Judges 12

 “Jesus, Savior, pilot me!”

The ship of our lives requires a captain. One of the blessings of reading history, including biblical history, is that we are able to gain a larger perspective on life than we can normally hold on to when we are working on today's to-do list. We need a pilot who understands the whole journey of the history of heaven and earth and the part that our lives will play in that journey.

The Lord used Jephthah greatly in the defeat of the Ammonites. He lost his only child in an experience that is still difficult for us to understand. His life was not yet over after his tragedy. He judged Israel for six years, and they were sad days of brother fighting against brother.

The Lord Jesus is building up a body, a new Israel, over which He is the head. We are told to pursue the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Sometimes it is not clear what spirit we are actually following.

The people of Ephraim had a spirit. They made trouble for Gideon in an earlier generation. They made more trouble for Jephthah and many of them lost their lives. As the years moved forward in the history of Israel, this same spirit of division was displayed in an unwillingness to yield to God's chosen leader. This spirit would continue in the northern tribes for many generations.

Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit, which was very different than the Ephraim spirit. When you are full of the Holy Spirit, you are full of a Spirit of worship, thanksgiving, and submission. The Ephraim spirit is a spirit of pride, resentment, and rebellion.

We need the Holy Spirit. We need our Savior to cast out of us every other spirit that would hinder the unity of the body of Christ and our fruitfulness together as a new world of loving friends.

The Holy Spirit loves to see Jesus honored and obeyed. He loves the new resurrection life that the Lord brings. He loves the Word of God, and would have that Word dwell richly within us.

The generations pass, and judges that we will never remember fill the days between God's surprising gifts of Jephthah and Samson. Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon all seemed very significant in their days, but a larger view of Israel leaves them and their descendants with only a brief mention. They fill the space between an amazing son of a prostitute and a mighty savior who allowed a woman to destroy him.

Jephthah and Samson would be far more important in helping us to understand the Messiah than the men who filled the twenty-five years in between them. But who could have known that at the time?

How we live in our own day has everything to do with the spirit that is filling us. We need the Spirit of the One who gave His life for us in love.

“Jesus, Savior, pilot me

over life's tempestuous sea;

unknown waves before me roll,

hiding rock and treacherous shoal.

Chart and compass come from thee;

Jesus, Savior, pilot me.”