So let's jump into the story here, Judges 11, verse 1.
Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor and he was the son of Harlot.
So what do we know about Jephthah so far?
We're going to bring our New Testament knowledge into the story.
So we know that he's a man of faith.
This guy believes on the Lord.
He trusts the Lord, he has faith in the Lord, he's devout.
He's a godly man in that sense.
He's a mighty man of valor.
What this means is that he is a guy that can fight.
Out on the battlefield, he has courage, he has skill, he's strong, he's physically able,
and he's skillful and courageous in battle.
That's what that phrase means, "mighty man of valor."
But he's also the son of a harlot.
So his dad had legitimate children with his wife, but then he also had to fling with a
prostitute and Jephthah is the product of that relationship with a prostitute.
So that's obviously, you know, something negative.
Not Jephthah's fault, but it's something that he kind of has to live with growing up as
a bastard son of this prostitute.
So it says in verse number two, "And Gilead's 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."
Who's there simply means an outsider, someone who's not in the family.
And you can see why this would happen, why there's enmity, obviously sometimes siblings
can be at each other's throats anyway and fight with each other.
But especially when they're half siblings, there could be strife here.
And you know, whose fault is this?
You know, it's Gilead's fault for being with a prostitute.
And you know, you ought to think these things through before you go out and commit adultery
or get divorced and remarried and break up your home that it's going to have repercussions
on your children.
So there's this strife and enmity between the children.
They're obviously threatened by Jephthah, okay.
Obviously part of the reason is because he's a mighty man of valor.
So because he's a mighty man of valor, he's superior to them in that way.
He's a threat to them.
They feel threatened by him, so they want him gone.
And so they kind of use this excuse of, "Hey, you're the son of a strange woman."
And they could have just kind of focused on the other half of the family and said, "Hey,
we're brothers, right?
We're half brothers."
But this is the way people are.
And by the way, if you ever excel at anything in life, expect to have some enemies because
of that.
Expect to have some people not want you around because you're good at something.
You think that being good at your job is just going to mean everybody at the job loves you,
right?
Because you're good at the job.
I mean, oh, isn't it so great to have him around?
But you know what?
The boss is going to love you if you're working hard and doing well.
But working hard and doing well could cause some people on the job to actually envy you
and actually have a bad attitude towards you.
Now, we should still do our best and strive to excel, but just realize that when you do
well at anything, you're going to have some people that are threatened by that and watch
you out.
Look how many stories like this are in the Bible.
Think about Daniel.
Okay, Daniel is put in a position where there are three presidents over the provinces and
you've got this structure of bureaucracy, but Daniel did so well that the king is thinking
about just putting him over the whole realm.
You know, instead of just putting him over a third of the kingdom, he wants Daniel over
everything.
You know, he wants Daniel to be the second in command.
Well, Daniel's fellow presidents, his fellow rulers, they don't like that very much.
They don't like to see Daniel rising higher than them.
So because of their pride and arrogance and just being competitive and striving for vain
glory, they end up deciding we're going to take Daniel down a notch.
And so what do they do?
They end up trying to find something wrong with his work.
And they can't find anything wrong with his work.
And so then they said, well, we're going to have to go after him in the area of religion.
And so then, of course, you know the story.
They end up going after his religion.
He ends up getting thrown in the lion's den.
God miraculously saves him.
But that's just one example of many that we can give where someone excels at something
and other people don't want him around.
Think about Isaac in the book of Genesis.
You know, he sows the seed and he reaps a hundredfold.
And Isaac's just thriving and doing well.
And so what does Abimelek tell him?
Hey, you're too mighty for us.
Go from us.
We don't want you around.
You're too powerful.
You're too strong.
You're too wealthy.
Now, this carries over into spiritual things.
If you excel spiritually, what happens?
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution."
So it's kind of the same thing going on there as, you know, you do really well at your job.
People could feel threatened by that.
And if you excel spiritually, some people are threatened by that, too, because it just
makes them look bad or makes them feel bad or they compare themselves to you or whatever.
But I just want to point out this is an ungodly attitude because, you know, the Bible says
where envying and strife is, there is confusion in every evil work.
And the Bible tells us that we should do nothing through strife or vain glory, but in lowliness
of mind let each just seem other better than themselves.
So this attitude that looks at Jephthah and says, "Hey, he's too powerful.
He's making us look bad.
He's a threat to us, you know, so hey, let's just play this card of, oh yeah, well, at
least my mom is actually married to our dad.
You're a bastard.
Get out of here."
You know, they kind of play that card because they're threatened by his might.
And so we don't, we want to make sure that we don't have this envious attitude.
You know, let's just bring it home.
If someone on the job is outperforming us, that's okay, right?
If someone in an academic setting is outperforming you, that's okay, right?
I mean, what if I, as a pastor, am preaching and pastoring my church, and what if another
pastor who's also preaching the truth, who's also a godly man, you know, ends up outperforming
me?
You know, or maybe he outpreaches me, right?
Maybe we both go to a meeting and we both preach on the same evening and he preaches
a way better sermon than me.
I should rejoice at that.
I should rejoice that God's Word is being preached because it's not a competition, okay?
It's not a competition.
We're all serving God together.
What if one of my pastor friends is pastoring and his church is just thriving and growing
by leaps and bounds and it gets twice as big as Faithful Word, three times as big as Faithful
Word?
Maybe his YouTube channel gets way bigger, which is pretty easy now because our YouTube
channel has been decimated.
But you know what?
That's great.
It's great.
We ought to rejoice.
And you know what?
Even when we go to our secular job, it's all about serving that company if you're ethical
as a worker.
I mean, if you're an ethical worker and you show up to work, yeah, you want to get paid.
But you know what?
You ought to be there doing what's best for the company.
They're paying you and you do what's best for them.
That's the agreement.
That's the righteous way to be an employee, and the Bible talks about that, you know.
Not with eye service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ doing the will of
God from the heart, and that's talking about your secular job.
And so you want to do your best for the company, and if you have that attitude, then when you
see someone else in the company excelling, you say, "Hey, that's good for the company.
That's good.
That's what we like to see.
We want the company to make money.
We want the company to succeed."
You're like, "Well, I don't care if my company makes money or not."
You know what?
You're a bad employee and you're not right with God because you should care whether your
company succeeds.
"Well, my company is bad."
Then get a job for a company you respect and change your attitude because we ought to do
our work under our job as unto Christ.
We shouldn't have this envious attitude or a vainglorious attitude.
You say, "Why does it say vainglory?"
Well, can I tell you something?
Glory on this earth is pretty much all vainglory.
You say, "What's vainglory, pretty much any glory you can think of except the glory of
God?"
I mean, think about it.
Vainglory is almost redundant because any time you're seeking personal glory in this
world and trying to get glory for yourself and accolades for yourself, it's pretty much
going to be vain 99% of the time.
And so we need to make sure that we're humble and that we love other people and care about
other people and not put down other people because they're superior to us.
And that's what we see going on in this passage with Jephthah's brethren.
It's not his fault that he's the son of a strange woman.
He's a mighty man of valor.
He's a godly man of faith.
But they're threatened by that so he gets thrown out of his home.
So it's kind of a sad story from the beginning.
He gets exiled.