LIFE LESSONS
JEPHTHAH
DR. JIM DIXON
JUDGES 11:29-39
JUNE 1, 2003
The Persian Gulf War began on January 17, 1991, and in a sense, it continues to this day. In Operation Desert Storm, it was Colonel William Post who was in charge of all supplies and provisions for the American troops. It was a huge job because there were 90,000 tons of supplies. Colonel William Post had a vast army of people under his command. They were in charge of distributing the supplies, and they were in charge of taking inventory of the supplies. Now, the Pentagon kept a record of all the supplies as they were offloaded in Kuwait. The Pentagon expected to receive from Colonel William Post an accounting of how those supplies were stocked and how they were distributed to the troops to make sure that none of the supplies were lost and that everything was accounted for.
This is kind of a humorous story that came out Operation Desert Storm. One day a message came from the Pentagon to Colonel William Post. It was a FAX and it said, “400 cases of grape jelly missing. Find the grape jelly.” He called one of his staff and he explained the problem and said, “Get to work. Find the grape jelly.” He didn’t think anything else about it until a week later when he got another message from the Pentagon. It said, “Urgent. 400 cases of grape jelly still unaccounted for. Find the jelly.” He called the staff person and the staff person said, “Hey, in the midst of so many tons of supplies, I haven’t been able to find this missing jelly. I need more help.” So, Colonel William Post assigned more people, more personnel. A week later he got another message from the Pentagon. “Very urgent. Grape jelly still missing. Find the grape jelly now!” He appointed still more staff, more people, more personnel to the task of finding the jelly. The subsequent week he received another message from the Pentagon. It said, “Critical. Highest priority. Find the jelly. It’s still unaccounted for.” Then he kind of lost it. He was tired of this. He wrote a message back to the Pentagon, and I quote: “I can unleash my army of personnel to find your jelly or I can use our personnel to supply our troops so they can win the war. I can’t do both. Tell me what to do.”
We live in a crazy world, don’t we? We really live in a crazy world, a world where it’s easy to lose your priorities. Even for the Pentagon in a time of war, easy to lose your priorities, to be more concerned with jelly than with winning the war, but that’s the kind of world we live in. Of course, our lives are the same. Many stresses. Many things unaccounted for. Lots of pressures and sometimes we lose our sense of priority.
Today we come to the person of Jephthah. From Jephthah, we have two life lessons. The first life lesson concerns this subject of priorities. What’s important? What really counts?
When we look at Jephthah, he was kind of a strange hero. He was born about 3100 years ago in the region of Gilead and his mother was a prostitute. She was a harlot. Jephthah, therefore, grew up with a social stigma attached to him. He was considered illegitimate. He was called many names and sometimes he was called a bastard. When he was fully grown, his half-brothers, the legitimate sons of his father, rose up and kicked him out of the family and banished him from the community. Jephthah fled. The Bible tells us he went to the land of Tob. Jephthah was a fierce fighter, a great warrior, and he had a brilliant mind for military strategy. He gathered around him all kinds of men, some of them unscrupulous, some of them unscrupulous henchmen. Some of them were robbers. Some of them renegades, but Jephthah led them and they became kind of famous and infamous—famous for their courage and their boldness and their strategy—but they were renegades.
It was a tough time in the land of Gilead The Gileadites were threatened by the Ammonites, and the Ammonites were formidable. The Gileadites were afraid. They were afraid that they could not win a war against the Ammonites and they had no supreme commander of their military forces. Who would lead them in battle? They were desperate and they thought of Jephthah, this renegade rebel leader out in the region of Tob. He was brilliant. He was courageous. Yes, he was a renegade, but the need was great and so the leaders of Gilead went to Jephthah. Though they had once banished him, now they go to him and they ask him to be the Supreme Commander of their armies.
Jephthah said, “I’ll do this on one condition. If I win this war with the Ammonites, then I am to be the absolute ruler in Gilead. I am to be the absolute ruler in Gilead and one of the Judges of Israel. The Gileadites were so desperate that they said, “Okay.” Now, Jephthah was also desperate. This was an amazing opportunity for him. It was an amazing opportunity for a kind 9f vengeance. He could rise above his legitimate brothers and he could rule the community that once banished him. It was an incredible career opportunity, an opportunity to ascend through the ranks, to attain great power, to attain great authority. A great career opportunity, and Jephthah was not willing to lose this battle. Jephthah prayed to the Lord and he made a rash vow. Jephthah said to the Lord, “If you’ll give the Ammonites into my hands and you allow me to win this victory, then whoever comes forth from the door of my house when I return victorious—that person shall be the Lord’s and I will offer that person up as a burnt offering.”
We should understand that this vow could not have pleased God. God hates human sacrifice. He makes that clear in scripture. Human sacrifice is an abomination to the Lord. Surely God would not have held Jephthah to this vow, but Jephthah did make the vow. Jephthah lived in a primitive time and he was a primitive man. He returned to his home and to his shock, his daughter came out of that door first to meet him. His only child. She came with timbrels and with dances, with music and dancing, and this was a traditional way for a daughter to greet a returning father.
We don’t know what Jephthah had been thinking. Who had he expected to come out of the door of his house? Certainly, he did not expect his daughter to come out of that door, and he tore his clothing and cried out in agony. Certainly, and hopefully, he didn’t expect his wife to come out of the door of his house. He probably thought that one of his countless many servants would come out of the door of the house first.
Of course, there is something of a dispute in the theological scholarly community. There are a few scholars who believe that Jephthah never sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering, that he simply offered her up in the service of God with a pledge to celibacy. But that’s a minority view. Most Bible scholars believe he actually did offer his daughter up as a burnt offering. Of course, his daughter said to him, “Father, if you’ve made a vow to the Lord, if you’ve opened your mouth to the Lord, let it be done to me in accordance with what has gone forth from your mouth. Only let this take place. Let me alone for two months that I might go in the mountains with my friends, and I might lament the fact that I will never be a mom, I will never be married, I will never have children.” After the two months, she returned to Jephthah and the Bible says, “He did to her according to the vow he had made.” A tragic, tragic story remembered in Israel for generations.
However, you interpret the story of Jephthah, there’s no doubt about this. This was a man who had his priorities messed up, so messed up that he was willing to put his own family at risk for the sake of his career, for the sake of his own advancement, willing to put the lives of people at risk and even the members of his own family at risk. He loved power more than people, and his career was more important to him, more valuable to him than the members of his own household.
Is that not a problem today? I mean, aren’t there people in this world, perhaps a few in this room, who love power more than people. Perhaps there are people in this room and certainly in this world, there are people whose careers are more important to them than their own family. This distortion of priorities. You want to know what counts? You want to know what is important in the sight of God? Your family counts. Your family is important. People count. People are important. Of course, nothing is more important than the kingdom of heaven. The Bible says, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven.”
I read a funny little ad that had been placed in the classified ads in the little town to Tucumcari, New Mexico. It’s a town of about 7,000 people. It’s in the farming community, an agricultural community. This man had placed an ad in the classified ads and this is what he put. “Farmer with 160 irrigated acres seeks marriage-minded woman with tractor. When replying, please send picture of tractor.” I think we can all agree, there’s a guy that doesn’t have his priorities quite right. You don’t want to marry a guy like that. We live in a world like that. We live in a world where people give their lives in the pursuit of things that really don’t matter. We live in a world where people value things of little importance and devalue things of great importance. This is the kind of world we live in.
I told the Elder Board a couple of weeks ago a story that I told a few of you years ago. It’s a story about a missionary who went to Africa. This missionary was kind of a “God and country guy” who sometimes got his nationalism mixed up with the gospel. He stood before this tribe of people in Africa and he said, “I come to you in the name of the greatest nation on earth,” and the whole crowd shouted “Hoosanga!” He knew the language but he’d never heard the word “Hoosanga” but the people seemed kind of excited and he continued on. He said, “I come to you from a nation where every single person in the nation has learned to love one another.” The whole crowd shouted, “Hoosanga!” Again, he didn’t know what it meant but they seemed excited and he was on a roll and he went on. He said, “The nation where I come from is where every single person treats other people in exactly the way that they themselves would like to be treated.” The crowd shouted, “Hoosanga!” He said, “If you will accept my message this morning, you will become great and you will become as great as the people that I represent in America.” The people shouted, “Hoosanga!”
He finished and felt pretty good about his message. He got together with the tribal chief. They took a walk. As they’re walking out through the fields and the jungle and he sees, in one of the fields, a bunch of cows. He notices them because they’re not like any cows he ever had seen in America. These cows have horns and they look very different than American cows. He says to this tribal chief, “Would you mind if I walk over and take a closer look at your cows?” The chief says, “I wouldn’t mind at all but be very careful where you walk because the hoosanga is everywhere!”
If you look in the Bible at the third chapter of Philippians, the Apostle Paul is explaining to the church at Philippi that in his life he has pursued many things, and in his life, he has accomplished many things and, in his life, he’s given his energy to the quest for many, many things. But he says he views all of these things now as “skubala” when compared, he says, with the surpassing value and worth of Christ. When compared with the worth of Christ and when compared with the value of knowing Christ and serving Christ and serving the people of Christ, everything else, Paul said, is skubala.
In your Bibles, the word skubala is rendered by different English words. Some render skubala with the English word “garbage,” some with the English word “refuse,” but the real meaning of skubala is “hoosanga.” That’s the real meaning of skubala. The word means hoosanga. The Bible tells us that most of us give our lives to the pursuit of what, in the sight of God, is nothing more than hoosanga, skubala. We wake every morning and we go through the day and go to bed at night and do it all over again the next day and we’re just pursuing hoosanga, things that really don’t count in the sight of God. We need to decide what counts. We need to understand what’s important. Christ is important, His kingdom supremely important, His people important, your family important, all people important as we take the gospel to people. But so many of the things that we give our life to are not very important in the sight of God.
It was Jesus who told the story of the rich man and his barns and how the rich man had prospered, and so much so that he had more grains and more crops, more goods, more possessions than he could put into the barns. And so, he tore down his barns, and Jesus said he built larger barns that he might put all of his stuff in the larger barns. Jesus said this rich man then said to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease. Eat, drink and be merry.” Jesus said this rich man was a fool. He said, “This very day his soul could be required of him and everything he’s accumulated. All that stuff. Whose would it be?” Jesus said, “So, shall it be with all who are rich towards themselves and not rich towards God. You have to make a decision whether you want to be rich toward yourself in life or whether you want to be rich towards God. I have to make a decision whether I want to be rich towards myself in life or whether I want to be rich towards God. I’ve got to decide what counts. Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and forfeits his soul?” What’s important? What counts? How’s it going with you in your spiritual life? How important is your soul to you? Have you made it less valuable, less important than other things more frivolous?
I read some time ago the story of Frederick VII who was the King of Spain. The year was 1808 when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Spain. In his nepotism, he put his own brother Joseph on the throne of Spain. He took Frederick VII and incarcerated him in this infamous prison called “The Place of the Skull.” For seven years, from 1808 to 1815, Frederick VII was in this cell in this prison. Frederick VII was allowed only one possession while he was in that cell for seven years. He was given a King James Version of the Bible. So, there he was in this lonely cell for seven years with the Bible. He was, historians tell us, a professing Christian and he had accepted Christ when he was young. So, seven years with the Bible. At the end of those seven years, Frederick VII was released and he returned to the throne of Spain but they went into the cell and found that he had scribbled on the walls of the cell. These are some of the things that he had scribbled after reading the Bible for seven years.
He wrote this on the wall. “33,214 verses in the Bible.” “774,746 words in the Bible.” “838,380 letters in the New Testament.” “The shortest chapter, Psalms 117.” Longest verse, Esther 8, 9.” Ezra 7:21 has every letter in the English alphabet except the letter “J.” He wrote that on the wall of his cell. John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the Bible. He went on and on and on. He spent seven years developing Bible trivia, seven years. Historians tell us that he went into that cell kind of a jerk, and they tell us he came out of the cell still a jerk. That’s how they view Frederick VIL No transformation of life after seven years with his Bible. He just used that time to accumulate statistical facts and to count these kinds of things. What a waste of time. I hope you understand … I mean, we look at that as so foolish and yet, how do you treat the Bible? How do I treat the Bible? How do we use it? Do we really think knowledge is more important than transformation? The Bible is all about transformation. It’s all about a changed life. God’s not impressed if you can memorize the whole Bible. God’s not impressed if you know every single fact and you know a million statistics about the Bible. God is not impressed. It’s all about transformation. Knowledge is for the purpose of character and for the purpose of productivity. It’s not a meaningful goal in and of itself.
I think sometimes in our lack of priorities in our life, we even put knowledge about character. Knowledge above fruitfulness, and we don’t understand the values, the things that God values. So, feed your souls. We need to feed our souls for the purpose of a changed life, becoming more like Jesus in order that we might serve Him, serve His people, serve our families, serve all people. That’s what it’s about for God.
In the year 1995, on December 20, Flight 965 left Miami, Florida. It was bound for Cali, Columbia. I think some of you know that that flight crashed into the side of a mountain, killing 160 people. Miraculously, four people lived and a dog also survived, but 160 people died. Through these last years, authorities have been tried to ascertain what caused this crash and they’ve pretty much determined that it was pilot error. The pilots had somehow programmed the flight computer to a beacon that they had already passed, and therefore the plane did a 180 and crashed right into the side of a mountain. Before the plane crashed, 9 seconds before the plane crashed, the verbal warning system began to say “Terrain, terrain. Pull up. Pull up.” The pilots had 9 seconds to rectify the situation. They discovered that in those 9 seconds, the pilots tried to reprogram the flight computer for maximum lift. They should have disengaged the flight computer and taken over the control of the plane manually. They made a bad decision. One hundred and sixty people died.
We live in a world where decision making is critical, and of course most of us will never in our entire lifetime have to make a decision so important and so quickly, but we all make many decisions. In the course of your life, you will make many more decisions and so will I. These decisions are so important. What’s most important is that we decide to value the things that God values. From this day forth, as long as we have life on this earth, we must choose to value those things that God values. That’s going to mean that you seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness. That’s going to mean that you value His people for Jesus said, “I’ll build My church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” That’s going to mean you value your family because, from the very beginning, God established the family and sanctified it. That’s going to mean you value all people and so much so, you give time, talent and treasure to see the Gospel go forth to the nations. There are a lot of things in life that you can give your time to and your talent and your treasure, but we have to decide what is most important to God. It’s all about priorities.
Before we close, there’s a second life lesson from Jephthah. Very briefly it has to do with discernment. Jephthah demonstrates the need to discern our enemies. When you come to Judges, chapter 12, there’s an amazing little story there. It’s a story about the Gileadites and a battle that they have with the Ephraimites. Both the Gileadites and the Ephraimites were Jews, but a war arose between them. Jew fighting against Jew. In Judges, chapter 12, we’re told that the Gileadites were led by Jephthah. He was their supreme commander and their ruler and he led them. He led them to victory over the Ephraimites. He conquered the Ephraimites.
In the aftermath of that war, many Ephraimites were seeking to escape across the Jordan River. We’re told that Jephthah placed a guard there and they were to identify and stop all Ephraimites, but how were they to identify them? They were all Jews and they all looked alike. Jephthah knew of a linguistic peculiarity that characterized the Ephraimite people. The Ephraimite people could not pronounce the “sh” sound. They could pronounce the “s” sound but not the “sh” sound. So, he gave a test word to the guards at the Jordan. When someone sought to pass, they would say, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If they said “no,” the guards would say, “Say the word “Shibboleth.” If the person said, “Sibboleth,” then they knew he was an Ephraimite because an Ephraimite could not say “Shibboleth.” An Ephraimite had to say “Sibboleth.” So, this was the way that Jephthah discerned the enemy.
You can look in your dictionary today, any one of your dictionaries at home, and you can look up the word “shibboleth” and you can see that it’s moved into our language, and it’s all based on Judges 12 and the life of Jephthah. The word shibboleth now refers to any test word, any password, used to discern the good guys from the bad guys, used to discern the enemy, if you will. The word shibboleth can refer to a criteria used for discernment.
As Christians living today, we desperately need discernment. We need to know the enemy. There’s a sense in which our shibboleth is the Word of God. Our test word is the Word of God. We test everything by the Word of God. We test everything by Holy Scripture. It’s through the scriptures that we know the enemy. The Bible tells us in Ephesians, chapter 6, verse 12, “We do not battle against flesh and blood, but we battle against the principalities and the powers, the world rulers of this present darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies.” This means that people are not our enemy. We do not battle as Christians against flesh and blood. I know it sometimes seems as though people are the enemy. I know that certainly now in America we view Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and all of the people of al-Qaeda as the enemy. Certainly, there’s a sense in which these people are enemies of America and more generally enemies of democratic liberties everywhere, but they’re not the ultimate enemy. The Bible would have us to understand that the ultimate enemy is a spiritual “entity of being” called the devil. Perhaps the devil has influenced those people we would deem to be enemies, but we should understand the devil is also seeking to influence us. He is the enemy.
This passage of scripture in Ephesians 6:12 speaks of “principalities and powers.” That’s a reference to fallen angelic beings. It speaks of the “world rulers of this present darkness.” The Greek word for world ruler is the word “kosmokrator” and that word literally means, “ruler of the world.” This is a title for Satan in the Bible. In John, chapter 12, verse 31, Satan is called “the ruler of this world.” In John 14, verse 30, he’s called, again, “the ruler of the world. In John 16, verse 11, again he’s called “the ruler of this world.” In 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 4, Satan is called “the god of this world.” Kosmokrator. But there’s another Greek word “pantokrator” which means “the ruler of all” or “the ruler of everything” and it can be rendered by the English word “almighty” and it’s used as a title for God.
In 2 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 18, pantokrator is a title of God, and that same word is used nine times in the Book of Revelation as a title of God, both of the Father and of the Son. But we should understand that Satan is the kosmokrator, the ruler of THIS world. He is the enemy, and he has hosts… he has legions of fallen spiritual powers that serve him. They are demonic hoards.
I know this is a tough message for the 21st century mind. I know that, in the midst of our enlightenment, we have grown in our knowledge of the physical world and in our knowledge of the physical universe, but we should not labor under the delusion or the illusion that knowledge of the physical world or the physical universe has anything to do with knowledge of the spiritual world. We can still be ignorant of the spiritual world.
I think sometime, when our knowledge of the physical world grows, it almost dulls us to our sensitivity to the spiritual world. We come to Christ and we come to the Apostles and we come to the Bible to understand the nature of the spiritual world and the nature of spiritual warfare. We are at war, and the Bible says there is a battle for the souls of people—men, women and children—and there’s a battle for your soul and there’s a battle for my soul. The enemy, the Bible tells us, is the devil.
Some years ago, I served at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora. One day a man came by the church and he stopped in the front office. He said, “I’m demon-possessed and I want to speak to Jim Dixon.” The gal in the front thought, “This has got to be a joke” and she buzzed my office. She said, “Jim, I’ve got a demon waiting for you.” The guy came back and talked to me and he said that he was possessed by an incarnation of a Hindu deity named Shukti and that this being that possessed him had revealed to him that he was to be the Antichrist but there was a part of his mind that was still free.” He said he had written a book revealing all the plans of the Antichrist and he wanted me to read the book. I listened to this guy and I really felt, I think from the Holy Spirit within me, that this poor guy was not demon-possessed. I felt like he was desperately needy, and I think to use clinical language, “kind of wacko.”
In the course of 30-some years in the ministry, I’ve had ministry situations with so many different types of people. I’ve seen people who I thought were oppressed by the demonic and I’ve seen a few people that I thought were possessed by demons. Certainly, this is a real possibility but I believe demon possession is rare. If you look at John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” you see that he named the capital of hell, “Pandemonium” and that word means, “chaos or confusion” but it literally means, “demons everywhere.” Pandemonium. Of course, I think in the capital of hell demons ARE everywhere, but I think in this world sometimes we give the demonic too much credit. I really believe demonic possession is relatively rare. Even in the Bible, demonic possession is relatively rare.
Satan can possess. Demons can possess. They can oppress. They can afflict and sometimes they do afflict us if only for a season. But understand this. The primary purpose of the enemy is to deceive us. His primary purpose is deception and he is seeking to deceive you as he is seeking to deceive me. When he was cast out of heaven as recorded in Revelation, chapter 12, he was called “the deceiver who has come to earth and will seek to deceive the world.” He is called the deceiver. Jesus called him “the father of lies,” and he lives to deceive you, to lead you astray. If he possesses somebody, it’s for the purpose of deception. If he oppresses somebody, his hope is deception. If he afflicts somebody, his hope is deception. It’s always about deception. He is seeking to lead astray. Satan knows people are easily deceived.
I read about a group in Waldport, Oregon, a small town of about 1500 on the coast of Oregon. A man came to the town, a strange man. Three hundred people came to hear him, a significant portion of the Waldport population, and this man claimed to be from another world, another planet. He said that his planet was conducting an exchange program, an educational exchange program. He said it was really a great opportunity. He said they would be sending some people here and they’ll learn some stuff here and you’ll have a chance to go to our world and you’ll learn some stuff. This is a wonderful educational exchange program opportunity. All you’ve got to do is sell everything you have and give me the proceeds. Twenty of those 300 people sold everything they had and gave him the proceeds. What a crazy world!
A lot of semi-intelligent people are also easily deceived. In the 19th century there was this brilliant mathematician named Dr. Richard Shallaye who was a professor at one of the largest universities in Europe and he bought three letters claiming to be ancient. One was a letter allegedly from Mary Magdalene to a Burgundian king. The other was a letter allegedly from the resurrected Lazarus written to the Apostle Peter. Another was a letter written by a Gaelic doctor to the Lord Jesus Christ. These letters were supposedly from the First century of course. They were supposedly authentic. He paid $30,000 dollars for them, and in the 19th century that was a ton of money for these three letters. He should have known… I mean, he was a brilliant mathematician, a famous professor. He should have known. Of course, the crazy thing was the three letters were written in French! Mary Magdalene didn’t speak French. Lazarus and Peter didn’t speak French. Jesus didn’t speak French. In fact, in the First century NOBODY spoke French.
It’s a crazy world. You might think, “Well, you know, I’m not easily deceived.” You might be thinking that. You might think you’re not easily deceived but remember we live in a nation where 51 million people read their horoscope every day—51 million people! Dave talked about superstition last week. How superstitious is this? 51 million people! There are 1700 daily newspapers in the United States of America and 1200 of them carry daily horoscopes. There are 25,000 full-time people employed as astrologers, 175,000 part-time people in America employed as astrologers. How can that be? Because people are easily deceived.
The American Astronomical Society has condemned astrology as absolutely bogus. There’s not a star in any of the constellations that can significantly affect this planet and it has nothing to do with whether or not you should go out to dinner on a Saturday night. But people are easily deceived and Satan knows that. He knows that people are easily deceived spiritually. He’s sold the world a bill of goods and he’s marketed the philosophy of materialism and he’s made people think, “Hey! If I could just get a little more, if I can just get enough, I’ll be fulfilled. It’s a lie. It’s all deception. “The love of money is the root of all evil,” the Bible says. It’s through this craving that many have wandered away from the faith and pierced their heart with many pains. It’s a lie. It’s a deception. He sold the world the philosophy of hedonism. “If I can just get a little more pleasure in my life, a little more comfort, I’ll find fulfillment.” It’s just a lie. Just a lie. He sold the world a philosophy of ascensionism for he said in his heart in the dawn of time, “I will ascend above the throne of God.” He sold his philosophy of ascension to the world. People seek power.
We’re supposed to be seeking service. We should only seek power if it enables us to serve God better, serve people more, but we live in a world where Satan has deceived. Jephthah was deceived. He sought power and he sought ascension and it was deception. His enemy that day on the Jordan River was not the Ephraimites. His enemy was not even the Ammonites. His enemy was the devil. The devil seeks to deceive. We need discernment. Our shibboleth is the Bible. Test everything. Test it all by the word of God. Let’s close with a word of prayer.