Blessings that grow transforming thankfulness

Introduction

Good morning. It’s great to be here with you. We are in our second week of part two of Genesis, and we’re going to spend a bit of time thinking about giving credit where credit is due.

If you watched a movie in the early 2000s, you’re probably familiar with this clip. It is how every VHS started back in the day, right in that era where downloading was becoming a significant thing. The video starts with, “You wouldn’t steal a car,” and everyone’s thinking, “I mean, if I could download it and if my 3D printer was good enough, maybe.” “You wouldn’t steal a bag,” and you’re like, “Well, if I could get away with it, maybe.” But the reality is, we kind of understand that idea of doing the right thing with this sort of scenario.

The piece of trivia with that video, of course, is that the soundtrack for that video was pirated. The guy that wrote it wrote it for a film festival to be played for something like that, but the makers of that video took it without permission, used it without paying agencies. So all that era of watching videos about piracy, you were watching a pirated video. Not only was the audio stolen, but the font also was illegally used; it was a ripoff font that didn’t give royalties. There’s a level where we can kind of laugh at that and we can say, “Well, if no one’s getting hurt.” But there’s other scenarios where we would say, “You…” I mean, we laugh at it, but Frank, who does that sort of thing for a living, is not laughing.

When someone really is hurt by it, there’s a totally different attitude. When someone really takes credit for someone else, we feel like a massive injustice for that. Famously, the story of Nicola Tesla, the idea that he’s credited with inventing the light bulb, but the suspicion is that Hierrick Goldell had already created a light bulb, and maybe even Tesla had bought that patent off him but then delivered it like it was his own work and then went into history as the guy that invented the light bulb. We hear that sort of thing, and then you feel the injustice of it. Even more if you bring something like that personal, if you’re in a workplace and you found out someone took credit for something you did, worse still, they took credit for something you did and got benefits for it, got promotion or got something significant because of your work, you feel that injustice of it.

As we go through this part of Genesis and we think about what God has promised to Abram, there is this undertone there that God has offered him blessings, but it’s important that God is credited for his work, that God is the one who has blessed Abram. We looked at this last week; Abram didn’t do anything to deserve it. He comes from a pagan family, and right away we saw how he sold his wife out to Pharaoh by saying she’s his sister. Immediately he shows he’s not deserving of the blessings that he might receive. That’s happening in this picture. As we get into chapter 14, there’s a real strong undercurrent of saying if God is the one giving blessings, then God is the one that deserves the glory for those blessings; He’s the one that’s doing the work.

In fact, chapter 13 of Genesis parallels almost perfectly the blessings that Abram receives in Genesis 12. There’s an echoing; it’s quite clear that the author that’s writing Genesis 14 is playing out the blessings that we saw in Genesis 12. So Genesis 12, the blessings God gives to Abraham: “You’re going to be a great nation, you’re going to be famous, you’re going to be blessed.” The next part of that, there’s a twofold blessing that those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed. Then there’s the final blessing that all families on earth will be blessed through you. That’s what Genesis 12 tells us. We get to Genesis 14 and we start to see these blessings playing out.

God brings the victory

Abram rises to the occasion

Like the first one, “You will be a great nation,” we see Abraham interacting with other nations around him on a peer kind of level. We jumped into that reading at the middle of Genesis 14; we conveniently skipped a whole lot of difficult names in the first half of that chapter and a whole lot of difficult politics, but let me give you that context and help you with that. I’ve got a picture here just to help us kind of guide that through. This is what’s happening in Genesis 14. There’s four cities up to the north of where Abraham is, and those four cities have rallied together and they have created an alliance, a coalition to rule over some of the cities that are to the south. So we have King Tidal there, we have King Amrafel, one of the ninja turtles there, we have Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson there on the end, and the big guy, the king that kind of pulled them all together, we have Ketal Lama. Ketal Lama is kind of the big guy; he’s pulled it all together. What they’ve done is we’re told that for 12 years they’ve been ruling over these five cities in the south. The five kings on the 13th year, they get sick of paying their tributes to these four kings in the north. They say, “There’s five of us, there’s only four of them, let’s put a stop to this.”

Genesis 14 tells us that the five kings march against the four kings and they suffer a terrible defeat. They have a battle by the Dead Sea. We’re told that they were defeated so badly that as they retreated, some of the men fell into tar pits there and died brutally as they were chased off. They were destroyed terribly, so much so that Penal Lama and his crew keep on coming south all the way down to Sodom and they totally sack the city of Sodom. They just take everyone away as slaves. So now instead of just giving tribute, the whole city of Sodom has been conquered, people have been taken away. That’s the scene that we come into. Part of that scene is that Abram’s nephew Lot is living in Sodom, and we’re told that Abram’s nephew is also taken away. That’s where Abram gets suddenly brought into this political thing. That’s what’s happened at the beginning. We came in right in the middle of chapter 14 where we heard those words that verse 14, “When Abram heard that his nephew Lot had been captured,” that’s where we come into the story.

This is what happens. Abram, he’s a nomadic guy, there’s this political battle going on with kings there, and suddenly Abram is sucked into this thing and he rises to the occasion. He just becomes a monster on the scale of things going on there. You can imagine Abram giving headl a phone call and saying, “I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you want, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will destroy you.” That’s my best lead niece. That’s the picture we get. Abram’s like, “I’ve got a particular set of skills, God, and I’m going to come and find you and I’m going to defeat you.” What we have is Abram turns into Abraham. This is the best picture I got to depict. He’s torn his shepherd robes off and he just kind of goes into battle. That’s the picture we get. This battle has happened, four kings versus five kings, and the five kings are destroyed.

God brings the victory

Let me read to you again what we read from verse 14: “When Abram heard that his nephew Lot had been captured, he mobilized the 318 trained men who had been born into his household.” I don’t know if you grew up singing that song, “Father Abraham had many sons.” We’ve robbed our children of great things these days. What I didn’t know is you should have been singing all that time, “Father Abraham has 300 Spartan soldiers.” King Leonitis is one of them. That’s the picture we get, this 315 trained men. It’s interesting because we get this picture of Abram, like he’s a kind of nomadic shepherd guy wandering around, but actually he’s quite a wealthy man and he has quite a lot of people with him. We’re told that he has no sons at this point. The legacy, the promise that he’ll be a great nation is something in his future. Right now he is still quite a wealthy guy. He mobilizes these 318 trained men, they pursue Hedama’s army until he caught up with them at Dan. There he divided his men and attacked during the night. This is the army that five kings couldn’t beat. Abram comes in with his crew in the night, decimates them. Kennalama’s army fled, we’re told, but Abram chased them as far as Hoba, north of Damascus. Abram recovered all the goods that had been taken and brought back his nephew Lot with the possessions and all the women and other captives. Abram basically does what Kalama did to Sodom. They had a battle, they lost, they just kept on going and took it all. Abram did the same thing, had a battle, he kicked their butts, and then just kept on going till he got it all back. That’s the picture we get, and it echoes very strongly this promise that God has given, “I will make you into a great nation.” He won’t see the great nation in its entirety in his lifetime; it’s something he looks forward at inheritance through his son Isaac, but this is a glimpse of that promise at work.

It tells us two things that are worth noting here. One of them is up until now, Abraham has been kind of this picture of a peacemaker. When he has conflict with his nephew Lot, he comes up with a peaceful arrangement. He says, “Choose where you want to live.” Lot chooses Sodom and Abram chooses the other side of the Jordan, and so he’s been a peacemaker up to now. But we get this glimpse here that reminds us that sometimes loving peace means defending those who are vulnerable, and so he fights for peace. That’s the first thing. It’s a helpful thing for us to know as we celebrate Anzac Day and process what it means to be Christians in the modern world and believing in a God of love, that if we’re going to love peace, there are times to fight for peace. That’s the first one.

The second one, and this is a key thought right through this chapter, it is God brings the victory. This is an echoing of the voicing that has been given to Abram, “You will be a great nation,” is happening right before him. We see it later on in Israel’s history. Probably the most clearest parallel is you might remember the story of Gideon. Gideon, a guy who God says, “I need you to rescue my people.” Gideon says, “I’m not the guy, I’m just not the leader.” God says, “I want you.” So he finally Gideon finally shows up, sees the army, says, “Well, at least we got this many people.” God says, “No, I want you to only take 300 guys, that’s what I want you to do because it’s going to be clear that this is my victory, not yours.” That’s the story of Gideon, very similar. They go in at night, they surround the camp, they light torches, they start yelling, it sends the soldiers into confusion, and many of them kill each other in that scenario. This feels very similar, 300 men, just over 300 men going in at night, fighting this battle. The message is God is the one who brings victory.

Give God the credit

It’s a helpful reminder for us. It’s built right in that context of God blessing Abraham, and it’s a helpful reminder for us because I think we fall quickly into the trap of taking credit for everything good that happens in our lives. In fact, the classic story for us is when things go bad, we start saying, “God, why are you not showing up and helping me out?” Then when things go good, we’re in danger of saying, “Gosh, it’s lucky I showed up.” Good news that I’m here today, look at what I’ve been able to achieve. We have this mismatch in our mind where we’re happy to credit disaster as someone else, but when it comes to good things, we want to take all the credit and not recognize that even in the space where we may have achieved things, everything we have, the very capacity we have to do what we do is a gift from God. If you are skilled in something, the fact that you even if you’ve trained to become skilled, the fact that you even have that capacity is not something from you. Someone else right beside you who may have tried to do all the things you did and failed, it’s because they are who they are and you are who you are. Everything, and it’s easy for us to forget the opportunities we have, the place where many of us have been born to have opportunities for education, reasonable amount of wealth. There’s things like that that happen that we very quickly drop away, very quickly move to, “I worked hard for this, this is mine, I did this, look at me, I am great.” It’s just a reminder that everything comes from God, and that means that we need to thank him and praise him.

Just this term, we’re going to have what we call Thanksgiving Sunday, and that is a Sunday we set aside every year in our calendar to spend some time giving thanks to God. It’s a dedicated week. We think it’s good for our heart to take a week to just dedicate the service to being thankful, and so we’re going to do that during this term in about eight weeks. We’re going to spend some time being thankful because it is good for our hearts to do that, because that’s the undertone of this passage. God says, “I will bless you and you’ll become a great nation,” and that’s a reflection of what is doing.

Those who bless you will be blessed

Melchizedek blesses Abram

The second blessing we see there is this two-fold blessing that God says, “I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who treat you with contempt,” is what we see. Once again, it’s echoed very strongly in this passage. We have this picture of these two kings. Bearer of Sodom is only referred to as the king of Sodom from this point in the story. We have the king of Sodom and we have this other guy, MelkiseDC, and these two guys very much echo this idea of those who bless you are blessed, those who treat you with contempt I will curse. Melkazedc is a very interesting character in the Bible. He’s so interesting that this is the only place we see him. He pops up in this chapter and we hear this little story about him, but he is repeated in the Psalms. David writes a psalm about MelkiseDC, and then in the book of Hebrews, the writer in Hebrews refers to Melkisedc because he’s such a surprising, unusual character that pops up in the story.

The first thing that’s surprising about him, we’re told he comes, he’s the king of Salem, which we think is probably Jerusalem in the day, so that’s already significant. Abraham wouldn’t have any idea of that, but it’s going to become the capital city for God’s people, and even in this time there’s a guy there who shows up in this story. What’s more significant about him is not the place he’s from, but we’re told he’s both a king and a priest. That is a really unique picture. We get to be both king and priest for the big part of Israel’s history. The first part of Israel’s history, God has that kind of picture for him, that the early prophets and the judges perform both kingly and priestly roles is what we see in the early part until King Saul is appointed king. We have these characters that play both king and priestly roles, and that’s what Mkisc is. As the king of Salem, we’re told that he is both a king and a priest, but even more surprisingly than his dual role is we’re told this is verse 18 that he is a priest of the Godmost high. He’s a priest of the God of Abraham, he’s the priest of Yahweh, and that is a unique thing in this space. Here comes this guy, we know nothing about him, we’re just told where he comes from, and the first thing we’re told is he’s a worshiper of the god most high. Interestingly, he brings some bread and wine. We’re told none of the future authors pick up that specifically, and I don’t want to read too much into it, but it’s quite interesting in the perspective of what we have through Jesus that he bring bread and wine. Then we’re told he blesses Abraham, and listen to this blessing. He says, “Blessed be Abraham by God most high.”

He’s the priest of God most high and he’s bringing that blessing. He says, “Creator of heaven and earth.” Now in a world where the pagan gods they’re worshiping around that area, the god of the sun, the god of the harvest, there’s this idea of linking things. The idea of really referencing creator of heaven and earth is a significant identified thing for Abram and MelkiseDC. Then he says, “And blessed be God most high.” He praises God himself, and then he gives us this line, “Who has defeated your enemies for you.” You see what’s happening there? This message from this priest, he’s reinforcing the message we’ve already looked at, the blessing that this is something that has come from God. MelkiseDC comes out of nowhere, he’s a guy who worships Yahweh, and he points Abram back to Yahweh.

Abram gives a tenth to Melchizedek

We’re told the blessing is those who bless you will be blessed, and so what are we told? We’re told Abram blesses him back. Abram blesses him back by giving to him. Then Abraham gave Abraham gave me Melkisedc a tenth of all the goods he had recovered. Once again, somewhat interesting in the world of the Bible, this idea that Abram gives a tenth to mec. It’s the first time we see in the Bible the idea of giving a tenth. It’s something that becomes part of the Old Testament law later on. The idea of it’s the word tithe is often used to refer to that 10% giving. What’s interesting about it here is this isn’t a law. The law comes in with Moses, we call it the Mosaic law. This is Abraham before Moses is born. Even before he is under the law, he gives this response to God’s goodness as a 10%. One of the things that has happened in the church is trying to work out what we do with giving to God, and the question about a 10% tithe has been a common debate amongst Christians. Is this something if it’s an Old Testament law, we don’t live under the Old Testament law, so we’re called to give 10% to God like the Old Testament was. This passage here is a little bit of speaks into that though it doesn’t give us really conclusive answers, but it is interesting that Abram isn’t under the Old Testament law and he still gives 10%, but he also is called to do things like sacrifices and we’re not called to do that because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. We kind of work that sort of thing, try to work that thing out. I think the answer is that it’s not a clear command for Christians today to give 10%. If we are to think about I was talking to a couple of different people over the course of this week about this, if we are to give 10%, if that’s something we’re called to, we end up in kind of a complex situation when we start asking questions like, is it 10% before tax or after tax? I think if you’re going to take the Old Testament at its face value, you would have to say before tax. That’s what Abram said does here before anything goes to anywhere else. If we’re going to take it that way then that’s something that would need to be considered. I don’t think we are called as a command to give a 10%, but I do think it can be a helpful guideline for us as we think about what living generously can be.

I know one pastor who said it should be a 10% for Christians today and it should be before tax, because why should God get the leftovers or why should God’s amount be calculated out of the after the government has got theirs, then God gets what left over. That’s not consistent with kind of first fruits giving. I know John Piper’s argument is he says if we are more blessed than the people of the Old Testament, then we should be more generous than the people of the Old Testament. His argument is 10% is not a guide, 10% is a starting place for Christians. The stance of our church is that God calls us to live and give generously, and that means in a whole lot of different ways, and it is between you and God what that looks like. It’s always a tricky space for us to talk about it, and we have a lot of history for churches that have really abused their authority and put spiritual abuse, spiritual manipulation on people to say you need to give to the church, even worse to kind of say you give to the church, you’ll receive blessings back. That is true, I think we do receive blessings back from God, but not necessarily financial blessings. It’s not the famous telly evangelist who owns his own airplane was saving up for the second airplane and he says God call he said I almost didn’t save enough and then God called me to give that money to this other group and I said yes here comes my second airplane because if I give this money away God will gift me the airplane. That’s not giving, that’s investing. That’s the way it stops. That’s not how it works. It’s not I give this, I will get that. That’s not what giving is. We do receive blessings from God, we receive blessings in lots of ways, but it’s not a tangible kind of investment return situation. Our attitude towards it as a church is that it’s we are called to sacrificial giving and sacrificial living and that looks like all of life and it’s between you and God, but it is hard to work that out sometimes because it’s easy for our hearts to become selfish. Sometimes these numbers are helpful guides for us to think about what would that look like for me.

A number of years ago we surveyed when we were part of the network of churches life Anglican, we surveyed all the ministry team across all of our ministries. It’s difficult for us to talk about money without kind of becoming some sort of bragging thing, so what we did is we surveyed everyone anonymously and we just put that information together and as a general guide all our ministry team across all our ministries gave more than 10% pre-tax in giving towards ministry of the kingdom. That was kind of a guideline for us to think about that’s where we’re at as a church. It’s a tricky thing because I work for the church, I paid for the church, Susie and I still give to the church. It’s not as circular as it sounds. It’s not I’m just kind of putting stuff in my own pocket. We also give other places because we think that’s good for our heart and so we have some sponsor children with compassion supporting external missions that sort of thing. I want to encourage you in that.

Don’t align with ungodly people

Let me come back a little bit more to this passage. What’s happening here is this is all tied into giving God the credit for what he has done. If God is the one that’s brought the victory, then all the spoils there are from God, so all of it is from God. Abram gives 10% to Melkisedc. We get that side of the story. We get the other side of the story. We get the king of Sodom. Listen to the comparisons between MelkiseDC and the King of Sodom. Melkisedc comes in and he blesses Abram. The first words we hear from the king of Sodom is, “Give me back my people.” Verse 21 here, Abram has come and saved his people and he says give them back to me. He says you can keep the spoils and it’s almost like he’s saying in out of the kind of his heart. Abram draws that attention that he’s concerned that King of Sodom wants to get credit for making Abram rich, which Abram’s like you lost these oils, I’m the one that rescued them. It’s not out of the kindness of the king of Sodom’s heart to give Abram this stuff, that’s not his stuff anymore. Abram has rescued at his own cost, his own challenge. We get that where Melkisedc is blessing Abram, the king of Sodom is just trying to gain for himself. Abram’s response to the king to Melkisedc is to give, and Abram’s response to the king of Sodom, he actually gives it all, but he the point is he refuses to receive from the king of Sodom. What happens here is he’s happy to partner himself with the king of Melkisedc, king of Salem, but he is not happy to partner himself in any way with the king of Sodom. I think that’s a helpful reminder for us that when we think about what it looks like to live the good life, when it looks when we think about what riches in this life and in the life to come look like, there’s a reminder that it is not helpful for us to partner ourselves with people who are not aligned with God.

There’s a danger I think sometimes that we can justify dodgy business deals, bending the rules, and we can even justify it with the idea like I give to church, I give to God, but this money is being used for the kingdom, it’s okay. God wants me to live a comfortable life, it’s okay if I bend these rules. I would say that’s never the case. Here’s the story of what we see in the Bible often in our sin, God is kind and we still see good outcomes even when we sin, but God never calls us to sin in order to achieve outcomes. You see what’s going on there? We’re going to see this more in some of the other stories that are coming out, but sometimes when we do the wrong thing, good still comes out of it, but God never calls us to do the wrong thing so that we might achieve good. It’s only in his kindness that in our wrongdoing he might still bring good results. We’re never called to pursue devious plans or align ourselves with ungodly people, put ourselves in a partnership position, and Abram really draws that clearly for us.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you

Let me finish with this last blessing. The last blessing is all the families on earth will be blessed through you. I want to say this is a key component to the blessings of Abraham. A couple of years ago we bought a children’s Bible, like a comic book children’s Bible for our kids, and when we read the story of Abraham and talked about the blessing God blesses, it tells Abraham the blessings, all of them, but skipped the one that said all families on earth will be blessed through you. So you’ll be a great nation, you’ll be famous, people that bless you will be blessed, people that curse you will be cursed. That’s the end. I threw the Bible in a bin. I think that’s an anti-gospel to miss that this is a core component of what Abram has been promised, that there is an eternal promise that is going on here and it needs to stay central.

I heard recently that the TV series House of David has come out. I don’t know if anyone’s seen it. I’ve read some reviews on it. I haven’t seen it, but one of the things they’re saying it’s received good feedback from critics, but one of the things they’re saying is they’ve diminished the work of God in the story and it’s quite a great adventure story of David. I’m not saying don’t watch it and I’m not saying it doesn’t have value and I love the idea of bringing some of the Old Testament stories to life, but if God is diminished in the story, then that’s not the story of the Bible. The story of the Bible is God is the main character, he is central, that David’s not just a good shot against Goliath, he’s not just a lucky shepherd boy, that God is at work in that and his purposes are eternal purposes. If we miss this final blessing, we miss the main point of what’s going on here. The whole blessing of Abram becoming a nation is the channel to which God brings an eternal blessing through Jesus.

MelkiseDC, this strange character brings that out for us so much so that when King David writes Psalm 110, he says he’s talking about the Messiah, the one who’s going to come and he says, “You were priest in the order you are a priest forever in the order of MelkiseDC.” That is the idea that we have no record. He says, “You have no father and mother.” The idea that we don’t know where it came from and we have no record of his death, so he’s this character that shows up and that’s kind of his legend just goes on. David says that’s like what the Messiah is going to be, he’s going to be this eternal king, but not just his legend will go on, but his life will go on. That’s the picture that David picks up from MelkiseDC. The Hebrew writer in the New Testament does the same thing, but pushes it even further, says not only is this he’s this forever priest, he’s a greater priest than the priests we know. In fact, he’s even a greater guy than Abraham himself. He draws the point he says he blesses Abraham abram he has to be greater. This is Hebrews 7:4, “Consider then how great this MelkiseDC was even Abraham the great patriarch of Israel recognized this by giving him a tenth of what he had taken in battle.” Abraham recognizes Melchisedc is someone more significant than him and the writer of the Hebrews wants to tell us Jesus is like that greater than anything else we can hope for or imagine. He says it like this north of Hebrews because Jesus lives forever his priesthood lasts forever therefore he is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him. In fact, we would understand that the salvation that Jesus gives gives even Abraham salvation that Abraham put his faith in God back here at the beginning of the Bible and it’s because of what Jesus did for him. Abraham’s sacrifices are pointing towards that that Jesus sacrifice is sufficient all the time to save anyone who puts their faith in him.

I think of it like as our as we think about how things get better over time, we see things we see this in the idea of our hospital system. When you look back at times in history where you whether it was better to be in hospital or not be in hospital, you walk through some of the sections of the museum and some of the instruments up on the wall and you think I’m glad I wasn’t in hospital then. My own story, I was born significantly prematurely and my mother says that with the timing of things if if she had had the situation I had she wouldn’t have survived it. It’s only because medicine has developed so much that a child was born that premature could survive there. The story is the same for my son Jet who was born with a heart condition. I was in my 30s when he was born and the doctor said we’ve been doing this surgery for 30 years, which means that if I had been born with that heart condition that surgery didn’t exist at that point and so I wouldn’t have survived that. We can understand that there’s when we think about the way things have developed we can see how salvation can come through something that is better. The picture of Jesus is far more superior than that because it’s once for all time that he is the best for us. This is where these promises of the good life land for us that even more for us than for Abraham we should give him glory even more for us we should give our lives give our all to him even more we should choose aligning ourselves with God before we choose aligning ourselves with worldly partnerships because what we have in Jesus is far greater than the salvation that Abraham receives in his day and the blessings that he receives in his lifetime what we receive in Jesus is far greater than that.