Christian Sermon Transcripts

Sample Transcript

If you read the first four chapters of Chronicles, there’s a whole lot of begetting going on, and people have descendants. And there are reasons that the Bible has genealogies. The Scriptures even give Jesus’s genealogy through his human descendants or his human parents. They give his genealogy in both Matthew and Luke. But Melchizedek is mentioned without genealogy, and the author of Hebrews says it’s like he has no beginning. It’s like he’s eternal.

³ Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. (Hebrews 7:3, NRSV)

You know what genealogy means? You had a beginning. And so, the writer of Hebrews paints this picture as Melchizedek being a type of Christ. He’s a type of Christ for us. He’s a picture of that, and he says this priesthood supersedes the old priesthood. It is a superior priesthood. The Levitical priesthood is a type and a picture of something greater, and the Levitical priesthood was ineffectual. I mean, it was a system that really didn’t work.

You had a high priest who had to be sinless, and then he had to offer a perfect sacrifice to atone for the sins of the people, and they had to keep doing it over and over again. Every time a high priest had to get another high priest, and every year you had to bring in a new unblemished animal. Then people would say, you know, Jerusalem was a river of blood with all the sacrifices that the priest continually made, not just the sacrifices for the day of atonement, but all the sacrifices that they made. And it always had to be an animal without blemish, and the priest had to be without stain, and they weren’t. They even had to have the priest offer a sacrifice for himself.

Jesus is the perfect priest according to the order of Melchizedek. The Levitical priesthood has served its purpose. It has been a pointer, a road sign. It points to this other priest from Judah. Where does the law say anything about the line of Judah? It doesn’t, but what it does say is there’s going to be a priest from this order. He is going to have victory over God’s enemies. He’s going to be a warrior priest, a warrior king. He will lift up his head in victory and he becomes our eternal priest. He is the perfect priest. He is without sin. That’s why it’s so important that He’s sinless. That’s why God had to send His son. To save humanity, we need someone who is fully God and fully man. He has to be a man, one of us, to be a priest.

It’s all about you, Jesus. It’s all about you. He is our high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. God says this, Swear to me, I swear to me. This is my answer. And it works forever. Amen. Now you understand Hebrews 7.