Ezekiel 12:1-14:11, Hebrews 7:1-17, Psalms 105:37-45, Proverbs 27:3
Today is the 5th day of November. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s a pleasure to be here with you as we come in out of…now it actually is kind of starting to get cold and time for a roaring campfire to keep warm, but I guess the important thing is that we keep the fire burning every day. And, so, here we are for our next step forward. We’re reading from the Contemporary English Version this week. Ezekiel chapter 12 verse 1 through 14 verse 11 today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, for the last few days in the book of Hebrews we’ve been hearing his name, Melchizedek, and it might sound vaguely familiar because we’ve seen this name before in the Bible in the story of Abraham which the book of Hebrews recounts today. This guys really interesting because entire stories about him existed like extra biblically among the Hebrew people. I mean even the book of Hebrews tells us he never died. He was a priest of God who never died dating back to Abraham’s times. So, we could go like, “well…maybe that’s Jesu?” or “what’s going on here?” And that kind of opens up all kinds of avenues that…that get us into things that we can’t possibly unpack right now. Things like cosmic geography, things like the understanding of the spiritual realm dating from Abraham forward into the first century. So, I have been studying a lot over the last couple of years and hopefully we can get into some of it as we go through the Scriptures next year. But rather than completely diverting from what the book of Hebrews point is and when it’s trying to teach us let’s look at this man named Melchizedek because the writer of Hebrews makes a direct correlation between Melchizedek and Jesus. So, who was Melchizedek? That takes us, like I just said, like the book of Hebrews says, back to the book of Genesis, so back to the beginning of our journey when we met Abraham. So, I’m quoting from Genesis 14 here. “And Melchizedek, the king of Salem a priest of God most high brought Abram some bread and wine. Melchizedek blessed Abram with this blessing, “blessed be Abram by God most high Creator of heaven and earth and blessed be God most high, who has defeated your enemies for you. Then Abram gave Melchizedek 1/10 of all the goods he had recovered.” So, like that’s the story of Melchizedek in the Bible. He’s mentioned one other time outside of the New Testament and that’s in Psalm 110, which was composed by the great King David. And I read, “the Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” So, like we've…we’ve read through this territory on our journey this year. So, we know that there’s a pretty vast amount of centuries between Abram and David. And then we also know that there’s a vast amount of centuries that existed between David and the writing of the book of Hebrews. So, if Melchizedek is showing up in Genesis and then showing up in Psalms centuries later, and then showing up in Hebrews even more centuries later. And that’s it, like that all. We read everything in the whole Bible that’s spoken about this guy, Melchizedek. So, if his name and his reputation and whatever the story is that swirls around him can exist outside of the Scriptures and be talked about, like a part of the fabric of the culture for millennia, then even though outside the Bible everything is speculative, we know he had a place in the consciousness of the Hebrew people for a very, very long time. And you start getting into this territory and you can Google Melchizedek and you can…you can go on all kinds of different journeys of speculation, some related to Jesus and some completely unrelated to Jesus. But the author of Hebrews is making a connection to Jesus. So, let’s like stick to that path. So, the author of Hebrews tells us that Melchizedek’s Melchi-Zedek means king of justice, or king of righteousness, and he was the king of Salem, which means king of peace according Hebrews. So, Melchi-Zedek is the very first priest of the most-high God or el-elion that appears in the Bible at all. So, we could say that Melchizedek was the first righteous priest of God most high, and the man who also happened to be the king of Salem or the king of peace. What Hebrews is bringing out here is that Melchizedek is interesting because he was a priest of the most-high God, in fact the very first priest of the most-high God mentioned in the Scriptures but he wasn’t a Levite, which would be against Mosaic law, which is a very big deal. However, Melchizedek couldn’t have been a Levite because Levi wasn’t born yet. And his priesthood couldn’t have been against the Mosaic law because Moses wasn’t born yet. So, you’ve got an anomaly going on here. and if we jump like a thousand years ahead of this account in Genesis and we enter into the time of King David and what he wrote in Psalm 110 about Melchizedek, Mosaic law had in fact been given and the priests were certainly from the tribe of Levi, the Levites. But David was not from the tribe of Levi. David, the king was from the tribe of Judah. So, why is it that he gets to be a priest that’s forever in the order of Melchizedek? So, this is where it gets interesting. Melchizedek was a priest of the most-high God who also happened to be the king of Salem. In other words, he was a priest and a king, a priestly king. David, speaking in Psalm 110 was king of Jerusalem, right? So, let’s break it down. Jeru-Salem, Salam, the same city Melchizedek had been a king of. So, in Psalm 110 it appears that King David is being set apart to be a priestly king, a king of righteousness, a king of peace like Melchizedek, regardless of what tribe he came from even though that was against the Mosaic law. So, if this interpretation is theologically correct then…then David was an anomaly, then David was an exception, he was a priest in the order of Melchizedek an exception. Jesus came from the line of David and according to Hebrews ties off this thread, gives an explanation for why this guy shows up a couple of times in the Bible but has a lot of conjecture surrounding him outside of the Bible. Jesus came from the line of David from the tribe of Judah, and He is a priestly king in the order of Melchizedek, a King of peace. And we’re quoting from Hebrews, “that person wasn’t appointed because of his ancestors, but because his life can never and end. The Scriptures say about Him, you are a priest forever just like Melchizedek.” So, like I said, there’s a lot…there’s a lot more to that story and’s there’s a lot of mythology that surrounds Melchizedek and it’s all tied to a larger worldview, spiritual worldview of the of the ancient Hebrew people and for that matter the ancient people of the time at the time of the writing of the Old Testament. This at least gives us a little bit of context and a little bit of background for what we’re reading in Hebrews and why it matters to the greater point that the writer of Hebrews is making, that Jesus is the great high priest, right? Because that’s the story that’s being told here this great…a high priest has to go in once a year and atone for the sins of the people, like everybody…I mean…Hebrews is written to Hebrew people, so they understand what’s being said here, this explanation of how Jesus has become the final and the greatest high priest, and there is really no need for a high priest any longer, at least a sacrificial officiant, is where he’s going here. Which brings up the obvious question. How can Jesus be the great never-ending high priest before God in His presence in the spiritual holy of holies if He didn’t come from the tribe of the Levites and He’s like an illegitimate priest to begin with. This is how the book of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews is connecting a story that goes all the way back to Genesis through the Psalms and then into the New Testament era, revealing Jesus as the high priest.
Prayer:
So, Father…I mean…just…there’s a lot here in context and in history…there’s a lot that we would need to know to fully appreciate what’s being said here and most of us aren’t Hebrew and most of us really don’t fully understand Hebrew worldview in a modern way, much less in an ancient way. And, so, we thank You for the opportunity to get some context, to get some help to understand the magnitude of what is being said to us in the book of Hebrews. And as we continue this journey we invite Your Holy Spirit to continue to reveal these truths through …through Hebrew eyes and through the lens of the Old Testament that lead us to the story that we’re living in today, the story of our redemption, the story of our salvation, the story of eternal life with You. Come into all the things we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that is it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.