From Sampler to Sower

Weekend Teaching Series: Heroes

Message Title: The Foolish Vow

Sermon in a Sentence: God is not honored when we treat him like the idols that surround us.

Text(s): Judges 10-11

Weekend Scale of Difficulty: 3 out of 10, A straightforward night, with one of the tougher stories in the Bible.

Message Summary:

Heroes moved into its sixth week with the story of Jephthah. We’re working our way through the book of Judges with our students, and we’re into the homestretch now.  That’s a good thing, because if you know anything about Judges, you know things are getting bad, fast.

We once again picked up where we left off last week.  Abimelech, son of Gideon, claims the title of king for himself, and sees his reign come to an end when the people rebel against his leadership and a besieged woman drops a millstone on his head.

Following Abimelech’s death, we have a short interlude in which two minor judges are named: Tola and Jair.

We don’t know much about either, but the way their short stories are presented show us that a transition is taking place.

Tola’s story is presented much like the other judges up to this point.  He rescued Israel in a time of distress, led Israel for the rest of his life, and then died and was buried.

Jair, however, is different.  Jair doesn’t rescue Israel from anyone.  He simply leads Israel for 23 years.  During that time he sets himself up like a king, he has 30 sons, gives each of them a donkey and a city, and renames the land Havvoth Jair (the villages of Jair).  No longer is this Israel, the nation that grapples with God.  They are the land of Jair, and their judge is more interested in consolidating his own power than leading as God directs.

In five short verses the book of Judges takes a turn for the worse, and we learn that the downward trend we noticed in the story of Gideon and Abimelech is not just a anomaly, but rather a pattern.

And then the next major cycle of Judges begins.

It starts with Rebellion.

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. (Judges 10:6a, NIV)

The usual suspects, the Baals and Ashtoreths, are here.  But there is also something different.  Notice all the nations listed: Aram and Sidon to the North, Moab to the south, the Ammonites on the East and the Philistines on the West.  North, South, East, West, it’s almost like the author of Judges wants us to know that there wasn’t a god or a religion that the Israelites didn’t chase after.

They liked the idea of being spiritual, and the spiritual ideas of every nation around them were considered equally valid.

Of course, that means that the religious ideas of every nation around them, including their own, were equally untrue.  None were true enough for them to give their lives to.  But they were convenient for making the Israelites feel more spiritual.

Sound familiar?  Interested enough in seeming to be spiritual, they are willing to dabble in everything, but not willing to surrender themselves to anything.  Just enough religion to make them feel better about themselves, but not enough to require them to actually live any better.

What’s more, they were all up in God’s face about this adultery.  They did evil in the eyes of the Lord.  Nothing secret or shameful about the shameful way they were acting.  They were out in the open about their infidelity to God.

Following rebellion comes retribution.

God hands them over to the consequences of their choices, and sells them into the hands of the Ammonites and the Philistines.  Up until now, Israel has been facing regional enemies who pose a threat from one direction.  Now Israel is getting it from all sides, from the Ammonites on the East and the Philistines from the West.  They’ve been selling themselves out to the foreign gods of these lands, so God sells them into the foreign powers of these lands.

Following retribution comes repentance.

Eventually Israel wakes up to the fact that their idolatry is making them miserable.  They cry out to God for rescue:

Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, “We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals (Judges 10:10, NIV).”

And everyone knows that following repentance comes a redeemer.

God responds to the repentance of his people by sending them a Judge to rescue them.

Only this time he doesn’t.

The LORD replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands?  But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble (Judges 10:11-14, NIV)!”

It’s as if God says “Haven’t we been here before?  Haven’t we already done all this?  Every time you’ve called out to me, I’ve rescued you, and still, every time I rescue you, you turn your back on me.  Well, fine.  If you want to serve all these other Gods, if you think your spirituality means you have all your bases covered, then let all these other gods that you are worshipping come and rescue you.  Learn first hand just how empty these idols you keep selling yourself to really are.”

Surprisingly, the people didn’t give up on God.  Even though he rejected their first request for rescue, they followed through on their repentance.  They got rid of the idols they had been worshipping, and they began to worship and serve God and God only.

And only then did God decide to act on their behalf to raise up a redeemer.

Often our poor choices result in unpleasant consequences.  And when we are faced with the consequences of our own poor choices, many times we too cry out to God for rescue.

But just because we repent doesn’t mean that God will always remove the consequences of our choices immediately.  We can know that he will remove the guilt for our choices.  He does forgive us and give us a new start.  But often he leaves us to suffer the consequences of our sin.  It’s his way of teaching us to make better choices next time.

The key is to not give up just because God doesn’t deliver us from the suffering caused by our sin.  The secret is in serving God anyway, trusting him to keep us through the storms of our own making, rather than simply making all our problems go away.

And because that is what Israel did, God acted on their behalf to raise up a redeemer.

Israel has still been suffering from foreign oppression.  It’s become so bad that the Ammonites, the enemies of Israel, are camped out on the very edge of Israel ready to attack.  Gilead, the part of Israel being threatened, has offered to make anyone who is willing to stand up to the Ammonites their leader, if only someone will step up to the plate and lead them into battle.

Judges 11:1 introduces us to this new leader.

Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute (Judges 11:1, NIV).

What do we know about Jephthah?

• He was a Gileadite, this was his home country.
• He came from a dubious background. His mother was a prostitute. And as a result, no one really knew who his father was.  Gilead is the name of a place, not the name of a person, at least not at this point in the story.  Most scholars agree when it says that his father was Gilead, that was just a nice way of saying anyone in town could have been his dad.
• He was a mighty warrior.  It’s the same phrase God used to describe Gideon when he found Gideon threshing the wheat.  But unlike Gideon, this does not appear to be an ironic description for a cowardly farmer hiding out from the Midianites.  Jephthah was one mean dude, and everyone knew it. But rather than making him popular, this actually worked against Jephthah.

No one liked him.  They all knew what kind of woman his mother was, and no one knew who his father was.  To make matters worse, everyone was afraid of him, scared of what he would do next.  Between his history and his personality, he was not popular, and before long the people drove him away from his home.

And Jephthah left.  Judges tells us he gathered around himself a “group of adventurers.” It’s the same phrase used to describe the men Abimelech hired to fight for him. Literally it means empty men, men empty of any sense of ethics or morality, men whose lives had no meaning or purpose.   Together they formed a band of outlaws who lived in the land of Tob and pillaged defenseless villages for a living.

Driven away from his home and his people, Jephthah leaves to become a gangster.

But now things have changed in Gilead.  The Ammonites are camped out, ready to attack.  Everyone is wondering who could be strong enough to defend them.  Someone remembers the bully they chased away.  Could the warrior they feared become the warrior they needed?  They send word to Jephthah begging him to return and defend them.

How do you suppose Jephthah reacted?

Yesterday you were too good for me.

Today you’ve decided you won’t survive without me.

Yesterday you rejected me.

Today you want my help.

Sound familiar?

In many ways this is exactly the same way Israel has treated God.  When things were going well they were too good, too spiritual to be bothered with God.  They rejected him.  Drove him away.  Shut him out of their life.

But when things stared going bad, when there was no way they were going to survive without a miracle, when they desperately needed help, where did they turn?

We wouldn’t do something like that would we?

Anyway, the people turned to Jephthah and beg him to come back and fight for them.  Jephthah calls them on their duplicity.  “Aren’t you the same people who drove me away?”  But the people of Gilead are desperate.  They even promise if he will come back they will make him their leader.

From outlaw to king, life’s looking up for Jephthah.

Only Jephthah appears to know he can’t do it on his own.  He points out that the only way he can win is if God helps them.  He seems to know that there must be a place for God in this plan if it is to have any prayer of succeeding.  Maybe just because he finds himself in a bad place in life, he’s not all that bad of a person after all.  With that provision – as long as God helps us – Jephthah agrees to fight for Gilead.

When he comes back to take over, he doesn’t resort immediately to violence.  Instead, in an act that seems to run counter to his gangster image, but which also reveals a great deal of wisdom on Jephthah’s part, he first attempts to find a peaceful solution.

He sends a messenger with a pretty simple question.  “Why do you want to attack us?”

The Ammonites reply “Because when you came out of Egypt, you Israelites stole our land.”

Jephthah replies “Actually, this land wasn’t yours.  We purposely tried to stay out of your land.  The Amorites were living in this land, and God gave this land to us.  Besides, we’ve been here 300 years now.  If you had a problem with this you should have said something back then.  You live in the land your god gave to you.  We will live in the land that our God gave to us.  And if you have a problem with that, we’ll let God be the judge who decides our case.”

This last little bit wasn’t very conducive to a peace settlement.  It basically was a polite way of saying, let’s go to war and see whose god is stronger.  And that’s exactly what happened.

Ammon marched against Gilead.

Gilead marched against Ammon.

And just before the battle was about to start, Jephthah made a promise to God.  He seems to have understood all along that the only way they could win was if God helped them.  And so he promised God to make a sacrifice.  Everything I have is yours.  Name what you want and I will sacrifice it to you, if only you will give us victory in this battle.

Only that’s not quite how Jephthah put it.

His words: “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 (Judges 11:30-31, NIV).”

Now just like in some parts of the world today, the Israelites in Jephthah’s day not only were born in a barn, they lived in one too.  Frequently houses were divided up into two sections, one where they family kept their livestock which provided food for the family, and one where the people themselves lived.  So Jephthah is basically saying to God, “Choose whatever you want that I own, and I will sacrifice it to you if we win.”

But this promise becomes problematic.

Gilead goes to war.

Gilead wins.

Jephthah returns home, remembering his promise.

And what comes out to meet him?

His daughter.  His only daughter.  His only child for that matter.

Jephthah knows he has made a promise he must keep.  But he is distraught.  “What have you done to me?” he says to his daughter.  As if somehow his stupid promise is her fault.  “You have made me miserable and wretched because I have made a promise I cannot break.”

He goes on to explain what he has promised God.  And his daughter accepts it.  “If that’s what you promised God,” she says, “that’s what you have to do.  Just give me two months to go out into the wilderness with my friends to mourn what is going to happen to me, because I will never marry.”

He gives her time.

She leaves to mourn.

Surprisingly, she comes back home.

“And he did to her as he had vowed (Judges 11:39, NIV).”

What are we supposed to make out of this story?

Well there are some pretty obvious questions raised by it.

Questions like “Did he really kill his daughter?”  (Which is a tough one.  It certainly seems like it – what else are we supposed to make out of the words “He did to her as he had vowed.”  Though the fact that her concern seems to be about the fact that she will never marry, as opposed to the fact that she is about to die, makes one wonder if perhaps instead of killing her she was taken to the tabernacle and placed in God’s service for life instead.)

Questions like “Why would God let Jephthah do something like that?”  (Which is pretty tough too.  Certainly Scripture indicates that God is not looking for, nor is he pleased by such actions.  But God lets us live with our own mistakes all the time.)

But laying aside these questions, what is the meaning of this story?  What is it’s point?

I think the core issue in this story, as with the entire book of Judges, is idolatry – mixing the worship of other gods in with the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

You see, Jephthah is a flawed hero.  He is hardly a role model that scripture sets up for us to imitate (though he is listed as a hero of faith in Hebrews 11.)  Jephthah is part of the second half of the book of Judges.  Remember what we said at the beginning of the lesson about Tola and Jair?

Something has happened here.  We’re moving away from the exemplary judges like Othaniel, Ehud and Deborah, visionary leaders who trusted God even when (at times) others had their doubts.  We’ve already seen the problems begin with Gideon, who although he said all the right things about not wanting to be king, still acted like one.  In Jair, we have a judge who didn’t even bother pretending that he didn’t want to be king.  We’ve found our way into a downward spiral, and Jephthah with his foolish vow is another step down, not up, from those who came before him.

And Jephthah’s great mistake was in thinking that Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one and only true God, creator and sustainer of the universe, was just like all the idols that all the other people worshipped.

We see it in the bribe he offers God.

That’s right.  Jephthah’s mistake wasn’t in being so vague that his vow might possible be construed to suggest he must sacrifice his daughter as a burnt offering, it was in promising God a sacrifice in exchange for victory in the first place.

He should have known better.

Jewish law is clear, judges are not to be bribed.  Both Exodus and Deuteronomy specifically prohibit judges from accepting bribes.  Deuteronomy 27:25 places a curse on anyone who would accept a bribe.  And just in case there was any confusion about trying to bribe God, Deuteronomy 10:17 states:

“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes (NIV).”

But as soon as Jephthah finished his big speech about appointing God to be the judge in the territorial dispute between Israel and Ammon, he turns around and offers God a bribe if only God will make sure that Israel wins . . .

Why would he do something so stupid?

Because that’s what all the other gods wanted.

Seriously.  If you wanted Baal to do something for you, you left him and offering and in doing so you bought your favor from him.  The same with Ashteroth.  It was even true of Chemosh, the God of the Moabites who Jephthah referenced in his message to Ammon.  If you wanted any of these idols to do anything for you, you had to bribe them with a sacrifice.

Not that they actually could do anything for you.  They were, after all, merely dead statues.  But still, you had no chance at all if you didn’t at least attempt a bribe.

What’s more, if it was really important you offered them your child as a human sacrifice.  2 Kings 3:27 makes reference to this practice when the Moabite king offered his firstborn son as a sacrifice in the hope he could change the outcome of a war he was losing.

Maybe that’s why Jephthah, while disappointed, wasn’t dissuaded from his vow when his daughter walked out of his house.  He assumed that Yahweh was just like Chemosh.  Rumor had it that Chemosh required the sacrifice of a child in exchange for victory.  Why should Yahweh, God of Israel be any different?

Jephthah made the mistake of thinking that God was just like all the other idols the other people chased after.

When in reality, God is nothing like the idols of our world.  He is completely different, wholly other.

And maybe that’s the lesson we’re supposed to take from this story.

You and I will hopefully never be tricked into vowing our children as burnt offerings to God.

But every day people sacrifice their families and friends for the idols they chase after.

Granted, it’s not normally as a fiery bribe to Baal or Chemosh, but people sacrifice relationships for money, power, popularity and pleasure all the time.

I mean, if you are going to get ahead in life, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices.

And every day, Christians come away making the same mistake that Jephthah did – that if we are going to get ahead in this world we have to operate from the same set of values and make the same kind of sacrifices as the rest of the world.

Values like relativism which argues that the end justifies the means or the idea that as long as you’re headed toward the right destination, it doesn’t matter what you have to do to get there.

Values like materialism which argues what matters most in this world is stuff, and whoever has the most of it wins.

Values like egocentrism, which argues you have to take care of yourself first, and then if you have anything left you can afford to look after others.

Our world operates on assumptions like those every day.

But God is different.  He isn’t like all those other liars.

He’s not shallow.

He’s not temporary.

He’s not just an illusion.

He is God.

And because he is different, his people operate from a different set of values.

The ends do not justify the means.  We’re not free to do whatever we want as long as we get where we are going.

Success is not measured in what we have, but what we give.

Our first priority is not how we can look out for ourselves, but how we can love others.

So, having seen in Jephthah what happens when you treat God just like all the other idols, will you make a real vow, a vow that matters, a vow not to live that way any more?

Worship Set: Revelation Song, Hosanna (Brooke Fraser version), How He Loves, The Stand

Favorite Moment: The teaching time.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, attendance wise.  A lot of sickness has been going around, and winter sports have started up.  But we had a great group of students there this week.  And not only did we have a great group of students, they were really engaged in the lesson.  It wasn’t a struggle to keep their attention, they were right there with me.  I love nights like that.