Vol. 11 — No. 11 March 15, 1970
Psalm 110:4
The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
In Christ Jesus, our High Priest after the order of Melchisedec, Fellow Redeemed:
“Visual aids” is a concept that we associate with modern education. But it was a method that God employed in various ways in the Old Testament. We have been considering certain persons, who in their life and work, were types or pictures of the Person and Work of Christ. The worship of God’s Old Testament people was basically a “visual aids” presentation of that which was to come. Perhaps the best known example would be the Passover lamb, which was a picture-shadow that found its substance centuries later in Christ. The male lamb of one year that was to be without blemish and that was slaughtered on the annual feast of the Passover, commemorating the deliverance of God’s children from the slavery of the Egyptians, always prefigured and represented the holy. Innocent, spotless Lamb of God whose blood had to flow to deliver us and all mankind from the slavery of sin, death, and Satan. The Passover lamb was the type; the Son of God was the Antitype. He was identified as such at the very beginning of His ministry by John the Baptist, who upon seeing Jesus approach, lifted up his voice and cried: “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.“ He was Identified as the Passover Lamb of God when He entered Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, the same day that the other Passover lambs were chosen and set aside for slaughter at the coming feast. And then in his first epistle to the Corinthians (5:7) St. Paul refers to Christ as our Passover. In some ways the entire nation of Israel and its history was a type of Christ. For example, the sojourn of the Children of Israel in the land of Egypt foreshadowed the sojourning of the Christ Child there to escape the wrath of Herod. And so also the coming out of Egypt prefigured the Christ Child’s coming out of Egypt after Herod was dead. Israel was taught to look to its past and present for light concerning its future. In this devotion we would consider a most amazing person whose life touched the history of God’s people for a brief moment, but in so doing cast light upon the future. That man was
We shall see that Melchisedec is a type of Christ—
It is quite possible that some of you have never heard of Melchisedec. If you have heard his name, it may well be that you have forgotten where and when he makes his brief appearance on the stage of biblical history. In the Old Testament Scriptures there are only four verses which speak of Melchisedec. There are three verses concerning him in the fourteenth chapter of the book of Genesis. Then there is complete silence until the Holy Spirit through the pen of David wrote the verse of our text in the 110th Psalm. In our text the Holy Spirit calls Melchisedec a type of Christ. Then there is another silence until the Holy Spirit moved the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews to elaborate at length upon Christ as a priest after the order of Melchisedec. Our study will cover this ground: Genesis, Psalm 110, and Hebrews.
The fourteenth chapter of Genesis reports a military expedition on the part of Abraham. You will recall that in the battle of the four kings from the east against the five kings of Sodom and the surrounding territory, the five kings were defeated. The city of Sodom was sacked and all the people carried off as prisoners of war, slaves. Among those taken was Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who lived in that city. When Abraham found out that his nephew had been taken captive, he armed his 318 trained servants and went in pursuit to rescue Lot. Since his army was small, Abraham divided it in order to confuse the enemy. He also made his attack at night. The Lord gave him a great victory. Abraham rescued Lot and all the people of Sodom with all their goods. It was then, after Abraham had returned, that we read of this strange, mysterious person, Milchisedec, king of Salem, who appeared bringing bread and wine. We are told that he was priest of the most high God. We are furthermore told that this Melchisedec blessed Abraham, and that Abraham gave Melchisedec a tithe, a tenth, of all the booty that he had captured. That is all that we hear about Melchisedec until the Spirit of God moved David to write in the 110th Psalm that the promised Messiah shall be a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews tells us more about the person of this Melchisedec. He emphasizes that his name means the King of Righteousness. He was also the King of Salem. Just where his dominion was located is of little importance at the moment. But Melchisedec was not only a king. He was also priest unto the most high God. That may not impress us, but it did the Jewish people to whom the letter to the Hebrews was written because they knew that according to the law no one could be both priest and king at the same time. You will recall how King Saul brought down upon himself the wrath and displeasure of the Lord because on one occasion he assumed the office of the priest. But Melchisedec was both priest and king. And so also was the Antitype of Melchisedec, the Lord Jesus Christ. He was and remains both King and Priest in one person.
The fact that Melchisedec was both king and priest in one person reveals his superiority over Abraham. That is further revealed in the fact that Melchisedec blessed Abraham, not Abraham Melchisedec. The greater always blesses the lesser. And then Abraham paid tithes to Melchisedec, not Melchisedec to Abraham. So then Melchisedec was greater than Abraham and his descendents which include also the priests of the tribe of Levi. That means that Christ who is priest after the order of Melchisedec was greater than any of the priests living at His time, or any before or after.
The writer to the Hebrews has yet another detail to reveal about the person of Melchisedec, namely that he was “without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.” The writer isn’t speaking literally as though Melchisedec were an angel or a special creation of the Lord. What he draws to our attention is that nothing is said about his parents, his origin, his death, or his descendants. He just appeared for a brief moment in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis and then disappeared. He was king and priest in his own right and remains so in his great Antitype, the Lord Jesus. And so also the birth of Jesus was different. He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and born of the virgin Mary. He wasn’t of the tribe of Levi as all the other priests. He was of the tribe of Judah. He didn’t inherit the priesthood. He was born a priest. He didn’t die and leave His priesthood to a successor, as did the other priests. No, He lives and remains a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec.
In brief, the person of Melchisedek who was greater than Abraham and all his descendants, the Jews, reveals unto us the greatness of the Person of our High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are to understand and receive blessing from the meditation upon the passion and death of our Savior, then we must know and under stand and believe the greatness of His Person. When He was crushed and writhed in agony, that greatness is hid from our eyes by His great humiliation. But at the gate of Gethsemane that greatness shines forth again. The chief priests and elders also felt that greatness, for they felt compelled to send a large company of armed men to capture one unarmed man, who was protected by twelve or only eleven men, two of whom only had swords. The greatness of Jesus became evident when they all fell back under His Word. But after they had Jesus bound, the company of soldiers began to forget His greatness. We see Him next before the reigning high priest, Caiaphas, the priest after the order of Aaron—a man who had fallen from the faith of his fathers, who ate, drank and was merry and whose only concern was to protect his position and power. Before him stood the Christ, the priest after the order of Melchisedec. But no greatness could be seen in His person, for He was slapped, smitten with the fist, spat upon, mocked, and ridiculed—the victim of cruel and merciless hate and jealousy. And yet the glory of the person of this priest after the order of Melchisedec broke forth when under oath He declared: “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” We who are gathered here this evening humbly bow the knee before the greatness of the person of our priest after the order of Melchisedec.
However, it is not the greatness of His person that in itself brings us salvation, but rather the blessed work that He achieved in the humiliation of His greatness through His passion. We consider therefore secondly—Melchisedec as a type of Christ—
In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis Melchisedec exercised only one function of the priesthood; he blessed Abraham and his seed. But thereby he indicated his superiority over the priesthood of the sons of Levi who came from the bowels of Abraham. The writer to the Hebrews enumerated the various points of superiority of Christ’s priesthood over the priesthood of the Jewish priests from the house of Levi, the succassors of Aaron. But one difference will be sufficient for our purpose. The chief work of the priests of the Jews was to offer sacrifices. And that they did. An individual priest would offer daily sacrifices in the temple, according to his order, all the days of his life. After he died his successor would continue all the days of his life. The high priest offered the annual great sacrifice for all the people on the great Day of Atonement. The next year he would repeat that offering. And so it continued all the days of his life, and after his death the next high priest would continue making the same annual sacrifice. There was no end in sight. The work of the Aaronitic priesthood was incomplete. And it was without value except in so far as it pointed to and received its power from the one sacrifice that was to be made by the priest after the order of Melchisedec. For that reason the writer to the Hebrews points to Christ and exclaims that “he is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself,” All of the priests of the house of Aaron had to offer sacrifices for their own sins, Christ had no sin. They could find no fault in him. The priests of the Old Testament offered again and again, Christ offered Himself once, and that sacrifice was sufficient to pay the penalty for all guilt.
Our meditation on the passion and death of Christ can only be a blessing for us when we see Him as our great high priest walking those ways of sorrow to make that one great and eternal sacrifice that will and can alone atone for our sins. Blood alone could cleanse from sin. Not the blood of bulls and lambs, but the blood of the Son of God. This so called “blood theology” is ridiculed and mocked by those who seek salvation through character, through good works and deeds, through a moral life. But let it be said again that an endless eternity of torment awaits those who reject in mockery the atoning blood of the Lamb of God, our priest after the order of Melchisedec.
But oh the sweet comfort for the believer who clings in faith to the bloody sacrifice of the Son of God. In olden days we are told that the watchmen would while making his rounds sang out the time of night together with the cry “All’s well!” And the inhabitants of the city or village could turn over in their sleep in security, knowing all was well. That is the security of everyone who clings in faith to the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus on the cross. Whether it’s midnight or morning, afternoon or evening he know that ALL IS WELL, for the blood of God’s Son has cleansed him from all sin.
Our High Priest can save to the uttermost. He can save in the hour of death when no one else can help. I wonder if we always appreciate what that means. There are thousands and millions of people who believe that there is a place in eternity called purgatory. They believe that there the person must suffer for a longer or shorter period of time in order to atone for his own sins. That doctrine could never have crept into the church until the atoning sacrifice of Christ on Calvary’s cross had been rejected. If Christ did not make full and complete satisfaction for our sins, then certainly you and I would be obligated to make payment for them through suffering in the world to come. But the glory of the passion story is this that it tells us that the Son of God offered Himself once for all of us. There is now no condemnation to them that are in Christ. We can’t be punished for our sins because Christ was punished for us. Our blood doesn’t have to flow because His blood flowed. We live because He died. The blood of Jesus, our Priest after the order of Melchisedec, cleanseth us from all sin. Thank God! Amen.
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All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the King James Version.