To Encourage You

Hebrews 7:1-3 “For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God . . . is first, by translation of his name, king of righteousness, and then he is also king of Salem, that is, king of peace. He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God he continues a priest forever.”

If the Bible is truly the Word of God, it is a book that has come to us from an eternal Being with an infinite mind.  That should cause us to stop in our tracks and consider what He has said very carefully. Of all that He could have said to us, it is the message in these 66 books that He chose to say for these words were the most essential for us to have.  This great God Who made us, above all, knew what we needed to be sustained.  Indeed, one of the names given to Jesus, in that the life sustaining words He spoke to us are part and parcel of His being, is “the Word of Life” (John 1:1).  It’s Who He is, and it is the very nature of the words of the Bible.  As such, every part of it has meaning to us.  It’s all essential. None of it is given to us as “filler.”  There are no vestigial parts.  As a result, every part of it should be weighed and meditated upon, for it is heavy with meaning and worthy of our greatest efforts to love God with all our mind. 

One such example of this is the priesthood of Melchizedek.  When we come upon this name in the Old Testament, it’s one of those words that we might be quick to pass over.  Melchizedek appears suddenly in Genesis 14, seemingly coming out of nowhere. We don’t know where he came from, and we don’t know what happens to him after this account.  We know nothing of his heredity, although priesthood in the Bible has everything to do with heredity (for only the sons of Levi could be priests and only those who came from Aaron’s line could be high priests).  He’s a person that we might quickly gloss over when we read about him and move on to something more “significant” and “interesting,” at least as we see it.  But then the verses above from Hebrews 7 let us know that God didn’t mention Melchizedek in Genesis 14 by mistake.  He didn’t just mention this person as a historical figure, one that perhaps He really didn’t need to mention for, in our day and age, he would have no significance. No, God chose to include Melchizedek in what He gave us for as He looked at us from before time began, He knew that the knowledge He would give us about Melchizedek would bless us in incredible ways. 

You see, God gave us the account of Melchizedek because in what He both told us about Him and what He didn’t tell us, it all pointed in wonderful ways to God’s wonderful Son.  The Son of God, this One who is eternal and infinitely above us in every way, is revealed to us, bit by bit, often in wonderful shadows and types, as we search God’s Word of Truth.  It is as we plumb the depths of God’s Word, even through the study of this one named “Melchizedek,” that we come to know more and more of the depths of the wonders of God’s only begotten Son. 

One of the main themes of the book of Hebrews is how Jesus so greatly surpassed the shadows that point to Him throughout the Old Testament.  One of those Old Testament shadows is the priesthood.  It was by way of the office and rituals of the priesthood that the people of the nation of Israel approached God.  It was by the sacrifices that the priests offered to God that the sins of the people were forgiven, at least until they sinned again.  And because their sins were many, the sacrifices were many. It was a never-ending reminder of their sin and need to be cleansed from it.  But then we have the priesthood of Melchizedek. It was different from the Levitical priesthood in many ways, and it was after the order of this priest that the Son of God’s priesthood came.  We see this typified in the meaning of Melchizedek’s name, and in the very nature of the things the Bible tells us about him.  And it’s on these things that the central message of the entire book of Hebrews turns. It’s a central theme.  But that’s just the start, but it should whet our appetites for more of what God would tell us about Melchizedek, and through this shadow, God’s perfect Son.