduces this Psalm. He says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.” The word “behold” is not one we typically use every day, but it’s something like “gaze upon this.” “Hey, pay attention”; or “Hey, look at this.” So, we might say, “Hey, look at this” before we want to emphasize the importance of something. David says “behold.”

So, right here, off the bat, in this Psalm it’s as though King David, one of history’s greatest men, is saying to you and I, Behold, I want you to look at something with me. And what is it he wants us to look at? Measurement. Measurement. He says (verse 1), “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is.” This is actually a question. In the Hebrew many of the Psalms start this way. This is actually a question: How good and how pleasant is it when brothers dwell together in unity?

This is a common thing in the Psalms to start with a question, like a kind of a tip of the hat to where we’re going. Like Psalm 15, right? “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?” You know the Psalm is going to be about the answer to that question that starts the Psalm.

So, right away in verse 1, you know this whole Psalm is going to answer that question: How good, how pleasant is it when brothers dwell together in unity? David draws our attention to the measurement of its goodness, pleasantness. Now, good and pleasant sound similar, like he’s just being redundant or repetitive here. Good though refers to the moral quality of a thing, whether it’s good or evil. Pleasant refers to the enjoyability of a thing, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant.

See, something can be good, but not pleasant. Something can be pleasant, but not good. Take surgery, for example. Surgery is good, but not pleasant. Right? You go in for that surgery and that’s good. It’s helping you and you’re glad for it. But nobody wakes up on the morning of their surgery singing, “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket.” Right? But we’re grateful for it. It’s a good thing. It’s just not pleasant. It’s helpful. It’s beneficial. Not pleasant.

The other side of things: something can be pleasant, but not good. Like sin. I mean sin is—it’s fun. I mean, let’s admit sin—there’s a moment in there when it’s pleasant to us, even though it’s not good. And we know in the long run it’s going to hurt us. We do it because there’s a pleasant appearance to it to us. So it’s pleasant, but not good.

So things can be good, but not pleasant. Things can be pleasant, but not good. But this—the topic of this Psalm—is both good and pleasant. What is that topic? Verse 1 says, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” The word brothers is like the New Testament use of the word brethren, right? To refer to a group of God’s people. So sisters, you’re included in this. How good and how pleasant is it or how good and how pleasant it is when God’s people come together in unity.

Now remember this is a song of ascents, right? The Israelites who originally sang this song would have been on their way to Jerusalem. They would have been very clear about this. As they’re ascending, going up the hill to Jerusalem, they’d be dwelling together—millions of them—and they’d be singing this song looking around at one another.

And just imagine with me millions of travelers away from home coming together, competing for the same space, all needing the same resources, all kinds of different people from different places with different preferences, and every one of them with a sin nature. Think there’s some potential for disunity there? Let me say the same thing about us in this room. All kinds of different people from different places with different preferences and every one of us with a sin nature. You think there’s some potential for disunity here?

See we come together at church, in our Bible studies, on Sundays, and our preferences are bound to clash. We’re not going to agree about everything. Our sin is going to impact the way that we relate to one another. So David wisely writes this song for God’s people to sing as they come together. He wants them to treasure unity, to protect it, to fight for it.

So he says to them, and I say to you this morning, “Behold,” take a look around at how good and how pleasant it is when God’s people come together in unity. We should treasure it. We should, and we should protect it. We should be ready to fight for it because the greatest threat to the unity of our church is not Satan. The greatest threat to the unity of our church is not the world. The greatest threat to the unity of our church is what’s in your heart, what’s in my heart. It’s our selfishness—that’s the greatest threat to the unity of our church.

That’s why after the service when we welcome new members, you’re going to hear—one of the things that the new members commit to is, Will you faithfully assemble with this body of believers, striving to maintain unity, doing all that you can to stimulate love and good deeds in others as you seek to exercise your spiritual gifts in faithful service to one another? That’s the commitment they’re going to make to this body and to one another, and that’s the commitment we’ve all made to one another—to strive for unity, to maintain unity that God has given us.

And so David says, take a look in your Bible, “How good and how pleasant it is when God’s people come together in unity,” but let’s not forget that he’s doing that through the use of a question. David doesn’t answer the question. You notice that? He doesn’t say, how good and how pleasant is it? Well, it’s about 14 parsecs of goodness and pleasantness. He goes on to compare unity to some things and he leaves it to you to decide.

I think the point is, you can’t really measure how good and how pleasant unity is. It’s immeasurable. There’s nothing that compares to it in this life. So the best you can do is compare it to some things that you know; and as we work our way through these things, we’re going to continue to see those five facets of unity. Here we see unity is immeasurable.

2.  Unity is Holy

Now look at verse 2. We’re going to see unity is holy. He says, “It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down upon the collar of his robes!” Now, if we’re honest, this is when things start to get weird in this Psalm. You read this and you’re like, okay, what is up with the oil on this guy’s head? Who is Aaron? Is that my friend, Aaron, from high school? Who’s this talking about? What does his beard have to do with anything? Is this like the hipster’s Psalm?

Here’s why it seems strange, right? David’s point is to compare unity to something that we’re familiar with. The problem is, you and I aren’t Old Testament Israelites. He’s comparing it to things that his audience is familiar with. He says it’s like the oil and it’s like the dew. The point of the simile is to try to bring clarity to something in your mind by comparing it to something you’re already familiar with. Our problem is, because we’re not Old Testament Israelites, they would read this and think, wow, unity is so holy. We look at it and we think, wow, unity is confusing.

So, our goal this morning, as we look at these verses, is to start to see things through the eyes of David’s readers, through the eyes of those Jews ascending the hill to Jerusalem. The first simile he uses is this: Unity is like the oil, not like oil, like the oil. This is describing an event, an event that every Old Testament Israelite would have been familiar with. The ceremony when they anointed the very first high priest in Israel—that’s Aaron—not your buddy from high school. And when they appointed him or ordained him as the high priest, Moses poured a special oil over his head in front of all the people as they come together at the grand opening of the tabernacle.

Exodus 30, we have a historical record of when God gave Moses the instructions about this event that now later the Israelites are singing about. In Exodus 30, God actually gives Moses like a recipe for this oil, myrrh and cinnamon and calamus and cassia. But listen to what God says about the oil. He says, after giving Moses the exact recipe/measurements of how to make it, he says, “Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil. Then use it to anoint . . .” and he goes on to list everything inside the tabernacle—the tent of meeting, the ark of the covenant, the table, it’s articles, the lampstand.

And then he goes on to say, and by the way if you want to write this down and look it up later, this is Ex. 30:22-33. He says, “You shall consecrate them [that’s the things you’re pouring the oil on] so that they will be most holy and whatever touches them will be holy. Anoint Aaron and his sons and consecrate them so they may serve me as priests. Say to the Israelites, ‘This is to be my sacred anointing oil for generations to come.’” Listen to this warning: “Do not pour it on anyone else’s body and do not make any other oil using the same formula. It is sacred, and you are to consider it sacred.” And now, “Whoever makes perfume like it and puts it on anyone other than a priest must be cut off from their people” (NIV).

You think God takes that oil seriously? The anointing oil is a big deal, right? You don’t just pick this up from your local Young Living distributor. You don’t order this on Melaleuca or Doterra. This special mixture of oil and aromatic spices was sacred. It was strictly forbidden to be considered common in any way. They’re even commanded: It is sacred; you are to consider it sacred.

You can also jot down Lev. 8:10-12. I wish we could just go to all of these verses and just read all of them, but this is where they actually do what God commanded them to do there in Exodus 30, right? Moses gathers together the whole congregation of Israel at the entrance to the tabernacle; all the people are there. It’s like the grand opening of the tabernacle and the oil being poured on Aaron’s head is the ceremony that takes place at the center of the whole thing while everyone watches in silent awe of the holiness of this event.

Aaron bows down and Moses pours this sacred anointing oil on his head and it runs down his head. It runs down his beard and down the edges, off the edges of his robe. Right? And everybody sits in silent awe at the holiness of what’s happening.

David calls that image to mind here and says, remember that—that’s how precious, that’s how holy the unity of God’s people is. He could have said, hey, guys, unity—it’s like when Moses anointed Aaron. Remember? That would have been simple, right? It would have been really clear. But the way that he describes it, it brings you into the moment. Right? You can just see the sunlight glistening off the drops of oil dripping off of Aaron’s beard. Right?

And he brings you into the moment to emphasize the abundance of goodness and pleasantness of unity. Right? Like the precious oil upon the head coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edges of his robes. And remember, this is a song of ascents. Right? The travelers would have sung together about this as they ascended the hill towards Jerusalem where that event happened. And looking around at one another, they would have been cherishing the holiness of the unity that they had in common with one another.

When God’s people come together in unity, it is holy. It’s sacred. You are to consider it sacred. Have you ever thought about the fact that when we come together, it’s holy? Wow. Like the oil running down the first high priest’s head and beard when they anointed him at the grand opening to the tabernacle in Jerusalem. I mean, it doesn’t get any bigger than that. You need to remember that. When we come together Sunday mornings, on Wednesday nights, on Tuesday afternoon with your small group, when God’s people come together, it’s like you’re treading on holy ground when you consider the unity that we share.

Let me ask you, do you guard it? Do you protect it? The sacred holiness of our unity—it ought to strike fear into our hearts before a word of gossip passes over our lips, before a word of complaint about our preferences comes out of our mouth, before a word of judgment about that new person who’s here who is different. Take caution for your soul. Do not mess with the sacred holiness of unity among God’s people because it’s immeasurable and it’s holy.

3.  Unity is Reviving

Number three: Unity is reviving. You can see this in the first part of verse 3. Take a look at verse 3 with me. It says, it is like the dew. Unity is reviving like the dew. Again, we have another simile that David gives comparing unity to dew. We don’t really think much about dew; but again, let’s unpack this to understand what this would have meant to David’s original audience.

You see, in ancient Israel, they didn’t have garden hoses. They didn’t have sprinkler systems with an automatic timer and a rain delay button. I mean, just try to get yourself into that mentality for a second to think what it would have been like to live in a society with zero control over water. And it’s not just the grass in the front yard you’re trying to keep alive. It’s not just the house plants on the kitchen table. Right? We’re talking about trying to keep alive their harvest, the food that’s going to keep them alive.

So they had a rich perspective of dew because they completely relied on rain and dew to water their crops. And in the summer months when there is no rain, dew was the only thing that kept the plants in Israel from shriveling up. They have this rich perspective of the lifegiving effect of dew.

It symbolizes—I mean we get this—dew symbolizes what’s fresh and invigorating. It brings life. You’ve seen this, right? You get up early in the morning, you step outside, and you look at the grass in your backyard, or maybe the rocks. You look at the grass, right? And there’s just two million little water droplets, beads of dew all over the grass or dripping off the leaves. And the sun kind of glistens through it. We get this. We get this picture that David’s using here. Right? Dew is fresh. It’s invigorating. It’s lifegiving.

But this verse, it’s not just talking about any dew. This verse is just talking about a specific kind of dew. It says—look at it there in your Bible—it is like the dew of Hermon. This is not the patriarch of the Munster family. This is Hermon, the well-known mountain in the north of Israel. There’s this mountain, Mount Hermon, in the north of Israel that is very well known for its dew.

So it’s important for us to see here this is the dew of Hermon. It’s not just any dew. This is mountain dew. So I think it’s important for us see that as he teaches about unity, David is very clear about his soda preferences, right? You can’t have unity in the church if you insist on drinking Pepsi. It’s named after a digestive enzyme.

Okay, okay, regardless of your drink preference, right?, they named the drink Mountain Dew because they wanted to communicate that it’s fresh and invigorating, right? It’s refreshing. Mountain Dew. And David is saying here in Psalm 133 that unity is like the dew of Hermon. The dew of Hermon was particularly heavy. You can read ancient accounts of people who would just freak out about how serious the dew was there. It’s just dense and thick. It’s the most abundant dew in the entire country of Israel.

The Israelites were familiar with this, right? A well-known characteristic—the dew of Hermon. It would be like if I said to you the rains of Seattle or the winds of Chicago. Right? It says here that unity is like the dew of Hermon coming down upon the mountains of Zion. Now, Zion we know is the nickname for Jerusalem and mountains of Zion just refers to the area surrounding Jerusalem which, ironically, maybe intentionally, actually, is exactly where these pilgrims would have been.

As they return to Jerusalem, they’re walking through the mountains of Zion. The interesting thing here is, Mount Hermon is in the far north of Israel. Jerusalem is further in the south and they are completely different climates. The area surrounding Mount Hermon is lush and fertile with orchids. It’s tropical, primarily because of this dew of Hermon. Whereas the area surrounding Jerusalem is an arid climate, more like a desert. It’s dry and parched.

From May through October almost zero rain falls in Jerusalem. It’s during those months when the travelers would have been singing this song on their way to Jerusalem. I mean, in our culture this would be like if we walked through the Mohave Desert singing, unity is like the rain of Seattle falling on the hilltops of the Mohave. Right? Picture that? They’re walking through this dry, parched climate around Jerusalem singing about how unity is like the copious dew from lush and fertile Mount Hermon coming down on the dry, parched ground around them, bringing life.

They’re singing about the fact that when God’s people come together in unity, there’s a lifegiving effect to it. It invigorates spiritual growth in a way that’s abundant and copious and unexpected in this world’s arid climate of disunity. The world is a desert for spiritual growth, but when we step in among the unity of God’s people spiritually, it’s like the dew of Hermon is falling. We begin to flourish because unity is reviving.

That’s part of the reason we get together, right? That’s part of what the church is all about. It’s about the lifegiving effect that it has on us when we share life together. The Lord didn’t intend for us to be lone ranger Christians. That’s one of the reasons I think you can’t go to church on TV or on the internet. You miss out on the fellowship, the reviving effect of unity among God’s people that you don’t get when you’re a passive observer in front of your screen. You can’t get this by watching church on TV. You can benefit from a sermon. I do all the time. But it’s no substitute for the lifegiving effect of fellowship among the body of Christ. Hashtag: IRL—in real life.

We all know people who say, I don’t need to go to church to worship God, you know. I can pray anywhere. I can worship at home. Well, that’s true. You can pray anywhere. You can worship God at home. But I think that kind of attitude undervalues what really happens at church. We don’t just come to pray. We don’t just come to worship. What about accountability, discipleship and spiritual leadership and fellowship? What about using your spiritual gifts to benefit the body? What about corporate prayer? What about the 52 one-another commands of the New Testament? You can’t even fulfill any of those by yourself.

As a side note, the elders have actually created a video that’s on the church’s website to answer that very question. If you have a friend that says I don’t need to go to church to worship the Lord. I can go to church online at home. I don’t need to go to church to pray. Well, one of the elders’ round table videos actually addresses that very question, so you can go on the blog and see that.

That’s one of the reasons we have small groups. That’s one of the reasons we gather together on Sunday mornings is for more opportunities like this. Because the unity of God’s people has a reviving effect on our soul.

4.  Unity is from God

Now our fourth facet of unity: Unity is from God. This is to me the most fascinating part of this Psalm. You’ll notice in verses 2 through 3 as you read through it—let me just tell you, something that you have to remember here is, this is a song. It’s a Hebrew poem. In American poetry, you know, we emphasize certain ideas through rhyme, making them sound the same. But in Hebrew poetry, they would emphasize things through the repetition and structure of the poem.

The structure of this song emphasizes the primary characteristic of unity that David means to communicate as these people sing together. Think about it this way. Look up here for a second. All right, there’s really four parts to this Psalm. There’s the introduction: How good and how pleasant is it when brothers dwell together in unity. Right? And then there’s the two similes: It’s like the dew; it’s like the oil—other way around. It’s like the oil; it’s like the dew. And then in the end—the outroduction—there the Lord commanded the blessing: Life forever.

So you have a four-part structure to the Psalm and folded right in the middle of those four parts is a three-fold repetition of the phrase “coming down upon.” Listen to it as I read it. It says: “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!”

And while they might be translated differently in the English, in the Hebrew that’s exactly the same words. It’s a three-fold repetition. It’s like the precious oil coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edges of his robes. It’s like the dew of Hermon coming down upon the mountains of Zion.

What I want you to see is, the primary thrust of this Psalm is that unity is coming down upon God’s people. David’s comparing unity to the oil and he’s comparing it to the dew, but unity is like the oil and it’s like the dew primarily in that it’s coming down upon God’s people and that’s a massive irony in this song, because you remember, this is a Psalm of Ascents. Right? It’s a Psalm of going up. And so, it’s like as the travelers are going up together to Jerusalem, they’re singing about unity coming down upon them. It’s like this—almost this hidden reminder in the midst of this Psalm that the source of unity is God himself.

That’s like James 1:17 says: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift from above, coming down from the Father.” That’s why this world is so desperately at odds with one another. No matter how hard they try, even though everyone wants unity, nobody can seem to figure it out. It’s because the source is hidden to those who are spiritually blind. People can’t create unity. You and I can’t create unity. We can only maintain the unity that God gives.

Now, don’t get me wrong, people may manufacture some false sense of unity, some cheap kind of unity, but true unity comes down from God. When my preferences and my desires are my number one priority, it creates all kinds of disunity, because none of our preferences are the same. But in the gospel, God creates in us a humble heart that defers to one another’s preferences for the glory of Christ, because when the advance of the gospel in Prescott is our shared vision, I can die to all my preferences. Throw them in the fire. I don’t care.

We see the same idea directly related to the church in the New Testament when Paul tells the Ephesian church (Eph. 4:3) to maintain the unity of the Spirit. He didn’t tell them to generate unity. He didn’t tell them to get unified. He said maintain the unity of the Spirit. How does that work? Good question.

I would respond: with a tuning fork. You see, if I have twenty pianos in a concert hall that all need to be tuned before the big show, there’s two ways to do it, right? I could tap the tuning fork and tune the first piano and then move to the second piano and tune it to the first. Then move to the third piano and tune it to the second and the fourth to the third and so on. And what I would have when I get to the end is twenty pianos tuned similarly but just slightly different from one another so that piano one and piano twenty are pretty significantly different.

So, instead I avoid the disharmony, the disaster of a concert that that would create, by tuning every single piano to the same tuning fork. And then I have twenty pianos in perfect harmony with one another. Not because of anything between them, but because each is tuned to the perfect pitch on the tuning fork.

So, we each tune ourselves to Jesus Christ. We tune ourselves to live according to what his word tells us about life, and the result is that imperfect people experience a holy harmony. That’s not based on what we do, but based on the perfect pitch of the tuning fork. It’s based on the sheet music of the gospel.

You see, in the world unbelievers run around trying to generate unity by tuning themselves to one another. That can never work. And it won’t work in the church either if we try to do it that way. That’s one of the reasons we don’t have a bunch of interest-based groups in our church. We always joke about the “left-handed-bikers-who-knit” Bible study. Right? The “left-handed-bikers-who-knit” Bible study. We don’t have one of those. It’s a joke. It’s a bad joke, sorry. Right?

We become so specific in our preferential Bible studies, right? We’re only going to hang out with people that have the same interests as us to study Scripture. Right? No, no, no. We don’t do that because our unity is not based on our common interests. It’s based on the gospel. So you end up with people completely different from one another with totally different preferences, totally different backgrounds, totally different personalities, all experiencing this profound agreement with one another because of the gospel, because of Jesus Christ.

I often think about—sorry, I didn’t tell these guys I was going to say this—but I think about Josh Lutz and Chuck Schafer Thursday mornings sitting at the same table at Men at War. They’re both there at six o’clock in the morning. You’ve got a young college student and a great grandfather sitting at the table just experiencing—both of them with this passion for Christ. They couldn’t be more different people. They couldn’t have more different preferences in music and clothing style, and yet because of their shared passion for Christ, because of their love of the gospel, because of what God’s done in their hearts, they sit at the same table every Thursday morning and study through God’s word together and experience this incredible relationship with one another and they benefit from one another and bless one another.

That’s incredible. That only happens in the church. That only happens because of the gospel. Right? It’s when people from all different walks of life come together. Math geeks and grammar nerds can still get along. How does that happen? Hymns only people and Chris Tomlin fans. Right? Skinny jeans and penny loafers. Right? Totally different people and yet we come together, and because unity comes down from God, because our unity is founded in the gospel, because it’s based on the person and work of Jesus Christ and not on ourselves and our shared interests, we have an incredible unity.

We have to be those kind of people. Right? We have to be the kind of people that say because of the gospel, my preferences don’t matter. Right? Throw all my preferences in the trash because the gospel has freed me from my obsession with myself and my preferences. Right? This is about Jesus. It’s about his glory, not my preferences. Not just right now, but forever. It stays that way. And that’s actually where this Psalm ends. It’s our fifth and final facet of unity.

5.  Unity is Eternal

Unity is eternal. Look at the second half of verse 3 there. It says, “For there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forevermore.” Now, in the Old Testament everyone knew that God lived among his people in Zion, at Jerusalem. Right? Where brothers were coming together to dwell in unity. See, Jerusalem was at the center of their worship. It was there in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the nation, the place where God’s people came together in unity to worship him. It was there that God commanded the blessing.

Literally, it’s almost like the blessing takes on personhood, you know? It’s like God looks at the blessing and commands it. Like, hey, blessing! Look at me in the eyes when I’m talking to you. Get over there and bless my people. Right? God commands the blessing. Get over there!

It was there in Jerusalem at the center spiritually of their nation that God commanded the blessing. Today the church is the place where God’s people come together to worship him, and that picture of unity in Jerusalem, that picture of unity in the church, that picture of unity here in this verse among God’s people, it’s a picture of heaven. It’s a foretaste of the eternal reality.

And that’s the very thing that David ends with here, right? That’s the very thing that these pilgrims would have ended with as they finished the last refrain of this song. The word for life here, where it says, “There the Lord has commanded the blessing—life forevermore”—it’s actually, in the Hebrew, plural. That would sound weird if you translated it that way. Lives forever. Huh? The Psalm was already weird enough. It’s Hebrew. In Hebrew it’s plural. Lives forevermore.

That’s not just a picture of eternal life for me or eternal life for you in the gospel, but eternal life for us. Lives forevermore. So this is describing the fact that God’s people who live together in unity now will live together in unity forever. One commentator says this implies not personal immortality, but the ever continuing vitality of the community. See, true unity among God’s people is eternal.

So, How good, how pleasant is it when God’s people dwell together in unity? Well, immeasurable. It’s holy. It’s refreshing. It’s from God. And it’s eternal. Because of that, we have to be the people that say, I need this. God, I need this. I need the body of Christ. I need the unity among your people. I need this in my life. You need the church. Because of what God has done, you need the reviving effects of the unity of this fellowship. We all do.

So, we have to be the people who treasure this unity, who guard it, who protect it, who cherish it. We have to be the people who stop acting like we’ve got it all together, that we don’t need any help from anybody else. I got this. Doin’ all right. How ya guys doin? Good. How are you? Good. Good. Have a good week. Okay, good. Thanks. Glad I came to church this morning.

We have to be the kind of place that is perfect for people who are not perfect. We have to be the kind of place that’s perfect for people who don’t have it all together because I don’t have it all together and you don’t have it all together. We don’t. We need each other. That’s what this is all about. This is what the Lord has blessed us with his unity for. We may look like we’ve all got it together on the outside, but you spend just a little bit of time with people, start to really get to know them, and if they’re honest, you’ll find out there’s not a person in this room who has it all together. We don’t.

But we have to be honest about that. We don’t want to be in the kind of place where people feel like they have to have it all together to fit in. Right? Rather, let’s be the kind of place where we all recognize, honestly, I don’t have it together; neither do you; it’s really good that we’re here together. It’s incumbent on us to let our guard down, to protect the unity of the body, to not throw up our walls, to not push forward our preferences, to not make this whole thing about me. God doesn’t take fondly to that.

His church is about Jesus Christ, the advance of his gospel in this world. So, it’s incumbent on us to recognize we need the church. We need the reviving effect of the community of God’s people. We need the holiness of the unity that God’s given us. We need one another. So, let’s guard our unity. Let’s treasure the fact that it’s immeasurable and holy, refreshing and an eternal gift from God to you and me.

Lord, how precious it is, God, that you bless us with the unity that we have. How good, how pleasant it is for us to have this time together even this morning. How good and pleasant it is, God, that you have brought us here together to admit our weaknesses, to cling to the gospel and to admit we need a Savior. We praise God for Christmas because it means there is a Savior. God, we’re here to celebrate together the fact that we need Christ. We need your gospel. We need your word. We need one another. We don’t have it all figured out, Lord, and it makes us deeply grateful people for the blessing of unity that you’ve given us, for the blessing of fellowship that we cherish. Lord, use us to put your gospel on display as we, broken people, treasure the gospel together, treasure our God together. Let this world see how great you are. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.