(Hebrews - Part 8): The Glory of the Eternal Son — A.W. Tozer

Hebrews 1:8–9 and the Glory of the Eternal Son

The first chapter, and look at something that we ought to have passed over when we were going through before. Verses 8 and 9. But unto the Son, God saith, thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom.

Thou hast love righteousness, and hated iniquity. Therefore, God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. One version makes it read like this. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity.

Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness. That's one of those versions that some of the Brethren say are modernistic. But I find in that translation greater emphasis on the Deity of Christ than in this King James version.

Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity. Therefore, O God, thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. This chapter sets forth the glory of the Eternal Sun. In fact, the whole book of Hebrews sets forth the glory of the Eternal Sun.

It shows the Deity of the Son and his position and his offices and his character. If I got the words correctly there this morning, the song said, My song is concerning my Savior. Well, the book of Hebrews is concerning our Savior.

And every sermon should concern the Savior. And all our lives should concern the Savior. But when we use the word Savior, we should know what we mean. We should allow it to have all the full, rich meaning that it does have.

We should realize that the one we call the Savior is very God of very goods. You know, theology is dry, and a lot of people don't like it. I venture to say that there wouldn't be one Christian in 100 that really would care much for theology.

And yet, you must go to theology to find out some things. In the amazing and solemnly beautiful and highly complex and profound doctrine of the Incarnation, we know that the Bible says that Jesus Christ, our Lord, is man.

We know that it says also that he is God. But how he can be God and man and not be two but one is something that the human mind has to solve, if it can solve it. I don't think we can solve it. I think that we can only find words that help us to rest.

If our faith believes, we can find words to help us to understand, though I'm not sure that we can understand. But I'm not worried about that at all. I don't understand much of anything. I can't understand the simplest facts of life.

How can I understand the profoundest facts of theology? But what I've been trying to get at here in that long roundabout statement is that the theology calls this, the hypostatic union, that means this, that there is in man what they call the hypostasis, that is the essence, that which makes you, you.

The human hood, that thing that is human nature. And there is in God, that which makes God, God, the essence, the hypostasis, that which lies underneath the eternal substance which is God. Now these two substances were united and they called that the hypostatic union.

I don't know whether that helps any, at least it gives you some words to say to admit you don't know. That's about what it is. Because it's too profound, it's too deep, it's too wonderful for you and me.

The Hypostatic Union and Christ’s True Humanity

But this one we call Jesus is both God and man. Whether we think of him as man or think of him as God, we're thinking correctly. And when we think of him as God and man, we think of him correctly. Because the fact that he is God and man doesn't mean that he is two.

Because he is both God and man doesn't mean that he is God and man, that is God plus man, which would be two persons. Even though he is God and man, is he not two but one Christ? And this is the Christ we adore.

And this is he concerning whom the book of Hebrews is written. Now it says here that God, the old God, referring to Jesus, thy God, which is Jehovah, his Father, for our God and Father is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

Now here is the humanity of the Son. He is called fellow, a fellow of the Lord Jesus. You know a fellow means an equal. And Jesus Christ had persons who were his fellows. We are all the fellows of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he is one with us in that he is human. He has the same substance, the same stuff of which we are made. I heard a preacher say that he was not a man, he was man. But he was both a man and man. Jesus Christ was man in that he had the essence, the substance, the hypostasis that is the essence of mankind.

But he is also a man in that he was born of a woman, a man, and is like other men. He has the lineaments and the form of a man. I do not think we make enough of this. I think that we have failed to emphasize it as we should, and because we failed to emphasize it, we are not enjoying it as much as we should.

Christ the Man at the Right Hand of the Father

To realize that Jesus is a man, that he is like other men in his humanhood, and that he is now at the right hand of God a man, and that if you were to the right hand of the Father, you might see God, and if you could see the Spirit, which is God, and you might see archangels and seraphim and cherubim and creatures, strange creatures out of the fire, you might see them all surrounding the throne.

And then to your delight and amazement, you would see a man there, a man who is about the size of you, and who looked like you, and who had the face and hands and head and hair and body, and was like you and me, in that he was a human being, and there would not be any other human being visible there.

That would be the one visible man. The others are not in the exact presence of God by the throne, because they are not yet prepared for that. They are in heaven, but they are not on the presence of the throne.

When a man Christian dies, Paul said, to be with Christ is far better. But we Christians, when we die, do not go to the throne of God. There is only one man that has been allowed at that throne yet, and that is the man Christ Jesus himself, man who is also God, and who won over death and was raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of the Father.

His children, his brethren, are waiting in safe keeping in God's safe heaven, but they have not yet been brought before the throne with exceeding joy. That is to be, when our Lord returns, then they will come before the throne with exceeding joy, glorified as he is glorified.

The Son of Man and the Spirit-Anointed Ministry of Jesus

Now, the life of the Son of Man on earth was the life of a Son of Man. You will notice that he did not call himself the Son of God, but he did call himself the Son of Man. He said he was God, he said he was equal with the Father and all that.

He certainly testified boldly that he was God, but he did not use the expression, the Son of Man. Over and over, the Son of God, over and over he used the expression, the Son of Man. I might, I don't want to say it like this quite, but it seems that one almost has to say it, that he was proud of the fact that he was a man, that he was the Son of Man.

He had in him a holy, sinless delight that he was man, and referred to himself as the Son of Man. Here is what is usually not known, and I don't know how many people I could get to agree with me among the bigwigs of the pulpits here and there, but nevertheless I hold that this is true, that Jesus, when he was on earth, did not do his deeds of power in the strength of his deity.

He did them in the strength of his Spirit-anointed humanity. If Jesus Christ had come to the earth and raised the dead and stilled the water and healed the sick and opened the eyes of the blind and unstopped the deaf ears and commanded the winds and driven out the devil and the demons by the power of his deity, it would have been a simple matter.

Nobody could have thought anything of that. God can do anything he wants to, and if he had been doing it as God, it would not have been a remarkable thing. But he veiled his deity and did it as a man.

But you will notice that he did not do it until he had been anointed with the Holy Ghost and power. And he is saying to us, hear this, for it's a tremendous thing that I want to say, that Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit-anointed humanity, stilled the waves and quieted the wind and raised the dead and healed the sick and made the blind to see and had power over the demons and did anything he wanted to do.

Not as God, which I say would not have been remarkable at all, but as man, which was remarkable in that he was a man anointed by the Holy Ghost. And he said, when I go to heaven and send the Holy Spirit down, you will do greater things than these, because I go unto the Father.

That, my brethren, takes away from us forever all excuse. For while we are not God and we could not do what God can do, we are human and we can do what Christ could do in the same Holy Ghost, because it was the anointing of the Holy Spirit that enabled him to do these things.

It is written in Acts 38 that Jesus Christ was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power and went about doing good, healing all that were oppressed of the devil. And he did that in the power of his God-anointed humanity.

The Holy Oil and the Anointing of the Holy Spirit

Now it says that this anointing that God put upon him was an anointing above his fellows. He was anointed above his fellows, not because God chose to anoint him above his fellows, but because he could be anointed.

I'll explain that now in a minute. He could be anointed above his fellows. First, this anointing. What was this anointing? This anointing, of course, was the anointing of the Holy Spirit. One of the figures of speech used in the Old Testament for the Holy Spirit is oil.

We use it still, we sing about it and preach and pray about it down to this hour. But it had its origin back in the Old Testament Levitical economy. Back there they had a certain oil that was called a holy oil.

It's been sneered at by the unbelievers and called hair oil and a lot of other things. But it was the holy oil of God, and it had common olive oil for its base. And then into this olive oil there were beaten four highly fragrant and aromatic herbs.

There was myrrh. His garment shall smell of myrrh written out of the ivory palaces. And then another, you'd smile at this, maybe, living when we do way down here and living in the western part of the world.

But cinnamon was one of the ingredients of this holy oil, and you know how very pungent cinnamon is. And calamus was another, and cashew another. So their olive oil had beaten into it myrrh and cinnamon and calamus and cashew.

And of course you had a very pungent, aromatic and sweetly fragrant oil. Now this oil wasn't to be used except upon priests and kings and prophets and certain ones and priests. Certain ones who were anointed of God, they received it.

And the scripture says, it shall not touch flesh, it shall not come upon the flesh. There had to be blood before there could be this anointing oil. And it was put down upon consecrated men, not upon carnal flesh.

And the Holy Ghost, when he came, fulfilled this. My brethren, a man might have an anointing oil, this anointing oil of myrrh and cinnamon and calamus and cashew, and have it on his head and in his hair and down over his shoulders and down onto the skirts of his garment.

And somebody came and said, I smell an anointed man. And somebody might have said, there's no anointed man in here. The answer would be, we know better, we smell him. We smell myrrh and aloes and cinnamon and cashew, and we know that anointed man is here.

You can't be anointed with the Holy Ghost and keep it secret. One man told me about trying it. He tried it, he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and then he went home and he said, Lord, I'll not tell a soul about this, I'll keep it quiet.

And he went to his house, back to his home, and he tried for three days. He said at the end of three days, his wife came to him and said, Everett, what has happened to you? Then he said, out it came. The Holy Ghost had come on him and he had been anointed.

The Oil of Gladness and Christlike Character

Well, this fragrance shows itself, just as it showed itself in my friend Everett Rowe. His wife knew it. She smelled it, the myrrh and calamus and cashew couldn't be hidden. Now, this Holy Spirit, this oil, was the Spirit of the mighty God, and it came with glad power.

Notice it's the oil of gladness, not with the oil of gloom. I have met some Christians who claim high things for themselves, but the only proper description of them is, Thou hast been anointed with the oil of gloom.

And while they are holy people and good people, there is a gloominess about them, a solemnity that refuses ever to crack as much as one tentative experimental smile. They are solemnly holy, and that's it.

But this scripture says that he was anointed with the oil of gladness. This was glad power. I'm happy to tell everybody that the power of the Spirit is glad power. It's money much else than that, but it's glad power.

It's the oil of gladness. And in the strength of this oil of gladness, he lived his beautiful, holy life, and he did his saving deeds of power. Lecture 1. Opening Of The Last Dispensation 2. And the reason God blessed him supremely, now, God blessed him above his fellows.

That is, there was more of the holy oil on his head than on mine and yours, or on anybody else that has lived, probably. But why? Is it that the Lord God in heaven, that he was in any wise holding back from some?

No. But the Holy Spirit can only anoint in proportion as we prepare. And notice here that God has anointed thee with the oil of gladness because thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. The Lord doesn't anoint mice.

The Lord never fills kittens with the Holy Ghost. He never fills rabbits with the Spirit. The Lord wants men and women with personality and something in them that can love and hate. Jesus Christ was not the meek, characterless, personality less, tame man that he is made out to be in the pictures.

He was himself a man that could love with an intensity of love that burnt him up, and could hate with an intensity of hatred. But some will say, How can it be that the Lord can hate? Isn't it a sin to hate?

And the answer is, No, but it is a sin not to hate. It is a sin not to hate that which ought to be hated. Jesus Christ loved righteousness, but he hated iniquity. And the same emotion, the same mighty attraction and devotion that we call love, of all that is good, becomes revulsion and renunciation of that which is evil.

I cannot love honesty without hating dishonesty. I cannot love purity without hating impurity. I cannot love truth without hating lying. I must hate evil, and Jesus Christ did. It is stated here. I didn't write this book of Hebrews, as you probably have guessed, but I didn't put this here.

It is written, Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity. And the ability of Jesus Christ to hate that which was against God and love that which was for God was what made him able to receive the anointing oil, the oil of gladness, in complete measure.

It is our imperfection in loving the good and hating the evil that prevents us from receiving the Holy Ghost in complete measure. It is possible, I believe, to be what we call filled with the Holy Ghost and still have God withhold some of the Holy Ghost from us.

It is possible to have him withhold because we are not in position to do it. It was the character of Jesus, his great love of that which was good. He loved goodness with a great poured-out devotion. You say, Did the Lord Jesus hate sinners?

The answer is, you know better. He did not hate sinners, but he hated the dirty sin that was in them. He did not hate the Pharisee, but he hated the Pharisee's self-righteousness. He did not hate the harlot, but he hated the harlotry that made her what she was.

He did not hate the proud man, but he hated the pride that made him the proud man that he was. He hated the devil, and he hated those evil spirits that he drove out, and he never showed any mercy for them.

Zeal, Convictions, and Resistance to Compromise

He had a pure and a holy hatred for that which was evil. The Lord's people have been brainwashed by a lot of soft, pussycat preachers who have taught them that to be good Christians, they have to be soft, purring fellows with soft fuzz.

They couldn't harm anything, and they couldn't speak up. They had to all get up and talk sweetly and softly and solemnly, and so you don't know whether they are men or women. No wonder the French say there are three sexes, men, women, and preachers, because a lot of preachers imagine that this is the way a preacher ought to be, soft and gentle, with the sunshine falling on his gentle head.

You remember in Goldsmith's Deserted Village, the sun would have a time on some of our golden heads, all right, the reflection would be tremendous. But the fact is that a Christian should be full of zeal, a Christian should have convictions, a Christian should be one of the toughest and hardest to move and surest.

While deeply humbled before God, he should be certain of himself before men, and he should love righteousness with a great, overwhelming love, and he should hate its opposite, iniquity, with a revulsion, and he should renounce it and put it from him.

If the people of the Lord were to stand up and renounce sin, you'd find they wouldn't be very popular very long. But the churches get along in the world without much persecution because they compromise with the world.

And while they won't do the things the world does, they won't in any wise dare to stand up and condemn the things the world does. Or maybe dope. Maybe they'll say, Don't take dope and bet on horses. But then that's relatively safe.

There wouldn't be many people who would crucify them for saying that. We all agree on that, even the cops. But the Lord's people should love righteousness and love it until it became to them an overwhelming passion.

And they should hate its opposite in everything that is evil. And if we did that, it wouldn't be very long until two things would happen. We'd be anointed with the oil of gladness above our fellows, and the world would turn on us and say, Who do you think you are?

And we would get a little bit of wholesome persecution. You know what's the matter with you people? You're too nice. You're the nicest bunch anywhere short of somewhere else. And you're just too nice.

Have you been persecuted, anybody here been persecuted recently? I doubt it, because you're living right. You want to be a good Christian, but you're so nice and easy to get along with and so tolerant.

If I could stir somebody up around here to get to loving God and hating sin to a point where he'd become a bit of a blessed nuisance, I'd be happy about it. No doubt he'd call me up and say, Can I see you, Pastor?

I'd say, Yes. Come down to the church at 1030. That's when I usually meet people. And he'd come in and say, I'm being persecuted. I'd say, Thank God you're being persecuted, because you dared to come out and stand for something.

Vance Hefner says, The trouble in the United States is that so many men are running for something when they ought to be standing for something. And it's true. There are so many running and so few standing.

God's people should stand. Notice some of the sins that Jesus hated. I'll merely mention them. There's no clock before me, so I can talk on at my leisure. There was pride, I mentioned already, and self-love and boasting, and then that oily, smiling self-confidence.

The lightning of Jesus' invective struck it. He didn't hesitate at all to send the lightning to strike this terrible kind of thing. And he loved the opposite. He loved humility, and he loved that lowliness that wouldn't boast.

He loved that. And self-righteousness, that arrogance before God and scorn of others. I heard on the radio last night, after I went to bed, I listened to a little program called Snobbery. I didn't know we still had snobs left in the world, but after hearing the Brother, I think we do.

People who look down their blessed noses at other people, not only because of their skin color, but because they are on the other side of a borderline or the other side of a river, or they didn't have as much education or something else.

I don't think God can love snobbery. A place in Akron, Ohio, they called Snob's Nob. It was a high place where a lot of fine homes were, and the snobs lived there. You can have the snob. The Lord hated snobbery, and in order to prove that he hated it and show that he hated it, he was born in a manger of a little unheard-of woman and grew up in a carpenter shop, working in a carpenter shop as a simple peasant among the simplest people that there were.

So he hated self-righteousness, but he loved righteousness and humility. And he hated all worldliness, that which was of the world and against God, and all that which was for God he loved. And he hated personal uncleanness of every sort in word or thought or deed.

We have been brainwashed in our day until Christians are afraid to speak out against uncleanness in any form. Preachers are afraid to speak out against it for fear they will get a reputation for being publicity seekers, or for fear somebody will quit the Church and stop giving.

But the Lord hated all of it, and he loved purity. I wonder if one reason Jesus took babies in his arms and blessed them wasn't their utter purity, the purity of a baby. They haven't had time to sin. That's the reason they are pure.

It isn't that they are little angels, because give them time and they'll prove they're not. But they're just pure and innocent, and they look up at you with purity in their eyes. They don't try to fool you.

They're not sneaky. There's nothing deceitful about them. When they begin to get deceitful and sneaky, they're not babies anymore. And the Lord loved babies because they were pure. And he sought out the Virgin, the Holy Ghost did, the angel did, and said, The Holy Ghost shall come upon you, and the power of the highest shall overshadow you, and that which holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.

And the Lord loved all that was good and hated all that was evil. He hated cruelty, and he hated lying, and he hated malice, and he hated dishonesty, and he loved gentleness, and he loved truth, and he loved love, and he loved honesty.

Tolerating Evil and Losing the Oil of Gladness

Now, why is it that the oil, the glad oil, doesn't flow upon the Church members in our day? Well, there are two kinds of Church members in every city. One, the liberals, who would laugh at all this that I'm preaching about now.

And we'd just laugh right back, because we know the voice we heard, and we know the sight we saw, and we know the truth we know, and we know the Lord we know, and we're not being in any way affected by anybody laughing at us.

That's one class. And put them over on the left. Over on the right we put another class. They are the evangelicals, the fundamentalists, the full gospel people. And I don't expect the oil to flow on the liberal, because he doesn't believe in the oil, doesn't believe in it.

And I'm sure the Lord isn't going to sneak up on a man and anoint him with an oil the man doesn't believe in. So we'll say the liberal, the modernist, the Unitarian, a person who doesn't believe all this, but who believes in decency and goes to Church, if he's not going to receive the oil, he doesn't believe in it.

And if he received it, he'd send it back. So we're not expecting the liberal to be anointed with oil. But we who are of the persuasion of the New Testament truth, we who believe the scriptures, we who believe that holy men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, and that Jesus Christ is very God of very gods begotten, not created, that he was born of the Virgin Mary to suffer under Pontius Pilate to rise again from the dead the third day and to be seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and who from his exalted position sent down and shed forth this said Peter which you now see and hear, we who believe this.

Why is it the oil of gladness doesn't flow very much around us? We have the truth, why doesn't it flow? Because of our ignoble tolerance of evil, that's why. Because theoretically we don't believe in it, but practically we tolerate it.

We allow what God hates because we want to be agreeable. If you insist upon being an agreeable Christian, agreeable before the world, you will be a weak Christian all your life. We tolerate that which God hates because we hate to be thought narrow.

They say he's narrow-minded. It's all right. They say he's intolerant. If a man stands up and says he doesn't believe in the Pope, somebody will hold his hands to high heaven and say, A such example of tolerance in a day like this.

I don't believe in the Pope. Example or no example. Hate that which Jesus Christ hated, regardless of whether they think you're narrow or not. Or we tolerate that which God hates because we secretly love the evil thing itself.

What's the weight of power? The weight of power is to put away the weak compromise and put away that evil which may cling to you as the smell of smoke. Put it away from you and set your heart on what is right and begin to love righteousness.

And love it to a point where you will only live for it and live that kind of life where you'll have nothing to do with its opposite. Christians are powerless because they tolerate wrongdoing. So we must turn away from the thing God hates.

Even if your wife loves it, turn away from it. Even if it is in your social class and where you travel, even if it is accepted as being all right, turn away from it. I remember once going into a home where they had a Ouija board.

Back in the days when Ouija boards were—some of you don't even know what a Ouija board is. Some of you only know because you read about it in a book. But a few of you have seen them. I've seen them. And I went in here, and a lot of people were gathered around, and they were minking with a Ouija board.

They were asking Ouija board questions. How dumb can you get? Sit around and ask a ticker board questions. There it was. They'd say, will it rain day after tomorrow? And the thing would spin around and point, yes.

Or else point, no. And I smelled something when I went in that house. I smelled it. My spirit smelled it. When I saw it, I walked straight over and said, take that thing out of here. It wasn't my home.

Take it out of here. And they took it out. Nobody stopped them. They said, well, you don't belong here. They took it out. I haven't seen it since. But that woman, I've known her all those years since, and she doesn't like me.

And I think that may be one reason why. But I'm getting along all right in spite of it. Some other people like me. She doesn't. And I still think it may be because I jumped on her Ouija board. Dr. A. B. Simpson said he was in a home with a gathering of people once, and there was music.

Listening to Music and Resisting Idolatry

He said it was nice music, and it was more or less in the background. And he was hearing it, but talking, as we do. We shouldn't, but we do. Music ought to be listened to, not talked over. But we do talk while we listen, and he was.

And he said suddenly he felt a shadow come over his heart. He said a strange thing. He said the Holy Ghost was reproving me. And he said, I wondered what I had done, or what I had said or left unsaid.

Then he said, I focused my attention on the music. And he said the music was worshipping a woman. And he said, I knew what it was. The Holy Ghost in me was aggrieved that they were worshipping a woman.

They've got to learn to stand up and be counted on things like this, and they'll say, holier than thou. And they'll call you a religious fanatic. If you can't pay the price, go join the Masons, or somebody.

They'll take you to heaven for nothing. But if you can't stand to have somebody oppose you, if you can't stand to stand by yourself before God and before the people and hate iniquity, I don't see how you can hope to be a Christian in any sense of the proper sense of the word.

Doing Good in the Power of the Holy Ghost

Jesus Christ, our Lord, loved righteousness and hated iniquity. Therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows, and in the power of that oil of gladness he went around doing good, healing all that were oppressed of the devil.

You've only got a little time, fellow Christians. For very long we won't be around here. Better do some good while you can, because you're not going to be here long. Better see to it that you do some good that lasts.

Giving to the community chest isn't enough. Do that. But that isn't enough. You ought to do something that's permanent, that'll be there when the worlds are on fire, that'll be gold and silver and precious stones in the day when the fire of God determines the quality of every man's work.

You can only do it in the power of the Holy Ghost. And you can only have the power of the Holy Ghost if you hate sin and love righteousness until those two opposite emotions control your life, as they did Jesus.

Prayer for Deliverance from Casual Christianity

Now, bless thou the word this morning, O Lord. We pray thee, help us to take thee seriously. We feel that we're not taking Christianity seriously. We feel, Lord, that there's too much casualness. We notice it all about us here.

People are too casual. O God, if it's true that there's a hell and a heaven and a judgment, and it's possible to be lost forever, and if Jesus is the Son of God indeed, and if sin is a canter on the world, then this is serious business.

O God, we pray thee, deliver us from the casualness that we sense, and may we wake up and come to life and begin to see that unless we do something about sin, sin will do something about us. O, we apologize before thee, blessed Spirit of God, that we've made our vessels so uncertain that thou canst not pour in all the oil that thou dost want to pour in.

Help us to cleanse our vessels, to put away every evil inside and outside, and then to bring our empty earthen vessels clean through Jesus' precious blood and receive the glad oil of anointing. We ask it in Christ's name.

Amen.