Looking For Righteousness and Peace

Hebrews 7:1-10

During a speaking engagement in Portland, Oregon, noted atheist Christopher Hitchens laid down some seriously good theology. Most people know him as the author of the bestselling book God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. After that book was published in 2007, he toured the country for several years debating a series of religious leaders, including some well-known Christian thinkers. In Portland he was interviewed by a Unitarian minister named Marilyn Sewell. The entire transcript of the interview has been posted online. This exchange took place near the start of the interview:

Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the Scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?

Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

Sewell wanted no part of that discussion so her next words are, “Let me go someplace else.”

This little snippet of their conversation illustrates an important point about religious “God-talk.” You can call yourself anything you like, but if you don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sins and then rose from the dead, you are not “in any meaningful sense” a Christian.

Talk about nailing it.

How ironic is it that Christopher Hitchens, an outspoken atheist, grasps the central tenet of Christianity better than many Christians do. What you believe about Jesus Christ really does make a difference.[i]

As we continue our journey together through the New Testament book of Hebrews, turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews 7:1-10.

If you’re like me, you read a passage like this, and you think things like “Who in the world is Melchizedek?” “What’s all this talk about priests and the priesthood?” “And why is God, through the writer, comparing Jesus to this Melchizedek?” “What do all of these ancient concepts have to do with me and what I’m facing today?” And so we flip to a place in our Bibles we’re a little more familiar with. Or we just put our Bibles down for the day, thinking, wow, this confusing stuff has nothing to do with me. We give up, tune out, move on.

But this passage has a very real and very powerful message for us today. Remember, Hebrews is a sermon, and the theme of the sermon is basically “Keep going. Don’t give up on Jesus. Don’t quit.” And like most sermons, this one has a primary text that the pastor is preaching from. For Hebrews, it’s Psalm 110.

It’s a Psalm written by David, and it’s considered both a royal Psalm and a messianic Psalm. Royal Psalms focus on kingship, especially the king of Israel. They were used at the coronation of new kings, among other things, and they talk about the relationship the king was expected to have with God, and also remind the people of God’s covenant with David, that his throne would be an eternal throne, and that a descendent of David would sit on that throne forever.

It’s a messianic Psalm because Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s covenant with David. It’s a Psalm that points both to Israel’s king and also forward in history to ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. It points to Jesus. Let me read it for you.

“You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” This is the part of the Psalm our pastor is expounding on now in our text for today from Hebrews. And it’s one of two places in the Old Testament where the shadowy, mysterious figure of Melchizedek appears. The first is in Genesis 14. So who is this guy Melchizedek, anyway?

When Abram, later renamed Abraham, and his family obeyed God’s call and left their homeland to go to the land that God would show him, they were a nomadic people. And there were many of them. It wasn’t just Abram and Sarai and their servants. Abram was already a man of wealth and power and, although he had no children himself, he had nieces and nephews and probably his parents and his wife’s parents and the people who were with them too. And their herds of cattle and sheep and goats and camels were large, so they’d set up shop in a certain place, near water, for a while, and when that area had been grazed down, they’d move on.

And what God asked Abram to do was to go even farther than he typically moved his family. To go to a distant land. Basically, Abram said, “Ok God, we’ll go, but where are we going?” and God said “I’ll tell you when you get there.” And when they came to the edge of the land of Canaan near the Mediterranean Sea, God said, “This is the place.” But Abram  still had large herds to graze, so he moved around some, and went down into Egypt for a while. But when he came back to Canaan, he and his nephew Lot realized that their families and herds were to big to be together. So to keep the families and their servants from falling into quarreling and infighting, they decide to separate.

So they kind of come to a fork in the road, and Abram says, “If you go this way, I’ll go that way. If you go that way, I’ll go this way.” So lot settled his family and herds in the lush Jordan Valley near the city of Sodom, and Abram went the other way a ways and settled his family in Canaan. Unfortunately for Lot, he got caught up in a bunch of political maneuvering. Several small kings in the area got together and decided to rebel against their overlord, the king of Sodom and his allies. And they defeated them. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled the battle, and because he lived near Sodom, Lot and his family and their possessions were captured by the rebels and taken away.

When Abram heard this from someone who escaped, he called up his own trained fighting men, 318 men (again, this wasn’t just Abram and Sarai) and they went to rescue Lot. Abram and his men attacked the rebels in the night and sent them fleeing and rescued Lot and his family and possessions and also took back all of the spoils the rebels had captured.

So Abram is coming back up the road with his little army of 318 fighting men from his family, and they’re exhausted,  covered in sweat and dust and blood from the battle. And Genesis 14 says, “After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, ‘Blessed 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!’ And Abram gave him a tenth of everything” (Gen. 14:17-20).

This passage and Psalm 110, where God says through David that the Messiah would be “A priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” are the sum total of Melchizedek’s appearances in the Bible before the book of Hebrews.

Melchizedek, who was both a priest of God somehow and also the king of Salem, which was probably the city that David would rename Jerusalem and make his capitol, met Abram on the road as he came back from battle, and he spoke a blessing over Abram and then Abram gave him a tenth of everything he had taken back from the rebels. Most of what was taken had belonged to the king of Sodom, not Melchizedek, king of Salem. But Abram gave a tenth, the tithe, of what was taken to Melchizedek.

Now, let’s head back to Hebrews. Look at Vv. 1-3. So he briefly describes what happened in Genesis to rekindle the people’s memory. And then he begins to expound on it. And Melchizedek is so important because, according to Psalm 110, he is a shadow, a foreshadowing, of Jesus. All the way back in Genesis 14, even before Abram had been renamed Abraham, God was painting a picture of what his messiah would be like.

So the Old Testament often uses genealogies to tie different parts of the narratives together. Abram is actually introduced into the narrative by tracing his lineage from Noah to himself through Noah’s son Shem. That’s usually how major new characters are introduced. But that isn’t what happens with Melchizedek, who actually foreshadows Jesus. Look at V. 3.

He just … appears. No genealogy, no mention of his parents or how his family ties into things. Nothing. It’s just Abram and his men on their way back from battle with the recaptured plunder, and here’s this person Melchizedek, king of Salem, coming out to meet him alongside the king of Sodom. He wasn’t even mentioned as one of Sodom’s allies before the battle. No mention of him at all. Just, boom, here he is on the scene. He blesses Abram, and Abram gives him the first tenth, the best part, of stuff that used to belong to the king of Sodom, and the king of Sodom doesn’t complain one bit. And then, just as suddenly, he is gone. Until David mentions him in a Psalm written about 1,000 years later.

Now, we know he had parents and a lineage. He wasn’t an angel, or anything like that. He was a person, a king, walking up the road to greet the victorious Abram with another king. He’d obviously somehow managed to become a worshipper of God long before Israel had become a nation, much like Job had. And he was also the king of Salem. But, from the way he is introduced into the narrative and then disappears from it, he APPEARS to have no beginning or end. His priesthood and kingship APPEAR to be eternal, a foreshadowing of the truly eternal nature of Christ’s kingship and work on our behalf.

It was the Eternal One, God incarnate, who came into this world in the womb of a poor, peasant young woman, born in a shelter for animals. Who learned his earthly father’s trade as a carpenter. Who grew up in the backwards, backwater town of Nazareth, high up in the mountains. Who became an uneducated, itinerant rabbi whose teaching was powerful, who healed the sick, touched lepers, befriended sinners and outcasts – even rich ones like Matthew – who raised the dead.

Who surrounded himself with a band of poor outcasts like himself and told them that in his strength and by his authority they would change the world. Who was betrayed by one of those disciples. Who was tortured and executed in excruciating fashion, enduring a horrible death in our place, dying with God’s just judgment for sin focused on him. Who rose again in victory over sin and death. Melchizedek, with no mention of genealogy or parentage, appears to be eternal. The one he foreshadowed would be the Eternal One in the flesh.

Now, look back at the second half of V. 2. The name “Melchizedek” literally means “king of righteousness.” And he was, quite literally, the king of Salem, which means peace. King of righteousness and king of peace. Righteousness and peace.

Righteousness is, quite simply, the state of being right with God. It is a state of having the sin that separates us from God cast aside so that we can be in direct and right relationship with God. True righteousness isn’t something you can earn or become on your own. It is something God gives to you, bestows on you, because of what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus took the punishment for our sin, and in exchange gives us his life, and makes us righteous – in right standing – before God.

A cloud of doubt hangs over home run king Barry Bonds. On August 7, 2007, Bonds hit number 756, the home run that broke Hank Aaron’s record. Most of the talk about the new record, though, is whether it really should count, because Bonds is alleged to have used steroids. Sports buffs say if his name goes in the record book it should be accompanied by an asterisk. The asterisk, of course, means that the record is a sort-of record, a footnoted record. The asterisk means the record is tainted.

The asterisk idea didn’t go away. Mark Ecko, the man who bought the ball that Bonds hit to set the record, asked baseball fans in an Internet poll what he should do with it. The fans voted for him to brand the baseball with an asterisk and donate it to the baseball Hall of Fame. In the summer of 2008 that’s what Ecko did.

Having an asterisk by your name is actually something we all should be able to identify with. Scripture talks about the Book of Life, in which the names of each believer is recorded. With all the sins we have committed in this life, you would expect that each of us would have an asterisk by our name in this all-important Book. Tainted. Don’t really belong.

But so great is our justification in Christ, so perfect is his work on the cross, so just is God in justifying us, that in the Book of Life there will be no asterisk by your name. Because of Christ’s atoning work on the cross for us, we truly belong in the kingdom of God.[ii]

In 1 John 2:1, St. John says, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Jesus gives us his life, his righteousness as a gift, helping us to actually begin to overcome sin, although we will never completely do that in this life. But we WILL grow in Christlikeness. And when we do fall, he is our advocate, our high priest, and his death on the cross continues to atone before God on our behalf.

Peace is far more than the absence of conflict or anxiety. It is the presence of wholeness, completeness, and well-being. It does include the absence of conflict. Peace between us and God that leads to peace in our hearts and minds and then peace between us and those around us. A peace marked by patience and kindness and gentleness and goodness. Peace is one of the fruits that the Holy Spirit brings out in our lives as we follow Christ. It isn’t something we can attain on our own. Not the complete peace that God gives us. It is a gift from God.

And while Melchizedek was CALLED the king of righteousness through his name, and the king of peace through his role, and APPEARED to have an eternal kingship and priesthood through his sudden appearance and no mention made of his death, Jesus IS the King of Righteousness and the King of Peace. He IS those things. He IS our righteousness and our peace, and he brings them into our lives.

Now, look at Vv. 4-10. Abraham was the greatest of the fathers of Israel. The ONE from whom Israel would burst forth as a people, and the one through whom God’s messiah would come. He was greater than Moses, who led Israel out of Egypt. He was greater than David, who led Israel to greatness. Thousands of years later, the people of Israel would be called children of Abraham. In Christ, WE are called children of Abraham. He is the single most significant character in the Old Testament and aside from Christ, the single most important character in the Bible.

And yet, after victory in battle, he tithed the recovered plunder TO Melchizedek. And he knelt before him to receive a blessing, acknowledging Melchizedek’s greatness over him. And Jesus is the truly eternal king and priest he foreshadowed. There is none like him. None who can match him. None who can compete with him.

We like to think that we don’t need God. And if we’ll admit we need God, we want to think we can come to him on our own. That we certainly don’t need Christ. We think if we just try harder, we’ll find the righteousness and forgiveness we need. We look for peace and security in the strength of our investments and bank accounts and the strength of the walls of our house. And we won’t find it there. But we WILL find it in the arms of the king of righteousness and the king of peace. King. There is none higher. There is no other place to look. It is foolish to try. Let’s pray.

[i] Dr. Ray Pritchard, “Christopher Hitchens Gets it Exactly Right,” KeepBelieving.com (2-1-10)

[ii] “Bonds’ 756th HR ball lands in Hall,” USA Today (7-2-08), 1C