A Superior Advocate

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The Superior Priesthood of Christ

This becomes clearer if another priest like Melchizedek appears, who did not become a priest based on legal regulation about physical descent, but based on the power of an indestructible life, for it has been testified: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

So the previous command is annulled because it was weak and unprofitable, but the law perfected nothing. But a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God.

None of this happened without an oath, for others became priests without an oath, but he became a priest with an oath made by the one who said to him, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever."

Because of this oath, Jesus has also become a guarantee of a better covenant. Now many have become Levitical priests since they are prevented by death from remaining in office. But because he always remains forever, he holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him since he always lives to intercede for them.

For this is the kind of high priest we need: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as high priests do—first for their own sins, then for those of the people. He did this once for all time when he offered himself.

For the law appoints as high priest men who are weak, but the promise of the oath which came after the law appoints a son who has been perfected forever. Now the main point of what is being said is this: We have this kind of high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and the true tabernacle that was set up by the Lord and not by man. — Hebrews 7:11-8:2

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the first book of the Harry Potter series, there's a name that keeps getting introduced. The name is introduced and then nobody says anything, or they talk about "he who must not be named." It's the name Voldemort, who's the big bad guy of the series. But over and over, J.K. Rowling, very smart, plants the name. So you're curious as you read along. You're like, "Who is this? Who is this mysterious Voldemort? Who is this he who must not be named?"

In many ways, reading the book of Hebrews has been like this for us. Three times over the course of this summer and spring as we've preached through this, we keep hearing this name: Melchizedek. Some of you may be like, "Melchizedek? I don't know how you say this name." But three times he kind of drops the name and then moves on. He doesn't say anything more about it. And so today we're finally picking up in chapter seven some details, some information. Who is this man of mystery from the Old Testament—this Melchizedek?

Well, a couple things about him. First, his name is mysterious. His name Melchizedek is actually a mashup. You know what a mashup is in music? I remember several years ago one of my boys was explaining a mashup, and there's Danger Mouse who mashed up a Jay-Z album and a Beatles album—the Black Album and the White Album becomes the Gray Album. That's a mashup, right? An amalgamation of two things. And this is what Melchizedek's name is like. It's putting together two words in Hebrew and they become a new word. So Melek means king, and Sadiq means righteousness. And when we're first introduced to this person, it becomes one mashup name: Melchizedek. It's a description of his character. He is, as we read here, the king of righteousness. He's a righteous king.

Second, his origin is mysterious, and this is highlighted here. He appears in the Old Testament without genealogy. Now Melchizedek is only mentioned three places in the Bible: the book of Genesis, once in the Psalms, and right here in Hebrews. But the writer of Hebrews makes a big point: we don't know where he came from. Now, that may not be a big deal to us, but in the ancient Near East, your resume was your family. The question always when you met someone is, "Who's your mama? Who's your daddy? Where did you come from? Who are your people?" That's what was really, really important, and Melchizedek shows up on the scene without any genealogy. He's mysterious.

Third, his importance is mysterious. Again, the writer of Hebrews makes the point that here's Abraham—Abraham is the father of the faith, the patriarch. His name itself means "big daddy" in Hebrew. That's a literal translation. Big daddy. He gives a tenth of everything he owns to this mysterious Melchizedek. And the writer says here, the inferior always gives to the superior.

The lesser always gives to the greater. This is a person even greater than Abraham and you could have heard the people in the first century reading this like, "Are you serious? How could there be anybody more important than Melchizedek?" His position is mysterious. It says here he is king of Salem. Now read that as shorthand for a city you've heard of—Jerusalem. He's king of a place that later becomes Jerusalem in the Bible. So he has a literal home he's from. But the writer of this reads that not just literally but also allegorically because Salem is the same as the word that probably many of you know: shalom, which means peace. He's the king of peace. He's the king of peace and the king of righteousness.

But that's not all. Melchizedek is king and priest. Now this was just not done. Nobody in our country gets to be president and supreme court justice. Those are separate offices. In the Old Testament, the priest is a person who represents God to the people, goes in before God on behalf of the people. The king represents God another way. The king is one who represents God to the people. They flow in completely opposite directions. You're asking for a head-on collision. Nobody can be president and supreme court justice and yet Melchizedek is both. He's a king and he's a priest.

Now this passage—I know you're getting a PhD in Old Testament this morning. Man, this is heavy stuff but it's critically important that you understand this. This is not Bible trivia because what we read here is that Jesus steps into the shoes of Melchizedek and he does his ministry in the order of Melchizedek, and this is vitally important for you to understand. This passage sort of sheds a spotlight on Jesus this way. He is an advocate like none other.

The Need for an Advocate

Now, I know you are probably familiar with that term. Advocacy or advocates. It's all over our language in our country. An advocate is someone who speaks for people who have no voice or represents and validates a person's experience or history, who represents someone in a setting where they could not represent themselves.

But here's a question for you this morning: Why would you need an advocate? Why would I need an advocate? One of the universal experiences of being a person, a human in this world, is the sense that deep down, there's something really wrong with me. Deep down, I'm not okay.

Now, I want to describe this two ways. Let's talk about this intellectually, theoretically, and then I'm going to talk about this personally.

On the intellectual, theoretical side, all kinds of writers and philosophers throughout history have tried to describe this. Sigmund Freud has a book, Civilization and its Discontents, and he describes this feeling—something's deeply wrong with me—as being at the very center of that book. He describes it as guilt, but it's a much more powerful word in the German: unbehagen, which is more akin to our words guilt and shame fused together. He said this is what it is to be a person. You have to trade this universal sense of guilt and shame for living in a just society. Every person has a conscience and this conscience keeps us from killing one another and if you feel bad about the things you've done, that keeps you from hurting other people. That's the universal experience of all people—the sense of guilt and shame.

We can define it closer. We can make it better. There's a sense of guilt that relates to things that we have done that are wrong. Maybe you had to read Macbeth in high school. Maybe you suffered through Macbeth this past year in high school. Macbeth is a story about people who do things wrong and how they feel bad about them. There's the queen in the story, Lady Macbeth, who orchestrates the death of her husband and she feels terrible about it. So she's sleepwalking in the castle and she's dreaming and as she's dreaming, it's like she's picturing her hands are covered in blood and she's scrubbing them over and over and she keeps saying, "Out, out spots! Out, out spots!" because she knows that she's guilty.

Well, we're a culture right now that feels less and less guilty. We're told, "You're okay. Stop feeling bad about you. You're good." And you know what's funny about that? People still feel bad. We feel really bad a lot of the time. There's another word for that: shame. There's an unfinished work by Franz Kafka, The Trial. It's about a man named Joseph K. And Joseph K goes to court. He wakes up. He goes to court. He's on trial, but he never knows why he's on trial. The charges aren't ever clarified to him. He doesn't know, but yet there's something in him that says, "Yeah, that's right. I'm kind of a bad person."

And that's something different from guilt. Guilt is feeling bad for what you've done. Shame is feeling bad for who you are. Guilt is I did something and I feel bad about it. Shame is I feel bad for just who I am.

Now, enough on the academic side. What about the personal side? Let me ask you some questions if you can identify with this. The sense that something's wrong with you.

Why is it that you work so hard? Why don't you actually take days off? Or why do you check your email on vacation? Why are you always available? Why do you always take text messages and respond to them? Could it be that your inability to rest comes from a deep need to prove yourself because deep down, you know there's something wrong with you?

What about this one? Why can't you ever seem to confront other people? Somebody does something wrong to you. It's very clear. You need to speak up. You need to defend yourself. You need to say something, and you don't. You hold back. You're agreeable to a fault. What keeps you from speaking up? Is it maybe there's a sense that there's something deeply wrong with me and therefore I can't really address it? I never feel okay enough to address it with another person.

Or why is it that others of you confront all the time? You love to confront. It's like everything's a nail and you've got a hammer in your hand and you're just confronting all the time. Could it be that you feel something deeply wrong with you? That if you could point out the wrongs in others, nobody ever looks really at you.

Why can't you commit to another person? Why are you in serial dating relationships or never have really close friends? Don't let people really get too close? Is there a sense in you that something is deeply wrong with you? Can't let them see the real person. Afraid of intimacy. Afraid of vulnerability.

What about why can't you set boundaries in your relationships? You know you need to set boundaries. You always say yes. You always are agreeable to a fault. Why do you have to have other people's approval? Is there a sense that if I'm agreeable, then they won't look at the real me? They're pleased with what I do.

Why do you need to be right all the time? Why so defensive? Why do you have to justify everything that you do? Are you covering up something on the inside—this feeling like I am not okay? I'm not an okay person.

What about this? Why are you so agonized over your looks? Why do you spend so much time and money and energy worrying about what you look like? Is there a sense that if people can see the outside of me and they approve of that, they won't look deeper?

I know that's an awful list of questions. I could keep going. But here it is: Deep down, there is in each of us a universal sense that there's something really wrong with me and that I'm broken, that I'm shameful.

Why We Need Melchizedek

And this is why we need so much Melchizedek. This is why you need to understand who Melchizedek is. There are four words that I want you to pay attention to in this passage: Priest, righteousness, king, peace. Let's take the first two. Priest, righteousness.

Melchizedek is the high priest of righteousness. Hebrews compares the ministry of Jesus as a priest with the Old Testament priesthood. The Old Testament priest went into the temple and took a sacrifice to pay for the guilt of sin. They paid an offering, and that shed blood covered over the sin of the people. There was a transaction that was going on there. And yet, that system was always provisional and always limited.

We read here that all these priests died. None of them were able to keep being priests. All of them were sinners. All of them had their own sins to have to deal with. They had to keep making offerings all the time. They never could stop and rest, like, this is sufficient. It was always provisional and limited.

But Jesus—this is what we read here—Jesus is none of these things. He is a high priest who truly meets our need. One who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart for sinners, exalted above the heavens.

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once and for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints high priest men in all their weakness but the oath which came after the law appointed the son who has been made perfect forever. — Hebrews 7

Imagine you're taking a test. You're back in school. I know, summer break. Why am I talking about this? But you're back in school and you're taking a test and the night before you study over the notes, you go back over the practice test that your teacher gave you. You rehearse all this stuff. And after the test, you come home and your parents ask you, how did you do?

Like, I think I did okay on this one. But the next week when the teacher hands out all the papers to everybody in class, you get your paper and on it is a big fat F written in red ink, circled. You look over the paper, and there are all the X marks, all the things you got wrong. And then you look at the essay questions. You're like, well, at least I did okay in the essays, right? No, you flip over to the essay questions and there—true story, this is what happened to me in college—your teacher has drawn a hangman on a noose with a dead person on it. Yeah, my English professor. I was an English major. Not that great, guys. I got that for bad grammar and bad spelling errors in college. Right? But this is what your teacher has done on your paper. But then you look, you fold it back over, you're like, how am I going to explain this to my parents? And you look at the top of the test and oddly enough, your name has been crossed out. Somebody crossed out your name on the top of the test. It's your handwriting. But you look again and somebody has crossed out your name and written JESUS. Jesus' test. And then the teacher realizes, I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. Wait, here's your test and comes and takes the paper from you and hands you another paper that you don't recognize. And you look over the test and it says in red ink, 100% A plus plus plus. And you look through and all these check marks and smiley faces by your essays and way to go. Again, you flip back over, you're like, sure this can't be right. You look at the top of the test and again, the name's crossed out. Jesus' name is crossed out. Your name is written in. That's your grade. That's what you got on the test.

This is what atonement is. This is what we have in Jesus as our high priest, one who takes away our guilt and gives us his righteousness, takes away the F and gives you the A plus. You get what is his, he gets what is yours. This is the depth of the gospel.

Therefore, it says, he is able to save completely those who come to him.

Now that would be a great sermon, but that's not all, like they say in advertising. Because Jesus is not just a priest who gives us righteousness. He is also a king who gives us peace.

Priest and King

What does a king do? Kings are different than a priest. A king, like I said before, represents God to the people but you've seen enough movies. You know what kings do? Kings issue pronouncements. They issue edicts. They say it and it's done. You ever seen the movie The Ten Commandments, the old one, the Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner one? Yul Brynner represents the Pharaoh in the movie and he has this phrase that he says, "So let it be written, so let it be done." He makes the pronouncements. That's what a king does. His word is law.

What kind of king is Melchizedek? Remember, he is king of Salem, Shalom. Peace. You don't need just a priest. I mean, that'd be great news if it was just a priest. But you need a king priest. You need a king priest, one who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set by the Lord, the one who always lives to make intercession, king priest, is a better hope by which we draw near. The king priest's reign is forever because he is forever.

I want you to think about all the ways that your life and mine is marked by shame. Working too much. Never confronting. Always confronting. Inability to commit. Inability to set boundaries with other people. Defensiveness. Need to be right all the time. Preoccupation with how you look. What are you doing with your shame?

So many Christians, we live as if Jesus is just our priest and man, he is our priest. Praise God. We can say all these things. Right? We can say, Jesus deals with our guilt. Hallelujah. Jesus forgives our sin. Hallelujah. Yes, he is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to him. Hallelujah. But why are you so joyless? And why are you so driven, and why do you feel bad all the time? Because all you think of is Jesus as priest.

Some of you are eaten up with shame. Have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that he's also the king of peace. He is the king of Shalom. He's the one who makes the pronouncements. So, let it be written. So, let it be done.

Here's what it means not only to believe in Jesus, but to access Jesus. It means that, yes, you've gone to him to forgive your sin. Really important. That's what repentance looks like. You go to your high priest for salvation from the guilt of your sin, but you keep going over and over with your shame. And you let the king of peace speak a word of peace into your heart, into the places where you can't confront, can't commit, can't set boundaries, where you over confront, you work too much, where you're consumed with how you look and come across all the time. You let the king of peace speak a word of hope into all of those areas.

Every time you see those things rise up, you go to him and you say, "King Jesus, I need you again. I need you to talk again. Can you say it again?"

Do you know how God talks to his children? Let me remind you. How does Jesus talk to his kids? It's a quote:

You are precious and honored in my sight, and I love you. I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. The Lord your God is among you, a warrior who saves. I will rejoice over you with gladness. I will delight over you with singing. Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. Do not fear for you will not be ashamed. Neither be disgraced for you will not be put to shame. You shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.

That's how a king talks.

Better Call Jesus

By way of conclusion, one of my boys and I have been watching Breaking Bad. We're in season three. I can't quite recommend the show—it's not a great show. You may be embarrassed. Your pastor watches that show. I'm sorry. It's not an endorsement.

But there's a character in the show that I really like, and his name is Saul Goodman. Saul Goodman is a shady lawyer—I mean, is a crook. But he has this tagline I love: "Better Call Saul." It's actually a spin-off show with the same title. Better Call Saul. It's on billboards. It's all over the place. And it's because you need an advocate. You need a lawyer. You need somebody who's going to speak up for you.

I love the tagline. Do you know that you have Jesus Christ on retainer all the time? Listen, he lives to intercede for us. He lives for it. We talk about living for things like football and golf and restaurants. He lives to intercede for you. He loves being on retainer in your life.

But are you living your life where you're accessing your lawyer? Are you going to him, your advocate? It's one thing to profess faith in Jesus. It's another to use him. It's another to access him, to go to him, to be with him, to draw near to him, to linger in his presence.

It's going to require something of you to apply this sermon today. It's going to require time. The currency of spiritual growth is time in silence with Jesus. Can I say that again? The currency of spiritual growth is silence in the presence of Jesus. Drawing near to the king.

I need you to say it again, Jesus. I'm back in my shame spiral. I'm back in all the old patterns. I need you to say it again. Better call Jesus. Better call Jesus.

Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the gospel, that it speaks to the very center of our need for you. That's not just in the past. It is a day by day, moment by moment need for you.

Father, will you teach us to be those who are hungry for a word from you? I pray for my brothers and sisters here this morning. Pray that they would draw near every day and listen for you to bless them.

Pray for those who are here this morning who don't know you yet. Father, I pray that you would show them how beautiful the gospel is, how very much we need it. But this isn't an old story. This is our lifeline.

Lord, we praise you and honor you and thank you. Lord, feed us today, renew our faith, encourage us in your word. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you respond in song together to God's word?