Craig Smith - Your Legacy's on the Line
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Your life is your legacy—not just the achievements you chase, but how you live while pursuing them. Jephthah’s tragic story shows that the way we seek success can cost us what truly matters: our relationships and the people God has entrusted to us.
Your Life Is Your Legacy
So I want to talk to you today about an idea. And the idea is that your life is your legacy. You know, we’re in this series right now. We’re talking a lot about a legacy that we would love to leave behind. And I think it’s very easy, when we talk about legacy, to think that that legacy is the things that we accomplish in life, right? It’s the big things we do. It’s the companies that we build. It’s the possessions that we acquire that we can pass on to our kids.
And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but the older I get, the more I realize that my legacy is a lot less about the things that I accomplish in life and more about how I live while I’m pursuing those things. The older I get, the more I realize I would rather be moderately successful but known as kind than to be wildly successful but known as cruel or uncaring, right? I mean, basically, I’d rather be loved than loaded. I’d rather be relationally rich and financially poor than to be financially rich and relationally poor.
Now, ideally, I would like to be both. I’d like to be loved and loaded, right? But the reality is that we’re often forced to choose which of those legacies we’re looking to leave. And the legacy that we ultimately leave comes down to those decisions—those day-to-day decisions. Your life is your legacy.
Jephthah’s Story (Judges 11)
And I want to unpack that idea today by looking at a guy in the Bible who honestly didn’t understand that. This is a guy who was desperate to leave a legacy, but in the process of trying to leave that legacy, he ended up leaving a very different legacy—one he’s probably not proud of.
If you want to follow along, we’re going to be in Judges 11 today, Judges 11 starting in verse 29. And while you’re turning there, let me give you a little bit of backstory about this guy. His name is Jephthah. And by the way, if you are new to church and you don’t know that name, that’s okay, because the reality is a lot of people who are not new to church, maybe even spent your whole life in church, might not know this story about this guy because it’s a story we don’t actually teach all that often because it’s kind of a strange story. Honestly, it’s a little bit of a dark story, but it’s a really important story for us to understand.
Jephthah’s Difficult Beginnings
Okay, so here’s the thing about Jephthah, though. Jephthah was what we’re going to call an illegitimate child. Okay? What that means is he had a father whose name was Gilead, and Gilead comes from a very significant family. There was a whole region of Israel known as Gilead, named for the tribe that this particular father was from. And this guy was actually named Gilead after the ancestor of this tribe. So it’s a little bit like the Kennedys, right? Important, significant, prominent family.
So Jephthah’s dad was this important guy named Gilead. The problem is that Jephthah’s mom was not Gilead’s wife. Okay? So, illegitimate child. Now, Gilead had a wife who, as you might expect, didn’t love that Jephthah existed, and Gilead had other sons. So, Jephthah’s stepbrothers also didn’t love that Jephthah existed. And so because of that, they basically kicked him out and said, «You’re not going to have any part in the inheritance.» They drove him out of their land.
And this is actually the way the Bible describes it that’s so interesting. It says, «And so Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.» Is that not your all-time favorite description of a group of individuals? A gang of scoundrels?
The Spirit Comes Upon Jephthah
Okay, this is a rough group of guys and Jephthah becomes their leader. Okay, that doesn’t sound like the backstory of a Bible hero, but verse 29 says this: And then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah. And that changes everything, doesn’t it? Like when God shows up, everything changes. When God shows up, your past is no longer your prison. When God shows up, your present is no longer a great predictor of what your future is going to look like.
Okay, so what you came from, and even what you’re doing right now, the mistakes you’re living and making at this very moment no longer define what your future is going to be. When God shows up, it changes everything. Tell somebody, «This changes everything, ” because it does. It changes absolutely everything.
God Redeems the Past
And God wants to change everything about Jephthah’s life. So then the Spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah, and he crossed over Gilead. In the original Hebrew, it doesn’t just say „cross.“ It says he crossed over. He went throughout the land. He crossed over Gilead and Manasseh, and he passed through Mizpah of Gilead, and from there, he advanced against the Ammonites.
Now, the Ammonites were the enemies of Israel, and they had been oppressing Israel for the last 18 years. And so what’s going to happen is God wants to use Jephthah to bring a release, to bring peace and prosperity to his people. Okay, but before he does that, before he goes into battle against the Ammonites, you notice he takes him on a journey. And if you notice, twice in that journey, the name Gilead is mentioned.
Okay, now here’s the significance of that: Before God takes him into battle, he takes him back into a place that had been a battle, right? He returns him to the very same place and the same people who had rejected him because he wants to redeem him. Do you understand? Before he creates a new name for Jephthah, he takes him back to the place where he already had a name. And what Jephthah was remembered for in that place was not good stuff.
The Legacy You Receive vs. the One You Leave
He was remembered for being the illegitimate son. He was remembered for being the reminder that his father had done something shameful, which brought shame on the family and created family strife. He was remembered as the illegitimate son who could have been a threat to the inheritance, and so he was driven out of the land. That’s what he was remembered for.
But God takes him back because the Spirit wants to give him an opportunity to reframe how he’s remembered. And I love that. I love it because what it means is that with God’s help, the legacy you received does not have to be the legacy that you leave. Do you hear me, church? Is that good news for anybody? I bet it is for some of us.
Breaking the Cycle
For some of us, maybe we can relate to Jephthah, though, because honestly, the family we came from, the dad that we had was rough. By the way, it’s interesting when Jephthah’s brothers—his stepbrothers—drove him out of the area; they didn’t say a word about his dad. And I don’t know if that’s because his dad was gone—maybe his dad had died when Jephthah was young—or maybe he was just kind of like, „Ah, you know, I’m not going to get involved in this. It’s sibling rivalry, whatever.“ Maybe he was physically absent. Maybe he was emotionally absent.
And maybe that’s something you can relate to. And maybe now, maybe you are a dad or a grandfather, or you’re thinking about becoming one, and it’s coming down the pike, and you’re getting nervous because you’re like, „I don’t have a good role model to follow. The legacy that I received, I don’t want to pass it on to my kids, but I’m not sure how to do it any differently.“
And I hope you’ll hear this: with God’s help, the legacy you receive does not have to be the legacy you leave. It can all be different.
Jephthah’s Rash Vow
He wants to help Jephthah do that. He gives him the opportunity to reframe how he’s remembered, but we have to cooperate with it. And that’s where Jephthah begins to struggle, and that’s where the story gets a little bit dark. It says, „Now Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, ” which sounds like a good thing, but listen to the vow and listen carefully. He says, „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.“
Now, even if you don’t know the story—and I know a lot of people don’t—that doesn’t sound right, does it? Like, I kind of need the tech team to play some ominous music at this point, right?
Three Problems with the Vow
There are three things that are wrong with it, actually.
The first is this—and I hope you know this, but if you don’t, write this down: You don’t have to bargain with God for His blessings! Do you hear me, church? You don’t have to bargain with God for His blessings. And the reason is that He’s a good father.
I love what the book of James in the Bible says. He says, „Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the—say it with me, church—from the Father.“ There he says, „Let’s not even talk about God.“ I mean, God can be an abstract, you know, powerful being, and that’s all true, but you need to understand that this is deeply relational. He’s your father.
„Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like the shifting shadows.“ This is who He is. This is who His character is. He loves you, and because He loves you as His child, He wants to bless you. You don’t have to bargain with God for His blessings.
Selfish Motives
The second thing that’s a problem with what he does here is he prays a very selfish prayer. And even if God could be bargained with—even if you had to bargain with God—what you have to recognize is that God isn’t persuaded by selfish prayers. He’s not persuaded by selfish prayers.
The book of James also says, „When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with the wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.“ It’s all about you. And can I just tell you something? Your father isn’t going to supply your selfishness. He’s not going to fund your self-centeredness.
Valuing Ambition Over Blessings
And do you see how selfish this prayer was? Listen to it again: „And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: ‘If you give the Ammonites into my hands…’“ By the way, in the Bible, there are about 70 battles that somebody leads the people of God into, and out of those 70 battles, you see a lot of prayers. That’s a good thing to do when you’re going into battle: to pray, right?
But out of those 70 prayers, there’s only one time somebody prays, „Would you give them into my hands?“ And that’s Jephthah. Nobody else prays it like that. Jephthah says, „Yeah, I mean, it’d be nice if we could be out from under their oppression. It’s been 18 years. It’d be nice if, you know, God, you would show up for your people, ” but what he’s really focused on is, „Would you give them into my hands?“
And 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—catch that! It’s a very selfish prayer. It’s a selfish prayer because there is a legacy that Jephthah is longing for. It’s a legacy of being known as a mighty man, a mighty warrior, who accomplishes great things.
What You Want vs. What You Have
He’s interested in the achievements, and to get those achievements, to get that reputation, to leave that legacy, he’s willing to give up what? Do you see what it said? He’s willing to give up whatever. And that tells us something really important about Jephthah, though, and it’s something, honestly, that we have to recognize.
Many of us, especially as men, struggle with this; I think women do as well, but there’s something particular about this temptation that I see men struggle with a little bit more often. And that’s the temptation to care more about what we want than what we already have—to care more about what we’re ambitious to achieve or to get a hold of than we are about what God has already blessed us with, right?
And so Jephthah is in that place, and he’s like, „Yeah, I want to be known as a mighty warrior. I want us to be known as the man who had this great victory. So give the victory into my hands so that I can return in triumph.“ And along the way, he’s kind of losing sight of the fact that God has already blessed him, right?
The Cost of Ambition
I mean, think about this. What does he say? He says, „Whatever comes out of the door of my house.“ Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! You have a house because you were kicked out of your home, and God has blessed you with a new home. You have a piece of land when you were rejected and driven out of your land. You have possessions. You have cattle, which is probably what he’s thinking of when he says, „Whatever comes out the door.“
The Hebrew word for door can also be translated as gate. So he’s probably thinking about his prized bull. Even if that’s what comes out, I’m going to sacrifice. So wait a minute! You have a home, and you have land, and you have possessions when you were told that you won’t have any of our inheritance. God has given you all of that.
He’s like, „Yeah, but I don’t care about that. I want that. I want this achievement. I want this legacy.“ And to get what he wants, he is willing to give up whatever he already has. And that’s a dangerous place to be in, isn’t it?
And I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I want to tell you, because I love you. What you want may not be worth what you already have. You might be pursuing something that is not nearly as valuable as what God has already blessed you with.
God Uses Imperfect People
Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands. And that surprises people sometimes, like why would God do that? Because he’s clearly kind of a messed-up dude. Can I tell you something? Everybody else in the Bible is also messed up, other than Jesus. All of them are really jacked up.
And sometimes we’re like, well, you know, we’re supposed to emulate, we’re supposed to imitate all the people in the Bible, right? No, you should imitate Jesus. Everybody else, take with a grain of salt. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong.
In fact, one of the lessons, particularly of the book of Judges, I have a friend who says it this way: one of the big lessons of Judges is that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. Jephthah is a crooked stick. But here’s the thing: just because God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick doesn’t mean you have an excuse to stay crooked.
How You Pursue Your Legacy Is Your Legacy
He devastated 20 towns from Aroer to the vicinity of Nahar, as far as Abel Keramim. And thus Israel subdued Ammon. And in English, it sounds a lot like this was one thing—it’s like one big description of an epic battle. He went out and fought and destroyed these towns in the process.
But actually, in Hebrew, it’s pretty clear this is not one big epic military campaign. It’s actually two very different events. He defeats the Ammonite army, and having defeated the Ammonite army, he then goes into their territory, and he devastates 20 of their villages.
And the reason I say in Hebrew it’s a little clearer is because the Hebrew word that’s translated here as „devastated, ” though, it’s not usually used for battles. It’s actually usually used for plagues. Plagues are a source of indiscriminate destruction. They don’t focus on military men. Plagues destroy men, women, and children.
And that’s the point. He defeated the military, and then he went into their towns, and he wiped out everybody. And here’s the great irony of this: he wants to be known as a man who has achieved great victories. He wants to be known as a mighty soldier.
The problem is that he goes from using his power to win a battle, which is justified, and then he goes to using that power to devastate, to indiscriminately destroy men, women, and children in villages, and he made it into the Bible. So on one level, he got his wish—he’s got a legacy. We’re still talking about him almost 3,000 years later.
But the Bible wants to make it clear that what he’s remembered for isn’t necessarily what we would all want to be remembered for, right? That’s such an interesting thing that’s going on, and there’s such an important lesson in this. 3,000 years later, we’re not just told that he won the battle; we’re told that he took that power and devastated men, women, and children.
And the point is this: how you pursue your legacy is your legacy. Do you hear me, church? It’s not just what you achieve; it’s how you achieve it. It’s how you live in the pursuit of it. How you pursue your legacy is your legacy.
The Tragic Outcome
And when Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels, because she knew how important this was. She knew how much he longed to have this legacy, this triumph as a great warrior, and this achievement of destroying the Ammonites. And she came out dancing to meet him. She was the first one to come out the door.
The Bible says she was an only child. Except for her, he had neither son nor daughter. Just a quick question for you: How many of you, when you heard she was an only child, knew that meant there were no other sons and daughters? How many of you knew that? Yeah, because you’re not dumb, right? Why does the Bible say it twice? Because it wants to make sure we don’t miss it.
See, informed by God’s word, the Israelites understood that your family is your legacy. It’s your truest legacy. It’s your family. It’s not necessarily just your sons and daughters; it’s the nieces, the nephews, the brothers, the sisters, the in-laws, the neighbors—it’s the people around you whose lives you touch, right? That’s your true legacy.
And so the Bible doubles down to ensure we don’t miss the fact that she was an only child; there are no other kids. In other words, his legacy is on the line. Do you understand? In his pursuit of one kind of legacy, his truer legacy is actually on the line. It’s in jeopardy.
Okay? And that’s such an important thing to understand. The pursuit of the legacy we long for can actually put our true legacy on the line.
Don’t Sacrifice Your True Legacy
And when he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, „Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down, and I am devastated!“ By the way, what did she do? She just celebrated the victory she knew was so important to him.
„I’ve made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.“ Not true. Absolutely not true. First off, the Bible forbids sacrificing children. It forbids it. And the Bible makes provisions for foolish vows. Did you know that? It does.
If somebody makes a foolish vow, here’s an opportunity for redemption. There’s a substitution that can be made because God doesn’t want you to keep a foolish vow, especially not one that’s so foolish. It’s the sacrifice of your child.
He says, „I can’t break the vow.“ He’s wrong. He doesn’t want to break the vow because he thinks that breaking the vow would make him look weak to his men who heard him make the vow. And what does he want to be remembered for? For the mighty warrior.
And he believes, because the world teaches us, that mighty men don’t admit that they’ve made mistakes. Do they? Yeah, they do. The strongest people I know are the ones who are the quickest to admit they’ve made a mistake because we all make them. We all make them.
A Father’s Day Challenge
It’s Father’s Day, so can I just say this to all the dads out here? Don’t sacrifice your children to satisfy your ambition. Or maybe to broaden it just a little bit for everybody: Don’t sacrifice your legacy to satisfy your longing.
I’ve seen people do it slowly, and I’ve seen them do it quickly. Slow decisions that just take them away from their true lasting legacy, or sometimes just, „This is what I’m longing for in the moment, ” and they make a dumb decision that blows up their lives because what they want is more important than what they already have.
And so they sacrificed their real legacy to satisfy some passing, transient longing that seems so important.
The Lasting Tradition
And from this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. That’s interesting. There’s a legacy. There’s a tradition that forms around this family, but it’s not around him; it’s around her.
Because how you pursue your legacy is your legacy.
An Inspiring Example
I have a mentor in my life; his name is Larry Osborne. He leads a really big church. And I know sometimes people look around here and they’re like, „This is a really big church. What do you mean by a really big church?“ This is a mega church; he leads a giga church. And that means more than 10,000 people on a weekend in live attendance.
He’s mentored a number of guys. He’s grown a lot of fruit on other people’s trees. And he sent this group a message last Father’s Day. He said it’s a picture of him, and there are a whole bunch of people. He’s got an Armenian family, and there’s like a crazy number of them.
He wrote, „Looking back on my past this morning, I’m incredibly thankful for mentors who taught me early on that the most important assignment and legacy was not a big church, books written, or anything else the world praises. I’m blessed to cook for, and then spend today with, my family: my 97- and 93-year-old parents, my brother, my sister, my in-laws, our kids, and grandkids. Even more blessed to have a wife who shares the same priorities.
Finishing well is not a short obituary with a list of ministry accomplishments in Christianity Today or Outreach magazine and all the other temporary things we’re tempted to pursue as though they’re important.“
He’s an inspiring example to me that how you pursue your legacy is your legacy.
Closing Prayer
Would you pray with me? God, we’re grateful for your Word today, and we ask that your Spirit would move and convict where necessary, give hope where we need it, 'cause we know that where your Spirit comes, everything changes.
And I just wonder, with every head bowed and every eye closed, how many of us would simply say today that maybe the legacy that we received is not the one that we want to leave? Just lift your hands up at all of our campuses if you inherited a legacy that’s not the one you want to leave behind. If you want to leave behind something better, would you put your hand up right now? Thank you. Yeah.
Holy Spirit, come on, give them the strength to change that legacy.
And I wonder how many of us would say, if we’re really being honest, again heads down and eyes closed, nobody looking around, but by a show of hands, how many of us would say, 'I am realizing I have been pursuing a legacy that’s not really the one that I want to leave'? Would you just put your hands up if the Spirit’s convicting you today? Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah. I see those hands.
If you’re a follower of Jesus, the good news is you have the Spirit, and everything can change. And if you’re not a follower of Jesus yet, then in this moment right now, you can receive that power. You need the Spirit. Without the Spirit, you’re going to get stuck. With the Spirit, everything is changing.
Your past is not a prison; your present’s not a predictor of your future, and you can receive the Spirit so easily. The Spirit comes the moment that you make a decision to follow Jesus. God loves you so much He sent His Son to die for you. Three days later, He rose from the dead, and then He offers us forgiveness, freedom, and power to change through His Holy Spirit that comes the moment we say, 'Jesus, I’m going to follow you.'
And if you’ve never done that, then I encourage you to have that conversation with God right now. Say, 'God, I’m going to follow you. Jesus, thank you for everything you’ve done. I’m going to follow you from here on out.'
Lord, I pray your power upon all of us that we might leave a legacy that honors you, and that we will look down from heaven someday and go, 'That’s the legacy I was really longing for.' In Jesus' name, Amen.