Book of Hebrews - Ch. 7, Vs. 1-3 (04/11/2021)

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Bro. Bill Nichols

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For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the
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Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom also
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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.
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Let us pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us together so that we might meet in person and we might study together your
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Holy Word. Thank you for providing us the technology that we may reach out and touch others that cannot be here for whatever reason today and interact with them as well.
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Thank you for giving us your Son. Thank you for giving us the Scripture. Thank you for giving us the
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Holy Spirit to help us in our understanding. But most of all, thank you for your
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Son that you sent to bear our sins, to intervene for us with you, and to give us a pathway to salvation.
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Bless and keep us as we go through the service today. In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen. Interestingly, most of what we know about Melchizedek comes from the epistle to the
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Hebrews. In fact, everything else the Scripture tells us about him comes from one of these two passages.
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I'm going to read them both. They're very short. Genesis 14, 18 -20.
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He's mentioned one time. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the
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Most High God. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be
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Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be the
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Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.
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And he gave him tithes of all. Well, that's it for Genesis.
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The other place that Melchizedek is mentioned is in Psalm 110, verse 4.
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The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
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That's all we know in the Scripture about Melchizedek, except what was written in Hebrews.
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That's the primary reason that I believe Paul wrote
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Hebrews. But more about that later. The first thing we need to recognize is that Melchizedek is not a pre -incarnate appearance of Christ.
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He was not an angel. He was not some other sort of extraterrestrial, extra -dimensional entity.
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He was not a demon. He was a real man. Thus he had a real name, a real mother, and a real father.
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We just don't know them. The second thing is, he was a priest and a king.
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A priest and a king of the Most High God. Now if you remember, that was something that got
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King Saul in a lot of trouble. But Saul was under the law, whereas Melchizedek was before the law.
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Now we're going to look at the passages in the Old Testament in which Melchizedek is mentioned.
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The one out of Genesis and the other out of Psalms. Now what
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I've done is I've attached part of a study that we did about four or five years ago when we went through Genesis and came to chapter 14 of Genesis.
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And that lesson, I had it titled that day,
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The King of Salem. It's out of Genesis 14. So go ahead and go to Genesis 14.
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And while you're going there, I'm going to read something to you that John MacArthur said. Raiding, conquering, and making other kings and city -states subservient vassals were all part of the world of the
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Fertile Crescent in Abraham's day. The locations mentioned range from Shinar, which is
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Babylon in the east, in the Mesopotamian area, to the region south of the
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Salt Sea, that would be the Dead Sea, to the Jordan Valley, to the land of Moab, southwest of the
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Dead Sea, to Mount Seir, later Edom. So that's what
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John MacArthur does to locate where all of this is taking place. Something that I added is this.
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We need to keep in mind that this entire region was populated by what we now call
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Semitic people. Now, do you know who the Semitic people are? If I were to tell you somebody was a
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Semitic person, what would I be telling you? You're saying a
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Semitic person? Well, I went to Wikipedia.
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This is not my normal source. The term Semite was created by members of the
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Guten School of History. The choice of the name was derived from Shem, one of three sons of Noah.
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Now, the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We kind of understand that the
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Hamites were those that populated Africa. The sons of Japheth were what we call the
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Gentiles, and the sons of Shem were what we call the Semitic people.
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That would include the Arabs. That would include the Jews, Hebrews, Armenian.
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All of those were Semites. Babylonians were Semites. So the choice of the name was derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah.
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In the genealogical accounts of the biblical book of Genesis, or precisely from the
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Koinonia Greek rendering of the name Shem, S -E -M,
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Shem. Now, the first 16 verses of chapter 14 of Genesis is replete with lots of names that I can't pronounce, so I'm going to skip those and just summarize what it says.
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It details a conflict that occurred between a confederation of four kingdoms, which did battle with a confederation of five rebelling kingdoms.
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The five nation confederation included
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Sodom. So Sodom was one of the five city -states that rebelled against the confederation of four city -states.
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When the city fell, Abram's nephew Lot, who lived in Sodom at the time, was among those taken captive.
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Later, when he discovered that Lot was among the captives, Abram took his personal servants and went in pursuit.
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Now, it's interesting to note that the army that he's chasing, with his 318 men, plus a few more men that were in confederation with him from two tribes in the area nearby where he lived, had just defeated a confederation of five city -states.
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Well, do you think Abram was worried about what he would do when he got there? What is he going to do when he catches up with the army that's running away, or is not running away, wherever they are, going back to their home, taking the captives with them?
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What's he going to do when he comes home? Is he going to be like the dog that chases the car?
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What are you going to do with it when you catch it? I think he's pretty well set. I think he wasn't worried.
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I think he had faith in the Lord, and I think he knew that God would give him the victory or give him what he needed to get, but he knew he had to go.
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So he went. So now we're going to pick up at verse 13.
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And I'll get a half a sentence, and then I'll break it again. And there came one that had escaped and told
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Abram the Hebrew. Now, you see that word Hebrew? That's the first time that that word is mentioned in the
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Scripture. Well, a lot of first times happen in Genesis, but this is the first time that word occurs.
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What it means is a descendant of Eber, E -B -E -R.
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Now, there's something in the Scripture. There's something taught in seminaries about what's called the law of first mention or the principle of first mention.
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It's a guideline that some people use in studying the Scripture. The principle says that to understand a particular word or doctrine, we must find the first place in the
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Scripture that word or doctrine is revealed and study that passage. The reasoning is that the
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Bible's first mention of the concept is the simplest and clearest presentation, and doctrines are then more fully developed on that foundation.
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So to fully understand an important or complex theological concept,
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Bible students are advised to start with its first mention. Now, I do not necessarily agree that that's the best place to start.
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Sometimes it may be. Sometimes it's not. It's always important to pull into the discussion context because context is overriding, and it's also important to pull in other mentions.
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That also is necessary. But the principle of first mention is valid and useful.
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I do believe that when we follow this rule, we sometimes find something interesting lurking in the weeds.
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That is a hint of something deeper. Here, for example, I believe we're pointed to Shem, one of the sons of Noah, as a possibility for the king of Salem.
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Remember, everyone mentioned in this passage, with the possible exception of Melchizedek, Melchizedek was
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Semitic. Everybody. And there came one that had escaped, and he told
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Abram, the Hebrew, for he dwelt in the plain of Mamre with the
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Amorite, brother of Eschol, and brother of Anar, and these were confederate with Abram.
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So these men, these two men and their followers, joined up with Abram and his 315 men and went in pursuit of the group that had captured the five -nation coalition.
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And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, 318, and pursued them unto
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Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them and pursued them to Hobar, which is on the left hand of Damascus.
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That's in Syria. And he brought back all goods and also brought again his brother
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Lot. It's really his nephew. His brother Lot and his goods and the women also and the people.
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So all of the things that were taken by this confederation that overthrew the five -nation kingdom,
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Abram and his three confederates and his 318 men plus whatever else came with him brought back all the goods, brought back his brother, brought back the women and the people.
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Now, what about Lot? Did he learn anything? Not really.
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He will move right back where he was in Sodom. When Abram leaves,
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Lot stays in Sodom. He ignores this warning from God and he will eventually lose everything he has when
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Sodom and Gomorrah are judged. But he and his daughters are spared.
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Now, we're to verse 17. And a word that I'm going to have difficulty pronouncing, but I'm going to try, actually two.
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And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer.
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Chedorlaomer. And of the kings that were with him at the Valley of Sheba, which is also the
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Kingsdale. So that's who went out to meet him. So the first person that Abram met when he came back was who?
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The king of Sodom. And now someone new and unusual arrives,
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Melchizedek. Now, pay attention to the sign of respect that the king of Sodom shows
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Melchizedek when he appears. Who got there first? The king of Sodom.
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The king of Sodom is there with Abram, discussing something with Abram. Up comes
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Melchizedek. The king of Sodom steps back, defers to the king of Salem, Melchizedek.
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And resumes his request that he's going to make of Abram only when
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Melchizedek is finished. So obviously the king of Sodom knows the king of Salem and respects him or at least fears him.
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But that's kind of lurking in the background. So here's what happens between Melchizedek and Abram.
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This is the one sentence, the one verse in Genesis that mentions the word
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Melchizedek. The word Melchizedek is only mentioned twice in the Old Testament. Just twice, here and in one other place.
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We'll get to both of them very quickly. And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was a priest of the
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Most High God. Now check that out. What was he? He was king and he was priest.
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Saul got in a lot of trouble when he tried to assume the same two roles.
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So what made Melchizedek different than Saul? Why did
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Melchizedek not get in trouble for doing the same thing that Saul did? Well, the answer is
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Melchizedek and this event happened before the law.
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There was no law then. There was no Levitical priesthood. There was no Levi then.
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There was no Jacob then. There was just Abram and Shem and Melchizedek and the king of Sodom.
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But we're going to look on to Samuel, 1
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Samuel 13, verse 5, and look at what happened to Saul and why it happened.
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1 Samuel 13, verse 5. And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, 30 ,000 chariots, 6 ,000 horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude.
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That is a formidable army. Do you think it's more or less than Abraham was facing with his 318 men?
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I don't know. Might have been fewer. We know that those four nations were successful in defeating five nations.
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And the Philistines were only one nation. In any case, the Philistines gathered themselves to fight with Israel, 30 ,000 chariots, 6 ,000 horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the seashore in multitude.
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And they came up and pitched in Mishmash, eastward from Bethhaven.
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And when the men of Israel saw it, they were in a strait, for the people were distressed.
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I would think so. 30 ,000 chariots, 6 ,000 horsemen, and people as numerous as the sand on the sea.
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Yes, it would be something to be afraid of. Then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and pits.
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And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead to get away from it all.
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As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal. And all the people followed him, trembling.
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So the ones that were left with Saul in Gilgal were afraid. And as he tarried there seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed,
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Samuel was the priest. Samuel was going to come and ask the
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Lord's blessing on the upcoming venture, on the defense of themselves from the
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Philistines. So he tarried there seven days according to the set time that Samuel had appointed, but Samuel was late.
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No, Samuel was right on time. Saul is early. But Samuel came not to Gilgal.
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And the people were scattered from him. So people are leaving Saul. And Saul said,
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Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering.
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And it came to pass that as soon as he made an end of his offering, the burnt offering, behold,
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Samuel came. And Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him.
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And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the
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Philistines were gathered themselves together at Mishmash, therefore said
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I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication before the
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Lord. I forced myself, therefore, and offered a burnt sacrifice.
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And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly. Thou hast not kept the commandment of the
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Lord thy God, which he commanded thee. For now would the
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Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue.
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The Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart. And the
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Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the
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Lord commanded thee. So that's what happened to Saul.
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And the reason is because Saul tried to usurp the duties of Samuel.
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He didn't have enough faith in Jesus, I'm sorry, in God. He didn't have enough faith in God to wait for Samuel.
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He should have waited for Samuel, but he didn't. So now we're going to go back and look some more at Melchizedek.
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There are no biological, biographical, and genealogical particulars for Melchizedek.
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Moreover, Melchizedek is not a name, it's a title. It means righteous king.
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It's not the name of a king, it's the title of a king. Whatever his name might be, we do know that he was a priest and a king over ancient
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Jerusalem. That he was both a priest and a king allowed for later revelations.
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Revelations in Psalms and in Hebrews to use him as a type of Christ. So now we're going to go to the reference to Melchizedek in Psalms.
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But understand, this passage is not about Melchizedek. It is about Christ.
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It only mentions Melchizedek. So let's read it. And the
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Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
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The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies.
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This is David talking about somebody. Who's he talking about? Who's David talking about in this passage?
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The Lord said to my Lord. He's talking about Christ. In fact,
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Christ will bring this exact passage up to the Pharisees a little bit later. So Christ is a king, just as Melchizedek was a king.
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Verse 3. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, and the beauties of the holiness from the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth.
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The Lord has sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
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So not only is Christ, like Melchizedek, a king,
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Christ is also, like Melchizedek, a priest.
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But a priest, a different kind of a priest than all the other priests.
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There were no priests at this time, except Melchizedek. Now when
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David is around, there's a lot of priests. And there have been a lot of priests.
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From the time of Aaron on, Israel has always had a priest.
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They've always had somebody to intervene between them and God. And they were ruled for that intervention.
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They were ruled for that engagement. But Melchizedek is before all of that.
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And then it goes on to say, The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
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He shall judge among heathen. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over many countries.
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He shall drink of the brook in the way. And therefore he shall lift up the head. Now, those are the only two mentions of Melchizedek in the
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Scripture that's not found in Hebrews. Everything else we know about Melchizedek, we know from Hebrews.
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There are those who believe that Melchizedek is a pre -incarnate appearance of Christ.
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Others believe he might be Shem, one of the sons of Noah, who was still alive at this time.
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Did you realize that? Did you realize that at the time of Abraham, Shem was still alive?
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Shem won't die until 90 years after Abraham offers his son on Mount, what we call,
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I can't think of the name of it now, the Mount of Crucifixion. I'll just say it that way.
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He offers his son on the same mountain that Jesus went to to take our sins, to be offered for our sins.
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Shem was still alive then. In fact, Shem only lived, I believe, two miles away from the mountain.
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I think Shem was the king of Jerusalem at the time.
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Two to three miles away. Some believe that he might have been an angel or some other extra -dimensional entity.
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I've already told you this. I believe he might be Shem, but we don't know for sure.
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We don't know for sure because we don't need to know for sure. The identity of Melchizedek cannot be settled completely.
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Otherwise, it would have been agreed on a long time ago by biblical scholars. But we can say at least this.
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He was a remarkable type or picture of Jesus. His superior status in Abraham's day is one of the things that make him a fit model.
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His superior status is attested to by two things. One, by the king of Sodom.
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The first to meet Abraham when he returned in victory. What did he do?
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He deferred to Melchizedek. He was there getting ready to talk to Abraham or Abram at the time.
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Up comes Melchizedek. The king of Sodom backs away and says, You go.
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And when he got through, then he picked up again. So the king of Sodom recognized that the king of Salem was somebody important.
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And the second thing that attests to the superiority of Melchizedek is
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Abraham himself. Abraham, without objection, both accepted a blessing from and also gave tithes to this priest king.
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We have later in the New Testament, and I've already read this, but I'll read it again. For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the
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Most High God, who met Abraham, the second one to meet Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him, to whom
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Abraham gave a tenth part of all, being first, by interpretation, king of righteousness, and after that, also king of Salem, which is the king of peace.
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Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither a beginning of days nor an end of life, but made like unto the
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Son of God. So that's what the Old Testament says about this event. Both attest to the fact that Melchizedek was a greater than Abraham.
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Now, here's a couple of things we need to know. It says, read it carefully, but made like unto the
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Son of God. That's clearly not the same as the
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Son of God. Being made like the Son of God is not the same as being the
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Son of God. And he abideth as a priest continually.
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What does that mean? He will be a priest forever. Now, that's important.
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Jesus will be a priest forever, like in some sense Melchizedek was a priest forever, because there's no record of his dying.
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There's a record of Jesus' dying, but there's also a record of his being raised from the dead, and he goes on to be a priest forever.
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Jesus is a king forever. Jesus is a priest forever. Melchizedek, king forever.
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Melchizedek, priest forever. David, Saul, all the other ones you can think about, kings for a time, and then it goes to another kingship.
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Aaron, Levi, all the other priests you can think about, served for a while and died.
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And then it goes on to say, now consider how great this man was, Melchizedek, to whom even the patriarch
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Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils. So both
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Abraham and the king of Sodom acknowledged that Melchizedek was a greater than Abraham.
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And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was a priest of the most high
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God. We've read that already. Now, the word used there is
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El Elyon, that sovereign Lord. That's the word that Melchizedek used twice for God's name.
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That shows that the Lord that Melchizedek worshipped, served, and represented was the same
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God that Abraham worshipped, served, and represented. Now, if it turns out that Melchizedek was
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Shem, then that would make sense, wouldn't it? That Shem, the one that came through the flood, would know who the real true
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God was, and would be worshipping him. What would also be true, if you think about it, if everybody in this whole story was a descendant of Abraham, who was a descendant of Shem, and that's the case, then every one of them would know
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Shem, because Shem was still alive at the time. So the king of Babylon would know
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Shem and know who he was. The king of Sodom would know Shem and know who he was.
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The king of... all of them would know. And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the priest of the
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Most High God. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abraham of the
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Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. Melchizedek recognized that Abraham, or Abram, worshipped the same
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God that he worshipped. So the king of Salem, Melchizedek, understood that Abram worshipped the same
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God that he worshipped, or that he worshipped the same God that Abram worshipped, but he worshipped him first.
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And blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.
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And he gave them... he gave him tithes of all. Now, that wasn't entirely clear to me, as who's giving tithes to whom.
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And in this particular passage, you have... it maybe could be read two different ways.
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But even though it's not clear here, it is very clear in Hebrews. In Hebrews it says,
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To whom also Abraham gave a tenth of all,
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Melchizedek, to whom Abraham gave a tenth of all. And then he identifies Melchizedek as the king of righteousness and the king of Salem, which is the king of peace.
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Melchizedek, the king of righteousness. That's what it means. He also gave credit to the victory.
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Who gets credit for the victory? Who did Melchizedek attribute credit to the victory that Abraham had?
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Did he attribute it to Abraham and his great military skills? Did he attribute it to Abraham and his great coalition of forces?
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He gave credit to the person to whom credit was due, God. And by the way, this is the first mention in Scripture of giving 10%.
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That tithe is a gift of 10%. Now, this is John MacArthur saying this.
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This 10 % offering was purely voluntary. And may only have been a tenth of the best, not a tenth of the total.
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It was to prove that Melchizedek was superior to Abraham. The lesser person tithes the greater person.
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And he says, therefore, it's probably not like the tenths that were required under the
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Mosaic law. But in any case, Abraham did give tithes to Melchizedek.
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And so now Melchizedek has finished his business. He's done what he came to do.
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He came to do what? Collect tithes from Abram and to bless him and to bless
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Abraham's God and his God. So now the king of Sodom looks around and sees that Melchizedek is finished.
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And so he starts up again. And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the persons and take the goods to thyself.
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Now, what he's saying is all the people that were captured, let them come back to my city. That's where they came from.
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But all the goods, everything they took, you can keep that as your reward for bringing everything back.
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Now, I thought that was very generous. Here's the king of Sodom offering to give Abram that which was taken from him by the very person that Abraham defeated, slaughtered, and took it back from.
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So he's going to give it back to Abraham. But Abraham won't take it. Because of a vow he has made to the
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Most High God. And he describes that Most High God with exactly the same phrase that he heard
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Melchizedek using just a few seconds ago. And Abraham said unto the king of Sodom, I have lift up my hand unto the
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Lord, the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and the earth. That's exactly how
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Melchizedek described the Lord a couple of verses earlier.
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That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelace, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou should say,
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I made Abram rich. Who's going to get credit for making
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Abram rich? The Lord is, not the king of Sodom. But then he goes on to say this, save only the portion which the young men have eaten.
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So the guys that were with me and helped take it, what they've eaten, they ate out of the goods.
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We can't give that back to you. And the portion of the men which went with me,
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Anar, Eshcol, and Mamre, let them take their portion. So Abraham does not impose his vow on his
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Amorite allies. He says they're entitled to as much of the spoil as is appropriate.
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Well, the king of Sodom has already told them he can have it all. So I don't know whether they got all of it or whether they just got some of it.
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Now, we are at the 1059 point, and we haven't really begun an actual breakdown of Hebrews chapter 7, but we've talked about it a little bit.
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What we're going to do next week is we'll do a complete breakdown, Lord willing. We'll do a complete breakdown of Hebrews 7 and everything else that we know about this mysterious man.
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One other thing I'd like to read, though, before I close. John MacArthur is describing the third verse of chapter 7.
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Without father, mother, without descent, neither having a beginning of days nor an end of life, but made like unto the
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Son of God, abideth a priest continually. MacArthur says this, and I think it's accurate.
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The Levitical priesthood was hereditary. You had to be a son of Aaron, a son of Levi, to be a priest.
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Melchizedek's was not. His parentage and origin are unknown because they're irrelevant to his priesthood.
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His parentage doesn't matter. Contrary to some interpretations,
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Melchizedek did have a father and a mother. We just don't know who they are. There's an ancient
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Syriac translation that gives a more accurate translation of what was intended by the
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Greek phrase. What is meant is whose father and mother are not written in the genealogies.
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Not that he didn't have a mother and a father, but his mother and father were not recorded, so they don't have a record of his birth and his death.
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So he can serve as a model. And he said that's quite a contrast to the details of Aaron's death.
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And he also said made like unto is a word not used anywhere else in the New Testament. The implication is that the resemblance to Christ rests on the way
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Melchizedek's history is reported in the Old Testament, not on Melchizedek himself, nor anything that he did.
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So that's where we are, and that's where we'll pick up next week.
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Any comments or questions? Okay, a thought.
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Yeah, if it was Shem, his parents were
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Noah and Mrs. Noah. Uh -huh. And they lived on this side of the flood, so you'd think his parents would actually be famous, rather than unknown.
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So I bet it wasn't Shem. Okay, you may be right.
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Well, the only thing is that Noah and his wife may have passed away so long before Shem.
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You know, Shem may have lived a long time after they actually passed away, to the point where people on the earth didn't know about them.
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Did that happen? Okay, I can... Actually, I was prepared for that.
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Apparently, the people living on the earth at the time of Melchizedek did not know who his parents were.
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There was no record of them having parents. There was no record of him having parents.
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If... If he were not Shem, if he were
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Shem, there would be a record of it. But we... Through Noah. Here's the way it works.
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Adam, of course, was cast out of the garden. 687 years later,
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Methuselah was born. Methuselah lived until he died.
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And there was a flood when he died. Adam died before the flood. But at the time of the flood, there were three men who survived.
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And they were Noah... Four men.
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Four men that died. There were Noah, Shem, Japheth, and Ham.
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Now... Shem was born 98 years before the flood.
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Japheth and Ham were both born before the flood. There was a flood. Now, everything now is counted after the flood.
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Eber, the man from whom Hebrew came, was born 67 years after the flood.
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And then... A little later, we come to Nahor, who was 193 years later.
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And Terah, which is 220 years later. And then...
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Noah dies 350 years after the flood. 352 years after the flood, two years before Abram was born.
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Two years after Noah died, Abram was born. And then...
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Sometime later, 427 years after the flood, Abram leaves Haran to go to Cana.
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Sometime between 427 years after the flood and 451 years later, when
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God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, this event takes place where Abram blessed
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Melchizedek. Shem does not die until at least 51 years later, 502 years after the flood.
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Noah had not been dead too long. You're right. And Noah would have certainly been more famous to them.
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But if it were Shem, if Shem were the king of... or Melchizedek, then all of the
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Semites would have known about Shem because he would have been their direct ancestor.
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And he would have been their direct ancestor who was living at this time. There would be no other direct ancestor of them that was living at this time.
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But they would have known as father and dad. So I don't think it's Shem. Well, it very well could not be him.
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And certainly, in some sense, we don't need to know who it is because we're not supposed to know.
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But it doesn't really matter because it's...
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His priesthood did not depend upon who he was. That was the whole purpose.
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That his priesthood was not hereditary. Jesus' priesthood is not hereditary.
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And all the rest of them are. All the rest of them will start, stop, end and they will continue to be inherited until the last one is replaced.
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And it's replaced not by Christ dying, living, by his fulfilling all of the parts of the law.
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We'll get to that next week. Okay. Any other comments or questions?
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If not, let's pray. Most gracious heavenly father, thank you for this day. And thank you for all the many blessings that you have given us.