Father, it’s comforting for us to know that as we cry for You to hear our plea, Your Word promises that You will. Lord, for the one who seeks You, finds You, Your Word promises us, Lord. So thank You, Father, that in Jesus You are not hiding, You’re not trying to get away. God, You want to reveal Yourself. You want to know us.

You want to be known by us in Jesus. So we just thank You for that truth that You are ever-present and You are an ever-present help.

Lord, we just pray that with open hands and open hearts, Lord, You would take our tithe, our offering, all that You’ve given to us, Lord, we would joyfully, gleefully give it back to You.

Lord, that You would multiply it for Your kingdom. Lord, we could say that in all and all, Lord, You are our provider. Lord, we are not our own providers, God. So we praise You for that. We thank You for Your wonderful provision for our church, Lord.

So, Father, as You always provide, we pray that You would feed us now in Your Word. Lord, open the ears and eyes of our hearts to hear and see. And, Lord, to grow up in Jesus more, we pray. In Christ’s name, amen.

Well, good morning. It’s good to see you. It’s good to be with you. I’m doing it already. I’m going to pause in Matthew just for a week and I’m going to jump to a psalm.

And we’ll be back in Matthew next week. I wanted to preach to you this morning from Psalm chapter 133. Psalm chapter 133.

And it’s not a big chapter at all. It’s just three verses.

Psalm 133.

And this is what David writes, sings.

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.

I have a guitar that I’ve had for about ten years now. And I love this guitar. It’s the only one I’ve got really that I love to play. And I’ve been playing it as of late and I just can’t get it to quite sound. Sound right. The strings don’t quite sound in tune with one another. There’s a certain just twangy dissonance there that just drives me crazy. And so I thought, well, I’m going to take it to a real luthier. A luthier is someone that builds or works on guitars. So I found this luthier across town. It’s a really cool shop. It’s this older gentleman. Not a computer in the room. Looks like it’s the 1970s in there. Just guitars. He has this huge wooden desk with just notes everywhere. It was a cool place. And I handed it to him. And he grabbed it and he looked down the neck of the guitar and he said, oh! He said, your neck’s bowed. I said, oh really? He said, yeah. He said, look at that. And he got it out to this level and he said, see, as soon as I get to the middle of the neck it hums up and comes back down. I thought, is it fixed? I mean, what can you do? And he said, well, call me. Call me later. And sure enough, he was able to adjust that neck and get it back straight.

And the very same, my friends,

God has given you and our fellowship that we can be in harmony together. That we can be unified together. That our fellowship could be a sweet sound. That it could be a fragrant aroma. That’s what fellowship in the house of God is to be.

And unless you live in some, you know, remote part of the world in Alaska or the Taiga in, you know, Siberia or you’re on the other side of the world, you’ve got to live around people. And you’ve got to live around people in the church. And I think this psalm, it’s a short but sweet picture of all that we should desire life together to be. Life together. That’s what the psalmist says it should be if we’re God’s people, if we’re followers of Jesus. It’s life together.

Verse 1, Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.

It’s 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. So he starts with the behold, which being in Matthew, we always know beholds mean I’m getting ready to say something I really want you to see and pay attention to. So he says, Behold, a good thing it is, a pleasant thing it is when brothers or brothers and sisters, when God’s people are of one heart and mind, when they’re together, when they live in harmony. He in fact can’t really quantify it. He says, How good? He says, How pleasant? It’s thought that David wrote this psalm right after the great contention between the house of Saul and the house of David was written. It was resolved and the kingdom was unified. And so David is looking out over all the tribes of Israel together and it just warms his heart to see how good, how pleasant is this. All of God’s people united together. So David beholds, he marvels at the togetherness of God’s people doing life together. It’s a pleasant thing for him. And perhaps he sounds like a madman speaking to God. He’s speaking strange words because it’s very possible that even as Christians, as God’s people, we’ve never really experienced community to the point where we’re saying, Wow, how good, how pleasant is this community? And so we’re really not desiring the relationships that God desires for us because we’ve never either been taught it or we’ve never known it to be authentic and real. But I want these three brief verses to awaken a desire for what God desires for us to enjoy this sacred union, this oneness together as God’s people. And not just for your personal benefit. Let me say to you, it is. God wants you to enjoy life together. But more so, I want you to see that when we enjoy life together, God Himself is greatly glorified. So here’s what the Bible says. What the psalmist does, he employs a couple of similes to describe the wonder, the greatness of life together. A simile is a type of metaphor. You would be like, if something was boring, you would say, that was like watching paint dry. Or if someone doesn’t eat a lot of food, you say, you eat like a bird. So it’s a like. It’s something completely different that hopefully shines light back into what you’re talking about to bring a greater clarity. A couple similes. So here’s the first simile. The psalmist says, life together is like being anointed. Life together is like being anointed. In Exodus chapter 30,

verse 22, the Lord said to Moses, take the finest spices of liquid myrrh, 500 shekels of sweet-smelling cinnamon, half as much, that is 250, and 250 of aromatic, and 500 of casea, according to the shekel of the sanctuary and a hint of olive oil. And you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer. It shall be a holy anointing oil. With it you shall anoint the tent of meeting and the ark of the testimony and the table and all its utensils and the lampstand and its utensils and the altar of incense and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils and the basin and its stand. You shall consecrate them. That they may be most holy. Whatever touches them will become holy. You shall anoint Aaron and his sons and consecrate them that they may serve me as priests. And you shall say to the people of Israel, this shall be my holy anointing oil throughout your generations. It shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person and you shall make no other like it in its composition. It is holy and it shall be holy to you. Whoever compares any like it, whoever puts any of it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people. God’s taking this perfume essentially, isn’t it? Very, very serious. He’s saying this is a holy oil. And what you’re going to do with this oil is you’re going to anoint the tabernacle, the place where God dwells, all of the utensils, all the tools used for the work of the priests. And you’re also going to anoint the priests themselves with this oil. And what that’s going to do, it’s going to make all these things sacred things. And what it’s going to do is make the priest himself and the priest very sacred, very special, very set apart in their devotion, in their nearness to God. That’s what it meant to be covered in this sacred oil. So you see what he’s saying is in the very same way, unity, togetherness among God’s people is a special, sacred thing. To have life together is sacred and special as this sacred oil would be to set Aaron apart for a special task.

In what way? I think we can only ask. How is it special? How is it unique? How is it sacred, life together? Now, Genesis, Genesis chapter 4, verses 3,

we read, In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. And we read in Genesis, Genesis chapter 4, verse 8, Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Now that, is it not, it’s a dramatic reversal of what Adam and Eve had just a couple chapters ago. What Adam and Eve had in the garden was perfect unity and fellowship. And do you know why they had a perfect unity and fellowship? Because they had perfect unity and fellowship with God. All was well in the garden until sin entered. The moment Adam and Eve broke unity with God, they immediately, necessarily broke unity with one another. Everything for Adam and Eve at life up to that point, until they sinned, the way they related to one another, the way they treated one another, the way they enjoyed one another, their very conception, of what it meant to be a human and interact with humans, was from God. God had given them all that stuff. It was a sacred life God had given to them, but so also it glorified them. Because it came from God, their relationship, their relation to one another, it looked like God. How could they treat one another, but how God taught them how to treat one another. So in their relationship, they couldn’t help but glorify God because they saw His person in their own persons. They saw His love and purity and holiness. But this life together that Adam and Eve had that God established, mirrored God Himself and holiness and character, and so glorifying to God, was lost when they listened to the voice of the serpent who said, hey, you should do life your way, not God’s way. No longer could it be possible for God alone to be the underlying source for their conception of themselves and one another. Having sinned against God, they broke unity with Him and they broke it with one another. So you know what that means for you and I. It’s from Cain all the way to us. We have a disjointed relationship with God, which means what? We have a disjointed relationship with one another. We as the human race were not chiefly, animated and motivated by God in our dealings with one another. You now have that thing called a sin nature. And that sin nature says, hey, let me inform you how you ought to relate to other people. Where Adam and Eve said, hey, what does God think? Who is God? What is God like? And what God is like is how I’m going to relate to people. You know what you and I do? True to form our sin nature? We say, what am I like? What do I want to do? How do I want to treat people? That’s the great struggle of the sin nature is we no longer conceive of who God is. We conceive of who am I? And what does it mean for me to treat others the way I want to treat people?

What is the most wonderful thing about being a person? I want you to think about that. It’s a weird question. What is the most wonderful thing about being a person? The most wonderful thing about being a person is being sinless. Second best. That’s the most wonderful thing about being a person.

You and I were created in the image of God to enjoy God. That’s in the Westminster Catechism’s first question. What’s the chief end of man? Enjoy God, glorify Him forever.

So what can it mean to know another person? What can it mean to be a person if that’s the chief and that’s number one? Well, number two is knowing people created in the image of God.

Because when I know you and you know me, but our chief satisfaction is God, you know what’s going to happen is we’re going to supremely enjoy one another because we supremely remind one another of our first joy and satisfaction, God Himself. That’s what’s so great about being a person over a dog or a cat, right? A dog or a cat, yes, it’s created by God, but a dog or a cat is not made in the image of God. It cannot conceive of how wonderful God is. But you see, fallen Cain, he saw righteous Abel. He saw the righteousness of God in Abel and he hated it. And he struck it down to the ground. And think about that if you’re Adam and Eve as parents.

You have before your eyes this very poignant picture of the consequence of your sin. You’ve got the one son bleeding the ground red and the other son banished. The other son in exile. It is the, opposite of what they had in the garden, complete and total disunity.

I wonder how much longer the city of Chicago will exist. If you read the news, it seems like everyone’s going to leave or everyone’s going to die. One of the two, it’s going to be an empty city because they outdo their own murder record. It seems like every weekend you read those. Highest record of murders in Chicago since this and this date. And it’s amazing, isn’t it? Just, you look and you see the proof of the disjointedness of man’s relationship with God because you see it in man’s disjointedness in his relationship with other people. Need I say the word politics? How nasty, nasty are American politics? So nasty. You read more stories in the news about people fleeing America and just living in other countries because they’re just tired of the whole thing. I’m thinking maybe that doesn’t, that doesn’t, that doesn’t sound so bad after all. But we don’t disagree with people in politics in America, do we? You know, we hate people who disagree with our politics in America. I mean, we just, we just wish them dead. People couldn’t get any nastier, it seems, on the internet. Why is divorce at an all-time high? Friends, it’s because we’re disjointed in our relationship with God and we’re disjointed then in our relationship with people. That’s why.

And that’s very bad news. But the Apostle John gives us very good news. And I want you to see it in 1 John 3. Verse 3, verse 10. 1 John 3, verse 10.

Here’s what he says. He says, By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one, here catch this, who does not love his brother.

For this is a message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life. How do you know that you’ve passed out of death into life? How do you know that you’re risen above God? Of the fall of man? Because we love the brothers. We love God’s people. That’s what John’s talking about. It’s a proof of it. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. So life together is this sacred, special, holy gift that God gave to Adam and Eve outside of just knowing him in the garden. And that was a gift lost. But John reminds us that Jesus returned the gift back to us. Jesus returns the gift forfeited because Jesus in his life, he was informed only by the truth and love of God. Jesus never lived for himself. Jesus never saw people as a means to an end. Jesus never had animosity. No, Jesus was perfect where Adam and Eve failed. And so friends, it’s only in and through Jesus that you and I can really have true sacred fellowship again. Only in this life, this man Jesus, can we have true life together. It’s only through the working of Christ’s Spirit that we’re free from being governed by the spirit of this age, by the sinful man, and we’re free to truly enjoy one another in holiness. Truly mirror the character of God. Truly glorify God in our holy fellowship. Just here in this room. These people among you, it can only happen here because only God can do it. Only we here are in Christ and He’s the only man above the fall. That’s a special thing. They’re not going to find it out there. It’s right here in the body of Christ.

Just as the sacred oil ran down Aaron’s head to his beard, to the hem of his robe. Friends, if we’re in the church, we’re saturated with the love and holiness of God to love one another and experience the holiness of God in the way that we treat one another.

Charles Spurgeon says, it might seem as if it were better not to smear his garments with oil. But the sacred oil cannot be restrained. It flowed over his whole robes. Even thus does brotherly love not only flow over the hearts upon which it was first poured out, but it runs where it was not sought for, asking neither leave nor license to make its way. Christian affection knows no limits of parish, nation, sector, age. Is the man a believer? Is the man a believer in Christ? That he is in the one body and I must yield him in abiding love? Is he one of the poorest? One of the least spiritual? One of the least lovable? Then he is as the skirts of the garment and my heart’s love must fall even upon him.

You see, Jesus shows us the perfect way by His life and He shows us perfect love by His cross. And through that cross, we are raised up to His perfections to know God, to love God, but to know and love people as Christ has loved us. The gift has been restored.

Jessica and I went to the steakhouse for our 11th year anniversary a couple of weeks ago.

And we’re sitting there and we’re talking. We really don’t know what to do with ourselves when we don’t have kids even though we have a baby with us. But we’re just trying to enjoy the evening. But there was this other man who walked in with us. So I knew it was him, but he had on this so fragrant cologne. I mean, you know, some people wear colognes just like, gosh, you know, did you put a ton on or is that just what that stuff smells like? And he was this big rustic man. You remember Ben Cartwright from Bonanza, you know, the dad? He looked just like Ben Cartwright from Bonanza. And so it’s like I’m looking at my wife and we’re talking and then like, I can smell it. Like I look over at Ben Cartwright and I’m like, oh, and I’m talking to Jessica and I’m like, this dude’s going to come over here and punch me in the face because he’s got to be wondering why I keep looking at him. But I couldn’t stop it because that’s what cologne or perfume does. It draws your attention to the one wearing. It just forces you, you know? And friends, in the same way, I think this is exactly what David means is in fellowship with one another. Well, I smell Jesus on you. Well, this is wonderful fellowship because it just, I can’t, I can’t stop looking at God. I can’t stop looking at God when I look at you. And so you see how being second best, what a glory it is to draw people into their greatest love. That’s what we are in the church. We’re fragrant to one another.

I want to ask you, do you count it a privilege to be saved by Christ? Oh, friend, then count it a privilege to be in His church. In the church, we have real human fellowship that brings joy because that joy points us to God. Let me say also, I think that perfume is an evangelistic perfume. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, we are the aroma of Christ to those being saved. So when we love one another’s perfume, the world’s going to say, y’all like smelling one another. Smells pretty good. Smells pretty good. Yeah. So what do we do, friends, but invite the world to come and breathe in the aroma of Christ. The aroma of heaven in Christ Jesus because it’s on us. Because it’s on us. What a joy. What a privilege to be in the church. In the body.

Second simile, verse 3.

He says, It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion.

For there the Lord has commanded the blessing life forevermore. So Mount Hermon is the tallest mountain in Palestine and Israel. It’s 9,200 feet above sea level. It’s capped with snow even until late summertime. And so it overlooks Mount Hermon and its ranges, all the other mountain ranges in Israel. So David is drawing the people’s minds to the highest mountain peak they know of. And he says, those misty, dewy clouds up on… Mount Hermon, they share, they bring their dewy clouds to fall even on the lower mountain ranges. He says, even Mount Zion, which is Jerusalem, God’s heavenly city. He says,

Mount Zion is watered, is taken care of because Mount Hermon is constantly saturating it with its dew. That’s what he’s saying. Deuteronomy chapter 11.

God says, for the land that you are entering to take possession of, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables, but the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water by rain from heaven. A land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. So see what David is saying. He’s saying in the same way that Jerusalem is constantly taking care of its vegetation and that illustration honestly probably isn’t as impactful to us as it was to them because we don’t live in an agrarian society, right? If we were all farmers, that would be a big deal. Like we got to have water. You and I just go to the store and buy our vegetables, right? We don’t think about water. But if you’re a farmer, if you’re in this society and you’re growing grain, whatever you’re growing, or even grass so your cattle can eat, like wow, God is saying, He is always going to feed the land. It’s a huge promise for God to make the people.

So David is saying to the people, just like God nurtured the land, life together in sacred holy union as God’s people, that nurtures you. So what is the second simile? Life together is like being nurtured. It’s finding the sustenance we need to thrive as God’s people.

In Ephesians chapter 4, verse 15, Paul says, Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ. From whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped. When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up. So God’s design is this. Live life together and living life together is the blessed means by which you grow in your faith. You grow in your knowledge of God. You grow in your love of God. The good news of the gospel is this. The moment you believe in Jesus, you are eternally secure. You are considered clean and righteous and pure. You are immediately, instantaneously a child of God, a friend of Jesus, one of His sheep, the bride of Christ. But here’s the biblical reality. That doesn’t come all at once. We’re each a work in progress in our growth until Jesus takes us home or He comes back for us. So the Bible calls that sanctification. It’s being made holy. It’s an ongoing process. Being made holy. So what the psalmist is talking about, Paul is saying much more explicitly in Ephesians, that when we live in fellowship with God’s people, we are sustainable. We are maintained. We are nurtured. And we are healed. And we are corrected. And you say, well, no. That’s what the Bible’s for. If something’s wrong in my life, I’ll go to the Bible. And I’ll go to prayer. Okay. If you had a perfect relationship with the Bible, which is to say God, and you perfectly heard the Spirit at every moment in your life, can I tell you something? You don’t. You, among anyone else in your life,

lack objectivity. You are not self-aware. None of us are perfectly self-aware. So lo and behold, what is God’s perfect plan? Let me put some people in your life who when you don’t have objectivity, they say, hey, I love you, and Jesus loves you. Let me point something out. Hey, are you carrying a heavy load? Let me carry that heavy load with you. You got this burden. You got this struggle, man. You need encouragement. You need encouragement. You need a warm-hearted friend. Here I am. You need some prayer. Oh, and you know what? I need it too.

You see how God’s good gift of keeping us along the pathway is one another.

Fighting to live in unity with God’s people does the work of preserving us as God’s people. Yes, it’s a challenge, and it’s difficult because we don’t always get along, and it can get really messy, and none of us are ever at our best,

but staying in the messiness rather than running from the messiness, it sanctifies us. It grows us as we say, let’s keep looking to Jesus. Let’s keep looking to Jesus. Yes, this is a problem. Let’s look to Jesus. What’s Jesus’ solution here? Let’s work on this together. Let’s grow together. Together, together, together. We are becoming Jesus’ people. Please hear me say this. Together, you cannot become Jesus’ people on your own. It’s just not so. We become one. Paul says there’s one faith, one Lord, one Father, one baptism. Just one. So there’s no knowing Jesus without knowing His bride. There’s no growing in Jesus outside the church, outside the local church. It’s we, not me. That’s bad grammar. Me follow Jesus. You know, we follow Jesus. We follow Jesus. We are God’s means to keep one another on the straight and narrow.

My younger sister, Laina, came up from Birmingham a few weeks ago and we went to this thing called a plant pop-up. I had never heard of it, but this super fancy nursery. They set up all their exotic plants in the hipster coffee house and you go in here and you walk around and you can buy these exotic plants in this coffee house or whatever. But what they had was, was cactuses, cacti. And they were really cool. I mean, they were all over. I mean, they’re huge and had all these really cool shapes and they were expensive things. And the lady, you know, we were asking the lady, like, how do you take care of these? Because, I mean, they didn’t even have a base. They were just sitting there by themselves. There’s no roots, nothing. It was just a cactus. And she said, she said, cactuses, they thrive on neglect. She said, don’t do very much. Just water it like once a month. You don’t pay them a lot of attention. So that’s interesting. And that makes sense because you think about cactus even on a desert scene.

You’re not a cactus. You’re a dainty little flower. And if the temperature in the room is off a degree, you wilt. And if you don’t get the right amount of water, you wilt.