Hebrews 11:32, Part 4, Jephthah

Well, Albert Einstein is credited with saying, only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity.

And I'm not so sure about the former.

Hebrews 11.32 says, and what more shall I say?

I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets.

We've been in Hebrews chapter 11 the past several weeks looking at the stories of the people mentioned in that chapter as examples of faith.

And we have looked at the stories of Gideon, Barak, and Samson so far.

Today we're going to look at the story of Jephthah.

Last time we looked at the story of Samson, which in many ways was more a study of stupidity than it was a study of faith.

Samson's story is a painful one.

Samson's story is a painful lesson in how to squander and waste the good gifts and calling of God in a person's life.

He serves as an example of what not to do more than what to do.

And I wish I could tell you that the person that we'll be looking at today stands as a better example for us to follow.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Jephthah's story is one of the most disturbing stories in the Bible.

And to be honest, I would like to just skip his story.

But that's not the way we do things here at Touchstone.

We study the whole Bible.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

And today's story falls into the ugly category.

Human beings are beautifully and tragically flawed creatures

who God has chosen to use in spite of those flaws and sometimes even because of those flaws.

We're sadly self-destructive.

Even when we have the best intentions at heart,

we can create a lot of trouble.

We can create terrible pain for ourselves and others in the process.

I mean, this is often the story in my own life.

In my heart, I want to do the good and the right thing.

But something often gets lost in the transition from intention to action.

And I end up making a terrible mess of things.

What was meant to be for good ends up being something awful.

Well, Jephthah is an example of this in as raw and painful a form as can be imagined.

He will have good intentions, expressing his faith and courage and commitment to the Lord

and the mission that he has been called to.

But he will foolishly create needless, terrible pain for himself and his loved ones in the process.

Well, with that as an introduction, let's turn to the book of Judges, chapter 10.

Judges, chapter 10.

I said that Jephthah's story is in the ugly category of Bible stories.

And it helps to explain its ugliness when we realize that the story of Jephthah

takes place during a very ugly time in Israel's history.

Beginning in verse 10.

Verse 6 of Judges 10, it says,

Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon,

the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines.

We have the same recurring cycle taking place again that we see throughout the history of Israel

during the period of the Judges.

The people of Israel have...

Again, turned away from the Lord and are worshiping the gods of the peoples around them,

following their religious practices and their morals.

Look at all of the gods that the Israelites are worshiping.

They're worshiping every pagan god of every nation around them and not worshiping the Lord.

They are forsaking the Lord.

It says,

And because the Israelites forsook the Lord and no longer served,

he became angry with them.

He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites,

who that year shattered and crushed them.

For 18 years they oppressed all the Israelites on the east side of the Jordan in Gilead,

the land of the Amorites.

The Ammonites also crossed the Jordan to fight against Judah, Benjamin, and Ephraim.

Israel was in great distress.

As we have seen in the other stories from the book of Judges

that we have looked out already, Gideon, Barak, Samson,

the Lord would remove his protective hand from Israel

and allow them to be oppressed by their enemies

in an effort to get their attention and cause them to repent of their sin and come back to him.

And we see that happening here again.

The Philistines and the Ammonites are the enemies who are coming against Israel this time.

The Israelites have an enemy on their west, the Philistines,

and they also have an enemy on their east, the Ammonites,

both coming against them, pressing in on both sides.

Notice the words used to describe the oppression that these enemies are bringing against them.

It says they shattered and they crushed them.

They oppressed them.

It says Israel was in great distress.

Then in verse 10, the Israelites cried out to the Lord,

We have sinned against you.

We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals.

So finally, after 18 long years of misery,

the people of Israel, they cry out to the Lord for help,

acknowledging their sin.

And it's shocking sometimes to see how clueless and stubborn

we can be about our condition before God, isn't it?

I mean, we can live a long time down in the ditch

with our life getting worse and worse,

as the consequences of our sin eat our life away,

before we will finally humble ourselves before the Lord.

And here, they spend 18 years just getting pounded

before they finally cry out to God.

In verse 11, it says,

The Lord replied,

When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites,

and the Manites oppressed them,

and you cried to me for help,

did I not save you from their hands?

But you have forsaken me and served other gods,

so I will no longer save you.

Go cry out to the gods you've chosen.

Let them save you when you're in trouble.

The Lord, he conducts a little history lesson for them,

reminding them of the many times in the past

when he has rescued them from their enemies.

He's been faithful,

and kind,

and forgiving,

again and again and again,

coming to their aid.

They, on the other hand,

have repeatedly forsaken the Lord,

turned their back on him,

casting him away from them.

The Lord sees through their half-hearted confessions and promises

to not do it again.

They've done it many times before.

They have just used the Lord to get out of whatever terrible jam

they were in at the moment,

and then gone,

right back to their old ways again.

So the Lord tells them here in verse 14,

Go and cry out to the gods you've chosen.

Let them save you.

Verse 15,

But the Israelites, they said to the Lord,

We've sinned.

Do with us whatever you think best,

but please rescue us now.

Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them

and served the Lord,

and he could bear Israel's misery no longer.

So the people, they respond with a heart of contrition and repentance,

getting rid of these foreign gods and turning back to the Lord.

True repentance involves more than just words.

It involves making a concerted effort at changing what we're doing,

choosing with our mind and will to head in a different direction.

And that's what the people are doing here.

They're putting away the foreign gods and turning to the Lord.

And he, the Lord, could bear Israel's misery no longer.

It says the misery that Israel has been suffering under,

it's unbearable to the Lord.

He's moved with compassion for them.

So the Lord, he doesn't get any pleasure from watching his people suffer,

even when that suffering is brought on as a consequence of their own sin and bad choices.

It breaks his heart to see us hurting.

He cries out to us through his prophet,

I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,

but rather that they turn,

turn from their ways and live.

Turn, turn and choose life rather than death, he says.

Peter tells us that he's patient with us,

not wanting anyone to perish,

but everyone to come to repentance.

In verse 17, it says,

When the Ammonites were called to arms and camped in Gilead,

the Israelites assembled and camped at Mizpah.

The leaders of the people of Gilead said to each other,

Whoever will take the lead in attacking the Ammonites

will be head over all who live in Gilead.

Well, things have come to a critical stage now.

The Ammonites have gathered their forces together

and they are preparing for a massive invasion of Israel.

They are actually setting up their camp inside of Israelite territory in Gilead.

And the Israelites, they attempt to meet this Ammonite challenge

by gathering their forces together,

but they have no power.

They have a serious problem.

They don't have a leader.

There's no one able or willing to lead Israel's military

into battle against the Ammonites.

They even offer huge incentives to anyone willing to take the job,

including making that person the leader of the whole territorial region of Gilead.

But there are no takers.

There's no one to be found in Israel with courage enough

or know-how enough to do it.

And that sets up the stage for our main character today.

So in Judges 11.1, we're introduced here to Jephthah.

It says,

Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a mighty warrior.

His father was Gilead.

His mother was a prostitute.

Gilead's wife also bore him sons,

and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away.

You're not going to get any inheritance,

and our family, they said, because you are the son of another woman.

So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob,

where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.

Jephthah's mother was a prostitute, it tells us here,

making him an illegitimate child.

He apparently lived with his father's family while growing up,

but when his father's legitimate children were old enough,

they drove Jephthah away.

Out of the family.

We learn a little later in the story that the whole town

was involved in driving Jephthah away.

They didn't want the likes of someone like him in their town.

Jephthah was a despised, hated, unwanted person.

He was a person without a family or a future.

He was forced to leave Israel and ended up living in a place called Tob.

He was apparently a natural-born leader, though,

because he ended up with a gang of scoundrels following him.

It doesn't say it outright, but the impression from the description here

is that Jephthah and his men are not considered the best of citizens.

He appears to have been the rough equivalent of a mob boss

or a powerful gang leader of his day.

So in verse 4,

it says,

No one had come forward in Israel

willing to lead them into battle against the Ammonites.

So when Ammon begins to march against Israel,

they're so desperate.

That they seek the help of the only person they can think of

who could lead them.

The very person they had driven away years earlier, Jephthah.

Jephthah is described as a mighty warrior in verse 1.

He apparently had skill as a warrior.

He was known for that, and he is a capable leader of men.

Men follow him, even though they are scoundrels.

So in spite of their misdeeds,

misgivings about his reputation,

the elders of Israel, they go to Jephthah

and they beg him to come back to Israel

and lead their army against the Ammonites.

In verse 7, Jephthah said to them,

Didn't you hate me and drive me from my father's house?

Why do you come to me now when you're in trouble?

Jephthah confronts him about how they have treated him in the past,

driving him from his home,

treating him like an outcast,

wanting nothing to do with him.

And now, when they have nowhere else to go,

nowhere else to turn,

they come to him, asking for his help,

acting like none of that ever happened.

Oh, let's just let bygones be bygones now.

The elders of Gilead said to him,

Nevertheless, we're turning to you now.

Come with us to fight the Ammonites,

and you will be head over all of us who live in Gilead.

Jephthah answered,

Suppose you take me back to fight the Ammonites,

and the Lord,

who gives them to me,

will I really be your head?

The elders of Gilead replied,

The Lord is our witness.

We will certainly do as you say.

So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead,

and the people made him head and commander over them,

and he repeated all his words before the Lord in Mizpah.

So they assure him that his banishment is over.

He's now their favorite son.

He's welcomed back to Israel.

Israel is now their favorite territory.

He'll lead them in battle.

They'll make him ruler over them.

It wouldn't be easy to forgive them

for all that they have done to him.

But Jephthah agrees to help them.

This part of Jephthah's story is good.

We see him acting nobly here, forgiving them.

And it's not an accident that Jephthah's story at this point,

it parallels God's own story,

maybe you've already started to pick up on that.

Jephthah was rejected by his own people and driven away.

The Lord was rejected by his own people and driven away.

They chose to worship and follow the pagan gods of the peoples around them

instead of the Lord.

They wanted nothing to do with the Lord.

They cast him out of their lives.

When their enemy comes against them,

and they're on the verge of being wiped out,

the Israelites, they come to Jephthah

and beg him to come back and help them.

And when their enemy came against them,

they were on the verge of being wiped out

and the Israelites called out to the Lord for help,

begging him to come back and to help them.

Jephthah responds by confronting them

with how they had treated him in the past.

The Lord, he responded by confronting them

with how they had treated him in the past.

They promised to make Jephthah their ruler.

If he'll help them.

They promised to make the Lord their ruler.

If he will help them.

Jephthah agrees to help them

in spite of their terrible treatment of him.

The Lord has agreed to help them

in spite of their terrible treatment of him.

The Lord is generous with his forgiveness.

Psalm 86.5, for example, says,

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love

to all who call to you.

So Jephthah,

Jephthah, he's kind of like this little picture

of their own behavior towards the Lord.

Well, before going to war with the Ammonites,

Jephthah attempts to negotiate with them,

the Ammonites.

He asks them why they want to fight against Israel.

What's your problem?

And the Ammonites, they reply that Israel

has taken a bunch of their land

and the only thing they want to do is to kill them.

And the only thing they want to do is to kill them.

And the only way to avoid being attacked is for Israel to give all of that land back to Ammon.

Well, Ammon's claim to the disputed land was bogus.

It had not been Ammon's land.

Jephthah recounted to them how Israel acquired the land and why it was rightfully Israel's land.

The Lord gave them this land.

But the Ammonites, they weren't really interested in negotiating a settlement anyway.

They were intent on attacking Israel no matter what and just annihilating them.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

With what Israel is facing even in these days with their enemies.

Well, verse 29, we skip down there.

It says,

Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah,

He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead,

and from there he advanced against the Ammonites.

So the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Jephthah and empowers him to lead the Israelites into battle against the Ammonites.

And he then went throughout Israelite territory, gathering men for war, preparing to face off against their enemy.

And in verse 30 it says,

And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord,

If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.

This is when Jephthah's story turns bad.

Jephthah makes a vow to the Lord here, which will prove to be very foolish.

I mean, he vows that if the Lord will give him victory over the Ammonites,

that he will give to the Lord as a burnt offering the first thing that comes out of his house to greet him when he comes back in victory.

I mean, this is such a stupid vow to make.

What does he think will come out of his house to greet him? A cockroach?

It will most likely be a beloved pet or a family member.

To make it that much more foolish, this vow was completely unnecessary.

The Lord is going to give Jephthah and the Israelites victory over the Ammonites without it.

This vow has no bearing on the outcome of this war.

We've already read about how the Lord was moved with compassion for his people.

Not wanting them to suffer any longer.

We've already read about how the Spirit,

Spirit of the Lord has come upon Jephthah, empowering him to lead Israel

in this war. Making a vow like this

is an attempt to obligate and control God and force him

to do what we want. That's what vows

are all about, really. If I do

this thing, then God will have to do this other thing for me.

People make what I call bargain

prayers that are basically the same thing.

God, if you will get me out of this trouble, I promise

such and such.

We all know what I'm talking about.

God can't be

controlled or manipulated.

He's sovereign.

Jesus

tells us not to make any vows of any kind.

Simply say what you're going to do

and do it. In Matthew 5.33, Jesus said,

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago,

Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made.

But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all,

either by heaven, for it's God's throne, or by earth, for it is His footstill,

or by Jerusalem,

for it is the city of the great king. Do not swear by your head,

for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

All you need to say is simply yes

or no. Anything beyond this comes from

the evil one.

Well, then Jephthah, verse 32 says, Then Jephthah went over to fight

the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands.

He devastated twenty

towns, from Aror to the vicinity of Mineth,

as far as Abel, Karamim. Thus Israel

subdued Ammon. So the Lord gives

Jephthah and the Israelites a great victory over their enemy.

And then 34 says, When Jephthah returned to his

home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but

his daughter, dancing to the sound of

timbrels. She was in

only child. Except for her, he had neither son nor

daughter. And when he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried,

Oh no, my daughter! You have brought

me down, and I am devastated. I have made a vow to

the Lord that I cannot break.

Jephthah went from being the happiest

person in the world to the saddest person in the world in a

split second. When he sees

his precious daughter come dancing out of the house to welcome him

home and to congratulate him on this great victory, the horror

of the vow that he had made crushes him,

and rightly so. He devastated the Ammonites,

and now the foolish vow that he made has devastated him.

Verse 36 says,

My father, she replied,

You have given your word to the Lord due to me just as you

promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites.

But grant me this one request, she said,

Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will

never marry. So his daughter, she demonstrates an unbelievable

amount of faith. Rather than trying to talk him

out of going through with his vow, she encourages him to be faithful

to the vow that he made.

Her only request is that her father give her two months

to roam the hills with her friends, to weep over the fact that she'll never

have the opportunity to be married and have children.

And he responds in verse 38, You may go.

He replied, and he let her go

for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because

she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her,

as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.

From this comes the Israelite tradition that

each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate

the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

The big question that Bible readers have contemplated for

hundreds of years is, did Jephthah actually sacrifice

his daughter as a burnt offering to the Lord?

We don't know.

Some things to consider

in this is, first, human sacrifice

has always been considered an abomination by the Lord and clearly

stated as such in the Law of Moses. Deuteronomy 12, 31

for example. There's only one instance in history

when the Lord asked someone to sacrifice his child to God.

Abraham sacrificing

Isaac.

And in that case, the Lord stopped Abraham before he did it.

That also happened to be before the Law of Moses was given, which, and then here,

what Jephthah vowed to do would not have been accepted by the Lord as an

appropriate form of worship, even if he did it. There was a provision in the Law of Moses,

which would have allowed Jephthah to redeem his daughter from this vow.

He could have paid the specified amount of thirty shekels to the priest at the tabernacle

to buy the life of his daughter back.

So it wasn't really necessary that he go through this.

No legitimate priest in Israel would have performed the act of offering Jephthah's daughter.

daughter to the Lord as a burnt offering. No priest would have

touched that.

Even with all of the problems associated with

carrying out a vow like this in Israel, some believe that Jephthah

really did kill his daughter. If he did,

it was one of the most unnecessary and foolish

things we could imagine.

Others believe Jephthah

didn't kill his daughter, but instead, to fulfill the vow, he devoted her

to the Lord, which meant she remained at the tabernacle

where she lived as a servant unmarried for her life.

We don't know.

In closing,

Jephthah is included

in the Bible.

In the list of people who lived by faith in the Lord

in Hebrews 11. How can that be?

Well, he exercised faith when he

led the Israelites into battle against the Ammonites.

He demonstrated faith in being willing to fulfill his vow in spite of how

foolish it was and the frightening consequences that it had.

As

people,

disturbing as it is,

his faithfulness to honor his promise

stood in stark contrast to the unfaithfulness

of the Israelites who repeatedly broke their promises

to the Lord.

But what can we take away

with us from this story?

Well, first,

we need to

trust the Lord with our life, apart from vows.

We're not in control of things. He is.

We need to trust Him and not try to manipulate Him

to control Him, to pressure Him

to do what we want. We need to instead seek to

know what He wants us to do and do that.

Second,

we see once again the Lord using

a very unlikely person to accomplish a great work.

Jephthah, the son of a prostitute driven from his home

and outcast in Israel, hated and despised,

is the one that God uses among all of those people

to lead them in victory over their enemy.

The Lord's rejects become God's chosen.

Lastly, we see again how amazing God's grace is

when we consider that someone who

blundered as badly as Jephthah did

is still counted among the faithful in Hebrews 11.

The hall of fame of faith.

We see his name there and we just kind of scratch our head.

What's he doing in that list?

And I want to say, be encouraged by that.

Those of you who feel you have made such a mess of things

in your life that you wonder if God could still love you

and use you, well, wonder no more.

Wonder no more. He loves you and He can still use you

to glorify Him.

Here's this final thought.

God's grace is bigger than our stupidity.

Let's bow our heads in prayer.

Father, we...

We find this story,

we find this story,

we find this story about Jephthah to be very disturbing.

I mean, what a...

What an unbelievable tragedy this ends up to be.

And...

But even in the midst of it,

we see your grace, Lord.

We're reminded of your amazing grace

extended to us.

We may not be quite as foolish as Jephthah was

in this vow that he made,

but we have each done some really stupid stuff.

And we thank you that you love us still.

We thank you that Jesus has died for our stupidity,

for our foolishness,

for the awful stuff that we have done, Lord.

We thank you, Jesus, for dying for us.

I ask you to encourage your people this morning.

Lord, remind us of your grace and your forgiveness,

of your faithfulness to us.

Even when we're faithless, you remain faithful.

You're the hero here, Lord.

Lord, you are our hero.

Remind us of that, Lord.

In Jesus' name, amen.