Why Does Hebrews Cite the OT Like That? (part 3)

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

In this last address, I would like to direct your attention to Hebrews, chapter 7, and the Melchizedekian priesthood. Melchizedek has been introduced briefly in chapter 5 in a passage I read earlier, a passage that insists Christ did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. Then Psalm 2:7 is quoted. “You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” He says in another place, “You are priest forever in the order of Melchizedek,” and Psalm 110 is quoted. That’s the first instance.

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The Old Testament chapter that is most quoted in the New Testament of all Old Testament chapters is, in fact, Psalm 110, so it is important to think through what this one says, partly because it is so very influential. In the epistle of the Hebrews, it’s cited several times and tied up invariably with Melchizedek.

Before the Melchizedekian theme can be unpacked, there’s this long warning against falling away that takes you right through to the end of chapter 6, where the author very carefully sidles back into the theme of Melchizedek. “Christ is our priest indeed. He has gone ahead of us, and he has become a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” Then the author begins his exposition.

Now Melchizedek is mentioned only twice in the Old Testament and in only one book of the New, namely here. What is interesting is, again, that the writer to the Hebrews expounds both of the Old Testament passages. So it’s worth our while taking a look at those Old Testament passages for ourselves. The first of these is in Genesis, chapter 14.

If we were taking the time to work through the Hebrew text, I would show you there are quite a lot of textual links, hook words and the like, between the end of Genesis 14 on Melchizedek and the beginning of chapter 15, which introduces God’s covenant with Abram. There are a lot of thematic connections. I don’t have time to unpack them here, and they’re not immediately relevant for us, but these arguments are tied closely to other things besides the ones I am actually dealing with here.

Begin at verse 8. “The king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) marched out and drew up their battle lines in the Valley of Siddim against Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goiim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five.”

Then you remember the account. Eventually the four kings seize all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and the five kings. They carry them away, and they also carry off Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions since he was living in Sodom. Now a king in those days was often the king of the equivalent of a good-sized village. A city would be 5,000 or 10,000 and a big city 20,000 people. So these are city kings.

Thus, when you have four kings against five, you’re not supposed to be thinking of 150,000 troops versus 250,000 troops. They’re fairly small numbers. It’s not too surprising, therefore, that Abram the Hebrew, as he’s here called, can take them on with 318 trained men. Undoubtedly he was outnumbered and all the rest, but nevertheless, it’s not 318 against half a million troops or something like that.

“One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. 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. 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. During the night …” Hence he could take on a much greater number.

“… Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. 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).

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 blessed be God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’ Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. The king of Sodom said to Abram, ‘Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.’ ” This was standard in these sorts of retrieval operations.

“But Abram said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have raised my hand to the Lord, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath 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.’ ”

That’s it. That’s all that’s said until the one rather allusive reference in Psalm 110 that we’ll think about in due course. Now just reading this account without knowing anything more that’s coming, it really is quite remarkable. From a literary point of view, Melchizedek appears, in some sense, as a kind of foil for the king of Sodom. Sodom is introduced just before Melchizedek. Then after Melchizedek is dropped, Sodom comes back again.

So Sodom comes out to confront Abram, and before he says anything, Melchizedek has popped in, and their little exchange goes on. Then nothing more is said about him, and then Sodom says, “You can have everything, except give me the people back,” and Abram says, “No way. I don’t want to take anything.” So in some ways, Melchizedek is simply a foil for Sodom.

On the one hand, Abram won’t have anything to do with Sodom and certainly won’t be enriched by him. On the other hand, Abram and Melchizedek seem to be pretty closely aligned sympathetically. Abram pays a tithe to Melchizedek, even though it’s not Melchizedek’s people that have been stolen, nor is Melchizedek helped, nor has Melchizedek sent troops. He seems to pay him a tithe because he is priest of El Elyon, priest of God Most High. He seems to want to give honor to whom honor is due, and the priest blesses him.

On the other hand, there’s nothing said about where he came from, what he’s there for. He just suddenly appears. Moreover, when you read this whole book very carefully, just about anybody who’s anybody has the genealogy carefully traced out, but this chap, who is so great that even Abraham pays a tithe to him.… Nothing is said about his parentage or lineage or anything like that. Nothing. It’s a very strange piece, and he’s never mentioned again in the entire book.

Now come to Hebrews. What does Hebrews say? “This Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of God Most High.” So far, that’s just recounting the details. “He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him, and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.” So far, just recounting the bare-bones facts of the story. Then the exposition begins.

“First, his name means ‘king of righteousness.’ ” That is what Melchizedek means. The melek root has to do with kingship. Melchizedek from the tsedeq root. He is literally “king of righteousness.” That’s what the name means. He is said to be king of Salem, we say in English. That S-L-M root. King of shalom. Salaam in modern Arabic. King of well-being, king of peace.

There’s a good case that can be made that this was the site of ancient Jeru-salem, that particular shalom, but you can’t prove it one way or the other. But he’s king of a particular place, and in one sense, these names are pregnant. They are evocative. He’s king of righteousness, and he’s king of peace. “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, like the Son of God he remains a priest forever.”

Many people have argued, across all of redemptive history, that Melchizedek is a preincarnate appearance of God, a preincarnate appearance, perhaps, of the eternal Word, who manifests himself as Jesus. This is an early visitation, it is argued. Well, it’s very difficult to prove a negative, but I don’t think so.

I’m not denying that sometimes God manifests himself in remarkably tangible forms in the Old Testament, as in some of the appearances of the Angel of the Lord and the like, but I don’t think this is one of them. The author is very careful to say, “Without father or mother.” Is that to be taken in an absolute sense? Well, no. He points out the ground on which he makes his judgment: “Without genealogy.”

Have you ever read Sherlock Holmes’ short story, “Silver Blaze”? The case is solved from “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” What was so curious, so strange, about it was the dog didn’t bark in the night. That’s an argument for silence. Arguments from silence are dangerous, but an argument from silence is powerful when there should be noise.

Sherlock Holmes’ point was that if it had been a stranger who had gone to this particular place, the dog would have barked. Because the dog didn’t bark, therefore, it had to be somebody the dog knew and recognized. So the silence becomes pregnant precisely because there’s an expectation of noise.

In a book like Genesis, there’s an expectation of genealogy. Now in all kinds of books, if there’s no genealogy mentioned, who gives a rip? There’s no expectation of it. So the absence of genealogy is not particularly significant. On the other hand, you get a book like Genesis, where everybody who is important is certainly connected genealogically, and then the absence of genealogy is a bit stellar. You combine that with other things. Where he came from? No mention. How he ends up? No mention.

Compare that with some of the genealogies. “So-and-so lived so many years. He had so many children. He lived so many more years. Then he died. So-and-so lived so many years. He had so many children. So-and-so lived so many years. Then he died. Then he died. Then he died.” This chap? No mommy, no daddy, no genealogy. Pops in, pops out. That’s it, amen. That’s it. This is the Word of God. You have to make sense of this.

On top of all of this, he says, “Consider who he was. Consider how great he was. Abraham, the patriarch, pays tribute to him and receives his blessing.” What do you do with that? These are exegetical observations right on the straightforward surface of the text. This is not trying to read anything in. But the proof positive, as positive as you can get, that this is not the Son of God is the little word like.

As far as the text goes, there’s no mention of father or mother. He’s without genealogy, without beginning or end of life, like the Son of God. It doesn’t say he is the Son of God. He could have easily said that. He could have said, “This is the incarnation of the Son of God” or “This is a preincarnate appearance” or “This is another visitation of the Angel of the Lord,” but insofar as he appears without father, without mother, without genealogy, without beginning, without ending, he’s just like the Son of God ultimately, eternal.

That raises the interesting question, before we press on with the author of Hebrews’ exposition, of why he is introduced. Who is he likely to be? How can you make sense of him historically? There’s no particular reason to think that Abraham was the only monotheist in the universe. You’re not that far out from the flood, the reconstitution of the race, the dispersal of the nations after Babel (chapter 11).

There’s no reason to think there are not at least some people who are, if not monotheists, then at least henotheists. That is, belief in one ultimately sovereign God, even if perhaps there are other gods. With monotheism there is only one God flat out. After all, it’s not a question of people climbing higher and higher into some deep insight about monotheism until the evolutionary progress brings us to Abraham. No, you begin with monotheism.

Originally, everybody was a monotheist. It’s idolatry that crops up and changes everything, but there had to be memories of monotheism and some people linger on with it a lot longer than others before the multiplicity of gods eventually corrupts so much. He worships God, Creator of everything, El Elyon, God Most High, and Abraham senses in him some sort of kindred spirit.

Moreover, he has an interesting role. He’s king and he’s priest. This is 2000 BC, give or take. We’re a long way away from the Mosaic covenant, where there’s a careful differentiation between the line of the kingly figures and the line of the priestly figures. The line of the kingly figures coming from Judah, the line of the priestly figures coming from Levi.

We’re a long way away from that division, but at this point, Abraham recognizes not only a kindred spirit, either a monotheist or a henotheist, but someone who reverences God both as priest and king, and Abraham honors him for it. He recognizes that he is serving the same God. He receives his blessing, recognizing in some sense its subsidiary role, and pays tribute to him in a tithe. That’s all the account says.

Because it’s incorporated in Genesis the way it’s incorporated in Genesis … without father, without mother, without genealogy, without any sense of origin or where it’s going, nothing more is said … he not only serves as a foil to the king of Sodom, but you have this figure who’s out there now, whom nobody has done anything more with theologically, until a millennium later, at the time of David, God says, “You are a priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” He says this to a Davidic king.

We’ll come to Psalm 110 in due course. The writer of Hebrews, however, has thought about these things a great deal. He first explains the Old Testament passage carefully, and then he drops in Psalm 110. What does he go on to say? “Just think how great he was: Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder! Now the law …” That is, the Mosaic law. Centuries later now. Don’t forget. He’s thinking in temporal categories.

“The law requires the descendants of Levi who become priests to collect a tenth from the people—that is, their brothers—even though their brothers are descended from Abraham. This man, however, did not trace his descent from Levi …” Well, I guess not. Levi is not born yet. “… yet he collected a tenth from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. And without doubt the lesser person is blessed by the greater. In the one case, the tenth is collected by men who die …” That is, the Levites, who all die off.

“… but in the other case, by him who is declared to be living.” That is to say, there’s no record of his dying. There’s no record of anything other than that he’s just there. “One might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth …” That is, under the conditions of the law. “… paid the tenth through Abraham.” You know he’s his great-great-great-granddaddy. You go back a wee bit and there he is. Lo and behold, he’s there in Abraham’s loins, as it were.

Because in the ancient world the son is always a little less than the father, if Abraham pays tithes to Melchizedek and Levi (there’s Isaac, there’s Jacob, and then there’s Levi; you have that three-generation gap in there), then he is clearly inferior to Abraham. So if Abraham is less than Melchizedek, then Levi is less than Melchizedek, so the Levitical priesthood is less than Melchizedek’s priesthood.

That’s hard for us in the West to understand, because we work so hard on individualism. You know, “I may be only 20, but I’m as good as you. Just because you’re 60, don’t think you can put on airs.” This sort of youth cult and so on. We just don’t think in these sorts of terms. The older I get, the more fun I have going to Asia, because over there I’m becoming important. Not because I’ve done anything, just because I’m getting old. Add another 15 years and I’ll have a blast. It’s the way it works in another culture. Whereas here, if you’re old, it just means you’re decrepit.

But this is an Oriental culture. This is a family culture. The argument makes perfect sense to anybody who understands this notion of unity in the clan, unity in the family, with the head of the clan being the important party. So far, the argument is clear. Before I come to detailed pointing out of some specific texts in the next verses, let me give you a summary of at least part of the argument in what follows now.

A millennium after these events, God comes along and says something rather remarkable. In the interval, after these events of the transaction between Abraham and Melchizedek, has come about not only the birth of Levi, then removal ultimately to Egypt, and then the exodus from Egypt, but then the giving of the law. With the giving of the law have come the prescriptions for the Levitical priesthood and the Aaronic high priesthood and so on. It’s all there.

So now you have, way down here in the tenth century, this Levitical priesthood in place. Then, once the Levitical priesthood is in place, God comes along and addresses the Davidic figure, the Davidic king … from the tribe of Judah, not from the tribe of Levi. He says, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” That’s what Psalm 110 says. We’ll look at that psalm in a moment.

Doesn’t that mean the Levitical priesthood, therefore, is not enough or is not stable or is not accomplishing what it should accomplish or is coming to an end? How can God, who has instituted the Levitical priesthood, come along and announce another priesthood? Isn’t that making the older priesthood principially obsolete?

That’s the whole argument, yet that argument depends once again on sequence, on the Genesis account being a long time before, so that you have this relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek, then the establishment of the Levitical priesthood, and then the announcement of a priest-king in the order of Melchizedek, harking to something before the giving of the law, which, in fact, jeopardizes any claims to exclusivity that the Levitical priesthood could advance. The whole argument turns on sequence.

Notice how it happens again and again and again. Verse 17: “It is declared: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ The former regulation [the Levitical priesthood regulation] 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 nigh to God.”

In fact, this hope is actually introduced with an oath. “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever.’ ” He didn’t even have an oath with the other one, but now a priest forever? The whole argument turns on the sequence once again. Now look even more closely at verse 11. We’ll skip the parentheses so you get the flow.

“If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron?” Do you see what the argument is? The very fact that you can have Psalm 110 promising another priest is already calling into question the adequacy of the Levitical priesthood.

Now go back to the parentheses. “If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come?” That needs to be unpacked. In much of the Western world, we have come to think of the law as embracing three categories: moral law, civil law, and ceremonial law. Those categories at the heuristic level, at the level of useful discussion and discovery, go back to the fathers.

There’s moral law. In terms of becoming a kind of grid to explain how the Old Testament and the New Testament fit together, I think they only go back as far as Thomas Aquinas, as far as I can see. John Calvin gets it from Aquinas, and so forth. So today, when we think about the law, we’re inclined to think of the moral law as preeminent. It endures. It’s important.

There is also civil law, which was important for the nation as a nation, but because the locus of the people of God is today not national; therefore, you don’t have to have all of those little laws about how to govern and how high to put the balustrades on your roof when you’re living in Jerusalem, and stuff like that. You’re done with all the civil law.

Then there’s the ceremonial law that has to do with the sacrificial system and the priestly system, and it has all been fulfilled in Christ, because he is our priest and he is our temple and he is our sacrifice, and so forth. Isn’t that the way we think of the law, more or less? But look at what this parenthetical statement says again. “On the basis of the priestly system the law was given.” Isn’t that striking? Yet when you stop to think about it, it makes jolly good sense for two reasons.

First, it makes sense because there is such a huge sweep of law content in the Pentateuch that deals with what we call ceremonial aspects of things. Endless pages of Leviticus, huge chunks of Numbers, certainly large swathes of Exodus, given over to how to build a tabernacle. “Make sure you do it exactly according to the pattern shown to Moses my servant upon the mount,” 30 odd times in Exodus.

Then all of those sacrifices. Sacrifices for everything. What you do when you have a baby, what you do when there’s a bit of mold on your wall, what you do with the great festivals, how a priest is supposed to dress, what kind of blood he brings in there, which goat you kill and which one you release into the wilderness. On and on and on and on, pages and pages and pages of it, over against the Ten Commandments, which you knock off in about half a page.

At one level, you understand how central the whole priestly system is, in fact, to the law. So if you change the priestly system, you change the law. How can you not? The whole priestly system is the basis on which everything else is given. That’s what the text says in the parentheses.

But there’s another reason that’s even more important. It was the priestly system that established the basis on which people could be reconnected to God. It was the priestly system, the temple system, the tabernacle system, the sacrificial system that established how you could be reconciled to God. All of Leviticus is bound up with getting dirty or getting clean. You get dirty by disobedience, sins of various kinds. How can you be reaccepted before God? By getting clean.

In one sense, then, the basis for the whole thing was the priestly system. It had to do with the sheer God-centeredness of it all. God is holy. We are dirty. God is clean. We are rebels and dirty. How shall we be reconciled to God? It all turns on the sacrifices God has prescribed and the priestly system he has introduced and the mediation and Yom Kippur and the high priest, and so on. Otherwise we are undone. That is the way the covenantal structure works for the Mosaic covenant.

It’s not too surprising, therefore, that the author says, startlingly, “If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it [the Levitical priesthood] the law was given to the people), why was there still need for another priest to come—one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron? For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must also be a change of the law.”

The logic is entirely dependent upon the parenthetical statement. The parenthetical statement establishes that the law is based on the priestly structures. Now the argument is, “So if the priestly structures change, there must, therefore, be a change in the entire law covenant.” That’s what the argument is. So we unpack it. “He of whom these things are said …” That is, these things about a new priest, a priest in the order of Melchizedek. “… belonged to a different tribe [the tribe of Judah], and no one from that tribe has ever served at the altar.

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, who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry …” That is, what tribe he belongs to. “… but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life.” That is, where there’s no ancestry involved, where there’s no derivation.

“For it is declared: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ The former regulation [the entire priestly structure of the Levitical priesthood] is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law covenant made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. And it was not without an oath!” Thus Jesus becomes the Great High Priest who lives forever. He has a permanent priesthood. Verse 25: “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”

Now take a look at Psalm 110. This passage has many, many interesting points, and one of the most interesting is that it is quoted by the Lord Jesus himself, who gives us an absolutely crucial clue on how to understand it. The relevant passage is Matthew 22, verses 41 and following. Keep your finger at the end of Matthew 22, but now we’ll look for a few moments at Psalm 110.

The heading says, “Of David. A psalm.” Many contemporary scholars deny that David wrote it. Supposing David did not write it. Then it would be reasonable to assume a courtier has written it, somebody in the court addressing the king. “The Lord [Yahweh] says to my Lord, the king …” “Yahweh says to my Lord, the king: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ ” It becomes, again, some way of talking about enthronement if the courtier is writing it.

“Yahweh says to my Lord, the king: ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ ” It sounds a wee bit like Psalm 2, doesn’t it? “The Lord sitting in heaven laughs. He holds them in derision. ‘I have set my king on my holy hill.’ ” “So hang on there, king. I’ll sort it all out.” Indeed, “The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies. Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive the dew of your youth.”

On the other hand, if the superscription is taken seriously and David says this, it looks a little different. “Yahweh says to my Lord …” To whom is “my Lord” referring if it is already David, the king, who is writing? If it’s a courtier, then clearly “my Lord” is the king, and there’s a difference between the Lord, Yahweh, and my Lord, the king. But if it’s David himself who is writing, who on earth is “my Lord”? “The Lord says to my Lord.” It’s King David writing?

That, of course, is exactly the point on which Jesus himself fastens. We’ll come back to Psalm 110. Look now at Matthew 22, verse 41. “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ‘What do you think about the Messiah? 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 …’ ” And then the words are quoted.

In other words, Jesus insists that the superscription of the psalm gets it right, that it is David himself who is speaking. If it is David himself who is speaking, then you have to understand that David must be speaking prophetically. He must be speaking transcendentally. He must be speaking outside himself to be referring to one who is to come, the one whom even the great King David says is “my Lord.” “Yahweh says to my Lord.”

As a result, there is a tradition in Jewish circles.… It’s not the only tradition, but there is a tradition in Jewish circles that this is an overtly messianic psalm. Not, then, a psalm that is messianic by virtue of a typology but what is sometimes called an oracular psalm, a psalm given as an oracle to David, in which he’s speaking beyond himself without even himself understanding everything that is being given.

“The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand.’ ” Almost as if we need to be reminded that this is, after all, God’s own Word, Jesus himself carefully adds, “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 …’ ”

In other words, if David refers to someone who is his son as “Lord,” reversing all of the Oriental expectations of who’s up and who’s down, how does a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a great-great-great-great-grandfather ever refer to his great-great-great-great-grandson as “Lord”? How do you do that? “Then how can he be a son?”

Jesus is not overturning the view that the Messiah is David’s son. All of Matthew’s gospel is against any such supposition. After all, how does the gospel begin? “The origins of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then the genealogy, and the central 14 is based on the Davidic dynasty. There’s all kinds of evidence that obviously the Messiah is David’s son. But although he’s David’s son, he is not David’s inferior. He is not just David’s son.

There were a lot of confused ideas about what kind of messiah would ultimately show up. In some circles in Qumran they even expected two messiahs, a priestly messiah and a kingly messiah. What Jesus is doing is challenging their notion of messiah. “Yeah, he’s going to be great David’s greater son. He won’t be as great as the old man, but you can’t expect that. But he’ll be great. He’ll be in David’s line.”

Jesus is saying, “Wait a minute. David himself, speaking by the Spirit, anticipates one whom he is prepared to address himself as ‘my Lord.’ So is this sonship category adequate for understanding all you should be understanding about the identity and being of the Messiah?” That’s what Jesus is doing.

Whether we have in Psalm 110 an unambiguously oracular psalm … that is, a psalm that is just given flat-out immediately by the Spirit, almost in dictation fashion … or something else. You have to understand it to be David’s writing to make sense of it. Now let me just say something about this nature of oracular revelation before we come back to this psalm and then see its bearing back on Hebrews again.

There are many parts of the Bible that are inspired in the sense that God so superintends everything that what comes out is genuinely the Word of God all right, even though the mode of it is extremely personal and private and so forth. So when Paul comes in from a hard day, you’re not to think he’s about to have a little snooze, when a voice stops him and says, “Wait a minute, Paul. You’re not done yet. Get out your quill.”

So he gets out his quill and gets out a sheet of paper. “All right, I’m ready.” “All right, dictate the following: Paul and Silas …” Paul and Silas. “… to the church …” To the church. “… that is at Philippi …” That is at Philippi. “… with the bishops and deacons.” With the bishops and deacons. “Grace and peace.” Grace and peace. “I thank my God …” I thank my God. “… upon every remembrance …” Upon every remembrance. “… of you.”

In which case, the whole thing becomes remarkably divorced from what the text says. This is a personal letter from Paul, where he is remembering and he is thanking them. “I thank God …” The mode of inspiration is precisely through the mind, vocabulary, heart, and experiences of Paul, so superintended by God that this is God’s Word, but it’s not in oracular form.

On the other hand, sometimes the prophets of the Old Testament did receive revelation in oracular form. “The word of the Lord came to the prophet such-and-such, saying …” And then you get some oracle. Which is why in Jeremiah’s time, when the opponents take the manuscript and tear it all up and throw it in the fire, those who are knowing what’s going on just have to laugh. Has God forgotten what he said? Don’t you think he can dictate it again?

It’s an insult to God Almighty. You might wipe out your hard drive and not have a backup, but God doesn’t need backups. Believe it or not, he remembers what he said. If he can dictate it once, he can dictate it again. In some oracles, like oracles given to Daniel, it may be given to Daniel in such a direct fashion, in such personal fashion, that Daniel himself doesn’t even understand what it’s saying. Daniel says so. “I was trying to find out what was going on here, and God just told me, ‘Seal it up, Daniel. It’s for a later time, not for you.’ ”

In that sense, the oracle becomes a kind of dumping. God has just given it, and the human agent is not much more than a secretary. In days before so much was done by computer, almost all of my letters and correspondence were done by dictation. An awful lot of mine still are. Some things come in and are done by email, but an awful lot is done by dictation.

In fact, 25 years ago, instead of these little handsets where I had to go everywhere carrying a little recorder to mutter into and then dump the tape on my poor secretary’s desk, it was all done with shorthand. I had one wonderful secretary 20 years ago. Her name was Judy. She took the most amazing shorthand. I could dictate at ferocious speed, and she got it down at ferocious speed. Let me tell you, quite frankly, very often I was dealing with sort of technical stuff where she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

She told me 10 years later that she had a “Carson word for the day.” Almost every day I would use some word or other that she had to look up in the dictionary. In the secretarial pool, she would say, “Anybody know this word? This is Carson’s word for the day. Ha-ha-ha!” Then they’d go and look it up and try to figure out what I was talking about. Sometimes she’d come and see me. She didn’t know what I was talking about. They were still my words. I signed them. I proofed them.

So sometimes God’s revelation comes in oracular forms, where dear ol’ Daniel himself doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Whether this is an oracular sort of revelation or not, I’m not quite sure. What you must see, however, is that this is David writing. Otherwise, Jesus has it wrong. David writing, anticipating a great David’s greater son, to use the hymn writer’s expression.

He understands that he will rule in such a way that the enemies will be progressively defeated. Then in that context he says, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ ” If this is not oracular, then I like to think of it this way. I don’t know if this is right or not. If you don’t want any speculation, just tune me out for about one minute.

If it’s not oracular, I wonder if David, led on by the Spirit of God, is just beginning to glimpse things over the horizon, precisely because, as we saw in 2 Samuel 7, he has brought the kingship to Jerusalem, and he has brought the tabernacle to Jerusalem. His son will build a temple in Jerusalem, and God has declared the dynasty to be in Jerusalem. These things are coming together.

If he begins to think about these things coming together at all, and if he’s reading the Bible, as most certainly David did, then sooner or later he would have had to think about Melchizedek, who was a priest-king. In the Davidic line under the Mosaic law, it couldn’t be that way. David began to think and wonder. These things are now in the same center.

I know we’re under the Mosaic law and he has to observe these things. Yes, yes, yes. But now with these things coalescing in one city, does this mean down the road he’s thinking about these things now, prompted by the Spirit of God? “One day, God’s King, God’s Anointed One, God’s anointed King will be God’s anointed Priest.” There is precedence for that already. “He will be a priest in the order of Melchizedek.”

Borne along by the Spirit of God, the Spirit speaks to him, and he declares in the name of the Lord, “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: ‘You, my Son, my Lord, are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’ ” However oracular, I suspect David understood a little more than some people think, precisely because he did have Genesis.

That brings us back to Hebrews one more time. That means that by reading the Old Testament sequentially, by understanding that Psalm 110, rightly understood in its place 1,000 years after Abraham and almost half a millennium after Moses, there has to be here an announcement of a king-priest, whose priestly functions necessarily render principially obsolete the Levitical priesthood.

That means 1,000 years before Christ, at least some were already understanding that the Mosaic law was not forever, that the law covenant functioned in its own place in redemptive history, but it was not the final covenant. Then, in case we still don’t get it, in the next chapter the author says something similar. Chapter 8, verse 1: “Yes, the point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,” and so on.

Now he goes on to talk about this a little bit more. Verse 7: “Now if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant [the Mosaic covenant], no place would have been sought for another.” In other words, he has argued that some place was sought for a change in the priesthood because that first priesthood was not adequate to all the need. So also with that whole first covenant, which was itself based on the priesthood, God, in fact, announces its obsolescence by coming along and predicting the arrival of a new covenant.

“God found fault with the people and said: ‘The time is coming …’ ” Now he’s quoting Jeremiah 31. “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand. This is the covenant I will make with them. I will do this. I will do that. I will do that.”

Verse 13, the conclusion. Here’s the point. “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete.” That’s 600 BC. Already, 600 years before Christ, God, speaking through Jeremiah, by announcing a new covenant, has already made the old one old. It is, in principle, obsolete, and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.

Now I am perfectly aware today that many, many, many Old Testament scholars, both Christians and Jews, come to the Jeremiah passage and prefer to speak of it not as the promise of a new covenant but as the promise of a renewed covenant. That is, it’s the old covenant simply renewed. I really do think that is mistaken, so mistaken it is almost perverse.

This isn’t simply renewed in the sense of re-strengthening or the like. The text not only calls it new, but then it actually introduces some distinctions. “It will not be like the old covenant in certain respects, but this is the nature of the new covenant I will make.” In other words, it’s spelled out where the points of continuity and discontinuity actually lie. Not all of them, but some of them, crucially.

Let me explain just a little. Take a look at Jeremiah 31 in its context, since it has just been quoted by Hebrews. Instead of beginning in Jeremiah 31:31, where we normally begin, begin two verses back in verses 29–30. Here there is a proverb that’s introduced. It’s a proverb that is used also in Ezekiel but in a slightly different way.

Jeremiah 31:29: “ ‘In those days people will no longer say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—his own teeth will be set on edge. The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.’ ”

In other words, that little proverb sheds light on the promise of the new covenant, and the promise of the new covenant sheds light on the proverb. What’s going on here? The point is that the old covenant structurally was tribal and representative. God gave special enduement to the priest, he gave special enduement to the king, and their job was to say, “Know the Lord.”

Even in the Old Testament, when we hear of the Holy Spirit coming on people with special enduement, it is regularly upon prophet, priest, and king and on a few people like Bezalel and Oholiab and people like that who were making nice tabernacle cloths. By and large, the Old Testament does not lay a whole lot of stress on the Holy Spirit coming upon all the people. No, it’s a tribal representative sort of structure.

They say, “Know the Lord,” and they stand in a sort of mediatorial position. The king rules, but he also teaches the people. The priests do their priestly work, but they also teach the people. The prophets declare the word of the Lord, and they teach the people. They have this inside track with God, and they have a representative, tribal function. So when the priest or the king goes off the rails, the whole people suffer.

Isn’t that what happens with David? He’s the one who counts the people. Then he has to face a choice. “Do you want so much time of plague or so much time running from your enemies?” It’s all the people who suffer. It’s a tribal representative system. If the king does well, the people do well. If the king does badly, the people suffer. It’s a tribal representative system. The fathers eat sour grapes; the children’s teeth are set on edge. That’s the very nature of the covenantal structure. But in those days, God says, no longer will they quote this proverb.

This is not talking about individual responsibility and whether it’s passed on and whether there are social entailments to sin. It still remains true that there are social entailments to sin. The Decalogue says that. “That God’s judgment might fall on the third and fourth generation of those who hate me and despitefully use me.” That’s still true. If you have a really rotten family, the social implications are likely to pass on. Sin is more than personal; it’s social.

That’s all true, but that’s not the point here. The point here is the tribal representative nature of the covenant. The people are complaining. “We have a bad king. Judgment falls down upon us. The fathers eat sour grapes; the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But it’s not going to be like that much longer, God says, because the covenant is going to change.

“ ‘The time is coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them, because they broke my covenant. This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will put my law in their minds. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord.” ’ ”

What? No teachers in the new covenant? We all know there are teachers in the new covenant. What does this mean? The point is there’s no tribal representative teacher in the new covenant. There’s no teacher in the new covenant who exercises anything like the teaching role of prophet, priest, or king in the old covenant.

In the old covenant, the teacher who was saying, “Know the Lord” had this inside track. It was part of a tribal representative system. But under the new covenant, everyone will know the Lord. So although there are teachers in the new covenant, it’s not because I have an inside track with God. Here I am; I’m a teacher, but I can’t claim I have some sort of inside track with God, some special enduement of the Spirit that you can’t have.

You can learn Greek as well as I can. You can study for as many years as I have. There is no bar in principle in which God somehow has given me a role in the church that is structurally, within the structure of the covenant, different, so that I have a mediatorial function that you don’t have. No, we only have one Mediator, one High Priest, one King, one ultimate Prophet, and his name is Jesus.

We’re back to the priesthood of believers under the structure of the new covenant. The new covenant is not structured as a tribal representative system anymore. No, no, no. “They shall all know me from the least to the greatest. No longer will a man say to his neighbor, ‘Know the Lord.’ ” The tribal representative system is gone. “I will forgive their sins and their wickedness and remember them no more.”

In other words, Hebrews understands that whole tribal representative covenantal structure had its principial obsolescence announced six centuries before Jesus Christ. Insofar as that entire covenant was based on the priestly system and the priestly system had its principial obsolescence announced 10 centuries before Jesus Christ, then what on earth are people doing still trying to preserve it in the first century?

It has been fulfilled. The new priest has come. The new temple has come. The new sacrifice has come. The new covenant has come. “So on the night he was betrayed, the Lord took bread, and he said, ‘This bread is the new covenant in my body. This cup is the new covenant in my blood.’ ” What this means, then, is that the New Testament authors are not reading the Old Testament in some bitty, proof-texting, atomistic way. They are reading the storyline.

As they read the storyline, they find the evidences across the pages that again and again and again, in various clever, wise, thoughtful, powerful ways, the place of the law covenant in redemptive history is delimited by new predictions of what will come along to replace it. It’s delimited by announcements of its principial obsolescence. It’s delimited by announcements of a new covenant. It’s delimited by announcements of a priesthood, not in the Levitical order but in the Melchizedekian order.

Suddenly that flips back to Abrahamic time. If that’s the case, then Paul remembers, “Well, yes, the promises given to Abraham cannot be superseded by all of this material that’s given later as law.” Gradually, the whole of the Old Testament begins to take in another sort of color, another sort of frame, another wholeness, which is driving constantly toward something new … a new covenant, a new priesthood, a new temple, a new sacrifice, a new Passover, a new Yom Kippur.

Suddenly you understand why the Old Testament is said to predict Jesus. The vast majority of Old Testament texts that are said to be fulfilled in Jesus are, in fact, typological predictions. There are some verbal predictions, of course, like Micah 5:2, which announces that this messianic figure will be born in Bethlehem.

There are some predictions that are merely verbal predictions that are fulfilled in events, but an awful lot of the predictions in the Old Testament are deeply grounded in this whole prophetic, typological structure, which itself, then, turns on such a reading of the flow of the old covenant that you see the progressive unveiling of things is itself anticipating something more to come. Once you’ve seen the structure, you’ve seen it forever, and it transforms how you read the Bible, how you understand the prophecy works.

Let me end with one sort of provocative aside, if I may put it this way. This has been an intellectually fairly strenuous day, and I know that, but, when all is said and done, isn’t there at least a temptation in us to say, “Yeah, yeah, I can see that’s what it’s saying. You’re probably right, Don. I need to do some more thinking about that, but I still wish God had made it a little more straightforward. I don’t want to criticize God, but how about some prophecy like this?” So here is Isaiah 53, the simplified version according to Don.

“ ‘And it shall come to pass in those days,’ says the Lord, ‘that in the reign of Caesar Augustus of Rome …’ ” (Footnote: Yes, I know at this point there is no Rome. You have seven scrappy little villages on the west bank of the Tiber. But take my word for it. You may still be in the Babylonian Empire, but after the Babylonians will come the Medo-Persian Empire. Then they’ll get beaten up by the Greeks. Then the Greeks will divide in four, and eventually they’ll get beaten by Rome.

Because those scrappy little villages are going to coalesce and make a nice little city on the banks of the Tiber River, they’re going to beat up all of Italy, and eventually they’re going to take over the whole Mediterranean world. The family that ultimately comes to power has the name of Caesar, and Caesar eventually becomes more or less the equivalent of king or emperor.) Back to the text.

“A decree shall go out from this Caesar that all of the world shall be enrolled for taxation. As a result, Joseph, a carpenter of Nazareth, with his espoused wife Mary, moves down to Bethlehem, where in due course she gives birth to a son by the name of Jesus.” Then you unpack all of the stories, and you talk about the angels and the inn and the shepherds and the wise men. Then you talk about all of the things Jesus does, the walking on the water, the turning the water into wine, Pilate, the trial, and his washing his hands. The whole bit. Just lay it all out, for goodness’ sake.

Everybody can see. We have the flippin’ manuscript. It’s before Christ. Even in Qumran we have a 150-year lead. Even if you want to throw in your most liberal critics and say this is a post-Isaianic school, it’s nevertheless pre-Jesus, and if you have any sort of sense at all you can see this is 700 years BC. But boy, there’s prophecy. Wouldn’t that convince the most alarming skeptic? Wouldn’t that solve everything? I think I’d be pretty good at writing Isaiah 53, don’t you? I wonder how many mothers would have named their kids Joseph and Mary, in hope. Put yourself in Pilate’s place.

“I will not wash my hands! I will not!”

“But the text says you will, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter. I will not!”

“But if you don’t, all of prophecy will be overthrown.”

“My hands are being dragged over there. I can’t help it. They’re being thrown in the pit. I can’t help it. They’re being washed.”

You think you have problems now with divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Think what you’d have then. Besides, would it change the human heart? No. Don’t you see the great wisdom of God? It is all there in the text, in models, in types, in patterns successively displayed, but because of our fallenness and brokenness, we just don’t see them very well. They’re still hidden.

We should have seen them. That’s why Jesus can say in Luke 24, “O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written.” We should have seen them, but, in fact, we only see them after the events. There isn’t any solid evidence that any single prophet, any single Jewish interpreter, understood before the cross that the royal Davidic Messiah would also be the suffering servant.

The disciples didn’t see it, even though Jesus had spoken explicitly along those lines. “That has to be more enigmatic stuff. I don’t understand that. Deep, deep. Beyond me.” Even after Jesus is actually crucified and they’re hiding in an upper room, they’re not saying, “Yes! I can hardly wait till Sunday.” They still don’t have a blessed clue. “O fools and slow of heart not to believe all that the prophets have written.” It was a moral failure.

But in measure, in God’s own providence, granted his knowledge of this broken world, it was also carefully hidden, carefully managed, carefully superintended, so that in the fullness of time, when the earliest Christians looked back on the cross of Christ, they could say, on the one hand, “This was a conspiracy. Why do the heathen rage, the peoples imagine vain things? Indeed, Pontius Pilate and Herod and the leaders of the Jews conspired against your holy servant Jesus to bring about this ridiculously evil event. Nevertheless, they did what your hand had determined beforehand would be done.” Unless you have both verses, you lose everything.

Not only, then, are we to see how the Bible hangs together, but we’re to see God’s matchless wisdom in doing it this way. My Isaiah 53 is just plain ridiculous. It wouldn’t solve anything. That’s why also in the New Testament the very same gospel that is sometimes said to be prophesied in old times and now fulfilled is in other passages said to be hidden in old times and now revealed. That’s what the mystery language is about. It has been hidden in times past but now revealed.

Historically, of course, dispensationalists have come along and focused on all the hiddenness revelation passages. They all wrote books on mystery. They weren’t thinking of whodunits. They were understanding that so much was hidden in times past and not revealed, and now the church has shown up for the first time, and all kinds of things connected with the church never been seen before, all hidden in times past, now revealed.

Reformed theology comes along and says, “Don’t you see? It’s all a straight playing field. It’s predicted; it’s fulfilled.” Paul manages to have both of them. He’s saying the very same gospel that has been predicted in times past and is now fulfilled has also been hidden in times past and is now revealed. Read 1 Corinthians 2 or read these last few verses from Romans, where, remarkably, these things come together.

Romans, chapter 16, verse 25: “Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden from long ages past …” And all of the dispensationalists say, “Amen.” “… but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings …” And all of the covenant theologians say, “Amen.” “… by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

The very way in which God has made these things so clear across the ages has been through these patterns, these types and structures and hiddenness, so we come away from reading our Bibles, and not only are we able to understand these things and begin to put them together, but we are driven to worship the mind of God that was so wise, so far-seeing, so probing, so central, so careful. The aim of the exercise as we work through these things is not simply to be masters of the text but, much more, to be mastered by the text, for it is the Word of God. Let us pray.

We confess with shame, Lord God, that we understand much less than we ought to. Open our eyes, that we may behold wonderful things in your law. The entrance of your Word brings light. “Sanctify them through your truth,” the Master prayed. “Your Word is truth.” Help us, Lord God, both in our understanding and in our attempts to teach it and preach it to others, not to convey the impression that we are exegetically clever but that we have glimpsed something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of God.

We are utterly consumed, the way all lines bring us to Christ Jesus and his glory, his death and his resurrection, his fulfillment of strand after strand after strand, the anticipation that brings us to the new temple, the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem, the abundant entrance, going behind the veil, seeing the glory ourselves, forever and ever, without any mediation ever again, because Christ died for sinners and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and is even now seated at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Help us, Lord God, to be faithful workers who do not need to be ashamed as we rightly handle the Word of Truth. For Jesus’ sake, amen.