Genesis 14:19:20

“Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.’ And he gave him a tithe of all.”

Hebrews 7:1-10

“For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him,  to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated “king of righteousness,” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.

Now consider how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises.

Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better. Here mortal men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives. Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him.”

We continue our journey in the Old Testament, showing places where Jesus shows up in various ways. Last week, we looked at the account of the Ark and made the point that all that was required for people to live through the Flood was to be IN the Ark. In the same manner, all that is required for eternal life is that we be IN Christ. He is our salvation and the only means of being saved.

Today, we will look at one of the most interesting and intriguing characters of the Bible. We first meet him in Genesis 14, and then He shows up in various passages all through the Scriptures, and we find a final mention of Him in Hebrews.

We find him in Psalm 110:4, and we find that He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. In this passage, David is making a prophecy about Jesus. Jesus refers to this Psalm once when challenging the Pharisees about Himself. IN Matthew 22:42-46, Jesus challenges the Pharisees about Jesus’ deity; he points out that David calls Him Lord, even though, as a human, he is David’s son. This is an example of Jesus showing that He existed long before He was born of a woman. Then in the same passage, God, called LORD, shows that Jesus, Lord, will be a priest ‘forever’ after the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus is NOT a priest after the order of Levi; why? Because what Levi was, through Aaron, was a temporary thing. The sacrifices were temporary; the Old Covenant was temporary, and there was a New Covenant coming in the Person of Jesus.

When we meet Melchizedek, he is coming out to meet Abram, who is returning from a military victory. You should take the time to read the whole chapter if possible. As Abram is returning, he is met by the Man, who we are told in Hebrews is the King of Righteousness and that He is the King of Salem, which is translated the King of Peace. Both of these names are names for Jesus. In Hebrews 1:8, we see this promise from God to Jesus,

“But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy Kingdom.”

A scepter is one of the instruments of the King. IN Genesis 49:10, we have this promise to the tribe of Judah, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” Thus, we can clearly see that Jesus is the King of Righteousness.

In Isaiah 9:6, we see this prophecy written about 750 years before Jesus was born, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

The Prince of Peace is another name for King of Peace, so we see here that the child that is born is the King of Peace. In addition to these, we see in Hebrews that Melchizedek has neither mother nor father, he has no genealogy, and he has “neither beginning of days nor end of life.” These are all attributes of God. Thus, we can conclude that Melchizedek is God, Jesus in the flesh, who came out to meet Abram on his return from the war. To add more credence, we see that Melchizedek was the King of Salem.

A little history will tell you that when Abram entered the land of Canaan, there was an ancient city of the Jebusites called Salem (Generationword.com). The name was at one time ‘Yerushalem,’ which means the foundation stone of Shalem or the cornerstone of peace. Many believe that this is where the original cornerstone of the earth was laid by God when He formed the earth. David captured the city around 1005 BC (2 Samuel 5:6-7:9), and it has been associated with the Jews ever since. It is still the capital city of Israel to this day. So, Melchizedek, the King of Jerusalem, the King of Righteousness, and the King of Peace came out to meet Abram. He fed him bread and wine, ‘Lord Supper,’ before the Passover ever existed, and blessed Abram.

Lastly, and it is important to note that both in Genesis and in Hebrews, this is mentioned: Abram paid tithes to the King of Salem. Tithing existed BEFORE the Law of Moses. Abram gave tithes to Melchizedek, and it is noted that Aaron, or Levi, paid tithes through Abram to Melchizedek. Abram paid Him, Melchizedek, from the profits of all he brought back from winning the battle. Tithing of our profit has been and continues to be a principle of those that are Abram’s children and that serve Jesus the King. We are told that Abraham is the ‘father of all who believe’ in Romans 4:11.

Once again, we see Jesus in the Old Testament, showing up as the King of Jerusalem and blessing Abram. Jesus is everywhere in the Bible; the entire story of the Bible is about Him. He is the first and the last, the Creator and the Sustainer of all, and He is both the beginning of the story and the end. Jesus, it is all about Him.

Genesis 7:1-12

“Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. ² You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; ³ also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. ⁴ For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.’

⁵ And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him. ⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth. ⁷ So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. ⁸ Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, ⁹ two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.

¹⁰ And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. ¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. ¹² And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.”

Last week, we began to take a look at the pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament, and our intent is to show that the entire Bible is about Jesus. There continues to be this heresy among too many who call themselves Christians, and sadly, many preachers who say that either the Old Testament is not relevant to modern Christianity or that the Jesus we see in the New Testament is not the same as the God of the Old Testament. But in Hebrews 13:8, we see that Paul tells us that Jesus is the same, “yesterday, today and forever.”

In John 5:46, Jesus says this, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” That means that the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy, written by Moses, is about Jesus. There are stories and pictures in these writings that picture and tell us about Jesus.

Just this morning I was reading in Isaiah 9, and there we see in verse 2, the prophecy of Jesus being a great light to the people in Galilee, and He fulfilled that in Matthew 4:16. In Isaiah 11:1-4, Jesus is the Branch that will come from the line of Jesse, King David’s line, and that He will be righteous judge. We can go on and on, but I hope that you are seeing the picture here.

Today, we will look at a very familiar story, the flood. Now we understand what is happening here, and the people on earth are just evil. All of men’s thoughts are evil all the time. Genesis 6:5, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

It seems that we are living in a similar situation today. I listen to people talk about abortion like it is nothing; that the killing of a child is just something one does. Just yesterday here in Canada, one of our Federal Ministers of Parliament proposed a law to make reading or teaching certain parts of the Bible illegal. I will bet you that they will not propose the same for the Quran. They know that someone would die. And in fact, the very fact that they are not banning the Quran shows that it is not about ‘hate speech’; it is about the Word of God. But I digress.

Noah, we are told in Genesis 6:9, “This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.”

For many years, I heard a lot about the ‘Noah walked with God’ part, and that is good. But in the first part of the verse, there is an important reference to Jesus in that Noah’s bloodline was ‘perfect in his generations.’ He had a direct, unpolluted bloodline back to Adam. As such, he needed to be preserved to make sure that Jesus, the second Adam, would have a perfect, unpolluted bloodline so that He could truly be the Savior of Mankind.

This is how we know, by that way, that the ‘Sons of God’ mentioned in Genesis 6 are NOT a human bloodline through Seth. These ‘Sons of God’ that cohabited with women were able to pollute the bloodline with their non-human ‘DNA’. Thus, to save Mankind, to preserve the promise of Genesis 3:15, Noah had to be saved and preserved for the bloodline to trace perfectly back to Adam.

Now, how do we preserve the bloodline of Adam through Noah? We are to build an Ark. If you have ever been to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, you will have an idea of the massive endeavor that God called Noah to take on. The flood is one of the very first demonstrations of God’s patient grace, how He made a way and prepared a way for others to live if they chose to do so. God would have saved others who did not have pure bloodlines if they had entered the Ark, as well as preserving Noah. It was simply an act of Faith.

Like Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, so too, these folks just had to believe God and get in the Ark. Noah built the Ark; he was obedient. Genesis 7:5, “And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.”

We do not know exactly how long it took to build the Ark. We know that Noah was a ‘preacher of righteousness’ (2 Peter 2:5). But we see in our verses above that Noah and his family entered the Ark, and God left seven (7) days of grace for others to enter (verse 4). God did not shut the door right away. Even a skeptic who simply out of curiosity had entered and stayed would have been saved. But no others believed and obeyed God.

The Ark is a picture of Jesus and His salvation. All those ‘in Christ’ are saved. Those who trust the word of God, obey the word of God, and all those who stop trusting in their own righteousness and ONLY trust in His righteousness to cover their sins, are saved. For almost 2,000 years, God has extended Grace and sent ‘preachers of righteousness’ to call people to be in Jesus. Get in the Ark that saves eternally and guarantees us eternal life. But like the millions of Noah’s days, many scoff and walk past the open door of the Ark.

Genesis 7:11-12

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.” The flood came, just like Noah had said, just like God had promised, and only those in the Ark were saved. It terrifies me to think how many scratched at the door, banged on the sides of the Ark, and yet, there was no hope. The window of God’s grace for that period was over.

Soon, sooner than we think, God’s grace for our age will come to an end, and His wrath, like the time of the Flood, will be poured out on all mankind, and we who are in Christ will be saved. What an awesome peace to have in our hearts! We have to keep trying to tell the story of Jesus.

The doors of salvation are still open, and the grace is still being extended. I leave you with 2 Peter 3:8-10, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

Jesus is coming to get us soon!

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario