It's hard to imagine Jerusalem as anything but "The Holy City", the place where God's temple is built and the place where Jewish people from everywhere in the world come to worship. But before that it was the city of the Jebusites, a wicked people who thought they were completely safe within their walled city. But David, cunning strategist that he is, devises a plan to take the city and run out the Jebusites. And when he does he makes it his city and it becomes sort of the capital for Israel.
David then took up residence in the fortress and called it the City of David. He built up the area around it, from the terraces inward. And he became more and more powerful, because the LORD God Almighty was with him. (2 Samuel 5:9-10)There's no doubt that God was with David but he also surrounded himself with men who were powerful warriors and who were completely devoted to David and his cause. I think this is a testimony to David's leadership and honorable character. He inspired and earned the loyalty of the brightest and best. We've already seen his sense of honor displayed in some ways that are quite remarkable...and actually seem a little strange if placed into our culture...but in David's culture it won great respect and loyalty. Take this incident for example:
David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” So the Three broke through the Philistine lines, drew water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem and carried it back to David. But he refused to drink it; instead, he poured it out to the LORD. “God forbid that I should do this!” he said. “Should I drink the blood of these men who went at the risk of their lives?” Because they risked their lives to bring it back, David would not drink it. (1 Chronicles 11:17-19)David just continued to draw people to himself:
Day after day men came to help David, until he had a great army, like the army of God. (1 Chronicles 12:22)As he continued to unite all of Israel around his leadership...and around faithfulness to God...
...there was joy in Israel.(1 Chronicles 12:40)
Why is unity so hard to achieve? I think maybe it's because we so often attempt to unite people around the wrong things...around relatively insignificant and trivial things. Our culture talks about celebrating our "diversity" but usually what that means is celebrating our differences. Please don't misunderstand me, I don't think there's anything wrong with celebrating our individual cultural or ethnic heritage but we need to be careful that those things don't become a source of division. It seems to me that we can't really have diversity unless we have unity. Without unity diversity morphs into divisiveness.
Sometimes I'm afraid that the same type of thinking spills over into the church. We divide our congregations into age groups...and not just in the children's departments. We start a new class for the "young adults" and they have kids and grow old together and eventually become the Seniors group. In the mean time 10 more "young adult" classes are started and the young folks and the old folks seldom if ever associate with one another. We've united around age demographics instead of discipleship. Where are the places that the older men and the older women have meaningful relationships with younger men and women? Not just a "Hi, good to see ya." relationship but one where life issues are discussed and burdens shared...and meaningful life lessons are passed on. And of course there's music. We divide our congregations according to "worship styles" instead of uniting to simply worship.
I wish I knew the answer to all this but I do know we need to purposefully work for unity.
It's important.
Actually, it's essential.
How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)
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