Jesus, the Eternal High Priest

1 The LORD said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool." 2 The LORD shall send the rod of Your strength out of Zion. Rule in the midst of Your enemies! 3 Your people shall be volunteers In the day of Your power; In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, You have the dew of Your youth. 4 The LORD has sworn And will not relent, "You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek." 5 The Lord is at Your right hand; He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. 6 He shall judge among the nations, He shall fill the places with dead bodies, He shall execute the heads of many countries. 7 He shall drink of the brook by the wayside; Therefore He shall lift up the head. David fulfilled many roles during his lifetime. David was not only a shepherd who became a king, he was poet who wrote most of the psalms. He also became a prophet by God’s Holy Spirit and gave us some of the most descriptive and detailed pictures of Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, in the Old Testament, such as Psalm 22 and Psalm 110. David fulfilled the roles of king, poet, and prophet, but he never was a High Priest. Psalm 110 is quoted or alluded to in the New Testament more than any other psalm, verse 1 at least twenty-five times and verse 4 another five times. Ten of these quotations or allusions are in the book of Hebrews alone. And especially in the book of Hebrews, the Messianic aspects of this chapter are quoted and used to assure us of the calling and ministry of Jesus Christ as our High Priest today. The first three verses of Psalm 110 speak of the deity and exaltation of Jesus Christ as King of kings who will one day subdue all the other kings and rule over all the earth. Now, when we come to verse 4, which is the central verse of the psalm, David announces that Messiah will also be a priest, something unheard of in Old Testament history. “The LORD has sworn And will not relent, "You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek." This verse is very important to the message of the book of Hebrews. Please take time to look up these verses in Hebrews that directly quote from Psalm 110:4. Hebrews 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:17, 21. Also, you might want to read the entire chapters of Hebrews 7 through 10 where the present high priestly ministry of Christ in heaven is described in detailed. If Jesus were on earth, He could not minister as a priest because He was from the tribe of Judah and not from Levi. But because His priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek, who was both a king and priest (Genesis 14:18-24), Jesus can minister in heaven today. There are some who believe that Melchizedek was an Old Testament appearance of Jesus Christ on earth.  But others believe that he is only a type of Jesus in His present priestly ministry. (See Heb. 5:1-11; 7-8; Zech. 6:12.) To be a High Priest in the Old Testament you had to be in the tribe of Levi and from the family or Aaron, the first High Priest. No Aaronic priest was "a priest forever" because each high priest died and was replaced by his eldest son. Being a mere human, Melchizedek died, but there is no record of either his birth or death in the Scriptures. This makes him a type of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God and the High Priest forever. In Jesus Christ, David has a throne forever (2 Sam. 7:13, 16, 25, 29; Luke 1:30-33) and a priest forever, and all who have trusted Christ share in those blessings. Jesus Christ is our glorified King-Priest in heaven, interceding for us (Rom. 8:34). I love Hebrews 7:24-25, which make this so clear. “But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” Today, we need to remember that His throne is a throne of grace to which we may come at any time to find the help we need (Heb. 4:14-16). God bless!