Our text for this morning comes from Judges chapter 3, verses 12 through 31. If you're using one of the Pew Bibles, you'll find that on page 182. Judges chapter 3, verses 12 through 31. In that never read book of Hezekiah, there is a story about an Ishmaelite and an Edomite and a Moabite. who are each of them captured in battle, and each of them is sentenced to death, somewhat anachronistically, by guillotine. I think that's one of the reasons we know Hezekiah isn't canonical, is there's a guillotine in there. So the Ishmaelite comes first. They only have the one guillotine, and so they will go one at a time. And the Ishmaelite comes first, and the executioner gives him a choice to make. He says, do you want to go face down or face up? He says, face down, I think. Okay, so they lay him out on his stomach there, and the executioner releases the blade, and it comes down. stops just before his neck, just a hair's breadth. The executioner says, it's an act of God, you can go free. So the Edomite comes, same choice, face up, face down, face down, okay, lay him out on his stomach there. Executioner releases the blade, stops right before his neck, act of God, you can go free. Now the Moabite comes. He says, I think I'd like to go face up. All right. Lay him down on his back. The executioner's getting ready. He looks up there. He says, oh, I see your problem. You've got a knot in the rope. Restructured a joke in order to make sure that the Moabite is the butt. of the joke because it is the Moabite king and Moab with him, especially as they are worshippers of idols who are the butt of a joke that is the passage before us this morning. As we prepare to come to the word of God, let's first go to him in prayer. Almighty and most merciful Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for any and all encouragement that you can give to us by it, to honor you alone as God, to put all of our hope in you, and will you empower us by your word this morning to mortify the flesh, to progressively throughout our lives be about the work of putting to death the idols that not only that tend to live in our hearts, but that our hearts tend to generate. We ask this for your glory and for our good. In Jesus' name, Amen. Judges chapter 3 verses 12 through 31. The Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord's sight. He gave Eglon, king of Moab, power over Israel because they had done what was evil in the Lord's sight. After Eglon convinced the Ammonites and the Amalekites to join forces with him, he attacked and defeated Israel and took possession of the city of Palms. The Israelites served Eglon, king of Moab, 18 years. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord, and he raised up Ehud, son of Gerah, a left-handed Benjamite, as a deliverer for them. The Israelites sent him to Eglon, king of Moab, with tribute money. Ehud made himself a double-edged sword 18 inches long. He strapped it to his right thigh under his clothes and brought the tribute to Eglon King of Moab, who was an extremely fat man. When Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he dismissed the people who had carried it. at the carved images near Gilgal, he returned and said, King Eglon, I have a secret message for you. The king called for silence and all his attendants left him. Then Ehud approached him while he was sitting alone in his room upstairs where it was cool. Ehud said, I have a word from God for you. And the king stood up from his throne. Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into Eglon's belly. Even the handle went in after the blade and Eglon's fat closed in over it so that Ehud did not withdraw the sword from his belly and Eglon's insides came out. Ehud escaped by the way of the porch, closing and locking the doors of the upstairs room behind him. Ehud was gone when Eglon's servants came in. They looked and found the doors of the upstairs room locked and thought he was relieving himself in the cool room. The servants waited until they became worried and saw that he had still not opened the doors of the upstairs room. So they took the key and opened the doors and there was their lord lying dead on the floor. The hood escaped while the servants waited. He crossed over the Jordan near the carved images and reached Sarah. After he arrived, he sounded the ram's horn throughout the hill country of Ephraim. The Israelites came down with him from the hill country and he became their leader. He told them, follow me because the Lord has handed over your enemies, the Moabites, to you. So they followed him, captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Moab, and did not allow anyone to cross over. At that time, they struck down about 10,000 Moabites, all strong and able-bodied men. Not one of them escaped. Moab became subject to Israel that day, and the land was peaceful 80 years. After Ehud, Shamgar, son of Anath, became judge. He delivered Israel by striking down 600 Philistines with an ox goad. Thus far, the reading of God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word. We ask that he would add his blessing to the reading and to the preaching of it. Here we have our second judge, well, and our third, but focus primarily on Ehud, the second judge in this book of Judges. We have a lot more detail here. We have a longer story. We have not a lot more detail maybe about the judge than we had last week about Ophniel, but we have a lot more of a story about the deliverance that he works. In some ways, it's troubling detail, isn't it? This is extra detail in this case, means extra confusion. Maybe extra questions in our minds. Perhaps we're asking, now wait a minute. Is this all okay? Is this right? Deception and assassination? Was God okay with that? Did God command that? I mean, of course, he foreordains whatsoever comes to pass, but did he command Ehud to do it in this way? Is that what he wanted? And so perhaps we turn to commentaries to see if they will answer these questions for us. And you probably didn't do that this last week, so I'll just tell you, they make it worse. Because they've done some study in the Hebrew and so forth, and so they began to bring up the fact that there are a number of Hebrew words here that are rare words, and that makes them difficult to translate because we don't have other contexts to help us kind of figure out what that word means. So you may have had a different translation, for instance, where Ehud escapes in verse 23. Mine says, by way of the porch. Well, there's a word there. We don't really know what it means. And so there are different guesses about what's the nature of his escape here. One of the commentators that I read thought he escaped through a latrine. Well, that's different. So we begin to ask ourselves, what is even going on? We don't even know what the story is. We have all kinds of questions. This is one of the things about judges. The reader is supposed to feel this way, is supposed to feel the need of an authoritative voice to delineate right from wrong, to make righteous judgments, to tell us how we're supposed to think about things. How are we supposed to feel about this? We're supposed to feel, you know, like we wish we could grab the narrator by the lapels and say, would you tell us how we're supposed to think about this? One of the things about Judges, it's written in such a way to make us feel that. Let us not allow our questions about the text to prevent us from seeing the main point, the main thrust. What is plain here? And we have that in verse 15. Again, of course, we've got this cycle repeating itself. So the Israelites have done evil in the sight of the Lord. He has handed them over into the hands of an oppressor. And in verse 15, the Israelites cry out to the Lord, and He raises up a judge to deliver them. Here's the main point. Salvation by God. That the Lord is a God who saves His people. Like we had last week, there is a stress here on, it is the Lord who saves. But unlike last week, where it was the Lord as opposed to the judge, because we had so little detail about Othniel, that the text rather tended to lay stress on the Lord as opposed to the judge. In this text, we have the Lord as over against any idols. It is the Lord, and not the so-called gods of Moab, that has power to save. Remember also from last week we talked about the name of the oppressor in the text that is Kushan Rishathayim and said that means Kushan double evil. It's not his real name, it's something of a nickname. We touched briefly on the fact that Israel did not see themselves in a position to rise up militarily against this Kushan Rishathayim. but they could poke back at him by giving him this unflattering name. That is a way of fighting back, if you will, that is always open to an oppressed people. And this text has something like that in spades. This story is told in a way that encourages God's people to laugh up their sleeves at the joke that is their oppressor. To laugh at the enemies of God. to snicker at false gods and at those who serve them. It ridicules and mocks the idols and idolaters in order to underscore the power and the grace of God. reminds me in that way of some other instances of this kind of thing in scripture. I think of Elijah on Mount Carmel where he has challenged the prophets of Baal. They have each prepared a sacrifice and the deal is you do everything right up to the point where you would light the sacrifice on fire. Now if your God is God, and of course Baal is supposed to be the God of the heavens, the God of the seasons, the God of the storm, he's a God who brings lightning, he should be able to light this on fire. And Elijah gives them hours upon hours to make this request of their God. And as they do so, he begins to mock them, doesn't he? Yeah, that doesn't seem to be working very well. I don't know, maybe if you cut yourselves or something and you bleed, he wouldn't notice. Maybe try to be louder. Maybe he went to sleep or something. Anybody bring a cell phone? Maybe he went on a journey and we need to call him. Oh, he didn't say that. Or in 1 Samuel chapter 5. where because of the sins of God's people, the Ark of the Covenant is taken into captivity by the Philistines. And the Philistines bring the Ark into the temple of their god, Dagon, as though it were a trophy of war collected there by their god. And they wake up the next morning, and what do they find? The image of Dagon has fallen down on its face in front of the Ark. It kind of looks like he's bowing down to the Ark. And now who is mocking the idols? It's God Himself, isn't it? They set Him up, of course, and the next morning He is there bowing down again and now with His hands and His feet broken off as if to say, He can't do anything. He can't take Himself anywhere, He can't do anything, and He bows before the God of Israel. Let's look at this story and the way that it mocks the idols and those who serve them. In verses 15 through 17, we have presented to us the two primary human actors here. We have Ehud, who is a Benjamite, and he's left-handed. It's interesting. This comes up from time to time in the scriptures. Benjamin was the last of the sons of Jacob to be born. He was born while his mother was dying in childbirth, and she named him Ben-Ami, son of Mysoroh. His father did not allow that name to stand and renamed him Benjamin, Benjamin, son of my right hand. And in several places in scripture we have noted there are Benjamites who are left-handed. In fact, one of the other places is later on in the book of Judges where we have kind of a whole regiment of soldiers who are all left-handed. From that it is guessed that maybe it means not so much that they're left-handed as that they are trained to fight ambidextrously. These are a kind of Benjamite special forces. So it is guessed that Ehud is one of these. At least, even if he's not, to an Israelite reading this, he sounds like one of those. He's a Benjamite who can fight with his left hand. And he's not only skilled, then, in this way, but he's clever. Clever enough to make for himself a double-edged sword. Just a note on that, we find that in verse 16, this reference to the sword. There is a Hebrew euphemism that's always used for double-edged sword. They don't actually write double-edged, they write double-mouthed. And there seems to be a connection between the sharpness and the power of a sword and the power of the word. We find it used that way in a couple of the Psalms. You may think of Hebrews chapter 4. The word of God is sharper than any two, you guessed it, mouthed sword. Because that idiom comes even into the Greek. Sharper than any two mouthed sword. The description of Jesus in Revelation chapter 1, you know that that striking image where he's got flaming eyes and his skin shines like bronze and we kind of wonder what all of it means. One of the parts of that description is that he's got a two-edged sword extending out of his mouth. So he makes himself this two-mouthed sword and he is clever as he hides it under his clothes on the right thigh where it is most likely to escape detection. There's the presentation of one of our characters. Now we have Eglon also in these verses and he is presented to us not only as oppressive, this is the oppressor of God's people, but as somewhat ridiculous as the narrator notes that he was, verse 17, an extremely fat man. Now, it is politically uncorrect as well as rude and just plain mean to make fun of people based on their personal experience, oftentimes which they cannot help. Understand that. But we are not supposed to feel sympathy for this idolatrous oppressor king, who by the way is a king. And in that culture, a king is supposed to be a feral, powerful warrior who leads his armies into battle. This is not that. This is a man who is presented to us as so fat that an estimated 18-inch blade plus hilt can disappear into him. This is a man who has trouble getting up, much less leading warriors into battle. The presentation of him is supposed to make God's people begin to smile a bit at who this oppressor is. He's not an impressive warrior. And then in verse 19, when Ehud has returned to him and said, I have a secret message for you, this king calls for silence and all his attendants leave him. Now the text has already told us, by way of foreshadowing, what Ehud's intentions are. And so the smile gets a little bit bigger, because not only is Eglon fat, he's a fool. Who dismisses all of his attendants, all of his bodyguards? Because a member of the oppressed nation says, I'd like to be locked in a room alone with you. Okay. That sounds good to me. Verse 20 then builds the suspense. Ehud approached. He approached Eglon who was all alone in his chamber. And he says, I have a word from God for you. Oh, we know what that word is, don't we? This is a word with two mouths. And the king, we're told, stood up. What fun imagery for the oral historian. Remember, this is a culture that's largely oral. So this is a story that's part of Israel's history, and there are oral historians who tell this. And can they paint this imagery? And the king stood up to receive the word. Verses 21 through 22 then, as one commentator said, slip into slow motion. As he had reached with his left hand, and he took the sword from his right thigh, and he plunged it into Eglon's belly. Even the handle went in after the blade, and Eglon's fat closed in over it, so that Eglon did not withdraw the blade. And Eglon's insides came out. Gross? Who put this in my Bible? That is disgusting. But it is meant to be gross in precisely the way that 9 to 12 year old boys find hilarious. You can almost hear the sound effects, can't you? Verse 23 then simply describes a simple and clever escape. Again, there, that's a place where we're not exactly sure what's going on, but it seems that Ehud closes and locks the doors from the inside and then he escapes by some other route. And then verses 24 and 25. There are three uses of a particular Hebrew particle that always seems to carry at least some sense of surprise, something a bit unexpected with it. And so I'll make use of a translation by Dr. Davis, one of the commentators that I make use of. He sets it up. He says, Eglon's servants return from coffee break. I mean, where did they go? They're foolish, too, to have gone far. But it says that they return. in verse 24, and they looked. Why? The doors of the upper chamber were locked. So they said, he's surely covering his feet in the bathroom. And so they waited to the point of shame, and still he was not opening the doors of the upper chamber. Then they took the key and opened them, and There he was! Their master was fallen to the ground. Dead! Yeah, we knew that. Thank you. Verse 26 tells us that Ehud escaped while the servants were dilly-dallying. While they were spending all this time waiting, Ehud had time to escape. And he crosses over the Jordan near the carved images. And then verses 27-30 describe this. He's calling help to himself. Some commentators have said that the city of Palms that's referenced here would have been in Moab and is not a reference to Jericho. That's in verse 13 where we're told he captures that. But we're told that he took possession of this city of Palms and now it seems the Moabites panic. Their king is dead and they are going to flee back to Moab. It seems they're not in Moab initially and they have to cross the Jordan River in order to flee. I think it probably is a reference to Jericho that they had taken possession of. And now they're fleeing back home, which is on the other side of the Jordan River. And Ehud has gathered help. And they have taken the fords, the only places you can cross the river. And we're not told exactly how that goes. But apparently, they are more than a match for those who are seeking to cross over and flee back to Moab. And they slaughter them there. I want to go back to something just touched on. In verse 26, as it mentions that Ehud escaped, it says, he crossed over the Jordan near the carved images. And that's not the first reference that we have to carved images. It's also the place where he turns around in order to tell Eglon that he has a secret message for him in verse 19, at the carved images. These two references to the carved images that serve as bookends around the actual assassination. They're referenced right before, and then the king is executed or assassinated, and then he makes his escape, and here's reference to these carved images again. It makes me think of the two watchers of Sirith Ungol. It's a Lord of the Rings reference, if you don't know. These two gargoyle-like figures that forbid entrance to this watchtower. I mean, at least those two resisted Sam Gamgee's attempt to enter. It was only by raising the file of Galadriel that he was able to enter. And at least when they do fail in their duty and someone passes them, they sound an alarm. These carved images are completely useless. They don't do anything. They don't provide any help at all. They don't save the king from assassination and they don't do anything to bring justice to the one who has assassinated him after the fact. They have a record that Washington generals would be ashamed of. I mean, they never beat the Globetrotters, but at least they put points on the board. To quote the Incredible Hulk, these are puny gods. If you get that, great. If you don't, I don't have time. It's not just carved images. You know, to us, that seems, of course, of course carved images would not do you any good. Of course those would not help. You made them out of wood, out of stone, whatever they are. That seems normal to us, but it's not just carved images, but rather it's also real flesh and blood adversaries that pose no threat to God's people. Notice verse 31. We have this third judge, Shamgar. He is given just this one verse. Now, in his day, he was famous. He was well-known. People knew about this deliverance. In chapter 5, there's reference to him in the days of Shamgar. He's a reference point in their history. But the Holy Spirit did not see fit to preserve hardly anything about him. We don't need, apparently, to know hardly anything about him. But we know this, that he faced 600 Philistines. These are presumably armed soldiers. No reason for Philistine villagers, for instance, to be in Israel. How would you feel if you were facing, let's just say, a half a dozen trained armed men, and they're against you? Whatever you say, right? But 600 trained, armed men are no match for a farmer's implement if God designs to save. There's flesh and blood, trained and armed, just like the carved images. They're of no use if God designs to save. What's the purpose of this text for God's people? What use is it to us? This is more than just a history lesson. It's more than just a good laugh for us. I see at least three ways that this text ought to be useful to us. First, this text ought to encourage God's people to have faith in the Lord. He's not just more powerful than the idols. It is plain laughable how much greater He is than they are. There's no contest. It's not even close. Psalm 2, verses 1 through 4. Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us break their bonds in pieces, and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens shall grow very concerned. No. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. Oh, you're rebelling, are you? That's funny. The Lord shall hold them in derision, the text. That's a pretty sharp word, derision. It means to dismiss by ridicule and mockery. There's a place for that. When people have set themselves steadfastly against the Lord and against his purposes, There's a place for that. Let's be careful. Just because there's a place doesn't mean it's every place. There is a place for that. And as we see that, we ought to be encouraged to put our faith in the Lord. Here's another encouragement that's here for us to put our faith in the Lord. There are no righteous people here in this text to be saved. And sometimes I think we can feel like, well, you know, God saves and that's wonderful, And it's wonderful for people who are kind of good people. They sort of deserve for God to be good to them. That's not really me. And there is such a thing as a relative righteousness that's described in scripture. I think of some of the psalms where the psalmist claims, I'm innocent. Not universally, not absolutely, but with respect to what the wicked accuse me of, I'm innocent. Job, too, has this relative kind of righteousness. There aren't even those kind of people in this text. These are people who have done what was evil in the Lord's sight. They have turned away from the God who has delivered them in the past. They have turned to worship the Baals. And in verse 15, they cry out to the Lord. And as has been said already in this series, there is no implication of repentance there. Dr. Davis is my favorite commentator for judges. It's because I trust him and because his commentary is so pastoral, it's so practical and a joy to read. It's also because he did his PhD in judges. So he just spent a lot of time with it. He knows it really well. And one of the things he's done a lot of research on is the Hebrew word that stands behind this cry out. And he says, when it is by itself, it never implies repentance. Sometimes it's there in the context of repentance, but when you have that, there's always another verb that comes alongside to supply that meaning. This is just crying out in misery. We're hurting. Save us. I mean, this is an amazing thing to know about our God. He doesn't say, why should I save you, you bunch of Baal worshipers? He raises up a judge to deliver them because he cares about their misery. we ought to be encouraged to put our faith in that God who saves those who do not deserve to be saved. This text helps us to hear and take the advice of Psalm 130. Verse 4 says, if you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? If you should keep track of all the sins, pare down humanity starting from the worst and all the way to the best, you're going to be left with Jesus and nobody else. Who could stand? Nobody. And verse 7 then says, O Israel, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption. We need to hear that and be encouraged to put our faith in the Lord. Secondly, this text encourages God's people to persevere in times of oppression and difficulty. Israel served this Eglon, king of Moab, for 18 years. There's a whole generation that grows up under his oppression. And this happened not because God was weak and not because he was careless, not because he wasn't paying attention, not because he was powerless to save, but because God was using Eglon to discipline his people and in all other ways to achieve his own purposes. And we go through some difficult times. sometimes when it mystifies us, sometimes what God is doing, sometimes when we cry out and ask to be relieved of the burdens that are upon us. And God rarely tells us what it is that He's doing, what purposes He's pursuing for us. But here's yet another text where we can look at the character of our God and be assured of the promise that Paul gives in Romans 8. that he is working all things together for the good of those whom he has called to love him. Persevere in faith in this God. Last of all, and perhaps most pointedly, this text should aid God's people in resisting idolatry. I think that's its primary design in mocking Eglon and the Moabites and especially the idols here in showing us that they're laughable. We are to be armed against idolatry in our own hearts because it is not only Moab's idols that were in ancient past times ridiculous, but our idols are a mockery. What are you trusting in? What do you hope for? What do you hope will make you feel secure, or give you a sense of belonging, or make you comfortable? We must learn to see the promises of Washington, of Madison Avenue, of Wall Street, of the Ivy League, of the adult bookstore. What a misnomer. I have to pause and just mock that for a moment. Adult book store? As though what they sell, first of all, how many books are in there? But much, much, much deeper than that. As though what they sell in an adult bookstore is somehow geared toward maturity. Adult, there's a joke. We must learn to see the promises of the adult bookstore and of science and technology, not only as lies, but as pathetic, ridiculous foolishness, worthy of nothing from God's people but our scorn and laughter, because we know the God who saves, and more importantly, He knows us. Almighty God, our Savior God, Merciful God, you who alone are God, make us more and more to belong to you with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind. Not just to belong to you as we already do by right, but by intention in the way that we think and speak and live. Make us to make right use of the things that you have made but to laugh at the suggestion that they can serve as gods for us. Make us to know of a certainty every moment of every day that good goods make bad gods, and be tempted not in the slightest to serve the idols of our age, but to honor you alone as God. We pray it in Christ's name, amen.