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Narrative 17: Melchizedek

The slides for the narrative study of the Scriptures are up. This set of slides considers Melchizedek, the priestly king who met Abram after he defeated the five kings who had taken Lot as a spoil of war.

Related posts:

  1. Narrative 16: The Rescue of Lot
  2. On Melchizedek (1)
  3. Narrative 20: Circumcision

October 8th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | Category: Narrative Study 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

2 comments to Narrative 17: Melchizedek

  • Fred
    October 8, 2009 at 1:02 pm

    Looked at your Melchizedek study. The correlation with Shem is an interesting thought, although as you say it is strictly conjecture. On the other points – I agree with all of it (that’s what scripture says) but I missed the “so what”. What are we to do with this?

  • Russ
    October 8, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    I think there are three ways to study the Scriptures:

    1. To apply them to our lives. In this case, what you do with it is to try and change your life, directly, from what you’ve learned.
    2. As an intellectual exercise. In this case, you’re trying to pin down the precise meaning of every possible word, phrase, etc. The application here is just to have the knowledge involved.
    3. As a study of God. In this case, you’re trying to understand God, from a “personality” perspective.
    4. As a study of doctrine. Really, this is #3 in a different way.

    The narrative study we’re doing here tries to focus on the third. Noting, of course, that the first can slip into the second (it’s called legalism), and the third and fourth can also slip into the second. So we often walk a fine line between learning about God, and finding things in the Scriptures themselves, just because they’re interesting. In the case of Melchizedek, we learn a great deal about Christ, and about the precedents in the Tanakh relating to Christ. This helps us more fully understand the position of Christ, and the overall structure of the story told in the Scriptures, so it contributes to our knowledge of who God is, and how He works in the world.

    I know, as in many other places, I’m swimming against the tide of modern teaching, which focuses on #1 to the exclusion of #3 and #4 to avoid #2 at all costs. I’m not certain this has worked, given the state of the modern church. We’ve been focusing on “do” for a good 50 or 60 years now, and the results haven’t been encouraging, IMHO.

    :-)

    Russ