Study no. 8 Melchizedek Hebrews
“All I see is shadows!”
One day some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged Him to heal him. Jesus led the man out of the village to a more private spot and healed him. Actually He did it twice. Jesus hardly ever performed a miracle in the same way twice. And that would be intentional so that people would not exalt the method. In this case He spit on the man's eyes, touched him ... then asked him what he could now see.
Mr 8:24 He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around."
Then Jesus touched him a second time. Now he could see clearly.
This may sound a bit callous, but I have to say it this way; why did Jesus heal people? Because He cared for them? Because they really needed healing? No, to both questions. Of course Jesus cared for them. He loved the whole world. Did the people not really need healing? Yes, just like millions of others in the world that He Himself had created. He, of course, did not create a world with sickness and pain. But He knew (He knows) how great our need is. He has the power to end all of the suffering in the world today. But He has some very specific reasons to fix it at a certain time and in His own way.
He also had some very specific reason behind all of His miracles, other than caring for the hurting individuals.
Every miracle was designed to teach us something. First of all, they were teach us that He is God, the promised Messiah, the Saviour of the world. Specific miracles were to illustrate other truths. Turning the water into wine, such good wine, that governor of the feast commented that this new wine was better than what they had just enjoyed ... was illustrating the remark that Jesus made. He had said that no one puts new wine into old bottles (wineskins). He was talking about the establishing of the church as not just being a revamping of Judaism. It was something new.
The healing of the blind man illustrates something as well. In the old Jewish system, everything about it had to do with 'types' or pictures or shadows. But now that Jesus has come and replaced the old, it like moving from seeing things in shadowy forms to seeing things in sharp focus.
Here are two passages that refer to old testament objects and practices as being only shadows.
Col 2:16 ¶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Heb 8:5 They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."
These things are intentionally referred to as shadows. In our last study I compared a picture of one's spouse with the real spouse. While a picture is good, it has no power or life in it. A picture reminds us of one important fact, however ... in order to have a picture, there must first be the 'real thing'.
Here is an example of how types and pictures work. Both circumcision and baptism are types, or pictures. Someone once told me that circumcision was a picture of baptism. This is impossible. That would be a picture of a picture. Circumcision pictures salvation. It was called 'cutting off the filth of the flesh' and pictured putting away the filth of the spirit by confession of sin and repentance. In other words, it pictured salvation, ( salvation that would come in the future when Jesus would come to die on the cross).
Baptism also pictures salvation, (the salvation that came in the past as a result of Jesus dying on the cross). It is showing that we were dead in trespasses and sins. As being 'dead' we needed to be buried. Then, coming up out of the water we picture the new life that God breathes into our spirit after we confess our sins and repent of them and turn to God for mercy based on our believing that Jesus died in our place and was raised to life.
Baptism is the picture ... salvation is the reality.
We are going to talk about Melchizedek.
This chapter is the central chapter of the book. It is the main reason for the writing of this book.
The approach of the book of Hebrews, as it addresses the problem of Christians sliding away from Jesus back to Judaism, is quite interesting.
The writer,in the first part of the book has said, Jesus is better than everything. This is opposite to what we might do. We argue, not that differently from the way a child reasons.
We might start out with “Jesus is bigger and better than” ... and mention some specific thing. That might lead us to a bigger thing, and we say ... He's bigger and better than that. After a growing list which keeps mentioning even better things ... we eventually would say ... He's bigger and better than everything!
But we have seen here is ...
Jesus is better than angels, (who attended in the giving of the law)
better than Moses (who lead the people out of Egyptian slavery to the promise of a new land.
better than Joshua (the general who lead Israel into the promised land)
better than Aaron ( the first high priest)
And now we will see the apostle proving to the Hebrews and to us that Jesus is better than ... and actually replaces the entire priesthood.
The very core, the center of Judaism is the priesthood. The very closest a person could come to God, was to come to the priest. The priesthood was held in the highest regard.
We have read in a previous chapter that Jesus is a priest 'in the order of Melchizedek'. We are going to see a contrast with being a priest in the order of Aaron.
First of all let's 'meet the man' Melchizedek.
He is king of Salem. Salem means peace. Jesus is called 'the Prince of Peace. Salem is the forerunner of the city Jerusalem. This means city of peace.
He is a priest of the most high God.
Consider the following:
There is no Israel as of yet. This means when God called Abram to leave his father and family and move to 'the promised land' .... that He either was the only righteous one living at that time and God had to move fast. ..or ... God had others as well that He considered His children. God is going to make a nation of people out of Abram ... but God still had others that were not even related to Abram, and they were God's children too.
Melchizedek is one of those. He was a priest of the 'most high God'. The same God we serve. All of the priests of God of that day had the same handicap. They had no writings or scripture from which to learn about God. They were dependent on hearing from Him once in a while.
Melchizedek is also a king. But this term may be a bit deceiving. We think of a king being ruler of a huge kingdom. And there were kings like that. Babylon is a case in point. But there were also kings of tribes or clans of people. Abraham, in a sense would almost be called a king of his own clan. The difference being that Abram was a nomad and had no permanent place to rule over.
So the situation is ... there may have have been many kings in the area. And there may have been more 'priests of the most high God'.
But God picked this one to include in the book of Hebrews.
V2. His name seems to have a double translation – he was also called king of righteousness. The next part makes reference to an actual event that we will read about in Gen. 15:17-24.
Verses 18, 19 and 20 are about Melchizedek. There is one other mention of him:
Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek."
To put this into perspective, Two thousand years before Hebrews was written, Abraham has an encounter with him. There is no indication of surprise with Abraham. He is not found to be wondering, “Who is this person?” To be fair there is also no indication that Abraham knew him to any degree, but I think it is implied.
Very simply, Abraham comes back from rescuing Lot from an enemy king. He is met by this priest 'of the Most High God' who blesses him with the words, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.” Melchizedek offers him (blesses him with) bread and wine and pronounces a blessing on him.. The general rule that is mentioned in Hebrews is that 'the lesser is blessed by the greater'. (v7)
Abram gives Melchizedek a tithe of the spoils. This shows that Abram considered Melchizedek to 'be above him' ... in rank (if I may use that word).
Verse 3 says that Melchizedek had no earthly father or mother ... had no beginning and no end. It is from this verse that some have said ...
a) That Melchizedek was actually a previous appearance of Jesus.
b) An angel
I believe it was neither of the above.
I believe that he was a 'picture' of Christ. A type. A Shadow. Melchizedek happens to be an individual who fits the picture well, he rules from the right city and we have no earthly genealogy or record of his birth, death or parents. No recorded history at all. This makes him a perfect 'type'.
Besides that Heb 7:15 And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest, 16 who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life.
The writer now begins a comparison of the two orders of priesthood, showing the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek to be superior.
4,5. A 'tenth' or tithe was commanded by Moses law, to support the tribe of Levi .... the priests.
“even though they came from Abraham”. Note – Levi is a grandson of Abraham. What seems normal is that descendants pay the tithe 'upward'. In this case, it goes sideways ... to descendants of Levi's brothers, who might argue ... your just a brother to us ... why should we give you tithes?
Abraham, on the other hand ... paid tithes to a non-relative ... who is reckoned 'higher' in stature than Abraham. This is a little difficult for Jews to grasp. Paul goes one further and says, since Abraham paid tithes to a non-relative, so did all the Jews who were 'residing' in Abraham's DNA. V10
Verse 11 mentions 'perfection' and says if it could have been reached, there would be no further use for priests. We need to jump to v19 and notice 'the equation'.
The law makes nothing perfect.
But the bringing in of a better hope ... does. The priest after the order of Melchizedek is this better hope.
We will exam 'perfection' a bit more later.
Verse 12 uses the word 'changed' in most of our translations. The context actually means Exchanged. This is why Stephen got attacked and killed early in the book of Acts, because he told the Jews that the old covenant from Moses has been exchanged and replaced by Christ and the new covenant.
These 'former Jews', Christian Hebrews, were not convinced that the covenant was exchanged. They were more like the Jews mentioned in Acts 21.
Ac 21:20 When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: "You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.
21 They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs.
James was slipping there. He was operating under the understanding that the Jewish system was changed to include Jesus as the Messiah. He was wrong. There was a total exchange.
V18 . The term 'annulling' agrees with what we have just been saying.
V19 The purpose of the priesthood is to provide a way to bring people 'as close to God as possible'.
We have come to recognize Christianity on at least three different levels.
To some of us Christianity means:
God wants closeness.
Watch for the phrase – 'Draw near to God', as we continue through the book of Hebrews.
Two other passages that underscore this phrase:
Eph 3:19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
1Jo 1:5 ¶ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
20 – 28
Jesus was 'installed' as high priest forever ... with an oath. What is the significance of this? The understanding is that anything said without an oath was subject to change. The normal priests were not sworn in by an oath. Therefore the whole system could be changed.
Jesus lives ... to make intercession for us ... until the end of time? Throughout all eternity?
After the millennial reign is over and we are with Jesus forever in heaven ... there will be no need for a mediator ministry.
1Co 15:24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.
25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.
Heb 8:1 ¶ Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens
One day some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged Him to heal him. Jesus led the man out of the village to a more private spot and healed him. Actually He did it twice. Jesus hardly ever performed a miracle in the same way twice. And that would be intentional so that people would not exalt the method. In this case He spit on the man's eyes, touched him ... then asked him what he could now see.
Mr 8:24 He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around."
Then Jesus touched him a second time. Now he could see clearly.
This may sound a bit callous, but I have to say it this way; why did Jesus heal people? Because He cared for them? Because they really needed healing? No, to both questions. Of course Jesus cared for them. He loved the whole world. Did the people not really need healing? Yes, just like millions of others in the world that He Himself had created. He, of course, did not create a world with sickness and pain. But He knew (He knows) how great our need is. He has the power to end all of the suffering in the world today. But He has some very specific reasons to fix it at a certain time and in His own way.
He also had some very specific reason behind all of His miracles, other than caring for the hurting individuals.
Every miracle was designed to teach us something. First of all, they were teach us that He is God, the promised Messiah, the Saviour of the world. Specific miracles were to illustrate other truths. Turning the water into wine, such good wine, that governor of the feast commented that this new wine was better than what they had just enjoyed ... was illustrating the remark that Jesus made. He had said that no one puts new wine into old bottles (wineskins). He was talking about the establishing of the church as not just being a revamping of Judaism. It was something new.
The healing of the blind man illustrates something as well. In the old Jewish system, everything about it had to do with 'types' or pictures or shadows. But now that Jesus has come and replaced the old, it like moving from seeing things in shadowy forms to seeing things in sharp focus.
Here are two passages that refer to old testament objects and practices as being only shadows.
Col 2:16 ¶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Heb 8:5 They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."
These things are intentionally referred to as shadows. In our last study I compared a picture of one's spouse with the real spouse. While a picture is good, it has no power or life in it. A picture reminds us of one important fact, however ... in order to have a picture, there must first be the 'real thing'.
Here is an example of how types and pictures work. Both circumcision and baptism are types, or pictures. Someone once told me that circumcision was a picture of baptism. This is impossible. That would be a picture of a picture. Circumcision pictures salvation. It was called 'cutting off the filth of the flesh' and pictured putting away the filth of the spirit by confession of sin and repentance. In other words, it pictured salvation, ( salvation that would come in the future when Jesus would come to die on the cross).
Baptism also pictures salvation, (the salvation that came in the past as a result of Jesus dying on the cross). It is showing that we were dead in trespasses and sins. As being 'dead' we needed to be buried. Then, coming up out of the water we picture the new life that God breathes into our spirit after we confess our sins and repent of them and turn to God for mercy based on our believing that Jesus died in our place and was raised to life.
Baptism is the picture ... salvation is the reality.
We are going to talk about Melchizedek.
This chapter is the central chapter of the book. It is the main reason for the writing of this book.
The approach of the book of Hebrews, as it addresses the problem of Christians sliding away from Jesus back to Judaism, is quite interesting.
The writer,in the first part of the book has said, Jesus is better than everything. This is opposite to what we might do. We argue, not that differently from the way a child reasons.
We might start out with “Jesus is bigger and better than” ... and mention some specific thing. That might lead us to a bigger thing, and we say ... He's bigger and better than that. After a growing list which keeps mentioning even better things ... we eventually would say ... He's bigger and better than everything!
But we have seen here is ...
Jesus is better than angels, (who attended in the giving of the law)
better than Moses (who lead the people out of Egyptian slavery to the promise of a new land.
better than Joshua (the general who lead Israel into the promised land)
better than Aaron ( the first high priest)
And now we will see the apostle proving to the Hebrews and to us that Jesus is better than ... and actually replaces the entire priesthood.
The very core, the center of Judaism is the priesthood. The very closest a person could come to God, was to come to the priest. The priesthood was held in the highest regard.
We have read in a previous chapter that Jesus is a priest 'in the order of Melchizedek'. We are going to see a contrast with being a priest in the order of Aaron.
First of all let's 'meet the man' Melchizedek.
He is king of Salem. Salem means peace. Jesus is called 'the Prince of Peace. Salem is the forerunner of the city Jerusalem. This means city of peace.
He is a priest of the most high God.
Consider the following:
There is no Israel as of yet. This means when God called Abram to leave his father and family and move to 'the promised land' .... that He either was the only righteous one living at that time and God had to move fast. ..or ... God had others as well that He considered His children. God is going to make a nation of people out of Abram ... but God still had others that were not even related to Abram, and they were God's children too.
Melchizedek is one of those. He was a priest of the 'most high God'. The same God we serve. All of the priests of God of that day had the same handicap. They had no writings or scripture from which to learn about God. They were dependent on hearing from Him once in a while.
Melchizedek is also a king. But this term may be a bit deceiving. We think of a king being ruler of a huge kingdom. And there were kings like that. Babylon is a case in point. But there were also kings of tribes or clans of people. Abraham, in a sense would almost be called a king of his own clan. The difference being that Abram was a nomad and had no permanent place to rule over.
So the situation is ... there may have have been many kings in the area. And there may have been more 'priests of the most high God'.
But God picked this one to include in the book of Hebrews.
V2. His name seems to have a double translation – he was also called king of righteousness. The next part makes reference to an actual event that we will read about in Gen. 15:17-24.
Verses 18, 19 and 20 are about Melchizedek. There is one other mention of him:
Psalm 110:4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: "You are a priest for ever, in the order of Melchizedek."
To put this into perspective, Two thousand years before Hebrews was written, Abraham has an encounter with him. There is no indication of surprise with Abraham. He is not found to be wondering, “Who is this person?” To be fair there is also no indication that Abraham knew him to any degree, but I think it is implied.
Very simply, Abraham comes back from rescuing Lot from an enemy king. He is met by this priest 'of the Most High God' who blesses him with the words, "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.” Melchizedek offers him (blesses him with) bread and wine and pronounces a blessing on him.. The general rule that is mentioned in Hebrews is that 'the lesser is blessed by the greater'. (v7)
Abram gives Melchizedek a tithe of the spoils. This shows that Abram considered Melchizedek to 'be above him' ... in rank (if I may use that word).
Verse 3 says that Melchizedek had no earthly father or mother ... had no beginning and no end. It is from this verse that some have said ...
a) That Melchizedek was actually a previous appearance of Jesus.
b) An angel
I believe it was neither of the above.
I believe that he was a 'picture' of Christ. A type. A Shadow. Melchizedek happens to be an individual who fits the picture well, he rules from the right city and we have no earthly genealogy or record of his birth, death or parents. No recorded history at all. This makes him a perfect 'type'.
Besides that Heb 7:15 And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest, 16 who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life.
The writer now begins a comparison of the two orders of priesthood, showing the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek to be superior.
4,5. A 'tenth' or tithe was commanded by Moses law, to support the tribe of Levi .... the priests.
“even though they came from Abraham”. Note – Levi is a grandson of Abraham. What seems normal is that descendants pay the tithe 'upward'. In this case, it goes sideways ... to descendants of Levi's brothers, who might argue ... your just a brother to us ... why should we give you tithes?
Abraham, on the other hand ... paid tithes to a non-relative ... who is reckoned 'higher' in stature than Abraham. This is a little difficult for Jews to grasp. Paul goes one further and says, since Abraham paid tithes to a non-relative, so did all the Jews who were 'residing' in Abraham's DNA. V10
Verse 11 mentions 'perfection' and says if it could have been reached, there would be no further use for priests. We need to jump to v19 and notice 'the equation'.
The law makes nothing perfect.
But the bringing in of a better hope ... does. The priest after the order of Melchizedek is this better hope.
We will exam 'perfection' a bit more later.
Verse 12 uses the word 'changed' in most of our translations. The context actually means Exchanged. This is why Stephen got attacked and killed early in the book of Acts, because he told the Jews that the old covenant from Moses has been exchanged and replaced by Christ and the new covenant.
These 'former Jews', Christian Hebrews, were not convinced that the covenant was exchanged. They were more like the Jews mentioned in Acts 21.
Ac 21:20 When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: "You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law.
21 They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs.
James was slipping there. He was operating under the understanding that the Jewish system was changed to include Jesus as the Messiah. He was wrong. There was a total exchange.
V18 . The term 'annulling' agrees with what we have just been saying.
V19 The purpose of the priesthood is to provide a way to bring people 'as close to God as possible'.
We have come to recognize Christianity on at least three different levels.
To some of us Christianity means:
- Salvation from sin and happiness in our lives.
- A relationship with Jesus in which we get to know Him in a deeper way.
- Drawing close to God.
God wants closeness.
Watch for the phrase – 'Draw near to God', as we continue through the book of Hebrews.
Two other passages that underscore this phrase:
Eph 3:19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
1Jo 1:5 ¶ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
20 – 28
Jesus was 'installed' as high priest forever ... with an oath. What is the significance of this? The understanding is that anything said without an oath was subject to change. The normal priests were not sworn in by an oath. Therefore the whole system could be changed.
Jesus lives ... to make intercession for us ... until the end of time? Throughout all eternity?
After the millennial reign is over and we are with Jesus forever in heaven ... there will be no need for a mediator ministry.
1Co 15:24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.
25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.
Heb 8:1 ¶ Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens