This is the back and forth, he seeks the diplomatic solution, it doesn't work out.
Verse 28, I'm almost done, "Howbeit the king of the children of Ammon harken not under
the words of Jephthah, which he sent unto them.
Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead and Manasseh, and
passed over Mizpe of Gilead, and from Mizpe of Gilead he passed over unto the children
of Ammon."
And this is where Jephthah makes a very stupid mistake here, "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto
the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into my hands,
then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when
I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer
it up for a burnt offering."
So this is a very foolish vow.
We should always be very careful before we commit to doing or saying anything.
Now, in the New Testament, the Bible very clearly commands us, and I've done whole sermons
on this, swear not at all.
Swear not at all.
Do not swear.
Don't swear by heaven, don't swear by the earth, don't swear by the Lord.
Just don't do it.
Now, in the Old Testament, it was permitted.
Certain things are permitted that God eventually rolls back and says that's not permitted anymore,
and oaths are one of those things.
And I proved that from the Bible in my sermon on swear not at all.
But the point is, you know, even if we don't swear oaths, the Bible still says that we
should let our yay be yay and our nay be nay.
And so, you know, the acronym that I always think of is DWYWYSWD, something like that.
Do what you say you will do, all right?
So if you say you're going to do something, you do it.
And this should be what we strive to do.
And you know, sometimes I've committed to things, and then later I realize, like, man,
I shouldn't have made that commitment.
But it's like, you know what?
I said I was going to do it.
So that's what I'm going to do, you know?
I remember I bought my house, you know, at the worst possible time, 2005, December of
2005, okay, I bought a house.
And it was like the worst time, peak of the market, the values were just through the roof,
interest rates were bad.
But you know what?
I have no regrets because, you know, I started Faithful Word Baptist Church in that house.
You know, I needed to do that, and so it is what it is, right?
But I bought my house at the worst possible time.
And I remember the housing market crashed a couple years later.
So I bought that house for $225,000.
Two years later, three years later, it was worth $85,000.
So here I've bought this house for $225,000.
Now it's worth, first it went up to $240,000, then it went down to $85,000.
And I mean, houses on my street were literally selling for like, what, $75,000 and $68,000,
like right in my neighborhood, and I'm just like, "Oh man."
And I still owe on my house, you know, a couple hundred grand or whatever, hundred and some
grand, you know, tons of money that I still owe on my house.
And a lot of people at that time were bailing from their mortgages, bailing from their houses,
and I remember people coming to me at that time being like, "Man, I'm upside down on
my house, I gotta get out of this mortgage, I'm gonna walk away from it, I'm gonna bail
on it."
And I remember asking those people, "Did your payment change?"
"No, no, my payment's still the same."
"Did your job change?
Did your amount that you're getting paid at your job change?"
"No."
And I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, well, if you're still making the same amount of money
and your payment's still the same, what's the issue?"
"Well, but you know, it dropped, it's like, well, I said just don't worry about it, it's
just a number."
You know, but I, you know, and I do feel that I was a little bit ripped off in that whole
deal because of the fact that the lender pulled a bunch of shady things and squirrely deals.
You know, on the day, the day you go to sign, it's like totally different than what you
agreed on and everything.
It's like, whoa, you know, the closing costs are way more than what they promised and everything.
But you know what?
You know, and a lot of people were telling me that I, you can get out of it, walk away.
But I'm thinking to myself, you know what?
This is what I signed on to.
Like, even though I kind of knew I was getting ripped off, I realized I was getting ripped
off and I signed it anyway.
You know, I knew that they had changed things on the last couple days and stuff, but I was,
I was so committed at that point, I'd already printed the address on the church invites.
What do you do at that point?
You know?
I got a thousand and so invites here that I bought with my own money, it's like, what
do I do?
You know, I'm just like, whatever, here, take a couple more thousand dollars of my money.
Thanks a lot, jerk.
You know, I just felt like, I just felt like I should just, I just felt like I should stay
with something that I signed on to, you know, that I agree, I agreed to this, and if I can
stay with it, you know, and I can understand people get in situations where they have to
default on something or whatever, you know, I get that, and they're, they're, you know.
But I'm just saying like since, since I was making enough money, I just stayed with it,
you know, and in the end, it came back, and I was able to sell it for more money than
I paid because I just stayed with it and hung with it over the long haul.
But you know, the Bible talks about a person swearing to their own hurt and changing not,
that they will receive a blessing from the Lord, and so sometimes you commit to things
or say you're going to do things, even just little things.
You know, you say you're going to go to one birthday party, and then you get invited to
a better birthday party, you go to the original birthday party, because that's what you said
you would do.
You know, and we should really strive to do what we say we're going to do.
Now obviously if we make a vow, you really got to do what you say you're going to do,
but we shouldn't be making a bunch of oaths anyway, so even just when we say yea, let our
yea be yea and our nay be nay, and when we say we're going to do something, we should
be reliable and stick with it.
Don't you hate it when people go back on their word to you?
I had a job one time and they told me, if you go get this certification, we're going
to give you a 50 cent an hour raise.
50 cents, you know?
But man, when you're living paycheck to paycheck, you know, 50 cents an hour is 50 cents.
I mean yea, that's 20 bucks or whatever a week, and so that mattered to me.
I needed that money.
So I actually, I had to take these series of tests and I had to take two sets of tests.
Well I figured out, and the tests are like three months apart, but I figured out that
I can take the test in California and then I can drive across the border in Nevada two
days later and take the test in Nevada and I can actually take all the tests and get
certified.
I thought that my boss was going to be really happy that I was like taking initiative and
driving to Nevada, you know, and I mean I had to put gas in my car to go to Nevada.
I come to my boss and say hey, I'm certified, let's go, let's do it.
Oh well, we didn't know you were going to do it that fast.
Didn't give me the raise.
Made me wait three months to get the raise.
He broke his word.
He said get the certification, as soon as you get it, you get an extra 50 cents.
I, you know, put $50 of gas in my car and he broke his word to me.
You know what?
And it wasn't going to hurt him to give me 50 cents.
But you know what?
Even if it does hurt you, if you say you're going to do stuff, do what you say you're
going to do.
Honor your commitments, right?
Keep your word.
But then there's a vow.
A vow is another level of commitment, right?
And pretty much the only vow that we really partake in, or the biggest vow that we partake
in is marriage, right?
Because we do make that lifelong commitment to marriage.
That is a vow that we take.
And here's the thing about that is that people are pretty flippant with that vow today, aren't
they?
You know, people go into marriage thinking, "Well, if it doesn't work out, I got Plan
B."
You need to burn your bridges behind you when you get married.
You need to burn the ships.
You need to be do or die with marriage because, guess what, "Till death do us part" isn't
just a slogan.
That's a commitment that you're making, okay?
And so you don't want to break your word on that.
Now Jephthah stupidly, foolishly commits to doing something and he doesn't even know what
he's committing to.
You know, we need to make sure that we know what we're getting into when we commit to
do something.
So he commits, "Oh, the first thing that comes out to meet me, I'm going to offer it as a
burnt offering to the Lord."
He assumes it's going to be a barnyard animal that comes out to greet him.
And of course, he goes out, he fights, he wins the battle, and then his only daughter
comes out to meet him, and before any of the animals come out, she comes out, which is
very unlikely.
You'd expect animals to, you know, you'd expect the dog to come running out and barking
and wagging its tail first thing, but no, you know, it's his daughter that comes out.
So now he's in this horrible position, and people have endlessly debated this passage,
and because of the fact that it's disturbing, it's unsettling.
When you read it, it kind of makes you uncomfortable, right?
But that's what it's supposed to do, I think.
You should be a little bit perturbed by this chapter.
You should be a little bit unsettled.
It is a rough chapter.
And so here's what we have to understand.
You know, everything is in the Bible the way it is for a reason.
Number one, it's an extreme example showing the seriousness of a vow as a warning.
Don't make stupid vows.
Don't say stupid things.
these rash odes. That's number one.