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#13: The Priesthood of Melchizedek

Hebrews

Mar 29, 2015


by: Jack Lash Series: Hebrews | Category: NT books | Scripture: Hebrews 5:1–5:11

I. Introduction
A. For several weeks we walked through a passage in Hebrews 3-4 which had the story of the Israelites in the wilderness as its backdrop.
B. Today we begin another longish section which has a certain part of the OT as a backdrop. It begins here in chapter 5 and is then picked up again at the very end of chapter 6 and is dealt with in depth in chapter 7.
C. Actually there are two OT themes which are used.
1. The first is the theme of the high priesthood.
2. The second is the high priesthood of Melchizedek.
D. Hebrews is a very Jewish book, which means we need to learn about some Jewish things, some OT things, some things unfamiliar to most Christians, in order to grasp it.
1. I realize that many don’t have a burning interest in the details of Hebrew religion in the OT.
2. But this is God’s word to us. And this is how it’s written. We don’t have a choice. It is what it is.
3. If we want to hear God speak to us in His word, if we want to obtain the treasures that God has for us here, we’ve got to dig through this stuff.
E. The author is frustrated as he writes the words we read this morning. You can see that in v.11: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”
1. He suddenly senses that he has come to the end of their attention span.
2. He has the answers to their questions. The problem is not that there are no answers.
3. The problem is their dull hearts. Sometimes people are hard of hearing when it comes to the Lord.
4. The author is ready & able to give them the theological explanations of the dilemmas they’re facing, if only they were spiritually ready.
5. Sometimes people who are questioning Christianity just haven’t heard the right answers to their questions. But sometimes they’re not really looking for the answers; they have a heart problem.
F. High priesthood
1. I said last week that we are now ready to delve into all Hebrews says about Jesus our high priest.
2. Messiah is the Hebrew word meaning anointed one. Christ is the Greek word meaning anointed one. In the OT, only high priests and kings were anointed. So, by referring to the coming Jesus as ‘the anointed One’ the OT is envisioning Him as a king or a high priest (or both).
3. The high priest in Israel
a. There were 12 sons of Jacob/Israel, each of which grew into one of the 12 tribes of Israel.
b. One of the sons, Levi, along with his descendants, the Levites, became the priestly tribe by God’s assignment.
c. One of those Levites was Moses, and one was his brother Aaron, who, along with his descendants, was given the responsibility in Exod.28 of being the high priests in Israel.
4. The high priest had a very significant place in the mind of a faithful Jew in the 1st century.
a. He was the main leader of the Jews in this kingless era.
b. But he was more than just a political leader. He was a religious leader, THE religious leader, the representative of the people who’d go into the Holy of Holies once a year on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, to make atonement for the sins of the people. He was their primary contact with God, the One who went to God on their behalf. He was the arranger & protector of their worship & ceremony.
c. The Jews were not a large or prestigious people. Israel was a pawn on the chessboard of the world. But the one thing they had over and against all other nations on earth, the thing which was the center of their national identity, was their special relationship with God. And so, their high priest was a very big deal to them.
d. For these Hebrew converts t whom this letter was written, being a Christian was disturbing. It forced them to rethink everything. The high priest, however, was familiar, an important part of their identity and their relationship with God.
G. Now I know that the Jewish high priest is not the favorite subject for most of us to study. And I know that the question of how Jesus could be the high priest without being of the family of Levi or Aaron is not the most pressing question in our minds. But think about it this way: God established the OT high priest in order to teach us about Jesus.
H. Now let’s look at Hebrews 5.
1. Verses 1-4 spell out the qualifications of a high priest, 5-10 how Jesus fulfills the qualifications.
2. My Easter sermon next week is going to be on v.7-9, so I won’t emphasize those verses today.
II. Things we learn about high priests from Hebrews 5:1–10
A. God chooses high priests. They don’t choose themselves.
1. 4 “No one takes this honor on himself, but he receives it when called by God, just as Aaron was. 5 In the same way, Christ did not take on himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.”
B. A high priest is one of the people.
1. 1 “Every high priest is selected from among the people and is appointed to represent the people in matters related to God.”
a. He is selected from among the people. This is why a high priest can identify with the people he represents. He’s one of them, now appointed to represent the people in matters related to God.
2. This is why “He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.” (2)
3. Also, “This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.” (3)
a. According to Lev. 16:6 the priest had to make atonement for his own sin before he could do so for the people.
b. The author points out in Heb.7:27 that in this way the high priesthood of Jesus differed from that of Aaron.
C. A high priest offers sacrifices for sins — v.1 & 3.
D. Jesus is our high priest (v.5, 10).
1. He knows God. He knows how to deal with God.
2. He knows you. He knows your strengths and weaknesses. He knows your heart and your frailties.
3. He is a mediator. He’s like a broker between you and God.
4. He intercedes for you. He offers a sacrifice for His people (the sacrifice of Himself, of course).
E. Jesus is a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
1. What in the world does that mean?
2. We’ll go into more detail about this later, because there’s a lot in Hebrews about it. But today we get started.
3. The claim that Jesus was a high priest would have immediately raised a question in the mind of any Jew: How can someone from the tribe of Judah, the line of kings, ever be a priest, much less a high priest? How can Jesus be a high priest when He doesn’t even come from the line of Levi?
4. In fact, there is so much emphasis on this question that it seems probable that this question was being thrown in the faces of these Jewish Christians by their fellow Jews, but these believers didn’t know how to answer. Remember that this letter is written to Jews who have come to Christ and yet now are being pressured and tempted to return to Judaism. One of the tools being used in this pressure seems to have been this argument. Their fellow Jews, in arguing against the Messiahship of Jesus, were apparently belittling the claim that Jesus was high priest since he wasn't a Levite.
5. So, before the author squeezes much out of the notion of Jesus as high priest, he stops to address this question. And the way he answers it is to say that Jesus was a high priest not after the order of Aaron but after the order of Melchizedek.
6. So what is the priesthood of Melchizedek?
a. Melchizedek was a man who lived way back during the days of Abraham.
b. His name appears only 11 times in the Bible, 9 of them right here in the book of Hebrews.
c. The two others are in the OT:
(1) One is in Genesis 14:17-20, where Abraham meets Melchizedek. Only a few things are said about him. He is said to be the king of Salem, but he is also called “priest of the most high God.” (This is 1st time the word priest is used in the Bible, and one of the very few times someone in the Bible is both a priest and a king.)
(2) The other time the name is used is in Psalm 110:4, the verse quoted here in v.6: “And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’”
(a) Psalm 110 is well-known as a messianic psalm (a psalm which speaks of Christ to come). In fact, Ps.110:1 is the OT messianic prophecy most quoted in the NT ("The Lord said to my Lord").
(b) No sense can be made of verse 4 except as a prophecy of the coming messiah.
7. So, the author of Hebrews argues from Psalm 110:4 that the reason Jesus — from the tribe of Judah — can nonetheless be a high priest is because He is not a high priest in the order of Aaron, but rather He is a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
8. Once again, objections the truth of Christ may seem irrefutable, but they never are. The answers are there.
III. The picture and the Reality
A. Here in chapter 5 it is as if the author is standing before a deep and beautiful pool, sticking his toe in, wanting very much to dive in, but is frustrated that his readers’ eyes are about to glass over and that they’re going to tune out. v.11: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.”
1. By "this" he means the Melchizedek priesthood and things like it. Eventually he does say much more about Melchizedek in Heb. 7. And he talks more about the promised land and the sacrifices and such.
2. I would like to try to introduce you to what he’s getting at.
B. When He created the world, God created many things which prepared people to understand His coming Son.
1. He created roles like father, mother, son, shepherd, king, warrior, builder, judge, counselor, teacher, friend, lover. He created things like water & thirst, food & hunger, houses & cornerstones & doors, the morning sun & the morning star.
C. But then in choosing Israel to be His people, He created a number of other roles and things which would further prepare them for His coming Son.
1. He created priests & high priests, blood offerings & sacrificial lambs, prophets & prophecies, tabernacle & temple. He created manna, the promised land, the bronze serpent lifted up.
2. That’s the purpose of all these things: to point to Jesus.
D. But what if you thought that the high priest was the real thing? And Herod’s temple? And the sacrifices? And circumcision? And all the ceremonies? That’s exactly what was happening in Judaism. And when the Reality showed up, they preferred the pictures.
1. And now these Hebrew Christians were being lured away from the Reality by pictures of the reality. They are exchanging the glory of God for the glory of created things (Rom.1:23), though in a very subtle way.
2. And in Hebrews 5 the author begins to tell them that Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism.
a. God had prepared the Jews for Jesus by giving them the OT high priesthood!
b. God gave them pictures; Jesus is the reality.
c. So, going back to the old high priest is moving from the ultimate reality to the imperfect picture.
d. Going from Jesus back to Judaism is moving from the ultimate reality to the imperfect picture.
e. The picture is helpful — but only to point to the Reality. If you don’t get the Reality, you have nothing.
IV. Christianity is all about Jesus!
A. All religions have some things in common. They have first principles, they have teachers, they have priests, they have temples, they have gods, they usually have sacrifices, they have rules.
1. Christianity has all these things too. It’s just that according to the Bible, Jesus is all these things. Jesus is our first principle, Jesus is our teacher, Jesus is our priest, Jesus is our temple, Jesus is our God, Jesus is our sacrifice, and our only rule is to love and trust and listen to and receive Jesus.
2. So often people ask which set of ideas is right: Is the Bible’s set of ideas right? Or is the scientific set of ideas right? Or the Buddhist set of ideas? But God doesn’t offer the world a set of ideas. He offers the world His Son. And that’s all we have to offer the world as well.
B. Romans 1:25 says that mankind “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” And man in his non-religious life AND IN HIS RELIGIOUS LIFE does the same thing.
C. God made the creation to look like Him, and especially to reflect His coming Son. Then He made Israel to reflect Him even more, to prepare them for the coming of Christ.
1. So everyone who lives in the world has all sorts of connections to Jesus, all sorts of aspects of His life which give Him a little taste of Jesus.
2. And it is even more true that those who grew up in the Jewish faith were surrounded by signs and symbols of Jesus.
3. There is no person who doesn’t have in his life plenty of things which point him to Jesus.
4. But people tend to ignore the Reality and focus on the pictures,
a. pictures which Col.2:17 says are “a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ,”
b. pictures which the book of Hebrews calls “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (8:5), “symbolic for the present age” (9:9), and “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (10:1).
5. The high priest was one of those pictures.
6. The Jews who were pressuring and lobbying these behrew believers to return to Judaism were pointing to shadows and trusting in pictures while avoiding the Reality.
D. So many in the Christian church do exactly the same thing.
1. They’re into the symbols, they’re into the icons, they’re into the ceremonies, they’re into the sounds and smells and aesthetics. They’re into the music and the eloquence and the architecture and the vestments.
2. But Bible Christianity is not about priests. It's not about popes. It's not about saints. It's not about Mary. It's not about ceremonies. It’s not about sacraments. It's not about tradition. It’s not about holy words or holy water or holy people or holy places. It's about Jesus. It's all about Jesus. It’s about what He did for us. it’s about who He is for us. It’s about Him coming again for us. It’s about knowing Him and trusting Him instead of ourselves. It's about Jesus revealed in the Scriptures.