26th October 2025

Abraham, friend of God, father of faith n°5 – 26/10/25 – Martin Mowat

Readings: Psalm 110 & Hebrews 5:1-10.

It’s always nice to rediscover things in the Bible, and that’s what happened to me this week. It’s something that ties together a couple of loose ends, loose ends that we might not realise are loose ends, or can be.  Maybe it’s something you know already, and you’ll say to yourself “SURELY he knew that.” 

Last week we were introduced to a couple of kings.  One, very wicked and devious, was called Bera, the other was called Melchizedek, which means “king of righteousness”. 

Before I get into telling you about my rediscovery, can we just pause a moment or two and think about the word “righteousness”.  What IS righteousness, because the word ‘righteous’ occurs 493 times in the Bible, and the word ‘righteousness’ another 213 times; so between them over 700 times.  

In simple terms righteousness is ‘doing what is right in the sight of God’. That’s not just being good, it’s not just avoiding temptation. To be righteous is to do everything that God calls us to do. 

So, bearing in mind that definition, our friend Melchizedek wasn’t just a good guy, he was a king who did everything that God had called him to do. He was an example to follow, someone certainly worth getting to know.

And that’s why I said last week that I’m sure Abraham was seriously excited to meet him, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they exchanged contact details and kept in touch regularly. Well, I certainly hope they did, although of course they didn’t have mobile devices, and there’s no mention in the Bible of them having any further contact.

In fact, strangely when you think about it, the Bible gives us scant information about him.  Unlike most other major Biblical characters, we don’t know anything about his parents or ancestors, we don’t know whether he was married and had kids, we don’t even know when he died or how old he was. Genesis is completely silent about all of those details, as is the rest of the Bible. All it does tell us is that after Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, (Bera) the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the … King’s Valley.

Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

And that’s it. Just 3 verses. You might wonder why the Genesis writer even mentioned him at all, unless it was to underline the point I made last week about Abraham refusing point blank any recognition by Bera. 

But in fact there was a reason, a very good reason, and this is what I rediscovered this week. 

It’s the same reason why, prophesying about the Messiah in the Psalm that Charlotte just read, David said “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

And the same reason that the writer of Hebrews, and sadly we don’t really know who that was, said “we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God”.

That statement was crucial information for the Jews.  It’s crucial for Christians too, as we shall see.
 

For the Jews, although Jesus was called a teacher, he wasn’t a “priest” as such, let alone a “great high priest” because, apart from anything else, he wasn’t from the tribe of Levi, he was from the tribe of Judah.

To do anything in the name of God, be it to preach, to pray for people, to heal people, to cast out demons, you name it, in other words all the things Jesus did, as a Jew you needed to be first formally recognised as a priest. It’s much the same in some Christian denominations today.

And that’s one of the principal reasons that the Jewish authorities were so upset by him.  If Jesus could do all those things, and get away with it, then potentially so could others, and then their priestly monopoly would be broken, and their livelihoods would be in danger. 

But what they hadn’t spotted was Psalm 110, verse 4. 

Jesus WAS a priest, a priest of a spiritual descendance, rather than of a natural one. He was a “Melchizedek priest”. 

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You (Jesus) are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” (Ps. 100:4)

And that’s why we can say, along with the writer of Hebrews, and with absolute certainty that “we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God”. (Heb. 4:14)

“Well,” you might say to me, “that’s all very nice, but it’s all a bit theological and academic. So what? “

Let me tell you. 

If we are to have our sins forgiven, if we are to be made righteous (there’s that word again), and given eternal life, we need a priest, an eternal priest, a heavenly priest.  And we have one.  “A priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110) and “a great high priest who has ascended into heaven” (Hebrews).  

The very next verse in Psalm 110 says The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.

In other words, this priest of ours is right there beside us, 24/7, 100% accessible.  We don’t have to go and look for him, we don’t have to make an appointment to get 5 minutes of his time, he’s already “at your right hand”. 

What’s more; he “will crush kings”, which means that he’ll solve your problems, if you’ll let him.   It says in Proverbs, Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.    (Proverbs 3:5–6 (NIVUK)

So that’s it, that’s my ‘penny dropped’ moment.  Melchizedek wasn’t just an interesting historic character, he was the vital link.

How much of all this did Abraham grasp that day, I wonder? Not only was Melchizedek a fellow believer, which was great news in itself, but he was officially a “Priest of the Most High God”. 

This also helps us to understand, perhaps, why Abraham “gave him a tenth of everything”.  He wasn’t giving it to Melchizedek personally, he was giving it as an act of worship to “the Most High God”, of whom Melchizedek was the representative. 

“Everything” in this context, I presume, was all the goods that he had recovered and brought back, including all Lot’s possessions. That would have been a huge amount of stuff, certainly by the standards of that day. And Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth of it all, a tithe. 

Though by no means unique to Israel, tithing later became an obligation for the Jewish people.  They had to give a tenth of their income to support the Levite priests, who had no other way to earn their living and maintain their places of worship. 

Some say, and I would agree with them, that the principle of tithing to the church, so that it can support itself and its ministers, as well as carry out its ministry in the local community and beyond, still stands today. 

That might surprise some of you, I’m sure, because it is not universally taught. Indeed, some denominations avoid it altogether, and it’s certainly a difficult subject that many preachers shy away from. 

We don’t have time today, and in any case, if we did, it would be a huge tangent to go off on.  We need to keep on track with Abraham, but I leave it with you to think about. There’s a world out there that needs pastors and missionaries to bring it the good news of the gospel, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless and starving.  

10% might sound like a tall order, but let me tell you that no matter how hard we try, we can never, NEVER out-give God.