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Advent Productions

Hebrews 11- Faith

Benjamin Ng

01 The Faith of Abel

02 The Faith of Enoch

03 The Faith of Noah

05 The Faith of Sarah

08 The Faith of Jacob

09 The Faith of Joseph Part 1

11 The Faith of Moses’ Parents

10 The Faith of Joseph Part 2

13 The Faith of Moses Part 2

14 The Faith of Moses Part 3

12 The Faith of Moses Part 1

15 The Faith of Rahab

16 The Faith of Gideon

07 The Faith of Isaac

17 The Faith of Barak

19 The Faith of Samson

20 The Faith of Jephthah

21 The Faith of David

22 The Faith of Samuel

04 The Faith of Abraham Part 1

06 The Faith of Abraham Part 2

Father in heaven, thank you so much for this time.

Thank you Lord for seeing us safely through the past week.

Thank you Lord for all the praises that are on our lips and the things that we're sharing with each other about your goodness.

And thank you Lord that You promised that if we ask, You will give us Your Holy Spirit.

And so this evening, Lord, we are asking because we need help to understand Your Word.

I pray that You'd guide us in our study together.

I pray that You please be with us and lead us as we go and look at this character in the Bible of Jephthah.

Will you lead us with your spirit we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

I have slides for you this evening and so you'll be able to read along and we'll be able to go a little bit quicker.

And so our first text really there is found in the foundation of Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 we've been going through this chapter and in this verse we've been here for quite a few weeks actually.

Because it just lists out a whole list of people and right in the middle of it you can see that it's bolded and underlined that name Jephthah.

And it's different to the title of my sermon because in the Old Testament his name is not spelled this way.

So if you do a word search on that specific name without figuring out the actual original meaning the original spelling you won't find them in the old testament at all but it says here what more shall I say for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jephthah of David also and Samuel and of the prophets.

Jephthah as I said is probably the least famous character in all of Hebrews 11.

Especially all these characters that we see are such illustrious characters and in the Old Testament there really is only 1 chapter devoted to him.

There's another chapter that follows it that has a little bit of description but really nothing much of significance.

So his story is found in Judges chapter 11 and I'm not gonna read really the whole chapter this evening so if you want to go back and still get a bit further background you can read that chapter through this evening after our study but we're going to start in Judges chapter 11 and reading in verse 1.

Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor and he was a son of a harlot and Gilead begat Jephthah 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 our father's house, for thou art the son of a strange woman.

Then Jephthah fled from his brethren and dwelt in the land of Tob, and there gathered vain men to Jephthah and went out with him.

The introduction of Jephthah seems to not start off very well.

It does say he's a mighty man of valor, he's a brave man, a strong man, a valiant man, an able man, a virtuous man.

These are the definitions that the Hebrew word implies when you look in the concordance.

He is a really good man yet in that same breath it says he's the son of what?

And you know his dad obviously slept with a prostitute and gave birth to him and even though he was the son of his father his brothers from Gilead's wife would not accept him and cast him out because they didn't want him to have any inheritance in their family They wanted nothing to do with him.

They didn't want anything to do with him rather.

Jephthah had every reason from a young age to be a bad man, a drunkard, an outcast of society because he was cast out of his home and rejected by his own flesh and blood.

But he didn't let his circumstances get the better of him and dictate what he ought to be in these sorts of circumstances.

Remember the Bible describes him as a valiant and a virtuous man and so even though the The the life that he lived handed him sour grapes He even though didn't have the best start in life and the love that he needed in the home, he never gave himself the excuse to be a bad person.

He never pointed to his life and said, well, you never had your brothers and sisters or even your mother and father reject you, did you?

No, he never gave himself excuses as why he would be allowed to act in a sinful way but rather he became better because of it.

You know, already here we learn an important lesson.

We must never give ourselves excuses as to why we are allowed to act a certain way, as if we are privileged or we just have this reason why we can be bad because I had an upbringing that was bad.

We must not blame our past or our circumstances or our upbringing because why?

God's grace is sufficient to overcome every cultivated and inherited tendency to sin and even overcome all the worst of circumstances to help us to be sons and daughters of God.

So even from the very beginning there, we learn a very important lesson about the faith of Jephthah.

We're going to continue reading there in verse 4.

And it came to pass in the process of time that the children of Ammon made war against Israel.

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.

And Jephthah 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 now unto me when you are in distress?

And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, 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.

So as the story progresses even though he's an outcast when the Ammonites come to fight against the children of Israel the first thing they do is they run back to Jephthah to lead them in battle.

They run back to him because they need help.

And it was obvious, even to those that had cast him out, that he was a man of valor, that he was a virtuous man, and that God was with him.

And at the first sign of trouble, they knew who they could trust and who they could turn to, and not even a second thought.

The Ammonites came, they took off looking for Jephthah.

And you know sadly this attitude is prevalent in us today as well.

Not only with people but how we treat God sometimes friends.

We easily forget God when we lack nothing, when there's no trouble.

We become too proud to call Him our God and to bend our knees to pray to Him because of the many blessings that we enjoy.

But when things get difficult and all else fails, We come running back to God at our last resort.

How Jephthah was treated, that's exactly how we treat God too, isn't it?

But friends, God is not a spare tire, only to notice when we have a flat tire.

We must learn to have a close relationship with Him just as Jephthah did.

When he was rejected by men, Jephthah, he became even closer with God.

He did not give himself the excuse to be bad and point to his past situations to dictate who he thought he should be.

Learn to make Jesus a center of our lives.

It's better to live a life constantly with close to God rather than just remembering Him when tragedies strike.

Remember the time will come 1 day, friends, when we will seek God and He will no longer be found.

That's what it says in Isaiah 55 and verse 6, seek ye the Lord while He may be found.

He agrees to come back and help the children of Israel fight this battle.

Much of Judges chapter 11 and this is why we're going to skip quite a lot here this evening.

Much of Judges chapter 11 really is this conversation that Jephthah has with the children or the the leaders of the Ammonites who have come to fight against them.

You see the Ammonites said that the land belonged to them and that's why they were coming to take it back whatever belonged to them in the past.

But Japheth, he goes and recounts the history that they actually, the Israelites, didn't intend to take their land when they were coming out of Egypt and making their march towards the land of Canaan.

But when they were passing through the land, the Ammonites said, no, you cannot come through here.

And not only did they stop them but they came to attack them and so the children of Israel had no choice but to protect themselves and as a result they came into the land of Israel and possessed the land.

And so, you know, Jephthah, he recounts all these things, but you know what?

Small but important fact, know your history.

You know, when you want to understand Bible prophecy, you need to understand history, friends.

Many Asians, We don't even know our Chinese history I don't know anything about Malaysian history the country that I'm living in here We are not really history people.

We like the sound of coins You know, we like the the flipping of the money isn't it that's what the Chinese are usually business people but here Jephthah shows us how important it is to understand the history and to understand these things especially when it comes to prophecy Daniel and revelation but furthermore Jephthah said and he said this in Judges 11, this long conversation that he has with them.

He said, look, for 300 years we've been here and you've done nothing about it.

But anyways, he goes out to fight against the Ammonites and there is not much the Bible says in regards to the battle.

It's not like Deborah or Barak that we studied before.

It's not like even the battles of Samson.

We don't really know much about the battle that Jephthah had.

All we read in Judges chapter 11 and verses 32 and 33 is this.

So, Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon, to fight against them.

And the Lord delivered them into his hands.

And he smote them from Arrowhere, even till thou come to Minneth, even 20 cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards with a very great slaughter.

Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel.

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Hebrews 11- Faith

20 The Faith of Jephthah

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