HEROES OF THE FAITH
JEPHTHAH
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
FEBRUARY 19, 1984
JUDGES 11:30-40
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is today ruled by King Hussein from his royal city of Amman. More than 3,000 years ago, that same city was ruled by a different king. The city was then called Rabbath Amman and the king was the king of the Ammonites. The Ammonites were the great enemies of the people of Israel. They were the descendants of Lot, the nephew of Abraham. They should have been as family to Israel, neighbors and friends, but instead they chose to use their great military power to attack Israel. They sought to subdue and conquer Israel. The people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, and once again God raised up a man to deliver them. That man’s name was Jephthah. He was no ordinary man. In his youth he was called a bastard, and as an adult he was called an outlaw. His father was a Jew from Gilead. His mother was a prostitute. At a very young age, he was excommunicated from his Jewish community by his more respectable friends and relatives. He was not socially worthy, and he began to wander over the hills and deserts of Palestine. He was bitter, but he was strong, and he gathered men to himself and he began to lead them.
He made them into a little army and they began to raid and pilfer and loot the communities of the countryside. Jephthah became infamous. He became notorious. He was an outlaw. The people feared him, but they also strangely respected him, because he was a courageous leader. In a time of national crisis, when the Ammonites were about to crush the nation of Israel, by the will of God the leaders of Israel chose Jephthah as the commander of their armies.
Now, from the life of Jephthah, I have two short teachings this morning. The first teaching is this: God is a gracious God. He delights in giving good gifts to His children. The Greek word for grace is the word charis. It means “unmerited favor.” You see, God has done things for all of us, wonderful things, that we have not merited, we have not deserved, and we have not earned. It gives God great joy to bless us like that. The greatest gift He has given us, as Christians, is that gift of salvation which He has given by His grace.
Now, in the course of time, God came to a man named Jephthah. God had a gift for him, an expression of grace. God said, “Jephthah, I want to forgive you for all of your past. I want to give you a new start, a new life. I want to give you a new position in life. I want to make you commander of the armies of Israel. I want to give you victory over the Ammonites, and I want to make you judge and ruler of the nation of Israel itself.” Now, Jephthah could not possibly have earned or merited all of those wonderful things, but God, by His grace, was willing to give them.
Now, Jephthah at first did not understand God’s grace. He thought that somehow he had to earn, merit, or deserve God’s blessings. So, Jephthah did a very stupid thing. He made a very rash vow. He said, “Lord, if You will do all these things for me, here is what I will do. When I return victorious from the Ammonites, I will sacrifice the first person that comes out of the door of my house to meet me. I will offer that person up to You as a burnt offering.” Now, in our civilized world, it is very difficult for us to imagine how any man in any time could ever have made a vow like that. But 3,000 years ago it was a very primitive time, and the nations surrounding Israel practiced human sacrifice. This was true of the Ammonites themselves.
In 1978 when Barb and I were in Amman, Jordan, we saw an archeological dig where archeologists had unearthed a 3,000-year-old Ammonite building, and in that building archeologists discovered the charred, incinerated bones of Ammonite children that had been offered up as burnt offerings to the Ammonite god Moloch. Human sacrifices! They sacrificed their first born. It was in such a world that Jephthah lived, and even though the one true God, the God of Israel, had said that human sacrifice was an abomination in His sight, still, in that time and in that age and in that place, Jephthah thought that somehow human sacrifice was the greatest sacrifice. If he could offer a human life to the Lord, he thought he would somehow earn, deserve, and merit God’s blessing. But you see, no matter how much sacrifice we make, we cannot earn God’s blessing. We cannot merit His gifts. No matter how many good works we have, no matter what we do, we can’t deserve His blessings. His blessings are simply given freely and they must be received as a gift.
At the close of my senior year in high school, we had our senior prom and our graduation party. It was a very expensive week. We had to rent a tuxedo. We had to buy a corsage for our date. We had to have enough money to go to a very nice restaurant. That was for the senior prom, and then for the graduation party that same week our high school and a number of other high schools rented Disneyland for the entire night. But we had to buy tickets to Disneyland and we had to have enough money to be able to eat food all night. I didn’t have anywhere near that much money. I remember sitting in the family room of our house and wondering whether I was going to be able to go to the senior prom and graduation party.
My oldest brother, Gary, came into the room, and he had a gift in his hand—a $100 bill. He worked at a grocery store. He gave me that $100 bill. I said, “Gary, what’s this for?” He said, “It’s for the senior prom and for the graduation party.” I said, “Gary, I can’t take this. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to pay you back. I don’t have a job now.” Gary said, “Jim, I don’t want you to pay me back. I just want you to go to the senior prom and graduation party. It’s a gift.” In that moment, my brother Gary was very much like god. We’re never more like God than in those moments when we learn to give.
In the months that followed, I wanted to pay my brother back but he didn’t want me to because he got joy from giving that to me as a free gift. You see, God is like that. He receives joy by giving to us things we could never merit, things we could never pay back. The greatest expression of that giving, of that grace, is His gift of salvation and eternal life. We cannot earn salvation. We cannot earn eternal life. God came to Jephthah with a gift in His hand. It was not a $100 bill, but it was a gift of forgiveness of sin, a gift of a new life, a gift of a new position—commander of the armies of Israel. God offered him the gift of victory over the Ammonites and becoming ruler and judge of Israel itself. It was a gift that had to be received.
God has come to every single person in this world today with a gift in His hand, a great and precious gift—a gift of forgiveness of sins, a gift of a whole new life, a gift of a new hope and a new position. He offers the gift of becoming children of God, a gift of eternal life, a gift of Heaven itself. But it’s a gift that must be received. As with any other gift, it must be opened, and it takes a certain humility to receive that gift because you must admit that what’s more important than anything else in your life you received by no merit of your own. But He offers that gift through His Son, Jesus Christ, and we receive that gift of eternal life, that expression of His grace, as we ask Jesus Christ to come into our hearts.
I know you’ve all heard of Colonel Harland Sanders. He died recently. He will always be famous for Kentucky Fried Chicken—Colonel Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken. But the most important event in his life took place when he was 79 years old in Louisville, Kentucky, when he went into the Evangel Tabernacle and he heard the Reverend Waymon Rogers present a series of messages from the Book of Romans on the subject of grace. For the first time in his life, he learned what it meant to become a Christian, and that through His Son God has offered this free gift of salvation and eternal life. Colonel Sanders fell on his knees that night. He said, “Lord Jesus, come into my life,” and he received Christ as Lord and Savior and he accepted that free gift of grace. Harland Sanders said that throughout his life he tried to earn, merit, and deserve salvation. He had attended church services thousands of times. He had given 10% of all his money to the kingdom of God and he had done many good works, many good deeds, but somehow he knew that all of his righteousness was “as filthy rags before a holy God.”
Somehow he knew that he couldn’t quite earn or deserve salvation, and it was in that moment in Louisville, Kentucky, that he understood that what God offers He offers as a gift. You can’t pay it back. You can’t deserve it. You simply accept it when you receive His Son, Jesus Christ, as Lord and Savior. “God loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” The Bible says, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” God is a gracious God.
Secondly and finally, from the life of Jephthah we see that God is a merciful God. Even as God is gracious, so God is merciful. The Greek word for mercy is the world eleos and refers to the compassion of God whereby He does not give us punishment that we deserve. Grace, charis, is God’s willingness to give us the good things that we have not earned. Mercy, eleos, is God’s willingness to withhold the bad things that we do deserve. Now, even as Jephthah didn’t understand God’s grace at first, so he didn’t understand God’s mercy.
Most Biblical scholars agree that part of the reason that Jephthah offered a human sacrifice to the Lord was Jephthah not only wanted to earn or deserve God’s future blessings but Jephthah wanted to atone for his past sins. Somehow he thought he could atone for what he had done, but we cannot atone for our past sins. We cannot atone for our future sins. We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and we are desperately in need of mercy. Only Jesus Christ can atone for our sins. We are all in desperate need of God’s mercy. But Jephthah did not understand that. When he came home and his own daughter came out of the house, he wanted desperately to be released from that horrible vow, but he did not think that God would release him, and so he went ahead and took his own daughter’s life. He did not understand the compassion and the mercy of God.
God is willing to forgive the sins of any person who comes to Him in Jesus Christ. My father played handball for 30 years. My dad loved sports. He still does. So do my brothers and I. I don’t know whether my dad was a natural athlete, but I know he worked very hard at handball. He became very good. One year when I was very young, he won the Glendale City Handball Championship and I remember he brought home this beautiful trophy which portrayed a handball player.
It was a beautiful trophy. He brought it home and they put it on the shelf in the hallway of our home. I know I wanted to touch it and my mom and dad said, “No, you might break it.” They knew me pretty well. That was at nighttime. The next morning my father was at work and I went into that hallway and I just had to hold that trophy. I reached up and I grabbed that trophy, and as I was bringing it down, I dropped it. The arms fell off and the head just rolled right off the trophy. I knew that when my dad came home I was going to be in big trouble. I thought I was going to look like that trophy did on the floor. My dad came home that night and when he found out what had happened, I could see the anger on his face, and I could also see the disappointment on his face. He told me to go in the living room and I knew what that meant. He went and got the strap. He told me to bend over, grab my knees, and brace myself. There was a moment of anticipation as he brought the strap back and then a very strange thing happened—something my dad had never done before. He missed me on purpose, and I felt the breeze of that strap go right over my back. I turned around and there was kind of a forced smile on my dad’s face and he said, “Son, just don’t ever let it happen again.”
Well, my dad never won a trophy again, so… But you see, in that moment my dad showed mercy. The bad thing that I deserved he did not give me because he had mercy, and God is like that. He is willing to overlook all the sins in your life, and He can do that because Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for our sin. He’s willing to have mercy on your sin and on mine if we would but receive His Son as Lord and Savior.
We all desperately need the Lord’s mercy, and in that moment when we come to Jesus Christ we move, the Bible says, “from death to life.” We deserve death. The wages of sin is death. But you see, through God’s grace and mercy, instead of receiving death we receive eternal life itself through Jesus Christ. That’s why Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus and said, “But you He made alive when once you were dead in the trespasses and sins which you once walked, following the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, the spirit which is now at work among the sons of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh so that we were by nature children of wrath, just like the rest of mankind. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He has loved us, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up to sit with Him in the heavenly places, that in the coming ages He might show us the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you are saved through faith. It is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.” That is the grace and mercy given through Jesus Christ.
I would not be a faithful minister of the kingdom of Christ if I told you that every person in this world had received God’s grace and mercy. Every person in this world has not received God’s grace and mercy. God has offered it to every person in this world, but we must accept that offer and we must receive that gift, and we only do that when we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That’s the message of scripture.
This past Monday night (and with this we’ll close) Barb and I and Drew and Heather were sitting around the kitchen table and Drew and Heather were signing their Valentine cards. At their elementary school, each child is supposed to bring a Valentine card for every other child in the classroom. They didn’t used to do it like that. I know that when I was in elementary school we all took paper bags and we put our names on them and we taped them to the chalk rail in front of the class and you could give Valentine cards to anybody you wanted or you could not give them to anyone you wanted. Some kids got a lot of cards and other kids didn’t. You always felt kind of funny when some kid could barely carry his bag away he had so many cards.
But you see, they’ve solved that problem now. Every kid gives a Valentine card to every other kid. It’s not very personal, but nobody’s hurt. Well, Drew was signing his cards and Heather was signing her cards. They don’t address the cards because they’re just put at random in various people’s bags. They don’t even know who they’re giving it to. But Drew and Heather wanted to know what the Valentine cards said. Drew particularly wanted to know because he couldn’t read. He said, “Dad, what does this say?” I said, “Drew, that says ‘Be Mine.’” Drew says, ” Be mine? I don’t want to give that. What if some boy gets that? Or some girl I don’t even like?” So we discussed that for a while, and after a while Barb and I wound up going through all the Valentine cards and taking out every card that said ‘Be Mine’ so Drew wouldn’t have to use it.
We’re a little bit like that. I mean, we don’t want to just commit ourselves to anybody. But you see, God is very different than us. In fact, the Bible tells us that God has actually sent a Valentine to every single person in this world through His Son, Jesus Christ, and what He says to every person in this world is, “Be Mine.” And He means it, because He loves every single person on this Earth. So He has given everyone that Valentine in Christ which says, “Be Mine.” But you must accept it. You must be willing to give yourself to Him and to receive Him as yours. That’s what the gospel is all about. But in that moment when you accept Him and you receive Him, you walk into the realm of His grace and His mercy, receiving forgiveness of sins and that wonderful gift of everlasting life.
This is a Communion Sunday. In communion, we celebrate God’s grace and God’s mercy, that His body was broken for us and that, through Christ, His blood was shed for us that we might find forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. Before we have communion this morning, let’s just have a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, we thank You and we praise You for Your grace and for Your mercy. Lord, at this communion time, we look back. We remember what You’ve done for us. We remember that You lived on this Earth for us. You came into this world for us. You died for us. You allowed Your body to be broken and Your blood to be shed for us to pay the penalty for our sins. But Lord, at communion, we do not simply look back but we rejoice in the present—that You are alive now and You are with us now. We rejoice that You are with us in this time and through these elements You are with us in a special way. And Lord, also at communion we look to the future and we thank You and we praise You that one day we will see You face-to-face. In Your Word, You have told us that we are to partake of the bread and the cup until You come again. We look forward to that day. So, be with us and anoint us by Your Spirit as we partake of this meal. In Your name, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.”