Gooding, David: 13 - Jepthah and the Ammonites

We take up our reading of the book of Judges this evening in chapter ten, beginning at verse six. uh And the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baalim and the Ashtaroth and the gods of Syria and the gods of Sidon and the gods of Moab and the gods of the children of Ammon and the gods of the Philistines, and they forsook the Lord and served him not. And 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 children of Ammon. And they vexed and oppressed the children of Israel that year. Eighteen years oppressed they all the children of Israel that were beyond Jordan in the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. And the children of Ammon passed over Jordan to fight also against Judah and against Benjamin and against the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was sore distressed. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, saying, We have sinned against thee, even because we have forsaken our God and have served the Baalim. And the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Did I not save you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, and from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? And the Sidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Maonites did oppress you, and you cried unto me, and I saved you out of their land- hand. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Wherefore I will save you no more. Go and cry unto the gods which you have chosen. Let them save you in the time of your distress. The children of Israel said unto the Lord, we have sinned. Do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee. Only deliver us, we pray thee, this day. And they put away the strange gods from among them and served the Lord, and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. We come now to the sixth and penultimate oppression of Israel, as mentioned and recorded in the Book of Judges. This time, the enemy is the Ammonites. They had made earlier attacks on Israel in concert with other tribes, and indeed this very chapter mentions such an occasion when they came, uh, with the Philistines, do see, into the, uh, uh, uh, to do damage to Israel. But the attack that, um, uh, heads our particular interest this evening is this, that the Ammonites had attacked some of the Israelites east of Jordan up to Gilead. Then they crossed over Jordan and came west and attacked the very heartland of Judah and Benjamin and Ephraim. And of course, the Israelites were distressed. So our first job perhaps is to reconnoiter the enemy, as usual. Let us look at the biblical, uh, accounts of their characteristics. Ammon, therefore, as he is mentioned throughout the Old Testament, Ammon in origin was the son of Lot by his daughter, as was, of course, Moab. One Samuel chapter eleven two, Nahash the Ammonite proposes a covenant with the men of Jabesh on condition that their right eyes shall be put out, and I will lay it for a reproach on all Israel. So there we meet one of Ammon's repeated characteristics. He is always trying to put Israel, the people of God, to shame and make a sheer mockery of them. That is Ammon. In this case, of course, this was in the time of Saul, in proposing a contract with the men of, uh, uh, of, uh, Jabesh and putting out their right eyes. If you put the right eye out of an ancient warrior, he can no longer aim his arrow by his bow properly, you see, if he's a right-handed man, and they wanted to make them look absolute fools. When Saul heard it, it angered him, and he, uh, set going a campaign that dealt with the Ammonites at the time. One Chronicles chapter nineteen verse four and five. here they are t- are at the same, uh, job, you see. The king of Ammon died, and Hanan, his son, uh, succeeded him. And David, because of his, uh, uh, peaceable relationships with the father, the k- late king of Ammon, sent messengers to comfort his son and con- with condolences over the son's loss of his father. Uh, but that son, the Ammonite, was persuaded that David, in sending these diplomats to offer him condolences, was coming to spy out the land and take a surprised attack on them. And what he did was to shave David's servants, half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and the men were greatly ashamed. If you know your Ammonites, you'll say that's typical Ammonite behavior, that is. Always for making fools of Israel and making them greatly ashamed. And when the king heard of it, he told them to stay where they were until their beards grew again. But of course, it sparked a great war with Ammon, which was not over till the crown was taken off the head of the king of Ammon and put upon David's head. Amos one thirteen. They were not only keen to make fool of people, they could be exceedingly cruel. Ammon, they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead. That's an Israelite possession, of course, up east of Jordan, uh, that they might enlarge their border. Absolute unprincipled cruelty for the sake of territorial addition. Zephaniah two eight, I have heard the insults of Moab and the taunts of the Ammonites who insulted my people and made threats against their land. The second feature you will find i- in the Ammonites is, and we have a case before us this evening, they not only mock the people of God and show severe cruelty in trying to extend their border, but they constantly are wanting to pinch, to steal and take over territory that belongs to Israel, always out to steal from Israel their God-given inheritance. So in the time of Nehemiah, when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite heard what he was doing, typical Ammonites, they, uh, laughed us to scorn and despised us. Similarly, chapter, uh, four of Nehemiah. Tobiah came to look at the wall that Nehemiah was building, and when he couldn't stop it, he affected, uh, great scorn. What do these feeble evangelicals d- I mean, what do these feeble Jews do, do you see? Building this wall thing. Even if a fox go up and were to wag its tail, it would have the wall down again. Typical Ammonite scoffing and scorn. In Nehemiah thirteen one um and four to six, an Ammonite by the law should not enter into the assembly of God, but when Nehemiah returns, he was, as you know, a, a highly pay- paid official in the court of the Persians, and he had to report the duty there from time to time. And when he came back to, uh, Jerusalem, he discovered, if you please, that, um, Am- the Ammonite had been installed by the priests in a great chamber in the courts of the house of God. So one minute he's pouring scorn on the whole thing, but he isn't against taking o- over if he gets a chance, and he's installed in the very house of God. Nehemiah has him ejected with all his furniture. So now in Judges chapter eleven, Ammon claims the right to Israel's territory. So much then for the, um, reconnoitering of the enemy, the two things, their mockery of Israel and anything to do with them and their efforts, and their attempts to take over what was Israel's inheritance. Let's deal with the introduction. The danger that Israel were by this time in was thinking that forsaking the Lord does not really matter all that much, because if it results in trouble, God will always save us from the consequences of our idolatry and start a new revival like he has always done. Like the famous atheist who said that God would pardon him because that's God's job. God's trade is to forgive people, you see. Taking it for granted. This time they took it for granted for too many times. And the Lord protested when they supposedly humbled themselves and said they were sorry and please deliver us. God made the protest. You cried unto me and I saved you in time past. Now you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will save you no more. Go and cry unto the gods which you have chosen, let them save you in the time of your distress. Now that sounds a bit contrary, perhaps, to your idea of the loving kindness of God, but people need to be taught a lesson, don't they? It's so easy to say it doesn't really matter if you sin, you come to the Lord and he confess, he can, and confess it, and he forgives you, and then you can, uh, what? Go and sin again? That's his business to forgive us. That attitude that would seem to favor continuing in sin, that grace may abound, will be a rebuke of God, of course. And if need be, God will allow us to suffer the consequences of sin. We do well, do we not, in our thinking to distinguish between the penalty of sin and the consequences of sin. For a believer, there is no condemnation there for them that are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation. Thank God that the penalty of sin has been paid. But the penalty of sin is one thing, consequence of sin is another. Here is a man, and uh, he's a commercial traveler, and he's away from home, a dear believer, but he gets drunk and falls off the veranda outside his bedroom in his hotel onto the ground and so smashes up his leg that it has to be amputated. Of course, he is conscience stricken and asks the Lord's forgiveness, and the Lord forgives him, you'll see, and there's no penalty. Does the Lord then replace the leg with a new grown leg? Well, not this side of glory. The consequence remains. Here's a Christian farmer, and the Lord tells him to sow wheat, but the price in the market is favorable to barley. So, in spite of the Lord's command, he sows barley. And when it comes up, he sees it's barley, ear comes on, it's barley, and conscience smites him. He has disobeyed the Lord and takes it to the Lord in prayer and confesses his sin and asks the Lord's forgiveness, and the Lord forgives him and then does a miracle to change the barley into wheat? Well, no, indeed not. Whatsoever a man soweth, he reaps. God is not mocked. If you sow to the Spirit, you shall of the Spirit reap eternal life, because after all, life, uh, eternal life is a gift, but eternal life is a life, and it's a life that has to be developed because of all its potentials. And if we sow to the spirit, we shall of the spirit reap the ongoing development of all the potentials of eternal life. We sow to the flesh, we shall reap of the flesh corruption and buckets of tears. God is not mocked. We must distinguish, mustn't we, between the penalty of sin, there is no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus, and the consequences of sin that God may be pleased to leave with us until we get home to glory. Secondly, there is the chastisement of God in his kindness that uses sometimes our mistakes and their consequences to train us and teach us so that we partake more nearly of his holiness. So God with the people of Israel, when they got into the th- way of thinking that it didn't matter if they went on a bit of idolatry now and again, because they could always confess it and the Lord would forgive them. That was a very dangerous mindset to get into, and the Lord had to make his protest and to allow them to suffer the oppression, to bring them to a better state of mind where they genuinely repented and footcast themselves on in- into the hands of God, do to us whatever you seem fit in your wisdom. Then God was sorry, as he always is, for his people and determined to save them. Now I want to jump to considering one of the, uh, distinguishing marks of Jephthah's, uh, uh, uh, of Jephthah's battle, his method of fighting. We read this in the next chapter. When Israel had persuaded Jephthah to take over their case, for erstwhile they had rejected him because he was the son of a harlot, but now in their dire need, they had no one able to save them, so they came and prevailed upon him to come and be their deliverer. His first act, eleven: twelve, was to send messengers unto the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What hast thou to do with me that thou art come unto me to fight against my land? You see. First of all, he tried diplomacy. Notice that feature which distinguishes him. It is true that when Ehud went into the king of Moab, he, uh, said he had a message from the Lord to him, which was a kind of a diplomacy that was, proved to be a dagger in the man's belly, but here was genuine diplomacy. And he, he, the question he raised with the children of Ammon, why you come to fight with me? And the children of Ammon answered the messengers of Jephthah and said, because Israel took away my land when he came up out of Egypt, from Arnon even to Jabbok and unto Jordan. Now therefore restore those lands again peaceably. Jephthah sent messengers again unto the king of the children of Ammon, and he said unto them, Thus says Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon. But when they came up from Egypt, and Israel walked through the wilderness unto the Red Sea and came to Kadesh, then Israel sent messengers unto the king of Edom, saying, Let me, I pray thee, pass through thy land. But the king of Edom wouldn't listen. And in like manner he sent unto the king of Moab, but he wouldn't listen either. And Israel abode in Kadesh. Then he walked through the wilderness and went round the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and they pitched on the other side of Arnon. But they came not within the borders of Moab, for Arnon was the border of Moab. And Israel sent messengers, and so forth and so on. I need not read it all. The argument turns on history, comparatively recent history, of course, but already some decades and decades gone by. When Ammon laid claim to this part of Israel's territory, Jephthah used his knowledge of history to argue the case and told Ammon and its king, it is not true. We did not take away Ammon's land. God forbid us to do it anyway, any more than we took away the land of Moab, Ammon's national brother, and the land of Edom. God would not allow us to do it. What happened was that Sihon, the king of the Amorites, came out to us in battle, and we had to deal with him, and we took his territory. And then the king of Bashan came and did the same thing, and we took away his territory as well. But it is false to history to say that we took your land. It's our land that God gave us. And as far as we're concerned, you hold the land that your god, Chemosh, whoever he was, gave you. We shall hold on to the land that our God has given us. Using diplomacy based on the historic fact, dealing with Ammon's claim that Israel has taken his land. I want to use it as a, a springboard, if I may, to come all down the centuries to the Epistle to the Galatians. For to this very present day, we do need to know our church history, so as we do not allow certain powers to filch from us our God-given inheritance. That may well not be mean knowing our church history exactly. You will see in the epistle to the Galatians, Paul is defending the doctrine of justification by faith, and he defends it in the early stages of his letter by a rehearsal, what I might, I think, justifiably call church history. Chapters one and two of Galatians are almost altogether taken up with an account of early church history. And the point of issue in that part of Galatians is this: where did Paul get his gospel from? Did he get it direct from God, or did he get his apostleship and his gospel ultimately either from man or through man? You say, what difference does that make where he got it from? We shall see that in a minute. He knocks the nail on his, on its head right from the beginning and the opening words of his epistle. Paul, an apostle, not from men. He didn't get his apostleship, and hence its authority, from men. Ah, but then he adds, neither through man. There would have been some who said, of course not, you got it from the Lord, Paul. But why that is so? You got it through us, didn't you? God used us as the channels to channel his gift of apostleship to you. It's not true, says Paul. I didn't get my apostleship either from men or through men. I got it direct from the Lord himself. When he comes to chapter two, he points out, points out that at one stage he went up to Jerusalem. He didn't go because the apostles there summoned him to go, and he had to obey their summons. He went up because God told him to by revelation, and he went up, and he didn't go to get their a- a sanction and permission to preach, or indeed to tell him what to preach. He went up, he says, because the rumor had been spread around that the apostles and elders at Jerusalem preached a very different gospel from what Paul preached. And Paul went up to Jerusalem to scotch that rumor and to demonstrate that the apostles and elders at Jerusalem preached exactly the same as Paul preached. So he tells us, you see, that when he went up, you see, to Jerusalem, verse six, from those who were reputed to be somewhat, whatever they were, it makes no matter to me, God accepteth not man's person, they, I say, who were of repute, imparted nothing to me. Which is that insistence on the historical veracity of it. He not only didn't get his apostleship from them, not even from the apostles in Jerusalem, they didn't impart the gospel to him. He got that straight from the Lord. So contrariwise, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the gospel of the circumcision, for he that wrought for Peter unto apostleship of the circumcision wrought for me also unto the Gentiles. When they perceived the grace that was given unto me, James and Cephas and John, they who were, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go unto the Gentiles and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor. Oh, that was nothing new, but we were already doing that anyway. Why all the fuss? They didn't add anything to him when it came to his gospel message. Well, it becomes relevant to us still today because in certain quarters we shall be told that it is the church that gave us the Bible. I remember years and years and years and years ago, and old men do remember things, don't they? Forgive them. Some friends told m- asked me would I be willing to see one of their colleagues, you see, because he was thinking of joining a a a, a order of monk in the Roman Catholic Church. I said, I'll see him on one condition that he wants to come, and not on the condition that you are urging him to come. If he wants to come, of course I will see him. So he came. He said to me, I, I, I, I'm, I'm Church of Ireland, you know. I said, oh yes, but I'm thinking of joining an order of monks in the Roman Catholic Church. I said, is that so? What do you think of it, he says. Well, he says that's a very difficult question for me because the church you propose to join anathematizes me. No, it doesn't, said he. Surely it doesn't. So it does. This was a book called, uh, Council Number two, you see. Is ancient history. How do they, um, h- how does the church, um, uh, uh, uh, anathematize you? Well, I says, the Council of Trent says that if anybody says they're absolutely sure of salvation, let them be anathematized, because according to the Council of Trent, that is not faith, it's fiducia, and that is unwarranted confidence, you see. I said, I'm one of those people that says I'm saved and I'm sure of it. But he says, come, you oughtn't to be sure of it, did you? I said, why not? Well, he said, obviously, I mean, it depends on our, on our strivings, doesn't it, and, and on our works, you see, whether we shall be saved in the end. I said, is that so? I didn't know that. I thought it was the opposite. And so I read him chapter four. To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but as of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted unto him for righteousness. I said, look at this, what it's saying here, very opposite of what you're saying, my good man. It says to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that, uh, uh, justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted unto him for righteousness. Oh, he said, ah, didn't know what that means. Didn't know it was in the Bible, said he. I don't know what it means. It's no good, he says, you're sitting there and quoting that to me anyway, because how can you understand the Bible? You would need to take that to the church and ask them what it means. So they say, don't they? And it's repeated time and time again. The Orthodox Church will say that you cannot take the Bible and use it to criticize us. It's the church that gave you the Bible in the first place, and in so doing, they never meant to criticize themselves. So they, you see, Paul himself says in one of his letters, I, you've heard something, I don't mind whether it came by word of mouth from me or through letter from me or so on and so on and so forth. They said, you see, there were different traditions. There was Paul's oral tradition that he spoke by viva voce to the churches that weren't written down, as well as the things that he wrote down in his epistles. And the church has collected them all. The church has the written records, but it has the oral tradition right from Paul and all the other apostles all the way down the centuries. And it's the church that gives it to you. The church gives you the Bible. That is historical nonsense, of course. It is not true. You could begin by asking, what do you mean by saying the church gave us the Bible? What, the whole church all the way around, Palestine, Asia Minor, North Africa, good and so is where they are, all the church gave us. But wait a minute, if all the church gave us the Bible, who did they give the Bible to? That to start with, it's a silly statement, really. And if you mean that it was the hierarchy of the church that gave us the Bible, that isn't true either. When Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, he sent it where? To the Galatians, that is. Didn't send it to some church headquarters for them to pass on. Nor was it the apostles at Jerusalem that sanctioned his letter with their imprimature and told them, uh, and then sent it on to the churches of Galatia. Wasn't so. Paul sent it direct from the apostle to the churches of Galatia, and so he did to the Romans. It wasn't the church that gave the, the, the, the, the people of God the Bible. It was the inspired writers like Paul and company who gave the scriptures to the church. Why is that important? Well, I said to the aforesaid friend, you'll say, what are you really telling me? That I can't take this verse from Paul's letter, understand it, and believe it? I must take it to the church to see what it means. I said, suppose I had been in Arabia when Paul the Apostle was in Arabia and happened to meet him. I said to myself, how fortunate. And I went and said, uh, excuse me, sir, are you the apostle, the Christian apostle Paul, by any chance? Yes, I am, yes. Well, I wonder if I could ask you a question because I've been so troubled in my conscience about my spiritual welfare, and I hear you talk about salvation and things like that, you see. Could you tell me, sir, on what ground could I be right with God and be sure of his forgiveness and be justified in his sight? And suppose Paul had told me by word of mouth what he has here written in his epistle, said I to my friend. What should I have done? Could I have listened to Paul, understood him, believed it, and have been saved on the spot? Or would I have had to say to Paul, well, thank you so very much indeed, thank you for explaining that to me so patiently, but of course I can't take it just like that. I shall have to take it to the church in Rome to see whether what you say is right. I couldn't begin to understand it unless they first explained it to me. How I should understand their explanation, I don't know, do you, if that were the case. It is an exceedingly practical matter, and if you lived and worked in countries where such chur- churches hold sway over millions, you would see the importance of knowing church history. And to this very present day, the question of the manuscripts of the Bible, and where do we get the Bible from, and who gave us the Bible? We need to know our facts in this, and if I might push my own trade a little bit, to give the expression, we need to tell our young folks early on in their Bible classes exactly where we got the Bible, because they need to know the facts. I have known, and I say this, I trust in all Christian charity. I have known Christian elders in churches, in assemblies, very good businessmen, but the questions they ask show they haven't got a clue how we got the Bible. They don't know the difference between a different in translation that will make one version differ from another, and the difference that is caused by altogether a different reason, by a difference in the manuscripts. That hasn't occurred to them. They just don't know it. They were brought up in a generation where these things were not taught. In this modern world, if I may suggest it, we do need to teach our young people early on, as they can bear it, exactly how we got the Bible. Where are the original manus- the early manuscripts and the earliest manuscripts, and how you decide between them in making the text, and so forth and so on, and how we should value all those who have worked in this prodigious task of preserving the Bible for us all down the ages. At the same time, be very clear in our minds who it was that gave us the scripture. It is a vital part of our God-given inheritance. Could not exaggerate its importance. We do need to know. In these days, when the United Bible Societies have gone over to translate to issuing a Bible plus Apocrypha, we need to know, don't we, why it has been in more recent, uh, uh, uh, uh, re- years that the Apocrypha was was not printed with the, uh, scriptures. Very good reason for it there is indeed, because if you hand your Bible plus Apocrypha to your unconverted friend, you mustn't be surprised if he comes back and says to you, then it's okay to pray for the dead, as the Apocrypha has it. If I might mention trade matters, there's a growing number of evangelicals that join the chorus that for the Christian church, not the a- the original Hebrew, but the Greek translation called the Septuagint should be accepted as the Bible of the church. That is a very dangerous doctrine. But I turned from the technical matters. This all began by talking about Ammonites who claimed part of the territory that God had given Israel. Jephthah, in dealing with the Ammonite oppression, first tries diplomacy based on history. What were the facts? That the territory we have, says Jethro, was given us by God, and, uh, you're not going to filch it from us. You have what your god Chemosh gives you. We shall keep hold of what our God has given us. So then, a lesson on the need to know our history as Christians, as Jethro knew his history as an Israelite warrior. Now let's think of another question related to Jephthah. Jephthah's weakness, he was an illegitimate child and suffered the resultant pain of rejection. The reaction to it possibly accounts for his urge to be recognized as head. If the Lord gives me, gives us victory through me, shall I be your head? We're now drifting quite a longish ways from Gideon, said, I'm not going to be your head anyway. The Lord is your king and ruler. It is taken for granted with Jephthah. If the Lord gives victory, he will be head. He went to the battle. When he came back, somewhat like, uh, Gideon, the men of Ephraim taunted him. He replied by taking the Fords of Jordan, just like Ehud had done. But when Ehud took the Fords of Jordan, he slaughtered the enemy that came over, Jethro took the fjords of Jordan and slaughtered his brethren because he had a row with them, and they had taunted him. He used as his criterion a pronunciation difference between his tribe and the other tribe. It would be like an American slaughtering an Englishman because the Englishman talks about missionaries, whereas the Americans have the pro- uh, uh, uh, what they feel is the correct pronunciation, missionaries, to allow to to rhyme with canaries, you'll see, and many other such things they do. They li- they work in laboratories. We don't consider doing that. We lo- we work in laboratories, you'll see. Fancy slaughtering your Christian brother because he can't pronounce missionary the way where you'd like him to pronounce it. This was a test that Jephthah used to distinguish the different tribes and their different accents between the tribes. He gave them the word for an ear of corn. Some pronounced it Shibboleth, and some said Siboleth, and the ones who pronounced it the wrong way, he slaughtered. Sad business. It's marvelous how Christians will disagree over things that are not fundamental matters of the faith. They won't kill, of course, their fellow Christians, but they'll exclude them from fellowship over things that are not fundamentals of the faith. And sometimes the believers mean the same thing, they have different ways of expressing it, but if they don't use the technical term favored by the one set, the one set excludes them from fellowship. That, of course, is an extreme view, isn't it? Don't let me harp upon it, but we do have to be careful, lest we invent our shibboleths that really, in the end, have no difference of meaning, but merely a way of putting things. Then the question arises, how do you explain what happens to his daughter? Well, I would explain it if I could. Did he or did he not sacrifice his daughter? Whichever I say, someone will disagree with me. So I won't say it anyway. I can tell you what happened. Do you see? Grateful for the victory that God had given him, Jephthah made a vow. It may have been a very unwise vow, rash, but it was a vow that he would sacrifice to the Lord whatever first came out of his house. That he sincerely intended to do, and therefore he was in effect putting it into the Lord's hand to decide what should first come out of his house. That was the implication of the vow. The Lord could take what he liked, but in Jephthah's thinking, it would be the Lord who would decide what should come out of his house, now that Jephthah had made this vow that whatever came out first, he would sacrifice to the Lord. When he came back, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dancers. Being the kind of man he was, he felt he must proceed with his vow. She asked, therefore, that two months be given her. Verse thirty seven: let me alone two months that I may depart and go down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity, I and my companions. And he said, go, and he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and once more it is said, bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. Came to pass at the end of two months that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed, and she had not known man. I said I'd not tell you what I think he did with her, but I think I can tell you the effect of what the Lord did. For you will notice, uh, early on, verse thirty four, she was his only child. Beside her, he had neither son nor daughter. He had proposed that if the Lord gave him victory, they should make him head. I think Gideon wouldn't have accepted it because of his conviction that the Lord was his head. That appeared not to have ever entered Jephthah's mind, taken for granted if the Lord gave him victory, he should be head. The effect of this vow and what the Lord did, that even though Jephthah may have become head, he could never establish a dynasty. He had neither son nor daughter. There never was, therefore, a reigning house of Jephthah. So far, then, my efforts at expounding the story of Jephthah. And as is usual in these expositions, some of it is true, and others of it may be lacks cogency and conviction, but you, my brethren, are there to help me, of course. So now over to you. Questions, if you have them, I'll do my best to answer them, but please, some contributions, if you will, to the study and exposition of this story. Hello. Yes. Just a small contribution, but thinking through the judges and their qualifications, what qualified them to be the deliverer in each case that we've seen. And this one suggestion that comes from chapter eleven and verse 7. Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, did not ye hate me and expel me out of my father's house? I was wondering if perhaps, or at least I think it was perhaps, that one of the things that qualified Jephthah to be a deliverer was that against Ammon, who sought to rob Israel of their inheritance, was that he himself knew what it was like to be robbed of his inheritance. Yes, yes, sir. Thank you very much indeed. And I have thought, I must say, that in some sense he shared God's feeling, for it's God who complains to Israel that I have delivered you from time to time, and you have rejected me. Yes? Now you ask me to save you, and God complains at it at the lower, much lower level. Jephthah says the same thing when they come to get him to ask to be their deliverer. He says, but you rejected me, gentlemen. So there's a certain affinity of feeling between him and the Lord. Mm-hmm. Just like the God. That's right, mm-hmm. Other contributions? Now I'd be absolutely wicked, more than normally. Anybody here admit to having preached on Jephthah? Pardon? I skipped this part. You skipped this part, did you? That is one way of getting through the Bible in so many years. All I ask for, gentlemen, seriously, I'm not te- teasing or anything like that. If you've preached on it, I'm going to say, what did you say? Be very interested to know how you went about it. I've told you what I say. Be interested to know what you say when you come to preaching about Jephthah, or perhaps you don't, perhaps you find other passages more profitable. Uh. I guess my comment is, according to, I'm not decided one hundred percent, but according to what I've studied, I would imagine that he did sacrifice her to the Lord, meaning that she was put to death rather than believe that she was given to the service of the tabernacle or other things that I've heard. Yes. So when she was sacrificed, some teach that she was given to the service of the tabernacle, but it just wouldn't make sense with the whole passage because of the fact that it's just that he, the only son or daughter, he had no son or daughter besides her. The fact that he's wailing, um, the fact that he was so sad and that they each year went four days each year to lament her. Mm. It wouldn't make sense that they'd be lamenting her if she was serving the Lord in the tabernacle. How would it, uh? So, although I can understand, now going back to the other part is, uh, at the same time, I would have a very hard time understanding how it all came to pass. Like, honestly, I'm not, honestly, I would have a hard time understanding how Jephthah thought, well, I promised the Lord. Even his vows are very strange because what did he expect to come out of the house? Chickens? I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if he thought animals might come out. What that would well be, of course. Right, and I'm thinking, what did he expect to come out of his house if he had a farm? I'm not sure, but you would think most things that come out of the house, I'm thinking, of course, a front door approach, would be a person. Yes. So that's, that's the first thing. And the second thing is, is why would he think that the Lord would want that? Because they would be going right back to offering the children to Molech. Yes, I, I take your point. I think myself that he m- might be expecting, whether it be a sheep comes out, or r- or, you know, about the farm, uh, uh, or whether it's an ox, it may be the best ox, I'll give it to the Lord. What, uh, what, uh, troubles me a little bit about it is the Lord's own selection. Yes, do you see what I mean? Was it the Lord who then let the girl come out first? Or did the Lord, Lord ignore the, the, the vow altogether because it wasn't a sensible vow to make? You'll see. Somebody's got a hand up there, and because then there's a hand here, uh, in the second division. Yes? You know, for many years I, I was con- I assumed that indeed that, uh, that he offered up his daughter, but as I began to strongly consider that, uh, I began to question the fact that did the Lord not define what the burnt offering should be? Okay, and that's been my biggest struggle. He never said that a burnt offering could be a human. So he never said a burnt offering should be? A human. A human, yes. He was very careful when he spoke of the different offerings mentioned in the book of Exodus, and nowhere do I Yes. find that. So, because that's the case, not only do I have a hard time, not only because he defined it, but secondly, I have a hard time believing he would receive that as a burnt offering, okay? Yes. Again, it, what was the purpose of a burnt offering? And then, and then, and then finally, I don't think that when we find a, uh, when we find that the Israel bewailed, I don't find it hard to believe that there was also a good reason for wail was because that he would not have the seed come from his own flesh. That she, you know, obviously, uh, a woman giving over to, uh, the service. We find that in Exodus, we see that in First Samuel two. We also even see that that's mentioned in Luke. Is that right, Luke's Gospel? Yes. Luke's Gospel is mentioned here. Uh, but I have no problem believing that indeed he gave her as a, as an offering, not so much by blood, but as an offering to God. Mm-hmm. That's the only way. Again, there's a good definition. Yes, I take, oh, now the hands are coming up, picking fast. Thank you very much. Yes, but this one was first, actually. Here, this one here. I was gonna basically, I shall just go ahead. I just sort of like what he said. I think you, you brought a very interesting point out when you said if God is involved in the selection of what comes out, it would seem that then a literal offering is not the idea, uh, that perhaps as this gentleman just says, that it's more along the offering, generally speaking, uh, in her virginity perhaps, that there's no seed, if that's the item selection. I find, would find it very difficult to think that God selected the girl to be a burnt offering. Right. On the fire. I find that very difficult to think. Yeah, so I think. Yes, they were the world her virginity because she had no child, but yes. Now, uh, hands going up. There's this man here and then that man there, and we'll try to take them in order. Uh, your hand is up as well? He's first over there. I see. Just two things. When I was in a university, I would oftentimes go in for punishment at the atheist tent. This is Pardon? I can't quite hear, sir. When I was in the university, I would often spend time with the atheists at their tent, and they would bring this passage up. One of the things that struck me, I just have two comments. One is that I, I did come from the fact that the passage seems to be silent on God's role in mind in this, and what Jephthah did seems to really fit with a lot of the nonsense, if I could just pick one word, of what happens when people descend into spiritual darkness. It reminds me of some of the things that Saul said when, when in battle he just made a declaration that no one would eat of anything until this or that happened, and it really troubled the men of Israel. And Jonathan came along and then later said, why did my father even say something like this? We don't hear what God says, and this is a sort of degradation of spiritual wisdom. Yes, pseudo religiosity. The second thing I would wonder is if he actually sacrificed his daughter, do you believe that some of the culture of pagan religion and human sacrifice, the way they treated Yahweh as their god and Shamash as this god, these territorial gods over them, that he was actually degraded some and actually sacrificed them because some of the nations around were sacrificing their children? Well, what seems to me to be, uh, uncertain, or perhaps unclear, but se- uncertain, uh, what Jephthah knowledge would have been, do you see? Whether he would have been quite a, a, an orthodox in his beliefs and practices, as was the high priest in the temple, for instance, or whether he was, like you say, if a king like Saul can make rash ideas and bind people, uh, to not eat, uh, and this like till the battle is finished, and Jonathan has to point out to him it's absolute nonsense, Saul, and the people just re-disregarded him and went on their way anyway. He ha- this was pseudo-religiosity. Whether a chieftain like, uh, um, uh, Jephthah, uh, was truly knowledgeable, and whether that would have seemed to him right, you see, in his day, that I would raise a question. Uh, I don't know what other folks would, would think about that. Yes, but someone who's over here, this good man next. Yes, sir. Um, yeah, I don't know for sure whether or not she was sacrificed and, and killed that way, but I would tend to lean that way based on, um, before, before a burnt sacrifice was ever formally defined in Exodus, God himself made an exception to not mentioning any humans there back in Genesis when he ordered Abraham to go sacrifice Isaac, his son, which obviously he did not intend for Abraham to actually go through with that, but the option was there if Abraham's faith was not enough or whatever. Yeah, hello, and there's another hand here. And, uh, also just looking at the, the wording in Judges, um, his, his vow said that, you know, it would be a burnt offering, and then later that he fulfilled his vow. Mm-hmm. Yes, it does. Yes. And you, sir? I just want to give you the references, uh, the references for kings and vows is in Deuteronomy chapter twenty three twenty one Mm-hmm. And following. This is the reference about vows and making sure that you pay your vows back to God. I also have gone over to, uh, to Saul. It's a very famous occurrence, but, uh, uh, I'm in full agreement with where he was going with this, but he's actually agreeing with you on your final conclusion. What happened was, Jonathan says, uh, Jonathan says, I have to die. The end result was that Saul's lot lineage stopped because of this. God delayed judgment. Jonathan did die, just like, uh, in the day thou shall eat, thou shall die in Genesis chapter, uh, guess it I guess it is. Adam didn't die immediately, he did die. His death was delayed. Jonathan's death was delayed. So whether, whether she died naturally or on the altar, the end result is the same. His house, his lineage stops. Mm-hmm. As a result of, uh, his unwise vow. The same as, uh, we have a, uh, the same thing happened in the song. No night is out, start this moment. Thank you very much. Well, now the time, uh, gentlemen, is now ten past eight, and I have to cease at a quarter past. Um, I understand why, um, uh, you have answered so well and thoroughly on the question of, uh, Jeff's vow. I would like to hear from you if you have anything to say about Jeff's earlier tactic of diplomacy. Uh, hello, sir? Yes. Oh. Uh, I was thinking about that, and I appreciate your application of that to knowing our church history. That's very valuable, especially where the scriptures come from. However, I did notice that Jephthah still had to fight the battle. Oh yes, he did. Ultimately, his argument based on history did not win the day. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think that, uh, to me, that just means that ultimately accepting the word of God as the word of God is still fighting a good fight of faith. That we still have to accept it on faith, ultimately. Oh, surely, sir. Uh, thank you very much for the comment. Eh, why I raise the matter as I do, as I have, is because in my work in sundry countries, this is not an unusual question to be raised. Now, by the authorities who claim that they gave the world the Bible, you don't convince them. They resist it anyhow, you'll see. But one does find, uh, what the evangelists call seeking souls who are troubled, that you should get them expounding and thinking about the scripture because they think it's a very dangerous thing to do anyway. And, uh, the church gave us the scripture, so what should we do? We're trying to explain it. We just have to obey what the church says. And in cases like that, it is useful to point out some church history where they are thoughtful people and need to be delivered from that misunderstanding of where the Bible comes from. The authorities themselves, uh, will dispute it, and it's a curious phenomenon that you get the same, uh, phenomenon in Judaism. You'll see the really orthodox Jew will tell you that, um, uh, yeah, yeah, well, the men of the great synagogue wrote down, uh, the the the Bible. Moses wrote it down, you see, but there was a lot of oral tradition from Moses onward, you'll see, or from what Moses said that they didn't write down until the men of the great synagogue wrote it down, and we have it in the Talmud. So if you get even, uh, Jewish scholars, I met a good professor, uh, in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem some years ago, expert in the Jewish theology, of course, and I consulted him about a, a passage in the scripture. Oh, I, I don't know about that, you see. He says, the Bible is for children. We scholars go for the Talmud. And with them, of course, the Talmud's authority eclipses that of the Bible. This is the official, uh, interpretation of the centuries of rabbis. They have the same argument, then, as does the Orthodox and the Catholic churches on this very matter. But sometimes it's worth raising it with qua- inquirers when you're trying to get a group to study the scripture and to lose their fear of daring to think through the scripture, lest they should think something different from their church, you see. Or the Jew, to encourage him to read his own Old Testament in Bible and not be worried about what the the Talmud says, or so forth and so on, and to take it as to what it says. But now, gentlemen, the time is a quarter past, and I we must leave it there, and uh I thank you very much for your cooperation.