Episode 165: Kings Clash, Abram Attacks, and Who is Melchizedek???

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Today Counts Show Episode 165

Preview

Winston Harris: If we haven’t figured it out already, we’re Lot. This battle, if you will, it activated a different level of leadership in Abram, which also just kind of blew me away that he had 318 trained men, keyword trained.

Jim Piper: Yeah, not 300, not 325, not 350, 318.

Winston Harris: 318 which is an interesting number ’cause maybe–

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Introduction and Overview

Jim Piper: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Today Counts show. Glad that you are with us. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Today Counts show. Glad that you are with us. Today Counts is a podcast and the subjects are really about life and leadership, especially leadership. Not just that, but it comes from maybe in today’s world a little bit of a unique perspective. It comes from a spiritual perspective, a faith perspective, and a Christian worldview. That’s what kind of informs our thinking, hopefully, as we learn. So we welcome you to join with us.

This particular episode is part of the Genesis project, which is a time that we are setting aside to walk through, to read through, and to simply discuss and learn from the book of Genesis. ah There’s four of us that have shared this project together, Pastor Matt Martin, Gary Harpst, Pastor Winston Harris, and myself, Jim Piper. Today, it looks like it’s Pastor Winston and myself. We might have one of the other fellows jump on here. We might not. We’ll see.

So let’s jump in. We’re on Genesis 14 today. Before we jump into that, let’s maybe do a quick overview, Winston, of where have we come so far. We’re starting the 14th chapter. So we’ve obviously discussed the creation account. Let’s just kind of remind ourselves where we have come from and where we’ve been.

Genesis Context and Abram’s Background

Winston Harris: Yeah, I mean, more recently, most of us may be familiar with the flood. So you have Noah, who has essentially been selected to save humanity through his family and God’s judgment of creation through the flood. Coming out of that, one of his sons, Shem, is where we’re getting the line of that will ultimately produce Jesus. And so we’re in the midst of Abraham, Abram currently, who’s coming from a Shem’s line and Abram gets called by God to essentially be the father of many, many nations. What we know God’s people to be in Israel.

Abram gets this call and he is moving towards the promised land. Him and his nephew, Lot, discovered in the last podcast, get to this portion of land and separated. Then we’ll jump into what happened after that.

Jim Piper: All of us, at some point in our lives, whether we’re five years old or 50 years old, we ask questions like, “How did this all come to be? Why am I here? Where am I going?” The book of genesis gets us off to a great start. As you said, we looked at the creation account and then what’s called the fall where man sinned. Then Noah, then the flood. Most people have heard about that. Then those you know after the flood got involved in this thing called the Tower of Babel when the whole world was trying to do what it does, right? And then gets dispersed.

As you said, Winston, we get introduced to this character named Abram, who is a descendant of Shem, who is one of the sons of Noah. I think we’ve been in two episodes so far. It might be three, let’s think about this out loud for a second. We had the call of Abraham from God to, as you said, go to the promised land or Canaan. Then while there, we covered the idea that a famine occurred. And so he took himself and his family into Egypt. That was a train wreck but somehow came out of that train wreck back to Canaan, richer than ever. And so was his brother’s son, his nephew, Lot also came out apparently rich. So rich, that Abraham had the wisdom to kind of separate the land and the ways.

I think you kind of pointed that out last time. It wasn’t just regionally. You may not have used the term ways, but that’s kind of the gist that I got. He could see a difference between the way that he wanted to live and the way that Lot wanted to live. So they parted ways, I guess, would be a good way to say it. I think that’s kind of where we pick up the story.

Genesis 14 Overview and International Conflict

Now, you all are going to laugh at me for a little bit as I stumbled through trying to pronounce all these names in Genesis chapter 14. But let me give you an overview real quick of what we’re going to be talking about today, what we’re going to be reviewing. It’s super interesting to me. I guess we could break down Genesis 14 into these sections. An international conflict arises that involves I think it’s like seven kings, or it might even be more than that seven, seven or eight or nine kings. So we’ll be learning a little bit about them.

Then in the process of that war, Lot in his family are taken captive, and all of their possessions. And so his uncle, Abram, rallies his troops, so to speak, goes and rescues Lot and his family. He kind of becomes a local hero, at least for the kings that got their butts beat. The chapter kind of ends with a meeting of the kings. So that’s kind of an overview of what we’re going to be looking at in Genesis chapter 14.

So it goes like this, and I’m reading out the New Living Translation, by the way. “About this time war broke out in the region. King,” and I think this is the first time war’s even mentioned. It might be the first war at least recorded in the Bible. “About this time war broke out in the region. King  Amraphel of Babylonia, King Arioch of Ellasar, King Kedorlaomer.” That’s the hardest one. “King Kedorlaomer of Elam, and King Tidal of Goiim fought against King Bera of Sodom, King Birsha of Gomorrah, King Shinab of Admah, King Shemeber of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela called Zor.” I’m just glad we’re not naming our kids most of these names anymore.

So that’s the first group, right? And just to give again, a little bit more of a foresight what’s going to happen here is so that group of kings kind of had an alliance. But the head kings, so to speak, is this guy that’s hard to pronounce his name, Kedorlaomer. I would just kind of call him the bully of that time. It would be my nickname that I’d give him.

Alright, so then we get to verse three. And it says, “The second group of kings joined forces in Sinem Valley, that is the Valley of the Dead Sea. For 12 years, they had been subject to King Kedorlaomer.” And so that’s the bully. For 12 years, they’ve been taxed, if you will, in more than just one way. So here’s what happened. “In the 13th year, they said, enough is enough, and they rebelled against him.”

So it took about a year for the response. It says in verse five, “Kedorlaomer and his allies arrived and defeated the Rephaites at Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzites at Ham, the Emites at Shaveh-kiriathaim,, and the Horites at Mount Seir, as far as El-paran at the edge of the wilderness.” A lot of people might be saying to themselves, why does the Bible give us all of these names and details? Well, one thought is details, history. You can study these names, you can study these places which adds credence to the biblical account

Let’s see. So at the edge of the wilderness. All right, so verse 7 says, “Then they turned back–” Now this is the first set of Kings by the way. “Then they turned back and came to En-mishpat (now called Kadesh) and conquered all the territory of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites living in Hazazon-tamar.” Alright, so just to be clear that first set of kings on their way to doing battle with the rebellious kings, the ones that said “Enough is enough bully,” on their way they decided to beat up a bunch of other people.

So then we get to verse eight. “Then the rebel kings,” as the bible calls them, “the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela (also called Zoar) prepared for battle in the valley of the Dead Sea.” Now, when we started this chapter, the author already, Moses already listed these kingdoms, but also with the king’s names. This one he leaves off the names to try to cut to the chase, I suppose.

Verse nine says, “They fought against King Kedorlaomer of Elam, King Tidal of Goiim, King Amraphel of Babylonia, and King Arioch of Ellasar—four kings against five. As it happened, the valley of the Dead Sea was filled with tar pits.” Another interesting data point that the Bible gives us. “And as the army of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled,” obviously, they’re getting their butts kicked, “some fell into the tar pits, while the rest escaped into the mountains.” Why do we need to know that? I don’t know.

Lot’s Capture and Abram’s Response

Verse 11, “The victorious invaders then plundered Sodom and Gomorrah and headed for home, taking with them all the spoils of war and the food supplies. They also captured Lot, Abram’s nephew, who lived in Sodom and carried off everything he owned. But one of Lot’s men escaped and reported everything to Abram the Hebrew, who was living near the oak grove belonging to Mamre the Amorite. Mamre and his relatives, Eshcol and Aner, were Abram’s allies.

When Abram heard that his nephew Lot had been captured, he mobilized 318 trained men who had been born into his household. Then he pursued Kedorlaomer’s army until he caught up with him at Dan. There he divided his men and attacked during the night. Kedorlaomer army fled but Abram chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. Abram recovered all the goods that had been taken, and he brought back his nephew Lot with his possessions and all the women and other captives.”

We’ll pause there. So what happened here? Real quickly, we have a bully king. Some kingdom said no more, 12 years of that’s enough. They joined together in the Valley of the Dead Sea anticipating the bullies response. Sure enough, after the bully took care of some business on the way, the war began these rebellious kings, so to speak. It looks like they pretty much get their butts kicked. They run for the hills literally.

In the process, Abram hears of his nephew being captured, and he goes after them. And he gets them, brings them back, and everything that they lost. Phew. Okay, that’s where we’re at. We’re not covering the meeting of the kings will do that next here after we talk about that. So as you listen to me stumble through that Winston, what are some thoughts that came to you except for hopefully maybe I’m glad I didn’t have to read that?

Discussion on Battle and Two Kingdoms

Winston Harris: Man, I think I have an affinity for words and I definitely don’t want to say the words you were trying to say. The way that I’m reading this as you’re reading this is I’m calling that king with the hard name, I’m just calling him King K, King K for me. That’s how I approach that.

Jim Piper: Yeah and when they teach you how to pronounce it, because I had to do some research on that, they actually spell it with a CH. But I didn’t know if that was K or CH because sometimes CH is still K, so that wasn’t helpful.

Winston Harris: It does not help. Well, some of the things that I, as I was reading this previously and as I’m listening to you read through it again, I think we can’t get around just this idea of battle, right? This idea of conflict. We talked about it a little bit in the previous conversation, even between Abram and Lot and the internal conflict, the family conflict. Now we’re getting into, as you noted, international conflict.

But I think the picture here, right, if you’re reading Genesis or if you’re reading the Bible, there’s always a story behind the story, right? Kind of making sure that we’re not just reading it at face value, but we’re trying to make sure that we understand that the Bible interprets, the scripture interprets scripture. You know, Pastor Matt is incredible at always tying those threads together.

And so as I’m reading it, I’m reading kind of in between the lines. Like, “Okay, what’s the story behind the story?” I’ll kind of synthesize it as the suddenness of battle or the seemingly suddenness of battle, right? We all have different battles and conflicts that we face. And sometimes you feel like, man, that came out of nowhere. But as you’re reading this, you’re seeing that this literal battle had been brewing, right? There was this oppression, there was this one bully, right, King K that is trying to lord over the other people of the region.

There’s this picture of how there are essentially two kingdoms, right? There’s a kingdom that operates in manipulation and darkness. And there’s a kingdom that is operating in light, is operating, looking to build up. There’s always this other kingdom that’s looking to tear down or to take away. There’s this other kingdom that’s looking to defend and to bring life.

As I’m reading through what seems like a random disassociated story, how could this apply to my life even currently? I’m just picturing in my life how I face conflicts and I face battles. It sometimes it feels like I’m getting side swiped, but if I step back I could see, “Oh, as I’m moving towards what God is calling me to do, as I’m moving towards the right thing, what’s brewing under the surface is there is a kingdom that’s gonna come against another kingdom.” There is resistance that is bound to push up against the direction and the energy and the thing that I’m towards that I believe is, you know, what, is for the kingdom of God?

This idea that we all have to embrace the reality of battle, that there is going to be resistance, there is this, fight for authority. There is this fight for taking ground and there’s this fight for territory. You had mentioned it, I think it was the previous podcast, but maybe some podcasts ago about praying scarcity prayers versus praying prayers of power and taking ground and moving forward.

And so I just see these realities present in this beginning of this chapter 14 is that there is a war. What are they fighting for? What is the battle about? And what is the battle in our own lives? Where are we trying to take territory? What is trying to push up against? What are these real world conflicts that this is kind of framing out for us that we can kind of start to lean into?

I think obviously we see Lot gets kidnapped. Part of that is his own, once again, ambition, his own desires to move near a place that would make him susceptible to even getting kidnapped. Once again, reading into and in between the lines, if we haven’t figured it out already, we’re Lot. We have the potential, we have the propensity to want to move to a place of our own desires and it makes us susceptible to getting, not just literally kidnapped, but having our identity kidnapped, having our literal resources taken because we’re investing in things that we shouldn’t be investing in.

We’re trying to do things with our life that God never intended. And so we turn around and we’ve wasted all of this time, we wasted all of this energy, all of these resources doing things that were because of our own desires. We see Lot here is a picture of us and Abram is a picture of Jesus, right? Abram is the one that’s gonna go in and rescue Lot and bring him back out. And so there’s so many themes and threads here around this idea of battle.

I think our culture, in a lot of ways, is looking for a way out of battle, is looking for what’s the road of least resistance. And I think this is an affirmation, especially for the believer, the one who has a Christian worldview that You have to go through battle. You can’t go around it, right? There is no shortcut to experiencing God’s plan for us. It is going to require a fight.

Jim Piper: Yeah, when you use the word brewing, that’s exactly the same word that I thought of on the moment. Because 12 years, this king was kind of having his way. Somebody did the math and, and this bully king didn’t have enough sense to create feedback loops, try to create some win wins, because it’s an economy. It’s probably all about the economy. He was just taking more than his fair share. It doesn’t tell us exactly, but we know that’s what was going on. And greed does that.

When I thought about the word brewing, like you said, my mind instantly went to coffee because I think that’s kind of where it comes from. You can smell that coffee coming, and you anticipate it coming. A lot of people ask us as Christians when they read the Old Testament, they don’t really like this war stuff. Particularly when we get further down the road in the Old Testament, and God gives instructions about the rules of war. Many of his instructions seem extremely barbaric, “kill everybody, don’t let anybody survive.”

The hippie in all of us says make love, not war. To what you were saying, we dismiss the reality of a cataclysmic conflict that is going on at every level, from the worlds that we can see to the worlds that we can’t see. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a physician, but I’m old enough to have had a lot of conversations with doctors. So I think they should just give me an honorary medical license.

But I’ve been taught through the years, it’s that my white blood cells at this current moment are fighting off infections in my body. And when I do have an infection, the white blood cell count goes up because there’s a fight. When the doctor sees that, they get scared because humans die on infections.

In leadership, we want to believe that everybody’s fine. All things are good. When in reality, coming back to your phrase, there’s always something brewing. And it’s an exhausting reality. But it’s true, there’s something brewing in your marriage right now. There’s something brewing in your family. There’s something brewing in your organization, in your neighborhood, in your state, it’s just there. Doesn’t mean you have to walk around being grouchy and angry and feel like you’re going to war every minute. But it is the stewardship of our existence.

So I mean, I appreciate stories like this. I think they’re really interesting. I often wonder what could have been done to avoid them. And when you look at it from the kings that rebelled from the bully king, they knew that it was going to bring a response. And so that’s why they gathered. It didn’t do them any good. They lost, but they tried to come together.

I do think you make a good point about Lot’s capture is the consequence of his choice. Let’s just say it to put a foot in both worlds, right? I mean, he was pretty much mentored by his uncle. So he knew who he was. He was exposed to faith in God, the idea of God, and probably a believer to some degree, or at least along but there was a lot of benefits, probably living next to Sodom.

It kind of reminds me of the Proverbs, especially the first five or so chapters of Proverbs. This heavy in warning men about staying away from certain areas because of the sexual drive that a man has almost all of his life, at least even in his mind, but certainly physically when he’s a younger man. That drive is at the mercy of opportunity. Proverbs talks about don’t go down her street. Don’t even look in that direction, don’t walk in that direction.

But what do men do? They do. They think that they can overcome the temptation when in reality they most often fall to that and then destroy a lot of good things that they had built from that time. Another example of war. When you read your Bible, you can think about that.

It also made me wonder though about the difference between what is the difference between a godly ambition and ungodly ambition? Because I think that ambition is a good thing. But ambition for what? I mean, you can have two extremely wealthy people. One could truly have this love of money and the other one being achievement oriented, accomplishing many of the same things, but can live without it.

That came to my mind too, because I would think that some of the kings talked among themselves and say, “Do we really need to do this? Do we need to go to war? Isn’t there a better way?” I don’t know what you think, but some people just want more. And if you try to say no, forget it.  They’re going to try to take it.

Winston Harris: I almost see ambition, to your question, kind of like fuel motive as the driver of the vehicle. Ambition in and of itself, fuel in and of itself is objective, right? Fuel can be used once again for a positive thing to make a vehicle go or fuel can be used in a negative way. Set it on fire and it becomes a weapon. Depending on what’s driving ambition, what are the motives and that’s going to shape whether it’s worldly or whether it’s godly, what is it being used for.

I often think about leadership specifically in this way. There’s a thin line between leadership and manipulation. There’s a thin line between how a leader moves people forward. In some ways from a certain distance, they look the same. Really when you drill down, it’s what is driving these practices. You know, how am I communicating with people? Why am I communicating with people?

Jim Piper: Yeah, wooing them to what? And why? Yeah, and why?

Winston Harris: Yeah. And we kind of deal with that with the Tower of Babel, right? I mean, obviously there was a leader that was grouping people and getting people to buy into a vision. It wasn’t God’s vision. It wasn’t God’s direction. But there was leadership nonetheless. It was an ambition. There was a desire. Where was it taking them? Why was it taking them that way? And I think we have to ask ourselves.

Jim Piper: Yeah, if we take your illustration of fuel is likened to ambition, it’s not how are you burning that fuel, but it’s also something that could probably be stored. It can be stored for a certain something. It could be surrendered, it can be given. I think that fits. I think that I think that fits. You know what’s interesting because when I was a younger leader, I had more physical energy and strength than any young man should have. I just never shut off.

That’s no longer true. But I still have probably the same or more fuel but it’s in a different tank where I want to empower others, partner with others, give ideas to others, free others. All my activities today, I’m a little bit fatigued at this point in the day, because of the activities, but the activities of the day were about empowering others, inspiring others. It was a fuel that I was trying to transfer to others. But boy, you could still use that same fuel to mislead others, to take advantage of others, to gain for yourself. Certainly.

And I think what God also builds into the fabric of life is that once we see enough of this, there’s something inside us that says no more. It’s the character element of justice, we stand up and we say, “No, we’re not we’re not going to let that happen.” Most people cannot walk by a crime in progress, and not participate in changing that situation wherever they can. I think that’s just something that God gives us.

So these kings rebelling, I mean, I think that’s an interesting word to use because they were rebelling against a bully. But we often think of rebellion as a negative thing. In this case to me, they’re simply standing up saying, “Enough is enough. We’re drawing a line in the sand.” Well, let’s talk about this rescue. One of Lot’s family members, whether by blood or otherwise, escapes. Where does he run? That’s the first thing I noticed, right? Where does he run?

Because when they split up, when the family split up, I kind of got this idea of hubris, didn’t you? That Lot’s got ambition and Abram he might be slowing down. I kind of get that feel. Now all of a sudden, wisdom sure looks good and the survivor runs to Abraham. Did you think about that part of the story? The rescue?

Abram’s Leadership and Preparation

Winston Harris: Yeah, what kind of threw me off because we were kind of doing Abram’s profile last week or last podcast, we’re kind of talking through what kind of leader was Abram. This part of his leadership profile, if you will, I guess I had never considered. The fact, one, that Abram seemed like he was ready for battle. I don’t know that I ever got a picture of Abram as like a leader, a general, somebody who’s ready to go to war.

Jim Piper: Something was brewing.

Winston Harris: This stirred him up. What I wrote down was this battle, if you will, it activated a different level of leadership in Abram. Something was there already and now this opportunity brought out of Abram what was already there. But also it showed that he was prepared for this, which also just kind of blew me away that he had 318 trained men, keyword trained.

Jim Piper: Yeah, not 300, not 325, not 350. 318.

Winston Harris: 318, which is an interesting number because maybe you can kind of start drawing some conclusions like he went out and built this army. Ideally, maybe he was like, man, if I can just get 300. Oh, hey, there’s another guy here. Maybe if I can just get 310. And by the time this opportunity arose, maybe he was on his way to 320. But now we’re at 318, right? That might just be a small note that I’m walking out on a limb on.

But just the idea that For some reason he felt like, and maybe I don’t know if this came on the heels of the Egypt conflict where he started thinking, “I gotta get smart about this, right? If God has called me to be a father of many nations and to be able to steward this thing that God is trying to do through me, I’m gonna have to be ready for conflicts,” that maybe in that moment didn’t need 318 trained men, but he started thinking there’s other people in these territories. How’s all this going to play out?

So the fact that he had taken time to train 300– We’re not talking about training five people. He trained 318 men, the time it would take, the thought process, the intentionality. He was ready for war, which just blew me away that Abram, you don’t get that, I feel like you don’t get that narrative often when we think about Abram, you who later be Abraham as a leader.

You kind of get the older grandfatherly poetic picture. That’s what you get when you hear Abram in the scripture. But this is a different Abram. He was like, “Let’s go. um I’m ready. My guys are ready.” You see he has a strategy. He splits them up. He thinks about the time of day or night that he’s gonna employ. The word mobilized is used. This is a strategic leader that is ready to go to battle. I just thought that was super interesting. A picture that we don’t always get of Abram.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I mean, I think he must have learned from Egypt, probably felt naked in a lot of ways coming out of Egypt. And how do we balance our faith in the idea that God will take care of us? That’s kind of a funny thing because we believe that God will take care of us. We want to believe that God will take care of us, that as the 23rd Psalm says that he will protect us or I’m sorry, the Lord’s Prayer that you’d protect us from the evil one, right,, and temptation and all of that.

But he’s also seeing the city slash many kingdoms being built up all around him and in existence and seeing the fruit of many of those. Then noticing his nephew isn’t exactly getting ready for the priesthood, it must have alerted him, right? He must have said, “Okay.” I think you said it well. I think he saw a storm coming. He didn’t know what the storm would be, but he saw a storm coming.

I think it was Rick Warren. I think I heard Rick Warren 20 so years ago. And I’ve and I’ve stolen this line so many times in my mentoring and whatnot. I think he was preaching a sermon about when Jesus was walking on the water, it might have been when he was asleep in the boat, whatever. But he said that our life is like this: we’re either going into a storm, or we’re in a storm, or we’re coming out of a storm. That’s pretty much it. That’s life.

Maybe that’s kind of what you’re saying is that Abram was figuring out, it’s a battle, right? It’s a battle. Obviously, I think the swiftness stood out to me as well. Leaders who are prepared, who are ready, they’re ready, they’re swift when they expect it. I think the other thing to though, Winston, is that when you study the seven elements of character, a good friend of mine did his thesis in character.

We hear the word character thrown around a lot. And when you ask people, “Well, what is character?” They usually say honesty and integrity. And then maybe they’ll pull out an illustration, it’s who you are when nobody’s looking. They’ll throw that out. That’s good. That’s great, but when you study the evolution of character, if you will, the defining of character, the Stoics came up with four. Let’s see if I can remember on top of my head: wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. The New Testament seemed to validate those four and then added faith, hope and love as a way of- a partnership between God and man.

One thing I noticed about people who do have a high level of justice is that, it’s like purring in the background or idling in the background, they often have a temperament of a guardian like temperament on guard. They have that kind of temperament. They’re also executors. I noticed that they’re ready. Most of them are just ready. When I see something happening, it’s almost like I need a timeout because I got to figure out my plan.

I kind of wonder what kind of temperament Abram had. And influence. Because if he wasn’t a warrior, then where did he get a warrior to train the warriors? I don’t know. Obviously, we have seen and we will see his weakness. That’s what we said a couple episodes ago, what we like about this story is we’re not following a man that is impossible to follow. He, like us, has his weaknesses. So we get the benefit of watching his life his ups and downs.

Meeting of the Kings and Melchizedek

Let’s read the last part here. And so the war, so to speak, is over. And they’re probably settling back in their home.” Verse 17 says this, “After Abram returned from his victory over,” here’s that guy again, “Kedorlaomer and all his allies, the king of Sodom, went out to meet him in the valley of Shevev, that is the king’s valley. And Melchizedek, the king of Salem, and a priest of God most high, brought Abram some bread and wine.

So two came out to see Abram, the king of Sodom, and this king of Salem, which is mentioned here the first time, Melchizedek. Melchizedek blessed Abram with this blessing, quote, “blessed be Abram by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has defeated your enemies for you.” I can literally imagine that in my mind, him reaching out with his hands and blessing him in some form. I don’t know if he anointed him with oil, don’t know what he did, but he just spoke with authority. Don’t know if he spoke softly. I don’t know if he spoke where everyone heard, but he delivered this blessing.

Then it says, “Then Abraham,” gave this is odd. This is a provocative deal here. First of all, we have this king that we’ve never heard of show up, bless them, bring him bread and wine. And then Abraham responds, then Abraham gave Melchizedek a 10th of all the goods he had recovered. Now this is before the law. This is before the Jewish law and the temple tax of a tithe.

Verse 21, “The king of Sodom.” So now we got the king of Sodom. Now he’s gonna do his deal. I don’t know if they were all there together. I kind of think they weren’t, but maybe they were, I don’t know. But it’d been really awkward if they were there together after being blessed, and then King Sodom says to Abram, “Give back my people who were captured. But you may keep for yourself all the gods you have recovered.”

It was common in that day that when you won more, you won. I mean you took the people, you took everything, you took the goods. So the king of Sodom saying, “Hey, I want my people back but you can keep the stuff.” Verse 22 Abram says, “Abram replied to the king of Sodom, ‘I solemnly swear to the Lord God Most High creator of heaven and earth that I will not take so much as a single thread or sandal thong from what belongs to you. Otherwise, you might say I am the one who made Abram rich. I will accept only what my young warriors have already eaten.'” Nothing that you can do about that. “‘And I request that you give a fair share of the goods to my allies, the people that helped me — Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre.”

Kingdom Discernment and Personal Application

Winston Harris: Yeah, this is interesting. The picture of the two kings that come out, how Abram engages with those two kings. Melchizedek, if anybody listening or watching is even remotely familiar with just Christendom and the Christian religion, the mystery of Melchizedek, who is actually this king. There’s obviously a lot of assumptions that maybe this is some kind of Christophany. Christ before the incarnate Christ, the picture of the bread and wine, kind of being a foreshadow to what we connect to bread and wine now, which is communion and passover and the body of Christ and the blood of Christ. There’s a lot of symbolism there and a lot of things that you can kind of jump into and then try to deep dive.

So that ended of itself, right? The picture of the two kings and how Abram is responding to the two kings, we can even draw some themes there for ourselves, right? Back to kind of the initial thought I had of these two kingdoms that we are all in the midst of, what do we do with these realities that whether you embrace it or not, there are always two kingdoms at work. And what I wrote down for myself is your life comes alive when you make a decision to engage in the kingdom that brings life.

Your life really matters. You really wake up, when you embrace the reality that there are two kingdoms and one kingdom brings life. One kingdom is desiring to generate, to heal, to restore, to bless. And when we participate in that, that’s when things start to really click, when things start to really make sense. Otherwise, what culture tells us to do with the world, encourages us to do is to go at it solo, to do it by yourself, to use your ambition for yourself, to create your own kingdom. And that’s false.

You see these kings in this battle, they had to partner up even to rebel, right? One king couldn’t rebel by himself, right? So this idea that we can build our own life and build our own kingdom and have our own authority, it’s false. And not until you wake up and say, “Okay, I need to partner up with the kingdom, need to pick a side. I can’t play both sides. I need to acknowledge that there are two different kingdoms, two different kings, if you will.” Once that decision is made from that decision, we start to see things move forward.

This tithing concept we saw show up in Genesis 4 with Cain and Abel, right? There was something there that an appropriate response to God, Yahweh, was to give 10%. In Genesis 4, that was first fruits, if you will, that was a first response, the best of. We don’t necessarily see that specific idea of the best of, but this idea of a 10th specifically, this kind of tithe to Melchizedek as a response. Once again, a heart response, a heart posture. It wasn’t a transactional thing. This was a recognition of once again, man, this king is deserving of this victory. I think it’s a challenging idea. How do we respond to victory, right? What do we do when we win?

Jim Piper:  Yeah, I think that the best is implied in that you have a king standing there. So you’re not going to give them your sack of potatoes. You know, I mean, that would be embarrassing. All right, let’s drive something home here that you laid out. It’s really important for each of us to recognize which kingdom we are a part of. We have to do that first. Otherwise, the kingdom that takes, the kingdom that temps wants you to see your existence as a life of imminent choices from left to right. Some of them are good, some of them are bad. But that’s getting ahead of things.

Because in either kingdom, you’re going to still have choices. If you put it in Bible terms, if you’re part of the kingdom of darkness, if you’re the part of the kingdom that temps, like the king of Sodom did, and then you think you have freedom. But you are actually a slave to that kingdom. Every decision you think you have just takes you into a darker path.

If you’re in the kingdom of God or the kingdom of light, you still have your free will. But it but you have this irresistible, constant woo towards the life giver towards a learning situation. If you have an addiction, it’s an addiction to learn an addiction to grow anything like that. I really like how you brought that out because you got the two kings. And yes, from my studies, no one has ever heard of the origins of this guy named Melchizedek, nor his kingdom.

He appears on the scene and then he is gone and somehow he’s not mentioned with all of these other kingdoms that go to war. Yet he comes and does this. You know, it seems kind of like an additional affirmation of God’s covenant with Abram that God’s going to bless the whole world through Abram. Then you’ve got this other joker that shows up and, know, tempts him. You know, apparently in a way, he’s at war. Now he’s at war with Abraham, he’s trying to negotiate back some of his losses. You don’t get this sense of grace, as you do with the previous.

So let’s just say that again. You pointed out this story clearly demonstrates there’s two kingdoms. Before I can go anywhere else, I need to decide: have I made a conscious decision to go after God? Or do I still want to experiment? Knowing where you are would be an advantage, I would think, because what I’m afraid of is that there’s a lot of folks who they never really thought about that way. If I made a good decision, I made a good decision. That’s cool. God’s probably happy with that. If I made a bad decision, oh, boy. I probably shouldn’t do that again. But they really haven’t thought about the kingdom in which they live or which citizenship they are registered for.

I think also Abrams’ response shows not just his integrity, which is funny because we saw a lack of integrity in Egypt. The story continues on our next episode. But there had been some time that had expired. It demonstrated his dependence on God. He rejected the shortcut. He rejected the free stuff. It wasn’t really free, he earned it in war. But he could have told the king of Sodom, “You better get out here pretty quick. Otherwise, we’re gonna grab you too.” By the way, where was that king? I wondered during the war. That’s just the thought that I had. He seemed to come out of the bushes. Said, “hey.”

Some of the big leadership themes that I wrote down was, and you already pointed this out, leadership is about being prepared. Being prepared is work, its discipline, its quadrant two kind of thinking and effort and because we know what we face. The second is courage and responsibility. He didn’t hesitate to act for the sake of his family and righteousness. What that reminds me of is that if I’m not self aware, and if I’m not leading myself well, then how am I going to be able to lead others well? How am I going to be able to serve others? So that’s the question that kind of came back to me.

And then discernment. He’s looking at these two kings – King of Sodom, Melchizedek – and he had the discernment to know what’s what. I haven’t always had that when I was young man, I had people trick me. And I still think people can trick me. So I would like to have more discernment. Then the beautiful part is worship. Victory didn’t make Abraham proud. It led him to worship and generosity. That was the tithe that he gave. That’s a pretty exciting chapter if you ask me.

Winston Harris: Yeah, there’s so much that I think we can all lean into depending on where we’re at in our own personal story. One thing that you said that just kind of sparked a thought about the discernment piece that I would imagine all of us struggle with, maturing in discernment. When you know what you’re willing to fight for, it may become easier to clarify which kingdom you’re willing to stand in. Like Abram knew, he was willing to go to battle. He had thoughtfully said, “I’m going to prepare X amount of people to fight. And these are the conditions I’m willing to fight.”

He had to make a decision before a decision. So he decided, he pre decided what am I willing to fight for? And I think from that place, this discernment is birthed that we can know in real time, “Okay, if I’m willing to fight for this, I’m willing to align with this.”

Predetermined Decisions and Conclusion

Jim Piper: You know what, I’m not shaking my head because I’m supposed to. I’m shaking my head in agreement. Because whether I’ve practiced it or not, that is something that I have, hopefully I’ve practiced it. But something I used to tell teenagers a long, long time ago is you need to make decisions about certain things before you ever find yourself in that thing.

And then when we’re working with leaders here at the Today Count show and lead today is we often get to that through really working hard on core values, not just doing it because the world is doing it now and business is doing it. But everybody listening to my voice knows that they have been part of an organization that has written core values, but they weren’t real. They weren’t there because when you have those core values and something comes against that core value, it triggers a response. Events that happen that align with your core values also triggers a response, just two different kinds of responses, but both just and righteous.

I think that that is a big takeaway. I agree with you 100 % Winston is that are we making enough decisions ahead of time? And does that seem like a paranoid way to live? You know, are we looking at a devil behind every bush, a tragedy at every turn? No, it’s not that but it’s like, “What will I do when I’m betrayed? What will I do when my loved one is in trouble? What’ll I do when someone asked me that hard question that I hope that they will never ask me? What will I do?”

And I do believe that predetermined decisions gives you encouragement, more courage to act appropriately when called upon. But you got to think about it. You know, you gotta get out of quadrant one in your life or you’re running around with your head cut off, not taking time to think, read, pray, contemplate, right all of those kinds of things that we can afford today in the 21st century.

Well, thank you, Winston, for joining us. That was good. And we continue on in the story of Abraham. And as we said before, if anyone is interested at all, and those big questions, “Where did I come from? Where am I going?” You know, this man, Abram, the three main religions of the planet claim him as the father of their religion, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So Genesis just continues to unfold like a flower and is so helpful for us. So that’s where we’re heading soon. I don’t think we get to that next. It might be two episodes from now. But it’s coming.

Outro

Winston Harris: Thank you for joining us here at The Today Count Show. Be sure to like and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to or watch, so you don’t miss any content. Stay tuned for more coming soon.
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