SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have our Bible reading now from Genesis chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna appear, I think, behind me.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the things that we normally do is we normally ask somebody else to do the reading, but as you'll see very quickly, if you click over to the first slide, how cruel that would be to ask anybody else to read it.
SPEAKER_01: The thing with old and old Hebrew names is nobody really knows how they're pronounced, you just take a run at it as hard as you can uh and give it give it a good old go and uh and we'll we'll see how far we get before I start tripping up, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So, up there, pray for me.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: In the days of Amrafel, king of Shynar, Ariak, King of Elisar, Kidilomar, King of Elum, and Tidal, King of Goyim, these kings made war with Bera, king of Sodom, Bersha, King of Gomorrah, Shinab, King of Adma, Shimeber, King of Zeboim, and Bela, that is Zor, in case you were confused.
SPEAKER_01: And all these joined forces in the valley of Siddham, that is the Salt Sea.
SPEAKER_01: Twelve years they had served Kirilomar, uh, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
SPEAKER_01: In the fourteenth year, Kerilomar and the kings who were with him uh came and defeated the re uh the Rephaim in Ashtaroth Kanarim and the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shave Kiryatham, and the Horites in the hill country of Ser as far as El Paran on the border of the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: Then they turned back and came to En-Mushpat, that is Kadesh, and defeated all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who were dwelling in Hazazor Tamar.
SPEAKER_01: Then the king of Sodom and the King of Gomorrah and the king of Adma and the king of Zeboim and the king of Bela, that is Zor, went out and joined battle in the valley of Siddim, with Kidilomar, the king of Elam, Tidal the King of Goim, Amrafel the king of Shinar, and Ariok the king of Elisar, four kings against five.
SPEAKER_01: Now the valley of Siddhim was full of bitumen pits, that's tar pits.
SPEAKER_01: And as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some fell into them, and the rest fell to the hill fled to the hill country.
SPEAKER_01: So the enemy took the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and all the provisions, and went their way.
SPEAKER_01: They also took Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and his possessions, and went their way.
SPEAKER_01: Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshkol and of Anor, these were allies of Abram.
SPEAKER_01: When Abram had heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men born of his house, three hundred and eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan.
SPEAKER_01: And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hoba, north of Damascus.
SPEAKER_01: Then he brought back all the possessions, and also brought back his kinsmen, Lot, with his possessions, and the women and the people.
SPEAKER_01: After his return from the defeat of Kirilomar, and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the valley of Shave, that is the King's Valley.
SPEAKER_01: And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought out bread and wine.
SPEAKER_01: He was priest of God most high.
SPEAKER_01: And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram by God most high, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God most high who has delivered your enemies into your hand.
SPEAKER_01: And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
SPEAKER_01: And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the persons, but take the goods to yourself.
SPEAKER_01: But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lifted up my hand to the Lord God most high, possessor of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you would say, I have made Abram rich.
SPEAKER_01: I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me.
SPEAKER_01: Let Anna and Eshkol and Mamre take their share.
SPEAKER_01: So reads God's word.
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
SPEAKER_01: Can I sit down?
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I've got to try to figure out what this text means.
SPEAKER_01: Shall we pray and ask for God's help?
SPEAKER_01: Our Father, we thank you that all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for our learning, uh, for training and righteousness, that the people of God may be competent and equipped for every good work.
SPEAKER_01: Would you speak to us now by the power of your Holy Spirit?
SPEAKER_01: Make us competent and equipped for every good work as we seek to love and to follow you.
SPEAKER_01: And we ask these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: So Genesis uh 14, uh certainly the first half of it has a has a sense of uh something of the middle earth about it, or kind of game of thrones.
SPEAKER_01: There's kings making alliances with other kings and battles and prisoners of war, and then more battles and bitumen pits and negotiations, spoils of war.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, at the center of all of those confusing names and places and kings is Abram, the man that we've been tracking for the last couple of chapters, God's man, the man of faith, the one to whom God had made promises that through him all of the nations of the earth would be blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And here's a glimpse of the nations of the earth and what are they doing.
SPEAKER_01: They're all fighting with one another.
SPEAKER_01: They're all ruled by tyrants.
SPEAKER_01: And in the center is the man who would come to finally bring blessing.
SPEAKER_01: The world still, sadly, is ruled by tyrants.
SPEAKER_01: You may think of the despotic rulers of Russia and North Korea.
SPEAKER_01: Look forward to this being listened to by uh the KGB on the Spotify uh feed next week.
SPEAKER_01: But there's also more subtle forces, right, that kind of draw and tug on us and require our submission, require our allegiance, even in the West.
SPEAKER_01: There are those those things that seek to rule and to govern us.
SPEAKER_01: It's the paradox of living in a world where everybody says, you know, that you're you're an individual and you're free and you can create your own identity and be whoever you want and uh and do whatever you want.
SPEAKER_01: That even in that environment, there are tribes, aren't there?
SPEAKER_01: Uh tribes which demand your allegiance.
SPEAKER_01: There are uh truths, uh self-evident truths that you don't go against if you want to live in a society like ours.
SPEAKER_01: There are things you don't say, you might think them internally, but you don't say them out loud.
SPEAKER_01: There's a kind of worldview belief system out there that demands your allegiance, that you submit to it, that you follow it.
SPEAKER_01: And when we go against them, people think that we've betrayed them.
SPEAKER_01: When we go against them, we find ourselves cancelled.
SPEAKER_01: Your allegiances matter.
SPEAKER_01: What you decide to submit to, trust in, follow matters.
SPEAKER_01: It all speaks to who or what you are orientating your life towards.
SPEAKER_01: Your allegiances matter.
SPEAKER_01: They show what it is you are trusting.
SPEAKER_01: And what you are trusting will affect your life and your witness in the world.
SPEAKER_01: It'll affect what your life proclaims, what your values are.
SPEAKER_01: Now, regarding the context, if you want to think, okay, what is going on with all of this?
SPEAKER_01: Let me try.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna break it down as briefly as possible without getting lost uh in the details.
SPEAKER_01: The basic idea is this is that Kidil Omar is uh the big king, right?
SPEAKER_01: And uh he lives kind of in the northeast away from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're kind of picture Israel in your mind, your end of the Mediterranean, this little strip, right?
SPEAKER_01: Kedil Omar is all is all the way up over here towards uh towards Iraq and uh and Iran and Assyria, that that sort of direction.
SPEAKER_01: But he has such power that he's uh subdued these lesser kings, and as was very common in the ancient Near East, those kings are having to pay taxes to Kid Lomar, right?
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's what happens in the first battle.
SPEAKER_01: In the first battle, he rides in and he subdues them and says, right, you can stay in place, you've got to pay me taxes.
SPEAKER_01: Very common in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_01: The kings of the valley, so Sodom, Gomorrah, uh, Zora, those guys, they kind of live with this for about 12 years, and then they decide, you know what, we haven't seen Kirl Omar in a while.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're gonna blow off paying our tribute.
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, where is this guy even anyway?
SPEAKER_01: He's all the way over there.
SPEAKER_01: Why are we paying taxes to him?
SPEAKER_01: And so they they rebel, they stop paying their tribute money.
SPEAKER_01: Kidal Omar, because he's very far away, he lets this slide for a year, kind of saddles his army and thinks, okay, I'll sort that out in time.
SPEAKER_01: So a year later, he comes sweeping down from the north and decimates the valley, Sodom and Gomorrah and all of these towns that are named, and he takes all of their possessions and he takes the people into slavery and he carries them off back north to where he came from.
SPEAKER_01: The problem is that one of the people that he took away uh into slavery is a guy called Lot.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we if you have been here, we've met Lot.
SPEAKER_01: If you're new, Lot is Abram's who will become Abraham.
SPEAKER_01: He's Abram's nephew.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why the story's in here.
SPEAKER_01: See, the Bible, the Bible isn't an exhaustive history of every single detail that happened in the world up until now.
SPEAKER_01: That's not its point.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what it's trying to do.
SPEAKER_01: You see that in the Gospels as well.
SPEAKER_01: The Gospels are selected details of the biography of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_01: And John even says this at the end of his gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He says, if I had written down all of the things that Jesus had done, there wouldn't be enough paper in the world to contain them.
SPEAKER_01: But I've written down these specific things for a specific purpose.
SPEAKER_01: John's purpose that you might know that Jesus is the Christ and have life in his name.
SPEAKER_01: And Genesis is a bit like that as well.
SPEAKER_01: Moses isn't interested, Moses the author, isn't interested in telling you every single little detail that happened between the creation of the world and now.
SPEAKER_01: This is a theological history.
SPEAKER_01: He's telling you the story of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: And so the reason why all of those names matter, and the reason why we still, 4,500 years or so later, talk about Kedil Omar, and he's not just forgotten to the annals of history, is not that because Kedilomar is a great king, but because he affected God's man.
SPEAKER_01: The story centers on Abram.
SPEAKER_01: And the fact that Kidil Omar has taken Abram's nephew matters.
SPEAKER_01: It matters to God's purposes in the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in brief summary of the rest of the passage, what happens?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Abram raises an army, he defeats Kid Lomar, he rescues Lot, and on his way home, so Abram rides north, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's down here in the wilderness, nearly in Egypt, right?
SPEAKER_01: So he's away from the battle that's initially happening, but somebody runs and says, Oh, hold on, Lot's been captured.
SPEAKER_01: You might want to do something about that.
SPEAKER_01: So he jumps on his horse as a 75-year-old man, right?
SPEAKER_01: And he musters an army and he sweeps up north, pursuing Kid Lomar, defeats him right up in the north in a place called Dan, and brings all of the stuff and Lot back down south.
SPEAKER_01: And on their way down south, two kings come out.
SPEAKER_01: Sodom comes out and goes, Hey, can I uh can I get my people back?
SPEAKER_01: You can keep the stuff, but I want the people.
SPEAKER_01: Another guy comes, a guy called Melchizedek, who's one of the strangest characters in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to come to him in a little while.
SPEAKER_01: But let's get into some of the detail of the passage.
SPEAKER_01: Four things uh to note around this theme of allegiances.
SPEAKER_01: First, if you're taking notes, making an ally of wickedness will lead you to disaster.
SPEAKER_01: Very simply, making an ally of wickedness will lead you to disaster.
SPEAKER_01: The last time that we were with Lot, last week in Genesis 13, Lot looked out over the uh over the whole country.
SPEAKER_01: He and his uncle Abram were standing on a hill, and Abram says, You know what, pick whatever part of the land you want.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go our separate ways, and you pick.
SPEAKER_01: And Lot picks the fertile valley to move his uh his herdsmen down into.
SPEAKER_01: And we read there that he went and he uh set up his camp near the city of Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: And already the author is being like, Oh, careful here.
SPEAKER_01: He says, you know, the men of Sodom were wicked and did and did wicked things in the eyes of the Lord, and he's moved his tent close to that city.
SPEAKER_01: Now we read one chapter later that he's not camping outside of the city, but has rather done what?
SPEAKER_01: He's moved in, he's become part of the city's infrastructure, he's living inside it.
SPEAKER_01: He has increased his affinity with that wicked city.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why would he do that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I guess from a material point of view, it looked like the right decision.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we saw last week.
SPEAKER_01: Lot's only looking at his material advancement.
SPEAKER_01: He's forgotten everything about his uh the spiritual side of his character, the fact that he has a soul that should be guarded and shepherded.
SPEAKER_01: He's only making decisions based on economics.
SPEAKER_01: And surely the natural progression is well, cities are safe, certainly safer than living out in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: They're walled, and he had become very wealthy.
SPEAKER_01: So it's like if I move all of my wealth inside the city and there's defenses around them, then I'm less likely to get ransacked by a marauding band of Babylonians, whoever it was that was marauding in those days.
SPEAKER_01: And so he thinks, right, I'm going to move into the into the city.
SPEAKER_01: He chooses to set aside any thought of what it might do to compromise his value system, to compromise his morals in moving into that wicked city and goes, you know what, this is the most advantageous and effective thing that I can do.
SPEAKER_01: This is not to say that cities are morally questionable.
SPEAKER_01: We love our city.
SPEAKER_01: That's one of our uh three main vision things: love God, love people, love Dublin.
SPEAKER_01: It's not to say that cities are inherently morally questionable, though if you've grown up in the countryside you might think that.
SPEAKER_01: The point is that Lot allowed himself to be completely absorbed into the city's culture, to live under this wicked king's rule.
SPEAKER_01: He'd separated himself from God's people, that is his his extended family from Abram, and he had found himself allied with wickedness.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, he was completely at the mercy of the political winds of change.
SPEAKER_01: And so when Keda Lomart came sweeping down in, he could do nothing about it, and he was swept away.
SPEAKER_01: When we build our security on what can be seen on our money, on family, on career, we can find ourselves beginning to compromise those values that we held before, beginning to compromise our integrity in order to shure up and secure these things.
SPEAKER_01: But the problem is that when we place our security, our hope, in a material circumstance, that's what a lot's doing.
SPEAKER_01: You can find yourself in a very precarious situation because in a moment it can be lost.
SPEAKER_01: That job that you value can be gone, that relationship that defined you can be over.
SPEAKER_01: When you place your hope in a circumstance, you place your hope in a very precarious situation.
SPEAKER_01: Because when it's lost, when it goes, what happens to you then?
SPEAKER_01: You find yourself like a lot taken captive to the tyrant of despair.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful not to ally yourself to that which is most expedient, to allow yourself simply to thinking and ruling your life in terms of what is most economically advantageous.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful of allying yourself to wickedness.
SPEAKER_01: It will lead you to disaster.
SPEAKER_01: Second.
SPEAKER_01: Consider the wisdom and witness of your allegiances.
SPEAKER_01: The opposite of being like Lot, if you're like, okay, okay, don't be like Lot, that's my take home, don't be like Lot.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, that could actually be the uh the take-home for a lot of chapters in Genesis between here and 22.
SPEAKER_01: And the New Testament says that Lot was a righteous man.
SPEAKER_01: I'm still wrestling with that, right?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll come to that later.
SPEAKER_01: The opposite of being like Lot is not complete isolation from the world.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: It's not just to shut yourself off.
SPEAKER_01: The issue was with Lot was not so much that he was near in proximity to wicked people, it's that he began in every way to identify himself with them.
SPEAKER_01: He began to look just like them.
SPEAKER_01: He was completely indistinguishable from the rest of the people in the city of Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 13 of the passage that we read, we read that someone escapes from the battle and runs to tell Abram what has happened.
SPEAKER_01: And when he gets to Abram, we we note some important things, some interesting things about where he finds Abram.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, in verse 13, he's identified as Abram the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: It's the first time the uh the term Hebrew is used, and it's used to denote that he has a distinct identity from the people who are immediately around him.
SPEAKER_01: He is discernibly different from the other guys, and the other guys are are named.
SPEAKER_01: We've got Mamre and Eshkol and Aner.
SPEAKER_01: He's known to be different, and yet he's near them.
SPEAKER_01: He's near the oaks of Mamre, and if you remember right back to Genesis 12 that we looked at a month ago, the Oaks of Mamre are one of the places where where Abram had set up an altar to call on the name of the Lord his God.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't go to the to the Baal altar or to the Ashtaroth altar or to the Molech altar, he built his own and he worshipped there.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's distinct, he's worshiping his God, and there's people around him who have known who have noted.
SPEAKER_01: And what does the text tell us about these people who aren't followers of the God of the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: We read that they were his allies.
SPEAKER_01: They had allied themselves with Abram.
SPEAKER_01: So it's possible for Abram to create an allegiance with these people who don't follow his God without compromising his own worship.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting?
SPEAKER_01: What's more, Abram is so highly regarded by these people who don't believe like he does or think like he does, that when the news comes that his nephew, who they've probably never met, has been taken captive, not only do they uh uh do they say, uh Go for it, Abram.
SPEAKER_01: We'll uh we'll look after the house.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, they saddle their horses with him.
SPEAKER_01: And off they go too.
SPEAKER_01: They go into battle with Abram, the man of God.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: Our calling as Christians is never to either full assimilation or full isolation.
SPEAKER_01: It is never to say, but you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I just need to speak the language of the city.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have the same values of the city.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to have the same values of my friendship group.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to talk in the same way that they do.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to affirm everything that they believe and everything that they do and everything that they say.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to fit in.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to look like them.
SPEAKER_01: But privately inside, I'll I'll keep my own worldview.
SPEAKER_01: I'll keep my own belief system.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just never say it out loud.
SPEAKER_01: I'll only be affirming.
SPEAKER_01: The problem with that is that eventually they're going to find out what you really believe, if indeed you do still believe it, and they're going to think that you're a two-faced.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to think that you're a traitor.
SPEAKER_01: Not only that, it's going to have an effect on you internally.
SPEAKER_01: So full assimilation doesn't really work.
SPEAKER_01: But neither does full isolation.
SPEAKER_01: You've met those Christians, I'm sure, or even come from that sort of background where the Christian disposition is to completely pull up the drawbridge and to and to shelter away from the world.
SPEAKER_01: They look at the city and go, oh, the city is full of sin.
SPEAKER_01: Sin's out there.
SPEAKER_01: And so we need to protect ourselves from the sin that might be in here.
SPEAKER_01: How wrong-headed is that?
SPEAKER_01: Have you taken a moment's reflection on how awful you are, right?
SPEAKER_01: And so you think, well, no, sin's not just an out there thing.
SPEAKER_01: So fully withdrawing doesn't solve the problem either.
SPEAKER_01: And here we have just a sense of Abraham, Abram being in the midst of these people who don't think the way he thinks and don't believe the way he believes, and yet he is so highly regarded by them, and they know he's different, they know he worships a different God, but when trouble happens, they saddle their horse and fight with them.
SPEAKER_01: Have you got relationships with people who don't believe the way you do that are so tight that while they know that you're a different person, if something happened to you, they'd be right there.
SPEAKER_01: And if not, why not?
SPEAKER_01: We all have a tendency to one of those extremes, to full assimilation or to full isolation.
SPEAKER_01: What's yours?
SPEAKER_01: Do you just gonna?
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna affirm everything, keep my head down, you're like, no, I'm gonna withdraw, this is too hard, sinful people out there.
SPEAKER_01: What's your tendency?
SPEAKER_01: What extreme do you tend to run to?
SPEAKER_01: And here's your application point.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever tendency you run to, work on the other one.
SPEAKER_01: If your tendency is to go to full affirmation, you need to work out some way of actually being distinctive, looking, sounding, speaking differently.
SPEAKER_01: Being known as a Christian in your class, being known as a Christian in your workplace.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean it doesn't mean bringing in tracks and putting them down in the common room.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean every time somebody pours you a glass of red wine, you're like, oh, that just reminds me of the blood that Jesus shed for me on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: There's a bit of wisdom and tact for how you might do it, but there are ways of showing that you think differently, that you believe differently?
SPEAKER_01: Or are you a person who just does full isolation?
SPEAKER_01: Well, is there a way that actually you can be with those people, interested in the stories and lives of those people around you, your neighbors, college mates, classmates, work colleagues, becoming interested in them?
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps even long before you ever mention the name of Jesus, in order to be in their lives, in order to create these allegiances of witness.
SPEAKER_01: What's your extreme work on the other side?
SPEAKER_01: Third, beware those allegiances that promise much but demand your soul.
SPEAKER_01: Beware those allegiances that promise much but demand your soul.
SPEAKER_01: Abram, as we have said, saddles his army, he launches his attack, he heads north, and he gets his nephew back.
SPEAKER_01: He defeats Kerlomar, and as a result, he brings back all the spoils of war and his nephew.
SPEAKER_01: And then we read that the king of Sodom comes out to meet Abram.
SPEAKER_01: He's cleaned off all of the tar, uh he's kind of gone back, washed his face, and out he comes to meet Abram.
SPEAKER_01: With him also comes another king who we have not talked too much about yet, Melchizedek, the king of Salem.
SPEAKER_01: That place will become Jerusalem later on in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: But Melchizedek is king of Salem.
SPEAKER_01: We'll think more about this strange character of Melchizedek in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: But note the contrast here.
SPEAKER_01: Melchizedek comes out and brings provision.
SPEAKER_01: He brings out bread and wine.
SPEAKER_01: Sodom brings nothing, and the first words out of his mouth are give me.
SPEAKER_01: See the contrast?
SPEAKER_01: Give me.
SPEAKER_01: But despite Sodom's frostiness, the offer is actually quite attractive, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, give me the people, and you take all the stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And you think, actually, that's the right way around because people need to be fed.
SPEAKER_01: Whereas gold and stuff doesn't need to be fed.
SPEAKER_01: So it's like, yeah, that's economically more viable.
SPEAKER_01: You take all the mouse to feed, I'm gonna have the gold.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01: It's quite an attractive offer that Sodom is making.
SPEAKER_01: It would have made Abram extraordinarily wealthy.
SPEAKER_01: And what's more, Abram had every right as the victor to take it.
SPEAKER_01: But he turns it down.
SPEAKER_01: Why does Abram turn down this offer?
SPEAKER_01: Two reasons.
SPEAKER_01: The first is because Abram knows that the one who owns everything ultimately is God.
SPEAKER_01: Neither he nor Sodom are possessors of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: And so he acknowledges verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: I've lifted my hand to God most high, possessor of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Sodom, this stuff isn't yours.
SPEAKER_01: It's not yours to give in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: God owns it all.
SPEAKER_01: So this idea that uh that you could come negotiating to me, you've missed the point, Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: He recognizes that God owns everything.
SPEAKER_01: Do you acknowledge that all of the things that you have, and that every time at the end of the month your bank balance increases, that it's not actually yours.
SPEAKER_01: That it's God's, and He's given it to you as a gift to use and to steward for you and for your family and for your upbuilding and for your growth and godliness.
SPEAKER_01: Or do you sit there and you think, what on earth is he talking about?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't he know how hard that I've worked to earn that?
SPEAKER_01: Who is the possessor of heaven and earth?
SPEAKER_01: The second reason that he turns it down is that he will not be enriched in any way by Sodom because it bears the taint of moral compromise.
SPEAKER_01: If Abram had taken Sodom's wealth, imagine what that would have done for Abram's reputation.
SPEAKER_01: Abram, the man of God.
SPEAKER_01: People say, well, what made him so wealthy?
SPEAKER_01: Where did he get his money from?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, oh, he uh got it from Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Sodom, right?
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: No, he won't have any of it.
SPEAKER_01: He's keeping his witness.
SPEAKER_01: Again, it's another way that he's showing that he's not fully assimilating into the values of the world.
SPEAKER_01: He has this right to take it all, and he sets it aside.
SPEAKER_01: He's very wise.
SPEAKER_01: Likewise, isn't there just such a temptation for us all at various moments just to just to give a little in terms of compromise, to move a little on our values in order to increase our influence or to enrich ourselves, to gain the world's esteem or respect by just flexing on what we believe just a little in order that they might like us a little bit more.
SPEAKER_01: Remember what the offspring of Abram said when Jesus on the Sermon in the Mount said, what does it profit a man or a woman to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?
SPEAKER_01: You can make yourself very rich these days by selling yourself.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that it will cost you is your soul.
SPEAKER_01: Beware making allegiances that promise much at the cost of your soul.
SPEAKER_01: Finally.
SPEAKER_01: There's no sense of his lineage or line.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so it seems like he's kind of just stepped out of eternity onto this stage of human history.
SPEAKER_01: The names and descriptions that he has are interesting.
SPEAKER_01: His name, uh Melchazedek, is it means king of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: The place where he rules is peace.
SPEAKER_01: Salem comes from the same word as shalom.
SPEAKER_01: So he is the king of righteousness, the king of peace.
SPEAKER_01: And he's not just a king, he's also a priest.
SPEAKER_01: A priest to who?
SPEAKER_01: A priest to God most high.
SPEAKER_01: He seems to be a priest to the God that Abram worships, a priest of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: And what does this king priest do?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he blesses Abram and reminds him that it is God who has given him victory in battle.
SPEAKER_01: He comes with provision and with blessing.
SPEAKER_01: He speaks words words of encouragement, he lifts his eyes to God and enables him to worship.
SPEAKER_01: And how does Abraham respond to this king priest, this king of righteousness, this king of peace?
SPEAKER_01: How does Abram respond?
SPEAKER_01: He gives him a tenth of everything.
SPEAKER_01: He gives him a tithe.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than receiving, he gives, he responds by giving.
SPEAKER_01: In doing so, Abram gives as an act of worship and dependence.
SPEAKER_01: He's not so much trying to enrich Melchizedek, but acknowledging Melchizedek's God.
SPEAKER_01: It's an act of worship for Abram.
SPEAKER_01: Does your giving reflect your desire to worship and express dependence on God most high?
SPEAKER_01: But in giving Melchizedek also acknowledges that, sorry, but in giving Abraham also acknowledges that Melchizedek is superior to him, that Melchizedek is greater.
SPEAKER_01: The one who is greater gives a blessing to him who is lesser, and the one who is lesser responds by giving.
SPEAKER_01: He makes the claim that Jesus is a priest like Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_01: The words in the book of Hebrews are he's a priest in the order of Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_01: He looks like Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it means that Jesus is a king who, like Melchizedek, is also a priest.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know that Jesus is a king?
SPEAKER_01: Well, because he tells us that he is.
SPEAKER_01: He says that he has come to proclaim the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth.
SPEAKER_01: This is Mark 1.15.
SPEAKER_01: In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth and said, The time is now fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand.
SPEAKER_01: Repent and believe the good news.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm bringing in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And all the way through the gospels, he shows us what the kingdom is like.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the miracles are for.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom is a place where sickness does not touch, where chaos does not touch, where the evil spirits of this world do not touch.
SPEAKER_01: He's bringing in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And then he stands before Pilate.
SPEAKER_01: And Pilate says, Are you a king?
SPEAKER_01: And what does Jesus say?
SPEAKER_01: He says, Well, my kingdom is not of this world.
SPEAKER_01: My kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is a king.
SPEAKER_01: But how is it that Jesus is a priest?
SPEAKER_01: Priests in the Old Testament offered sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus himself offers a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus did not offer the sacrifice of a lamb the way the priestly descendants of Abram would.
SPEAKER_01: No, Jesus offers himself.
SPEAKER_01: He is the priest who offers himself as a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: The Lamb of God, as John said, who takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_01: He is the perfect sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why did Jesus, the king priest, offer himself as a sacrifice?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't know if you've ever noticed, but if you ever stand next to a sheep, you and the sheep are not equivalent.
SPEAKER_01: You might look like one, but you're not.
SPEAKER_01: You are of more value than the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: And that sheep could never take away, could never cover human sin.
SPEAKER_01: Only a human could die for a human.
SPEAKER_01: Only a human could die to cover human sin.
SPEAKER_01: And only the eternal king of righteousness could offer himself for all of humanity.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is that king priest.
SPEAKER_01: When Abram bows and offers Melchizedek a tenth of the spoils, he is acknowledging, in a sense, that the priesthood that would come from Abram's own line would always be inferior to this king priest.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, that greater king priest, who, while descended from Abraham, does not come from Abram's priestly line, is a priest like Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the king of righteousness, the king of peace, and you cannot have one without the other.
SPEAKER_01: In order to make an allegiance with the King of Priests, King of Peace, you must come to the King of righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot be at peace in your life without Jesus' righteousness, without the righteousness that covers all that you have been, all that you are, all that you one day will be.
SPEAKER_01: This is why God sent Jesus into the world to bring peace between you and him.
SPEAKER_01: But his righteousness, God's righteousness, demands satisfaction for those ways that you have deserted him, where you have not lived as you ought to have lived under his good rule.
SPEAKER_01: We have all committed treason, we have allied ourselves with wickedness.
SPEAKER_01: We all have lived in the city of Sodom in that sense.
SPEAKER_01: And so, in order for his righteousness to be fulfilled, he sent Jesus, the King of peace, the King Priest, the perfect sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: See from his head, his hands, his feet.
SPEAKER_01: Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
SPEAKER_01: Did ere such love and mercy meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?
SPEAKER_01: The king of righteousness on that cross made peace with you by the shedding of his blood.
SPEAKER_01: So Charles Wesley in that great hymn that I just quoted from brings us at the end to our response.
SPEAKER_01: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
SPEAKER_01: Abram gave a tenth to the king priest who blessed him.
SPEAKER_01: What is your response?
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found at the link below.