Gen. 13:14-18; 14:1-24; 15:1.

What a peaceful scene closes the thirteenth chapter of Genesis-a scene which is marked by faith, as the early part of the chapter is marked by the absence of it. Lot chooses, and there is no faith in his choice. In fact, where is there ever to be found faith in this world-bordering child of God? for child of God he must be, according to 2 Pet. 2:7.But he is never said to walk with God, and God, on other hand, never links His name with Lot. The nearest we get to anything like faith as connected with him is that he accompanied Abraham, and this is not faith at all. Faith never has a creature for its object, be that creature a saint; but only God. But is not just now the intention to do more than simply allude to the fact that Lot chose, while Abraham let God chose for him, and to call attention to the contrast.

Let us pass on, then, to Abraham. God calls him to lift up his eyes and to look northward, southward, eastward and westward; and He calls upon him also to rise and walk through the land in its length and breadth, saying that all this land is his and his seed's. How much more he gets than Lot-how much better is God's choice for His people than their choice ! And to this gracious promise Abraham, as it were, bows his head in faith and worship; faith, because we read immediately of his tent, the witness that he is a pilgrim for the present and that the promise of the inheritance of the land is received in faith for the future; worship, for he builds an altar to Jehovah. Notice, moreover, that he dwells in Mamre, "the place of fatness." I repeat, then, how peaceful is this picture. God chooses; Abraham accepts the choice in faith and worship. But as we have in this chapter the strong contrast between Abraham and Lot, so we have in the next chapter a vivid contrast to this scene presented to us-the strife of kings- the strife of kings for mastery. We are brought, as it were, from the sanctuary in the thirteenth chapter out into the world of strife and turmoil in the fourteenth chapter. The four kings vanquish the five kings, and they take the spoils with "Lot, Abram's brother's son, and his goods." In other words, it is, as we may say, the same story of victory on the one hand and defeat on the other, that makes up the history of the world, one in the ascendency now, only to be put down, and another to take that place a little later; without stability and permanence anywhere, it is, and will continue to be, until He comes whose right it is to reign, nothing but overturn, overturn, overturn.

But how strikingly Abraham now brings into this scene in his own person, the hopes of the former chapter; he is the man of faith, whether in receiving God's promise, or in pursuing and conquering kings. He overtakes and overcomes the kings and recovers both Lot and Lot's goods and also the spoils. In the victory that has just before been recorded, do we not see, as it were, the potsherds striving with the potsherds-the world claiming the world from the world. In Abraham's victory, as I take it, we have faith laying hold of all for God, or, to speak more correctly, for Christ, as we shall see presently.

This brings us to Melchisedek, the central figure here; and how can anything be more perfect than the introduction of Melchisedek, type of Christ, just at this point ? For if Abraham lays hold of and recovers for God all that the world has claimed for itself, to whom shall it be given,-at whose feet shall it be laid ? Christ's surely. And so to Melchisedek Abraham gives tithes of all. Tithes which, while they witness that Abraham is owning Melchisedek's superiority and taking himself an inferior place, are surely also the pledge and earnest of the world being put into the hand of Christ; and that it is a question of the turning over of all things and all peoples to the Lord Jesus, the Melchisedek King-Priest, seems clear, for in the first place, God's millennial name, "most high God," possessor of heaven and earth, is four times used here :Melchisedek is "priest of the most high God" and blesses Abraham as of the "most high God;" and again he says:"Blessed be the most high God." Again Abraham lifts up his hand to Jehovah the "most high God," possessor of heaven and earth, that he will not be enriched from a thread to a shoe latchet by the king of Sodom. (Now the millennium is the time of Christ's universal dominion). And again, if we look at the 110th psalm, the Melchisedek King-Priest psalm, we see the same thing-His people are made willing in the day of His power; His enemies are put beneath His feet-His dominion is universal. How perfect, then, that this One whom God has appointed heir of all things should be brought before us just after Abraham has, as it were, taken possession of all things, not for himself, but for Another, and that he should bring them, in spirit, as we may say, and lay them at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ.

What a blessed thing to know, too, that God's King is God's Priest. The two offices are joined in one Person ; the One that holds the scepter over men is the One that was Priest for men's sins, and throughout the ages of the Lord's dominion this blessed fact abides for the joy and worship of all His own in heaven and earth. And, again, as it seems to me, the most awful of all bitter remembrances among the lost will be that the Name to which they bow is the name which means "Saviour;" the One whom they own as King and Lord is the One who died that they might have been delivered from the flames of an eternal hell. Notice how similar lines of thought with reference to Christ are brought before us in meditating on the fifth of Revelation. The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the One who is rising up and going forth with resistless strength, is immediately described as "a Lamb as it had been slain." In other words, God's King is the Man who was down here amongst men, perfected as a Priest, by acquaintance with infirmity, need and sorrow (Heb. 4:14, 15, 5:7-10).

The remark was made just now that Abraham did not claim the world for himself; he really only claims it in faith for Christ, and now that he has, in spirit, presented it to Him, he declines to have anything further to do with it – he turns it all over to Sodom's king for the present. He has been enriched by God, by God's promise, and he will not be enriched at the hands of the world ; he will rather wait in faith to inherit those promises. Refusing anything from the king of Sodom seems to be as beautiful an expression of faith, in its way, as is the act of giving tithes of all to Melchisedek, which we have just been looking at. And now, passing on to the opening of the 15th chapter, we have God's beautiful answer to Abraham's faith. Has he just now refused to be enriched by the world? Then God will enrich him Himself, yea, enrich him by Himself:" I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." In the 13th chapter God gave him a goodly portion – the land of Canaan – but here He gives him something quite beyond this – God Himself is his portion :How blessed!

So that we see Abraham as a man of faith, whether a pilgrim and a worshiper, as we first looked at him, or whether as the same pilgrim (for we read that they went and told "Abraham the Hebrew" – the passenger-the pilgrim), laying hold of the spoils for God and bringing those spoils to God's king-priest; or again, refusing aught of those spoils for himself from the king of Sodom. And when the Lord Jesus affirms that "Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad" does it not seem that this would apply to the occasions we have been looking at as well as, surely, to others also? Is it not indeed faith, and faith's testimony to Christ? F. G. P.