Judges 11 :28-40

Order of Service

• Hymn — Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise (#224)
• Call to Worship — 1 Timothy 1:15-17
• Prayer of Invocation
• Heidelberg Catechism — Lord's Day 7, Questions 20–23
• Hymn — Precious Lamb (#353)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Scripture Reading — Judges 11:29–12:7
• Sermon
• Hymn — In Christ Alone (#265)
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

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Sermon Title: A Salvation Marred by Sin

Scripture: Judges 11:29–12:7

I. The Lord Accomplishes Salvation for His People

A. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon Jephthah, equipping him for battle (Judges 11:29)

1. The same pattern seen earlier in Judges: the Spirit empowers a man to accomplish God's deliverance
2. Jephthah moves swiftly — he passed through, passed on, and crossed over to fight

B. The Lord gives Israel a stunning victory over the Ammonites (Judges 11:32–33)

1. Eighteen years of Ammonite oppression comes to an end in brief words
2. Three voices in the passage confirm the Lord saved Israel: the narrator (11:32), Jephthah's daughter (11:36), and Jephthah himself (12:3)

C. The Lord is the true King in Judges — providing, fighting, and saving even when unrecognized

1. The key interpretive phrase of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes"
2. Yet there is a King — the Lord God — always at work on behalf of his people

II. The Salvation Marred by a Sinful Vow (Judges 11:29–40)

A. Jephthah's vow was unnecessary and reflected a lack of trust in God (Judges 11:30–31)

1. Jephthah knew redemptive history well — his speech to the Ammonite king in Judges 11:23–24 shows his biblical knowledge
2. The form of the vow — "if you will do this, then I will do this" — is essentially an attempt to bribe or manipulate God
3. Despite knowing the Lord's faithfulness, Jephthah felt out of control and sought extra security through a deal with God

B. Application: We are prone to make the same bargains with God

1. "Lord, if you give me this job / heal this illness / grant this desire, then I will tithe more / pray more / witness more"
2. We treat the Lord as though he were altogether like us, as if he needed our piety to move him to act

C. The plain sense of Jephthah's vow is that he offered his daughter as a burnt sacrifice (Judges 11:39)

1. Some scholars argue he only devoted her to a life of celibate service, pointing to the emphasis on her virginity
2. However, the plain reading is that he offered a human being as a whole burnt offering
3. The Lord explicitly condemns human sacrifice — such a thing has not even entered his mind (Jeremiah)
4. Jephthah should have never made the vow in the first place; at minimum he should have repented of it

D. The Lord provided a gracious way out through the law of rash vows (Leviticus 5:4–6)

1. Numbers 30:2 — the Lord calls his people to keep their word
2. But Leviticus 5:4–6 provides atonement for rash vows — a lamb or goat for a sin offering
3. Jephthah had two months to repent but instead persisted in his hard-hearted, self-contrived piety

E. Sin compounds when we refuse to repent

1. Like Jephthah, we stack sin upon sin: a small lie grows, gossip continues, bitterness becomes hatred
2. We brush aside sin, keep up our show of piety, and persist in our own ways

III. The Salvation Marred by Sinful Vanity (Judges 12:1–7)

A. Ephraim's pride: a recurring pattern in Judges

1. Ephraim had done this before with Gideon — demanding to know why they were not called to fight
2. Here they come armed and threatening to burn Jephthah's house down over a perceived slight

B. Jephthah's response is saturated with self-importance (Judges 12:2–3)

1. Contrast with Gideon, who flattered and praised Ephraim to defuse their anger
2. Jephthah makes the conflict all about himself — the dispute is between him and the Ammonites, not Israel and the Ammonites
3. He references the Lord's deliverance but buries it in self-focused language: "I took my life in my own hand"
4. He has come to believe his own words secured the victory

C. Application: C.S. Lewis on humility — "Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less"

1. We understand Ephraim — we too grow offended when left out, overlooked, or not consulted
2. Pride and vanity cause us to see ourselves as central and the world as conspiring against us

D. The tragic result: 42,000 Ephraimites killed at the fords of the Jordan (Judges 12:6)

1. The Shibboleth/Sibboleth test exposed dialect differences between the tribes
2. The fracture of Israel is the direct result of sin — vanity leading to civil war and mass death

E. Jephthah himself dies, proving he was not enough (Judges 12:7)

1. Death is always the consequence of sin — established in the Garden
2. Jephthah, through whom the Lord worked great salvation, comes to think himself greater than he is and dies

IV. Looking Beyond Jephthah to the Better Judge and King

A. Jephthah's daughter and the Lord Jesus: a limited but instructive connection

1. Both die because of another's sin
2. But Jephthah's daughter dies because of her father's sin with no substitute taken — this is no Abraham and Isaac story
3. Christ dies because of our sin and for our sin — he is the substitute

B. Christ is the atoning sacrifice that Jephthah refused to accept in place of his daughter

1. He goes as the substitute for sinners — for those who fail to trust God, who grow fearful and forgetful, who think too highly of themselves
2. He was marred in order to accomplish the salvation that all earthly judges and kings only mar

C. Do not find rest for your soul in any earthly judge or king — find rest in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ

1. He rose from the dead so that we can truly say: no guilt in life, no fear in death
2. Hebrews 11 names Jephthah alongside David — even deeply flawed instruments of God point us forward to Christ