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"The Victory of Faith" Text Comment v.10 The most common assumption, based on a good bit of evidence, is that the five cities, Sodom, Gomorrah, etc. were located under what is now the southern end of the Dead Sea. Nearby are salt formations and asphalt pits and there is a reek of Sulphur -- all of which recall the destruction of those cities in Gen. 19, and the southern shore of the Dead Sea did use to be much further north, some of the shallow waters of the most southern part dating from after Roman times. v.13 His introduction as "Abram the Hebrew," as if he had not been introduced up to this point, has long been thought to be evidence that Moses had this account in some independent source or document and wove it into his history; all the more as "Hebrew" seems not to have been used by the Israelites to speak of themselves, but only by non-Israelites speaking of Israelites. "Hebrew" = descendant of Eber, 10:24. v.14 The Hebrew word "trained men," found nowhere else in the Bible has, in this century been found, in a like form, in an Egyptian text from this period meaning in reference to a Palestinian chieftain's retainers, exactly as here. His allies accompanied him with their forces, as we read in v. 24. "Dan" is often regarded as the northernmost limit of the Promised Land. It was not called "Dan" until later, before it was called Laish. An editor has put in the later name before the Pentateuch was given its final form as a portion of Scripture. v.15 A smaller force prevailing in a night attack anticipates Gideon's similar success centuries later. v.18 "Salem," which means "peace" (like "Shalom) is "Jerusalem," a known abbreviation, Ps. 76:2. Melchizedek's name means "King of Righteousness." He was also a priest, the first one mentioned in the Bible. The association of "King" and "Priest" in this one man, at Jerusalem, was to prompt David, the first Israelite to sit on Melchizedek's throne, later to speak of a greater Melchizedek to come (Ps. 110). Melchizedek is certainly an indication that God had his people elsewhere and not solely in the family of Abram. The Bible doesn't tell us everything, only what we need to know! v.23 Abraham's surrender of rights to the spoils of war, even the words he uses "Not even a thread or a thong of a sandal" have close parallels in ANE texts from this period. Indeed, there is a great deal in the chapter that evokes the circumstances and life of the early second millennium B.C. v.20 The first instance of a "tithe" or "tenth" being paid as an act of religious devotion. Abram, Abraham, is in the Bible the great exemplar of faith, indeed, he is called the "father of the faithful." And what we have in the great history of his life and his deeds from Genesis 12-25 is the OT's greatest account of the life of faith, the nature and character of that life, and God's blessing and reward in it and through it. In the NT both Jesus and Paul treat Abraham as the Bible's best example of a believing man, of a man who lived by faith in God and faith in Christ. Now faith, in its simplest, most elementary sense, is simply the reliance placed by one man in the truthfulness and faithfulness and power of someone else. It is the credit one man places in the word and the capability of another. A very fine statement of the nature and meaning of faith is given us in our Confession of Faith in the 14th chapter:
You see, one trembles at a threat, or obeys a command, or embraces a promises for himself precisely because one accepts to be true what God has said in his Word. Robert Bruce, the old Scot, put it quaintly this way: "the nature of faith is to make things that are absent in themselves, present nevertheless." And how is that: because, though one cannot see them or hear them, or touch them -- in that sense they are absent -- one knows for sure that they are real, and real for him or for her, because one believes what God has said about them: whether angels, or heaven, or the forgiveness of sins, or the second coming of Jesus Christ, or his resurrection from the dead, or whatever. Faith is not mere opinion, for opinion lacks certainty and faith is reliance on the word of God who cannot lie! Nor is it mere knowledge, such as one might discover by investigation, reasoning, and proof. Faith is true knowledge, of course, it is the knowledge of the truth. But faith is the knowledge of truth that we must be told and told by God, otherwise we could not know it. So, when Paul says that Christians live by faith and not by sight, he is simply saying in another way that Christians base their lives, their choices, their actions, their commitments, their hopes, on what God has told them and upon the credit, the reliance they place on his Word. Now this faith is what we see shining so beautifully in Abram's behavior here in Genesis 14. We see it, of course, in the daring with which Abram took off after his nephew and his house when he first learned of Lot's capture. What else was this but Abram remembering that God had given this land to him and to his descendants and that he would be the father of a great nation. A man who knows that, who credits God's promise to him as something that must come true, who has, accordingly, a conviction of his own invincibility until and before that promise is fulfilled, is a man who does not worry about being outnumbered by an enemy. He may well be prudent and attack at night, but attack he does, and gains the victory. But, in particular, Abraham's faith shines brightest and is revealed most clearly in the aftermath of the battle, when he returns to the Promised Land, and is met by two separate individuals. "Faith is the victory that overcomes the world," John says. But Abram's greatest victory over the world is not in battle against the confederation of kings, but against the subtler, more powerful temptations of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. In effect, upon his return as a conqueror, Abram is confronted with an alternative, a choice between two men, two views of life, two paths to walk. Abram's decision, first regarding Melchizedek and then the King of Sodom is, in each case, a decision in keeping with faith, with the credit, the reliance he placed in the Word of God. The alternative, and the fact that Abram had to choose between them, is emphasized by the fact that the King of Sodom's appearance is mentioned first, but then Abram's encounter with Melchizedek, as if both men were present at the same time. Melchizedek brought a banquet out to Abram. Bread and water would be ordinary fare, bread and wine was the food of kings. He blessed Abram in the name of God with an unspecified blessing. He didn't promise any particular thing to Abram or offer any particular advantage. And, then, Abram paid him a tithe, presumably a tenth of all the plunder and spoil he had returned with after his victory over the confederation of kings. The King of Sodom approached Abram differently. He brought nothing to Abram, no meal, no gift at all. He made, with what seems to be a disdainful and certainly an ungrateful attitude, what amounted to a business deal. Certainly there is nothing of the customary courtesy that marked such conversations in the ANE. "Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself." No doubt he imagined himself generous, though Abram was his rescuer and, actually, could have kept everything for himself. That is clear enough from v. 24 where Abram does require that his allies get their share and says plainly that he has no intention of repaying the Kings of Sodom and the other cities for what plunder his men have already consumed on the way home from the battle, nor for the tithe he has paid to Melchizedek. Now, here is the point. Melchizedek was more gracious, but Abram had to pay him a tenth of everything he had gained. The King of Sodom, with the other kings, were offering to reward him with a large amount of booty and, perhaps, with peaceful relations. Perhaps that is the unstated threat in the offer the King of Sodom makes. Abram's faith however saw in Melchizedek's meal and his blessing the favor and salvation of God. And such was the favor of God that he saw in that blessing and in his relationship to God's priest, that he was perfectly willing to pay a tithe to Melchizedek, it was his happy and grateful duty to pay a tithe to the house of God. And, again, it was only Abram's faith that saw the danger in the proposal of the King of Sodom, the possible entanglement with worldly and wicked men and the compromise to his witness for God -- as he says in v. 23 -- that the King of Sodom might be able to say that he had made Abram rich instead of God. Only faith sees the great gift Melchizedek brought and the great danger in the King of Sodom's offer. He knew what God had said to him was true and he evaluated this affair, therefore, in terms of that word. And here is the life of faith that Abram is exemplifying for us. Faith in its true exercise in the Christian life is not merely a general commitment to a set of principles, not even a general commitment to God and Christ. It is credit to the word and the power of God that we express in specific and particular ways each day in the face of a thousand and one different circumstances of our lives. And, you see, the issue is exactly our faith. It is not first our obedience. Our obedience depends upon our faith, our worship depends upon our faith, our prayer, our witness, our love for God and man. Everything in our life depends upon our faith. Every failure in our lives is a failure of faith. It may be disobedience but it is first a failure of faith. The Christian life lies first and ultimately in the indicatives, not the imperatives, the things that are true, not the things we are commanded to do. The extent to which we believe those things, the strength of our conviction of those truths, is the explanation of our sin and of our obedience. How you respond to a temptation is determined by just how much credit you give to what God has said to you and told you is true: about what he thinks of sin, how he is likely to punish it, what harm sin does and what danger it is likely to pose to a godly life, about how he sees everything in your life and the angels too, about how every deed done in the body will have to be accounted for on the great day, about grieving the Holy Spirit, and so on. How you respond to trouble and affliction in your life, whether in a godly and gracious way or not depends upon the measure of credit you give to what God has said to you about his judgments being true and righteous altogether, about all things working out for good to those who love God, about his disciplining the sons he loves, about his being with us through the deep waters and so on. The entire issue is your faith and the strength of your faith and conviction. The key to everything good and holy and fruitful and eternal in your daily life and mine is faith and nothing but faith, the credit, the reliance we place upon God, upon Christ, and upon what God has said to us in his Word. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! And, give us grace to feed our faith and exercise our faith that it might grow strong. Meditating always in your Word and putting that Word into daily practice in our lives and so proving it true and strengthening our conviction of its truth! I am reading a simply wonderful book. It is entitled, My Spirit Rejoices, and it is the Journal and some other literary remains of Elisabeth Leseur, a woman some in the Roman Catholic Church are seeking sainthood for. And while we have our strong differences with Roman Catholicism at many points and would with Mrs. Leseur, what shines in this book and in her words is simply her faith in God and in Christ, the invincible credit and reliance she placed upon the Word of God. She was a woman of remarkable spirit, of abounding charity and generosity whose life deeply enriched and benefited multitudes of others: her family circle, the poor, those struggling in an age of unbelief with questions of the reality of God and the truth of Christianity. It is all the more remarkable because she had a liver ailment from infancy and was a semi-invalid for much of her adult life. Her life is a particularly wonderful story especially for the effect that she had on her husband. Elisabeth Leseur was born in Paris in 1866 and died there in 1914. She became a staunch believer in Christ only after her marriage and her husband, Felix, was adamantly an unbeliever. He says, in his introduction to the book, that he did everything to disabuse her of her faith in Christ, he mocked it, he criticized it, he gave her books to read that he thought would undermine her faith -- she had a very fine mind and read widely and deeply. He says that to counterbalance his library, she formed one of her own composed of the great doctors of the Christian faith and above all she read and re-read the Bible, never did a day pass without her meditating upon some passage of God's Word. In her journal, of which her husband knew nothing until after her death, she speaks often of her spiritual solitude, of the loneliness in her faith in God that caused her so much pain. She was married to a man though she loved, with whom she could share nothing of what mattered most to her, indeed, to raise the issue at all was to make matters always worse. Felix, her husband, writes in the introduction, "The Journal will show how the atmosphere of hostility to her faith that surrounded her, and the necessity of hiding all the riches of her religious development, lacerated her spirit. Alas, for that I am principally responsible, and since I have understood this it has been my constant grief." [p. 20] For, you see, after the death of his wife, her sister gave Felix Elisabeth's Journal. And the reading of it made him a Christian. He later became a priest, a devout and faithful priest. And what lay behind her life and the beauty and the power and the life that God brought forth from her suffering? It was faith, the credit she placed in the Word of God, the living of her life according to what she knew, from God's Word, to be true even though those around her did not believe a word of it. She not only believed, she acted on her belief -- and that is faith and that is what Abram did and that is what God is calling you and me to do every day. And if we do, we shall be Christians indeed! |
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