Hebrews Lesson 4

Hebrews 5:11-7:28.

The writer of Hebrews started off his letter arguing the supremacy of Jesus Christ - that he is greater than the angels, he is greater than Moses - the giver of the law and one who walked with God, and that all things are now subject to Him.

Last week we discussed God’s rest and how we enter that rest through faith. Our obedient response to God’s invitation to follow His Word leads us into spiritual rest - just as the promise was given to the ancient Israelites that if they believed and obeyed, they would enter into the promised land of Canaan where God would protect and provide for all their needs. But that generation rebelled and were not able to enter into the physical rest that was offered. This served as a teaching point for all people of faith - obedience to God’s Word leads to rest - disobedience does not.

We then followed as the writer of Hebrews explained how God’s rest is available to us today because Jesus has become our high priest. He is the perfect representation of humanity - being made man himself, and obedient to God even to the point of death on the cross. He was the perfect sacrifice to atone of our sins - and so now He intercedes for us as our High Priest.

Throughout this book, we have noticed how the writer often ties his teachings to Old Testament reference points - sometimes reinterpreting events or passages to show how Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of those passages.

I think we are also beginning to notice the level of difficulty in following the arguments laid out in Hebrews. This is not a book that you would normally recommend to new believers who are searching to understand the gospel. While everyone can glean something from this book, the writer is not addressing his letter to brand new gentile converts. These are Jewish Christians who grew up trained in the Torah - they were very familiar with Jewish sacred text and thinking.

Laying the groundwork of Jesus being our High Priest, the writer will soon expand further and show what it means that he became the High priest in the order of Melchizedek (whom we were introduced to last week and will dive deeper into today) and that his ministry is based on a new, greater covenant between God and man than existed before (we will discuss that next week).

But before he continues his argument, he wants to make sure he has the reader’s attention, that he cuts to their heart and convicts them to listen closely and take appropriate action. Remember, the letters that we find in the Bible were written to be read out loud. Most everyday Christians did not go home, open the scroll and read these letters in private, they heard them. They would gather together and one who was literate and well spoken would read them to the church.

Thus, many of these letters were written to elicit a response from the listener.

This is what we find In the first part of today’s reading, Hebrews 5:11-6:20 - a postponement of his argument regarding Christ’s priesthood and the benefits of Jesus’ priestly ministry with the injection of a direct, confrontational exhortation.

Gareth Cockerell, in his commentary on Hebrews, writes:

“(The writer) now turns to shame, warning, consolation and assurance in order to awaken them (the hearers) from complacency and direct them to the path of persevering faith. He would bring them back to his main topic with a renewed determination to comprehend its significance and appropriate its benefits as the adequate and only means of such perseverance.”

So lets listen to this passage and notice how he skillfully uses the negative emotions of shame and fear to prepare his hearers for comfort and assurance.

Read Hebrews 5:11-6:20 (break up w 2 readers: 5:11-6:8 and 6:9-6:20)

Where did you hear words of shame? (5:11-6:3)

Fear? (6:4-8)

Comfort? (6:9-12)

Assurance? (6:13-20)

Let’s look closer at the beginning of this passage:

Hebrews 5:11 ESV

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

“about this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain”

What is the “about this” that the writer has much to say?

Hebrews 1:1–2 ESV

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

Hebrews 2:1 ESV

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.

This is God’s word, spoken to us, through Jesus Christ - the word made flesh.

The verses preceding 5:11 tells us that the writer is referring to Christ’s priesthood, but the emphasis in this passage is on “the word” - Christ’s high priesthood is nothing less that the ultimate “word” or message from God addressed to his people and requiring their response. It is God’s word that penetrates all and holds all accountable.

And as Cockerill states, “although Christ’s high priesthood might be “difficult to explain” because of its complexity, the main reason for this difficulty is the spiritual state of the hearers: “because you have become dull (sluggish of hearing).”

The writer is implying that while once they were receptive, they have now become and are in a state where they fail to attend, grasp and heed God’s message as they should.

Dullness of hearing leads to hardness of heart.

What factors do see that lead to dullness of hearing and immaturity of faith?

Notes: 6:1 “dead works are works of unbelief”, 6:2 instructions about washings may refer to difference between Christian baptism and various OT teachings on ceremonial washing.

Danger of Apostasy

Compare to wilderness generation - “persistence in a state of spiritual regression, accompanied by the refusal to apply the teachings of the writer to ones own life, leads to ultimate loss without the possibility of restoration.

Why? “Because persistence in neglect of God’s salvation springs from and reinforces unbelief.” Cockerill

Writer is warning - not condemning - he does not believe they have gone that far.

Hebrews 6:9 ESV

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation.

God is just - he has seen their works and the love they have shown in his name.

Assurance is found in the certainty of God’s promise. He has thrown us a lifeline and all who in faith have grabbed on to it can know that God will complete the work he has promised to us.

Hebrews 6:19–20 MSG

It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.

Melchizedek the Priest and King

Genesis 14 - Abraham rescues Lot and presents tithe to Melchizedek.

Timothy Tenant (Foundations of the Christian Faith: A Resource for Catechesis and Disciple-Making.)

A key feature of Christ’s fulfillment of the Old Testament is that he would come and be the final high priest. This emerges in the book of Genesis in a rather unexpected way. Genesis 14 opens with the account of a regional conflict that pits five local kings against four other kings who oversee small areas of the region. The four kings defeated the five kings, who fled with all their men, allowing Kedorlaomer and his allies to capture everything—cattle, sheep, women, and children—anything and everything. In the ancient world these were considered the spoils of war since no soldier was paid for his service. You may recall that Abraham’s (Abram at this point in the story) nephew Lot had decided to live in Sodom (see Genesis 13), which was a notoriously wicked city. Sodom was one of the little kingdoms defeated in this conflict, so Kedorlaomer and his allies had captured Abraham’s nephew Lot and taken all of his belongings. Abraham heard that his nephew had been taken captive, so he took 318 of his best-trained men and set out on a hundred-mile pursuit and finally overtook them way up in the north. Abraham knew he didn’t have the forces to defeat them in a pitched battle, so he divided his men to attack them at night and routed them. The fleeing kings abandoned their spoils, and Abraham recaptured everything that had been taken. He returned home with his nephew Lot and his possessions, and all the captured slaves and livestock.

In Genesis 14:18 a very odd thing happens. It is so odd that the Jewish people ruminated over this for centuries. A man named Melchizedek, who was not a part of this conflict, comes to Abraham.

Genesis 14:18–20 ESV

And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

There are six things about this encounter that were considered quite strange.

1. His name is Melchizedek, which means “king of righteousness,” or perhaps “one who worships or honors the king of the righteousness.” Who is this king of righteousness?

2. He is the king of Salem, which means “peace” and is an early reference to what would later be called Jerusalem.

3. He is both a king and a priest. In verse 18 he is called king of Salem and “priest of God Most High.” Israel would have kings and priests, but never in one person. The kings came from the line of Judah, but the priests from the line of Levi. This is very strange, indeed.

4. He emerges with no calling card or proper introduction. He just comes out of the blue. Everybody knows, even the people that have never actually read the Bible, that the Scriptures are full of genealogies, which tell how a certain person begat a person who begat another person, and so forth. Family lineages (who you are, who is your daddy, and where do you come from) were very important things in the ancient world. It was like your calling card. No one said, “Hello. My name is so-and-so.” Rather, they said, “Hello. My name is so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, the grandson of so-and-so, who was victorious in this or that battle, or who performed some great feat.” Everyone was connected. There was no personal identity or personal autonomy as it is known in the modern world. It is because of the absence of information about Melchizedek that the Jewish people speculated quite a bit about who he might have been. We don’t know who his father or mother was, nothing of his genealogy, either his ancestors or progeny, and we don’t even know how old he was.

5. He brings out bread and wine and blesses Abraham, not the other way around. Bread and wine are the primordial elements of life that would someday reemerge at the Passover and at the Eucharist. Melchizedek offered these gifts and this blessing by invoking the name of God Himself, El Elyon, a title that is used twenty-eight times in the Old Testament: “Blessed be Abram by [El Elyon] God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to [El Elyon] God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand” (vv. 19–20).

6. Abraham tithed 10 percent of all the spoils of war to Melchizedek. Genesis 14:20 records that “Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” It was customary to tithe 10 percent of the spoils to a king. The great patriarch Abraham, the fountainhead of monotheism and one of the most influential people in the history of the world, was tithing to this unknown priest-king named Melchizedek.

Biblical References to Melchizedek

Psalm 110:1–4 ESV

The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

The memory of this encounter stays with the Jewish people for a thousand years—all the way to the time of David. David, as you know, wrote many of the Psalms, several of which are known as coronation psalms (i.e., psalms to celebrate the coronation of a king). In Psalm 110, David seems to prophetically prefigure not merely his own son’s coronation, but also great David’s greater Son, the true messianic king who was to come and redeem Israel. Psalm 110 is a coronation psalm for a king, and yet it extols the figure as a “priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek” (v. 4). For a people who only knew of the order of Aaron and the Levitical priesthood, this meant that the prefigured Messiah would be both king and priest. David is aware that this is a major dilemma that must be resolved. How can the Messiah be both high king and high priest? Judah is the kingly line; Levi is the priestly line. The two lineages are separate, so how can the Messiah fulfill both? But David remembers the story of Melchizedek from millennia earlier. In Psalm 110, David hints at the solution by stating that there was a priesthood that was earlier than the tribe of Levi which dates back to Abraham, who is the great-grandfather of all the tribes. It is in Psalm 110 that we learn of the order of Melchizedek.

This hope appears again in Zechariah 6:9–15.

Zechariah 6:9–15 ESV

And the word of the Lord came to me: “Take from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. And say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.” ’ And the crown shall be in the temple of the Lord as a reminder to Helem, Tobijah, Jedaiah, and Hen the son of Zephaniah. “And those who are far off shall come and help to build the temple of the Lord. And you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. And this shall come to pass, if you will diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.”

There the Lord instructs Zechariah to take the high priest, whose name, amazingly, is the Hebrew name for Jesus—Joshua—and to declare that his name is the Branch and that he will rebuild the temple, the dwelling place of God, and will be clothed with majesty and sit on a throne. He will be a priest on the throne, bringing harmony between the two: the kingship and the priesthood. Again, in Israel, no one could ever be both a king and a priest. Abraham’s grandson Jacob had twelve sons who became the twelve tribes of Jacob—two of his sons were Judah and Levi. It was from Judah that the kings would come, and it was from Levi that God would raise up the priests. The sons of Levi and the sons of Judah were prohibited from intertribal marriage, so no one—even the Messiah it seemed, could become both a priest and a king.

Hebrews 7 Another thousand years go by and the writer of the book of Hebrews explains the whole thing with clarity. He is seeking to explain how Jesus can serve as the great high priest of the Christian faith even though he is from the tribe of Judah: “For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests” (Heb. 7:14).

The book of Hebrews goes to great lengths to explain that there was an earlier priestly order that precedes and trumps the tribe of Levi—the order of Melchizedek! He then tells us all the ways this priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood. There are three main reasons.

The Superiority of Melchizedek’s Priesthood

First, it is a permanent priesthood. The text says, “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” (Heb. 7:17, emphasis mine). The Levitical priests always died and their priesthood expired and was passed on to someone else. But this priest, this messiah, was declared to be a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek! This permanence is even sealed with a divine oath: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’”

Second, Abraham tithed to him, not the other way around. According to Jewish law, everyone tithed to support the Levitical priesthood because the Levites were not given their own territory. But Abraham tithed to Melchizedek and since all of Abraham’s descendants are in his loins—in his body—then vicariously the entire tribe of Levi (Abraham’s great-grandson) was there, tithing in Abraham. The lesser always tithes to the greater, and so the whole Levitical priesthood, through Abraham, was tithing to the superior priesthood of Melchizedek.

Third, the priesthood of Melchizedek is greater than the Levitical priesthood because of the character of the two parties involved. The Levites were themselves sinners. They had to sacrifice for themselves before they could sacrifice for the sins of the people, just as ordained ministers receive Communion before they give it today. This is not merely symbolic solidarity, but the declaration that ministers and priests are also sinners. But Jesus was a priest without sin, and not because of some human ancestry or lineage, but because of the righteous indestructibility of his life!

Melchizedek is a type of Christ who demonstrates how Jesus Christ is both King and Priest. We have already celebrated how Christ is the second Adam, and here we see Christ as the Great High Priest. All the priests of the Old Testament were prefiguring this Great High Priest.

In Jesus Christ we have the complete fulfillment of the whole Jewish priesthood. Indeed, the whole priesthood prefigured the one true High Priest who was to come, Jesus Christ. In the old order, people had to confess their sins to a priest. But with Christ as our High Priest, we can boldly and directly enter into the glorious presence of God (Heb. 10:19–22). Jesus is the intermediary who stands in the gap and intercedes for us, representing us before God as our Great High Priest!