Hebrews Lesson 96 August 9, 2007
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall
renew their strength; They shall
mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall
walk and not faint.
Well as you can see (visual testimony)
that overindulgence in ice cream and lobster is not fatal. I went up to
Connecticut last week. I took the hot weather with me. It was 96 or 97 degrees which is hot. It is not quite as humid. They think
it is just terrible; but here where it ranges from 95% in the morning to about
60% their range is from 80% down to about 45%. It is humid but it is... We get
the grand prize for humidity here, living in the swamp. So it was great. The
ordination was great. I am going to give a report on Sunday morning when I will
have pictures by then so that you can get an idea of how things went. It was
very good and we had a tremendous weekend.
One of the members of the ordination
council is Dr. Elliott Johnson.
Elliott was a doctoral student – in fact he got his ThD the same year that Charlie and George Meisinger got their ThM’s. So
they knew him back then. Charlie hadn’t seen Elliott since then. He is one of
the good guys up there at Dallas Seminary that are really holding the line
against the influence of progressive dispensationalism and several other things
- just a real solid guy. He was impressed with the depth of the ordination and
all that went into preparation for it, even having the general public (the
congregation) invited to witness the questioning.
He said, “I have been to a lot of
ordinations and they are all back in the conference room somewhere. The elders
or the deacons grill the pastor.”
He thought it was a great idea to
have the congregation there. He saw a few things he liked.
Well, somebody sent me an email
today. I’ve had this before and I thought it was rather amusing. I thought I
would read it to you and share the humor. It has a lot to say about how things
are interpreted today and how people read things the way they want to read things
and shape things the way they want to shape them.
Judy who is a professional genealogical researcher discovered that
Hillary Clinton’s great great uncle Remus Rodham, a fellow lacking in character, was hanged for
horse stealing and train robbery in Montana in 1889. The only known photograph
of Remus shows him standing on the gallows. On the
back of the picture is the inscription:
Remus Rodham,
horse thief, sent to Montana territorial prison 1885. Escaped 1887. Robbed the
Montana Flyer 6 times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives. Convicted
and hanged in 1889.
Judy emailed Hillary Clinton for comments. Hillary’s staff of
professional image adjusters cropped Remus’s picture,
scanned it, enlarged it, and edited it with the image processing software so
that all that is seen is the headshot. The accompanying biographical sketch is
as follows:
Remus Rodham
was a famous cowboy in the Montana territory. His business empire grew to
include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with
Montana’s railroad. Beginning in 1883 he devoted several years of his life to
service at a government facility finally taking leave to resume his dealings
with the railroad. In 1887 he was a key player in a vital investigation run by
the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency.
In 1889 Remus passed away during an important
civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing
collapsed.
I guess it is all how you look at
things, right?
Well before we get started we need
to make sure that we are in fellowship. I know the mention of Hillary Clinton
probably got half of you out of fellowship and it may take you 5 minutes to get
you back in fellowship. Nevertheless we will have silent prayer and then I will
open in prayer. Let us pray.
Well, tonight we are back in Hebrews
7:11. We will be back in Hebrews 7:11. As I started getting back into the flow
of Hebrews 7, I realized it was taking me a long time because it had been a
little over 2 months, maybe three months, since we actually went through this
first part of Hebrews 7. I figured if it was taking me that long to get my head
back into Hebrews 7 it would probably take you even longer. So, I thought that
we needed to have some review to reorient ourselves.
What happened is that we hit those
last couple of verses (7, 9, 10, 11) that deal with (mostly 10 and 11) the fact
that Levi paid tithes in Abraham’s loins and how that verse was used as a proof
text in many theologies for different positions. So we took a little bit of a
side track down two major rabbit trails dealing with:
Now I concluded the second part of
those two series last week. So we
are back into our flow of Hebrews. Let’s take some time this evening. I want to
review.
As I was doing this I went back to
the first chapter of Hebrews. I noticed certain thematic elements that come
into play in Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 that were identified in the introduction.
Now that we have studied through the first 6 ½ chapters and are on the verge of
getting into this next section, it all of a sudden stands out a little more as
to what the writer was doing. Hebrews takes a number of different threads as it were –
threads of doctrine related to the person of Christ, related to His
sanctification in His humanity during the time that He was on the earth,
certain threads related to His ascension and His present session at the right
hand of the Father. The Psalm that is quoted the most in Hebrews is Psalm 110.
Psalm 110:1 is quoted two or three times; Psalm 110:4 is quoted two or three
times which are very important for understanding the Doctrine of the Ascension.
This doctrine is just embedded back there in the Old Testament. If you went
back and just read Psalm110 you might not on your own pick out all the
implications that the writer of Hebrews is picking out. That is the way that
doctrine progresses.
Sometimes I will use the phrase
progress of doctrine. People don’t know what that means. It doesn’t mean…well,
it can mean two things. It means that doctrine progresses in the Scripture
because you have progressive revelation. So with the Old Testament you have
certain things revealed in the Pentateuch, certain things revealed in the
prophets, certain things built on that when you get into the gospels, and more
things built on top of that in the epistles. But once the canon is closed, you
have another type of progress of doctrine. That is the progress of the church’s
understanding of doctrine so that our understanding of the doctrine of the
trinity today is far superior to the Apostle Paul’s doctrine of the
trinity.
Now when I say that some people say,
“Wait a minute. He had the Holy Spirit and he was inspired when he wrote all of
that.”
He understood the trinity, yes, but
he didn’t have the word trinity. See, you have the word trinity. That
encapsulates all that is taught there in that one vocabulary word and he didn’t
have that. That was not coined until Tertullian coined it in the early part of
the third century. So with the development of vocabulary
(came) the development of technical language to articulate the nuances of these
doctrines. We who live 2,000 years later understand things that were
only implicit in the minds of the apostles as they wrote these things. They did
not understand the full import of everything that they said.
So let’s start with about 3 points
of general introduction to Hebrews.
Now we have seen this outline
before. We have the prelude, which is the first four
verses. The emphasis on the prelude is on the God who speaks. Over and over and
over again as we go through Hebrews we focus on God’s revelation. God has
spoken; God has said; God has revealed. These are the oracles of God. Again and
again and again there is a reference to God speaking and because God has
spoken, there is a necessary response on our part to be obedient to what He has
said.
We are not to sit there and go,
“Isn’t that interesting. God spoke. Well, let’s go into the classroom and talk
about this and bandy it about and see what our opinions are about it.”
No, when God speaks we are to
respond. It is like that commercial that they had for one of the stockbroker
firms. When they speak, everybody listens. Well, it is sort of like when God speaks everybody is
supposed to respond and respond in obedience. So the emphasis is on God speaking.
He has spoken in times past.
NKJ Hebrews 1:1 God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in
time past to the fathers by the prophets,
NKJ Hebrews 1:2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom
also He made the worlds;
The emphasis there and the
implication is that He is speaking now. It is something that is final and
complete. That revelation process has been completed.
The rest of the prelude introduces
the basic themes related to the Son. He created all things. He has purged us
from sin. He has cleansed us from sin. He has ascended to heaven. He is now
seated at the right hand of God the Father above the angels and this seating is
related to His victory in His humanity. He is the future heir of all things.
NKJ Hebrews 1:4 having become so much better than the angels, as He
has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
So the session, the seating at the
right hand of the Father, is going to then be related to His priesthood. But,
before the writer can get there, the first thing he has to establish is that
Christ is superior to the angels. That is the focus in the first section in
chapter 1:5 to 2:4. So 1:5 to 2:4
has a doctrinal exposition of His deity and humanity. The emphasis though is
going to be on both of these. Psalm 2:7 emphasizes His deity, His eternal sonship which is quoted in verse
5.
NKJ Hebrews 1:5 For to which of the angels did He ever say: "You are My Son, Today I
have begotten You"? And again: "I will be to Him a Father, And He shall be to Me a Son"?
Then it is connected to Psalm 89,
and the second part of the verse which relates to His
humanity and His being the Davidic Son.
So these two things are brought together and then in verse 8 it
emphasizes again His deity. It will be an eternal reign. Then in the second
part of that section in verses 10 through 12 it talks about how we will be
elevated up because of the plan of God, that the Lord laid the foundation of
the earth, laid the plans - verse 10 which quotes Psalm 102.
But the focal point of this is that in
His sonship and in His humanity He is qualified and
He is elevated above the angels - because in His deity He is already there.
But, in His humanity He has to go through this second qualification process
which when He passes the test when He is buried, resurrected, ascended to
heaven; then He is elevated over the angels in His humanity.
At the end of the chapter we read:
NKJ Hebrews 1:13 But to which of the angels has He ever said: "Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool"?
Then we have a quote from Psalm 110:1 which reads:
NKJ Psalm 110:1 A Psalm of David. The LORD
Now I want you to watch this. I am
going to go ahead and connect it to Psalm 110:4 in this introduction so you can
watch how the theme develops.
The capital, the upper case LORD is referring
to YHWH. So that is
referring to God the Father.
said to my
Lord,
That is Adonai
in the second “Lord”. That’s a
reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ.
"Sit at My
right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your
footstool."
Now we all know from English that
when you have a second person singular command, it assumes the presence of the
second person singular pronoun.
So when I tell you to jump what I
have actually said is, “You jump.” When I say to leave, I am actually saying,
“You leave.”
So when the First Person of the
Trinity says to the Second Person of the Trinity, “Sit at My right hand” He is
actually saying, “You sit at My right hand.”
Now it is important to put that
first “you” in there because we connect it to the second use of the second
person pronoun - You sit until I make your enemies your footstool.
Now we have identified that in the
conversation in Psalm 110 that the “you” is a reference to the Second Person of
the Trinity, the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. So when we come to Psalm 110:4 which is the key verse behind Hebrews 7 dealing with the Melchizedekean priesthood we read:
NKJ Psalm 110:4 The LORD
That is YHWH, the First Person of the Trinity.
has sworn And will not relent, "You are a priest forever According to the
order of Melchizedek."
Who does that you refer to? Second
person singular – the Messianic Davidic King – the eternal Second
Person of the Trinity.
So the point that we are bringing
out here is that this shows from the exegesis of Psalm 110 that this other
person is viewed as being fully divine in Psalm 110. You have a multiplicity of
persons there in the Old Testament. You don’t have a singular deity. You have
multiplicity of persons there. You have two divine beings in conversation. The
second one is identified as becoming a priest forever according to the order of
Melchizedek. It is the unpacking of that verse that is going to be significant
in the book of Hebrews.
So the first section closes with
this reference to Psalm 110:1 and then you have the practical exhortation and
warning in chapter 2 right here in 2:1-4. In 2:1-4 there is a conclusion drawn
and that conclusion is a challenge to give strict attention to obedience lest
we drift away. The default position of your sin nature is carnality and to
drift away from doctrine. So whenever you stop walking by the Spirit, your
spiritual gears shift into carnality and you automatically start drifting away.
So, there has to be attention given. We have to focus on our spiritual life. It
is not something that is just going to happen. There has to be discipline,
mental discipline.
The more I watch things today… I
have heard within the last two weeks of so many cases of young people. There
has always been young people - teenagers who grow up,
leave, go off to college and sort of sow their wild oats. But what we are
seeing today is a level of – and I am hearing more and more reports of
this – where kids who grow up and are well-taught and well-grounded in
apologetics and worldview and the whole thing; they leave and by the time they
get into their twenties they are off almost to the verge of neo-paganism and
witchcraft. There is such an incredible amount of pressure in the culture and
from the peers on these kids that they feel so left out. You go into some parts
of this country and I have seen this with young ladies and shall we say a
little more mature ladies in their 30’s and even 40’s trying to figure out if
they are going to find a man who is a believer and positive to doctrine. They
can barely find other women who are positive to doctrine, much less a man. So
when you look at young kids, teenagers, college-aged kids growing up and going
off to college, they feel like they are completely isolated. It is very easy
for that peer pressure to convince them that Christianity and intense devotion
to doctrine is not that important. As soon as they do
their gears slip into carnality and it doesn’t take long at all. Two or tree months
and you don’t even recognize them any more. That is what the apostle was
warning right here. You have to give more earnest attention.
NKJ Hebrews 2:1 Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have
heard, lest we drift away
He gives an example from the Old
Testament. He goes to Sinai and says, “Look at the Mosaic Law. If the Jews who
had the Mosaic Law were rebellious and were disciplined in such an extreme
manner in coming out of the wilderness that they weren’t allowed to enter into
the Promised Land, how much more will we who have such a greater salvation i.e.
inheritance (Remember we are defining the word salvation having to do with that
end result – salvation, deliverance, the full orbed manifestation of
everything we get with our justification) that how much more we will be
accountable when we stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ?”
From there we go to section two.
Section two extends from 2:5 down through 4:13. There are two divisions in this
section. There is the doctrinal exposition or the pedagogical development in
2:5 to 3:6. Then this is followed by a much lengthier practical exhortation and
warning in 3:7 to 4:13. As we go through this we see the themes begin to be
developed a little bit more. We see an emphasis on the Son being made a lower
than the angels. It has already been indicated that He is elevated at the
ascension above the angels. Now the writer goes back in his logic and says that
He is created lower than the angels. In His deity He was over the angels; He is
lower than the angels.
Why was it necessary for Him in His
humanity to go through all of this kind of testing?
In verse 10 he writes:
NKJ Hebrews 2:10 For it was fitting for Him,
That is the Father
for whom are all
things and by whom are all things, in
bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect
through sufferings.
The “many sons to glory” are the
Church Age believers. So what he is saying is that it is fitting in order to
bring you to your maturation point so that you can be a successful co-ruler
with Jesus Christ in the Millennium. In order to do that it was necessary for
the Captain of Our Salvation to be perfected, that is to be brought to
completion through sufferings.
So he sets the standard and He
blazes the trail for us. He has to go through the same kinds of suffering, the
same kind of testing, the same kind of temptation that we do, yet without sin.
Now that comes up at the beginning of the next section. So you see how each
section sort of builds on the sections before.
Then we come to Hebrews 2:17-18. At
the conclusion of this little section he says:
NKJ Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren,
Why?
that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in
things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people.
Now look back to verse 10. He had to go through this
process of being perfected through suffering. You connect that with the fact
that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest because He has been tested
in all things as we are. He had to be made like us. He had to live His life on
the earth in His humanity as a human being.
Now that brings up an interesting question that I have
been thinking through more and more dealing with the hypostatic union. We think
about the hypostatic union and I have talked to some degree about this already.
You have the two natures in Christ, but it is one person. It is one individual.
He is not schizo.
He is not saying, “I am over here today. Now I am over
here. Let’s go back over here and be divine; now let’s go over here and be
human.”
It is one person. So everything is coming out of one person. But, He has two natures. One is undiminished deity and the other is true
humanity. He has always got both of these natures there.
But some how and this is the issue with kenosis in
Philippians 2:5-11 where it is translated, “He did not think it robbery to be
thought equal to God, but He gave up His attributes.”
He didn’t give them up. He willingly restricts
them.
The question came up when we were at the ordination
this last week. The standard question was to define the hypostatic union. And
the answer that was given by David was the standard answer that you will find
like Jesus Christ our Lord John Walvoord’s book on Christology or any number of other
classic works on Christology that Christ willingly gave up the independent use
of His eternal attributes.
After he gave the definition I said, “Okay David, tell
me when Jesus the Second Person of the Trinity ever used His attributes
independently of the Father’s will.”
He never did. So that’s really not a good definition,
but it is one we have all heard and one that has been used again and again and
again for decades if not for centuries. So we have to think through what is
really going on with the hypostatic union is that Jesus willingly sort of
blocks off His deity. He assesses those divine attributes when it is important
to demonstrate His divine credentials and who He is as the Messiah, as the
predicted Son of God because remember in the Old Testament you have all those
passages like Psalm 110:1, 110:4, Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6 all of which indicate
that the Messiah is going to be fully God. He is going to be called eternal
God. They will call Him Emmanuel, God with us. Micah 5:2 He will be born in
Bethlehem. He who’s going forth is of old - eternality. He will be born in
Bethlehem. So He demonstrates that He is divine through the use of certain
divine attributes, but He only accesses His deity to demonstrate His
credentials. He never assesses His deity to solve the problems in His humanity,
to deal with the weakness of His flesh in terms of His limitations of His
humanity.
When we did that study a couple of weeks ago in
Genesis when we were dealing with sorrow and grief and dealing with funerals
and the loss of a loved one and I traced the use of the various compounds of lupeo and how antilupeo is used
to intensify. It is an intensified grief and sorrow and anguish that Jesus is
going through when He is in the Garden of Gethsemane. That is probably the
closest He ever came to giving up because the pressure was so intense, but He
had to pass the test without being strengthened by His deity because that was
the whole point - that He was going to solve all of His problems and handle all
the testing on His own as a man in contrast to the first Adam who failed and
who gave up and acted independently of God. So Jesus has to handle all of these
things in His humanity. That means He can now be a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God. That is the spiritual life starting with
salvation, making propitiation for the sins of the people.
NKJ Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a
merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining
to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
NKJ Hebrews 2:18 For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those
who are tempted.
Now that takes us through - it
emphasizes a few of these themes related to priesthood that we see in the
teaching portion, the doctrinal exposition part of that particular section.
Then in 3:7 down to 4:13 we have this long section dealing with the challenge
of listening to God’s Word. The centerpiece of this is a threefold and if you
add verse 13 almost a fourfold repetition of the idea in Psalm 95:7 and 8
picking up at the last phrase, the last part of the sentence.
NKJ Psalm 95:7 For He is our
God, And we are the
people of His pasture, And the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His
voice:
NKJ Psalm 95:8 "Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion,
As in the day of trial in the
wilderness,
“If you hear His voice.” He takes us
back to chapter 1, verse 1. God has spoken in these last days. God has spoken
by the prophets and the fathers. So if He has spoken, our response is not to
harden our hearts to that. This Psalm 95 is an indictment on Israel for their
failure in the wilderness in general and at Kadesh Barnea specifically because they failed to trust God and to
rest in His provision so that they can then enter into their promised rest,
which is entering into the Promised Land. So they failed to do that.
That leads to the next section which begins in 4:14. You have a doctrinal
exposition in 4:15 to 5:10 and then a lengthy practical exhortation from 5:11
to 6:20 and embedded in the middle of that is a short warning section.
Now it begins in verse 14 with a
statement.
NKJ Hebrews 4:14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has
passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,
What is he doing there? He is going
back and picking up that theme that ended the previous didactic section with in
verse 17 and 18 talking about the high priest. So he goes back and picks up the
thread of the high priest, he picks up the ascension. He passed through the
heavens. Then we have an exhortation.
let us hold
fast our confession.
NKJ Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses,
but
So he is unpacking this whole
doctrine of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ.
was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace,
that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So he begins an exposition of the
high priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again He connects that to
Melchizedek in verse 6. He quotes from Psalm 110:4 and then he breaks off. In
verse 10 he says:
NKJ Hebrews 5:10 called by God as High Priest "according to the
order of Melchizedek,"
NKJ Hebrews 5:11 of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become
dull of hearing.
So he didn’t get very far into the
topic and he broke off in order to challenge them and to warn them because they
have become sluggish and dull of hearing because they didn’t take their
spiritual life seriously enough. So they have slipped into carnality gear and
they are veering way off course and he has to grab their attention and warn
them about the dangerous consequences of what is going to happen if they are
off course. If they continue they can even end up in the sin unto death. So we
have this lengthy section from 5:12 down through the end of chapter 6 in the
midst of which is that very well known very famous warning section in chapter
6:4-8. All this simply challenges them to the fact that there are real and
serious consequences to failure in the spiritual life. It is not that you will
lose your salvation, but there is tremendous damage that is done both in time
and in eternity.
Okay, that brings us now to section four which is chapter 7:1 through 10:39. So we have 4
chapters to deal with. They are not going to be the kind of chapters for the
most part that we get mired down in a lot technical exegesis. There is a lot of
narrative here and there is also some sort of what I would call filler verses
that we will get into because the standard process apparently in Jewish
commentary is that if they wanted to quote a passage to make a point rather
than just quoting the first part of it they would quote the entire passage
simply to make a point out of one phrase. So in chapter 8 when he has this
lengthy quote of the New Covenant passage from Jeremiah 31 he quotes the whole
passage; but the only point that he is making is that the term New Covenant
implies that the older covenant was temporary and was always
designed to be replaced. That’s it! That is the only point he is making
from about a 5 verse quotation. We will of course take
our time going through it to make sure that we understand the New Covenant.
Okay, let’s look at chapter 7. The
section is going to emphasize the necessity of a new high priest, a high priest
that has to be superior to the priestly ministry that was part of the Mosaic
Law. The Aaronic high priesthood and the Levitical priesthood were tied to the Mosaic Law. The
Mosaic Law was intended to be temporary. It had limitations. It was designed to
provide a priesthood only for the Jews. Because the
Jews had come to Mt. Sinai God had said there in Exodus 19 that He was going to
make of them a kingdom of priests.
But, even as God was speaking to
them from Mt. Sinai they cowered in fear and said, “Oh, we can’t listen to the
voice of God so let’s send Moses up as an intermediary and he can talk to Moses
and Moses can talk to us.”
In other words the people don’t want
- as a nation they rejected the idea of being a priestly nation. They wanted to
have a subcategory to be the intercessor for them. This is where God sets up in
the Mosaic Law the intercessory ministry of the Levitical
priesthood in relationship to their rejection. So we have a development of the
limitations of the Levitical priesthood in this
section. So we have a doctrinal exposition from 7:1 through 10:18. Then we have
20 verses of warning from 10:19 to 10:39. That will be a rugged exposition
going through that particular warning. That’s almost as tough a warning as we
dealt with in chapter 6. So we get into that section and deal with that. That
takes us through our orientation so far.
So we come to Hebrews 7:1 and it’s a
contrast between the priesthood of Melchizedek and the priesthood of Aaron. Let
me just remind you of some things that we covered already in relationship the Levitical priesthood in contrast to Christ’s
priesthood.
NKJ Hebrews 7:13 For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from
which no man has officiated at the altar.
The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, was from another tribe and the tribe
of Judah could not officiate at the altar. So it had to be based on something
else. So Jesus Christ was from the tribe of Judah, the line of David, and
couldn’t serve in the temple.
NKJ Hebrews 7:1 For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the
Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and
blessed him,
Melchizedek is a picture by analogy
of the source of blessing. But it is to Melchizedek that Abraham gave a tenth.
He is not required to. It is a grace offering. Ten percent just happened to be
the round figure that most people used in the ancient world. There was nothing
magical or mystical about 10%. It was a standard round number and there is
evidence throughout the ancient world that this was a standard number in many
different cases for taxes - property taxes, different kinds of religious taxes
as well. It is just a tenth.
And so Abraham gives that to
Melchizedek and that shows that Abraham who is the father of the Jews as a
people used himself spiritually as inferior to Melchizedek. Now that is
important to understand because any priesthood that derives from Abraham would
also be viewed as being inferior to Melchizedek. That is the thrust of this
whole initial section.
It talks about Melchizedek that he
was without father, without mother, without genealogy. That is not saying (I
will go over this one more time) that he didn’t have parents. There is only one
person in the Bible who didn’t have any parents other than Adam. That was
Joshua the son of Nun. (Laughter) Melchizedek was without father and without
mother in the genealogical record. We don’t know who his parents were. There is
no indication in the canon of Scripture as to who his parents were. He was
without genealogy. Why? Because, he is not in the line of the
seed. The genealogies in Genesis deal with tracing the line of the seed
from Adam to Noah and from Noah to Terah and from Terah down to Joseph. But Melchizedek isn’t in the line so
there is no genealogy. We don’t know who his parents
are. We don’t need to know. It is irrelevant to the purpose of Genesis.
NKJ Hebrews 7:3 without father, without mother, without genealogy,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God,
remains a priest continually.
In other words there is no genealogy so there is no record of
when he was born or when he died, not that he wasn’t born or that he didn’t
die. Melchizedek is not some pre-incarnate manifestation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There are always some people who come along and think that this is what
it means. He is made like the Son of God in terms of this literary analogy. So
he becomes the forerunner in terms of the prototype for this royal
priesthood.
Verse 4 through 11 focuses on the
greatness of Melchizedek.
NKJ Hebrews 7:4 Now consider how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils.
This is what he is unpacking. This
is his purpose of focusing on Melchizedek. Abraham paid tribute to his
superior.
NKJ Hebrews 7:5 And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who
receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people
according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from
the loins of Abraham;
Levi is a great grandson of
Abraham.
They are set up over the rest of the
Jews as the spiritual representative of God. Therefore they are to receive the
tithes.
NKJ Hebrews 7:6 but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from
Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.
The point is his genealogy is not
derived from him. It is Melchizedek. So he makes the point in verse 8.
NKJ Hebrews 7:8 Here mortal men receive tithes, but there
That is in that instance with
Melchizedek…
he receives them, of whom it is witnessed
that he lives.
That is that Melchizedek lived. So
he drives home the point in verses 9 and 10.
NKJ Hebrews 7:9 Even Levi, who receives tithes,
Now Levi never received tithes; only
his descendents did some 300 or 400 years later at the time of the Exodus and
the giving of the Law. Only then did you have any kind of tithing or priesthood
set up. So Levi didn’t literally receive tithes. He is simply set up as a
metonymy of source.
paid tithes
through Abraham, so to speak,
NKJ Hebrews 7:10 for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.
That last phrase has to be
understood in light of the phrase “so to speak” or “in a manner of speaking” or
“figuratively speaking” he is still in the loins of his father.” He is simply
drawing the physical connection that if the father is inferior to someone then
the grandson is inferior. That is the simple point that is being made
here.
Then we get to verse 11.
NKJ Hebrews 7:11 Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the
law),
Therefore,
conclusion.
Now this passage is going to sets up
an argument. It starts with what is called a first class condition in the Greek which we usually understand to mean if and the speaker
assumes it to be true. Now he can assume it to be true and it may not be true.
He can assume it to be true and it is true. He can assume it to be true for the
sake of argument. That is how it is set up in a debate. That’s the kind of
first class condition we have here.
“Therefore, assuming” he is saying.
“That perfection came through the Levitical
priesthood.” But it didn’t. That
is the point of the parenthesis.
what further
need was there that another priest
should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according
to the order of Aaron?
What he is saying is. “Why would we
need another priesthood if the first priesthood was sufficient?”
We could set it up in terms of a
logical syllogism this way. P1 is your first proposition. If completion came
(but it didn’t) (assuming it did) through the Levitical
priesthood, there would be no need of another priesthood.
Now who is
he addressing? Remember, he is addressing we believe mostly converted Levites.
They are tempted to go back to all of the pomp and circumstance and all of the
ritual of the temple from their own Jewish patriotism. We believe that the
writer wrote this in that era around 62 to 66 AD just before
the Jewish revolt. There was just this maelstrom of Jewish patriotism going on
against the Romans. There is all this rebellion that is being fomented so there
is pressure there that “you guys were Levites and you have become Christians.
You are anti-Jewish now.” So there is cultural pressure on them to give up
their Christianity for patriotic reasons and to come back into the fold as it
were. It was a time of tremendous
division among the Jews. They were fighting each other more than they were
fighting the Romans. You had the Zealots. You had the Pharisees. You have the
Sadducees. You had the Essenes. You have all these
different (many other) groups and subgroups and they were all fighting each
other. It was a time of incredible arrogance. This is why they couldn’t unite
against a common enemy. When you look at how much they did to defend against
the Romans and they were that divided we can only imagine what they would have
done and they would never have been defeated by the Romans
if they hadn’t been that divided at their core.
So he is writing to these Levites
and he is saying, “Look you have to understand this. If completion had come
through the Levitical priesthood there would be no
need of priesthood.”
Proposition 2: Completion did not come through the Levitical priesthood. We know that because Jesus Christ is
the final completion of all the prophecies and promises in the Old
Testament.
What is the conclusion? Therefore
another superior priesthood was intended and necessary. This is why in verse 17
he is going to quote from Psalm 110:4 to show that from the Old Testament from
the time of David it was understood that another order of priests would be
necessary according to the order of Melchizedek, not the order of Aaron or the
Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law had a purpose, but it was not a purpose that was
related to salvation or a purpose that was permanent.
Last time we looked at a couple of
references in Romans related to the purpose of the Law and there are basically
three.
NKJ Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His
sight, for by the law is the
knowledge of sin.
So the first thing that happens is the law exposes the fact that we just
can’t do it. It is impossible. Man is incapable of living up to God’s
standard. Other verses we looked
at were Romans 7:5 and Romans 7:7.
NKJ Romans 7:9 I was alive once without the law, but when the
commandment came, sin revived and I died.
What he is saying is, “I thought I was alive.
But once I really understood the Law when the commandment came, sin revived and
I died. I realized that I was a sinner and that I was dead.”
NKJ Romans 7:13 Has then what is good become death to me?
Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me
through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become
exceedingly sinful.
That is spiritual death, not physical death. It is revealing; it is not
producing. He is already spiritually dead. It is producing a
knowledge of that death in him. That is what you would have to
understand of Romans 7.
So the Law was not given for
salvation but to expose sin, to expose man’s inability, and to reveal the fact
that man was spiritually dead.
Okay, we made it into Hebrews 7:11.
Next time we will deal with the change of the priesthood and the necessity of
that getting into the rest of this particular section.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.