To Encourage You

Hebrews 7:1 “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him.”

One of the keys to understanding the Bible is demonstrated to us in the verse above.  Here, in this one verse, we have the appearance of a name seemingly out of the blue.  It’s the name Melchizedek.  So, who in the world was he? Why do we see his name here? What’s the significance?

Well, to understand this, we must look elsewhere. It isn’t enough to just look at this verse.  This verse, in and of itself, gives us an incomplete picture. So where else can we learn about him?  The answer is other places in Scripture. Namely, other than in the book of Hebrews, Melchizedek shows up in two other places in the Bible. The first is in Genesis 14. Here he appears, seemingly out of nowhere, to bless Abram (before he was renamed “Abraham” by God) after Abram and his trained men had delivered his nephew Lot and many other captives from the hands of a confederation of four kings. Then Melchizedek’s name turns up just one other place in the Old Testament: Psalm 110, which was written over 1,000 years after the book of Genesis. Here we have a prophesy that points to Jesus with these words “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”  When his name turns up again in Hebrews 5 and 11, it is over 1,000 more years after Psalm 110 was written.  With this, we see the superintendence of God, Who alone is eternal, over the writing of the Bible.  It is His book, from beginning to end.  To understand what He has told us, we must search the Scriptures.  We must compare what He has said in one place with what He has said in other places. It’s in these comparisons of the Scriptures that we so often are able to interpret the Scriptures by the Scriptures.  It’s the process we read about concerning the Berean church, who we are told made a practice of searching the Scriptures (Acts 17:10-11).  It’s in this way that they were able to discern the truthfulness of what various preachers were teaching them.  They were students of God’s Word.  Similarly, Paul wrote to his protégé Timothy, that he was to “do (his) best to present (him)self to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).  It’s the process of learning by way of “precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little” (Isaiah 28:10).

So often Jesus, as well as the apostle Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, referred back to Old Testament references in their teaching.  It’s a process of learning the breadth of the Scriptures in order to plumb their depth.  May God help us to be students of the awesome truths of His Word by digging into them and studying “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). There are infinite treasures available to us if we are willing to work to search them out.  It’s the promise of God that He will reveal Himself to those who really want to know Him, for He has told us, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).  But that seeking is not some mysterious thing. It’s not only for some mystics or “holy men.” No, God’s Word is the place we seek for Him. And it’s a “word (that) is very near you” (Deuteronomy 30:14), if we will only pick it up, read it, study it, and meditate on it.  To say that it would be well worth our time is such an understatement of what God has for us if we will but mine the limitless treasures of His awesome book.

More about Melchizedek later . . .