Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 371 - The Most Selfish And Foolish Vow (Please click here for English podcast)

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Silence

1. Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2. Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1. Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2. Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3. Open your heart to praise the Lord

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord

more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

Psalm 130 :5-6

Confession and Repentance (Subjective Shifting Devotion Method http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html)

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

“Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2. Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

"Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (Judges 11:30-40)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges 11&version=ESV

30 And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, 31 then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.” 32 So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. 33 And he struck them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim, with a great blow. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.

34 Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with tambourines and with dances. She was his only child; besides her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 And as soon as he saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low, and you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.”36 And she said to him, “My father, you have opened your mouth to the Lord; do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has avenged you on your enemies, on the Ammonites.” 37 So she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: leave me alone two months, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions.” 38 So he said, “Go.” Then he sent her away for two months, and she departed, she and her companions, and wept for her virginity on the mountains. 39 And at the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to his vow that he had made. She had never known a man, and it became a custom in Israel 40 that the daughters of Israel went year by year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in the year.

Judges 11:30-40

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening

This passage is perhaps the only one in the Bible giving me a feeling that I want to vomit. How can a father be so selfish and foolish to make a vow that cause his own daughter to be burnt to death alive in the name of making sacrifice to God? How could that happen?

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

It's impossible to imagine that God intended Jepthah to sacrifice his daughter, since that contravenes the Torah. Presumably Jephthah should have known that; it is ironic that earlier he showed such a close awareness of the Torah's story about how the Israelites came to be in control of the land east of the Jordan. If Israel were working properly, his daughter and her mother and other people in the community would also know that human sacrifice contravenes the Torah, but evidently everyone is following the assumptions of other people who did sacrifice their children…
Further, if Jephthah had been better acquainted with the God of the Torah, he would also have known that you can renegotiate an unwise promise. God didn't intervene for the same reason that God doesn't usually intervene when fathers abuse or kill their children; God leaves us as human beings to exercise our responsibility and does not go in much for intervening.
In light of the way the story in Judges as a whole is developing, it makes sense to see the story as an aspect of the steady degeneration of Israel's life that will eventually issue in the closing judgment that people in general were doing what was right in their own eyes (Judges 21:25).

John Goldingay. Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.130.

So, do you know why Jephthah did that now? It is because he, just like all those Israelites at that time were more closer to all kinds of various cults surrounding them rather than God. Those people made their vow liked that, making human sacrifice as the most important vow, even sometimes with their own children, usually babies but not adult.

Nowadays people do similar sacrifice and that is abortion. Abortion has become a non ethical issue and anyone can do that in most countries. I do not think God allows abortion but today's law and culture allow that.

What I receive from Jesus today is that we have to understand and live out what it says in Romans 12:1-2:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Once we are being conformed to this world we would do "what is right in our own eyes" and not what is right in God's eye and His will.

You would keep on doing some selfish and foolish acts until you have Jesus as your Lord living out Romans 12:1-2.

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to open our eyes to see what is right in your eye and be able to do what is right in your eye and your will. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have you done any similar selfish and foolish act before?

2. How can Romans 12:1-2 help you to deal with today's message?

3. What have you got from Jesus today?

Today's Time with Abba daily reading that I recited loudly and copy the Bible is:

Psalm 119:145-152

Ezekiel 20:1-49

Hebrews 9:11- 28

Proverbs 27:11

Photos of my copying the Bible today using Time with Abba passages

Yesterday's Golden Verse

Other passages

DAY 15 of 40 Days Prayer for REC Promised Land, 7a.m. (Anna, my daughter-in-law and Zoe, my granddaughter came this morning to pray with us. We had 38 people today)