Passage: Genesis 14:18 Speaker: Pastor Lukus Counterman Series: By Faith
Speaker: Lukus Counterman - Imagine being a child at the state fair and in a moment of excitement, captivated by the lights, sounds, and smells, you get separated from your father. When you realize what’s happened, you get scared and start to panic. You don't know which way to go, where to look, or what to do. You begin to cry, but as you wipe tears from your downturned face, you see a shadow on the ground at the end of an aisle of venders. It looks just like your dad. It makes you really happy and you feel a deep sense of hope. But which is better? The happiness of seeing the shadow, or actually having your dad step around the corner and seeing that it’s really him? Full joy is found in the reality, not the shadow. So it is with Jesus. The Old Testament shadows encouraged our hope (Heb. 8:5), but real joy blossomed with coming of Christ. He came to be our ultimate and final high priest. He came to fulfill and replace all the symbols and shadows. When we look at passages like (Gen. 14:18-20; Psalm 110:4) we see a hopeful shadow in the person of Melchizedek. But it wasn’t until Jesus (Heb. 7) that real joy came to the people of God. “Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man”(Heb. 8:1-2). May God teach us a theology of Melchizedek that points us to his Son, Jesus!