Proclamation
“Then The Spirit of The Lord came upon Jephthah, and
he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh … he passed over unto the children of
Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto The
Lord …” Judges 11:29-30 (KJV)
Explanation
These are the words of God which were
written by the prophet Samuel under the influence of The Holy Spirit of God. After
the death of Jair of Gilead, who led and judged Israel for twenty-two years, the
Israelites again did evil in the sight of The Lord and He allowed the
Philistines and the Ammonites to oppress them for eighteen years. (Judges
10:1-8) Then the Israelites cried out to
The Lord but He told them to cry out to the gods they were serving. (Judges 10:10-14) During that time Jephthah was a mighty
warrior. He was the son of Gilead and a prostitute. When the sons of Gilead’s wife were grown,
they drove Jephthah out of town and denied him any of the inheritance of his
father. (Judges 11:1-3) Some time later
while Israel was at war with the Ammonites, the elders sought out Jephthah and
asked him to be their commander. He
refused and reminded them that they had driven him out of town. The elders agreed to follow him if he would
return and lead them, and he eventually went with them. (Judges 11:4-11) After exchanging messages with the king of Ammon
and then being ignored, Jephthah advanced against the Ammonites. (Judges 11:12-29) Then he made a vow unto The Lord that if He
delivered the Ammonites into his hands, then he would offer as a sacrificial
offering what ever came out of his house to meet him when he returned home in
triumph. (Judges 11:30-31) Jephthah
fought the Ammonites and The Lord gave them into his hands. After Israel subdued Ammon, Jephthah returned
to his home and his virgin daughter, his only child, was first to come out of
his house to greet him. He gave her the
two months she requested to say goodbye to her friends, then he sacrificed her
as he had vowed to The Lord. (Judges 11:32-40)
Application
We should be very careful with respect to what we promise
The Lord God that we will do if He comes through for us as we requested. Usually we are being very selfish when we ask
God for something, and the promises that we make are our way of showing Him
exactly how serious we are in our request.
The problem is that when we get what we asked for from Him we generally
break our promise to Him. He never
breaks His promises to us but we frequently break our promises to Him. Let us be faithful and keep our promises to
God.
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