Love in God's Family - 2

Psalm 133

This Psalm uses picture language to describe brotherly affection. The first illustration comes from something that used to happen in the Old Testament temple. The second illustration is a picture from nature.

The message of this Psalm can be summed up like this:

One of the strongest evidences that God is blessing the church is the quality of fellowship (the brotherly and sisterly affection) that they experience. And that particular blessing is a taste of what eternal life is like.

David says believers living in fellowship or unity is a good and pleasant thing to experience (v1).

He says it is like this (V2) and Like that (v3a) and then he explains why it is so good (V3b): For there the Lord has commanded a blessing. Where? Where believers are living together in support and affection and service of each other. In that situation you are witnessing a blessing ordered by God. And that blessing is described as: life forevermore. In other words, where you are seeing Christians in warm brother and sister fellowship, you are seeing eternal life at work.

When you taste brother and sister affection, you are experiencing a taste of the quality of life in the new world. Heaven (the renewed earth) will be a world of beautiful relationships. And isn’t it true that even in this sin-damaged, death over-shadowed world, loving relationships are the most satisfying thing?

The aims of these studies are:

1. To attract you into God’s family if you are still only an observer of it, or a visitor to it.

2. To motivate our church to an increasing measure of brotherly love towards our fellow Christians.

3. To understand the essential role that the Holy Spirit has in producing brotherly and sisterly affection.