The Order of Melchizedek remains one of the most unknown teachings in Scripture.  What is it?  Who makes up the group?  Can anyone besides Jesus the Messiah actually belong to this priestly order?  We first learn about “the order” of Melchizedek in the following passage:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.  [8] Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.  [9] And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,  [10] being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
    [11] About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.  [12] For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,  [13] for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.  [14] But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  Hebrews 5:7-14 (ESV) 

Please take a few moments to re-read the above passage and take special note of the highlighted words and phrases.  These words are the keys for understanding this teaching.  I will not review the foundational teachings the writer refers to right after this in Hebrews 6 because I have done that in previous posts.  Please see chapters 19 to 25 of the Image of God series as well as my books When We Awake and Food Sacrificed to Idols.

Let’s begin this series with the little understood idea of food in Scripture.  Throughout the Bible food represents doctrine, teaching, or ideas relating to the knowledge of God and walking in his ways.  Notice in Hebrews 5:14 that only mature believers who partake of  solid food will be able to understand the Order of Melchizedek which Hebrews also calls the teaching about righteousness. 

We can see how dominant this theme of spiritual food is by reviewing the first appearance of Melchizedek.  Genesis 14 describes how four kings from the East defeat the five kings of the area of Sodom.  The four kings then take as booty all the provisions of Sodom and Gomorrah as well as certain prisoners, including Abram’s nephew Lot, which brings us to the following passage that introduces Melchizedek:

When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. [15] And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. [16] Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsman Lot with his possessions, and the women and the people.
    [17] After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). [18] And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) [19] And he blessed him and said,
     “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
         Possessor of heaven and earth;
    [20]  and blessed be God Most High,
        who has delivered your enemies into your hand!”

    And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.  Genesis 14:14-20 (ESV)

Melchizedek appears for the first time known in history with “bread and wine.”  This bread represents the body and this wine the blood of Jesus himself.  Jesus told us that we must eat his flesh and blood, which is represented by the bread and the wine, in order to live.  He told us his words were spiritual.   (This means that we are not to take them literally!  We do not actually eat flesh and blood.)  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” he said.  Thus Jesus teaches us to eat the spiritual truth that comes directly from him and his Father.

Good bread is God’s Word.  Good wine is God’s Spirit.  And there is also bad bread and bad wine.  Bad bread is false doctrine which always contains a mixture of God’s truth with man’s defiled flesh added to it; bad wine speaks of demonic, satanic, carnal spirituality.  The bread and wine of Melchizedek speaks of the good food of God.  Further, the relationship of Melchizedek and Abram deals with the idea that a man of faith can eat and digest the food of God.  This relates to the idea of Christians being able to assimilate the deeper truths of Christianity, doctrines that go beyond the “milk” of the Word.  The “teaching about righteousness” is one of these doctrines, one of the deep spiritual truths of God.  Anyone who becomes part of the Order of Melchizedek must understand and walk in the truth of this profound teaching.  Otherwise, he remains a child, and as we learn in the New Testament, a child does not yet possess his inheritance.