A God-Made Man - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 14, we see a manifestation of Abram’s faith and trust in God, as well as a foreshadowing of the person of Christ in the figure Melchizedek.
Transcript:
After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God most high, and he blessed Abram saying, blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and praise be to God most high, who delivered your enemies into your hand. Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Genesis 14:17-20.
I've got a question for you that I'd like you to chew on. How have you gotten to where you are today? Now, any red-blooded American will be drawn to think about the hard work that they've put into life. In that respect for myself, I could think about my years of study to be a pastor. I could think about how I took the opportunities that came before me, and of how even before ministry, I worked as a carpenter's laborer, worked in an electronics recycling warehouse, and worked gathering shopping carts and loading purchases at the Home Depot. When you think about your life, you'll probably think about some of the same sorts of things.
But of course, that's not really the whole story. I didn't get to where I am today on my own. I was able to get an education because of the upbringing and support my parents provided me. I was able to get an opportunity in ministry because Pastor Scott Aiken first took me on as a summer intern, and then you as a congregation decided to bring me on staff while I was still in the process of learning things. In many ways, seen and unseen, I have gotten to where I am today by the help of others. We're all manifestations of God's help, God's grace in our life. When you think about your life, you should think about the same kind of things. We like to tell ourselves the myth of the self-made man or woman. But every good thing we have comes to us by God's grace. And this is not something that's just exclusive to Christians. It is common to all people. Every good thing comes from Him.
As we follow Abram's story, we notice a pattern of growth. He didn't really trust God when his life was threatened in Egypt. But now back in Canaan, he is improving. When he and his nephew Lot have to part ways, Lot chose where he would go, leaving open the possibility that his nephew might choose the land God had promised to Abram. Rather than grasping for it, Abram trusted that God would sort everything out. Now turning to the next chapter, chapter 14, Abram's reliance on God is tested further when a very lucrative opportunity comes his way. So we're gonna be first looking at verses one through four of chapter 14. Moses records, At the time when Amraphel was king of Shinar, Arioch king of Elassar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goyim, these kings went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela, that is Zoar. All these latter kings joined forces in the valley of Siddim, that is the Dead Sea Valley. For twelve years they had been subject to Kedorlaomer. but in the 13th year they rebelled.
A lot of confusing names there, right? These first four verses are setting the scene for us. We're at war. We've got four kings going against five kings. The four kings are the king of Shinar, Ellasar, Elam, and Goyim, and the five kings are those from Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboyim, and Bela. And just to kind of orient you to the geography of where roughly these kings are located. Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboyim, Bela are in this general vicinity. This is the area of Israel today. And Sodom would have been around this area. The valley of Siddim is right underneath the Dead Sea. See that big blue spot there? That's the Dead Sea. The smaller blue spot up there is the Sea of Galilee. So a lot of this is happening in this area. The four kings, King of Shinar, Ellasar, Elam, and Goyim are from this direction. Now, the reason why I'm being so broad is because actually a lot of the commentators and scholars are not exactly sure where all these cities are located with any certainty. Even Sodom, the location of Sodom is disputed. I've been to the purported location of it, but it's still a little bit disputed. They have the general lucidities, but that specific location, they're not sure. There's no other historical records of these kings as well. Now in every other way that the Bible has put forth a historical record where it's been able to be corroborated, it's been able to stand the test. And so it's really interesting, it's kind of something kind of incredible to imagine that the Bible is telling us all these details about a world that we don't have any other insights on, but there's clearly a lot going on. But generally, what you can understand is that these kings are coming from the area of Mesopotamia, that's modern day Iraq, and also the area of Iran. And particularly, it seems that this, kind of this boss king, Kedorlaomer, he's the king of Elam, that seems to be from a region in Iran. They had apparently at some point come through and subjugated these other kings. Now something that's important to understand about I guess the nature of governments at this time is that a king was typically not a king over many cities. There weren't many great empires at that time. Typically what it was is that you had a king and he was a king over that city. So if you were to put it in Rhode Island it would be like you have the king of Scituate and the king of Smithfield, then like the king of Glocester. That's what it would have been like in that time. Each city had its own king and so you basically have four kings, four cities versus five kings, five cities. Now these four kings had come through and subjugated and in these cities along with Sodom and Gomorrah were paying, it seems they were probably paying tribute to Kedorlaomer. He wasn't able to control what they were doing. because he was very far away, but basically what he said is, every year I expect you to send me some money, to kind of like pay your dues, I beat you up, and if you don't pay up, I'm going to come back and beat you up again. Kind of a schoolyard bully kind of thing. Well, after paying up for 12 years, these five kings decide, we don't want to do that, we want to keep our money. And so these four other kings are like, well, we're going to come back and beat you up. So it says that they rebelled in the 13th year, And then it takes a full year later, the 14th year, for these guys to show up and deliver their response. So picking up in verse five, we read, in the 14th year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El-Paran near the desert. Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat, that is Kadesh, and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who are living in Hazezon Tamar.
Generally speaking, what's going on here is these kings, they're coming from the east, and they're basically sweeping down along the eastern side of the Jordan River. That's what commentators seem to think is going on here, is they're taking this route of basically overcoming all these peoples that are living in this area is kind of a hodgepodge of people who are living in the land of Canaan. It's kind of like the wild west. And they're just conquering the people that they come along and they're eventually working down towards here where Sodom and Gomorrah are located. Continuing on in verses 8 through 12, things come to a head in this valley of Siddim. It says, Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela, that is Zoar, marched out and drew up their battle lines in the valley of Siddim against Kedorlaomer, king of Elam, Tidal, king of Goyim, Amraphel, king of Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, four kings against five. Now the valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some of the men fell into them, and the rest fled to the hills. The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food, then they went away. They also carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions since he was living in Sodom. So you have this showdown between the four kings versus the five kings. You would have thought maybe the five kings would have an upper hand here since they have five kings, but apparently these five kings in their five cities weren't as strong as these four kings in their cities because Moses doesn't even give us a record of a back and forth battle. It basically seems like the four kings knocked their block off. It just says, immediately goes into talking about their retreat. Sodom and their crew basically lose handily. They're running away, and it's saying that some of the men were falling into tar pits, something that we're not too familiar with here but you know that there's lots of petroleum over in the Middle East, over in the Near East. Well, you also know that asphalt has a petroleum basis to it, tar has a petroleum basis to it. So you actually have a natural occurrence of these pits or pools of tar that comes up to the surface. Really interesting. Something you wouldn't want to step in and get stuck in. Apparently that's what was happening to some of those fellows. certainly didn't help their retreat. Well after putting them on the run these four kings basically they circle back around and because the valley of Siddim is right about here they go back and they loot Sodom and Gomorrah and they take Lot and everything that he has. Now as you might imagine Abram would take an interest in his nephew being kidnapped. And in verses 13 through 15 we see what he does when he finds out. It says a man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother of Eshkol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.
Something that's interesting here is this is the first time that we see Abram referred to as a Hebrew. That's the first occurrence that we have of this here. There's a little bit of ambiguity as to the origins of that word Hebrew. I've heard it suggested that it means across the river. I've heard it suggested that it means dispossessed people. It seems to be referring in some way to the sense that Abram's a migratory sort of person. He's from away, you'll recall that he had settled by the oaks of Mamre now as it turns out that word Mamre is not just a random word it's the name of a person he had basically settled at the property of this Amorite named Mamre and Abram had apparently become good friends with them because he counted him as an ally along with Mamre's brothers, Eshkol and Aner. And so when Abraham hears about his nephew Lot being kidnapped, he basically taps his friends and gets his own household together to go in pursuit. Now the details here makes it clear that Abraham's lifestyle is a little bit different than ours because I don't know about you but I do not have a miniature army to call upon, 318 trained men, he did. Now those men alone wouldn't have been enough to overcome these four kings at least in terms of natural sorts of chances. So it makes sense that he's calling together some allies to go and pursue. Now he had a great opportunity to do this, if we go back to the next slide to the map. So that red spot there, that's roughly where Abram is camped out. These four kings are making a route back up the west side of the Jordan. And so basically what Abram and his allies do is they're going to go cut them off up at the top, north of just north of Galilee, this is the area of Dan, and they end up chasing them into Damascus, which is up into this area, which is in modern day Syria. And so when they cross paths with them, when they catch up, they split forces, it seems like they have some kind of like surprise attack on them, perhaps, we're missing some details here. But in any case, they win, they're victorious. They recover everything, Lot included. Now, it's when Abram is making his return that things get interesting. He has a lot of loot on his hands, two cities worth. And it's difficult for us to imagine the value, but we could be very conservative here, and I believe this is very conservative. and imagine that maybe it was just one million dollars of value from each city. That keeps things simple. So say two million dollars. After risking life and limb, it would be awfully tempting to hold on to all of that. Strangely though, that's not what Abram does. Picking up in verse 17 we read, after Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the valley of Shaveh, that is the king's valley. Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram saying, “blessed be Abram by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, and praise be to God Most High who delivered your enemies into your hand.” The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me to Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre. Let them have their share."
So, Abram has met up with two fellows. The king of Sodom and also the king of Salem, a man named Melchizedek. They meet up in this place called the Valley of Shaveh, alternatively known as the King's Valley, currently known as the Kidron Valley. That's a picture just on the very edge of it. There's a little bit more area than this, but that's the walls of Jerusalem, present day Jerusalem. This is the valley, the Kidron Valley. So somewhere in that valley they met together. it's kind of curious because at this point in the story, we've heard no mention of this king of Salem. He hasn't been part of the battle or anything, but here he makes his appearance. Again, someone we don't know where he's coming from but there's something that's significant about the names involved here so in the case of his city, the city of Salem means peace you'll notice Jerusalem the Salem, that continues to be retained in the name today, it means peace. And his own name, Melchlzedek, means my king is Zedek. The word Zedek means righteous. And so his name means my king is righteous. This fellow, just on some surface details here, it might seem that he's a pretty outstanding fellow, but on top of that, it's noted that he was a priest of the most high God and yet he's not a Hebrew, he's not a relative of Abram but he has apparently this special role the special relationship with God says that he's a priest of the most high God which in Hebrew is El Elyon and the thing that's interesting about that is that term El Elyon In the Canaanite religion, they would also use that term as well. And so if you're just going off of that, you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell, you know, is this guy worshiping the God of Abraham or is he worshiping the God of the Canaanites? You can still experience some of that confusion in the Near East today, because you can have Christians and Muslims in the same land using the word Allah and they're meaning two separate gods because the Christian God is triune in nature whereas the Muslim God is singular in nature but they use the same term. It's the same kind of dynamic going on here where you could be referring to El Elyon and have some different castings on what you're exactly meaning when you're using that word. But as we see based on his interactions with Abram, the God of Melchizedek is the God of Abram. It's the true God. Melchizedek brings bread and wine and he blesses Abram. In verses 19-20 he says, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand. So, What Melchizedek is doing here is a couple of things. One, he's affirming God's blessing upon Abram. God has told Abram multiple times now that he's going to bless him. Melchizedek is confirming that this is the case. And he's also giving glory to God. He says, praise be to God most high who delivered your enemies into your hand. The glory doesn't belong to Abram and his allies. The glory belongs to God who delivered their enemies into their hands. And so in response, Abram offers a tithe, a tenth of the goods that he got from his victory. And this is a gift that is given to God, not to Melchizedek. Now, in terms of how does that gift get utilized, I don't know. We don't know what happens with those gifts. But the point here is that Melchizedek is acting as a priest of God. And this is a principle that ends up being carried out throughout the Old Testament among the people of Israel, where they would give a tenth of their goods to God, recognizing that it's from Him that everything that they have flows. He's the one that's credited they don't provide ultimately for themselves it's Him who is who is the giver and that's a principle that carries into the present day now we don't have to be held to a legalistic rule of you know you have to give ten percent of what you get financially because we're no longer under the law. But we are encouraged to give and it still continues to be a very good principle, just as it's a good principle to take rest, to take Sabbath rest. It continues to be a good principle to recognize that of all the things that I have, I can't say, well that's mine and no one else can have that. I say, no, what I have is because God's been gracious and merciful to me. And so I'm going to give back. This is why the apostle Paul, when he's taking up a collection for the saints in Jerusalem, as he encourages the Corinthians, he tells them this in 2 Corinthians 9.7. He says, Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. So what Paul's saying there is like, not holding you to a hard number rule here, I'm encouraging you to be a giver. to someone who gives from the heart, not reluctantly.
Setting that aside, that's just where that all originates, we have that principle established there, apart from that, step back, let's look at this figure of Melchizedek because this isn't the only place that he appears. He gets brought back into conversation further on in the Scriptures. He gets picked up by David in one of his Psalms, in Psalm 110:1-7. David writes, “The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, rule in the midst of your enemies. Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning's womb. The Lord is sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from her brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high." Now, what's particularly significant about this psalm is that Jesus applies it to himself in Matthew 22. And what Jesus picks up on is the fact that David says, the Lord says to my Lord. And so apparently David has someone who's greater than himself which is quite a thing to actually testify to because I mean he's the king. In some ways, you'd expect him to say, well I don't want to say anyone's higher than me than God. And yet he's saying that he himself has a Lord. And what he's talking about is this messianic king which is to come. And so we have an interesting combination here. All the language here in Psalm 110 brings to mind a conquering king, and yet in the midst of it, it talks about this king who is a priest. You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Now, the concept of a priest might be foreign to some of you, because I know the Catholic Church calls their pastors priests, they're not functioning in the same way as these Old Testament priests would have served or at least they shouldn't serve in that way. In the ancient times a priest acted as a mediator, as a go-between, as an intercessor between a human being and God with the understanding that a human being couldn't just simply come before God because they were not holy. They are not worthy to come before him. And so, as we get further on into the development of Israel as a nation, they actually develop a whole priestly system, where you have the sons of Aaron, the tribe of Levi, they're acting as the intercessors for the people of Israel, coming before God, offering sacrifices. Maintain that relationship with God. We can take for granted so easily our ability to come before God now that we have Christ. But the reason why we can do that isn't because the concept of priest has been tossed out. No. It's because Christ is our High Priest. The role of priest remains. It's Jesus Christ who fills it. But there's a question of how He could do that because Jesus is not of the tribe of Levi. He's of the tribe of Judah. And because of being of the tribe of Judah, he can lay claim to being the fulfillment of the Davidic line, this Messiah that was promised. So how do we sort all these details? Well we go to my favorite book, the book of Hebrews. The book of Hebrews is great for Leviticus, it's great for understanding the details going on here with Melchizedek. So I encourage you to turn your Bibles to Hebrews 7. I really wish I could read the whole chapter, but we can't because there's not enough time. So we're going to just jump along to some of these verses so we can understand why this man, Melchizedek, is so significant as it relates to Jesus Christ. So, Hebrews 7. In Hebrews 7 and the first four verses, the author of Hebrews relates to us many of the details here that we've already picked up on. In verse 2 he picks up on the fact that the name of Melchizedek means king of righteousness, the king of Salem means the king of peace. In verse 3 we also get the mysterious origin kind of picked up on. Verse 3, it says, Without a father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. Now what's kind of significant about that detail here is that Melchizedek almost has this bearing of eternal existence about him, since we don't know where he was born, how he came, no mention of his death. And that's telling us something about Jesus Christ. If Melchizedek is resembling the Son of God in that sort of way, then we also know that Jesus is eternal. That he is in fact divine because God is without beginning and he's also without end. If Jesus was a mere man we wouldn't say that it seems as though he's without beginning of days. You would just point to Bethlehem. Of course the writer of Hebrews understands that that's not when Jesus, that Jesus' origin did not begin there. Jesus has always existed from the very beginning. In addition to this, making this connection with Jesus. it's indicated that Jesus has a greater bearing and greater importance than even Abram himself because in the case of Abram with Melchizedek, Abram gives Melchizedek this tithe indicating that he needed a mediator. And so if Jesus is fulfilling this role, then Jesus is fulfilling a greater role than even Abram had to play in God's redemptive mission. Looking at verses 11 through 14,. we get to this piece of the priesthood. It says, “if perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, and indeed the law given to the people established that priesthood, why was there still need for another priest to come, one in the order of Melchizedek, not in the order of Aaron. For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also. He of whom these things are said belong to a different tribe, and no one from that tribe has ever served at the altar. For it is clear that our Lord descended from Judah, and in regard to that tribe, Moses said nothing about priests."
The reason why we have this shift from the Levitical priesthood to this priesthood outside of their line in Jesus Christ, one who is from the tribe of Judah, is because the Levitical priesthood cannot accomplish what God set out to accomplish, which is the purification and restoration of the human heart. It was insufficient. And so, if you need a new priest, a new kind of priest, then the priesthood has to change, and the law has to change. And this makes the opening for us having a priest who's outside of the tribe of Levi, which then enables us to have this fascinating figure who's both king and priest. going down to verses 15 through 19, we return back to this figure of Melchizedek. It says, and what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life, for it is declared you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek, that’s recalling Psalm 110. The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless for the law made nothing perfect. And a better hope is introduced by which we draw near to God. So now things are starting to come together here. We see that Melchizedek was a priest, not because he was a Hebrew, not because of ethnicity or any regulation. He was a priest on the basis of something else. And as we're tying together the knot with Jesus, Jesus has become this priest of the line of Melchizedek on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. something radically different. If you're going to take a priest who is a priest on the basis of an indestructible life versus a priest who is a priest only on the basis of their ethnicity and some regulation of the law, you want the priest who is a priest on the basis of an indestructible life. Because those other priests couldn't make anything perfect. What's being implied is that Jesus can make us perfect. He can restore us. and as the writer says a better hope is introduced that enables us to draw near to God. How does it enable us to draw near to God? We have the answer.
This is the last set of verses here, verses 26 through 28, it says such a high priest, this is talking about Jesus here, truly meets our need one who is holy blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priest, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints his high priest men in all their weakness, but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son who has been made perfect forever. We can be made perfect in Jesus Christ because He Himself is perfect. He is the better hope as our priest because unlike the human priest, He is holy. He is blameless. He is pure. He is at the right hand of the Father. He is perfect, and he has offered himself as a sacrifice once for all. And so because Jesus is our priest we can come before God. That's good news because on your own you cannot come before God. You're not holy, blameless, or pure. You're a sinner. That's really bad news. The good news is that Jesus is all those things and because of that we can call upon God as our father. Now obviously, going back to Genesis, Abram doesn't perceive all of this, but looking back we can see the significance, the foreshadowing, the foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. A
nd we see some more foreshadowing in another way, because as Abram's wrapping things up with Melchizedek, the king of Sodom comes to him. kind of negotiating, saying, give me the people and keep the goods for yourself. And the reason why I say negotiating is because the king of Sodom honestly didn't have much of a claim to anything. He got whooped. He was run by the tar pits. Abram could have kept everything for himself. And so he says, well, just give me the people. You can keep the goods for yourself. Now... Many people, again, we use the very conservative number, two million dollars, would say, hey, yeah, I'll keep the money. But Abram sees the actual danger here. In verses 22 through 23, he says, With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the Lord, God most high, creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, I made Abram rich. Abram refuses to keep any of these goods for himself because he wants all the credit to go to God. He doesn't want the king of Sodom claiming the credit to himself. And maybe this is especially underscored by the fact that Sodom is a very wicked city. You definitely don't want that guy taking the credit for making Abram rich. Now this whole Interaction here is somewhat reminiscent of the interaction that we see between Jesus and Satan when he was tempted in the wilderness. In Matthew 4:8-10, we find Jesus being tempted in this way by the devil. It says, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor. All this I will give you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan, for it is written, Worship the Lord your God. and serve him only. What the devil was tempting Jesus with there in the in the wilderness wasn't just merely riches and you know glory and all that stuff, that would have been tempting on its own. What he was doing was tempting Jesus with a shortcut because the thing is that Jesus is going to get all those things but his way leads to a cross. When you go back to Abram, Abram understands God has promised to make him a great nation. That he's going to immensely bless me. What the King of Sodom is really kind of offering him is a sort of shortcut to that. Abram refuses it though. Because now at this point he's trusting God and he wants all the credit to go to God. He doesn't want credit going to the King of Sodom as to why he has a blessed life. And so he says, the only thing we're going to have is the food that's already in our bellies. The food we've eaten. And then he does take care of his allies. He says they can have whatever they need, but I'm not taking anything. Abram's growing in his faith. He credits God for his success, not his own military prowess. He determines to only accept provisions that give all the glory to God, because he doesn't want the credit going to the King of Sodom.
And we, of course, can learn from this as far as who we will lean on for support. We should determine, we must determine to depend upon God as our benefactor in life. Now to be sure, God can use other people to bless us. He does. but we need to be careful about who we lean on. If we lean on someone who's going to take all the credit for themselves and helping us and deny the hand of God, then we should probably avoid that kind of help. We don't need to make deals with the devil. More importantly, the figure of Melchizedek stands before us. He is a sign of God's abiding grace. He blesses Abram, ministers to him, intercedes for him. He points us to Jesus, God's ultimately perfect manifestation of grace towards us. Jesus Christ is the perfect priest. He presents himself to God as the perfect sacrifice that justifies us before God. If we give credit to God for our earthly success. And we most certainly can only give him all the credit for any success, any victory we'll have on the day of judgment when we're found innocent. It's only by Jesus that anyone enters the kingdom of God. Even after you and I come to Jesus, all the credit belongs to Him. If I'm a better man today, if you are a better man or woman today, it's because of Jesus. It's not because of me. It's not because of you. So we follow the example of Abram in giving glory to God in all things. The money we give back, the praise we offer, the obedience we live out cannot compare with all that he has given us. Because he has given us this. His very own son, the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Let's pray.
Dear Father. It's incredible all the breadcrumbs that you've put down in your word leading up to Jesus Christ. How when we look at the figure of Abram we're reminded that we should trust you and give all credit to you. And we're reminded of this Father as He interacts with this priest, Melchizedek, who prefigured Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the one that we need to intercede on our behalf. Father, we confess that we have no standing before You outside of Jesus Christ. And Father, like Abram, we want to give all credit to You for the blessings that we enjoy in our life. We know everything that we have, every good thing, comes to us as a mercy. We couldn't do anything on our own, Father. We couldn't breathe without You. Father, help us to live always remembering this. Help us to look to You boldly, because we know that we have a perfect High Priest, Jesus Christ, and that because He intercedes for us, we can always come to You. And that You will give us what we need. And that ultimately, Father, we know that whatever things this world might have to offer us, they cannot offer us the security of the age to come and the resurrection that you've promised us. Help us to fix our hopes on that rather than making deals with the kings of Sodom. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham. It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)