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Following Christ, without reservation!

Sunday Worship -11:00am & 6:00pm

Sunday School - 9:45am

Wednesday Night Bible Study & Prayer - 7:00pm

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2320 East Broad Street

Statesville, NC 28625

704-873-6373

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Good & Pleasant at Unity Baptist Church

Good & Pleasant at Unity Baptist Church

The Apostle Paul exhorts the church in Ephesians 4:3 to be diligent to "preserve the unity of the Spirit!" Explicit in his exhortation is that this "Spiritual unity" wasn’t to be manufactured but preserved....implying that there should be an inherent unity among believers, especially within a shared local assembly but also among the body of believers universally.

I enjoyed the tremendous blessing of having experienced the reality of this sort of inherent unity or fellowship this week as I was given the opportunity to share from the Scriptures with Pastor Bradley Johnson, and the members of Unity Baptist Church, in Youngsville, N.C. unitybaptist2005@gmail.org

I must take a moment to thank Pastor Bradley and the congregation for their warm reception and hospitality, and most encouraging of all, their joyful embrace of the truths of God’s word. From the moment of my arrival to the moment of my departure on Wednesday evening, I felt as though I was at home among brothers and sisters, but there was something about that experience that was extra-ordinary; something more profound; something that demanded deeper consideration; something that required a clearer articulation. My attempts to give proper attention to the experience led me to Psalm 133.

"Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, coming down upon the edge of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon coming down upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing - life forever."

Psalm 133

The first sentence in this passage, and the one which most immediately drew me to the text, reflected my feelings as I drove in last night! The experience of finding so warm an embrace from a congregation of believers whom I’d never met, so far from my home church, was precisely as the passage indicates....good and pleasant! I passed the time of my drive home trying to avoid the impression that the Psalmist’s words here were an understatement of monumental proportions. The more I contemplated his choice of words, the more I realized that they were the perfect words to describe the blessing of my experience with the members of Unity Baptist Church. Sometimes the most profound words are the simple words. I say profound because simplicity tends not to obscure the blessedness of the experience with eloquence. Eloquence and rhetoric are used to communicate blessedness to an audience who may not have experienced it before but simplicity is just a statement of a reality. It simply "is" good! It simply "is’ pleasant! By the time I sat down to write this blog entry, I concluded that the Psalmist said it best, so I’ll say it like he said it! How good and pleasant it was to dwell, even if for only a few days, in unity with my brethren at Unity Baptist Church.

Unity is Good

The word Good speaks to the nature of the experience. The inherent quality of the unity or fellowship experienced. There was a recognizable absence of evil or evil intent. No jealousy, no manipulation, no exploitation, no arrogance or pride, no competition, no conflict or division. Just the people of God gathering around the proclamation of His word; anticipating and praying, from the pulpit to the pew, for a word through which we might be brought by the Spirit into the presence of the Lord; through which grace might lead us into a deeper individual and corporate communion with our Lord Jesus Christ. The Psalmist likens it to the anointing oil upon Aaron’s head. It was a mixture of various aromatic spices, unified with olive oil; the ingredients and proportions of which were to be used exclusively for that purpose. It was the aroma of the individual spices combined by the addition of the olive oil so as to make the whole of the ingredients one fragrance. So it is and was with this Spiritual unity I was blessed to experience. Every believer, blessed through the New Birth with the fragrance of Christ, made one by the Holy Spirit to become an aroma of Christ. Oh how good it is for the brethren to dwell together in this sort of unity! The Psalmist likens it to the Dew of Hermon, settling down upon Zion. How good that life-giving dew was to the arid hills of Zion; condensing in the cool night air of the higher elevations of Mount Hermon and settling down quietly and unnoticeably upon Zion to water its vegetation.

Unity is Pleasant

The word pleasant speaks to the Psalmist’s estimation of the experience. If Goodness describes the inherent nature of Unity, then pleasant-ness must be the Psalmist’s response to that goodness. This is how he felt about the goodness of brotherly unity and the experience of it. This is what initially struck me as an understatement. Having tasted of such a fellowship this week, the words "awesome" or "amazing" or "unprecedented" or perhaps "blessed" seemed more appropriate, but in the end, the word pleasant appeared to be the perfect word. It’s broad enough to accommodate the minutia of the experience but narrow enough to prevent its becoming superficial. Just as the aroma of the anointing oil permeated the temple, filling it with a pleasant fragrance and as the dew settled down upon Zion from the heights Mount Hermon providing for a cool, pleasant refreshing, so also is the pleasure of experiencing this unity among brethren.

Unity Comes From Above

Both the anointing oil and the dew came down from above and so does this kind of unity among the brethren. It comes to us as gift from God. It is manufactured by Him alone and not ourselves. This is reflected in Paul’s exhortation that we are to "preserve" it! He doesn’t write that we are to manufacture it. It is this "from above" quality that makes true unity among the brethren indeed good and pleasant.

I am deeply grateful and humbled that God allowed me to taste once again the goodness and pleasant-ness of true spiritual fellowship among the members and leadership of Unity Baptist Church this week, and I am reminded again of the extraordinary blessing of having the opportunity to experience that weekly among the members of my home church. May our fellowship, local and universal, always be good and pleasant, for it is from there "Zion" that God commands the blessing - Life everlasting!