I will be preaching from the Book of Judges this coming Sunday, particularly about the Biblical account of Jephthah.  The formative idea came from something I read by Haddon Robinson.

The Jephthah story is one of the great tragedies in the Bible.  Basically, in asking God for a victory over the Ammonites, Jephthah promises that he will sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house when he returns from his victory.  Well of course, his only child, a daughter hearing her father’s approach dances out of the house to greet her victorious father.  She is overjoyed, but Jephthah is heartbroken knowing that he has vowed to sacrifice his daughter who happened to be the first thing out of his house. 

The bottom line is that Jephthah is a man of great faith, but bad theology.  Jephthah should have known that God abhors human sacrifices, yet he sacrifices his daughter. 

There is a great danger when someone has a deep faith, they are absolutely committed to God, call them staunch, but they have bad theology.  One only has to look at the atrocities that have occurred in the name of religion, and specifically in the name of our savior.  Maybe we should spend more time in the study and in prayer learning about the grace and love of God as well as God’s judgments.  A good place to start is to read our Book of Confessions.

There is always the temptation to think “I am right.”  But the Confessions give us the perspective of hundreds of people who have experienced God in Jesus Christ, and these confessions have been adopted by the church as reliable expositions of what Scripture teaches.  Maybe I am not right, but maybe this church treasure can keep us on the right path.

Remember to study your Bibles tonight, and maybe you should also pick up the Confessions.

Steve