Remembering Jephthah’s Daughter: A Sermon -- By: Rollin Ramsaran

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 28:4 (Autumn 2014)
Article: Remembering Jephthah’s Daughter: A Sermon
Author: Rollin Ramsaran


Remembering Jephthah’s Daughter: A Sermon

Rollin Ramsaran

Rollin Ramsaran is Dean and Professor of New Testament at Emmanuel Christian Seminary. He holds the PhD in New Testament and Christian Origins from Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; a MA in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary (in conjunction with the Westwood Christian Foundation); and a BA in Bible and Preaching in America from Pacific Christian College. He has experience in youth ministry, church planting, and pulpit ministry in various communities in California, Massachusetts, and Tennessee.

Everyone aspires to be Spirit-led, to be Spirit-filled, to be filled by the fruit of the Spirit. Everyone is ready to run on Spirit power! And I wish that for you—especially that you know the Spirit of God that has been shaped by Jesus and that you not change the gospel of power to anything less than what it should be. But this morning let me caution you about this combination of Spirit and power. For it is a combination incomplete without full knowledge; it can be potentially dangerous without full knowledge. It can be downright deadly!

Consider a Spirit text from the New Testament, 2 Tim 3:16: “Every scripture is inspired by God (God-breathed!) and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” This is a text familiar to many.

Now a less familiar Spirit text from the book of Judges. We find Jephthah the Gileadite, the son of a prostitute, and a mighty warrior. Jephthah the outcast returned home to Gilead, an Israelite region in Transjordan, by request of its elders, to lead the people during an impending community crisis, a crisis caused by Ammonite military aggression. For Jephthah, the outcome of the community crisis will lead directly to a familial crisis, a truly heart-wrenching family calamity. Hear then Judges 11:29-40:

Then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah. He crossed Gilead and Manasseh, passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there he advanced against the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “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.”

Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. He devastated twenty towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Minnith, as far as Abel Keramim. Thus Israel subdued Ammon.

When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the s...

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