Bargaining instead of Brokenness - Judges 10:6 - 12:7

This is a sermon by Peter Birnie from the evening service on 2nd June 2024.

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Judges 10v6-12v7 “Bargaining instead of Brokenness”

Intro:

(Slide 1) 2 Questions before praying: Are we being changed by this Judges series – Have you done anything differently, are we living any differently as a result of sitting under God’s word so far in this series? Think about that for a moment… Here is the second question that I want us to have in our hearts and minds all the way through this sermon tonight – What are we producing as a Network of churches, what character are we seeing formed among us? Are we broken by our sin longing for God to change us, or is God just part of the bargain that we make for a nice life? Let’s pray for change, for brokenness, for grace to work among us tonight. PRAY.

(Slide 2) There is a saying that “people get the leaders they deserve”. If there is even a small percentage of truth in that then in this part of Judges it will help you understand the dire state that the people of Israel are in at this moment in history. Jephthah – who is he again? “Oh yeah, he is the guy who sacrificed his daughter and then ruled over a terrible genocide killing more than 40,000 people”. How can Jephthah be the leader that the chosen people of God deserve? How can this bloke who lacks any godly judgement be the judge over Israel? (Slide 3) It is because the awful cycle that they entered into of idolatry and oppression has indeed become a frightening spiral to greater and greater depths of spiritual adultery and faithlessness. The mould of sin has almost completely taken over and the result is utter misery and depravity. Amongst the chosen people of God.

The depths to which they have fallen should make them utterly spiritually broken before God. They should be crying out to God not just for rescue but for deep renewal and transformation. Their cry should sound like this (Slide 4); “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” But instead their cry is only this (Slide 5) Judges 10v15; “Do with us whatever you think is best, but please rescue us now.”

 

Yes they are in a desperate situation at the beginning of our passage tonight with 7 different false gods listed as idols they have given themselves to and 7 different nations listed as their oppressors whose hands the one true God has given them into. (Slide 6) But sin has a huge capacity to blind people to their real state before God. And so despite the awful situation they are in, they are still operating as people who can make bargains with God rather than people who are broken before him. Instead of begging God to change their hearts, they are still trying to simply convince him to alter their circumstances. And so welcome just the judge for them - enter “Jephthah the bargainer.”

 

 

 

          1) Jephthah – a product of his time (10v6-11v3)

(Slide 7) Jephthah is a product of his time – in these verses the mould is absolutely out of control. Sin and its consequences are everywhere and this is what produces a Jephthah;

• Miserable Israelites (Slide8): God’s people are utterly miserable, v8 says that they are shattered and crushed under the oppression of the Philistines and Ammonites. This is the chosen people who God promised to bless and through whom bring a blessing to the whole world. Most of Jephthah’s life all he has seen has been miserable members of the people of God – no joy, praise, gratitude, instead misery brought on by their own idolatry.  
• Bloodthirsty Ammonites (Slide9): The Ammonites are cruel and wherever they go they bring violence against Israel. For 18 years Jephthah has watched God’s people weakened by their sin and dominated and bullied by enemies.
• Unfaithful Gilead (Slide10): The unfaithfulness of the people of God as a whole shows itself in broken families and immorality. Jephthah is the son of a prostitute, his very life a testimony to the unfaithfulness of his father.
• Ruthless sons (Slide11): Gilead’s legitimate sons therefore treat Jephthah with ruthlessness. He has been hated and driven away by his half-brothers.  
• Scoundrels everywhere (Slide12): So rather than growing up in the middle of God’s people actively putting their faith in God (Deut 6) Jephthah ends up driven away, surrounded by scoundrels who know nothing of God.

(Slide 13) Kids would you eat this – food that has been contaminated (rotten apple that has ruined loads of others) What has happened here? The rot that started small has got worse and worse. This is Jephthah. He has been in the middle rottenness for most of his life and so he is rotten as well. And yet he is going to be their leader.

 

(Slide 14) Can you see why the cry of the Israelites in 10v15 is not enough here? The cry of “Do whatever you think is best with us but please rescue us now?” Even though they are a shattered and crushed people, their hearts are still not broken by their own sin. All they want is to be rescued, what they should desperately seek and cry out to God for is real heart change.

 

So far then, this gives us at least 2 serious questions to ask of our Network as a whole and our individual local churches. (Slide 15) What are we producing in terms of godliness and obedience and holiness? Is the spiritual temperature among us healthy, are the conditions for growth and fruitfulness good? Are younger people growing in zeal for the LORD and the pursuit of holiness? What are we producing? I think there are real concerns here – many of our younger people who have time and energy and resources seem to want to invest those gifts in the idols of the culture around us, in self, in comfort, in materialism. Why is that? What are we producing as God’s people in this city, what will we produce in the years to come?

Second question then – (Slide 16) as we look at the filth all around us, if we do identify some of that among us as well, then do we just want relief from this battle we are in or do we want our hearts to be genuinely changed? We will come back to this longing for change at the end.

               2) Jephthah – a committed bargainer (11v4-31)

(Slide 17) The rotten conditions that Jephthah has grown up in mean that instead of him learning to trust in God’s promises, covenant and character, he has come to trust in his own ability to bargain and make things happen. All the way through this passage Jephthah is a bargainer;

(Slide 18) He bargains to secure his position over Gilead in verses 4-11. And notice that all through this negotiation although he talks about the LORD he doesn’t talk to the LORD until he has got what he wants. Jephthah believes in his own strength and ability, he is all about  transaction – he will give his physical strength in return for power and control. And he gets what he wants from the Gileadites because they are so desperate to beat the Ammonites.

(Slide 19) He then attempts to bargain with the Ammonite enemies in verses 12-28 pointing out that their understanding of history is incorrect, that the land the Ammonites are claiming never belonged to them anyway, that it has been 300 years in the meantime, and that God himself has given the land to Israel. 3 strong reasons for them to back down – transaction for Jephthah this time is diplomacy and reason in return for peace and security. He doesn’t get what he wants this time.

(Slide 20) This brings us to the most troubling of all his attempts to bargain. Despite being in no position to do any deal with God (the rottenness of sin means none of God’s people deserve anything) AND despite actually already having God on his side (the Spirit of the LORD coming on him in verse 29), Jephthah dares to bargain with God anyway.

This is utterly rotten and the mould of idolatry runs all the way through Jephthah’s transaction. The false gods all around Israel work on transaction – you give me this and I will give you that. A big part of the detestable false religion that God hated so much was transactions that involved human sacrifice – in Leviticus God’s law talks about the land vomiting the inhabitants out because of terrible atrocities such as this. Jephthah, in his rottenness and misunderstanding of who the one true God really is, reverts to the type of bargain that a Canaanite would make with Molech in v31 – “Let me win and whatever comes out of my door to greet me I will sacrifice as a burnt offering.” Perhaps in Jephthah’s mind this would only have been a servant coming to greet him but this shows the sheer rottenness of sin – Jephthah has no idea who God really is and what he really values.

So here is big question number 3 for our Network tonight – as we think about what we are producing and where our hearts really are at, (Slide 21) do you realise that you can’t bargain with a God who doesn’t need anything you can offer? And that you have no need to try to bargain with the God of grace? Brokenness rather than bargaining is the only way to approach the God resists pride and yet lifts up the humble.

             3) Jepthah – a man unchanged by God’s goodness and grace (11v32-12v7)

(Slide 22) If only Jephthah had understood this. If only the people of God had followed the instructions given again and again in the law of God to bring the children up knowing who God is, to stay away from idols, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, to run to him for mercy and grace, to stand on his grace-filled promises. But Jephthah wasn’t changed by God’s goodness and grace.

(Slide 23) As he stares at his beautiful daughter running to embrace him after the God-given victory over the Ammonites, his cruel, stupid, sinful vow should have broken his heart and led him to break a bargain that was rooted in idolatry and throw himself instead in that brokenness of heart on God’s grace. Repent of the vow, and accept whatever punishment God would send. But Jephthah is a bargainer through and through. Transaction is how he has always run his life – and so he will not run to God in brokenness, he will not break the vow that he wrongly made. And the cost is the life of his only child.

What terrible costs there are when we lose sight of God’s grace, when our view of who God really is gets mixed up with the type of gods people make in their own image all the time. Jephthah himself will answer to God for this terrible act – but also responsible for this horror is the wider people of God around Jephthah who have failed to teach Jephthah the truth about Yahweh, who have failed to model true faith in the living God, who have failed to reject idols, who have failed to treat the mould of sin with real seriousness.

(Slide 24) And it isn’t just a personal tragedy for Jephthah’s family, in chapter 12 v 1-7 there is the record of the wider impact on Israeli society. Despite deliverance from the Ammonites that the people had cried out for, a grace-filled deliverance from God that should have led the people to a grace-filled unity, evil and death go marching on in the form of a civil war between Gilead and Ephraim followed by a systematic ethnic cleansing so that 42,000 Ephraimites are wiped out (many of them identified simply by their accent and pronunciation).

(Slide 25) As we look at the state of our nation and even the Church within it right now, as we consider how far we have fallen, this is the explanation! God has been so good to us, God has poured his grace upon us. We have so much access to God’s word, we have freedoms that Christians in other nations can only dream of, we have rich theological resources, we have a history of preachers and pastors who love Jesus and have faithfully declared the gospel and yet … as a nation instead of being changed by God’s goodness and grace we are getting harder and harder. The terrible costs of this are seen in family life, church life, our politics, our culture as a whole. The rot is everywhere, the mould seems to be in the very air that we breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

So how are we to respond to Jephthah and the misery all around him brought on by sin? How are we to respond to the misery around us brought on by that same sin? The answer is that we are to respond in brokenness before the God of grace, the God of Calvary, the God who became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God, so that we could be purified and changed and filled with daily holiness!

 

(Slide 26) Let us go back to Psalm 51 to finish with – and as I read these words, open your heart out to God, admit where sin has taken a hold, feel the weight of your heart being far harder than it should be, be broken by your own sin and failings and in that brokenness ask God to change you tonight and forever, so that you live a grace-filled life, so that, together as a network of churches, God produces in us young men and women who love God more than anything else, so that God produces among us holiness and reverence, so that God makes us more and more into a light to shine brightly in this city of Hull that many others would come and delight for eternity in the same grace that has rescued us.

Psalm 51 – this is the word of the Lord!

 

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