Hey, friends.
Welcome back to Genesis.
I’m glad you’re with us on this Thursday as we close out
the week, and we do so kind of moving quickly.
We’re going to cover some ground today,
so bear with us.
We are in a part of the story that isn’t unimportant.
I don’t mean to insinuate that it is,
but there’s not a lot that happens in terms of moving the overall narrative.
So, we will cover these things fairly quickly.
The first part of this story,
it finds Abram and Lot at a kind of
crossroads.
They’re both doing fairly well.
Abram has generously shared with Lot some of his good fortune,
presumably from Egypt and from their home place,
and Lot has also done pretty well.
And we get told in verse 7 of chapter 13,
there was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock
and the herders of Lot’s livestock.
And so in verse 8,
Abraham says to Lot,
“Let there be no
strife between us and between your herders and my herders,
for we are kin.” And Abram comes up with
this plan.
He leaves it in Lot’s corner.
He says, “I tell you what,
you pick a direction,
you go that way, I’ll go the other way.
You go right, I’ll go left, you go left, I’ll go right,
you go there, I’ll go somewhere else.
And I don’t want there to be a problem between us.
I don’t want there to
develop any kind of animosity.” And this is really a generous thing that Abram does,
Michael.
He recognizes a moment of tension.
And I think in a good example,
as we move towards some family
times, some family holidays,
he takes it upon himself to say,
“I want to be helpful,
not harmful in this.
I want to be part of the solution, not the problem.
So Lot,
you take your pick
and I’ll do whatever else is available.” And that’s a step of faith.
I think it’s also a step of
grace on his part,
a step of reconciliation might be too strong a word, but it certainly
moves toward maintaining the relationship.
And I think if one were preaching this text,
I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it that you could apply in our own relationships.
We’ve said this before, that
the main character of the Scriptures is God,
so that hangs above this whole thing.
But certainly right now we are in the middle of Abram’s story.
What’s so interesting is so early in this story,
how we see these new characters
being brought into it.
So yesterday we had his wife Sarai,
who really wasn’t involved in the
calling of Abram’s story.
So now we saw her in this encounter with Pharaoh,
which we already said,
set up this later narrative with the Israelites encounter with Egypt.
Now we really have
introduced and fleshed out a little bit of Lot.
And what’s fascinating about this relationship is,
once again, the text is very sparse.
So when Abram says to Lot,
“Hey, look, here’s options, you get to pick.” The only thing that the text says here is that Lot sees,
I’ll just put this up for you.
So this is verse 10,
Lot looked about him,
saw that the plain of the Jordan was well
watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord.
And so verse 11,
he chooses for himself all the
plain of the Jordan.
What’s really, really interesting about this is
there’s no value attached to that.
It doesn’t say that he’s being greedy or that the other land is horrible and
that he’s leaving Abram on the outs.
People have speculated, people have sort of read things into
the text.
But really,
what we see is in the case of making a choice,
Abram makes this generous offer,
like you said, Clint.
And then we learn that Lot,
who becomes an important character in setting up
both Abram’s story, but also some other nations and other cities that become critical settings amidst Abram’s journey,
Lot chooses the better land or at least good land.
And that’s what we know,
and it’s going to set off the action from there.
Yeah, and I think they go from there.
There’s no sign of animosity.
In fact, in the next chapter,
Abram is going to take a personal risk
to lead men to recover Lot after he’s kidnapped.
So I think we see here a very interesting decision
by Abram, who recognizes the possibility of conflict
within the family and says,
“Look, as kin’s people,
there’s not room here for both of us.
So you do what you want and I will work
around it.” I think we see a lot of wisdom,
a lot of grace in that.
Then we move on into chapter 14, the next story.
You could read a lot of this,
but let me just
cut to the chase.
Lot ends up kidnapped.
In the midst of some international strife,
there are countries, there are cities going to kind of…war would be a strong word,
but they are attacking one another,
they’re in conflict with one another.
And in the midst of that,
Lot gets caught up.
Lot has settled near Sodom and he gets caught up in it and he’s captured.
And then verse 14 said that
“When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive,
he led forth his trained men,
born in his house,
318 of them,
and went in pursuit.
He divided his forces by them at night,
and his servants routed them and pursued them to Hobart
north of Damascus,
and he brought back
all the goods, also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods and the women and the people.”
So Abram here acts as a rescuer,
a kind of military commander,
a leader.
One of the things
I think that’s interesting about this part of the story, Michael,
is 318 trained men is a big number.
We think of Lot traveling with some sheep and donkey and a few people,
servants with him or whatever.
This is a nomadic people at this point that he is leading.
It’s 318 and those are just the trained men.
One could only guess at the number of other people that that represents and
the size of this small,
almost small country-like people group that is traveling throughout that area.
Yeah, God is keeping this promise that he made to make Abram a great nation in lots of different ways.
We have not yet introduced the heir conversation.
That’s going to come later,
but we already see it.
I think you make this point really well,
Clint. We already begin to see the
size and the swelling of Abraham’s,
really his resources,
the people that he has at his command.
Here we see him acting in that military way.
We often don’t pair that when we think of our
spiritual leaders as combining political,
economic, and even military kind of control,
but here all of that is part of God’s blessing of Abraham.
When God makes this promise,
“I’m going to make you the father of many nations,”
he’s already keeping that promise, though he’s not
done so biologically yet.
That is actually, I think, some of the thing that adds richness to
the story is see all of the blessing in this area.
It leaves questions, “Well, why not in this other,
in this critical way for Abram to be the father,
the literal father of many nations?
Why isn’t that happening?” The text leaves those questions open to us because of its narrative.
Yes, there’s a lot more happening here.
This isn’t just like six people in a tent.
This is a substantial
operation and to the extent where choosing what land you can graze your animals on becomes a
significant issue, a complicated matter because there’s enough crops, there’s enough flock,
they aren’t dealing with crops,
but there’s enough animals that that’s a real substantial issue,
and we see that lived out here.
I also think we see a restatement of something we’ve already
spoken of, and that is Abraham’s faithfulness.
We think primarily in the story of his faithfulness to God,
and
certainly that’s the main thrust,
but he could have,
had he chosen, said, “Well,
Lot made a bad choice.
He should have gone the other way.
I told him not to go over there by
Sodom.
I knew that would be trouble.” And typical of the Abram stories,
there’s no hesitation here.
There’s no, “He hears that Lot’s in trouble.
He takes his men.
He puts himself at risk,
and he acts.” And that is characteristic of the Abram narrative.
A man who does things most often
does what needs done.
You know, in the story we saw in Egypt,
we see maybe that he can be impulsive
with that action at times,
but here he’s faithful to his nephew.
He takes a personal risk to go and
save this young man,
Lot, or this man,
Lot, his nephew.
And I think that is in keeping with the
way that he’s presented in the rest of the stories.
It’s interesting because as we go further into the
book of Genesis now,
the family relationships will only become more complicated.
And what’s really interesting in this case is to see how devoted Abram is to his family and to preserving that unit.
And we’re certainly going to see the best and the worst of families as we come here.
It’s good to see Abram immediately right out of the gate setting a good example of what it looks
like to be committed to those who are put in our circle.
That’s certainly not always going to be
the case as the story and the lineage continues.
So it’s worth noting that it does happen here,
and that’s worth celebrating.
And then we move on to just the last part of the 14th chapter, an odd story,
odd in a couple of ways,
a story that in large measure,
we don’t know 100% what
to do with, though it does come up later in the New Testament,
specifically in the book of Hebrews.
This character that we’ll meet is used to make some theological points.
But in the scope of this
story, we have this priest, Melchizedek,
who is called a priest of the God Most High.
But at this point, there is no priesthood.
There’s no organized Jewish, Judaic religion.
There’s simply Abram
and God, and yet this person shows up.
After Abram is successful in this military action,
he meets this King Melchizedek of Salem,
a priest of the God Most High,
and he blesses him.
And he then Abram returns
a tenth of his possessions.
This is the first we see of
what might be called tithing.
He gives them to Melchizedek as a sign of gratitude,
as a sign of faith,
as a sign of his stewardship,
his commitment.
And then that character goes away,
and we don’t hear anything else.
And I don’t know that Bible scholars know exactly what to do with this.
Certainly, it represents,
again,
Abram’s
faithfulness.
But there’s no priesthood.
There’s no tithing.
This prefigures, preassumes
a great number of things that we haven’t gotten to yet.
Yeah, it’s impossible to know actually exactly what is meant here by the God Most High.
Not necessarily in the text.
I think one can make a reasonable assumption that the editors that
have included this in the Scriptures,
they intend to prefigure a much more eternal covenant that God
will make with Abram later in the text.
And then ultimately, we see spelled out with Moses and the people of Israel.
But here,
what is exactly meant by this priest of the God Most High,
there is no priesthood.
We don’t have Aaron.
We don’t have that family.
We don’t have the tribes,
though we certainly get that sense already.
That’s the thing about these Genesis stories,
Clint, is that it does
have this real feeling of that which is to come.
It has some of the culture of the much more mature
Israelite family.
It has some of the images,
even the tithing, the 10 percent we’re going to see
codified later on.
That we see being done here without any rules.
It’s kind of a beautiful
turning back and seeing,
even in our history,
the prefigures of what will be.
And I think
though we couldn’t be certain exactly what is meant here,
we certainly see that the people of
Israel are being prefigured in this thing.
The long worshiping tradition that they’ll inherit
is connected all the way back to Abram,
who’s the first one called in this new covenant.
And so it
brings this nice sort of beautiful continuity to the story that we already are going to see flushed
out and mature as we go.
Yeah, and I would say that the one thing we do know about this story
as we read it,
Abram is not just simply making a donation.
He connects this with his faith.
This is a gift specifically to honor the God Most High,
the one that they will come to call the Lord.
And so this is an act of faith.
And whatever else it may have said to the people is unclear to us, perhaps.
But Abram’s insistence and his faithfulness and his generosity,
or at least his
willingness to do what he believes is the right thing because of the God who has called him,
is very clearly on display.
And as we close that story,
then I would say we move into what will
dominate the Abram story really throughout the rest of his part of the narrative.
And that is his heir.
And so next week, on Monday,
we will begin to look at this very important and crucial
part of the Abraham text.
So Clint, I just want to sort of squeeze in here before we close up for
today that one of the really interesting frames to look at the Old Testament is to see those times
when New Testament authors take a thing in the Old Testament and they give their own interpretation
of it based upon the revelation of Christ.
We don’t have time to really work this out,
but it is just to say one of the interesting things about Melchizedek is that the author of Hebrews in the
New Testament takes Melchizedek as a spiritual example,
a pre-figure of the person of Jesus Christ.
That one way of reading this is that Jesus is that ultimate priest of Melchizedek,
who is the one who connects in the story all the way back to the pre-Abram promise and that
therefore we see in Christ the fullness of God’s plan.
Surely there would have been a lot of
interpreters in the author of Hebrews’ only own time who would have disagreed vehemently with that reading,
but yet that is one lens that the New Testament writers brought when they return to
the Old Testament text.
So in that telling,
Melchizedek is a spiritual exemplar or a spiritual
image of what Christ is in Christ’s fullness and that is one of the interesting lenses of scriptures.
When you know the Old Testament,
it provides a kind of palette that enables you to understand
the New Testament in new and I think richer ways.
It can be hard to read the Old Testament.
A story like this may seem like, well,
when we don’t know what a story like this actually was intended to mean,
if we’re not 100% confident about that,
why are we studying it?
Well,
because the implications of it go far beyond just what it meant then to even what did it mean in the New Testament and
it contained in terms of spiritual wisdom.
There’s a lot that can be embedded in the text that
I think we can pull out if we’re willing to listen to it.
So starting next week,
really we will dig
deep on the promise,
the covenant promise, specifically the promise of an heir for Abram
that takes us in some interesting directions,
some very challenging stories as a part of that story.