Next you pass to Jephthah. The next enemy is Ammon. You know Ammon was the brother of Moab, and represents profession as we have seen in Moab, only now it is not the sensuous side of profession, the worldly side, but, as you might say, the intellectual side, closely connected with Jabin. He suggests the spirit of rationalism which comes into the Church and settles down, putting its icy hand upon its life. The children of Ammon claim their title to the inheritance which Israel has long occupied. What I have said as to Jabin would apply here. You take the matter of the Word of God. If people are going to treat it in a mere intellectual way, as the rationalists do, as that which can be criticized and sifted, full of mistakes, and a little bit left that you can accept perhaps; if that spirit is allowed, you have the very opposite of the spirit of Christ. He magnified the Word of God. He always quoted Scripture as settling every question. It was the end of the matter when He quoted Scripture. What a lesson! The Son of God ended every discussion by simply quoting the Word of God. Rationalism would rob us of that element in the character of Christ, loyalty to the Word of God. The children of Ammon would tell us that we can be Christians in name, we can be professors, and yet deny the Word of God, which is our title to Christianity. Oh how much of the Ammonite rule we see about us today, where human intellect traffics in the Word of God, and man, instead of being judged by Scripture, sits in judgment upon the Scriptures.
What an awful oppression that is. And the deliverance from it is through Jephthah, which means "He openeth." He is the one who opens, and it is just as Christ has opened for us the precious Word of God, as, you remember, He opened His disciples' understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, that we are freed from rationalism. He has opened heaven for us, that we may know our place before God. He is the Opener, the Revealer, the One who makes the Word of God luminous to us. And it is as Christ Himself is thus the Opener for us, that we find a blessed and precious deliverance from all the reasonings of the flesh, from all the power of an intellectual supremacy, which, after all, means utter bondage. Who is more miserable than the man who thinks, as you might say, for himself? Who more wretched than the man who glories in his own bondage to his own poor, feeble reasoning?
I do not dwell upon the sequel to the life of Gideon, nor even to that of Jephthah, and there are many other thoughts there which we have not time even to mention. I am trying simply to show how it is Christ all the way through who is the remedy for these evils, and, therefore, I do not dwell upon the details of the failure as you have it in the history of Abimelech, nor of Jephthah's subsequent failure, things that are dark enough surely.
We can sum it all up in a few words. Gideon craved the priesthood, which was robbing Christ of that place; Abimelech grasped after kingly power, which was taking the place which Christ alone can occupy, while in Jephthah's harshness, you see the absence of that "meekness and gentleness of Christ," which rules no less effectually because it is done in love and grace.