Genesis 14 Sovereignty of God

Cornerstone Church

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Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for another opportunity to open your word. Book of Genesis, which we're studying through, we pray that you would speak to our hearts.

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Use Pastor John as he brings the word to us. Give him words that are taught by your

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Holy Spirit and learn from your scripture. In Jesus' name, amen. Learning from your scripture, there are a couple of passages that are,

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I think, of significance. It stopped.

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It stopped, and I'm gonna mute it. I have no idea who tried to call me. They'll try again if it's really important, but okay.

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There are times where you're reading a passage of scripture and there are ways to get into the word so that it's more than just reading a novel from James Patterson or something like that.

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If I think of different passages, Romans 1, 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel.

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It is the power of God to salvation to those who believe, 2 1st Psalms of the Greek. And I can think of John 5, 39.

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He searched the scriptures, and then he think he'd find eternal life. But they are they that testify of me.

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When we go to the scriptures, we learn to be closer to God. 2 Timothy 3, 16, and 17, it's all scriptures given by inspiration.

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It's profitable. A man may be thoroughly equipped. In fact, you can spend an entire month in Psalm 119 and understand the power of the precepts of God.

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So there are times where you go into the scriptures and it's good to read the scriptures. I think it's powerful to meditate on the scriptures and to let the scriptures get into your heart, however the

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Holy Spirit designs to do it. Jeff gave us a great example Sunday in the second half of chapter one of Romans.

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And he gave them over, and he gave them over, and he gave them over.

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And so reading in a passage of scripture, you might find a repetitive phrase that is clearly key to understanding what that passage.

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So use that as a tool. When you actually dive, deep dive into that scripture, use that as a tool.

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Sometimes you will find lists, and they're powerful for understanding that God has a real message.

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Conjunctions, the best powerful conjunction but God. And you go into this, or therefore, you go into this and that.

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There are times where you go into a passage of scripture and you go, I'm not really sure why this is there.

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Because then what you're doing is you're taking a section of scripture and you're putting it into the context of the bigger picture of scripture.

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And you say, I'm not sure how that fits in. And actually considering how that fits in to the bigger picture gives you an insight of perhaps what that passage is doing for you.

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The opening pericope of Genesis one through 11 is the story of what? The beginnings.

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The beginnings. And it's how God in his sovereign will, he is the creator of all.

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He establishes it all. He has authority over all. And in fact, beginnings after beginnings, after Noah and then sending the people out, the beginnings, he set everything in motion.

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Chapter 12 through 50, what's that pericope about? It is the creation of the nation

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Israel to mediate blessing to the world. Did you guys get that one? That's a great quote. Charlie Baylis, Dallas Seminary.

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So we went into chapter 12 as we get into that section of it and we see the call to Abram.

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We see the covenant. We see Abram seeing the expanse of the land, of the promised land.

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This isn't a land grab. This is God's giving the land to the people. And Abram responding by setting up altars and calling on the name of the

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Lord. And then he gets a test. And how are you gonna do with this test? Well, he didn't do all that well.

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And that beautiful phrase, but God. You see, Abram was willing to sacrifice

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Sarah even on the altar of possessions. But God didn't allow it.

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But God fixed what was going to be going wrong. Last week in chapter 13, we see how while they were down in Egypt, they accumulated

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Abram and Lot. They come back and by God's sovereignty, Abram in humility gives

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Lot the option. You go one way, we'll go the other. Lot chose the plentiful valley, the cities.

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And Abram takes the high road. He takes it. God sets up, sets up.

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Now we get into chapter 14. And it all of a sudden becomes a history of the wars of nations.

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And then it becomes a call for Abram to do something he's never done before, go into military battle.

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And then it comes back into the end of the chapter, which

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I'm letting Jeff take it because he loves the story of Melchizedek. Love, love, love the story of Melchizedek.

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That's one of my favorite of all Bible studies. But we get into that, the end of the chapter, and it's actually the story of two kings and one

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Lord. And how does this fit? Because then we go back into talking about Abram.

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How does this fit into it? And I come into the reality that, okay,

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God has the beginnings. God established all. He was sovereign. He was the creator of all. We get into the beginning of the book of John.

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In the beginning was the word, the word of, and we get into he created all. Nothing was created without him.

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He is the light. He is the life. All of these things, the sovereign God. And then all of a sudden, we're talking about other nations.

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This is a story of the sovereignty of God. See, there is nothing in the world that is outside of the sovereignty of God.

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Do you believe that? Yes. Do you believe - Not one rogue molecule in all the universe, according to Sproul.

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Do you believe enough about the sovereignty of God to know in your heart without a doubt that he is sovereignly in control?

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And Ilan Omar this week proclaimed her heart broke. She wept because Israeli hostages were rescued.

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Do you believe God is sovereign? Is your God that big that he is still sovereign?

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He has to be. Now, why he permits that, that's a mystery that we don't understand.

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But he is a sovereign God and he is sovereign. So we have a story here that God is sovereign.

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I gotta get my reading glasses on now. Even in the geopolitical interactions of nations that have nothing to do with the story that we've seen so far, except that God scattered them, it seems like he stopped talking about them.

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He now centers in on Abram and what's gonna be his chosen people. But now he reverts and talks about the geopolitical conflicts of other nations.

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He's sovereign. Even a man who at one point in time was so timid and so afraid that he would lie to Pharaoh, tell him you're my sister, he's gonna use him in military power.

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God is sovereign. Even when we're comparing the kings, whether it's gonna be the king of Sodom or the king of Melchizedek, the king of Salem, God is sovereign over all.

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Even though Abram would have no idea what's going on, he uses this interaction with Abram to be a forerunner of the

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Messiah that's gonna come. We're going to, we have to look at this as a snapshot, a reminder of the complete sovereignty of God.

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And that's a good place for us to be today. I mean, we're, in our country, looking at a huge dichotomy of beliefs.

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San Francisco has now established themselves as a sanctuary city for children who do not want to be told by their parents they can't be transitioned sexually.

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Is your God sovereign? And he is. Why he's allowing this, we don't know.

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But my God is sovereign. I don't look at these situations and get so despaired that I think

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God doesn't even see, because he does, because he really does.

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Start about the nations at war, the first 12 verses. We're not going to read the entirety of those 12 verses because it will get somewhat tedious.

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But let me say this. If you look at my maps, again, I redid them, and on the one side, which is a smaller scale, you will see down in the lower right -hand corner the

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Gulf of Arabia, and then to the left you see the Mediterranean Sea, that little tiny, it looks like some sort of a vegetable that's actually the

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Dead Sea. What we have here is, we have four kings and five kings.

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The first four kings that are listed are going to come in war against five kings.

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In the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, Ariac, the king of Elassar, Chedar -Loyomar, king of Elam, tidal king of Goim.

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These kings made war with Bera, king of Sodom, Bersha, king of Gomorrah, Shanab, king of Adma, Shanam, Shemetber, king of Zeboim, and the king of Bela, that is

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Zohar. If you go into this scale map, and you're to the right -half side of it, you'll see my numbers one through four.

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Those are the four kings that are listed there. Geographically, this is where we believe there are.

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The Elassar and Goim, we're not sure, but the indications are that Shinar is what we now know as Babylon.

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That Elassar is probably east of Babylon in the

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Tigris -Euphrates Delta there. That Elam is actually, it's south of Ur, it's at the top of the

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Gulf of Arabia, whatever that's called. Number four, we don't know, except that it's probably

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Gorum. What's interesting here is as history has unfolded, and as archeology has been looking in these regions, these locations, these kings, have turned out to be true.

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So we have here, for whatever reason, God motivated

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Moses in the Torah to take time here in the book of Genesis to be listing these kings.

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By the way, did you notice that Ur is right in the middle of all these things, and we know Ur, they were idol worshipers.

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That's the familiar heritage of Abram. But we've got this eastern region that are listed here for some reason.

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They are proven to be real. They're actually proven to be real. Chet -O -Larmar, who's listed there as the king of Elam, is probably the strongest of the kings.

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He's kind of like the ringleader. Now, they do have a sense of control over the five kings.

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Flip it over if you went to the other side, and you have this little tamale, and at the bottom of the tamale, there are numbers one through five, and they're grouped very tightly together.

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It's in the Valley of Siddam, but they're basically on the southern coast of the Dead Sea. You have

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Saren, Gomorrah, Adma, and Ziboam. They're grouped so tightly together in the south on the east shore of the

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Salt Sea, the Dead Sea, in the Valley of Siddam. Number five is Bela, and that's now known as Zohar.

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And again, these are cities that are shown archeologically to really exist. The four kings from the east joined forces together against the five kings in the

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Valley of Siddam, and it says they joined forces, and then it says 12 years they had served

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Chet -O -Larmar. The realization is that the four kings dominated and overran the five kings.

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And so the region is pretty much now ruled pretty much by Chet -O -Larmar.

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For 12 years they served, in the 13th year they rebelled, and in the 14th year after this rebellion,

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Chet -O -Larmar and the kings who were with him, they came back over, and now the letters

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A through F is the progression of the reattack of Chet -O -Larmar and his allies as they come back into the region that we would know in the

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Jordan Valley. So they come up, and they come up probably up to Damascus and come down.

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This route that they take, A, B, C, D, has been called the King's Highway. It's where the kings would traverse and come down and do their assault and do their attack.

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And so they started out with Ashtoreth, then they went to Ham, and then they went to Shavah, Kiriathium, and then eventually they come down into the hill country of Seir, which is below the

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Valley of Siddur. From there they head west, and they head over to Kedesh. We know

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Kedesh from the Book of Joshua, where the

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Israelis, the Jews, come up, and they get to see the Promised Land from Kedesh Barnea.

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We know that story. So that's where that's located, way down. And then they come back up into Hazazan, Tamar, and they continue to have a fight.

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They turn back and came to, and Mishpat, that is Kedesh. Sandy, I should have had you read, because I know how much you love to read these names.

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No, okay. They defeated all the country of the Malakites, even also the

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Amorites, who were dwelling in Hazan, Tamar. And so the rebellion is put down after there had been servitude for 12 years, then a rebellion, and they came in, and they took over again.

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Yes? What's the X? Above Seir? That's just the, yeah,

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X is the Seir. It's the valley, it's a region of Seir.

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It's not one of the countries, if you would. The king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Adma, the king of Zebu, and the king of Bala went out.

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They joined battle in the valley of Sidum with Chedok Larmor and the other kings, four against five in the valley of Sidum.

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Now, in this battle, the valley of Sidum is full of what's called Budiman pits.

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I believe these would probably be like quicksand type of thing, tar pits, where people would fall into them and get sucked into them, and they basically had no way out.

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And so that happens to many of them. And they fled, and so the enemy took all the possessions of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their possessions and went their way, and they also took

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Lot, the son of Abram's brother, who was dwelling in Sodom, and all his possessions and went their way.

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And so now we have come to the circle of where Moses is led to tell the story of these other kings who are of power in that general region and how they overrun the five kings in the bottom of the

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Salt Sea, the rebellion, the attack again, and now it comes back circle to Lot, who we know, and it highlights the fact that Lot has taken value.

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I thought your scripture records God's sovereign action with his creation, with all of mankind. He starts out with Abram, the emphasis on his chosen people, yet God's sovereignty is over all nations.

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The record provided in Genesis includes the dealings between other nations, and they are verifiable in history.

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The details that are recorded by Moses in this, what we now know as the 14th chapter, by the way, there were no chapters, there were no verse numbers in the original manuscripts, but we read it as chapter 14 verse.

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These details are verifiable in history, and the fact that they are verifiable is a validation to the rest of the words of the

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Torah. And you take these words in the 50 chapters of Genesis, the creation story, then you move on to Exodus as the people go wandering, numbers in Deuteronomy, they're given the instructions, the law, and then eventually

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Joshua, they come into the land. These are not just myth stories that have been made up after the fact that are the basis of some sort of Judeo -Christian religion.

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These are verifiable facts. And when we read stories like this, and some of the genealogies, almost tediously listing genealogy after genealogy, and then the nation, and the language, and how the repetition of that, how

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God sovereignly has set things up, when I get to the story of these four kings and of these five kings and of the conflict, history, archeology has proven these places to be true.

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They're verifiable. And that just serves for us to know that these words in Scripture, they're true.

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If I were trying to create a religious system with a book of truth,

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I don't know that I would have included one of my main characters calling his wife his sister.

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The fact that God, in these words, includes every bit of this story, it's his sovereignty, and it's not man's perfection, this is verifiable, and we can validate the fact that the

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Scripture is true, and we even include stories like this that archeology cannot, they cannot deny.

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Was working with Kyle. He was one of the baptisms on Sunday.

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He's a brand new believer. And when I first met with him, talking about what will happen in baptism,

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I said, one of the things that's very important is for you to have a testimony. What's that? And it was beautiful.

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And I could talk with him about what a testimony includes, and that you can talk to somebody about what you believe, and they can argue that they don't believe that.

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But if you can testify to what you know happened, they can't argue against what they know happened.

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And so as Kyle gave his testimony, it was just a story of truth that has happened in his life.

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He had, I think, about eight to 10 acquaintances, family, and I don't think any of them were believers.

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And they got to hear, they cannot argue with the facts of his testimony. So when you get into Scripture, and you can say,

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I know the Scripture is true, because even these little details are verified. This makes

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Scripture so much more powerful for us. Jeff, give me 13 to 16, please, because we've got a guy named

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Abram, who already has an amazing story, including being afraid of Pharaoh after God had told him,

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I will make you a blessing, and I will multiply your descendants. But here's this guy,

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Abram. Then one who had escaped came and told Abram, the Hebrew, who was living by the

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Oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, both of Eshgal and of Aner. These were allies of Abram.

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When Abram heard that his kinsmen had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan.

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And he divided his forces against them by night. He and his servants and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus.

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Then he brought back all the possessions and also brought back his kinsmen Lot with his possessions and the women and the people.

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One who witnessed Lot's abduction, this is fascinating to me now. We don't know how long it has been between chapter 13 and 14, where Lot goes to the east, to the south, into the

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Valley of Siddam, where it's going to be plentiful. We don't know how long it's been, but it has been long enough that Abram is now established in the north by the

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Oaks of Mamre. And he has allies with him.

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These allies, by the way, are people that eventually, when we get into the book of Joshua, are going to be judged by God that they must be killed.

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At this point in time, they're allies. They're living in the land. We're talking about the Amorites. At this point in time, they're not considered by God to be, we've got to wipe these people out because they have so violated, so violated

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Yahweh. But at this point in time, somebody in Lot's camp apparently escaped the defeat, saw

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Lot is gone, and knows enough to go to Abram. Now, Abram, at this point in time, is somewhere in the

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Bethel Ai region, if you would, okay? West of the

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Jordan, perhaps low of the Jabbok River, somewhere out in that way, whether he's there in Shechem, but the

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Oaks of Mamre is up in that region somewhere. It's a distance. He goes up to him.

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And what's interesting, too, this is the first use of the word Hebrew. So if in the

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Hebrew, you've got abrei, ibrei, it is eber with this little apostrophe at the end of it.

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It's basically acknowledging the descendants of eber as now being called descendants of eber,

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Hebrews, if you would. So now, Abram is up in this region, again, west of the

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Jordan, somewhere near the Jabbok River, give or take. He's now known as a descendant of eber, and he's got a bunch of people with him, 318 people.

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He and Sarah have not had that many children and grandchildren yet, okay?

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It's cleared from the passage here that it's not only Abram and his wife, because they didn't have any children yet, even.

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But it's of the household. It's their servants. It's their people that are with them.

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They are not part of the descendants of Abram. They are other people who are allied with him, who are along with him.

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So Abram hears this, and he does something that is unique, because having just been afraid of Pharaoh, he now is confronted with the reality that a force of four kings, led by Chedol -Aramar, who overran five kings, destroyed

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Sodom and Gomorrah and all this other kind of stuff, and takes Lot and others captive.

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He has the courage to call together 318 men who have been trained for battle.

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This is sovereignty of God written all over it. This is a big turnabout for Abram.

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You're telling us he was outnumbered? No, he wasn't. He had God. That's the point.

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Nice, very good. That is actually the point. Yeah, I couldn't have planted you better.

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The reality of the battle, this one who escaped, obviously would have told

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Abram what transpired, and the forces that took all of these five kings into the pits and killed them and all this other kind of stuff, took all their possessions and everything else.

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They're clearly a formidable force who had been in battle before, because they'd already conquered them once, 13 years earlier, and now they come back and they do it again.

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They are battle -proven soldiers. One soldier killed how many in one night under Elisha?

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One angel? One angel. 185 ,000. 185 ,000. It's like, yeah, he had them outnumbered.

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He clearly does. So Abram and his men go down in pursuit.

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Now, the pursuit is pretty significant.

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He takes them to Hoboth, north of Damascus, and if you go to my larger scale map at the very top of it,

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Damascus is significantly north of the Sea of Galilee, and he went and pursued them that distance without defeat and, in fact, with success, because he pursued them and he brought back all the possessions that all the kinsmen would love and brought them back.

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This has to be the sovereignty of God for Abram. Yeah, go ahead. Verse 16, it says, and the other people.

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There are probably additional captives besides Lot and his household.

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He didn't bring the sodomites with him, then. He might have. Yeah. He might have. It says he brought them back.

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He brought back all the possessions and his kinsmen with their possession. Now, here it says, and other people.

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The ESV says his kinsmen, Lot, with his possessions, with the women and the people, so clearly it's not just Lot, but he rescued.

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He rescued the people from somewhere in those five cities or the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but clearly

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God enabled him, first of all, to have the courage and, second of all, to have the wherewithal and, third of all, to have the, he was willing to fight the fight as far as it had to take and Damascus is a long ways away, north of Damascus.

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Hey, boss, we ran out of map. So far, it ran out of map. Thank you for that. What happens now is fascinating, so I'm going to leave out a major portion of this study so that Jeff can have it next time around, but I have to mention it.

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After the battle, after the defeat of Chedorlamar in verse 17, and the kings that were with him, so the other three kings, they're coming back down.

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Now, whether they went through the King's Highway east of the Jordan or whether they went through what we now know as the

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West Bank, we don't know which way they went, but they go back down toward Sodom and Gomorrah south in the

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Valley of Sidon, and it says the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the

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Valley of Sheba, that is the king's valley. This is all down in this region down here.

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Apparently, the king of Sodom was not killed, which is unique, that the

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Maradi kings did not kill the king of Sodom, but here's the point, Abram is going to be confronted by two different kings with two different agendas, and he's going to respond in two different ways.

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Barb, if you would read for me from 17 all the way to 24, please.

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After Abram returned from defeating Chedorlamar and the king's ally with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the

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Valley of Sheba, that is the king's valley. Then Melchizedek, Melchizedek.

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Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out brand new wine. He was priest of God most high, and blessed

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Abram saying, blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be

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God most high who delivered your enemies into your hand. And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

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The king of Sodom said to Abram, give me the people and keep the goods for yourself. Did you say?

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All the way to the end of the chapter. The end of the chapter, okay. But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have raised my hand to the

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Lord God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or a thong of a sandal.

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So you will never be able to say, I made Abram rich. I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten, and the share of belongings to the men who went with me, to Aner, Eskel, and Mamre.

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We let them have their share. There is a form of presentation often in these kind of accounts.

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It's called a chiastic form. You've used this before. A, B, B prime,

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A. Okay, and if you were to look at this, it's in this form. A, B, B prime,

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A. And so what we have in this one, A is the king of Sodom going out to meet

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Abram. That's in verse 17. A prime starts in verse 21.

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The king of Sodom offers blessings to Abram. Okay, that's the two.

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But in the middle is usually when you have a chiastic form, the middle is the most important.

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It can be A, B, C, all right, and then go B prime,

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A prime. It can do this where there's only one in the middle, but the middle is really, really, this is the golden nugget, if you would.

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On either side of the golden nugget is the king of Sodom. He's gonna go out after Abram and his 318 band, plus one, the

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Lord, because it's actually going to say that in verse 20. Oh, by the way.

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So Bob, if you were wondering how many went out in battle, verse 20 kind of tells you how many went out in battle.

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Okay, the king of Sodom's gonna come out and he's gonna greet him, and then he is going to offer him blessings.

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And the king of Sodom said to Abraham, give me the persons, but you can take the goods for yourself.

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He's offering them reward for what he has done. In the middle is the power of it.

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In verse 18, and Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.

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He was the priest of the Most High. That's B. A, the king of Sodom comes out.

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B, this is the big part, the king of Salem comes out to greet him. B prime, the king of Sodom offers blessings, but get this now, in verse 19, and he,

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Melchizedek, king of Salem, blessed him, Abram. Said, blessed be

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Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be

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God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.

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And Abram responds by giving him, Melchizedek, a tenth of everything.

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You gotta follow the pronouns. Melchizedek isn't giving a tenth to the king of Sodom. He's giving it to the king of Salem, to Melchizedek.

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The king of Sodom, in this section here, represents

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Abram's triumph and worldly authority and all this other kind of stuff.

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The king of Salem, Melchizedek, comes to Abraham to emphasize the sovereignty of God.

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Do you see that here? After the return of the defeat of Chedolam, the military conflict of the kings,

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Sodom went out, and you can almost see the rejoicing, the deliverance, and everything else.

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You can almost think of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, you know,

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Hosanna, Hosanna. They wanted to deliver, they wanted to deliver. Okay, the king of Sodom, responding to the military, he says, we'll take the people, but you can have all the goods.

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It's a worldly blessing that is given. And what does Melchizedek come down, and he said, blessed be

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Abram by God most high. The blessing is a sovereignty blessing coming from God.

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And then there is a reaction and a realization of what really took place all the way from the valley of Sodom, all the way up to north of Damascus.

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What really happened there? God delivered your enemies into your hand.

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And so the blessing is given with the reality of what is to be. I do want to make a couple of observations of Melchizedek.

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Just a few. Do it, can I do that? You are free. All right. First of all, Melchizedek is the king of Salem.

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He's the priest of the most high God. We don't know anything about him other than that.

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We don't know his ancestry. We don't know, he is called the king of the most high

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God. Probably, now there are other variations to it.

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Probably, Melchizedek is what? Could be Christ's pre -incarnate.

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A theophany. And that's probably who he is. It is actually the second person of the

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Godhead Trinity coming down and speaking directly to Abram with blessings.

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Did you notice what he comes? He is going to come with bread and wine.

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There is an amazing precursor of the Messiah who will come and his body, the bread, his blood, the wine.

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Jesus who comes to offer his body and his blood. And we celebrate that in communion.

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What do you say in communion? This is my body, this is the blood. And Melchizedek comes and brings out bread and wine.

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Why? Because he is the priest of the most high God. He has the power to do this. He gives blessings to Abram from the most high

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God and the power behind this is this most high God is the possessor of heaven and earth.

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And any other religious practice can't claim that. If you think about Abram's background in Ur, idol worshipers, they could not claim this authority to be the possessor of heaven and earth.

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And so the blessings to Abram come from the God most high, the possessor of heaven and earth.

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And he tells this directly to Abram. Okay, you were called. You responded when the spy, whatever, comes from the one who survived.

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And you called 318 and you went into battle. You were never alone, Abram. You were never alone,

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Abram. He delivered you from the enemies. There's gonna be a lot, and I'm sure you're gonna talk about this next week.

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There are so many layers of this story, whether it is actual conflict or whether it is spiritual conflict.

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Abram was never alone. Even when he was in Egypt, denying that Sarah was his wife, he was not alone because God protected him.

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God protected Sarah. Give me verse 20 to 24 again, please,

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Barb. 20 to 24.

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Yeah. Blessed be God the most high who delivered your enemies into your hand. Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

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The king of Sodom said to Abram, give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.

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But Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have raised my hand to the Lord most. God most high, creator of heaven and earth, and have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or a thong from the sandal, so that you will never be able to say,

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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, Eskel, and Mammon.

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They let them have their share. Abram is going to recognize and respond in recognition of the sovereignty of God versus worldly, quote -unquote, sovereignty.

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The king of Sodom believes he has the authority to give and to allow riches and everything else, but Yahweh has the authority to really, really give blessings.

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So Abram responds to Melchizedek, the king of Salem, by offering a tenth of everything he offers to him.

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He declines the possessions from the king of Sodom. He basically knows that everything he gets, everything he has, is a gift from God anyway.

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It isn't the king of Sodom's to give away.

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Abraham proclaims his worship to Yahweh, the God most high, the possessor of heaven and earth.

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He says to the king of Sodom, I won't take any of that stuff.

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I won't take any of that stuff, lest you should say I made Abram rich.

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And to have that view of the fact that everything I have is a gift from God, it's not a product of some benefactor in the world.

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It's not even a product of my cleverness, my hard work. It's all a gift from God.

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I will not take anything that is yours, lest you say I, the world, have made

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Abram rich. Can you almost hear in these words,

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Jesus in the wilderness, when Satan is trying to offer him all these things?

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Did Satan have the right to offer worldly possessions? Yeah, he did.

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He's the prince of the power of the air. But did he have the right to actually give those away?

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No, he didn't, because God is the ultimate possessor of all things. God would not bow the knee.

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Abram here would not bow the knee to the offering from the king of Sodom.

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Now, he's going to be appropriate. Those who labored with me, they get their reward as they deserve.

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But nobody is going to say you made Abram rich, because there's only one who has made

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Abram rich, and that is the ultimate king of all, Yahweh. I want to close this in prayer.

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Let's pray. So, Father, we pray that you would come upon us with power the way you came upon Abram.

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He had to chase down his loved ones and deliver his loved ones from the enemy who took them captive.

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Lord, we have many that we love. The enemy has taken them to do your will.

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And Lord, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers and dark forces and heavenly places.

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We pray that we would go into spiritual war with that kind of courage, that we would fight for the ones we love.

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Make us strong and courageous in the battle. Give us opportunities to witness and share the gospel with other people.

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And Father, we pray that you would give us victory the way you gave victory to Abram. And Lord, most importantly, we thank you for our

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Melchizedek, Jesus Christ, who gave his body and blood for us, for our sins, for our forgiveness.

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We have a true and great high priest named Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen. Amen.

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Amen. Thank you.