35As soon as Jephthah saw her, he tore his clothes and said, “No! Not my daughter! You have brought me to my knees! You have brought great misery upon me, for I have given my word to the LORD and cannot take it 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 his vow to do so is in itself a sin, and the carrying out of his vow will be doubly sinful. If a man’s vowing to do a 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 man might vow to steal, to commit adultery, or to murder, and then say, ‘I was right in all those acts, because I vowed to do them.’ This is self-evidently absurd, and to admit such a principle would be to destroy all morality.” (Spurgeon)
Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 (NKJV)
- 1 Walk prudently when you go to the house of God; and draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil. 2 Do not be rash with your mouth, And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God [is] in heaven, and you on earth; Therefore let your words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:4-6 (NKJV)
- 4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For [He has] no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed-- 5 Better not to vow than to vow and not pay. 6 Do not let your mouth cause your flesh to sin, nor say before the messenger [of God] that it [was] an error. Why should God be angry at your excuse* and destroy the work of your hands?
“This passage makes it clear that it is better to not make vows at all than to make foolish vows. This does not mean that vows are bad - they can be good. It means we must take them seriously. Christians need to take seriously the sin of broken vows, and when we see them we must either repent and keep them or repent of the foolishness in ever making the vow, and seek God’s release from the vow.” (Guzik)
“I have given my word to the LORD, and I cannot go back on it: At the same time, on the sake of principle only, there was something wonderful about the spirit of Jephthah’s willingness to keep his vows, even when it cost him something. In the specific vow he was foolish and should not have kept it, but the tenacity of character that says, “I have given my word to the LORD, and I cannot go back on it” is glorious and should be the word of every follower of Jesus Christ.” (Guzik)
The Christian Vow
“Beloved, many of us did, in effect, make a most solemn vow at the time of our baptism. We were buried with Christ in baptism unto death, and, unless we were greatly dissembling, we avowed that we were dead in Christ and buried with him; wherein, also, we professed that we were risen with him. Now, shall the world live in those who are dead to it, and shall Christ's life be absent from those who are risen with him? We gave ourselves up there and then, in that solemn act of mystic burial. Recall that scene, I pray you; and as you do it blush, and ask God that your vow may yet be performed, as Doddridge well expresses it:-
"Baptised into your Saviour's death
Your souls to sin must die;
With Christ your Lord ye live anew,
With Christ ascend on high."” (CH Spurgeon)
I remember the church we were baptized at, it was a Baptist church that Calvary of Tucson had borrowed for the occasion. On the center stage were the worship musicians singing and playing beautifully and above them at the back of the stage was a wall that opened that had a glass pool for baptisms behind it. Men walked up the left stairs and women up the right stairs. We were able to arrange that pastor Troy baptized us together! It was a beautiful ceremony and in essence “we avowed that we were dead in Christ and buried with him; wherein, also, we professed that we were risen with him.” and I’ll never forget it.
It wasn’t a rash vow!
The old man was buried and the new man rose in Christ!
Have you made the baptism vow?
Blessings
https://www.gotquestions.org/baptism-John-3-5.html
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