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We’ll be looking this evening at Hebrews chapter 7.
We’ll be reading verses 1 through 3 of Hebrews chapter 7.
So we look to hear the preaching of God’s word.
Hebrews chapter 7.
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God,
met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.
And to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything.
He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness.
And then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace.
He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
But resembling the Son of God, he continues a priest forever.
You may be seated. Let’s pray.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. We thank you that your word is life.
We ask that the same Spirit who inspired this word,
that you would give him to us now to open our hearts,
that we might hear and know and see, that we might find life for our souls.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, have you ever encountered a figure in history or a story
who seems almost too extraordinary to be real,
someone whose fleeting presence leaves you captivated, wondering about the truth behind the tale?
In the pages of scripture we meet such a character, Melchizedek.
He steps briefly into the spotlight in Genesis 14, where he blesses Abraham and receives a tithe,
only to vanish from the narrative as quickly as he appeared.
Yet centuries later, the writer of Hebrews brings him back in chapter 7, verses 1 through 3,
painting him as a man shrouded in mystery.
He’s called the King of Righteousness and Peace, with no beginning or end recorded,
a priest forever resembling the Son of God.
Melchizedek is the man and the myth,
a historical figure whose enigmatic qualities spark our imagination.
But this isn’t just a curious detour in the Bible.
Tonight we’ll see how this legendary priest-king points us to the greatest reality of all,
Jesus Christ, the eternal high priest and king,
whose life and work surpass every legend, grounding us in the truth that saves.
If it weren’t for the book of Hebrews, most Christians would probably not have heard of Melchizedek,
and even fewer would consider him significant in redemptive history.
But tonight we’ll begin considering what the author of Hebrews finds so significant about this intriguing character.
We’ll look at Melchizedek in three ways tonight.
Number one, the man, Melchizedek as a historical figure.
Number two, the myth, Melchizedek as a symbolic figure.
And number three, the legend, Melchizedek as a type of Christ.
So number one, Melchizedek the man, or the man, Melchizedek as a historical figure.
Hebrews 7, 1 and 2 says,
For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God,
met Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him.
And to him Abraham apportioned a tenth part of everything.
Melchizedek is truly a mysterious figure.
He’s only referenced two times in all of the Old Testament, Genesis 14 and Psalm 110.
In Genesis 14 we have the account, as we read earlier, in verses 18 and 20 of Genesis 14,
And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.
He was priest of God Most High.
And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth.
And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.
And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
The amount of things that we don’t know about Melchizedek far exceed what we do know about him.
In fact, if it weren’t for Psalm 110, and more significantly the Book of Hebrews,
taking such an interest in this figure, we probably wouldn’t be talking about him tonight.
From the narrative in Genesis alone, most of us would probably never give Melchizedek a second thought.
Even the mention that he gets in Psalm 110 probably wouldn’t garner our attention either,
if it weren’t for the author of Hebrews making such a big deal out of it.
He’s going to spend the whole of chapter 7 talking specifically about Melchizedek.
The bottom line is, as we’ll see going forward, the author of Hebrews sees Melchizedek’s priesthood
to be the key to the legitimacy and superiority of Christ’s priesthood, based in Psalm 110.
This is why the author has been trying to talk about Melchizedek since chapter 5.
If you remember in chapter 5, verses 10 through 11, the author interrupts himself.
He says, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek,
about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
And then he digresses into what we’ve just finished dealing with,
the depression about apostasy followed by the reassurance of God’s unbreakable commitment to his promise.
Now, finally, in chapter 7, the author’s returning to the subject of Melchizedek.
As we said, Melchizedek is a mysterious figure,
because so much is made of him in Hebrews based on his mention in Psalm 110.
There are plenty of speculative theories about who he was.
While most mainstream Jewish literature around the time of Christ hardly mentions Melchizedek,
there are some Jewish writings from around the time of the writing of Hebrews
that saw Melchizedek as a type of messianic or heavenly figure.
You may have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
This is a collection of scrolls found in some caves near the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 50s.
This was significant because there were scrolls of almost every book in the Old Testament,
which were much older than any copy we previously had until that point,
and yet they all matched the copies we had completely.
But there weren’t just scrolls of the Bible.
The Jewish community that was at this place called Qumran was known as the Essenes,
and they were a bit like a cult.
They had some strange ideas about the Messiah and the end of days, including Melchizedek.
They have an entire scroll that we call Melchizedek because it talks so much about him.
Some of the scrolls from the Qumran community view him as an angelic or a divine being
who gives counsel to Yahweh and even executes judgment on the world.
Another Jewish scroll titled Second Enoch says there will be a second Melchizedek
who will emerge in the last generation.
They describe him as the head of all, a great archpriest, the word and power of God,
starting to sound like Jesus himself.
Much later there was a group of heretics in the fourth century who became known as Melchizedekians
because they wrongly were elevating Melchizedek above Christ,
probably stemming from an abusive reading of Hebrews as well as other Jewish speculation.
There are still theories floating around today that speculate that Melchizedek was an angel
or even a theophany, which is a manifestation of the pre-incarnate Christ.
This would mean that similar to the angel of the Lord who shows up in the Old Testament,
Melchizedek was in fact God himself, the second person of the Trinity
before he took on a full human nature at his conception and birth.
But the fact that Christ is compared to Melchizedek and Melchizedek compared to Christ
undercuts this speculation.
Comparison is only possible when the two things are not identical.
So drawing comparisons between Christ and Melchizedek as Hebrews does
implies that they’re definitely not the same individual.
Despite all the speculation, based on the text of scripture,
there’s no reason to think that Melchizedek was anything more than an ordinary human
who lived in Canaan, ruled a place called Salem, and served as a priest of God in the days of Abraham.
The most reliable, unbelieving Jewish historian that we have from around the time of Christ
is a man named Josephus, and he doesn’t offer any fancy speculation
about Melchizedek being anything more than he appears to be in Genesis 14.
He takes the narrative at face value, although he does mention that the Jewish traditions
thought that Melchizedek might have been the first one to build a temple in Jerusalem.
But the biblical evidence and narrative does not support this.
So although there have always been pockets of speculation,
the ordinary view was likely the predominant view within the Jewish community
at the time of the writing of Hebrews, and matches what we find in the scriptures.
So Melchizedek is said to be a place, king of a place called Salem.
So what’s Salem?
Well, most scholars believe this is a reference to Jerusalem.
From Josephus, we learn that this is a clear tradition in Judaism.
But we don’t have to only rely on the Jewish tradition to associate Salem with Jerusalem.
If we flip back to Psalm 76, verse 2, in Psalm 76, verse 2, it reads,
God’s abode has been established in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion.
Salem is mentioned in parallel with Zion.
Apparently, it is an older name for Jerusalem.
Now, we don’t know about how long Melchizedek ruled.
We don’t know how big his kingdom was or what the city of Jerusalem was like
so many centuries before David ousted the Jebusites in 2 Samuel 5
and claimed it as his own capital.
In David’s time, we learn that Jerusalem was a formidable city
which Joshua and the subsequent generations of Israelites had been unable to conquer
until David’s time.
But when the Jebusites moved in, we simply don’t know.
But it’s interesting that in Abraham’s day, when God is promising him the land of Canaan,
Jerusalem is being ruled by a righteous king.
But Melchizedek was more than a king.
Genesis 14 tells us that Melchizedek was also a priest of God.
We don’t know what this involved, how formal the designation was.
We do see in Genesis’ narrative Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
all acting as informal priests for their households.
And Job is another example of someone who was likely within the same time period
acting as a priest for his family.
But on the other hand, Melchizedek is specifically described as a priest
of the Most High God.
But aside from that, the details are sparse.
We don’t actually know if Melchizedek ever met Abraham again
or if he ever saw him again.
But the thing that Melchizedek does that Hebrews highlights is bless Abraham.
The author of Hebrews finds this to be extremely important.
Not the content of the blessing, so much as what it demonstrates
about the relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek.
By blessing Abraham, Hebrews 7 is going to go on to argue,
Melchizedek demonstrates that he is superior to Abraham in certain respects.
And Abraham’s response to Melchizedek’s blessing reinforces this relationship.
Abraham gave Melchizedek a tithe, a tenth of all the spoils of the war.
God had granted Abraham the victory, and in response he returned to God
a tithe of what he had received by giving it to God’s priest, Melchizedek.
So Melchizedek is an enigmatic figure, the source of much biblical speculation.
But despite the sparse details of what we have of his origin in life,
we have no reason to think that he was other than an ordinary king
who lived at the time of Abraham.
And yet this ordinary human is far from insignificant.
So we’ll consider next the myth, Melchizedek as a symbolic figure.
Verse 2 of Hebrews 7.
He is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness,
and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace.
As with almost all Hebrew names, we can see there’s significance to be found in Melchizedek.
Almost all Hebrew names are words or roots of words that can be translated.
The Hebrew word for king is melek.
The way that Hebrew works is the three root consonants carry the heart of the meaning for the word.
So it’s those three key consonants, M, L, and CH, that have to do with being a king and ruling.
King is melek, queen is melekah, malak is to rule or to reign.
You get the picture.
So when you have a Hebrew name that includes this M, L, C, it means king something.
Melchizedek is a combination of the word for king and the word for righteousness, tzadik.
As Hebrews 7 puts it, by translation of his name, Melchizedek is king of righteousness.
Now we don’t know how he got his name, but we can assume that he was a righteous king
who ruled well and worshiped the living and true God.
With a name like king of righteousness, very likely the author of Hebrews,
in associating him with Christ, is thinking of the earlier quote in chapter 1 of Hebrews from Psalm 45.
We find in Hebrews 1, 8, and 9, where speaking of Jesus, he says,
He says,
When we looked at this passage at the start of our series, we noted the significance of Christ,
who was described as the one who loved righteousness, unlike anyone before or after him.
As the king of God’s people, Christ was the one who was characterized by a love for righteousness,
which was also conversely displayed in his hatred of wickedness.
But Hebrews doesn’t stop with the translation of Melchizedek’s name.
He also notes the significance found in the translation of the name of his kingdom.
We already noted how Salem appears to be a reference to the city which was later known as Jerusalem.
But as with other Hebrew names, Salem also can be translated.
The same principle here regarding the core consonants applies,
with the added wrinkle that S or SH in Hebrew look about the same.
If we were saying this city in Hebrew, it would sound more like Shalim.
This is very similar. You can hear the similarity in the well-known Hebrew word Shalom.
And indeed, it has the same root consonants and the same meaning.
Shalom in Hebrew means peace.
And this is what the author of Hebrews points out.
The author finds it intriguing that not only does Melchizedek’s name mean king of righteousness,
but in another sense, he is also the king of peace.
If we look ahead to Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11,
we find the author combining righteousness and peace again as the result of God’s discipline.
Hebrews 12, 11.
For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.
But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Righteousness and peace joined together in the heart of the believer
are the result of God’s work in his children’s lives.
How appropriate for the king of righteousness to rule the city of peace.
When a righteous king is ruling, there is peace in the city.
And you might recall that Christ is famously prophesied from Isaiah 9 to be the prince of peace.
As a side note, in case you think that king of peace sounds higher rank than prince of peace,
let me reassure you the Hebrew word for prince in that case just means ruler, not necessarily below a king.
The emphasis is on peace, which characterizes the rule.
But besides the king of righteousness ruling the city of peace,
Melchizedek bears another similarity to Christ that we see in verse 3.
He is without father or mother or genealogy having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
But resembling the son of God, he continues a priest forever.
This verse is probably where the speculation takes off about Melchizedek being other than human.
However, the author of Hebrews is not suggesting that Melchizedek was actually created out of nothing as an angelic or divine being.
He made the case at the beginning of the book that angels are inferior to Christ.
If Melchizedek were an angel, he would be a strange source of Christ’s priesthood.
And if Melchizedek were some kind of divinity, he could only be a false one in competition with God, the one true God.
Rather, the author is speaking of Melchizedek as we encounter him in the pages of Genesis.
Within the biblical narrative, Melchizedek appears without any mention of his genealogy, his birth or his death.
The author of Hebrews is picking up on Melchizedek’s literary appearance out of thin air to highlight a further resemblance between him and Christ.
He’s not trying to say that Melchizedek is a separate category of being.
The significance that the writer of Hebrews finds in Melchizedek’s obscure beginning and end is that this allows him to appear eternal.
But his main point in just a few verses will be that this provides a context for a new order of priesthood, which combines the priest and the king into one person.
Which brings us to our third consideration, the legend, Melchizedek as a type of Christ.
As Hebrews 7, verse 3 says,
The book of Hebrews makes extensive use of a concept we call typology.
This has to do with the fact that God, in his wisdom, has revealed his salvation, and especially his son Jesus, in events, objects, people, and practices in the Old Testament, which pointed beyond themselves.
The two things are related, like your shadow is related to you.
When you look at your shadow, there’s some similarities to your own appearance, but the differences are also so great that you would never mistake one for the other.
We sometimes call it foreshadowing.
But going forward, we’re going to see quite a bit of typology in Hebrews, and we’ll talk about it more as we get there.
But a quick example is the Passover lamb.
When Jesus came to see John the Baptist, John said, Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
The lamb that God commanded the Jews to kill and eat in Exodus was meant to point beyond itself by picturing a certain aspect of Christ and what he would do.
And the author of Hebrews is saying, Melchizedek is such a type of Christ.
There are certain aspects about Melchizedek, as he is portrayed in scripture, that are meant to point beyond the event and highlight aspects about Jesus.
The author of Hebrews sees Melchizedek’s name, king of righteousness, his rule, king of peace, and his priesthood combined with his obscure origins as pointing forward to the actual eternal priest king, Jesus Christ.
If Jesus walked by the author of Hebrews, he might have said, Behold, the Melchizedekian priest who takes away the sin of the world.
Now, one caution is that we’re doing typology, looking for symbolic people or events in the Old Testament, which are meant to point ahead to Jesus and his work of salvation.
We do have to be careful that we’re making connections that God intended.
There have been periods in church history in which people found meaning in any little detail that they could think of and turned everything into a type of Christ.
The red string out of Rahab’s window in Jericho was famously taken to be a symbol of Christ’s death on the cross because it was red.
While a connection sounds interesting, we don’t have any clear indication that the color of the rope was meant to mean this.
But in the case of Melchizedek, there’s no question.
Let’s look over quickly to Psalm 110, where the writer of Hebrews finds this similarity.
In Psalm 110, verses one through four, it reads for us, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter.
Rule in the midst of your enemies.
Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power and holy garments.
From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.
The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.
You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
This is where the author of Hebrews is getting his idea that Melchizedek is the key to Christ’s priesthood.
And we’ll continue to unpack this in the coming weeks.
From our perspective, looking at typology, not only do we have Psalm 110, which says that Messiah will be a Melchizedekian priest,
but we have this extended discussion in Hebrews itself on the typology of Melchizedek.
With inspired precedent, we’re on solid ground to interpret Melchizedek as a type of Christ.
So what is so significant about Melchizedek in reference to Christ?
Well, as we mentioned earlier, we don’t know much about Melchizedek’s priesthood.
He is described as a priest of God Most High.
But the scant details are actually helpful in this case.
As Hebrews points out, this lack of information allows Melchizedek to better prefigure the eternal Son of God.
Melchizedek, as he appears in Genesis, possesses his priesthood apart from lineage or genealogy.
He just has it.
And while Christ, the man, does have a traceable genealogy as the second person of the Trinity,
Christ has neither beginning of days, nor end of days, nor father, nor mother, nor genealogy.
As God, Christ simply is, without beginning and without end in history.
Melchizedek’s priesthood is superior to Abraham.
This is seen in the fact that Melchizedek blesses Abraham, and Abraham pays ties to Melchizedek.
This implies that Melchizedek is superior to Abraham’s descendants, including Levi,
which implies that the Melchizedekian priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood.
This is very important, because there are only two legitimate priesthoods of the one true and living God.
The Levitical priest, which was instituted by God through Moses, and the Melchizedekian priesthood.
But they are not completely equal.
The Melchizedekian order is better.
And we’re going to see Hebrews make this case in the next few weeks.
Now what does this have to do with us?
All the similarity is cool, but what is the big takeaway?
What’s on the line?
Well, it turns out, as we’ll continue to see, the priesthood of Christ is on the line.
We can sometimes take for granted that Jesus is our priest.
By that, I mean that we use the concept without always understanding the basis of Christ’s priesthood.
If it weren’t for Melchizedek, Christ would have to have traced his lineage through Aaron.
The only other line of legitimate priests is through the line of Aaron.
Because of this, the priests and the kings of Israel were permanently separated.
Kings came from David’s line in the tribe of Judah, and priests came from Aaron’s line in the tribe of Levi.
The few kings that attempted to usurp the priestly role suffered severe consequences from God directly.
King Uzziah, for instance, was struck with leprosy for thinking that he could be a priest as well as a king.
And his arrogance was his downfall.
But in Melchizedek, we see a king and a priest who is above even Abraham.
Abraham, the recipient of God’s covenant promise.
Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation.
The ancestor of Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and all the rest.
Melchizedek is Abraham’s king and Abraham’s priest.
To quote from our passage for next time in verse 4 of chapter 7,
See how great a man this was, to whom Abraham the patriarch gave a tenth of the spoils.
Melchizedek pronounced the blessing on Abraham, and Abraham paid Melchizedek the tithe as his priest.
Christ is the promised Davidic king.
He’s the ultimate king of righteousness and peace.
But his role as redeemer required that he do more than conquer our external enemies.
Because for us, the enemy is on the inside.
It is in our hearts, the sinful nature that we inherited, that fuels our rebellion against God.
We break God’s laws most fundamentally and tragically because we want to.
And as much as we’d like to blame others for our sin,
our rebellious thoughts, words, and actions flow out of our own twisted desire to engage in them.
Apart from Christ, our attempts to even reign them in amount to whitewashing tombs,
attempting to disguise our appearance before others rather than achieve true righteousness.
The root of sin is a rebellious attempt at autonomy,
to be lord of our own lives and acknowledge no higher authority.
This rebellion doesn’t just hurt us and those around us,
but most dangerously, it provokes the wrath of God.
Not as a petty ruler who cannot be challenged,
but as the judge of all the earth who must do what is right.
The soul who sins must die.
So unless there is a priest who can intercede to propitiate God,
take away his wrath by offering a sufficient sacrifice, we are doomed.
The son of David the Messiah had to be more than a king.
He had to have the right and privilege to stand as a priest before God to make such an acceptable offering.
Behold, we have such a high priest.
The son of David, David’s son yet David’s lord,
who has been appointed high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Jesus, high priest of the Melchizedekian order,
holds the most superior priesthood of all and the offering he offers is beyond perfect.
He offers himself.
As we saw last time, Christ’s superior priesthood reverses the distance and trepidation
that was present with the Aaronic priesthood.
The anchor that was used to pull the Levitical priests back out of the Holy of Holies
pulls us into the presence of God.
This is the benefit of having a Melchizedekian high priest.
Jesus has superior access to God,
and those who put their trust in him gain that superior access to God.
If you put your trust in Jesus as your high priest to make atonement for your sins
and give you fellowship with God, you find it.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Father in heaven, we thank you that you have given us a high priest.
And you have sworn, you appointed him as a priest after the order of Melchizedek,
one who is a priest and a king, who can stand in your presence
to offer sacrifice for us and rule us perfectly in righteousness and peace.
We thank you for Jesus, and we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
In response, let’s turn to hymn 277.
Let’s sing hymn 277, and let’s stand as we sing.