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Pennsylvania Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Eric Walsh

To Know the High Priest

So let's get into God's Word to open up tonight and to kick off our camp meeting.

We're going to start in the book of Hebrews, starting in chapter 4.

For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

And Paul makes this great statement in verse 16.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Our message tonight is entitled, To Know the High Priest.

Let's pray, Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word here at camp meeting and we thank you especially Lord because you are just such a good God.

And now Lord I ask once again that you just make me a nail hammered into the wall and upon that nail hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Father, we want to see and hear from Jesus.

This is our prayer in your precious and holy name.

We're gonna jump to the book of Genesis and I've as I was studying for this, I just kept finding these interesting things.

This is after the 4 kings have come in and they had, they'd attacked.

The 2 of the kings that were attacked and beaten were the King of Sodom and the King of Gomorrah, which tells you this story is proof positive that in fact before the pre-incarnate Christ met with Abraham and the 2 angels went to Sodom and it was destroyed, God had long been working for the salvation of those cities.

When you just read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and read it in just the context of the fire and brimstone, it may seem that God was impatient and even cruel, but when you read it in the in the context of Genesis you realize God was agonizing and working with them and this is 1 of those stories I don't have time to get all the way into it but you would remember that 1 of the Kings taken was Sodom and because Lot lived near Sodom Lot was taken Abraham and you don't really think of Abraham this way but the spirit of prophecy says he was also a mighty warrior.

He took just 318 men and went and whooped all of the coalition of the kings that were against the these other kings and Abraham Abraham wasn't Abraham yet he was still Abram he won the battle.

Verse 14 says just to give you the scripture and when Abram heard that his brother speaking of Lot was taken captive.

He armed his trained servants, born in his own house, 318, and pursued them unto Dan.

And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them and pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.

He brought back all the goods and also brought again his brother Lot and his goods and the women also and the people.

And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedder Lamar and of the kings that were with him at the valley of Sheva, which is the king's dale.

There's a king that hadn't been mentioned yet in the entire chapter and he pops in at verse 18 and says, and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine and he was a priest of the most High God.

1 king is not involved in the skirmishes at all.

1 king is not touched by the evil king's coming.

And I want to submit to you that the attacks on Sodom and Gomorrah, like later happens to Israel and Judah, was an attack, a trial given them that they might realize their need to repent and return to God.

You see, Melchizedek, king of Salem, didn't need that.

Instead, he brings out bread, he brings out drink, and he's a priest of the Most High God.

Verse 19 says, and he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be the Most High God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.

And Abraham, Abram here, gives him tithes of all.

Melchizedek, as we will see, means king of righteousness.

And on top of that, he's also the king of Salem.

He is a type of Christ is the way that we understand it.

Some have argued that maybe this is Shem still alive all these years later.

But I would, I would, I don't think if when the Bible doesn't speak clearly, here's what I would say.

This was a man who was right with God at a time when the world was in chaos.

We know this by what happens to the lands of all the other kings mentioned.

Divine vengeance At this point in history in the Bible is an inflection point of the great controversy.

Right as it seems the world is about to go Dark with evil, Melchizedek shows up, is introduced to Abram, and in the next chapter, Abram is shown the stars of heaven, and the Bible says when he is told that that's how his offspring is going to be, he believes God and the Bible then says to Abraham, it was credited to him as righteousness.

After meeting Melchizedek, Abraham exhibits righteousness by faith.

So important is this figure that in Psalms 110, verse 1 it says, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion.

Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power and the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning.

Thou are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." Who is this talking about?

Melchizedek was this great priest in the old world at the time when Abram needed him.

Abram was about to come out of darkness into spiritual light, knowing the true God, trusting the true God to be the father of the people through whom the Messiah would come.

But literally Melchizedek is who Christ is also a priest after.

We'll see why that's so important in a second.

Malachi chapter 3 speaks to what happened when we have the priest come to a time of judgment, which is where Melchizedek was as we saw, as we see later in Genesis, when the cities are destroyed.

Malachi 3, 1 says, behold, I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in, behold he shall come, says the Lord of hosts.

Now let me, let me jump ahead a little bit and make this thing plain.

This message is a response to the idea that we as Adventists have a doctrine and a theology that is not conducive to feeling assurance of salvation.

And I want to tell you from the outset as you so as I go through this you get it the the only way you have the message we have or are exposed to it and don't feel an assurance of Salvation is if you don't know the high priest.

It is ignorance of the high priest and his function that would make you think that you cannot have assurance of salvation.

That's why it says here, he shall suddenly come to his temple.

Now I want you to think about this there's a couple ways you can interpret it but prophetically 1 of the ways is that in 1844 Christ suddenly came to the most holy part of the heavenly temple.

Now watch this verse 2, but who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appears?

So when this time of judgment comes, this day of atonement in 1844 we believe it started, who is going to be able to, to, to, to, to withstand it?

Who's going to be able to stand when he appears here's the key the work of the high priest is given here he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller soap and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that he may offer unto the Lord an offering in what?

The work of the high priest in heaven now is the work of making a people righteous.

That's why in Ephesians he says he's coming back for a church without spot or wrinkle or any type of blemish.

The work that began in 1844 was a special work.

It is 1 of the reasons people don't like to even discuss it, why it is often swept under the rug.

It is a statement of a very active work, just as Melchizedek began the process of establishing a people through Abram when he blessed him that would bring in the Messiah.

That work in 1844 began the process of a work that would bring in Christ the Messiah the second time.

Because for Christ to return, the Bible gives us 2 things that must happen.

He has to have a church without spot or blemish.

But the other 1 is that this gospel must go throughout the world and then shall the end come.

The work of the high priest today is to get the church into a position where the church can do this work.

It says, and I'll come near to you to judgment.

And the fear that people have is judgment.

1 guy online actually said, a now former Adventist, that he felt afraid under our doctrine because he was told that his name could come up in the investigative judgment, and if at that moment he was eating a piece of pepperoni pizza, he'd be wiped out.

A lot of folk don't really understand the high priest, they also don't understand judgment.

To Know the High Priest

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