Be Careful What You Bargain With;

Judges 11:30-35 (NIV)
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 sound of tambourines! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter. When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, "Oh! My daughter! You have made me miserable and wretched, because I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break."


Ever notice how words don't seem to mean what they used to mean? That is that people don't put value in what they say anymore. Jephthah wanted a victory over the Ammonites and would seemingly give anything to get it. In the end he ended up giving all he had.
How many of us would have followed through with that?
We have all made deals with friends, neighbors and co-workers before perhaps knowing full well we would never keep our end even if we felt we had the best of intentions. And I am pretty sure most of us have made a deal or two with God and when it came time to pay up, if we payed at all it was the most painful thing we had ever done, and we regretted our words.

Jephthah was simply following a command of the Lord,(Numbers 30:1-2) and it wasn't an option to him to not keep his oath he made to God. There's another verse in proverbs that might apply here too, "kings don't go to battle without counting the cost."

It seems in this day we have let words become empty, lacking meaning and value. Jesus gives us a guideline in
Matt 5:33-37 (NIV)
"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

Great words and words that should resonate in our hearts to be careful what we bargain with, you just might have to pay up!