Hebrews 7:15

Hebrews 7:15

A priest like Melchizedek

We have established by now that, under the Law of God, Melchizedek was not a Levite and therefore not qualified to be a priest. In the same way, Jesus Christ was born to the line of Judah and He doesn’t qualify either! Bear in mind that none of these ancestral roles had been put in place at the time of Abraham; Jacob had not been born, for he was Abraham’s grandson so, obviously, the 12 sons of Jacob and their place in God’s plans for Israel were not even contemplated. To make matters worse, when Abraham and Melchizedek met, they were strangers from completely different backgrounds. Abraham could trace his ancestry back to Noah through Terah, but he was a nomad who had reached Canaan after a torturous journey from Chaldea. Melchizedek’s ancestry is, of course, unknown but he was King of Salem, a Jebusite city. The meeting between these two men is unlikely and, at first sight, apparently random, except that Yahweh was involved and everything was exactly as He planned it! 

In the same way, Yeshua appeared in Israel at a very unstable moment in the country’s history, He came from a very humble background after growing up in an unremarkable hamlet, raised by two apparently ordinary parents. No wonder the ruling authorities had a job in recognising that this was Messiah, do you remember Nathaniel’s words? “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46. Both Melchizedek and Yeshua broke the rules, they should not have been Priests, they should not have been Kings, they were both innocuous characters who suddenly appeared on the pages of human history and whose ancestry is not primarily human but spiritual and divine. 

This must surely teach us that when the Lord our God chooses to intervene in human affairs, He does not play by the rules, He may choose who, how and when he appoints and as He does so, the whole course of history changes! Let’s just take this one step further. As we have already seen, we too are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God! 1 Peter 2:9. We are all people who came from nowhere, who have no ancestry to speak of and yet who are related to our father Abraham through God’s promise. Somehow, his spiritual DNA has been passed on to us! How privileged and blessed are we? Hallelujah! Do we live up to oe even cherish our spiritual inheritance?

 

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