Clough Hebrews Lesson 36

Superiority of Melchizedek’s Priesthood – 7:1-10

Beginning in Hebrews 7 we start a new part of this large section; you recall the last worksheet that we had, which was the mimeograph sheet handed out a month or so ago, we said that the large section goes from Hebrews 3:1 to Hebrews 7:28, this section is concerned with Jesus Christ as the ideal priest who is faithful, who is sympathetic and who is eternal. Those three attributes of His priesthood, not of His person, of His priesthood. These attributes have been discussed in a certain section, the attribute of faithfulness, you recall, Hebrews 3:1-6, it was then separated by a warning passage, 3:7-4:13, that was the second warning passage of the epistle which was to the effect that every Christians has the goal of ultimate sanctification, which is called and identified by the word “rest,” and that Christians who fail to keep that goal in front of their face are going to fall.

And then Hebrews 4:14 through 5:10, the second attribute of Christ’s priesthood, the fact that He is a sympathetic high priest and this was tied in to the fact that Jesus Christ is pure humanity and because Jesus Christ is pure humanity it means that Jesus Christ had to be sanctified; recall again that the word “sanctify” does not primarily mean get rid of sin because it is used of Jesus Christ in this epistle, Christ was sinless, therefore sanctification can’t refer primarily to getting rid of sin. Sanctification refers to something else; what is the something else? The first and great commandment, be loyal to God and secondarily get rid of sin, but getting rid of sin would accomplish nothing. A person could get rid of sin and have utterly zero sanctification. Adam had to be sanctified before the fall, Christ had to be sanctified, though sinless. Therefore Christ can be a sympathetic priest because He too, like us, shares in the process of sanctification.

Then we had the third warning passage of the epistle, Hebrews 5:11-6:20 and that was the famous warning passage everyone thinks of when they think of the epistle to the Hebrews and that was the third warning, namely that every believer should go on to maturity; failure to go on to maturity puts you in a place where you are mirroring, though you are not identical to, but you’re mirroring the people who in the first century knew of the gospel of Christ and when they had had the Holy Spirit teach them that gospel, turn their backs and commit the sin of death.

Now the last chapter in that overall section, Hebrews 7 in its entirety is devoted to the third attribute of Christ’s priesthood, that Christ is an everlasting ideal priest. Now you’ll notice, obviously, this epistle focuses in on Christ’s priesthood and the fact that it does means that Christ’s priesthood has a lot to do with our life now. You see, the point is that Jesus Christ makes effective by His priesthood God’s plan for our life. Here’s your position, if you are a Christian tonight and you have accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, it means that God has in position and in law done certain things for you. He has promised you absolute righteousness for one thing. He has confirmed that by the decree of justification for another thing. But though that is positional, everything in your position relates to what ultimately will be your experience. It’s no good to say something is your position but yet you don’t enjoy it by way of experience. So during this phase of our plan of salvation, during this part of our life, then we are progressively enjoying more of that position. Now what is actualizing the position isn’t just our efforts. What is actualizing that position in our lives is partly the intercessory work of Christ as our priest. So always be aware of Christ’s priesthood, particularly as we conclude this section the next few times together, in Hebrews 7, remember the emphasis will conclude with Christ’s person as a priest.

The next section is going to go on to describe some details of that priesthood and this is why the epistle of the Hebrews historically was used by John Calvin against the Catholics in Poland; it was a famous commentary by Calvin in which he assaulted the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Poland. They had infiltrated Poland and had pretty well taken it over and John Calvin wrote a very famous commentary and the commentary was that Jesus Christ in this epistle totally undermines the Romanist system and that the whole concept of the mass and the sacrifice is denied by this epistle. So historically this epistle has caused a lot of controversy. Today we hardly know what the issues are and so therefore you read these words and they don’t seem that much to you.

In Hebrews 7, then, the issue is Christ’s priesthood. You recall the last verse of the previous chapter, Hebrews 6:20, “Whiter the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” He, the author, after finishing with the warning passage that began in Hebrews 5:11, he ended that warning passage with 6:20 in which he returned to the subject of 5:10. If you’ll just look back at Hebrews 5:10 for a moment you’ll see that before He got onto this extended parenthesis he was discussing the Melchizedekian priesthood. He had just started discussing that when he stopped and he stopped for a considerable time because it became obvious that he had lost his audience. It was obvious to him that as he spoke, remember this was probably delivered in a synagogue first, it was obvious that as he spoke it was way over the heads of the people, but this man did not do what they often tell you to do in teaching, he didn’t say okay, this is over the heads of your students so therefore what you ought to do is simplify the lesson down to their level.

Instead of simplifying the lesson down to their level he took all the way from 5:11 on through the end of chapter 6 to chew the students out and then proceed from 7:1 to go at it again, refusing to lower the standards of the content; bring the students up to the standard but never lower your standard to the students. The students will catch up if they’re willing. If people are discouraged, this also would argue, just stick with it and eventually it’ll all click. You can’t get it overnight so don’t try. But Hebrews 7:1 begins one of those detailed exegesis and this is what the author would call the meat of the word. Up to now we’ve been playing with the milk so beginning with 7:1 comes the meat. This is why we wouldn’t attempt to teach Hebrews to the 11:00 o’clock group.

Hebrews 7:1-18 can be subdivided and for those of you taking notes or if you like to indicate this in the margin of your Bible so that when you read chapter 7 again you’ll read it with understanding, the first 3 verses form an introduction to his argument. He’s going to define the rules of the ballgame in the first three verses, and then beginning in verse 4 he’s going on and describe the content, the major premises of his argument. But before he gets into the major premises of his argument the first three verses define the rules by which he will proceed. And it’s in these first three verses that you will face a very fascinating account of how the first century people used the Old Testament. We have seen this man use the Old Testament before, by now most of you should have appreciated the depth of study that this man had of the Old Testament. By now you will understand that when he teaches out of the Old Testament he doesn’t consider this just an option, he considers this necessary for Christian maturity and he also has a very profound depth of understanding of the Old Testament.

Now in these first three verses he’s going to discuss something called hermeneutics; he’s even going to use this word, this word is in the original language. Those of you who have the Greek text will notice the word in verse 2; hermeneutics, a good word to add to your vocabulary, hermeneutics is the science of the interpretation of literature. And it’s a science, just like any other science there are rules to it and this is why some clod on the street who walks up to you and says, well that’s just your interpretation, is usually some sort of an ignoramus who has never heard of the word hermeneutics. The Bible is to be interpreted in the times in which it was written and you don’t use some special hermeneutics with the Bible than you would any other piece of literature. If I write a letter to you I don’t expect you to show it to members of your family and have members of your family come up with five different interpretations of the letter. I wouldn’t have written you the letter if I didn’t intend that the letter be understood. Now so many people today in our country think that the Bible was deliberately written to cause confusion, that God just worked it up in as most difficult fashion as possible so there’d be as many different interpretations as possible.

Now that obviously isn’t the case; God doesn’t want to confuse people, He wants to make it clear. The problem is that we’re sinners; we could get the truth if the fall had not occurred. The reason there are diverse opinions and interpretations of the Bible is basically it’s because of sin. It’s basically we simply don’t want to look at it, and this is why, since there are no living prophets today, no pastor teacher is infallible; the only infallible authority there is today is the book that you hold in your lap. That’s the only infallible authority. Pastor teachers can only justify their interpretation on the basis of hermeneutics. Since this is a Wednesday night class and not an 11:00 o’clock service we have tried to keep this class open so you can ask questions when you want to and we have tried to show you some of the methodology of interpretation because you people, more than the others, should know why we say certain things; not just what we say but why we say it.

Now we’re going to begin in verse 1 and the first thing we notice, let’s read verses 1-3. “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; [2] 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; [3] Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abides a priest continually.”

Now there’s a lot in there but the thing that I want you to notice is that he quotes a passage of Scripture in verse 1. This entire chapter 7 is written from the grand total of five verses in the Old Testament. These 28 verses that you’re reading are the result of this one man’s interpretation and meditation on only five verses out of the Old Testament. He is going to build a vast super structure of the doctrine of Christology; Christology is the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of His person and the doctrine of His work. This man will build up an entire doctrine in the area of Christology grounded solely on five verses of the Bible that most people don’t even know.

So therefore since all these verses figure in so tightly into his argument, let’s look at them. Turn first to Genesis 14:17, I’ll show you four verses here. This is the incident, going back in history, of about 2000 BC. Here’s Galilee, here’s the Dead Sea, it happened only centuries after the flood which means therefore man is spreading across the face of the earth. As we learned if the family framework literature, out from Ararat and the cradle of civilization came waves of people, every forty or fifty years a new wave of people would spread out from Mesopotamia. As these people would become sophisticated in technology and so on, and superior to the people in the boundaries they’d move out; as the population would multiply and concentrate in this area they’d move out; as the climate slowly improved after the flood and the ice age moderated they’d move out. So you have in world history a series of waves of people out from the cradle civilization. In one of those early waves, and along with it, was a man by the name of Abraham who came up through Haran and then came back down into this land.

Remember Lot, he gave Lot the choice of which piece of cake he’d take and Lot took the biggest, and that’s the area of Lot’s estate, down in the south of the Dead Sea, except in that way the Dead Sea did not look… here’s the way the Dead Sea looks today and the Dead Sea in olden times looked like that. And obviously after a while God had had it with Sodom and Gomorrah and He opened up… there’s a geological fissure that runs north/south through this area and this whole thing opened up in a tremendous explosion and water spilled down here and in Josephus time, the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, you could take a boat out across the southern end of the Dead Sea and look down and see Sodom and Gomorrah. So the Sodom and Gomorrah is underneath the south end of the Dead Sea, probably coated under tons of silt but it would be worth an expedition today to fund.

Now in this same area you have a king, a King of Salem. Salem is another word for Jerusalem; Jerusalem is simply “Jeru-salem,” or the city of peace. And here’s the city where this king was. Abraham had his area over here near Hebron, and Lot is over here, his cousin. Lot is taken by one of these waves, these waves of people come in from the northeast, much like the Huns and so on went across Europe and destroyed the Roman Empire and so forth, you have these waves of people coming down here, and one of these waves they invade the whole area, not only south of the Dead Sea but east of the Dead Sea and to the north of the Dead Sea. They took massive numbers of captives and began to march them back toward the Mesopotamian plain. They go to a place called Damascus and camped. While at Damascus Abraham and his forces chased up and destroyed them; regrouped. Abraham was not a pacifist, when somebody stole his property or kidnapped his people he killed to get them back. And when Abraham brought them back, Abraham is coming back now to a place called Salem and Salem is the place from which this king comes and meets him on this road.

Now let’s read the text in Genesis 14:7, “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer, and of the kings that were with him, at the valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale.” Now you see there’s a whole coalition here of kings, the king of Sodom is included. Verse 18, “And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God.” Now his name, Melchizedek, can be broken down; zedek is the Hebrew word for righteousness, and melek is the word for king, king of righteousness. So, “Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the most high God.” The title, “most high God” was the way God was known in the ancient world, El Elyon, El occurs in the Ugaratic text and other passages of non-Scripture. [19] And he blessed him, and said,” who is blessing who in verse 19? Melchizedek blesses Abraham. “And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: [20] And blessed be the most high God, who has delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all,” the “he” in verse 20 is Abraham. Abraham turns and he gives Melchizedek tithes of all.”

Actually only verse 18-20, if you want to include the background of 17 fine, then 17, 18, 19 and 20 are four verses. Now the author of Hebrews just is concerned with those four verses plus one and the fifth verse isn’t found here. This is talking about a 2000 BC event, Genesis was apparently compiled under Moses around 1400 BC. So there’s four verses here; now the fifth verse is from the Psalms, Psalm 110:4; Psalm 110 is a unique Psalm. Those of you who were here when we went through the Psalm series, you recall we classified the various Psalms. Psalm 110 is a Psalm that defies classification. It doesn’t fit any of the classifications I gave you then and scholars who have devoted many, many hours and labors to this problem have had to concur that Psalm 110 categorically is kind of a one large hapax, it just doesn’t occur in any other place, this kind of psalm.

Psalm 110, “A Psalm of David.” It is quoted by the Lord Jesus Christ in His ministry which means that by the time of Jesus Psalm 110 was clearly considered to be Messianic. Remember Jesus, in commenting on the first one, “The LORD said unto My Lord, Sit thou at My right hand, Until I make thine enemies Thy footstool.” One day when Jesus was teaching He said to the people, as He flung out the challenge, if David is Messiah then who is he talking about in Psalm 110 when he turns and he says “my Lord.” Who was David talking about, it must be someone superior to David. Yet also in the context of Psalm 110 the person who is superior to David yet also has humanity. So you see Jesus Psalm 110 to show very clearly that the Old Testament was looking forward to a greater David, a greater son of God, Messiah. That goes on and in Psalm 110:4 this king, this Messiah has a priesthood; “The LORD has sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Now you’ll notice that phrase, that clause in verse 4 is what is going to be added to his repertoire and so he has Psalm 110:4 and so we have five verses out of the Old Testament.

So Hebrews 7:1, “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God,” is a verbatim quote of Genesis 14; do you see that? So he’s going to comment on these five verses, phrase by phrase. Now why do I pause here? Because there’s a great debate in ministerial circles today and in seminary circles on what should be said and how it should be said from the pulpit. We have a group of human viewpoint that are teaching public speaking and so on. Now Hebrews gives you the model for how it was done; there’s no debate on what is to be said from the pulpit, the model is already here in the Bible. Hebrews is an address given in a synagogue and it shows you the method that was used by this author. He is going to quote his text, he is going to work with the text. Then he is going to exegete that text word by word, phrase by phase, clause by clause and verse by verse. That is the methodology of the pulpit; all other methodologies are obviously unscriptural; that doesn’t mean that a minister can’t engage in this, fine, but the main emphasis should always be the way the New Testament was, verse by verse teaching of the Word of God.

So this is what he’s going to do; after quoting verse one and he defines what the text basically is, readers, by the way, know major events of Scripture so they can fit it in their framework real quick and he discusses this business of meeting Abraham while he was returning “from the slaughter of the kings,” he blessed him. Now blessing is something that we throw around a lot but I wonder how many people really know what blessing is. Blessing, we say blessing before we eat the meal or something like this, or if we bless somebody, so forth. What does “blessing” really mean? B. F. Westcott, who was a 19^th century scholar who worked on the Greek text, Westcott and Hort is a famous Greek text, B. F. Westcott in 1892 published a study on the concept of blessing in the Bible and he concluded in a general way and then in a specific way. Obviously generally was no news, blessing is an expression of good will toward some person; but in the Bible blessing is more powerful than just simply good will. Blessing is an expression of the good will of God’s consul towards someone. Now why is that important? Because the person who does the blessing is at that moment revealing new truth.

Do you remember so often in the Bible when a man was about to die, he’d call all his sons to his death bed and he’d bless them. Remember how Noah blessed his sons, how Abraham blessed Isaac, Isaac blesses Jacob, Jacob blesses his sons, those blessings, you recall, every time contain prophecies because you remember when Noah blessed Ham and blessed Japheth, and blessed Shem, he was really revealing the whole course of history. Well, these old patriarchs, before the canon of Scripture was closed, when they called the son of a Messianic seed into their death room, they would, and we don’t know how this was done, but in some way the Holy Spirit showed to those patriarchs God’s will that would propagate through each one of his sons. If you want a good example, the last two chapters of Genesis give you the blessing Jacob made upon his sons, the tribes of Israel, and spelled out in every one of these blessings is the history of the tribe. Now how did Jacob know that? You can’t argue that was written after the fact because no matter how late you’re going to date Genesis, it was certainly dated before the Messianic seed arrived on the scene and yet you have in the prophecy there Jacob saying it’s Judah that’s going to be the scepter. Judah is the one from whom Messiah will come.

So the patriarchs, when they blessed, they expressed good will, yes, but that isn’t powerful enough to demonstrate what Biblical blessing is really all about. To make it powerful and accurate you have to be precise, it means that his revelation of the good will of God for someone. You have Baalim, he was the famous man who rode the ass and the ass talked back to him, Baalim was a false teacher in Scripture. He’s a classic example of revelation because Baalim wanted to curse Israel, and he would happen? God the Holy Spirit would put inerrant words in his mouth. And then when he wouldn’t prophesy God put inerrant words in the mouth of his ass and the ass prophesied. So it shows you how God the Holy Spirit, when He wants to reveal the will of God, that Word is revealed, if He has to use an ass to do it. Okay… you drew that conclusion, I didn’t.

All right, so Biblical blessing can’t be done today in the original intent of the word. Why can’t it be done today? There’s no gift of prophecy functioning today because the canon is closed, the c-a-n-o-n, not c-a-n-n-o-n, lots of cannons are still open. The canon of Scripture is closed; it was closed with the writing of the book of Revelation, therefore there is no such thing as prophecy occurring today and there won’t be any prophet until a prophet comes upon the scene, prophesied in the book of Revelation. So while we are in an era of a closed canon we really don’t bless anything like they blessed in this time. So when we use the word “blessing” let’s just be careful, we mean we express our good will towards someone, we may share with them the good news of the gospel and someone says well, I got a blessing from it, that’s fine but just remember back in your head some place that you’re only using an application of the thing, you’re not using the full force of the word “bless.”

All right, so Melchizedek, when he blessed Abraham, he was confirming the Abrahamic Covenant to Abraham. See, Abraham had been promised a bunch of things; well, Melchizedek blessed him, whether he put his hand on his head, we don’t know but Melchizedek brought out the wine and then he gave him a priestly blessing, and the blessing was a Gentile confirmation that the keys, so to speak, had been turned over to Abraham and his seed. Those of you have gone through the morning series, what is it that you associate with the call of Abraham? [someone answers] All right, faith, what else? [others] Election and justification. All right, election, the calling out of a specific person from a group of people is illustrated by Abraham. Now you’ll recall back a few Sundays ago we went through this, I pointed out 2000 BC is a critical date in history because in 2000 BC when God called Abraham out, the implication is that all the religions of the world are declared null and void of all authority. Beginning in 2000 BC the only religion that is on speaking terms with God is Abraham’s religion, period! And this means the beginning of missionary effort.

The whole concept of missions is tied up and implicit with the call of Abraham. See, before Abraham there’s no need for missionaries, because you had people like Melchizedek and somebody else and somebody else in each culture, now God’s let the cultures go down the drain; all cultures become damned cultures at this point, that’s Deuteronomy 4:19, all cultures are turned over to absolute heathenism and collapse. This is why the missionary today can go into another culture and declare the Word of God authoritative, as the authoritative norm for that culture. True, he shouldn’t import a lot of his Americanism, he’s not trying to Americanize the culture but in spite of all that, and all the waving of hands and all the sob sisters in the anthropology department that fuss about missionaries, the fact still remains that the missionary must subject the culture to which he is sent to the norms of the Word of God, period, no compromise. Why? Call of Abraham, 2000 BC. Now, after 2000 BC when this happened and you have Melchizedek blessing Abraham, he’s confirming, right here this is a confirmation now that something is different, something has changed.

Hebrews 7:2, “To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all;” remember that was the last part of that Genesis quote we just read, now you’ll see a semicolon, if you have a King James, because the author is now going to start his interpretation. See up until that semicolon he just quoted his verse, now begins his method of teaching verse by verse, and you remember this, next time somebody has some smart words to say you about well, we don’t do verse by verse in our little group, and you say well we, like the author of Hebrews, do it verse by verse. Usually such a person wouldn’t know that Hebrews is in the Bible. But let’s look at “being by interpretation.” See, here we’ve got the verse by verse approach.

Those of you with the Greek text, look at the word “interpretation,” and what do you see? Hermeneutics, do you see the word there, it begins with a rough breathing, then e, there’s your h-e, “being by interpretation King of righteousness,” now you see what he does. Remember what I did back over in Genesis 14, I told you what Melchizedek was when I said what? King of righteousness. All right, what does he do? “King of righteousness, and after that” now “after that” means in the sentence, remember it said “Melchizedek, king of Salem,” so what the author is doing here is he’s going through verse by verse, word by word, he says the first term is Melchizedek, and it says Melchizedek means king of righteousness, and after that, that is in the sentence, it says “king of Salem,” and then he says isn’t that interesting because Salem, S, with a consonant, s-l-m, and remember in Semitic languages it’s not so much the vowels it’s the consonants that count, the Hebrew word for peace is shalom, s-l-m, and so he’s saying that here is the King of righteousness and peace, that’s always a sign of God’s program that righteousness and peace go together, eventually.

Now we come to Hebrews 7:3 and in verse 3 is where we really hit a most interesting point of Bible interpretation. We have a problem in verse 3; what’s the problem, can anybody guess. Immediately we’ve got an issue that we’ve got to settle in this verse. [someone answers] Okay, you’ve got an attribute of God that seems to be equated of a man don’t you? You’ve got the attribute of eternality here, and in verse 3 he says “without father, without mother,” what are you going to do with it. Can anybody now define or make up the question that we have to answer before we can finish verse 3 satisfactorily. Let’s try to tighten the thought up into a question. Now you want to do this when you’re studying Scripture. Don’t just come to a text and trust that the Holy Spirit is going to write it in a neon light in your closet; don’t do that. Now really, some people are just foolish about it and it’s a tragedy. When you come to a difficult text like this just hit it hard and then back off, if it’s too hard for you right now just go on and come back to it, but if you’re right in the problem, the key thing you want to do is ask the right question. You’ve got 90% of the problem licked if you can set up the question.

Now can someone set the interpretation question. [someone answers] All right, what are the alternates that he could be talking about in verse 3? [more said] Well no, it’s obvious he’s talking about Melchizedek in verse 3, see because he just got through explaining Melchizedek in verse 2, Melchizedek this, Melchizedek that, dot, dot, dot, dot, so it’s not Abraham in verse 3, it’s clearly Melchizedek. [someone else] Okay. Who is this Melchizedek? Is he what or what? That’s the question? [someone answers] Yeah, is he man of God, and this is the question we’ve got to answer and to answer this we’re going to come to a very interesting understanding of the Old Testament. That’s what I wanted to stop and go through round Robin Hood’s barn here at first to get you to see the question because when we go to answer it we’re going to discover something interesting.

Who is Melchizedek? Man or God? Now that’s a question that we’ve got to answer or we don’t know what’s going on in verse 3. All right, if that’s the question, what do we need to answer that question? What are some things we’re going to look for in verse 3. All right, the first thing you’ve got to is understand the historical background. He’s not talking about any Melchizedek, he’s talking about a specific Melchizedek that was the king of a city in 2000 BC. Now if he was God, let’s try to take a hypothesis now, let’s suppose, let’s the two ideas here, God or man; if he was God, God did show up in the Old Testament; any of you know the words for when God shows up? What does He show up as, usually? Angel of the Lord, okay, His title is usually “angel of the Lord,” or “angel of Jehovah,” that’s the way He goes under, sometimes “captain of the army of the Lord’s host” and so on. And what is that called; do you know what that’s called, that appearance? A theophany. So what we have to ask, is this a theophany? Is Melchizedek really the angel of the Lord appearing here, or is he a man that in some peculiar way functions as a type of Christ?

Now can any of you see in verse 3 a clue that it can’t be a theophany. If you make Melchizedek a theophany you’ve got a problem. Do you see that last part of verse 3, “who is made like the son of God,” now if he were an angel of the Lord he would be the Son of God, he wouldn’t be made like the Son of God. So that pretty well knocks out the theophany idea. Secondly, there’s another reason it knocks out the theophany. The first reason is verse 3, the second reason why we knock the theophany idea out is because everywhere else a theophany occurs in the historic prose narrative of the Bible it’s very obvious it’s the angel of the Lord. Somebody says, after they see the angel of the Lord they either fall to the ground, they either make up a saying, this is the place where I saw God, Peniel, the face of God, you see all those places that were named. See, you don’t have that reaction here, so those two reasons would tend to knock the idea of a theophany.

On the other hand, we’ve got another problem; if we make it man what are you going to do with this phrase, “without father, without mother, and without genealogy,” again, those of you with the Greek text just look at the word for “descent” and you’ll see it’s the word for genealogy. See it says “neither beginning of days, nor end of life.” A peculiar man if he’s this way. “Now consider how great this man was” and so on and so and so. What are we going to do with this? Let’s turn back to Psalm 110: 4 and see if we can pick up something we missed the last time we looked at it. [someone asks a question] A theophany is knocked out, number one because of verse 3, number two because everywhere you have a theophany in the prose of Genesis, elsewhere it’s always clearly marked and it’s not at all clearly marked in Genesis 15.

Now if you’ll look back at Psalm 110, let me try to draw a picture of what’s happening here and then I’ll explain it. The author of Hebrews is looking at Genesis 14 through the eyes of Psalm 110. He is taking what he sees in Genesis 14 but he’s taking it as Psalm 110 comments on it, so what we have is a comment on a comment of Genesis. Now let’s look at this comment in Psalm 110:4, “The LORD has sworn, and will not repent, You are a priest,” what? “forever after the order of Melchizedek,” so the author of Psalm 110 clearly attached the idea of foreverness. Our author didn’t originate that idea, that idea, that came from Psalm 110:4. So he didn’t pick that up, that’s not an original generation of this author. Of course the Holy Spirit could be working in all of this for those of you who are a little disturbed because I’m taking it apart piece by piece, I’m not undermining the Holy Spirit’s inerrancy when I’m doing this, I’m just trying to show you the method the Holy Spirit used. The Holy Spirit, by the time He worked with David, see David was the author of this Psalm, Psalm 110, when He worked in David’s life to produce Psalm 110 he had already worked with David to meditate, so in Genesis 14 that David saw something in Genesis 14, the same thing that would quote a foreverness about Melchizedek. Now if you go back to Genesis 14 you won’t find anything, the word “forever” is not there, nothing is there.

But what is it that, in turning back to Hebrews, that this author makes a point of? Let’s see if some of you can guess what is it that David saw about Genesis 14 later picked up by this author that he saw? In verse 3 he is said to be “without father, without mother, without descent, without beginning of days nor end of life,” now Melchizedek was a Gentile. Contrast him, just for a moment to take an example of Aaron in the Bible in the Old Testament. What is true about the narrative of Aaron that is not true about the narrative of Melchizedek? [someone answers] Exactly, Aaron’s entire genealogy is given, who he’s the son of. Remember the Jew, you don’t have last names and first names, you only have one name, and then you have so and so, son of so and so, son of so and so, son of so and so, son of so and so, son of so and so. This is why David would have been called, not David somebody but he was David ben Jesse, David, ben-the son, of Jesse, and that’s how a Jew would have identified him. He identifies himself by the genealogical stream, physical birth, physical lineage is critical, always in the Bible.

But in Genesis 14 you have this character that is never referred to elsewhere, has no genealogy, suddenly he shows up on the scene and suddenly he disappears from the scene. Now that’s what the author it talking about here in verse 3. “Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life,” he doesn’t mean that Melchizedek literally didn’t have a father or literally didn’t have a mother or literally was forever, what he’s talking about is that as Psalm 110 pointed out, this man has a peculiar ungrounded priesthood. See, the Jews always grounded their priesthood on genealogy, Aaron’s priesthood was a function of his genealogy. Why? Because of the tribe of Levi; Levi was the priestly tribe. So always your priesthood was linked tightly to your birth, your family, your tribe. This man comes with a tribe-less, familyless priesthood, thus no genealogy, no father, no mother is given in the account.

Now why is this important for us to know? Because in verse 3 you have a powerful testimony of why you must read your Bible and read your Bible and read your Bible and read your Bible over and over and over and over again so that you learn to look at history through the eyes of the spirit who wrote it. Now look here’s reality out here, let’s pretend you’re here, you’re the student, and here’s the Holy Spirit teaching you, and out here we have people in the real world; one of these people is Melchizedek, the Holy Spirit is teaching you as a believer, so you’re looking out at Melchizedek. Now as you look out in the physical world there’s an infinite array of data that you can perceive. There’s an infinite number of facts about this room that you can perceive, there’s the chemistry of the pain of the building, there’s all sorts of details that you could get involved with. In other words, you could spend your life studying the forces of the air moving through this room. There’s an infinite array of data that confronts you no matter where you are and no matter what you’re looking at. Your life and my life basically are processes of exclusion of data; we learn to tune out, not tune in.

We couldn’t live if we absorbed all the data, we’d be swamped with too much data, so in your life you have learned and I have learned to select out only the data that’s applicable to you. A businessman goes in, he looks at the financial sheet, he doesn’t look at every little single stock that’s located there, but as he looks through he might have invested in one or two corporations, so he selects out from the stock market report those that are pertinent to him. Now that doesn’t mean, there are thousands of other reports there on the financial sheet. That’s not the point, he’s only interested in one, so he uses a method of selection. For those of you interested in apologetics, here’s where your presuppositions are operating. The presuppositions are operating as filtering devices, they filter out and they value reality, what is important to you among the infinite array of data.

Now what he’s trying to point out to us is that the Holy Spirit does that to you and here’s how the Holy Spirit teaches you. You’re looking out here at all these things, for example, Melchizedek, you could deal with his father, you could deal with his mother, you could deal with his tribe, you could deal with how he died, you could deal with the bread and the wine issue and you could deal with his relationship to Abraham. The Holy Spirit, when He recorded the whole Melchizedekian incident in Genesis 14, the Holy Spirit could have recorded all these things. But the Holy Spirit didn’t see fit to do that; He cancelled out this, He cancelled out this, He dropped this, He dropped that, He included this but didn’t make any comment, and He included this. Now of all the things the Holy Spirit could have said, and believe me, scholars would love to have Him say more because we could pin the dating and correlation and it would be a lot easier buy the Holy Spirit didn’t see fit to record that; He only saw fit to record this one thing.

So the method of interpretation this man is using is a strange one you haven’t met before. Up to now it’s always been what the Holy Spirit has said; now this man adds a second tool of Bible interpretation to your tool kit. He is saying it’s important what the Holy Spirit doesn’t say; watch that. And thus we have one of those rare instances, and you’ll very rarely come across this in your life, argument from silence that is valid. Now usually in logic it’s considered a weak argument, an argument from silence. But at this point this author is definitely employing the argument of silence and he is saying that of the infinite array of things the Holy Spirit could have said about Melchizedek, why did He only pick out this. And he considers it so significant that he makes the grand point of verse 3, without this, without this, without this, the Holy Spirit only intends us to know one thing about Melchizedek, all the other things are incidental. Why? Because out from Melchizedek will come a type of Christ and that’s why the Holy Spirit were saying, as though He were a teacher, remember the New Testament word for Holy Spirit is paraclete, the one who is along side, the counselor, the helper, and it’s like He has his arm around you and He’s saying look there, look there, don’t worry about that, don’t worry about that, look over there and see that. And that’s what the Holy Spirit is doing in Psalm 110, and this author is simply amplify the point of Psalm 110.

“Without father,” then, “having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but being made like unto the Son of God;” “being made,” what voice, active or passive on that verb? [someone answers passive] All right, active would be making, making him, being made is passive and it means the subject receives the action. Who receives the action? Melchizedek receives the action, Melchizedek is “being made,” present tense, “like unto the Son of God,” in other words the Holy Spirit in writing Psalm 110 through David, and through this author, the author of Hebrews, is turning Melchizedek into a type of the Son of God. This is an operation of the Holy Spirit in selecting historical material. Think of what, for example, to cite another illustration, wouldn’t it have been beautiful if the Holy Spirit wrote 55 chapters to cover the period from Adam to Noah. Think of all the things that must have gone on between Adam and Noah; the Holy Spirit could have written a whole book, like the book of revelation, just of the first six days of creation that would so help us, apologetically. Maybe it wouldn’t though, because if it did He would probably have done it.

But the Holy Spirit saw fit only to tie thousands of years of history and collapse them into ten measly chapters of Scripture. And then starting with Abraham explode the concentration of data enormously until you have in the four Gospels you have each day and hour of the life of Jesus Christ explored. Why? Because as the progress of revelation in history continues and peaks with the person of Christ the object of revelation becomes so critical that the Holy Spirit wants to get all the data He can on the person of Christ, compared to the incidentals which He would consider creation and so on. Now it’s not that the Holy Spirit is undermining creation at this point, He wants us to believe it but the details of it He doesn’t obviously consider as important as the person of Jesus Christ. And this tells us, then, about emphasis.

So let’s look at Hebrews 7:4 because now we’ve laid down the ground rules and we’ll finish the next section. The argument here is pretty simple, we’ll go through verses 4-10, the argument is this, Melchizedek’s priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood of the old covenant; that’s a statement of the argument. Melchizedek’s priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood, but he’s already told us how he’s going to argue, he’s laid out the ground rules in the first three verses, that’s the name of the ball game. He’s given us the rule book, he says this is my method of interpretation, now I’m going to teach you something.

So he begins at verse 4, “Now consider” the Greek has several words for “behold,” this is theoreo, this is the word that is used when John, remember the scene when Christ is resurrected, John and Peter come waltzing up to the tomb and John stops because John sees something, and Peter just zoom, goes right on in, but John doesn’t have to go in because John paused at the opening of the grave and he looks in and he sees something, and in the Greek isn’t theoreo, he “beholds” something, something just whips John and it just roots him right there, he doesn’t move, Peter is behind him and he doesn’t see what John has seen so he just darts right on in. But what John saw was Christ’s grave clothes arranged in a very peculiar way, the top had been taken off and left in one place and the rest of the linen was over here, which showed that there was a resurrection, Christ didn’t just disappear, poof and become a spirit, because if He had, who took the grave clothes apart. Christ obviously in some way got up and pierced and went through the grave clothes but afterwards He took the hat off and laid it down and walked out of the tomb. And that’s what John saw; now all of that took maybe 3 or 4 seconds for John to put together in his mind, so the word to mean to look at and just be rooted and gaze and think on something is this word theoreo, so this is what the man is saying to us in verse 4. He says, now he says pay attention, just be like John at the grave of Christ and you pay attention to what’s coming.

“Now consider how great this man was,” and he’s talking about Melchizedek and in particular if you know the rules of the ballgame, how is he going to show it. Let’s paraphrase those words, “Now consider how great the Scriptures make this man,” that’s what we really want, if we want to fill out his whole meaning. “Consider how great the Scriptures make Melchizedek, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.” The word “even the patriarch” is put in there for emphasis, because the Jew would go back to the root of his people, which is Abraham, who was Abraham, and this author if a very good logician and he starts with the root of the argument. If he can show Melchizedek greater than Abraham, then he can show Melchizedek is greater than Abraham’s seed, it’s a simple argument, and that’s all this argument is devoted to do; he’s going to go all the way and to prove Melchizedek is better than Abraham.

Hebrews 7:5, “And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood,” now those would be the priesthood under the old covenant, remember, 2000 BC, here’s your timeline, Abraham, 1400, there’s Moses and the Law and the Levitical priesthood. The Levitical priesthood starts 600 years after Abraham. “Truly they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the high priest have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham, [6] But he whose descent is not counted” now remember the interpretation we just struggled over in verse 3, all right, here’s your confirmation of that interpretation. In verse 6 it doesn’t say he who has no descent, it simply “he whose descent is not counted,” so that shows you he’s not talking about a theophany, the eternal God, He’s just simply talking about Melchizedek who did have a descent but the Holy Spirit did not see fit to record it. “…he whose descent is not counted, from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises.”

So verse 6 shows Melchizedek is greater than Abraham, because one, he received tithes, Abraham paid him 10%, the 10% tax went from Abraham to Melchizedek. The 10% is a sacred tax, it means that God is involved here and Melchizedek is God’s representative. The second proof that Melchizedek is greater than Abraham is in the last part of this verse, “and he blessed him that had the promises.” So the blessing goes this way, and so he says notice those two things. That proves Melchizedek greater. Verse 7, “And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.” Now verse 7 is simply the custom of the day that anyone would have understood. That an inferior doesn’t bless a superior, not the way we were talking about before. The superior person always blesses the inferior person. Verse 7 is the same kind of argument, if you turn back to Hebrews 6:16, remember the argument over there, “Men truly swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.” The author of Hebrews believes that the creation, being made by God, has principles in it that can be understood in ordinary, every day terms. When God goes to reveal it in every day understandable terms. And he says see, God’s revelation is no different from every day custom and verse 7 is the every day custom.

Hebrews 7:8, “And here men that die receive tithes; but there he received them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives.” In other words, the text doesn’t record his death. [9] “And as I may so say,” now verse 9 is a very personal note the author is putting in here and this is rare in this epistle, but that little phrase, “as I may so say,” we could kind of paraphrase it, “I might even say this,” because he knows what he’s going to say now most people aren’t going to buy; what he says is indeed a true Biblical fact, but very, very few people indeed are prepared to accept what follows, so this is why he prefaces it, “as I may so say,” in other words, if you buy it, if you’re deep enough grounded in the Scriptures and you believe it, fine, “if I may so say, Levi also, who receives tithes,” that refers to the Levitical priesthood, 1400 BC, ever since 1400 BC the Levitical priesthood received the 10% tax, “paid tithes in Abraham.” Abraham lived 2000 BC; Levi lived in about 1800 BC, he was a grandson, a great grandson of Abraham, and you have Abraham in here making this act with Melchizedek and he is saying Levi and the Levitical priesthood have paid their tithes.

Now how do you figure that one; they’ve paid their tithes 200 years before they existed. When great grandfather Abraham paid the tithes, Levi was paying it with Abraham. Now this introduces, and as he explains it in verse 10, “For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him.” This is a final truth and I want to conclude tonight by pointing to this last doctrine, the doctrine of imputation.

Don’t ask me to explain this doctrine fully, I can’t, never read anybody that studied the passage that can but in some way the human race is structured differently from angels in that we are racially united. Angels are not; when angels were created they were created all at once, there are no such things as mommy and daddy angels having baby angels. The second divine institution doesn’t apply, no sex with the angels. All right, if that’s the case and man is the one who has the sex and man is the one who starts off, really as one, Adam, and Eve came out of Adam, so there is no such thing as Eve genes and Adam genes, Eve’s genes are Adam’s genes, that’s what that story is trying to do, it’s trying stave off these idiots who take an allegorical view of Genesis 2 blow the whole thing; it’s got to be literal because it’s the only way you can have all the genes of the human race back to one person, Adam.

So Adam has genes, Eve has genes from Adam. And then you have the racial spanning out and everybody in the human race, though many different races now, all have the genes of one. Now this is why we are credited with being in Adam when he sinned, just the way Levi is credited with partaking of Abraham’s action. Now you may think this is unfair, this is obviously a legally strange term to most of you, but this is the Biblical testimony of the unity of the human race legally before God. Children partake of their parent’s actions; we partook of our parents, Adam and Eve, in their actions, in some way. Now before you get your liver in a quiver and say it’s unfair, let me just add this. If imputation wasn’t true you and I could not be saved. Imputation is a built-in fail safe system that God built into the human race knowing the human race would fail at the fall, and then we have imputation backwards; what Jesus Christ does when I’m born into Him I share. Now I couldn’t share Christ’s righteousness if the principle of imputation wasn’t valid. So to make the righteousness that Christ does acceptable to you tonight, God has to have built in some creation, this imputation device. If He had not built in the imputation device, you tonight would be faced with a massive problem of generating your own righteousness. And none of us could do it. So the only reason that we can somehow be born again and partake of Christ’s destiny is by the same principle that we share Adam’s destiny.

Now to show you very quickly, this is not isolated to Hebrews 7, turn to Romans 5:12, this is why babies, the moment they are born are considered violators of the Law of God. This may be hard news for some, oh, you mean those sweet little dears, they are sinners? Yes, and Paul’s argument is the proof is that they die. You see, if you don’t say… suppose we have someone here tonight say well, I don’t believe that, I don’t believe that babies the moment they are born are sinners, you’ve got a very, very bad problem. What do you do with the infants that die? Because you have got to say then that God unrighteously permits an innocent person to die. Is that the character of the God of the Bible? An innocent baby, that you claim is innocent, suffers deformity, suffers accidents, suffers death. You’ve got a big problem if you’re going to say that infants are innocent. There’s no such thing as an innocent infant, they are born with a sin nature. They show it at the earliest possible moment.

And Paul’s argument is precisely that in Romans 5:12-14, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world,” please notice verse 12 for those of you tending to allegorical interpretation to Genesis, “by one man sin,” Adam is just not the word for mankind, “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all men have sinned.” And his argument is verse 13, “For until the law sin was in the world; but it is not credited when there is no law, [14] Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses,” so Paul says what’s the cause of physical death? If you’re going to hold to the doctrine of the innocency of infants, you’re going to have to also hold to the badness of God, you’re going to have to make God a cruel God. The only way you can get all the pieces together is to hold to the sinfulness of infants and that’s why they too partake of death. Otherwise, if they’re innocent how come they’re under the death curse. Why is it that from a baby’s life is in jeopardy from the first breath, and why is it that the baby too inherits deformities from parents? Why is it that he has all the baggage? All of us have baggage, whether it’s by our environment or whether it’s by our genetic inheritance from our parents. If our parents have done something to harm their genetic tissue you suffer, I suffer, and not only that but our children can suffer. We pass this on. Why is this curse of confusion, chaos and basically death, put upon young infants. The Bible’s only explanation is what you find in Romans 5:12-14.

One other passage to show you, there’s also Romans 9 to lock this in firmly and show you that it’s not just Hebrews, in Romans 9:10-13, “…when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac [11] (For the children being not yet born, neither having done good nor evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calls,) [12] It was said unto her,” verse 12 was said approximately in the year 1900 BC; it is a quotation from Genesis, “The elder will serve the younger.” Okay, the elder is Esau, and the younger is Jacob. Usually the younger serves the elder. In this case it’s going to be reversed, he says. In other words, Jacob is the elect, Esau isn’t. Even though they’re twins, Esau was born first, then Jacob.

Now the next verse, verse 16 says, “[As it is written], Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,” is not a quotation from Genesis. Anybody know where it’s a quotation of? Malachi; is Malachi one of the first books of the Old Testament, or last books of the Old Testament? Written about 500 BC, oh, notice something now that’s happened. Verse 12, verse 13, how many years separate them? Fourteen centuries. Do you know what he’s just said? What started with two babies that were born from the woman Rebecca, wound up as two nations? What are they? Israel, obviously and Edom. The national destiny of Edom is determined by what happened to Esau. Now that’s how unified this whole concept is. That’s why in practice and some conclusion, let me just give some applications of this.

How can you make this sound so very theoretical. Well, one obvious solution, one obvious application is in the doctrine of suffering. This doctrine keeps you from having to say God is a cruel God when infants die. If you don’t say this you’re going to have to say that. [someone says something] No but they are under Adam’s lordship and they do not die in the same sense man does, there’s no spiritual death in the sense we’re using it for them, it’s not analogous type thing, they don’t have a conscience and they’re not saved, they’re just debris in the world around us, so to speak.

One application is in the doctrine of suffering; another application is in the area of your family. This shows you why, number one, if you are a parent in charge today, what you are doing will control the destiny of your children, to some degree. You are going to influence your children, either for good or for evil but you’re going to influence them, and the Bible warns you that you are exercising powerful control over your children. Now God, true, He’s not going to tamper with the volition of the children but obviously you have example after example after example after example of this, it’s saying parents because be serious because the fallout from what you are doing is tremendously powerful. All right, that’s one way, taking it looking downstream.

Another way, going upstream, a third application, you can understand the problems you have in the Christian life if you will understand your father and your mother, spiritually. If you will look back at their life and try to figure out where their big problems are, what their big hang-ups are and if they are Christians, talk with them about it, you’ll learn a lot of lessons from your parents in their area of sanctification that you can turn over and use in your life, so you’ll save yourself having to learn the same lesson that your father had to learn and that your grandfather had to learn. Maybe in your family there’s a propensity to sin in a certain direction. Watch it, you’ll see patterns, each family has their own pattern. So learn to know your family pattern, think about it.

[someone says something] Yeah in the millennium, that’s a prophecy of the millennium. [someone else asks question] That’s covered in David’s case in 2 Samuel 12, [can’t understand phrase]

The final application of this is singles who are considering marriage. Before you just go tripping down the aisle, do some research on the family background of the individual you’re thinking about marrying. You are not just marrying one person, you are marrying generations and you are going to live with the result of generations of history. So you just don’t pick somebody at random. Illustration: find out, if you can, if you date the person enough you ought to be able to tell where they blow it, all right, find out. You get invited into their house, look around, you don’t have to be picky Sherlock Holmes and take your microscope and look all over the place but you can learn a little bit about their family habit patterns. [someone says something] Okay, the case of adopted children, this is one of the case where when you consider adoption of children you run into a problem, right here, where you don’t know the background of an adopted child and adopted children are harder, for that reason, to raise, than your own children. [more said] Well, they’re just going to have to look to eh Lord for wisdom in their soul, that’s all, in their own personal experience. That’s the problem, God doesn’t tailor the universe for the exception; He tailors it for the norm and the norm is that you have parents and that you are to learn from your parents.

I’m sure we stirred up questions but I’m also overtime so let’s pray and if you have some questions later…