Melchisedek: Bread: Wine: Cup &C. Stars: Sand
Through a rift in the dark clouds which encompass the history of Lot we view for a moment the majestic and mysterious figure of Melchisedek, coming forth from Salem with regal welcome and priestly benediction for the victorious servants of the Most High. His sudden appearance is august and imposing besides its typical meaning. The subsequent references of scripture to Melchizedek invest him with a royal grandeur and magnificence, as a type of Christ, altogether unique.
A priest ordinarily is one who has a position of privilege between God and man towards man his function is to disclose the will of God; and towards God he has to advocate, by sacrifice and intercession, the cause of man. Now there are two orders in scripture: the Aaronic, or hereditary; and that of Melchisedek which is prior to Aaron's and of very much grander dignity than his. The peculiarities of this order are, firstly, that it unites the priest's office with that of the king; and, secondly, that, instead of a qualification for the position being given by family descent, as in the order of Aaron, the qualification for this high office consisted in the holy and glorious nature inherent in the one on whom it was bestowed—not extrinsic but intrinsic. Now only God can judge what is in any being apart from his actions or lineage; and this is the peculiar feature here in this type; that the Father who “knoweth the Son,” in all the depth and amplitude of His nature, judges Him to be qualified—by His nature and quite apart from His actions—to be “priest forever after the order of Melchisedek.”
The typical meaning is set forth in such detail in Heb. 7, and is so familiar, that I only point out, (1) that the apostle gives us an example in accepting as a guide the meanings of the names used (at least in some instances), saying, “First being by interpretation King of Righteousness, and after that King of Salem, which is, King of Peace.” Divine peace is always preceded by righteousness: “First pure, then peaceable “; “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other “; “And the work of righteousness shall be peace." (2) He shows that the silence of Scripture may be full of meaning sometimes: no mention is made of any genealogy of Melchisedek in the Old Testament, from which silence he deduces an important chain of reasoning. (3) This priest is a perfect intercessor: Abraham's intercession for Sodom, for instance, was exercised six times; had he gone on once more to the number of perfection, seven, would he not at the rate he was reducing the number of righteous men, we may say, have come down to ask that Sodom should be spared if there should be found even one there? and there certainly was one righteous man, Lot. Who can tell what the result of perfect intercession would have been even in that extreme case? But this priest after the order of Melchisedek “is able to save to the uttermost seeing He maketh intercession.”
Of course there is no special caste of priesthood in the present dispensation, for the simple reason that all Christians are brought into this lofty and privileged position. “Ye are a royal priesthood,” says Peter, writing, not to any clergy or officials amongst them, but to “the strangers scattered.” In Rev. 1:66And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen. (Revelation 1:6) it is said of us that we are made, βασιλεῖαν, a kingdom of priests. Consider what a splendor of magnificence there is in that short phrase—a kingdom of priests!
Melchisedek brings forth bread and wine, emblems of the means of life and happiness. Wine, “that maketh glad the heart of man," has however sometimes a second and very different application in Scripture, where we read of the “cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath.” Treading the winepress is an invariable figure of the execution of judgment. The cup is a symbol of adjudication: the ruler of the feast sent the cup to whom, and in what order, and with what contents he judged best. Hence Psa. 75:7, 87But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another. 8For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them. (Psalm 75:7‑8). “But God is the judge: he putteth down one and setteth up another: for in the hands of the Lord there is a cup.” A judging or “divining cup” was a frequent thing amongst the ancients: Joseph alludes to the idea, Gen. 44:1515And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? wot ye not that such a man as I can certainly divine? (Genesis 44:15). Now this cup may contain either happiness or condemnation. It may be either the “cup of blessing which we bless;” or its contents may be of a nature so dread and awful as to cause the most patient of all sufferers to pray, “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”
There are two other humble domestic utensils which also are used to convey stupendous revelations of the divine nature. One is the bottle of Psa. 56:88Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8), “Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle.” This is an allusion to the ancient tear-bottles or lachrymatories often found in Egyptian tombs. It expresses in a very powerful and living way the sympathy of the Lord with His suffering people. In all their afflictions He is afflicted. Jesus wept. The third symbol is in the expression “Moab is my washpot.” Moab's special sin was pride, the most appropriate punishment for which is scorn— “surely He scorneth the scorner.”
Abram then receives the promise of posterity, and his name is changed to Abraham— “father of a great multitude” when as yet he had no children at all! But God's promise is better than anyone else's performance. The promise is given with a double aspect; his children were to be as the stars, that is, the heavenly family, those who inherit his faith, as shown in Rom. 4:1616Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, (Romans 4:16), which includes every believer; and they were to be as the sand on the sea shore, that is, the earthly posterity: the sea (Gentile world) may beat upon them, “cast up mire and dirt” upon them, and for a time submerge them, but can never dissolve nor assimilate them.
Certainly it is a very wonderful Book which uses figures so diverse and important as the stars of heaven and the sands of earth to express an old man's descendants; and which can at the same time, with a similar disregard for the laws of human rhetoric, take the humblest of common domestic utensils—a cup, a bottle, and a washpot—without loss of gravity or dignity to express the judgment of God, deliberate, vast, balanced, as a solar system; the sympathy of the Lord, descending as the dew upon Hermon, and the scorn of the Almighty scathing as a withering blight.