On behalf of the saints who are gathered at Friend of Sinners Reform Church ARP, I bring you greetings in Jesus' name. This morning we turn to that portion of the Bible that Dr. Luther called the little Bible. What my late mother called the heavenly hymn book. We turn to that book which the spirit of Christ gave to us to sing back to him. We turn to the Songs of David, the book of the Psalms. When we sing from the psalter, we can be certain that we are singing with Jesus. As the 22nd Psalm and Hebrews chapter two make clear that he is the liturgos, the liturgist, the song leader of the great congregation in the heavenlies. Because the Psalms form the principal content of our sung worship, it is important that from time to time we hear them exposited and explained so that we understand what it is that we are singing to the praise of our God. Now because this occasion is one in which we mark and we celebrate the unity of the church, It seems fitting that we look to a psalm that declares the blessedness of that unity. The 133rd has been a favorite of Presbyterians for centuries. Perhaps you know that among the wonderful documents that our fathers in the faith at the Westminster Assembly composed was a volume that they did not compose. but rather that they translated into English and put to mostly common meter the 1650 psalter. The 1650 setting of the 133rd continues to be the closing psalter setting that is sung at the end of business when our presbytery or our synod assemblies conclude. However difficult the deliberations, the debate, or even the discipline that has been handed down, it is a reminder that the purpose of biblical church government is to promote unity that can only be achieved through the purity of the scriptures and the peace of the Holy Spirit. The 133rd has a divinely inspired prescript informing us that King David was the human author. And that it is set in that part of the Psalter known as the Psalms of Ascent. Settings 120 through 134 form a little hymn book within the hymn book. Psalms that were particularly employed on the journey up to the Jerusalem plateau. to the Holy City, where each Hebrew male was required by the law of Moses to make pilgrimage to three times a year for the festivals, also called the Sabbath weeks. Passover in early spring, Pentecost, the commemoration of the early grain harvest 50 days later, and the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. Streams of pilgrims, often with their families, would be ascending the steep trails to Jerusalem up Mount Zion for the most holy days of the year, filled with joy and excitement for the celebrations that would take place. Just imagine, if you will, choirs of hikers as they would from time to time break into song, singing one of the psalms of ascent along the way. I invite you now to stand to ascend for the reading of God's word. The 133rd Psalm, these are the words of our God, a song of a sense of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is 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 is like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore. O God most high, by your Spirit will you add the blessedness to the reading and the preaching of this your word for Jesus' sake. Amen. You may be seated. The very first word of the psalm prompts us to take note. Behold! Lo! Hark! Something excellent is about to be declared. Give ear. In fact, something good, it says. Good. Oh, this is the very word that Jehovah used to describe the completion of his creation. God declares that for brethren to dwell in unity is good. Brethren being the children of the covenant, the people he has brought near to himself, the people who are set apart to worship, to glorify, and to enjoy him forever. Yahweh declares that unity is good according to him, pleasant. pleasing to him when his worshipers are united by and for the purpose of that worship, that festal praise. We are given in the psalm a simile, a description of what unity is like, one that perhaps falls short for us in our culture and to our modern ears. We'll explore it more in a few moments. but the picture is pointing the reader, the singer, back, pointing them back to an ordination, the anointing of the very first high priest, Aaron the Levite, the brother of Moses, and to the priestly garment that God told Moses to have made. and to use in the sacred duties. The anointing oil, the collar of his robe, is the first simile of unity. The second is sort of meteorological. Brotherly unity is like the dew of Hermon. Mount Hermon is a prominent feature in northern Israel, near Lebanon and Syria. It is a coastal mountain, and it is right in the jet stream of marine weather coming off of the Mediterranean Sea. For comparison, consider how much more moisture falls at the elevations around Shasta than does here in Reading. By way of latitude and altitude, Shasta sits right in the jet stream and gets far more moisture. So do Mount Hermon. Its ridges and valleys are adorned with the so-called cedars of Lebanon. It is the headwaters of the Sea of Galilee, also called Lake Capernaum or Lake Gennesaret. with then downstream the Jordan River flowing south out of the lake. It is the source of irrigation and fertility for the whole Jordan Valley. Hermon is a snow-capped peak for much of the year. In modern times, it even has chairlifts and ski slopes on its flanks. There is a ski area in Israel, and it is on Mount Hermon. Compared to southern Israel, to the dry, arid plateau on which Jerusalem is set, Hermon is a lush paradise. This makes the statement that lush Hermon-do, descending upon the mountains of Zion, sounds so strange. But this is the intent. The unity of the brethren is a supernatural refreshing that visits the place where the Lord, Yahweh, Jehovah, commands his blessing. A blessing of life forevermore, eternal life. He does this at the sacred assembly, at the place where the worshipers are heading, Mount Zion. When the thronging worshipers assemble upon that dry and arid plateau in southern Israel, in Judah, when they are united in worship, something supernatural takes place. Spiritually, it's as if the arid drought is transformed. into a lush garden paradise. When our own ARP minister, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, preached his series through the Psalms of Ascent, he titled it A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, playing on the sort of hitchhiking that the pilgrims would do to arrive at the assemblies of worship, but moreover, how when they were there, they were guided in the deepest things of the universe. As the sacrifices and the prayers were offered, as the law was publicly read and explained, and as the people of God caught a temporary vision of the assembly of the kingdom of God, of His holiness, and of His promises, His covenant. One of the commentators that I relied upon cast imagination to the return home by one of these hitchhikers. Perhaps they've been gone for the better part of three weeks. A week of sojourning on either side of a week of worship. And when they return home and sit back, put their dusty feet up, maybe pour a cold glass of lemonade, the whole household then gathers around Daddy, who got to go up to Jerusalem. And all the kids are asking him, what was it like, Daddy? What was the worship like? How did it feel to be with all the brethren of Israel? And perhaps the father would get a twinkle in his eye, and he would simply break out singing the 133rd. And the children would be like, no, daddy, we know the hymn, but what was it like? How did it feel to be a part of that massive worship service? And the daddy would keep at it. He would just keep on repeating the choruses about oil and priestly garments and Herman's dew. And the meaning would be kind of lost on the children. And so it may be for us. Perhaps we sung the 133rd, but the similes don't really grab a hold of us. Those of us who have beards, We know what it is when oil runs into it. It's kind of yucky, let alone if it gets on our collar. Now, perhaps we understand how dry southern Israel is. So maybe we kind of get the picture that the unity of worship there felt kind of like the desert was visited that week by a lush mountain mist. But we don't get it, we don't naturally gravitate toward these examples of Hebrew poetry. And so we must look deeper because the Holy Spirit writing through David must be up to something deeper here. So we crack open our guide to the universe. Scripture interpreting scripture, we turn to the rest of the Bible to try to understand what the Hebrew hitchhiker is singing about. The festal worship in Jerusalem, in Zion, has something to do with Aaron's ordination. The recipe for the, quote, precious oil, In the 133rd, well, it's actually found, recorded in Exodus chapter 30. The Lord said to Moses, take the finest spices of liquid myrrh, 500 shekels, and of sweet-smelling cinnamon, half as much, that is 250, and 250 of aromatic cane, and 500 of cassia. according to the shekel of the sanctuary, and a hymn of olive oil, and you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil, blended as by the perfumer, it shall be a holy anointing oil. This precious oil was what was used to anoint the prophets, priests, and kings It was used to anoint the ceremonial furniture of the tabernacle for the sacred ceremonies. You see, this oil was a sign and a symbol that God himself provided, indicating that what was being done in worship particular was holy. Three times in the psalm the same verb is employed, translated in the New King James Version twice as running down, then the third time translated as descending. Because the anointing oil in the scriptures has always been symbolic of God's own spirit coming down to consecrate, to sanctify, to make holy. The priests were anointed by God to declare the things of God, the word and sacraments of God. Then, just as now, this work can only be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so the anointing oil was a type and a shadow, a symbol of the Holy Spirit which comes down from God, consecrating his servants. The Lord takes the consecration of his ministers and elders very seriously. He said to Moses about the anointing, it shall not be poured on the body of an ordinary person. and you shall make no other like it in composition. It is holy and it shall be holy to you. Whoever compounds any like it or whoever puts any of it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people. The purposes of the holy shall be for the ministry of God and they shall not be faked. This work is good. and precious to our God. Now I want you to perhaps imagine having heard the ingredients, the fragrance of this precious oil. The hitchhiker says to his kids, you should have smelled the fragrance of the worship, children. It was amazing. Everything that is going on in the Old Testament with regard to ceremony is prefiguring something that would be fulfilled in Christ. Christ is everywhere in the Old Testament because he is there in type and symbol and shadow foreshadow. How do we understand this? The Apostle Paul. You see, the epistles of the New Testament explain the Gospel and the Old Testament to us. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth these words, thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere for we are the aroma of Christ. In 2 Corinthians, the Holy Spirit is informing us that the aroma of festal worship in the Jewish Sabbath weeks on Mount Zion long before the whole procession of ascents and all of the ceremony and the amazing perfume of myrrh, cane, cassia, and cinnamon was foreshadowing the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church of Jesus Christ, spreading the aroma of Christ in the world. As Jesus adds more and more worshipers to the procession which is ascending to the true Mount Zion, our heavenly home. Here's another commentator. The Holy Spirit who consecrates us and makes us one and who sweetens and makes fragrant that unity so that everyone who sees it and experiences it will be moved by its loveliness like a room filled with this fragrant aroma. Real Christian unity. The Holy Spirit wrought unity that the psalmist is celebrating is compelling. It is attractive, it is beautiful, like the holy anointing oil that was never used for anything else. This kind of unity can be found nowhere else but amongst the people of God in the Church of Jesus Christ under the blessing of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Children, this is the precious oil. But what of the collar? of Aaron's robes and down to the skirts. The Lord's prescriptions for the priestly garment are found in Exodus 28. And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and of fine twined linen skillfully worked. It shall have two shoulder pieces. You shall take two onyx stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel. Six of their names on the one stone, and the names of the remaining six on the other stone, in the order of their birth. As a jeweler engraves signets, so shall you engrave the two stones with the names of the sons of Israel. You shall enclose them in settings of gold filigree. And you shall set the two stones on the shoulder pieces of the ephod as stones of remembrance for the sons of Israel. And Aaron shall bear their names before the Lord on his two shoulders. Aaron the high priest would bear the names of the people of God before the Lord. He, being covered in the anointing of the Holy Spirit, would bear the people of God before the Lord on his shoulders, offering prayers and sacrifices on their behalf. And so, beloved, in the details about a garment, Christ, our great High Priest, is coming into view. This is a main theme in the book of Hebrews where we read that Jesus ever liveth to make intercession for us. He is always interceding for us as our high priest and mediator of the covenant of grace. We read in Hebrews that he is not like the priests of old. who had to first offer the blood of bulls and goats for their own sins, and then for the people. But in fact, Christ has offered a better sacrifice, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He offered himself as a propitiation for sin. the final satisfaction of the penalty that is due for a sinful people before a holy God. Hear the gospel. Under the old covenant, a man who was born a Levite was consecrated to the ministry of the priesthood at age 30. with the pouring of the precious oil on his head, down his beard, and to the skirts. When Jesus was 30 years old, he stepped into the waters of the Jordan River flowing down from Hermon, where the prophet John, himself a Levite, was conducting ceremonial washing for the Jewish people and calling them to repentance. Jesus said to him, we must fulfill all righteousness. And the Holy Spirit came down. out of heaven and anointed our Lord with a full measure of the Spirit and he was henceforth consecrated for his ministry of preaching and of prayer and for the final sacrifice. His becoming the sacrifice of atonement, the final atonement, our substitute on the cross. He bore the sins of all his people. upon his shoulders, and he is gathering us in procession. This is what Hermans do. The meteorology is foreshadowing. The Hebrew hitchhiker has to make that arduous climb up the desert plateau to Jerusalem. The songs of ascent even sing of the arduousness of the journey. The 121st, we lift up our eyes to the hills from where our help comes. Our help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. We are staring our eyes upward on our journey to him. The 121st declares that he is our shade, that the noonday sun of the desert climb will not strike us down. The Lord is ensuring the perseverance, that the grueling pilgrimage is worth it. Because the destination is like another world. The climb up to Zion is dusty. It is rocky. It is thorny. There are serpents and scorpions. Our foot is prone to slip. We are prone to fainting. But the destination, Hermon's dew falling down on the mountains of Zion, is a picture of the new heavens and the new earth, another world. God set forth his race of worshipers. He placed them in a garden. A garden that was watered by a supernatural mist each morning. Adam was given charge to be fruitful and multiply, to care for the garden, to expand the boundaries of the garden that it filled the whole earth. But alas, Sin and its curse, thorn and thistle, toil and sweat, pain in childbearing, death and dying, drought and famine, serpent and scorpion, devouring locusts. But God, but God, commanded the blessing, the gospel, the good news of God's anointed. The sin bearer, with the names of God's elect engraved on the palms of his hands, leading a whole host captive to his garden paradise. Zion is a term used interchangeably for Israel, for Jerusalem, for heaven, and for the church. The place where the Lord commands, meaning appoints, ordains, gives charge, commissions, that is in Christ's church, where the word and the sacraments are shown forth where the fulfillment of Christ in all the scriptures is announced, where his sacred psalms are sung, where the prayers are offered, where we are commissioned in the power of the Holy Spirit to go and make disciples, to initiate them into the church through baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and to teach, to fill the earth, glorifying God and enjoying him forevermore. Life forevermore. This is our unity, children. I love how the Heidelberg Catechism, the tutor of my youth, exposits these things for us. Question 31. Why is he called Christ, meaning anointed? because he is ordained of God the Father and anointed with the Holy Ghost to be our chief prophet and teacher who has fully revealed to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption and to be our only high priest who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us and makes continual intercession with the Father for us and also to be our eternal king who governs us by his word and spirit and who defends and preserves us in the enjoyment of the salvation he has purchased for us? And question 32 of Heidelberg, but why art thou called a Christian? Because I am a member of Christ by faith and thus am partaker of his anointing that so I may confess his name and present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to him and also that with a free and good conscience I may fight against sin and Satan in this life and afterwards reign with him eternally over all creation. This is our unity, that we, the church, the Israel of our God, are anointed with his Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, uniting us to him. We are, according to Holy Scripture, the good and pleasant aroma of Christ to God, filling the earth. a procession of ascent to a supernatural destination, the garden mountain temple paradise of our God. We are commanded to tell of the blessedness, the life forevermore, of eternal life with Christ who can and does spare us from the destruction we deserve. For there, The Lord has commanded the blessing. In the church, the visible kingdom of God on earth, we share a unity that has come down. It is supernatural. It is prescribed only by God. It cannot be faked. It is his anointing, anointing us with the very spirit of God. And in the church, In the presence of Zion on earth, we declare the hope and glory of the Lord. We sing forth his praise, even amidst the difficulty of our pilgrimage. And we share the sweet aroma of our unity, and the blessings of his word, and his holy sacraments, and the prayers, the means of grace. Anticipating a time when the church will no longer be like the dusty streets of ancient Jerusalem in Palestine. Yes, the church is, is dusty and dry at times. Children, can you picture it? It must be like what Eden was like. back before thorns and thistles, back before toil and sorrow, back before sin and death. The unity of the people of God is like the world remade, where Hermon's dew does fall on Jerusalem at last, and the dusty streets of Zion are transformed into the verdant boulevards of the garden city of our God, the new Jerusalem. That, as the apocalypse revelation foretells, will come down from heaven, and then the whole earth will be filled with His glory. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. The Trinity appears in this psalm. God the Father pours down his spirit on his son, who is the great high priest. As it was in the beginning, as it is and ever shall be, world without end, amen and amen. Our maker and our God, our Father, our savior and our brother, our comfort and our counselor. We praise thee three in one. We thank you for the plan of your righteousness, foreshadowed through a peculiar people called Israel. Oh, Lord, forgive us, for we, like them, are often a stiff-necked and ignorant divided kingdom. Grant us true unity. We thank you that you have fulfilled all of the promises, all of the types and shadows with a yay and amen in Christ. We thank you, Jesus, for taking your anointing that you received and pouring it out upon the church at Pentecost, on sons and daughters that they may all understand. We thank you, Lord, for this today, the pleasant aroma of the saints. Our prayers ascend to you. May they be sweet. Holy Spirit, put the Psalms of ascent on our lips. Make these truths clear to our children. Add to the great assembly. Bless our unity. Bless this congregation at Reading. Bless all the ARPs. Bless all the faithful churches who declare Jesus Christ the anointed. We praise you and we thank you and we look forward to that great day. Praise you that you've not left us orphans, but have given us your word and spirit until then. And so with the church in all places and all ages, we cry out, come Lord Jesus. And we will praise your name. King of kings. Our great high priest, our prophet and our God, we pray all these things in your name, in Jesus' name, amen. We're going to sing.