Oh my. Today’s word is very long. Please, please keep in mind I was not looking for this today. Here it comes:
Psalm 133: “How good and pleasant it is when brothers 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 upon the collar of his robes. It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion. For there the LORD bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.”
“As a result of the division after Solomon’s reign, some of the kingdom references in the historical annals of Israel could apply to the Northern Kingdom (Israel) or to the Southern Kingdom (Judah). The priesthood, however, was all-encompassing. It was established in the infancy of Israel and was dictated by God to be a lasting ordinance…
The idea of Hermon’s dew falling on Mount Zion may have found great significance among the pilgrim songs because it gave imagery to ‘the people of the northern kingdom’ flowing ‘down upon Zion, the center of the southern kingdom.’ During those three pilgrim journeys a year, the wayward, broken streams of north and south came together as one river. ‘Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!’ (KJV)
The tragic division into two kingdoms also resulted in loss of identity. The reason the people ultimately took on the name ‘Judah-ites’ (shortened to ‘Jews’) is because the tribe of Judah alone retained a measure of its unity. We may shake our heads and think what a pity before the reality hits us that Christians split into much more than half. We have splintered into every conceivable twisted branch of one family tree.
I’m not just referring to denominations. I’m talking about divisive, unloving, and arrogant attitudes rising up from among those distinctions between blood-bought, grace-taught siblings. Eugene Peterson points out, ‘The first story in the Bible about brothers living together is the story of Cain and Abel. And it is a murder story. Significantly, their fight was a religious fight, a quarrel over which of them God loved best.’ We’re like that sometimes, aren’t we? At the heart of our interfaith debates is our attempt to prove that God loves us – approves of us – more than our sibling. But our hearts toward one another can change. And we have the will of Christ to preapprove our request.
John 17:20-21 ‘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.’ [emphasis mine]
Who was this prayer for? (All who believe in Jesus)
What was the prayer for? (Unity)
Why did Christ want it? (So that the world would believe Jesus!)
Zephaniah 3:9 Then will I purify the lips of the peoples, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder. [emphasis mine]
Instead of criticizing and mocking one another, we want to ‘be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day drawing near’ (Heb. 10:24-25, HCSB)
As I’ve shared before, I was greatly relieved and freed when God helped me understand that unity does not equal uniformity. In both the family of man and the family of God, we can be very different and yet still practice unity. We can get along and come to love each other even if, in our human nature, we wouldn’t have preferred one another. I’m not sure many things are more fulfilling in the Christian experience than, in the power of the Holy Spirit, finally having victory over an old area of religious prejudice.
Have you experienced overcoming religious prejudice?
Nothing is like the holy nod of God: the sense that He is pleased by our courage to go against the grain of prevailing opinions and our own putrid flesh in order to ‘let this mind be in’ us that ‘was also in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 2:5 KJV)
Christ wants believers to be one: black, brown or white. Charismatic or noncharismatic. Calvinist or Arminian. Southern Baptist or Freewill Baptist. Add a few of your own…
What do we do about all of our very real differences? I am a visual learner and some years ago as I first grappled with a strong burden toward unity in the body, God illustrated a concept to me through a diagram of a skeleton. I believe He showed me that among believers in the body of Christ there are spine issues of great importance and rib issues of less importance.
Spine issues compromise the backbone of our faith. They are biblical tenants of such importance that disagreement may mean one of us is in Christ and the other is not. Or they mean that one is highly deceived and the other is walking in Truth. Rib issues, in contrast, do not involve matters that threaten to break the back. Some of them may be important to us, but they are not matters of eternal life and death. Differences in rib issues tend to be more interpretive and less heretical…
The goal is to realize that we don’t have to agree on rib issues. We can still thoroughly love one another even if we remain mystified as to how the other grew that odd rib. Questions arising from our differences can also cause us to run to God’s Word and see if what we believe is biblically sound.
I have rarely seen a person change their mind about a doctrinal stand because someone shouted at them about how wrong they were. On the other hand, I have seen countless people change their positions because something drove them to the Word of God. I saw one of them in the mirror this morning.
Take the ‘unity’ out of ‘community’ and what you have left doesn’t even make sense. No one in the last century has contributed more to the concept of Christian community than German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At great expense, he led a ‘fugitive community of seminarians’ in the pursuit of truth during the Nazi regime. During that harrowing period, he penned the following words:
‘Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.’
As we reflect on such powerful words of a man who lost his life for truth, let’s each think of someone we tend to dislike and feel divisive toward in the body of Christ. Picture their face. Recall some of the things that cause you to feel so resistant.
Without saying a name, think of several things he or she is ‘by reason of Christ.’ (Things like: Adored, Sanctified, Justified, Loved, Bought, Forgiven)
Ask Christ to cause you to couple every thought you have toward that person with these truths. Our first real steps toward unity are not toward those we naturally like. They’re toward those we don’t. Jesus’ kind of unity doesn’t exist until two people stand shoulder to shoulder who before stood sword to sword. Let’s do the hard thing. Let’s love each other when we wouldn’t even like each other. After all, eternity is a mighty long time to spend together…”
Stepping Up: a journey through the Psalms of Ascent by Beth Moore, pages 157-160