Melchizedek Part 1: The Mysterious King-Priest of Genesis 14

All right, let's begin. Lesson 17, Genesis 14, the passage of Scripture that pertains to the enigmatic, mysterious figure of Melchizedek. It's been the subject of a great deal of speculation, controversy, not just in modern times, but going all the way back, it seems to potentially several centuries before Jesus. To set the scene again, before we read our text, verses 17 through 20, we have the battle of the nine kings, the eastern kings against the western kings, and in the middle of all of that, we have a tenth king that comes out to give thanks, it seems, some kind of blessing to Abraham. All right, and this tenth king is Melchizedek, and one way to get a Bible class off track is to bring up the subject of Melchizedek. I found that out the hard way a few times. You just bring up this name or someone in the vicinity of this name, and then ask if there are any questions, and the next

thing you know, you're an hour and a half down the road, and you have gone just about everywhere you can go. It can lead in some really interesting directions, and I'll get into, of course, why that is, but I want to do a couple of things here tonight. I want to study the subject of Melchizedek in its original setting of Genesis 14. What does it mean there? And then what did it come to mean later on when you're looking back at it as potentially prophecy? How was it interpreted by later commentators, particularly among the people of God? How did they see this character of Melchizedek? And there are some threads that are left untied in the Genesis 14 story that invite or almost provoke this kind of, it kind of creates this vacuum that's filled by this kind of earnest speculation. All right, somebody just shows up all of a sudden, and he's in charge of Abraham. What? I mean, we're talking about,

this is God's, the founder of God's people. He's not, he's supposed to be a blessing to the nations. He's supposed to be, he's supposed to be the most important person on earth at this time in terms of salvation history, God's redemptive arc. And all of a sudden, here's this, here's Abraham paying ties to somebody. What's going on? All right, so turn up your hearing aid, your ears, whatever you got, hearing aid for me is coming up here pretty soon. I'm going to have one of those coming out. I just know it. It's just right down the road. And glasses are coming in the next few years. You're going to see a hearing aid right here, and glasses, and probably very little hair. As you can see, the rain kind of messed my hair. It flattened out here. I'm kidding. That was my wife's concern. But get, I think, get excited. I think you can get excited about this particular topic. All right, verse

17, after his return, that is Abraham's return from the defeat of Qadar the Omar, as Abraham defeated this king and his king, the Axis group, the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the valley of Shabay, that is the king's valley. And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High, and he blessed him and said, blessed to be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. That's really interesting. We get this character who in the sacred pages of Genesis gets his own speech. It's very rare. Usually the narrator just tells you what basically the gist of what a character said only usually gives lines to really important characters, and he gets a whole prayer right here. And then it concludes with, and Abram gave him Melchizedek a tenth of everything.

All right, so what we can tell from these four verses, and I'm just, this is just going to be, these are going to be the facts, and then we can go on to inferences. Melchizedek is a king of Salem. We're not completely 100% certain that the author of Genesis meant by this Jerusalem, but later commentators certainly did believe that this was Jerusalem. It's an abbreviation of the ancient city, the name of the ancient city. Okay, so some commentators think that there was a different Salem besides Jerusalem, but the author of Hebrews in the New Testament directly connected Salem with Jerusalem. So we can be pretty certain that we're dealing with Jerusalem. Melchizedek's a king of Jerusalem, and later biblical writers again understood Salem to be a pre-Israelite Jerusalem. Okay, let's just say something about the word Salem for a second. The word Salem in Hebrew would be Shalom. You get that's a greeting. It can be very casual. You can just say, even

today in Jerusalem, you didn't say Shalom. It's, it's hello. How are you doing? But more formally, it means peace be upon you. And so it's a, it's a kind of a prayer, a blessing. It's like saying, God bless you to somebody. And so the word means literally peace in Hebrew. And the name Melchizedek is made up of two Hebrew words, Melch, which is Hebrew for King, Melch. And Zidek is Hebrew for righteous or righteousness or justice. It can mean legitimate king, the true king. So there are competing claims to the throne, but he's the righteous or the true king. Melchizedek would then mean king of righteousness, king of justice, or the legitimate king. In ancient Assyria, there was a king by the name of Sargon. History only knows, knows his name as Sargon. He's actually mentioned in the Old Testament a few times, Sargon, the word is Assyrian for the legitimate king. So it would be maybe equivalent to what Melchizedek originally meant.

He's the legitimate king, but maybe more technically it means king of righteousness. But he's king in, in Salem, king of Salem. And the author of Hebrews is going to go on to say that means he's also king of peace. Okay. So king of righteousness and king of peace, two words that are going to be very important in New Testament theology, righteousness and peace. All right. He's priest of, he is, he's a priest, or he's king of Salem, but he's also said to be, as we saw in verse 18, he's a priest of El Elyon. That's Hebrew for God most high, or the most high God, which would suggest that in the ancient world around this time, even someone like Abraham might have believed in many gods, but that there was one high God above all the other gods and that these other gods are maybe even created beings like angels. So Melchizedek believes in, he's priest of the most high God. This also

means that Melchizedek and Abraham worship the same God. Okay. So Abraham doesn't seem to be the only one on earth who has a true theology. There's also someone named Melchizedek who does as well, and he's a king. So his people probably do have the same beliefs as well. There also, I should mention, I planned on getting to this, but it's probably not going to happen. But if you go through the chronology, the genealogy from the early parts of the book of Genesis, and then you compare that with the age of Abraham, there's a man still living at the time of Abraham right here at this battle of the nine kings. It's going to surprise you probably, but Noah's son, Shem, his oldest son is still alive. In fact, he might have even outlived Abraham. Okay, because we're given the age of Shem and that overlaps with the age of Abraham and it seems to even extend beyond it. All right. So, and I

should mention, I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit, but some ancient rabbis believed that Melchizedek is actually Noah's son, Shem, under an alias. So we're thinking, here's the flood age, Noah's age, Noah's son, Noah's three sons, and then way later is Abraham, and it is way later. But remember, they're living a really long time and so people have noticed that Shem would still be alive. So would Jacob and Ham at this time. All right. So it doesn't seem to be the case that Abraham was the only one with the truest theology. In fact, Noah's son was still alive. So was Ham, so was Japeth, and we have this Melchizedek. All right. All right. He is a priest of the most high God in Melchizedek was, and according to the text, he brought out staple foods for the famished and victorious warriors. So Abraham had mustered 318 men to go into battle with him, and they came back and brought back all the

people that the five eat, or four Eastern kings had stolen, and he brought them all back. And Melchizedek supplies the whole troop, it seems, with bread and wine. Bread's the staple food, everyone. That's what everyone eats meat is something you eat rarely in the ancient world. Maybe that's something that you eat on just rare occasions. But bread you eat every day, if possible, and then wine is usually it's diluted at least times 3, sometimes times 10. And wine is really safe in that ancient age because you don't know about the water. But if there's fermentation, then you know that there's some degree of bacteria that's eating, or it's good bacteria eating bad bacteria. So you could be safe in drinking water, this very, very watered down wine. So Melchizedek supplies that to the troops. He performs a priestly blessing over Abraham, blessed be Abraham, and then he blessed God for what he had performed for Abraham. And then he received a tithe or

a tenth of everything that Abraham possessed. And we know that at this point Abraham's extremely wealthy, so he gives a tenth over to this priest. And then he's the tenth king, Melchizedek is, mentioned in this episode concerning the battle of the kings of the east and kings of the west. Genesis usually introduces important and especially upright characters with some kind of genealogy. So when we first meet Abraham, we learn who Abraham's father was. When we meet Cain or Seth or Abel, when we meet Noah, we get genealogy. We get to know who was his father, who was his grandfather for important characters, especially if it's an important character who's righteous. We get a genealogy. But on this one occasion, we have somebody introduced who's an important figure, so important that Abraham pays him tithes, and he's called priest of the Most High God. And he's king in Salem, but he gets no genealogy. We're not told who's son he is. What? You just

don't find that in ancient tech. You don't even find that. It's not just something that's a quirk of Middle Eastern, ancient Near Eastern literature, ancient Near Eastern literature. This is all across the ancient world. Any literature that has come down to us that's a couple thousand years old, you can even look at, for instance, Beowulf. It's a text that's 12 or 13 centuries old, and it was written in England in the medieval period. Even there, any time you get an important character shows up, you're always the son of somebody. Many of our surnames are based around son, Johnson, Dickson, Robinson. You can just go on and on and on. That's a shortening of what used to be a very long process of I am Jeremy's son of Terry. It's very formal. It's something you know. You usually go back a couple of generations. You don't just say your son of your father, but son of your father and your grandfather and his father.

Now, Kizadek, though, here comes the king of Salem, king of peace, king of righteousness, receives a tithe from the most important man on earth and no genealogy. You could say, well, neither of the other nine kings got a genealogy either. Qadar Laomar doesn't get any kind of genealogy, but he's not a righteous character. He doesn't get any lines of his own. He's one of the bad kings and he goes away. But now Kizadek, really important, no genealogy. That's going to be noticed by later generations. He's the very first priest mentioned in the Bible. That's significant. Law of first mention, whenever you the first time scripture mentioned something, it's usually really, really important. Then finally, in terms of the facts of the texts that we read, this king of Jerusalem is gone without a trace, never to be mentioned again in scripture until a thousand years later. That's sort of like some King Arthur stuff right there. It's said that King Arthur, his headstone

read in Latin, the once and future king. In other words, he's coming back. He's gone. Now, Kizadek is no trace. All right, people who came out of nowhere did something famous and were only known later. I can think of you such characters in fairly recent history. Maybe some of you remember the so-called tank man. If you remember, there's a pro-democracy rally. I think it was 1988 in Tiananmen Square, China, Beijing. Tanks were rolling through the city and one man stood in front of a tank. This was all standing in front of a tank and the tank has to stop. You don't want to, you know, should I run him over? Well, that's going to be on TV. So no, just try to go out, turn left. And the tank, you know, it can back up one set of tracks and spin the other the opposite way and just turn on a dime like that. It tried and he stepped over to the side

there and stopped them a couple of times. We don't ever really get to see the footage all the way through to the end of the story. But I think there might be footage out there somewhere, but the police come and pick him up and carry him off. But no one knows who that man is. It's one of the bravest acts. Can you imagine staring down a tank like that? All right, no one knows. Probably snuffed out by the CCP, but no name. Man in the Iron Mask, 1600s, 1700s. I don't know if any of you know the story about the man in the Iron Mask, Alexander Dumas, the French novelist, made him famous. But Louis XIV imprisoned somebody for 37 years and no one knows his identity. And the reason why no one knows his identity, it's presumed, is because Louis XIV had a great secret that he wanted to keep. And he had one prison warden assigned to him for all 37

years. And he was delivered to four different of the greatest highest security prisons in 1600s, 1700s France. And so his identity was kept from the public. It's thought by many, I think a French writer, Voltaire, maybe as Rousseau, who said that the man in the Iron Mask was actually the king's illegitimate brother that he could have been a contender for the throne. And so he was kept secret. I'm not sure about all of that. But anyway, we never found out his identity, important person. He comes into history and leaves history without a trace. There's the babushka lady. I don't know if you're familiar with that particular phrase, but if you go into the, if you get into the JFK assassination, look at the pictures. There's one particular black and white photo of a woman wearing a Russian babushka. It's a very peculiar way of wearing a headscarf. And she's holding a camera and she's taking pictures of the motorcade just at the moment

that Kennedy's being shot. No one knows who that woman is. It's always been curious because we need that extra angle right there to be able to determine whether or not there was one shooter or multiple shooters. But nobody knows who this woman is. Nobody could ever find her. And she's wearing Russian headdress and has thought that the communists might have been in on the plot. And so there's always been this fascination with this babushka lady, but she shows up one day. She's captured by history. The glare of history shines upon her for just a moment. And the next thing she's gone, no one knows who she is. And oh, for the photo that she took. No, no trace. A couple more. Vincent Van Gogh, you know who he is, but he sold, you want to know how many paintings of his own that he sold in his lifetime? One for the equivalent of $15, somebody on the street. He was utterly unknown. He

was thought to be by those who did know him as a kind of a little bit of a lunatic, preacher son who did a little bit of preaching himself and then just fell on hard times and mental illness. And he ends up in a hospital, mental hospital. And then he paints this glorious painting, glorious painting for the mental inmates and dies one year. Never knows. He's the most famous artist next to Michelangelo and Leonardo today. 150 years later, the most famous, recognizably famous work of art ever created. People are more likely to know starry night than they are Michelangelo's David. Herman Melville wrote the greatest novel on the American continent, greatest novel ever written, Obidic. He sold 14 copies of it in his lifetime. He was so depressed because he knew he had written a masterpiece, but he wondered why he was the only one that knew he had. And so at the end of his life, he wrote a little novella, just

a little short story called Bartleby the Scrivener. And the story in brief just goes, one day a young man showed up at a copier's office and he asked for a job. His name was Bartleby. And he was given the job because he had a really excellent handwriting and job was to take the lawyer's arguments and brief for the judge and copy it out. Deeds of trust. He had such excellent handwriting that he would just copy. His job was to copy, copy, just copy. It wasn't nothing original, just copy. So it's nice and legible so everyone could read it. The lawyer could read it. And the office is spun by his handwriting. It's so beautiful. It's so excellent. It's the best they've ever seen. And he's doing a great job just pumping out copies and copies and copies. He's so fast, but then a couple weeks later, the flow of copies stops. And so the boss goes by Bartleby's desk and says, well, where's

the copies? Can you please copy out the brief we need it today? And he just has these words, I prefer not to forwards, I prefer not to. And the boss has never been told no before. What do I say to that? Well, you better get me that copy. He says, I prefer not to. And the boss is so confused. Is this guy playing a joke on me? He's really good. He's been great. I'm just going to leak now. So he leaves and he thinks, oh, I got the message across. He's a little rude. Maybe he's autistic or something. So leave alone and we'll get that copy. But the day went by and no copy. And the next day, all right, I'm going to go in there. I'm going to demand that copy. So he goes in. I need that copy. I need it now. I prefer not to. He said, you walked away. The boss says, I'm going to tell him after lunch,

if I don't get it by the time we close, you're fired. So he went in and told him and said, are you going to get me that copy? So I prefer not to. And the boss was just at an utter dead end. No idea what to do. He just feels sorry for this kid sitting here staring ahead and listless and his face is turning yellow. And it's kind of a satire. It's kind of comical, but ultimately they don't have the heart to kick him out. In fact, the only thing they can do is they end up moving offices and leaving him there. It's kind of funny. And then he dies, the Bartleby dies sitting there at his desk. And you're thinking, this is a ridiculous story. Well, it is. It's an allegory. And they find out that Bartleby used to work in the Dead Letters Office in Washington DC. That's people who have sent a letter and then, but before the letter got

there, they died. The recipient died. And so it was the Dead Letters Office. So ultimately that mail ends up getting shifted to this one particular office in Washington DC. And one man is assigned with recording that dead letter and then throwing it away. And he had been doing this for years and years and years, dead letter, reading all of these husbands that were asking forgiveness of their wives, but their wife was dead. Or a father trying to reconcile with a son, but the son never got the letter because he had died. He'd just been dealing with years and years and it broke him, broke him. This letter sent out to no one, no one that could appreciate the beauty of what was written. What do you think he's saying? He's talking about his own life. He had written Moby Dick as a letter, a letter to the world, letter to his country, masterpiece, but no one received it. It was a dead letter.

And so he ended up having to survive to write these stupid novels that the public would appreciate, the pop boilers. Those are the copies, the copies. You just write cliche stuff and you can be rich. You write something genuinely, a masterpiece, and it's a dead letter. Bartleby the Scrivna. So Carmen Malville sold 14 copies of the greatest novel written in the American continent in his lifetime. And only after he dies, 20-some odd years somebody picks it up, it's the only print left. He paid for it to be printed. He paid for like 20 copies to be printed. That's all there ever was. There was only one left and it was some dusty library somewhere, some back was, and somebody picked it up and he just read it on a whim and they couldn't put it down. It's completely the mastery of the English language. Like no one had ever had had this capacity to write since Shakespeare 300 years before. What in the

world? All right. I took way too long with that story. Last one I'll mention is Anne Frank. She wrote her diary at 15 years old and then she died in the Holocaust and someone, her father in fact, who survived World War II, published it later on. It's become maybe the most recognizable piece of nonfiction written in the 20th century, written by a 16-year-old. She never knew. She just wrote the diary for herself. There are these characters that enter into history, spot like, shine on them. Sometimes it's after they die. But you don't know really where they came from, where they came across this importance and then what happened to them no one really knows. There was a thousand years of silence over the character of Melchizedek who Abraham paid ties to. And then one day, David Ben Jesse, the king who moved his capital city from Hebron to Jerusalem, writes a cryptic song of prophecy that makes reference to Melchizedek and the name

was uttered perhaps for the first time in a thousand years. God doesn't forget. He tells, as one of my friends likes to say, really mom stories. All right. If you thought my Bartleby story was long, listen, I wanted God's. It can take a thousand years or longer. There was the commentary of David a thousand years later and I'll get to that in a minute. I only have 15 minutes left. A thousand years after David, just in the centuries leading up to the time of Christ, there was a group of Israelites who kind of created a compound, an isolated society away from what they thought were the corruptions of what had become of Second Temple Judaism. So they created their own community in the desert. They were called that they came to be called the Qumran community for the Dead Sea community because I talked about the Dead Sea. I think it was last year because that's where that battle was fought, where Abraham

that Abraham was in. Well, a thousand years later, 2000 years after Abraham, 1000 years after David, this community coalesced around the Dead Sea. They separated themselves and lived in the harshest region of the Middle East in order to isolate themselves from the corrupt Israelites, Jerusalem and Galilee. Galilee had become very Gentile, very Greek speaking, and Jerusalem was under the control and occupation of the Romans. And so they felt that the priesthood in Jerusalem was corrupt. It was no longer legitimate. And so they separated themselves out into the Dead Sea region so that they were east of Jerusalem, which would mean, since the Messiah is going to come from the east and make his way to Jerusalem, according to the prophecies, they would be the first ones to meet him out there before he got to Jerusalem. So they're out there in this, and they also felt like out here in the desert, we can train up our children the way they should go.

They won't be corrupted by the rest of the world and we can just keep this community going. And it lasted for a century or so and then ended up dying out over time. But they copied out a lot of scriptures. And in some cases, they even wrote commentaries on scriptures. And one of the fomentaries that they wrote is on the subject of Melchizedek. And it was discovered in 1946. This text was discovered in 1946 in a pottery in a vase from 2000 years earlier. It was found in the 11th Qumran cave. That's why it's called 11 Q Melchizedek. And here's what it reads. Can you show it up there? Show the picture. I just want you to see what it actually a photocopy of what it what it looks like. Okay, scroll up. There we go. Maybe zoom in a little bit. I don't know if you can. But that's the piece that we have. And so we can't make it all out.

But here's what we do know that it says it's written in Hebrew. It says it will be proclaimed at the end of days concerning the captives. Its interpretation is that he will assign them to the sons of heaven and to the inheritance of Melchizedek. For he will cast their lot amid the portions of Melchizedek who will return them there and will proclaim to them liberty, forgiving them the wrongdoings of all their iniquities. And this thing will occur in the first week of the Jubilee that follows the nine Jubilees. And the day of atonement is the end of the tenth Jubilee when all the sons of light and the men of the lot of Melchizedek will be atoned for. And a statute concerns them to provide them with their rewards. For this is the moment of the year of grace for Melchizedek. Your Elohim reigns, that is, your God reigns, Zion is, and then dot, dot, dot, don't know what it says, and then

it picks back up. Those who uphold the covenant, who turn from walking in the way of the people and your God is Melchizedek, who will save them from the hand of Belial Satan. As for that, which he said, then you shall send abroad the trumpet in all the land. We don't know what all that means, but what we can pick up on is that Melchizedek seems to be associated or identified by the Qumran community as God or maybe some kind of theophany of God. There's also speculation in the Qumran community that he was Michael the archangel. There's some similarity between the name Michael and Melchizedek. So there's some idea, the last line that I read, then you shall send abroad the trumpet in all the land, though trumpet is associated with the day of atonement, but it was also associated with the archangel Michael. And so there was speculation again that maybe Melchizedek is a theophany of God, or maybe he's an angel

Michael, and then some of the rabbis later on said it's Shem. Okay, Josephus, show the next picture. This is a contemporary of the apostle Paul. He wrote a book called The Antiquity of the Jews, Flavius Josephus. And he wrote, Now the king of Sodom met him at a certain place which they called the Kingsdale where Melchizedek king of the city of Salem received Abraham. That name signifies the righteous king and such he was without dispute in so much that on his account he was made the priest of God. Okay, there's more of that. And let's just go to the next one I'm running out of time, Philo, who was also a contemporary of Paul, younger contemporary maybe. He wrote in a book called Allegories. Moreover, God made Melchizedek the king of peace, that is of Salem, for that is the interpretation of this name, his own high priest. Okay, there's a lot more than that. I'll leave it right there. Okay, all right,

so there's a lot of speculation as to who this guy is. But where we really need to start, and it's a shame, it's a pity, we're starting this at 750. So it's going to have to go into part two later on. Let's just get as far as we can in the next five minutes. Okay, Hebrews chapter six, five, six, and seven discuss the character Melchizedek, but it builds upon the Psalm that was written by David a thousand years after Melchizedek. All right, and I want to read to you that Psalm, it's Psalm 110. It's the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament. All right, here it is. Psalm 110 verse one, pay attention to things that don't make sense. All right, just file it away. Because when something doesn't make sense, if you're paying attention, don't just read, sometimes you just read it because, oh, I'm supposed to read it in Scripture, but you don't understand what you're reading. That's good that you're

reading it, but you need to stop because whenever you don't understand something, that's an invitation. That's the spirit of God knocking on your door saying, learn, learn. All right, so here we go. The Lord says to my Lord. Okay, we've got a little bit of a problem here. Lord says to my Lord, can you pull that up, Brother Stephen, in King James text because we need to use the font. Same, there we go. All right, this helps. The King James does this, the English Santa version unfortunately doesn't. Look at the difference. The Lord said unto my Lord, look at the font difference. You see that capital L-O-R-D? That means underneath that is the sacred, ineffable covenant name of God Yahweh. I am. All right, sometimes I just, when I see capital L-O-R-D, I just mentally, I substitute the words I am. So it's the I am said unto my Lord or my out-of-nigh. Sit down at my right hand until I make thine

enemies by sit still. All right, so you hear that? What does that mean? We'll read on a few more verses, but then come back to that. Verse two, the Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter, rule in the midst of your enemies. Okay, back up again, sit at my right hand, the I am says to the out-of-nigh, until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Who holds a scepter? A king does. Okay, so he's talking about somebody who's going to be king and he's also referred to as out-of-nigh, as Lord. And then he says, this is Yahweh, I am speaking, rule in the midst of your enemies, he says this to the out-of-nigh. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power and holy garments from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn. Okay, now here's an oath. The Lord, the

I am, has sworn and will not change his mind or repent. Thou art priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Wait a minute, he's been speaking of him as a king, your mighty scepter. Now he's speaking of him as a priest after the order of Melchizedek. But in Israel, kings and priests can't be the same person. Those offices are separated, I'll get to that in a second. The Lord is at your right hand, verse 5. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook, by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head and that's the end. What is David writing? What is this? Why? All right, here's the setting. You won't be able to get very far with this. But he was, as mentioned, David was the first Israelite king to conquer and then move his

capital city and tabernacle to Jerusalem, where Melchizedek had been king a thousand years earlier. If you remember from last week, the kings of the east defeated the allied kings of the west. And the kings of the east, or sorry, and then they took Lot Haasich and held him in Syria. And Abraham got involved because his family had been taken and he and his men went up to Syria and defeated the eastern kings and took back Lot and everything that the kings had captured from the other kings. The kings of Sodom or the king of Sodom comes out to demand that Abraham give him back the people he rescued. He can keep the goods for himself and Abraham gave up everything. And then the king of Salem, Melchizedek, shows up and offers Abraham food and blessing. So it's possible that this meeting between the king of Sodom and the king of Salem, Melchizedek and Abraham, the three of them, Sodom, Salem and Abraham, they

met together. It's very likely that this meeting took place in Melchizedek's city, Jerusalem. And it's quite likely that Abraham was living in Jerusalem under the reign of Melchizedek at the time and that Abraham was a willing subject of Melchizedek and was known by that king. That's an inference, but I think it's a solid inference built on a couple of things. One thing is, the king of Sodom comes out and he doesn't bring anything to Melchizedek. It's a long trip maybe for the king of Sodom, but Melchizedek brings enough food and wine for at least 318 hungry soldiers. That would be logistically simpler if they were already where the king of Salem lived in Jerusalem. Also, I'm going to find out later that Abraham offered Isaac on Mount Moriah, which is close to where he lived. Mount Moriah was thought to be Mount Zion later on. Before this time, Abraham seems to have spent time in Hebron, as I said, and the previous chapter

says that he built an altar there. And then at some later point, after parting from Lot, he may have moved to Jerusalem under the jurisdiction of Melchizedek. A thousand years later, King David's throne is located in Hebron, but he wants to move the Tabernacle and the palace to Jerusalem, which was still at the time of Canaanite City for the Jebusites. Now, why did he want to go to Jerusalem? You can't know this for sure. There's a great mini-series out there. I think it's called, what's it called? It's David. What is it called? The House of David? You ought to see it. It's incredible. The first season is on Amazon Prime. I think it's free. And then the second season is not. But man, it's so good. I don't know if they'd pick up on this or not. It would be incredible if they do. But it would seem that David wanted to move from Hebron to Jerusalem. Good chance that it was because

Melchizedek had been king there. He considered that to be a holier place. He wants to move the Tabernacle and the capital to Jerusalem. And then he goes on to conquer at great cost, conquer that city. And he sets up his rule on Mount Zion, which is in Jerusalem, the citadel of the Old Kingdom. And then at some point, probably after taking charge in Jerusalem, he pens Psalm 110 that we just read a minute ago, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies your footstool. Why does he seem to elevate, though, a priesthood above the priesthood that Israel currently employs? Okay. Remember, there's already a priesthood that David has. Who are they? They're the Levites, right? He already has a priesthood. Why is he talking about a higher priesthood? We have the Levites. They're descended from Aaron, who's the brother of Moses. They're extremely important. They've served the Tabernacle now for 500 years, and they're written

into the law of Moses. It's an ancient and time-honored priesthood by now. Eli was a priest within David's lifetime, or at least early part of his life. And then an Eli raised up Samuel, and Samuel was the priest who anointed Saul to be king, and then Samuel anointed David himself to be king. So the priests are the king-makers. They are God's voice to Israel. All right. Remember, Samuel is a priest. They're necessary to a fulfillment of the law. Moses' law can't be followed without a priesthood. The priesthood and the law go together if one falls, so does the other. That, by the way, is why the fall of Jerusalem is 70 after Christ is so devastating. The temple's destroyed. How can they do sacrifices anymore? Can't follow the law of Moses now. The priests sacrifice the animals for atonement on the altar according to the law. Why, again, is David speaking of a priesthood of another higher order than the one that made

him king and offered atoning sacrifices for his sins? The answer on its face may be that David has moved into Jerusalem, where maybe Abraham lived, where Melchizedek was king a thousand years before. And David probably noticed that this king from the ancient archives was the kind of king that God no longer allowed, a king who was also a priest. And the reason seems to be that God, I don't have time to get into that right now. I'm going to have to stop right there. We'll just put a bookmark in it. I'm sorry. I wish I could bring it back to some spiritual application, but this is a long foundation. We'll have to come back to it in part two. Thank you, Lord, for your precious words. There is a blessing just in hearing it, read and spending time learning about it. Forgive this preacher and teacher and pastor for not bringing a spiritual application. I pray for a blessing if only in the

scripture that was read and the time that we spent going through these things. I pray for safety and protection upon your people. Blessing. I pray for a greater desire and joy in reading scripture and studying scripture. All of us, the joy of the Lord is our strength. In Jesus' name we pray amen.