Original Contributions
Bible Treasury, 2nd Edition, Volume 1, November 1857.
(1st. Edition, November [01 1857 280])
[01 1857 276]
The Melchizedek priesthood, in its order being eternal, and in its actings millennial, is full of precious truth about Christ, from beginning to end.
When that wondrous stranger met Abram, be met him as in the kingdom. He met him with the fruit of the vine which, as we know, is to be drunk in the kingdom (Luke 22:18). He refreshed Abram with a feast after the warfare was accomplished, and gave him a blessing from the possessor of heaven and earth. His acts, therefore, were those of one who was standing in the kingdom, or in the days of millennial glory.
But this was a feast upon a sacrifice. It was brought forth by a priest; and such a priest as had already secured or dispensed righteousness and peace, as his name and royalty signified: and this he was, and this he had done (I speak of him only as a type of the true priest, while still hidden in his temple, ere he met Abram). He had then dispensed such provisions as a needy sinner wanted; he was now dispensing what a weary conqueror after the toil of battle wanted. It had been already "righteousness and peace," and now it was "bread and wine," and "blessing from the possessor of heaven and earth."
Gen. 14 lets us know this, but does not carry us farther back than this. It shows us the feast of the kingdom after the warfare, and it intimates that such a feast had been preceded by the exercise of an efficacious priesthood. Heb. 7 resumes the mystery, affirming this suggestion of a previous efficacious priesthood, and then instructing us in the character of the sacrifice which that priesthood used, and in which all its efficacy rested.
But this is addition of a truly profound and wondrous kind.
Melchizedek, in Gen. 14, appears at once and abruptly, without any record of himself, in his parentage or ordination. The Spirit, in Heb. 7 uses this as an intimation of the person of the true Melchizedek. But it is a very faint one — justly so in so early a time as the days of Abraham. But still this is enough to make Melchizedek an image of the Son of God, in whom is "the power of an endless life."
Thus there is intimation of the person of this priestly king in Gen. 14. But there was no intimation there, that it would be Himself whom the royal priest, the true Melchizedek, would offer up. There was no hint, whatever, of this; and yet, it is on this that the efficaciousness of the priesthood altogether depends — a truth which the epistle to the Hebrews largely and distinctly teaches.
So that however refreshing the feast was to the weary warrior, and however blessed the dispensation of righteousness and peace is to a weary sinner, all this rests on the value of that sacrifice which the disposer of peace and of royal refreshings had to offer and did offer, and of which Gen. 14 gives us no hint, but which the epistle fully and powerfully discloses.
"Himself" was the sacrifice, as this epistle again and again tells us. (See Heb. 1:3; Heb. 7:27; Heb. 9:14, 26.) And this was the sacrifice that entitled the priest to dispense righteousness and peace, and then to spread a feast for the heir of the promise, when the kingdom had come, and the warfare was accomplished. For this "Himself" was "the Son," the one who had "the power of an endless life." Death, thereafter, found itself abolished, the moment it touched Him. The captive was the spoiler. The gates of hell could not prevail. He that had the power of death was destroyed. Sin was put away when such an one met its demand. He, "without spot," offered Himself to God, "through the eternal Spirit." How could it be, but that sin must be satisfied? The wages of sin was paid; that which was the sting of death was exhausted. The resurrection was the witness of all this.
The altar is thus revealed in this epistle, and only here. Gen. 14 had given us no sight of it. And this is the profoundest of the mysteries; and we might well expect to wait for New Testament days to have it thus set forth.
The throne, the sanctuary, the altar, — these we get in the combined visions, so to speak, of Gen. 14 and Heb. 7. The feast of the kingdom depends on the efficacious services of the sanctuary or priesthood, and they depend on the value of the altar or sacrifice.
It is this last point that is indeed the great sustaining truth. If the altar be not sufficient, all is gone: the sanctuary will confer no righteousness or peace, the kingdom no refreshing feast of bread and wine. But the altar is gloriously displayed in this epistle. Life is contemplated here, as being in Jesus, but it is life on the other side of death, and therefore the sacrifice or the death is proved to have been equal to its business of putting away sin, which is the sting or occasion of death. Jesus is displayed as One who, having gone down under the penalty, could rise up from thence in victory.