History Is Our Defender

“And said unto him, Thus saith Jephthah, Israel took not away the land of Moab, nor the land of the children of Ammon:” (Jud 11:15 AV)

 

Jephthah is a judge for Israel at a time when Ammon went to war with them over disputed territory.  Ammon is coming against Israel thinking Israel took land from both them and the Moabites.  The disputed territory is on the eastern side of Jordan and the Ammonites have every intention of winning this territory for the glory of Ammon.  What follows the verse above is Jephthah’s discourse on the history between Israel, Moab, and Ammon since Israel come from Egypt.  He rehearses details in the intercourse these two nations had with Israel and how the LORD expressly forbade Israel from taking territory held by Moab.  In Jephthah’s discourse, much detail is given and the argument cannot be disputed.  The casual reader may wonder why the LORD felt it necessary to give us all that detail.  The reason is simple.  History is a great teacher and is often the proof for the present.  Jephthah was a student of history and it was because he retained these details the rest of the people of God felt it ethically and morally responsible to defend the land of which they now possessed.

History is an important teacher.  In grade school and high school, I performed rather poorly in the subject of history.  For the most part, history was nothing more than memorizing dates and facts.  There was little effort to tie the present with the past.  It was assumed we would figure it out.  Christian education does a much better job of accomplishing this.  The curriculum is tied to the sovereign works of God and how the events of history reveal God’s plan among mankind.  When I entered the seminary and learned church and Baptist history, it began to click.  History learned in my primary education actually had significance in the light of God’s plan for mankind.  When, where, and how things happened may be interesting.  Why they happened is significantly more important.  When I learned how wars between nations resulted in the furtherance of the gospel, or the establishment of Israel, these things became important.  To my secular educators, these facts may explain some of the political and economic realities of today, but how God used these events for His purposes is infinitely greater.  We are sadly losing our history.  As the mobs continue to erase the history of the western world, we are losing the footprint of God’s plan.  Some of what has been canceled are not the best examples of our world.  Erasing it is not the answer.  Remembering it and learning from it is the answer.  As much as I hate the Jewish internment camps of WWII and the human ovens that still remain, they need to stand if for nothing else but to remind us of how evil mankind can be.  That way, we will never return there.  If it is erased, history is bound to repeat itself.  Even Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians the things written in the Old Testament are for our learning that we might not repeat the same mistakes as our forefathers.

Jephthah knows the facts regarding what went down between Israel and Ammon.  Between Israel and Moab.  When the accusations of thievery were leveled, facts were Jephthah’s defense.  Knowing history is so important.  History defines the present and gives direction for the future.  History gives is a general sense of what God is doing and where things are going.  History may not be pretty.  Sometimes it is downright embarrassing.  But history is also or defense.  No nation is perfect.  We all have our skeletons in the closet.  Conversely, every nation is not as guilty as its enemies desire to claim.  Knowing the facts is our defense.  This has been an odd devotion.  Why this stress on history?  In a more personal application, we can fall victim to the accuser’s wiles.  He can bring up the failure of the past and get our eyes off of the successes of the present.  We can fall down a vortex of despair because we forget the past.  We forget we are not what we once were and God has a way of changing our forgettable past into a present and future which glorifies Him!  History of how God works in the life of the individual in our defense against an enemy who desires to nothing more than to discourage and defeat.