Every now I catch myself telling my kids some story without fully remembering the end of that story. And I’ll look up at my wife, who is frantically shaking her head “no,” because she remembers that story. And her internal filter is saying, “Not age appropriate!”
There are certain stories in Scripture that seem to scream “not age appropriate.” For very good reasons, they aren’t the ones chosen to be in children’s Bibles…because they’re deeply unsettling. The story of Jephthah is one such story.
Jephthah was one of the judges in Israel, but what makes his story so disturbing and tragic was the way he mixed some of God with some of his own ideas. He saved Israel from their oppressors, but in the process, he sacrificed his own daughter—literally, put her on an altar and burned her alive.
It can be hard to know just what to do with a story as heinous as this. We may be inclined to rush past it. But we had better not, because Jephthah has four timely warnings for all of us.
1. We are far more influenced by our culture than we realize.
Jephthah didn’t realize it, but most of his outlook on God and life was shaped by the culture he was in. He knew enough from God’s Word to lead Israel boldly into battle, but he also didn’t flinch to promise human sacrifice as a way of ensuring military victory.
Jephthah was desensitized to violence, so much so that killing his own daughter seemed like the obvious price to pay for success. It wasn’t some idea Jephthah cooked up in his own head, though: child sacrifice was precisely what the surrounding nations did to please their gods. So right there, mixed in with real devotion to the one true God, is a practice indebted to pagan worship.
We might shake our heads at Jephthah, but we have to realize that we do the exact same thing. We mix a little bit of the gospel with a little bit of our culture, and the result—though natural to us—is just as toxic as Jephthah’s faith. Our culture is not as advanced as we might think. We just worship different gods.
2. Our idolatry has devastating effects on those around us.
The impurity of Jephthah’s faith cost a lot of people, including his daughter, dearly. And while our idols of choice are different, our idolatry has equally devastating effects. Sadly, the ones that suffer most are usually the most vulnerable and weak among us.
Consider, for instance, that 1 in every 3 kids in the U.S. grows up in a single parent home. Why? Because one of the parents—or both—decided that their desires were more important than what was best for the family.
In Wake County alone, there are an average of 23 abortions every day. Why? Because we would rather end a child’s life than have that child impact ours.
Our appetite for pornography has created a sex industry in which the average age of the girl entering it is 13 years old. Why? Because we would rather have sexual gratification than think about what it’s doing to anyone besides us.
Upwards of 30 million people, mostly teens, have been diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia. Why? Because we have exalted the idol of the perfect figure, crushing any who fail to fit it.
Idolatry always kills. Our 21st century idolatries are not nearly as sophisticated as we’d like to think they are.
3. God’s grace is a hard thing to grasp.
Jephthah made a stupid vow to God because he wanted to ensure success. He thought that by negotiating with God, he could get God on his side. In other words, he was still operating under a system of works.
Grace has never been easy for us to grasp. Works-righteousness, as Martin Luther said, seems to be hardwired into us. When we allow our hearts to go unchecked for even a moment, they run back to works, to religion. We make promises to God, hoping that we can strike some kind of deal.
But the doctrine of grace says that God won’t make deals. The only trade he’s willing to make is his righteousness for our absolute surrender. It’s so simple, yet it’s so hard for us to grasp. As Luther said, “The law says ‘do,’ but it is never done; the gospel says ‘believe,’ and it is already done.”
4. We need a better Judge.
This is a recurring them in the book of Judges. Jephthah was a savior of Israel, but a terribly broken savior. And he, like all the other judges, points us to Jesus, the perfect Savior who was broken for the broken.
Jesus was driven from his brothers, like Jephthah. He was “despised and rejected by men.” But while Israel ran to Jephthah, we didn’t run to Jesus. He ran to us when he could bear our sufferings no longer.
Jephthah believed he could find favor with God through extreme sacrifice. Jesus offers us favor with God as a free gift, because the most extreme sacrifice has already been paid.
Jephthah started his deliverance with diplomacy, but when that failed, we wasn’t afraid to fight. In fact, he killed not only enemy Amorites but also fellow Israelites, and even his own daughter. Yet with Jesus, when pleading did not work, he took the war into himself. When it came time to die, it was his life, not ours, that he took. That’s a Judge worth following.
For more, be sure to listen to the entire message here.
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