DUNCAN/The joy of unity

If you have your Bible, I’d invite you to turn with me to Psalm 133. We seem to live in a time where there’s a great polarization in our communities and in our nation today and it makes us value unity and agreement. Sometimes it makes us wistfully look back to times when we’ve experienced more communal and national unity, and in the church, of course. If you’ve been in a church that has been blessed with a real experience of the communion of the saints, you know what a great blessing that is. 

David, the author of this psalm, knew something personally and intensely about the blessing of unity. He also knew that it is a precious, even a rare commodity. David had lived through a civil war as the leader of one side, but that civil war was doubly deadly because it wasn’t just a civil war, it was a holy war. Each side thought that the other was the usurper of God’s rule and so not only was there a conflict which divided brothers but there was a spiritual conflict in Israel. And David knew the horrors of that kind of dissension. And when God finally brought Israel together and made him king, we’re told in 2 Samuel chapter 5 that he realized that it was the Lord who had done this. No human being could have brought that country together. 

Unity is Good and Pleasing 

In verse 1, David tells us about two aspects of unity. “How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.” In other words, David tells us it’s not just pleasant, it’s not merely pleasing to experience unity, it is actually good. You know there are some things that people seek that are pleasant but they’re not good. David says unity is not one of them. Unity is both pleasant and good. It’s so important for us to remember that this unity can be very easily fractured. Unity can be taken apart by gossip and slander, backbiting, nosiness, even other sins like adultery and fornication. It’s obvious how adultery could bring disunity in a marriage, but adultery can even bring disunity in a church.

I remember in a church many years ago a woman who was a godly mother married to a godly man. They were there every time the church doors were open — Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night — And then she simply decided that she no longer loved him, and she had an affair. And the affair not only broke up her family, but it also ended up breaking up the church because the people took sides, and they didn’t respect the way that the elders were trying to deal with the situation and it set families against families. Sin brings disunity and not just those sins that are directly poised to strike at unity but those that bring collateral damage to unity. So, David pauses here, and he says, “We need to appreciate the goodness and the pleasantness of unity and not take it for granted because it is so easily fractured.”

Unity Is a Blessing Poured Out by God on His People

Then he gives two illustrations, and you see those in verses 2 and 3. The first illustration comes from the priesthood and the sacrificial ritual. “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 robe!” You see the picture of the priest being anointed with oil. It’s a picture of blessing being poured out. As the priest has offered the sacrifice and the robe is on his head and the robe is now filled with fragrant perfume from the precious oil of anointing. He was in some dirty and smelly business, but that oil was filled with a pungent, pleasing aroma that countered the other displeasing aromas which would have surrounded him in the context of that sacrificial system.

And then the illustration changes. Look at verse 3. Suddenly we’re in the mountains and David’s talking about Mount Hermon, the tallest mountain in Israel, a mountain which was notorious amongst the Israelites for having extraordinarily heavy dews. And that was a picture of the flourishing of the plants and the fauna because of that heavy dew, even situated in an arid plain. Hermon was blessed because of those heavy dews that God had poured out. And so, in these two pictures we see pictures of the blessing of unity. 

Unity is a Blessing: A Blessing that God Commands 

And that’s the third thing that I want you to see in verse 3 — “For there, the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore!” David here is emphasizing that the Lord is the One who has commanded this blessing of unity. And where is he talking about? Zion. The Lord has commanded unity there. Mt. Zion was the location of the king’s throne in Jerusalem and eventually the temple. In other words, the throne of God and the throne of the king is brought together and there is a symbol of God’s presence right in the midst of His people where David and his heirs will rule. 

But isn’t it a bit ironic that David, the man experiencing and calling for peace is the same one who will himself destroy this peace in Zion? One morning, while his armies are at war, he will get up in this very city and he will look out and he will see a beautiful woman bathing on the roof of her house. And the choice that he makes that day will lead the Lord to say to him through one of His prophets, “The sword will never depart from your house.” But on that same mount, a thousand years later, the Son of God will die to give us peace. And what does Paul say about Him in Ephesians 2:15? “He Himself is our peace.” David disrupted the thing that he so valued in Israel — Only Jesus can give it back.

Are you experiencing a lack of peace and unity in your life? The restoration of that blessing will begin when you go to Jesus because the greatest tension, the greatest disunity, the greatest lack of peace there is, is when you are at enmity with God. And there’s only one Person that can remedy that and He did by becoming cursed for us so that we might be reconciled to God. Christ has broken down the walls of separation in His death on the cross. David knew very little of peace in his life and so he prized it very highly, but he brought much disunity on his people. May we prize peace highly. May we pray for the Lord to prosper unity in our congregations. May we hate and deplore strife. And may we mortify those things in us that promote disunity amongst the brethren. How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.