“Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy companions.”
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“Joy is the very business of Heaven”. C. S. Lewis
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In the beginning, God created. As He did so, and at the end of each creation day, He declared His work to be good. Now when God says ‘good’, He means perfect. Unspotted, unblemished, untarnished, unmarred, complete and perfect in every way, for it was the work of His hand and fashioned according to His perfect will and design.
Then He created man, and in his infinite wisdom gave man a will. He placed man and woman in His pure and perfect garden and gave them only one law, and exercising his own will to usurp God’s authority over him, man broke that law and introduced sin into the world, and death through sin.
God was not taken by surprise. God did not have to back up and regroup. God did not have to make a new plan.
He who is from eternity to eternity, made His plan according to His foreknowledge of all things, and as was revealed to us by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Peter, God’s Anointed One, Jesus Christ, was “…delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God…”, nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put to death.
Then in Acts 2:24 Peter goes on to say, “And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.”
God has decreed that all who respond to the Holy Spirit’s calling and turn from sin to God through faith in the shed blood of Christ to save them, will be caught up in the grasp of grace and made brand new. And because He lives, they too shall be regenerated, and the same resurrection power that brought Him up from death will also give everlasting life to those who believe in Him.
The promise is given to us in Romans 10:9-11
“…that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved, for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, ‘WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”
It is the calling and precious duty of the preacher to tell you these things; to bring you to the cross of Christ and bid you look up and see the One who paid your debt. And then to take you past the cross to the tomb and show you that it is now empty. He is not there, for He is risen, just as He said.
We serve a living Savior, who shows us the wounds in His hands and feet and the wound in His side, and says ‘believe’. Die to self and the world and be raised to newness of life in Him. Be baptized into His death, and raised into His life.
It really is that simple. So simple that many miss it. Come with empty arms; lay down all the philosophies of men and the arguments of the so-called wise; lay down all your doubts and fears, let go of anything of this passing world that would hold you back, and just come.
Come to the cross and receive forgiveness of sins. Come to the tomb and receive resurrection life. Come to the Mount of Olives and see Him rise into the Heavens, promising to return and gather you to Himself, that where He is, there you may be also.
Because He who is coming will come. And He will come for those who love Him, and who eagerly await His return.
That is the message of Easter, and now you have heard it once more.
But today I want to take you farther. I want to take you to Heaven where He has gone and from whence He will come, and show you the glimpses He has given us of the eternal bliss and joy that awaits His bride, the church; the fellowship of believers from the beginning to the end. The joy with which He is anointed above all others.
Anointings are a common and frequent occurrence throughout the scriptures. They are God-ordained, in that they are representative of the office and work of His Son. Men were anointed with oil as a consecration to the office of priest, to the reign of king, and they were also anointed with oil for other purposes, such as to honor them as a guest, and as we discussed last week, to honor them in death as a preparation for burial.
All of these were types, or representations of the anointing that would befall God’s Son. In fact, the Hebrew word from which we get Messiah, and the Greek word from which we get Christ, both mean ‘anointed one’.
Jesus Christ is anointed of God as Priest and King. He was anointed at His baptism with the Holy Spirit, as is confirmed to us in Acts 10:38
“You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; for God was with Him.”
Then of course, He was anointed for burial in advance by Mary; one more expression of the Father’s pleasure in Him before His departure in Jerusalem.
But there is one more anointing we are shown in scripture; perhaps the greatest anointing of them all, for it is the final one, and the one that is the ultimate expression of the Father’s approval.
Let’s sharpen our focus now, to this verse in Hebrews 1, and see what this means for the risen Christ and for His church.
“Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, therefore God, Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy companions.”
GOD, THY GOD
The first thing we must consider here is something that in truth is too deep for us to fully grasp.
Here is pictured for us the perfect union of the Godhead. Psalm 45 is being quoted in Hebrews 1:9. Let’s go there for a moment.
“My heart overflows with a good theme; I address my verses to the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Thou art fairer than the sons of men; Grace is poured upon Thy lips; Therefore God has blessed Thee forever”
It is verses 6 and 7 of this Psalm that are quoted in Hebrews, whereby the Holy Spirit confirms to us that this is truly a Messianic Psalm, meaning, that although it had an application to the events of the day it was written, its words also spoke of the Anointed One who was to come.
Here in verses one and two of Psalm 45 we see a reference to this Anointed One as a Man, in that He is compared to men when told that He is fairer than the rest.
So in Hebrews 1:9 we have a glimpse of God the Father addressing God the Son, and praising Him for His perfect work.
As I mentioned before, the implications of this are far beyond our imaginations. But just for a moment try to get a hold on this scene. The God-Man, this one who lay aside the exercise of His divine attributes as God and took on human flesh, thereby existing at once as fully God and fully Man, has accomplished the work He came to do.
Listen once more to these splendid, almost lyrical words of worship from Philippians:
“…who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant; and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE SHOULD BOW, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:6-11)
In absolute faithfulness and devotion to the Father’s will He has gone to the cross and shed His blood, He has risen from the grave and ascended back to the place from which He was sent to do this work, and now here He sits, at the Father’s right hand, in all His majestic glory; that same glory the disciples were given a glimpse of when they were with Him on the mountain.
Preachers and theologians over the centuries have tried in so many ways to explain the nature of the Trinity, but there are simply no human words. We come to a certain place and there we stop and simply wonder. Faith must absorb it.
One God, three distinct Persons, so distinct as to confer with one another. Hear the divine counsel from Genesis 3:22
“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…’.”
Yet so united in oneness that Paul is able to say,
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” (Eph 4:4-6)
And Jesus told Philip,
“…He who has seen Me has seen the Father;” (Jn 14:9)
The only distinction we can safely make, is that the second Person of the Godhead became Man, and as Man, accomplished a perfect work ; a work that could not have been done in any other way, for which the Father blessed Him.
I dare not say more, for fear my puny mind may go astray. But just let your thoughts rest there, on that picture of God in three Persons, rejoicing over the victory won.
THOU HAST LOVED RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HATED LAWLESSNESS
Now it goes without saying of course, that as God, He loves righteousness and hates lawlessness. He is Righteousness Himself. And His throne is a throne of righteousness.
Unrighteousness and lawlessness are the lot of man, introduced into the world through sin, and holding sinful men in their sway, relentless and merciless.
“There is none righteous, not even one” “They suppress the truth in unrighteousness” Man, apart from God, has “…presented (his) members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness…”
These are just a few phrases the scriptures give us to describe the condition of mankind. But God is altogether righteousness, and lawlessness is cast away from Him forever.
But then He becomes a Man, and although He has no sin, He must face temptations and conquer the flesh unto death.
As a Man, he loved righteousness and hated lawlessness perfectly, thus winning back the throne He left and taking His seat once more at the right hand of the Father as the glorified God-Man.
This is all-important for us, you see, because He now rules over a people He has made and is making like Himself.
It is by His finished work that He calls those in Him, ‘holy and blameless‘. It is because of His obedience unto death and His resurrection from the dead; it is because His scepter is the scepter of righteousness that He now sends His Spirit to indwell the believer, and gives us both the desire and the power to love righteousness and hate lawlessness.
ANOINTED WITH THE OIL OF JOY
When Jesus came back out of the wilderness to begin His public ministry, He stood up in the synagogue and read words from Isaiah that spoke of Himself.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, Because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives, and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.”
Then in verse three of that same chapter it says,
“To grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning.”
He is anointed, and He anoints.
Later in this epistle to the Hebrews we read this admonition:
“…fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2)
C. S. Lewis spoke well when he said, “Joy is the very business of Heaven”, and I think it’s a truth we far too often miss.
The scriptures make very clear that it pleased the Father to send His Son to Calvary. Difficult as that may be for us to grasp, God, seeing the end from the beginning, considered the sacrifice of His Christ for sin a joy, because of the redemption purchased there.
For the Son it was all joy. Gladness.
Look at it all from that perspective, and try to understand that from an eternal mindset, the joy of the finished work and all it wrought far surpasses the sadness and horror of the brief existence of sin and its wages.
It was with gladness that He deemed to take a body, knowing He would then forever be Man. It was for joy that He gave Himself to the hands of evil men and endured the cross. It was with rejoicing and gladness that He broke forth from the tomb in utter defeat of death and the grave for us.
And when He ascended, glorified, to His rightful place, the Father anointed Him with the oil of gladness, and He in turn anoints us with joy instead of mourning. It is His joy to do so.
Yet He is anointed with joy above His companions. For He is deserving of the greater gladness.
I am indebted to William R. Newell for his commentary on this verse:
“He will have a greater sense of joy than His companions because:
1. He is God the Son, His companions are creatures
2. He has infinitely loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, of His own nature, not as His fellows who cannot say they have always shared those sentiments, nor do they even now consistently behave as though they do.
3. He has been looking forward to that day (His 2nd coming) from ages past
4. His great joy will be in the final overthrow in wrath of all His enemies
Ps 2, Heb 10:13”#
On this special day that we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord, let your joy be made more full by the knowledge of what He is now able to do in us.
It is because He now takes His throne as glorified Man forever ~ it is because His scepter is one of righteousness ~ it is because the Father has anointed Him with the oil of gladness and declared that He would make His enemies a footstool for His feet ~ it is because He perfectly and eternally loved and upheld righteousness, and will ultimately put all lawlessness under His feet, … it is because of these things that He is now able to make us stand before Him with unspeakable joy, forever, and conformed to His image.
It is because of His place far above His companions and the authority that has been bestowed on Him that He can guide us along this road to glory, helping us to walk in His righteousness and know His joy, no matter our circumstances.
And as Newell pointed out, His great joy will be in the final overthrow in wrath of all His enemies. But I would take that a step farther and say that His sense of joy will be greater than His companions, those companions being the saints, because He will see us all standing before Him, rescued from the Fall, made brand new, redeemed back to the Father blameless and pure; not one will be lost, all the sheep will be brought safely into the fold, the church, His bride, adorned in glory and gathered for the marriage supper, and all and only because He left His throne to be our Champion.
This is what I want you to go away with this Easter Sunday, believer. Come to the cross and lay self and sin down. Go beyond it and rejoice at the empty tomb. But don’t stop there. Move on down the road to glory, following your Captain, and let him make real to your heart and mind the unchangeable reality that you will soon stand whole before the throne of your Glorified Master and King, to be anointed with His oil of joy unspeakable and full of glory.
That is the promise of Easter.
“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 24,25)
