A Higher Priest | Hebrews 7:1-10 | Once for All

One of the easiest ways to explain the value of something is to make a comparison. We do this with food, with celebrities, and even with historical figures. In Hebrews 7:1–10, the author uses a comparison with the mysterious Old Testament figure Melchizedek to explain why we must remain faithful to Christ.

Early believers were tempted to return to the tangible "check-the-box" rituals of the temple sacrifices. This sermon explores why that would be a step backward. By looking at Melchizedek—a priest-king who had no recorded genealogy and who received a tithe from Abraham himself—we see a foreshadowing of a priesthood that does not rely on earthly markers, but on eternal appointment.

Today, we may not be tempted by animal sacrifices, but we are often tempted to save ourselves through our own works or to find peace on our own terms. This passage reminds us that Jesus is our "Higher Priest." He is the King of Righteousness who gives us His perfect standing before God, and He is the King of Peace who remains on His throne regardless of the turmoil in the world.

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One of the easiest ways for us to explain something is to make a comparison. Now, if you were to try a new chocolate and then explain it to a friend, you might compare it to another standard and then either expand upon why it is better or worse. And we do this not only with food, we do this with people. Someone will ask you who someone reminds you of, and you will do your best to come up with an accurate description. Now, of course, this has several drawbacks. We don't all have the same reference points, right? We don't all have the same background to establish a standard. I may tell you something tastes like a food brand you don't particularly enjoy. I could tell you that someone's personality is like a person whose demeanor is like nails on a chalkboard to you. You could tell me that someone looks like a celebrity, but I don't find that person to be particularly appealing, and so my bias is going to skew how I look at things. And there are always going to be names you will be honored to be compared with, and others you would be appalled to have been made the comparison to. Most people would be honored to have a comparison made with a well-known figure that's historical, Unless, of course, that well-known historical figure was a despot known for his tyranny. So while it would be impossible to have universal standards in this way, there is a near-universal agreement in some cases, right? No one would want to be compared to Nero or Hitler. But we would find it quite appealing to be compared to Abraham Lincoln, correct?

As we return to the book of Hebrews, We come across a name that the Old Testament people would have known, and now the Hebrew audience that the author of Hebrews is writing to knows. They know this Melchizedek, and you may remember it from several months back when we were looking and digging into the life of Abraham in Genesis. Melchizedek, well, a figure with some mystery in the Old Testament, would have been a name that was well regarded by the audience that would have heard this book for the first time in the first century. Their Hebrew roots and their knowledge of the Old Testament would have known that he was a priest and that he blessed Abraham, the great patriarch of not only the Hebrew people, but the Jewish faith. And on top of it all, Abraham gave this Melchizedek a tithe. He gave him 10% of the spoils. Now we will see that the author of Hebrews here uses this favorable character to remind his audience why they should remain faithful to their newfound Christian faith.

Now before we break down this passage into our points for this week, I want to very quickly set the context for us. The book of Hebrews addresses a very real concern in the early church. Early Jewish believers had come to faith in Christ, but they were tempted to return to the rituals and rites that they had just recently come out of. Now, we don't know the exact date of the writing of the book of Hebrews, but we know for sure that it was written prior to the destruction of the temple, which happened in the year 70. And how do we know that? Because the book of Hebrews talks about sacrifices like they are taking place. Well, prior to the year 70, there were sacrifices taking place in the temple on a regular basis. But after the year 70, there hasn't been a sacrifice since. And so, just as Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24, Luke 21, The temple was destroyed. Every stone was turned over. There hasn't been a sacrifice since. And so we know, without a doubt, that the book of Hebrews was written very early on in the Christian faith. Well, these Hebrew Christians, They're looking to go back to these rites and rituals, and we've talked about this before. Wouldn't that have been appealing? Now, for us, sacrifice doesn't seem appealing, but for them, they were used to, I took a sacrifice to the temple, a priest slayed that sacrifice, and I know my sins are forgiven. They knew it. It was a ritual. It was something they could do. It was a box they could check. Well, now they are Christians. They have to have faith that Jesus is the one who forgives their sins. Yeah, you can check that box, but... It's entirely an intellectual thing, right? You have to have faith, you have to believe. It's not something I can actually take. I can't take a bird or a sheep to be slaughtered for me. I have to trust that Jesus is the one who paid the price for my sin. And so there was this appeal of going back to the Hebrew way of doing things. So what's happening here is the book of Hebrews is making an argument for why these early believers should stick with their newfound Christian faith. And it's a very compelling reason. The reason is that Jesus is greater. He is greater than the sacrificial system because he was what the whole sacrificial system was pointing to in the first place. He is greater than all the feasts that you and your family could attend in Jerusalem. because those feasts were just types and shadows pointing forward to what Jesus was going to do for them. In other words, the author of Hebrews is saying, why are you accepting the imitation when you have the real deal right in front of you?

And so we come back to the book of Hebrews and find ourselves in chapter seven today, and we're going to break it down into three points to help us make our way through it today. Our first point is that Melchizedek is a priest. Now the people that this book is addressed to are thinking about going back to the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. And so the author of Hebrews is using what they know to convince them to stay. They understand priests. They understand sacrifices. They understand this way of looking at their faith. And so the author of Hebrews wants them to remember this priest, Melchizedek. Secondly, we're gonna see that Melchizedek is a unique priest. The Hebrew folk that are hearing this for the first time would have been familiar with the idea of a priest for sure, as I said. But it would have been a group of people who were from a particular family line. For them, if someone was going to be a priest, If they were going to be set apart to God, they had to have been a Levite. But Melchizedek isn't a Levite. And so the author of Hebrews uses this unique priest to make a connection with Jesus. And then finally, the author of Hebrews makes a case that this unique priesthood is greater. The author of Hebrews wants the people to understand that there is something better, there's something greater than the sacrificial system that they desire to return to. In fact, there was always something greater. And this incident we're looking at with Abraham and Melchizedek foreshadows and points forward to this greater thing. It points forward to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so as we recall this mysterious Melchizedek, we begin by looking at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 7. Now if you were to start off reading the Bible and read through the whole thing front to back at a moderate pace, you would come across Melchizedek's name early on in your journey, right there in Genesis 14. And his name might hardly register on your radar other than maybe you might say it out, Melchizedek. Is that how you say it? You know what you do when you're reading the Bible and you come across those names. Otherwise, you don't read his name again until Psalm 110. And then you wouldn't find it again. So if you were reading, like I said, the Bible at a moderate pace, you might read Melchizedek's name a few weeks into your Bible reading, not read it again for several months, maybe a year, and then not come across it again until Hebrews 7 here. He's not really mentioned very much. Well, if you were to do that, and you were to come to his name here in the book of Hebrews, you might say, what's the significance of this? Who is Melchizedek? I hardly even remember him being talked about. What's going on? It's my guess that this emphasis on him here would come as a surprise to you. You'd probably go back and look at your study notes and then go to Genesis 14 and say, okay, yeah, I need a refresher here, I remember him, but who is this guy? He is really the definition of an obscure character. And yet the author of Hebrews is making a big deal about this, isn't he? And that's because the people the author is addressing are considering going back to that sacrificial system of Judaism. And what is being presented to them here is an argument that all of that stuff, that sacrificial system, has been fulfilled and that the purpose of it is pointing to Jesus. We're gonna see that as we go through the book of Hebrews here.

Now as I said, the name of Melchizedek seems like a blip on the radar to you and I. But it would have been a name well known to those who had been raised with the stories of Father Abraham. And this is why his fancy four-syllable name is brought to the table here. They understand who he is. So who was he? Well, it tells us here, right? He was king of Salem. He was a priest. Now, if you remember back to Genesis, Abraham rescued Lot and a whole bunch of other people from kings who were taking over an area near Sodom. It was quite the military maneuver that Abraham was able to do, and he gained a reputation in that area. Now Abraham deserved the spoils of the battles. It was because of him that victory was won, but he didn't take them. Instead he gave a tenth of everything to this king of Salem, this Melchizedek. Now this is a substantial event because it shows Abraham's faithfulness. It also shows that he wanted to trust God for the blessings that he would receive and not trust in his own might, in his own power, in his own armies to get wealthy and powerful. And if Abraham is giving a tithe of these spoils and not accepting them, then he must be handing this off to somebody important. This guy must be a priest. In fact, as it says here in the text, he was a priest of the Most High God. So we know this is not some random pagan priest. Melchizedek was not some random shaman who was taking donations to open a new bookstore and spiritual center. He knew the one true God and was a priest. He received offerings, he offered sacrifices to the one who is above all, the Most High God. And we know who Mochizedek worships and what he does, but the author of Hebrews is deliberate here to help us know more about him by telling us his name. Now, his mother wasn't paging through a baby name book. We've talked about this before. They aren't paging through, boy, that's a good one, Melchizedek. I'll name my kid that. I can guarantee you that none of you mothers came across a name like that in the baby book and didn't move on, right? Obviously, we don't have any Melchizedeks in the congregation. But that wasn't what was going on. That's not the significance of names in the Old Testament. He is given this name because it tells us something about who he is and what he does. His name is literally translated King of Righteousness. He is righteous. And in his work as a priest, he offers sacrifices for unrighteousness. And in addition to what his name means, we're reminded of where he's from. He is King of Salem. And that literally translates to King of Peace. And the idea here is that his name shows us that he's a king, and where he's from shows us that he's a king, and he shows up in the life of Abraham, and it points us to something greater.

And so, so far, we've seen that he is a priest, but as we look further on into the passage, as we move on to verse three, we see that his priesthood is unique. Now, when we come to this, it can be a little bit confusing. He doesn't have a father? He doesn't have a mother? He has no genealogy? No beginning of days or end of life? What does that mean? Well, it's simple. Melchizedek dropped from the sky. Poof, there he, no, that's not what it means. What they're talking about is that it's not that he doesn't have a mother or father, it's that we don't know them. Whether you were here when our scripture readings have been genealogies or not, you know that a significant part of Genesis is genealogy. You start reading your Bible. It's rather interesting. You're thinking, boy, I can get through Holy Scripture no problem. And then what happens? You get into Genesis and suddenly so-and-so starts begatting so-and-so. and you start to fall asleep while you're reading, right? That's how it works. We know what the story of Genesis looks like. Genealogies are important. And so, when we look at Genesis, most anyone of significance in the book has so-and-so was born, so-and-so lived this many years, and so-and-so begat so-and-so, and then so-and-so died, right? Obviously, they're not so-and-sos. I can't think of any names off the top of my head, but that's the formula that we know. Well, Here's this priest in Genesis named Melchizedek. He has none of it. We don't know who his father is. We don't know who his mother is. We don't know when he was born. We don't know when he was dying. We don't know who he begat. He just shows up. Now, of course, he's a real human. He lived in real-time history. He has these things, but the author of Hebrews is letting us know that this is a priest who God through Holy Scripture doesn't feel it's important for us to understand all this stuff about that's normally super important. And so these Hebrew folk reading this book of Hebrews would have heard the idea of a priest and immediately thought of the tribe of the Levites. They were the priestly line for them. Not just anyone could be a priest. Somebody from the tribe of Benjamin couldn't walk up to the temple and say, I think I've decided to go to seminary and become a priest. They would say, aren't you a Benjamite? Hit the road. You had to be of the tribe of Levite. Your genealogy had to match up in order for you to be a priest. Now you probably have now caught on to the point that's being made here in Hebrews. Melchizedek is most clearly a priest. Holy scripture says he is. Abraham gives him a tithe. So there must be a priesthood here that doesn't rely on the earthly markers of genealogy. So it isn't that Melchizedek doesn't have a mother or father at all. Instead, instead, scripture doesn't give us this information because there is a priesthood that is appointed by God. And the bigger point here is that we will see, and we'll see this expanded upon as we go through Hebrews, is that this resembles Jesus. This resembles the Son of God because Melchizedek, we don't see his end of days. As far as we know, he's a priest forever. And again, the point isn't that Melchizedek is out there somewhere doing priestly stuff, somewhere in the world because he never died. That's not the point. The point is that scripture doesn't record it. His priesthood didn't have a beginning or an ending. And so it points us to the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ, because His priesthood is eternal.

And as we will see in our final point, it's a greater priesthood. Not just because we don't have information about His family, or his birth or his death, but because Abraham, Father Abraham gave this priest an offering. And so we look at verses four through 10. And right there in verse four, we read that he must be great because Abraham, Abraham gave him a tithe. And as the tradition of the Old Testament unfolded, the priests who were the descendants of Levi received the tithes from the people of God by the command of God. This is the Levite's duty, even though every last one of them is descended from Abraham, there was a specific group of people who took the tithes, who made the sacrifices. But Melchizedek isn't descended from Abraham. He isn't one of their brothers. And he took the tithe. And not only that, but he put a blessing upon Abraham. The great patriarch of the Hebrew faith was blessed by someone. Now in our minds, shouldn't Abraham be the one who does the blessing? He's the one who's going to receive the promise. Shouldn't he be blessing? Through Abraham, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. Shouldn't Abraham be walking around saying, bless you? That's not the case here, though. Melchizedek came. Clearly, there was someone greater than him who blessed him. And then notice what it says here in the text. He blessed him who had the promises. And we know the promise. It was great. It was the promise that through Abraham's line would come the one who would crush the head of the serpent. Christ would come from the line of Abraham. We know this blessing. And we know that his people would inherit the land. You would think that his descendants And Abraham himself would be the pinnacle of faith and godliness. They're the ones who do the blessing. But they're not. It's Melchizedek who goes to Abraham and blesses him. Melchizedek blesses Abraham. And as the authors of Hebrews says here, the inferior is blessed by the superior. And that goes without saying. And so Melchizedek is greater as a priest than Abraham was as the one who would receive the promise. And then the author of Hebrews gets down to the root of the argument. You could say that Levi himself, the one who receives the tithes of his brothers, paid a tithe to Melchizedek because he was still within Abraham when he offered the tithe to Melchizedek. So to put it in the simplest terms, if you think you Hebrew people About returning to the rites and rituals of the covenant. That the priest will offer you a sacrifice that is good and that your forgiveness would come. Understand why you feel that way. But there's something greater. There's something more than this. Melchizedek points to something better. A forgiveness of sins that is absolute and forever. And if you want to go back to a high priest who will offer a sacrifice for your sins, you're going to something lesser. The author of Hebrews is saying there's a higher priest. There are those greater than those who are descended from Levi. There is a high priest who is not of the order of the Levites, but he is of the order of Melchizedek and is the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't go back to a priest that's a sinner himself and is of a lesser order. Instead, remain with the one who paid for your sins with his own precious blood once and for all.

And now we're going to expand upon this idea next week. but the underlying message comes through in what we've read this week. Our sin is a problem. We need someone to make an offering for our sin, and that can either be a high priest, or it can be the high priest, Jesus, a higher priest who once and for all paid the price for our sin in his life, death, and resurrection. And so as we wrap up today, We look at this passage and it's easy to wonder how a book written to a bunch of Hebrew folk trying to convince them to not leave the Christian faith applies to us. We aren't tempted to go back to a sacrificial system. In fact, there isn't even a sacrificial system anymore because there isn't a temple. So how does this apply to us? Well, while we're not tempted to return to the sacrificial system of Judaism, We are tempted to leave for our own idea of how we're saved. We're tempted to believe that we save ourselves by our own works. We're tempted to try and find not only our righteousness within ourselves, but we also believe that we can find peace with God on our own. We're tempted to return to that. But at the end of the day, we can't do this. We have no righteousness of our own. We're sinners. We have no peace on our own. Our sinful nature is in rebellion against God.

In my conversations with people, I find that in our present moment, folks are struggling with two specific things. They wonder about their struggle with sin and their righteousness before a holy God. And they struggle with finding peace And so that's where I want us to go with our specific application for this passage today. There's two things that we desperately need, righteousness and peace. And so for our first application, I want us to remember that Jesus is our King of Righteousness. We read in our passage today that Melchizedek means King of Righteousness and that he points us to the Lord Jesus. Jesus is our King of Righteousness because he lived a perfect life on our behalf and he bore the wrath of God for our sin. He took your place, but that's not the end of the story. The Bible lets us know in very clear language that when we are in Christ, we are not only forgiven of our sins, and they're taken from us as far as the East is from the West, but we are also given the gift of the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ in the place of our unrighteousness. We receive this gift of Jesus' righteousness on our behalf. It's not only that Christ makes my slate clean, I am also seen to have perfectly kept the law because Jesus kept the law for me. I am perfectly righteous in the sight of God because Jesus was perfectly righteous on my behalf. And so when you are struggling with sin and you're wondering if you are really saved and worthy of being in the presence of God, Know that Jesus himself has made the offering on your behalf. Walk boldly in the world knowing that despite your failures, despite your struggles, God through his spirit is not only making you righteous, you are righteous. Because the king of righteousness is your Lord and savior. You have his perfect gift of righteousness.

And secondly, remember that Jesus is your king of peace. when the world is in turmoil. It's easy to wonder what is going on. You feel restless as your life reflects the discord and turmoil that you see in the world and you lack peace. As we saw, Melchizedek points us to Jesus. And so just as he is a higher priest and he is the king of righteousness, Jesus is also our greater king of peace. despite what we witness in the world around us. Pandemics, unrest, political discord, our King of Peace is still on His throne. And we know that because He is the Ascended Lord, and because all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Him, we can trust that He is working all things together for good for those who love Him. We can put our faith and our trust in Him because no matter what we see in the world, We have peace with God because Jesus, our greater King of peace, has reconciled us to the Father. And so, we step out into a world of turmoil. But we do it in confidence, knowing that we have been given a gift of righteousness. And because of that truth, we truly have peace with God. We have a great high priest who has done this for his people. And so may we grow in confidence. Confidence in this truth that every day Christ has won the victory. And so may our lives be lived in such a way that they bring glory to our great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

View the full series: Hebrews: Once for All

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