And with this all in mind (this background), you can see why the psalm for today is (surprise, surprise) Psalm 110, the only other place where Melchizedek is mentioned in the Old Testament. If we read the psalm, you’ll see, it’s attributed to David, so it’s set during the Davidic kingdom, and in this case though, what does it say? Psalm 110:4:
The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizʹedek.”
Now what does that mean? Well in context, you’ll remember, from the time of Moses to the time of David, the only people who could be priests were Levites. So at the time of the exodus from Egypt, although before the exodus, any member of any tribe of Israel could be a priest, after the sacrifice to the golden calf in Exodus 32, in a sense God “laicizes”, he defrocks eleven of the twelve tribes and he gives the priesthood just to one. It shrinks, and it’s only now for anyone who’s a member of the tribe of Levi. You have to be a descendant of Aaron, who was a Levite.
But then when David comes along, a thousand years later, around 1,000 B.C., he starts acting as if he himself is a priest. He offers sacrifice in 2 Samuel 6. In the book of Chronicles it even says that David’s sons were priests. So it’s kind of mysterious. What is David doing? He’s acting like he’s both king and priest. Well, why? Why’s he doing that? Well think about it. What city is David king over? Zion. Well, what is Zion? It’s Jerusalem. Well, what’s Jerusalem? It’s Salem. Who was the first king of Salem? Melchizedek. Was he just a king? No, he was both king and priest.
So David, when he comes and he brings the ark up to Jerusalem, he’s acting like he is a new kind of priest, or actually, an old kind of priest. He’s in a sense restoring the priesthood, not after the order of Levi (that’s a later thing, at Moses time), but after the order of Melchizedek. And unlike the priests of Levi who only serve for a few decades, priest of Melchizedek is going to be a priest forever.
Now that all falls apart and the temple gets destroyed within a few hundred years and the monarchy falls apart, it all kind of crumbles; but David is an anticipation of another priest-king in Jerusalem who will also restore the priesthood to all 12 tribes. It’s not going to be a Levitical priesthood, it’s going to be a Melchizedekian priesthood. And that priest is (of course) Jesus Christ, who will come to Jerusalem at the end of his life as the true King of Righteousness, who will gather twelve Apostles, who represent the twelve tribes around him, and unlike those twelve tribes who were laicized in the book of Exodus, Jesus is going to ordain them.
He’s going to consecrate them in Luke 22: “As the Lord covenanted a kingdom to me, so I covenant to you, that you might sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”. And he takes bread, and he takes wine, he identifies it as his body and his blood, and in Luke he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” He commands the twelve to offer a sacrifice of his body and blood and thereby constitutes them priests, not after the order of Levi, but according to the order of Melchizedek, because Jesus is the new Melchizedek, he’s the new (and the true) King of Righteousness, the king of Jerusalem.
And if you have any doubts, what kind of sacrifice does he offer in Jerusalem? It’s bread and wine, an unbloody sacrifice of bread and wine in thanksgiving for the victory over his enemies; not not earthly kings, like Sodom and Gomorrah, but the principalities and the powers of the darkness, over the angelic powers of the kingdom of Satan with which Jesus is at war throughout the Gospel of Luke, throughout the gospel account of his public ministry.
Brant Pitre
Author