Title: Judges 11:1-40
Contents
Text: Judges 11:1~40
Hymn 579
One
There are many groans, hardships, and pains in the world. However, many people live a life that has nothing to do with the groans, hardships, and pains of the world. Because I have no special relationship with them. However, the situation is different when there is someone I love among them who are groaning, in pain, and in distress. That moan, agony, and pain begin to touch our hearts. So they react towards reality, which makes them moan, agonize, and hurt.
The text of Judges 10:16 we looked at yesterday testifies that God was grieved at heart because of the plight of the people of Israel. Seeing Israel who turned away from the evil heart of serving the seven foreign gods and decided to serve only the Lord, God is troubled in his heart. The suffering of the people of Israel brought sorrow to God's heart. Although Israel did not hesitate to betray God, their voices calling for God when they came back were heard in God's ears.
Judges 11 tells the story of God, who was grieved over the plight of the people of Israel, and saved them. The text is verses 32 and 33. So Jephthah came to the Ammonites and fought them, and the LORD delivered them into his hand, and he struck twenty cities from Aroer to Minnith, and defeated them very greatly as far as Abel-Gramim. . Through Jephthah, God greatly defeated the Ammonites, who had oppressed the Israelites for 18 years, and forced them to surrender.
It was God who put an end to 18 years of oppression. It was the Israelites who grieved and moved the heart of God. When the people forsake the foreign gods and call on God only, God does not leave their plight. He is grieved over their affliction, and He puts an end to their affliction with salvation. Only God who takes care of the afflictions of those who believe and serve Him, because He is our God, we can have hope even in the midst of suffering. Because of that God, there is room for hope even in the many moans, hardships, and pains of the world.
two
However, the text does not overlook another tear recorded between God's salvation in Judges 11. God uses a great warrior named Jephthah to deliver Israel from Ammon. However, the text of his warfare process raises questions about the process. This is verses 30 and 31 of the text. And he made a vow to the LORD, saying, "If the Lord will deliver the children of Ammon into my hand, then whoever comes out to meet me at the door of my house will return to the LORD when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, and I will offer him as a burnt offering."
Jephthah, who has received the Spirit of the Lord, suddenly makes a vow before God while going out to fight against the Ammonites. Although the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, perhaps as a result of his anxiety over the war with the Ammonites, he made an absurd condition before God that if he defeated the Ammonites, he would return and sacrifice those who received him as a burnt offering. Ironically, the human sacrifice of a person as a burnt offering was an abomination to God. In addition, the human sacrifice of human sacrifices stemmed from the custom of the Ammonites, enemies of Jephthah, to offer their children to their god Molech. Anxiety is more powerful than faith in Jephthah's desire to secure victory even by making a vow that is impossible for an Israelite to make.
The Spirit of God was already with him, but he made an absurd vow, and when he returned from victory in the end, he offered the only daughter he met as a burnt offering. A burnt offering is a sacrifice made to God by killing an offering with a sword and burning it with fire. Verse 39 says that Jephthah did to her daughter just as she had vowed. Jephthah's absurd faith led to violence that killed his daughter, and Judges 11 ends with a mourning. The second half of verse 39 and verse 40 of the text. It became a custom in Israel, and the daughters of Israel went every year to weep for the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, four days a week.
Jephthah, who believed in God, had an innocent daughter brutally killed by her father because of Jephthah's false belief that even the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. Hearing the mourning of the daughters of Israel every year, people must have thought of Jephthah's distorted faith. They must have looked back and looked back at how that distorted faith turned into violence that puts those close to them, especially the weak, into a corner. Above all, the lamentation of those who suffered because of their distorted faith must have been a great sorrow to God.
Through Judges 11, which is given today, we must examine whether the families around us are suffering because of our false beliefs. We should look to see if the weak around us are weeping because of unreasonable and unreasonable beliefs or cold unbelief. Therefore, I pray that today's church members and my life will not be God's sorrow, but a life that participates in God's work of saving those who weep. I will pray.
prayer
God, who takes care of and saves those who serve you, help us to put that God as our hope and to cast aside many foreign gods and serve only God.
Above all, like Jephthah, please don't commit the foolishness of trying to use God as a condition to follow God's customs and not believe in God while participating in God's work of salvation. May our faith not become violence against our parents, children and spouses, our faith not become the tears of the weak, and our faith not the grieving of God. Help me to live as a Christian who thinks and believes in God, who is the super-rational logos, with all reason.
Mother's Day. God who gave birth to any life on this earth only through the sacrifice of our parents. Give me a day to think deeply about the mother and father you have given me for you. I beg you, break down the wall of old stubbornness, misunderstanding, and conflict that we have built up through our ignorance and foolishness, make us love our parents even more, and let us live in the place of parents that God has called us to love first. Please. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.