The Story of Jephthah

I want to welcome you this evening to Calvary Chapel. And those online, we welcome you. Would you stand and join me in prayer?

We look to you tonight.

This world is tough for us, Lord, sometimes. Well, a bit at a time. And our hearts, you know, with what went on in Kansas City today, with the parade and the shootings and all, it's just a sad thing. Just things can pull on our hearts at times. But I thank God he's with us. We can trust him, and we love him. Jesus, we just tell you tonight, we love you. Father God, Holy Spirit, we ask that you would comfort those who are hurting, Lord.

You would bless our service, Lord, that we would look to you, trust you.

Exalt, giving us, Lord, dying in our stead. We praise you. You may be seated. We praise you tonight, Lord. We're going to look to you, God, by your strength. We know faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. We thank you for your word that is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. You meet us right where we are, just right in here and now.

And you've got that light to guide us as we go. We thank you for that, for your word.

That's our desire, Lord. Be those lights that reflect you, Lord Jesus. That as you shine, as we look to you, that the world may see that you are lovely, Lord. You're wonderful.

When pain strikes, when concerns hit, we look to you. We trust you, Lord God.

We'll sing this song together. This is actually kind of a hymn. Chuck Gerrard kind of started it years back. Sing that again now.

We sing our hearts to you.

All the sickness and things that's going around, Lord, the concerns that we have for loved ones, the world in which we're living, and the chaos that seems to be going on, and I still always will hold to them. As I roughly quoted from A.W. Tozer, things look like everything's in chaos behind the scenes. There's a God who is in complete control.

And as long as God has a work for us to do on this earth, we'll be here. You see? And then when he says, okay, it's time, he'll take us home. We're all terminal. Either in the rapture, we'll be transformed either that way, or we'll be transformed through death up into glory. So we're just hanging in and living from day to day. We're looking to the God of the universe who sent his son, Jesus Christ,

to die on the cross for us, and who said before he left and died on the cross, he would not leave us as orphans, but send his Holy Spirit to convince us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, to lead and guide us. And we thank you for that in Jesus' name. And so as Pastor Ryan comes up, we ask that you would just, by your Holy Spirit, speak to him as he teaches your word. And we pray that for the Children's Church, and for the youth group, and all that's going on there, that which is going forth, be glorified in Jesus' name.

Amen. If you have a Bible with you, open up to Judges chapter 10.

Judges chapter 10.

We were reminded today that the time of the judges is not a lot different than the time that we're living in right now, where people seem to just do what's right in their own eyes. So tonight we come to the story of Jephthah. Interesting guy, interesting background. So we'll cover chapters 10 through 12 tonight, but we'll pick up in chapter 10. And before we get to his story,

there's a couple of judges that are mentioned. Remember the last time we discussed Abimelech, and really Abimelech's treachery, how God dealt with him, and that sort of segues directly into chapter 10, verse 1. It says, Now after Abimelech died, Tola, the son of Pua, the son of Dodo, and all of those names are amazing. We can't change that. That's just... If you're looking for names,

just consider these. A man of Issachar arose to save Israel, and he lived in Shemir in the hill country of Ephraim, and he judged Israel for 23 years. Then he died, and he was buried in Shemir. After him, Jer, the Gileadite, arose and judged Israel for 22 years. He had 30 sons who rode on 30 donkeys, and they had 30 cities, the land of Gilead, that are called...

The only thing I really have to tell you about those two judges is isn't it kind of interesting that God saw fit to name them in Scripture? We're given no real details about anything that they did. We're given no details about the work that they did. We're given no details about any exploits that they were able to accomplish. Other than these guys served God,

and they did so faithfully that God said, I want to make sure that the people know... I want to make sure that the people know who these guys are and that they served me faithfully. And I always think that that's kind of a cool thing about God because there are so many people who serve in absolute anonymity. Nobody has any clue what they do. Nobody has any clue.

They'll never make it on the news. They'll never make it in a magazine. They'll never be known by anyone other than perhaps the small group that they serve or maybe even just the Holy Spirit knows what they do. But God keeps track. There are some of you that serve in ways where maybe you're just a prayer warrior and no one will ever know ultimately on this side of eternity

anything that you've done. But on the other side of eternity, your name is written down by God because he took note of the work that you did. And he says, they served me faithfully and I will always know the work that they have done for me. And so we move on from there. We come to verse 6. It says, The sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord.

If you're keeping track on your bingo card, I believe that this is number 8. So the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord and they served the Baals and they served the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram and the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of Ammon, the gods of the Philistines. Thus they forsook the Lord and did not serve him. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel and he sold.

He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the sons of Ammon. And so once again, we see this cycle take place with the children of Israel. Once again, they've done evil in the sight of the Lord. And every time that they've done evil in the sight of the Lord, the way that they express that is they serve their idols and they pursue different idols.

The Baals, which of course are the idols of wealth, the idol of crops, and it ensured their wealth as far as they were concerned. And of course, Ashtaroth, which was the goddess, of pleasure. And so it's wealth and pleasure. Things don't change very much. And they gave into these gods once again. And as they gave into the gods of the different lands around them,

I want you to notice what it says in verse seven, the anger of the Lord burned against Israel and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the sons of Ammon. Did you notice that those were two of the nation's gods that they served? He said, if you love that so much, then I will let you go where you want to go. If the gods of the Philistines and the gods of the Ammonites are the ones that you want to go to, then I will give you exactly what you want.

I will give you the Philistines and I will give you the Ammonites and they will take you over. It says in verse eight that they afflicted and they crushed the sons of Israel that year. For 18 years, they afflicted all the sons of Israel who were beyond the Jordan and Gilead in the land of the Amorites. The sons of Ammon crossed Jordan to fight against Judah, Benjamin and the house of Ephraim so that Israel was greatly, greatly, greatly, distressed.

I'd like to point out three words to you out of verses eight and nine. The words are afflicted, crushed and distressed. I point those out to you because those have become familiar words throughout the book of Judges. Would you agree? Because that's exactly where sin leaves us is it leaves us afflicted, leaves us crushed and it leaves us severely distressed.

And may I throw another word in there that I think goes right along with those words. It leaves us severely distressed. Because we have suppressed the truth of God and unrighteousness, given over to our sins and it always leads to those things. And it says in verse 10, the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord saying, we have sinned against you for indeed we have forsaken our God and served the Baals.

The Lord said to the sons of Israel, did I not deliver you from the Egyptians, from the Amorites, from the sons of Ammon and the Philistines? Also when the Sidonians and the Amalekites and the Manites oppressed you, you cried out to me and I delivered you from their hands. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore I will no longer deliver you.

Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen. Let them deliver you in the time of your distress. This is the first time we've seen this. God has some really harsh words for the nation of Israel. Judge number, eight starts to be a little bit of a difficult one to achieve because they have found themselves in a place where they have so turned against God that God says,

go cry out to the gods that you seem to want to really serve. Go cry out to the gods that you think actually are providing for you, that are actually bringing joy to your life because I've delivered you over and over and over again. Go cry out to those gods because I won't deliver you. Now when we first hear this, this is a scary thought for us, am I right?

But I want you to take note of what takes place next. It says in verse 15 that the sons of Israel said to the Lord, we have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day. So they put away the foreign gods from among them and they served the Lord and he could bear the misery of Israel. Israel no longer. Then the sons of Ammon were summoned

and they camped in Gilead. The sons of Israel gathered together and camped in Mizpah. The people, the leaders of Gilead said to one another, who is the man who will begin to fight against the sons of Ammon? He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Now things seem like they're at their worst for the nation of Israel. Would you agree? Typically the way that we've seen

this cycle work in the past is that they sin, God brings judgment in the process of their judgment they cry out to the Lord. The Lord sends a deliverer only this time they cry out to the Lord and what the Lord say. Go call to somebody else. I hear you knocking but you can't come in, right? Sorry, bad song joke. Talk to somebody else because I'm done with you.

I'm not going to deliver you anymore and we go, but that's not how God's supposed to respond. God is the faithful God of deliverance. Why has he not responded? But I want you to take note of what happens next because what happens next is they say, you're right. We've sinned. Do to us whatever seems fit to you. Only deliver us. Then the next thing they do is

they put away their foreign gods. And this brings me to my very first point. There is a difference between cheap confession and real repentance. There is a difference between cheap confession and real repentance. You see, when they first cried out to the Lord, they cried out because they were tired of the consequences, not because they were tired of their sin.

They cried out to the Lord because they were tired of the fact that they were dealing with the Ammonites and the Philistines, not because they knew that they had hurt the heart of God. You see, it wasn't until God got really serious with them and said, listen, go talk to the gods you're still keeping in your closet. Go talk to the gods that you're not willing to throw away. Go talk to the gods that you're still hiding from me.

Go ask them to deliver you because until you're done with them, you don't get me. Because until you realize that I'm your only hope, I can't be any hope for you. And sometimes as believers in Jesus Christ, what we like to do when we start experiencing the consequences of sin in our life, is we start saying, I'm tired of the consequences, but I'm not tired of the sin. Because remember, the book of Judges is not written to an unbelieving world.

The book of Judges is written to a believing nation. The book of Judges ultimately is written to the church. Which is exactly why in the book of Revelation, Jesus talks to the church of Laodicea and he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. You know why? Because we have to be tired of the sin if we really want God to be in our lives. And if we're truly tired of the sin,

we will put it away. Better yet, we will destroy it. And if we're truly tired of the sin, we will put it away. In John Corson's commentary, he says that that phrase put away in the Hebrew literally means to destroy. In other words, they didn't just put them away until a more convenient time, which is oftentimes what we like to do with the little areas of sin

that we have in our lives. Can we just be honest about that? Can we just be honest about the fact that sometimes we have that sort of repentance in our heart that Paul describes where he calls it a sorrow that leads to death. You see, there's a difference between worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. Worldly sorrow leads to death. Godly sorrow leads to life because ultimately godly sorrow

causes us to put to death the sin, to destroy the sin that would keep us from knowing God. And I think that one of the best things that we can do as believers in Jesus Christ in the church is quit looking at what the liberal church is doing and saying those nasty sinners and start looking at what I'm doing and saying you're a nasty sinner. Quit looking at what I'm doing. Quit looking at the church that I disagree with and figuring out what their sin is and start looking at my own life and figuring out how I am restricting the work of God because of the sin that I have in my own life.

Because they finally surrendered. They finally submitted. They finally repented. And I want you to notice how God responded. I love this. This is a great verse right here in the middle of verse 16. And he could bear.

It's been a day, hasn't it? They could bear the misery of Israel. No longer. Let me put that to you in some Ryan speak. It broke his heart. It broke his heart. You know, every time something like this happens, the same things begin to take place. I don't know if anybody knows what happened in Kansas City today. They had a parade for the Kansas City Chiefs and it was cool.

I kind of looked at a couple of little clips of it throughout the day and we had some friends that even went there and it was just kind of a neat thing. And I love it. And Kansas City has always been so good at putting on really good celebrations that don't turn into riots. I'm just being honest. When the Royals won the World Series, the two other times that Kansas City won the Super Bowl,

they've always done a good job of putting that on. As I'm sitting there working away, putting this study together in my office, I get that little alert about a shooting. And so I always have news radio on in the background because I'm old and boring. And so I've got news radio on and they cut away from the Sean Hannity, the Sean Hannity show, that I was listening to and it went to their sister station in Kansas City, a news station I used to listen to when I lived in Kansas City.

I think this is why this is hard. It's my home away from home, right? I mean, God did a lot of work in my life in Kansas City. And of course, somebody calls into this radio because they're just covering what's going on. Somebody calls in. You know what they called in and said? You know, if we would just deal with these guns. And I thought, how can you miss it?

How can you miss the point? And of course they hung up on them and excoriated them and said, this is not a good idea. This is whether you believe that or not or however you feel about it. This is not the time to have that discussion. Because when it comes right down to it, people were injured today and life was lost today. From what I understand, at least 11 of those were kids.

And don't you think it breaks God's heart? Don't you think he's looking at the nation and being like, how long? How long until you're going to turn to me? How long until you're going to quit trying to put band-aids on amputations and actually deal with the real problem? That the real problem that we have as a nation has nothing to do with who the president is.

It has nothing to do with who the Congress is. It has nothing to do with who the governor is. It has nothing to do with what the laws are. It has everything to do with the heart. Just like the problem that the nation of Israel had was not that they weren't sorry about the consequences of their sin. It's that they were living in sin. Until they finally realized

that they had repented. And then God's heart could bear it no longer. He could bear their misery no longer. Well, you know what's going to happen when God can't bear the misery of what we're going through any longer? He's going to take the church out of here. And he's going to deal with the world. But God's heart was broken. And I just want to tell you, not on a national level, but on an individual level,

can I just tell you that if you're battling with sin right now, and you're not willing to let go of some things in your life, you're still keeping those things in your back closet. You're still keeping that in your back pocket. You're still keeping that as an option for yourself. I'm here to tell you right now, God won't deliver you. He won't deliver you until you come to him and say,

I don't want it anymore. I just want you. And his heart will not be able to bear it any longer. Because ultimately God's heart is to deliver. And that's what he does. And so Ammon comes to camp them. And so Ammon comes to camp themselves against Israel. And Gilead says, who's going to fight for us? We need to find a fighter. And that segues us into chapter 11,

the rise of Jephthah. It says in verse one of chapter 11, now Jephthah the Gileadite was a valiant warrior, but he was the son of a harlot. And Gilead was the father of Jephthah. Gilead's wife bore him sons. And when his wife's sons, who grew up, they drove Jephthah out and said to him, you shall not have an inheritance in our father's house for you are the son of another woman.

So Jephthah fled from his brothers. They lived in the land of Tob and worthless fellows gathered themselves about Jephthah and they went out with him. They came about after a while that the sons of Ammon fought against Israel. Now, the people of Gilead say, who is going to be a warrior for us, right? And if we were watching a movie right now, it would say 20 years earlier, right?

It would take us to the beginning, maybe 30 years earlier to a young boy who was being kicked out of his father's home because he came from the wrong mother. He was judged for things that were not his problem. He was judged for sins that were not his fault. And I need to speak a word to us as a church right now. And that's that the kids growing up in our culture right now

are a lot like Jephthah. They're a lot like him because they've come from some really sad circumstances. The kids growing up in our world right now have parents that were drug addicts. They have parents that were alcoholics. They have parents who abandoned them. They have parents who beat them. They have bad views of men because in their minds, men, are abusers.

They have bad views of mothers because in their mind, mothers abandon them and they don't understand things. And unfortunately, what happens to us as the church is we say, I don't want them around my kids. I don't want them around my kids. And we do to Jephthah, or we do to the kids in our culture, what Jephthah's brothers did to him and they kick him out. We need to know as a church

that there is an entire generation that's coming up right now that has no idea who God is. They have no idea who God is. They have no idea who God is. They have no idea what it's like to have a real home. They have no idea what it's like to have parents that love them. They have no idea what true discipline really is. Discipline that loves and corrects, not discipline that beats them.

They don't know any of these things. And they feel like Jephthah. They feel abandoned. And we need to know something as a church. Either we'll be there for them or the world will be there for them. Because I'm here to tell you right now that there is an entire culture in the world that is looking at the outcasts of the world and saying, we can give you the love that you missed.

We can give you the love that you never received. And the love that they're talking about is sin. Meanwhile, we as the church are content to let that happen. And we need to pay attention because that entire culture is growing up right now and they need people that love them. And we need to get all of the perfect, perfect images and pictures of what that looks like out of our mind.

Because loving kids like that is a hard thing to do. Because they don't even know what they need. And they will push back on anything good for them because they have a fight or flight mentality. And it will take only the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And it will take only the work of the Holy Spirit in our church life. Only the Holy Spirit can break down those walls.

But those walls can be broken down. Do you know how I know that those walls can be broken down? Let me tell you about a man that went home to be with Jesus today. His name was Jeff Johnson. Jeff Johnson pastored Calvary Chapel of Downey. And his background, as a matter of fact, you should just get the book Harvest and read about the background of Jeff Johnson

because man, did he have a screwed up background. And you know who reported, at least that I saw that Jeff Johnson went home to be with Jesus? Greg Laurie, who grew up with a mom, a lot like Jeff does. And do you know what the difference between them and most of the kids growing up in our culture are? There was a guy there named Chuck Smith who didn't care what their background was,

who didn't care what their parents were like, who knew it was going to be a little bit hard to love him. And he showed him love anyway because of the Holy Spirit at work inside of him. We need to know that because that's the generation that we're dealing with right now. And the easy thing for us to do is to kick them out. But we can't do it. We got to show them who Jesus really is.

And so Jephthah gets kicked out by all of his brothers. And when he gets kicked out by his family, he flees. And it says, worthless fellows gathered themselves to him. Now, this is the second time we've seen this in a couple of stories. The last one was Abimelech, only the worthless men that gathered themselves to Abimelech are a lot different than the worthless men

that gathered themselves to Jephthah. The men that gathered themselves to Abimelech that he gathered around were hired assassins that he used to put his family to death. The men that surrounded Jephthah were a lot more like the men that David had. Do you remember that story about David? When David was fleeing from Saul, it says that all those who were unemployed,

all those who were in debt, all of those who were the outcasts gathered themselves to David. And David, being the leader that he was, took a bunch of worthless men and turned them into valiant warriors. He was a valiant warrior. He was a valiant warrior. He was a valiant warrior. He was a valiant warrior. He was a valiant warrior. That's who Jephthah is. He's going to take these men

and he's going to turn them into valiant warriors because what it says right here in verse, hold on, I lost my verse here. In verse three, it says that they gathered themselves about Jephthah and they went out with him. The idea of going out with him means that they went out as raiders. Well, who were they raiding? Well, they were raiding the Ammonites. We know that because that's what he was so anxious about.

He was so anxious to do. He turned them into the same kind of warriors that David turned those men into. Now, I want to point something out to you. God is going to use Jephthah in a really powerful way to deliver the nation of Israel. And God will use everything from his background to make him exactly who he needed to be as the man who would deliver the nation of Israel.

The rejection that he went through made him tough enough to deal with the enemy he was going to have to deal with. He had worthless men gather themselves to him, all of the unemployed. And so he learned what it was to be a leader. He went out on raids against the enemy so that he learned how to be a warrior. All of the things that he went through in his life growing up prepared him

for what God was going to do in delivering the nation of Israel. And I want to tell you something. God uses everything in our lives to prepare us for our present and our future. God does not waste anything. Sometimes we can find ourselves going, Lord, why did I have to go through X, Y, and Z to get where I am? Why did I have to go through X, Y, and Z to get where I am?

Why did I have to go through X, Y, and Z to get where I am? And I was just telling my daughters this again last night. I was telling them this exact same story. I said, you have to understand something about God. God uses everything in our lives to fashion us into who we are and who he wants for us to be. You can never ask God why. Well, you can, but he probably won't answer you.

You should not keep asking God why. You should always ask God, what? What are you preparing me for? What do you have for me to do? And I gave them two examples from my own life. When I was growing up, I went to a Christian school. Matter of fact, right here at Calvary Chapel. I went to a Christian school, and from the third grade through the sixth grade, I was the only kid in my class.

And I remember that being a little bit hard for me because I couldn't go to somebody else and say, what'd you get on number 15? Well, I could, but no one would be there to talk to me. I'd be like, what'd you get on number 15? I got this. Well, that's what I got too. Okay, I think that sounds good. Yeah, me too. Let's turn it in, right? I mean, I could have done that.

Group projects were always kind of interesting because it was just me. And I remember that being a hard time. And I remember my mom telling me when I was in high school, she said, that was really hard for me to allow you to go through that. She said, but in the middle of it, I felt like God said, I'm teaching him to stand on his own. And you know what? I told my daughters, I said,

do you know what I do with 95% of my time? I work in an office by myself. I'm pretty content with that because I'm used to it. I kind of got used to being a little bit of a loner. I kind of got used to not really being able to say, what'd you get on number 15, right? The beautiful thing about being the only kid in your class is I was the smartest kid in my class, right?

Worst thing is I was the dumbest kid in my class too, but I never talked about that. I just talked about being the smartest kid in my class. Well, so that was one thing that prepared me for where I am today, because I have to be able to be a little bit of a loner sometimes with my job. And I'm like, perfect. I'm set. I'm prepared for that, right? And then there's the fact that I worked construction

all those years, and I didn't really like working construction. And you know what my wife told me over and over and over again while I was working construction? She said, Ryan, God is going to use this when you're in ministry. God's going to use this when he puts you in charge of a church. Do you know what I've done since I've been the pastor here? I've overseen the remodeling of this sanctuary.

I've overseen a parking lot that went in out here, and we are hopefully going to be overseeing a project of adding on to this building at some point in time when we can get all those things put together. And every time we do, not to mention how many things I fixed on my own here, and every time something like that happens, my wife just, she looks at me and she says, hey, do you remember when I told you that God was really going to use your experience in construction for when you became a pastor? And I'm like, you know what? And she's like, I'm just saying, right?

So God uses all of those things to prepare us for what we are today. And so we look back on our lives and say, Lord, I don't understand why, but I can see what, I can see what you were doing. Sometimes we see things in our lives, and we say, Lord, that was wasted. That was such a wasted time. Listen, God doesn't waste anything. God is so good at using everything.

He doesn't waste anything to fashion us into who he wants us to be. And that's exactly what he did with Jephthah. So they come to him. It says in verse five, when the sons of Ammon fought against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to go get who? Jephthah. Why? Because he was a warrior who was already fighting against Ammon. They went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob.

In verse six it says, and they said to him, come and be our chief that we may fight against the sons of Ammon. And then Jephthah said to the elders, didn't you hate me and drive me from my father's house? So why have you come to me now that you're in trouble? The elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, for this reason we've now returned to you that you may go with us and fight with the sons of Ammon and become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.

So Jephthah said to the elders, if you take me back to fight against the sons of Ammon, the Lord gives them up to me. Will I become your head? And the elders of Gilead said to Jephthah, the Lord is witness. Surely, we will do as you have said. So they bring Jephthah in, they make him the leader, but Jephthah being a wise man tries to choose peace first. Notice what it says in verse 11.

Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead and the people made him head and chief over them. And Jephthah spoke all the words, all these words before the Lord at Mizpah. He sent messengers to the king of the sons of Ammon saying, why is this, or what is between you and me that you have come to fight me or fight against my land? The king of the sons of Ammon said to the messengers, because Israel took away my land when they came up from Egypt, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok in the Jordan, therefore return them peaceably now.

Okay, quick sidebar. Isn't it great that the whole reason that they're arguing is because they said, you stole my land. And if you give my land back, we'll have peace. It's almost like some things never change. Anyway, so, but Jephthah sent messengers again to the king of the sons of Ammon. And they said to him, thus says Jephthah, Israel did not take away the land of Moab,

nor the land of the sons of Ammon. For when they came up from Egypt and Israel went through the wilderness to the Red Sea and they came to Kadesh, Israel sent messengers to the king of Edom saying, please let us pass through your land. But the king of Edom would not listen. And they also sent to the king of Moab, but he would not consent. So Israel remained at Kadesh.

Then they went through the wilderness and around the land of Edom and the land of Moab. They came to the, to the east of the land of Moab and they camped beyond the Arnon. But they did not enter the territory of Moab for the Arnon was the border of Moab. And Israel sent messengers to Sihon, king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon. And Israel said to him, please let us pass through your land to our place.

But Sihon did not trust Israel to pass through. So he gathered all his people and camped in Jahaz and fought with Israel. The Lord, the God of Israel gave Sihon and all his people in the land of Israel and they defeated them. So Israel possessed all the land of the Amorites, which included the Ammonites, the inhabitants of that country. So they possessed all the territory of the Amorites

from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok, from the wilderness as far as the Jordan. Since now the Lord God of Israel drove out the Amorites from before his people Israel, are you then to possess it? Do you not possess what Chemosh, your God gives you to possess? So whatever the Lord, our God has driven out before us, we will possess it. Now, are you any better than Balak,

the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever strive with Israel or did he ever fight against them? While Israel lived in Heshbon and its villages and Eror and its villages and all the cities that are on the banks of the Arnon, 300 years, why did you not recover them within that time? I therefore have not sinned against you, but you are doing me wrong by making war against me.

May the Lord judge, may the Lord, the judge, judge between the sons of Israel today and the sons of Ammon. But the king of the sons of Ammon disregarded the message which Jephthah sent them. This is what we call revisionist history. That's what Ammon was trying to pull. He said, you stole our land. And he says, let me give you a history lesson. Now, the great thing is that Jephthah

just literally quoted the history from the book of Numbers of Israel, taking the entire Eastern portion on the East side of Israel. On the East side of the Jordan River. And exactly how that happened, how it was not a military campaign on their part to take it. It was actually a defense strategy on their part and God gave it into their hands. He said, so listen, if you have a problem,

it's your problem, not mine. So can we have peace? And of course you can't. They can't have peace because they're still fighting over land today, right? So no peace. And so now we move into the battle. It says, now the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, verse 29, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. Then he passed through Mizpah of Gilead and Mizpah of Gilead.

He went on to the sons of Ammon. I want to point something out to you out of that verse. Jephthah is now ready to take on the people of Ammon. But no matter how great of a warrior he is, no matter how well prepared he is, no matter how much of a leader the people have made him, there is one very important thing that happens to him. Before he wins this battle,

he was filled with the spirit of the Lord. Now I tell you this because it's so important for us to understand that it is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit declares the Lord. It's fascinating. There's two guys I listen to on the radio in the morning all the time, Adrian Rogers and David Jeremiah. It just works out that way. I'm usually leaving my house when Adrian Rogers is on

and I finish listening to him when I get to church. And then David, David Jeremiah comes on next. I'm like, might as well listen to him too because I really like David Jeremiah. And the fascinating thing is both of those guys have pointed something out. The importance of the power of the spirit of God. Adrian Rogers has been talking about the importance of the power of the Holy Spirit and raising our kids.

David Jeremiah, first of all, was pointing out the importance of the power of the Holy Spirit and studying God's word. And now today he pointed out the importance of the power of the Holy Spirit and having self-control. In our lives, it's almost like the only place we have for hope to live as God has called for us to live is through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because after all, if by the spirit, we put to death the deeds of the flesh, then we shall live, right?

And so that power of the Holy Spirit, it's the key in our lives. If you're lacking that power, it's probably time to ask. And so then verse 30 knows what happens. It says, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, if you will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord's.

And I will offer it up as a burnt offering. So Jephthah crossed over to the sons of Ammon to fight against them. We'll deal with that vow in just a minute, by the way. And the Lord struck, or excuse me, the Lord gave them into his hand and he struck them with a very great slaughter from Aror to the entrance of Mineth, 20 cities. And as far as Abel, Kererim,

or however you say that. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel. When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. Again, we'll deal with that in just a minute. So by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jephthah was able to overcome. He led an army that overcame the enemy

and absolutely destroyed them. He won the victory. How did he win the victory? Through the power of the Holy Spirit. But what did he do before he left? He made a rash vow with the Lord. Now, you should ask yourself a question. Why did he make this vow? Because, look at it again. Verse 30. He said, If you will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors

of my house to meet me, I will offer it up as a burnt offering to the Lord. Now, why did he make this vow? Because he wasn't going to. He wasn't totally sure if God was going to deliver. He was covering his bases. You know what we call that? We call that unbelief. He was having a hard time believing that God would actually do this, that God was actually on his side.

So he makes this vow. Lord, if you do this, or Lord, I'll do this if you do this. How many of us treat God like that? How many of us think that God is waiting to work on a quid pro quo with us? That we think that God is doing a give and take, like, oh, if I give enough of this to God, then he's going to give enough of this to me. Listen, everything that he does in our lives

is by his grace. Stop making deals with God and just live your life according to his power. Because that's what God does. God does things in our lives. We don't have to make a deal with God. And so one of the issues he has is unbelief. And I believe that the second reason is he has a true misunderstanding of God because he doesn't really understand how God's promises work.

God's promises aren't dependent on me. They're dependent on God. That's what made that rainbow that we saw in the sky the other day so amazing, right? Because when we saw that rainbow in the sky, we were reminded of something. We don't have to do anything to keep God's promise because he made a promise to never flood the entire earth again. And every time we see the rainbow in the sky,

we're like, God keeps his promise. We don't have to do anything to make him keep his promise because for him to violate his promise would make him feel bad. It would make him less than God. So he has a misunderstanding of God. So he makes this vow. First thing that comes through my door, if you give me the victory, I will offer it to you as a burnt offering.

Now, I don't know if he was thinking that the first thing that came out of his door was going to be a cow or if it was going to be an oxen or if it was going to be a sheep. He's like, surely the first thing that comes out of my door when I come home is going to be Bessie, right? Bessie the cow, not Bessie his daughter. Like, I don't know what he was thinking when he made this vow.

But that's the problem with making a vow is you're not always thinking, right? And so, he comes home and notice what it says, verse 34, when he came to his house, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines, with dancing. And she was his one and only child. Besides her, he had no son or daughter. And when he saw her, he tore his clothes and said,

alas, my daughter, you've brought me very low. You are among those who trouble me for I have given my word to the Lord and I can't take it back. So she said to him, my father, if you've given your word to the Lord, do to me as you have said, since the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon. She said to her father, let this thing be done for me.

Let me alone two months that I may go to the mountains and weep because of my virginity, I and my companions. Then he said, go. So he sent her away for two months. She left with her companions and wept on the mountains because of, of her virginity. At the end of two months, she returned to her father who did to her according to the vow, which he made. And she had no relations with a man.

Thus it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went yearly to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite, four days in the year. Now, I bet right now you're going, come again? What, what just, right? Because everybody that ever reads this goes, huh, I wonder, how do we handle this one, right? Well, there's two prevailing thoughts on what actually took place here.

This is one of those times where I wish God would have been like, hey, be just slightly more specific in what you write here so that there's no questions. It's just me. That's how I feel. There's two prevailing thoughts. One is that he really did go ahead and follow through with what you and I think of as fulfilling a vow of a burnt offering that he told her,

I've told God I would make you a human sacrifice, and she said, well, then you better do what you told God, and she went and wept for her virginity for two months and then came back and he killed her, an offer as a burnt sacrifice on the altar. That genuinely is what some commentators think happened. I don't, but some do. Now, here's why I don't think that that's what happened.

First of all, because in the Levitical law, human sacrifice is absolutely forbidden. As a matter of fact, we really haven't seen a great deal of that even within the nation of Israel up to this point in time. Even some of the worst of the nation of Israel like Jezebel and Ahab didn't take part in human sacrifices. That wouldn't actually come until like Manasseh and then God has to deal with the nation.

That was actually the thing that caused God to say, I have to judge the nation because you're sacrificing babies, which is kind of a fascinating thought. We won't deal with that right now. So that's the main reason why I don't think that she was offered as a human sacrifice. What I do think, and this is the other prevailing thought, is that a burnt offering is a consecration offering unto the Lord.

That's actually another term for it, is a consecration offering. So what I think happened is that he dedicated her to the Lord to the full-time service of the temple, meaning that she would never marry. She would remain a virgin and she would serve the Lord in the temple day or in the tabernacle day and night. That would be what she is wholly dedicated to the Lord.

Which is why she was so willing. Well, if that's the vow that you made, then you should keep that vow. Only allow me two months to go and wail my virginity. In other words, I'm never going to be able to experience what the other ladies are with having a husband and the fulfillment of having kids and all that kind of thing. Let me go and bemoan that. And so she did.

And she comes back and all it says is he kept his vow that he had made to the Lord. So I believe that he actually just dedicated her to the temple service. And it makes much more sense to me that that's what would have taken place at that point in time. But again, we're reminded. Jesus says, hey, listen, just let your yes be yes and your no be no. There's really no reason

to make a vow. And we are reminded that even spirit-filled men can sometimes make very foolish decisions because God chooses imperfect people to do his work. And so, let's see, what time is it? It's 7.59. I think we can do this. Give me like five extra minutes. It says, then the men, chapter 12, verse one, then the men of Ephraim were summoned and they crossed to Zaphon

and they said to Jephthah, why'd you cross over to fight against the sons of Ammon without calling us to go with you? We will burn your house down on you, morons. Jephthah said to them, I and my people were at great strife with the sons of Ammon. When I called you, you didn't answer. No, he says, you didn't deliver me from their hand. When I saw that you would not deliver me,

I took my life in my hands and I crossed over against the sons of Ammon. The Lord gave them into my hand. Why then have you come up to me this day to fight against me? Then Jephthah gathered all the men of Gilead and he fought Ephraim and the men of Gilead defeated Ephraim because they said, you are fugitives of Ephraim. Oh, Gileadites, in the midst of Ephraim

and in the midst of Manasseh. The Gileadites, the Gileadites captured the ford of the Jordan opposite of Ephraim. Super funny part of the story-ish. And it happened when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said, let me cross over. The men of Ephraim or the men of Gilead would say to him, are you an Ephraimite? And if he would say no, then they would say, say now,

Shibboleth. And they would say, Sibboleth. It's like Mike Tyson, right? For, only it would have been Sibboleth. For he could not pronounce it correctly. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan and they seized him thus there fell at that time 42,000 of Ephraim. And Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried

in one of the cities of Gilead. Now once again, we're dealing with the Ephraimites again, right? Remember the last time we dealt with them? It was Gideon. Gideon goes to battle. The 300 men, yay, right? The original 300, they actually win the battle unlike the other 300 who didn't win the battle. And the Ephraimites are like, why didn't you call us? We'd have gone to battle with you.

And he's like, you know, I called, and no one was home. You guys left me on read. I don't know what else to do. So I went to battle. But you know what? You guys have done way more than me. You killed those kings, right? All we did was, you know, kill everybody else. But you guys took care of those kings. We're good, right? Soft answer turns away wrath. And Jephthah wasn't really

a soft answer sort of a guy. He actually was a valiant warrior. And so when they come to him and they're like, why don't you call us? He was like, you didn't answer. I wouldn't wait. I wasn't waiting on you. I took my life into my own hands. Let's go to war. I kind of like that sometimes, right? Like, listen, we need to understand something. Sometimes a soft answer

turns away wrath. Sometimes you got to slap somebody around, right? And that's just kind of all that there is to it. Sometimes you got to let somebody know, hey, you're in the wrong. You're not really slap somebody around. I don't want to get any calls. I don't want to get any texts about this. You know, Pastor Ryan, I really think you need to reconsider that

slapping people around thing. I'm going to sidebar another one of my favorite memes going around right now. It's a sidebar. It's like I'm always in a war. Like I want to love people like Jesus does and I want to slap them in the face. It's a really hard decision to make. I can understand that, right? Because it's people just like you want to do with me sometimes.

Anyway, but sometimes you just got to deal with things. Soft answer turns away wrath, but every now and then you got to handle business. And that's exactly what Jephthah does. So they go and they attack him and they take the fords of Jabbok, basically a crossing of a river there and a whole bunch of Ephraimites escape, only they try to start sneaking back across.

So when they're sneaking back across, they're not going to they're not about to let that happen. And so they say, are you an Ephraimite? And they'd say, no. So they'd make them say this word shibboleth and they had a speech impediment, right? Because of shibboleth, right? It's kind of like that great commercial on the Super Bowl. Remember the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger

and State Farm and he's like a good neighbor. He's like, no, it's neighbor. He's like neighbor, neighbor, neighbor, right? It's the exact same thing, right? Arnold Schwarzenegger would not be able to make it across the fords of Jabbok and they would have killed him right there, right? The entire governator thing wouldn't have happened. So that's exactly what they do.

Totally take out Ephraim and they kind of deal with it. Matter of fact, we don't hear this from Ephraim anymore because he dealt with business. So, all right, we'll close up there for tonight. Next week, we will get into one of my favorite judges who is Samson. So would you bow with me? Father, we come to you and I thank you for your word. And Lord, as we have had

a little bit of fun there at the end, may we also come back, Lord, to the understanding that what you deserve and desire for us is repentance or true repentance. Hearts that are fully turned towards you. Hearts that are for you. And so, Lord, if there's areas in our life where that needs to take place, would you do that work in us? Lord, if there's areas in our life

where we need to experience the power of the Holy Spirit because we seem to just continue to fail on our own, Lord, may we seek that power and Lord, may we have that power. Lord, may we have that fresh filling of your Holy Spirit in our lives. Lord, continue to do your work in us to make us the men and women that you've created for us to be. I thank you for these examples from Scripture.

Sometimes what to do, sometimes what not to do, but always so good for us to hear. Father, we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Be blessed.