This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We're continuing on our look through the book of Judges. This is week three, day
three. In a few minutes we're going to begin to look at Jephthah and at Judges
chapter 11, verses 1 to 11.

But I just want to take you to a verse from the New Testament before we go
there. We've been looking together at what we can learn from the faith of these
judges throughout the book of Judges. I've waited until now to point you to this
verse in Hebrews chapter 11, the faith chapter.

Hebrews chapter 11 talks about some of these people. Hebrews 11, 32, the writer
of Hebrews says, "What more shall I say? I don't have time to tell about Gideon,
Barak, Samson, Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets.

In talking about the great people of faith, he includes these people we've just
studied. We've just learned from Gideon and Barak and Deborah how to have faith.
And we're going to finish out this week by seeing what Jephthah has to teach us
about faith and by beginning a look at what Samson has to teach us about faith.

These people of faith had their faith affirmed in one of the greatest
affirmations of faith ever given, the faith chapter of Hebrews chapter 11. And
when you look at the life of Jephthah, the judge that we're going to learn from
today, you learn how to get off the shelf, how to have the kind of faith that
gets unstuck, that gets off the shelf, that starts living the life again that
God has for you to live. How many useful things in your house never get off the
shelf?

They get resigned to some back corner of some back closet. Now I know that
there's some junk there. There's toe massagers, there's plastic candle holders
that have one corner broken off, to all kinds of kitchen gadgets that never
really worked.

But I also know there's a lot of treasures on those shelves. Your favorite knife
that the company put away with the gadgets when they helped you and you haven't
been able to find it since. Your most useful wrench that one of your kids put in
the junk drawer and you don't know where it is.

That item that you think you've lost but it's really there somewhere on the
shelf. When you look at the life of Jephthah, you're reminded that people can
sometimes suffer this fate. That your life is brimming with usefulness.

There's things that God has given for you to do but you feel like you've been
put on the shelf. You feel like you're not being used. You feel like your
purpose isn't being fulfilled.

Jephthah was exactly like that. Judges chapter 11 verses 1 to 3, let's read
about his life. Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior.

His father was Gilead. His mother was a prostitute. Gilead's wife also bore him
sons.

And when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. You're not going to get
any inheritance in our family, they said, because you are the son of another
woman. And so Jephthah fled from his brothers and he settled in the land of Tab,
where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.

So here's Jephthah, the son of a mighty warrior. His father has sex with a
prostitute and out of that comes Jephthah. And the rest of the family looks at
Jephthah and says, we don't want anything to do with you.

And they send him off into the land of Tab, where a lot of us live. This place
where we know God could do great things through our lives, in our lives, but
we're living in this place where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and
followed him. He had leadership qualities, he had leadership abilities, but he
was leading the wrong people in the wrong place in the wrong way.

And he seems like he's doomed to a shelf life. The son of a prostitute,
disinherited, cast out of the land, hanging out with the wrong people. He's
branded useless, worthless, on the shelf.

And we can feel like that. Maybe you feel like that, maybe you know somebody
who's experiencing that. Deep down you know that you can be used in a great way
of God, but you're spending your time right now sitting on the shelf.

And maybe it's because of choices that you know you've made, maybe it's because
of choices other people have made. You just know it's where you are. What I want
to tell you, the end of this story is that Jephthah becomes a judge of Israel.

He makes some faith decisions which get him off the shelf and into usefulness
before God. So how do you do this? How do you get off the shelf?

There's many lessons we could talk about, but in the life of Jephthah there are
three key decisions, three specific things that you and I can do. Number one, he
reconciled past relationships. Many people are on the shelf because they've been
put there by someone, and that can tend to make a person bitter.

That can tend to make a person angry. To become useful again, or tempted
sometimes to think, "I've got to get revenge on that person who put me on the
shelf," that's exactly the wrong method to get useful again. No, God tells us
that to become useful again, "I've got to let go of my bitterness.

I've got to let go of my anger. I've got to instead hang on to God's
forgiveness. " Now Jephthah does this, and he does it actually through a series
of questions, a question that he has when they figure out that they don't have
the right leader in Israel, and they start to look for another leader.

In Judges chapter 11 verses 4 to 11, "Some time later when the Ammonites were
fighting against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land
of Taab. 'Come,' they said, 'be our commander so we can fight the Ammonites. '
Jephthah said to them, 'Didn't you hate me and drive me from my father's house?

Why do you come to me now when you're in trouble? ' The elders of Gilead said to
him, 'Nevertheless, we are turning to you now. Come with us and fight the
Ammonites, and you will be head over all of us who live in Gilead.

' Jephthah answered, 'Suppose you take me back to fight the Ammonites and the
Lord gives them to me. Will I really be your head? ' The elders of Gilead
replied, 'The Lord is our witness.

We will certainly do as you say. ' So Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead,
and the people made him head and commander over them, and he repeated all his
words before the Lord in Mizpah. These questions that Jephthah asks in this
exchange, he could have just said, 'Yes, I'll be your leader.

This is what I've been waiting for. ' But before he goes to be their leader, he
reconciles some past relationships. And the questions that he asks actually have
to do, if you look at them closely, with his past, his present, and his future.

First, he asks, 'Did you not hate me and drive me from my father's house? ' He
confronted the problems in the past head on. He didn't pretend it hadn't ever
happened.

He had to let go of his bitterness, and so to let go of it, he had to confront
it. One of the keys to reconciling the past is openness about what happened,
with all involved in what happened. Oftentimes, we're open about what happened
in our past with a bunch of people that weren't involved, the friends that we
have now, and they may be supportive, but they're not going to help us to get to
reconciliation.

Now, you may not have the opportunity to be open with those who are involved.
They may not be giving you the opportunity. They may be gone.

They may be dead. In this case, the people of Israel came to Jephthah. They gave
him the opportunity, and so he took the opportunity.

And even if the person is someone you cannot talk to anymore, you can still, in
a conversation with the Lord, take the opportunity to confront that problem head
on, to be honest that it happened, to be honest about the bitterness that
happened in your life. Jephthah could have said, 'No problem. I'll be your
chief,' and ignored his emotions, ignored the break in relationship in the past.

He didn't do that. If he had done that, the undercurrent of bitterness would
have destroyed his usefulness. So you've got to confront what happened in the
past to reconcile relationships.

Second question he asks is, 'Why have you come to me now when you're in trouble?
' He brought their present relationship into sharp focus. Another key to
reconciliation is taking care of the present.

What's our relationship going to be like now? He needed to know exactly what
they wanted of him. He wasn't assuming anything.

So he asked the question again, 'Exactly what are you asking for? Exactly what
do you mean? ' By walking through that, he understood what kind of relationship
they wanted.

Many times in reconciliation, your relationship is not going to be what it once
was. We expect that it will be, 'Oh, I'll be reconciled and we'll be just the
kind of friends that we were before. ' Sometimes that happens, but usually not.

And so you need to have a conversation. What's our relationship going to be like
now? An honest conversation that may say, 'We may not be the friends that we
were before, but we can work together on this.

' And then he talks about the future. The third question he asks is, 'Will I
become your lead? ' He sought assurance for the future, and Jephthah needed some
guarantees.

He'd been hurt. And he was asking, 'Will this hurt happen again? Will they kick
me out of the land again?

Will you put me back on the shelf? ' It would have been easy for him to say,
'Now that you need me, let's see how you handle the rejection. ' No, there's no
way I'm going to help you.

But Jephthah gets off the shelf because he's willing to confront these things
we've just looked at and reconcile some past relationships. Getting unstuck,
getting off the shelf starts with forgiveness for some bitterness that you have
in the past. If you're stuck and there's some bitterness from the past you
haven't forgiven, that's where you start.

It starts with your relationships. What bitterness do you need to honestly
confront so you can let go of it? What opportunities are in front of you right
now that you need to clarify?

What assurances from God and others do you need in order to have the confidence
to move ahead? Let's pray about those things. Lord, we don't want to live a
shelf life.

We don't want to live on the shelf, not serving, not doing the things you made
us to do. And so we come and we pray that you'd help us to reconcile those
relationships where there's been a hurt. As opportunity comes to have the
conversation that we need to have, even though that's difficult.

And if the opportunity doesn't come to have the conversation with you that lets
go of the bitterness in your presence, because Lord, we don't want that
bitterness to keep us from the great things that you want to do in our lives and
through our lives. So we come right now and we give it to you. In Jesus' name,
amen.

Join us tomorrow. We're going to continue to learn from the example of Jeff
Thun.