Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.
Ever made a rash promise, or worse, had to follow through on such a promise, even when it hurt? Today we'll meet a man who had good intentions, but made a foolish vow. The man's name was Jephthah.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win, with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, this episode from Judges chapter 11 is very difficult, because Jephthah made a tragic vow after the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, in verse 29. Will you clarify this in your message on God, man, and a foolish decision? Dave, as you indicated, this is a very puzzling passage. And what I do in the message is I outline I think two different views of what really happened. Either way, Jephthah seems to be very unwise here in this particular episode, and of course his daughter was involved.
But I don't want to give away the story. The message is going to clarify what the issues are. But I do want to say to all those who are listening, that when it comes to foolish vows, let's remember that God is willing to help us to know what to do in the situation in which we find ourselves.
And all throughout the Scriptures, there are examples of those who made vows to the Lord, and of course, they kept those vows. So what does Jephthah do? Well, at the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be giving you some very important information.
I want you to pray about the possibility of helping us get the ministry of running to win to even more countries. Tell you about it in just a few minutes. We as human beings are really complex creatures, aren't we? There's a little bit of the good and the bad and perhaps at times the ugly in all of us, sometimes also the unwise within us. Today we're going to look at a very interesting man found in the pages of Scripture who had a difficult history and background, but God used him mightily, but he is not remembered for the way God used him. He's remembered because of a promise or a vow that he made, and that has been a topic that has been discussed by many throughout the centuries. In order for me to introduce him to you, I want to simply paint the picture, and this is found in the 10th chapter of the book of Judges. Judges chapter 10, because we're back where we started from in the sense that Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.
Chapter 10 verse 6. If you are a part of this series of messages, you may remember that this actually is the sixth time that Israel went through this cycle of doing evil and then calling on God in their distress. You'll notice that they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they served seven different kinds of gods listed in verse 6.
Somehow their proclivity, I kind of like that word, haven't used it for a long time, but their proclivity toward other gods just simply would not cease. And so what do they do? They are in distress. The Lord sends them two different adversaries. It says he sold them into the hands of the Philistines to the west and the Ammonites to the east, and those two groups shattered and crushed them, and they served these Ammonites for 18 long years. And finally they cry to the Lord, but God is tired of it.
They come to the Lord, and the Lord replies in verse 11, when the Egyptians and the others came, I delivered you. Did I not save you from their hands? But notice verse 13, but you have forsaken me and have served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen.
Let them save you when you are in trouble. You know, God is presented in the Bible as being a God of emotion. You can please him, you can displease him, you can grieve him, you can tax his patience, and that's what the people did. Well, when they hear this from the Lord, they begin to change their minds. It says in verse 15, but the Israelites said to the Lord, we have sinned.
Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now. And then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the Lord. Well, at last you have genuine repentance. At last the people are willing to deal with their sins on more than simply a verbal level. You've met people, haven't you, who can only deal with things verbally, never a heart transforming experience with God. Well, the text says in the last part of verse 16, these marvelous words and God could bear Israel's misery no longer.
Isn't that wonderful? That God was so touched by what they were going through that he could not bear their misery anymore and he began to intervene. That introduces you to the man I told you about. The man who served the Lord but is not remembered for having served the Lord, he's remembered for something else. A mighty man, a good man, a spirit filled man, and yet and yet and yet and yet.
His name is Jephthah and his story is found in the 11th chapter of the book of Judges. What I'd like to do in the next few moments is to try to show you how that his life was really a series of contradictions in one sense. He was a man whose life can be painted in many different colors because he was a man of strong colors. He was a man who who stands out on the pages of scripture as being remarkable in some ways. First of all, though he was rejected, he showed good leadership.
You would not have expected that from this boy, but we read the text chapter 11. 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 are not going to get any inheritance in 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 group of adventurers gathered around him and followed him. What would it be like to be the son of a prostitute? Rejected, yes. His half-brothers said we don't want to have anything to do with you. A sense of alienation, a feeling of being unwanted. What happens is you have this feeling of self-loathing because of who you are, because you think it's your fault, the conditions under which you were born. You're responsible for that.
At least you're being accused of something that's wrong. You grow up with the scars of your parents. You don't have this good sense of identity. You long for a kind word. You'd like it if someone would pay attention to you and somehow judge you on the value of who you are as a person and not your origin, that there's nobody around like that because you have a stigma.
You feel as if everyone sees it painted on your forehead, unclean. That's the context in which he was raised. And so he was chased away.
And he settles in Tob, which is a part of the country that is farther north, maybe 15 miles away. And he gathers around him a group of men who kind of are like Robin Hood. They go about doing good, probably doing also at times some not so good. But what they're trying to do is to establish their identity. Maybe they're getting paid by protecting people from caravan riders and marauders that are in the area.
And at times they may be up to no good. But nonetheless, Jephthah leads this group. Very interestingly, his brothers now call for him. It says in verse four, sometime later when the Ammonites made war on Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob. Come, they said, be our commander so we can fight the Ammonites. Jephthah said to them, didn't you hate me and drive me away from my father's house? Why do you come to me now when you're in trouble? The elders of Gilead said to him, nevertheless, we are turning to you now.
Come with us to fight the Ammonites and you will be our head. You see, it established himself as a leader in such a way that they were willing to respond to him. And clearly his reputation of leadership and organization was evident. And they said, come, you lead us now. And he was hesitant until he extracted a promise from them. But I want you to notice that it says in the last part of verse 11, he repeated all his words before the Lord in Mizpah. Somewhere along the line, Jephthah rejected, found God or more accurately, God found him.
Now we need to just sit back for a moment and ask ourselves this question. How would you expect a child with that kind of a background to react when he becomes a leader? There are many people who are very angry because of rejection, because of their background, because of the shame connected with who they are. And they long for leadership so that they can work out their anger. They say to themselves, you have mistreated me.
Wait till I get in charge and then I will take charge of you and I'll show you how I'm going to even the score. Wasn't that true of Abimelech in the last message that we preached in this series who had the same kind of background and yet who's angry and now is going to destroy and he kills 69 of his half brothers? Jephthah is of a different spirit. Jephthah does not long for leadership.
He is pushed into it. He is taken from the responsibility that he had, and there's a consensus developing that he's to be the leader. That's remarkable for a young man brought up in that kind of an atmosphere. As a matter of fact, did you know that the best leaders often chosen by God are not to those who desire to lead, not those who aspire to leadership and to be able to have authority over others, but those who are coerced, those who are called, those who are pushed into leadership because of the good hand of God. Many years ago, this passage of scripture came to me and it's one that should be branded upon our minds and hearts, particularly those of you who desire greatness. The Lord asks the question of Jeremiah, seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not.
If God wants to put us in positions of leadership, that is his choice and he will lead us and he will direct us, but it's not something to which we should aspire, something that we think should be ours because of who we are. Whenever I travel, I bring back with me in my heart many, many horror stories of what happens in churches. Two weeks ago, someone told me about a staff member who thought that he should be the senior pastor of the church because he was more gifted than the senior pastor.
Now that sometimes happens. Maybe it's true in this church, although I don't want to go down that road right now. But instead of waiting for God to work it out, he began to do like Absalom, telling people, don't you think things would be better if I would be in charge? And he began to chip away at the leadership and the structure in the church. To make a long story short, church split, broke apart.
There are more people who have left this large church than who remained awful. Let's give Jephthah some credit. You would expect this guy to aspire to leadership and lord it over others to work out his anger, but he doesn't. He becomes actually a very good leader despite his circumstances. Let's go on and find out that he also, even though he lived in a violent culture, a violent culture, he became a diplomat, a diplomat.
Now I have to summarize the rest of the story. He goes to the Ammonites and he says, why is it that you want our land? And they say in verse 13, the king of the Ammonites answered Jephthah's messenger. When Israel came up out of Egypt, they took away my land from the Aaron to the Jabbok. That's speaking about two rivers that are on the other side of the Jordan River, all the way to the Jordan. Now give it back peaceably. So what they're saying is this land was once ours and 300 years ago you came and stole it.
We want it back. Jephthah does not attack them. You'd expect that also.
That's the way. There was no diplomacy in those days, but Jephthah sends messengers with a very long message in which he rehearses the history of Israel in detail. Commentators wonder how Jephthah could know so much. And then he gives them three reasons why he's not buying what they're selling. First of all, he says, we never took the land from you. We took it from the Ammonites, not the Ammonites.
That's his argument. You can find it there for yourself in verse 21. He says, you are not the tribes from which we got the land. You are Ammonites. We took it from the Amorites.
I guess he says, you've got your ites mixed up. Number two, he says, God gave it as a gift and we're not about to give it back. Number three, we've lived in the land for 300 years.
If you think it was yours, why didn't you come earlier and claim it? That's the argument that he gives. You know, I could give a parenthesis here and say that this whole issue of who does the land belong to is still not resolved, is it? We're talking about 1400 years before the time of Christ. And today we have bombs going off and people being destroyed and we have fights and people are dying, hundreds of them in the land of Israel today, all because there's an argument as to who owns the land.
Who owns the land? Well, there's no doubt that God did give it to Abraham and to his descendants. And some of us believe that in the future there are still promises made to Abraham that have never been fulfilled. But meanwhile, Israel itself is living in unbelief. It is not a godly country by any standard. The Israelites have rejected God's Messiah and they have even turned away from Jehovah, as found in the pages of scripture.
And so it's a very, very difficult situation. And if you talk to Pastor Schwartz, who's behind me today, and if you speak to Charlotte Crute, who knows a lot more about these things than I do, you'll discover that they can meet with Palestinian Christians. Pastor Schwartz did that just several weeks ago and gave us a report on it. He can meet with Jewish messianic believers.
And these two groups are one in Jesus, members of Christ's body indwelt by the Spirit. But if they get together for a Bible study, one thing they absolutely cannot do is to talk about who owns the land. The issue is too volatile, destroys any fellowship that you're trying to build.
Well, that isn't a new problem, is it? It's a problem that goes way back to here, who owns the land? Well, the people, of course, the Ammonites were not about to buy his logic. And so war breaks out. But what I want to point out to you is that let's give this man Jephthah credit for being such a diplomat.
He could have just simply begun to fight, but he wants to work out a peaceful solution, even though he can't. He's a leader, he's a diplomat, but also he experienced the power of the Spirit, despite, and I'm going to use a strong word here, his stupidity. Notice that the scripture says in verse 29 of chapter 11, then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. He crossed Gilead, and then it tells us what he did. And let's pick it up in verse 32. Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites and the Lord gave them into his hands. He devastated 20 towns and so forth. Thus Israel subdued Ammon. Victory achieved. When the Bible says that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, it really means that the Spirit of the Lord clothed him.
I like that expression. And that's what the Holy Spirit even does today, I believe, as he comes upon people for special ministries. In his case, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him that he might be a mighty warrior, that he might be a good organizer, that he might have the courage to motivate his troops. The Holy Spirit of God has many different ministries that he performs in God's people.
He gives us what we need at the moment if we're willing to be yielded to him. Well, I told you at the beginning of this message that Jephthah is not remembered for this victory. If you ask the average person about Jephthah, he will not tell you, well, he was a man upon whom the Holy Spirit of God came and he won a victory against the Ammonites. Jephthah is remembered for a vow that he made, and that's the thing that we want to discuss now. You'll notice it says in verse 30, 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.
Wow, that makes us pause, doesn't it? What in the world was he expecting to come out of his house? A sheep? A goat?
People didn't keep animals in their houses. Verse 34, when Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter dancing to the sound of tambourines? She was an only child, except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried out, oh my daughter, you have made me miserable and wretched because I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.
Notice this. My father, she replied, you have given your word to the Lord due to me 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.
You may go, he said, and he let her go for two months. She and the girls 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 bowed. And she was a virgin. From this comes the Israelite custom that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite.
What in the world is going on here in the text? He makes a vow to the Lord. Now, first of all, you need to understand that vows were, were okay. You could make a vow to the Lord. In fact, you were encouraged to make a vow to the Lord.
Actually, when you look at this, this is foolish for a number of reasons. Number one, this isn't really strictly speaking a vow. He's bargaining with God, trying to buy God's favor. That's what Jephthah is doing here. It's almost as if he's thinking to himself, now, if I do something that'll just tear my heart out, God is going to be so pleased with this that he will give us a victory over the Ammonites.
Oh, my friend, you certainly are going to have to listen to Running to Win next time to find out what happened and to learn more about vows and even foolish vows. I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone who drives a truck. This person says, I've listened to your program and audio books quite often. He goes on to say, the Holy Spirit transforms my mind to be more in tune with him as I drive down the road. The reason I mention that is because when it comes to the ministry of radio, what we've discovered is people listen in different contexts and in different ways.
I never forget being in New Mexico, along with some people who herded cows, and this woman said she listens to the ministry of Running to Win, and she does it on her radio. Thank you so much for helping us. Would you consider becoming an endurance partner?
That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Here's what you can do to find more info. Go to rtwoffer.com. When you're there, you click on the endurance partner button, or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Perhaps you've heard me say it before, but Running to Win is in 50 different countries in seven different languages, and we hope to continue to expand this ministry. Right now, you can go to rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button, and you join the Running to Win family.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. Pastor Erwin Lutzer with Part 1 of God, Man and a Foolish Decision. The eighth of twelve messages on the topic we've been down this road before, taken from the book of Judges. Next time, more on Jephthah's unfortunate vow. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
