Hebrews 7:1-10 For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings… The Jews were very fond of beautiful mysteries, which awakened the sense of wonder and the desire for deeper knowledge; and, as the Psalms and Proverbs show, they love to have truth in pairs or in halves. Their minds moved, as a railway engine moves, on parallel lines and with corresponding wheels; their piety soared as the lark soars on equal wings. As in this subject of Melchisedec, they often gained their idea of the whole truth, just as in geography you gain your idea of the whole earth by uniting the two half-spheres that are separated" on ,he map. The mystery of Melchisedec is thus explained by four pairs of truths. I. HE WAS A MAN AND MORE THAN A MAN. Many things about him are "hard to be uttered" or explained (Hebrews 5:11). Here, I think, is the key that opens the difficulty: — there are two Melchisedecs: the on, lived in Salem, and the other lives in this page. King Henry VIII., the queen-killer; was, as most people believe, a had man; but Froude makes him a good man. There are thus two Henrys: the one lived at Windsor, the other lives in Froude's history. What Froude did for Henry by hero-worship, Moses did for Melchisedec by omission; but with this difference, that Moses keeps to exact truth. As we have Froude's Henry and the real Henry, so we have, as we may say, the Melchisedec of Abraham and the Melchisedec of Moses. Melchisedec was "made like unto the Son of God" (Hebrews 7:3). He was not like Him, but was made like Him. I have watched an apprentice wood-carver. Before him was a tree, like any other tree. Beside him stood a life-size statue of Christ. Glancing now and again at the statue, and guided by his teacher, he hewed out a piece here and there, and soon the tree became a statue. He made it more by making it less, for he thus put a grand idea into it. As that carver elevated the tree into an image of Christ, so Moses, guided by God, fashioned or rounded off the Melchisedec of his story into an image of Christ. It was not an after-thought, but a fore-thought to liken Christ to Melchisedec; for Christ is the original and Melchisedec the copy, expressly "made" beforehand for New Testament teaching. What a man of mystery that Melchisedec of Moses is! He seems to have dropped down from heaven. He seems to be his own ancestor and his own heir; one sprung from himself, a cause uncaused; one ever living among the dead and dying. He stands quite apart, has not his fellow in the Bible, and is like himself only. Fix your eye upon this portrait drawn by the Divine hand, grasp it as it lies there, and the subject is delightfully simple. "This Melchisedec" on whom you and I gaze, not that whom Abraham gazed upon; this literary Melchisedec, not that literal one; " this Melchisedec" is an image of Him who was "without father" as to His human nature, and "without mother" as to His Divine; as God "having neither beginning of days nor end of life"; who in His office was "without descent" and without succession, and so "abideth a Priest continually." Melchisedec was a man. and seems more: Jesus is a man, and is more. II. CHRIST IS LIKE MELCHISEDEC, A PRIEST AND A KING. Pity belongs to Him as Priest, and power belongs to Him as King. His priestly pity and kingly power temper and sustain each other, and as two uniting streams roll along in one full flood of communicated joy. He saves with all the power of a king; He rules with all the gentleness of a priest. His kingly power enables Him to do His priestly work right royally, with royal graciousness and munificence. He saves with sovereignty, with a sovereign's generosity. The rebel Themistocles appealed for pardon to the Persian king Xerxes. The king pardoned him in his sovereignty; not as one who had to study petty economics, whose grace was a miser's hoard; for he gave Themistocles the country of Magnesia for bread (about £12,000 a year); Myus for condiments, and Lampsacus for wine. That is how a sovereign pardons, and illustrates one part of what we mean by the sovereignty of God. Our great High Priest has a royal right and a royal power to save, as He makes one thing of Priesthood and Kinghood. The golden sceptre of grace is ever in His hand; and whosoever will may touch it and live, shielded by the whole power of His kingdom. What can sin, death, and hell do against those who have Him as their ally? III. MELCHISEDEC IS A TYPE OF CHRIST BECAUSE HE UNITES RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE. His name means "king of righteousness," and he was king of Salem, or peace. He was, no doubt, a righteous man and king, doing all he could to right the world's wrongs. But much more than that is meant here. For he was a priest, and no priest was he unless he represented God to man and man to God, and so provided righteousness for the unrighteous. They for whom he acted should have had righteousness, but had it not; and it was the part of their priest to gain for them the "abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness." To us, at least, priestly righteousness means all that. The righteousness our High Priest has to do with is held out as a free gift to the most unrighteous among us; and it is thine for the taking. Melchisedec was also king of Salem. A dense mass of meaning lies for us in this title also. Salem, like the salaam given to-day in the East, means peace. A King of Peace! Earth's kings are war-makers; ours is a Peacemaker. Earth's great cities have often been Aceldamas, streaming fields of blood; our mother city is peace. And what a union of contraries is here! Let the bare idea of God's righteousness enter the heart of a man in sin, and lo! his peace is gone, and he is the prey of remorse. But Christ brings us a peace founded upon eternal righteousness. IV. MELCHISEDEC IS A TYPE OF CHRIST. BECAUSE HE UNITES JEW AND GENTILE. Aaron, the priest, was only for the Jews; but Melchisedec, who was out of Aaron's line and above it, was a Gentile, and he was a priest for Abraham the Jew, and for the Gentiles dwelling in Salem. He was a world-wide priest, opening his arms to all the races of humankind, and his city was meant to be the mother-city of all the earth, emblem of the heavenly Jerusalem into which people of all nations shall be gathered. Thus Christ is a Priest, not after the ruder of Aaron, who was for Jews only, but He is "a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec"; and any sinner under heaven may receive the blessings He brings. (James Wells, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him; |
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