Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Hebrews 7:1-10
Pastor Dennis Tuuri
Reformation Covenant Church

Today’s scripture is found in Hebrews 7, verses 1 to 10. If you have the handouts for today, it’s the second page. First page is the overall structure of the book of Hebrews and where this section falls in that structure. And then the second page is today’s text. I won’t read the two verses at the beginning and end of your handout page. They sort of show the context. The sermon will be on chapter 7, verse 1 through verse 10.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. 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; to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, meaning king of peace, without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils.

Now I erred there beginning at verse four again. Now consider how great this man was to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi who received the priesthood have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham. But he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. Now beyond all contradiction, the lesser is blessed by the greater. Here mortal men received tithes, but there he receives them of whom it is witnessed that he lives. Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text of scripture. We thank you for your word and we pray that your Spirit may illuminate our understanding. Transform us, Lord God, by the power of your Spirit and word and prepare us to see the great gospel in this text. Confirm to us by the meal that we’ll partake of toward the end of the service. Father, we know that this section of Hebrews was introduced by the author of this sermon with words indicating the difficulty of the subject matter.

Help us, Lord God, to plow into this difficult subject matter by the grace of your Spirit. Make it simple to us to understand and may we see the significance of it in a way that both encourages us yet challenges us as well. In Jesus’ name we ask it for the sake of His kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated. I watched a movie this last week two or three times. It’s called a “Primer”—uh, nothing objectionable in it in terms of language or anything like that. So, the reason I’m mentioning it is, well, it’s about time travel. These guys make this thing they can travel in time in, and what you notice in the movie are some interesting things in the details. For instance, the words are a little off. You get the sense from the visual of the people speaking the words, and then there are these colors to certain scenes in the movie.

And you know, we’ve been trained to think about movies that every detail is controlled by the director, that he’s trying to get across something. Every detail is sort of set up and important for understanding it. Well, then you listen to the commentary on this, and this was a very low-budget movie. It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. One of these things where they didn’t even use, you know, the clapper at the beginning of scenes, you know, to roll because they couldn’t afford that much tape. So very low budget. And what you find out is that while you’re trying to figure out, well, is the juxtaposition of voice and actor off because we’re talking about time travel and things are displaced? Well, no. It’s because they recorded the audio very poorly at first and so they had to go back and dub all the scenes. It was a mistake. And the coloring of the scenes—from what I can tell, there was nothing really about that they intended. They just shot at dusk sometimes and they used natural lighting, that sort of stuff, and it sort of turned out those kind of colors.

So a movie like that, not all the details are significant. Very low-budget movie. Now big budget movies—you know, the details become much more important. Well, in the Bible, every detail is important. This is a text today we’re going to deal with that’s kind of exciting for someone like me whose job is to put together sermons, because what you see here is a little bit of how this sermon to Hebrews was put together, this particular section of it.

What it is—it’s a sermon. Kind of, it starts with a recasting of the narrative of Abraham and Melchizedek meeting from Genesis 14, and then he draws application of that for his sermon. So it’s kind of interesting to see how he treats the Old Testament, how he exegetes it, and what he does with it. For a guy like me—and hopefully for you too in your Bible study—well, what we see and what we will see as we get into a little more detail of the text here in a couple minutes, what we see is that every detail of that account is important to the author of this sermon to the Hebrews.

Even what’s not said provides the most significant element of the text from Genesis 14 to the author of the sermon to the Hebrews for his particular purposes. He builds his whole application on what details that were omitted from the text. So you see, unlike “Primer,” God is big budget. God has all the resources. He never runs out of tape. He’s got all he needs. And when He puts together this most holy of all books, this revelation of Himself and who we are, every detail is very important.

That’s what the text tells us today by way of thinking it through. Now, we’re going to get to the minutiae of that detail in a minute. But on the first page of the handout, I’ve given you the overall structure. Last week was the first time in several weeks having done this, and you know, one of the questions indicated it would have been nice to have it in there again. So it is important to understand sort of where we’re at. And I give you again the overall structure of the book.

It’s sort of helpful because when we see the whole book, we remember that back in the beginning of this book, Jesus is first compared to the prophets of the Old Testament. He’s greater than the prophets. He’s compared to the angels. He’s greater than the angels. And then we remember that he was compared in section three. In section three, he was compared to Moses—greater than Moses. And we’re now involved in the central section of the book, where he’s compared to the ironic priesthood, Levitical priests, and the ironic priesthood particularly. And he’s greater than them.

So you know, in big picture, the supremacy and superiority of Jesus Christ is the big theme of this sermon, and we don’t want to miss that even as we get to the details in a minute. We are at the boxed text at Roman numeral 4: “Christ a priest like Melchizedek, high priest of good things to come.” That’s where we’re at in today’s section. Now my daughter Carolina drew these nice arrows that say “expand” in them. And it shows you that what we do then is we take that central section of the book and now I give you an outline of that central section with the heading “Section 4.”

And so we see there we went through 5:11-6:20. There was an introductory exhortation there. “Shama” was a word that some of our folks use with their kids—Hebrew for “have big ears, listen up. Shama.” And when you want to get kids’ attention, that’s a good thing to do. Listen, “shama.” The word is biblical, reminds them that your authority comes from God. So that exhortation at the beginning was, you know, it’s going to be tough; you become sluggardly and all this stuff. Now listen hard—that’s what he’s got us doing here at the beginning of this section. And at the end of the section there’ll be a concluding exhortation to live by faith, getting together and encouraging each other. So there’s a closing and opening and closing exhortation to this whole major central section of the book. And we’re in the next phase. We’re in the bolded section 7:1-28: “Jesus is high priest of the superior order of Melchizedek.”

That’s what chapter 7 says. And then from that, we’re going to talk about heavenly patterns of earthly work. We’re going to talk in a few weeks about the old covenant being provisional and imperfect. Then we’re going to talk about the weakness of the old covenant. And in the context of that, the very center of the book seems to be this phrase: “Jesus Christ is a high priest of good things to come.” He’s being contrasted with the old order. Compared and contrasted.

Remember, same with Moses. You know, it wasn’t like total contrast. It was comparison and then contrast. Like, but different. And so we’re being set up for that. Like Aaron, like Levitical priests, but different. Because after we get to the pivot point, now we’re going to see the power of the new covenant. We talk about the new covenant being established in the matching section to—from 9:15 to 23. And then access to heaven and closer relationship to God being talked about on the basis of Jesus’s offering. And then the offering of Jesus accomplishes what the old offerings could not.

So that’s kind of the flow of the section. What we’re doing is Jesus is being compared and contrasted with the ironic priesthood, Levitical order. A lot of comparison, but contrast. So we’re in that section right now. And the verses we read this morning are the first part of doing that compare-contrast thing. And he’s going to contrast. He’s going to compare Jesus with Melchizedek as opposed to Levitical priests. So that’s kind of where we’re at in this section.

And then what I’ve got expanding that out is now these chapter 7—I’m going to deal with it in three sections. And so I’ve got that for you on the opening sheet as well. The first section today is the boxed section of the text: “The Melchizedek priesthood is superior to Levitical priesthood.” So he’s going to say that Melchizedek was a superior priest—priest to the priest that came from Abraham. And then he’s going to compare Jesus to Melchizedek. So Jesus’s preeminence over Melchizedek certainly, but he himself is preeminent over Levitical priests. That’s the point of these 10 verses.

Now next week we’ll start dealing with the next set. We’ll deal with verses 11 to 19: “The priesthood being changed, the law of worship is also changed.” And we’re going to talk about worship. Again, this is a very critical verse—the verse, this one verse out of this section—that, you know, how do we worship? There’s this transformation of worship, and the priesthood has changed. It has changed from Levitical to Jesus, who is more like Melchizedek priest. And there’s a change of worship because of that. And we’ll talk about that next week, and we’ll talk about the worship service and your participation in it and all that stuff. So that is the second kind of thing that the author of this sermon has developing in the section.

And then finally, the last nine verses: “The new priesthood saves us to perfection.” And it’ll talk about the requirement for sanctification. And unlike the Levitical priesthood, Jesus, the new priesthood, is able to bring us through sanctification and ultimately, as we get into His presence, to perfection.

Now, you should write this on that first page if you’re following along: 7:1-10 is an exposition of Genesis 14. Okay? And the next two parts of chapter 7—verses 11 to 19 and 20-28—that’s an exposition of the meaning of Psalm 110, that we just read responsively. So there are two places in scripture and two only where Melchizedek is mentioned by name. One is Genesis and one is Psalm 110 (Genesis 14). And so he’s going to talk about Melchizedek, and he’s going to talk about it first in reference to Melchizedek in the first historical record of his meeting with Abraham. Then he’s going to talk about Melchizedek in terms of Psalm 110:4 and what that means for the next two things.

So you see there’s an orderliness to the presentation here that will help us. Remember, it’s hard—going to have to “shama” here. Pay attention. It’s kind of a hard topic. Well, it’ll help us to see this big picture sort of stuff. He’s dealing with Jesus and Melchizedek, starting with the Genesis text. And then next week, for the next two sermons, we’ll deal with implications of the psalm text.

Because he’s starting with the Genesis text, I thought it’d be important for us here to look at the Genesis text. So I’ve got Genesis 14:17-15:1 on that first page of your outline or handout for today. Let’s just read it. And now, I’m putting it in the context, okay? We don’t want to abstract out just a few things. And what we’re going to see is that where I’m starting—believe it or not—with the king of Sodom, that’s where the author of the sermon of Hebrews starts. We’ll see you in a couple minutes what I mean. All right.

Verse 17: “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the valley of Shaveh, that is the king’s valley, after his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him.” So there are these kings. They captured Lot. Abram went out to rescue Lot. Kills a bunch of these kings. There’s a slaughter. That’s the word used in our New Testament text. We read “slaughter of the kings.”

And after the slaughter of the kings, the king of Sodom comes out to meet Abraham at that place after the defeat of the kings. Verse 16, we see Melchizedek. “Then Melchizedek, king of Salem.” Salem—well, Jerusalem, maybe, probably. It’s kind of hard though, because you remember Shechem—one who messed around with Dinah. Shechem. The text, the scripture says, lived in Salem. So there’s a separate city Shechem where this guy was from. It’s also called Salem. So we don’t really know if Melchizedek is from Jerusalem or Shechem. But in all likelihood, I would say, and in fact we don’t really know that Shechem was different than Jerusalem. But there’s a little bit of ambiguity. But the point is this is probably Jerusalem or at least that region.

So we have this Melchizedek, king of Salem. “He brought out bread and wine.” See, now that’s the important part for us, right? That’s part I love to read. We just sang about it a couple of times in songs. In this sermon to the Hebrews, it’s irrelevant. Well, maybe not irrelevant, but he doesn’t even mention it—the detail, okay? So he brings out bread and wine. “He was the priest of God Most High.”

In the Hebrew, that’s “El Elyon.” Most High—El, God; Lion, Elyon, for you young people following along with your questions. God Most High. And this is a name that is used in reference to God among the Gentiles. So it’s indicated that Melchizedek is a Gentile and not, you know, of what would become the Jews. And El Elyon is this name given. Now, sometimes it talks about God’s preeminence over the whole earth—means Most High, elevated one, ascended one on top—and not just over Israel, you see, over all the nations of the world. That’s the implication of this name. It’s kind of a Gentile name, and it shows God’s superiority to everybody and everything in the created order.

So he’s El Elyon. Pretty significant name to be used here as Abraham has slaughtered these Gentile kings, okay? And “he blessed him.” So Melchizedek blesses Abram, and he says, “Blessed be Abram.” That’s the blessing. “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth. God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth.” That’s God. So the blessing is “Blessed be Abram,” and the blessing is identified as coming from El Elyon, God Most High, who is possessor of heaven and earth.

And “Blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” Now those are two different kinds of blessings. And if you do a study of blessing in the Bible, one way of blessing is to impose a blessing upon someone—a functional superior to an inferior, okay? So Jacob blesses his kids; his kids can’t bless him in that way. You bless your kids, maybe saying words of benediction to them. The elders of the church pronounce the benediction at the end of the service. The New Testament word for blessing is like “benediction.” It’s different. It’s “eulogia,” but it’s the same contraction of “good words.” And so the good words are performative utterance—a blessing upon people that is affected by God. The blessing is made in the name of God.

But this kind of blessing is given from a superior to an inferior. And that’s quite important for the argument in Hebrews today. And then the second one, where he blesses God—God is obviously not inferior to Melchizedek. But that’s the kind of blessing that we can give mutually. We’re to bless God by praising His name, but it’s not as if we’re doing anything for Him in that. The first one blesses the person who’s under you in the name of God. The second one is just sort of a mutual blessing and praise of each other, or praise of God on high, okay? Two kinds of blessings.

And so Melchizedek blesses Abraham. Then it says, “And he gave him a tithe of all.” In the text, it’s a little unclear, but clearly we know from the Hebrews text that it is Abram giving Melchizedek a tithe of all the spoils.

“Now the king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the persons, and take the goods for yourself.’ But Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will take nothing from a thread to a sandal strap, and that I will not take anything that is yours, lest you should say, “I have made Abram rich,” except only what the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre; let them take their portion.’”

“After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.’”

Now, it’s a very pregnant scene. I mean, it’s one of those movie sort of scenes that is very, you know, this is really important, and yet said in so few words. We’ve got the slaughter of the Gentile kings—a test of Abraham. Remember, we said that the sacrifice of Isaac was a test, and God comes to him after the test and gives him the promise. So we’ve got a test of Abraham. He’s going out and doing battle and killing these kings and rescuing Lot. And then God comes to him after the test and says, you know, now be assured. I’m your exceedingly great reward. Beautiful statement. Everything we want, need, and hope for really is summed up in relationship with God.

But blessing—again, fathers, one more time—we can look through Hebrews and through these texts and see what we’re supposed to be doing. Our children go through a test. They pass the test. We come alongside and bless them, you see? We give them words of promise and encouragement after the test. See, that’s important to do. That’s what God does here.

But after the slaughter, the king of Sodom comes to meet Abram. So we’ve got the king of Sodom, Melchizedek, and the king of Sodom referred to again. And you know, you got to visualize this in your mind. The valley of the kings—you’ve got kings here. You’ve got Abram, who is now king of these other kings. He’s defeated them. You’ve got the king of Sodom, and then you’ve got the king of Salem, who’s a priest of God Most High. What do you got? You’ve got the world, and you’ve got the community of faith, you know? And it’s the same today. When we go into the world, we go into our work week this week, there’ll be kings of Sodom offering us blessing, offering us money, offering us power, you know, if we’ll do what they kind of want us to do.

Are we going to be enriched by them, or are we going to be enriched by God? You see, that’s the choice before us always. There’s an antithetical relationship being set up here. There’s two different kings, two different paths. Psalm 1, right? Two paths. Proverbs, the opening—long nine first chapters. Two paths. There’s always two paths. The path of accommodation and we’re trying to get blessings from Sodom, or the path of, you know, being blessed by God’s representatives on this earth.

Very interesting. So that’s the Genesis text that the author exegetes in our text. So let’s look now at the second page of the handout, and we’ll talk briefly about that. And we’ll look, as I said, at some of the ways that he uses scripture. It’s kind of interesting.

Now on the second page, I’ve got the setup from chapter 6, verse 20. This is the end of the exhortation, but it’s the beginning of the next section. It leads us to the next section, okay? “The forerunner has entered, even Jesus, have become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” That’s a quote from Psalm 110. So Melchizedek is introduced here for the third time, by the way, in this book. Chapter 5 had two references to Melchizedek already. In fact, this very same phrase—you know, Psalm 110 is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. And this is the reason probably—because of all these citations about the order of Melchizedek.

See, now Psalm 110, we read it, and we’re trying to learn that version of it, a good version of it. And I hadn’t thought about this, but we probably ought to be doing this. Next week’s liturgy is already made up, but maybe “psalm of the month” for a month would be this Psalm 110, to drive these lessons home to us. And we could learn this most quoted psalm in the New Testament. So I think that’d be a good thing to do. So work on it at home. Take your orders of worship home.

But did you notice, of course, Psalm 110? We saw the reference to Melchizedek, and very interestingly, it’s not that dissimilar from where Melchizedek appears in the Genesis narrative, is it? It’s about the destruction of ungodly kings. And that’s what Abraham did as Melchizedek met with him. You see, he had come from destroying those kings, and he gets sustained that if need be, he can go after the next group. And then God tells him, “Yeah, my blessing is on you. I’m your exceedingly great reward. I’m your shield. You’ll be able to do mighty things for me.”

So Psalm 110, with its note of victory and triumphing over the world, you see, is really very much akin to the imagery set up by Genesis 14. Abram triumphing over the world militarily, slaughtering, if need be. But anyway, so this text is introduced. And now what we’re going to have, as I said, today is Genesis 14 talked about.

So this is in two parts. Now the whole thing is a unit because at the beginning and end, you’ll notice that I’ve bolded “Melchizedek met Abram” or “Abraham” in this text. Melchizedek met Abraham. So at the beginning and end of this 10-verse section, we have what’s that technical term? “Inclusio.” We have an inclusio—we have some brackets telling us this is a unit, okay? Melchizedek met Abram; he met Abram at the end. But it consists really of two parts that I think we can look at it this way: first, there’s a description of the narrative from Genesis 14, and then after that description of the narrative, there’s the lesson for the Hebrews from the narrative.

So it’s sort of like a good sermon, you know? He explains the text, then he tells them the relevance of the text for their life. And that’s what I’m doing today. I’m taking the text, we look at the notes from the text, we talk about it, and then we make application, you see? So that’s just this—this is a way of preaching that we get directly from the pages of scripture.

Well, in this narration, and by the way, in both of these, we won’t take the time to look at it, but the first half begins by talking about Melchizedek met him, and then he talks about the blessing, and then he talks about the tithe. And in the last half, the last section, he talks about the tithe first, then the blessing, and then meeting him. So we’ve got a little structure, again, kind of telling us, yeah, it’s two sections here that are a little bit separate from one another. Additionally, the word “priest” in verse one and at the end of verse three shows us that 1 to 3 is this little unit. It’s obvious from the text, but literally he ties it off with “priest.” So we’re talking about—and it’s kind of important—this whole long middle section is about Jesus as priest, okay?

So let’s look at verse one. “For this Melchizedek—Melk is king; Zedeq is the Hebrew word for righteousness. So this Melchizedek, king of righteousness, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, El Elyon, who met Abram returning from the slaughter of the kings.”

Now, see, that’s interesting because what he’s given him here is a paraphrase of that first verse I read you in the Genesis account. The king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the defeat of the kings. But in his paraphrase, what does he do? He removes the king of Sodom and inserts Melchizedek. We don’t have in the Genesis narrative Melchizedek coming out to meet Abram after the slaughter of the kings. We’ve got the king of Sodom coming out to meet Abram after the slaughter of the kings, and Melchizedek just appears. But he does a good paraphrase because we know that Melchizedek did indeed go out to meet Abram, and it was after the slaughter of the kings.

Now, see what’s happening? This is what history is, you know? The ungodly will be found out, will not be able to be found anymore over time. King of Sodom goes away, and only Melchizedek remains. So as we contemplate the two paths, one path is the path of curse and being wiped off the earth; the other path is a path of establishment, okay?

So he says this Melchizedek comes out after the slaughter of the kings. And I wanted to emphasize that—I want to make an application point at the end of the sermon—but textually here, that word is a good translation: “slaughter.” Some of the modern translations say “defeat.” Well, the Greek term means “to cut.” That’s the basic word. The root meaning of this word is to cut things up. So Abram comes back from cutting up the wicked, perverse kings who were man-stealers. Man-stealing is a horrible thing in the scriptures. Not supposed to do it. And these men are obviously just pronounced in their ungodliness. So it is all right.

So we’ve been talking about Abraham, father of the faithful, and this tells us a little more information about the father of the faithful that you’re supposed to imitate. Father of the faithful under certain conditions waged war against ungodly, wicked men and slaughtered them, killed them, cut them in pieces, you see? So this is what happens just prior.

So now, you know, in thinking, well, he’d have to go through a period of repentance, you know? He maybe had to do it, but it wasn’t what he should do. You know, we have this idea of when war is okay—a justifiable war—but the whole assumption of that is that war is always bad. And well, if it’s the lesser of two evils, it’s okay. No, it’s not the lesser of two evils. Abram’s got nothing to feel bad about here. God’s response to his slaughter of the kings is to come out and bless him through Melchizedek, okay? It’s important.

Now, Melchizedek does that; then he blesses him. To also Abraham gave a tenth part of all. So we’ve got right at the beginning, good sermon—two points he’s making: that Melchizedek blesses Abraham and Abraham gives Melchizedek a tithe. That’s what he’s going to talk about in the rest of this little application thing. And then he says, “Now, see, this sentence really is ‘For this Melchizedek remains a priest continually.’”

A priest remains at the end of verse three. The short form of this sentence would be “This Melchizedek remains a priest continually.” And in between that sentence, we’ve got all kinds of qualifiers about what happened, the meeting, and then stuff about Melchizedek, okay?

“First being translated king of righteousness. Righteousness is the same as justice. We get confused about righteousness. We think, you know, right standing with God. That’s true. But in the broader sense, righteousness just means justice. And so he’s a king of justice. And he likes the fact that justice was just meted out to those wicked kings by God’s servant Abraham, you see? He’s a king of righteousness. That’s a righteous act. It’s a just act that Abraham has done.

“Then also king of Salem. The text tells us he’s king of Salem. And now he tells us—now you should know that Salem is shalom. It means peace. So he’s also the king of peace, okay?

We have a little capital down here in Oregon: Salem. What does it mean? Peace. Shalom means the blessings of God and the orderliness of a culture which God is in the center of it, mediating it all to us. You, children, blessed are the peacemakers. You create God’s order when you clean your room. That’s peace. That’s orderliness. Your room’s a mess. There’s no peace there, okay? Don’t do it today. This is the Sabbath. Tomorrow morning, first chance you get where you don’t have chores to do, be a peacemaker. Obey, you know, the greater Melchizedek, Jesus, who is a king of righteousness, king of peace, by making peace in your room, order to it, okay?

So he’s king of righteousness and king of peace in that order. Righteousness produces peace. We could say the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ to us is the source of our peace with God and the source of our working out righteousness and peace in the context of the culture we inhabit. We won’t have peace until we have justice and righteousness. Your room’s a mess—is not peaceful right now, kids. The state of mess is not peaceful. It’ll become peaceful as we apply righteousness and justice to our particular surroundings the way Abram did in his surroundings.

Now, the next part is what confuses everybody, and it’s not confusing. Believe me, it isn’t. It says, you notice there are these threes here, and some people think that this text from Hebrews is an old fragment or maybe completely is an old hymn. I don’t know, but it is kind of a beautiful little three sets of three.

“He’s without father.” That’s one word in the Greek: “apatōr.” Think of it that way. No dad. “Without mother,” “amētor.” “Without genealogy.” Now, these are unusual words. This is the only place in the Bible where these words are used. But we know what “without father” and “without mother” means because those words are used in other Greek documents in the papyri, in the Greek scrolls of the time. The term meant whose mother was unknown. Philo wrote about Sarah, and Sarah was “amētor.” She was without mother. It didn’t mean she didn’t have a mother. It meant that the text of scripture doesn’t tell us who her mother was.

So you see, this is where the silence of the text is being exposited by the preacher here. It doesn’t tell us who the dad was of Melchizedek, yeah, he had one, but it doesn’t tell us. Doesn’t tell us who mom was. Doesn’t tell us any genealogy. See? And he’s saying that silence as to mom, dad, and genealogy is significant. In Genesis, we’ve got a book filled with historical characters, and almost every one of them has a genealogy, a mom, a dad, some kind of descent. They’re tethered in time.

Now, Melchizedek was tethered in time, I believe—real guy. How’s he going to, you know, how is Melchizedek like the Son of God if he is the Son of God? He’s not, you know? Some people think we’ve got a Christophany here, or a theophany—appearance of God in the Old Testament. But if you read Genesis 14, it sure seems like he’s a normal guy like you or I. Maybe not normal. He’s a priest and all that. Priest, king. That’s not normal. But there’s nothing in Genesis that would cause you to think he’s a type.

Here is why people think he’s a type: because of these words. But it’s just because they don’t quite know what these words mean. I think “without father,” “without mother,” other Greek texts tell us, just means mom and dad are not recorded for us. “Without genealogy,” it appears that the author of this sermon was like George Grant. He made this word up, you know? George Grant just loves to make up words. And that’s good, you know? It’s not a bad thing to make up words. This word has no other evidence in any Greek writing apart from Greek writings that refer back to the text of Hebrews. That’s “without genealogy.” Again, it’s one word, no other text.

So maybe he makes it up. The significance is he’s building a case for the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek to Levi. Now you’ll remember that the Levitical priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood, wasn’t all Levites who could be priests. Only those who were descended from Aaron. So genealogy was important. Who their father was—important. Not only that, but Leviticus 21 gave out very detailed rules about the sort of women that priests, and particularly the high priest, could marry. So you had to have a mom and a dad, you know? A dad tracing genealogy back, and the mom—she’s got conditions on her. You’ve got to know who the mom is to have proper genealogy to be a Levitical priest.

His point is that Melchizedek, the silence of the text tells us, that wasn’t important for Melchizedek priest. Whatever order Melchizedek was from, genealogy, mom and dad, it’s unimportant. See? Contrasting this priesthood with the relatively inferior priesthood of Levi, that had this genealogical thing. And what he’s doing is setting us up to say—he’s like Jesus. That doesn’t mean he’s a type of Jesus doesn’t mean he’s a theophany. He is a type of Jesus Christ. He’s a type. An Old Testament picture—the way David is a type. Melchizedek’s a type of Jesus. And in terms of him—Jesus—not being descended from Levitical priesthood, he’s from the tribe of Judah. All right.

Next section: “Having neither beginning of days nor end of life.” See, people get confused here. Again, he’s just making a comment on the text, the narrative. The narrative doesn’t tell us who mom and dad are. Doesn’t tell us genealogy. Doesn’t tell us when he was born. Doesn’t tell us about his death. Doesn’t say he’s going to be succeeded by another priest. So the text, with those absences, tells us that from the perspective of the text, he doesn’t have beginning of days or end of life.

From the perspective of the text, he is sort of like the Son of God, who remains a priest continually. So from the perspective of the text, Melchizedek is described this way. And on the basis of that, the author of this sermon makes the application that Melchizedek priesthood is more like Jesus. Jesus is after the order of Melchizedek, not after the order of the Aaronic priesthood, okay?

So, you know, just to sum up: he’s saying that as he refreshes the knowledge of the people—the Hebrews’ understanding of Genesis—he’s saying, “Now look, the text doesn’t tell us who mom was. The text doesn’t say anything about dad. The text doesn’t give him a genealogy. The text doesn’t say where he was born or when he was born. The text doesn’t say when he died. The text doesn’t say who’s going to succeed him. And because of all that, the text itself is a divine type.

We could say, to describe Jesus, because Jesus is, you know, not going to have a genealogy back to Levi, and he’s going to be a priest continually. So it doesn’t, you know, it looks, it sounds hard. It’s not hard. In fact, it’s easier than most people make it out to be. It’s much less of a mystery than it first appears to us. It’s just saying, you know, we’re looking at the details of what God gave us. We’re going to execute those to you. And remember that those details kind of draw a connection between Melchizedek and Jesus.

See, the author here—what he’s reminding them of is that, you know, when we got Psalm 110:4 saying that the Messiah would be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, they should have known that the Levitical priesthood was going to end, that it was temporary, okay? Now, it doesn’t mean that it’s just throw that part of the Bible away. We learn from it. We’ll talk about that next week. You know, there are people in the other ditch. You know, it’s interesting. The Jews—many of the Jewish writers commenting on Melchizedek—said that they thought he was Shem, and he had done a crummy job as a priest, and that’s why he’s replaced by the Levites. So according to Jewish tradition, they inverted the whole thing. They make the Levitical priesthood more important than the Melchizedek priesthood.

Just the opposite of what scripture says. That’s important too, as we get to, you know, we’re always so prideful of who we are and our role in the history of things and whatnot. Well, that’s what they did. They horribly perverted the text to assert the superiority of Levi over Melchizedek. But they should, you know—they should have known this. The guy—the author is saying—the Levitical priesthood was going to be terminated. It was only provisional, okay? And it was going to be replaced by something, and they should have known that something would have had some connection back to Genesis 14 and the details of that text, including the details of what were left out, okay?

Okay. Then he gets to the implications for them in the second part, the lesson for the Hebrews. He says, “How great now consider how great this man was to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils.”

And the word order is a little different in the Greek. It says now think about this: this guy was great. Now remember, he’s just told us. He’s reminded us in the previous section the greatness of Abraham and the promises given to him. He’s, you know, Abraham is up there. Levi is up there. Aaron is up there. He’s not tearing him down. But he’s saying that Melchizedek—think about how great he was because he says even Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils, the patriarch. That’s the right word. Or in the Greek, patriarch is the last word in that sentence. Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils to this guy. And he was the patriarch. He was the father of us all, you see? The father of the faithful. So it’s a real emphatic point being made.

“Indeed, those who are of the sons of Levi, patriarch, father—now we’ve got the sons, Levi, who received the priesthood, that’s the Levitical priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham.”

So he’s saying that, by the way, the word “law” here—we’ll talk about this next week—law in Hebrews means the laws of worship and sacrifice primarily, not the civil law. But what he’s saying here is, okay, so our patriarch gave a tithe to Melchizedek. And Levi was supposed to get tithes from the people, but “he whose genealogy is not derived from them. That’s Melchizedek. Received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.”

“Now beyond all contradiction, the lesser is blessed by the greater.” See, now at the middle here, he turns, and he mentions the blessing here. But immediately the application is made: that because Melchizedek blessed Abraham, Melchizedek is the greater. And now he’s going to make the same point about the tithe.

“Here mortal men received tithes, but there he received them of whom it is witnessed that he lives.” Say so. I mean, of whom it is witnessed that there’s no text of scripture that tells us about how he died. So he’s kind of superior to Levi, who dies.

“Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.”

And now the section comes to an end. Okay, sounds pretty easy. He’s saying, you know, there was this exchange of blessing and tithe. He brings up both of those points and says that in that exchange, the greater blesses the smaller. And Levi, who receives tithes from everybody else, he was inferior to Melchizedek because he’s in the loins of Abraham, kind of literally in a way, right? That think of genealogical descent. Something about that seed, there’s a literalness to that. But covenantally, I think, is the stress here. Covenantally, Levi is in Abraham, and Abraham is tithing, so Levi then is shown to be inferior to Melchizedek. And so he says, you’re all messed up, those of you that have said that Levi is superior to Melchizedek. No way. Melchizedek blessed Levi, and Levi tithed to Melchizedek. That’s what he’s saying.

So he’s drawing out the priesthood of Jesus and telling him he’s like Melchizedek. He’s the one. Now you should be transitioning away from Levitical, Aaronic priests at the temple. You come to church on Sunday, and you worship in the New Testament Melchizedek order, and the sort of worship that is entailed. And we’ll talk about that next week. But that’s—that’s what the text. That’s the purpose of the text. Really quite simple. Stuff that makes it difficult for us is stuff we don’t know, typically. Really, it’s not that bad.

And then he’s going to say in the very next verse, “Therefore if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood, under it the people received the law. What further need was there for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron?”

All right. So that’s kind of the simple overview of the text. Let’s make a few points of application and we’re done.

We began by saying that the purpose of this entire section, of course, is to show the superiority of Jesus Christ to the Aaronic and Levitical priests. And that’s what’s beginning now in this section we just looked at. So overall, the big picture of this whole section is Jesus should be magnified and thought of as great. He’s greater than Melchizedek. Melchizedek was way above Abraham, yeah, Abraham, Levi, Aaron—don’t tear them down. Raise them up. But understand that above them is Melchizedek, and above Melchizedek is Jesus Christ. So the superiority of Jesus Christ is being stressed here.

This is gospel. In other words, he’s preaching gospel. The good news that Jesus has come—the greater prophet, the greater ruler of things over the angels, the greater Moses, the greater Aaron, the greater Levi, and the greater Melchizedek—has come. That’s gospel. And that’s what we need to hear. Who we’re worshiping today is superior to every other revelation of who God has said he was in the Old Testament. We don’t want to break continuity. That’s not the way he does it. He draws continuity to show the superiority of Jesus Christ.

Now, one of the implications of this text today is that we’ve got to acknowledge what you do when someone’s superior. We’ve got to see ourselves. We’ve got to imitate Abraham—not just now in his patience and faithfully going to church and all that stuff. That was the implication before. Remember, we’re to be imitators of Abraham. Well, here’s another way we can imitate Abraham: tithe.

Now, it’s not the stress of what the author here is talking about. He’s talking about people who are being tempted to go back to the Levitical order instead of pressing ahead with Melchizedek and Jesus Christ. But in our day and age, our tendency is to think, yeah, Jesus is superior. And golly, what a blessing that we are blessed now. At the end of the service, the Aaronic benediction is Jesus now pronouncing that blessing upon you. This is not a hope or a prayer. He is blessing you. Blessing he will bless you. Multiplying he will multiply you. We love the spirit of Jesus when it comes in the sureness of him being in charge when it comes to being blessed.

A little less happy about it when we acknowledge that the necessary response to that gospel is to continue to give a tithe. I’ll talk about this a little more next week, but you know that part of Levitical law continues. But even if it didn’t, the point here is that the tithe predates Mosaic legislation. Circumcision predates. And so baptism in light of that is important. The Sabbath observance predated Mosaic regulations.

You see, tithing is before the law. The law regulates how we give God the tithe in a particular way for that particular period of time. But the obligation, because of the blessings of God upon us—just like Jacob, “If you’re going to take care of me,” and he’s blessed to say, and he will, then “I’m going to give you a tenth of all.”

So this sermon should leave us all with a renewed commitment to tithe, no matter how difficult it might seem to us for whatever reason. This is the required response to the gospel that Jesus is blessing you. This is the two elements: blessing and tithe. That’s what’s going on between Melchizedek and Abram. That goes on between the greater Melchizedek, Jesus, and us. It happens here in worship. And that’s the context of what’s being said. So a renewed commitment to tithe. Tithe just means tenth. It’s quite simple. Again, we make it complicated, but you just give a tenth of whatever results God has given you from your labors.

In this case, it was returning the tenth of the spoil. In normal vocation, it’s a tenth of your wages. So that’s our proper response to this wonderful gospel that Jesus is in control.

There’s a second response to this text, particularly. It’s told us about the importance of details. So I hope that each of us, you know, you want to go away from the sermon at least one thing to apply that week. Maybe for you it’s tithing. Maybe for you it’s having an increased attention to the details of the Bible, because it is those details that provide this wonderful exposition of Jesus Christ being compared to Melchizedek. It’s the very things that are left out of the narrative and some of the things that are in there—slaughter of the kings, for instance—that provides our understanding of its application to Jesus.

So when you read the Bible, don’t just zip through a chapter. Well, it’s good to do that, too. But understand, you need to have a knowledge of the details of the text, okay? I encourage you—if you don’t understand a detail of the text, ask mom and dad about it. Wives, if you don’t understand a detail, ask your husband. Husbands, if you don’t understand a detail, ask your wife. There’s no reason. There’s nothing in the Bible that says you’re smarter than she or you’re more attuned to what the scripture says. We should think about the details of the text. That’s what this guy did in his sermon. About all he did was preach the details that were left out. It’s interesting.

So a renewed commitment to the details of the word of God. We’ve got to know the word. If we’re going to imitate Abraham—refers to his patience and continuing doing what’s right, and refers to his tithe—we’ve got to know what he did. So we’ve got to know the word of God and a renewed commitment to know the details of scripture.

Third, one thing you can do from this text is to pray for me. Pray for us. Pray for the church. The larger context here, you know, has to do with the proper application of what we call capital punishment, the death penalty, that Abraham slaughtered these guys. Remember I said I’d come back to that. It is appropriate for God’s people to make war, to wage war, at various times in history.

Now I don’t know about—the point of this is that righteousness—Melchizedek is king of righteousness and justice. What does that mean? Means defined by God’s word. What is peace? Peace is defined by the righteousness and justice of God’s word. We want to see our Salem ruled over by the greater Melchizedek, king of peace, king of righteousness. We don’t have that now. The rulers in our state are, primarily, most of them are in opposition to Jesus Christ, pretty radically. So, okay, that’s bad. We need to speak God’s word into that, and very specifically from today’s text.

One thing that I think is a crying need to speak into the political arena at this point in time is the need for the death penalty. It is disappearing from the face of the world, and with its disappearance is a disappearance of the righteous justice of God as recorded in the scriptures. We’re getting embarrassed that Abraham slaughtered men. And if we let this trend of civil government continue, we’re going to get more and more embarrassed about it. We don’t want to be embarrassed about it. We want to say that the civil magistrate should put certain people to death because of their sins and crimes.

Old Testament—a lot of sins, a lot of civil crimes rather, you could vary the penalty. The judge could, but not murder. You took deliberately a man’s life. There was no ransom. There was no other sentence that judge could give but death, you see? So pray for me. I want to get involved in doing a Bible study down in Salem talking about the wisdom of Proverbs in relationship to civil rule. I think our church, maybe our denomination, should make statements about the death penalty. I think all that stuff’s really important.

You know, it cuts across humanism and announces the fact that we’re theists. You know, ultimately, it’s the glory of God and the honor of God that we’re trying to serve as we go about doing what we do. And so the death penalty here in this text is a proper, I think, application for us.

Pray for me. Pray for Howard L., Doug H., Matt L., and George S. Jr.—guys that are looking forward, as we get into the fall, thinking about Parents’ Education Association. What should we do? Think about the elders of this church. Think about the CRC, the denomination we’re in. You give a united witness to the importance of the death penalty in the context of our laws.

We’re on the verge of having a new constitution in Iraq that says that, unlike the provisional constitution that will say that their law is Islam law, that Islam is the only standard for law. The previous constitution said Islam is one standard, one thing by which our laws are informed. The current draft says Islam is the standard by which our laws are informed. So we’ve gone to war. If this—if this is what it turns out to be—to create an Islamic state, a set of more kings like Chedorlaomer, the kings that were ungodly, you see? That’s what we’ve created here.

We want a government that’s founded upon the truths of God’s word and the scriptures. And it’s our responsibility, you see, to proclaim that message and to transform the world through it.

Fourth, and related to that, is service. It’s easy to look around us in our day and age and see the wickedness of kings and get upset. And well, the fault lies out there with, you know, the gay agenda or the public schools or this or that. God says no—it lies here. Judgment begins with the church. If you’ve been given more knowledge and information, it’s to the end that you would serve others by giving it. So if the churches remain close-mouthed about the importance of capital punishment or closemouthed about the dangers of public school or whatever it is, you see, then it’s our responsibility, you know?

Here’s what’s really interesting: we’ve got a Gentile king, and we’ve got the father of the Jews—which is superior? Well, we normally, when we read the Old Testament, well, the Jews are superior, and they’re going to try to—they’re ruling over the Gentiles. That’s the way we think of it. But this text reverses that. Says that the greatest people were the Gentiles. And you—I think that’s what the New Testament says, too. The Jews were puffed up with their importance. Well, they were important, but their job was to be servants to the Gentiles. The Gentile God-fearers were more at the focus of what God was doing. And He created a whole group of people to serve the Gentile God-fearers.

I think that’s what this text tells us from Genesis 14. The Gentiles, the Gentile king, is greater than the Jewish king. The Jewish king is to serve the Gentile king. That’s a Gentile God-fearer. I think that’s very significant for us, because in the same way that those Jews twisted it around and said Levi is superior to Melchizedek—he was lousy. That’s what we tend to do with the world in general. You know, well, it’s a lousy world. But we’re doing good. No, it’s a lousy world because we’re not doing so good. We’re not serving that world that God has claimed covenantally as His own.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”

And then secondly, you know, we in this church—great Bible teaching, I hope; great understanding of doctrines. A lot of great guys here know the Bible a lot better than me. Praise God. But that doesn’t make us better or greater than other churches. It makes us less great. It puts us in a service role to them, you see? And by way of analogy, and I know the Levitical, Melchizedek thing is totally gone now, but by way of analogy, we’re sort of like the Levites then to the Melchizedek churches around us, you know? And maybe they don’t know everything that we know. God set up the Levites to inform the Gentile God-fearers, to serve them with the knowledge of the word and worship and all that stuff.

That’s what we’re supposed to do. God gives greater knowledge to people, not to puff them up, but so they be servants, you see? Servants. And we should be servants of the civil magistrate. My hope in two years is to have a Bible study that doesn’t go down there and knock them over the head about everything, but takes the basic truths of rulers from the last third of the book of Proverbs, try to put it in a communicable form, and entreat liberals and democrats—liberals and conservatives alike—to honor God with their actions.

So that’s four things we can take from this text today. An attention to the details of scripture, looking at the Bible, studying it with the details. Secondly, acknowledging Christ’s superiority, and in response to that great gospel that Jesus has come, we’re on this side of all that stuff. Respond the way Abraham responded by recommitting ourselves to tithe, to give the tenth to Him. Third, to assert again the importance that the civil governor is to exercise capital punishment, the death penalty. That’s justice. We will not have peace as a culture if we don’t have justice preceding that peace.

And then finally, that we all should develop the idea that if you’ve been given more through your association with this church—knowledge of the word, knowledge of worship, whatever it is—it’s to the end that you might serve others.

You know, it’s interesting in the flow of covenant history. We had Adam, of course, Noah. That’s a generalized worldwide covenant with Noah. And then we have specific covenants for the Jews—the Abrahamic covenant that we see now is in the context of a greater person, a Gentile Melchizedek. Then we have the Mosaic covenant, and who does God bring along? A Gentile guy, Jethro, to work with Moses in setting up his system. Then in the Davidic covenant, God brings along Hiram to be a sponsor of David’s element of the Jewish aspect of the Davidic covenant. And then Cyrus and Darius with the restoration covenant.

Our job is to be good stewards of the mystery of God, to be stewards in a way that takes the knowledge that God gives us to other people. So that’s the application: details, tithe, civil governor exercising God’s justice, and each of us seeing ourselves as servants to those around us.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the great blessing of being on this side of the cross. We thank you for the coming of the greater Melchizedek, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the relative simplicity of this text once we know our Bibles and the details of them. And we thank you, Lord God, for the renewed commitment you call on us to do today—to tithe, to serve you, Father, to be a witness to the civil magistrates, and to know our Bibles.

As we come forward today, may we indeed be consecrating ourselves anew, dedicating ourselves afresh, to some application of one of these four things in our own lives individually. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.