Melchidedek - a Type of Jesus

In a court of law if a person is charged with 1st degree murder, evidence must be found to prove the crime was premeditated. Should there be a lack of evidence the charge would have to be dropped.

For God to say that He knew the end from the beginning, and that His plans and purposes were indeed “From the foundation of the earth” (Rev. 13:8)….  then He would need to provide evidence of ‘foreknowledge’.  

Since the spiritual kingdom is not physically visible - our God cannot be seen with our physical eyes nor his works proven by physical laws, God had to find another way to provide  undeniable proof that He is indeed who He says He is  and that His promises are based on infallible proof of His ability to perform them.  And because He sits above time and knows the end from the beginning it was easy for Him to use types, foreshadowing, prophecy in His scriptures that would prove to us that we indeed have been given the TRUTH and we can trust every word that comes out of His mouth.

God’s creation is so infinitely detailed that scientists are still a long way from understanding all that creation is … and the more they discover the more they discover they do not yet know or understand and they discover  to a greater and greater degree how detailed our physical world is.

Would He not be as infinitely detailed in His word?  That His word would be an unparalleled work forever unmatched by any other book written or produced?   The more I study God’s word the more I find to amaze and delight me and show me how much deeper I can still go !  And in the same way that every one of the details and laws that rule our physical earth are needful and important (whether we understand them or not!)  so also every word of God is important …  and has meaning for us.

 Some of us were raised by ‘old school’ parents who followed up our ‘why’ questions by the standard… ”Because I said so!!!” and  -consciously or not  - we tend to transfer that experience to our perception of God.  And yet God is not like that at all.  

Our God is invested in revealing that He alone is God, that His word will always stand the test of time and come unscathed through all scrutiny. 
He truly wants to dialogue with us, reason with us, speak face to face - even as He did with Moses - so that we will have an answer for anyone who questions us. 

The more we dig, the more we find how true our God is and how absolutely amazing!  
The Bible is written in such a way its content and the way it is recorded provide all the information we need to understand who God is and how we are to live in  His kingdom. 
(see I Cor. 10:11, Rom. 15:4, Heb.1:10, Col. 2:17, Luke 24:25-27)

  One way that God provides ‘evidence’ that He indeed did premeditate the end from the beginning is by putting ‘types’ in the Old Testament. 

 A ‘type’ is a person who by some aspects of his life or character point to Jesus who is the ‘anti-type’.  A ‘type’ is LIKE the ‘anti-type’ it is pointing to.  

So a ‘type’ is a person who is always in the Old Testament and points to the ‘anti-type’ who is always in the New Testament.  

Some types are ---
 Moses -- (Hebrews 3:1-6)   God said He would send someone LIKE Moses Deut. 18:15 -- obviously pointing to Jesus who LIKE Moses ‘would be faithful in all His house’.

Adam --    I Cor. 15:45-49  --   Adam - the first man is LIKE Jesus in that both of them did something that passed on to all people  ---  From the first man Adam, we all received physical life , and also inherited a ‘sin’ nature that condemns us with Adam …   Adam points to Jesus whose substitutionary death gave us spiritual life if we are ‘born in him’ …  So from one we received physical life / condemnation but from the Second Adam, Jesus, we receive eternal spiritual  life / salvation.  As surely as we received from the first Adam , we can have confidence that we also receive from Jesus.

King David -- David was LIKE Jesus in that He was a King after God’s own heart and ruled over his kingdom … God promised in I Sam. 7:16 that David’s throne would be forever ….  Pointing to Jesus who was indeed a descendant of David and His throne is forever!!  Several times Jesus is referred to as “the Son of David”  

Joseph --  while Joseph is not noted as a ‘type’ of Jesus, he so obviously is as I have found 56 ways Joseph is LIKE Jesus …  as in neither have ‘any sin’ attached to them … and both sold for pieces of silver. 

So in our scripture of focus -- Melchizedek is another type that points to Jesus  --  in the ways he is LIKE Him…  

1.    Melchizedek  - His very name means “King of Righteousness”   …  Jesus is our King of Righteousness ….  (Heb. 7:2 , I Cor. 1:30)

2.    Melchizedek -- King of Salem --  Salem is the old name of Jerusalem and means ‘peace’ … and Jesus is our King who is our Peace and He rules  the Heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12:22)

3.    Melchizedek --  served Abram bread and wine ….  Jesus’ gave His body as ‘bread’, His shed blood ‘wine (Matt.26:28-28)

4.    Melchizedek --  has no mother, no father, no genealogy , no beginning or end…  in this he points to Jesus being more than a ‘man’ - that He was truly God come in the flesh  , as God having no mother or father or genealogy or beginning or end …  a very important LIKE that this Melchizedek type shows about Jesus … it is ‘key’ that we know Jesus, while having walked among us as fully man was also fully God !

5.    Melchizedek - a Priest of the Most High God -  a priest that was not from the tribe of Levi (all Old Testament priests had to be)  Here Melchizedek is LIKE Jesus in that he was of a different kind of priest …  Jesus was not a priest according to the old order of the law, but of a higher order .. a new order that allowed for there to be a change in the law … Had Jesus been a priest of the Old Covenant order then we would still be under the law …  but now we are under the New Covenant of grace that Jesus established in His kingdom!

6.    Melchizedek - blessed Abram who had the promises of God --  so Jesus blessed us who have the promises of God …. 

7. Melchizedek received tithes from Abram …  without this detail we might wonder who was greater, Abram who was chosen by God to be the one through whom God would from His nation … or this Melchizedek who was a priest living somewhere in Abram’s area and time.

But Hebrews tells us  - so we are left without doubt -- that the one who receives the tithe is greater than the one who pays it, and the one who is greater blesses the one who is lesser.  (Heb. 7:4 and 7)

So we see that Jesus is pointed to as being the greater -- the one who blesses us, the one to whom we owe our ‘all’ ...not of what we have ‘earned’ but to give back to Him what we did not earn .. (Micah 6:8)
Note - that Melchizedek did not receive tithes from what belonged to Abram but rather from ‘the plunder’ that was in his hand 

8. Melchizedek - the only Old Testament character who was BOTH priest and King … in that he was shown to be LIKE the coming Jesus who would be both High Priest and King ! 

9.  Melchizedek --  lived before the law , therefore not under the law to obey the law …  in that he was LIKE Jesus in that Jesus came to fulfill the law and bring in a NEW law ...that freed us from the obligations of the law ..and put us under the law of ‘love’ that defines the obligations of the New Covenant. 

So we can see the evidence shows that Melchizedek is a type of Jesus and points to what God foretold that the Messiah would be LIKE.  

Not a single person in the Old Testament believed that the Messiah would be other than a man  called and chosen by God, as other godly men had been, so it is important for us today to see that God revealed thousands of years before Jesus was born,  that the coming Messiah would be GOD in human flesh and offer His body as 'bread and wine' for our salvation..  

Interesting to note that even today, there are still many who believe that Jesus was a righteous man but was not ‘God’. 
If they would but look at the ‘evidence’ they would see that it would easily stand in a court of law!