Today on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. Have you ever stopped to consider the right error of judges is implying to you that maybe the idol itself is wrong. Maybe you've chosen the wrong thing in which to find power and joy and significance. Maybe the reason that you're unhappy in love is not because you haven't found Mr.
Right, it's because ultimate happiness was not found in him anyway. Welcome to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. This month, Pastor J.D. has been walking us through the fascinating book of judges in a teaching series called Broken Saviors. Today, we'll see how over and over again God's people substituted his plan with their own with tragic consequences.
Does that sound familiar? Sadly, I think we see a lot of that today, even in the church, combining all of my awesomeness and sprinkling in a bit of God along the way. I think it's safe to say that doing it God's way in His power is always the best choice, but we are broken and we don't always see it that way. So our message today is creatively titled Hot Dog Faith. Let's see what he means as we turn to Judges chapter 10. Almost nobody knows the story of Jephthah in Judges chapters 10 and 11 because it is terrible. I mean terrible. It is going to leave you feeling deeply unsettled, downright disturbed.
Let's just suffice it to say that this story would not make for a great bedtime story for your seven-year-old. But first, before we get into it, I want to talk with you about hot dogs. Americans can eat them some hot dogs, can they not? On the 4th of July alone, Americans consume 150 million hot dogs.
They say that if you line them up end to end, they would stretch from where I am standing to Sydney, Australia. Frankly, we love them. Thank you for that, for those of you that got that. If you have ever looked on the package where it tells you the contents of a hot dog, however, the first component that you will notice that goes into a hot dog is mechanically separated chicken or turkey, which the USDA defines as a, and I quote, a paste or batter-like poultry product manufactured by forcing turkey bones with attached edible tissue through a sieve under high pressure, a process called advanced meat recovery. Advanced meat recovery, doesn't that make your mouth water?
Other ingredients include corn syrup, beef, salt, sodium phosphate, sodium etherabate, sodium nitrate, and what makes it so tasty, maltodextrin. Now, I just know that makes you hungry and ready to get out of church and go eat something. I actually like hot dogs.
The coaches at Iron Tribe Fitness have tried to get me to stop eating them, but I tell them the only reason I work out is so I that I can eat stuff like that without guilt, so lay off. But the point is a hot dog is not pure meat, and there are some who would say that eating that kind of stuff is not good for you, and by some, I mean the medical community. I share that because many Americans build their faith like a cheap hot dog. They take a little bit of something from this and a little bit of something from that, and they mix it with a little bit of something else, and the result is a concoction that you could hardly call Christian.
It's more than simply bad for you. It is spiritually toxic, and that is what you're going to see with Jephthah today. He's got a little bit of the meat of Christian faith that has been separated from true Christianity through advanced faith recovery system or whatever, mixed with a whole lot of the sodium nitrate and the maltodextrin of his culture. Keep that in mind as we get into Judges chapter 10. We'll begin in verse 6. The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they served the Baals and the Ashtoreth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, and the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. They forsook the Lord, and they did not serve him if you were counting, by the way. That's seven different kinds of gods that they serve. Seven in Hebrew is, of course, the number of completion, which is a way of saying they had completely abandoned God. There's symbolism in the seven there. So verse 7, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, and they crushed and oppressed the people of Israel that year.
Now here we see a familiar pattern. The Israelites serve false gods, and they end up in slavery. We've seen that all through the book of Judges, but now the author inserts a little twist. The Israelites begin crying out for deliverance to the very gods that have enslaved them. The Ammonites are the ones who enslaved them, and the gods of the Ammonites are the very ones they cry out to for deliverance.
Here is what is being taught, and it's very important. It's not just that idolatry leads you to enslavement. It's that your enslavement usually leads you to more and more idolatry. You see, when sin enslaves you, you usually will end up looking for deliverance to the very things that put you in slavery in the first place, and you think, if I just try harder with these same gods, then they will deliver me.
Now let me stop for a minute here, because some of you think, well, what's that got to do with me? I don't have any idols in my house. I don't bow down to any statues, and I'm not anybody's slave.
That's a great question, and it brings up a really important point, one that is absolutely foundational if you're going to understand what the Bible teaches about sin, and that is that an idol in the Bible is not just a statue to which you bow down. An idol is anything that you look to in your life for power or joy or significance apart from God. For example, some people think if I have success, then I'll have power and security and safety and joy. If I have some academic recognition or if there's some talent that I have or some gift, maybe it's my personal beauty or the beauty of my spouse, or maybe it's that I'm athletically fit or whatever, that these things will guarantee for me power and joy and significance in the future. Now those things are all fine in and of themselves, of course, but when you look to them instead of God for power and joy and significance, they will always enslave you.
And what do I mean by enslave you? Well, you start to feel like you could never be happy until you have that thing, and so you'll do anything to get it. And that's kind of the definition of slavery is that when it speaks, you obey. I've got to do that, what it says, because I got to have it. And when you do get that thing, you never feel like you have enough of it, or you're always worried about losing it.
And so you begin to make really destructive choices to hang on to it or to get more of it. So you feel like I have to be beautiful if I'm going to have power and joy and significance. So I will, for example, starve my body, even though it's bad for it. So I can be a certain size because I couldn't be worth anything if I'm not, don't weigh that. Or I'll hate myself when I'm not at that weight. Or you say, I need more money, so I will work until I destroy my family. Or I will cheat. I'll break my, people, by the way, who cheat in business are not usually inherently dishonest people.
They're just people who want something so bad that they're willing to compromise their integrity to get it. William James, who is not a Christian, he's a postmodern philosopher, said that success is the primary God of the Western world. And he said, success is a goddess. He said, because no matter what you give to her, she always demands more. And so he said, for me on the altar of success, I first gave my family. And he said, then the goddess said, I need more. And so I gave them my integrity. And then the goddess said, more. He said, then I finally gave my health and my life.
And the goddess never quit demanding more. Have you ever stopped to consider the writer or judges is implying to you that maybe the idol itself is wrong. Maybe you've chosen the wrong thing in which to find power and joy and significance. Maybe the reason that you're unhappy and love is not because you haven't found Mr.
Right. It's because ultimate happiness was not found in him anyway. Jeremiah chapter two 13 probably gives you the clearest description of sin anywhere in the Bible. Jeremiah two 13, a verse I think you ought to have memorized. My people have committed two evils. The first evil, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. And they have hued out evil number two, cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water at all. In those days, water was a precious commodity. And the best thing to do was to find a natural underground spring.
That's living water, constantly flowing, constantly fresh. He says, that was me. That was God. That was my love.
I was the one who gave you power and joy and significance and security and safety, but you forsook me. And then because that left you parched, you started to dig out cistern. Now a cistern was what you would dig in the desert to collect rain water. And then the problem is it would leak through the ground. It would become muddy.
It would become muddy. It was terrible. It was not nearly what you would compare to a natural underground spring.
And he's like, so the evil number one was you forsook me. And then that left your soul parched. And you just dug cistern after cistern after cistern after cistern to try to get enough water to satisfy your soul. It's the wrong well. You think I got to dig, dig, dig, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. There's gotta be some kind of satisfying water in here somewhere. And God says, it's the wrong well.
I created those things in me. I'm the one who gives you power and joy and significance, not those hued out cisterns that could hold no water. Verse 10, the people of Israel cried out to the Lord then saying, we have sinned against you because we have forsaken our God and have served the false gods. The Lord said to the people of Israel, you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore I will save you no more. Why don't you go cry out to the gods whom you've chosen. Let them save you in your time of distress. For the first time in the book of judges, God says, no.
Why? Well, see, it's one thing for the wayward prodigal to come home and true repentance. God will always receive someone like that. But imagine a wife who has been unfaithful again and again and again and again. And she is caught in the midst of her adultery. And so she pleads with her husband for security and provision just until she finds somebody else to take her on.
That's a totally different scenario. These people, God sees their heart. They don't want God for God.
They're just in pain and they want somebody, anybody to make it stop. There's no change of heart toward God. This is a God I'm going to use you to get out of trouble. There's a difference you see in using God and worshiping God.
This is very, very important for many of you. Listen, it is possible for you to come back to God in an idolatrous way that he will not receive. I see it all the time, to be quite honest with you. You see a man whose marriage begins to fall apart and he panicked. So he runs into church and he begins to make promises to God, God, just give me my family back.
Or maybe he's out of a job. And so he comes in and God, I'll do this, I'll do whatever. And the repentance looks so sincere, but it's not because the moment that the danger, the immediate danger is gone and he gets his family back or he gets his job back, he goes back to the independent way that he was living to begin with.
You see, you've got to evaluate, and this is a huge, huge question. Are you using God or are you worshiping God for God? Because God can tell. Whether you come to God in pain is not really the issue.
The question is, will you follow him the same when the immediate danger has passed? Are you using God or are you worshiping God? This is Summit Life, the teaching ministry of Pastor J.D.
Greer. We'll return to our teaching here in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly share a little bit more about our current resource this month. As we've seen over the last few weeks, the Book of Judges is a wild ride, a story of ups and downs and victories and failures. But through it all, one thing remains constant, God's unwavering rescue and grace. In our new eight-week study, based on our current sermon series called Broken Saviors, we'll explore how God's grace shines through the lives of imperfect leaders, leaders that are in many ways just like you and me. Each session of this eight-part study will help you see how God uses flawed individuals and how that same grace is available for us today. Our prayer is that this resource will help you discover how God's grace can empower you and help you find hope in the midst of your own imperfections. Give us a call at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgreer.com and we'll immediately email you this resource today. Now, let's finish up today's message with Pastor J.D.
Greer here on Summit Life. Verse 15, the people of Israel said to the Lord, then we have sinned, so 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 serve the Lord.
Well, believe it or not, they get it. Do you see how different what they said in verse 15 is from what they said in verse 10? In verse 10, they said, we want peace from you. Verse 15 said, we want peace with you, even if it continues to mean trouble for us here. Do whatever you're going to do.
You see, that's a huge difference. We would rather not have trouble, they say, of course, but having you, having peace with you, that's the essential part. You see, that's true repentance. I don't care if life gets easy or life gets hard.
I just want you. There's some people who talk as if when you come to Christ, he just makes everything in your life easy. Oh, I mean, you hear them give testimonies and I think they're, you know, don't mean harm, but, oh, I came to Jesus and my marriage just turned awesome. And my kids started to show up my bedside quoting scripture and my boss gave me a raise and we discovered oil under my house. And it was just awesome, you know, and listen, that is not always, in fact, it's not usually the way that it works.
A friend of mine calls it a train wreck conversion. God lets most people have a train wreck conversion where things in their life just start going wrong. And one of his purposes in that in scripture is to see if you're coming to God for something he can do for you if you're coming to him for him. And sometimes the things in your life begin to go wrong and you don't get the raise and the marriage doesn't turn immediately better because God is saying, are you in this for me? You in this just to use me for something. Are you using God or worshiping God?
That was the question. Well, Israel genuinely repents. And so the Lord becomes impatient over the misery of Israel or the NIV says he could bear it no longer. I love that phrase because it just shows you how God feels about his people. He hurts with them. He says enough.
Your pain is painful to me. And he rises to his feet. Chapter 11. Now Jephthah was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. Gilead who was Jephthah's father had many other sons by his wife, you know, is not the prostitute. And when his wife's sons grew up, they drove Jephthah out because they said to him, you shall have no inheritance in our father's house for you are the son of a prostitute. So Jephthah fled from his brothers and they lived in the land of Tob and worthless fellows collected around Jephthah and came out to him.
He becomes a kind of crime boss, a land pirate is what we would call him. Verse four. But after a time, the Ammonites made war against Israel. And so the elders of Gilead went to bring Jephthah back. And they said, hey, come be our leader that we may fight against the Ammonites. I apologize for this, but this, I can't help being reminded of season seven and 24, where they go back to Jack Bauer and they say, we don't really like you, but we need you to come fight the terrorists. Verse seven. So Jack Bauer said to the elders of Gilead, did you not hate me and drive me out of my father's house? And now you come crying back to me when you're in the hour of pain, no deal. By the way, Jephthah is responding just like God did. Jephthah is like, oh, you didn't want me for me. You just want to use me.
So verse eight, they say, I don't know. We're really sorry this time. If you come home, you can be in charge.
You can, I don't care who your mom is. You can be head of CTU or be president for all we care, whatever you want. And so Jephthah agrees. And Jephthah says, I'm taking my talents back to Cleveland. At first, he tries diplomacy. He tries diplomacy with the Ammonites. And he says to the king of the Ammonites, why are you attacking us? And the king of the Ammonites says, well, because you took my land.
Jephthah responds with three, I think rather compelling points of reasoning. He says, number one, well, as a point of fact, it wasn't your land we took, it was the Ammonites. And not Ammonites, but Ammonites, your name was never on the title deed.
So get off your high horse. Number two, when we took their land, we were simply responding to their aggression against us. When we passed through their land, they attacked us and we kicked their tails. So we kept their land because God had given it to us anyway.
Number three, if this land is really a gift from your God, commosh to you, why don't you come and get it? And verse 30, he said, okay, we're coming. Verse 30, Jephthah made a vow to the Lord. And he said, Lord, if you will give me the Ammonites into my hand, whatever comes out from the doors of my house to greet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall belong to you, the Lord.
And I will offer it up as a burnt offering. So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them and the Lord indeed gave them into his hand. And Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child.
Besides her, he had neither son nor daughter. And as soon as he saw her coming out after the battle, he tore his clothes. And he said, alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low. You've become the cause of great trouble to me for I've opened my mouth to the Lord and now I cannot take back my vow. Verse 36, and she said to him, my father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord.
So do to me, according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you and your enemies on the Ammonites. So she said to her father, let this thing be done for me first. Leave me alone for two months that I may go up on the mountains and weep for my virginity with my friends. And so he said, go. And he sent her away for two months and she departed, she and her companions. And she wept for her virginity in the mountains.
And the end of the two months, she returned to her father who did with her, according to his vow that he had made. Sometimes commentators try to soften what has happened here. They'll say like, well, Jephthah must have expected it to be an animal that came out of his house first. And that's what he's promising to God as a burnt offering, but animals will not have been kept in the house. They didn't have pets like we have pets. So he's not talking about that. By the way, when he says whatever greets me, the word he used for greet definitely connotes a human encounter.
It's not a word you would use with an animal. So he's definitely thinking human sacrifice or they'll say commentators will say, well, Jephthah didn't actually kill his daughter. Sacrificing her just meant that she had to die as a virgin. Like, you know, she just would remain unmarried for the rest of her life.
Well, if that's true, why the two month hiatus? That wouldn't make any sense. Obviously we're talking about human sacrifice and obviously he actually burnt his daughter. He killed his daughter. It's just that he expected the first one out of his house would not be his daughter. He thought it would be one of his many servants or one of his many comrades in arms. So a couple of questions I want us to consider. Here is the first, why did Jephthah make this vow?
And I'm going to show you, you're thinking, this has nothing to do with me. It has a lot to do with you. I'll show you that toward the end, but why did Jephthah make this vow?
I'll give you two reasons. Because he was desensitized to violence. He was desensitized to violence.
This is just the way they did things. Human life was cheap in those days when it came to the idol, obtaining the idol of military dominance. Now it seems unspeakably horrific to us, but that's just because violence is no longer our idol of choice. And before you and I shake our heads in bewilderment and say, what a backwards primitive people we ought to consider that we commit similar excesses with our idols.
And we do not wince nearly as much when we do. For example, a woman can tear apart her family and devastate her kids because she finally realizes she's been married to the wrong person. And that's why she's not happy and she's got to be true to herself. And so she's got to go find true love, even if it devastates her kids. And we kind of shake our head and say, well, she's got to be true to herself.
And I guess that's just what she's got to do. Let me talk about this for a minute because our culture idolizes romantic and sexual fulfillment to the point that anything you sacrifice on the altar to that is okay because that idol is enthroned and unquestioned. For example, if I, as an evangelical pastor decided that I preferred sex with men and I left my wife and my kids for another man, by the end of this month, I would be celebrated as a national hero. I would be on Ellen. I would be on Oprah. And they would say things like, well, he's just being true to himself.
What a courageous guy to come out and just acknowledge the truth about who he is. The fact that I had to abandon my family, that's just the price you got to pay for true love. That I devastated my family would be totally insignificant. What if true love meant that it's not actually about me anymore?
Our culture confuses true love with self-love and you can't wrap up self-idolatry in the clothes of romance and call that true love. Or in another sphere, a man can neglect his wife and kids in order to get ahead. And we say, well, that's just what it takes to get ahead to survive in this business.
You'll never succeed in the finance world unless you work till nine every night, unless you never take days off. It has been easy for me to justify the sacrifice of an awful lot on the altar of ministry success. Like Jephthah, I'm like, well, I got to succeed. I'm doing God's work. And if that means I got to sacrifice relationships and family and even integrity, well, that's just the price.
I got to do your work, God. Somebody in our culture gets pregnant at an inconvenient time and they eliminate the child in an abortion. And we say, well, only she has the right to determine what shape her life will take.
And if having a kid right now and her judgment's going to mess up her life, well, I guess that's okay. It's just the price of freedom. You see, before we shake our heads and bewilderment at Jephthah, we should realize that we're probably not as advanced of a culture as we think we are.
We just got different idols. Number two, here's the reason that he made the vow. It's because this is how you pleased pagan gods. That's how you please pagan gods. You offered sacrifices to gain their favor. The greater the sacrifice, the greater favor you could earn from your God.
So when you needed something big from him, you got to sacrifice something big. But God, listen to this, never, ever, ever puts this out as a requirement to get his attention or his favor. In fact, he outright forbids it in Deuteronomy 18 10. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering.
You say, what about Abraham? That was a test of faith and obedience. This is an attempt by Jephthah to pay God off to negotiate with him.
It's totally different. Here is what has happened. Listen, Jephthah has mixed all kinds of sodium phosphates and poultry paste into his faith and come up with something that looks like the meat of faith, but it's really not faith at all because it's totally different than how God said that we should pursue him and do his work. Here's the second question. First question, why did Jephthah make the vow? Why did Jephthah keep his vow?
That's the second question. I mean, maybe you could excuse him for in his fear of saying something stupid, but after he saw it was his daughter for two months, he sat there and considered it. And then he just went through with it.
Listen to this. He kept it for the exact same reason that he made it. He has no concept of the grace of God. He feels like he has to earn God's favor the way you earn a pagan God's favor by making sacrifices that merit it. Now he feels like if he doesn't keep his horrific vow, then God's going to punish him. But God does not give victory or favor or salvation because we earn it.
Never. It is not by works of righteousness which we have done. It is according to his mercy that he saves us. He bore in his own body the price for our peace. It's by his sacrifice that we were healed. So our society celebrates when someone chooses to walk away from their family in order to be true to oneself. Let's be counter-cultural in our walk with God.
You're listening to Summit Life. Each month we send a featured resource to all of our gospel partners and generous monthly financial supporters. This month we've designed an eight-part digital Bible study based on our teaching series called Broken Saviors, and it's an in-depth expansion on the timeless teachings and warnings found in the book of Judges. The Israelites' temptations in those days were much like our own. So often we shift our focus away from our Heavenly Father and onto lesser things that we think will satisfy us. The Israelites were continually disappointed when they pursued earthly things, and maybe you feel that way too. But as you work through each of the eight parts in this study, you'll see that the central message of Judges is that only Jesus can satisfy our every need.
After all, it's the gospel that changes everything, right? Get your copy emailed to you immediately today when you give a financial gift. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or give online at JDGrier.com. While you're on the website, you can also sign up for our email list to get ministry updates, information about new resources, and Pastor JD's latest blog posts. It's a great way to stay connected with Summit Life, and it's completely free to subscribe. Sign up when you go to JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Bidevich. Be sure to listen again Friday when you'll hear the conclusion to this message titled Hot Dog Faith, right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Career Ministries.
