Welcome! Today we finish our series on the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. These psalms are a collection, indicated in the original Hebrew as “of ascents,” or “degrees” or “steps.” We have mentioned repeatedly in this series that they may have been recited as the Israelites made their regular pilgrimages from around Israel to Jerusalem for important religious holidays. As a modern culture I think the setting of these psalms may be somewhat hard for us to relate to. We don’t walk any great distances singing spiritual songs together. Instead we drive in a nice air-conditioned car with the radio going on in front while the non-drivers watch movies, listen to music on headphones, or play games on their cell phones.
I don’t think I’m a Luddite, but I do think we have lost something important as a culture, and we are continuing to lose it more and more day by day as we get ever more entranced by our electronic devices: we are losing our sense of community. The sense of community in residential neighborhoods has been steadily disappearing for at least the last 40 years.
Nowadays the only place I still sometimes see community in residential neighborhoods is in the very poorest neighborhoods around here. As you move up the rungs of financial prosperity communities become more and more just a collection of islands, homes that are almost nations unto themselves. Yes, there might be some friendly banter as you talk to your neighbor across the street for a little while, but to really get into their lives, to know what is really going on, to put off the “happy masks” takes real work and seems to go against our very culture. It has gotten to the point that it almost feels wrong to really become a part of a neighbor’s life. That doesn’t mean that we as Christians cannot do it, we can do it, and we should do it, but it is ever more difficult, it is ever more work, to do so.
Nowadays the only place I still sometimes see community in residential neighborhoods is in the very poorest neighborhoods around here. As you move up the rungs of financial prosperity communities become more and more just a collection of islands, homes that are almost nations unto themselves. Yes, there might be some friendly banter as you talk to your neighbor across the street for a little while, but to really get into their lives, to know what is really going on, to put off the “happy masks” takes real work and seems to go against our very culture. It has gotten to the point that it almost feels wrong to really become a part of a neighbor’s life. That doesn’t mean that we as Christians cannot do it, we can do it, and we should do it, but it is ever more difficult, it is ever more work, to do so.
Back in Old Testament times, when these psalms were written, and on into the times of the New Testament, life was different. Most people lived in villages, and they didn’t just know their neighbors, their neighbors were like family. There was real community in communities. Today, not only is this nearly gone, even community in families is becoming more and more scarce. Tons of families are what we now call dysfunctional. We used to just call them heartrending or tragic. Dysfunctional sounds so clinical; it is such an understatement. Homes with children traumatized by divorce, homes with no parents at all, homes with fighting parents, homes with abusive parents or other abusive people, homes with substance abuse, homes with workaholic parents – I could go on and on. The bottom line is that these are homes in which Christ is not King. Even if some members of the homes are believers, others are not, and there is conflict and the fruits of lives that have gone their own way, where people have not bowed their hearts to Christ and invited Him in to transform individual lives first, and from individual lives, to entire families, and from families, to entire communities.
Now these tragic things did not just suddenly happen with our modern electronic age, but I do worry that it is adding new problems on top of the old. We as a people are becoming less and less social, more and more loners, more and more content to numb our pain and loneliness with reading, watching, and playing with our electronic toys.
It’s not just Christians that are noticing this. Tomorrow at Clemson University, freshmen will gather together during Convocation to hear the author of a book that uses dark humor to touch on these same themes. In the book, which is entitled Machine Man, the main character is a social loner who uses electronic devices to numb the pain and provide distraction. A workplace accident leads to him having a part of his body replaced by machine, and as the book goes on, he continues to replace more and more of himself. He eventually becomes less and less human, and once he realizes what he has become, it is too late for him to do anything about it. What I think he doesn’t realize is that he wasn’t all that human to begin with in the beginning of the book. He had already gone much further down this road than he ever realizes.
What a contrast is this world with the picture we see in Psalm 133, ascribed as a psalm of ascents of David, the first of the two psalms we will look at today:
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. – Psalm 133
Now I have to be honest here – my first impressions while reading this psalm in preparation for today’s message was “yuck.” Let’s start with Aaron’s beard. Our kids have done science experiments where you make a mold and make a clay item from that mold. To prevent sticking, you first cover things in Vaseline – a lot of it. Trying to get a ton of Vaseline off one’s hands is one of my all time pet peeves. It is a big gooey mess, and it takes tons of washing and tons of soap – I hate it. And although I don’t have a beard or much hair on my head, I can imagine what it is like to have it covered in oil. Can you imagine getting a ton of oil in one of the Duck Commanders guys’ beards?
So how are we to understand this? And why Aaron’s beard? Well, Aaron’s anointing with oil (and that of his sons) is described in Leviticus 8. It is interesting to note that out of the book of Leviticus, it is only chapters 8-10 that are a historical telling of events; the rest of the book consists of telling the various rules and regulations of the Law. But the setting in chapters 8-10 is that the Tabernacle has just been built, and now it is time to finally begin the sacrificial system. This would be a time when the Israelites were all together, eagerly awaiting the inauguration of this new chapter in their lives, and so at least on a very superficial level, an event having some similarities with tomorrow’s Freshman Convocation. Anyway, the anointing with oil of Aaron, the first high priest, was a huge deal and a big celebration. Think about this – who could go into the Holy of Holies place? Only the high priest. Only Aaron. Only he could perform the sacrifices that would atone for sin, that would lead to the forgiveness of sin. As the first high priest, he was the first one who could do this for the people. It was a time of great joy for the Israelites as they experienced these events together, and that is what David the author of this psalm, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is getting at.
Now what about the dew of Hermon? What in the world is that? Well, again, my first impression was “ick.” In my teenage years when I did a fair amount of backpacking with my dad and sister, up in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range it rarely if ever rained in summer, and so we would often sleep in our sleeping bags without setting up a tent. On rare occasions we would wake up in the morning absolutely drenched in dew. It was pretty awful. Our sleeping bags would be wet, our provisions would be wet, everything would be wet. It was a pretty miserable way to start off a new day. It would set us back as we would wait for the sun to dry things off before packing up to go.
Now as I explored this dew of Hermon thing, I came to realize that despite a fair amount of personal study on Israel, I had missed this Hermon thing and it is a pretty big deal. Literally it is a big deal. I don’t know if you have ever had this "Aha" moment when you suddenly realize your knowledge of geography is much weaker than you realized. This actually happened to me this week in an area separate from Hermon. (Maybe I need to go back to Clemson to take a geography class!) But I was in an office looking at a map of Germany and noticed a lot of blue to the north. I wondered what country that was until I finally realized that the map was telling me that there is a lot of water to the north of Germany. I don’t know how I got into my head the idea that Germany was landlocked, but it’s not!
Anyway, back to Hermon. As we have discussed, these Psalms of Ascent may be so described because they were used by Jews as they went up to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount from all over Israel to celebrate the three annual national religious feasts. But here we have an interesting image: the dew of Hermon falling (down) on Mount Zion. The passage seems as if Mount Hermon is higher than Mount Zion, and to my surprise it is, very much so. Mount Hermon (actually a group of three mountains) has peak elevation of 9232 feet above sea level.
It is located in Israel’s north, on its northern border; the often Biblically described “cedars of Lebanon” come from this area. It is often covered with snow, and there is even a ski resort there.
You can see it even from the Sea of Galilee. In fact, the only reason there is a Sea of Galilee is because there is a Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon gets a lot of moisture, and as the moisture runs down its slopes, it gathers into streams and rivers and flows into the Sea of Galilee.
Israel proper is a very dry land, mostly desert. To have dew, or a light rain fall down on you if you are an Israelite, is to have a time of celebration. The grasses which were brown will turn back into green. Everything will seemingly come back alive. It is a time to rejoice when the dew of Hermon comes to Zion.
This theme of associating dew with blessing is also found in Proverbs 19:12 which states that “The king’s wrath is as the roaring of a lion, but his favor is as dew upon the grass.” This uses the same Hebrew word, tal.
It is interesting to me that the two scenes are similar in the sense that in both there is a dripping down of liquid, oil from the beard, and water from the sky. Another point of similarity is that neither the Israelite watching the anointing of Aaron nor the one observing the dew coming down upon Zion really did anything; they simply rejoiced in the moment of the wonderful situation.
With these thoughts in mind, let’s go back to the beginning of this psalm. How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! This is something to rejoice in, something to dance about, just like dancing in the rain or dancing as Aaron is anointed. But what exactly does it mean to live together in unity?
I was surprised when looking at the Hebrew to see that Psalm 133:1 was a song I often sang with my classmates in Hebrew school – If I ever knew what it meant, I am sure that as I sang it all those times I did not know. The Hebrew is: Henay mah tov umah nayim shevet achim gam yachad.
So what does it mean? Many translations use the phrase “in unity,” but I think, looking in depth at other uses of the word yachad in Scripture, that this isn’t quite right. First of all, there is no separate Hebrew word for “together” and “in unity” – both of these are coming from the single word yachad. The main problem I have with the phrase “in unity” is that I think its opposite is the wrong opposite for what is going on here. What’s the opposite of unity? Disunity. But the clear focus I believe of David here (and of the Holy Spirit who inspired David to write what he wrote) is the whole idea of togetherness, and the opposite is aloneness.
Now, just like my picture of a car trip in which each passenger is doing their own thing on their cell phone, it is important to understand that simply being in the same place at the same time does not mean you are together. I remember being on a crowded train in Germany going from Munich to Ulm and I never felt more alone. So I understand why the Bible translators felt the need to add something to just the word together. But I believe a better translation, and in fact a more literal one, if you look at the full meaning of the word achim as well, in this passage, is this: How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together as brothers and sisters in the Lord!
I believe that even in the New Testament, when Jesus talks about “being one,” this is what He is talking about. Consider this passage from John 17:
“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me." – John 17:20-23
This unity is not unity of dress or unity in the use of idioms in your speech or unity in secret handshakes or anything silly like this. It’s not unity in your hobbies or your profession or what TV shows you watch. It’s about being family. Just as God is in Christ and Christ is in God! None of us know more than a skin’s depth of what that must truly encompass, but I am certain that it means that we are to be family. Our unity is not in stuff of this world – our unity is in Christ Himself, in that we love Him together and know Him together and experience Him together and share His love to others together. This is what Jesus prays for us. He prays that our family bonds would be just as deep as those between the Father and Son within the trinity, within the God that is Three in One! That’s incredible!
And our unity in Christ is not just figuratively in Christ, that is, it’s not just in believing in Him and seeking Him together. It is in the Holy Spirit of God, which is bestowed upon every believer in Christ. There is but one Spirit. One Person we call the Holy Spirit. And that one Person is in each one of us, drawing us to God, teaching us, comforting us, growing us. And yes, He brings about unity, but unity to me is such an inadequate word to describe what He is doing.
It is no accident that this psalm uses images of oil and water as analogies to this unity of brothers and sisters in Christ; oil and water are both frequently used as symbols in the Bible of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit in us is a pledge, a down payment if you will, a receipt, a proof that our salvation will be completed when we are glorified with Christ. As the psalm says, for there the Lord bestows His blessing, even eternal life!
How do we live this out? How do we live as the family of God as opposed to strangers who happen to be in the same place at the same time? A few verses come to mind.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. – Col. 3:12-14
Finally, all of you, be like-minded [live in harmony with one another], be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. – I Peter 3:8
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. – I John 4:12
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. – Eph. 4:2-3
I see something amazing in these verses. Four different books. Three different authors. One message. Unity/family is kept by humble, sacrificial love. God gives us this kind of unity through His Spirit. We are to keep it, that is, we are to avoid ruining it. And we do that by dying to self in our relationships and living for one another.
Obviously a first step is to spend time with one another. Not just for a few hours on Sunday morning, but at other times, in other ways. Social media is better than nothing, but it is not the best. To spend time with people means giving them some of your undivided attention as opposed to texting while reading Facebook while watching a movie. Again, I’m not anti-technology. But we are talking about being a family of brothers and sisters in Christ, not a framily. I don’t know if you have seen the Sprint commercials about their framily plan, but to advertise their cell phone plan that allows you to have basically complete strangers in on your plan (you can even have them billed separately), they throw this complete hodgepodge of strange people together (actually, some of them aren’t even human) as if they are a family. That’s the opposite of these verses, the opposite of the blessing that is available to us as we live for the Lord and for one another together.
One more time:
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity! It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down on the beard, running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the collar of his robe. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore. – Psalm 133
And let us now in our brief remaining time in the final psalm of ascents, Psalm 134.
Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who is the Maker of heaven and earth. – Psalm 134
I have split this psalm into two sections because it seemingly has the form of a call and response. The Israelites who have come this long journey to Jerusalem to worship are calling out to the workers, the servants of the Lord (who would be Levites) to praise the Lord. And then the Temple servants reply, “May the Lord bless you!”
I think the little detail about nighttime is fascinating. The people calling out to the Temple workers are there at night watching the night shift at the Temple. Perhaps they have been there all day, and at last it is time to begin the journey home. It is possible the group will travel by night rather than day to avoid the hot sun. In any case, working at the Temple as a Levite was not a day-shift only kind of job. There were always Levites there, day and night, and the demand was even greater at the times of festivals. Some were undoubtedly there to guard the Temple items; recall that there were all kinds of gold tools and precious stones too. The Levites also kept people out of the most holy place; I don’t know that this place really needed guarding, though; God seemed in the past to take care of that Himself. But yes, guarding was a part of their nighttime activities.
By the way, while reading recently about the temple curtain, I was struck by its colors: white, blue, red, and purple. White depicts purity. Blue is symbolic of heaven, and red is symbolic of earth. And what about purple (and recall how Christ was given a purple robe when mocked)? It is the merging of red and blue. It is where heaven meets earth. What a perfect description of the Temple, and even more, of our Savior, Jesus. God made flesh. Purple, the blending of red and blue, was indeed the appropriate color for Him.
But back to our night-shift temple servants: another task they had was to keep the fire on the altar and the lamps in the candlestick continually burning. Interestingly, some lovers of God would spend some of their evenings keeping the Levites company. Do you remember the prophetess Anna described in Luke 2? It says in Luke 2:37 that she never left the Temple but worshiped there night and day. When Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple on the eighth day, both Anna and Simeon were there and they prophesied about Jesus.
And as Jesus grew up He had many encounters at the Temple. But through all of these, the Levites were there, working, working. There were the animal sacrifices, the various offerings, the making of bread, the keeping the fires going, and undoubtedly much more. Day and night, the servants of God maintained His house on earth. In this context we have this wonderful interaction between the servants and the visitors.
The scene reminds me of one I participated in way back in 1990. I cannot believe this was 24 years ago! Anyway, during the winter break in December in Illinois, a huge missions conference was hosted every three years by Intervarsity, called the Urbana Missions Conference (Urbana was the town where it took place). I was a relatively new believer, and, along with many Christians from many churches, I had been encouraged to sign up to help volunteer to help do needed work for this conference. One of the “perks” of volunteering is that you could attend portions of the conference for free. Nearly 20,000 people, mostly students, attended this conference. Anyway, one of my tasks was to direct incoming carloads of people where to park on the opening day of the conference. Being Illinois, and being December, it of course snowed that day, and so, for my entire shift of several hours, I stood out in that snow. There was a huge amount of traffic, and people had to wait in their cars a long time to get to park. But the people were cheery. I remember one carload in particular. As I was motioning for it to go forward, they instead stopped right by me, rolled down the window, and produced for me a paper cup filled with hot steaming cocoa. Smiling, the lady driver who offered to me said something very much like, “The Lord bless you!” I can’t remember the exact wording, but that was definitely the spirit of what she said. I would like to say that I replied in the spirit of Psalm 134, but I think I probably said something more like thank you very much (though chattering and blue lips). But that whole time I was struck by how happy people were despite the weather, despite the waiting. And I was happy too. In fact, I would say that I was supernaturally happy. My joy was not from within me. I attribute this to the fact that they had enlisted volunteers to pray for every minute of the conference. The whole experience was as far from the (mostly true) stereotype of the American traveler as you can get.
Now I want to point out a few things about some of the Hebrew words used in this psalm. The word translated “praise” in the first part is barach which more often is translated as bless. This same word is used in the last part in “May the Lord bless you from Zion.” So the first part could equivalently be translated “Bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands and bless the Lord.” And then the response, “May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who is the Maker of heaven and earth.”
I want to mention one other word, the word translated as servants in “servants of the Lord.” The word is avodim which means slaves. It is the exact same word used in avodim hayenu, “We were slaves,” referring to the Israelites’ time in Egypt. We see this same use of slave in Greek in the New Testament when Paul and other writers call themselves doulos or slaves of Christ.
I point out these two words, barach and avodim to you because they shatter a stubborn stereotype, a stubborn image in my mind that is clearly not Biblical. When I think about being a slave, I picture a situation more like Egypt, or a situation like in Uncle Tom’s Cabin with a terribly harsh, unfair, cruel slave master. I still think of slavery, even willing slavery, as wrong. But the picture here is so strikingly different. Imagine a slave owner so good, so kind, so loving, that the only slaves he had were people who volunteered to put themselves under him. Imagine a group of people coming by the master’s house and telling the happy slaves there, “Bless your master; lift up your hands and bless him!” And the slaves there respond by saying, “May our wonderful master bless you as well!” Well, that is exactly the situation of this psalm.
I encourage you to think of yourself as avodim, as doulous, of Christ. I encourage you to truly be slaves of Christ. He is a good Master, the best. To serve in His house is a great privilege and a great joy, a great blessing. To serve Him is to be blessed. To serve Him is to do what we were made to do, not just individually, but together. To combine the thoughts of these two psalms, how good and pleasant it is when God’s people serve as avodim together!
And so, as we come to the end of our journey in the psalms of ascent, we are much like the Israelites who have finished their journey to the Temple. What would they do now? Just go home to business as usual, or be forever changed by the experience? What will you do now? I encourage you to reflect on the journey and commit to an ever greater love of our Savior, and in the power of the love, to serve Him and to serve one another wholeheartedly.
Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord.
(Your turn):
May the Lord bless you from Zion, He who is the Maker of heaven and earth. – Psalm 134
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