Participants: James Rafferty, Ty Gibson
Series Code: BOTB
Program Code: BOTB00007B
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00:01 Welcome back friends, in our first segment of our study of
00:04 Hebrews, Chapter 6 and 7. 00:06 We explored Jesus as our fore-runner, and we saw that 00:09 He is definitely seeking to draw us in to a personal 00:14 intimate relationship with the Presence, Capital P, 00:18 the Presence of God, behind the veil and He has brought 00:22 back a good report, He has good news for us, 00:24 and the good news is, that God is friendly, the Father Himself 00:29 loves you, so come on in to the Presence of God boldly 00:33 and consummate this relationship that has been 00:37 in God's heart all along. 00:38 Right towards the end of Chapter 6 and into Chapter 7 00:42 we hear about this priest king called Melchisedec. 00:46 Now this is a mysterious persona in the Old Testament. 00:50 This someone has been questioned quite a bit. 00:54 Who was Melchisedec? 00:55 Where did he come from? 00:57 It says right here, in Chapter 7 beginning with verse 1 "For this 01:01 Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, 01:03 who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings 01:06 and blest him, to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of 01:09 all; first being by interpretation King of 01:11 righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, 01:14 King of Peace; was without father," verse 3, "without 01:16 mother, without descent, 01:18 having neither beginning of days, nor end 01:20 of life; but made like unto the Son of God; 01:22 and abided a priest continually. " 01:25 Now this is mysterious Ty. 01:26 This is mysterious. 01:28 Without beginning without end, without mother without 01:30 father, and so there is a lot of mystery surrounding 01:33 Melchisedec. Who was Melchisedec? 01:35 I think the point that Paul is trying to make is 01:37 that Melchisedec was a unique kind of priest because 01:43 Melchisedec was both a King and a priest. 01:46 King and a mediator. 01:47 Whereas the Levitical priesthood, the sons of Aaron, 01:52 were merely mediators, they were in a priesthood role, 01:55 but they were not of the tribe of Judah for example, 01:59 which was the tribe that kings descended from. 02:02 So why is that so significant? 02:04 It's significant because what Paul is doing is He is invoking 02:07 the idea here of King and priest to bring to our attention 02:11 justice and mercy meeting together in the 02:16 Lord Jesus Christ. 02:17 His priesthood marries justice and mercy together. 02:21 Because? 02:22 Because Jesus, is Himself God. 02:25 Chapter 1 of Hebrews has informed us, He is Himself 02:30 One Who loves righteousness and hates iniquity. 02:32 He is, later on in Chapter 6, holy, harmless, and undefiled. 02:36 In Chapter 4 He is tempted in all points as we are but 02:40 He is without sin. 02:41 Jesus is, on the one hand, He's a king, He's fully invested in 02:47 justice, He's not in any way fallen as a sinner, and yet 02:51 at the same time, having passed through the human 02:54 experience, He occupies a mediatorial role that is just 02:58 saturated with compassion, with sympathy, with mercy. 03:02 He's the priest, that's right. 03:03 And that's interesting because in the Old Testament 03:04 kings couldn't be priests and priests couldn't be kings. 03:07 That's right! 03:08 And yet, in the New Testament even believers are called to be 03:10 priests and kings after the order of Christ, we could say. 03:14 Christians, and Christ here has established Hebrews Chapter 7, 03:18 as both a king and a priest, One who is just, One who 03:21 exercises the laws of the land and enforces those laws. 03:24 But also One Who is merciful. 03:26 One Who loves, has compassion upon, and reaches 03:29 out to humanity. 03:30 It's highly likely that Paul is drawing this idea 03:33 from Zechariah Chapter 6. 03:35 Because in Zechariah Chapter 6, we have a Messianic prophecy 03:39 that foretells Jesus coming and it is very interesting 03:42 because in Chapter 6 of Zechariah, verse 12 it says this 03:47 "Thus says the LORD of hosts, saying:" Now this is the Lord, 03:51 This is God speaking, "Behold the Man" First of all we have 03:55 the humanity of the Messiah, being highlighted. 04:00 "Behold the Man whose name is the BRANCH." And the reason 04:04 why His name is the BRANCH, it says, is from His place, from 04:09 His ministry, from His position in humanity as our Savior, 04:12 He shall branch out. 04:14 This is going to be an extensive ministry which is 04:18 going to take in the whole human race. 04:20 And He shall build the temple of the Lord, which we looked 04:24 at in the previous part of Hebrews, Jesus is in Chapter 3 04:27 the builder of the house of God, which house 04:31 we are Paul says. 04:32 We are a temple of the Lord and then verse 13 04:35 It says that yes, He shall build the temple of the Lord 04:40 and He shall bear the glory which is the theme that is also 04:44 brought out in the book of Hebrews. 04:46 Jesus in Chapter 1 is the expressed image of God's person 04:49 and the brightness of His glory. 04:51 And notice, He shall sit and rule on His throne, so He 04:57 shall be a priest on His throne. 05:00 And the counsel of peace shall be between them both. 05:05 Now the both here in the context is the kingly role 05:11 He shall sit upon His throne and rule, and the priestly 05:14 role, He shall be a priest on His throne. 05:17 Okay so we are looking at Zechariah 6 verses 12 and 13. 05:21 Zechariah is just back from the book of Matthew. 05:24 Matthew, Malachi, Zechariah and we are looking at these 05:26 two verses that seem to pin point, to direct us to what 05:31 is taking place in Hebrews Chapter 7. 05:32 That we have Christ in the role of priest and king so that the 05:37 counsel of peace can be between the priesthood and the kingship. 05:40 having justice and mercy. 05:42 In other words, it's not so important who Melchizedek is 05:45 but what he represents. 05:47 What he points to, what he directs us to. 05:49 He directs us to a ruler ship, if you will, he directs us to a 05:54 reign of grace that is, that is mingled with, that is in 05:59 partnership with justice. 06:01 In other words we have mercy and justice coming together. 06:04 Isn't that Psalm 85? 06:05 That's right 85:10. 06:07 Psalm 85:10 we have mercy and justice coming together and 06:10 that's what we see in the cross. 06:11 We see God be merciful and we see God being just. 06:14 Punishing sin in Himself, the Son of God, as well as being 06:19 merciful to those who have sinned. 06:21 This thing is picked up in a beautiful way in the book of 06:23 Romans as well, while specifically in Chapter 3, 06:26 because using slightly different language, in order to fill out 06:29 the concept, Paul says in Romans 3, that God through 06:33 Christ is both just and the justifier 06:37 of those who believe in Jesus. 06:39 So He is just, He maintains His justice, but simultaneously 06:43 maintaining that justice, He has mercy by which He freely 06:48 justifies fallen human beings and draws them back into a 06:53 relationship with Himself. 06:54 Okay so Paul says in verse 4 of Hebrews 7, now consider how 06:58 great this man was. 06:59 That's what we have been doing. 07:00 We are not trying to figure out where he came from 07:02 We are trying to consider how great he was. 07:04 In other words, the breath of his ministry, what he represents 07:08 because it points to Jesus Christ. 07:10 Consider who great this man was, and what is the 07:12 consideration he directs us to next. 07:14 Unto even the Patriarch Abraham gave tenths of the spoils, 07:18 That is a tithe. 07:19 He paid the tithe. 07:20 Abraham paid a tithe, yes, he says in verse 5. 07:23 We who are sons of Levi received the office of the priesthood 07:27 and have the commandment to receive tithes of the people 07:29 according to the law that is of their brethren, 07:32 though they came out of the loins of Abraham, 07:34 but whose descendent is not counted them, but here it says 07:37 that Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. 07:41 Now notice this, without contradiction, the less is 07:45 blest of the greater. 07:46 And here men die who receive tithes but he received them 07:50 of whom it is written. 07:52 He lives, and this is what I say, that Levi also, verse 9, 07:56 who received tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. 07:59 For he was in the loins of his father when 08:03 Melchizedek met him. 08:04 Now this is so powerful in the context of the gospel. 08:09 example of some of Paul's complex reasoning and complex 08:15 language that Peter kind of told us we should expect 08:18 from Paul, so we really need to break down the reasoning 08:21 that Paul's going through here and why it is and how it is 08:24 and why it is important that Abraham paid 08:28 tithes to Melchizedek. 08:31 I mean in what sense? 08:32 Or Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek. 08:35 What is powerful here in the context of the gospel is 08:38 Levi was not alive when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. 08:41 Levi was in the loins of Abraham, in other words he was 08:45 simply unborn, he was going to be born later on. 08:51 When Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, what Paul is saying 08:53 here is that Levi did too. 08:55 In other words, everything that Abraham did was accounted to 08:58 Levi before he was born. 08:59 There's a corporate sense in which the Bible speaks of the 09:04 human race, there's a corporate sense in which the Bible speaks 09:07 of any given nation, and here Abraham, the beginning of the 09:11 Hebrew people, that God is founding as a nation 09:14 Abraham is an individual in whom the whole of 09:19 Israel is represented. 09:20 Everything future to Abraham is attributed to Abraham. 09:23 That's right, now the reason this is so important, the 09:26 reason why Paul was calling us to consider this is because 09:29 this is what the gospel is all about. 09:31 In the gospel Jesus Christ, we have accounted to us, 09:35 everything that Jesus did. 09:37 When we accept Christ as our Savior, when we are in Christ 09:40 everything that He did is accounted to us so that just 09:44 like Levi, who wasn't even alive, because he is connected 09:48 with Abraham, paid tithes to Melchizedek, because Abraham 09:50 paid tithes to Melchizedek. 09:51 Just so we, even before we were alive, we obeyed the law of God, 09:57 we are perfect, pure and holy before God, are justified before 10:01 God, or are accepted before God, or are God's beloved when we 10:05 accept Jesus Christ for what He did for us. 10:08 Yeah, 2 Corinthians Chapter 5, says in verse 14, "for the love 10:13 of Christ compels us because we judge thus that if one 10:18 died for all then all died. " 10:20 Now this is very strange language for Westerners to 10:24 comprehend, because we don't think in terms of anything being 10:28 done for anyone unless it is done in their immediate context 10:32 and by themselves. 10:34 But the corporate language of Scripture is such that Paul 10:36 can say in verse 14 here in 2 Corinthians Chapter 5 verse 14 10:41 that when Jesus died, everyone died in a sense. 10:46 Now we didn't die literally at the cross. 10:48 Jesus died, but He died as a human being. 10:51 He has died as a true partaker of human nature and so in a 10:58 representative sense, the whole human race was represented 11:01 in the person of Jesus Christ. 11:03 Through His life, and His death, in His resurrection, 11:06 in His ascension, anyone who by faith wants to be identified 11:12 with Jesus certainly can by God's promise. 11:15 And that is why we have 1 Corinthians Chapter 1 11:17 telling us that Jesus Christ 11:19 is our wisdom, our righteousness, our 11:22 justification, our sanctification. 11:24 He's our everything. 11:25 Jesus Christ is everything and what we are called to do is 11:28 to be in Christ. 11:30 To accept Christ as our Savior and then all that is attributed 11:34 to us just like Levi paid tithes in Abraham's time. 11:36 So we have Christ as our obedience as our righteousness. 11:40 So the Apostle Paul comes to the conclusion in Chapter 7 11:44 and he tells us in verses 25-27 that number 1, because of Who 11:50 Jesus is as our high Priest. 11:51 He is able to save to the utter most. 11:53 Completely, totally saved to the uttermost. 11:56 Secondly, He informs us that He is holy, harmless, and undefiled 12:01 and separate from sinners. 12:02 And thirdly, that He made a once for all sacrifice 12:09 for the human race. 12:10 And we having been human beings who have fallen in sin, find 12:15 ourselves represented in Christ dying for us, 12:19 He died for all once. 12:20 Once for all, once for all friends, I want you to say that 12:22 over and over again, once for all. 12:24 And that includes me and that includes you. 12:27 Jesus is your Savior, He is my Savior, let us by faith 12:32 accept Him as such, and be saved by His grace to the uttermost. |
Revised 2014-12-17