"Unity in the Church" Psalm 133 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Tonight I want us to look at Psalm 133.

Psalm 133 is a psalm that has been in my heart for years now, and there's definitely been a rallying cry in the church as of late concerning COVID and responses to COVID for unity and a pursuit of unity.

And so my heart keeps coming back to Psalm 133, which is a psalm about unity.

And I want to read it for us now.

Psalm 133, a song of ascent of David.

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

Running down on the collar of his robes.

For there Yahweh has commanded the blessing, life evermore.

I have a little poem for you.

To live above with saints we love, oh, that will be glory.

But to live below with saints we know, that's a different story.

This is the age-old story of Israel, the age-old story of the church, that we have fellowship in the church body together, bound together by love we have for each other, common fellowship, a common Lord, a common savior, a common church, even, or in Israel, a common ancestry, a common call, a common covenant.

So you would think that they would all just get along, wouldn't you?

And yet, sometimes the people you know the most and love the most are able to hurt you the most.

And so tensions and relationships or wrongs or slights or even sin have an exasperating effect on those that you feel that you have the closest spiritual relationship with.

You know, if a person at another church sins against you, you can ignore it.

But if a person at your own church sins against you, you have to run into them every Sunday.

Do you see that?

Unless you go into the other door.

Emmanuel's big enough, you can hide for a little while.

But eventually you two will be around the coffee machine together, and you just have to deal with it.

And this is the nature of unity in the church.

It's something that is esteemed, something that we want to have and experience that the Bible describes as good, and yet it is often a phantom, and often we are so easy to focus, so easy to focus on places where we see disunity and say, hey, this church is not marked by unity because this other person doesn't think about this issue the way I think about this issue.

How dare they be disunified?

If only everybody would agree with me, we would all have unity.

You know, I have perfect unity with my mirror, by the way.

My mirror is on board with all of my ideas, thinks it's great.

Um, but we recognize that's not true unity.

You can't have unity with yourself.

This is a psalm about precisely that.

It's noted here in the inscription that it's a song of ascents.

That's one of the psalms, the uh 15 songs here from Psalm 120 all the way through 134 that were memorized by the Jews to be sung on their ascent to Jerusalem.

It's called an ascent because they're going up to Jerusalem.

There were three different feasts a year where the Jews would travel there.

Many of the Jews after the dispersion wouldn't make all three of those.

They would make maybe one of those a year, or maybe two of them, maybe depending on the means that the family have, they might make one every few years.

But it was a basic part of Judaism.

Remember, after the Babylonians and the Assyrians took the Jews into exile, they scattered around the known world.

When Ezra was able to lead some back in Zerubal and Nehemiah, in the book we're going to be studying beginning next week, Sunday night, we'll start Nehemiah.

When they begin leading Jews back, they didn't lead everybody back.

They only led a handful of them back.

In fact, they're listed in the book of Ezra and in the book of Nehemiah.

They actually lists the ones that came back.

So this is not a massive return.

The rest of the Jews made pilgrimages on, you know, somewhat of a regular basis, and these were songs.

They had special songs they would memorize and sing on the way.

Now, this psalm was not originally written for such a purpose.

This psalm was written by David, and it's not very hard to figure out when David would have written the psalm, because as you look at the course of David's life there, you have a very narrow window where the psalm would have worked.

Remember, David was made king when he was but a boy, and then spent years serving King Saul, who was from the tribe of Benjamin, but was in a sense the king ruling from the north.

And then David spent 20 years or so on the run as Saul was trying to kill him, and David went and fled in different areas around the north by Bethshan and Beth Seda, and even over he fled even over into what would be today Jordan and lived out there.

But finally Saul died, and David was able to come back to Jerusalem.

He was able to be, after decades on the run, the rightful king of Israel.

And Jerusalem was even not even the first step.

First, he was ruling from Hebron, and then he was finally able to conquer Jerusalem a few years into his reign, and then he was able to unite the twelve tribes.

Remember, Saul passed on his kingship, not to David, but to Ishboxheth, and Abner propped up Ishbosheth, and they were trying to lead a rival kingdom from the north.

David finally consolidated them when Isheth died, and Joab murdered Abner, and that brought all twelve tribes into harmony.

And nothing like murdering your opposition to bring everybody into a real sense of unity, right?

Well, that's what happened in Israel.

Finally, the twelve tribes were united under David's reign, and it was indeed a time of peace.

A time of peace for a decade or so until 2 Samuel chapter 12.

2 Samuel 12 · chapter mention

In fact, in chapter 5, when David finally consolidates everything, chapter 6, he brings the ark back to Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is finally, for the first time in Israel's history, the true capital of the nation.

It was the religious capital with the ark there.

David, remember, was dancing before the Lord and all of that.

You have from 2 Samuel 6 to 2 Samuel 11, where he commits his affair with Bathsheba.

That little window there is likely when this psalm was written.

This is a psalm of the happy days.

This is a psalm when the 12 tribes are in harmony with each other.

David is on the throne.

All 12 tribes, it says, in those days spoke as one man.

They were stoked to be one nation and to serve David.

And of course, you know this didn't last.

David's own son Absalom would exile David, and then he would be sent back out.

He'd have to cross the Jordan and go hide in the, what's again today, the nation of Jordan.

He'd have to return there and hide there again as a political refugee.

Ultimately, he was able to return again.

But when he returned again, his kingdom never reached the zenith it had before.

He passed it on to Solomon.

Solomon was able to hold it together, but when Solomon died, civil war broke out, and the twelve tribes of Israel were never united again in any real way.

So the only time that this psalm could ever really have been written in Israel's history was in that little window of time between 2 Samuel 6 and 2 Samuel 11.

So it's interesting to me that David wrote it, but it is its real purpose, unbeknownst to David, would be to be in the Psalms of Ascent.

500 years after David's death, the Jews would memorize this psalm and they would sing it as they went to Jerusalem.

And the pilgrimage to Jerusalem would be a difficult road trip.

Some of these people would, you know, walk for a day or two from Jericho.

It's a day, a day and a half to get there.

But if you're from further than Jericho, you're talking a several-day journey.

If you're from Egypt, and remember, more and more Jews were moving to Egypt by the life of Christ, more Jews lived in Egypt than in Jerusalem or even that whole part of Israel.

So lots of Jews are making this pilgrimage.

It is a long journey, many days, fraught with danger, and they have a songbook to sing while they're making this journey.

They did not have Sirius XM radio.

They did not have DVDs in the backseat of the camel.

They had these songs.

And you can imagine the propensity for family division on that kind of journey.

You know, your kids, not my kids, but your kids might argue in the back of the van on the way to Giants.

Like Giants across the street.

You know you can't watch a DVD, it's across the street.

You go down to Woodbridge and Ikea and you have to pack a lunch and board games and stuff for the back of the van.

Imagine.

So if you live in Woodbridge and thought that was funny.

It's a hardship for me, okay?

I-95 freaks me out.

Well, they're journeying all the way to Jerusalem.

And you can imagine them singing these songs.

This song, as they're singing, it would probably be more wishful than actual, you know?

You hear the brothers arguing again the backseat of the camel, and you can picture the dad turning around and saying, How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity, okay?

Don't make me sing this song again.

This is how this song functions.

Now, of course, all 15 of these psalms have that same function, and it covers the gauntlet of emotions of that kind of pilgrimage.

You have the Psalms of Ascent begin with the Psalm of Desperation, a spiritual 911, where they're eager.

They need to see Israel again.

They feel like they are outcasts, and their heart just needs to see Israel again.

And then you go through this journey where they're singing and celebrating the grace of God that they'll experience when they get there until they finally see the temple.

One of the Psalms describes coming from the mountains and through the hills and finally cresting and seeing the temple itself and the joy that would fill your heart with you're almost there, you're getting there.

Psalm 131, we looked at a maybe a month ago or so about calming your soul before you enter into worship.

Psalm 132, celebrating the the longest of these psalms, celebrating how precious it is and how delightful it is that God chose Zion to build his temple.

You can see where that song would be so important for them to sing as they journey to the temple.

And now these psalms wrap up.

These 15 psalms come to a close here in Psalm 133 and 134.

They're really a pair of Psalms.

They begin with the same word.

I know the ESV translates the opening word differently in these two Psalms, Psalm 133, behold, Psalm 134 come, but it is the same word in Hebrew.

Perhaps there's a reason they translate it differently.

I don't know what it would be though, but it's the same word.

So the Psalter ends here with these same two invitations to come to Jerusalem and to marvel at the temple.

And what you're marveling in Psalm 134 is the joy of worshiping before Yahweh in his place, the joy of worshiping before Yahweh in Zion.

Psalm 134 is looking upward at the temple, at Yahweh, who is the Lord of the temple, and saying, I can't believe I'm here.

It wraps up the Psalms of Ascent with this overwhelming joy of being in the presence of the Lord.

But the second to last one, the one we're looking at tonight, Psalm 133, it's not in a sense with its eyes cast at Yahweh.

Now its eyes are cast with those that made the journey with you.

The journey is over.

You've arrived at the temple, and how good and pleasant it is to be with other people.

Again, imagine coming from the dispersion.

If you're a Jew in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey or Egypt or Ethiopia, or Jews back then were down in Eritrea.

This is a very long journey to get up to Jerusalem.

And you get there.

And even by the life of Christ, the languages were so diverse.

You know this from Acts 2.

You have Jews all over that are speaking different languages at home.

Their skin tones would be different, different colors.

They're from different, well, we would almost consider ethnicities.

They've scattered and kind of assimilated in all these other cultures, but a few times a year they come together and to hear each other singing the same songs in Hebrew.

Some of these people may not have heard Hebrew since the last time they were in Jerusalem.

Their complexion may be different, but their clothes are the same.

They're wearing the same clothes as they come to the temple.

Imagine that kind of joy of seeing those who you live in Ethiopia, or you live in Asia Minor, you live in Corinth, you live in Rome.

But now you get together in Jerusalem.

And there would be such joy in your heart as you look around and see your brothers and sisters.

David would have had no idea how the psalm would have functioned when he wrote it.

He was celebrating the twelve tribes being as one back when he became king, but by the time it joins the Psalter as a psalm of ascent, it is celebrating something even more profound than that.

As I mentioned, Israel was always plagued by disunity, and it is no different in the church today.

Churches have often been plagued by disputes and disunity.

See Yodia and Senecdoche and Philippians, see Paul versus Cephas, and the to the Corinthians, Apollos versus Jesus, where some believers say, I'm of Apa I'm of Paul, and another says, I'm of Apollos, and they argue about who wrote the book of Hebrews.

It gets ugly over there.

Some say, I like Cephas.

You know, he's he's more bold and steady, and others would say, I like Jesus.

He just loves everybody.

And they were dividing the church.

They had the Jesus faction in the church and the Paul faction, and this is the early church.

And thus the New Testament is filled with calls for unity, appeals for unity.

Please with believers, to agree with one another without divisions, to have the same minds, Paul tells the Corinthians.

Have the same mind.

He says, I'm not going to participate in these divisions among you, he tells them.

Paul says, he's looking at a group of people that call themselves the party of Paul, and Paul says, I don't know what's going on, but I'm not part of that party.

And he says, you need to have the same mind among you.

And that mind, he tells the Corinthians, is the mind that was in Christ Jesus.

He tells them in 2 Corinthians 2, we have the very mind of Christ.

Ephesians 4.

Paul elevates unity to the level of maturity and says, as you grow up into a mature follow of the Lord, you will find yourself in unity with Jesus Christ, and you'll find yourself unified with other believers.

So the Colossians, he says, unity will bind you together.

Love will be the bond that tethers your heart to each other, he tells the Colossians.

And so Psalm 133 is really a celebration of how sweet fellowship is, how fundamental fellowship is to Christianity.

Now when I say fellowship and unity here, I'm just using the word that is in the ESV, Psalm 133, verse 1, how sweet it is when brothers dwell in unity.

Psalms 133:1

I recognize that unity is easier said than done.

It's easier preached than accomplished, because you have to understand the main component in disunity is, of course, sin.

Sin is what brings disunity.

And you can't just love sin away.

You can't just paint over sin and it goes away.

Sin is like the mold.

You put a new coat of paint over the mold, it will eventually grow back out.

So you can't just mask up sin by appeals to love and unity.

And a lot of Christians, I think, err in this in their pursuit of unity.

They downgrade truth.

And this is probably the major way you hear appeals for unity is appeals for just get along with this other church or with that other person or somebody who wants to join Emmanuel but doesn't agree with our statement of faith or won't submit himself to the teaching in our statement of faith.

And he says, you're creating disunity by not letting me teach my wrong view.

And you never want to dilute truth for the sake of unity, because truth and unity are friends, they're not enemies.

Fellowship is sweet and fundamental to Christianity, as I mentioned earlier, but we have fellowship with the truth.

Nevertheless, Psalm 130, I'll say more about that later, but nevertheless, Psalm 133 pleads with us not to simply accept disunity as the cost of living in a fallen world.

Instead, Psalm 133 appeals to you to recognize that it should be good and pleasing to have unity.

It's a possible experience in the Christian life.

Not only is it possible, it is a good experience.

And when the psalmists, when any psalm throws around good, it is not an incidental word.

We use the word good in a very incidental way, don't we?

How was school?

Good.

Really?

Because that sounds like the opposite of good to me with that voice.

You dropped like six octaves there when you said good.

I don't think it was really good.

When the psalmist uses the word good, it comes with all of the moral implications.

That only God is good.

We understand that.

Only God is good.

Anything else in this world that is morally good is good in as much as it reflects the character and the attributes of God.

That's what makes something good.

Something is good if it has a likeness to God.

And here, David says, it is good when brothers dwell in unity.

Now, of course, it would be impossible to not think of the Trinity at this point, that the Father and the Son and the Spirit do dwell in unity.

That unity in this really robust sense is a uniquely Christian concept because we have a uniquely Trinitarian God.

And that the Father and the Son and the Spirit do have harmony with each other.

They do have unity with each other.

They are like-minded.

The Son being the image of the Father, identical to the Father in every way, of course, will have unity with the Father.

The Spirit proceeds as love from the Father to the Son.

And this is why the concept of the Trinity is so fundamental to Christianity.

We recognize that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.

So you're dealing with three different persons, and yet one being in one essence, and in that sense, like-minded.

And so there is a very real and true unity that is there in God.

Earlier I said you can't have unity with yourself just by looking at the mirror.

The Trinity is different because the Father's image of himself is identical to him in every way, except it is alive.

The mirror is not alive.

But the Father's image of himself is alive.

He has life in and of himself, namely the Son.

As the Father and the Son look at each other, there's a love that goes between them that reflects them in every way, and that love is alive, and that is the Spirit.

The number three is not, of course, incidental either.

There can't be four persons in the Trinity because when you understand that the Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son, there's no fourth direction for this to go.

As the Father marvels at himself, he's looking at his son.

And as he marvels and loves his son, there is love between them.

And as the Son is the image of the Father, and the Son is showing love back to the Father, that is the Spirit.

And as the Spirit looks at the Father, he sees the Son.

As he looks at the Son, he sees the Father, and the three are in total harmony with one another.

That's why unity is good.

And that is also, by the way, why religions without eternity are incapable of any kind of profound concept of unity, because unity, for example, in Islam, is not rooted in God.

You just look at the kind of Muslim cultures that are so totalitarian and so dogmatic.

There's no room for dissent.

You know, they execute people who have who are political dissidents kind of thing.

That's not just that democracy allows us to not do that.

It's that we have a triune God in many respects behind our worldview that allows for diversity with unity.

I think it's such a fundamental part of a Christian worldview to see the very concept of unity comes from the Trinity.

It is rooted in who God is.

And this is why David begins with how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.

I'm not suggesting David knew the nuances of the Trinity, but I am saying that David knew enough of Genesis 1, 2, and 3 and the promises of God Himself being the Savior and the plurality of God that you see in Genesis 1 that he's able to articulate these kinds of concepts.

It is good when brothers dwell in unity, because even within the Trinity, what gives the Trinity its unity is the love the persons have for one another.

And that is going to mark human unity as well.

And David is giving here some examples of what human unity looks like here.

He's using some metaphors, and these metaphors are impossible, by the way, they're impossible.

And so it's worth reading just to know that David is just going over the top to show you how good unity is by really these hyperbolic examples here.

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.

This is the image here of Aaron, who's the high priest long before David.

He was the first of the high priests, and Aaron is soaked in oil.

I mean, this is an exuberance of oil.

There's so much oil pouring down him.

This is, you know, obviously oil was a medicine.

It was, you Know a blessing to be anointed with oil is a sign of God's favor on you.

But this specifically is from Exodus chapter 30.

Exodus 30 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 30 describes this oil.

Exodus 30 · chapter mention

It's not a random kind of oil here.

It's a very particular kind of oil described.

It's got a whole chapter on it.

You get the ingredients for how to make this oil in Exodus 30, and it's myrrh and cinnamon and cane, I assume sugar cane, uh cassia, olive oil.

Even the proportions are written there.

And so you could go make this yourself if you wanted to, except that in Exodus 30, it also says nobody except the high priest can make it.

So there you go.

Charismatics is fun.

There's whole charismatic uh chat rooms where Pentecostals would like to argue with each other whether or not you're allowed to make this oil today.

Um I don't know.

I thought you might want to know that.

I would rather have a conversation with the Pentecostals arguing over that than for you to try to sell me essential oil after the service, though.

So to be clear about that.

Essential oil does not make this model right here.

It does not exist.

It's only for the high priest.

By the way, Exodus 30 says if anybody is found in possession of this oil, they're punished.

I don't know what the exact punishment is, but the first people that were offering strange power before the Lord were struck dead.

This is a sacred oil.

It's an oil that marks the high priest doing his priestly duty.

The high priest would enter the Holy of Holies, and that but once a year, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

So that's the image that David is using here.

The high priest has the oil, not just any high priest, Aaron, who's not alive when David's writing the Psalm.

That's the priest David chooses here.

He's the archetype for the high priest, he's the first high priest.

David is saying the foundation of our sacrificial ministry and the anointing of the Holy Spirit itself, just running down Aaron's hair, running down his beard, soaking his gown.

That's what fellowship is like.

What a rich experience with the Lord.

The most worshipful experience you can imagine, David says.

I mean, that's what he's talking about here.

The first high priest going into the Holy of Holies with the oil that he's first going to put on the outside of the tent, and then on the doorpost, that's where this oil is headed.

And David says, that kind of intimate experience with the Lord, that's what unity is like in the church.

That's what this kind of fellowship with believers is like.

That's just a little bit of that oil that you see on the tent outside.

It's soaked through his hair and his beard, and it's soaking through his shirt.

I mean, that's what I mean by David saying by David going hyperbolic here.

It's running down on the collar of his robes.

This is the most spiritual experience Aaron has is what unity with believers is like.

And then David goes with a different example.

It is like the dew of Hermon.

Now, Hermon is a mountain in eastern, northeastern Israel.

It's you know where Lebanon and Syria come together.

You can probably even see it from I've never been to Damascus, but I imagine you might be able to see it from Damascus.

It's covered with snow most of the year.

If you've been to Israel and you've gone to Banias or where the transfiguration took place, that mountain up there, that's this place.

Maybe you even saw snow on top of the mountain when you were there.

It's usually there.

This is a very lush.

It's the lushest part of Israel.

It is green.

The first time I was there, the Jordan River was just rolling down, rushing down the mountain.

It was so loud.

There was just water everywhere.

Everything is green up there, and it is lush.

It is, it's the headwaters of the Jordan River.

There's water there all year rounds, by the way, as the snow melts.

I mean, dew up there is a sign of blessing.

The dew is turning to water.

There's dew everywhere because it's green everywhere.

This is the water source of all of Israel.

And dew here is the image for where the rest of the water comes.

I mean, I know most of it is snow runoff.

If you're talking actually the hydrological cycle here, I know it doesn't begin with dew, but David is saying the dew here is the picture of the beginning of the water source.

It's the little water on the ground up at the very edge of Israel.

You walk over that mountain and you are in Lebanon or you're in Syria.

The tiniest amount of water up there is going to rush all through the land of Israel.

This dew comes from the mountains all the way down.

They have a special phrase for this dew, by the way.

You know what that phrase is?

Mountain dew.

One of you got it right.

One of you got it right.

I spent too much time as a youth pastor, and I do not apologize, not even one second for it.

The dew rushes down and it goes through all of Israel.

It rushes, it says, all the way to the mountains of Zion.

If you're familiar with the topography of Israel, there is no amount of water from Mount Hermon that rushes to Mount Zion.

That's not the way the topography works.

The water flows down, it goes into the Sea of Galilee, it exits the Sea of Galilee in the Jordan River, it goes down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea where it cul-de-sacks.

That's where it doesn't get out there, it just stays there forever.

Mount Zion, meanwhile, halfway down the Jordan River, halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is Jericho.

If you're following the Jordan River, turn right from Jericho and walk a day and a half uphill to get to Mount Zion.

So, no, the dew does not flow through Israel up to Mount Zion in any actual literal sense.

But again, David is using exaggerated language here.

He's taking the little small parts of water on the very outskirts of Israel, and he's following it as if it's flowing through the whole land all the way to the temple.

It's a psalm of ascent.

Again, they're singing this on their way to the temple.

All the way to the temple, it's as if the water is carrying them right there.

He's getting brought there by this kind of current.

This current, it's falling on the mountains of Zion.

This is over-the-top language.

That's what unity and fellowship with other believers is like.

It's like it's being swept.

You're just being carried along towards worship.

You were trying to leave Israel and you got stuck in the Jordan, and the Jordan deposited you, dropped you off right at the steps of the temple.

That's what fellowship, that's what worship is like.

I hope you feel that way at the end of Sunday evening when you go home from night church.

I hope you feel that way.

That's the joy we have.

In some sense, we are very much like the Israelites.

We lead our different lives during the week in our different works and our different places we are during the week, the different places we live, and we don't have to wait three times a year.

We come together every week with people that speak your language, so to speak.

With people that know your vernacular, that have the concept of sin and the concept of redemption and the concept of prayer and the concept of you know struggling with sins and encouraging one another and praying for each other.

That's our common language, and we have it as we gather together on Sunday.

So, what's it like to go to church on Sunday?

Oh, I'm glad you asked.

It's like the oil running down the beard.

It's like the dew that rushes all the way up to Mount Zion.

That's what church should be like.

Language that most people don't understand.

But when you swim in Psalm 133 for a while, it starts to be clarified.

So this Psalm presents to us as unity as a good and positive and a noble and a virtuous thing to pursue.

But would it surprise you to know that this is the only use of the word unity in the entire Old Testament?

There's nothing else about unity in the Old Testament.

This is it, right here.

The sum total of unity given right here, which is fitting under the Old Covenant because there was no true spiritual unity under the Old Covenant.

We understand in the New Covenant unity is a virtue and unity is something to be pursued.

But do you know this?

The word unity is really only used three places in the New Testament.

Three places.

And all three of those are different words.

So when the Bible uses unity, it's four places, four different words, four different meanings.

This is the only Old Testament place.

It's Hebrew, and so we don't need to spend more time on it.

But I want to, we'll end back in Psalm 133, but I want to just walk you through what those New Testament words are for unity so that you have a right understanding of what it means to fellowship and worship with each other in unity.

Here are those three types of unity, by the way.

Each of those three different Greek words that's used for unity.

I'll give you the verses and the cross-references in a second, but I wanted to give you the big picture first, kind of the table of contents first before we go into the chapters here.

There's three types of unity in the New Testament.

The Old Testament word that we looked at in Psalm 133, just broad in general.

It's good to be unified with people.

Picture all the Jews getting together at the temple.

That's what that's about.

But in the New Testament, three different kinds of unity.

One is the word for unity in number, meaning like there's one as opposed to two or three.

One is the word for unity in function, meaning you're all working together.

And one is the word for unity in voice.

And we might even say that that's the unanimity.

Or maturity is another word for that.

That you're mature, and so you're speaking in a mature way, or you're speaking in a unanimous way, is the way it's used.

We'll look more at that in a second.

But those are the three different words.

And before we look at the verses, I hope you see how all three of them are different.

Even though they're all translated unity in English, they are very different.

One speaks to having unity means there's only one of you.

So that's easy to be unified when there's one of you.

The next speaks to unity and purpose, where there's many of you all doing the same thing.

And the third is that you're all saying the same thing.

You're sounding the same way.

They're all very different, but I want to look at them one at a time.

The first is unity and identity or number.

And that comes from John 17, verse 23.

John 17:23

This is the high priestly prayer of Jesus, where Jesus is praying, and he says in John 17, verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word.

John 17:20

So this is before the verse on your screen.

I'm starting a few verses earlier, John 17, 20.

Jesus says, I am praying for not just my 12 apostles, or 11, now Judas is already gone, not just for these 11 apostles, I'm praying for them and also for everybody who will believe in them once, or believe in me through them once I'm gone.

In other words, Jesus in John 17 is praying for you.

If you believe the gospel, because you have the testimony of the apostles in your Bible, which you all do, then you are the recipient of this petition.

It is about you.

Jesus is praying to God about you, and he says, I'm praying that they, verse 21 of John 17, may all be one.

Just as you, speaking to his father, are in me and I am in you, they may be in us, so the world may believe that you have sent me.

Now there is again an ocean truth of truth in John 17, 20 through 21.

It would be impossible to even tread water in it tonight.

So the shortest way out of this, into the rest of the swim lane here, is to say what Jesus is praying for is that the Father has given his life to the Son.

The Son will give his life to us, and he does that by bringing us into the Son.

So when you place your faith in Christ, you are adopted into God's family, and you are hidden in the Son.

Your identity is wrapped up in Christ Jesus.

So if the Father and Jesus are one, then Jesus is praying that you would be one by being united with him.

Now he's not deifying us, he's not saying in every way you're going to become members of the Godhead.

This is the kind of the Mormon mistake to that logic, is to say that, you know, we're all going to be like Jesus and end up being deified ourselves.

That's not what he's saying.

He's not saying in every respect, but he's saying in terms of identity.

He told Philip earlier in a verse we looked at this morning if you have seen me, Philip, you have seen my father.

He's not saying the Father and the Son are the same person, but he's saying that in some sense they have the same identity.

That if you see one, you see the other.

And now he's speaking to the Father.

His prayer is that when you look at these believers, I pray that you will see me.

It's not that God forgets who you are, forgets your name, or forgets that you're not Jesus.

He's omniscient.

Jesus is tying your identity to him.

This is incredible to think about.

It'll blow your mind when you think about it.

Verse 22, John 17, the glory that you've given me, I have given to them.

Again, the glory of the Father is incarnate in Jesus Christ, and Jesus says, I'm giving it to them.

And the way he does that is by bringing us to him.

And he says that they may be one even as we are one.

And here's where we get to our word unity.

I will be in them, and you will be in me, that they may become, the ESV says perfectly one.

But that's the word for unity.

That they may become, and the ESV is on the screen, perfectly one.

That's the word if you have the New American Standard or many of the other English translations, that they may be unified, that they may have unity so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.

That's unity and identity.

It's Jesus' prayer that you will have unity with one another because you are hidden in Christ.

The second kind of unity is unity in function.

And this is the word that's used in Colossians chapter 3, verse 14.

Colossians 3:14

He says, Beyond all these things, rattling through fruits of the Spirit, virtues believers should have.

He says, belong beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

The word that's used there for bond of unity, that Greek word is a word that's often used of body parts or of machine parts that are functioning together.

Your body has a unity when all the parts are tied together with muscles and tendons.

It has the same function.

Your body has one mind, one heart.

It has many members.

Your arm is not your leg, your foot is not your hands, your ear is not your eye.

There's many different members, but they have unity because they are all giving you your corporal identity.

There's one function in them.

Now, so here's Paul's point to the Colossians is you have unity with other believers when you are bound together, not with muscles and tendons, but when you are bound together with love.

Love is what ties believers together to give us that unity.

Love for Christ, love for each other, love for the world, that you're taking the gospel to the world, that's the unity and function.

We are all operating with the same head, namely Jesus Christ, the same mind, the mind of Christ given to us in his word, the same goal to take the Great Commission to the world, and the same love, the love of Jesus Christ, who is our head.

That's what it means to have unity and function in Colossians 3, verse 14.

Colossians 3:14

And the third and final place unity is used in the scriptures.

It's used twice here.

So the word unity, if you did a word search in the New American Standard, you'd find it five times, four times in the ESV, because it translates one of them perfectly one, but five times in the New American Standard, but again, four places, four different words, and here's the last place.

Ephesians 4, 3, and then 11 and 13.

I put it in red on your screen in the ESV there so you can see it somewhat clearly.

Paul says, I'm being uh being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

So this is the appeal to the Ephesian believers.

We'll look at this in a few months when we get to this in Ephesians 4.

He's pleading with them to be disciplined, to be diligent, to demonstrate the unity they have by keeping it.

So they guard the unity they already have in the Spirit by being at peace with one another.

There is that phrase again, the bonds.

The thing that ties you together in Colossians is love.

In Ephesians, it's peace.

That bond gives you your unity with one another, but it is a different word.

And this word that he uses in Colossians, I mean in Ephesians, could be translated almost unanimity.

You're preserving the unanimity or the vocal aspect of you.

You're all saying the same thing, in other words.

Now, that's obviously easier said than done.

You know, our our world has had all kinds of different uh what you call gray areas these past few years.

You know, you remember the the I remember the dress one that made its way on social media.

Was that a blue dress or a yellow dress?

I think those were the two colors, and nobody could agree.

Is Paul telling the Ephesians that you all have to agree on what color of dress that was for you to have unity in the church?

Do you guys know what I'm talking about with the dress?

Okay, good.

Because that would be weird if you didn't, and I would probably need a new job.

But it goes on here.

Here's he where he explains how you can have that kind of unity.

Look at what he says.

God gives the church prophets and apostles, he gives evangelists and he gives pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service that will be for the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith.

Now you might say, hold on, I thought we already had the unity of the faith from Jesus' prayer.

Yes, this is a different kind of unity.

This is a different word.

Here he's saying it's something you attain to.

You grow into it, you mature into it.

The word maturity, and we study this in a few weeks, is all over Ephesians 4.

It's the key word in Ephesians 4, that you grow up into maturity.

You stop being an immature believer and you become a mature believer, and that way you have this kind of unity.

And you have this unity when you recognize that you have the mind of Christ.

Here he says you'll be like a mature man, the measure of the stature of which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

And earlier in Ephesians 4, he says, you'll stop being like a child who's battered by the waves.

You know, a child goes into the ocean and the waves batter them and knock them over, and they can't play in the ocean anymore.

They're too small to enjoy the ocean because the waves beat them up.

And Paul says, I want you to grow up.

So the waves start stop knocking you around.

So that you fight the waves, they don't fight you.

You become a mature man.

You get some muscle on you, son, and get into the world with some kind of maturity.

That's what he's appealing for in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So when you look at all three of these forms of unity in the New Testament, I want you to appreciate something about them right now that you experience all three differently.

The first one of these is something you already have right now.

If you're a believer in Christ, you are completely unified one with another because you are in Christ.

You can never be more unified with Jesus than you are at the moment of your conversion, which means you can never have more unity in your life than you do the moment you're saved.

And there's nothing you can do that would break that unity.

Nothing.

The love of Christ is stronger than the power of sin.

You will never break the unity you have with the Father and the Son because you are in Christ through faith that will never be eclipsed.

So, in that sense, your unity is already realized and recognized.

But the second word, unity of function, is what you're doing in this life.

And this is something that Paul is asking you to really think about.

And I think this is what's celebrated in Psalm 133 to recognize that your purpose in life is to love the Lord your God and be a light to the world.

Do you recognize that that is why God left you on earth?

And when you realize that, you'll have a sense of priority about you.

You'll realize you're a tourist here, you're a pilgrim here.

This is not your home.

You are just passing through along with everybody else.

You're filling the courtyard at the temple a couple times a year, and you have unity with the people who are there who are going to go back to their homes, who are going to go back to their lives in Asia Minor, in Turkey, and Eritrea or wherever they're coming from.

But they have unity when they're there at the temple.

This is what Paul's telling you.

Do you recognize that you have the same function as every other believer in this world, which is to bring the gospel to the world?

When you have the right love, you'll have the right mission.

Do you love the lost with the love of the Father?

Then you'll pursue them.

Do you love each other with the love of Jesus Christ?

Then you'll let love cover sins.

You know, when you recognize that Jesus died for someone's sin and that believer sins against you, you're like, okay, well that sin was that sin was against me and it was hurtful.

And I can't believe they were that sinful towards me, and it was wrong of them, but Jesus died for that sin.

It was written on the paper, nailed to the cross, he was crucified for it.

And so if God forgave that person for it, I guess I can get on with my mission in life.

Amen?

That's that second kind of unity.

It's an appeal to you.

It's not something you ever fully experience, it's something you're striving for.

Every moment of your life, you're trying to live that out.

And the third kind of unity is this unity that you grow into, that you mature into it.

And you recognize you will never really have the fullness of that unity until you see Jesus face to face and you will be like him.

In this world, sin separates you from that kind of unity.

Because whatever area you have sin in, you're not perfectly reflected.

In Christ, right?

So if your goal is to grow up into maturity, so you speak the same things as other believers, the solution for you is to speak more like Christ, which is great news for you because you have the mind of Christ.

God gives you the mind of Christ through his word.

So the more you study his word, the more you apply his word, the more mature you grow, and the more you will start sounding like Jesus.

In a sense, this is the kind of unity that's not unity with each other, primarily, but unity with Christ.

Because you're saying what he would say, you're thinking what he would think.

And that's the kind of thing that only comes with maturity.

And I want to park on this one for a second because oftentimes appeals for unity are couched in language of immaturity.

They're couched in language of why don't you check that doctrinal conviction so that these people can have unity with you.

So for example, let me give you one that often comes up at church.

Emmanuel teaches a literal six-day creation.

It's in our statement of faith.

It's something we teach, it's something we believe is important.

We can have unity of function with people that don't believe that.

We can recognize that, you know, there's people that don't believe in a literal six-day creation, they're taking the gospel to the nations and evangelizing them.

That's great.

Pray for them.

Good.

I hope the gospel goes forward.

But we can't have a unity in voice with that.

We can't check what we believe about six-day creation and say, you know what, for the sake of believers that don't agree with that, we won't teach on that so that we can have unity with them.

That's confusing our categories here.

Rather, we have unity on creation when everybody grows into maturity.

So you don't achieve this last kind of unity by lowering the bar.

You achieve this last kind of unity by raising the bar all the way up to being exactly right in the image of Jesus Christ.

Which you can see why we're not going to get there in this life, right?

I mean, we're all wrong about things.

And so, in that sense, you have unity by expressing humility that I could be wrong about things.

I'm sure I'm wrong about, you know, 20% of my doctrine.

I just don't know which 20% it is.

So I'm not going to have unity by saying I don't care about one out of five sentences.

I'm going to have unity by studying the scripture and bringing on the mind of Christ.

This is important when it comes to gray areas in the Bible.

Gray areas, for example, what day of the week to worship in Romans 14?

Should you eat meat that was bought in the marketplace in Romans 14?

Two very obvious examples.

A more modern American example.

Should you have drums in the worship service kind of thing?

Well, there's people that want drums, there's people that don't want drums, there's people that want to eat meat from the market, there's people that don't.

There's people that want to worship on Sunday and people that want to worship on Saturday.

What do you do to get unity?

You don't say everybody go down to the weakest person.

Rather, you say those things are outside the scope of what Scripture commands.

So we don't seek unity in those things.

We don't seek to be unified around drums or no drums, around meat or no meat.

That's not the basis of our unity.

The basis of our unity has to be whatever is in Christ.

So if something is in Christ, that gives us unity with one another and it pulls us up towards maturity.

If something is outside of Christ, we don't have unity in those things, and that's okay.

Because those things don't provide unity.

But you know what does provide unity that was in all three of those terms?

Love.

Love binds you together.

So if I disagree with Alex on a gray area, doesn't mean we're not unified.

No, we're unified because we're in Christ.

And as we love each other despite our disagreements, our unity in fact grows stronger.

Our unity grows stronger because we have the love of Christ that is greater because it's in Christ than those gray areas.

Listen, I have more in common with Alex on a gray area that we disagree in than I do with a Muslim on a gray area I would agree with him on.

The world has to be that way.

This is why it's so important to understand what unity is.

I think the there's often a sickness inside of some parts of Christianity that seeks for unity by diluting doctrine, by diluting convictions, by saying you can be unanimous with us if you just come down to our level to make a statement of faith that's shorter so you have more people in church kind of attitude.

I sarcastically hear that referred to as the Rodney King Christianity.

Can't we just all get along here?

Can't we just get along?

But saying can't we get along doesn't help you get along, does it?

At some point, you have to grow up into the image of Christ and hold on to what is mature and what is true.

Unity is seen in the harmony that is in God Himself, Psalm 133, verse 1, how good and pleasant it is.

Psalms 133:1

Unity is seen not in similar actions, not in acting in similar ways.

This comes up with elections.

I've had people tell me, you know, isn't it a shame the Christian church doesn't have unity in how to vote?

No, it's not a shame at all that we don't have unity in how to vote.

It's okay.

In fact, I would quickly argue that our unity in Christ is strengthened by diversity in gray areas.

Then as people grow up into maturity, of course, gray areas become more clear.

But as long as you are united in Christ, gray areas have a way of highlighting diversity and highlighting the preeminence of Jesus Christ's language of Colossians.

Then does everybody wearing the same color sweatshirt?

Then does everybody decide which kind of songs we want to sing, or then does everybody decide how often we celebrate communion each year?

All of 10 million things.

If you look for unity in those areas, you will be an immature believer.

Unity is not one voice, unity is not one vote, unity is not one action on gray areas, unity is not one approach to Christian living.

Unity is seen in the conformity to the picture of Jesus Christ, and it is binding our hearts together by love.

And when you have that kind of relationship with other believers, that your love covers sins, you worship Jesus Christ together, then and only then, when you go home on Sunday evening, and your kids ask, How is church tonight?

Then and only then can you say church tonight was like oil running down the head, running down the beard, right onto my collar.

Church tonight was like dew from Mount Hermon, rushing down up to mountains, all the way to Mount Zion.

That's what church tonight was like.

But you can only say that if you have unity in Christ.

Lord, we're thankful for the love you've shown us in Christ Jesus that binds our hearts together.

In a sense, we're as unified as the crosses.

Our sin was nailed to you, our life was hidden in you while you bore the wrath of God.

Our bodies were raised in you when you raised from the grave.

We look forward to the day when our souls will be with you for all time.

We know that now we have an image.

It's faint because we're at a distance.

We look forward to the day where we will see you face to face, and then and only then will be fully like you.

We long for that day, even so.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Come quickly.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.