Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Philippians 2:5.

I read that verse yesterday in Hearing God and it resonated in so many ways today in what I read in Judges 11. We meet an illegitimate son of a man named Gilead. Jephthah was a mighty warrior v. 1, whose mother was a prostitute and so his half brothers drove Jephthah away, rejecting him to receive in their inheritance. Rejection. They looked down on Jephthah because of his mother. Who do we look down on? Who do we reject? Who have we been rejected by? Did God reject Jephthah? No. Does God reject prostitutes? No. Does God reject illegitimate children? No.

Continuing the story, when they are fighting against the Ammonites, these same men go to Jephthah in the land where he settled to ask for his help against the Ammonites because he is a mighty warrior and now they need him. They needed something from him so they seek him to help them and to be the head (judge) over them in Gilead.

An amazing part of this chapter is how Jephthah, a mighty warrior, sent messengers to the Ammonite king asking why he was attacking his country which begins a back and forth with the king claiming land that was not his in the first place nor when Israel, 300 years earlier, had subdued the land. That land had belonged to the Amorites. Jephthah sends this message to the king: Now since the Lord, the God of Israel, has driven the Amorites out before his people Israel, what right have you to take it over? Will you not take what your god Chemosh gives you? Likewise, whatever the Lord our God has given us, we will possess. v. 23-24.

Jephthah honored God. He gave credit to the Lord to decide who would possess the land. And then he does something that I honestly cannot understand. He makes a vow to God that if God will help him against the Ammonites….“If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” v. 30-31. I can only imagine he thought a goat or a sheep or a calf would come out. He never expected his daughter, his only child, would come out first. Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. Leviticus 18:21.

Let this same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. God didn’t ask him to sacrifice his only child, God forbade it and no Priest of God would have performed that sacrifice. But Israel, far from honoring God throughout all of these 300 years, had left the wisdom of God. God was rejected over and over again and only turned to as a last resort. Jephthah could have sacrificed an animal had he truly known God’s heart. Instead, he did was right in his own eyes.

What about us? Would Christ Jesus have stood for the sacrificing of our only child to Him in a misguided attempt to honor a vow that should never have been made? Did He while on this earth honor the actions of others who rejected others because they were not of “us”? No. That was one of his most often heard criticisms. “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Matthew 9:11. Are we no better than those Pharisees we love to malign when we reject others?

It’s not easy to love as God loves. It’s scary. But we want God to love us. Can we open our hearts to allow God to work in us so we don’t reject others? So we’re not cruel in our judgments when the whole world is lost in criticisms and judging…cruelty. It hurts to be rejected. Can we feel that pain and not cause that pain? With His help we can begin to understand and it takes trusting Him to lead us. He knows the way, the only way. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.