Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

Hey y’all , hows it going?

Ready for break?

What are y’all gonna do? anybody doing anything cool?

Cool cool.

Okay so question for you, movie sequels are the usually pretty good?

sometimes, but usually no.

Like who has seen Grease?

anyone seen Grease 2? I haven’t seen it, but how could it be good?

it’s top 5 worst movies ever made.

What about Cars? how about Cars 2?

But they’re not all that made are they?

What movie has a sequel that is better than the original?

Okay.

Star War's Empire Strikes Back is probably better than A New Hope, debatable, Return of the Jedi is the best of the Original Trilogy.

End Game is better than Infinity War

Dark Knight is better than Batman Begins

Did you know that there have actually been two movie sequels to win Best Picture.

anyone know which two movies those are?

The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Both of those, better than the original movie.

Which for Godfather 2 is wild cause Godfather 1 also won best picture.

Anyways, tonight we are talking about covenants, old covenant v the new covenant.

Some of y’all have asked me, what is the new covenant.

Or why don’t we keep the the Old Testament Law?

How do we have a new covenant?

What is it, what was the old covenant?

So we are gonna look at that tonight, we have a lot of Scripture to cover tonight, and tonight is gonna be a little different.

I have two goals for tonight, first one, I want us see what the text has to say to us by what it was saying to the people it was written to.

Second, I want to go through the process of what to do when you get to a weird passage of scripture.

Chapter 7 if you have no context to what was going on, you might have just kinda skip over this and not really deal with it.

Chapter 8 doesn’t really make sense if you don’t have chapter 7 though.

They all part of the same thought.

7 is the background for 8.

So if you have a bible go ahead and flip over to hebrews chapter 7, we are going to be in chapter 7 and chapter 8.

I know it’s a ton of scripture but just stay with me.

So if you have a bible great, if you don’t throw a hand up and we will get you one.

Charley, the bible man.

will get one to you.

who need one?

okay cool.

Context

While you’re flipping over there let me give you some context.

Remember the whole book the theme is Jesus is greater, the Author is making the case that Jesus is the better way.

Jesus is the foretold messiah and has brought a new life.

Jesus is God, Jesus is greater.

And A guy that we have mentioned before is going to show up in this, the man Melchizedek plays a pretty big roll in this.

So we are going to look at who he is.

and make our way through this text so.

So Hebrews 7:1-3 let’s read this first part together and look at and figure out who Melchizedek is,

but before we do that, let’s pray for our time in the word

pray

Who is Melchizedek?

okay, let’s read this first part together.

Okay cool, so what do we have here?

We have this man, Melchizedek, who is this guy?

So four things, 1) He is a king, the King of Salem.

2) Abraham gave him a tenth of everything after a battle.

So Abraham recognized he was a King, that’s important.

3) He’s has no genealogy given in the scriptures.

No beginning or End.

4) is a Priest forever.

but what does any of that mean?

So His name means King of Righteousness, in the Hebrew Mel is King, Sedek is righteousness.

Which the Author translates for us in verse 2. So the king of Righteousness, another way to translate the hebrew is The King of the Righteous.

The Righteosu what?

The Righteous God.

Since he is a priest.

He is also a king.

What was he King of?

He is the king of Salem, that is his title, The word Salem means peace.

So if we Broke down his whole name and title, it would mean, The King of the Righteous, the King of Peace, Priest of the Most High God.

Great we have what his name means, but who is he?

Why does Hebrews make such a big deal about him.

So to under stand that, we need to go all the way back to Genesis, and see where he is, so let’s look at this interaction, because this is the only place Melchizedek appears, a place in the Psalms talks about him, but this is the only place we see him interacting with anyone.

So flip over to Genesis 14:17-24 read this with me,

Okay, so this is it, this all we have from scripture about Melchizedek, it ain’t much, but it is important.

One of the things to remember about the bible is that everything is important, and nothing is in there just for fun, but all of it is telling a story, from start to finish, about God’s plan of redemption.

So why is this interaction important,

First off, where he is from is significant, Salem is at that time in the region of Canaan, which is the promised land.

Salem is also another name for the city of Jerusalem.

That makes Jerusalem a Canaanite city.

Yet there was a Priest of God there, sitting in Salem, soon to be Jerusalem.

So Melchizedek blesses Abraham by bringing Bread and Wine to Abraham, after Abraham wins this battle, then Abraham blesses Melchizedek by giving him a tenth of the spoils.

So to sum up Melchizedek, he was a priest of the of the most high God, in the city that would be come Jerusalem.

A king worshiping Yaweh, in the Canaanite city of Salem, decades before The Hebrew people took over.

This is where Jesus gets his priest hood as the Great High Priest, not in the order of Levi, but in the order of Melchizedek, King of the Righteous God, King of Peace, High Priest in what would become Jerusalem.

basically to say, God has always dwelt in Jerusalem, the plan was always to be in Jerusalem, the priesthood and final sacrifice would be made in Jerusalem.

Melchizedek is a shadow of Christ, a blurry picture of the coming Christ.

How is He a shadow of Christ?

So how was he a shadow?

Let’s look at the next chunk, read with me, Hebrews 7:11-22

Okay, so how was he a shadow of Christ?

This chunk starts out by talking about the Levitical Priesthood.

which is where all of the priests in Israel came from.

If you were going to be a priest in Israel, you had to be from the tribe of Levi.

There was a genealogical aspect to being a priest in Isreal

You know all of the future Kings of England are going to be from the line of Charles the III, all future kings of England, their great grandad has to be Charles the III.

Same thing with Priest in Israel, their great something grandad has to be Levi, they have to come form the tribe of Levi.

One of the 12 tribes of Israel.