Got it!

Back from New York and happy to be in Chicago! The trip only confirmed my joy and relief that I’ve returned to my city from a city that is Second City to me!

Here’s a passage from an old study I listened to on my subway-to-bus-to-subway trip from O’Hare to the lakefront:

Psalm 45:7 says, “Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

Jordan explains, “Now that verse, people don’t like that because they think, ‘It’s okay to love righteousness but you shouldn’t hate wickedness.’ But you know that’s exactly what the Bible says God does?”

Psalm 5 exhorts, “[1] Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation.
[2] Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.
[3] My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.
[4] For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee.

Jordan says, “When that verse says, ‘Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity,’ the response to that should be, ‘Did you get that?’ Most people say, ‘Well, yeah, but, well, uh, uh. . .’ That’s not the response. The response is, ‘God hates all workers of iniquity.’ That verse doesn’t say simply that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. You see that?”

Psalm 11 says, 5] The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.
[6] Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.
[7] For the righteous LORD loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

Jordan says, “You see, the holiness and integrity of God will not tolerate sin and it hates it. Now that’s something you need to remember because sometimes we think that God, because of His grace and because of Calvary, will tolerate sin. He doesn’t.

“The Cross is the greatest demonstration of God’s attitude toward sin the
universe will ever see. And God’s attitude toward sin at the Cross is it took the sacrifice of His Son to put it away. It took the sacrifice of the most valuable entity the universe could ever possess to put away sin. It is a big deal. And the Cross answers it. ‘But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’

“While we were yet somebody God hated, Christ made it possible for Him to love you by dying for you. Now that’s something. I was reading that verse in Revelation 13 yesterday thinking about how He’s the ‘lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.’ That means God had this stuff planned out before He ever created anybody.

“You talk about grace upon grace, and mercy, and righteousness and meekness. That’s it! God loves righteousness and He hateth wickedness. If He loved righteousness He’d have to hate wickedness.

“And you know, folks, as Believers, if we love righteousness, there’s no way we can love wickedness. It’s okay to be intolerant about that.

“In this world that we live in today, the stupid philosophy of Genesis 3 prevails. People think like it’s something new and sophisticated and chic and all that stuff. It’s as old as the Garden of Eden. But people get the idea that you can tolerate evil and that everything’s relative and it’s okay just to put up with it.

“That’s not what the Cross teaches you. The Cross teaches you that God put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

“Jesus Christ had the same thinking process and the same value system that God the Father had. He thought just like the Father. God has appointed Him to be His standard bearer. ‘Anointed Him with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.’

*****

“He anointed him with the Holy Spirit above his fellows. That means it was without any holding back in any way. The word ‘fellow’ means someone who is your equal.

“Zechariah 13:7 says, ‘Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.’

“So God the Father looks at this man and says, ‘This man is my equal.’ In Psalm 45 the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father looks at some people and says they are my sons equal. Well who are those people? That’s the little flock. That’s that redeemed remnant in Israel.

“Psalm 45:8: ‘All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.’ What I’m doing as I go is I’m trying to show you some of these verses where you can see how some of these things apply to the Lord Jesus.

“The New Jerusalem is described as the ivory palaces. Solomon built that great judgment hall all out of ivory back in I Kings and that verse is used in I Kings 22 about the palace of Ahab. And it’s a term that’s poetically and figuratively used to describe the city, talking about heaven.

“He came out of heaven down to the Cross and the garments He comes in as king have the fragrance of the anointing that reminds you of the Cross and everything He does as the king, everything He does as the Conqueror, everything He accomplishes and finds to rejoice in.”