Clough Genesis Lesson 46

Principles of Defense; Abram and Melchizedek – Genesis 13:14-24

Genesis 14 is another episode in our theme that we have been working with over the past few Sunday mornings, and that is Abraham is insisted upon by many writers of Scripture to be the model of faith. That means that Abraham’s life is divinely presented in the Scriptures to be a means of teaching us what faith would look like if we had it. So let’s look again at the doctrine of faith; review does not harm. The first thing we say that in order to believe, for Abraham to have believed, he had to have something in his soul. You can’t believe, biblically that is, you can’t believe without first having something supplied to your soul. You’ve got to have this, otherwise what you have is not faith; what you’ve got then is self-hypnosis, or autohypnosis; that’s possible, you can hypnotize yourself into believing. You know, it’s a wonderful day, it’s a wonderful day, it’s a wonderful day, it’s a wonderful day and it’s pouring and everything’s happening, you’ve had three auto wrecks going to work and it’s a wonderful day. It’s not a wonderful day, it’s horrible, but because you’ve hypnotized yourself into thinking it’s a wonderful day this is the way you operate. And that must be distinguished from biblical faith. In the Bible faith is real.

And Abraham had to have certain basic elements in his soul. Some of these elements, for one thing he had to believe in creation. He had to believe that the whole of history, the universe, is a product of a sovereign God; not of chance, not of some evolving process; he had to believe in God, which meant in his day he had to cut loose from all the heathen mythology. The next time you hear somebody tell you that Genesis 1-11 is myth throw this one back at them: why is it, ask the person, why is it that in every ancient religion the gods are made out of previously existing material. For example, Tiamat, the goddess of Babylonian mythology comes out of the salt in the fresh waters; in other words, the waters precede the gods. Now why is that you find that in Canaan, you find that in Egypt, you find that in Mesopotamia, you find it in all the areas that we can check. When you come to the Bible it’s the only place, the ONLY place where God preexists the materials, the matter of the universe. He calls it into existence.

Well, Abraham had to make this great break like you and I have to make the break from evolution because if we really believe in evolution, we really believe that everything is done by Chance, we can’t believe in the promises of God. One or the other has to be sovereign; you have to choose. The other thing Abraham had to have is a belief in the fall, that man was a sinner; otherwise he would have taken himself too serious. And then he had to have some promises of God, that God promised a land, a seed, and a worldwide blessing. Now that’s the absolute minimum to really get started believing; there’s a lot of other things but that’s what Abraham had to have to get started, a basic foundation in his soul spiritually. We know he had it; some of you like to do a little reading and if you want a little exciting side material on Abraham, read Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, the first part of the book, and read there how he visualizes the conversion of Abraham. It’s kind of an interesting story; it’s not Scripture but it represents an ancient Jewish viewpoint.

A second thing in the doctrine of faith is that faith can’t be measured, taste, felt or seen directly; there’s no instrument, no X-ray machine that we can use to say ah, we’ve got 3 grams of faith per cubic centimeters. Nothing like this will work. So therefore faith has to be seen indirectly and it’s seen indirectly by a modification in somebody’s behavior in thought, word and deed. That’s how you can see faith and that’s what the Bible says. Even the apostles did not have a faith machine where they could go around with a litmus paper test and say he’s a believer, he’s a believer, he’s not a believer, he’s not a believer, he’s a believer. No way, the apostles just simply said if you continue in the Word then you have been born again, and if you don’t, well, then you never were born again. So this is the second point about faith is that it can only be indirectly observed by a person’s thought, word and deed, gradually, not perfectly, but gradually coming into conformity with the Scriptures.

Now a third thing about faith and one that is very much seen in these Abraham stories is that there are times when faith calls for you to do absolutely nothing but completely rest. Faith called for Abraham to absolutely rest in the matter of Lot; remember his business partnership broke up, the guy walks off with the best assets in the ranching business, irrigated pastures and so Abraham, what does he do; he does nothing, he rests and God says that’s right Abraham, you’ve had your business ripped out from under you but you just rest, relax and I’ll take care of it. And God did take care of it. Conversely, sometimes faith impels us to do something, like that question somebody asked, what about our need, our need is to eat, and the most frequent occurrence, obviously since the times of the wilderness I have not heard of God dropping manna from heaven; ever since the manna incident we have had to work for our food. Tell some people in Washington about it, it would be a new lesson. But those of us who are normal work for our food and have for some time. So that is faith-doing; we do it by faith that if we’ll do this, then God will provide the rest and make up for the slack.

Finally, Abraham was oriented to God’s grace. Those of you who have been reading in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, remember the illustration along the house by the road, when Interpreter takes them through the rooms and they look in this one room and there’s a fire, and there’s a man sitting there with water and he swishes water on the fire and he keeps doing this all the time, water on the fire, water on the fire, water on the fire, and Christian asked him, hey, what’s he trying to do and why can’t he put out the fire? And Interpreter says look behind the walls, where the fire is and there’s another person there squirting oil on the fire from behind the wall. And they ask Interpreter, what does this mean? And he says the man who is squirting oil on the fire is the Lord Jesus Christ supplying grace to your soul and the man who is the one with the water trying to put out the fire is Satan, but he never can quite do it because the supply of oil keeps coming. There’s orientation to grace, that for Abraham to function requires a continual input of grace from God.

Now we have said, because Genesis 14 is a most crucial passage on violence we have made several points here. I reiterate these points and I will amplify them by a study of verses 14-15 and some of the fine points of those verses before going on to the rest of Genesis 14. Genesis 14 is a classic passage in the Bible you want to remember, the next time somebody brings up the discussion of righteous violence.

Now there’s a piece of unbiblical human viewpoint that is quite popular today, even in Christian circles, and I can understand, we live in a violent era and naturally the pendulum never stays in one place and people get so fed up with one thing that they throw the baby out with the bath water and go to the other extreme. And because of the violence in our society now we’ve got a lot of people coming up with a new theme and the new theme, you get it on the media, do this and do that, and that is all violence is wrong. But the sentence “all violence is wrong” is wrong because the Bible clearly teaches in Genesis 14 that some violence is right. So therefore it’s not quite so easy to say all violence is wrong. The Bible doesn’t tell us that. In fact, most people who say all violence is wrong say it because they believe in something opposite to the Scripture. They believe peace at any price, and that’s wrong. Does Jesus sit down at a SALT talk with Satan to mutually disarm heaven and hell so we can have peace between the two? This is the backbone of the Scripture; there is no disarmament treaty between heaven and hell or between Christ and Satan. So at least in that instance violence is right. There is such a thing as a godly just form of violence; a violent intervention into evil as Abraham illustrates. Abraham here, then, was applying faith and abiding by the Word of God to violently intervene against evil. Abraham, in this sense, was a doer and not just a hearer of the Word.

Now because this, as I said, is a classic reference I would be remiss in my duties as a pastor, and since we do live in a violent society, of going any further without giving you some guidelines, biblical guidelines on how you ought to respond to possibilities in your future life of violence personally to you. Now what is a Christian supposed to do? Do we have places we can go in the Bible to handle this particular problem. So let’s look at Genesis 14:14-15. “When Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and he pursued the terrorists unto Dan. [15] And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and he smote them, and he pursued them unto Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.”

Now once again, this little episode of Abram wasn’t just a little friendly hike over to the Jordan Valley and back; it involved a long, long march and a grueling one; if it was done in summer it was really grueling because I was there one summer and we drove down the Jordan River, that is all under sea level and it is hot, very hot down in there. But the enemy marauding army started down in here and went way up here to Dan, way up in the north part. Now that distance is about 150 miles that they marched; that’s just to get to Dan. And then it’s about 50 miles northeast of there down the Damascus Road before you get to Damascus, over what is now called the Golan Heights. So that’s a long, long march, we’re talking 200 miles, and they didn’t have jeeps. So they were tired men. And Abram, with 318 men kept pursuing and pursuing and pursuing and pursuing until he attacked them, annihilated them, and got all the goods back, as listed in verse 16.

Now the best summary of defenses that I have ever seen is by a man who’s a former Marine who has made a study of personal defense for over 20 years and some of you who are gun buffs may know about Mr. Jeff Cooper. Now some of his summaries of principles are found in a small book, Principles of Personal Defense. Now these were not written in the context of a Bible class but the principles, ironically, are all found in Genesis 14:14-15. So I’m going to use Mr. Cooper’s seven principles of defense that he uses and add one of my own from the Scriptures and go through verses 14 and 15 with you and look at some of the details. These are to provide Scriptural guidelines to you if you get yourself, and hopefully you won’t, but if it ever does come to the point where you need to face a violent assault upon your person, and I remind you that it’s becoming increasingly probable that you will face this kind of situation. As a Christian, what are you going to do about it?

The first principle that I would say from the Scriptures, before we get to the seven of Mr. Cooper’s, is your spiritual defenses against physical violence. When you are in a dangerous area it may sound stupid and trite, but pray, just simply pray for protection so you won’t have to get yourself into a violent situation. Now I can’t be sure of why these kinds of prayers work in sometimes the spectacular ways they work; I can only guess, but my guess is that demonic powers, the principalities and powers in the unseen world around us are behind much of the physical violence that goes on, and when you pray in the name of Christ against such powers you have some way of shorting them out, energy wise, whether it’s directly from the throne of God, I have no idea how it works, I just observe.

Let me narrate two experiences of people in our own congregation in the last few years that have had this thing happen. First of all, about four years ago we had a group of 3 or 4 girls that roomed together in an apartment in the rape zone over by Texas Tech and sure enough, one night some guy broke in their apartment and was going to do his thing, had a knife all ready and so on. And one of the girls, of course it was bedlam when they woke up and found this fellow in the bedroom, but one of them, I don’t know whether it was preplanned or what, but one of them just happened to think, and she looked him and she said you get out of my apartment in the name of Jesus Christ. And this guy just turned to rubber; now what happened we don’t know except the girls practically had to escort him to the door. He became an uncoordinated mass of jelly at that point. As I say, we don’t know whether that was just a psychological quirk that they just tripped, whether it was just such a shock that somebody would say that to him or what happened, or whether it was in fact an ejaculatory type of prayer that in fact did have ramifications in unseen powers which at that moment were beginning to work in that man’s life. That was one experience.

Then we had an experience shortly thereafter of a fellow who used to be downtown in a parking lot, a commercial parking lot and he manned a little booth there at night, and he was by himself studying one night and he noticed three or four of these guys coming toward the booth, and they didn’t look like they were asking for the time of day, and so he could kind of put two and two together and figure out what was going to be next. So without saying anything, without making any maneuvers physically that would telegraph what he was doing, he looked at them as they approached him and they kept on coming, and as they approached he looked at them and he began to pray, Father, protect me against these fellows right now, in the name of Christ. That’s all he said, and he said he no sooner had that prayer, it was mentally, he didn’t even say it out loud, he just said it in his mind, and he just held his ground and stared at them, and they came up to within ten or fifteen or this booth, and then they just kind of went hey, what’s this guy, what’s up here, so something just happened to them and they walked off; he never saw them again.

So again, we can’t be sure, I’m not teaching this as absolute dogma, I just observe that were people have prayed particular prayers in situations of physical danger God has answered those prayers. I think it is due to a James 4:7 principle, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” And where you have demonically aided powers that threaten you that can be a situation that works.

Now for the seven principles of self defense that Mr. Cooper advocates: The first principle is a principle of alertness, general alertness. Now women are particularly vulnerable and sloppy about this; being alert means you look around to see what’s happening around you, you look for a strange car that is parked where it usually isn’t parked, with people in it that you have not see before. In other words, you ought to have an idea in your mind of what is normal in this situation, and when you walk into a door at night you just ought to look around before you put the key in the door and there’s no one around to protect you, look around. If you see two or three people around, that might be a time not to put the key in the door, it might be time to take a short walk. In other words, alertness. You see this in verse 14, “Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants,” remember I said when I went through that, that’s not what the Hebrew is saying. What the Hebrew text says is “he unleashed his servants that were already armed.” Now the fact that his servants were already armed means what? It means that Abraham did not, even though he had the promises of God, I head some off because…well, God’s going to protect the believer. Yes, by means, perhaps in your case, of simply being alert. And in this case Abram, before he would take his flocks and his herds across land, he had his servants armed and they’d take a look before they’d move the herds up to, say a waterhole or something like that. Who’s around this water hole? How many men are at that waterhole? What business do they have at that waterhole?

Principle number one: be alert. Mr. Cooper suggests a little game you can play with yourself to train yourself to do this. Take a 3 x 5 card with you and a pencil or pen; try this for one week. Mark X’s or 0’s on the card for every time somebody comes up to you and you have seen them before they meet you. And anytime you’re busy, your mind is on something else and somebody comes up…oh, oh! That’s an X because if they were going to attack you they would have. And just think how many times you let that happen to you in the course of seven days, and if you do this simple log on a 3 x 5 card for seven days that’ll tell you whether you are a generally alert person or you’re sloppy in this area. Now it’s too bad we have to live this way but that is the way society functions right now. We may not like it but that’s the way we have to live if we’re going to survive, and we have a better right to survive as believers than non-believers.

The second principle is a principle of decisiveness. That means if you’re going to respond you can’t hesitate and you can’t think through of how you’re going to respond. Now the way to train yourself in decisiveness is ask yourself this question: perhaps you walk home late at night and it’s dark, ask yourself as you walk down the sidewalk, right now, what would I do if somebody hopped out at me from that alley? In other words, you think ahead; what if this were to happen now? What would I do? And you don’t have to become morbid about it, but just every once in a while think it through and then lo and behold someday if it happens you’ve already at least thought of one option, you don’t sit there and oh dear, what do I do now kind of thing. That means the principle of decisiveness. Now Abraham was decisive; notice in verse 14 when the situation happens he doesn’t sit there and call a conference to figure out what he’s going to do. If verse 14 is saying anything to us it’s saying that he thought out what he was going to do and he went ahead and he did it; there was a decisive response. Under law you are allowed to use sufficient force to prevent an assailant from inflicting injury or death upon any party.

Principle number three; aggressiveness… aggressiveness. The best defense obviously is an offense, but if you are attacked you’ve lost the offense, so you can’t use that principle but there is another principle you can use. The best defense is an explosive counterattack. Assailants, as Mr. Cooper says, never expect their victims to be aggressive. Now he adds this, I’ll read what he says and then I’ll add a biblical principle that I think will modify what Mr. Cooper says on this point: “How do we cultivate an aggressive response? I think the answer is indignation. Read the papers, watch the news; these assailants have no right to offer you violence. They are bad people and you are quite justified in resenting their behavior to the point of rage. Your response, if attacked, must not be fear; it must be anger. Now the two emotions are very close and one can easily turn one into the other. At this point, under attack, your life hangs upon your ability to block out all thoughts of your own peril and to concentrate utterly on the destruction of the assailant. Anger lets you do this.”

And then he gives an illustration. “The little old lady who drives off an armed robber by hitting him on the head with her purse is angry and good for her.” And every once in a while you read about that; it’s a most astounding thing, big city and these hoods come up and they try to rub out this little old lady and she just wallops them one with her purse and it must be the shock or something, the unexpected idea that this little old lady is not going to tolerate this. And if you read these stories carefully, because my own mother was involved in one of these episodes, if you read the stories carefully it’s very interesting; many times your old person, the grandfather or the grandmother, react better than the young people. The young people stand around and they don’t know what’s going on and it’s the older person that is mad and angry and they do something about it, probably because the older people grew up in a generation when there were biblical absolutes taught and they’re just responding automatically.

Well Abram reacted with aggressiveness and you see this in the end of verse 14 and the end of verse 15. Notice, at the end of verse 14 he pursued those people, the assailants, all the way to Dan. And at the end of verse 15 he chased them all the way to Damascus. He was aggressive. Now I suggest besides… you can develop an aggressive spirit and you don’t have to just be angry about it; I suggest you develop an aggressive spirit by loving the one who’s being attacked. In this case, Abraham loved Lot, this is a case of loving your neighbor, and he cared enough for his neighbor to be aggressive. If you want an illustration, watch a mother when somebody messes around with her little baby; this little harmless 110 pound woman, she turns into a screaming fury if somebody ever messes with her child. Why does the mother, all of a sudden have this aggressive character? Because of love. At that point she doesn’t care if she’s 110 pounds and this guy is 210, all she knows is that he’s messing around with her baby and she’s not going to tolerate it. So you see, there it’s love of the child that promotes the aggressive response.

A fourth principle in self-defense which you see in verses 14-15 which Mr. Cooper points out is simply speed; simply speed! It speaks for itself. Abraham continues quickly, to pursue and chases them until he destroys them in Dan. There’s speed involved.

A fifth principle is coolness. Translated this means the ability to control your anger, not just be angry but to translate that anger into some very useful maneuver. For example, in a situation often cite, the case of a woman being attacked, a woman can just break her hand by hitting somebody on the head, the skull happens to be the hardest part of the body, and you may have seen the movies where you hit somebody. Well, you can break you knuckles hitting somebody in the head; it’s far better to take your two fingers and punch in their eyes, and it has a lot faster effect; rip off one of their ears or something, and you ladies can do that. If you think you can’t you get in a situation, you’ll find you can very quickly. You learn, and it’s too bad again, I preface all of what I’m saying this morning, yes, this is disagreeable and I know some of you don’t like it, but would you just get real for a minute. Have you read your papers in the last couple of days? What world do you live in? We live in a fallen world and in our own culture one which is progressively abandoning the biblical principles, and you’ve got to think this way. God will protect you by means… Genesis 14 is teaching you means. In verse 14 Abraham, it says, had arms for his servants. Now true, they didn’t have .357 magnums, or .45’s, but they had some form of weaponry. That’s what the text says, I don’t know what the weapons were, I presume it must be spears and swords but they had weapons of their day, and they were believers and they used them. It was God’ means, and I’ll prove it in a moment, that it was God blessing the use of the weapons. It’s hard for some people that have never heard this to take, I know, but just hold with me and we’ll get through it.

Coolness can mean that, for example in verse 15, Abram’s thinking strategy. Notice in verse 15 he divides himself against them. It means he thinks; he says look, I’ve only got 318 guys, I’m outnumbered ten to one, I’ve got to think what I’m going to do to handle myself in this situation. So he splits up his forces and comes in on a perimeter attack at night. That’s coolness. If you happen to be walking down the street and you’ve got an umbrella or something, you don’t hold it over and bat the guy over the head, that tells him what you’re going to do, you stick it in, thoom, like that, it’s all over, throat, or stomach, or groin area, that’ll take care of the situation very quickly. Now those are maneuvers that require coolness.

A sixth principle is ruthlessness. Again you see this in verses 15-16, you didn’t think you’d find that in the Bible, I know. Verses 15-16, the word “smite,” now that’s not just a harmless little hey-hey kind of thing; that is the Hebrew word for slaughter. If you don’t believe me look at verse 17; what is the king of Sodom doing; he comes out to meet Abraham when he’s returning from what? “from the slaughter” of the king. There is a ruthless counter response. Now that doesn’t mean going around picking fights with people. What it means is that when you have evil people who disregard your property, disregard the value of your person, they are bad. You know, it’s so elementary you would think somebody would think that way; they’re bad people and they deserve that kind of response. It’s not the time to show grace at that point.

Listen to this, I know some of you still are not convinced; let me try another approach with you for a minute. This is what Mr. Cooper points out, and it’s something that’s very opposite to what you often hear from the police. “We often hear it said, and especially by certain police spokesmen who it seems to me should know better, that in the event of victimization the victim should offer no resistance for fear of arousing his assailant. Perhaps we should ignore the craven exhortation to cowardice made here, so let’s consider the pragmatic results. Statistically the Sharon Tate party did not resist. The Starkweather victims did not resist. The LeBianca’s did not resist. Apart from the odds that you’re going to be killed anyway if you submit to threats of violence it would seem, especially in today’s world of permissive atrocity, it may be your social duty to resist. The law, currently, seems completely disinclined to discourage violent clime. The sociopath who attacks you has little to fear at this writing, from either the police or the court. The felon fears neither the police, nor does he fear the judge, nor does he fear the jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim. If the felon attacks you and lives, he will reasonably conclude that he can do it again. And by submitting to him you not only imperil your own life,” but here’s the love of neighbor again, “you jeopardize the lives of other people. Think of that one for a moment, maybe it’s a twist you’ve never thought of. By allowing this to go on you jeopardize other people. The first man who ever resisted Starkweather after eleven murders overcame him easily and without injury. If that man had only been his first victim today eleven people would be alive that were subsequently brutally murdered.” So it’s a it’s a little tact that you haven’t even though of before, that resistance may be a social duty at these times. Certainly Abraham in Genesis 14 believed so.

Finally, the seventh principle is surprise and you see that in verse 15, it’s at night. Abraham surprises his assailant at night. Cooper points out: “I can point that in every single successful defense against violent attack that I have ever studied, and I have studied for 20 years the subject, the attacker was totally surprised when his victim did not wilt.”

So that’s a little unpleasantness for Sunday morning but it’s part of an unpleasant world we live in and I’m sorry if some of you are upset by it but this is just what the text says and put away and someday you may need it and then you’ll appreciate it.

Genesis 14:17, continuing with our study to the end of the chapter. “And the king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer,” now what the passage shows us here is Abraham comes back down from Damascus, apparently along the Jordan River, and comes back, not to Sodom, he comes back to Jerusalem notice; he’s not interested in hanging around Sodom. Now here an amazing thing happens and we’re going to get some very interesting principles for the Christian life out of here.

The king of Sodom, the last time we met him he was chasing around the mountains, he’d lost all his men and decided it’d be better to retreat. Well now after the battle he comes to meet Abraham, and the valley that he meets him is spelled out at the end of verse 17. You don’t notice it because it doesn’t ring a familiar bell with anybody because you don’t usually see that valley called that in the Bible. Here it’s called the “valley of Shaveh, which is the king’s dale.” That valley is known by another name that I’m sure some of you that have been in the Bible for a while will be familiar with, the valley of Jehoshaphat, or the valley of Kidron. And it’s located just southeast of the temple mound. Just southeast of the temple in Jerusalem there’s this long valley, the kings are buried there, you can go by and see the tombs of the ancient people in the Old Testament and you can look on the west side of the valley and you see the ancient city of David. Here’s the significance of that little note. In the future, according to Matthew 24 and 25, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes back, remember what He said He’s going to do? He said when I come back I’m going to divide the nations into the sheep and the goats, and I’m going to have a personal judgment of all the nations on the earth, those who have been faithful to Me, you go over here; those who have shown your lack of faith in Me by certain behavior, go off to the left. That valley is going to be the place where Jesus Christ judges the kings of the world; it is the place of judgment. And it’s interesting, right here, prophetically 2000 years before Christ a judgment is occurring. I’ll show you the nature of it because it’s a subtle kind of judgment; it doesn’t register if you don’t read the text carefully but there is a judgment that occurs.

Genesis 14:18, “And Melchizedek [comes], the king of Salem, and he brings forth bread and wine; and he was the priest of the Most High God.” Melchizedek’s name is central to understand this passage. His name is used by New Testament authors. Here’s a tip; when reading the Old Testament and you come across these long names, break down the vowels and just keep the consonants. So write out the name without the consonants. There’s that man’s name. Now the Hebrew language concentrates, not on vowels but on consonants as the stem word. This word, M-l-k, the “ch” is pronounced “kah”; M-l-k is the Hebrew word for king, melek, or the verb to rule, malak. And this word, zedek is the Hebrew word for righteousness, the king of righteousness. This man’s name became so famous that later the kings at Salem, or Jerusalem, see, Jeru is just J-e-r-u in front of the word Salem, which you see mentioned in verse 18, it’s the same city, Jerusalem. That man’s name became so famous that according to other biblical passage it appears… his name became a title, just like Pharaoh, it might have been the man’s name first, but later it became just the title of the king. Well, Melchizedek eventually became a title, so for example in Joshua you read Adoni-zedek.

The question, however, for us as believers is who is this most shadowy figure of the Bible, a mysterious figure that appears and disappears from the stage of history with no introduction and no departure, no prophecy, no comment on his significance. The New Testament authors pick him up. It’s very interesting; Melchizedek is a type of the godly leader before Abraham and the dispensation of Israel. Prior… ever wonder about this, who preached the Word of God between the flood and Abraham? Well, the answer is found here, men like Melchizedek did. They were rulers, sometimes of very small cities, one mustn’t think of Jerusalem here as a large city at this time. Melchizedek was a Gentile and he was one who, it says he was the priest, but it also says in verse 18 he was the king. So he was king-priest together, in one person.

Now B. F. Westcott, who was the great Cambridge New Testament scholar of the last century, gave a very fine analysis of Melchizedek. Here’s what he said: “Melchizedek appears at a crisis in the religious history of the world, as a representative of primitive revelation, still preserved pure in some isolated tribes. Before the fresh order is established we have a vision of the old order in its superior majesty, and this, on the eve of its disappearance. It gives its blessing on the new order. So the past and the future meet, the one bearing witness to an original communion of God and men, which had been practically lost, and the other pointing forward to a future fellowship to be established permanently.”

So we’ve got a crossing of the dispensations at this point. The leader from the old one and the leader of the new one and they meet together. Now the old leader is in charge of the Word of God from Genesis 1-11 and he passed Genesis 1-11 to his people. So many, many tribes on the face of the earth have pieces of Genesis 1-11 in their tribal mythology, in their heritage. Those of us in the West, if you’ve studied Beowulf, the English epic, you’ll see that in Beowulf we, of the more Anglo type background, have it in our heritage. It goes far back before the Christian missionaries came to Great Britain. Beowulf is a preservation of traditions going far, far back of the flood, Noah, the judgment and so on. How did they get it? Not from Christian missionaries. They got it because father told son; son told his son and it was transmitted down.

One of the interesting experiences I had in connection with this the last several weeks of this summer, due to a very gracious lady in our congregation who’s had a ministry with a lot of the Chinese students in our city, has gotten me in a situation where from time to time I’ve been asked to teach portions of the Word of God at the Chinese Bible class at the university on Saturday morning. And one of the interesting discussions we got into last time was on one of the Chinese characters, and one of the boys that comes here quite frequently was showing me that the character has reference to Noah and the flood, I believe it’s the Chinese character for a large ship, and it’s got people in a boat. And in particular he showed me one part where it’s got 8 people in a boat. Well that’s interesting, that did not come to China by way of the Church. That came because way, way, way, way, way, way, way back, centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries ago there were believers that had carried the Word of God into China, long before the time of Christ. And so this became embedded in the very structure of their language.

So people like Melchizedek are interesting from this point of view. Look what he does in verse 18; he brings out bread and wine. Bread and wine? Doesn’t that remind us as Christians of something? Yes it does, it reminds us of communion, but don’t get there too fast. Let’s ease into communion here by a little prolonged approach. Bread and wine of that day was what? What was that equivalent to in our day? Well, bread and wine was simple refreshment; there wasn’t anything sacred about, the bread and the wine was just refreshment. Well, what’s refreshment about? The men had just marched 200 miles; these men are tired men, they’re hungry men. And so Melchizedek, as a representative of God, notice, he’s the “priest of the Most High God,” he comes out and he refreshes them. That’s grace. It shows that God was interested in these people who violently intervened against evil. I said to those of you who were a little queasy about the Christian exercising violent intervention against evil, what are you going to do with verses 18 and 19 and 20, where you have God commending them for their violent intervention against evil. Do you see that; that is an official priestly blessing of God upon it?

Now the man also refreshes them and he becomes a type of Jesus Christ. Here’s how; turn to Psalms, one of the most famous of all Psalms, Psalm 110. Scholars who have categorized the Psalms into various categories always have a problem with this one. This Psalm doesn’t fit in any category; it’s just a real unique Psalm. It’s quoted several times in a very important way in the New Testament. Let’s read it, you follow in your translation as I read Psalms 110:1-5. “The LORD shall say to my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. [2] The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion; rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. [3] Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power; in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth. [4] The LORD has sworn, and will not repent, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. [5] The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of His wrath. [6] He shall judge among the heathen.” This psalm speaks of a mysterious lord. If in your translation, under the title, Psalm 110, you ought to have a little note in small letters saying “A Psalm of David.” Now I know some of the modern translations have dropped that; they shouldn’t have because the Hebrew text has that in it; it’s part of the text, it should be part of verse 1, and that tells you who the author of Psalm 110 is.

Now along during His ministry the Lord Jesus Christ whipped this psalm out on several occasions and he used it as a riddle. Here’s the riddle. Jesus said to His contemporary Jews, He said David wrote about a lord that was higher than David; how could this be because if you notice in verse 1 there’s two lords mentioned; there’s one Lord who says something to the other lord. The first Lord, looking at it carefully is all caps; I hope you have this in your translation; it should be capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. That’s the word for Jehovah, clearly as God mentioned. So the Lord that is God said to my lord, well now who’s “my Lord,” it can’t be a man, can it? Because David was the highest man of his society, he was the king; nobody’s higher than the king. So who was this mysterious individual? That’s what Jesus said to His people; He said I’ll give you a riddle, see if you can solve it, Who is the Lord, who is David’s Lord, and the Jews knew very quickly the only answer was one, the Messiah.

And so Psalm 110, for thousands of years has been taken to mean the Messiah is the Lord that sits on the right hand. Many of you have recited the Apostle’s Creed; remember that place, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, He rose the third day from the dead and now sitteth at the right hand of God the Father. He now sits at the right hand of God the Father… did you ever think where that came from? It came from right here, here’s the start of that expression, “sits at the right hand of God the Father.” It comes from Psalm 110. Now since this is the Messiah in view in Psalm 110, He is called in verse 5 “a priest after the order of Melchizedek.”

Now what does it mean to be “a priest after the order of Melchizedek?” This: it means Christ is a lone figure, He is absolutely unique. Melchizedek had no genealogy; Christ, because of His genealogy couldn’t be priest, He wasn’t of the right tribe; Christ was of the tribe of Judah, which tribe had all the priests? Levi. So He was in the wrong tribe, so if Christ is ever going to be a priest for us it’s got to be a unique priest, and yes, therefore He’s unique after Melchizedek. But there’s something else. What does Melchizedek do here for Abram? He gives him bread and wine; what does Christ do for you if you’re a Christian this morning? He gives you spiritual life, and what has the Church been told to do, something we independent fundamentalists are very lax on I’m afraid, and that is respect for communion. What is the whole communion service about? To show that Jesus Christ refreshes us. It’s a memory that Christ not only saves but He refreshes, He gives life. Melchizedek refreshed.

But most importantly is this: what was Melchizedek doing at that point when the men came back from a violent intervention against evil and they made that 200 mile trek all the way back to Jerusalem and he comes out and he meets them, and he holds his hand up, which we presume it was, the priestly blessing, he holds his hands up and he blesses them in the name of El Elyon, or the Most High God. What he is doing is he is rewarding them for their suppression of evil. When does Christ do that? At the bema seat; He rewards Christians who have aggressively met the principalities and powers in their life and have become victors in the spiritual realm.

Let’s turn back to Genesis 14 and see how the passage is completed. The end of this passage, Abraham’s response to Melchizedek is a judgment. Notice in verse 19 the title for God? He’s called El Elyon. Notice in verse 18 He is called El Elyon, or Most High God. Notice in verse 20 He’s called El Elyon, the Most High God. That was His title back in those days, that was how believers referred to Him. They didn’t call Him Christ, they didn’t call Him Lord, they called Him El Elyon; in fact in archeology we’ve recovered tablets that have El Elyon on them, so we know that this goes way, way, way back. But then when Abram responds to it, watch what happens; the king of Sodom comes up in the middle of the conversation, and he says [21] “Give me the persons, but you take the goods to thyself. [22] And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I lift up my hand unto the Jehovah,” see him shift the name, “I lift up my hand to Jehovah, El Elyon,” and then he repeats Melchizedek [“possessor of heaven and earth.”]

Follow with me verse 23-24, “That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abram rich. [24] Save only that which the young men have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eschol, and Mamre; you let them take their portion.” A very interesting passage. Here’s the gist of it. Two kings come out to meet Abram; two kings that represent two religions. Abraham does not respond to them like most of us would respond, well, you know, all religions lead to Rome, all religions lead to the same place, it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere, don’t pray in the name of Jesus in Jones Stadium because ABC TV might not like it, this kind of approach. And Abram very clearly discriminates in the valley of Jehoshaphat the right from the wrong. He comes and he welcomes Melchizedek, and notice in verse 20 he pays him tithes, and he gives nothing, he accepts nothing by way of a relationship with the king of Sodom.

Now let me explain why. The tithe or the ten percent… now easy, this is not a pitch for giving so just relax, the tithe, or ten percent was known back down through history as God’s portion of material production. By the way, it was not a tax on the means of production; it was a tax on what was produced. It’s interesting, the Bible has no such thing as property tax; the Bible never taxes the means of production, it only taxes what is produced. And then it’s not progressive either, it’s ten percent. All right, this is to be visualized as a tax. In the New Testament we are not told a specific amount for the reasons that Christians will be involved in many, many, many different countries with different tax structures, but don’t get too religious when you see the word tithe. The word “tithe” in that day meant a tax; it was a ten percent tax on all production. Well, Abram give him tithes of all the things, tithes or tax on everything that he had gotten by way of the battle. That means, in connection also with verse 22 when he calls him “LORD,” that means he accepts the religion of Melchizedek, and here he unites his faith with that of Melchizedek and says we both worship the same God; we call Him by different names but we worship the same God, our religions are one.

But now he does something totally different to the king of Sodom. He says to the king of Sodom, I oath, in verse 22, I lift up my hand means I take a formal oath, “I oath to Jehovah” that I won’t take anything of these possessions, you can have them all king, just be my guest. Why? Answer, the end of verse 23, “lest you will say later I have med Abram rich.” Here he discriminates the other guy’s religion. The religion of the king of Sodom is an evil religion and he doesn’t want to compromise his beliefs so he says all right, God is going to supply my needs. Abram has mastered the faith technique to the point where he is a master of the details of life, the details of life do not mean that much to him at this point. Remember how he learned; chapter 12, he didn’t do too good there; chapter 13 he did better; chapter 14, he is a champion at this point, spiritually because he recognizes how great it was to relax and God would supply his needs. You know, he could have got wealthy overnight with all these possessions but he didn’t, go ahead and take them, I don’t wan you coming back to me and telling me that it was your money that prospered me when I’m trying to confess God as my supplier.

Now you say well, that’s a sweet principle on giving from the Old Testament. What is it? It’s the principle that believers do not accept contributions from non-believers. That’s what the principle is and it’s true in the New Testament. Turn to 3 John, this is a trial that often Christian organizations fail and they get in trouble when they fail this one. You usually don’t hear this kind of a thing taught from the Bible in the middle of a building program. 3 John 7, “Because for His name’s sake,” he’s talking about the missionaries going out, “For His name’s sake,” “For Christ’s name’s sake they went out,” went forth, “taking nothing of the Gentiles.” Why? The same reason Abraham did, because they don’t want it said that the Christian church that professes that Christ will supply all her need has to be dependent on the world. And it requires adjustment in the financial thinking of Christian institutions if they’re going to be serious and follow the Scriptures at this point. Yes, it’s harder that way but really, is it? Because if the world doesn’t give its money the world doesn’t tell us how to control it either; no strings, that’s the principle.

The gospel must be free of financial strings and hidden obligations, and so therefore whenever you see a Christian organization, it’s the measure of the maturity of a Christian organization… some of you get junk mail through the mail box and you’ve never heard of it, first of all you don’t know what they really believe but they are pitching you, the religious con game is at work and you get notice after notice in your mail box send to so and so mission, you never know what they’re doing but nevertheless they are soliciting you. They have no business sending you a solicitation for funds when they don’t even know whether you’re a believer or not. What’s happened, of course, is they’ve bought your name off of some mailing list and they’re sending you a pitch. Now chalk it up, whenever that happens you’ve got somebody screwed up in that Christian organization. They do not know this principle or if they do know this principle they are rebelling against applying the principle to their life. It takes faith to apply it but that’s what God’s Word says. I didn’t write it, I’m not responsible for it, all I do is teach it.

Let’s watch how it ends. Abram says in a very famous statement that’s still repeated in Israel today, “I won’t take a thread or a shoelace,” it’s still used, you go into a store in Israel and it’s a variety store or something and their expression for we have everything from A to Z, they’ll say we have everything from thread to shoe laces, and it comes out of this passage, it’s just stuck in the Jewish mind for these 30-40 centuries. “…lest thou say, I have made Abram rich, [24] Except that which the young men have eaten,” that’s some of the spoils they took for refreshment on the way back to Jerusalem and those three men, Aner, Eschol, and Mamre, were the men in league with him, remember in verse 13 that we mentioned last week.

So he pays off the other people, but Abram says, by way of conclusion, Abram says I am a believer, God has called me to a certain lifestyle, and if I expect God’s blessing on my life I cannot have these strings all plugged in all around, I’ve got to make the break. God called me out of the world and I must financially act as though I was called out of the world. The hardest thing for some people is a test of faith in the area of finances and here we see Abram, and maybe the best way of visualizing this is to think of what you would do if you were stressed financially, and of course I know none of you are stressed financially, but just suppose you were stressed financially and someone came up to you… and suppose the stress, to make it really applicable is you were the treasurer of a Christian organization with an identified ministry and this was going on, ministry in the name of Christ and someone comes to you and you don’t know whether they’re a believer or not but they like what you’re doing and they say hey, I’ve got a check here for $500,000. Now that’s not off, the spoils of war that Abram had here were probably equal or more than $500,000, maybe $1,000,000, and I’m going to give this to you because I like your ministry, just like the king of Sodom says I’m so happy at what you did for me, here’s $500,000, take it. Would you have the faith to say with Abram, cut me out, I don’t want it, keep it, and turn you back, under a position of financial stress. Remember, Abram just lost half his business. That shows you that maybe a little sweating it out and thinking will show you how Abram responded; it was not an easy, flippant type of response.

All of due to God’s grace, so we’re going to sing the hymn, Amazing Grace.