Picking back up with Melchizedek as High Priest:
This Melchizedek, a high priest of "the Most High God." Now I have to emphasize; God is God. We don’t have two or three different God’s in Scripture. We have One God! But Scripture does associate Him with different titles or names. Especially back in Genesis. You’ve got El Shaddai, El Elyon, and you’ve got Elohim and you’ve got Yehovah or Yhovah and those are all various titles or names of the same God. Of course, Jesus Christ, born in Nazareth, was the appearance in the flesh of that same God. So, when we come to Melchizedek I have to feel we’re speaking of the same God. Jesus Christ in a theosophy, as a Priest of The Most High God, He is the Most High God.
I know I ruffle a few feathers once in a while, but I guess that’s the beauty of being independent. I’ll never forget one time I had been given the pulpit for a church in our area and on the way out, one of the ladies asked why I wasn’t a pastor in their denomination. And without even thinking, I said, "I couldn’t stand the peer pressure." I've not been told to built an assembly or a church but rather to be instant in season and out of season. For me that means be ready any where at any time for out of our being will flow rivers of living waters. I know I ruffle a few feathers once in a while, but I guess that’s the beauty of being independent. I’ll never forget one time I had been given the pulpit for a church in our area and on the way out, one of the ladies asked why I wasn’t a pastor in their denomination. And without even thinking, I said, "I couldn’t stand the peer pressure." I've not been told to built an assembly or a church but rather to be instant in season and out of season. For me that meant be ready any where at any time for out of our being will flow rivers of living waters. We're learning to eat of the tree of Life, not the tree of good and evil or of the worldliness of our old flesh. God has a higher level for us all but we do need to pass through somethings in order to acquire them.
Well, I mean that. I have to hold myself responsible only to the Lord of glory and that I do not take lightly. Whenever I open the Scripture I realize that this is an awesome responsibility. But I do feel that Melchizedek was a type Jesus Christ in a theosophy. In the person of a man who was of the line of Noah, in fact a son, as he had no record of beginning nor of end of days, quite possibly Shem or his great-grandson Eber. In other words, back in Genesis 18, my goodness, who in the world sat down and ate the fatted calf under the oak tree with Abraham? Well, it was the Lord. We know it was because Scripture says it was. And other times the Lord appeared in human form and then went up. And so I see no reason to take anything away from the fact that Melchizedek was simply Christ again, in an earthly manifestation. Because after all, Jerusalem in 2000 BC wasn’t some metropolis that needed a king. His title of king was a future thing more than a present. And so I have to feel, especially in view of verse 3 of this chapter 7, it could be no one but the Lord.
After all the Lord of glory is everything. He’s God the Father, He’s God the Son, He’s God the Spirit and you can’t take anything away from Him. And then, Colossians tells us that Jesus Christ was the Godhead in bodily form. Well, I don’t know how you can take anything away from that. So now as you come into verse 3, this Melchizedek, the king of peace was:
Hebrews 7:3a
"Without father, without mother, without descent, (or without a genealogy) having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; (now if that isn’t a description of God I don’t know what is! And nothing else would fit) but made like unto the Son of God;"
Well, in human form for a little while. And we know like I pointed out, you don’t even hear the name Melchizedek for another thousand years. So He must have left that opportunity of presenting Abraham with the bread and wine and then just simply went back into the invisible Godhead as He did in Genesis 18, and at the burning bush and various other places. Alright, the last part of verse 3.
Hebrews 7:3b
"…abideth a priest (not a year at a time. Not for 50 or 60 years. But how long?) continually."
In other words forever and that takes us into Eternity.
It never ends. He’s eternal in the heavens. And so His Priesthood is that which never ends. Now in verse 4. Paul, and remember who he’s talking to, he's talking to Hebrews who had embraced Jesus of Nazareth as their Messiah but they were still practicing the Levitical Law with all its customs and rituals. They were not ready to break from the legalism of religion and step into Grace. At least that’s the way I have to look at this whole scenario. So now he’s using all these Old Testament things to convince these Hebrews that he wasn’t some renegade coming from out of left field. He was simply bringing them from one period of time and an area of instruction into another. We’ve covered that when we went into chapter 6 verse 1. What did he say? "Now leave the principles of the first words of Christ?" Paul didn’t say, to abandon them, but to move on. That is still the case in our day and time as many want to revert back into something they never had a part of in the first place. Even those Hebrews who have come to faith in Christ want to keep one foot in the old and the other in the new and Jesus said that we're not to. He so much as said it by way of a parable in the old wine skin and the new wine and the patching of an old shirt with a new patch made of new materials, for that was the lesson there revealed.
I gave you plenty of illustrations of what I thought that meant. You just simply don’t abandon what’s behind but you build on it and it’s a progressive revelation. Alright, so now verse 4 where Paul says:
Hebrews 7:4a
"Now consider (just stop and think for a little bit) how great this man was,…" You know what word throws a curve at everybody? "Man" M-A-N. Well, let me show you something. Come back to I Timothy chapter 2 and verse 5.
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