The Book
of Judges, Chapter 10.
Now, the very amount of space that's given
to the life of Jephthah suggests that there
must be some spiritual significance to this man's
life, and not only the space that's given
to it, but by contrast to the number
of judges and the short number of verses
and space that is given to them to
come between Abimelech and Jephthah.
In Chapter 10, we have a man named
Polamention, and he receives two verses.
The emphasis is upon his family background and
names of his family, and then the fact
that he judged Israel for 23 years.
Two verses.
Then, three verses are given to Jeor, and
he judged Israel 22 years.
He appears to have been a man of
wealth, and he judged Israel and brought peace
and prosperity in Gilead, which is going to
be the object of our attention in just
a few moments.
So, it would appear that God has chosen
to quickly pass over the 55 years of
span of time, and then move over and
give some consideration in detail, 59 verses, to
this man Jephthah.
See, the count actually begins in verse 6
of Chapter 10, and goes all the way
through Chapter 12 and verse 7.
It is divided into two sections, and that
is the sorrowful declension and the strange deliverer.
In verse 6, we begin our reading.
Verses 6 through 18 draw our attention to
this very sad circumstance.
We are passed over two judges, and the
emphasis being on this man and we shall
see early that he's being held in contradistinction
to Abimelech, but at the same time noting
that there are some curious things that are
happening now concerning the judges that did not
characterize the earlier judges.
So, there is a gradual decline being recorded
for us, and quite obviously the character, the
strength, the importance and the general stature of
the deliverer himself is beginning to go down
in each of these accounts.
The children of Israel did evil again in
the sight of the Lord, and served Balaam
and Asheroth, and the gods of Syria, and
the gods of Zion, and the gods of
Moab, and the gods of the children of
Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and
forsook the Lord and served him not.
There's a sevenfold account there, seven of the
idolatrous practices, but interestingly enough, in verses 11
and 12 we see a sevenfold deliverance from
a captivity.
The god's people had entered seven times into
idolatry, and seven times they were disciplined, fell
into an oppression, and seven times they were
delivered.
If nothing else, we see the importance that
God is putting in the word of God,
and in this particular era, that he will
and must discipline waywardness amongst his people, and
if it becomes our persistent character, and if
we insist on malpractice or abuses after we
have been delivered and experienced something of his
power, it suggests to us that God is
going to lengthen the discipline, intensify the discipline,
not toward a punitive measure alone, but the
thought would be that you and I might
glean from it, and mature and grow spiritually.
So, we have the affliction in verses 6
to 14, the actual condition, the awfulness of
their idolatry from verses 6 to 8, and
then the aim that God has in this,
in this severe dealing with them.
We read here of an oppression that exceeds
anything.
The Ammonites were cruel people.
Something of this is stated.
You might want to look at it in
1 Samuel 11, verses 1 and 2, they
are a statement as to the wickedness, almost
but completion, of vile, atrocious behavior on the
part of these Ammonite people, characteristic of the
cruelty of those that are not God's people,
and they have fallen into their hands.
Verse 8, that year they vexed and oppressed
the children of Israel eighteen years.
The word vexed is unusual.
Mr. Darby translates it crush.
The first time it's been used in such
a fashion regarding these oppressions, God's people are
getting deeper and deeper into difficulty because of
the perpetuation of their self-indulgence, their inability
to learn from their historical dealings with God,
and God then intensifies his discipline, not unlike
a parental act.
Verbal correction when they're small, a light tap
on the hand, and increasing severity as the
child goes on and practices until it realizes
that it must be corrected and behave itself
in some fashion, whatever the family problem is.
Well, God is doing the same nationally amongst
his own, and in verse 10 we read,
and the children of Israel cried unto the
Lord.
This is the beginning of their repentance.
We have sinned against thee, both because we
have forsaken our God and served Baal.
Now, God, through this experience, has drawn out
of the people a clear-cut confession of
their sin, and the Lord said unto the
children of Israel, Did not I deliver you
from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, and
from the children of Ammon, and then listing
each of the deliverances?
Yet in verse 13 he comes back, Yet
you have forsaken me, and served other gods.
Wherefore, I will deliver you no more.
A strong faith I have now given you
up.
Go, and cry unto the gods which you
have chosen.
Let them deliver you in the time of
your tribulation.
Reminding ourselves of something that Gideon's father said
to the men of Baal.
Let God, or let your God, deliver him,
and take care of my son if he's
done wrong.
And, they come back to the same reasoning
here, but God is now going to be
touched by the cry of the people with
a sense of utility and a grief and
a deep burden of heart.
The children of Israel said unto the Lord,
We have sinned.
Why did God press this conviction?
In order that, hopefully, that they might ultimately
draw around to the place and come to
the end of themselves.
Sometimes it is, in truth, not sufficient for
the glib confession, for the so-called confession.
Lord, forgive me.
It's like the man that walks through the
house and steps on everybody's feet saying, I'm
sorry to everyone, but he touches every single
person all the way back, and on his
way out he'll do the same thing.
He's not any more sorry, he's just irritated
that you're in his way.
And, some of us have a very glib,
casual way of saying, Lord forgive me my
sins.
Now, that's not what confession is, and sometimes
God needs to burden our soul and convict
us that we will see our sin and
literally say the same thing about our sin
that God does.
If God calls it anger, then please don't
call it an impatient temperament.
Admit to God that you're angry.
If you've had a doperous thought, don't ask
the Lord to forgive you for your mind
wandering.
We've not fooled anybody but ourselves.
If we say we have no sin, we're
deceiving ourselves, and God wants us to have
an open, honest confession, and these persons are
really burdened.
We have sinned.
Do thou unto us whatever sinneth could unto
thee.
Deliver us only, we pray thee, this day.
And then, on their own, without the initiative
or provocation from God, they put away the
strange God and serve the Lord.
They've gone back to worshiping God with no
guarantee of his deliverance, but they have genuinely,
in their confession, meant business with God, and
his soul was grieved for the misery of
Israel.
The New American Standard Bible says, he bear
the misery of Israel no longer.
God could just not bear it any longer
to see what his people were going through.
They had gone through a severe chastening, but
the problem stood before them.
The children of Ammon gathered together in a
camp in Gilead.
There they had the military encounter, and somehow,
in their own initiative, they set up a
form of defense in some fashion.
They've gone out as far as Mizpah, and
there they put an alignment.
They assembled themselves together in a camp in
Mizpah, and now they're ready for conflict, but
they have no leader, they do not have
the assurance of God's provision, and in a
sense of futility, I imagine, in a sense
of anxiety, the elders of Gilead get together
and make a decision.
They need to choose a leader.
This man that they choose is a strange
man, indeed.
He bears the mark of unusual power, the
presence of the Spirit of God, and yet
confusion, contradiction, ill-advisedness with his mouth, ill
-tempered.
We could never, by any stretch of our
imagination, suggest that he is truly a spiritual
person, and yet he has spiritual power.
And I am sure we don't have to
go too far for illustration.
Many of us have been heartbroken at the
degree to which God can use an individual
and then possibly he himself to mark with
such cruelty.
There is quite a distinguishable difference between the
gift and the man.
Quite a difference between what we do in
our service, and in our activities, and what
we are in ourselves.
Our work, our service, and our truth that
we bear in the sense of our service
to God is one thing, and yet the
truth that is conceived by the Spirit of
God through abiding in Christ may well be
lacking, and this is the type of thing
that we see in Jethro.
And it's not uncommon to see this in
the Reformers.
Remember, we suggested to ourselves that it's possible
that Abimelech might be a foretelling of the
Roman oppression, and the potpourri system, and the
four priestshood, and all the terror that came
down through the Roman church.
So, if that's so, it's not difficult to
see in Jethro some of the contradiction that
characterized the great Reformers and the Reformation movement.
It was division, it was contradiction, there was
great strength of a man, great power, character,
and yet, on the other side, almost unbelievable
statement contradictory to basic Christian grace and love.
And so, the Reformers are suggested, and we're
coming toward, by Jethro's period of time, we're
coming toward the end of the church's history,
if this is indeed reasonable to say it's
a prophetic picture.
Now, let's look at Jethro himself.
We draw to our attention some things about
the man.
Verses 1-28 of chapter 11 bring to
us the man himself.
In Shakespeare, there's a phrase that comes out
of Hamlet that says, there's a divinity that
takes our ends, roughs you them as we
will.
Somehow God overrules in very truth.
We feel that we are forming our lives,
and we do, and we respond, but God
is overruling in these matters, and men are
doing what they can, but God is still
going to raise up and accomplish his end.
Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of
valor, and he was the son of a
harlot, and Gilead begat Jephthah.
Gilead's wife bear his sons, and his wife's
son grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah
and said unto him, thou shalt not inherit
in our father's house, for thou art the
son of a strange woman.
And Jephthah fled from his brethren, and drove
to the land of Pov, which is about
80 to 100 miles northeast.
And there were gathered three men to Jephthah,
and went out with him.
Apparently, he had some kind of a marauding
party.
He can't pass a judgment what he was
doing.
He may have been harassing other people's enemies
of God, even as David did during his
retreat.
We don't know what he was doing, but
he was certainly disowned by God's people.
He was rejected.
There's no divine appointment.
There is no call by God.
There is not the Lord raising up a
judge, but rather, we see in verse 5
and verses 7 through 11, again and again,
the phrase is the elders of Gilead, the
elders of Gilead.
Men have come to see that they need
to choose their leader.
Prior to Abimelech, there was no choosing of
a leader.
God raised up the leader, and they were
dependent upon God, and they cast themselves upon
God.
Now, with Abimelech's arrival, and his self-assertion,
and God's crushing, humiliating death, and setting him
aside, now the people seem to feel that
the general spirit of a king or a
ruler for some kind of a control is
important to have, and we mustn't wait upon
God.
We need to do it ourselves.
So, they begin to select this man.
He's a cast out, he's disapproved.
This is an unfair stigma put upon him
because of his parents' sin, but nonetheless it
stands against this man Jephthah.
And it came to pass in the process
of time in verse 4 that the children
of Ammon made war against Israel, and it
was so that when the children of Ammon
made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead
went to fetch Jephthah out of the land
of Ptah.
Come, be our captives.
Remember the parable of the trees?
Come, reign over us.
Come, be our captives, that we may fight
with the children of Ammon.
And Jephthah said unto the elders, did not
you hate me and expel me out of
my father's house?
Now, the very language suggests that his own
brothers are now the elders of Gilead.
That's remarkable of a song, and if it's
not exactly so, which I have no way
of knowing, then it certainly is implied that
the elders joined his brothers in evicting this
young man from the household.
Did you not hate me and expel me?
Then why are you come down unto me?
Why am I in distress?
Why are you doing this?
Why do you turn to me now?
He's going to rub their noses a little
bit in their problem.
The elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, therefore
we turn again to thee now that thou
mayest go with us, fight against the children
of Ammon, and be our head over the
inhabitants of Gilead.
If you bring me home again to fight
against the children of Ammon, and the Lord
deliver them before me, shall I be your
head?
Now, he's not insisting on it exactly like
the bramble, but he is assuring himself that
there is going to be a second reaffirmation
that I am going to be your leader.
I'm not coming back and being humiliated again.
I'm not going to tolerate that kind of
abuse.
Sometimes we can be unkind unnecessarily with our
brothers, and that lingers in the back of
the mind.
It's so wounding, and it prevents real freedom
in the service of God.
The elder said, this will do.
Everything's fine.
The Lord witnessed between us.
Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and
the people made him head, captain over them,
and Jephthah uttered all his words before the
Lord in this time.
Now, he has been officially accepted and enthroned,
we might say, as their leader, their own
choice.
There are some qualities in this man, and
we mustn't overlook them, and I think if
anything else we can see the strangeness, the
inequity, the lack of balance.
In the earlier deliverers, there was a singularity
and a commitment to God, and God did
not take time to show us their weaknesses.
When we come to Gideon, his weakness and
his failure is shown at the end of
his life.
Here, at the very outset, we can see
that there is an erosion of goodness, of
quality, of character.
There is failure in this man, but he
is a man of valor, he is a
man of worth, he is a man that
has a great comprehension of the nation of
Israel and their history, and he is a
man that does not want violence and warfare.
He is the first deliverer who's caught by
sending out messengers in verse 12 to the
enemy, the Ammonites, and between verses 12 and
28 he tries to negotiate a peace.
Now, it's an unreasonable and almost impossible job
to effect, but he tries to effect this
end.
He tries now, and he's working.
He sends out the messengers, he reasons with
them, he tells them that others haven't done
this, and he begins to deal with them,
and you should really read that, because if
nothing else, it tells us that this man,
Jephthah, has a grasp of a nation's history.
He has a dealings with God.
It is no wonder, in reality, that God
is able to go down deep into the
inequity of his life and the lack of
balance in his behavior, and record him in
Hebrews chapter 11, verses 32 to 34.
He is listed amongst the great worries of
David and Samson and Jephthah and Barak, but
the important thing in his life, the thing
that we would like to draw some lessons
from and observe with a little bit of
care, is what happens just prior to the
battle.
He assures these people that even though they
have elected him as their leader and promised
to do this, it will be the Lord
that will deliver him and deliver the nation,
and that's seen back in verses 8 and
9.
The Lord, if I am your head, the
Lord will deliver.
Now he starts, and he is ready.
The king and the children of Ammon did
not listen to the words of Jephthah, the
efforts to negotiate a peace, some kind of
a settlement without war, and then in verse
29, the spirit of the Lord came upon
Jephthah, and in divine prerogative God has accepted
this weaker vessel.
Hardly God's choice, but the people leaning upon
God have made their own choice, and God
has accepted this vessel, and now God raises
up the vessel, and he's going to make
use of this man.
The spirit of the Lord comes upon him.
Now, this has only been said twice before,
Ophniel and Gideon, and now Jephthah.
It shall come up again in a curious
fashion in the life of Samson, which we
shall see, Lord willing, tomorrow.
The spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah.
He passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and over
Mishpa against Gilead.
From Mishpa of Gilead, he passed over into
the children of Ammon.
He's ready for conflict, but he is not
secure in himself.
The enabling of the Holy Spirit of God
does not make a man spiritual, it gives
him the power, and there's difference between power,
external power which we might say in our
age we're familiar with, gifts, and real spirituality.
He could not say that he's a spiritual
man.
And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord,
and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver
the children of Ammon into my hands, then
it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of
the doors of my house to meet me,
when I return in peace from the children
of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's.
I will offer it up for a burnt
offering."
The word burnt offering is an offering that
ascends.
He's going to offer whatever has come out
of his home after the battle unto God.
It's hard to imagine that he really thought
an animal was going to come out.
As the story goes on, it's a sad
revelation of an impatience and a rashness of
his mouth.
Let me read to you an excellent commentary
by Micah in chapter 6.
Micah 6 and verse 6, wherewith shall I
come before the Lord, and bow myself before
the high God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings
of calves of a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin
of my soul?
Then the answer comes back, He hath showed
thee, O man, what is good, and what
doth the Lord require of thee but to
do justly, to love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God?
God's standards have always been the same.
The commitment of ourselves, the yieldedness of our
disposition, the surrender of our will, whether it's
in the old testament or in the new.
God wants your affection.
He wants our intelligent affection.
We study the words, and understand that we
be knowledgeable, well-taught, and then yield our
heart and affection to what God has designed
for us.
But here, with impertinence, impatience, lack of faith,
rashness of mouth, he makes a vow before
the Lord.
The book of Ecclesiastes says, Be not rash
with thy mouth, and let not thy heart
be hastened to vow.
Many of us, at one time or another,
have made vows.
We have pledged ourselves.
We have committed ourselves before God.
There were laws in the nation of Israel.
Numbers chapter 30 gives us a very important
law.
Here, the vow was made by Jephthah.
He stood before God and vowed a vow,
and pledged himself that he would give to
God whatever came out of hell.
That was a very unwise thing to do,
but there was no one there, nor could
anyone stop him from that vow.
Now, it might have been that he was
thinking of Leviticus chapter 27, where you would
make a vow to the Lord, and make
a pledge, and be given a variety of
things recorded in Leviticus 27 of different ways
that you could pledge or give certain things
to God, and God would receive those things.
But, in the book of Numbers chapter 30,
there is something that needs to be drawn
to our attention that we can see the
importance of our words.
We have been studying in the book of
James the importance of our words, because words
are the expressions of our inner person, and
my mind must be my controlling factor.
I must never allow my body or my
soul to control my body and my person
in my life.
I must be.
If I'm going to pray, I pray with
understanding.
If I'm going to sing, I sing with
spirit and understanding.
And, if we make a vow, if we
pledge ourselves and commit ourselves in some fashion,
a man must be a man of his
words.
The book of Numbers chapter 30 tells us
that if a man makes a vow, he
is irrevocably committed to that vow.
There's no way out.
Whatever he says, he is committed to.
However, God puts the umbrella of protection over
the woman, and if she makes a vow,
and her husband or father overhears her, he
can negate the vow and ask her to
take it back, and thus protect her.
But, no boy has that protection.
Why?
Because God has given headship to the man.
God has given responsibility of leadership to a
man, and we men need to be men
of determinate, mature, wise character that our words
convey our spirit, and therein shall be our
strength.
Your strength is not in the number of
times you can press 150 pounds over your
head.
Your strength is not in your capacity to
go through a grueling game of football and
come out on the other end and tear
down a goalpost.
That shall soon pass.
Young men, your strength is in your inner
character, where your spirit and your respect of
God and your value of others around you
cause you to be a person who seeks
yes or no.
A man good as his word.
If one of the elders of the church
says we need to have the lawn mowed,
then learn to say nothing if you have
no intention to mow the lawn, or else
say, I'll do it and I'll get it
done by Saturday, and then do it no
matter what happens.
Let it be known that whenever you say
anything, it is absolute true and going to
be carried through of great importance.
It shall become the securing, stabilizing factor when
you're a young man in a married experience,
and the woman is looking for security and
strength and protection, and no matter how much
money you bring in, she'll need to be
able to have confidence in what you say
and your tender protective care for her.
The importance of a vow is reiterated again
in Deuteronomy 23, and here is a man
that makes a brash statement.
So important is this arena of thought that
the whole battle toward which this whole story
is supposedly directed constitutes two verses, and that's
all we find of the battle.
Verse 32 and verse 33.
The enemy was attacked, the enemy was destroyed.
The battle techniques, the stratagems, the victory, the
manner, all is set aside.
Now we must quickly come back before our
minds are lost.
God's people had an epiphany that pushed himself
before them.
Now they have made the bad choice themselves,
and now we have to carry this thing
through and see where real leadership rests.
And Jephthah came to Mizpah and sat under
his house, and behold his daughter came out
to meet him with tindles and dance.
She was his only child.
Beside her he had neither son nor daughter.
No one to perpetuate his name, no one
to inherit his estate, no one to sit
back and enjoy the richness and the prestige
of being ultimately restored as a leader amongst
God's people.
The two-and-a-half tribes had made
their choice.
They stayed on the eastern side, and they're
the ones that have gone into this oppression.
They're the first ones that go into idolatry.
They're the first ones that are absorbed.
God's people that drag their feet and don't
want their spiritual inheritances enterral themselves.
To be in fellowship with God's people and
enjoying the fellowship of God's people is so
important.
And here's Gilead now in a desperate condition,
and Jephthah wants so much to have enjoyment,
and he has chipped away at everything and
heartbroken because now he must fulfill his vow.
He is bound to it, and most remarkably
as we read the story, we find that
his only daughter, loving and enjoying, exhilarating in
his return, there must have been a very
charming and warm bond between that father and
daughter because she accepted her father's vow without
questioning, without arguing.
There was something that would teach us that
she was literally offered as a burnt offering,
plain and consumed in fire.
Although this man has the potential for doing
such things we see a little bit later,
and is not without a quick temper, yet
I really don't feel for myself that this
is what the portion teaches.
She was to become an offering, and she
became an offering.
She would then be committed to a celibate
life.
She would live unmarried without the privileges or
blessings of family, and perpetuating just his name,
or inheriting his estate, and merely serving the
Lord there in the temple and amongst God's
people.
This is a blow to her, and she
has privilege to be released and bewail her
virginity, and then came back and was committed
to this life.
Verse 39, and it 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 knew no man, and it was a
custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel
went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah
the Gileadite four days in a year.
First the man, then the vow, and whether
there's any connection or not, then the strife.
This must have been a difficult experience, as
we learn nothing else.
Men, be careful what we commit ourselves to.
It's no wonder that the apostle Paul urges
us to be our words be yea and
nay.
Be careful about taking vows and committing and
pledging ourselves.
Now, this does not mean if we are
called into a court of law that we
can bear a testimony and vow to tell
the truth.
I don't believe that's the lesson for this
course, but rather to commit ourselves and some
pledge to God for something we shall do,
we will be bound to it.
But, ladies, although you seldom come into the
benefit of it, think of what God has
provided for his people.
God has designed that the father or the
husband should protect his family, and with that
kind of love and care it is another
testimonial to God's interest in the woman, and
his protection and care over her under his
design.
Now, how markedly we men have failed as
ever, but men we have a deeper commitment.
You see how the weight of responsibility, what
we think and what we say and what
we do, we are answerable for, and so
thus signifies your role of head chef, and
thus the deeper need of a woman that
can be a help meet for you.
Remarkable how carefully integrated Holy Scripture is to
bring across very simple, but important truths.
And Ephraim gathered themselves together.
Ah yes, Ephraim.
They had been blessed by Jacob, they harassed
Joshua, they irritated Didion, and now they're back
again.
They're petty little spirits.
They gathered themselves together and went northward and
said to Jephthah, and who are they?
They're on the other side of the river.
They're no problem.
They weren't involved.
They had no need.
The delivery was over.
Wherefore passest thou over to fight against the
children of Ammon, and did not call us
with thee?
We will burn thy house with fire.
Ah, it's great to have brethren like this.
They come in different forms, they say different
things, but you understand.
You know the spirit right away.
And Jephthah said unto them, the soft answer
of Didion that they were expecting possibly.
Oh no, there's no vacillation here.
I and my people were at a great
strife with the children of Ammon, and when
I called you, you delivered me not out
of their hands.
And when I saw that you delivered me
not, I put my life in my hands
and passed over against the children of Ammon,
and the Lord delivered them into my hands.
Wherefore then are you come up to me
to say to fight against me?
Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of
Gilead, and fought with Ephraim.
The men of Gilead mowed Ephraim, because they
said you Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among
the Ephraimites and among the Manassites.
Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before Ephraimites,
and it was so that when the Ephraimites
were escaped, they said, let me go over,
that the men of Gilead said, art thou
an Ephraimite?
And he said, nay.
Then he would say unto him, say Shibboleth.
And he said Shibboleth, for he could not
train to pronounce it right.
Then they took him and flew him at
the passages of Jordan, and there fell at
that time of the Ephraimites forty and two
thousands.
And Jephthah judged Israel six years."
Six years!
That's all.
Why all that bulk of material?
To convey the importance of the temperament of
leadership.
He was a man that's not been called
of God.
The people have chosen him.
He is qualified.
God, in grace, comes to send.
He is impatient with a rash vow.
He brings dissension and hurt to his own,
and now he's out with a sword and
he'll slay 42,000 men.
He's not the man for real leadership, but
God will use a weaker vessel.
The people have chosen him.
Now you have to deal with them.
You pick them, you live with them.
God picks them, and there's peace and rest
among God's people.
God passed over the quiet, serene years of
Polla and Jair.
Why?
That he might show us the tumult and
confusion that comes when we begin to assert
our will and become impatient with God.
Jesus speaks with those to whom we look
for leadership.
Man of character, truthfulness, maturity, godliness, yield ourselves
to those that handle the word of God
in such a way that our spirits are
melted and fed and matured and grow.
The confusion and strife and the things of
the world are stripped away, and gradually we
begin to mature and grow in our lives
as leadership under the sweet balm that God
has provided, the ministry of the Holy Spirit
by the word of God.
Godly, patient, tender example.
This is what God is still looking for.
Many varied lessons, not the least of which
we men must be careful how we commit
ourselves before God.
The strife and the confusion.
If a man couldn't say a word in
the right way, cut him down.
Pity the poor Gileadite that, just with a
little tongue-slide, he got slaughtered, too.
Can you imagine the civil war that we're
at the threshold of?
Kill the man.
The next man we find in the next
few chapters, he starts burning down everything he
can find.
He gets grand help, wonderful deliverance, and more
damage and destruction to God's people than he
ever performed on the enemy.
This is the confusion that comes when we
fail to confess our sins.
Genuine repentance, and a humble request for God
to work in our midst.
I pray that God will graciously allow some
of these very simple thoughts to bring blessing
to our souls.
Christ's like Carrick.
Do you remember our Lord?
He was accused of being illegitimate.
Do you remember our blessed Lord?
He had a vow.
His vow was to do his will.
Our blessed Lord never brought strife, but rather
that quiet, serene, loving, attentive care for his
own.
The Spirit of the Lord came upon him,
and he healed and ministered and restored.
And so, Jesus is quite a striking contrast
to our blessed Savior, and you and I
have been called not to be like Jesus,
but to set our sights and our affections,
and to begin to mirror some of the
beauty and the grace and the love of
our Lord Jesus Christ.