A Priest Forever, Genesis 14:17-24 (Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 23, 2018)

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Augusta Peters
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1 A Priest Forever, Genesis 14:17-24 (Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost, September 23, 2018) 17After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King s Valley). 18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) 19 And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; 20 and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand! And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. 21 And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself. 22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lifted my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, 23 that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abram rich. 24 I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me. Let Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre take their share. PRAY I hope some of you have read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Not just seen the movies but read the actual books that make up The Lord of the Rings. I find that I can t finish the movies because they left out so much of what was in the books. The movies feel hollow and superficial to me. One of the characters left out of the movies is Tom Bombadil. I don t know how to describe him. He s a mysterious figure. He s not a hobbit, or a man, or dwarf or elf or ent. He certainly not an orc or a troll. We re not told what he is. He defies all categories. He just shows up early on in the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. He appears out of nowhere, he helps Frodo and his friends out of a tight spot, and then he s gone. Some of the other characters refer to him later on but he never makes another appearance. It seems he s a very old character, some say older than earth itself, he has great powers, but no one knows where he came from, no one knows what he really wants, and no one know precisely how powerful he is. He s a mystery. Today we come to the biblical equivalent of Tom Bombadil. We are studying the book of Genesis on Sunday mornings at Grace Bible, looking at the life of Abraham, and we read that part of the text where Abraham meets the mysterious Melchizedek. And I hope to show you two things about him: first, appearance of Melchizedek and, second, the priesthood of Melchizedek. First, the appearance of Melchizedek. In the first part of Genesis 14 we read of a war between kings: four kings from Mesopotamia led by a king named Chedorlaomer [ked-oar-lay-oh-mer] versus five kings of Canaan. Chedorlamoer was the big dog in the ancient near east at the time as we read that the kings of Canaan had been his vassals for twelve years. In year thirteen they rebelled. In year fourteen, Chedorlaomer led an army into Canaan to re-exert control over the region. They met in battle and the Canaanite kings lost. Their armies were scattered, their cities plundered, their people carried off into captivity. ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 1

2 Included among the captives is Abraham s nephew Lot. When Abraham hears about this he gathers the men loyal to him and pursues Chedorlaomer. Abraham catches up with them, positions his men to launch a surprise, nighttime attack, routs the Mesopotamian troops, and gets everything back Chedorlaomer had taken, including Lot and all his possessions. As he is on his way home to Hebron, Abraham passes by what is now known as the city of Jerusalem. The king of Jerusalem comes out to meet Abraham with provisions they are undoubtedly hungry from all the running and fighting, so this king gives bread and wine to everyone. This king s name is Melchizedek. Let s read now Genesis 14:18-20: 18 And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) 19 And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; 20 and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand! And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. I want you to see three things about Melchizedek from the text: first, he s a worshiper of the one true God. God Most High or Most High God is one of the titles for God in the Bible. Melchizedek somehow knows who God is and worships and serves him as a priest. He s a monotheist he believes in one God in Canaan, a place which from everything else we can tell from the Bible and archaeology is full of nothing but polytheists. In that regard, he doesn t fit. Being a monotheist in Canaan is kind of like pulling for the Bulldogs in Oxford it s not supposed to happen. Second, Abraham shows deference and respect to Melchizedek as his superior. Even though Abraham is a great man himself, even though he s the one chosen by God to be the man through whom all the nations will be blessed, even though he s powerful enough to defeat four kings in battle with the men in his own household, Abraham shows deference and respect to Melchizedek by giving him a tenth, or a tithe, of everything he won in battle. Melchizedek, we read, blesses Abraham, and in that culture the greater always blessed the lesser, never the other way around. Third, and this is what I want to camp out on, Melchizedek shows up in the story out of nowhere. Melchizedek just appears in Genesis 14 no foreshadowing, no follow up. Without warning he s there and then he s gone. In Genesis and indeed virtually all the Old Testament every significant character who believes in God has a genealogy we know who his parents are, who his grandparents are, who his children are. Not with Melchizedek. Now if that s all there was to Melchizedek, if the Scriptures said nothing else about him, I d say he was an interesting character but ultimately not all that important. And what we read in Genesis 14 is all we know about the historical person named Melchizedek. But there are other references that make him a truly fascinating person to ponder. First of all is Psalm 110, where David writes, The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Psalm 110:4. King David, hundreds of years after Moses wrote Genesis, reflects on the story of Melchizedek and suggests there s more to him than might meet the eye on the first reading of Genesis 14. ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 2

3 But it s in the book of Hebrews where the significance of Melchizedek is fully revealed, and in Hebrews 6:20 we read, Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. What is the point the author of Hebrew is trying to make? A lot of Bible scholars argue that Melchizedek was Jesus in pre-incarnate form. They say Jesus appeared in Genesis 14. I don t think that s the best way to read Hebrews. Rather, the author means Jesus, much like Melchizedek, has appeared in our world seemingly out of nowhere as the great high priest of the God of the Universe. If you are here today and not a Christian, welcome we are glad you are here and you ve chosen to spend a Sunday morning with us. But I want you to have a firm grasp about what exactly the Christian faith is and what it is grounded upon and how different from all other world religions. Some religions are founded by men who claim to be prophets sent by God: that would include Islam, Judaism, Mormonism. Muslims say Mohammed was the ultimate prophet, Jews say Moses was the ultimate prophet, and Mormons says Joseph Smith was the ultimate prophet. But none of them claimed to be God they only claimed to have heard God. Other religions are based on some tradition or insight into how the world and human beings in particular work. These would include Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Scientology. In these religions there isn t really a personal God but instead a path of wisdom or virtue to follow. But Christianity is not like any of those. Instead, you know what Christianity is like? It is far more like one of those movies where everyone wakes up one day and there are alien spaceships hovering over the major cities of the world, movies like Independence Day and War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still. Now, just imagine that really happened you wake up one morning, turn on the news on TV or get on Facebook or Twitter, and you see the posts about the alien mothership hovering over Washington, D.C. Imagine that happened, and imagine a door opened on that ship, a shuttle flew out, the shuttle lands on the lawn of the White House, and a figure walks out of the shuttle and begins to speak. He intervenes in human history. That would get your attention, would it not? Something very much like that is the central claim of Christianity. Not that God spoke through a prophet and certainly not only an ethical teaching or path of wisdom we need to follow, but that God himself has appeared out of nowhere on earth and intervened in human history. Only Christianity says that God became a man in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is truly alien to our world; he is not of this world. He appeared and lived among us as a human being for thirty-three years, then died on a Roman cross. We read this in Hebrews 7:15-16: This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek, 16 who has become a priest, not on the basis of a legal requirement concerning bodily descent, but by the power of an indestructible life. You know ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 3

4 what that means? Not only are the central claims of Christianity not like any other world religion, but they are more like the Superman story than any other world religion. In Superman, you have a man who appears on earth, an alien to our world, with the power of an indestructible life. Christianity says that God appeared as a man in Jesus and died on a cross, but Jesus proved he had an indestructible life three days later when he was resurrected, when God raised him from the dead. Jesus cannot be killed and he cannot be destroyed. No other religion makes claims like this. Now, do that mean you must believe the claims? No. You could very well say, J.D., I don t believe God appeared on earth in the person of Jesus and I don t believe in Superman. You could say that. I had a friend years ago, an atheist, who I challenged him to look into Christianity. He told me, J.D., I have as much reason to investigate Christianity as I do flying unicorns. They are both just fairy tales. And he challenged me and said, J.D., are you really saying that any time someone comes to me with some kind of fantastic religious claim I have to invest a lot of time and study it carefully before I reject it? Here s my answer: you need to investigate Christianity because its claims are uniquely grounded in history, and therefore can be investigated the way no other religion can. The facts of history are not central to other world religions. For example, the facts surrounding the life of the prophet Mohammed are not essential to the claims of Islam. In Islam, Allah is god or he is not, regardless of the existence of Mohammed. Allah would exist with or without Mohammed. Same with Buddhism the historicity of the Buddha is immaterial to the claims of Buddhism itself. Same with Hinduism or Mormonism or any world religion. You can t test them against the record of history you either believe the prophecy or the wisdom or you don t. Christianity says Jesus is God and has appeared in history, but if in truth Jesus did not and his resurrection is just a fairy tale then don t worry about becoming a Christian. If Jesus was not resurrected I ve got nothing to offer you and this church has nothing to offer you. At one point the apostle Paul says, And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. 1 Corinthians 15: Christianity is a thoroughgoing waste of time if what we say about Jesus didn t really happen. But, conversely, that means that if you re going to intelligently reject Christianity, you ve got to look into the history. You ve got to explain why so many people went to their death proclaiming Jesus Christ had an indestructible life. You ve got to explain how the Christian church got off the ground after the apparent death of its founder. And if you can t explain that satisfactorily, you can t intelligently reject Christianity. Have you done that? If you re skeptical and say, Christianity is just a made up fairy tale, well, have you at least studied the facts behind the faith? You really must, because of the unique claim we make that in Jesus Christ God has appeared on earth. But, when he appeared, what did Jesus do? Second, the priesthood of Melchizedek. Genesis 14:18: And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. [Abraham and his men ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 4

5 were tired from their pursuit of Chedorlaomer it had probably been days since they d eaten, so Melchizedek brings them provisions. Then we read this...] (He was priest of God Most High.) Americans as a rule don t have a category for priests we think the term is roughly equivalent to pastor or preacher, but that wasn t the case in the ancient world. In antiquity priests were a class of people appointed by the gods as their representatives on earth, and if you wanted something from a particular god you had to go through his or her priests. You couldn t just go to that god directly. Americans have a hard time understanding this because we have a very high sense of spiritual self-esteem. We don t need a special class of people called priests to help us go to God of course, God would want to hear from me. But that kind of thinking is ridiculous when you examine it. For example, it s generally hard to get in and see a physician who is a specialist. If we find out we are sick and need to see a specialist quickly, we don t just call their office and try to get an appointment for first thing Monday morning. Instead, we call all the doctors we know and see if they can put a word in for us to get us in quickly. When we do that we re treating our doctor friends as what? As priests! Yet we still think, Of course, God wants to hear from us! This oncologist won t talk to me, but the God of the universe can t wait to talk to me. Only in the United States would that kind of thinking be considered sane. But in the ancient world everyone understood that the gods were mighty, the people were not, and the people needed priests to get an audience with them. The Old Testament priests (they were called the Levitical priests, because they descended from a man named Levi) in particular were appointed by God to oversee the sacrificial system. In the Old Testament, animals were offered up at the temple in Jerusalem and killed to atone for the sins of the people. The priests were responsible for the proper handling of those animals. The people of Israel, being the ancients that they were, knew they had no right to presume on God. They understood they were not holy and God is holy so they readily brought animals to the priests to atone for their sins. But they had a problem: how could they know the death of those animals did anything for them? How could the slaughter of a little calf or goat help you with God? For more than a thousand years these questions remained in Israel as the blood flowed from the temple sacrifices. But we get an answer in the book of Hebrews, where we read in Hebrews 7:11: Now if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need would there have been for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron? The author of Hebrews recognized there s no way killing a goat is going can get us anything from God. But those sacrifices point us to a new priest, in the order of Melchizedek, offering a ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 5

6 different sacrifice that could do something for us. 11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent [or temple] (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Hebrews 9: Jesus Christ is alien to our world. But he voluntarily appeared on earth to live a perfect life as a man (the life you and I should have lived, but haven t) and on the cross he died a horrible, bloody death (the death you and I deserve to die, but won t). And Hebrews tells us that when Jesus died, he didn t just shed blood here on earth. He shed his blood both on earth and in a temple that is not a part of this creation and not a made of human hands. We are aliens to that world but Jesus is at home in it. And Jesus blood shed in that temple has powerful properties. His blood accomplished something for us there. I confess I don t know precisely how, but if you trust in Jesus and believe that he died for your sins that blood washes you and cleanses you, and now the way to God is wide open for you. If Jesus is your great high priest, you need never feel guilty again not matter what you ve done. You need never feel shame again no matter what s been done to you. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all that. Through Jesus Christ the great high priest you can talk to God directly, whenever you want, because he has made a way. And if Jesus is your high priest you can live a life of integrity and have no fear for the future. And the king of Sodom said to Abram, Give me the persons, but take the goods for yourself. 22 But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lifted my hand to the LORD, God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, 23 that I would not take a thread or a sandal strap or anything that is yours, lest you should say, I have made Abram rich. 24 I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me. Let Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre take their share. Genesis 14: Melchizedek has just blessed Abraham. Abraham, recognizing Melchizedek s greatness, gave him a tenth of all the spoil. But then the king of Sodom comes along. In the Bible Sodom is bad, bad news. You stay away from Sodom. More on that in a few weeks. The king of Sodom gruffly tells Abraham, Take the plunder, but give me back my people. That was not a generous offer. According to the laws of the time, that s exactly was Abraham was entitled to. Sodom is not being generous; Sodom is making sure he gets what he deserves. But Abraham wants nothing to do with Sodom. He says, You can keep it all I know the one true God, he s blessed me through his priest Melchizedek, I trust him to provide for me, and I don t want anything from you. ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 6

7 If you believe Jesus is your priest, one of the wonderful, liberating things that will happen for you is that you won t have to compromise your integrity. I want to speak to the students directly for a moment, though what I say will apply to everyone in the room: you re going to face so many temptations in your years of high school and college to compromise your integrity. You ll be tempted to compromise your sexual integrity (by having sex outside of marriage) and you ll be tempted to compromise your academic integrity (by cheating). You ll be tempted to compromise your social integrity (by gossiping about others or cutting them down behind their backs) and, when you start making money, you will be constantly tempted to compromise your financial integrity (by being greedy and stingy and spending every dime you make on yourself). But if Jesus, the true and greater Melchizedek, is your high priest, you won t have to compromise what you know is right because you ll know that no matter what happens he will be there for you and provide for you. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Hebrews 7:25. Honestly, I don t think I liked this verse for a long time, because in my mind I thought it said Jesus was whining or begging on our behalf, as if the Father in heaven really didn t like us or want anything to do with us but Jesus kept after him saying, Please, oh please, oh please, Father bless my people. That thought did not appeal to me at all. But later on I realized it can t mean that Jesus secured the Father s love for us by his blood. Jesus doesn t have to beg the Father for anything when it comes to believers. The Father already loves us because he s the one who sent Jesus to live and die for us. Instead, it means this: Jesus always lives, even today, for the welfare of his people. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day of our existence, Jesus is ready and more than able to give us the grace we need to obey him and be happy in him. You ll never know what form the grace will take, but you ll find you have it when you need it. If you need a little more faith, you ll find you have it. If you need a little more encouragement, you ll have that, too. If you find need a new friend, you ll have one. If you need courage in the face of temptation, you ll have it. If you need a gift out of the blue to remind you of God s love for you, you ll get one. He will not always give us what we ask for but he will give you what you need. You don t have to run to Sodom. You never have to compromise your integrity to follow Jesus. You can say, like Abraham, I know the one true God, he s blessed me through his high priest Jesus, and I trust him to provide for me. Friends, he is a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. If you re not a Christian, it means Christianity is utterly unique among all the world religions and you must look into it carefully. The claims demand it. And if you are a Christian, Jesus always lives to provide for you. He is your great high priest: he has powers beyond your conception, he has an indestructible life, and love beyond degree. Will you trust him? AMEN. ã 2018 J.D. Shaw 7

The Significance of Melchizedek. Genesis 14:17-24

The Significance of Melchizedek Genesis 14:17-24 Genesis 14:17 17 After his return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley