God's Faithfulness (Judges)

One of the ways I like to prepare for a sermon or a passage, especially a story, is to look and see if there's a children's Bible that explains that story, and I couldn't find one. It's interesting how we pick which stories go to children's Bibles. This one's pretty graphic and even humorous, but yeah, it's an odd story. As we consider this, and Cheryl, thank you for reading God's word to us. I wanna begin by just really reflecting on what the Bible is. A story like this really challenges us to ask, what is this book and why would it include a story like this? And I believe it really helps challenge a false notion we can easily fall into, or maybe you have if you don't read the Bible often and you're new to church. So I think many people think the Bible's a really nice book about nice people on how to be nice. And a story like this makes it very clear that that is not what the book is about. The Bible is about God. It's about how good he is, how powerful he is, how he makes promises and keeps those promises to a people who are gross and sin, who are broken, who need help, who need healing. The Bible is full of rascals. When you go through the Bible, even our greatest figures, Moses and David and Abraham, They're murderers and adulterers. The Bible is about broken human beings whom God has committed himself to save. And so as we look at this book, it reveals. The Bible helps us see us as we are in many ways. It's a real book. It doesn't ignore problems. It gets into the real difficulties of life and in many other places. And so as we look at our story, I just want us to see two basic truths. This isn't the outline for the sermon, but this is what I believe we see throughout Judges. We deserve God's judgment, and yet God still delivers us. We deserve God's judgment, but yet He continues. He delivers His people. Those are the two basic truths. So we're in Judges, that's page 202 in your Bible, if you're using a pew Bible. If you don't have a Bible, please take that with you. I would love for you to take that home as a gift to read, to learn about who God is. But for context, let's go back. God called a people to himself. He sent that people into Egypt, Israel. They were then enslaved and abused by the Egyptians. God delivered them miraculously and very powerfully out of that great nation. They, they crossed the Red Sea where, where they walked on dry land, but then God crushed the Egyptian army. Then because Israel was disobedient, they wandered. for that whole generation who was disobedient to God and would not take the land in the wilderness. And then God raised up Joshua, who took God's people into the promised land, and they've begun to conquer the nations, but they did not remove every idol, they did not drive out all the peoples, they were disobedient. And so the theme of Judges, there's two basic catchphrases throughout Judges. They did what was evil, In the eyes of the Lord, and they did what was right in their own eyes, because there was no king. This is what we do when left alone. So that's the context. The overview of the book, it is in the section of three here, so if we were to go back to last week, chapter three, verse seven, We've got Othniel, in 7-11, I use that to show the pattern of judges, where Israel is faithful, then they do evil in the sight of the Lord, and then God raises up a people against Israel, then Israel cries out, then he gives them a judge, and then they're delivered, and then we just cycle continually, those six steps. It's repeated. But Othniel being the first judge mentioned in verse seven, right before Ehud, He's kind of your typical strongman. He's how a victory is supposed to be won. He's a strongman who goes in, he leads an army, he's used by God to defeat the enemy. Notice there's no details with Othniel. You just get the basic pattern. God heard his people, God saved his people. Ehud, we might wish we didn't have so many details. We get into the real gritty details of the story and I do believe those details are supposed to be highlighting something for us. Then we get a sham gone while I would love to give a whole sermon on what an ox goat is. I don't think that'd be helpful. But here we have, we're just gonna focus all of our time here on this man in this way. The three points I hope to walk through is one, God works against evil. One, God works against evil. Two, God hears our cry for help. God works against evil, God hears our cry for help. And third, God delivers his people. God works against evil, God hears our cry for help, God delivers his people. Let's first look at God works against his people. It's very emphatic what takes place here. Verse 12 is written as a chiasm. You've got the people did evil as it begins, you've got the people did evil as it ends, and right there in the middle, one of the most challenging statements in this story is the Lord strengthened Eglon. Let's first focus on those repeated statements. The people did evil. We do have a little bit more detail. They they went after the other gods. They're they're bowing down and serving other gods We saw this throughout chapters 1 & 2. This is the basic problem of Israel. It goes all the way back to Mount Sinai After God delivered them in such a miraculous way from Egypt God then takes Moses up to the top of the mountain. He gives him instruction. There's thundering, the lightning. God's speaking to his people. They're afraid, and because Moses takes too long, they decide to build a golden calf to thank that golden calf for delivering them from Israel. They have a heart bent towards idolatry. I believe this is what it means to do evil in the sight of the Lord throughout Judges. God's people keep longing and craving and going after the carved images. God is faithful to his covenant. We can go back to chapter two and see there, verse one, I will never break my covenant with you. But God does not bless our disobedience. So in light of our evil, in light of the evil of these Israelites at this time, God strengthens the nations to overcome Israel. Now, this is the greatest blessing of being an Israelite. God says, I am your God, you are my people. I am with you and I am for you, but God has to expect that there's gonna be obedience. He wants to be with them and for them as they obey, and he can't bless disobedience. So what happens here is that God is going to strengthen another nation to come up against his people. He's not going to be for his people. He's going to be for another nation in the sense that he's going to strengthen them to discipline his own child. This is challenging. It's meant to be challenging. We see Almighty God strengthening Eglon. A Moabite. A Moabite. Someone who worships other gods, but he's not part of the covenant. But yet he's still strengthened. God isn't passively letting the Moabites come into Israel. He is proactively strengthening them to come against his people. We see here God correcting the pattern of Israel. The pattern of Israel is they play the whore. And we saw that in Judges 2, 17. They're constantly seeking out to worship and love and serve other gods and not the one God who's committed himself to them. This is challenging because it's very complicated. You know, we like things to be very linear. Oh, God loves me no matter what. I can just go there and it doesn't matter what I do. I'll always enjoy God. I'll always love God. Yeah, when God says he loves you, it's a covenant. Commitment, promise. That doesn't change. But we can't enjoy the law of God if we're playing in sin. You see, our relation with God, it's complicated here because of the strength of the Babylon. It's complicated when we're not enjoying the law of God. It's complicated by our own sin. We complicate things. Think about it as a parent. It's conflicting to discipline our children, isn't it? We want to love them. We want to nurture them. We want to care for them. But we know that we must discipline them. Wrongdoing has to be treated as wrong or else they'll never learn it's wrong. It's conflicting to discipline a child and it's conflicting here for God to discipline his children whom he loves. We have to realize it's our sin that brings the discipline. We've put God in this position. Israel has put God in this position. There's something else I wanna just mention here. God takes away the peace and comfort that he promised them and he established for them in the promised land. They're supposed to go into cities already built. They're supposed to inhabit homes already furnished and provided for them. He really established this wonderful opportunity for them to have peace. But we see here is God takes that away from them. Because there's something he wants more than our simple, circumstantial happiness. He desires a holy happiness. A desire and a delight in him above all things. He protects his people there. This is grace. Strengthening the King Eglon of Moab. It's an act of grace to care for his people. He strengthens Moab. These people aren't even in the promised land. They're outside of it. He takes the people who are outside the promised land to come in. The city of Palms is probably a reference to Jericho. And then Moab, or Eglon, he gets the Ammonites and the Amalekites to fight with him. God's hand is with him. He is still promising his people, but he's disciplining them. So for 18 years, Israel served Eglon and now our second point really the turning point of the story verse 15 and when Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord It took 18 years 18 years they were oppressed and 18 years, they had to pay tribute. 18 years, their freedom and benefits and blessings were gone. And then notice, they cry out to the Lord. It appears as if God immediately raises up a Savior. For 18 years, they're letting this oppression take place, not learning quickly. Remember earlier, they talked, the narrator of Judges earlier talked about how they were stubborn in their ways. 18 years of stubborn oppression. But then as soon as they cry out, immediately, the Lord is listening, the Lord is hearing, he raises up a deliverer. This is the turning point of the story, and it's simply Israel crying out. It doesn't appear they fully repented. They simply look up to God and they cry out for help and God quickly helps. I believe this is something like what we see in that very popular story of Luke 15, what we call the prodigal son. The younger son tells the father, hey, it'd be better if you were dead. Can I have my inheritance now? He goes, he squanders his father's inheritance on prostitutes. He comes to the point where he's starving, and he comes to his senses. What am I doing? Why am I craving for the food of the pigs when I could be at home with dad? Even as a servant with my dad, it's better than where I'm at. Israel, I believe, comes to their senses like that. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. We'll cry out to the Lord. and plead for mercy. Again, it's amazing. 18 years and yet how quickly God changes things. The second point is God delivers his people. This is verses 15 to 30. The details of how God delivers his people are what's emphasized here. We see they've sinned, they've done evil, they cry out, and then 15, be on. The Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. That's a lot of information about a man, a lot more than we had about Othniel. So let's walk through what all these different things mean. First, it's important whenever you're in Israel or if you're reading the Bible to know what tribe you're in, to know who your people are. People are normally described by their nationality, their line. So here we are, Ehud, he's a Benjaminite. It's important that it probably isn't obvious to you that Benjamin means son of my right hand. Okay, he is of the tribe of the son of my right hand. And in case you haven't read Judges before, the Benjaminites do not look good in the story of Judges. Benjaminites are not the right tribe. But for now, we're just going to see that he's of the tribe of the son of my right hand. And then, of course, we come to the irony. He's a left-handed man. Okay? He is of the tribe of the right hand, and he is a left-handed man. And it's important that it doesn't literally say left-handed man. It actually says he's limited in his right hand. Hebrew has idioms that way. He is limited with his, it isn't saying he's ambidextrous or amphibious, as some like to say. It's not saying he's so skilled with both hands or he has a unique skill with his hand. It's actually saying the man who's from the tribe of the right hand, he's not so good with his right hand. He's a left-handed man. He's limited with his right hand. Okay, then we have his name, Ehud. The best translation of this name is, where's the majesty? Where's the splendor? Right, it's like going to Wendy's back in the day. Where's the beef? Othniel, he's an amazing king. He's a mighty man. Ehud. Where's the glory? Where's the power? What's supposed to be so impressive? You're from the tribe of the right hand, but you're limited in your right hand, and where's the splendor? This is who God raises up for this time. And the story gets more interesting. The basic details here of who he is, which again, the author goes into pretty interesting detail, he's not so glorious. We continue, the people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon, the king of Moab. And he who made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, that's about 18 inches, we think. And he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes and he presented the tribute to the Eglon, the king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man. Now, verses 15 and 16, we see here that there's, Israel is continuing to pay tribute. So they're probably bringing livestock, produce, maybe gifts of some sort. It's a way of continuing to be in the good graces of the king who is oppressing and watching over the people. They're serving Eglon, so they're giving him gifts. The way I read it, and I could be wrong here, but the way I read it, the nation of Israel doesn't seem to be aligned with the plan of Ehud. It seems like he's doing his own thing. The nation of Israel, they're bringing tribute. He dismisses them later and he goes on alone. It appears he is acting as a single individual. So he comes, the nation of Israel sends him to pay this tribute. Maybe it's a coincidence or another coincidence that he's left-handed, so he's able to sneak in a dagger in his right thigh, not where they normally check. But this is what we have. Ehud is coming, he's paying tribute for all of Israel. Now we've got, the king of Moab, Aglon, and the end of verse 17 is supposed to stand out at some level. He's a very fat man. It appears that he's obese. The way that it's emphasized is he's extremely large. He's morbidly obese. I mean, 18 years of devouring the produce and the goods of Israel. He's a glutton for the glory of Israel. He's been abusing the people. He's been indulging himself. The humor is intentional because if you're an Israelite, the name Eglon sounds a lot like Iglo, and that's a word for cow. What we have here is King Fat Cow. Okay, here's what we have set up so far. Limited lacking of splendor is going to battle King fat cow That's not really the headline you think for some glorious battle and then it gets worse It is supposed to be humorous It is supposed to be somewhat of a mockery and let me just point you Psalm 2 the Lord laughs At the Kings who rise up against him He takes, he brings up kings, he takes down kings. This is supposed to show Israel, God will make a mockery of their sin. He will make a mockery of any kings that comes up against them. God is powerful. We continue with the story. After they finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute. But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal. Now Gilgal's another town. It seems as if he left the castle They go to Gilgal. Gilgal is where Israel crossed the Jordan. And Israel was supposed to set up Ebenezers, stones. We sang about Ebenezer earlier in Come Thou Fount. An Ebenezer is a reminder God has been good. It's a reminder God has been faithful. And they're supposed to set up stones there, 12 of them, one for each tribe, to remind them that God delivered them. God has brought you to this land, but here instead of those stones, what do we have? Idols. He turns back at Gilgal where these idols are. It's a definite marker. Notice what he does. He goes back in the chamber. I have a secret message for you, O King. The word message is the Hebrew word dabar. I only mention that because it has a double meaning and it's important that we use the word debar because if you're thinking of Eglon, here's what he's saying. I have a debar for you. What Eglon hears is you have a message. What he means is I've got a dagger. It is deceptively cunning. I have a debar for you. And he hears, oh, I like secret messages. Silence in the chamber. He triggers everyone to go out. He looks like a buffoon here. He's buying into, he's following the plan of his own assassination. Silence, I want to hear the secret debar. All along, he means I've got a dagger. He's cunning. So verse 19, he came silent while the attendants left the court. Eud came to him, he grows closer, and he was just sitting alone in the cool roof chamber. Eud said, I have a debar from God for you. Well, this is even more enticing, so what is Eud gonna do? He stands up. Not only a secret debar, but a debar from God? Please let me know. He's looking for this privilege debar. So then Ehud reached out, verse 21, with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his now exposed belly because he's standing up. And the handle completely into his stomach, and the fat closed over the blade, and he did not pull it out. And the dung came out. And then Ehud escapes. Again, I believe Ehud's working alone. He's left the tribute party. He's gone in by himself. He's tricked Eglon, who really looks just like a buffoon here. He's following along with his plan perfectly. We hear this sentence, and the dung came out. That's there in the Bible, we gotta deal with that. Why? Why does it need to be here? We see this cunning assassin, we see this king being conquered, we see God, he's raised up her liver, he's made the man he made strong, and now an embarrassing loss. Why does God need to say this here? It looks as if he's relieved himself as part of the victory. It's gross. I believe this is added for no other reason to highlight how gross and embarrassing this feat is. Just like Psalm 2, God laughs, God mocks the kings who despise him and oppress his people. One of the themes we'll see throughout Judges is that God is just. Vengeance is the Lord's. He will bring a deliverance. He will reveal sin. He will show us. He will declare sin and reveal how disgusting it is. It exposes all that's wrong. We see at the end, 26 through 30, Ehud escapes. And then he's established as their leader, the verse of 27. And so he says to Israel, Follow after me. The Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hands. The Lord is the one who's going to strengthen Israel now. The victory is his. All they have to do is by faith follow him. By faith they've cried out. Now they must by faith fight. And so they went down and they killed about 10,000. And Moab blessed a dude that day under the hand of Israel. And they had rest. So how are we supposed to read this story? A lot of interesting details. An unlikely hero, an unusual adversary, unusual death. Are we supposed to learn from Eklund's mistakes? Is that what we're supposed to learn from? Don't be so trusting. Don't see someone's handicap as a weakness. Be aware of the cunning. Maybe go on a diet. I was supposed to learn from Ehud. How to defeat your enemies. How to take down the Eglons in your life with deception and cunning and like an assassin. I hope those sound as crazy as they are. Now if we're gonna think about Eglon, I think it's fear of God. What comes about to those who hate God? It's actually worse than the death of Eglon. We see here God bringing a vengeance and a justice and a judgment against rebellion. It's a warning, fear God. He will be a righteous judge. He will expose our sin. Fear God. As we think about Ehud, he's not who you expect as a hero. We see a man who simply works by faith. Ehud is not who we actually identify with, though, because he's a picture of Christ. He's the deliverer. He's the one who God uses to bring about a peace for his people with his actions. God gives him victory through his leadership, and we'll talk about that a little bit more later. Now, if we're really gonna think about who we should identify with and how we should think about the story, we need to realize we're most like Israel. If you wanna know who we are in this story, we're Israel. Let's start from the beginning. We're the ones who do evil in the sight of the Lord. We're the ones who rebel. We're the ones that do what's right in our own eyes. We're the ones that refuse God worship. We're the ones that are full of lust, anger, greed, selfishness. We lie. We cheat. We do evil in the sight of the Lord. We have to first identify with Israel. And then we have to realize that our sin brings about consequences. Our sin is entangling. It's entrapping. It's enslaving. We are underneath a ruler that we cannot defeat, and I'm gonna say first and foremost, it's our own sin. And the only way we can be healed, cared for, and freed is by crying out to the one God. Help us. We sang earlier, just as I am. just as I am that will receive, will welcome, pardon, cleanse, and relieve, because thy promise I believe. This is the beautiful part of truth of Scripture. We don't have to clean ourselves up to come to God. In fact, we cannot clean ourselves up enough for God to receive us. God takes Israel while they're crying out, still worshiping other gods. He's the one who hears us. He's the one who calls us while we're still sinners. He loves us even while we're still sinners. He delivers us even while we're still rebelling. Our problem, the problem in our own story is that we do evil. Our call is to cry out to God. And then we'll see that we do not get a deliverer like Ehud. And praise God for that. The deliverer he's promised is a much better deliverer. God himself has come down. Jesus Christ, the one who lived a perfect life that we could not live, the one who died, and yes, it looked like he was losing. It looked like he had been defeated on the cross. I was saying a tribute to Luther, but we see it elsewhere. It was like there was a fish, he bites the worm, Because the worm is what you see, the weakness. But what he finds is the hook. When Satan thought he was conquering Christ on the cross, he saw only his frail humanity that he thought he could kill. But when he bit in, he found the Godhead. that could not be defeated. Christ was not defeated on the cross, no, that was the victory. Death is defeated in His death. Sin is conquered by His own life being crushed for ours. Our deliverer is not like Ehud. He's the perfect man dying for our sin in our place. If you're not a Christian this morning, The first thing you need to realize is you've done evil. There's something wrong. There's some entangling of the heart. There's lust. There's anger. There's greed. We all have sinned. We all have different kinds of sin. God will judge each one of us for it. Unless we believe in His own Son, Jesus Christ, whom He crushed for our iniquity, for our sin. You must first believe you are a sinner and that Jesus Christ came to die for sinners and cry out to him. Cry out to God for salvation. A few takeaways from our text. Even though we see God strengthening his people, we see God delivering his people. I wanna say that one of the first takeaways I want us to see as believers, God is faithful to his promised people. That's us, church. God is faithful to his promised people. He is longing to secure our worship. So here's the thing, when we suffer, when we're in difficult circumstances, we can oftentimes just too quickly ask, God, why? Why would you do this? God, what are you, why can't you remove this trouble? What are the questions we have to ask? God, what are you trying to teach me? What would you like for me to learn about my own life and my own sin and how I can trust you more? It doesn't mean every sickness, every difficulty is a consequence of sin, but every sickness, every difficulty is an opportunity for God to refine us. Suffering is never wasted on the Christian. God uses it. We also see here that Israel wasn't demanded. Clean yourselves up so God would love you. No, God said, I love you because I love you. I'm committed to you. However, he also made it very clear, I cannot bless your disobedience. If you disobey, I will send calamity upon you to bring you back to me. If you obey, I will pour my blessing on you. This is very clear in Deuteronomy 30, beginning in verse 11. For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. God has already called them, there is people. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us to bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it. But the word is very near you. It's in your mouth and your heart so that you can do it. So he's speaking to his own people right now. He has delivered his word of grace. They've received it. Now he gives them instruction. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him. For he is your life in the length of days, that you may dwell in the land of the Lord, swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to give them. That's the basic parameters of how to live within the covenant. I wanna say the New Testament's not that different. Israel didn't clean themselves up and be obedient so they could hear that word. No, God called them while they were rebellious and said, I'm gonna make you my people. I've claimed you for myself. I've delivered you. Now, I wanna bless you. Because I am the Heavenly Father from whom every good, perfect gift comes. I want to bless you, but if I bless you in your disobedience, you're going to keep worshiping those gods, and that will be your ultimate destruction. I will discipline you, he says to us, when you disobey. Like a good Heavenly Father. Praise God he doesn't bless our disobedience. We want him to. We want him to, let's be honest. But praise God he doesn't. The second thing I want us to see, the second takeaway, God listens. His ears are bent towards his people. longing as a parent for their child to speak, to cry out for them. He's longing to hear from us. He's longing to hear, God, help me. Help me not look exactly what we want it to look like, but He's going to always act. He is quick to show mercy. I believe it's a story already revealed. Our problem is that we are very slow and stubborn to cry out. Cry out to God. Be sick of living in this defeated state. Cry out to God. And finally, a brief just focus here. Eu, I have a debar from God for you. We see here in that statement, God is a just judge. God does bring about justice. So if there's enemies you can distrust, God is going to have vengeance. He is a just judge. Do not take vengeance in your own hands. God is a just judge. Again, if you're not a believer, there is something you must do and realize that he will be a just judge of your sins. You must believe in Jesus Christ for your forgiveness. Will you pray with me? Father, we see you are the God who gives strength. You are the God who has your way. Your will is good. Lord, I pray we will learn to trust you. That our hearts would be disciplined to not go after other gods. That our hearts would receive correction. That our hearts would cry out to you. Help us, oh God. Deliver us. Well, we thank You this morning that we, we get to look up. And not just cry to some God somewhere who might help us. No, we get to cry out to You, our Father, who sent Your Son to give us a clear, certain victory in the death of Jesus Christ, in His resurrection, and in His ascension to Your right hand. We get to look up and we get to look to a risen, conquering Savior. Thank You. for the victory you've already given us. Help us all to walk by faith to follow you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.