Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Psalm 133
**Pastor Dennis Tuuri**

Sermon text is Psalm 133. I provided handouts in the foyer to be very helpful for you to understand how I’m moving along. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Psalm 133, a song of ascent of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It’s 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’s like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this text. We thank you that your Holy Spirit has been promised to us to bring us the Lord Jesus Christ to minister to us by your word. We pray that you would indeed illuminate our hearts and our understanding with an understanding of this text. Light up our minds so that we can comprehend the spiritual truths that lay here, grab ahold of them, be transformed by them, give you glory and praise and live our lives differently. Thank you that this is what you promise to do for us today. And we can ask this in confidence because we ask in the authoritative name of the Lord Jesus Christ and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Please be seated.

Last week we took a very quick overview of this text. I wanted to—well, the sermon might not have been quick, but it was kind of a quick glance at the big picture. I wanted you to be able to walk away from Psalm 133, and the next time you read it or you sing it at the church, you think of the big picture imagery. We’ll slow down today and talk about a lot more of the context of it, its literary structure, where it’s found, historical relationships, etc.

Our main theme, looking at it in this way, is this: this is a psalm of hope. It was really pretty interesting. Yesterday I was watching the Live Earth affair, and two billion people supposedly united to flip off the light switch and save the earth. Well, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio interview to introduce Al Gore. And he said Al Gore is a great messenger of hope. What? I didn’t think that was the message. I thought it was catastrophe is coming.

So they try now to put a positive spin on the global warming thing. Now, what would our response be if we actually discover that global warming is occurring? What’s our response? Well, then it gives us an opportunity—like the day of Pentecost or like the other events—it’s that prayer, providential acts of God, and we then address the situation from a Christian perspective. We proclaim what God’s doing.

And that’s not, of course, what went on yesterday at all. But that’s what we’re trying to do: see what actually does bind us together. And we have this wonderful picture of the body of Aaron and the body of the land of Israel. And so on your sheets I say the body corporate. So it’s about unity, dwelling together in unity. And the picture of that is that we’re all incorporated into Aaron, the greater Aaron, the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re incorporated in a context of worship and service and the whole body.

The body liturgical is described because the emphasis in this psalm, as we’ll look at again today, is worship. Worship is where all this stuff really takes place first and foremost, and it works its way out to the world. So it’s the body corporate, the body liturgical, and it’s also the body politic. The whole nation was seen as one nation under God from the north to the south, Hermon down to Zion.

And so the whole thing, you know, is that as people are unified together through service and liturgy, that sets up the service of the week serving one another. God gives us this blessing of unity in our corporate nature in the body of Christ as we worship and also in the civil government ultimately at the end of the text from Hermon to Zion. And we said that the big picture here is that we’re to accomplish unity through service.

How do we get unified? Well, Jesus makes us unified. He prayed, and God grants him this prayer. But the text wants us to focus upon the work of Aaron and his garments are his working garments. And so it’s through service that we attain more and more unity. How do two people from diverse cultures—a stop sign gang guy and a reconstructionist guy or gal or whatever it is—how do they come together? Well, I say that the way they come together is through service, working together on joint projects for the kingdom.

And as a result, we have this interaction of the various elements. Just to use two examples, there’s lots of little cultures and subcultures at RCC and in the broader church, of course. How do we perichoretically—you know, that’s that big fancy term about indwelling each other—how does that happen? Well, it happens as we serve. It happens in worship. And worship is service. Liturgy means service means your work.

And so it goes into your work in the week as well. And God brings you together with various cultural elements in your workplace or in your neighborhood through service. And I wanted to pitch that again and again, ask you to volunteer on the sign-up sheets that are down in this hallway here for the work at the church—service and unity and the great blessing that comes with that. And then also remind you again about the marriage seminar: to pray for it, register for it, get yourself geared up either to help yourself in your own marriage or to help someone else by coming to a seminar and learning tools.

If unity is this great kind of culmination of this blessing, then it seems like a seminar on conflict resolution is incredibly appropriate to that purpose. I believe the Lord God had me—had us—learn Psalm 133 from Mark Reagan at camp, and then I went up to the Trinity Church music camp a couple weeks ago for a day, and I just happened to hear instruction by Pastor Hatcher on Psalm 133.

I think it was for the purpose of doing that with us, helping us to see the importance of conflict resolution in terms of unity and serving one another. So please do that.

So in Psalm 133, Aaron is like the land, the land of the king or what? In the Arthurian legend, we might have Excalibur. The oil is like the dew. The oil that’s on Aaron is like dew on the land. And we’ll talk about the differences, but similarity first. There are similarities drawn for us. Unity and blessing comes by serving, unity and blessing comes by serving one another.

Let’s now look first of all at the temporal context to Psalm 133. You can’t grab this out of its context, but there’s a context for a verse or a psalm in this case. And if we look at Psalm 132 and 134, what are its mates right around it? What’s going on in this movement of these psalms?

If you turn to Psalm 132, I want to point out a couple of things. Quick, quick, quick—sword drill. Get there. Psalm 132.

Psalm 132, verse 1: “Remember, O Lord, in David’s favor, all the hardships he endured.” Well, that’s significant. The psalm right before this one about the blessings of unity that David wrote begins by talking about the hardships he endured. And that will be one of our major themes today: understanding that relationship between hardships and difficulty and then blessing in the long term.

Look down at verse 4. David says, “I’ll not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord.” He was concerned first and foremost with worship. Worship is what he wanted to do—to set up a worship center. And of course, he did at Zion.

And then verse 8: “Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might. Let your priests be clothed with righteousness.” What’s he talking about? He’s talking about when he brought the ark of the covenant to the worship center he established on Mount Zion. “Let your ark, let your presence in the ark come into the place. The rest of the tabernacle wasn’t there. No temple. Solomon built the temple, but David built a tabernacle at Zion. Ark of the covenant there and the direct presence”—so the worshippers had a little picture of New Testament worship in the Old Testament.

“Arise, O Lord.” So again, the focus as we move into 133 in its context is this movement of God into the midst of the worship center on Zion. And then “let your priests be clothed with righteousness.” So when we talk about Aaron’s garments, there’s a direct connection to this as well. Let this happen.

And by Psalm 133, it’s happened. You see, the blessing has come.

Verse 10: “Do not turn away the face of your anointed one.” So again, don’t turn away the face of your anointed one. Aaron was the anointed one. We’re anointed ones. David was a king and anointed one. We’re Christians, little anointed ones. And so David prayed that oil of anointing would be ours as well, and that God would see it and attend to us. So all these things have direct connection.

Verse 13: “The Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his dwelling place.” You always think about the temple. The temple was built on Mount Moriah, not on Mount Zion. Zion was the place where David’s tabernacle was set up. The worship music was all written for it, etc. So Zion has preeminence in the time of David because that’s where he established the worship center of the Lord. And so Zion now—Zion later will become a term that you can use to talk about temple worship because it’s clear from Hezekiah’s time he took Zion worship and incorporated it into temple worship on Mount Moriah.

But Zion in its original thing is what’s being talked about. The Lord chose Zion to set up the worship tabernacle rather.

Verse 16: “Her priests I will clothe with salvation. Her saints will shout for joy. There I will make a horn to sprout for David. I have prepared a lamp for my anointed.” So the anointed shines forth clothed. And that imagery of Aaron that will come to 133 is what that’s all about.

“His enemies I will clothe with shame. But on him his crown will shine.” The head of David, the head of Aaron, the head of those united to Christ through the church and through his sovereign election—our crowns shine because we’re anointed with oil and it’s like a lamp on our heads. Pentecost, right? The oil is burning now where our faces shine forth as Moses did. So all this imagery comes into Psalm 133.

And notice that if we bring that in, it’s the destruction of God’s enemies. Where are they in Psalm 133? Well, they’re not. That’s the way the Old Testament works. You look in the Proverbs, you look in all kinds of places in the Psalms, and what happens is there’s warfare and difficulty, and then they’re all gone and we’re established. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in history, and that’s the way it did work at various times in Israel’s history.

So Psalm 133 has as its context the defeat of the enemies of the church.

Now let’s look at 134. “Come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, and stand by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion, he who made heaven and earth.”

So he’s picking up the imagery from 133 of blessing and Zion. Those are the two words that are used in 132, 133, 134. In 132 we’re moving that way. In 133 we’re established in the blessing commanded from Zion. In 134 that continues on now into the future. It’s succession. So we’re continuing to do this. We keep coming before the Lord. We worship him. Lift up our hands, and the Lord blesses us from Zion. And that’s what we’re doing today. The Lord is blessing us from Zion.

So that’s the immediate context of 133. And you’ve got to bring that context in. It’s like singing one verse of the song without remembering what verses 1 and 3 are. In other words, the words bless and Zion are used in Psalm 132 and 134. And that’s significant. It ties it together and helps us to understand that indeed in 133, the allusions are primarily to worship, to the Zion, the worship center of David, and the blessings that come forth from it.

Now 132 through 134 conclude the Psalms of Ascent. So the little broader context now for 133 is that 132 through 134 are the tail end of the songs of ascent. And on your outline I’ve got them: 120 through 134, the songs of ascent. You know, the songs of ascent or degrees—they’d be sung on the way up to Jerusalem. Once they’re in the land, they’re ascending up, where worship is always the place you ascend up to. So they’re ascending up, and you can see where 133 means we’ve kind of arrived, and now it’s going, and this is great.

And so it’s kind of the culmination—these three psalms—of the psalms of ascent, and that’s its immediate context too.

John has posited the theory that maybe the psalms of ascent, being odd in number (15), are chiastically structured. If that’s true, then 133, its pair is 121. If I understand John’s view here.

All right, so turn to 121 for just a minute. We sing this one all the time. “I to the hills will lift mine eyes.”

From whence shall come my aid? Verse 1: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not stumble. Behold, he who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.”

Well, we know this song well, don’t we? This psalm. We sing it all the time. And then verse 8: “The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.”

So now and forevermore, the Lord commands the blessing, life forevermore. That’s what it is at the end of 133. So 121 is like the beginning of the ascent. “I’m looking up to the hills from whence comes my aid.” And by 133, we’re on the hill and the dew is coming, the oil is coming, the blessing is flowing. Praise God. So that’s kind of its context in the Psalms of Ascent.

The little broader view is that the Psalms of Ascent are set in the context of the fifth book of the Psalter. Those of you who have been long know that each book of the Psalter—there’s five of them—each one ends with a doxology that marks it off as a specific unit. And 150 is the concluding great doxology to the end of the Psalter, the five books. These are Psalms 107 to 150. And I’ve given you a little structure there. You know, you should put this stuff in your Bibles or in a notebook. You all, men and women, should have books at home. You should have a library shelf of commentaries. You should put this stuff in there. You really should. I’m not just saying that. If you want to know what your Bibles say, you want to remember the context of what the Psalms are about, put this stuff in there. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel then. Or maybe just put it on your hard disk. Or maybe just link to my outline. You don’t have to use all that paper up and destroy the world.

So weird, you know—how do you save the world? Well, I saw some of these commercials, and the world, you know, the land is arid, the mountains don’t have snow on them anymore, the little animals are dying. And then what somebody does is they turn off the light switch. And that starts these other things being turned off, and the whole world flourishes. Everything’s great because we stop using energy.

And it’s really interesting because man is like Aaron, a lightbringer, right? And their view of how we seek unity and the salvation of the planet is dimming of light, not making lights brighter. Their view is, “Let’s replace all of our incandescent bulbs with mercury-filled bulbs that break and then create mercury contamination in your home, yada yada.”

So, as I said, I’m not denying the problem, but our solution to it, I think, would be based on a biblical model and wouldn’t be lit. You know, the Luddites—I think those were these guys who were anti-technology, who would throw their shoes into the machinery in Holland because they didn’t like being displaced in work because of technology. A lot of this stuff tends to be kind of anti-progress.

Well, in any event, the immediate context, the broad context now, is the whole Psalter. And in book five, there’s a definite movement. It begins with 12 Psalms of Exodus (107 to 118) and then the Egyptian Hallel. So they were coming out of Egypt. That’s 107. There’s conquest in 108, trouble in 109. Yahweh is established as king in 110, and then you’ve got the Egyptian Hallel—so-called because these are hallel songs of praise for coming out of Egypt, and they’re a little discrete unit.

So that whole thing is like history being brought in. And then when you get to—you come out of Egypt. And as we come out of sinful patterns and we’re established on the mountain of God, what happens? God gives us his law. So as they’re established and Yahweh is king—we’re not into the land yet, but God has been established as King—we’re out of Egypt and we sing the Egyptian Hallel. And then we’re at Mount Sinai and Psalm 119, the great long psalm in the law of the word of God. The word of God comes to us on the mountain. You see, so we’ve been brought out of bondage. God’s delivered us to hear his word. And on the basis of that word, we then move toward the promised land through these psalms of ascent.

Some people, by the way, think there might have been 17 steps to the temple going up in elevation there too, to remind the people: you’ve come up from all parts of Israel, and now you literally ascend up these steps.

So the idea is that historically you see—the Bible is history rooted. It’s not abstract concepts or ideas. It’s history. And book five is history. It says what really happened and interprets it for us in such a way as we can apply it to our situation.

So these 17 psalms right in the middle—120 to 134—and then 135, 136, the great praise that happens now that we’ve gone up to the worship center in Jerusalem in the land. So we’ve come out of Egypt, we’ve gotten the law, he’s conquered the Egyptians, we’ve gone up in the Psalms of Ascent, we’re now in Jerusalem in the promised land, and we sing praises for his grace and saving us in 135 and 136.

And then immediately there’s cold water thrown in the face with 137. “How should we sing our song in a strange land?” It’s a song of exile. And the point is that once they got to Jerusalem—after David came Solomon, and after Solomon came his son, and after in the time of his son Rehoboam—we have then the division of north and south. Jeroboam in the north, Rehoboam in the south, and eventually north and south are taken into captivity and exile.

And so we’re tracking the history of Israel as we go through the fifth book of the Psalms. So there’s this wailing, you know: “What are we going to do? We’re no longer in Jerusalem. We’ve arrived and sung great blessings of God, but now we’re in crisis.” Now, that’s a psalm that we can sing. Am I right? You’re sort of gone into exile here.

There weren’t two billion Christians anywhere, any time visibly uniting together to accomplish a goal yesterday. Nor will there be likely in our lifetimes. Yesterday was a howling reproach to the church, among other things, for our disunity. You see? So we’re in crisis. “How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?” And the answer is, “Well, hey, the Lord went with you into captivity. And ultimately Jesus went into captivity for you. But God’s with you. God is everywhere.” That’s what the answer is.

And beginning in Psalm 138, the answer is: “Well, he’s here everywhere. He’s with you. No matter where I go, I can’t hide from Yahweh. I’m not in a special presence in Jerusalem.” But wherever I am—and we’re not established as, you know, the church and members of the church as civil rulers in this country. But hey, the Lord God is with you. Jesus promised that he’ll be with you wherever you go.

So God’s presence is with us. He’s exalted his person above his name. His name was in Jerusalem, the tabernacle of David and the temple was the dwelling place of the name of God. And so in Psalm, I think it’s 138, it says that God exalts his name—his word rather—above his name. It means that he’ll be faithful to his word to save us. All that stuff we sang and thought about and how it all worked out great—we’ve lost all of it, but God will be saving us through his word, his covenant word of faithfulness. Even if he has to die for us, he’s exalted as higher than his person. Of course, that’s just what he does. Jesus dies for us.

And so we have the crisis answered. At the end, we have the great Hallel, the great songs of praise at the end of the Psalter. So 133 is kind of a reminder of a great time at the end of the songs of ascent. But it’s also a reminder, if we remember its big context, that it was followed by a time of exile and crisis. And so it has application to us because we’re prepared for exile and crisis with the messages of 132 through 134.

So you see it really is helpful to know your Bibles.

Now that’s the context. Psalm 133 is in the fifth—and last—book of the Psalms. It would be sung as families walked up to Jerusalem. I don’t care if you were coming from Mount Hermon, you went up to Mount Zion even though it was lower in elevation because spatial rhetoric—the way this stuff works—says God is always up, and where God meets with us is up. So they would walk up to Jerusalem, and this is probably where these songs were written for. They would ascend up by walking, and they’d sing this stuff.

All right, let’s look at Psalm 133 and its historical context. We’ve done a little bit of that, but we can go a little broader. And something I think very significant: we made the general observation that 133 comes out of crisis originally, the deliverance from Egypt, and it’s followed by crisis. So it’s not to be abstracted and said, “This is the way it should always be.” “Well, why isn’t it like Psalm 133 at our church? Why isn’t it like that in Oregon City?” Unless you’re doing something wrong. Well, no. Something wrong has happened, but it’s not a psalm that describes all reality for all time. It’s set in a context and a movement. And now we’re going to see that in spades with David.

If we think a little bit about David, this is a psalm of David. He wrote it. And what happened was—we don’t know this, but some people have thought that perhaps the time in his life when David wrote this psalm is described for us in 1 Chronicles 10:13-15. So see if you can find 1 Chronicles, chapter 10 and 11.

1 Chronicles 10 and 11. We’ll see probably the historical context for the writing of this psalm. And at least it fits it really well.

Verse 13 of 1 Chronicles 10: “The same account is found in 2 Samuel with a little more detail, but this is one of the other accounts. 1 Chronicles 10 assumes you know all that stuff in 2 Samuel. But anyway, verse 13: Saul died for his unfaithfulness which he had committed against the Lord. Saul reigned for 40 years. David has been in trouble a long time. Saul has been against David a long time. And what happens now is Saul dies because of all these sins that he did.

Verse 14: “He did not inquire of the Lord. Therefore, he killed him and turned the kingdom over to David and the son of Jesse.” So the death of Saul—David’s been anointed already, but he doesn’t experience it. Do you need light bulbs go off? It just hit me in my head just now. It’s true. He’s been anointed already, but he doesn’t experience it. We’re anointed. We have the blessing that comes from Zion, but we don’t experience it in its fullest right now. That’s the way it was with David who wrote this very psalm.

Verse 11: “Then, after years of problems, years of struggle—and not just the death of Saul, but finally now the division between Saul and the followers of Saul, Abner and his men, and the followers of David. And one of David’s guys, his chief guy was Joab, and he kills Abner. He murders him. Really, I mean, it’s horrible. It’s not just that Saul is the big problem, but for years after that, we have divided north and south still, with adherents of Saul and adherents of David not united. It’s horrible. It’s horrible for many years for David. It’s a real problem.

But eventually—you see, when Abner died, that’s what we learned in 2 Samuel. But here, the next thing in the history of this is in verse 11 or 11:1.

“Then, and only then, all Israel—the north, the followers of Saul—all Israel, the whole land, Hermon to Zion—all Israel came together to David at Hebron, saying, ‘Indeed, we are your bone and your flesh.’ Also, in time past, even when Saul was king, you were the one who led Israel out and brought them in.” Victory and conquest, in other words. That going out and coming in is battle stuff. “And the Lord your God said to you, ‘You shall shepherd my people Israel and be ruler over my people Israel.’”

Shepherds lead their people into battle. They don’t just, you know, pat them on the head.

Well, in any event, “therefore, all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel according to the word of the Lord by Samuel.”

And then, okay, so Saul dies, the conflict with Saul’s followers is over, and now: Behold, brothers dwelling together in unity—finally, everybody united! All Israel. You see, that’s why people think this is where this psalm was written. Praise God. You notice the language there? “You’re your bone. You’re our flesh. We’re bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh.” All right? That’s what Jesus says to us. We acknowledge him as the great shepherd. We come united at the table of the Lord. Okay?

So what does he do next? Now that unity has been established, verse 4: “David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, which is Jebus, where the Jebusites were and the inhabitants of the land.” Now they’re going to take Jerusalem, and now he’s going to eventually bring that ark of the covenant to Jerusalem and specifically to Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

So you see, this is why people think this is where it was. He knew what was happening. He knew that unity had come. He knew that the worship center would be set up. And so maybe that’s the immediate context. And if not, we still know it’s a psalm of David. And he went through years and years and years of not experiencing Psalm 133 before he experienced it. That’s important for us to understand what’s going on.

The assignment of authorship at the beginning is a big deal. A big deal. It reveals to us that this is a psalm of David. And that’s important. David wrote this psalm. David’s the one who wrote it. He may have written it when he became king of all Israel—king of all Israel. His life was very hard for years before this happened. And David built a worship center at Mount Zion. And that’s where this psalm, you know, talks about being at and being blessed in.

So there’s a historical context with David, and some of his history helps us to understand it.

Secondly, the Bible says that once they got into the land and established the place where God was going to be, they had to go up to Jerusalem three times a year. So there were annual festivals where the men and usually they take their families were required to ascend up, and they would sing the psalms of ascent.

So historical rooting for Psalm 133 in the celebration of the feasts. We come up every Lord’s day. You know, the Old Testament had lots of worship times, lots of things going on—8 feast days. Now we have 52 because everything’s boiled down to the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath, the Christian feast day, which is the first day of the week. So those annual festivals inform us about what happens when we come up to Mount Zion here in Oregon City. So they would be united. They’d be living apart, and they would come up. And now there’d be a visual representation, a manifestation of their unity together. And Psalm 133 climaxes those processions. Psalms of Ascent.

Now, post-exilic was another thing we could think about, right? So they get kicked out of the land, they get divided, you know, they get sent to Assyria, then they get sent to Babylon, and then they’re in bad places and Persia and all that stuff. And then they come back. And so appropriately, the Jews would see this psalm as showing that we’re all brought back together into the land. The division that happened under Solomon’s son went on for years and years and years. God finally takes them to captivity. But it’s to the purpose that they would come back in more united fashion. They’d be able to sing Psalm 133 and say, “Yeah, we experience it now that we’re back and we’re all together again being faithful to God.” So post-exile, they would have this experience of unity after many years of struggle.

Okay, the patriarchs: dysfunctional families. Okay, so this talks about brothers, and we can say we’re brothers in Christ. Yeah. But it uses the term brothers, which has its immediate context to a brother—a literal brother, or a cousin, or a nephew. A relationship in the context of the family.

And if we think about this—see, we read Psalm 133 and say, “Man, I’ve got a horrible family. My family’s not united at all. We may be dwelling together, but we’re not in unity. And maybe we’re not even dwelling together because we can’t get it all together anymore.” Well, just think about the brothers that the Bible has set up for us who had similar difficulties. Look at all the patriarchs. And from one perspective, you could say their families were somewhat dysfunctional. They would come in for family counseling, I suppose, if they lived now. But problems.

I didn’t put Cain and Abel on here, but that’s what I should have started with. Obviously, they didn’t dwell together in unity. One of them killed the other one.

And then we had Abraham and Lot. They didn’t dwell together in unity either. They started fighting and stuff. Abraham came up with this solution: “Let’s divide. Let’s not live together.” But problems between Abraham and Lot.

Isaac and Ishmael. Abraham has, you know, a son by Hagar, his handmaid. Not good. And we have the Ishmaelites that come from that. We’ve got problems to this day. And so Isaac and Ishmael—problems. Two striving together as it were. There has to be separation, not unity. They don’t even dwell together anymore.

Jacob and Esau dwelt together, not in unity. Eventually they had to split. See?

Joseph and his brothers—they killed him. Or at least they were going to kill him, and they thought better. We’ll send him into slavery in Egypt. I don’t think—you know, I don’t tell me all that’s going on in your family, but I don’t think in your family any brother or sister has sold anybody into slavery or killed them or struck out at them in the way that some of these people did—wanting to kill them like Esau did to Jacob.

What’s the point? The point is that brothers dwelling together is not always the norm. And even when it is the norm, it’s not necessarily normal that they’re in unity. It’s hard work. That’s the point. Are you better than Abraham and Jacob and Cain and Joseph? Are you? No. Well, they had a hard time figuring out how to cut at peace with their brothers, nephews, and brothers literally. So, you know, don’t take this psalm as some kind of, “Oh, this is horrible.” It’s supposed to be a psalm of hope. It’s supposed to say they dwelt together and eventually they had unity. Eventually Jacob comes back and he and Esau embrace, etc. Eventually Joseph and his brothers lived together in unity. But it takes years, just like it did with David. It took years and years and lots of trouble and trial.

Don’t grow faint or weary in your families. Remember the dysfunctional families that are the historical context. I’m not—this is what it says. Brothers dwelling together. And in the case law in Deuteronomy, brothers dwell together until they get married or have kids. We know this is talking about real families. And I’m looking at the real families that it would hearken back to and remind us of. It’s important to do that with the Bible. Slow down. Take a look at the words. What do they remind us of? What do they tell us?

So, brothers and sisters, sisters shouldn’t fight, but they should love each other. Sure, you tell us that every week, Pastor T., but I’m telling you this week, it is hard work. This is very hard. Don’t grow weary because you can’t pull it off. Don’t give up. The Lord will bring it to pass. Psalm 133.

So we have historical context with David. These were real psalms written for real occasions, real history, real worship, and reminding us of real families that really lived. So they’re real, but they also point us to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Right? He’s the head. If we’re not in Aaron’s head—connected to Jesus—there’s no blessing flowing. Ultimately, our unity is found in the greater Aaron, in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is typology. The psalm is telling us that you want unity with brothers dwelling together, not just dwelling together, but in unity. You’ve got to be in the church. You’ve got to be in the church. Jesus accomplished this for us. He prayed just before he died for us: “Lord God, make them one. Even as you and I are one.” Father answers that prayer. It doesn’t say in Ephesians, “Try hard to build unity.” It says, “Don’t destroy the existing unity. Okay? Maintain the unity that Christ has purchased with his blood.”

You see, so this points ultimately to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have to have unity in the head. Without being united to Christ and accepting his death, burial, and resurrection, and united to that gospel message, there’s no unity with brothers. Can’t get at it. Can’t get at the biblical picture of what it is.

I wanted to quote some stuff from Calvin here on this section. So let me just read this. Calvin said this: “We have here clear proof that David, as we have just said, holds all true union among brethren to take its rise from God. All right. Zion, Aaron, due—God. The top of the mountain has to be the place it comes from. And to have this for its legitimate object that all may be brought to worship God in purity and call upon his name with one consent is where it begins.”

Calvin said, “Would this similitude have been borrowed from holy ointment if it had not been to denote that religion must always hold the first place?” Awkward statement, but in translation—we’re always reading Calvin in translation—but he’s saying, you know, the point is he wants us to hold religion in the first place. That’s why the oil is talked about. It becomes dew, which we’ll talk about, but it’s oil and it’s Aaron and it’s worship and it’s on Zion, and it’s where David wanted to go where everybody would be brought together and worship.

So Calvin is saying clearly the preeminence of worship is what this text talks about. “Any concord is thus insinuated, so the implications he’s going to draw out—which may prevail amongst men—is insipid if not pervaded by a sweet savor of God’s worship.” So yesterday’s unity was insipid. Calvin would say if it doesn’t emanate from a sweet savor of God’s worship.

“We maintain therefore that men are to be united amongst themselves in mutual affection with this as the great end: that they may be placed together under the government of God.” So worship is the beginning place of us working out lives placed under the government of God. And there’s no unity, there’s no blessing outside of that.

“If there be anyone who disagrees with these terms, we would do well rather to oppose them strenuously than purchase peace at the expense of God’s honor. We must hold”—but when mention is made of the priest, it is to intimate the concord takes its rise in the true and pure worship of God. While by the beard and skirts of the garments, we are led to understand that the peace which springs from Christ as the head is diffused through the whole length and breadth of the church.

“The other figure of the dew distilling upon Mount Zion and Hermon denotes that a holy unity has not only a sweet savor before God, but is productive of good effects. As the dew moistens the earth and supplies it with sap and freshness. Moses, we know, said of Judea that it was not like Egypt, fertilized by the overflowing of the river, but such as drank daily of the rain of heaven.”

Remember I read that verse last week from Deuteronomy 11. Israel is a land that has to drink daily of the dew of heaven because that’s the only source of life. So Calvin is saying that it starts in worship and flows out because it starts as oil but it becomes dew, which permeates the rest of our lives, and it’s a different character. But we can only experience these blessings—Calvin said, and he’s absolutely right—united to the head. Outside of that, all human unity is insipid.

So Jesus is the great picture, culmination of this. But these texts apply to Christ, but they also apply to Christ’s body, the church. And here I’ve got in your handouts: garment, spacious, house, big people. This word for garment is actually also used in, for instance, Jeremiah 22:14, where it talks about a spacious house, and in Numbers 13, where it talks about really big people, giants.

And so the imagery of garments is, as Calvin said correctly, an image of the whole church united to Christ, but, you know, flowing out from it. So it has its typological meaning of Jesus, but it also is typological of the church.

It is to be united in worship, and as the church disperses, it has the unity of the dew in all of its lives as well.

Now, worship again here is significant for us because that’s what we do. But there’s a connection too. “How good and how pleasant its movement is good, you know, but some good things we do aren’t pleasant or pleasurable, right? But this what he’s talking about goes from goodness to pleasurableness. It’s pleasant.”

Now, this same Hebrew word is used in 2 Samuel 23:1. Don’t bother to turn there. Just listen. “2 Samuel 23:1. Now these are the last words of David. Thus says David, the son of Jesse. Thus says the man raised up on high, the anointed of the God of Jacob, Psalm 133 imagery. And the sweet psalmist of Israel”—the pleasant, same word—”the pleasant psalmist of Israel. The psalms he composed were pleasurable. They were pleasant. They were taking good words and making pleasurable things out of them.”

Psalm 81:2 says, “Raise a song and strike the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the flute.” Same word. So now the musical instrument is an instrument of pleasure. And so the church is defined first of all as a worshiping community. And when we come together as the church, singing the songs and praises of God is to be a pleasant experience. It’s better than good. It adds to and moves on to pleasantness.

So the unity picture in 133 begins in worship and the songs that David wrote and the instruments that were used brought pleasure in the context of worship. That’s our goal here. You know, maybe we’re doing a good job, maybe we’re doing a bad job, but that’s the goal of the music ministry: that our worship would be the unity of brothers in goodness, but also in pleasantness in worship. You see, so it starts here. Pleasant worship. The church pleasingly learning songs and singing them before God. God gives us pleasure as we sing together.

I’ve used the word pleasure several times. You know, if we can be sort of Gnostic or Greek, pleasure is not the—no, no—”we got duty now and pleasure later.” No, God says your very work, the beginning of all your work, singing praises as part of the liturgy of the church, is to be pleasurable. You’re supposed to have pleasure in it. Pleasure is not bad. Pleasure is the magnification of goodness. Not to get to pleasure by going around good—that ain’t pleasure according to the Bible. It may be in a short time, but it’s not sweet in the end. It’s bitter.

So pleasure, though, is a good thing. And we get there through goodness. It goes from goodness to pleasurableness. Okay.

Now, if we’re going to talk about the church, we’ve got to talk about denominations because 133—remember, David wasn’t just extolling the pleasures of his little group that got together for, you know, devotional time. He was celebrating the unity of the whole body of God in Israel, right?

So we have to talk about that. What we should want from Psalm 133 is righteousness—right actions and attitudes and joint worship amongst the church of Jesus Christ across denominations here in Oregon City, between the CRC and the PCA, the OPC, other reformed churches, ultimately through other trinitarian churches. That’s the goal. That’s what this psalm says. Do you want that?

Well, you know, one of the beatitudes—the things that talk about the attitude toward our law-keeping, our goodness that becomes pleasurable in us with the right attitudes—tells us that blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. I hunger and thirst for unity across denominational lines, for more unity in Oregon City, for more unity in the reformed world. I hunger and thirst for it. We’re supposed to want that badly.

And we’re not supposed to see Psalm 133 ultimately fulfilled in Oregon or RCC or even in the broader confines of Oregon City churches. We want the kind of national unity of the church in worship that David sang about here and that he experienced as all Israel came and swore to him at Hebron. That’s what we want. We want that.

Let me quote some more Calvin. I know it’s tough listening to quotes, but see why would I quote Calvin here? Because he was like David under Saul. He was in times of trouble. He didn’t see the unity of the church. He saw the church being smashed by God and splintering into a thousand pieces, primarily. You know, those guys, the Reformers, being kicked out, excommunicated by the Catholics. Then you got the Anabaptist thing going on. You got lots of Reformers arguing with each other. Similar times to today, I might say.

So Calvin is instructive for how to apply this text in the midst of us hungering and thirsting for righteousness—for right actions. That’s what righteousness is. It has a social dimension to it, and ultimately we get that righteousness through good, pleasurable worship and unity with other denominations, other churches, etc.

Here’s what Calvin said: “I have no doubt that David in this psalm renders thanks to God for the peace and harmony which had succeeded a long and melancholy state of confusion and division in the kingdom, and that he would exhort all individually to study the maintenance of peace. This is the subject engaged upon—at least so far as the shortness of the psalm—in the midst of it. There was ample ground to praise the goodness of God in the highest terms for uniting in one a people which had been so deplorably divided previous.

“Brings this greatness of praise to God. When he first came to the kingdom, the larger part of the nation considered him in the light of an enemy to the public good, were alienated from him. Indeed, so mortal was the feud which existed that nothing else then the destruction of the party in opposition seemed to hold out the prospect of peace and unity. Saul had to kill David. Their passions were so inflamed that the only way you can get to peace is by killing the other guy.

“The hand of God was wonderfully seen and most unexpectedly in the concord which then ensued amongst them, when these who had been inflamed with the most violent antipathy largely coalesced together at Hebron.”

“This peculiarity in the circumstances which called forth this psalm has been unfortunately overlooked by interpreters who have considered that David merely passes a general commendation upon brotherly union without any such particular reference. The exclamation with which the psalm opens—Behold—right, that’s the first word: ‘Behold, how good and pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity.’

“Behold.” See, Calvin says this exclamation is particularly expressive. Not only is it setting the state of things visibly before our eyes, but suggesting a tacit contrast between the delightfulness of peace and those evil commotions which had well nigh ruined the kingdom. He sets forth the goodness of God in exalted terms.

“The Jews, having by long experience of intestine feuds—which had gone far to ruin the nation—learned the inestimable value then of union. At this is the sense of the passage, appears still further from the particle gum in the Hebrew word at the end of the verse. It is not to be understood with some who take it mistakenly in the sense of the psalmist as being a mere connective to add two sentences together, but as adding emphasis: ‘Dwelling together in unity’—adding emphasis to the context, as if he had said: ‘Who were naturally brethren had become so divided as to view one another with a more bitter hatred than any foreign foe.’

“That can happen, and it’s happening now. But now how well is it that we should cultivate a spirit of brotherly concord? There can at the same time be no doubt that the Holy Ghost is to be viewed as commending in this passage that mutual harmony which should subsist among all God’s children in exhorting us to make every endeavor to maintain it. So long as animosities divide us and heartings prevail amongst us, we may be brethren, no doubt, still by common relation to God, but cannot be judged one, so long as we present the appearance of the broken and dismembered body.

“As we are one in God the Father and in Christ, this union must be ratified amongst us by reciprocal harmony and fraternal love. Should it so happen in the providence of God that the Pope—the Catholics—should return to that holy concord which they have apostatized from mutual love, it would be in such terms as those that we would be called to render thanksgiving unto God. And in the meantime, we are bound to receive into our brotherly embraces all such as cheerfully submit themselves to the Lord.”

So he talks about well, I—but his point is you’ve got to apply this to divisions in the church because that’s the immediate context. And Calvin knew that when he got to this text, he could, you know, dance around the graveyard, but he didn’t. He went right at it. We should apply this somehow to our relationships with the Pope. This is what our desire is.

And now the way he went about it—well, they’ve got to do this, they’ve got to do that. I don’t know. But the point is it is appropriate to us, and it’s appropriate to our times today. What goes on in the reformed world, what goes on in the divisions in Oregon City, what goes on in the division across the reformed world with other churches is always a test of love, harmony, and concord. And we want to meet together in the joint worship of Christ.

Now, that demands some doctrinal unity, but probably less than we normally think of to worship God.

So it talks about the church, and it talks about the blessings that will come, and it brings hope to us in the midst of our setting.

Psalm 133 and the family: I’ve got here the family lawyer and Tommy Boy. Apologies to those. I’m not commending the movie Tommy Boy, but my sons know that I always tell them: brothers got to hug. “You’re not my brother. Don’t want a hug.” But Tommy Boy, you know: “Brothers got to hug.” They have to go from dwelling together to dwelling together in unity. Okay, how do we do it?

Well, in Genesis, when the land was such that they could not dwell together, Abraham said to Lot, “Please let there be no strife between you and me and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are brethren.” He’s the family lawyer who, the way he tries to move toward the unity described in 133 when it’s not present, begins with the assertion that the Lord has brought them into the same family.

And so in our families, you know, we can apply it to Christ and the church, but it applies to our families as well. We want brothers and sisters to dwell together in unity. And how do they do it? They remind themselves: “You’re my brother. It means something. We’re not Gnostic, Greek concept people where the only thing that means something is ideas, and the physical lineage of children has nothing to do with who they are. We belong here. Brothers are brothers. And they should be exhorted by this psalm to not just dwell together, but to dwell together in unity. To say to one another when trials are potentially happening or in the midst of them, ‘Are we not brothers? Let’s act like it.’ That’s family lawyer—as some people call it—that Abram was, to bring peace to his family.

God wants brothers to love each other actively. This is hard. It’s hard. But we do it by recognizing the unity that God has already brought us to, dwelling together, and building on that toward more unity.

Psalm 133 in the individual. I’ve got to rush. Third Commandment. Well, you guys don’t want me talking about this anyway, but it’s interesting to me to note in passing, we’re trying to do an in-depth study of this. And the word beard is used twice. Now, some people think that anointing oil couldn’t be put on the flesh, so the beard is important as a transmission belt for the oil. And I’ve got a verse for you on that. I think it means flesh other than the high priest’s. But some people say that. I don’t know that’s true. And I’m not sure why the beard is in here, but it’s used twice. That seems significant.

And again, to drive out this idea that we’re just abstract ideas, the Bible says what you do with your body is important. And I’ve mentioned these Ten Commandment sermons by Moses in Deuteronomy. And the third commandment—no empty witness in the world. They only got two commandments in it. And this is one of the two commandments. It says, “You are the children of God, of the Lord your God. You shall not cut yourselves nor shave the front of your head for the dead, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God, etc.”

Now, you know, do the Ten Commandments change? Yes, they change from Exodus 20 to Deuteronomy 5. Does the command “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself” change? No. But its application changes. It changes from Sinai to 40 years later going into the land. It just did. You can either think that Deuteronomy 5 is a problem, or you can say, “Well, Ten Commandments change.” And all these case laws—do they change? Of course.

Does this mean you can’t cut your beard? No. But what it does mean is that part of your witness in the world has to do with physical appearance. Your body’s important. You’re supposed to take care of your body. And man, the normative thing. I’ve given you some outline stuff here from John’s Sunday school class a while back. You know, the word elder means a guy that can grow a beard. Its root is the same word for beard. They’re connected words. So elders were bearded guys. I’m not saying elders of the church need to have beards. But I am saying that what you do with your body is significant.

And when you do this or that thing to your body just because you think it’s kind of cool or it’s like the culture around us—forget it. God says it is essential to your witness in the world to take care of your body. Piercings. Can I give you a verse that says piercings are wrong? I cannot. Israel was pierced in the nose by God. Maybe just the husband is supposed to let the wife have earrings. I don’t know. But I know that it’s significant. And I know that when we’ve got a culture of rebellion or even just stylishness, and when kids in the church start doing things to fit in with the world around them, we’ve got a little third commandment problem going on. We’ve got a deteriorating witness to the world, being formed by the world as opposed to reforming the world by Christian perspectives.

Enough on sin. I think you can tell that I’m pro-beard. The Bible says it’s important what you do. I’m not trying to give you the specific application in your life, but there is application to be made. How you treat your body is significant.

The third commandment—witness to the broader culture. God wants us to take care of our body.

So there’s an immediate application of the individual. Chorus this psalm: you should strive for unity. But even in your physical nature, it’s talked about.

So the word for elder is from the same word as beard.

Finally, Psalm 133 in the future. This is kind of where this whole thing has been going to, and I’ve made these points all along, but recognize what’s going on.

Look at that first page. “Behold how good and pleasurable. Pleasurable is better than just goodness. We can have goodness without pleasure. But this what he’s talking about goes from goodness to pleasurableness. This is dwelling together, but more than that, it’s dwelling together in unity. You see, blessings flow. You know, the name of the sermon is what? Descending to Us: A Sure Hope in Present Trials. That hope is that we’re going to mature and grow. We’re going to go from goodness to pleasurableness. We’re going to go from dwelling together to increased unity.

By reference, there’s oil mentioned, but it’s specifically said to be precious oil. So there’s a reference to oil, but it’s the precious anointing oil that’s being talked about. Blessings flow and increase in this psalm. There’s movement. We go from the head to the glorious garments of Aaron, right—representation of the righteousness of Christ, the church itself. Jesus wears us as a glory garment. And so this—there’s this progression.

He goes from the head to glory garments. It goes from Hermon to Zion. Zion’s where God chose to put his name. It’s better than Hermon. So it starts with Hermon—good enough. Nice tall mountain. God’s up there in the heavens. Hermon has lots to do. The dew comes down. It distills in the evening, and droplets float over to Zion. Maybe. I don’t know. But the imagery is that we’re going to the better mountain, Zion. We’re going to the better oil, the precious oil. We’re going to the glorified Christ in his body, not just the head.

We’re going from goodness to pleasurableness. Nuts. You see, we’re going from dwelling together to dwelling together in unity. And we’re going as well from oil to dew. That’s progression. It starts in the church. But if all we have is pleasurable singing together, unity in the church, we miss the imagery that what’s going to happen is dew as we go into the world.

Dew, as Calvin noted earlier, has these great properties. If you don’t have a watered lawn, it won’t grow. It has fertilizer in it. It brings things into the soil. It’s a necessary component for blessing, growth, and maturation. The oil is consecration to service. The dew represents the actual service flowing out into—not just found in Zion, but flowing out into all the world.

Turn to Hosea 14. This will be the last text as we bring to conclusion this section of this sermon, rather, on this.

Look at Hosea 14. This is so cool. I love it.

“Hosea 14, Israel, return to the Lord your God.”

Okay, look down. Verse 4: “I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from him. I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall grow like the lily.”

See, dew produces growth.

“And lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread. His beauty shall be like an olive tree”—there’s the oil—”and his fragrance like Lebanon. Again, back to the scented oil. Those who dwell under his shadow shall return. They shall be revived like grain and grow like a river. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, ‘What have I to do anymore with idols? I have heard and observed him. I am like a green cypress tree. Your fruit is found in me.’

“Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right. The righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.”

We’re called to Mount Zion. Great good news. The dew is flowing. And we’re given hope today. Don’t care if you’re dis-unified. If you have problems in the church getting along, don’t care if there’s problems in your family. I care, but don’t lose hope. It’s just the reverse.

This psalm tells you that the Lord commanded the blessing—life, and not just life, but life forevermore. Ascent again. The beauty of the commanded blessings of God, brothers and sisters, is that they shall come to pass. There is no doubt about them. We labor, yeah, we labor trying to put away idolatry. We labor hard trying to promote unity amongst the body. But we labor with a sure hope in mind, a goal in mind that will be accomplished because God commands the blessing from this place today to his people and to his extended body in the church and to the whole world.

This is what God is doing. Yeah, we’re going to struggle like David struggled. We’re going to struggle like Abel struggled against Cain, or like Jacob and Esau struggled. We’re going to struggle like Joseph and his brothers. We’re going to struggle like the divided kingdom. We’re going to struggle in exile. We’re going to have long problems trying to get back to this thing and get God’s blessing.

But it’s going to come to pass if we remember the historical context. This psalm takes place in history, a history that is always preceded by great difficulties, trials, and tribulations. And God says in the midst of your trials and tribulations—whether it’s in your family, whether it’s folks in this church, whether it’s other folks in other churches in Oregon City, whether it’s denominational feuds that are going on now in the reformed world, or whether it’s, you know, desiring to see the reformed world and the Lutheran join up together and the Episcopalians too, and maybe even the Catholics eventually—in the midst of all of those troubles and trials today, the message is: take hope for the future.

Be diligent. Don’t forget the message. Be wise and understand that unity is the blessing that God gives to his people. Do not destroy unity in your home. Do not tear apart people in your home. Do not tear apart people in this church. If you can’t do it here, there’s no way it’s going to happen in an extended way.

In Hebrews, we go to Mount Zion, but it says, “You better listen at Zion,” because it says, “You know, the punishments are worse now if we don’t listen.” He says, “Have hope.” He says, “Work hard in serving one another and trying to maintain the unity that God has provided.”

You know, that skirt thing—it doesn’t mean the bottom. It means the top. It’s a bad translation. Sort of sorry that Mark Reagan included it in his, but anyway, it probably means the opening of the garment. We’re not sure what it means, but probably that. And I’ve given you a text on your outline—two texts first where it was prescribed and they did it. The opening or the hole in the garment had a band put around it so it couldn’t be rent. It had a band around it so it couldn’t be torn.

So again, the very picture of the skirts of the garment—the opening of the garment, the top of the garment, the collar—is one of telling us Jesus has brought you together. Do not tear one another apart. Do not rend what God has done. Jesus has done the ultimate rending for us. He’s been rent, torn apart for our sake. Shall we then tear at his body again by creating division, disunity?

And shall we not rather be—whatever we can—in terms of stitching up the rending and divisions that we see in the context of our world, being part of the way that God in a consecrated and then nurtured fashion, with oil and dew upon us, shall we not apply our efforts afresh with great strength and commitment, knowing with sure hope that God will accomplish this?

Shall we not strive together as brothers and sisters in the Lord in our families and in this church? And then also, to whatever degree God allows us to do it, in the context of the broader culture.

Psalm 133 is that picture of hope in the times of distress and trials. Let’s thank God for that.

Father, we thank you for the sure blessings that you’ve commanded—the blessing, not just life, but life forevermore. We thank you for these few short years we walk this earth, where we can decide to serve you or not, where we can give into temptations and disunity and trials and tribulations and gossip and slander or not. We know that after we die, Lord God, and you bring us into your heavenly presence and then in the eternal consummation that these things are no longer temptations to us. We’ve been delivered from the presence and practice of sin altogether. So bless us, Father, with these few short years we have. May we consecrate them afresh to build the body of Jesus Christ, working in hope. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.