Melchisedek — Leslie Craig

Sincerely for inviting me back again. First time round, I could understand that you didn't know what you were getting into. But the second time round, there is no excuse for you. So I'm not quite sure why you did it, but here we are again.

And it is a delight, of course, to see your city in a different state. I know you're still in Iowa, but it's not Arctic. And it doesn't kill you out there. And it really does make a difference. It's most beautiful.

And I was remarking, driving down all those streets, the beauty of the trees and everything, out in bloom, and it really would welcome you back again. So I'm glad that I've come to see it as it is just now.

And I can understand why you want to live here. Such a beautiful place to be. It's good to be here, and I would like to take a study this evening, into perhaps not that often spoken of character, and one who perhaps is a little difficult to understand, especially for younger believers, but one that is very, very important in the Scriptures.

Melchizedek in Genesis 14

He's a man that is set alongside the Lord Jesus. And as he is set alongside the Lord Jesus, we are given a divine command to consider his greatness. And that's something that we ought to do. If the Bible tells us to do something, then we should do it.

And so to do that this evening, I want to read in Genesis chapter 14, the man that we want to think about this evening is Melchizedek. And we're going to consider his greatness as the Scriptures present him to us.

Of course, as we think of him, we're going to be thinking of the greatness of our Lord Jesus that eclipses the greatness of this man. Now the first half of Genesis chapter 14, recounts for us the battle of kings against kings, and then the intervention of Abraham.

And we'll pick up in that part of the story, because of time and also because of the difficult to pronounce names. I don't want you to be smiling at me and poking fun at me at the end because I wasn't there whenever they were called for supper.

So let's pick up in the part that interests us for this evening's meetings. And verse number 14, when Abraham heard that his brother was taken captive, he harmed his trained servants born in his own house 318 and pursued them unto Dan.

Now here we get a little idea as to the extent of the possessions that Abraham had. This was a very wealthy man, a man of tremendous means to be able to, from within his own trained servants, take this number with others and pursue them unto Dan.

He divided himself against them, he and his servants by night, and smote them and pursued them unto Hubba, which is on the left side of Damascus. He brought back all the goods and also brought again his brother Lot and his goods, and the women also, and the people.

And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Kedeliomar and of the kings that were with him at the valley of Shaba, which is the king's dale. So far as we know, this is that part that joins the valley of Hinnom and the Kidron Valley.

That is at least what some of the expositors would indicate to us. And Melchizedek, king of Silo, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the Most High God. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abraham of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth.

And blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thine hand. And he, that is Abraham, gave him, that is Melchizedek, tithes of all. And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons and take the goods to thyself.

And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lipped up mine hand unto the Lord, the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, I have made Abram rich.

Save only that which the young men have eaten and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eschol, and Mamre, let them take their portion. After these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.

Or as perhaps better translated, thy reward is exceeding great. I want you, just while your Bible's open here, you may want to turn back to this passage later, but while it is open before you, I want you to notice the two parts of the blessing of Melchizedek.

So to do that, look back to verse 19. The first part of the blessing of Melchizedek is, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. The second part is, And blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.

Now, I want to just make a simple point here. Melchizedek, amongst other things, is making a prophecy, prophetic utterance, that very shortly after is realized in chapter 15 and verse 1, because notice the two elements are brought into God's blessing.

Melchizedek speaks two things. Then sometime later, God speaks two things in the reverse order. God says, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield. That's the second part. Blessed be the Most High God, which delivered thine enemies into thy hand.

God was his shield. But the first part of the blessing was, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. Thy reward is exceeding great. So that's not entirely evident, because he's not called a prophet, but he is speaking prophetically, uttering something that is about to be the case, as God comes to him with the reward for refusing to make himself rich through the spoils of the battle that originally belonged to the king of Sodom.

So that's just a little important thing that we need to point out from here. Now let's come and read the best quoted part of the Old Testament. And that is, I'll not ask you to raise your hand, but you should know, Psalm 110.

Psalm 110. Now, one of the reasons why I'm taking up the character of Melchizedek is that he is the subject of the most quoted part of the Old Testament in our New Testament. You will find perhaps a surprise that it's not Isaiah 53, and especially verse 5.

You would think that one would be the most quoted. And it is coded. But this psalm, taken by the Holy Spirit, is used in so many different ways, liberally through the teaching of our Lord, and through the preaching of the apostles in the early chapters of the Acts, and then expounded particularly by the writer to the Hebrews, but alluded to in other parts as well.

This is the psalm that we need to understand, above all other psalms. So Psalm 110, a psalm of David. The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall wound the head over many countries.

He shall drink of the brood in the way. Therefore shall he lift up the head. And here we conclude the psalm. The psalm is in two parts. While it's open, let me point them out to you. We have, first of all, a divine oracle.

Psalm 110 and the Priestly Kingship of Christ

The Lord. That is the covenant name of God. In the old translation, Jehovah, more properly Yahweh, it is the covenant name of God. And he speaks to David's Adonai, David's sovereign Lord. Here we're thinking about Messiah, who is a son of David, and yet David's son is going to be David's sovereign Lord.

This is the point at which the Lord questions the identity of Messiah. Whose son is he? How is it, he says, that David speaks of a son as someone who is superior? And they knew the answer, but they dare not speak it.

Because they believe Messiah to be the son of God. Equal with God. And yet, there's one in their midst who is making claim to that very title. He is Messiah. Greater than David. He is David's sovereign Lord.

So, this is a formal statement. A divine oracle. That Yahweh says to my sovereign Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The second thing that is here indicated, and this is picked up in the early chapters of the Acts, is that this demands, through simple logic, that the Lord had left the presence of the Father.

Because he's told again to take that seat in glory. And now we're to understand that the Old Testament, while it was not entirely explicit, contained evidence of the two appearings of Christ. Not just one.

As we now know it, the appearing to put away sin, and then the second time, apart from sin, unto salvation. That our Lord would make two appearings. And this describes the in-between period. This is the great until period.

That our New Testament speaks so often about. And don't we love that? Do this until I come. And as we gather together, every Lord today, we are doing that in this in-between period. That the Old Testament spoke so clearly about, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

So it is in the first place, in verse number one, a divine oracle. That places Christ in the throne of the glory of his Father, and asks him to wait a time, before he will rule in the midst of his enemies.

That's what kings do. Kings rule. But then there's a second part to the psalm. That begins in verse number four. It is not a divine oracle, but it is a divine oath. The Lord hath sworn. Again, we go back to the covenant name of God.

The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art, speaking now to the son. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. And when did God say that? After he had taken his seat at the right hand of God.

So there is, in the first place, with respect to his kingship, there is a waiting period. A divine oracle. Sit until. There is, with respect to his priesthood, a divine oath that when he took that place, he is and evermore shall be a priest forever.

But then we have this curious name brought in. That has only been mentioned once in our Bible. We have read the story.

A priest forever? Why not after the order of Aaron?

Who is this curious creature called Melchizedek? Well, if in the first part kings rule, what do priests do? Verse number 6. Priests judge. That's what priests were called to do. So having read that then, let's just read a little in the chapter that deals most with that, which is Hebrews chapter 7.

Melchizedek and the Better Priesthood in Hebrews 7

Now this is not the first mention of Melchizedek, but I just know that if I took the time to read all that is spoken concerning him in this beautiful letter, we certainly would not be able to get through that.

So let's just pick up in chapter 7. One of the things that the writer to the Hebrews is chiding them is that they did not understand this. He wanted to teach them this, but they were dull. They were still seeking after the milk.

They had not matured onto spiritual meat, and they were not making spiritual progress. And what we come to realize is that the understanding of what Melchizedek means in Scripture is going to nourish us.

It's going to cause us to grow. It is going to give us that which will protect us and our minds from defeat as Christians. So chapter 7, verse 1. This Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being by interpretation king of righteousness, and after that also king of Salem, which is king of peace, 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.

Now consider how great this man was. Here's our commandment. We need to do this. Consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils. And verily they that are the sons of Levi, who received the office of priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is of their brethren, though they came out of the loins of Abraham.

But he whose descent is not counted from them, received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises. And without all contradiction, the less is blessed of or by, the better. And here men that die receive tithes, but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.

And as I may so say, Levi also, who received tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him. If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need was there of another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek and not be called after the order of Aaron?

For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.

For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood. And it is yet far more evident, for that after the similitude of Melchizedek, there ariseth another priest, who is made not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless light.

For he testifieth thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment, going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which we draw nigh unto God.

Inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest, for those priests were made without an oath, but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord swear and will not repent, thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.

By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament. And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable and untransferable priesthood.

Wherefore, he is able also to save them to the uttermost, that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth, to make intercession for them. For such a high priest became us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens, who need it 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. For the law maketh men high priests, which have infirmity. But the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the son who is consecrated forevermore.

Now that is a long chapter. Not sure when you last read it. And it is a rather intricately woven argument. And I'm not going to go through all of the details. But I read it with purpose, because as I go through some of the details that we need to speak about concerning Melchizedek, we will have to revert back to some of the things that we have read from chapter seven.

Prophet, Priest, and King in the Person of Christ

Now let me take a step back. And I want to just speak to you a little about what it means when we speak of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, as we do realize, is his human name. It means Savior. Lord, we understand.

We have already thought of that, as we thought of the Old Testament, the word Adonai in the New Testament. It carries a very similar idea, but it is used in the New Testament also of the covenant name of God.

But it brings to our idea that of complete sovereignty. Lord. But the word Christ is the Greek translation of the word for Messiah. And so when we read of Christ, we're not thinking of anything other than the sense that he is the Lord's anointed.

Now the idea of anointing is a very simple one. It is this, that God, throughout his purposes with the nation of Israel in particular, he had certain individuals marked out by him as his public representative.

Others did his will, but these people were marked out officially by God as his man. And to do that, they were anointed publicly with oil. That therefore leads into this idea of Messiah. Messiah is an anointed one.

And in that sense, these men in the Old Testament that we'll speak of in a moment or two, they were little messiahs. They were partially those that God had sent as his man for the occasion in that generation to represent him.

Now I'm using the term deliberately but carefully, little messiahs. Let's think of someone. One of the offices that was an anointed office evidently was the office of a prophet. And you will remember that when God sent Elijah to mark out his replacement, he went and he found Elisha and he anointed him.

And from that point on, Elisha was an anointed prophet. He was, in that sense, a little messiah. He was one that was marked out by God through the anointing of Elijah to be a prophet of the Lord. And God used him mightily.

Then, of course, there were the priests and the high priest. And on that day, that solemn day of their consecration, before the people, the priests were anointed with oil. And as it ran down them, they were marked out as those who were God's men to represent the people in the tabernacle and in the temple worship.

That's another kind of little messiah. A priest or a high priest set apart by God through anointing to serve as a representative of the people before their God. So in one sense, we can think of God sending a prophet to the people, he anointed that man.

And then in the other sense, we can think of God anointing a man to come from the people to him. That's what the priests did. They came as the mediator between the people and God. But then there was a third, an added title, and it was the title of the king.

Now initially, as you know, God was the sovereign of the nation, but after the time, they wanted a king of their own. And the first king proved to be a great disappointment, though he was a tall man. I'm not saying you've got to watch all tall men, because some tall men are good.

But this man was head and shoulders above the rest, and he was impressive to look at. Remember where he fell down? He fell down when he faced an even taller man. For this great big man of the flesh that they all admired, he had one great weakness.

He wasn't true in his heart to the Lord. And so when he met a Goliath who was even taller than him, he was faint at heart. And it was a boy that went out to battle, not a tall man, not one that was head and shoulders above all the rest.

It was just a boy that went out and brought the giant down. But God sent Samuel to that boy. And while Saul was still reigning as a king, Samuel anointed David to be the next king. Now here is a beautiful illustration.

I know that all of the kings were anointed, but David in particular helps us as we come to understand the truth of Psalm 110. David was anointed many years before he actually sat as king. And those years were difficult years of rejection and of persecution when he had to run and hide and whenever he had to flee for his life.

All those years, he was still the anointed of the Lord. He was still a little Messiah. Now it is evident from the Old Testament that on some occasions, David being one of them, God brought two of those anointed ministries together.

You will read quite frequently in our New Testament that David spoke as a prophet. He was an anointed king, but he also spoke as a prophet. There were kings who were prophets. And you will know the number of those in the Old Testament who themselves were priests and they were also prophets.

And so there were those anointed by God that carried two of the ministries that God had as anointed ministries. But Hebrews chapter seven is teaching us is that in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant that God had made with the nation of Israel, it was never possible for one individual to have all three.

That God kept exclusively for the true Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is only he that can bring together prophet, priest, and king. That is explained in the center part of this chapter because the kings spring out of Judah.

The priests spring out of Levi. They come from different tribes. And you cannot be a priest under the covenant of God with Israel if you do not come from the tribe. Of Levi, if you do not spring from the line of Aaron.

Now there was one exception to that. In the Old Testament, it did not go well. King Uzziah, he took upon himself to go where no king was allowed to go. And God struck him with leprosy. And the man died that way.

No king was allowed to officiate as a priest. And so that is why we need this man Melchizedek. It is Melchizedek and his order of priesthood that enables our Lord Jesus, the true Messiah, to bring all these offices that these little messiahs enjoyed and bring them together into one glorious person.

And that's what I want to speak to you about this evening. And let me put it to you this way just to summarize our thinking and then we'll go through this. The Lord Jesus was anointed. Anointed by God with the Holy Spirit.

It was on the occasion of his baptism that they saw the Spirit coming in the form of a dove and resting upon him. And in that manner and in the public gaze and in the presence of the forerunner who was the representative of all the prophets that had gone before and the greatest of them, God officially anointed our Lord Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit.

Not with oil, but with the one of whom the oil in the Old Testament was speaking, the Holy Spirit himself. Now it is, I believe, from that point on that we can officially speak of Jesus as Christ. Anointed as a man on earth.

Anointed in his public ministry. It's at that point he leaves his family, leaves his home, and he begins to preach. And he picks up where John left off because John is withdrawn. And John is withdrawn by imprisonment before the Lord began to preach the gospel of the kingdom.

It is my understanding, although you may have a different one, that it is for that reason that the Lord speaks in that curious way about those in the kingdom being greater than John because John was not in the kingdom.

He was withdrawn before the Lord began to present the gospel of the kingdom. This was on God's purpose. It took the anointing and the Lord then after that began to preach. Now how does this work out? Well, let us think about the three periods then that we can measure from the anointing of the Lord Jesus at his baptism.

We can think of from his baptism until his ascension into heaven. The public ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, his preaching, his teaching, his miracles. What does the scripture say about that? We can think of the period from his ascension until he comes again in his glorious appearing.

What does the scripture say about that? And then we can think about all that the scripture says about his appearing and his messianic kingdom in this world. What we come to term as the millennial kingdom.

We get that from Revelation, the book of Revelation. The millennial kingdom of Christ. What does the Bible say about that? And so as we look at those three periods from the Lord Jesus was anointed until he ascended, from he ascended until he appears again in glory at the end of the tribulation and from that point right out into his messianic kingdom.

Well, we would need to have time, but I didn't have time to do this, to go to Acts chapter 3 and we would discover this. The Peter there, he draws upon a prophecy from the Old Testament concerning Moses and says this, that a prophet shall the Lord God raise unto you like unto Moses.

He says God has done this. He raised up his servant Jesus. And those years of his public ministry, our Lord Jesus acted before the nation as the anointed and greatest Messiah, an anointed prophet to the nation.

They rejected him, but his message stands. The book of Hebrews begins in that because God has spoken fully and finally in Christ. The world needs nothing more because of what God has given the world through the revelation that Christ has brought to this world.

He is par excellence, the greatest prophet that God has ever sent. God has raised like unto Moses a prophet, his servant Jesus. Now we have discovered from Psalm 110 that from the Lord ascended into glory until he comes again, he is fulfilling another role.

Not now so much as prophet because we have the completed scriptures, but as priest. He is now as we speak, our great high priest appearing for us before the very throne of God. He is God's anointed priest.

But when he comes again, the one that God has anointed as king who was born as king, he will reign as king. And at his glorious appearing, he shall sit upon the throne of his father David in Jerusalem, and he shall reign.

So this is a very comprehensive title. And I know we use it so often. We speak of our Lord Jesus Christ. But as you let that beautiful title roll off your lips, think to yourself, the fullness of what it means for our Lord to be called Christ.

Bringing together these different roles that God had in different people, in different generations, and bringing them together at last in one man. And there is a sense, and you need to go to Zechariah to get this, that there was a tension between at least two of those roles.

You can think of the king. His role was to bring people under the yoke and to get them to do what they were told. You know how difficult it is to get us to keep the speed limit, isn't it? That always gets a smile or two.

It's hard. I mean, 55 is hardly fast enough for those roles. And 70, well, there was a truck, a semi behind me today, and I was doing 70, and he was pushing me out of the road. So I had to get out of the road because he was not going to stick to the speed limit.

And it's hard to get people to stay by the road. I know the reason. Roads are dangerous. There are fatalities. And I know the reason. But it takes a kind of person to be a king. You've got to be strict.

Authoritarian. What kind of a person does it take to be a priest? It's a very different kind of role. You need to be feeling. You need to be soft. You need to be easily moved. That when that story is being told you, that you're not sitting with a stoical face and with a hard expression, but with eyes that are easily given to tears, not fake tears, but real tears of sympathy and empathy as you enter into the experience of one with a broken heart that has made mistakes.

The police officer can't be like that. They may pull you in and tell you what they're going to do with you. And you can cry your heart out, and they'll just be a stoic still. There's always a tension between the king and the priest.

But Zachariah says in our blessed Lord, he makes peace between those two things, and he brings them together. And so when our Lord sits as a priest upon his throne and makes peace between the offices, he will ensure that there is righteousness in this world, but it will be a righteousness that is filled with grace and love and compassion and forgiveness.

Such is the blessed Christ that we know. So then for a few moments, let us think a little bit with that as our background, as we think of the in-between role which follows the life of the Lord, which was his anointed prophetic work, and then the coming anointed king.

Christ's Sovereign and Sympathetic High-Priestly Ministry

We want to think of this period that we live in, where the Lord is our anointed great high priest. And as we come to this then, we need to understand a little about this man, Melchizedek. Now, I just want to back up again, because I find this surprising, shocking in fact.

Many things in the Bible are shocking, aren't they? Really shocking. I don't know if you ever thought about this. Do you ever think of the bother God went with Abraham? I mean, God was going to make him something, and it's going to take a long time to make him.

He had no children, for a start. He was in the wrong place. He was way down in Ur of the Chaldees. He was somebody that went to the Ziggurat to worship the moon god. He was an idolater. I mean, God had to go to the bother out of showing his glory to him.

He had to call him to leave that place and go. He was reluctant to do that. He only went halfway, and then God had to encourage him to move from Haran down into the land. And then when he got there, he had some faith in God, but then his faith kind of ran out, and he went down into Egypt, and God had to chase him back out of there, because he was prepared to compromise the sanctity of his marriage, and went through a lot to make Abraham the man that he was.

And who am I to condemn? I'm not condemning him. I'm just pointing out what the Bible says. God went to a lot of trouble to make Abraham the friend of God. Okay, what's the big deal in that? Well, the big deal is this, that while God was going to all that trouble, there was already a man in the land who knew more about God than Abraham ever did.

His name was Melchizedek. You ever wonder why God didn't choose Melchizedek and not Abraham? I think one of the reasons is, and he explains it to the nation of Israel, he says, you were nothings. I picked you up.

You were nothings. You were not a great people. Look who you were. God did it to show his grace, that he takes people who are nothing, and who are failures, and whose faith fails them, and they make mistakes, and yet God says, I'm going to persevere with you, and I'm going to make you my friend.

Isn't that what he does here in Ireland still? Isn't that what he does in Ireland? With a nobody like me just picks me up? With all of my problems, with all of my weaknesses, with all of the things that I do that bring displeasure to my Lord, and yet he maintains with me because he is going to make something of me.

God already had a man there. That fulfills all the criteria to make him the head of the order of which Christ would come. Isn't that amazing? And yet God went to all the trouble with Abraham. That fills me with tremendous relief that God will stick with me as he will stick with you until he makes of you what he intends to do.

That he will bring us into the closeness of friendship with him. The only one in the Old Testament that was described as a friend of God was this man. Of course, we are all his friends through Christ as he taught his disciples as he left the upper room.

So what kind of a person was this? Well, he was king of Salem. Which is now Jerusalem. So he was a king over the city that is God's chosen city. He was a priest of the most high God. He was a true worshiper of God.

How he got this knowledge, we have no idea. But what we know from Melchizedek and also from the experience recorded in the life of Lot, sorry, of Job, that outside of the family of Abraham, God had revealed himself to others.

It was not that he had made covenants with others. God didn't make a covenant with Job. God didn't make a covenant with Melchizedek. But he revealed himself to these other people. That is evident. But God did make a covenant with Abraham.

And that's what made the difference. And so here he was. We can think of his sovereignty. He was a king of righteousness. A righteous man. And a king of peace. And I've already spoken about that. As the scripture would tell us, Isaiah 32 would teach us that a king shall reign in righteousness.

What a beautiful reign of Christ that will be when he comes back again. A king shall reign in righteousness. So much for that. We can think of his superiority. He's not only a king of righteousness and a king of peace, this Melchizedek man, but he is superior to Abraham.

I mean, Abraham had his ascent. We've got that. In fact, the book of Genesis is all about genealogies. You will find that pattern repeats time and time again. The book of the generations of, the book of the generations of, the book of the...

And anyone worth their salt is in one of those generations. But here's a man who's not. There's no record of his lineage. There's no record of any children. He just appears. He's the odd one out. In a book that makes everything about who you are and where you came from, it leaves that out for him.