Blog

by Nathan Buck

Have you ever wanted something so badly, that you would do “anything” for it? There used to be a commercial for Klondike ice cream bars that asked, “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” And there was always some silly or outrageous thing someone would be willing to do on camera to get one.

That’s funny for a commercial, but chasing desires with wild abandon or big promises doesn’t work so well in real life. Last week we took a look at the leader Jephthah, from the Bible, and how he bargained with God. Read last week’s blog post by clicking here. This week, we are going to see how his vow to God turned out. Read Judges 11:34-40.

So, in hot pursuit of the enemy, Jephthah promises to sacrifice whatever comes out of his tent when he gets home. Obviously, it would be a living thing that would be coming out of his tent. We are not certain if Jephthah had someone in mind, or if this was just a moment of irrational passion for victory at any price. What we do know is that it was his daughter that came out to meet him.

I don’t know about you, but as a father this would crush me. Anyone from my family coming out that door would be an agonizing reality check for my arrogant promise. Jephthah, being an honorable man of his word, would keep his vow to God. And why God didn’t stop him, we are not privileged to know. But we do know it was Jephthah who created the situation, and the consequence is soul wrenching.

Now, did he need to kill her? Was it a greater sin to keep his vow, or to break it? Well, it is a sin to break a vow to God, but also a sin to murder a person. Jephthah made a foolish vow and we do not see God correcting or intervening, He lets Jephthah own his vow and work out the consequences.

What I find interesting is Jephthah’s daughter’s response. She didn’t mourn for her life or accuse her father of being foolish. She honored her father and honored God so highly that she saw her life as a reasonable price for the tremendous victory. She only mourned that she would never marry. This is amazing to me, the faith this young woman had. It makes me uncomfortable because of what happens to her, and because it reveals the shallowness of my faith. I am not certain I could have respected my father or resisted questioning God - in fact just reading the story I wrestle with God’s inaction.

But what should we take away from this encounter? Even in a foolish vow, BOTH Jephthah and his daughter wanted to honor God more than anything else. Even though Jephthah’s vow seems foolish to us, and even though he should have just trusted God for the victory, he still fulfilled his vow because of His desire for God’s blessing more than anything else. Jephthah’s daughter likewise submitted herself to death to satisfy her father’s vow, so that both she and her father would be right with God.

I can wrestle with the morality of this situation all I want. I can even declare that Jephthah made an unwise vow that he shouldn’t have kept. But I am embarrassed by the faith and devotion he and his daughter have in the face of a shortsighted and perhaps even selfish promise.

It reminds me of a young man I knew when I worked at UPS. In hiring new employees, the manager had inserted occasional weekend delivery driving in as a requirement for new associates. Others who started before this young man did not have that requirement, and it was only briefly discussed in his interview. He was a great employee and worked extraordinarily hard. The center manager asked him one day if he could start training for weekend driving. Because of commitments he had on the weekends, he couldn’t. The center manager was upset and had one of his usual temper tantrums. The center manager said, “It was in the job requirements when you were hired, I am sick and tired of people starting here and telling me they can do this, and then not being willing to do it.” He stormed up to his office.

We all knew this would blow over, and we knew the center manager valued this employee. We also knew that management could not require union employees to work hours outside their officially scheduled duties, and some loophole made it impossible for the center manager to enforce Saturday driving. There was actually no real job requirement problem, just the center manager’s broken expectations.

This young man came in the following day and turned in his resignation. We were all in shock, including the center manager, who begged him to stay. But the young man said, “I prayed about this and considered what you said. If I agreed to drive on Saturdays when I was hired and I cannot fulfill that, then I need to resign. I am a man of my word, and I cannot in good conscience continue here if I am breaking a promise.”

There are many who questioned the sanity of this young man, but no one questioned his faith or his integrity.

If I can offer two pieces of advice from this blog post, it would be these:
1. Be wise and trust God. Don’t make foolish promises, vows, or seek signs - whether for selfish things or noble ones.
2. Have the faith and integrity to stand by your word. If you make a promise, carry it out. Your integrity is direct reflection of God’s, and He keeps His promises. (He also doesn’t make them lightly).

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Charlie Wolcott

We in Western Civilization love the intellect. We love to think; we love logic; we love science. I am an intellectual type. I am very fact-driven and I do not like misinformation put forth. One of the very common statements made about our current society is that “We stand upon the shoulders of giants.” This is a very true statement. Our knowledge is dependent upon those who came before us. However, one thing I am learning is that there is also a significant problem with this mentality. It is easily seen in the scientific setting, but what about the religious setting?

In Jurassic Park, Ian Malcom gives a very powerful lecture about this issue. Here is a quote: “I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here: It did not require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any of the responsibility.”

In Jurassic Park, John Hammond stood upon the shoulders of the giants that did all the research before them, but he lacked the deep knowledge of the studies. And as a result, he misapplied a few concepts, missed a few things, and the central problem of the movie came out. Is not our current scientific community under the same issue?

Evolution most certainly applies to this. They took what the Bible-believing scientific field founders studied and established and they ran with it, claiming science to only belong under their worldview, and completely disregarding the work of those who went before them. I will even be bold enough to proclaim that atheism must commit the ultimate academic crime to maintain their position: plagiarism; taking that which someone else did and claim it for their own.

But there is a much more serious issue that follows the same train of thought. The vast majority of “Christianity” here in the US is guilty of the same thing. Leonard Ravenhill says it so poignantly and clearly: “Most preachers are only echoes, for if you listen hard, you will be able to tell what latest book they have read and how little of the Book they quote.” ~Leonard Ravenhill: Why Revival Tarries, pg 111

Tell me and tell you this right now: Guilty! I am guilty of this. If you look through my posts, and you know the different sources I have been reading, you can tell which ones are standing out to me. Paul Washer was the first to get my attention about this issue in this interview. He addresses the problem of living off the study, research, and prayer life of men like himself, John Piper, Eric Ludy, Ravenhill, Wilkerson, and others. We cannot be parasitic where they hear from God and we hear from them. WE must go to God ourselves. We must get directly fed from him.

There is a time where this happened in the Bible. In Exodus 20, right after God gave the Ten Commandments, the people greatly feared God and demanded that Moses go speak to God directly and they would listen to him. Same problem - they did not want to hear from God directly. I believe God intended to give the full Law to the people directly. The timing of things indicate that God spoke the 10 Commandments not to Moses privately but to everyone publicly. So what happened? After 40 days while Moses was with God, the people grew impatient and they turned to worship a golden calf. Here is the lesson of this passage (among others): we cannot be dependent upon others to get our spiritual nourishment. We need to get it from God directly DAILY!

Two months ago, I wrote about intercession in prayer. One of the things I warned you about is to let someone else delegate their prayer to you. You CANNOT delegate prayer. You CANNOT delegate studying the Word of God. You CANNOT delegate hearing from God. There is only one mediator between God and man and that is Jesus Christ. Your parents cannot do that. Your pastor cannot do that. Your best friend cannot do that. Your spouse cannot do that. Your favorite TV or internet speaker cannot do that. Your children cannot do that. Only Jesus Christ can do that.

Too often, we depend upon the giants that go before us, as though they are doing the job only Jesus could do. Any of the truly great men of God: the Rees Howells, the George Whitefields, the Hudson Taylors, the William Booths, the David Wilkersons, and others, will always deflect any attention they get towards Christ. I am teaching my Monday night Bible study group through Eric Ludy’s “Wrestling Prayer” and before I started the study, I warned about this issue, mostly as a reminder for me. Ludy is my favorite preacher that I listen to. And I have to watch myself that I not become a parrot of him where I know he had done the research and the prayer life and he preaches a true message with pure passion. I can mimic the passion and I can mimic the truth. Paul Washer, in the interview I cited above, said he could tell in a heart-beat if there is any real truth in someone like me preaching the same message. The truth is there, but it’s not real. It is real to Ludy, to Piper, to Washer, to Ravenhill. They did the work. But is it real to me? Have I spent myself searching and digging and pursing God and discovered the truth for myself? Or am I just taking what they have said and running with it?

The Seven Sons of Sceva did that. They stood upon the shoulders of giants like Jesus and Paul claiming the truth they proclaimed, but the demon knew they had no power of their own. They tried to ride the coattails of Paul. They may have been loyal followers, soaking up every word Paul spoke. They may have been able to quote every line and tenant that came from Paul’s mouth. They may have had the same passion. But they did not have the POWER! They had not gotten their hands dirty and earned the right to drive that demon out. They had not spent their night hours in the battles of prayer to get the instructions from God in what to do. They took what Paul was doing and they tried to take the next step and the result was a disaster.

As I wrap up this post, please do not read what I am not saying. I am not saying throw out all your books. I am not saying never listen to another preacher again or attend another Bible study group. We do need to hear from others. We need others to hear from us. Paul even tells us to imitate him as he imitates Christ. The key to that? “As he imitates Christ.” No one is perfect. We have to get close to God ourselves so that we can know who is like Christ and who is not. We have to get close to God so that we can model Christ-likeness ourselves. And we cannot compare ourselves to another, nor can we depend upon someone else to carry us to that destination. We must get on our own two feet and walk ourselves. Others can walk with us, but they cannot walk for us. Get in the Word. Study the Bible. Spend time in prayer. Seek after God yourself. Learn from others, but do not base your entire existence upon them. Base it on God himself.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Steve Risner

Al Gore once said, “Everything that ought to be down is up. Everything that should be up is down. They've got it upside down and we're going to turn it right-side up.” How is this statement related to this blog post series? Well, atheists have it all wrong and I'm going to explain why.

I have been covering 5 statements made by a high school friend who is a “Catholic atheist,” in his words. I could be wrong, but I believe he says that so he can keep his job at the university he's employed at. I'm not sure. We've covered things in these statements from our Godly heritage as a nation, when the Gospels were written, how and why they were translated and by whom, and most recently, the Enlightenment. We've covered a bunch of things. This week we will take a look at this person's final point in his condensed version of what's wrong with Christianity.

His fifth statement is: “Humanity slowly but surely accepted that the authority of God and king should be marginalized in favor of popular rule.”

What do you think of that statement? I think it's intriguing and indicative of a few misconceptions that may exist out there. Let's take a few moments to see those.

First, this person is lumping the authority of God with the authority of government rulers. It's certainly true that as a believer in Christ, I believe those in authority over our nation and states are there because God placed them there. It's difficult sometimes to accept that and to respect that and I know I've failed often in regards to my attitude towards our president, Congress, and even our governor (John Kasich). I'm not perfect in this but I understand the idea and do my best. However, the authority those in power have over us is not to be unquestioned or blindly accepted. God's authority is of a level and superiority that is comparable to nothing and no one. His will for us is perfect and good. He loves each of us and wants the absolute best for us. How He defines “absolute best” and how we define it may differ, but again His knowledge and ideas on our lives are far superior to our own. He not only has the bigger picture in mind but He also has eternity in mind. I believe this is demonstrated very well in the book of Job and I have had plans to write on that for some time now. Hopefully, that will happen this year.

But the authority of presidents and kings and other government officials is granted by God. In some cases, that authority is for the benefit of the people to receive the blessings of God. In some cases, that authority is for the punishment of the people for turning from God or for some national sin. Either way, the authority is from God but is human in nature and imperfect at best. But God's authority is not and I don't believe His authority has been “marginalized” by anyone. Has anyone decided that government authorities are not to be taken seriously? I paid my taxes this year. I stop at stop lights. I haven't stolen my neighbor's car. When I see flashing lights in my rearview mirror, I pull over. Don't you? I guess you could say that recently, some have decided they can somehow protest the election of our president and have it accomplish something. But in reality, this is nothing more than a tantrum and essentially has no purpose at all (a demonstration of “tolerance” that we talked about last time). So, I'm not sure I even agree with him there. I do think our society (and this will be discussed later) has embraced more of a democratic form of government where the will of the people is at least supposed to govern the land to one degree or another.

We are, however, not living in a democracy here in America. This is quite often mistakenly claimed. We live in a constitutional democratic republic. This is not the same as a democracy, and “popular rule” actually is not how it works in these United States. We elect people to represent us. They work for us. They are supposed to speak for us, but we have found recently that our will is generally not their concern. That's another topic entirely and I have no intention of discussing it further. But we send men and women to Washington and to our state capitals to represent us and make decisions.

This idea has also recently been brought to light in our 2016 presidential election. A process known as the electoral college is used to elect the president. Some have said that this is unjust and we should do away with the electoral college in favor of the popular vote. In my opinion, this is a terrible idea and should be avoided completely. I agree with the Founders, who were brilliant and founded this nation on Christian principles found in God's Word. They were led to use this practice for the election of our president to avoid “tyranny by the majority.” It is the ‘tyranny of the majority’ that James Madison, a Founding Father, warned about. His reading of ancient history was that the direct democracy of Athens was erratic and short-lived, whereas republican Rome remained stable for much longer. He even worried about using the word “democracy” at all, lest citizens confuse its representative (i.e., republican) form with its direct one. “Democracy never lasts long,” wrote John Adams, another Founding Father. Asked what government the federal constitution of 1787 had established, Benjamin Franklin responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Tyranny by the majority is what the republican form of government we have is designed to avoid. In a pure democracy, the majority can vote for anything and do anything. This could easily mean that a large group could dominate another because there are no checks. But, as we've explained in the past, this means morality is subject to opinion and consensus rules. This is a terrible place to be in. If everyone decides molesting children is okay, then it is. If all the men vote that there's no such thing as spousal abuse, then there isn't if the men outvote the women. If Christians vote that you have to go to church on Sunday or face jail time, if that's the majority of votes then it's the law. This is why a pure democracy doesn't work and why our Founders knew that pure democracies don't last long. They collapse quickly under the weight of the insanity that comes with the anonymity that accompanies the mob mentality. If you're not sure about the idea of “tyranny by majority,” just do some reading on it.

In short, in the US, if the law was determined strictly by a majority rule, the states of California, Texas, Florida and New York would dominate our nation. Does that seem right? These 4 states contain a third of the nation's people and have no idea what it's like to be in Ohio, Wisconsin, or Montana. They could make laws that make it difficult to exist for us simply because the majority rules or, as my atheist friend says, popular rule.

The American form of government, which is based on Biblical principles, emphasizes the role of the governed in the process, but we have elected officials that determine our laws and how they're enforced. They are subject to us via the electoral process but we are also subject to the decisions they make. I'm not actually certain how all this fits into this atheist's worldview, but he made the statement.

Next week we'll cover some very common mistakes we Westerners/Americans make concerning the world around us. I hope you find it informative. Thank you for reading and be blessed.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by David Odegard

After the comments I made about pluralism last week, one would conclude that a Christian really cannot hold pluralistic views and be biblically consistent. But no, constant reader, they still try.

“Modal inclusivism” is an attempt to make Christianity more accessible to people of other religions by expanding the Christian view of the work of the Holy Spirit to include those other religions. It is an assertion that the Holy Spirit is present in other religions; not just persons holding to other religions, but the actual religions themselves.

Karl Rahner would be the voice in the catholic world, and Clark Pinnock is his ardent admirer translating this to the evangelical world. The inclusivism of Pinnock would not attempt to accept everything from other religions as true, but he pushes forward the idea that the Holy Spirit is present throughout all the world and that He is at work in the lives of all human beings and their religions to bring them to God. But Pinnock goes way too far when he claims that salvation can be obtained inside other religions.

He would not go so far as to say that all roads lead to God; he would say that Christ is the only way to God, but then assert that there are many roads to Christ, the Christian church being only one of many. These many other roads which lead to Christ are found in all the world’s religions like Islam, Hinduism, and pagan religions to name a few. The axis of this assertion lies in his belief that the exclusivity of Christianity is unacceptable to the world and therefore needs to be modified so that “more radical options [such as pluralism] are unnecessary.”

Pinnock’s evangelical heritage compels him to at least attempt to moor his theology to the Bible. He views all those believing before Christ came as pre-Christian believers. He calls Job a “pagan saint” and infers that Melchizedek is also one. He uses the account of Cornelius to make the point that God wanted “to teach the apostle Peter that there is no partiality in God’s dealings with humanity.”

The account with Cornelius (Acts 10) contradicts Pinnock’s inclusivism, however. Although Pinnock claims that God is in pagan religions, God did not use any of Rome’s pagan worship to convince Cornelius (who was Roman) to convert to Christ; rather he used specific means. Cornelius had already rejected the Roman gods and had become a “God-fearer.” This meant he believed in the God of Israel and had committed himself to a life of prayer, giving, and Sabbath worship. He was truly seeking God. But in spite of what Pinnock thinks, God did not send an angel to him to preach the gospel, rather He sent an angel that gave Cornelius the name and address of a Christian preacher. The Holy Spirit used the church.

Pinnock argues that the Holy Spirit can move in other religions, but we do not find an example of that in the New Testament for sure, and one has to be careful about calling God’s people under the Old Covenant who were waiting for the Messiah to come “non-Christian.” Certainly the name of Jesus had not manifested itself to properly call people “Christian,” but they were waiting in faith for the promises to be fulfilled in the Christ (Messiah).

Cornelius calls upon Peter, who has been prepared for the encounter and salvation comes to Cornelius and his whole household. He is the first recorded Gentile to become a Christian. For sure Peter did need to learn to accept Cornelius, but that didn’t include recognizing any value in Roman pagan worship. It simply wasn’t paganism that connected Cornelius to God.

We would firmly recognize that the Holy Spirit is at work everywhere in every person, but we could not say that God is using Islam or Hinduism to bring people to an awareness of Jesus Christ. The clarity of the gospel reaches some of these unbelievers in spite of the high pitched noise of false religious preaching. God be praised. God has ordained the preaching of gospel through Christians to be the mode of saving grace for all the nations.

Hebrews 1:1-2 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.” Also remember what the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 1:3, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”

Jesus said to the assembled body of the church, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’” (Matthew 28:18-20).

Pinnock may not go “all the way” with pluralism, but he definitely has an “emotional affair.”

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Bill Fortenberry

“The single most important influence that shaped the founding of the United States comes from John Locke, a 17th century Englishman who redefined the nature of government … According to Locke, a ruler gains authority through the consent of the governed.”

This quote comes from ushistory.org, a website that receives more than 3 million visits per month. They, like many others, claim that our nation was founded on new ideas that were developed during the Enlightenment. However, as we learned in the previous article, Locke flatly denied this claim. He said that his ideas came from an ancient source of wisdom that could never be proven wrong. So what was this ancient source of Locke’s theory of government by the consent of the governed? Let’s find out.

If you were to search the internet for the history of the concept of rule by the consent of the governed, you would undoubtedly come across a few statements like this one from the website democracyweb.org: “The first significant historical examples of rule by consent of the governed were the city-state of Athens in the fifth century BC and the Roman Republic from the fifth to first centuries BC.”

This is the view taken by most professional historians. They realize that they cannot defend the claim that Locke’s ideas originated in the Enlightenment, so they back up about 2000 years and identify a different secular source for Locke’s ideas in the nations of Athens and Rome. There is, however, a more ancient source of this concept than Athens and Rome.

The earliest record we have of a government that was established by the consent of the governed is actually found within the pages of the Old Testament. More than a thousand years before the Roman republic, God Himself established a nation for His people, and He gave them a government that ruled at the consent of the governed.

This philosophy of government by the consent of the governed can be found throughout the Old Testament. From the judges to the decision to have a king, from Rehoboam to Athaliah, and even into the New Testament with the Jews rejecting their Messiah, the Bible is filled with examples of the Children of Israel changing rulers when those rulers failed to govern at the consent of the people. And in every case, God always sanctioned the decision of the people in choosing their own rulers. He may not have always approved of their decision, but He always submitted Himself to it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself in my excitement. Let’s go back to the very foundation of Israel’s government. Most people assume that God simply dictated His Law to the Children of Israel and commanded that they obey it whether they wanted to or not, but look at what the Bible actually says in Exodus 19:5: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.”

This passage is the preamble to what is known as the Mosaic Covenant. The full covenant is recorded in chapters 19-24, and it contains the famous Ten Commandments as well as several other foundational laws of the nation of Israel. These five chapters of the book of Exodus can be viewed as being equivalent in nature to the Constitution of America. They form the foundation upon which all the other laws of the nation were established, and that foundation begins not with a commandment but with a proposition.

God did not simply tell the Israelites that they would be a holy nation unto Him. Instead, He presented them with an “if … then” proposition and left it up to the people themselves to decide whether or not to become the kind of nation that He wanted them to be. The response of the people to this proposition is found in verse 8 where we read that they gave unanimous consent to do everything that the Lord commanded them to do. From this, it is plainly obvious that government of the nation of Israel was established on the concept of rule by the consent of the governed. The people were granted the sovereignty to either accept or reject God’s offer, and they willingly chose to accept it.

But God didn’t stop there. Keep in mind that at this point, the Children of Israel had only heard the preamble to the Mosaic Covenant. They weren’t aware of the actual details of the covenant yet, and it was possible that after hearing those details they might decide that they didn’t want God’s form of government after all. This is why God gave the people two additional opportunities to either accept or reject the form of government that He had offered them.

In Exodus 24:3-7, we read: “And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do. And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD … And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient.”

Here, we see that after God delivered all of the terms of the covenant to Moses, Moses came and told the people what the Lord had said, and all the people gave unanimous assent to the terms. Moses then committed the entire covenant to writing and read what he had written. Then the people voiced unanimous consent a second time to confirm that they were agreeing to the covenant exactly as it had been written.

There are, therefore, two different recognitions of government by the consent of the governed in the Mosaic Covenant. The first is found in the “if…then” proposition of the preamble. And the second is seen in the process of ratifying the covenant through a unanimous vote of the people. These facts demonstrate that the idea of government by the consent of the governed preceded the government of Rome by more than 1,500 years and the writings of John Locke by more than 3,000 years.

The idea that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” is a much more ancient idea than most historians are willing to admit. It predates Locke, Rome, and Athens. It is, in fact, the foundation of the only earthly government ever established by the direct hand of God. The idea of government by the consent of the governed came to our founders through the pages of Scripture.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Katie Erickson

“When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, ‘Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.'
'My father,' she replied, 'you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised, now that the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the Ammonites. But grant me this one request,' she said. 'Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.'
'You may go,' he said. And he let her go for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed. And she was a virgin.
From this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.” (Judges 11:34-40)

Last week, we read about the vow Jephthah made regarding the battle with the Ammonites. “And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31). Since God granted Israel victory in the battle, Jephthah had vowed to kill whatever (or whoever) comes out to meet him when he returned home.

Jephthah was blinded by the desire for victory, and we can pretty safely assume that he never thought it would be a close family member who he would have to sacrifice. But, his own daughter, his only child, was the one to walk through that door first. She had completely unknowingly brought disaster to her father and their family.

Because of this vow that Jephthah had made, likely foolishly, both the Ammonites and Jephthah’s family will experience bitter distress. Many Ammonites lost their lives in the battle, and now Jephthah had unintentionally vowed to kill his own daughter! This was a tricky dilemma, because it’s a sin to break a vow to God (Numbers 30:2), but in this situation it was actually a greater sin to fulfill it by killing a person (Exodus 20:13).

Amazingly, Jephthah’s daughter seems ok with what has to happen. Her father has to keep the vow that he made. We see a similar situation much earlier in Scripture, where Abraham needs to follow God’s command by sacrificing his only son, Isaac (Genesis 22). Isaac was a willing victim, though fortunately God stopped Abraham before he actually killed his son.

Later on in the New Testament, we see that Jesus is a willing victim for all of us. Because mankind sinned, the penalty of death needed to be paid for all of us. The only person who could pay that penalty fully was Jesus Christ. He willingly allowed Himself to be the ultimate victim, to be killed in a very violent death, so that we could be saved.

Jephthah needing to sacrifice his daughter, however, was not to save anyone from their sins. It was the result of a foolish statement that he had made in the heat of the moment. Jephthah desiring victory in one battle caused his daughter to lose her life! Jephthah did end up killing his daughter, as best as we can tell from the Bible. He felt that he had to do it because of his vow.

It would have been better to simply trust God for the outcome of the battle and not make this vow in the first place. An innocent life would have been spared, had Jephthah committed to fully relying on God, rather than trying to bargain with God and influence it himself.

Have you done this in your life? Have you made a rash decision or said things in the heat of emotion that you now regret? Our actions always have consequences (that’s God’s natural law), and our foolish actions almost always come with negative consequences. If we put our trust fully in God, then we will be following His course for our life. We wouldn’t have to worry about making stupid decisions if we’re walking in step with God and living the life that He calls us to live. Be careful about what you do and say, but always trust in God fully.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Ami Samuels

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

In Hebrews chapter 11, “By faith” is listed 22 times. By faith Noah built the ark. By faith Abraham obeyed and went, even though he didn’t know where he was going. By faith Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice. By faith the Israelites crossed the Red Sea on dry land. These people were all commended for their faith! They didn’t just have faith, they acted in faith.

Ephesians 3:20 says, “God can do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine.” If we believe this and believe that God is the creator of the universe and all things in it, why don’t we believe that God can feed the multitudes with the offering of our lives? Just like the little boy who offered his lunch of 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish in Matthew 14:13-21. Jesus fed the multitudes with the boy’s small offering. Jesus is the multiplier – he can feed the multitudes when we offer our talents and gifts for his purposes.

What is God calling you to do by faith? Start a Bible study? Start a ministry? Write a book? Take a mission trip? Become a missionary?

Martin Luther King said, “Faith is taking the first step without being able to see the stairway.”

What will you do by faith according to your gifts granted by God?

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.