Rescue Us!

It’s it’s not every gosh every week in local church life that you see God’s hand so clearly on not just a group of people but also a facility and you know for us for all of us to already be here Wednesday night when the fire happened. I think too just about how you know God just totally orchestrated putting the fire out and taking care of us and just man God’s just so kind. I mean, it’s it’s really clear that He’s on us spiritually, if you will, all the fruit that’s happening in our church, but to see Him so so kindly take care of us physically, too, man, it’s just just great.

Yeah, so what we want to do, we just want to take a few moments and just pray. God, what what is next for this facility? You know, ultimately, this might hurt somebody’s feelings. The the four walls of this place is not the church. The New Testament says that the church are the people I’m looking at right now. Ultimately the four walls of this place we want to take care of but they are a facility that facilitates the life of the church. So what’s next? What’s next for us as we look at renovations, as we look at possible if we need to build things in the future and how we use this place. So that’s what we want to take some time now to pray for is God, what’s next? So I want to invite you to grab a neighbor and just pray. God, please help us to raise money for whatever You want to do. Lord, speak to us. God cares about everything, including the paint on the walls and what we do. So, let’s ask let’s ask Him to guide us. All right, you grab a neighbor and let’s pray for a moment.

Holy Spirit, thank You so much. In terms of how churches go, Lord Sauldam, we’ve already seen our fair share of fires. Most recently, the AC unit. Lord thinking though back in the early 60s the what we think is probably an arson that burned down the original sanctuary. Lord, I was thinking about that though as we were singing that that song, Shine, Jesus, shine. And we’re praying that the that Your fire would get a hold of us. Holy Spirit, in the Bible, You’re described a number of ways. You’re described as breath. You’re described as water. You’re also described as fire. When the church started back in Acts chapter 2 and Holy Spirit, You manifested Yourself on those early Christians, it looked like fire. I pray that You would get a hold of us with that same type of intensity and warmth. God, the funny thing about fire is that I can use a fire to start another fire, but that original fire doesn’t get any smaller. Lord, You’ve placed something in my soul that I can give to other people and that doesn’t take away from what You’ve already given me. It actually grows. I pray You get a hold of us with that type of fire. I pray You get a hold of us with that same type of intensity and burning and passion and warmth. Not that we’d be belligerent toward people that we disagree with. Not that our words would be incendiary against our enemies, but that our heart would beat with the same love and compassion for the lost God that Your heart beats with. A heart that sent Your Son to die for us and to be resurrected for us, which we’ll celebrate here in a few minutes. Holy Spirit, as we look at Your Word, I pray You get a hold of this, that You would get me out of the way, You’d help all of us to walk out of here knowing what our next step is in following You. God, we love You. Thank You for loving us. It’s in Your great name. Amen.

Awesome. As you return back to your seat, open back up to Judges chapter 12 as we continue in this series to the book of Judges, which we’ve called Broken Saviors. You know, thinking about that fire in the AC unit a few weeks ago reminds me of some times in my life when I had really got caught in a bind and I needed a rescuer. You know, the the fire of my life had kind of erupted and I needed somebody to come and help me out. I think about maybe like a house project gone awry. Maybe you’ve cut into the wrong thing. The water starts spewing everywhere and you’re like, “Man, I need somebody to really take care of me in this moment.” Or you’re building something for somebody and it just it’s just not all coming together and you’re just like, “God, I I need a rescuer in this moment.” Also, it’s not just mistakes. It’s also our like moral choices sometimes where we get caught in a situation and we’re like, “God, I need someone to rescue me out of this.” the one of the best examples of that in my life in middle school.

You see, I have been born with a predisposition, a an internal wiring and operating system that absolutely craves your approval. And that’s just kind of how I am. That’s what I that’s the part of the hand I’ve been dealt in life is just to need people to need me and to like me. And that has never been more apparent than those terrible years of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. So, if anybody in the room is in your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade years, you should know it’s going to be over soon. And at a certain point in life, you’re just going to stop caring what people think about you. All right? Until then, maybe you’re like me and you’re just made a slave to that.

There was this group of friends that I was not in in middle school. I at best would say I orbited around the solar system of their friendships. And I so deeply wanted to bust into that thing like a comet and just be like, “Hey, here I am. Do you love me?” So, there’s these one of these guys I had a middle school class with and our last names were very similar. So, we sat right beside each other and I was watching him and he’s writing stuff on the desk in his class and he’s just writing little dumb stuff about a classmate of his and I thought that was funny. Seventh grade, whatever. And I thought to myself, if that if if I like him more because of that, maybe he’ll like me if I do the same thing.

In my wisdom, I decided to up the ante. So, I take out a piece of paper and I write to so and so and I wrote the most gross things I could think of as a seventh grader about this kid. a kid that was nice, that treated me well, that I I think at that time would have called me one of his casual friends. I just wrote the dumbest, grossest, meanest things I could because I thought it would make this classmate like me. And my plan, guys, it gets better. My plan is I’m going to walk the halls and at a certain point just kind of casually tip that thing out of my pocket. I don’t know if I’ve told you about this. Knowing it’s going to get picked up, it’s going to get read and all this dumb stuff that I had said about this kid was going to get floated around school.

It did not take very long for that the administration to understand who had done this. Now, they didn’t have a motive, but they had a culprit. And they called the culprit’s mom. So, I get home from school that day and my mom’s like, “How was school?” And you’re just playing it casual like the moms do. And what’s even worse, my mom had already gone grocery shopping and she had already bought me a chocolate candy bar. I’m tearing that wrapper. It was pretty good. “Anything interesting happened at school today?” Like, “No. I I don’t think so.” “Really? Anything you want to talk about at all?” My mom’s just man giving me time, opportunity after opportunity. She’s trying to cat like throw me a lifeline eventually. She says, “Jeremy, I know what you did. I know about the note.”

And I have to go back and apologize to that kid. Think I had to call his mom. I had to talk to the girls that I had included in this note. Had to apologize to my teacher. Obviously, my parents. Man, I had created a situation for myself. It had snowballed and I just needed to be rescued from me.

The story of Judges is that while God is radically committed to loving His people, those same people are radically committed to running away from Him. Despite God’s repeated efforts at grace and redemption, God’s people find new ways to break His heart and to go against His design. And when we go against God’s design, like I so painfully showed, things always go poorly. And we need to be rescued. Jephthah’s judgeship is an especially painful reminder of this reality. We’re going to look at how it all ends. We all need Jesus, man. It doesn’t get any more basic or any more profound than that. The story of the Bible is we need Jesus. We need Him. In fact, just say it. Say it with me. Let’s just make this very normal. Three, two, one. We all need Jesus, man. That has got to be engraved on our souls. Every morning you get up, you need to say, “Jesus, I need You today.” When you go through the disagreement with your spouse or your coworker or your friend, you say, “Jesus, I need You.” When you are facing that emptiness of an unmet dream or desire, you say, “Jesus, I need You.” When you are facing that financial issue and you don’t know how to get out of it or that medical diagnosis and you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, you need to remind yourself, “Jesus, I need You.”

Let’s look at Judges chapter 12 as this truth will jump out at us. Judges 12. The men of Ephraim were called together and crossed the Jordan River to Zon. They crossed to Jephthah, who we looked at last week, and they said this: “Why have you crossed over to fight against the Ammonites but you didn’t call us to go with you? We will burn your house with you in it.” Talk about 0 to 60, huh? Jephthah replies, “My people and I had a bitter conflict with the Ammonites. So I did call for you, but you didn’t deliver me from the power.” Jephthah claps back: “When I saw that you weren’t going to deliver me, I took my life into my own hands. I crossed over to the Ammonites and the Lord handed them to me. Why then have you come against come today to fight against me?” Then Jephthah gathered all of the men of Gilead and they fought and defeated Ephraim. These are other Israelites, by the way, because Ephraim had said, “You Gileadites are Ephraite fugitives in the territories of Ephraim Manasseh.” We’ll get to that in a minute. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim. Whenever a fugitive from Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the Gileadites asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” He would answer, “No.” So they told him, “Please say Shibboleth.” If he said, “Caleth,” because he couldn’t pronounce the shh correctly, they seized him and executed him at the ford of the Jordan. At that time, 42,000 from Ephraim died. Jephthah judged Israel six years and when he died he was buried in one of the cities of Gilead.

We all need Jesus. Goodness gracious. The first way I see this is that we need Jesus to save us from ourselves. If you’re a notetaker, write that down. We need Jesus to save us from ourselves. Man, the tragedy of Jephthah’s story is that redemption for him was in his grasp. Do you remember from last week what all he overcame? He was the son of a prostitute. He was kicked out of his dad’s house by his half brothers. He’s an outcast from his clan and he’s leading a group of worthless raiders just marauding the countryside. That’s who he is. But despite all of these issues, Jephthah becomes judge over Israel. He becomes the top dog in a time without kings. He could have had the ultimate rags to riches story, but he can’t get out of his own way. When the people of Ephraim, a tribe on the east bank of the Jordan River, challenge his authority and his credibility, he takes the bait. He can’t calm himself down, and he brings the fight to the other Israelites, his own countrymen. Instead of using his influence to pacify the situation, Jephthah seems happy to bring the hammer down on all these upstarts from across the river. Man, Jephthah needs Jesus. Jephthah’s judgeship is all about bloodshed and fighting. You remember how the story ended so tragically last week with him sacrificing his daughter to God because of a dumb vow that he made. Man, from beginning to end, Jephthah’s life is about killing people. Whether it’s his own daughter or other Israelites, he can’t get past that. But also look at the Ephraites because they need Jesus, too. They’ve got the same issue. They can’t get over themselves. They can’t get out of their own way. They need a rescuer. Also, Jephthah, put yourself in the shoes of the Ephraites. You just watched a man named Jephthah lead an army that totally destroyed foreign invaders that had just swept through your country that you yourselves could not subdue. You said, “Hey, that guy just defeated those enemies. Let’s go and fight him.” What in the world? They’re so foolish. They did the same thing back to Gideon, or to Gideon back in chapter 8 in Judges chapter 8. Gideon had just defeated a foreign army, and the people from Ephraim, feeling themselves, thinking they’re all way more important than they actually are, go and they challenge Gideon. Now, Gideon is different because he is able to calm them down with his words, but Jephthah just incites them. The Ephraimite people and Jephthah could not get out of their own way, and they kept creating trouble for themselves.

Do you know anybody like that? Thank you. Yes, ma’am. Do you know somebody that can’t get out of their own way? It might be the bully at school. They might actually be the person that is loneliest and craving love the hardest, but because they’re not getting it at home, they’re taking that aggression and that unmet desire out on their classmates. And you know what happens to a bully? They grow up and they just bully other adults, always keeping people at arm’s distance when, man, if they could really change things, that same arm which keeps people away would actually draw people close.

Or it might be the gossip who can’t get out of their own way. And instead of using their words to encourage and uplift, instead of using their words to mend relationships, they’re constantly using their words to tear people down because they’re actually feeling so insecure about themselves.

Do you know somebody who can’t get out of their own way? Someone who is dealing with some sort of substance issue. This person who is trying to medicate this desire for a good thing, but they’re using bad things to medicate that good desire. Somebody who can’t stop spending money on stuff and they’re drowning in a sea of debt and poor decisions. Someone who can’t get out of their own way with their sexual sin. So every night they’re scrolling, looking at the same stuff, feeling terrible, wanting to get out of that cycle, but they can’t get out of it.

Do you know someone like that? Are you someone like that? And you’re here this morning and you’re recognizing, “I might have my church clothes on and I may have gotten here in time for service, but man, I can’t get out of my own way. And my choices are constantly putting me in a place where I need to be rescued, too.” Man, if that’s you, you are in the exact right place. God has so much love and compassion and grace for you, and He would love to spring you free from the thing that’s binding and holding you.

Jephthah and the Ephraimites could not get out of their own way. They needed Jesus.

I do want to explain something as we are looking at the Bible, just to help you understand what’s going on here. Look at verse four. Jephthah gathered all of the men of Gilead, and they fought and defeated Ephraim because, look at this, Ephraim had said, “You Gileadites are Ephraimite fugitives in the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh.” Now, for about 5% of the room, you understand what’s being said. But if you’re normal, the other 95%, you don’t understand what’s going on right now. That means that me, Al, Donna, and somebody else are the weird ones. We understand what’s going on. Everybody else, you’re the normal ones. All right.

So, when Moses, God uses Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. All right? That’s called the Exodus. They’re wandering through the wilderness. After 40 years, they get to the edge of the wilderness. God does not allow Moses to go in, but he can see into it. God then, after Moses, raises up a new guy named… Do you all remember his name? Joshua. That’s right. Okay. Aaron was his half brother, did the other stuff. But anyways, Joshua is the one that actually takes this group of people, the Israelites, into the promised land.

Israel is broken up into 12 tribes. God, in His wisdom, understood these millions of people, if I’m going to just dump them into the promised land, they’re constantly just going to be fighting over every square inch of land. So, I’m going to divide the land up into 12 allotments. Now, one of the tribes, the Levites, they did not get any land because they were to serve in the temple. So, now God has enough land for 12 tribes, but there’s only 11 tribes inheriting land. He takes one of those tribes, cuts it in half along the Jordan River. East Manasseh and West Manasseh. Out of West Manasseh, God raises up these two groups called the Ephraimites and the Gileadites. We’ve seen what’s happening so far. So even within these tribal systems, there are some rivalries coming up. The Ephraites attempted to cancel any territory claims by the Gileadites by denying that Gilead is an actual tribe. It’s like looking at your cousin and saying, “Why do you own any land here? You don’t live here. You shouldn’t own the land here if you don’t actually live here.” Historically, Gilead was one of the clans from the tribe of Manasseh. By identifying the Gileadites as a mixed stock of Ephramites and Manassites, the Ephraites were classifying the Gileadites as squatters. You are here as fugitives. The Ephraites’ problem is that their rivalry with other tribes was fueled by a desire for more land. Now, that’s something that we can identify with.

Why would they do this? The New Testament speaks to that. James 4:1-7. What’s the source of wars and fighting among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? You desire and you don’t have. You murder and covet and can’t obtain. You fight and wage war. You don’t have because you don’t ask. You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulterous people. Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever wants to be a friend of the world becomes the enemy of God. Or do you think it’s without reason? The scripture says, “The Spirit He made to dwell in us envies intensely, but He gives greater grace.” Therefore, He says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, submit to God, resist the devil, and He will flee from you.”

Why would the Ephraites go and challenge their ancestral cousins who just defeated the foreign army? Why would they take the fight to a leader that they knew had already conquered someone else? It’s because the passions that waged within them. Why would we bully and gossip and slander? It’s because the passions that are waging war within us. Why would we spend our money on things that we don’t need and we can’t actually afford? It’s because the passions broiling and raging inside of you. Why do we keep turning to pornography and to substances and numbing ourselves with Instagram? It’s because the passions that are waging war within us. But the promise of the Bible is that resist the devil and he will flee from you. You don’t have to be a slave of the passions that put you at enemies or at warfare with God and with others.

Man, this describes all of us. You may not be an Ephraimite. You may not be a Gileadite. You may not know how to say any of this stuff. But we need to be saved from ourselves. I need to be saved from my passions which create wars with you. I need to be saved from my destructive habits which dismantle any positive progress in life. We need to be saved from the self-centeredness that fuels our own little kingdoms. We need to be saved from our shameful mistakes that bring dishonor on us and our families. And nothing out there can save us. No amount of money I spend on my problems, no amount of time sitting away from them, the right relationship or the right family won’t heal this stuff. Even church and religion won’t solve the problem. There’s lots of people sitting in great gospel preaching churches all across America have no relationship with Jesus and they can’t make any progress in life. No amount of putting money in the plate, no amount of taking the Lord’s supper, no amount of getting baptized over and over again will save you from sin, which is the actual issue. Man, we need Jesus.

We need Jesus also to give us real peace. Look at verses 8 through 15. So Jephthah has died. His time as judge is over. Ibzan, who was from Bethlehem, judged Israel after Jephthah. He had 30 sons. He gave his 30 daughters in marriage to men outside the tribe and brought back 30 wives for his 30 sons from outside the tribe. Ibzan judged Israel for seven years. And when he died, he was buried in Bethlehem. Elon who was from Zebulun judged Israel after Ibzan and he judged Israel 10 years. And when he died, he was buried in Aijalon in the land of Zebulun. After Elon, Abdon, son of Hillel, who was from Pirathon judged Israel. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys. Abdon judged Israel eight years. And when he died, he was buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim in the hill country.

of the Amalekites. You might look at that list and see a bunch of random names. That’s what I also see. But I recognize positively some good things are happening here. You look at this list and you look at leader after leader that God keeps providing for the people of Israel, right? Despite a tribal uprising, despite all the warring foreign armies, the threat of civil war, God keeps holding Israel together for at least another 25 years. Jephthah the judge even binds a couple of the tribes together by marrying his daughters to their sons and taking their sons for his daughters. There’s a lack of big battles being recorded here. It makes you wonder if this 25 years of mostly peaceful time. But the shadow side of this is that we’re still in the book of Judges. Israel still needs God to keep raising up judges because Israel keeps failing to get out of their own way. Israel needs God to curb their drive towards self-destruction. You see, Israel and us don’t just need more human leaders to make decisions. No, we need a divine savior to deal away with our biggest problems. None of these judges are able to deal with the real issue facing Israel, their sole level devotion to their own their own way, which the Bible calls sin. In the book of Judges, the legacy of the Israelites is mistake after mistake, going from one season of shame to another. And not to be a downer, but that actually describes you and me pretty well, too. Ephesians 2:1-3 says this about us. You, me, us, dead in our trespasses and sins in which we all previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts. And we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. Man, this is us slaves to our flesh, slaves to our fleeting passions, slaves to Satan and just carrying out whatever He wants us to do. Ultimately dead in our trespasses and sins. You know what a dead person can do for themselves? Nothing. Ain’t nobody across the street doing anything for them. Because dead people can’t breathe. They can’t raise themselves up. They can’t make money. They can’t bring themselves to life. You’re dead. That means you’re dead. So any hope to create life in a dead person’s got to come from a different source. And that’s what God does for us. God in His grace and His mercy and His kindness looks at dead people and says, “I love them. Even in their rotting grossness, I love them. Even in their disobedience toward Me, I love them because I made them and I have chosen them and they are Mine.” You see, in Jesus, God makes a way for us to live. Not just be forgiven at one time, but for us to have a completely renewed state. You know, the crazy thing to me about the book of Judges is that some of these crazy judges are recorded in the in the New Testament positively in the hall of faith in Hebrews chapter 11 where the author is talking about Moses and Abraham and all these men and women in the Old Testament that walked by faith and the author of Hebrews has the audacity to record Jephthah. What more can I say? Time is too short for me to tell you about Gideon. I get that one. Okay, Gideon, the whole fleece. I get all that. Barak, I get that one. He and Deborah delivered the people. Samson, oh, I get that one, too. He was a little crazy with the ladies, but he saved all the Israelites when he killed himself. And Jephthah’s here. The guy killed his daughter. Al, are you s is anybody else surp Paul is with me. You’re with Thank you, Paul. I appreciate this. Why in the world is Jephthah here? Verse 33. By faith who conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the raging of fire, escapes the edge of the sword. Somehow Jephthah does that. Gains strength and weakness, becomes mighty in battle, puts foreign armies to flight. Man, Christ, man, He doesn’t just save us. He doesn’t just like like baptize you and then like release you to do whatever you want to do. He does that kind of but also what Christ does is man He totally redeems you so that we post cross look through the cross back at Jephthah and we see a redeemed forgiven man.

A man whose mistakes are not the final story about him. Man, something I want to say to somebody in the room, I don’t know who you are. That thing you did that you don’t think you could ever be forgiven of. That note you may have dropped in middle school. That adultery that you may have had. That lie you told as a 5-year-old to your grandma. That drink you can’t put down. Whatever it is, that does not have to be the end of your story. What God wants to do is forgive you and totally redeem you. So that even a man like Jephthah who would slaughter 42,000 of his cousins, who would offer his daughter as a burnt sacrifice to God, who would manipulate and slander with his words. Even a man like that could be recorded in the New Testament as somebody you and me ought to live like. That’s not avail- not possible any other way other than through Jesus Christ.

Jesus, our sin is a lot. Our sin is so great. Our need for You is so immense. It is deafening and terrifying and startling. And I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it because when I when I come to start to appreciate how deeply I need You, I feel so unworthy of You. But in that moment, You always remind me of how loved I am by You. God, in my flesh, I am just like Jephthah. I want to use my words and my actions to manipulate and harm. And I need a Savior. I need a rescuer. Thank You, Jesus, for rescuing and redeeming my mistakes. Thank You for doing that for us as a church family. We’re going to keep making mistakes. We’re going to keep sinning. We’re going to keep saying things that hurt each other’s feelings and doing things that don’t make sense according to the Bible. And we need You to continue to shower us with Your love and Your mercy and Your kindness until that day when You either draw us home or Christ, You come back and You’ve finished what You started in the empty tomb. We look forward to that day. God, thank You for loving us. We love You. Amen.