Treating God like a Man

Last week I began the story of Jepthah. In some ways he was a very unusual man but in some ways he was just like many of us. Have you ever wanted Jesus to do something for you and you were not sure that he would. Maybe you wanted a loved one healed or maybe it was a new job or the love of a particular person. Maybe you just wanted to get out of trouble.

It seems like there is always something we would like to have God do for us. Have you ever wanted something so bad you began to bargain with God? Have you ever said Lord if you will just get me out of this mess I will................ Never disobey you gain, or stop doing whatever it was that got me in this mess in the first place, or I will perform some great service or act for you, almost as if we are trying to earn a favor from God.

I think that is because we forget who we are dealing with. Maybe it is just force of habit. We are used to dealing with other humans and we often have to give something to get something. If we want our neighbor to let us borrow his tools we have to let him borrow ours or do something else for him. Sometimes we encourage our spouse to do something for us by doing something for them first. The way we get what we want from the people around us is by giving them something they want or need. It just makes sense.

But what about when we are dealing with God? What can we offer God that he does not already have? What is there in the world that God needs? Even if we offer ourselves to God Paul says that if we give him everything we have that is just what is due to him after all he had done for us, we are not really giving him anything that was not owed to him already. When you consider who God is and that we owe everything, including the very life and soul in our bodies to him it seems silly to try to persuade God to do what we want him to do by offering him something from us, but we dot it sometimes don’t we?

Jephthah did. Judges 11:29-40

Judges 11:29–40 NASB95

Now the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, so that he passed through Gilead and Manasseh; then he passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he went on to the sons of Ammon. Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If You will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.” So Jephthah crossed over to the sons of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. He struck them with a very great slaughter from Aroer to the entrance of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the sons of Ammon were subdued before the sons of Israel. When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, behold, his daughter was coming out to meet him with tambourines and with dancing. Now she was his one and only child; besides her he had no son or daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you are among those who trouble me; for I have given my word to the Lord, and I cannot take it back.” So she said to him, “My father, you have given your word to the Lord; do to me as you have said, since the Lord has avenged you of your enemies, the sons of Ammon.” She said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me; let me alone two months, that I may go to the mountains and weep because of my virginity, I and my companions.” Then he said, “Go.” So he sent her away for two months; and she left with her companions, and wept on the mountains because of her virginity. At the end of two months she returned to her father, who did to her according to the vow which he had made; and she had no relations with a man. Thus it became a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.

The spirit of the Lord had come upon Jepthah already and given him victory in battle. God was already helping him. He knew that an even bigger battle was coming up and he had a good idea. I should go to God and ask him for his help. Then, apparently, he began to doubt. Why should God help me, what have I done for God. Jepthah, who had already been given victory over his enemies by God decided that he had to offer something to God to ensure that God continued to help him out.

He decided that he would make a vow to sacrifice to God whatever came out of his house to meet him when he returned from battle. God did not ask him to make this vow or any other vow, God did not ask for anything from Jephthah, it was all Jephthah's idea.

God did help Jephthah in the battle, and the battle was won, of course there is no reason to suspect that God ever intended to do otherwise or that Jephthah's vow made any difference in the outcome whatsoever. He returned home a conquering hero and who should be the first to come out to meet him but his beloved daughter. It was then that the horrible truth hit home, he had promised to sacrifice to God whatever came out of his house to meet him, and it turned out to be his own daughter.

After all who or what did he think would come out to greet him when he came home. Did he think that there was a flock of sheep in his house that would be so glad to see him return home that they would open the door and rush out to meet him, or did he believe a heard of cattle would be hanging out in his living room and seeing him through the window knock down the door in their eagerness to welcome him home? Who else but his family would be in the house and rush out to welcome him home.

Somewhere in his mind he must have known he was putting himself in a position to sacrifice a human being, a member of his own family. And apparently he did. Apparently he killed his own daughter in a horribly mistaken idea that God wanted him to make this sacrifice. The scripture tells us that she never married and that the daughters of Israel celebrate the date of her sacrifice to this day. Her own father must have killed her and offered her on an altar. It makes me sick, and I think it makes God sick too. God never required a human sacrifice, he condemned the nations that sacrificed their children to their Gods. The story of Abraham and Isaac is a story about how God provided the sacrifice rather than let Abraham sacrifice his son, God just wanted Abraham to prove his faith in God. Jephthah did a horrible and terrible thing because he tried to bribe God into doing what he wanted him to do.

God is not a man that he can be bought or hired. There is nothing we have that God needs, there is nothing we have that he did not give to us. We cannot bargain with God or persuade God with bribes or offerings. God tells us in his word that he prefers obedience to offerings. When we try to bargain with God we cheapen the grace that God gives us and when we try to buy his favor by giving something special to him or by performing some great service for him we cheapen the gift that Jesus gave us by trying to buy for ourselves something that we could never earn or pay for but something that is freely given to us after Jesus paid all of the costs.

Many people are hung up on that idea and it keeps them from accepting the gift that Jesus offers. They say I need to clean myself up first or I am not good enough or I am not worthy. If you could clean yourself up then Jesus would not have needed to die in order to wash you white as snow. No one is good enough or worthy enough except Jesus himself. That is the whole point. If there was a way we could earn it, or pay for it, or compensate Jesus for what he gives us then Jesus would not have needed to die on the cross. If we could buy salvation for ourselves he would not have had to pay the cost.

To assume that we can offer Jesus something that can somehow obligate him to bless us or to favor us is to imply that we don’t really need a saviour after all, that we can do it by ourselves, but we can’t. We can’t pay for our own sins and we can’t earn our own forgiveness. We have nothing that is valuable enough to trade for the love of Christ. That is point of the parable about the treasure in the field, it is worth giving up everything else you have in order to receive the kingdom of heaven because nothing else you have nor everything you have all together is even close to the value of salvation. Paul asks What would a man give in exchange for his soul.

Jephthah made a terrible mistake. He tried to bribe God into dong something God had already been doing, something that God was doing anyway. He made a vow that God never asked him to make and he made a sacrifice that God never wanted. Because he thought that he had to offer God something he ended up doing something terrible.

There is a lesson here for all of us. God loves you and he wants you to prosper. God wants to help you. Often all you need to do is ask. Don’t assume that you understand what God wants, ask him what he wants from you. Don’t try to negotiate terms with God find out what God has planned and jump on board with his plan. After all he loves you and wants the best for you. God wants to bless you and he wants you to prosper, to be give the cup that runneth over, packed down and overflowing with good things. You don’t have to persuade God to do this, he wants to do it.

God is not like us, he does not think like us, he is not selfish like us, he does not work the way we do and he does not think like us. His thoughts are above our thoughts and his ways are above our ways. We cannot manipulate God by promising him something we believe that he wants. Even if we could we shouldn’t try. God knows and understands the world better than we do, he even understands us better than we know ourselves. God knows the best outcome and how to achieve it. Why mess with a perfect plan? We will never know everything that God knows or understand all that he understands, so why to change his mind, why try to persuade him. Our goal should not be to get God to come around to our way of thinking but for us to change our way of thinking around to his way of thinking.

Don’t promise God what you will do if you get your way, instead you should ask God what he wants you to do and do that. Believe in God, trust God, follow God. Let God make the decisions and you just do your part. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to persuade God to change his mind, trying to buy or bribe God, He cannot be bought and you shouldn’t try. Simply trust God in everything, let your prayer be like the prayer of Jesus. Tell God what you are thinking and what you are feeling and finish with not my will Lord but yours.