Rescue: The God Who Intervenes

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Well, I want to—I want to start this morning by just kind of telling you about my childhood, my growing-up years. I, you know, like many other children, I’m sure, I, you know, went to school every day. And one of the things that I enjoyed a lot as a child growing up was coming home from school every day, school being done.

And before I had to get to my homework, I would come home and I would plop myself down in front of the TV set, and I would watch some afternoon television shows. Now, you know, back in the day that I was growing up, we didn’t have all of the wonderful options that are available to us now. You couldn’t just pull up whatever you wanted on YouTube or Netflix or, you know, all of these different platforms that exist.

You were limited to what was on the three major networks, but there were still some very interesting shows that I could watch. And a lot of times they were Westerns and, you know, kind of stories about things that happened in the Old West—shows like The Big Valley or High Chaparral or Bonanza or Gunsmoke or those kinds of shows.

But there was one particular show that I would watch periodically that was very intriguing to me, very interesting. And that was a show where there was—there was usually somebody who was in peril, somebody who was, you know, the victim of some sort of injustice. Something was happening to them. They were being cheated. They were being stolen from. Maybe their lives were being threatened.

Maybe even some members of their family had already been harmed in some way, and they needed a rescue. And then this person would come into the picture. This person wore a white hat—I think Paul’s ahead of me here. This person wore a white hat and rode a white horse and fired a silver six-shooter that fired silver bullets.

And, you know, this person would come into the frame, and then the music would start to play, right? Ba-da-rump, bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, ba-rum-ba-rum. And that’s not quite right, but you get the picture. Yes, it was the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger would come in, and he would rescue the person who was in distress.

And, of course, the Lone Ranger wore a mask, but we never really knew who the Lone Ranger was because he wore a mask. And he would—he would ride in, and he would solve the problem. He would rescue the person or the people who were being harmed in some way. And then he would mount his horse, and he would say, “Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!” and he would ride off into the sunset.

And somebody would say—can you say it with me?—“Who was that masked man?”

And then somebody else would say, “Well, that was the Lone Ranger.” And that was usually the end of the show.

But we—we—we love these stories, don’t we? We love these stories of rescue because we—we love to see justice being done. We love to see good triumphing over evil. You know, we love it when rescue happens. And so, you know, even into our current contemporary day, we continue to be intrigued by and maybe even obsessed with rescue stories.

I—I’ve noticed that recently we’ve had kind of a—I don’t know if it would be a flood necessarily—but at least several new superhero movies have come out. There’s a new Spider-Man movie out. The Mandalorian and Grogu came out earlier in the year. Later on this year, The Avengers is going to have another installment coming out.

And it’s interesting that in a lot of these rescue stories, the hero wears a mask. I don’t know why. I think masks would be incredibly uncomfortable. I was looking at one of the episodes of The Lone Ranger, and I was thinking to myself, I’m not sure why he wears a mask. Everybody knows who he is because he’s the only one wearing a mask.

But I can’t really imagine that he would be all that comfortable always having to wear his mask. But anyway, he wore a mask, and people would always say, “Who was that masked man?” And today, our passage that Andrea read and then Mateo read really describes for us a rescue story that we read in the book of—in the Scriptures.

Now, of course, the entire Bible, we might say, is a big rescue story about humanity being rescued by God. But what we read in the passage that Andrea read for us today in Genesis 14 is a particular rescue story that is very—that is very interesting and very intriguing. And actually, this story in Genesis 14 follows another rescue story.

And that story is one that we really kind of readily identify as a rescue story. The one in chapter 14, maybe we don’t see it quite so clearly, and so I’d like us to unpack it. But just to give you a little bit of the backstory, in case you’re kind of wondering what has happened prior to this particular passage in Genesis 14, if you go back to Genesis 12, you find that God has spoken to a man named Abraham.

God has called Abraham and told Abraham that he wants to bless him, and he wants to make him a blessing. And he’s called Abraham to leave his homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans, which is in kind of what modern-day Iraq is now. He’s called Abraham to leave his homeland in Ur of the Chaldeans and to travel to a land where God would show him, and that land ends up being the land of Canaan, which is now modern-day Palestine or Israel.

Very long, very long journey to make. And so Abraham and his wife Sarah and his nephew Lot leave Ur of the Chaldeans, and they go on this long journey, and they end up in the land of Canaan. And what we discover is that they—they are accumulating wealth. Both Abraham and Lot are accumulating wealth, and they have flocks and they have herds and they have servants and they have shepherds, and they have people that are under their care, and they’re becoming very, very numerous.

And it’s becoming challenging for them to occupy the same geographical space. And in fact, quarrels are breaking out between the herdsmen of Abraham and the herdsmen of Lot. They’re starting to bicker and fight with each other. And so Abraham says to Lot, “Okay, listen, the whole land is before us. Let’s—let’s go, you know, let’s—let’s split up.”

“And I’m going to let you choose, Lot. You’re my nephew. I’m going to let you choose. You can go to the right. If you go to the right, I’ll go to the left. You can go to the left, I’ll go to the right. But you pick it, and we’ll split up. And—and that way we won’t have this strife.”

And so Lot looks out and he sees that the land of the Jordan, the plain of the Jordan, is well watered. It’s green, it’s lush. And he’s like, “Yeah, that’s what I want. I want that lush green land.” It also happens to be in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And the writer in Genesis says the Lord had not yet destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, but they were living in wickedness.

But that’s the direction that Lot went. And then Abraham chose to go the other direction. Well, fast forward just a little bit, and some—some war breaks out. All of—all of these different peoples living in the land of Canaan are subject to different kings. There are different people groups, and war breaks out, and there are some kings that start terrorizing the territory, and they end up attacking the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and some of those other towns.

And there’s kind of a battle that takes place, and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and their other allies end up getting defeated. And Lot and his family and all of the people of Sodom get carried off as captives, and the plunder gets taken, and someone comes to Abraham and says, “Do you know that this happened?” And Abraham, he gets really riled up. He’s like, “That’s not going to happen. That’s not going to—that’s, that’s my nephew that you took.”

And so Abraham gathers his 318 men—I find that very interesting, very specific number—gathers his 318 men, and he rides off, and he does battle with these kings that have taken Lot captive and his family and all of their goods.

And he wins the battle. He defeats those kings, and he brings back all of the people, Lot, his family, all of the people of Sodom, and all of the plunder. He brings them back. And that’s where our story picks up in Genesis 14. Now, you know, we would say, “Well, that’s a rescue story. That’s like the Lone Ranger going in and defeating those kings and rescuing Lot and his family.”

And so, you know, that certainly is a rescue story. But Abraham himself is in need of rescue. And that’s what we see happening here in Genesis 14, because Abraham is returning from this battle, and he’s coming back into the—the—the plain of the Jordan. He’s coming back into the place where Sodom and Gomorrah are and where all of these other, you know, kings live.

And this is the picture that kind of takes place in my mind. And it may just be in my mind. Maybe it’s not in anybody else’s mind. But I can imagine Abraham and all of the people that are with him, all of the men that went with him to fight, and then all of the people who were rescued. I can imagine them as this very joyous, you know, procession of people coming back.

Now, they’re probably battle-weary. You know, they’re tired, and maybe they’re somewhat wounded and beat up. But they’re also very excited and very happy that they have won the battle and they have rescued these people, and they’re coming back into this valley called the King’s Valley. And I can imagine Abraham thinking to himself, “I wonder what the king of Sodom is going to give me for, you know, rescuing all of his people.”

“I wonder what I’m—you know, I wonder what sort of, you know, compensation I might receive for all of this effort that I put forth.” I mean, we don’t know for sure if Abraham was thinking that way. It’s not written in the text. But I know that I would be thinking that way if I were the one who had poured out all of my energy and risked all of—you know, risked my life and everybody else’s life. I would be thinking, “I wonder if I might possibly receive a little bit of, you know, something?”

And it says here in the text that Abraham was coming into this valley, and the king of Sodom came out to meet him. So Abraham and all these people are coming into this valley. The king of Sodom is coming out to meet him. And then all of a sudden, without any introduction, without any particular warning, the next thing we read is, “Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine.”

“He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abraham, saying, ‘Blessed be Abraham by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.’” And then Abraham gave him a tenth of everything.

Here’s what I think is happening. I think that the king of Sodom is moving. He’s—he’s moving towards Abraham. But before the king of Sodom gets to Abraham, this person, just very mysterious—dare I say it?—masked man. You know, he’s not wearing a mask, but he’s still very mysterious. This person comes into the picture and gets between Abraham and the king of Sodom. And what he does is he does a couple of things that are very significant.

One is he brings out bread and wine, and so he offers Abraham hospitality. This would have been a sign of hospitality, and it would have been an invitation to table fellowship. And table fellowship was the most intimate kind of fellowship that you could have with someone back in the ancient cultures. And so Melchizedek is offering Abraham hospitality, and that stands in stark contrast to the king of Sodom, because one of the sins of Sodom, we read in Ezekiel, is that they did not offer hospitality to their guests.

And so when, you know, chapter 18 comes along, the angels or the men that are visiting with Abraham go and spend the night in Sodom, they are not greeted. They are not welcomed. They are not shown hospitality. That’s one of the—one of the sins. I’m not saying it’s the only sin, but one of the sins of Sodom was this—this lack of hospitality.

And so Melchizedek shows up, and the first thing he does is he offers Abraham hospitality. But the second thing that he does is he affirms for Abraham who it is that is blessing him and who it is that is giving him the victory. He says, “Blessed be Abraham by God Most High.” This is the word Elyon in the Hebrew text.

And it literally means God Most High, the Most High God. And it gets repeated here several times. And Melchizedek is letting Abraham know that God alone, God Most High, is the one who is blessing him and is making it possible for him to actually, you know, win this great victory and bring back all these people.

And if there was ever—if there was ever a thought in Abraham’s mind that somehow he could work out some sort of arrangement, some sort of deal with the king of Sodom, that totally gets dispelled by what Melchizedek does here. Melchizedek says, “It’s God who is blessing you. It is God who should be praised. It is God who has delivered your enemies into your hand.”

And then Abraham gave him a tenth of everything. And this is Abraham’s worshipful response to Elyon and to Melchizedek, to give a tenth, to say, “I’m going to worship you. I’m going to give you, you know, part of what you have given me.”

And then Melchizedek is just gone. He just disappears from the narrative, and we don’t read anything more about him in this passage. And what happens next is also very significant, because the king of Sodom comes to Abraham and he says, “Okay, give me the people. Keep the goods for yourself.”

But Abraham says, with a raised hand, “I have sworn an oath.” To whom? Elyon. “I have sworn an oath to the Lord God Most High, creator of heaven and earth, that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abraham rich.’”

Abraham now understands for sure that it is God Most High who he needs to give his allegiance to. He understands for sure that it is God Most High that he should be worshiping. And we, you know, we need to realize that Abraham is still very—he’s very young in his relationship with, you know, with the Lord. God called him, and he obeyed that call, and he went to the land of Canaan. But, you know, he’s still struggling.

He went down to Egypt during the famine, and he gave his wife away to the Pharaoh because he was afraid that, you know, he was going to be treated badly if they knew that they were married. And, you know, there are things that Abraham is still trying to understand about what it means to follow this God that has called him.

And so, in this particular story, Melchizedek comes in and rescues Abraham from something that could possibly have been disastrous, that as he comes back from this, you know, from this battle, that maybe he ends up aligning himself with the king of Sodom in some way. Maybe he ends up choosing to give his allegiance in some way to the king of Sodom, this king who was known for his wickedness.

But instead Abraham says, “I’m—I’m not going to take anything from you.” And so we have, you know, we have a rescue story. And Melchizedek, he just appears, and then he just disappears. And we’re left asking the question, “Who was this masked man? Who was this person that just showed up?”

Some scholars have suggested that Melchizedek was the king of Salem, which also has been linked with Jerusalem, and that maybe he was another king in the area. But I—I wrestle with that particular understanding because the land of Canaan was populated by people who did not believe in Elyon. They did not believe in God Most High.

They were people who worshiped false gods, pagan gods. And Abraham is the lone person in the land who actually is worshiping Elyon. And so it doesn’t make total sense to me that Melchizedek would be an actual king living in the land. If that were the case, then I think Abraham would have certainly aligned with him much earlier.

But instead, this—this—this person, whoever he is, he just appears out of nowhere, and then he’s gone just like that. And we don’t read anything more about Melchizedek until, really, until we get to the New Testament, the book of Hebrews. There is one brief mention of Melchizedek in the book of Psalms, Psalm 110, where David is talking about the Messiah.

And he says about the Messiah, he says, “You have become a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” And so our ears perk up a little bit. Oh, Melchizedek. He’s not only—he’s not only priest of God Most High, he’s also apparently the head of a priestly order. And the Messiah is going to be a priest in the order of Melchizedek.

But that’s all that gets said in the book of Psalms. And then it’s when we get to the book of Hebrews that we find more things being said to us about Melchizedek. Now, the book of Hebrews is a book that essentially exalts the person of Jesus and talks about how superior Jesus is to everyone and everything else.

The book starts out by saying that Jesus is superior in, you know, his communication. He is a superior form of communication. God spoke through the prophets, through the written word. But in these last days, God has spoken to us through his Son. He’s actually come in and inhabited a human body and has spoken to us through his Son.

So he’s superior in his communication. We—we read that Jesus is superior to the angels. The angels are merely servants of God. They are winds. They are flames of fire. They are—they do God’s bidding. But Jesus is actually the Son of God. He is—he is someone with authority and power and majesty. He is the exact representation of God, and he is the—he helped, you know, create the universe, and he sustains the universe through his powerful word.

So we find that Jesus is superior to the angels. We find later that Jesus is superior to Moses, because Moses was a faithful servant in God’s house, but Jesus is faithful as a Son over God’s house. So the book of Hebrews is telling us all about Jesus, all about how wonderful he is, how beautiful he is, how superior he is.

And then the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is our great high priest and that he is superior to the high priesthood of Aaron. And, you know, again, there’s a lot of Old Testament backstory here, but Aaron was Moses’ brother, and Moses was given—sorry, Aaron was given the responsibility of being the high priest of the nation of Israel.

And as high priest, he was responsible for offering sacrifices that would lead to atonement for the sins of the people. Last week, Jesse pointed us back to Leviticus chapter 16, where we read about the Day of Atonement, and we read that the high priest, Aaron, had to go into the—the—the tabernacle, into the Holy of Holies, into the Most Holy Place where God’s presence dwelt.

And there he had to offer sacrifices that would atone for his own sin and for the sins of the people. He would shed blood, and he would—he would perform a sacrifice that brought cleansing to the people. And the book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is greater than Aaron, that Jesus is a great high priest, that he’s actually beyond the priesthood of Aaron.

It’s not—he’s not even from the same tribe as Aaron. Aaron was from the tribe of Levi, and Jesus, his ancestry is in the tribe of Judah.

But he’s a great high priest. And how is that possible? Because the writer of Hebrews says, “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” And then we get to chapter seven in Hebrews, where Mateo read for us, and here we find a little bit more about Melchizedek.

That he was king of Salem. He was priest of God Most High. But the writer says, first of all, the name Melchizedek means “king of righteousness.” So in Hebrew, that’s Melech and Zadok put together, Melchizedek. He’s the king—his name literally means “king of righteousness.” And then also it means king of Salem, which means literally “king of peace.”

And then this very interesting statement: “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life, resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. Just think how great he was. Even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder.”

And the picture that’s starting to come together is that Jesus is a priest that does not stand in the line of Aaron. Jesus is a priest over—over God’s house. Jesus is a priest over the people of God in the line of Melchizedek, in the order of Melchizedek. And he’s a priest forever. And Melchizedek is a priest forever. Are you starting to connect the dots here?

When we ask the question, “Who was that masked man?”—that person who showed up in Genesis 14 to meet Abraham and to keep Abraham from forming some kind of allegiance with the king of Sodom—I think the answer has to be that was actually Jesus himself. That was actually God the Son prior to his incarnation, taking human form and coming into a situation where a rescue needed to happen so that the father of our faith, Abraham, would not go in a direction that he shouldn’t have gone or that, you know, would have been disastrous for him to go in.

And we, you know, the writer to the Hebrews goes on to tell us just a little bit more about Abraham’s response—or Abraham’s response. He says Abraham gave him a tenth of the plunder. And the law requires that the descendants of Levi collect the tenth from the people. But this person, Melchizedek, did not trace his descent from Levi, and yet he collected a tenth from Abraham.

Over and over again, this idea of Abraham giving a tenth is repeated.

And I think what’s being told to us here is that Abraham, by giving a tenth of his plunder to Melchizedek, Abraham is choosing, “I’m going to—I’m going to make, you know, God Most High the God that I worship.” And when Abraham did that, the writer to the Hebrews says it was actually Levi who was paying the tenth, because Levi would later be descended from Abraham.

One of the things that we are very familiar with in, you know, the Old Testament and certainly in the church as well is this idea of giving a tenth of what we earn in order to, you know, to worship the Lord. And every Israelite had to give a tenth of their earnings or a tenth of their crops to help support the tribe of Levi.

The tribe of Levi didn’t have any land inheritance, and so they were dependent upon the people of Israel to give a tenth and to support them through their giving. But the tribe of Levi was also expected to give a tenth. Everything that they collected, they gave a tenth of that to the Lord. And what the writer to the Hebrews, I think, is telling us here is that Abraham—Abraham did that.

He gave a tenth to the Lord. And in a way he was—he was doing it on behalf of Levi because Levi would be his descendant, and then Levi would collect the tenth and would give it to the Lord. And so we have this picture. We have this picture here of a rescue story, of Abraham needing to be redirected, of Abraham needing to recognize that God Most High is the God that he should worship.

And Abraham needing to turn away from the things that would distract him, turn away from the things that would be detrimental to him. If he gets aligned with the king of Sodom, you know, it’s all over. It’s all toast. If he—if he chooses to link himself in any way with that particular person and all the things that that person believes.

And then the writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus—Jesus is our great high priest, that he is the one who, you know—he is the—he is the person in this story, in the Melchizedek story. And then as he comes into the world and becomes a human being, and as he lives out his life and then goes to the cross, suffers and dies and rises again from the dead, that he is our great high priest.

And if we read further in Hebrews, we find this statement: “Such a high priest truly meets our need, one who is holy, blameless and pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.”

Jesus continues to offer us rescue from the things that would prove to be detrimental to us. You know, last week Jesse was talking to us from the book of 1 John, preaching from 1 John, and sharing with us how light is something that dispels the darkness, but it also—it also heals us from the things that would try to kill us.

It destroys that which would try to kill us. And in the same way, Jesus, when he becomes our great high priest, he deals with the things that would destroy us and would kill us. He—he deals with sin. He takes our sin upon himself. He says, “I’m going to be the person who suffers in your place. I’m going to be the person who dies in your place.”

“I’m going to take all of that, you know, wrath and penalty upon myself.” And then he rises again from the dead, and he says, “I’m going to overcome all of the negative stuff in the world and all of the evil in the world. I’m going to show that I have victory over evil.”

He becomes our great high priest, and he—he redirects. He redirects us from things that would potentially harm us, things that would potentially distract us, just as Melchizedek did that with Abraham.

I was trying to think of an example that would kind of make sense, and the only thing that really kind of came to my mind is something that happened many years ago before Andrea and I got married. I was—I think we might have been engaged at this point. And Andrea lived in Pueblo, Colorado. I lived in Colorado Springs.

And I would try to—to—to do, you know, things to help her when she had things that needed to be done, whether it was, you know, winterizing her swamp cooler or mowing her lawn or power washing her deck or those kinds of things, changing the oil in her car. I would—I would do these different things to—to try to help her out.

Well, one particular day, she let me know that the sewer had backed up. And she said, “We need a cleanout.” Do you not remember this? The sewer had backed up, and—and she said, “We need—we need a cleanout.” And she said, “I don’t have time to work on this. Could you come and dig a hole so that we can install a cleanout?”

And I said, “Sure, I’ll come and try to do that.” Well, I’ve never done anything like that before. I had no idea how deep a hole you have to dig in Pueblo, Colorado, to get down to the sewer line. I found out later it’s—it’s eight feet down to get down to the sewer line.

Now, we—we just had cleanouts installed in our house this past couple of weeks, and they only had to go down about four or five feet to get to the sewer line. And they did that all by hand. But anyway, I’m—I’m out in Andrea’s front yard, and I’m—I’m trying to dig a hole to create a place where we can install the cleanout.

And her neighbor across the street, a guy named Mike, he literally comes running across the street, and he’s yelling at me. He’s like, “Rod, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to dig—I’m going to dig a hole for the cleanout.” He said, “No, you’re not. You can’t dig deep enough to get to that sewer line.”

He said, “You need to get a backhoe.” Well, long story short, we got the backhoe. The backhoe dug the hole for us. But even though it’s not exactly the same sort of situation, I feel like there was a rescue taking place there. I feel like Mike was a bit like Melchizedek, coming, rushing in—rushing in to kind of save me and prevent me from doing something that would have surely, you know, been hard for me to do, impossible for me to do, and maybe would have caused injury for me as I’m trying to dig this massive, massively deep hole. He comes running across and he says, “You can’t do that.”

“You need something else.” And in the same way, we see that Melchizedek comes into Abraham’s existence, his life, and he—he shifts Abraham away from the thing that could possibly cause Abraham damage.

And something else that stands out to me is that Melchizedek brings out bread and wine. Now, that’s a sign of hospitality. But what does it also make you think of? Communion, right? We’re about to—we’re about to celebrate communion.

And maybe I’m a bit out on a theological limb here, but I don’t really—I don’t really mind. You can—you can come and talk to me about it later. But I just have to wonder, again, I believe—I believe that this is Jesus. I believe this is God the Son in human form, coming into Abraham’s life and wanting to—to keep him safe, wanting to keep him from going in a bad direction.

And I just have to wonder, is this Jesus inviting Abraham to believe in his death and resurrection that will happen so many years down the road, offering bread and wine, inviting Abraham to put his faith and his trust in what Jesus would eventually do that would—that would provide rescue for the entire world?

And what—what happens next in the book of Genesis, in chapter 15, is that Abraham is—is letting God know that he’s a little bit worried about the fact that he doesn’t have an heir. He says, “This—this—this man in my—the servant in my household is going to be my heir because I don’t have a son.”

And God says, “No, Abraham, you will have a son. Look up into the sky and tell me what you see.” And Abraham says, “Well, I see all these stars.” And God says, “That’s what your descendants are going to look like. They are going to be like the stars in the sky.” And it says in chapter 15, verse 6, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

And we fast forward all the way to the book of Romans, chapter 4. We find the apostle Paul looking back on that moment and saying, Abraham is the father of all who are justified by faith. Abraham becomes the first person to be justified on the basis of faith by God.

So it was either in that moment, or it was in this moment in chapter 14, when Abraham put his faith and his trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus, so that he might be justified by faith. Again, maybe I’m out on a limb. You can come talk to me later if you—if you think so. But all of this adds up to—to the important thing that Jesus is the one who rescues us from sin, from death, from things that are—are damaging to us.

And so, as we think about, you know, application, as we draw to a close here, as we think about application, there are two things—two things that I think we could probably latch on to.

One is that we need to celebrate Jesus as the great high priest who is in the order of Melchizedek and who mediates a better covenant. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus has a better covenant than the covenant of Aaron or Moses.

He has a—he has better promises than the promises that were given to Aaron. He’s the great high priest. He’s—he’s beyond, you know, the Aaronic priesthood. And so we need to celebrate Jesus as the great high priest, and we need to worship him as the one who rescues us and who has suffered and died for us, who has risen from the dead, has given us eternal life.

That’s the first thing that I think we can do in application. And the second would be this: to celebrate the God who intervenes and who keeps us from wrong alignments, wrong thoughts, wrong words, wrong actions.

I don’t know about you, but I find it very frustrating when I’m moving in a particular direction and then my direction gets redirected. I have something I want to do. I have a place I want to go. I have a person I want to see.

And then something happens, and I can’t see that person. I can’t do that thing. I can’t go to that place. And I’ll be honest, I rarely—I rarely think about the fact that maybe—maybe God is redirecting me. Maybe God is doing something that is keeping me from danger or keeping me from harm. Maybe there’s a way in which I need to recognize that God is—is actually at work in my life.

And so I think that’s another application. And certainly there are—there are times, I think, when those—those obstacles are perhaps the work of the enemy. But I think a lot of times those obstacles might possibly be God himself trying to steer us away. Just as Melchizedek got in between Abraham and the king of Sodom, I think God sometimes gets in between us and the things that would cause us harm or would possibly destroy us.

So who was that masked man?

It was Jesus. It was Jesus showing up at a critical moment to make a difference. Think of how things might have gone really, really differently if Melchizedek had not been there and if the king of Sodom had been able to come up to Abraham. I don’t even want to think about it. It would be horrible.

Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you for this story in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that tell us about the way in which you rescued Abraham and provided him with—provided him with something that would help keep him on track, that would help keep him moving forward in his faith and his belief in you. And we also see how that person was, in fact, Jesus, and that Jesus continues to provide rescue and provide guidance for us.

And so we ask you, Lord, to, you know, to continue to, you know, show us yourself in these ways. We ask that you would help us to be able to celebrate who you are as the great high priest.

We ask that you would help us to be able to celebrate the ways in which you intervene and keep us from, you know, taking the wrong steps.

We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.