MELCHIZEDEK
Hugo McCord
“Consider how great” Melchizedek “was, to whom Abraham the patriarch,” after a victory in battle, “gave a tenth of the choicest spoils” (Hebrews 7:4), and to hear Melchizedek say to the patriarch,
Blessed is Abram of God Most High, the possessor of heaven and the earth, and blessed is God Most High who has delivered your oppressors into your hand! (Genesis 14:18-20.
Melchizedek is identified as “a priest of God Most High” and as a “king of righteousness” and as a “king of peace” (Genesis 18:18; Hebrews 7:2), What attributes! How excellent a man he must have been!
Further, he is identified as “the king of Salem” (Genesis 14:18), which was the first name of Jerusalem. Of that city Josephus wrote:
He who first built it was a potent man among the Canaanites, and is in our tongue called the Righteous King, for such he really was (WARS, 6, 10, 1).
That ancient cities had kings is common knowledge, but one is startled to read of a king also being a priest of God. How did this occur? Why? We do not know. Just “out of the blue,” so to speak, Melchizedek appears in history without a royal or priestly genealogy.
Physically we know he had a mother and father, but as far as any mention of them is given, he was
fatherless, motherless, without genealogy, having neither a beginning of days nor an end of life, and resembling the Son of God, he continues as a priest forever (Hebrews 7:3).
As far as history records, he was still a king and priest when Moses finished writing about him, and so “continues” forever (Hebrews 7:3). Normally, kings and priests lived for a while, and died, but the last we know of Melchizedek he was still reigning as king and serving as God’s priest. Actually we know that he is not still reigning and serving as God’s priest, but history does not tell of a cessation of his work. So in three ways Melchizedek resembled the Son of God: (1) he was both a priest and a king; (2) he had no predecessor; and (3) he had no successor.
After the days of Melchizedek, we learn that Israelite priests had to be descendants of Aaron (Exodus 28:1; 40:13-16; Numbers 3:10; Hebrews 5:4), and Israelite kings had to be descendants of David, a man after God’s “own heart” (1 Samuel 15:14; Acts 13:22).
The final king with a Davidic genealogy was Jesus, “born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Romans 1:3), and was raised from the dead to sit on David’s throne, beginning on the day of Pentecost, May 28, A.D. 30 (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:30).
Where is David’s throne today? Not in earthly Jerusalem, “the city of David” (2 Samuel 5:7), but in “the heavenly Jerusalem,” “the Jerusalem which is above” (Hebrews 12:22; Galatians 4:26). So, from heaven Jesus reigns as “King of kings, and Lord of lords” until “the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God” (1 Corinthians 15:24; Revelation 17:14).
We become citizens of his kingdom by being “born again,” “born of water and Spirit,” “having our hearts sprinkled” with “the blood of Jesus Christ” as we are “cleansed” in “the washing of the water,” the “bath of the new birth” (John 3:3, 5; Ephesians 5:26; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:2). While our bodies are still wet, our “souls” have been “purified,” and we have been delivered “from the power of darkness, and transferred into the kingdom of” God’s “beloved Son” (1 Peter 1:22; Hebrews 10:22; Colossians 1:13).
His kingdom “is not of this world” (John 18:26). It is a spiritual, invisible kingdom “inside” (entos) Christians’ hearts, “an unshakable kingdom” of “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 17:21; Romans 14:17; Hebrews 12:28).
A startling fact about Melchizedek is his wearing two hats, his being both a king and a priest. God did not allow David and his successors on the throne to be priests. David was of the tribe of Judah (Luke 3:31-33), “of which tribe Moses said nothing about priests” (Hebrews 7:14). Uzziah, one of David’s successors, tried to both king and a priest, and even lost his kingdom in his sin (2 Chronicles 26:16-23).
However, in the wisdom of God, the last king on David’s throne was, like Melchizedek, to be both a king and a priest. Before David died, he was allowed to write about the plan God had in mind for his last successor, Jesus Christ: “Yahweh has sworn, and he will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek’“ (Psalm 110:4). Jesus would wear two hats!
Some 500 years after David, Zechariah also foretold of the coming priest-king: “he shall be a priest upon his throne” (6:13). What a “great” (Hebrews 10:21) priest King Jesus would be! All priests before him had offered animal blood for people’s sins (Hebrews 5:1; 10:4). But Jesus presented to God, not “the blood of goats and calves,” but “his own blood” (Hebrews 9:12).
Truly we live, not in the starlight age of the time of Melchizedek, nor in the moonlight age of David’s day, but in the sunlight age of the “Sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2, KJV). “Indeed, I assure you,” said Jesus, “many prophets and righteous men wanted to see what” we “see, but did not; and to hear what” we “hear, but did not” (Matthew 13:17). Because Jesus is our king, “we are more than conquerors” (Romans 8:27), and because Jesus is our priest, we enjoy “the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7).
I do not know who constructed the following chart, but I am glad that somebody did:
|
Melchizedek Priesthood |
Aaronic Priesthood |
Christ’s Priesthood |
|
No priestly
genealogy, He 7:1-3 |
A priestly genealogy Ex 28:1; Nu
20:23f |
No priestly
genealogy, He 7:3 |
|
Non-Levitical He 7:6, 11 |
Levitical 1 Ch 6:1-3 |
Non-Levitical He 7:11, 13-14 |
|
A Kingly priesthood He 7:1 |
Non-kingly 1 Ch 6:1-3 Ge 38:29; Ruth
4: 18-22 |
A kingly priesthood Zech 6:13; He 8:1; Re 1:5; Ac 2:30 |
|
Continuing He 7:3 |
Non-continuing He 7:8, 12, 23 |
Continuing He 7:3, 8, 25 |
|
One priest He 7:1-4 |
Many priests He 7:23 |
One priest He 7:23-24 |
|
|
Oathless He 7:21 |
With God’s oath He 7:21 |
|
|
A sinner He 7:28 |
Sinless He 7:26 |
|
|
Offered for self and the people He 5:2-3; 7:27 |
Offered for people only He 7:27 |
|
|
Goat and calf blood He 9:12 |
His own blood He 7:27; 9:12 |
|
|
Repeated annually He 9:25; 10:1 |
Once for all He 9:25-26 |
|
|
No forgiveness He 7:11, 18;
9:9; 10:1-4 |
Eternal redemption He 9:12 |
|
|
On earth He 8:4 |
In heaven He 6:20; 8:4;
9:24 |
|
|
Man-built tabernacle Ex 25: 8-9 |
Divinely-built house of God He 8:2;
10:21-22 |