Thank you. Good morning, brethren. All right,
we're gonna be in Judges chapter 11. Judges 11. Today, we look at Jephthah. In Jephthah, we see in him types
of our Savior. And there's many, Blessed comforts
in what we'll be looking at this morning. We'll just be going
up to verse 29 Lord willing, but there's many blessed comforts
for the believer the believer who knows what they are in themselves
the need that we have for a Savior a complete Savior a complete
salvation a Now if you recall last week, before we get into
11, we'll just look at a few things that we learned in chapter
10. And you remember that we saw
our great need for a new birth. We must be born again. We need
a savior. and not be turned from that Savior,
not be turned to our vain works of this flesh whereby men think
they can save themselves or improve their lot with the Lord. But
we must be born again. And we saw how that to do this,
God was gracious to his people by allowing their enemies. He
allowed their enemies to penetrate deeply to the heart of Israel.
They crossed over Jordan. They troubled the mighty tribes
of Israel, Ephraim and Judah, so that Israel as a whole was
sore, distressed. So were distressed. And the Lord
showed his people their need of a Savior. And he gave them
a cry, a cry in the heart, not according to the law, which he
rejected, but according to the heart of faith wrought in them
by the Spirit of God. Verse 15, Judges 10, 15 said
that the children of Israel said unto the Lord, we have sinned.
what seems right to you Lord only deliver us we pray thee
this day have mercy on us Lord and the spirit bore further fruit
in them so that we read in verse 16 that they put away the strange
gods from among them and they served the Lord and what happened
the Lord did this to and so that his soul was grieved for their
misery he was touched Our Lord, our Savior is touched with the
feeling of our infirmities. He knows what we feel. He is
tender toward us. He's very gracious, very kind. We don't always think that when
the times are hard and when we're in the fire and sore distress,
but your Heavenly Father And your darling Savior, your precious
Savior, He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and
He does care very much. And the people were moved with
godly fear, and they found themselves, the blessing of the Lord is that
they found themselves insufficient to deliver themselves out of
the hand of their enemies. They kept looking to the Lord.
Their weakness caused them to continue to look to the Lord. And so we read at the end of
chapter 10, verse 17 and 18, that the children of Ammon were
gathered together and they encamped against Gilead. And the children
of Israel assembled themselves together and encamped in Mizpah. They didn't want to be there,
but their enemy was coming. They had to face it. There was
nowhere that they could run or be turned to. They were facing
the enemy, but they felt in themselves insufficient for it. And the
people and princes of Gilead said one to another, what man
is he that will begin to fight against the children of Ammon?
He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Who is he? Who is the Savior
of God? Who is it that God will send
to deliver His people, who will deliver me? Oh, wretched man
that I am, Paul said, who shall deliver me from the body of this
death? Who shall save me? You can be
sure of this, contrary to what this nature tells you, contrary
to what your flesh and your mind tell you, if you are a child
of God, if God will be gracious to you, you are going to feel
your need of the Savior, God's Savior, God's salvation. Not
your own hand delivering you, but the Lord delivering you.
You have great, great need. And so Jephthah is the judge,
the Savior of Israel. Judge meaning Savior. This is
whom God would raise up, this man Jephthah, and he raises him
up to deliver his people. And he's a faithful man in whom
the Lord reveals many types of Christ and shows his people,
I pray this morning, that he comforts your hearts, that he
comforts you, showing you that he is the one who's made you
weak in yourselves, who's troubled you, allowed you to be troubled,
allowed you to be brought low to see your need of the Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. So to begin, let me say a few
things about Christ's birth, about our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ. Before we get to Jephthah, let
me just say this about Christ. He was born into poverty. He was born into a family that
is poor. And it shows us. It gives us
a type and understanding how that he, though rich with the
glory that he shared with the Father, in eternity, though he
was rich, yet he became poor for your sakes. It pictures him
taking on the flesh, laying aside the glory he had with the Father,
and taking up and robing himself with the weakness of this flesh
in order to make you rich, rich in the blessings of God. You
may be poor here in the flesh, but you are rich beyond measure
in Christ, our inheritance. We are rich in Christ. Our Savior
was also conceived in the womb of a virgin out of wedlock, and
that gave rise to rumors of scandal. Scandal. They spoke ill of Mary,
and he was, for all appearances, an illegitimate son. His parents
were told to flee Bethlehem. They fled Bethlehem, being warned
of an angel, because Herod sought the life of the child. And Herod
put to death every son, two years old and younger, in Bethlehem
to try and take out the Christ, the Son of God. And he grew up
in Galilee, many, many, many miles away from where he was
born in Bethlehem, so that when men began to see him, when he
began his ministry, they didn't believe that he was the Christ.
How could a man from Galilee, of which the scriptures speak
nothing of, how could he be the Christ? How could this man be
the Christ? Well, like Christ, Jephthah's
birth was also offensive to the natural man. Jephthah's birth
was also offensive to our flesh. Look at verses 1 and 2 in Judges
11. Now Jephthah, the Gileadite, so Gilead being on the east side
of Jordan, where they first settled, those two and a half tribes first
settled in Israel before they crossed Jordan to the west to
the rest of the land that God had given them. Now Jephthah,
the Gileadite, was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son
of an harlot. a whore, someone that his father
Gilead had slept with out of wedlock, and Jephthah was conceived
and born. And it says, Gilead begat Jephthah,
and Gilead owned his son. From what we could tell, he loved
his son. He counted him his own son, and he lived in his own
house. He took care of his son, Jephthah. But Gilead took a wife, and his
wife bare him sons. And his wife's sons grew up,
and they thrust out Jephthah. And said unto him, Thou shalt
not inherit in our father's house, for thou art the son of a strange
woman. Now just like our Lord Jesus
Christ and his birth and his flesh, he had all the markings
of what this world despises. and what society, good society,
hates about a person and looks at them and judges others of
low degree and people they count to be wicked, they count to be
cursed of God and have nothing to do with. They rejected him.
And their father, though he loved them, his own brethren thrust
him out. He came unto his own and his
own received him not, though the father loves the sun, and
is well pleased with the sun, the natural man, carnal man,
does not receive Christ. You will not come to me, Christ
said, that ye might have life. You search the scriptures, for
in them you think you have eternal life. You think, this is my salvation. Just reading this word, and studying
this word, and learning the good moral lessons of this word, and
keeping the law of God, this is my life. And Christ tells
us, these are they which testify of me. They speak of me. God
has given you this word, his scriptures, to tell you of salvation,
to tell you of the Savior, to point you to his servant, Jesus
Christ. Now one thing that our Lord makes
clear in this to us, to you that have no confidence in the flesh,
to you that are troubled in yourselves. The Lord
shows us in his word, both here and in other places, that he
delights to save and to use those that are the weakest among us,
those who are the most worthless and despised in this world. He
chooses base things, the weak things of this world, things
that put off others, things that others should look at us and
say, They're nothing. They're nothing. Why would God
look to them? And we're made to feel our weakness. We're made to feel our infirmity.
We're made to feel our age. We're made to feel our shortcomings
and our troubles and our difficulties. And we're troubled by them. We're
troubled by them. We're disappointed in ourselves. And we see our sin. Brethren,
Christ Jesus, this is a faithful saying, Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners, of whom I'm chief. And you say the
same things about yourselves, of whom I'm chief. Why should
the Lord look upon me, a sinner, a failure, unbelief, full of
unbelief, questioning God and But Christ Jesus came for ones
such as us. Where else can we go? We're brought
to see where else can I go? Lord, you alone have the words
of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that
thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. John tells
us that as many as received him, How? Why would anyone receive
Christ? Well, it's because to them, God
gave them power to become sons of God, even to them that believe
on His name. How do I know if I'm a child
of God? Well, when you look at your flesh, when you look at
your works, you look at what you're doing, you won't see anything,
any reason to believe that you are a child of God. But when
you believe Him, When you look to Him, God has wrought faith
in your heart so that you have no other hope, no salvation,
but the one whom He sent to save His people from their sins. Your
hope and trust is Christ, that He will be gracious even to you.
That's because God gave that to you. That's the power of God
that delivers you from trusting the things of death to believe
the promise of God made unto us in Christ. declared in His
Word, declared by His preachers, declared through the whole age,
from Adam through to the end of Revelation, that we cannot
save ourselves, but God Himself has provided. He has provided
the deliverer. He has sent the Savior, the Lord
Jesus Christ. These were born out of blood
nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, not of
our own will, not of our own works, not because we're born
to parents that believe, but because God, because God would
give them life, cause us to look to his savior. And so while we
look at fleshly things, understand this, your God, your father looks
on the heart, and there he sees the work of his son. There he
smells the savor of the precious Lord whom he has sent, the precious
Savior, the one whom he sent, and he is well-pleased, well-pleased
with you in Christ, well-pleased with you for Christ's sake. God
the Father has done this for you, for love's sake, for love's
sake. That's why he sent the Son to
save you. And so we see a picture of ourselves
even here in verse 3, Judges 11, 3. Then Jephthah fled from
his brethren, just like Christ was made to flee. Jephthah fled
from his brethren and dwelt in the land of Tob. Now that word
means good, like a pure tree, a good tree. That's where Jephthah
dwelt. And there were gathered vain
men to Jephthah and went out with him. Now the word here is
used several times in Judges, and here it means empty. It's the same word that was used
to describe the pitcher that Gideon and his men held. An empty
pitcher. An empty pitcher. Pitchers were
made to hold things. And these pitchers were empty.
Empty. That's a picture of you and I.
We're empty. Empty of any good works. Empty
of anything that we can bring to God and say, Lord, declare
me. Justify me, Lord. Have mercy
on me. Look what I've done for you.
We have nothing like that. We are empty pictures of ourselves. We're empty pictures. And therefore,
it's appropriate to see these men as those that gather themselves
to David. When David fled from Saul, who
was pursuing him and wanted to kill him, we're told in 1 Samuel
22, verse 2, that everyone that was in distress, And everyone
that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented, gathered
themselves unto him. And he became a captain over
them. And there were with him about 400 men." And so that's
who is attracted to the Lord. The same ones, those who are
troubled, discontented, not pleased at all with themselves or their
works and what they've done in this life. Those who have debt,
great debt, a debt so great that we cannot pay it off with our
own works. Those who are in distress. Lord,
what if I stood before you today? Have I done enough? No, no, not
at all. We haven't even come close to
doing what the Lord is worthy of in our lives. Not at all. We're not worthy of it at all.
We're made worthy by the grace of God, freely given in his son,
Jesus Christ. And so we see often ones just
like us being drawn to the Lord, Mary Magdalene, a harlot herself,
out of whom the Lord cast seven devils. She loved the Lord. She
came to the Lord. And then there's the other Mary
who sacrificed her wedding dowry, that oil, that precious ointment,
to pour it on the head of Christ. Matthew was a tax collector,
one who worked for the Roman government and the people, the
Jews, despised him, that he would labor and take from his own people
to give to the Romans. And then Simon, who was an apostle,
Luke terms him Simon Zelotes, meaning Simon the Zealot, the
one who looked to the law and trusted the law and would put
to death anyone whom they judged and deemed as a jury, they were
judge and jury, and if they felt you were to be put to death because
you broke the law, you'd be put to death. And the neighborhood
would clap and cheer that they did it. They approved of it because
they despised sinners. And the Lord saved him from that.
He delivered him from that. And that woman with the issue
of blood, she trusted in all the doctors and spent all her
living to try and heal herself. that she came to the Lord. And
how many cripples and people with lame hands and lame on their
feet and unable to provide for themselves were drawn to the
Lord, or that the Lord came to. Or that Syrophoenician woman
whose daughter had a devil. And all she could say is, Lord,
help me. I'm a dog, Lord. You're right. I'm a dog. But
give me a crumb. Let a crumb fall from your table,
Lord, and have mercy on me. And blind men, like Bartimaeus,
who by his own works became blind because of his sin. Or those
that were born blind, so that others looked at them and said,
whose sin? His parents or him? Being judged of others because
he was blind. And the apostles, many of them
were fishermen, smelly old fishermen. And yet the Lord called them.
These are the ones that are attracted. These are the ones that are drawn
to the Lord, the Lord having put them there, having preserved
them, having made them poor and brought to nothing, seeing their
own weaknesses and their incompetencies, because the Lord is pleased to
save those who aren't worth saving, who have nothing in themselves,
nothing to bring to God, nothing to recommend themselves to the
Lord. empty pictures, broken pieces just floating around in
the ocean, seemingly worthless. But the Lord loves such before
the foundation of the world when he gave you to Christ because
he could put you in the hands of no one better by putting you
in the hands of his son. And so we have nothing to boast
of in coming to Christ. We can't lay any claim, any glory
to say, see, I saw it, I recognized it. I came to Christ because
there's something about me that isn't so about you. No, all the
glory goes to God. The reason why you have no hope
or confidence in yourself, if that's true of you, if you don't
have any confidence in your works, in your righteousness, it's because
God worked that in you. God gave that to you. He works
that in every one of his children. And so we see this grace of God
doing the same for his children in Gilead there. They rejected
Jephthah at first, but they returned. They returned from their wicked
works. Look at Judges 11, verse five
through eight. And it was so that when the children
of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to
fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob. And they said unto Jephthah,
come and be our captain, that we may fight with the children
of Ammon. This takes us back to the end of chapter 10, where
they said, what man is this that'll lead us? He'll be captain over
us. And so they went to Jephthah. And Jephthah, verse 7, said unto
the elders of Gilead, did not ye hate me and expel me out of
my father's house? And why are ye come unto me now,
when ye are in distress? There's a lot of similarities
to chapter 10, isn't there? When the people under the law
went to the Lord first and said, Lord, save us. We're showing
up just like you told us to do, and we're asking you to deliver
us. And the Lord said, I'm not going to deliver you. And now
here's Jephthah pushing back. But the elders, having a new
heart by the grace and power of God, the elders of Gilead
said unto Jephthah, therefore, we turn again to thee now. We
see now our need. We see what fools we are. We
see how we drove you away, and we despised you, We rejected
you, but we need you now. Therefore we turn again to thee
now that thou mayest go with us and fight against the children
of Ammon and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. We see in that a picture of us
in the elders of Gilead. That's us. We, too, walked in
rebellion. We, too, by nature, walked in
sin and rebellion in the course of this world against the true
and living God. But, as the scriptures say, but
God had mercy. But God, who is rich in mercy
for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us, made us alive together with
Christ by grace. By grace are ye saved. It's true. He saves his people by grace,
not because we earned it, not because we sanctified ourselves,
not because we prepared ourselves under the law or any good works,
but because God would be gracious. And therefore, anything we have
done, it's because the fruit of the Spirit was worked in us.
God worked it in us. God wrought salvation in our
hearts. through the power of Christ. God's grace brings his children
to see their need of him and to cry to him for help. Otherwise,
we would never come. We would be happy and content
in this world. Sure, there would be troubles
and difficulties, but we would get along. We'd find a way to
just make it work, and we'd be happy until the end, until that
final day. If we have any goodness in ourselves,
we'll never turn to the Lord. If we have an idea, yet to save
myself, we'll turn to that first, won't we? If there's something
else I can do, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. Until God is
gracious and says, no more, and shuts us up to Christ to see,
you're not going anywhere. You're not getting out of this.
You're gonna cry out to me. You're gonna call upon me. And
though it troubles us in the flesh, and it makes us weak,
and it bends that knee so that finally we hit the ground, and
we fall on our face, and we cry out, Lord, forgive me. I don't know what to do. Good.
Good. Because now you're crying out.
One of those few times in our lives when we cry out in the
spirit, Lord, save me. Help me. Help me. Otherwise,
usually our prayers are pretty cold, pretty dry, pretty common. All right, that's just being
honest with you. But the Lord, there are those times when the
Lord breaks his child and makes you to see, I don't have anything,
Lord, save me, save me. And so Jephthah, verse nine and
10, said unto the elders of Gilead, if ye bring me home again to
fight against the children of Ammon, and the Lord deliver them
before me, shall I be your head? And the elders of Gilead said
unto Jephthah, the Lord be witness between us, if we do not so according
to thy words. I'm not going to drive you away. And this is a picture of what
the Lord brings his children to do. In Romans 10, we see this,
right? The word of faith which we preach,
not the word of works, but the word of faith which we preach
says that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus,
and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from
the dead, thou shalt be saved." What he's saying there is, if
you believe that he indeed is the Savior whom God sent, he
bore our sins, he died on the tree, bearing our cursed death
in himself, bearing our sins to put them away forever, and
he died and was buried, but God raised him from the dead, justifying
him and his people together. I believe it. I believe it. There's
only one reason why you believe and confess the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's because God has given that to you. and shut you up to all
other works and other ways where we would wiggle out of like a
worm. Every time I find a worm, I have
a worm bin. I'm trying to get more worms
in there. And I've put compost in there. And when I find a worm,
I bring it over. And those suckers just squirm
out and crawl out. And I have to catch them constantly.
And that's how we are. We would worm our way out of
it. We would squiggle out of it. But God, no man can pluck
thee from my hand. not my Father's hand, not your
Savior's hand. He will not let you go. For with
the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation. Lord save me, a sinner. For the scripture saith, whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. You will not go away
empty. He will not turn you away. Though
we time and time and time again left to ourselves turned him
away, yet those in whom he works the salvation, he will never
turn them away. He'll burden you and turn you
and strip you and break you and bring you down in yourself to
see he's all the salvation of God. And it doesn't matter who
you are, Jew or Gentile, there is but one Savior, one Lord,
one Lord. And he saves through the Lord
Jesus Christ, and that's how he brings all his people. None
of us can boast and say, I'm a Jew or I'm a Gentile. No, I'm
a sinner. And every one of his people knows
I'm a sinner. First and foremost, a sinner
saved by the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. For whosoever
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And so nothing's going to break
that promise. Nothing's going to break the
promise of God. Not your promise, not mine. The promise of God
made unto us in and by the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Then we see
that just like our Savior who intercedes for us, so Jephthah,
at the end of verse 11, uttered all his words before the Lord
in Mizpah. He went and laid this all before
the Lord, what was said, and said, I'm going for them, Lord.
Please save me. Please provide. Please do fulfill
thy word. Glorify thy name. and may glorify
me as the mediator, as the deliverer, as Christ said in John 17. Now
finally, I'm not gonna read all of verses 12 through 28, but
what happens here is that there's an exchange. Jephthah's now the
head, and he writes to Ammon and says, what are you doing?
Why are you attacking us? And the Ammonites tell him, we're
going to war with you because we want our land back. You took
our land from us. We demand this inheritance be
returned to us. And the picture there is that
this is man-made religion. Just naming and claiming. I want
the inheritance of God's people, and I'm just going to make it
so for me. I'm going to walk the aisle. I'm going to make my decision.
I'm going to get myself saved. I'm going to make myself born
again so that I can have this inheritance of the Lord's people. That's what man does. That's
what man does. He takes, he tries to take what
the Lord God alone gives. freely to his people. The only
reason why they didn't have that land is because they kept attacking
the Lord's people. They wouldn't help them. They
kept turning against God's people and trying to destroy them and
so the Lord destroyed them instead and took their land and gave
it as an inheritance to his own people. And so We that by nature
are Ammonites have to learn we don't demand anything from the
Lord. We don't have that kind of arrogance
and pride to think that we deserve salvation. But that's how man-made
religion talks about the Lord's salvation. You've gotten this. The Lord's done everything he
can do. Now it's up to you to name it and claim it, to make
it yours, to take possession of it. But that's not how it
works. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. And the psalmist tells
us, thy blessing is upon thy people. I bless and the blessing
of God is upon the people of God. And Paul tells us in Philippians
2 at the end of verse 12 and verse 13, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling. Why? For it's God which worketh
in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. We don't
go up there just assuming that I can just take it. No, we come
to God humbly as sinners, begging mercy and forgiveness with God,
asking him to be gracious and merciful to us. And it's God
that works that in you, both to will and to do of his good
pleasure. Not my good pleasure, his good
pleasure. It ultimately is our good pleasure because we're thankful
for it when he brings us to see it's all of him. In Romans 9,
15, and 16, where he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom
I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will
have compassion. So then it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. God is the one who gives freely.
We come to him asking him for mercy, begging him for mercy,
because that's the fruit that he works in his child. That's
how he manifests that faith in his child. And so, like Jephthah,
defeated his enemies, so Christ overcomes our enemies and his,
and overcomes the enmity in our own heart, turning us to repent,
to see our need of him, to forsake the dead works religion, the
dead works that we were doing and trusting in to save us, to
be turned, repent of those things, and to believe the Lord Jesus
Christ, to look to Him alone. Now, this world hates and persecutes
you because it wants the inheritance that God gives His children freely. And they think that they're gonna
come and take it, but they gotta go through Christ. They gotta
go through Christ to take it. They gotta go through Christ
to get it. And so, let me just say in verse 29, Judges 11, 29,
then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, And he passed
over Gilead and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpah of Gilead,
and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed over unto the children
of Ammon. And we're going to stop there.
And we don't see it yet, just like we're not going to look
at it today, but just like we don't see it yet fully, he gained
the victory. Christ triumphed over all our
enemies. The head of the serpent is bruised,
and he shall soon be crushed under your feet when the Lord
Returns so next time we'll see this vow But I pray the Lord
bless and comfort you to see the grace of your God given to
you freely in the Lord Jesus Christ Not because you've named
it and claimed it not because you've done anything worthy But
because it pleases the father to be gracious to you his children
in His son Jesus Christ, and he's turned your heart to him
to believe him amen All right, so we're gonna I'm
going to close us in prayer, and then we'll be dismissed for
about 15 minutes. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your grace and mercy. Lord, we see in ourselves what
sinners we are, how far short we come of your glory, of your
grace, how we don't work our own salvation, how we can affect
our own salvation, but Lord, We see the fruit of your spirit,
whereby we have cried unto you, Lord, and confessed our need
of you. Lord, have mercy upon us. Keep
us, Lord. Save us. Deliver us from death
and from dead works that cannot save, and keep us ever in the
arms of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Bless your people that are sick,
that are wounded, that are troubled, that are hurting, Lord. Have mercy upon them. Bless their
heart, strengthen their hand in Christ. Help them, help our
brother Scott as he gets well. Bless our brother Ron as he's
healing and battling the cancer in his body. Lord, help Peggy
strengthen her heart and all the many other things that have
been unsaid. All the pains, the aches, the
sorrows, the mind troubles, the physical troubles, the spiritual
hurt. Lord, have mercy upon your people.
Strengthen us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's all our hope, all
our salvation. It's in his name we pray and
give thanks. Amen. All right, so about five after
on that clock we'll come back. Six after.