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Psalm 110

Psalm 110

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Old Testament studies from Psalm 110 from The Gospel Coalition.


The last of the four psalms we’re studying together in this series is Psalm 110. I’d like to begin once more simply by reading it.

“The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion saying, ‘Rule in the midst of your enemies.’ Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb.

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way; and so he will lift up his head.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

This is the Old Testament chapter most frequently cited in the New Testament. It’s cited more frequently than Isaiah 53. Yet, let’s be quite frank. The themes in this brief chapter are not, by and large, the sorts of themes that resonate with wild enthusiasm amongst the dominant young secularists of our day.

Kingship? Well, at least the UK is still a monarchy. Try and play that one off in Australia or America, let alone a lot of other places, and even here, after all, monarchy is constitutional. Nobody in David’s time, 1,000 years before Christ, had any notion whatsoever of a constitutional monarchy.

Precisely what power does Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II have, legally speaking? She can dissolve Parliament, and she can agree to sign or agree not to sign some piece of legislation, but if she takes either route without the explicit consent and ordering of her prime minister, she will precipitate a general election, and the party with which she has disagreed will be returned with a great majority.

Apart from that, she has no power whatsoever except moral suasion, and granted the history of the royal family in the last 20 years, not too much of that either. She is head of state, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with the notion of monarchy in the ancient world where, if you were a king or queen, you ruled. You’re not a constitutional monarch.

David is not a constitutional monarch, so the notion here of crushing the enemies, ruling in the midst of the enemies, your troops willing on the day of battle, and so on, these are not notions that are really going to fly too well in the contemporary world.

Priesthood? “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” How would you like to put that on your church bulletin board? “Jesus, the priest, in the order of Melchizedek. Come and hear. Come and listen.” It really grabs you, doesn’t it? How would you like to make that the title of a university mission series? “The priest, in the order of Melchizedek.” Yet, in all fairness, that theme is simply huge in Hebrews. It ties the whole of Hebrews together. Even the notion of priesthood.… Drop the Melchizedek bit.

Well, of course the Church of England still battles on here so we know about priests, at least in some respect. The FIEC types might prefer some other category like pastor; nevertheless, we hear this word priest around, but for the average secularist on the street who doesn’t darken the door of an Anglican church except, perhaps, on his funeral, priest is not a term that resonates something that’s really important, bound up with mediating between God and me.

It’s not a term that quickens the pulse, and yet … and yet … this psalm, this very short psalm, ties together more biblical themes in short compass than any other passage of Scripture. It’s unbelievable. To make sense of it we must first reflect a little on the superscription (most of our Bibles these days put the superscription in): “Of David. A Psalm.”

No psalm in the entire book of Psalms depends more for its interpretation on coming to terms with its superscription than this one. How you interpret this psalm depends on how you come to terms with its superscription. No ancient Hebrew manuscript omits the superscription, and in the Hebrew text, there is no break between the words of the superscription and the words of the psalm. That’s so for all the superscriptions. That is to say, it’s considered part of the text in the Hebrew manuscripts that have come down to us.

Yet, today, many scholars of more skeptical persuasion argue the author must be a courtier, not David, because then the first verse makes a certain kind of obvious sense. If it’s a courtier writing, then the courtier says, “The Lord …” When it’s in capital letters, it’s Yahweh. “The Lord says to my Lord …” That is, the king. The courtier says, “Yahweh says to my Lord, the king, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ ”

It’s a bit like Psalm 2 in that regard, isn’t it? Initially, there is some sort of interplay between Yahweh himself and the king, but supposing it’s written by David, then if David writes and says, “The Lord [Yahweh] says to my Lord …” to whom does my Lord refer? Of course, that’s exactly the logic Jesus himself takes up in Mark and Matthew.

If we look at the Matthew instance (Matthew 22:41–45), “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ‘What do you think about the Messiah, the Christ? Whose son is he?’ ‘The son of David,’ they replied. He said to them, ‘How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him “Lord”? For he says, “The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” ” ’ together here. In much of the Western world, of course, when you get older it is simply assumed you’re going to be more and more out of date. There was a time when I was invited to speak in Australia at the Katoomba Youth Convention. I knew those days were slipping away when they asked me some time ago to speak to the Katoomba men and then a few years later to the Katoomba senior citizens. I can hardly wait till they invite me to speak to the Katoomba superannuated pensioners or whatever it is.

It’s rare that I get invited nowadays to speak to a bunch of 18-year-olds. It probably condemns me. Then I go to China. I was in China last year, and they announced publicly to everybody I had just turned 60, because that proved maybe I was worth listening to, after all. You don’t start getting credit until you’re over 60, because all the values are reversed there. The older person is automatically worth listening to and the younger person is not quite to be trusted.

These are just cultural overtones, but it’s those cultural overtones that are operating in the Bible by and large, so as a result, a father does not say to his son, “Sir.” He does not call him, “My Lord.” The son addresses the father as lord. The older person gets the honor. If David is writing and says, “Yahweh says to my Lord,” and this Lord is the Messiah (Jesus presupposes this is a messianic psalm; we’ll come to that in due course), then the question is.… How can he really be David’s son if David addresses his son as Lord?

In fact, Jesus is not denying he’s David’s son. That’s just too big a theme to get away with. In fact, Matthew’s gospel, which is quoting these words, begins by pointing out in the genealogy in the opening chapter that Jesus really is the son of David legally. What Jesus is saying is that he has to be more than the son. He may be David’s son, but he has to be more than the son or Psalm 110 doesn’t make any sense.

This is in line, then, with the sequence of Davidic prophecies I briefly surveyed three days back. That is to say, by the time you get to Isaiah in the eighth century, already you are anticipating a Davidic king who sits on the throne of David and of the increase of his kingdom there is no end, but who is also called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

This Davidic monarch is Davidic. It is a Davidide who is coming. Yet, he is one who is so identified with Yahweh himself that he can be referred to seven and a half centuries before Christ as the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. That raises the fact, then, that this psalm is viewed by Jesus as a messianic psalm.

We have already seen in our glance at Psalm 2 that sometimes messianic psalms work on the basis of a Davidic typology where you have a person, a place, or an institution that enters into a certain repeated pattern in Scripture, with the pattern gradually being ratcheted up until its fulfillment comes in Christ. There is a Davidic typology.

In Psalm 2, you have a Davidic typology operating, but now, this is not just a typology; this is not all about David, but in a sequence and a pattern that anticipates a greater David, now it’s David himself writing, and he says, “The Lord [Yahweh] says to my Lord …” An explicit reference to someone who is not David whom, yet, David addresses as, “My Lord,” and someone who is called to rule, someone who is going to exercise his royal authority.

“The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion.” He’s going to be a Davidic king from Zion. He’s going to rule. He has the scepter. The Lord is the one who is extending it. He’s going to be a Davidide, yet he is addressed by David as, “My Lord.” It’s breaking categories, even from an Old Testament perspective. What is going on here?

Then, to top it all off, you have this further statement, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’ ” What is going on? To think through how this psalm is put together, it may help to follow the structure of the argument just a wee bit, and then we’ll tie it to other passages and see how this is pulling together a great deal of what the Bible says.

There are two oracles and two explanations. There is an oracle and then an explanation, then an oracle and an explanation. The first oracle is verse 1. “The Lord says to my Lord …” and then the actual oracle and then a meditation on it in verses 2 and 3. Then the second oracle. “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.” Then the oracle itself, “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” Then a meditation on it in verses 5, 6, and 7. Take it that way.

The fact that the Lord swears to this messianic figure (“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”) is actually a theme that is brought up very frequently in the New Testament. Thus, for example, Acts 2:34 in Peter’s address at Pentecost, David did not ascend into heaven, but rather, this figure sat at the right hand of God in fulfillment of the prophecy.

Thus, we read, “For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,” “ ‘tied to Jesus’ ascension and his rule with all authority in the name of God himself. Or Hebrews 1:13: “For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand,’ ” or Acts 5:30 and 31, “Jesus, whom you killed, God exalted to his right hand,” or Romans 8:34, “Christ was at God’s right hand interceding for us.” Hebrews 10:11 and 12, similarly.

That is, at God’s right hand, the hand of authority, receiving worship and honor with God, this one whom Jesus elsewhere declares receives the same honor as God himself. It is the Father’s determination that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father (John, chapter 5). Now he’s at the Father’s right hand. This is a theme that is picked up regularly in the New Testament. Then the meditation itself in verses 2 and 3.

Notice how closely Yahweh and this messianic figure are tied together. Yahweh has the scepter that he gives, and this ultimate king is then urged to rule, so God gives him the authority to rule with all of the authority of God. Anybody who knows the New Testament hears overtones then of 1 Corinthians 15. “Now that Christ has risen from the dead, all of God’s sovereignty is mediated through Christ.” The scepter has been given to the Son, not in some mediating restricted way as in the ancient kings.

Yes, the ancient king, as we saw two days ago, becomes God’s son in some sense. That is, picking up God’s authority to rule, but it’s so restricted. It’s a mediated authority, but Jesus says, “All authority is mine,” and Paul insists all of God’s authority is mediated through Christ exclusively until he has crushed his last enemy.

Verse 3 is hard to translate, but the general thought is clear enough. We have here a crowd of volunteers rallying to their leader for the conflict ahead. “Your people, literally, will be freewill offerings.” Probably that means they will then be willing offerings. They’re offering themselves up as in Romans 12:1 and 2, presenting themselves as living sacrifices, volunteers as it were, by God’s grace in the army of the living God whose reign is mediated through this messianic figure.

The last line is not, “You will receive the dew of your youth,” but “You have the dew of your youth.” That is, the idea that the king keeps the first freshness and flush of the dawn of life, and this is passed on to his followers who, with this new life he provides, are voluntarily full of enthusiasm and adoration and worship for him who is their monarch and their king.

Then the second oracle, and here’s where I want to spend more time. Verse 4: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ ” We simply have to say something more about Melchizedek. Melchizedek shows up only three times in the Bible: Genesis 14, here, and in the epistle to the Hebrews.

He is such a mysterious figure it’s not too surprising that Jewish speculation produced books on him. In the eleventh cave at Qumran, they found a whole scroll which is now sometimes called the Melchizedek Scroll with all kinds of wild speculation regarding Melchizedek, but I want to draw your attention to what Scripture actually says in Genesis 14, then think through what David is likely then to have meant by making this reference to Melchizedek, and then pick up how Hebrews takes it.

1. Genesis 14

I’m sure you remember the context. Four petty kings against five petty kings in a small, regional skirmish. When you read king here, think small village mayor. In other words, you’re not thinking of a World War II tank battle. You’re thinking of someone who is the monarch of a small city-state, but small city-state is a town of 3,000 to 10,000, at most.

You have these kings (small-town mayors) with their militias grouping together and going on raiding parties. Verse 5: “In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites.” Then they defeated a lot of others until they came down to the area of Sodom. Verse 8:

“Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) …” Five now. “… marched out and drew up their battle lines in the Valley of Siddim against Kedorlaomer king of Elam [and his lot]—Four kings against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills.

The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away. They also carried off Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom. A man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.” Abram also has certain alliances. “Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshcol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram.” There’s Mamre, Eshcol, and Aner.

“When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan.” Now 318 trained men.… This does not mean they’re Marines. It means they’re adults who are trained, first of all, as farmers and shepherds and so on but obviously have enough military smarts to use a sword or the ancient equivalent of a pike. That sort of thing.

This is not a huge military maneuver or the like. Still, 318 plus those from the other three who go up with them whose numbers are not given, and they chase them. In those days, these battles often were set pieces for a short while and then one group begins to run and the others chase them. How far they chase them determines how many get killed.

They start in the south and they head all the way up to Dan. That is normally the sort of distance a healthy adult would take three and a half days to walk, so if they’re running and going at it hard 18 hours a day (these are fit people; they’re trained in that sense) then they’ve caught up to them pretty fast partly because they’re not bringing along women and children and the sheep and the cattle that have been swiped from Sodom and Gomorrah, so they catch up to them. It takes them a while to catch up to them in the north.

We read, “During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus.” That means from Dan on it was a running battle and they kept whipping away at them and picking up what they had already taken as their booty. Then he gets it all back.

“He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people. After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).” Skip 18, 19, and 20.

Verse 21: “The king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.’ ” This was not being generous. That was standard protocol. That is to say, if there was a rescue party that went out, then they were paid by keeping all the plunder for themselves and the people were returned to their homes. Sodom was simply saying, “Follow the dictates of our cultural norms in such circumstances. Let me have the people back; you can keep the loot.”

“But Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, “I made Abram rich.” I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me—to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share.’ ”

In other words, you can make perfect sense of this passage without any reference to verses 18, 19, and 20. In fact, if you read verse 17, it links very nicely with verse 21. Just drop 18, 19, and 20 and the story flows very naturally. The question is.… What are 18, 19, and 20 doing there? What’s the point?

For this is an odd passage. We’re just introduced to Sodom. Sodom came out to meet the returning victors. “Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’ Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.”

Melchizedek.… Names in Hebrew are so often symbol-laden, and “Melch-,” from the melek root, simply means king. “-Zedek” is from the tsedeq word group, which simply means righteousness. His name means “king of righteousness.” That’s what it means in Hebrew. We’re told he’s king of Salem. The S-L-M root.… Salem, or shalom? He’s king of well-being. He’s king of peace. Or in modern Arabic, salaam. He’s king of peace. His name means “king of righteousness,” and he’s king of the town called peace.

Almost certainly (you can’t quite prove it 100 percent), this is Jeru-salem … called Salem before it was called Jerusalem. He is the king of the town that ultimately becomes Jerusalem, and we’re told, he is not only king but a priest. He’s priest of God Most High. Of course, later, once the Law comes along, it’s very clear within Israel under the covenant of Moses, which comes along centuries later, you can’t be a priest and a king.

The kings come from the tribe of Judah; the priests come from the tribe of Levi from the family of Aaron. You cannot be a priest-king, and the first king, Saul, who tries to override that split, ends up losing his throne precisely because he’s disobedient to God on that front, but here you have a priest-king, and he’s priest of God Most High. The covenantal word for God, Yahweh, is not used. He’s priest of El Elyon, God Most High, the exalted God.

So who is he? There is a long and pious tradition that says this is a preincarnate visitation of Christ. That is, preincarnate before the eternal Son became the human being as we know in, “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.” He appeared as Melchizedek. There is a long and cherished and godly, pious tradition in this respect. I don’t think it’s correct.

I’ll give you some further reasons why I don’t think it’s correct in a moment, but one of the obvious things is none of the language here suggests it. You have to presuppose Abram was not the only one who came to the conclusion of monotheism. Why should we think he was the only monotheist in the world?

We’re not all that far removed from the flood and from Babel. There is still a historic memory even while so many of the people have degenerated into various forms of polytheism or henotheism, where you believe there’s one big God but lots of smaller gods, or monotheism where you believe there’s just one God, full stop.

Apparently, Abram has found in him something of a kindred spirit. He seems to be simply the king of Salem, one of the small towns in the southern part of ancient Palestine where Abram was then operating. There were others, like the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were not known for monotheism or righteousness.

They had their own problems, but after the division between himself and Lot, Abram just didn’t frequent that area, but he does seem to have formed some kind of respectful alliance, friendship perhaps, with this Melchizedek figure who is a priest-king, king over Salem and priest. He comes out and says, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.”

Thus, he is enough of a monotheist to believe this one God has created everything. “And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Abram receives the blessing from him, the bread and wine, which are not here flagged as in some sense sacramental. It’s interesting this is the only detail in the account that is not picked up by the New Testament writers.

Bread and wine were simply staples. The troops were returning, and they were hungry, and he comes out with vast supplies of food: bread and wine. Abram greatly and gladly receives this, as he does not receive anything from the hand of Sodom. That is, there’s a foil. Abram is prepared to enter into some kind of relationship with Melchizedek, receiving his blessing and acknowledging in some sense Melchizedek is the superior.

He’s the priest-king and pays him the tithe while, by contrast, he will have nothing whatsoever to do with Sodom. Nothing. He doesn’t want anything from his hand even though the dictates of the time say he has the right to receive the booty. He won’t receive anything because he does not want Sodom, a wicked polytheist, to say, “I made Abram rich.”

Thus, literarily speaking, verses 18 to 20 introduce a figure who is a foil to Sodom, but if you’ve been reading this book through again and again and again, something else leaps out at you. It just cries out for reflection. In this book, you have a long sequence of genealogies. Anybody who is anybody and is important is tied by genealogy to somebody else. Genesis 5. The table of nations. Genesis 10.

“So and so lives for so many years and begets somebody or other. Then he lives for so many more years. Then he dies. That person lives for so many years and begets somebody or other. Then he lives for so many more years. Then he dies. Somebody lives for so many years. Then he begets somebody else. Then he lives for so many more years. Then he dies.”

The table of nations.… Which people belong to which people? Where do the Canaanites come from? They come from Ham, after Noah. The whole book is full of this. There’s hardly anybody of any significance in this book whose genealogy is not tied down. There are a few that are mentioned, but they’re not very important figures.

Now you have Melchizedek who is so important that even Abraham pays him the tithe, but he pops up in three verses and disappears. There’s no mummy. There’s no daddy. There’s no record of his birth. There’s no record of his death. He just appears and disappears, and that’s all that’s said.

Can you imagine how strange that must appear to any reader of Genesis reading about 1,000 BC, several centuries after Moses is finished with it? “What’s this dude doing here? This is the Word of God, but why is this in here? Well, he’s a foil, I suppose, a clever literary device. Is it significant?”

2. Psalm 110

Now put yourself in David’s place. The first king is Saul. David sets out to serve him, but Saul comes to a sticky end. He begins so nobly, and he ends up paranoid, frightened, inconsistent, and disobedient, not least in this God-given division since the time of Moses between priest and king. He thinks the sacrifices simply have to be offered or he’s going to lose the battle. The sacraments are magical, and if the priest isn’t there to do it, then he’ll do it himself because it’s more important to have the sacraments done than it is to obey God Almighty.

He never did get a dynasty. Jonathan, his son, dies. David knows from the time he’s a shepherd lad he’s to become king, and now he becomes king. We witnessed that already in our study of 2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 2. Now, after seven years of reigning in Hebron, he takes Jerusalem, and he becomes king of the whole 12 tribes.

Don’t forget. Moses had already prescribed, which we saw the first day, in Deuteronomy, chapter 17, when somebody becomes king, one of the first things he’s supposed to do is take the book of this law and copy it from the Levite’s copy and make a reading copy and read it every day. Let us suppose David is pious enough to have done that. He has made his own reading copy. He certainly can read and write. He writes gifted poetry. He’s a musician. He makes his own handwritten copy. He reads it every day.

Somewhere along the line, he has read and reread and reread what we call Genesis 14. Now he is king of Jeru-salem himself. Of course, between Melchizedek and him, a distance of close to 1,000 years, has come Moses with the giving of the Law, and with the giving of the Law there is now an absolute bifurcation between the priestly line and the kingly line.

That wasn’t there for Abraham. It’s instituted at the time of Moses, and now it’s there for David, but David has now become king of Jeru-salem, and he reads his hand-copied Bible, and he learns again and again and again about this odd character Melchizedek, greater than Abram in some sense. He blesses Abram and receives the tenth from Abram, but he cannot help but notice this king who is king over the same turf that David is now king over is something David can never, ever be. He’s a priest-king. David cannot be a priest-king.

But if David believes the sovereign God has given this Scripture, has given us Melchizedek, it’s not an accident in Scripture. It’s not just a literary trick, a literary foil and nothing more. There’s something significant in this Melchizedek. There cannot be something absolute between priesthood and kingship, for already somebody greater than Abram, Melchizedek himself, is priest-king, priest-king of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.

You can almost hear the wheels going around in David’s head. He understands something now of the promise of God this side of 2 Samuel 7, which we have also looked at, that God has determined in grace the Davidic dynasty will stand and there will be a Davidic king, and borne along by the Spirit of God he sees, ultimately, there has to be an antitype to Melchizedek, a Davidic king who really can be priest and king.

He writes, “You are our king forever. Sit at my right hand. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever …” Not in the order of Levi, which is operating when David writes but, “… in the order of Melchizedek.” That’s all that is said about Melchizedek in the entire Old Testament. That’s it. Full stop. There is no more.

3. The epistle to the Hebrews

We can’t look at all of the passages in Hebrews that talk about this Melchizedekian figure, but let me draw your attention to Hebrews 7. The author sidles up to Melchizedek a few times and then has to back away with further explanations and warnings and so forth. Finally, this passage (chapter 7) is at the crux of it all.

The writer says, “This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High.” Notice all he’s doing is summarizing the Old Testament text at this point. “He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.” So far those are just accurate details. There’s nothing clever there.

“First …” Now he’s beginning to expound the text. “… the name Melchizedek means ‘king of righteousness.’ ” Exegetically that’s true. That’s what the name means in Hebrew. “Then also, ‘king of Salem’ means ‘king of peace.’ ” That’s also true. Righteousness and peace coming together in a king-priest. Anybody who is steeped in the Old Testament remembers those passages that envision righteousness and peace kissing each other.

How do you maintain absolute righteousness in a damned world? How do you have peace and maintain righteousness? But he’s king of peace and he’s king of righteousness. “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God he remains a priest forever.” This is the crucial point.

The author does not say, “Ontologically speaking, he has neither father nor mother; therefore, he is the Son of God.” He’s merely saying in the text, “There is no father and there is no mother,” which is extraordinary in a book full of genealogies. There’s no genealogy. Thus, he resembles the Son of God.

In other words, the evidence that is strongest that this is not a preincarnate appearance of Christ but only a figure who anticipates him, who is a type for him, who announces him but is not to be identified with him is this word in the TNIV resembles, or in many of our English versions who is like the Son of God.

In other words, so far as the account goes, he stands out in the Old Testament record because there is no father mentioned, there is no mother mentioned, and there is no genealogy mentioned. Yet, he’s king of peace. He’s king of righteousness. He’s important. He’s significant. In this respect, he’s like the Son of God, a priest, and without any mention of end of days or any mention of death. He’s like the priest we have to do with who is a priest forever, and the author goes on still teasing things out.

“Just think how great he was.” He’s still doing his exegesis of Genesis 14. “Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder!” This business of giving a tenth, “Let’s think about that,” the author says. “Now the law requires …” which comes along centuries later “… the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, their kindred—even though their kindred are descended from Abraham. This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi.”

He’s already there parallel to Abraham, separate from Abraham. “Yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. And without doubt the lesser is blessed by the greater. In the one case, the tenth is collected by those who die; but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living.” That is, declared to be living because there is no mention of his death.

“One might even say …” The language suggests the author knows this is pushing things a bit. Yet, there is a sense in which it’s true, if you don’t think of human beings as simply isolated individuals but part of an organic whole. “One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth …” That is, from his fellow Jews, “… paid the tenth through Abraham, because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor.”

We think so individualistically in the Western world that we don’t think very easily in those terms, but there is an organic wholeness to human beings, after all. My son and my daughter come from my wife and me. They carry our genes and nobody else’s. That’s it. There is a sense in which, when I have done something before my son or my daughter were born, there is a sense in which they have done it in me.

It’s not a full sense. It doesn’t explain all that there is in individual identity, but there is something to that. Melchizedek is portrayed, however briefly, as greater than Abraham and greater than Levi because Levi is necessarily inferior to Abraham and collecting a tenth from Abraham and blessing him.

Then two verses that are stunningly important. They’re not easy to understand. “If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood …” The priesthood that comes under the Mosaic code and indeed the law given to the people who established that priesthood. “… why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron?”

Get rid of the parenthetical expression for a moment. “If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, why was there still need for another priest to come?” That is referring to Psalm 110, as becomes clear a little further on. That is to say, the Levitical priesthood is established by the law of Moses. It’s a perpetual priesthood. Then along comes David centuries after Moses and announces the coming of a figure who is a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

What do you need a priest in the order of Melchizedek for? You have a Levitical priest. Why is there an announcement of a Melchizedekian priest? The author infers if there is an announcement of a Melchizedekian priest, then in some sense, the Levitical priest wasn’t adequate. He can only be temporary. He can’t do what needs to be done. It is a temporary institution.

Then the author goes on to say in verse 12, “When the priesthood is changed, though, the law must be changed also.” Let’s stop and think about that. This side of Aquinas in the high Middle Ages, we have come to think of the law in three categories: moral, civil, ceremonial law. Those are standard categories that are taught to theological students all over the Western world: moral, civil, ceremonial law.

There is a certain heuristic value to that. There is some law that is ceremonial that is bound up with sacrificial systems and that sort of thing. There is some law that is civil. That is, ancient Israel was a nation. There is law that seems not to change with time (we’ll call it moral), but because of that heritage of thought in the Western world, we are inclined to think of moral law as the important thing. The important thing in the Mosaic law is the moral law. Let’s call it the Ten Commandments. All the rest of the stuff is add-on. It’s not all that important, is it?

We don’t say it’s not important; nevertheless, it’s the moral law that continues. It’s the moral law that’s eternal. The moral law gets elevated in our thinking, and the ceremonial and the civil law are the detachable bits, but here the author says something different. He says the law is given on the basis of the priesthood in the parenthetical expression in verse 11, so when you change the priesthood, the whole legal system changes. The whole covenant changes.

This should be so obvious to us. You read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. What’s in Exodus 21 and 22 and 23 and 24? Things like how to build a tabernacle, how to design an ephod, what the appropriate sacrifices are, the third silver socket from the left, and that sort of thing. Chapter after chapter …

Then you come to Leviticus. What do you have then? I know there are nice little bits in Leviticus 19 we all like to quote about loving your neighbor, but most of Leviticus is the sacrificial system and what’s required, the feast days, and how the priest is supposed to conduct himself, and so forth. Then you come to Numbers. I know there are certain little accounts, but you actually go through more of the same. In Deuteronomy, you repeat it all.

Now along comes a theologian who says, “Yeah, but after that came David about 1,000 BC who announced a priest in the order of Melchizedek.” If that is principially announcing the obsolescence of the Levitical priesthood, if you change the Levitical priesthood, you have to change the whole law covenant because the whole law covenant is built on the priesthood.

We’re inclined to think the whole law covenant is built on morality to which you add a priest or two and a civil law or two, but that’s not the way it’s actually built. Just read it. Chapters and chapters and chapters. It’s built on the priestly system, because the priestly system is designed to teach men and women that there is no possible approach of sinners to God apart from the priestly sacrificial system God has ordained.

There’s no way back apart from bloody sacrifice, apart from intermediaries, apart from slaughtered lambs, apart from a bull and a goat on whom the high priest once a year places his hand, acknowledging as it were that all the sins of himself and his family and the people are on them, and they’re slaughtered, and the blood is brought in to the presence of the living God in the Most Holy Place behind the veil.

Now you get rid of the priest? You change the whole law covenant? The whole thing has to change. It has to go. In case you think I’m reading too much out of verses 11 and 12, all the rest of chapter 7 is making the point. You read verse 12. “When the priesthood is changed the law must be changed also. He of whom these things are said belonged to a different tribe.” That is, not the tribe of Levi but the tribe of Judah.

Verse 14: “For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry …” That is, you have to descend from Levi. You have to descend, in fact, from Aaron to be a high priest.

“… but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. For it is declared …” Psalm 110. “ ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ The former regulation …” That is, the regulation about the Levitical priesthood, “… is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.” A hope that actually does reconcile human beings to God, a hope that is based on a better priesthood, a Melchizedekian priesthood.

“And it was not without an oath! Others became priests without any oath …” Read Exodus. Read Leviticus. There is no mention of an oath as these people become priests. None. Now, Psalm 110: “ ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever.” ’ Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.”

That leads to chapter 8 where now the quotation is from Jeremiah 31, which announces a new covenant. That’s about the sixth century. Then the author draws his conclusion in verse 13 of chapter 8 by calling this covenant new. Announcing a new covenant he has made the first one, the old covenant (the Mosaic covenant) old and obsolete. If you have the announcement of a new covenant, then presumably, the covenant that’s in place is already old.

That which is old and obsolete is passing away. In other words, the writer to the Hebrews is saying, “Read your Old Testament salvation-historically. Read it in sequence. Then you can see the Old Testament itself is announcing the principial obsolescence of the old covenant.” It never was designed to be permanent. It was pointing forward to a better king, a better priest, and that’s already determined in Psalm 110.

We have a priest-king, and the great theme of the kingdom of God mediated through the king of ancient Israel and the great theme of a mediating priest who offers sacrifices to pay for the sins of the peoples, sacrifices God has ordained, now comes together in a new priest-king. Because he’s priest-king, he can’t be in the order of Levi. He’s in the order of Melchizedek, the first priest-king, the king of peace, the king of righteousness.

If I had more time, I would tease out the rest of Psalm 110 and show you all of it fits into that pattern. I want to suggest to you any Christian who gets this under his or her belt is getting together a huge set of swaths of biblical theology coming down into Jesus. The whole kingly David dynastic pattern, the entire priestly sacrificial temple ritual, all those festivals, all coming down to a priest-king who now becomes our ruling Lord, our King, and our High Priest.

Then the author goes on to tease out in chapters 9 and 10 that he’s not just our High Priest; he’s the bloody sacrifice. To change the metaphor again, his body is the veil. You get through that body to the very presence of the living God. To change the metaphor again, we don’t have an earthly tabernacle or a temple built in Jerusalem.

You go into the very presence of God into the heavenlies by the blood of Jesus. We are gathered already in chapter 12 in the presence of the living God, not around Mount Sinai, but around the very throne of God secured by the blood of the priest-king who was also the Lamb.

I do not see how such huge sweeping biblical themes can fail to stir a Christian to understanding and worshiping God for his wisdom, foresight, planning, the typological structures, the instructional categories, the warnings, the whole lot. Suddenly, the whole Bible is coming together, and it’s pivoting on Psalm 110.

Let me tell you what the problem is: getting that across to secular, biblically illiterate undergraduates. That’s why I started the way I did. Notions of a king who rules or of a priest who is a mediator between God and us do not fly very well with your average secularist. We have lost those things from our cultural heritage.

Even amongst Christians who have been Christians for two or three decades, if they haven’t been in Bible-teaching churches where these things have been brought together with clarity, they may not fall down in unqualified delight that Jesus is our priest-king because they have so been stamped by the secular categories that this is just God-talk stuff that’s used in language at church and sung in one more song, but it’s not at the center of their very being.

I tell you quite frankly, it’s almost impossible to get the gospel across in any sort of richness unless you get across Jesus as priest-king, which means somewhere along the line, part of our job is getting people to know the Bible’s storyline, how the Bible hangs together. There is a sense in which you can go only so far in adapting the biblical language and the biblical categories to secular mindsets and find equivalents.

There is a sense in which, eventually, you have to help people make the leap back into the Bible’s storyline so that, although all the terms are not contemporary terms and may be seen as slightly ridiculous and old-fashioned and not very coherent, in fact, that’s the world in which we live and move and have our being. That’s the world in which we’re reconciled to God. There is no other.

You cannot build an entire soteriology, a doctrine of salvation, out of, “He has come to give us an abundant life,” which expression after all is only found once in John 10 and makes perfect sense within the notion of John 10 and sheep and shepherd, a shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, but if you just abstract the abundant life out of John 10 and say, “Jesus promises you the abundant life,” what’s it giving you? More sex? Better job? More pay? A sense of fulfillment?

A big part of any mature Christian leader’s job, whether in a CU or a local church or any Bible study, today in a biblically illiterate generation is to grab hold of more and more of these whopping, massive biblical structures, see how they work in the Canon, and bring us to Jesus. Then convey them, not as dry-as-dust bits, so people can see they are there in the Bible. They are inescapable. It is what the Bible is about.

We need to return to a time when you can put up on the bulletin board, “Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek,” and people say, “That will be a great message. I have to go to that one.” You can’t do it now because at the moment it’s just God talk. It’s alien. It’s foreign, but somehow or other that is the direction in which you have to go, or people will not understand their Bibles and, therefore, not understand God.

They will not worship God as he is. They will not understand the gospel as it is, which means not only understanding but being so captured by it yourself you delight in it. You are enthralled by it. You worship him who sits on the throne and the Lamb because of it. Then you devote constant hours and imagination to thinking through how you can get this across to a damned world. That’s your whole ministry. Everything else is footnotes. Let us pray.

Who is sufficient for these things? We are so terribly limited in our understanding, Lord God, but we see these things in your Word, we want to understand them better, and where there are mandates we want to obey more enthusiastically with fewer constraints and conditions. We want to trust you.

O Lord God, by your grace you have saved us. By your grace, now work within us that we may be increasingly conformed to Christ Jesus, and grant as we work with a new generation coming along behind that we will find ways to get across what the apostle calls the whole counsel of God to a new, lost, biblically illiterate, and narcissistic generation. We beg these mercies of you, in Jesus’ name, amen.

We probably have about five minutes for questions. I promise to try to keep answers short.

Male: Some of the psalms represent David’s deliverance, not just this normal believing guy, but because he has already been anointed as God’s king. I find it difficult when I come to Psalms to distinguish between those which are because David is the type of the king and those which actually are just more applicable as Christian experience, like Psalm 40 was applied yesterday. How do we begin to get a grasp on which of these things are David speaking as God’s anointed and David speaking as a believer?

Don: The question is huge. I wish I could answer it fully now. Let me just give a couple of hints. I don’t have time for more. In part, what you’re looking for are patterns. When you have recurring patterns, you then begin to have the beginnings of what is essential to a typology. That is, there is a pattern that recurs and gets ratcheted up. You get a pattern of David being betrayed by his friends. That’s a pattern that recurs in the Psalms.

There are elements of that that are very personal and bound up with Absalom or they’re bound up with historic figures, but there’s a pattern of betrayal and how he responds to it that is then picked up and especially applied in the passion narrative to Jesus by being betrayed by his most familiar friend, as it were. What you’re looking for is not just isolated events but patterns. Typology depends somewhat on patterning. There are other factors, but that’s one of the big ones.

Male: This idea of this biblical theology grand narrative of Jesus as priest-king is heart-stopping and heart-expanding and majestic and just huge. It ties everything together. Another thing that strikes me that way is the idea of Jesus as Lord and how that relates to creation theology and resurrection theology and that huge scope of the redemption of all things and Jesus is Lord over all things. How would you tie those two themes together?

Don: I could list two or three more. This is not meant to be an exhaustive thing. I haven’t really mentioned anything.… I’ve alluded to it … of how the structure of the doctrine of the Trinity shapes things, too, and the imago Dei language and how it works out in the New Testament as Jesus is the supreme image of God and so on. The whole notion of sonship that I briefly introduced a couple of days ago needs to be expanded. There are lots of others as well.

There are texts, then, that do tie them together. For example, the so-called Christ hymn of Colossians 1:15–20 ties together Christ as head of all creation redeeming the whole universe to himself in some sense, and in particular, Lord of the church, which narrows it down to a more soteriological and covenantal people type of focus.

Likewise, the resurrection flows out of, on the one hand, the death and Jesus’ vindication and as foretaste of the ultimate resurrection of all of God’s people and so on and so on, but it’s also tied to the restoration of the entire universe, the whole universe groaning in travail waiting for the adoption of sons, to use the language of Romans 8. There’s a sermon by John Piper that was at one of the conferences of The Gospel Coalition on Romans 8 that is just intensely moving in that respect. You could dig it out of the thegospelcoalition.org, his sermon on Romans 8.

There are lots of ways these things can further be developed. Part of our danger, I think, is in line with the tendency in the West to specialize. You get some people who so fasten, let’s say, on the creation motifs and resurrection and new heaven and new earth motifs that somehow the cross isn’t much more than interference in the background.

Then you get others who focus narrowly on the cross and they might have what they’re saying right, but they don’t see its implications for not only salvation and proclamation and mission and all of that, but for how a damned universe is reconciled to God. What is important is to learn, ultimately, the sweep of massive structures in the Bible and still to preserve a place for hierarchializing as the Bible hierarchializes.

Paul, when he’s writing to the Corinthians, can say in chapter 15, “The matters of first importance I now give to you,” which shows that Paul is hierarchealizing. There are matters of first importance, and by implication, of somewhat lesser importance. Then he starts talking about the first importance: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and so on.

You get the summation of the gospel itself. What you don’t want are people who, though they believe these things about the gospel, nevertheless, are so focusing on restored culture that they’re doing their little bit over there and yet they’re not getting across what is of first importance. What you want is integrative thinking that still focuses on the cross, the gospel, the resurrection, the identity and person of Christ and so forth.

Male: A historical one on Genesis 14. It talks about Melchizedek being a priest. What was the concept of him being a priest in that culture, because obviously the first real understanding we have of what being a priest involved was when it comes in with the law. When we read that Melchizedek was a priest, we think, “Hang on a minute. I didn’t know there were priests at that time. What did they do?”

Don: Virtually every notion of religion involves priesthood at some level or another. What it really means is some kind of mediator between God or the gods and us. In Paul’s day, there were priests at the oracle of Delphi and priestesses, likewise. In fertility cults, the farmer might go and sleep with the priestess or the farmer’s wife with a priest in the hope by this copulation you encourage the gods to copulate and, thus, bring about a restoration of a kind of copulation of the land that produces lots of bounty in the farm.

In Corinth, 400 years before Christ that was a really big part of Corinthian worship. It was somewhat diminished in Paul’s day, but it was still there. This goes back to ancient fertility cults that were common in the ancient Near East. There were priests of Isis, for example, in ancient Egypt. If you recall, Joseph in Egypt marries the daughter of one of the priests, so the notion of priesthood is just about universal in religion, and it has to do with mediation.

It’s between the God and us, often bound up with notions of sacrifice and the like. It’s not as if the Levitical priest drops holus bolus from heaven tabula rasa … there’s nothing else there, it’s just a brand new concept. It’s everywhere. It’s just that it’s now given a peculiarly God-centered, Yahweh-centered, Yahweh-defined sacrificial system that is designed to point forward to who Jesus really is. It’s when you start becoming as secular as we are in the West that the notion of priesthood just disappears because we don’t have much of a God to be afraid of so we don’t need any mediation. Does that help?

Male: Don, thank you very much for opening God’s Word for us. I think we feel stretched, yet at the same time our hearts have been warmed and challenged to keep going in the gospel, keep plummeting the depths of the riches of the wisdom of God. Thank you very much, brother. Let’s just pray for Don.

Gracious Father, we thank you that you’ve used our brother this week, and we thank you that you, O God, have challenged us and stretched us and warmed our hearts and provoked us to go further than we are now to know more of the depths of the wisdom and knowledge of God. Lord, we pray that you’d help us in that, and we pray for our brother. We do so with much thanks for all that you use him to do.

We pray he would be thrilled with these things and they would warm his mind and heart and pray they would work themselves out in joyful, glad obedience. We do pray, especially, for wisdom for Don in his various responsibilities in leadership, and we pray you would give him a gracious heart and sharp mind and clarity of thought to discharge all of these responsibilities well. For Christ’s sake, amen.

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.