So, he says, did he ever strive against Israel? Verse 26,
While Israel dwelled in Heshbon and her towns, and in Aurore and her towns,
and in all the cities that be along the coast of Arnon three hundred years,
why therefore did you not recover them within that time?
He said, look, there's kind of a statute of limitations here.
If we stole your land three hundred years ago, it's kind of water under the bridge at this point, you know.
Don't tell that to the Native Americans, you know, but it's kind of like, you know,
three hundred years later, it's kind of like, okay, here we are, you know, that was,
and you know, this whole idea of these people stole our land and stuff,
it's like, you know, there's eight billion people in the world.
You know, people have to live somewhere, people are going to inhabit different areas,
and you got to make room for everybody somehow.
And so this thing of, well, this lands our land, and you know, it doesn't belong to anybody else.
It's like, you know, everybody needs some space, you know.
And if you look at the history of our country, there's a thing called the Homestead Act, okay.
And in the Homestead Act, basically in order for you to claim property or even purchase property,
you know, out west or whatever, there were a few things that you had to do in the Homestead Act
in order to have that land is that you had to put a fence around it, you had to improve it,
you had to be using it and improve the land, and you had to live there at least six months out of the year.
Okay. Now, what's the rationale behind that? What's the logic behind that?
The logic is that you can't just show up somewhere, you know, you're the first one there, right?
What if I'm just the first guy to get to Arizona and I'm just like, all of this is mine, it all belongs to me now.
And then everyone who comes here forever has to pay rent to me and buy it from me and whatever.
I mean, does that really make sense just because I'm the first guy there, I just, I now pronounce all of this mine.
You know, and think about like the Spanish Conquistadors, they're just kind of just cruising through North America,
just declaring everything, this is all part of Spain now, and then they just leave.
It's like they show up, this is not, so look, don't get mad at me for what I said about the Indians
because now I'm down on the Conquistadors now, all right, I'm a little bit down on the colonizers now.
So I'm explaining both sides.
You know, it doesn't really make sense for the Spanish to show up and say, oh, this Florida now belongs to the King of Spain.
Without building anything or improving anything or settling there, you know what I mean?
So there's an idea, and I do think that it is somewhat rooted in the Bible, that in order to own something you have to use it.
You can't just sit there and just own everything, you know, and if you look at the way the property rights worked back in ancient Israel
and they divided up the land and everything, you know, God set up a system to where one guy can't just own the whole thing
because there's the year of Jubilee and everything, so there wasn't just kind of an unfettered property right of just we own this
and, you know, there was a balance there.
And I'm getting a little off track, so I don't have time to go into all that explanation.
I've preached that in other sermons about the year of Jubilee and property rights in ancient Israel.
That's a whole other subject, but the point is that, you know, you can't just sit there and ride around on horseback saying,
we own all this, we own everything.
You know, you've got to do something with it, you've got to use it, and you can't just sit there and say,
well, somebody took this from my ancestors 300 years ago, so I demand it, after someone else improved it.
So, like, your ancestors are on land that's unimproved.
What do I mean? I mean, it's just pretty much wild land.
You know, it's wilderness. For the most part it's wilderness.
And then, you know, people come along and improve it and irrigate it and farm it and build roads and infrastructure.
And then it's like, oh, actually, this is mine.
You know, there's a statute of limitations there.
And so, you know, I'm not trying to get into a big thing on that tonight,
but I'm just kind of pointing out some of the issues here between Jephthah and the Ammonites and what's going on here
and why Jephthah has the moral high ground here.
Because the Ammonites are wrong on history, they're past the statute of limitations, okay,
and they're worshipping some false god named Chemosh, so they're automatically the bad guys.
And we're automatically going to side with Jephthah because he's praying to Jehovah and he's our guy.
So, anyway.