Day Fourteen - Another verse to meditate on

Ecclesiastes 5:4 When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed.

                  Have you ever vowed a vow to God?  God always keeps His promises to us.  It is a serious matter to make a promise to God and not to keep it.  Was there ever a time when you told God that you would serve Him,  that you would  allow Him to use you?  Have you kept that vow?  The Bible says that a person who does not keep His vow to God is a fool.  In fact He says that it is better not to vow, than to vow and not pay.  (Ecclesiastes 5:5)

Read Judges 11.  This is a story of a man by the name of Jephthah.   He was a judge that God used to deliver the children of Israel  from the Ammonites.  Before Jephthah went to battle he vowed that he would sacrifice the first thing that came out of the door of his house to the Lord.   In that day,  the house was connected to the stable,  so that the animals were sheltered under a portion of the house.  Jephthah no doubt believed that God would choose an animal to come out of the house,  but the first one to come out was his daughter.   This would not be a problem for anyone today.  We know that God would never ask us to sacrifice a person,  but Jephthah did not have the same set of beliefs that we have.  He strongly believed in keeping his vow.  It was sacred to him.  Jephthah actually carried through and killed his daughter.  

Was this a good thing? No,  God has no desire to have man sacrifice his child.  In fact,  he was adamant in the law,

Leviticus 18:21 And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.

The people of the Old Testament believed that it was sacred to keep a vow.  They did not speak flippantly to God.  What does it teach us about vowing a vow to God?   Is it important to keep our vow?   Why?  Some take this to mean that we should never make a promise to God for fear of breaking that promise.  Perhaps we should think different and ask God to hold us accountable for the vows that we do make.

 

 An Exercise to increase our Faith:  Meditate on Ecclesiastes 5:4.  If you haven’t vowed a vow to God,  perhaps now would be a good time to do so.   If it is serious to break a vow,  then a vow will hold us accountable to God.  If we have made a vow in the past,  have we kept it?  Have we taken our vows seriously?