In the 110th Psalm, verse 6, excuse me, verse 4,
the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest
forever in the order of Melchizedek. Now, two weeks ago, the last
time I preached for you, I had intended to preach on that verse,
but by way of introduction, I preached on the three verses preceding
that, and by the time I got done with that, we were pretty much
out of time, so I just stopped. But the promise in the Old Testament
of Messiah consisted of three offices, prophet, priest, and
king. The prophet is someone who speaks
to the people in behalf of God. The priest is someone who speaks
to God in behalf of the people. And the king is the one who is
to rule all things for the fulfillment of God's purpose and for the
good of God's people. Now, these offices were called
the offices of Messiah because the word Messiah simply comes
from a Hebrew word meaning the anointed one. And anybody in
the Old Testament days who was to fulfill one of these offices,
they would be anointed with oil. And the reason they were anointed
with oil is the oil was a symbol of the Holy Spirit who would
be given to those people in a special way in order that they might
perform the function of prophet, priest, or king. These works
could not be carried on with natural abilities and powers. Consequently, those in the Old
Testament who served as prophets, priests, or kings were given
special abilities to carry out the job they were given to do.
Now, in the Old Testament, these three offices of Messiah, these
three offices of the anointed ones were spread out. You never
did have one person who occupied all three of these offices. Not
even once did that happen. Some occupied two of them. You had priests who were prophets,
and you had some kings who were also prophets. But one double
combination that never occurred in the Old Testament was a king
who was also a priest. God never allowed those two offices
to be joined in one man. Some tried. One or two of the kings, even
what we would call godly kings, got it in their mind to go to
the temple and themselves offer sacrifice. And they paid dearly
for the presumption of doing that. These offices cannot be
entered into unless and until God appoints a man to that office. And those kings who tried also
to be priests were self-appointed priests. And they paid the price
for trying to go into God's temple without God's authority. However, In all of these messiahs,
anointed ones of the Old Testament, there was a foreshadowing of
a single person who would come and in himself embody all three
of those offices perfectly. The prophets of old, they spoke,
but they never could tell the whole truth because they didn't
know the whole truth. In Hebrews it says, at sundry
times, at various times and in various ways, God spoke to the
fathers through the prophets. That's in Hebrews chapter 1.
And it was just a little bit here,
a little bit there, a little more, but never the whole message. And so that scripture in Hebrews
goes on to say, but He has in these last days spoken to us
by His Son. Which shows us that Jesus Christ
is indeed that prophet that Moses spoke of, whom the Lord told
the people would come. That prophet to whom all of God's
people would listen. Not every one of God's people
will even hear me, much less listen to me. But I know this,
all of God's people will hear from Christ and they will listen.
That is, they will follow him. He says, my sheep hear my voice
and they do follow me. That's the only way we know who
God's sheep are. They follow after the shepherd, the Lord
Jesus Christ. They hear God's anointed Messiah
prophet. And then, while there were many
priests under the Old Covenant, not a one of them was ever able
to actually put away anybody's sin or make a way into the real
presence of God. In fact, under the Old Covenant,
nobody ever went into the presence of God other than the high priest,
and that only once a year, and never without the blood of a
sacrifice. The Old Covenant high priests went into the presence
of God, but they never made a way for us to go into the presence
of God. And the testimony of that was
that for all those hundreds of years that the Old Covenant was
in place, there was a curtain between the holy place and the
most holy place. And the only one who ever saw
the Ark of the Covenant and the cherubim that were over the ark. The only one who ever went in
there and witnessed what is called the Shekinah glory was that high
priest. And he only once a year, and
I'll guarantee you he did it with a lot of trembling. And even when he went in, he
went in with smoky incense, and that went in before him. And
it would make the whole scene obscure even to him. Those Old Testament priests and
their Old Testament sacrifices could never put away sin. It
was necessary that another one, not anointed with oil, but anointed
with the Holy Spirit of God without measure, that he come and he
could truly bear sin in the presence of God. He could come into the
presence of God, bearing the sins of God's people, and there
suffer as the sacrifice. This Messiah priest joined together
priest and sacrifice into one person. He is the Lamb of God
that takes away the sin of the world and he's the priest that
offers the blood before the Lord. The book of Hebrews says he offered
himself without spot to God. Now, in the religion I was raised
in, they were always saying, Christ made a sacrifice and you
have to accept it. And it wasn't until I was an
adult and taught better that I learned I can't accept the
sacrifice of Christ. For the very simple reason is
it was never offered to me. It was offered to God. Why would
a sacrifice be offered to me? It's not my law that's been broken. I'm not the one that's been sinned
against. Sacrifices are offered to God
and it's up to Him to accept them or not accept them. And
He never accepted one of the sacrifices in the Old Testament
because the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin.
An animal cannot bear the sin of a human in the presence of
God. But Jesus Christ became a man, a perfect man. having no sin within himself
at birth, never doing sin, never thinking sin, never desiring
sin. And yet, as he went to Calvary,
the Scriptures tell us the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of
a multitude no man can number. He bore more sin than you and
I bear. Why? Well, if we're one of His, He
was bearing our sin and He was bearing the sin of a whole lot
of others just like us. And He bore them all before the
Father and suffered in such a way that those sins were actually
put away. They no longer exist. No matter
how much anyone searches for them, they can't be found, says
the Scriptures. Not even God can find them. That's the Messiah priest. And
having finished his work as the Messiah priest, he became the
Messiah king, the anointed king. In the book of Philippians, Paul
says that once Christ had finished that priestly work of humbling
himself and becoming obedient to death, even the death of the
cross, it says, wherefore God hath highly exalted him. O child
of God, is there anything more thrilling to your heart than
this? To know that your Savior is exalted high above the heavens,
at the right hand of God, beyond the reach of any who might try
to confound or bring to nothing His work. To know that God The
one against whom we sin has set Jesus Christ above everything
in heaven and earth and below the earth. That He is delivered
into the hands of our priest. Control of everything and everyone. And He is at this present time
controlling everything for our eternal good. Miserable things
may happen to us in this life. Horrible things to bear. Deep
valleys to go through. Difficult trials to face. But
brethren, all of these are from the hand of our High Priest,
the King, who is at this present time bringing to pass God's eternal
purpose, which involves the salvation of everyone in Christ. He cannot
fail. There is no authority that hasn't
been given to Him. There is no power that is greater
than Him. And the time will come when every
knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Some of you already bow and confess
that now. And it will be our great joy
someday to see that scene. when even those who rebelled
against Christ their entire life will have to bow the knee before
Christ and say, Your Lord, Lord of all. We see a lot going on in our
world today that's very troubling, and it does look very much out
of control. I know this, it's out of my control.
There's a whole lot going on If I was in charge, it wouldn't
be happening. And I know that when we read about the barbaric
butchery going on in the Mideast, we might be led to despair. But understand two things. All
that is in the control of the Lord Jesus Christ, too. And every
one of those barbarians will either, by grace in this life
or judgment in the next life, bow the knee and declare Jesus,
whom they hate, to be Lord. You say, how could that be? Those
people are monsters. You say some of them might someday
in grace be called on or be brought to own Jesus Christ as Lord? How could such people like that?
Well, God got you to do it, didn't He? You say, well, I'm not like them.
Well, more than anything, that would make me wonder if you understand
anything about yourself at all. You may not have butchered anybody
yet, and maybe you never will. But I'll tell you, if you don't,
it'll be because God holds you back. As I pointed out, somebody
cuts us off in traffic, and by our language, we're ready to
consign them to eternal flame simply for cutting us off in
traffic. I'd say that's pretty serious
anger on our part, isn't it? You think you wouldn't do that?
The heart's deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
Who can know it? There's not a thing you wouldn't
do. There's not a crime you wouldn't commit. There is not a corruption
you wouldn't descend into if God did not withhold you from
it. And He who saved you can save
any of those fellows in the Middle East. He can save your children. He can save your parents. He
can save the criminals in our nation. He can save anybody. The only issue is the will. So, our Lord Jesus Christ fulfills
all those Messiah offices. In the New Testament, they come
under the word Christ, for it means the same thing as the word
Messiah. And let's look at our Lord's priesthood for just a
few minutes. Here in verse 4, the Lord has sworn Now, our Lord's
priesthood is not like the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The law
given on Mount Sinai established a priesthood, and it established
the priesthood through the line of Aaron. Aaron, a sinful man. You say, well, what makes you
think he's a sinful man? Do you recall that when Moses
was on the mountain getting the law, that Aaron led the people
into all kinds of idolatry and corruption, pagan revelry. All the English translations
do their best to give some kind of polite description to what
was going on at the foot of the mountain while Moses was up there
giving the law. But it's very simply, this is
what was going on. They made themselves a golden
calf. And it was a common thing in
those days that if you had an idol, you'd make a calf-type
thing and set your idol on that calf and worship it. Well, of
course, the Jews worshipped the invisible Jehovah, so they said. So they made a calf and didn't
put anything on top of it. But they worshipped the calf.
They said, let's make a feast unto Jehovah. and set that golden
calf up there, and it says, and they rose up, I think the King
James says, rose up to play. Some of the more modern translations
say pagan revelry. What was going on was sexual
corruption of the most disgusting sorts. That was what Aaron did. And God made him the first high
priest. And all the other high priests
that came after, that were actually authorized by God to be the high
priest, were his descendants. No wonder his priesthood never
worked. Would you like a man like that representing you in
the presence of God? Why, he couldn't stop his own
sinning, let alone do anything about your sinning. But when Aaron was made a priest
and his descendants, the high priests, yes, it was part of
the old covenant. It was part of the law given
to Israel. But God made no oath. But he did to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Christ's priesthood comes with God swearing, swearing that
he will never change his mind. that Jesus Christ is a priest
forever, just like Melchizedek. Now off the top of my head, as
I was studying this, I can think of only two times that God swore.
Now we're not talking about swearing in the sense of using vulgar
language. We mean it in the sense of making
an oath. And why did God rarely make an
oath? Because he's God and he ought
never have to make an oath to secure his word. We ought to
believe it. Right? I mean, if God says something,
he shouldn't have to say, I swear to you, it's true. Why do we
swear to things? We swear to things because by
nature we're liars. And so when we're telling important
things, we got to swear an oath so people will believe us. But
God ought never be called upon to swear an oath as though He
by nature is a liar and we can't believe His Word unless He swears
an oath. But all the condescension and
the kindness of God, He speaks, He's speaking to us liars, so
He speaks in the language of liars. So that we might be assured. And in the book of Hebrews, it
says that God swore an oath. regarding salvation in Jesus
Christ. He swore an oath to Abraham,
and we realize that his oath to Abraham involved more than
really just so much real estate over there in the Middle East,
that it involved eternal salvation. And the writer of Hebrews says,
and therefore he swore an oath, so that by two things, The fact
that God can't lie anyway. And secondly, that He lowered
Himself to swear an oath to us. We might have strong hope who
have fled for refuge to Christ Jesus. I don't have anything I can really
brag about. I just don't. But I can say this. I mean, it's
just the truth. I have fled for refuge to Jesus
Christ. Now, that's just an objective
fact. It's not something to brag about. I mean, that means you're
running, you're in trouble. You can't solve your own problems,
so you seek refuge somewhere else. See, a man cannot boast
about his faith. People say, I'm proud to be a
Christian. Why? Being a Christian involves that you have no abilities.
Being a Christian involves a confession that you are unable to solve
your own problems. In particular, that problem called
sin. Being a Christian means confessing
that you're nothing but sin and that nothing less than the slaughter
of the Lord Jesus Christ can save you. So there's nothing
to be proud of in the fact that you're a Christian. Yes, we're
very proud of Christ. We boast in Christ, but we're
not ashamed that we're Christians. But it's not a point of pride,
is it? But have you fled for refuge
to the Lord Jesus Christ? Refuge from the storm of God's
wrath? Have you fled there? Then God
says, I have sworn an oath. He swore by himself, says the
scriptures, because there's nobody greater than Him to swear by.
You know when you have to swear when you're going to give testimony?
A lot of times they put a Bible. You say, I swear on the Bible.
Now, I'd be very uncomfortable doing that, but that's what they
do. And you know why? Because most
people have some respect for the Bible. They think the Bible
is more important than them. more trustworthy than them. And
essentially what they're saying is, when they put their hand
on the Bible and say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole
truth and nothing but the truth, they're saying, if I don't tell
you the truth, then I'm saying the Bible's not true. And not
many people, well, nowadays they would, but go back 50 years or
so, not many people would have said the Bible's not the truth.
So they're swearing by something greater than themselves. God
can't swear by anyone greater than himself or anything, because
there's nobody and no thing greater than him. So he swore by himself,
which is essentially to say that when God swore an oath regarding
his promises in Christ, he was saying this, if anybody flees
for refuge to my son, the Lord Jesus Christ, yet in the end
is lost, I cease to be God. That's a pretty firm foundation
now, isn't it? Because I don't think God's going to give up
on being God. I don't think God is ever going to say, well, he
trusted Christ, but he ended up in hell anyway, so I guess
I have to get off my throne now and let someone else be in charge.
That's not going to happen. So you can be certain of this.
that if you fled for refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ, you will
not perish. God swore an oath, and here's
the other oath he swore, that Jesus Christ is a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek. He has sworn and he will not
change his mind. God did change his mind about
the priests of Aaron, didn't he? If you could possibly find
someone who is a descendant of Aaron and had a right to claim
the high priesthood of the Old Covenant, it would do you no
good, because God has no respect for that priesthood. But here
is a priesthood that our Lord Jesus, that our God, God the
Judge, has respect to. And He has sworn that this priest
shall never, never be turned aside from Him. Now, inasmuch
as Jesus Christ was made a priest by an oath of God, what does
that tell us? It tells us we need a priest,
doesn't it? I know sometimes when people
are trying to declare the truth, sometimes what sounds like error
is just careless language on their part. But people say, well,
you can just go right into God's presence, back up the bus. No, you can't. No, you can't. We are sinful. He is holy. He is of pure eyes to behold
iniquity with any kind of positive attitude. And that means he cannot
behold sinners without any kind of positive feelings or blessings
or anything like that. He can't do that. And what's
the proof of it? Well, one day, his beloved son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who never did sin, never thought sin, never
desired sin, he was made guilty with the sins of a countless
number. And though that one in heaven that looked upon him was
his father, though he was the just judge, yet he poured out
a hell's worth of wrath upon Jesus Christ, the substitute.
And if God would not hold back in his punishment of sin, sins
that Jesus Christ himself never did commit, do you think for
a moment that he would withhold his wrath from you for sins that
you actually did commit? No, we cannot just go into the
presence of God willy-nilly. We need someone to go in the
presence of God for us first. We need someone to do what a
priest is supposed to do, and that is not only go into the
presence of God, but in his going into the presence of God, he
makes a way for us to go into the presence of God. In the book of Hebrews it says
that that curtain that hung between the holy place and the most holy
place, for all those generations hung there as a testimony that
the way to God had not been made known. I don't care how faithful
a Jewish man you were, If you had gone into the temple and
gone in, you know, there's the outer courtyard and then go into
the holy place where they had the candles and the table of
showbread and the altar of incense and all that, if you'd have gone
in there, you'd have been in trouble enough for that. But
if you dared to pull back that curtain and go into that most
holy place where God's token presence was, it would have killed
you. While there was a man, one time
when they were just trying to move the Ark of the Covenant,
and they put it on an ox cart, and it's going along, and as
you know, they didn't have nice suspension back then, nice rubber
tires and all that, just those big wooden tires, wooden wheels,
and as it's going along, it hits a bump, and the thing rocks. And the Ark of the Covenant,
it looks like it's going to fall off, and a man, did probably on reflex what any
of us would do. He reached out and he touched
the ark to stop it from falling off. Was God thankful? God said, well, appreciate that.
I didn't want that to hit the ground. God killed him. And that was just a token representation
of the presence of God. Oh, we have a priest. We need
one because we dare not go into God's presence ourselves. But
we have a priest, a priest whom God has put in place, a priest
whose sacrifice God has accepted. Peter said, he bore our sins
in his body on the tree. And when He bore them there,
He bore them before God, the Judge of all. Though He was on
Mount Calvary, He was in the presence of God. And God saw
all those sins, poured out His wrath against
His Son, and Jesus Christ did, as our priest, what no one else
has ever done. He actually died all the way. The reason that hell goes on
forever is because people are never done dying. They never
die sufficiently to put away their sins. We just can't do
that. But Jesus Christ died in a way
that you and I could never do. He died to the point that God
says, my wrath is spent. I have poured death upon him.
And he absorbed it all. And therefore our Lord could
say what no one in hell will ever be able to say. It is finished. It's done. And all those sins that were
laid upon the shoulders of our Lord Jesus Christ were, as it
were, burned away by the wrath of God that day. And he not only
went into the presence of God for us that day, by his successful
completion of that work, he made a way for us to go. And God gave a remarkable testimony
of it that day in the temple. It was a testimony that was lost
on nearly everybody that knew about it. But there was an earthquake
when our Lord finished that work. And one of the things that happened
on account of that was that that curtain, that veil between the
holy place and the most holy place, was torn from top to bottom. Now as long as that curtain hung
there, what was it saying? The way to God has not been made
known. Jesus Christ said that it is finished, and the curtain
tore in two and said, now the way to God is known. That curtain tore in two. As a testimony, as though the
curtain itself were saying, for the first time in all history,
there has been a sacrifice offered to God which God accepted. A sacrifice that actually put
away sin. And if sin is put away, then
there is no danger in coming in the presence of God. It's
sin that makes God dangerous. Right? No sin, no danger. And that curtain tore in two.
And for the first time in history, anybody standing in the right
spot could have seen all the way back into the most holy place. And if God ever gives us spiritual
eyes to see, we will see in the torn body or see through the
torn body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the very presence of God. And
we may boldly approach that throne of grace and through Christ find
mercy to help us in our time of need. God swore to make Christ
a priest, which tells us we need a priest. We have the testimony
of the cross to tell us that as our priest, he successfully
bore our sins. And then we have this, he is
a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Who is Melchizedek? I don't know. I've got my opinions. But that's
all they are. I did read one commentator and
I thought he said something very wise. He said, why is it that
even though it seems the Holy Spirit went to great length to
not reveal who Melchizedek is, that everybody wants to try to
figure it out. But that's because, well, anytime there isn't information,
we want to make some up. We just can't stand not knowing.
But we know this. The Bible tells us that his priesthood
was not the result of his genealogy. Anybody that was a high priest
in Aaron's line, it was because of who his mom or who his dad
was, or grandfather, whatever. Christ? No. Like Melchizedek,
it seems he just came out of nowhere. Now we know where he
came from, but still. He had no earthly father. He
had no natural claim to a priesthood. He didn't even come from the
tribe of Levi, from which all the high priests were to come.
What's that mean? It means his priesthood has nothing
to do with the priesthood of the Old Covenant. He's after the order of Melchizedek,
and that also means, because Melchizedek is the only other
one. I said there wasn't anybody in the Old Testament that combined
the offices of king and priest. Melchizedek did. Evidently, Melchizedek, while
it's obvious he wasn't a Jew, he wasn't in the line of Abraham.
Whether he was just a natural man, some say he was Shem, the
son of Noah. I don't know. But he was king
of peace and king of righteousness. And whether he was a natural
man or a supernatural pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, I don't
know. But I know this, his names, apply to Christ perfectly. Christ
is our priest, who is our king of righteousness. We are not righteous because
we act righteous, even though we're believers. Why is that? Because we don't act righteous.
We know if we're counted righteous in the sight of God, it's not
because of our righteousness, we don't have any. He is our king, our righteous
king, who is our righteousness. We are justified. In the Greek
language, justified comes from the same word that righteousness
does. We are accounted righteous in the sight of God through Jesus
Christ. And therefore, we have what?
Peace. Thus, Christ is our King of Peace.
And I like that, that He's the King of Peace. Which means that
under His authority, we are at peace. We are at peace with God. I don't know. I can't read your
hearts. I can't really hardly read mine.
But I do believe this. I am not, at least I don't want
to be at war with God. I like God as he's revealed in
the scriptures. I believe he has the right to
be God. I believe he has the right to take all the privileges
of being God, if you want to call them that. That he has the
right to sovereign rule. That he has the right to do with
me as seems good in his sight. He has right to do with everyone
I know and love and everything I have. He has the right to do
that. I'm not at war with him on that
issue. I'm not at war with him about
his method of salvation. I think it's a good one. Christ,
you see, has made peace between God and me. And that in turn
has made peace between me and at least everyone else who's
at peace with God. Why should I be at war with anybody
else that's at peace with God? God's people dwell together in
peace. Now, one more minute. In order for all of this to happen,
Jesus Christ, see He couldn't be our priest from heaven. He
cannot be a priest as simply God in spirit. And so he took
on our nature, our frame. And then he was our priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek. And here's the wonder to me.
When he went back to his home, he took our nature with him.
He is still a man. For the scriptures say there's
one God and one mediator, that means one priest, between God
and men, the man, Christ Jesus. He is still my priest. And as long as he's seated at
the right hand of God, so am I. So long as he is accepted
by God, so am I. So long as he is blessed by God,
so am I. And God has sworn that he is priest forever. And that's long enough for me.
Heavenly Father, oh, thank you for your Son. Thank
you for sending him here. As much as we enjoy the Christmas
season, may we look beyond the mere celebration of a happy time
and understand why it's such a happy time. that it is joyful
to us because our Lord came and endured our sorrows for us, that
He came as the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that
we might be your children full of joy and with no eternal grief
to bear. Father, bless this congregation,
bless all who have gathered here this morning, that the gospel
would have power in our hearts. Lord, for those that have tried,
May this good news provide a light to them in the midst of their
darkness. May their souls be lifted up beyond the difficulties
of this life. Father, exalt your Son. He's
worthy of it. In Christ's name we pray it.