-before I begin today I have to make a disclaimer. Lorie has asked that it be known that she holds no responsibility for me picking this story. This was not her choice, this was all me, just so you all know, don’t blame her if you don’t like the story.
-but today it’s my turn to tell my favorite Bible story.
-now I will warn you, this story is definitely my kind of story. For those that don’t know me, when I was a kid most of my life was spent watching Star Wars and playing hockey, so you can kind of guess what kind of story time we’re going to have.
-the story I picked is the story of Ehud and can be found in Judges 3:12-30. but I don't’ want to read it. Back when these stories would have happened the average person couldn’t read, these stories would have been passed on by people teaching their children or telling these stories around the fire at night, so I kind of want to do it like that. Sit back, imagine what’s going on.
-I should add, I believe the Bible is 100% true, so as a historical book, I believe this really happened just like it says it happened, so picture it in your mind as we go through it.
-our story begins as all stories in Judges begin, once again the Israelites do evil in the sight of the Lord, so someone comes in and conquers them. This time it’s the Moabites with their king, King Eglon. [SHOW JUD. 3:12 (NLT)]
-we know a few things about King Eglon. One, we know he was smart. He wanted to beat up the Israelites, God’s people. But they are not a weak little group of people, they own the world’s best land and know how to defend it, so he hires help. He gets the Ammonites, who hate the Israelites, and the Amalekites, who really hate the Israelites, and gets them all to gang up on Israel. So he’s a good military leader, and he manages to be over Israel for eighteen years. Smart man.
-we also know he’s rich because he demands a tribute from the Israelites. Also, in certain translations like NIV, verse 20 uses a term that translators aren’t too sure about, but they use the term summer palace. If the guy has more than one castle, he’s probably well off.
-but there’s one other way we know he’s rich and learn something about him. In verses 17 King Eglon is described as very fat. [SHOW JUD. 3:17 (NLT)] Now, in the Bible there is only one other person called fat, and he dies by falling back on his chair and breaking his neck. This guy is very fat. I mean Jabba the Hut fat. [SHOW PICTURE OF JABBA THE HUT] Except he’s a king [SHOW PICTURE JABBA WITH CROWN]
-so we pick up our story with the Israelites serving their eighteenth year and getting ready to give their tribute to Eglon. Now it says the people of Israel cried out to God for help and the Lord heard them and chose a man named Ehud. He is the son of Gera, he’s from the tribe of Benjamin and he’s left-handed. [SHOW JUD. 3:15 (NLT)] The only other thing we can guess is that he’s quite young because after he died the Israelites have troubles again, but that’s eighty years later.
-Ehud is given the job of taking Eglon his tribute, so he makes a small double-edged dagger and hides it under his clothes by strapping it to his right thigh. That’s important because what usually happened when another country came in and took over Israel they would take away their ability to make weapons. Ehud manages to make one in secret with improper tools.
-so Ehud and a handful of other people (because I’m guessing Ehud couldn’t carry all the gold himself). They deliver the treasure and leave, but on the way home Ehud leaves them and goes back to King Eglon’s palace by himself. He walks in and tells Elgon he has a secret message for him.
-King Eglon likes this idea so he tells everyone to leave him and Ehud alone. Ehud walks up to the king and says, “I have a message from God for you!” As King Eglon stands up, I’m guessing it was probably hard work for him since he was so big and needed to use his arms to push himself up out of his throne, anyway, as he works to stand up, Ehud takes the dagger strapped to his thigh and plunges it into King Eglon’s belly. But King Eglon is so fat the Bible says the king’s fat sucked in the dagger handle and all. [SHOW JUD. 3:21-22 (NIV)] [ACT OUT]
-but now Ehud has a problem, he’s trapped. He decides to lock the doors into the room with them and then he escapes. Now again, there’s a translation problem here because the Hebrew word for how Ehud escapes is not entirely known. So there are two theories.
-one is there was a porch off of this room, so Ehud went to the porch and jumped off. Could it happen? Sure. But would he have just run and jumped off a second story porch (I doubt it’s a first story porch)? Probably not.
-the other translation goes like this. A little history here is before the flushable toilet there were three ways to get rid of bathroom waste. One was to have an outhouse, you have to go outside and walk to another building to go the bathroom. Eglon, he’s a fat boy, I doubt he was doing that every time he needed the bathroom. Now if you were rich, you could have a chamber pot that would be emptied for you. But again, Eglon would probably need a big pot, plus he’s a king, he doesn’t want his poop in his royal room. So there’s one other option.
-what the uber-rich, the royal would do is they would have the bathroom on the second floor on an outside wall. Then what would happen is one of the castle employees would every so often have to go outside and walk around the castle until he got to a door underneath this bathroom, open it up and scoop the poop into the moat and let the water take it away.
-so what many people believe, and it’s in some translations, is Ehud escaped by dropping down into the latrine room, opening the door and running away. [SHOW JUD. 3:23 (NLT)]
-now there’s some merit to this because remember all the people, including the guards, were asked to leave Ehud and Eglon alone. And the way the story goes the servants waited and waited for the king to come out, it says they waited until the point of embarrassment because they thought he may be on the medieval toilet, they waited until the point of embarrassment until they got a key to unlock the doors Ehud locked and check on the king, by which point he was long dead and Ehud long gone. [SHOW JUD. 3:24-25 (NIV)]
-so while the Moabites are all realizing their king is dead, Ehud has run back, gets the Israelites rallied up and tells them to attack for the Lord has given the Moabites to them, they attack and win and the Israelites live in peace for the next eighty years.
-now I know what you’re thinking. Best story ever! I know! But believe it or not there’s actually some things we can learn from this.
1. GOD HEARS YOU WHEN YOU CRY
**Jud. 3:15a -> 15The People of Israel cried out to God and God raised up for them a savior, Ehud. (MSG)
-I wonder if for many people here, we haven’t gotten to the place where we pray because it’s a habit, not because we actually believe God will do anything.
-a few weeks ago we talked about this in Downpour, our Sr. High Bible Study. We talked about how a lot of prayers that are said seem to be for healing. Heal grandpa of this, heal mom of that. Do we pray because we actually believe God will physically heal them, or do we pray because it’s the good Christian thing to do?
-we need to start believing that God actually hears our requests and will do what we ask Him to do.
**Mark 11:24 -> 24Listen to me! You can pray for anything, and if you believe, you have it; it’s yours! (LB)
-we need to start believing that God is hearing us.
-one student saw it this way. When things are kind of bad we ask God. When things are really bad, we blame God and run away from Him.
-we need to start trusting God even when things go bad, really bad. If we actually ask Him (sometimes I don’t think we ask, we just assume), God will come through.
**Lam. 3:55-57 -> 55“From the bottom of the pit, O Lord, I cried out to You, 56And when I begged You to listen to my cry, You heard. 57You answered me and told me not to be afraid. (GNT)
-when things are going wrong and we need God’s help, I don’t think the issue is God doesn’t hear us. Maybe we’re not believing, maybe we’re not even asking.
-and sometimes God has to wait for things to be right. The Israelites were enslaved by Moab for eighteen years. But we don't know, did they start crying out when it happened, or did they start crying out eighteen years later?
-if they did start crying right away, and God knew Ehud was the person for the job, God knew the people would have to wait. If Ehud was a young man, how old was he 18 years earlier? 5? 6?
-I’ve experienced this in my own life coming to this church. I left my last church in March and was praying for God to put me somewhere, anywhere. I wasn’t hired here until September. As much as it seemed like God didn’t hear me in that six months, He did. But He also couldn’t send me here in March, Maggie hadn’t resigned yet.
-there are times God hears our cry. Just because He doesn’t answer when we want Him to, how we want Him to, as big or as bold as we want Him to, doesn’t mean He’s not listening.
-take Ehud, when God said “this guy is your savior” do you think the Israelites were jumping up and down? No! Ehud was probably the least likely choice. But thankfully…
2. GOD CAN USE ANYONE
-see, Ehud was not the idea of a savior.
-his name comes from the Hebrew root for the word meaning sympathy or support. Would you want that kind of guy as your leader in a military victory, they guy whose name means “sympathy”?
-and then we have the left-handed problem. For many people that would be a problem. In ancient thinking, the right was good. If you were a good person, you sat on the right of the host or the king. The left was bad. The term “sinister” means “from the left”, we use that term now to mean horrible and deviant.
-so Ehud was left-handed, but that’s not all. He was left-handed for a reason. The ancient Hebrew doesn’t describe him as left handed, it says Ehud was “shut of his right hand”. That can mean he just didn’t use his right hand, it could also mean Ehud’s right hand was useless. Like he was crippled or something so he could not use his right hand and thereby became left-handed.
-but wait, there’s more. He was from the tribe of Benjamin. The weakest, smallest tribe in Israel. Even though some very strong warriors came from there, some even left-handed, they were still looked upon as the little guy, the tribe from the youngest, woosiest of Jacob’s boys.
-so you cry out to God for a military leader to save you from the Moabites who have enslave you, and God picks a young guy from the weakest tribe with a crippled right hand whose name means “sympathy”. Yay. Thank you Jesus, we’re going to win now...
-but those are the type of people God always uses!
**I Cor. 1:27-28 -> 27God purposely chose what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise, and He chose what the world considers weak in order to shame the powerful. 28He chose what the world looks down on and despises, and thinks is nothing, in order to destroy what the world thinks is important. (GNT)
-God uses regular people. God uses you!
-I am tired of hearing people say how they can’t help with children’s ministry or they can’t help me and Liz with the youth because they don’t feel like they are at that level spiritually or whatever the excuse is. We spent a month last year talking about how we are all as a part of this church supposed to be living out prayer, presence gifts, and service. We’re all supposed to be serving God in some way.
-you don’t feel good enough? Perfect! Do you think I wake up and go “it’s about time I preach today, I deserve it being the best youth pastor in town.”? When God told Ehud His plan, do you think the guy who had been made fun of his whole life for being from a lesser tribe, for being left-handed, for possibly being crippled, heard God’s call and went, “Finally! It’s about time I got to lead a military conquest!”
-God doesn’t ask us to wait until we feel ready or until someone out of the blue walks up to us and says we’re ready, we’re supposed to serve anyway.
-even Paul, the guy who wrote all the books in the Bible, do you know what people said about him?
**II Cor. 10:10 -> 10“Don’t bother about his letters,” some say. “He sounds big, but it’s all noise. When he gets here you will see that there is nothing great about him, and you have never heard a worse preacher!” (LB)
-but he kept going, thank God, because those are the people God uses. God uses everyday people to do great things. That way, we can know it’s by God’s power, not our own.
-but it’s more than that. Way more. It’s one thing to say to God you’re willing to serve, but you have to be willing to do what God wants you to do.
-and like Ehud, a man who did great things, he had to do some less than fun things to get there.
3. SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE MUCK
-I’m sure many of you noticed I’m wearing my handy-dandy crocs this morning. But, do all of you know where they came from?
-when we took the Sr. High mission trip to New York we met every morning in a church basement. This basement had access to the church from outside, there was a stairwell you went down with a little landing at the bottom, then you opened the door and went inside. Well, on the Wednesday of our trip, it started to rain. And it rained. And it rained. It rained so much the storm drain started to back up. And after the storm drain backed up, the sewers backed up, including the storm drain right outside the door to the church at the bottom of the stairs.
-so while everyone else was stuck inside, myself and the Youthworks staff were literally knee-high in sewage with broomsticks trying to unblock our storm drain so the sewage would go back down and the students could leave. The story of the shoes is I was wearing an old pair of shoes that were falling apart, the only kind I take on mission trips, I was wearing those while knee-high in sewage. After getting the water down we all got to take a shower and clean up and it felt oh so nice. New socks, new pants, new shirt, same old shoes. So myself and a few students walked down to a knock off store down the street in New York. He was selling knock-off crocs, not name brand, two sizes too big, ugly color, two dollars, sold! I was never wearing those other shoes again.
-now if you had told me a decade ago when I was starting full-time ministry that one day I would have the privilege, nay, the honor of wading in sewage for Jesus one day, I don’t know what my answer would have been.
-I also want to say though, just because you serve God doesn’t mean you will one day pull and Ehud or a Troy and end up in sewage. I think we’re just the lucky ones.
-but, things will sometimes get messy. Sometimes in serving God we have to do things that are hard or that we don’t want to do, and too often, that’s when people quit. But that’s when we need to push on. One of my favorite lines in the Lord Of The Rings movies is Sam talking to Frodo and saying in all the great stories, it is always darkest right before the light. Sometimes we need to go through the dark so God can bring about His light.
-after all, our Example we’re supposed to be following is Jesus, and look at how things turned out for Him! He left heaven and the ability to be God everywhere to be a person for what? To be born poor, to have no father later on in life, to never have a home, to rely no the kindness of others, to sleep outdoors, to eventually die on a cross in a most horrific and brutal way.
-and here we are two thousand years later trying to make following Jesus easy. “Just say a prayer and you’re in.” “Have you best life now.” “God wants you to be wealthy, donate now and I’ll send you my fee book ‘Divine Wealth’.”
-since when was following Jesus supposed to be easy? Since when was serving supposed to be easy? When did we decide giving to God would be easy, or we would only tell other people about Jesus when we felt like it, when we felt it would be easy?
-anything worth doing will at some point be hard. I think everyone knows that. We have to remember that in our Christian walk too. If it’s not hard for you, then you aren’t walking right. If it’s not a struggle and you don’t sometimes end up in the muck, I don’t know if we’re following the same Jesus.
**Luke 9:23 -> 23Then He said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow Me. (NLT)
**Luke 13:30 -> 30There are those who are last now who will be first in the future. And there are those who are first now who will be last in the future.” (NCV)
**Gal. 2:20a -> 20My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. (NLT)
-our following Christ is meant to be the crucifixion, the killing of this old life and living a new life. And yes, one day it will be glorious and wonderful and we will be rewarded in heaven, but not yet! We have to finish our jobs here on earth first. We need to be living for God even when we are asked to follow Him through the muck and the grime.
-so as we end in prayer today, think about it. What can you do for God? Don’t think about how He seems silent, don’t think about how you don’t feel like the right person, don’t think about how it may involve some work and even some things we don’t want to do. What can you do, not in your own power, but in God’s power for Him?
