Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, is it a family reunion when all the family members gather together and none of them want to be there? Is that a family reunion? Is that an actual reunion? Is that what you are expecting and hoping for from a family reunion? Is it just gathering everyone together into a room and saying, we’re together? Well, maybe various people who aren’t thrilled to be at a family gathering of that size. Nevertheless, the general hope, the general tenor of a family reunion is you’re getting together to enjoy one another’s company, to reunite, to be in fellowship and harmony with one another again. You would see the family unified not only in body, but in spirit.
So this evening we come to a psalm of unity. David, speaking about unity, what does unity look like? What does it evoke for him when he looks upon Israel brought together as the people of God? What does it look like for us when we gather together as God’s people, principally and primarily on the Lord’s day, but also at other times, wherever two or three are gathered together in Jesus’s name?
Well, the Psalm of Unity, we’re going to look at three significant aspects of unity that it expresses. First, you will see united as the church. We are united as the church. Then we will see that we are united by the spirit, united by the spirit. And finally, we will see that we are united in the son, united in the son.
So speaking as united as the church, verse one, David writes, behold how good and pleasant it is. when brothers dwell in unity. My brothers and sisters, this is a psalm, and so it’s poetry. Now any scripture passage that you may find is like a gemstone. You can look at it from one angle and be dazzled by its beauty and awe of all that is there, but then you turn it again and there’s more complexity, more beauty to it that you didn’t even begin to see. In fact, God’s word, you can spend your whole life studying it. You can plummet steps to great profit for your soul and for your neighbor and your worship of God. You will only begin to plummet steps. Think, even a psalm as short as this, you could probably hear a hundred sermons on it. And there will be more still for you to uncover about what Christ desires for you to hear from it.
So this evening, as we look at it, I ask a very basic question. What does it mean when it says, it is good and pleasant when brothers dwell in unity?
What does good mean? That’s a word we use very frequently, very commonly. Say, that is good. I like that. That is a good thing. But what does good mean? What is David saying by saying good?
When something is good, it’s fulfilling its intended purpose. It has an end, a purpose that is involved for it. Think of what God, when he sets out and creates all of creation, you see in Genesis 1, when it’s giving the different days, the ends each time, and God saw that it was good. Because when he had created it, he created it how it was designed to be. It had light, was to create light, to bring visibility to his creation. And its existence, when he made it, says it is good. Because it’s fulfilling its purpose.
In an unfallen world, the image is not a blinding light that gives you cataracts. It is a light that shows you the glory of God and his creation. Or imagine a tool. You use it rightly, it’s good. A hammer on hammering a nail is good. Trying to saw something with a hammer is not good. It’s not its intended purpose.
So David is saying there’s something about brothers dwelling together, brothers and sisters dwelling together in unity that is good. There is a end goal, a goodness to the fact that they are dwelling together in unity.
But he also says it is pleasant. It is pleasant. This is a word that we get my daughter’s name from, Naomi in the Hebrew. Pleasant, something that is lovely, beautiful that you look upon. David is saying it’s not just a matter of this thing is a utilitarian good. It’s good when the people get together because stuff gets done. What’s beyond that? He says it’s a good thing that people are gathering together. It’s also a beautiful thing. It’s something evocative, something that excites him.
Imagine when people gather together for a wedding. It’s not only a good thing that we’re gathering together to witness a husband and wife coming together, But it’s also a beautiful thing to see the decorations, the decorum, the formality, the ceremony behind it. All the beauty that is manifest, that often at its best is pointing to the beauty of the great wedding feast to come. And so for David, he’s saying it is a good and pleasant thing when brothers dwell in unity. But what is that unity? What does unity look like for David? What is he thinking of with unity?
Well, again, I asked earlier, is it considered unity when a family gathers all together and nobody likes each other, nobody wants to be there, they’re like, this is the last time I’m ever gonna see you again? No, it’s not the intended unity he’s looking at. Or is it, we all get along great because we accept and agree with everything anybody says or does or thinks about our God? But welcome anybody, like, wanna let the satanic temple come worship with us according to their means? Go ahead. No, it’s not the unity he’s looking forward to.
The unity he looks to is unity in God around his word. Unity in God around his word. He’s saying that Israel are the people of God. They don’t worship Baal. They don’t worship any of the Egyptian gods. They worship the one true God who made heaven and earth. And that God who made heaven and earth, he’s revealed himself. And he said, this is how you worship me. I am the all-consuming fire. Here is how you come to the all-consuming fire and are not consumed. There’s a specific truth. The unity is rooted in the truth of God’s word. It’s not just every man for himself, everyone deciding this is how I want to approach God. No, they are united together following one God. And they follow him according to his word, which binds them together in truth.
And think of Israel’s experience of this when they are devoted to God and his word is when they are unified. When they go astray from that is when they fall into disunity. And David perhaps even has that in mind, consider before his time, the time of the judges. It’s a time of immense disunity between Israel. In fact, what’s the summary of judges? Every man did what was right in his own eyes. They have nothing outside of themselves. They’re not looking to the objective truth of God’s word to guide them all together and focus their heart on there. Rather, each one is deciding himself how he will follow his own will and his own heart. And it leads to all the tribes are divided from each other. They’re picked off by various nations. There’s no cohesion between them. And in fact, they end up in civil war with each other because they are so disunited and different people following different aspects and none of it resolving around God.
But then later, David doesn’t live to see this. He will see, well, he won’t see his son, Solomon, will have a son named Rehoboam, and Rehoboam and his rival Jeroboam will divide Israel into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. It is not good or pleasant. The kingdom is torn in half, and the brothers are no longer dwelling in unity together.
But when that division happens, how does Jeroboam cement the disunity? What does he do to assure that Judah and Israel will not be reunited? He targets worship of God, because the place of God’s worship is Jerusalem. And already there are Israelites who are like, well, I didn’t like Rehoboam, but I still love God. I’m going to go back to the temple and worship God. And so Jeroboam sets up his own idols and two places of worship for Israel to go. and turn away from the Lord. And that creates greater and greater disunity for the Northern Kingdom as time goes on, and Israel and Judah are divided thereafter.
But David experienced something different. He built that place of centralized worship for Israel. David, he comes after the time of the judges. He comes after Saul’s tumultuous reign. And he unites all 12 tribes. All of them acknowledge him as the rightful king that God has chosen for them. And he conquers Jerusalem, the city that borders both Judah and Israel, the midway point. And he sets that as his throne, not the deepest depths of Judah. I don’t know, I don’t care what happens to you, Israel. He’s like, no, Israel, I am your king too, so I will draw near to you. My kingdom is established in Jerusalem and I will bring God’s ark here. And we all together will come as his people. to worship him according to his word. And though Solomon is the one who will build the temple, David is the one who set the foundation for it. David, if you go into Chronicles, you see basically Solomon just had to almost press a button and let everything David had set up work to build the temple. David, used by God to bring this unity for Israel.
Think of this image, he says, how good and pleasant it is. He’s rejoicing when brothers dwell in unity. And he experienced that. Think of his friendship with Jonathan, the son of his mortal enemy Saul. Jonathan loved David. Though his father hated David, Jonathan, a man after God’s own heart, recognized David as a man after God’s own heart. And he joined himself, not only as a comrade, as a friend, his very soul. He adored David. He was unified with David. And they supported one another in serving the purposes of God.
But David also knew the heartbreak when this doesn’t happen. Think of his own sons. David. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. And he would spend the rest of his life after his affair with Bathsheba, seeing his sons killing each other. They were not unified. And he saw the heartbreak of that. And so David, who experienced both the highs and the deep lows of this fallen world, seeing it not like that, exhorts us to see what a precious beauty it is when his people, when we are united as one.
The church, the new Israel is often divided, not only in theory, often very literally divided. In our history, we have killed one another over various conflicts. Not only been divided in just our doctrine, I think the many divisions you may find if you go on the internet and the various things Christians say against one another, but we’ve done far worse than that to one another. The church has often been a place of division, not of unity. And that’s something we can grieve over. It’s something that we can pray about and ask the Lord to deliver us from that.
In fact, we as a denomination, we, one of the ways we celebrate our unity with the wider church is acknowledging we’re not the only true church. We have the word of God, but we also have things like the North American Presbyterian Reformed Churches or the International Council of Reformed Churches where we acknowledge we have other brothers and sisters and other denominations who are all faithfully following the word of God.
And why ought we as a church Individually, when we’re meeting other believers, I get it, sometimes you meet someone, you have that skepticism of, is this a Latter-day Saint or Jehovah Witness? But if it’s a fellow believer who loves Christ, can’t always define technical terms of theology, has never heard of the Westminster Standards, This living in the life that Christ has called others to live, let us remember the disciples who, when they said to Jesus, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him. And Jesus said, if someone is not against you, they are for you. Do not hinder them or stop them.
And Jesus himself, the night of his betrayal, he prayed in John 17, verse 20 through 23, After praying that the Lord would preserve his disciples and that they would be one, he then prays for you and me and all our brothers and sisters who have ever lived or whoever will live. He says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them as you loved me.
Let us ever contend for the truth of the gospel. And let us also remember Christ is praying that the world itself would see and recognize in the church a unity of fellowship and love for Christ and his people, that the world does not doubt that the Father did indeed send his son to die for such a people and that they can become such a people. Jesus is saying, Father, I am praying that my church would be one and that the world would see that oneness and that unity.
And so we ought to encourage that courage, our denomination, that it tries very hard to look into relationships with other churches and to encourage those who we know in other churches that may not confess exactly the same as us, but they are your genuine brothers and sisters, and you can encourage them in their walk and their faith.
One of my best friends from high school days, is now a Baptist pastor. And he and I still have vigorous disagreements all the time about things. And he and I pray for one another and he and I ask each other for wisdom very often. And that is a great gift.
David understands something about this unity that’s very important. We may see it as being united by the Spirit, Verse two, I ask you, what is this unity like? What is this unity like that David is looking and saying is good and pleasant? Well, he uses a simile. It is like the oil running down. It’s like precious oil on the beard, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes.
Remember I said earlier, he’s saying it’s a beautiful thing when brothers dwell in unity. Now he’s taking an image that Israelites would have seen as a thing of beauty, the anointing oil. It’s something often that is at their festal gatherings, their great feasts, there’s the abundance of oil being poured out and anointing people. It’s something that’s evocative to an Israelite, the imagery of the beauty of seeing that oil poured out. And often associated with them coming together for feasts and worship together. It’s an image that they go, oil, unity, it’s beauty, draws us all together. It’d be very powerful for them.
But there’s something else significant about the oil. And also even notice who he chooses a particular figure that this oil is poured out upon. The anointing oil was often poured out upon the significant offices of the church under age that was Israel. The oil would be poured out upon kings, upon prophets, and upon priests. And what it represented, it was a sign and seal to them That they could not do their calling without the Spirit of God. That they were longing for, they are called to this high and noble calling to serve the people of God in their particular way. Even the kings, the king of Israel is marked to be a servant, not as one lording over his brothers, but as one guiding them to follow the true God, to unify them all together in the true worship of God. And this oil, the pouring out of it, the symbol that they may only do this in the power of the Spirit.
And look at specifically, it’s poured out upon Aaron. Of what tribe was Aaron a part of? The Levites. The Levites themselves is a image. You see Aaron, oh, he’s a Levite. What is significant about the Levites? The Levites did not have an inheritance of their own in the promised land. God was their inheritance, but they still had to live, practically speaking. So he dispersed them throughout Israel. There were Levitical cities where the Levites could come, and this was their city, but some of them were in Judah, some of them in Benjamin, some of them, and Ephraim. The Levites are spread throughout Israel. They are like salt. They’re supposed to hold and unify the worship of God together. There’s supposed to be no tribe without the presence of Levites in their midst. The Levites reminding them of God’s word. The Levites modeling before them God’s word. The Levites themselves by being dispersed in Israel are a unifying factor in Israel’s life at their best. We see like in the book of Judges sometimes goes astray when the Levites go astray from God’s word. But at their best, they are a unifying force, unifying Israel in the worship of God.
But then, secondly, this image of the oil being poured out is poured out on a particular Levite. Aaron, the high priest, the one that Israel’s worship is unified to, the high priest who wears a vestment, 12 gemstones representing that he bears Israel on his own body, and that he represents to God Israel, represents back God to Israel. Aaron himself, the high priest, he’s supposed to be the one who directs Israel’s gaze. In fact, think of the king of Israel. He’s supposed to have a copy of the law that he transcribes and meditates day and night upon, and the Levites check to make sure he’s actually transcribed the word of God properly.
The high priest, religious life is unified around this high priest, and so the imagery of Israel being brought together, the high priest through whom he alone represents all the people before God one day in the year at the Day of Atonement and goes into the most holy of places on the Day of Atonement for the sins of Israel. He has that oil poured out upon him. And remember, that oil is representative of the picture of the church, represent a picture of the Spirit being poured out upon Aaron. It has this imagery, the running down of the oil, down his beard, the fullness of it, not only down his beard, but down the entirety of his garments, covering those gemstones that he wore that represented Israel.
And think there, where does our ability to even be unified, where does our ability to even be an individual Christian and hear the voice of our Savior and join with other Christians come from? It comes The Spirit of God. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost. Jesus, who received the Spirit in fullness like no king, prophet, or priest ever had before, in Him ascending, saying, it is better that I go so that I may pour out the Spirit upon you, breathing it upon His disciples, and then at Pentecost, pouring it out upon the church.
You see this imagery of Aaron’s whole body being covered by this anointing oil. And what is the church called? The body of Christ. And he is her head. And he has poured out his spirit on the entirety of the church. The whole church has the fullness of the spirit. There’s no church that has more of the Spirit than another. We’ve received the Spirit in the fullness of Christ’s promises and love. And we live in the Spirit.
There is no hope for us to have any unity. There is no hope for us to have unity with one or two brothers and sisters, let alone visible unity across the globe. But the world can be like, yes, there’s Christ’s church. Apart from the Spirit, the Spirit is the one who first unites us to Christ, and we have the unity in the Son. We are united in the Son by that Spirit.
As verse three notes, what is unity like again? Unity was like that precious oil. Unity wrought by the Spirit of God. What’s this? Unity is also like the dew of Hermon. Now, ESV and most translations choose a different word, but the imagery in the Hebrew is the same. It uses the same word for the oil running down the beard, the same imagery for the oil running down the garments, and the same imagery again for the dew running down. There’s this imagery of from the fullness of God above pouring down upon his creation in abundance.
The Mount Hermon, though far away from Zion, it evokes this imagery of the dew that can even envision it coming down even to Zion itself. Dew that carries and brings such a beauty in the morning when you look out and see the bright gemstones of the dew upon the grass and how it gives life to the grass and brings it all together as one piece. It is beautiful.
And then after this imagery of what is this unity like, the oil being poured out, and this precious dew, David then concludes. He says, which falls on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Where has God commanded the blessing? Where has God said, go there and be blessed? Mount Zion. Mount Zion. Remember earlier how I said that Jeroboam, how did he maintain disunity amongst Israel and Judah? He prevented his people from going to Mount Zion, the city of Jerusalem where God was to be worshiped. That was where they were to go to draw near to God, to find him in his presence in the tabernacle and now the temple at that time. They were there to go to see the high priest, not just your Levite neighbor who was keeping you accountable, but to go to Jerusalem and experience the fullness of God and his glory as manifested by the temple, to see the high priest offering sacrifices on your behalf.
David saw this unity and he saw the disunity. He himself was pointing forward for us to a high priest beyond Aaron. Aaron was long dead by the time David wrote this psalm. And yet he is evoking that imagery of Aaron, the high priest, the Levitical tribe. But he was also looking forward to Christ, our high priest, the one who has poured out his spirit upon us as his people, the one who saw us. As scripture says, we are those who hate God and hate one another. The division against God was the greatest disunity we had. And the manifestation of our disunity against God showed in our disunity towards one another.
And yet Christ came in the fullness of time as our perfect high priest. He gave His life for us. He reconciled us to the Father. And in so reconciling us to the Father, He has reconciled us to one another. Whatever sins we have ever made against God and His people, Jesus is capable of cleansing us from all those sins and reconciling us to the Father and joining us together as brothers and sisters, so that he can then say to his disciples, if your brother comes and sins against you, forgive him. If he sins against you many, many, many times, and he asks for forgiveness, forgive him many, many, many times.
Christ is our unity, brothers and sisters. The church is the visible working of Christ on this earth. The church is his body. But ultimately, we are united to Christ as his people. His church is united to him. And while we are to have visible unity, that is not to be in such a way where we see that our unity, our true unity is found in the church and itself alone. The church sometimes goes astray. The visible church that our Protestant forebears saw, they were trying to reform her. And then they were kicked out of that church. And then that church made an anathema against the gospel itself. And yet the church did not cease to be. Where could the church be found? Wherever two or three were gathered in Christ’s name. those who are devoted to his word.
Remember earlier, what is unity? It’s being united to God around his word. He has proclaimed his word to us through his son. The spirit enlivens our hearts to receive his word. And so we who are united in Christ are united with one another in true everlasting fellowship And it can seem so hard in a fallen world, and how many of us have experienced many times over grievous wounds and hurts from others in the church, or ourselves have been guilty of delivering such wounds. There are times where such wounds can seem insurmountable, and yet Christ is saying to us through this psalm, It is a good and beautiful thing when we dwell in unity, not just a showing up to tolerate one another, but being those who come together because the Spirit has opened our hearts to recognize one another as brothers and sisters, to gather together. We ought not neglect to gather together, nor should we despair of the visible unity of the church. I cannot Imagine or fathom reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. But with God, all things is possible. And who knows, maybe in a thousand years, once again, we may be reunited by his spirit, granting that the truth of the gospel finally is proclaimed in its glorious freedom.
We can always be praying for unity, and we ourselves can live in the light of that unity. knowing that in spite of the divisions that we had apart from Christ, he has broken down every barrier and division. We may delight and rejoice in the unity that we have and may recognize and welcome one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And this is a precious gift that Christ has given us.
Unity does not hinge on your strength. Rather, the Spirit who has opened your hearts unites you with brothers and sisters who are all united with Christ together. And thus, brothers and sisters, we may confess with David and live in the light of the reality. Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell in unity.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.