Psalm 133

Now shall we turn please in the scriptures to the Psalms. I know that, I think that's the way that you say it over here. Some North Americans smile whenever we Irish call it Psalms, but I think you guys call it Psalms or something of that nature.

And we're going to read one of the very short and well-known ones, and it is 133. 133. I would like to publicly thank the assembly for the kind invitation to come.

I cannot believe the transformation that 50 degrees Celsius makes on this part of the world. Last time I was here it was, we don't work in Fahrenheit, I have no idea what Fahrenheit is, it's a foreign language. But for us, it was minus 25 when I was in Cedar Falls, and to go out, you just looked outside and said, well outside will kill me, so let's just stay inside.

And that was kind of a strange thing because it rarely gets beneath freezing where I come from. But now to see it in the early summer, it's beautiful. You have a beautiful land, you've got a beautiful state and when you come off the flat and onto the rolling hills and valleys here, it is most delightful.

So thank you for bringing me out to show me what it's really like, and also for the privilege of sharing with, now I'm not used to this, my younger brothers, Matt and Dave. I think this is the first conference I've ever been the oldest brother at, and that's kind of scary. We do have three grandchildren, that maybe qualifies me, but that's something else.

But I personally am looking forward to hearing both Matt and Dave and trust that the Lord will richly bless us and help us. It's not really a time for levity, but I couldn't help thinking that you've come to hear an Irishman and a Canadian and American, and that sounds a bit like the beginning of a joke. But we'll just leave it there and trust that the Lord will grant us great help and blessing as we surround his word.

Isn't it wonderful that every part of our personality has been redeemed? It's good to have humor. God invented humor, and it's good to have it in a clean and a healthy environment amongst believers and to have the joy of communion together and all of these things, to sing and to have the whole gamut of what it means to be a human being, all touched by the grace of our God. And so it's just wonderful to have your fellowship again.

Let's read the scriptures. Psalm 133, a song of degrees or a song of ascent of David. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.

It is like the precious ointment upon the head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments as the Jew of Hermon and as the Jew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore. It's always a little difficult to think of what might be appropriate for an open session, the opening session of a conference weekend.

And as I was thinking about it and praying about it, I felt a burden to come to this Old Testament scene where the people of God, the nation of Israel, were coming together in their ancient festivals and feasts to worship God. And as David looks upon the thronging congregation there in the city of Jerusalem, he expresses something of the wonder of what it is to be drawn together with one common bond, one common identity, with one common desire, and that is to know the presence of God, to receive the blessing of God, and to leave as those who are invigorated to live. A brother has already mentioned that in prayer.

The general round of life begins again on Monday, and business will have to be looked after. So many will be the things that will crush in upon us, but as we go to begin another week, that what we receive from this place and from this book, from the source that is before us, will send us out to live in the manner that God intends us to live, with the fullness of life, with the abundance of life, with the blessing of God's eternal life. That's what God calls us together to do.

And that's what the ancient Israelites, as they at last left the city of their worship and took one last glance back, as they breasted the hill that took the city out of their view, and they looked back and they thought of the joy that they'd had. Yes, they were going back to their fields and their farms. They were going to tend their vineyards.

They were going to look after their family. They had many things before them, but they had this long lingering joy within their hearts. We have been to the Lord.

We've been drawn together, and we have received a blessing. May God grant that during these sessions we would have the same experience, though we do not have a physical temple. We have a very useful building together where we are comfortable, but that which draws us together is just the same as what drew them together in the grandness of their circumstances, whether it was in the days of David or in the glory days of Solomon or even in that beautified, rebuilt temple in the times of Herod, to come together and to glorify the name of the Lord.

There is something about this. As we look at it, it's the 14th of 15 songs of ascent. Many and varied are the ideas as to what this means, but I think I am not mistaken when I say the by far and away predominant view, the view that I personally hold, is that these were the songs that were collated together in the five books of the Psalms, dedicated to the pilgrims who were going up to Jerusalem at the time of their annual feasts.

Now, that is a theme that you can pick up if you go through them. For example, the very first of them, Psalm 120, speaks about what it would be like to live outside of the land of Israel, up on the extreme north, down in the extreme south, in the cold of the Armenian mountains in the north, in the hot, sweltering heat of the Sinai or Arabian Peninsula in the south. What would it be to be out there? No, he wants to be where the Lord is.

And then as he looks at the hostility of the world around, looking at the high mountains of the peoples all around, he wants to turn his eyes and look to the Lord. And at last, in the third of the Psalms 122, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.

I think it is very evident that this, which has become the predominant way of understanding this Psalm, is one that makes sense even within the collection of Psalms. And as I say, the very last of the Psalms, the one that comes next, 134, is that backward glance of the pilgrims as they look back and they look to the city, and they think, while I'm on my farm and my fields far off, I cannot see the city. I cannot see the sanctuary.

How blessed are those that stay here. And so off they go, having received the blessing of being in the presence of the Lord. Isn't there a very real practical benefit to all of this? I mean, in the nation of Israel, as we think about it, they were scattered back in times whenever the travel was by foot, for the most part, and was done just by taking a day's journey and finding somewhere that was safe to rest at night, a way up there and down, down in Beersheba.

Across on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, those that lived on the east side of the River Jordan, scattered they were. They were all different. You know what it's like to pick out people from particular states.

I'm not so sure that I could pick them out the way that you could, but I think you probably would recognize a Texan, would you, by the accent. We do that back home with our counties. Where I come from is a lot smaller, but we can pick out those from the various parts of the island of Ireland just by the way that they speak.

And one of the things that we know in human experience is that after a little while, when you're living with your clique, with your kind, it's very easy to begin to find fault with the others. You know what they're like, and the Lord knew that too. And so He had designed that they would come together.

There would not be an altar for the tribe of Dan and another altar for the tribe of Reuben. And throughout the land scattered, twelve altars for twelve tribes. God said, there will be one altar.

There will be one house. There will be one priesthood. So that these scattered peoples that belong to me will be drawn together.

I don't know if you've ever adopted this manner of understanding the Bible, but I recommend it to you, and especially you young men and young women. Try as best you can in your study of Scripture to find out the background detail so that you can put yourself in there. And try to imagine how it would have been for them.

I know that we are going to use Scripture this weekend, and we're going to take it and seek to teach what it means in its context, and then at times use it as a principle to apply it to us in our day. That is all valid. That's what the Holy Spirit does.

But never forget what it meant to the people who first got it, in their circumstance, and how it benefited them. So I've often thought of a father, let's call him Yonatan, and he calls his boy Benjamin. He says, this is your first year.

We're going to Jerusalem. Really, Dad? Yes. What's it going to be like? Oh, it's going to be busy.

What's Jerusalem like, Dad? Oh, you'll see. And so they pack their bags for traveling, and they leave their little home. They make their way down the path.

It's just a hardened foot-trodden path to where it joins a wider road. And as they go down, they join with a neighbor. They know him well.

And they reach the village. They find that there are others, and they're walking in the same direction. And very soon, there's a little group of people, and they're journeying south.

They all speak alike. They all know each other. But at the same time in the south, the same scenario was taking place.

And these people, and they all know each other, they're heading north. And some are coming from the east, and some are coming from the west, until at last the roads that lead up to Jerusalem are thronged with multitudes. The distinctive voice and accent of the tribes is lost.

But as they press into the city, and at last press into the precincts of the temple, they are united with a common identity. They are no longer of this tribe or that. They are no longer of this dialect or that.

They are one. They are drawn to one place. They are drawn to one altar.

They are brought together with one priesthood, with one common desire, and that is to worship the one and only true God. Isn't it a marvelous design of God to draw them together to one place? Now, God has done that for us. It has already been quoted, and this is really something that encouraged me, where two or three are gathered together in my name.

There am I in the midst of them. God has granted to us alike a oneness, a common gathering place, gathered not simply to a geographical location, but gathered to the place where Christ is, gathered to Him. And so, coming from our different backgrounds as we smile and pick out the differences, we are united, and we are joined in one to seek the blessing of God and to seek to know our God and to gather in His glory.

There was as well as that not only a oneness, but there was a threeness about it, because God called them to do this three times a year. He called them in the springtime, and then a little further as the barley and wheat harvests had matured, He called them back again. Then after the long, hot summer, when the vintage of the year was being gathered in, all the fruit had been brought in, He brought them back.

I think there's a tremendous principle in that as well, for we have those that are with us this evening who are in the springtime of life, full of vigor, full of life, still thrilled with the fact that you are saved, young brother, young sister. To know this, I could have been lost. I could have been anywhere.

My life destroyed and damaged by sin, but God has saved me. And here you are, fresh with the zeal of new and divine life, ready to worship God. And may God richly bless you over this weekend.

But there are those that are here in the next stage of life, and I'm still hanging on to it. It's called the middle years of life, and those are busy years. When they came at Passover, the busyness hadn't really begun.

Oh, they were at the fields, they were working a little at the farm, but it hadn't really begun in earnest. But it's in those middle years, when you get married, when the children come, when you get a little further advanced in employment and you're given responsibilities because you are a dependable Christian, it's a lot more difficult to come then. There's so much more to do.

There's so many other distractions, and yet God said, in the midst of all that, you come. You come together to me. And then there's the other end of life, whenever the heat of the summer has been born, and all the problems and cares that have weighed down you, dear saints, that have lived many more decades than we have.

And what that has done in your life is to produce a marvelous fruitfulness, as it had in the land of Israel, those hot summer months, difficult to bear, but producing a rich harvest of many and varied fruits, until at last they brought in the vintage of the year in the wine. God said, when you do that, come again to me. And so we have those that are with us whose service for God we honor, and rightly so.

And God calls us, whether it is in the freshness of life, whether it's in the busy middle of life, whether it is in the rich harvest of older years, He calls us together, calls us for our blessing. There is, of course, a sevenness, but I dare not touch upon that too much, because that would take all of my time. Because as they came to one place, all united together, when they came in the three different stages of a year that would speak to us of the different stages of our human experience, they came to keep seven feasts.

And every single feast had truth behind it. God was teaching them doctrine, and what it meant to be in a covenant relationship with Him, beginning as He did with the truth of redemption through the blood of the Lamb. Moving quickly on to the great truth of the need of sanctification, the putting away of sin as they put the leaven from them.

And that great truth that they would understand at last, the truth of firstfruits, giving the first of our lives to God, of devotion to Him, and then giving the fullness to God in that feast of weeks. Not only the first, but the fullness. These lessons that are written large across our Bible, of course, to us, they teach us deeper things.

Not only do they teach that Christ died in the Passover and His body was unstained, and uncorrupted in the tomb during the feast of unleavened bread, but raised as He was on the feast of the firstfruits, and the Holy Spirit coming on the day of Pentecost. These are doctrines that we need to hear time and time again to ground us in our Christian lives. Then at the end of the day, to come as the year was waning, to be called together with that sound of awe as the trumpet sounded, we've got to meet God.

Isn't that something that we think of more and more as life goes on, of how it's going to be when we're standing before Him? Thankful we are that we shall never be judged for our sin, but remembering this, that our lives will be assessed in that day and called at the end of life with this realization, I've got to meet God. And that nation then, thankful for the blood of atonement that was sprinkled before the throne, they had every confidence their sin was gone. They were having access to the presence of God.

And that last feast, it spoke of the kingdom fullness that God is going to bring to that nation that would remind us too of the fullness that God is going to share with us through His Son. These are the doctrines that they were going to learn as they came together. That leaves us five minutes to speak on one little psalm, but that's enough.

I want us to think about the psalm in three parts. The psalm begins and ends together. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.

So let's start here at the either end. We're going to move into the middle. That's how the psalm is structured.

Notice two things. Behold, blessing. Behold, blessing.

As the writer looked upon the throng crowds worshiping God, he said, Behold, blessing. There is a blessing for those who come together around the Word of God. But notice another thing.

He uses the covenant name of God in verse number three, for there the Lord commanded the blessing. And it's through the covenant name of God that they can call themselves brothers. They have a relationship vertically with God, and because of that, they are in the horizontal, they are brothers.

That's true of us as well, isn't it? Our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, and then we have fellowship one with the other. Our fellowship is vertically first. On the grounds not of the old covenant that this passage is speaking of, but now on the grounds of the superior and superseding covenant, the new covenant in the blood of Christ, that of which we will take the symbol if the Lord allows us to gather on Lord's Day and take the cup in our hands to remember this, that we are brothers and sisters because of the Lord.

Not Yahweh, the God of Sinai, but Yeshua, our Savior of Calvary, has brought us into a relationship one with the other because we have been united in God. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. For there, for there, the Lord commanded the blessing, even life forevermore.

Step in a little. We get two liquids flowing down. The first of them is oil running down a beard.

That's a strange one, isn't it? Beards are all back in again. Some of us can't grow them. That's just a fact, but there it is.

And yet, we don't have so many of these shaggy ancient beards that they had back in Bible times. It's a kind of a strange simile to us. It's like that.

And then there's another liquid, and it's flowing down, not down a beard, but flowing down Hermon, a mountain. It's water. And what are they? Well, of course, it's very simple.

What these speak of, the Holy Spirit, the oil and the water flowing down. The oil flows down the beard. It is anointing oil.

It is oil that sanctifies and sets apart for God. This is the picture of Leviticus chapter 8 when the high priest was anointed and set apart for service. The oil unites and sanctifies the water, flowing down as it did from the high peak of Hermon, and watering the whole of the land through the flowing of the River Jordan so that the Jews came upon the mountains of Zion.

They give life and refreshment. These are two things that we crave for this weekend. Unity, unity of sanctification, set apart for God, drawn together because of that, and refreshment.

And then in the center, how beautiful is this, is a man, Aaron, their greatest representative on earth, the only man that could pull back the veil and enter into where God was. And his name is kept to the very center of the psalm, for this is the high peak of it. It starts and ends with God, the God of the covenant, who brings us together and gives us a relationship with each other.

It steps into the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, the oil and the water, that which sanctifies and refreshes. But at the very center is a name, Aaron. For us, it is not a high priest after the order of Aaron, but one who is of a different and a higher order, after the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus, the Son of God, His name. And as the oil came down, it came around the names that were on His shoulder and upon His breast. And His name and those names meant everything.

His name brought those names before God, the strength and the comfort on the shoulder and on the heart. These people were represented before God by a great high priest, or by a regular high priest, I should say. We have a great high priest.

And so, I think you will see just in a very simple way the manner in which the Holy Spirit has arranged this psalm to draw us together, because Christ truly is the center of all that we do. And may we, during this weekend, be drawn to Him, that His name will mean everything to us, to realize that He carries us on His shoulders, and He bears us on His breast, and He longs for us as we begin at the center then and flow out. We go one way, and we've got the oil that unites and mixes brothers and sisters.

The other way, we flow from Christ to the Spirit who gives refreshment and life forevermore, and to leave this place refreshed and entering Monday again in the will of the Lord with a renewed and spiritual vigor to live an abundant life for His glory. May God bless His work.