major international wars wars. There’s uh Russia, Ukraine, Iran, US, Israel, lots of civil wars that go on that uh that just escape our notice. Places like Sudan and Myanmar and Yemen and Ethiopia. And then there are lots of regional or intermittent conflicts. If you lived in those places, you wouldn’t enjoy it very much. places like Haiti and Syria, Ecuador, Cameroon, Afghanistan, even in northern India, the Philippines, Peru. So, it’s no surprise then that, you know, the Bible covers this great sweep of world history that it mentions a great many wars and armed conflicts throughout the centuries. And this morning, we see the first war mentioned in the whole Bible. This is this is desert storm 1.0 that we’re looking at this morning. And the war itself, it’s quite briefly sketched. It only takes a few verses, but the aftermath of the conflict, that’s where the gold really lies for us today because God’s been installing these faith convictions into the life of our spiritual ancestor Abraham. He’s this man highlighted in the New Testament being very significant for our lives because he’s our model of what it means to be made righteous by faith alone. And last week we saw Abram running down to Egypt because uh there was famine in the promised land. And he got down there and he was fearful and he lied about his wife being his sister and he almost lost her to the Egyptian Pharaoh. And then shamefully uh he was deported because of his deception. And then he he went back a humbled man. He returned to the place in the promised land where he had first built an altar to the Lord. And this was a journey of humility and repentance and worship. And from there, he just seemed to have a a new perspective, a perspective to be radically generous to his nephew Lot. They needed to separate because they both had abundant livestock. And Abram just said, “Well, just take whatever you want and I’ll just go the other way.” So if last week showed Abram being tested by scarcity, by famine and food insecurity and fear, our passage today shows the same man, but he’s being tested by success. And if you think of your own life, which do you think challenges you more? Is it the test of having less than you want and you need? Or is it the test of having more than you need and want? What’s a greater threat threat to our ability to trust God and to walk with him by faith? In our story today, it begins in the mud and blood of a desert war. But before it ends, our eyes are lifted to the stratosphere, the very throne of heaven where Jesus sits. He ministers to us faithfully so that we can survive and endure either scarcity or success. And we hardly seem, it hardly seems to bother us. So this first war in scripture, it’s briefly described Genesis chapter 14. At that time uh the world of the ancient near east it was not a world of nations like we know today. Instead uh the political situation was one of city states. So large cities, walled cities. Uh they had their own tribes and clans. They were held together by local kings. And at times some of those citystates would ally with one another and they went up against other regions in an effort to expand their power and their influence to plunder riches to enslave people for themselves. So we begin our story. We have four kings from the east who had formed an alliance together. They come from regions in what today would be Iran and Iraq and Turkey. And to those kings, the territory kind of east of the land of modern-day Israel looked like easy picking. So they battled. They subdued various peoples on the eastern side of the Jordan River, south of the Dead Sea. And we read that they subjugated those people for 12 years. But then the city states in the land of Canaan, the land in the west, they rebelled. They didn’t want to have to pay tribute money to be dominated by those four kings in the east. They were tired of the taxes and they were tired of the transfer payments and the lack of representation down east and constant stalling of pipeline development. And people in the west maybe they held something like a provincial referendum. They voted to separate. You know a quote often attributed to Mark Twain says history does not repeat itself but it rhymes. So we have these five western kings who rise up in rebellion. The rascals from the east, they’re not willing to give up the prosperity they’re gaining from the west. So the armies of the east attacked. They had no trouble regaining control. The big battle took place at the southern end of the Dead Sea. And as the battle turned against them, the five beaten western kings, including the king, kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, went running for their lives. And verse 10 tells us that as they were trying to escape, some of them fell into tarpits. They didn’t have great military maps at the time. They fell into tar pits. Others fled to the hills. And I I don’t think any of us probably have ever been in a war. But in a war, so many things are uncertain. There’s this fog that comes around when particularly when you’re on the losing side. You don’t know what sides up and and what strategies working and what’s not working. The fog of war kind of settles over everything. I’ve been reading some of the letters that CS Lewis wrote, including uh several that were written in the year 1950, which was the start of the Korean War. And CS Lewis, he had fought in World War I. He had endured the horrors of World War II. And now the Korean War threatened once again. And these major world powers like the US and China and the Soviet Union, now nuclear armed, were starting to circle one another as that conflict on the Korean Peninsula played out. So in a letter to an American friend, Lewis wrote, “All that has become obvious is that your country is committed to what may be called a major minor war, and you have our heartiest sympathy because Britain was not involved in that. What we are able to do to help is not at the moment,” he says, very obvious. If we move our ships or our troops from Singapore or Hong Kong, China would no doubt be ordered to stage a large-scale attack on our depleted garrisons. I see the latest Russian move is to lay claim to Alaska, but I can hardly believe that’s a serious threat designed, don’t you think, to panic the American staff into refusing to reinforce the Far East? He just didn’t know what was going on. He said, “What a state the world has gone into. One can but hope and pray.” So, in the midst of that ancient war in Canaan, in verse 11 is where this conflict really touches this one particular family that we’re most interested in throughout these chapters of Genesis. It says, “The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, all their food, and then they went away. They also carried off Abram’s nephew, Lot, and his possessions since he was living in Sodom.” Remember last week when Abram returned to the promised land, he renewed his life of worship at the altar. He generously gave Lot his choice of where to live with his family and his people and his herds. And Lot chose for himself the well-watered Jordan Valley to the east, settling among the cities of the valley. And it says he pitched his tent near Sodom. Sodom was not a great place to raise your family. We saw in in chapter 13:13 it says the men of Sodom were wicked. They were great sinners against the Lord. But Lot seems to have gotten progressively involved with that culture and that community as time went by. Chapter 13, he was pitching his tent near Sodom. By chapter 14, he’s living in the city of Sodom itself. Later, we’ll see even in chapter 19, he seems to become a bit of a respected citizen in that city. He’s sitting at the city gates alongside the other elders. And although Lot continued to be assimilated into the city of the Sodommites, second Peter chapter 2:7 tells us something interesting about him. It says Lot was a righteous man who was greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked men of the city. But before that, he’s living in Sodom. This battle’s raging around him. Lot just found himself in the wrong place, the wrong time. When the five western kings were defeated, Lot, his family, his possessions, they were all taken captive mar to be marched to the east where they would likely live out their lives as enslaved people. And one of the men who escaped to the hills, he ran breathlessly about 60 kilometers or so uh from the battle site to the area of Mamry where where Abram the Hebrew was living. First reference to Hebrew in the Bible. This is the term that people will use uh for generations to refer to Abraham and his descendants, the Israelites. And Abram, it says, had allied himself with some of the peoples around him. When he heard that his nephew and his nephew’s family had been taken captive, though he was more than 75 years old, an age when most men don’t want to climb a ladder to clean their gutters, he got on a camel and he went to war. He rounded up a posy, it says, of some 300 men within his own household. and along with the allies of other peoples around him eventually caught up to his capture some 150 km to the north and then very briefly as the war described says nothing much about tactics or strategy. It just says during the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them pursuing them as far as Hoba north of Damascus. So we can imagine arrows flying and swords gleaming in the moonlight. When it was over, Abram and his allies and his men stood victorious. He continued to chase the enemy right out of the territory. We read in verse 16, he recovered all the goods, brought back his relative Lot and his possessions together with the women and the other people. And we could end there. You know, everyone lives happily ever after. It’s a it’s a great war story. The good guys win. Abram and his allies declare victory. But God has a lot more to show us from this story. As Abram returns victorious and he interacts with two kings from his home region, both of them come out to meet him as he’s coming back. And as Abram arrived back in his old neighborhood with all these spoils of war and all this food and all these people, he was a man to be reckoned with. He had power at his fingertips. So the first king who came out to meet him was the king of Salem. This is a man named Melkisedc. This meeting really is the center of gravity of our passage this morning. MelkiseDC appears very briefly, then he disappears uh just as quickly from the Old Testament, but he leaves this mysterious chemtrail that we’ll try to follow again in a few minutes. But here’s what we read of the initial encounter between Abram and MelkiseDC. MelkiseDC, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of God most high. And he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God most high, creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God most high, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Now, this man of mystery, MelkiseDC, his title, King of Salem, means king of peace, and his name Melkisedc means king of righteousness. And he seems very unlike what would be a typical Canaanite pagan king because he recognizes the source of Abram’s victory not as Abram himself but as God and not just any God but God most high creator of heaven and earth. MelkiseDC is described as both a king and a priest for his people. Which is really interesting because when you and I think of a king, we think of someone with vast power and sweeping authority and someone whose laws are not to be transgressed. I mean to cross the will of a king is to invite punishment maybe death because a king represents ultimate power. But a priest is someone very different. A priest intervenes, mediates, he represents us before our deity. The priest performs rituals and functions on our behalf as a bridge between us and God. So the king is the one who decrees and enforces the law. The priest is the one who’s like a caregiver, a supporter, a helper who sympathizes with us and who deals with us gently. If you want, kings are more like stern fathers and priests are more like supportive mothers who let us know that we’re accepted. And in MelkiseDC, these two offices are mysteriously fused. His interaction with Abram, it deepens the the mystery because he brings out bread and wine which hints to us of the sacrificial meal of Jesus at the last supper. And MelkiseDC, he doesn’t make any request of Abram that we read about, but Abram voluntarily just chose to give him a tithe, 10% of all the spoils of war. MelkiseDC had gone out to bless Abram. Yet Abram responded with this unexplained act of humble generosity. Now we’ll come back to MelkiseDC in a bit. But the second king, the king of Sodom, he didn’t come out with bread and wine. And he didn’t come out to bless Abram. And he didn’t come out with the name of God most high, creator of heaven and earth on his lips. Unlike MelkiseDC, his focus wasn’t to offer a blessing to Abram and to bless God. King of Sodom came out to make a deal to nervously negotiate terms with uh the powerful man who had just won this uh great military victory. King of Sodom really he had a weak hand. He didn’t he wasn’t holding any face cards. He was essentially at Abram’s mercy. He tried to bluff to see if Abram would bite. He said, “Give me the people. Keep the goods for yourself.” His city of Sodom, of course, had been overrun, had been plundered. They’ taken all the food. They taken all the people. It left him a king without any subjects. And he figures, well, the material goods, the wealth, the food, everything else that’s been recovered by Abram. There’s nothing much I can do about that. But if he could manage somehow to get back some of his people, his subjects, perhaps he could start over and Sodom could be rebuilt. So with no real bargaining power, only a request, he said to Abram, “Just give me the people. Keep the goods for yourself.” Now, we shouldn’t minimize the temptation to Abram here. He had every opportunity now to throw his weight around. Cities of the plain were his. The cities of the hills were his. Really, everything was his. In chapter 13, he was being tested by scarcity, by famine, by not having enough, by fear. Now, he’s being tested by success. He’d gone to war. He’d simply try wanted to recover his relatives. He hadn’t gone on a campaign of conquest. But the upshot of the victory was that he was in a position to seize and consolidate power. You know, something similar to this in that uh that confrontation between Jesus and Satan. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Satan offered Jesus a shortcut to the kingdom without having to go to the cross. He said, “I’ll give you can everything that’s in front of you, you can have. Just bow down and worship me.” He offered Jesus a shortcut. And Abram here can see a bit of a shortcut as well. He could lay claim to huge swaths of the promised land without having to wait around any longer for God to give it to him. What was at stake though? Abram saw that it was the very reputation of God that was a state at stake because he had been trusting by faith that God was the one who was going to give him land and descendants and blessing all the things God promised him at the beginning of Genesis 12. But if he accepted the offer of this king of Sodom, no one would know that God had anything to do with it. Everyone would just assume that it was through the spoils of war and wealth acquired from this wicked city of Sodom that Abram had become rich. So this moment kind of hangs in suspense in the Bible. King of Sodom eagerly awaits for Abram’s decision. And Abram looks at him and says,”Ive raised my hand to the Lord God most high, creator of heaven and earth. And I’ve taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the thong of a sandal, so that you’ll never be able to say, 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 Anar and Ishkal and Mamry, let them have their share.” He’s just looking out for his pagan neighbors here, his allies. He knew what they had risked and he wanted them compensated accordingly. They didn’t know anything about Abram’s God. They weren’t asked to walk by faith as Abram was. So Abram saw to it that they re received their share of the spoils. As for the men of his own household, all Abraham says, “I I’ll just deduct expenses, just the food that they’ve eaten along the way.” He didn’t want to feel like he had to pay back the king of Sodom uh with the things that they had eaten on the way to war. So God had made these sweeping promises to Abram and through the spoils of war uh he was offered a simple shortcut to gain reward apart from God. Abram said I don’t want anything to do with that. God had told Abram that God would bless him. So Abram was not going to allow the king of Sodom to bless him instead. Abram wanted something more enduring than the spoils of war. He wanted the fulfillment of God’s promise to come to in a way that in a way that was miraculous and enduring and untouched by human hands. Pretty spiritually courageous thing for Abram to do. He’s now he’s fully prepared now to return home to his little rented three-bedroom bungalow because he didn’t even yet even own a square meter of the land that God had promised him. But if the promises were going to be fulfilled, it would be God, not Sodom, who would gain the glory. Words of MelkiseDC, the high priest of Salem, encouraged Abram to look to God for his blessing. And that’s what Abram did. Something solid for each of us to chew on here. All of us, we wrestle with prosperity. Um, it’s compared to the majority of the people in the world, we have so much. Being tested by scarcity may be far less of a problem for us than being tested by success. And my friend Gil has a story to tell this morning of a time in his life when he was tested by success, by prosperity. Always makes me laugh when he tells it. But Gio, would you come up and share with us your story? >> I think it’s okay. There you go. Can you hear me? Okay, good. Okay. Well, I’m Gio. I’ve known Doug for years. Um, Doug and Charlene, I guess. Um, I’m the shy guy in the church. I don’t dress up for you to notice me. So, I don’t know how he keeps putting me in these situations, but I don’t have a sports car. I have a little Fiat. I don’t know that came the other week. Um, I don’t volunteer for stuff. These guys just get a kick out of getting me out of my comfort zone. So, um, I don’t know how you guys are, but with me, I’m very shy here in church. Everywhere else, I’m a big mouth, but here, I like to hide. I like to pretend to sing. I like to just, you know, be part of the group without exposing myself. But I’ll expose myself because apparently I have something to do with this story, I guess. So, um, Doug, so before I read this, it’s it’s just a quick story. It’s actually, um, I’m a guy who fears being poor. So, that’s my motive. So, before I read this little blurb of my uh, my story, I’m scared of being poor. I’m shy at church, and I do nothing to try and get anyone’s attention. So I just try and exist. So just know that after I read my little story, I realized I’m pretty shallow. So So just understand I’m scared of being poor. So just please appreciate that. Anyways, so when Doug did call me, he called me on Thursday and then he asked me if he could tell my story of my moral dilemma. And I’m like, which one? cuz I come to Doug with I probably have 20 years of moral dilemmas I gave to Doug. So like which one you talking about? He goes the one about the money. I’m like, “Which one?” And he’s like, “Oh.” I’m like, “The the lot thing.” So we wanted some cash at my welding shop that I was at. I said, “Okay, yeah, go ahead and tell it.” So then he’s like, “Did you want to tell it?” I’m like, “No.” He goes, “It’d be better if you told it.” I’m like, “Still no.” And then he’s like, “Go on and tell it.” I’m like, “Well, I’ll tell it. I couldn’t care less. Sure. I’ll tell you the story.” Whatever. So, so he says, “Go ahead and say it.” I’m like, “Okay, good.” So, anyways, my moral dilemma. And now I kind of see it has a link to this, I suppose. Um, I said, “Well, so he goes, “Yeah.” So, I said, “Doug, well, I was hoping you’d forgotten that story. So, let me take you back a bit.” This is 8 years ago, I think, around there. So about 6 months before this all happened, I was frustrated with life. I didn’t have much money um to go on holidays, buy a car, um buy anything that my friends are buying. Like somehow everyone had a lot of money. I don’t know how they did it, but everyone had a boat, everyone had jet ski, everyone had something. They big screen TVs. For some reason, I just never kept up. So I was kind of frustrated a bit. So then I I I talked with God and I said I had a little conversation with God and I said, “God, if I win the big one, I’m going to give half to charity.” Months went by and obviously you can imagine no there’s no lottery. I didn’t win no lottery anyway. So I got nothing. So now I’m annoyed and cuz that’s the way I am. So I talked to God again after about 6 months or so and I said, “God um I said, “God, you know what? Never mind on that promise. I revoke. I take it back. If I win, if I if I win the big one, I’m going to do whatever I want with the money.” I actually said that to God. I’m sure you all have as well. Anyways, that’s what I actually said to God. And I moved on with my life, still winning nothing. Then not long afterward, I get called into an office at work and there’s 10 other guys there or nine other guys. I’m the 10th. The lady in in charge, she ran the show. She’s like, “So, what brought you here?” I’m like, “What’s happening?” Like, “Are we getting fired?” She’s like, “No, we won $100,000.” I’m like, “Like each of us?” She’s like, “No, like all of us.” I’m like, “Okay.” And I’m doing math and I’m like, “Okay, well, okay.” So, I said, “For each, no.” I said, “So, we divided it up.” So, I’m a bit excited at this point. So, I go out with the boys after work, go for a couple drinks, celebrate, whatever. It’s just after work, you go out for a drink, I suppose. And we’re talking, having a good time. And then as I’m driving home, I’m like, “Oh my god, do I owe half of this to charity.” Then I start negotiating and battling with myself. I told myself, “No, no.” I said, “If I win the big one, this isn’t the big one.” The big one was millions. And in my head, millions. Lotto 649 big, not 100 grand, which is 10 grand, which is that’s come on. Anyway, so I was thinking like millions. I’d give half. I can’t even do that with this. But anyway, so I revoked my promise before I won the money. So that’s what I said to myself. So technically, I figured out I was off the hook. But the next day, I went back to work and asked the same lady, “When exactly did we win this money?” Cuz I don’t know if you guys do group lots at work, but you can’t go claim a group lotto ticket and take it. You actually have to show registration. You have to show the names. You have to do this. There’s a process. You don’t get the money till a week after. That’s what they do. They have to put it’s a legal thing actually. So, so I said, “When exactly did we win this money?” Cuz I’m like, “This will relieve me of everything.” She goes, “Oh, about a month ago.” And I’m like, “Man, I revoked the promise a month ago.” Like, when? She goes, “I don’t know the dates on a date.” I’m like, “I don’t even remember the date I promised.” So, I’m like, “Oh, man.” I said, “I got to try and figure this out.” So now I’m trying to figure out the exact timing of my conversations with God versus the date we won the money. That’s who I am. I’m practically building a legal defense for myself. So I call Doug, my spiritual adviser. I tell him the story and ask him, “What do I do?” And Doug in his nurturing way starts calming me down because I get hyper pretty quick. And at starts calming down and starts asking me questions. He asked if I want to donate some of the money and he also said, “Oh, Gio, you’re a special guy, aren’t you?” And chuckled at me. I’m like, “Yes, I’m your special project.” So, I’m think Doug, if I give half of this away, then I give some to the kids, and then my wife takes some, I pretty win a couple bucks. Something that’s kind of nothing. and he’s a so we talked more and I was pretty firm that I wasn’t giving half away. So I’m that guy. Um later that night I did call Doug again. Yeah, I will. I’m sleep. I’m just a mess. Anyways, I said, “Okay, what if I give 10%.” He goes, “You you I can’t remember how Doug explained it, but he encouraged me not to be too hard on myself.” Thank you. After going back and forth with myself over and over again, I finally settled on 15% and that was that. I told him, “Is it okay I give the church 15% of that?” He goes, “You give whatever you you give.” I’m like, “No, 15%. That’s my final offer.” He goes, “Okay.” So, he accepted my final offer of 15%. Which, if you guys all do the math, that’s $1,500. So, whatever. That was that. Oh, here we go. And I thought that was that. So I thought because now now that Doug So I thought that was done, you guys. That was eight years ago. But because now Doug has asked me to come up here and tell the story again. And as I’m thinking about it, I realized something. Maybe I should have given more. Maybe the whole point wasn’t whether I technically owed the money, whether I had revoked my promise in time, or whether 100,000 counted as the winning the big one. Maybe the real question was what kind of person I wanted to be when I actually had the opportunity to do something good. And just when I start feeling guilty all over again, another thought crosses my mind. Is Doug making me tell this story to help deliver today’s message? Or is he punishing me because he knows I don’t like the Cowboys? The Cowboys were losing that night, Thursday night, when he came up with this little idea of his because honestly, I’m starting to question his motives. I do bust his chops a lot with the Cowboys, so it does bother him. I know it does. Um, so Doug, thank you for bringing this back to my attention. You’ve managed to make me reconsider a decision I made a long time ago. And for everyone else, I guess the moral of my story, this story, is that it’s easy to make promises when you don’t have anything to lose. It’s a lot harder when keeping those promises means giving up something you really want. And sometimes the biggest moral dilemmas aren’t about what we have to do. They’re about what we know we could do, what we want to do, and we al what we ultimately decide to do. I gave 15%. Was it enough? Is it enough? I don’t know. But I do want I do know one one thing. The next time I make a deal with God, I’m getting a lawyer to read the first fine print of the contract. So, that’s my moral dilemma, guys. And I shared it with you. Um, yeah, do what you got to do with that. Thank you. Gio, now I don’t even know what it has to do with this message. No, thank thanks. Those are those are the phone calls that every pastor loves to receive. You know, some guy’s in a moral dilemma. I don’t have enough. I have this money. I don’t know how much to give away. And pastors love dealing with that stuff. I don’t know. I I think I think the point of that is as I as I wanted you just to share that was it’s this is not this is not a message about making vows and keeping vows. I mean there’s Jesus says something about that but this is just about the tension we feel when God prospers us and gives us a certain amount of success and then we find ourselves painted in a little bit corner and we don’t exactly know what to do with it. We’re painted we’re painted into a corner by our success. And uh you know Abram I think was facing that when he had this great victory all this goods and all these people at his fingertips and he refused to congratulate himself for what he had uh for what he had won in the war you know and we can congratulate ourselves for our wealth and our success and our houses and our cars, our education, our careers, our vocations, our work ethic, all those things that put us a little ahead of other people in the world. But the test of success is always going to be, are we going to give the glory back to God or are we just going to keep it for ourselves? But before we close off this morning, we come back to Melkisedc because he really, I think, pointed Abram in the right direction. He appears, he disappears very quickly in biblical history. Bible isn’t quite done with him because a thousand years later after Abram after that episode uh Israel’s King David his the great King David was inspired to write Psalm 110 and he wrote a psalm that ends up being quoted more often than any other psalm in the New Testament. It’s all about uh um becoming uh this this coming Messiah. And in that psalm uh mysterious reference to MelkiseDC, the Lord has sworn will not change his mind. You are a priest forever in the order of MelkiseDC. Now David was celebrating his own ascension to the throne. But he had someone else in view who was going to come after him who would be his lord who would sit on the throne as the king forever. Not only would he be a king, he would also be a priest forever for all time in the order of MelkiseDC. Now in Israel, it was unfathomable anyone could ever hold joint office of king and priest because all the priests came from the tribe of Levi. They all had to be related to Moses’ brother Aaron. If they didn’t have that lineage, they weren’t allowed to serve as priests. But David and the royal line, the kings of Israel, came from the tribe of Judah. And God had promised David that one from his line would sit on the throne forever. So, how could a priest from the tribe of Levi and a king from the tribe of Judah ever be combined in one person? Well, fast forward another thousand years after after David and Jesus comes on the scene and he starts quoting Psalm 110 is referring to himself. Only in him can the joint roles of king and priest be realized. And then the author of Hebrews takes a deep dive into this. We’re not going to take as deep a dive this morning, but if you want, you can read Hebrews chapter 7. Some of the things that the author of Hebrews has to say about the connection between MelkiseDC and Jesus. He says, “This MelkiseDC was king of Salem, priest of God most high. He met Abraham returning from the defeat of the kings and blessed him and Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. First his name means king of righteousness. Then also king of Salem means king of peace. Like the son of God, he remains a priest forever. If perfection could have been attained through the Levitical priesthood, the Levites, why was there still need for another priest to come? One in the order of Melkisedc, not in the order of Aaron. So the point he’s making is just that the Jewish priests again descended from Moses’ brother Aaron. They administered the law of God. They stood, they represented the people to God through all their sacrifices and their rituals. Their work was never done. But what they needed and what we need is a different kind of priest, a priest of a different order. This mysterious MelkiseDC, he predated the priests in Israel by 500 years. And if Jesus was a priest of Melkisedc’s order, not one of Aaron’s order, then Jesus is timeless. He’s eternal, eligible to serve the dual roles of king and priest. Difference between the priesthood of Jesus and the priesthood of the Jewish priests can be explained with a bit of a parable. You can imagine that if you grow up as an orphan, you never know your father or mother at all. And one day your uncle comes to fetch you from the orphanage and he takes you home to live with him. Your uncle’s he’s a he’s a he’s okay, but he’s different kind of guy. He never smiles. He never plays with you. Never encourages you. Every morning he sits you down. and he gives you some rules to follow for the day. Every evening at supper time, he reviews your day and he shows you how you failed to live up to the expectations. You haven’t kept the rules. Every night, you go to bed miserable. Not because not because the rules are bad. The rules are great. They make sense. You know, it’s just right to follow them. And when you do manage to obey some of them, you feel pretty good. But overall, you’re such a miserable failure. You cry yourself to sleep. You’re full of self- condemnation. One day, quite unexpectedly, your real father shows up. He’s not at all like your uncle. He smiles. He hugs you repeatedly. He wants to be with you, wants to play with you, wants to live with you. And he’ll be a great model for you. He’ll show you how to enjoy life and and still live it properly in a way that helps you. You find that when you’re with when when you’re with your father, you end up obeying all those old rules of your uncle almost by accident. And your father never gets tired of you or never wants to go away from you and he never does. That story is an illustration of Hebrews 7. The strict uncles, the Old Testament law, law itself is good, but you’re too weak to keep it. So the law won’t make you perfect. It’ll only make you miserable. And we’ll all be miserable every time you and I think that our acceptance before God, our relationship with him depends on how well we behave, how well we keep a set of rules. writer of Hebrews insists that the law didn’t make anyone perfect. So Christ came and changed everything. He was not a priest from the tribe of Levi. His priesthood like MelkiseDC predates and supersedes the Levitical priesthood. Jesus doesn’t need to have Aaron and Levi in his family tree. He came from the royal line of Judah and still like a priest of like like MelkiseDC. The priesthood is eternal. writer of Hebrews goes on and he says,”Now there have been many of those priests since death prevented them from continuing in office. But because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he’s able to save completely those who come to God through him because he always lives to intercede for them. And finally, because Jesus is a true priest in the order of Melkisedc, he’s the one who can truly come and truly meet our needs. Such a high priest meets our needs. He’s holy. He’s blameless. He’s pure. He’s set apart for sinners from sinners. Exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he doesn’t need to offer sacrifices day after day. First for his own sins, then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. So, as king, Jesus just deserves our worship. and as the priest who went to the cross representing us and our sin, he’s now our gobetween and our mediator. So that when we place our faith and trust in him alone for salvation, he saves us completely. Jesus is the king. He’s the priest in the order of Melkisedc. And that just brings us back to the final place we need to land this morning. It is thanksgiving. We had to get there eventually. What is it that keeps us from being spoiled by success? The only answer to the test of success is thanksgiving. You know, the ancient priest MelkiseDC, he was really he was kind of coaching Abram toward thanksgiving when he said to him, “And blessed be God most high. He’s the one who delivered your enemies into your hand.” In effect, he was saying to Abram, Abram, don’t don’t let this military success go to your head. All this wealth and all this opportunity, it’s not worth it. All of your success has come to you from the hand of God. Don’t grasp it with your fist. Let thanksgiving and generosity be the relief valve from the pressure that success brings. And how do we know that Abram received the word? Well, again, he just seems to be able to show reckless generosity. Something moves in his heart. He looks at Melkisedc. He says, “Here, I want to give you 10% of everything that I’ve just gotten. Not 15, Gio, but 10%. And may all of our successes be turned into thanksgiving.” not not only this weekend but always to God be the glory for all the things he has done for us and he’s given us and uh and may thanksgiving always be our response to success. Let’s take a few moments just to pray uh this morning and um one thing you might want to do is just give thanks for all the blessings that God has blessed you and your family with. This is personal time between you and God. Just start with thanksgiving and then pray about your successes. Thank God for them. Thank God also for his care in your life during times when things have been pretty scarce. And then thank Jesus that he’s come to be your king and your priest forever. Just take a few moments to pray and then I’ll close us off.