Well, good morning. Would you take out your Bible with me, please, and turn to Psalm 133, the 133rd Psalm. Psalm 133, which is very close to the middle of your Bible. Psalm 133 we'll read those three verses here in just a moment. That'll provide the text for our lesson. There are some young men who are going around with handouts, those are two sided.

One has the congregational focus that we have for our congregation this year year of ascent. And then on the other side is the fill in the blank that we normally do, or sometimes do for these lessons that is specific to this lesson. So if you'll turn to Psalm 133, and if you'd like one of those handouts there are some young men that are going around handing those out.

Thanks a lot. It's good to see those who are visiting with us. We have a number of visitors here. We have a few of our number who have been off and are back, and we're grateful very much for the presence of all, but especially for those. And I will remind you, or perhaps tell you for the first time, if you are visiting with us, that we are studying the Psalms of Ascent this year.

This is a year of ascent. And this psalm, Psalm 133, is the next to the last of those psalms of ascents, or degrees, or steps, depending on your translation. And it's believed that these were the psalms that were sung by the Jews, at least in the days of Jesus, and for a couple of hundred years before, as they were coming up to the temple to worship.

on the feast days, especially the Passover through Pentecost, those 50 days or so. And this yearly pilgrimage to Jerusalem is what kept the Jews national and brotherly unity alive in many ways. You think about it, the Jews dispersed after the Babylonian captivity, and they were in many parts of the world, and yet still, and this is true even to a certain extent today, right?

That, that Jews were still Jews, they, they maintained this, this family identity, this racial identity, this religious identity. And one of the big reasons for that in the ancient world where you weren't able to connect in the same way we are today. One of the big reasons for that is because many of those Jews would come back to Jerusalem every single year.

And it was a reminder that they were all family, that they were all unified with one another. The holidays are coming up, and, and we experience something similar at the holidays, right? When you come together as a family, you're reminded that these are my people, this is my family. Thanksgiving was the most important holiday in the McClinney family growing up.

Every Thanksgiving, we went there. And I would see my cousins, and I'd see my grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and all these sorts of things. And And it reminded us that, that we were family, that we had unity with one another. I remember the first year that I missed Thanksgiving, because, you know, most of you, do you do, raise your hand if you're married and you do the rotation thing, you know, every other year, yeah.

Christmas and Thanksgiving. So the first time I missed McClinney, McClinney Thanksgiving, I got a, I got a picture from my cousins. Every year all the cousins would get together and we'd take a picture, you know, kind of, kind of showing, okay, this is another year has passed. This is how everybody's changed.

I get this picture from my cousins. It's the big cousin picture. And I was in it because they held up my photograph, right? To show, hey, Reagan is still a part, even though he's not physically here. So you can imagine a family coming together, a people coming together to worship on these feast days. And then they have all this familiarity of these songs that they're singing as they're going up to the temple to worship.

Because they're not just coming together as a reminder of, hey, we're a group of people, we're a nation, we're a family. They came together specifically. to worship God. As Psalm 122 in verse 1 says, I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord. That's what these Psalms of ascent are all about.

They're about coming together with the specific purpose to worship. That this unity was more about, was about more than just common ancestry. This unity was about a common God. And worshipping that common God. And so we see this progression in the Psalms of Ascent about all sorts of different things that these people were reminded of.

But, but specifically this quarter. In October, November, December, we've looked at and are looking at Psalms 132 through 134, where there is refuge to be found in the people of God. while we are in the world. And like the steps leading up to the temple, those characteristics ascend from one to the next in these Psalms.

We studied last month about spiritual mindedness in Psalm 132, how we're, we think about the, the, the things of eternal significance, like God's kingdom and God's Messiah. And so today we talk about how we find unity with other spiritually minded people who are thinking about and focusing on those same things.

And then next month, we'll finish up by looking at Psalm 134, where we, with one mind and one heart and one voice Praise the one that we all imitate and desire to be with. So, Psalm 133 is about how we unify with our brethren. And that's going to be our focus, our emphasis for this month. This idea of the unity that we find with one another.

Coming together, as we're doing today, doesn't just show our unity, it helps us to maintain and grow in that unity just as them coming together once a year did. So after arriving, I hope that we can look around in this building today, look around the people who are around us and say, behold, look how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.

To those who have only or mostly only known unity. And for many of our young people, that's the case. This verse might not seem like a big deal, but unity is not found everywhere, and it is not found in every time. And for those of us who have experienced disunity among those who are supposed to be the people of God, this ideal truly is good and pleasant.

Psalm 133, we are told, is the psalm of David, there in the psalm heading. A psalm of ascents of David. And David understood what it was like when unity was missing, didn't he? David was one who thrived in time of war. And God told him that the sword would never leave his house, and that's exactly what happened.

David wasn't allowed to build God's house because of how much blood he had shed in war. But still, even though he was a king of war, David preferred unity to discord. He preferred peace to war. Behold, he said, look, isn't it awesome? Isn't it amazing? Thank God for our unity. And it is not just good and right and holy and pleasing to God.

It is good and pleasant for us as well. Because strife is a burden. Strife permeates every part of our lives. It permeates our very thinking. But unity is a blessing. that permeates in the same way. Strife is bad, to use the terminology of the verse, but how good unity is. Strife is unpleasant, but how pleasant unity is.

How good and how pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity. My question is, why should we have this unity as Christians? We know we want it, that's the ideal, that's what we're working towards, and gratefully, we've had that for many years. But why should we have unity? What is it that causes us to have unity, despite trials or temptations or difficulties that we might have personally or with one another?

Well, verses 2 and 3 give us some insight Interesting and vivid ideas to consider as to why we should have unity as Christians. And so this is a one point sermon with two sub points that come underneath it. So why should we have unity? We're told here in verses two and three, why the people of God should have unity.

Read with me beginning there in verse two. It is, this unity is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron. Running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Herman descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there, the Lord commanded the blessing life forevermore.

At first glance, maybe those verses seem far removed from us, a different place, a different time. Beards are back in, but maybe not to the extent that they were in that day among the Jewish people, but I would suggest that there are some powerful messages about our unity. Why should we have unity?

Because we share an overflowing blessing. That's the main point of the lesson this morning. We can have unity with one another as Christians because we all share as children of God in these overflowing blessings. The Lord commanded the blessing there in verse 3. For there the Lord commanded the blessing.

The psalmist says God is the one who commanded this to be the case and he uses two metaphors to describe the blessings. The first metaphor that he uses is precious oil upon the head. So this is an anointing. Oil was something that was valuable, it was something that was helpful that's true in our day, but it was even more true in their day without modern medicine.

Oil was expensive, it was often given as a nice gift we think about the woman who poured the costly oil on Jesus feet in the New Testament, and they were like, whoa, wait a second, we could have sold this for a lot of money. It was expensive, and so if you wanted to make your wife happy, you might give her some oil, right?

Maybe that's true today, you know, there's a place downtown you can go buy some oil. Maybe not to the same extent as then, right? So oil was costly, oil was precious, oil had a lot of different uses. It was associated with healing, medicinal purposes, it gave off a pleasant smell in an often stinky society.

But it was used in Hebrew culture specifically, but in other cultures as well. And this is what it's talking about in this verse, to anoint someone. To pour it on somebody's head as a sign that they were set apart for something special. You think about the role of the king. The king was anointed.

Sometimes a priest is anointed. Certainly that was the case in the Mosaic Law. Occasionally we see prophets who were anointed as well. And so this is like a big one time sort of thing. You anoint somebody's head with oil. It's something special. It's a one time blessing, and it's grand. It's grandiose, right?

It's a big deal to anoint somebody's head with oil. That's the kind of one time blessing we have from God. But then the second image is kind of the idea of daily blessings that we have from God, and that is the morning dew. The morning dew. D E W. Modern science confirms the benefits of dew for plants and for various ecosystems.

Dew plays a role in protecting plants from the elements. It helps regulate the plant's temperature and hydration and germination. Daily dew is vital for plant survival. And even if we had rain, if the dew were to cease, eventually the plants themselves would die off. The psalmist makes clear that these blessings are not given in small amounts either.

The exact phrase in Hebrews, in Hebrew, That is used three times is that phrase running down or running over. You see it there in verse 2, running down on the beard, running down on the edge of his garment. The same phrase is actually used again in verse 3. New King James translates it, descending upon the mountains of Zion.

This is running down, an overflow of blessings. These are not small helpings of blessings, but abundant to overflowing. Big one time blessings from God, like salvation, and daily blessings from God, like the dew in the morning. I made my Dodgers joke last week. That's one of the jokes I'm most proud of in my preaching career.

And the, and the Dodgers won! So they won before November even came. They won at the end of October. And the hero of that series and the MVP was a player named Freddie Freeman. I mean, that almost sounds like a comic book character. And that's kind of what he's like. I mean, he's this amazing baseball player.

He seems like a really good guy in lots of ways. We got somebody going like this. They know Freddie. Freddie's a great guy. And Freddie was the hero of the series, but he was especially the hero of game one, because he, he hit the winning home run and afterwards he's being interviewed and his teammates, because they were so excited, did this to him.

This is called a Gatorade bath. Usually the head coach or the hero of the game some of the other players come and they, they pour Gatorade on his back. In this case, it was water, right? And so Freddy was given this Gatorade bath because he was the hero, right? It's only done on special occasions, with big games, with big implications.

You look at that. He was totally soaked on his head, all down his back. That's a good image for the kind of anointing that we're talking about here. This is not just, okay, take a knee, we're gonna pour a little oil on your head. This is full to overflowing. It is running down. A lot of our bearded people aren't here this morning.

It's But you think about Aaron's beard and how much oil there has to be to run down through the hair and then run all down in the beard, those, it's a little gross, but those are the kinds of blessings that we're talking about from God. Totally soaked. Hebron is at the beginning of the headwaters of the Jordan River.

It's a river's worth of water for that heavy dew. And those two things combined remind me of Psalm 23 and verse 5, where the good shepherd End 1 is being talked to by the sheep, and the sheep says, You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over. And that's what's being described here, because that's what God does.

In the New Testament, it reminds me of Ephesians chapter 3. Would you mark your spot there in Psalm 133? Turn to the New Testament in the book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 3. If you've heard me preach for any length of time, you know my love for this particular subject. series of verses

in verses 20 and 21. Paul concludes his prayer. By saying, Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or even think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. So God is able to do so much more than we could have even thought of or hoped for.

And praise God for that. That He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly above all that we can ask or think. That is one word in Greek. It's It's uper ec peri su, and it's a compound word, one that I've explained to you before. Peri su is this idea of super abundant, ec is exceedingly, and uper is over above, overflowing.

And so it's this idea of super abundant, exceedingly, over and above to overflowing. Literally, it says, overflowing all things to do Overflowing exceedingly super abundantly. Meyer says of this word, There is nothing at which the action of God would have its limit. He can still do more. God wants to overflow us with blessings.

He is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us as Christians. He is able to do that. But even more importantly, brethren, He does do that. God desires to bless us in ways that we cannot fully imagine or comprehend. What does that have to do with unity?

What do we have to fight about, really, when we share in this kind of blessing? You know, sometimes you hear about these great, I'd say great in terms of wealth, these great wealthy people the ultra rich who fight over these inheritances that can't be spent in ten lifetimes. You know, their children's children's children could spend as much money as they want and they still wouldn't run out.

And we look at that and we say, how foolish. Among the 50 family clans on Forbes list of America's richest families, at least six of those clans have gone through very bitter, very public family feuds, including legal battles over trust funds, sham adoptions, trying to get some extra inheritance, even murder accusations.

In one case, there was proof that murder actually took place because they wanted more of the money. In another case $70 million was what was offered to one of the people who was supposed to receive an inheritance. And that was such an insultingly, small sum of money that the, that a lawsuit followed by the siblings that lasted for 18 years.

I don't want $700 million. I'm gonna go to court to, for 18 years in order to get more. And we look at that and we say, how silly. How can you be divided when you're blessed to that degree? But if you're a child of God this morning, I want you to think seriously about your inheritance. As children of God, we have an infinite inheritance in heaven.

It's reserved in heaven for you. It's undefiled. It will not pass away. No matter how many times you divide that inheritance, it doesn't get any smaller for anyone. All who desire can share in that inheritance as children of God. And so I ask, how can we have anything but unity if we see and remember and acknowledge God's blessings?

And from where do those blessings come? Well, those are our two sub points this morning. We share in overflowing blessings from, from two different perspectives. We share from our shared spiritual heritage. This isn't just any oil that's being described back there in Psalm 133. It's running down the beard, not just anybody's beard.

It's running down the beard of Aaron. It's running down the edge of his garment. That would be his priestly garments. And so there's a very specific anointing that's taking place. It's the anointing of Aaron as high priest for the people. And that oil that was used on that occasion is described in great detail in Exodus chapter 30 verses 22 through 33.

Now we won't read that this morning, But it describes this anointing oil that is made for the priests and the tabernacle. This oil was made from the good stuff, right? It's made from myrrh, sweet smelling cinnamon and cane, cassia and olive oil. And it's not just that it was a really good oil, it was a holy oil.

It was only used for the tabernacle and for the priests. It was made Preston talked a number of weeks ago about how people were inspired to build the temple and to do the work there in the tabernacle as well. Well, the guy, the perfumer who made this oil was divinely inspired to make this oil. Now that's some essential oil if I've ever heard of it, right?

Like, God himself gives the recipe and then he inspires the person to make it. And how is this oil used? Well, in Leviticus chapter 8, verses 10 through 12, this is what happened. Also, Moses took the anointing oil, and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it, and sanctified them. He sprinkled some of it on the altar seven times, anointed the altar and all of its utensils, and the laver and its base, to sanctify them.

And he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron's head. and anointed Him to sanctify Him, to set Him apart as holy for the work that God had given Him to do. Now, like Aaron, we are to be set apart as holy as a kingdom of priests, set apart to God's service, and in that we are all unified as we become the people of God.

We are all children of Abraham who are sharing a common heritage by faith, and we see that described again in the New Testament, this time in Galatians chapter 3. Will you turn over there with me, Galatians chapter 3.

Galatians chapter 3,

beginning there in verse 6.

Just as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. So there's this battle going on between Jews and Gentiles, and what is our heritage? Well, I'm a physical descendant of Abraham. Paul says to the church in Galatia, don't worry about these Judaizing teachers.

You know who's really a child of Abraham? Somebody who serves God by faith. Because that's what Abraham did. And the scripture, verse 8, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand saying, in you all the nations shall be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.

Whatever your physical heritage, you can become a, a child of Abraham, a son of Abraham. As the kids sing in the back, Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. Whatever my physical heritage, because I serve God by faith. But more importantly, later in verses 26 through 29, Paul makes clear it's not just that your common heritage is in faith, like Abraham.

You have a common heritage in that you are a child of God. Read with me in verse 26. For you, you Christians, are all Jew or Gentile. You all are sons of God through the faith of God. in Christ Jesus. For as many as you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free.

There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In terms of our worth and value and inheritance before God, all of those other things are put away because we are all children of His. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed. According to the promise. We're brethren, brothers and sisters.

We are fellow heirs according to the promise. We have these blessings because we have the same father. And we should be unified in that reality, that we are family, that fact keeps us together. When other lesser things should tear us apart, when lesser things tear others apart, even physical family, we all remain one in Christ Jesus and our commitment to him.

Now, that doesn't mean that we're all the same in another sense, because where verse 2 focuses on what we have in common, that we all receive the blessing of anointing from God, that we have this common heritage, verse 3 describes and emphasizes our differences. Go back to Psalm 133 one more time. Let's read verse 3 together.

It is like, he says again, so unity is like this precious oil. And then in verse three, it is like now the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore. You say, okay, they're both mountains, Mount Hermon and Mount Zion. So I thought you said this was about our differences.

Well, despite our differences, we have the same spiritual hope. Because David could not have picked two mountains that were more different in his country. Hermon and Zion are in many ways opposite. So here's a picture of Mount Hermon, here's a picture of Mount Zion. Even looking at them we can see the difference, but Let me illustrate a few.

First, there's the size of these two mountains. We have Hermon, which is a huge mountain. In fact, it's an entire mountain range. And then we have Zion, which is a small ish hill. In fact, some translations translate, translate it the hill of Zion. So just in terms of height, Mount Hermon is the highest mountain in Israel.

Its peak is over 9, 000 feet. You can see in this picture that there's snow on the top of Mount Hermon. You see that? 9, 000 feet compared to Mount Zion, which isn't short necessarily, but it measures in at less than a third of that, 2, 500 feet. Even the location of these two mountains is very different. So we have Mount Hermon in the far north.

We have Mount Zion more in the central part of the country. We're on the border versus the very capital city. And the habitation of these places is very different. Mount Hermon is rural, very little, even today, very little people in that area versus the urban area of Jerusalem. Mount Zion is one of the most tightly packed, tightly compressed places in the world, at least among those that don't have tall skyscrapers.

Hermon is in a wet region and received large amounts of rain and snow. Zion is in a dry region. But more to the point that he's making here. Herman gets a ton of dew every morning. In Zion, there's very little dew. It's very rare to have dew at all in the morning. And then we think about the relative importance or significance or prominence in the Bible.

Zion's on like every other page. Herman is more like a footnote. You very rarely see it in the biblical text. So these two places are very different. And yet he connects them together in an interesting way. He says, Our unity is like the dew of Hermon that is running down on the mountains of Zion. The problem with that is, the dew of Hermon doesn't run down to the mountains of Zion.

That's a geographic and scientific impossibility. So what is he saying? Thought a lot about this. Here's what I think he's, he's saying. All dew, all water for that matter, ultimately comes from the Lord. And whether it's the dew on Hermon, the little dew that's on Zion, or the dew in your own backyard, basically all that water comes from the same place.

It comes from God. And basically all that water that has ever been on earth is here now. The dew then is the dew now. That dew in your backyard, it was almost certainly In the region of Israel at some point through the millennia and those found in different places in different amounts It's all water and it's all from the lord.

Have you ever seen those these loci bracelets? Have you ever seen these bracelets? This is the classic low cut. Here's the, here's the catch. You pay 35 bucks for this because, not because it's made of silicone, that's not the reason, but because it carries water from Mount Everest in the white bead and mud from the Dead Sea in the black bead.

The highest and lowest places on earth. So you got a little bit of water from both places. Maybe they really went there and got water from those places. It's kind of cool if they did. But here's why it's still a racket. Because that water, over thousands of years, has been everywhere all over this earth.

And it's very possible that some of the water that you walked through this morning as the dew was on the ground has been on Mount Everest and has been at the Dead Sea. Because ultimately all that stuff, all that water, comes from the Lord. He was the one who created it to start with. It's His water, He made it, and He gave it.

And likewise, whether we're on the mountain of Hermon or the hill of Zion, we receive the same blessings from the Lord. The unity of God's people brings opposites together. The bond that we have in Christ brings people from far divergent backgrounds and cultures and classes and races and makes us into one.

It unifies us as brethren, that we are all Children of God. So whether we're from Mount Hermon or Mount Zion, whether that describes us and who we are, whether we're rural or urban, whether we're blessed or not blessed in terms of our physical lives, God brings all of those people together from those divergent backgrounds.

For there, he says, the Lord commanded the blessing. There the Lord commanded the blessing. Which of these two places? Well, there, Mount Zion, Jerusalem, though not mentioned specifically as implied, Jerusalem, the city of peace, the city of unity. That's what Jerusalem means, the city of peace. And David, though he wrote this psalm, never realized this vision of peace and unity for the city in which he dwelt.

In fact, In no small part due to his own sin, Jerusalem was often divided and sinful during his reign. He even had to flee it during one of the uprisings of his own family when his own son comes to take his life. But we look forward to a new Jerusalem where righteousness dwells and where perfect peace is all that is ever known.

And what is the most important of these blessings? What does it all boil down to? Well, that's the last phrase here in Psalm 133. Life forevermore. And that's what Jesus offers. It reminds me of John chapter 10 and verse 10. Jesus says, I came that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

Life. You know what the most abundant amount of life is? In terms of time? Forevermore. That's the most abundant life that you can have. Not just in time, but also in quality. And so as Christians, we have a common life that is based on a common love, a common purpose, a common savior, a common father, a common hope that brings us together and keeps us together.

This assembly, this temple, should be a foretaste of that life forevermore that is coming. Amen. And so, behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. For there the Lord commanded a blessing, life forevermore. Here, at the spiritual Mount Zion, forming the spiritual temple as the church, we should have unity.

As does everyone who shares in the covenant blessings of God that overflow because we are anointed into his family. That's our spiritual heritage. We have a common father. And because despite our differences, we share in the expectation of eternal life. That's our spiritual hope. With those two things in common, these blessings that come from God as his children, because we submit to him as our father and look forward to what he will do for us in heaven someday.

With those things in common, we can and should and must have unity with one another. How good it is, but even more, how pleasant it is to share in that kind of unity with God. As brethren, as brothers and sisters who dwell together in the midst of this crazy world with all of its disunity, with a common Father, a common hope, and common blessings in Christ.

And if you want to become part of that family that receives those blessings, you have that opportunity this morning to be born again into the family of God. And if we can help you with that, why don't you come now while together we stand and while we sing.