"IMPOSSIBLE TO RETREAT" (Pastor Tom Henry) ~ 10/8/26

“…I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back.” (Judges 11:35)

In Jephthah’s case there were good reasons for going back. He had made a rash vow, and such things are much better broken than kept. If a man makes a vow to commit a crime, the vow is in itself a sin, and to carry it out makes it doubly sinful. Jephthah had vowed to the Lord that if the Lord would deliver the Ammonites into his hands, upon his return home, whatever should come out of his house to meet him would surely be the Lord’s, and he would offer it up as a burnt offering. This vow was wrong and should not have been made for several reasons. For one, no vow was necessary, because his cause was just, and there was no need to “bargain with God” for His help, which is what this really amounted to. But beside that, human sacrifice was forbidden, and murder itself is against God’s moral law, not to speak of the added aggravation of a father taking the life of his own innocent daughter. Despite many attempts to mitigate the horror of what Jephthah did, the Scriptures account seems quite clear, that the man did indeed offer his daughter as a burnt sacrifice to God as he had vowed to do. (Vs. 30, 31)

Clearly Jephthah reasoned that since he had made this vow, he had no choice in the matter, even though it was his own dear child, who, upon his victorious return, ran out to meet him. Some suggest that since he said, “Whatsoever cometh forth from the door of my house,” he wasn’t expecting a person, but perhaps an animal. I find that suggestion to be rather absurd, but regardless, the language seems to indicate that he was now having regrets: “I cannot go back.” He should have gone back! If a man’s vowing to do a wrong thing made it necessary and right for him to do it, then the whole moral law might be suspended by the mere act of vowing, for a person might vow to steal, or commit adultery, or to murder, and say, “I was right in all those things because I vowed to do them.” Jephthah was wrong to make his vow, and he was doubly wrong when he kept it.

But our purpose here is to take Jephthah’s words and to apply them to good vows that we have made; to other openings of our mouth to the Lord in which there is no ill; openings of the mouth which need never be regretted - which we never go back on but rather renew them again and again.

It may be with some who read this that it will not have much to do with you. You have not opened your mouth to God or made any sort of commitment to Him. You remain as you were, far off from Him and neglecting His claim. You are not to be envied. Your being under no obligation of your own does not mean that you are not under much obligation to God because you are His creature, and therefore subject to His law. People will say (often proudly) “You know, I do not profess anything,” and after that assertion they appear to feel at liberty to say and do whatever they like. Just think, if a man entrusted his business to a man who cheated and embezzled money, who when confronted, said, “Don’t blame me, I never professed to be honest.” What would that mean? It would mean that he was a confessed and acknowledged thief. What if a man were to say, “Well I never professed to be truthful,” what is he? He is an acknowledged liar. And the man who says, “I never made any vows or promises, neither do I pretend to serve the Lord,” acknowledges himself to be a godless man. He lives in daily robbery of God, defrauding Him of His rights: he is living in avowed rebellion against Almighty God. He is living without hope for the hereafter, and without grace in His soul for the present. Your non-avowal of Christ is a confession that you are on the opposite side, and thus you disavow Him and all that He is, which leaves you without God and without hope.

But, to all of my brothers and sisters in Christ, we have made sacred vows to the Lord to which we must ever be true, never to retreat from them. We have confessed our faith and allegiance to Jesus Christ. Let others believe and confess what they will, “our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” We have also declared and vowed before God that we are Christ’s disciples, and followers of the Good Shepherd, and a stranger’s voice we will not hear. We have admitted the Redeemer’s claims on our service, and have resolved to live for Him and do His will. These are all sacred vows, and with each of them, let us say, “I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.”