Jesus: Priest and King

In the Old Testament, the roles of High Priest and King were separate from one another. It seemed to be the division of ‘church and state’, if we were to use language from today. The King led the people in the Name of God. The High Priest led the Worship in the Name of God. Melchizedek brought these two roles together into one person. As we have called him, a Mystery Man in the Bible.

One very significant difference we need to recognize between people of the Biblical times and ourselves is that we have set things up today very differently. The ‘state’ is secular, that is, beyond religions in how it runs things. The ‘church’ maintains its sacred role in our lives, but as something we have deliberately separated from the running of the state, the running of government. In the time of the Old Testament, the King ruled on God’s behalf. The High Priest led worship on God’s behalf. 

So when Jesus is following the pattern of Melchizedek, He is taking on what had been the roles of two different people in the Old Testament. Bringing them together is what Jesus does as our Savior. 

Perhaps the best known Title for Jesus is “Christ”, so well known that it is often mistaken for his family name, Jesus Christ. But it means ‘the Anointed One’. It refers to Jesus’ anointing by the Holy Spirit when this comes down from God in the form of a dove. This moment is recorded in all four gospels. In the Old Testament, both King and High Priest were also anointed to their positions before the Lord, as a way of being set apart for divine service.

It is probably easier for us to relate to Jesus as King, not that we have a king, but because we recognize the position and the role of someone with temporal authority over us. In the United States, our leader is the President. These powers are tempered and balanced by the Congress and by the Court system, but there is one person ‘in charge’. Jesus, being the Son of God, being without sin, is the ideal as our Ruler, operating only from love, not from power, nor from the corruption that comes from it.

The High Priest is out of our direct experience. The role of the priesthood in the Old Testament was marked to a great extent by the performance of the sacrificial system that was the mode of Restoration and Redemption, beginning in the time of Moses. What that means is that the people then had sin in common with us today. We recognize the need to ask for God’s forgiveness for our sins, that we have in common with the people of time of Moses. But in the law of Moses, they required a blood sacrifice, blood for blood, to pay for their sins.

We do not recognize that as an ongoing system, because this system was fulfilled in Christ. Jesus was the final sacrifice. By his death and resurrection on the cross, our sins were paid for and our relationship restored with God. It emerges from and culminates the system that was laid out in law under Moses. Jesus takes things further. He is the Final Sacrifice, but He is also the High Priest who oversees, who runs the sacrificial system. 

So there is a lot of history that finds itself fulfilled in Jesus. It is inclusive of the ‘ruling’ authority of the king and the ‘religious’ authority of the High Priest, but it is not something new. Even these roles been drawn together is seen in the figure of Melchizedek.  

Pastor Peter

Jesus and Melchizedek

While the Gospel of Matthew seems to be written with a Jewish audience in mind, connecting to the Old Testament in a deliberate manner, it is not the only book in the New Testament with such a focus. The other is the book of Hebrews (aptly named). While the gospels focus on the life and ministry of Jesus, Hebrews has a different point of view. It is written in the form of a letter that explicitly lays out the connections of Jesus to what came before, what came in the Old Testament. It might be better described as a theological treatise.  

In the book of Hebrews, Jesus is explicitly “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” It is not simply a leap from Genesis to Hebrews, but comes to us by way of Psalm 110, where David speaks of ‘the victory of God’s Priest-King’. David himself was ‘just’ a king. There was another serving as the high priest to God in his kingship. These roles were not blended. In fact, it was when King Saul blended these roles, offering the sacrifices to the Lord that were the purview of the priesthood, that he fell afoul of the Lord. 

But in this Psalm, David is looking forward to someone more powerful than himself, someone who will bring these two most powerful roles in the kingdom together, a priest-king in the order of Melchizedek.

In Melchizedek is something greater, more powerful than in David-who was not only king, but the most powerful king of the People of Israel. Jesus is of the line and family of David, he is of the Royal Line, born in the Royal City of Bethlehem, but there is more to who he is in the understanding of the Old Testament. In addition, Jesus is the High Priest, the only one who is able, once a year, to stand in the presence of God in the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the people. He who has the most power and he who stands closest to God. Such is the Order of Melchizedek, such is our Lord Jesus.  

So, if we were to look to the Mystery Magi, these strange harbingers of God who pop in and out of the life of Jesus as Melchizedek popped in and out of the life of Abraham, could God be providing to us, through Matthew, an even more significant hint at the birth of God’s only Son as to who Jesus is going to be? The Magi have power, consider not only their gifts but their ability to mount an expedition to the east to follow a star. They also have a closeness to God, being able to interpret that the star means something divine. I rather like that idea.

Pastor Peter

The Wise Men: Connections to another Mystery Man?

    In the book of Genesis, God calls Abraham from the East to settle in the land that God promises to Abraham and his descendents. A large section of the middle of Genesis is devoted to Abraham and the foundation of what will become the nation of Israel. But, as with Jesus, there is an episode that brings a mystery man into the life of the Father of God’s people.

His name is Melchizedek. He is named as the king of Salem, and also as a priest of God. Salem is generally considered to be Jerusalem, which David shall conquer as the capital for Israel and the place where the temple of the Lord will be constructed. But prior, it is referred to as a Jebusite fortress-the Jebusites being one of the peoples of Canaan that will be driven out as God brings God’s people into the Promised Land. It was the Jebusites that David drove out.

But in this moment, Melchizedek  just shows up. Abraham has just gone on campaign against certain of the Canaanites to rescue his nephew, Lot. He is successful and, on his return, this mysterious priest-king is there to meet him.. He praises Abraham in the name of God and Abraham, in response, gives him a tithe. The tithe, the granting of one-tenth, is the gift that is offered to God from the fruits of what God has granted. So Abraham is recognizing in Melchizedek the authority of God. 

Melchizedek drops into the life of Abraham for less than 5 verses. This authority of the Lord in the life of God’s Chosen One. 

It feels to me that there is a parallel to be made between Melchizedek and the Magi of Matthew 2. They come, they bless, and they disappear. Led by God and led away just as quickly. For Matthew, the gospel ‘to the Jews’ as some have called it, this is an echo of the Old Testament in a manner that is different from simply quoting something that has been fulfilled in the life and ministry of our Lord. 

Maybe this is also something of a reversal of roles. In Genesis, Abraham (Abram here as the Lord has not yet changed his name), comes from the East and receives the blessing of God in Melchizedek in the Promised Land. Jesus comes from the Promised Land, born in the City of David, and receives the blessing of God from the Magi who come out of the East. 

Cannot say for sure, but it feels right to me. Tomorrow, we will look at what Melchizedek means to Jesus in the words of the New Testament.

Pastor Peter

The Wise Men: The Mystery Magi of the Bible

  It has become such a part of the lore of Christmas that we do not even consider how odd the story of the Wise Men is in the birth of Jesus. These Magi, Wise Men from the east, unnamed, never to recur in the Biblical record, that just show up. What do we know about them?

We know they were people of means, given the gifts that they brought with them. It was enough to allow Joseph to take his family to Egypt before the Slaughter of the Innocents

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We know they were people of some kind of importance, given that they were entertained by King Herod when they arrived in Jerusalem.

We know they were astronomers and astrologers (those two were intermingled) of some kind, interpreting the signs of the sky.

We know that, unlike pretty much every creche scene anywhere, they did not arrive with the shepherds at the stable to find Jesus in a manger. Rather, they told Herod they ‘saw the star at its rising’. I have always interpreted this as the angels rising up from where they sang to the shepherds. So there was some time lapse before they arrived. We know that, on questioning them closely, Herod went after every male child two years and under in an attempt to rid himself of this rival to the throne of Israel, which seems to give us a sense of the time gap.

We know that Mary and Joseph were living in Bethlehem. It might have been that they considered Jesus too young to travel with, or it might have been the result of the taxation. Joseph returned to his own city, to Bethlehem. The expectation might have been then that he remain there. 

There is something else we know about the gospel of Matthew. It is the gospel with the most explicit references to the Old Testament. For example, when the Wise Men returned to their land by another road, the Lord warned Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt ahead of Herod’s retribution. This is to fulfill Hosea 11:1, where God says, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” Unpacking that is going to require its own posting.

More directly, we know that the Wise Men coming to Jerusalem lead Herod to direct his own scribes to dig up the reference to Bethlehem, where the king of the Jews is to be born, as found in Micah 5.

With this backdrop, do we have more that we can say about these mystery men, these mystery magi of Matthew 2? Were they simply a foil to allow Matthew to draw out these references to our Lord Jesus? Or do we find a forerunner to their presence in the Old Testament? Tomorrow, a theory..

Pastor Peter