(Audio)
Jephthah made a vow to the LORD.
"If you deliver the Ammonites into my power," he said,
"whoever comes out of the doors of my house
to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites
shall belong to the LORD.
I shall offer him up as a burnt offering."
We should be careful to promise to the LORD only what he is asking us to promise him. There was a certain zeal in what Jephthah promised. But it was not a zeal that God desired. It was a sacrifice, but not one the LORD desired.
Sacrifice or oblation you wished not,
but ears open to obedience you gave me.
We desire to share in the LORD's victory and we delight to the degree that his victory takes hold in our lives. But often we get ahead of ourselves by promising things we cannot deliver and were not meant to. Abraham certainly didn't offer Isaac because he thought it would be a good idea. He listened to the LORD and the LORD led him to the edge of faithfulness in that commitment. But there was no one to stay Jephthah's hand. Herod made so many vows and promises that he couldn't turn back when asked to kill John the Baptist. In our own lives we may be called to follow the LORD in hard ways which we do not understand just as Abraham was. But we must not impose those sacrifices on ourselves like Jephthah and Herod. If they are to bear fruit they must come from God.
"In the written scroll it is prescribed for me.
To do your will, O my God, is my delight,
and your law is within my heart!"
The LORD wants to bring both the good and the bad into his feast. The originally invited guests get too busy with their own plans to attend just as Jephthah missed on a better future he might have otherwise had. It does no good to try to find clothes to wear to the feast ourselves. We can find nothing to cover ourselves which is suitable to the occasion. We need to rely on the host to provide us with the wedding garments of baptismal grace. We must continue to rely on this grace throughout our lives, letting him lead us through every challenge into we enter the hall filled with guests and taste the fattened calves.
"For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him"
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