The Mystery of Melchizedek (Part 1 of 4)

In the seventh chapter of Hebrews, we read about a royal priest whose name was Melchizedek. Now, at first glance, this passage seems to be nothing more than a detailed lesson on Old Testament history. But today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg shows us there's a lot in this passage that applies to us today.

He's titled this message, The Mystery of Melchizedek. In teaching through the Bible in a systematic and consecutive fashion, one inevitably discovers that there are certain portions of Scripture which one might be tempted to skip, and yet you just can't. The reason I mention that is because Hebrews chapter 7 is a potential skipping chapter. If I were teaching topically through the Bible, then I perhaps would wait some time before I came to Hebrews 7 and maybe even hope that someone else would deal with it in my absence.

But given that we have planned to go through it in this consecutive way, there's nothing else for me but to put my head down and try and get through it. Hebrews chapter 7 is one of the most demanding, fascinating, challenging, and rewarding sections of the epistle to the Hebrews. The real burning question in coming to this section of Holy Scripture is, who is this mysterious figure called Melchizedek?

And the answers that have been provided throughout the years are many and varied. For example, if you read commentaries, you will discover that there are those who say that Melchizedek was a personification of the third member of the Trinity—namely, the Holy Spirit. There are others who believe that he was a divine virtue, with dramatic powers greater even than the powers of Christ.

We can certainly X that one out. Others have suggested that he was simply an angel. And others, and quite a number of others, have proclaimed the fact that Melchizedek was nothing other than a pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God. Now, before I come to my own personal explanation of this as a result of my study, it should not be surprising to us that when he mentioned Melchizedek for the first time in the tenth verse of chapter 5, he immediately paused at that moment and said in verse 11, We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, because you are slow to learn.

Now, that ought to be a key right there. It's almost as though he comes right up to it, and he backs off it, he breathes for a while as he introduces areas of pastoral concern, the problem of spiritual infancy, the pathway to spiritual maturity, the peril of spiritual apostasy, and then he comes back to him again at the end of chapter 20, closing the ellipsis, if you like, the parenthesis then complete, and he says, This Jesus has become a high priest in the order of Melchizedek. And then he must have looked at his amanuensis, his secretary, and said, Well, we might as well go for it. We've mentioned him twice.

Let's just see it through. Let's tackle this issue of Melchizedek. Now, this particular section is probably as daunting as any in the Epistle of Hebrews, because the imagery which the writer employs and the argument which he makes takes us into unfamiliar territory. And the reason for his approach is because he is addressing a first-century audience that understood the nature of Judaism, were facing peculiar challenges in relationship to their profession of faith, and the application of these truths would be as familiar to them as it is apparently unfamiliar to us.

Now, at the very heart of it is an issue which many of you may never, ever have encountered, some of you will be familiar with, and others will be somewhere in between. The issue is referred to in biblical theological terminology as typology, or typology—that is, t-y-p-o-l-o-g-y. And we are introduced here to a classic statement of this means and method of illustrating the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What you have in the Old Testament, both in people and in practices and in events, are foreshadowings of the Lord Jesus Christ. We saw this on a number of occasions in our studies in Joseph, where as we unfolded the text of Joseph, our mind shot a way forward to Christ. And we realized that what we had in Joseph was not simply an historic statement concerning the reality of the unfolding of God's plan for the life of Joseph, but we also had in that a type that was pointing us forward to the antitype. The type in the Old Testament is the representation of the antitype, which is the reality which we discover in the New.

Now, if I give you a couple of concrete illustrations, you'll have this in no time at all, and it will be plain sailing. For example, in Numbers chapter 21—and you needn't turn to it, this can be your homework—but in Numbers chapter 21, God commands Moses, if you recall, to hoist up a serpent or a snake on a pole in the wilderness. And Moses is then to tell the people that all who look to that serpent or that snake on the pole will live.

They will be cleansed, and they will live. Now, that is a type. And the antitype, the reality which it foreshadows and to which it points, is the lifting up of the Lord Jesus upon the cross, providing the atoning answer to the sins of men and women in the way in which the serpent on the snake, in looking to that, foreshadowed it in the physical cleansing back in the Old Testament. So the type is the snake on the pole, the antitype is Christ. Now, if we were tempted to say, Well, I wonder where he gets that from, we would need to turn, as I encourage you, just so you can see it, to John chapter 3 and to verse 14. This is Jesus himself speaking. He said, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. So Jesus takes the Old Testament picture, and he applies it immediately to what is going to happen in his death. In the same way—and there are many to which we could turn—but in the same way, in Exodus chapter 12, in providing instruction concerning the Passover, we're told in verse 5, the animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. The sacrificial lamb spoken of in the Passover celebrations in Exodus was a type.

The antitype is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So that, for example, when Peter writes to the scattered believers of his day in 1 Peter chapter 1 and in verse 19, he says to them, You weren't redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but rather, with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb—notice—without blemish or defect. When people read the Old Testament, they say, Why were all these things so important? Why was it so necessary?

Why did they pay such attention to the detail in that way? And the answer is often, although not always, because what is provided there is a type which finds its antitype in the fulfillment in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the reason that I mention this should be obvious to you by now. This individual Melchizedek is a type of the antitype the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And the uniqueness of the priesthood of Melchizedek, as it is described for us in the Bible, is described in exactly the way in which it is provided in order that it might foreshadow and point us forward to the one who is the absolute fulfillment of the nature of the role of high priest.

Now, it is interesting, at least to me, that we only have three mentions, or three places in the Bible, where Melchizedek is mentioned. First in Genesis chapter 14, which is the historic encounter to which the writer refers here in the opening verses of Hebrews 7. First, then, in Genesis 14, then in Psalm 110 and verse 4, then in Hebrews 5 verse 10, and then in Hebrews 6-20, and then in the unfolding of Hebrews chapter 7.

Now, can I just make an aside here which I think is of importance and certainly should be instructional for us? Here we have a mention of this shadowy character—first of all, appearing, as it were, from nowhere in Genesis 14. And there's only three verses that refer to him, and then nothing. Total silence, and about a thousand years later, David reintroduces him in the fourth verse of the hundred-and-tenth Psalm. Then silence, and approximately a thousand years later, he appears in the tenth verse of Hebrews chapter 5. You say, Well, what's the significance?

Well, here's the question. If people encounter me all the time, they want to tell me that the Bible is a collection of writings where people got together and collaborated on material so as to make sure that they could stick it all together in a way to con the guileless—in a way to satisfy the weak-minded individuals who are prepared to buy this whole notion. I don't know how you get a Melchizedek from nowhere in Genesis 14, then a thousand years and a Melchizedek in one verse in the time of David, and then a thousand years and Melchizedek in the first century in the writer of the Hebrews. Unless the same individual who authored Genesis authored the Psalms and authored Hebrews.

Because how otherwise would people have known about this person? So, in a subtle and yet wonderful way, as an aside, here is one of the internal proofs as to the veracity of the authorship of the Bible—that it is, as Paul says to Timothy, God-breathed, theopneustos, and profitable, therefore, for all of our instruction, correction, and training in righteousness, and so on. It is not as men and women want us to believe—a ragbag of material generated by some well-meaning religious freaks in the early centuries AD. You have to have more faith to believe that than you have to believe in the divine authorship of Holy Scripture.

But that's an aside. Let us move to the instruction concerning Melchizedek. Take the opening phrase of verse 1, add it to the closing phrase of verse 3, and you've got the essential picture. This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever. This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High, and I'm adding it to the closing phrase of verse 3, and like the Son of God he remains a priest forever. Not that we're going to pass over the elements in the middle, but that will give you the very heart of what's going on. The snapshot, if you like, which is given to us in the Bible of Melchizedek, leaves him at every point in permanent possession of his priesthood. Now, that'll become clear what I mean by that as we go on, or it won't.

But I hope it might. He was the king of Salem, we're told, which almost certainly should be identified with Jerusalem, because that was another name for Jerusalem. He is the priest of God Most High. And his name is significant, especially when you think of that which he portrays, insofar as he was called the King of Righteousness and the King of Peace. There could be no better description of the one who was to be the fulfillment of the shadow which he cast—namely, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the third verse, we come to the most troubling element, which provides individuals with some of the more fanciful ideas about who Melchizedek is—without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days, end of life.

So what is this? Is he the original nowhere man? Did he come from nowhere, was about essentially nothing, and go to nowhere? I have concluded in my own personal study, and you're sensible people and need to judge for yourselves, I have concluded that Melchizedek was an historical figure, that he had a real birth, a real life, and a real death.

In fact, in researching it, it seems distinctly possible that he may well have been a descendant of a fellow by the name of Japheth or Japhet, who reigned over a certain territory—a small tribe in Canaan—and the territory over which he reigned had as its chief town Salem. And while there is much which appeals to the idea of Melchizedek being a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Son of God, I can't get there because it doesn't say that. In fact, it says that he was like the Son of God. Or in the King James Version, he was made like unto the Son of God.

Now, we only need our knowledge of the English language to think this out. If the writer—if he was the pre-incarnate Christ—then the writer would have said he was without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of the days of our life, and, hey, you shouldn't be surprised, he was the Son of God. But he doesn't say that. He said he was like unto the Son of God.

He was a type. And the way in which he is described for us in the Bible is in such a way as to focus only on that which provides for the fulfillment in the totality and reality of Jesus himself. So, if we take it in context, clearly he didn't come from nowhere. If he was a mere man, he had parents, and he lived and he died. Well, then you say, why does it say without father or mother and without genealogy?

Well, again, the context is the answer. For the Levitical priesthood, genealogy or ancestry was everything. You could not be a priest after the order of Levi unless you were a literal descendant of Aaron. And indeed, your mother had to be a person who qualified by certain stringent requirements to be a priest's wife. And furthermore, certification of that had to be placed within the genealogical register. Now, let me just earth this in history again for you. In Ezra chapter 2—and you find the exact same statement in Nehemiah, most of us will have forgotten it—but in Ezra chapter 2, in the list of the exiles who have returned after their captivity in Babylon, in verse 61—and it's an interesting chapter, Ezra.

You might like to turn to it and begin memorizing it right now. But Ezra chapter 2 verse 61 provides us with a list of unpronounceable names, and then it says of them, verse 62, "...these searched for their family records, but they could not find them, and so were excluded from the priesthood." These were guys who were showing up and saying, Hey, I'm in the Levitical priesthood! And the answer was, Show me your birth certificate.

Show me your identification. And in all of the chaos that had ensued in their lives, they were unable to go and produce the genealogical records, and therefore they said, on the strength of that, you cannot be a priest. Now, Melchizedek, in contrast, had no reference to genealogical records. He is not introduced to as on the basis of his genealogy. He appears in the Scriptures as if from nowhere, disconnected in his description from his realistic origins as a mere man but described in a way that attaches nothing to his origins and provides us with no record of his ending.

Why? Because he is a type of the one who was to fulfill a priesthood which had nothing to do with genealogy and which would go on forever. And so in order for him to be a fit type of the fulfillment, it was necessary that he would have this shadowy depiction within the pages of Scripture.

Now, learn this in passing. Even the silences of Scripture are pregnant with meaning. What it doesn't say about him teaches us something. For the Levitical priests could only begin at the age of twenty-five. For five years they were allowed to do a kind of interdisciplinary priestly function amongst themselves, and then from the age of thirty they could begin ministering to the congregations that gathered.

But that only lasted for twenty years, and at the age of fifty, it was done and gone. So nobody out of the Levitical priesthood would be able to provide the type of the Lord Jesus Christ. It would have to be somebody with another kind of priesthood—namely, Melchizedek—who, unlike the others, is not introduced to as on the basis of these things, nor is his priestly function limited by these time frames which were part and parcel of the others. Melchizedek's priesthood was not founded upon his genealogy but was derived from his personal dignity.

It was not limited to a prescribed period. There is no record given of it coming to an end. It obviously came to an end, but he doesn't have it described as coming to an end because of the purpose for his existence in Scripture. And in this respect, he foreshadows the superiority of Jesus' priesthood, because the priesthood of the Lord Jesus rested upon the eternal dignity of his sonship. The priesthood of the Lord Jesus was not on the basis of his lineage.

The priesthood of the Lord Jesus was on the basis of his personal worth. This new covenant we call the gospel has changed everything. There's a lot for us to look forward to as Alistair Begg continues describing Melchizedek and the amazing ways he foreshadows our great high priest Jesus. We'll hear that tomorrow on Truth for Life. To illustrate how Jesus changed everything, there's an online video we'd love to have you view called The Story. In just a few minutes, this video explains how Jesus' death and burial and resurrection from the dead created a new line of communication between us and God the Father.

To watch this beautifully animated feature, you can go now to truthforlife.org slash the story. The first line in our mission statement at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance so that unbelievers will be converted. And if you are one of our financial partners, you would be encouraged to be able to read the letters and emails we receive from people telling us how God has used Truth for Life to change everything in their lives.

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We've got to admit that sometimes we feel ill-equipped or nervous to bring up the subject of salvation. This book, Have No Fear, helps us talk to our friends in a very natural way without coming across as offensive. The second book we're including, we're actually including two copies, one for you and one you can share with a friend. This book is titled The Word One to One. And this is a book for sitting down with a friend and walking through the first chapter of the Gospel of John together.

By doing so, this will prompt a natural two-way conversation that keeps you focused on the scriptures. We like the format of this interactive book. In fact, we posted a sample on our website so that you can get a sneak preview of what's inside. So when you give a donation to support the ministry of Truth for Life today, you're going to get a three-book bundle, one copy of Have No Fear and then two copies of The Word One to One. Give online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Or if you'd prefer to call us, our number is 888-588-7884. Or you're welcome to mail your donation along with your request for the book. Write to Truth for Life at post office box 398000 Cleveland, Ohio 44139. Tomorrow, Alistair takes us back to Hebrews chapter 7. He's teaching us how the mysterious priest Melchizedek foreshadows Jesus as our great high priest and why that has implications for us today. I'm Bob Lapine. The teaching ministry of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.