[0:00] Well, good morning to you all. Wonderful to be back with you this morning and delighted to be able to apparently be visiting you for the next couple of Sundays as well. So we'll be seeing each other again the next couple of weeks or so. As always, greetings from the George Richville College and staff and the faculty. In case you don't know me, my name is Mark Norman, as Nick said. I'm serving on the faculty of the George Richville College and we're delighted to have a good relationship with Nick and St. Mark's. In fact, Nick came and preached to us on Thursday. Nick, what was it about? It was about hamstringing horses and the doctrine of predestination. What a great sermon we had from Nick on Thursday. All right, let's have our Bible open at that wonderful passage in Judges chapter 3, the PG 18 passage says Nick with probably with good reason. And we're going to focus on the story that was read out to us and I've given the title The Assassin and the Fat Man. Apparently Nick advertised the title at Bible study and a couple of folks a little bit worried about what I was going to say, but that's going to be our title today,
[1:10] The Assassin and the Fat Man. Let's have our Bible open there at Judges chapter 3. In fact, Nick said it was quite providential that today's sermon is actually in Judges because you guys have apparently been dealing with Joshua. That's a great book and of course Judges comes after Joshua. All right, well before we come to look at our story itself, let's get a little bit of background, sketch in a little bit of background to the book of Judges. And I suppose one of the ways to describe the book of Judges is to simply say it's the worst possible nightmare. It's Israel's worst possible nightmare.
[1:45] Joshua is a fairly up-tempo book. It's a fairly positive book, but Judges, oh Judges is a real terrible book. Imagine waking up one Sunday morning and the world seems to be the same and you go off to church and things go as usual in church on Sunday, but the Jesus that you're worshipping isn't quite the Jesus you are used to. Isn't quite the Jesus revealed to us in the scriptures.
[2:14] Superficially he might seem to be Jesus, but in actual fact he's not Jesus at all. The Jesus you know and love has been replaced by somebody else and the somebody else is disturbing. He's actually quite evil and he's permeated the church and worst of all you're the only one who can actually see that. The whole of the church has lost its way and gone astray. Now over a period of time that's precisely what happened to Israel in the book of Judges. Again Joshua ends quite well, but once they're in the promised land things don't turn out so good at all because the Israelites instead of defeating God's enemies in battle, the Israelites now start to settle down and they begin to accept the unbelieving culture around them and that is very very sad. Of course as you know the background to the book prior to the book is simple after being rescued from slavery in Egypt and after wandering in the desert for 40 years in the book of Exodus finally in the book of Joshua Israel comes into the land and God calls her again to defeat his enemies the wicked tribes living in the land and God promises her that she will have victory over her enemies. She would be literally invincible. That's what we read in
[3:35] Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verse 24 where Moses writes and says he will give their kings into your hand and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand against you. You'll destroy them.
[3:50] Judges however again informs us that once in the land Israel settles down and starts to forget God and turns to other gods, turns to a different kind of Jesus. She starts to accept the status quo. Instead of defeating the wicked nations around her, Israel begins to accept their values and their detestable practices and their gods.
[4:16] In fact if you want to summarize the book of Judges in one verse, right at the end of the book that last verse is very helpful. It just sums up the whole book. If you've got the book of Judges open in front of you, just quickly have a look at 21 verse 25.
[4:30] That really sums up not only the 21st century in Cape Town but it also sums up pretty much what was going on in that 150 years of Israel's history in the book of Judges where we read in those days Israel had no king. Everybody did just as they saw fit.
[4:47] So there's a lack of leadership. There's a lack of guidance. There's a lack of focus on the Lord. There's a lack of proper worship. There's no pastoral leadership. There's a lack of pure faith and religion. There's a lack of morality.
[5:03] Every Israelite is just essentially caring for him or herself. That's the background. It's a very, very disturbing background. And of course you want to ask yourself as you open up the book of Judges and you see what's going on.
[5:16] You say, well Lord, what are you going to do? Your church is just about going off the rails. What is the solution? What is God going to do? Will he just leave his children to their fate even if they're happy with the status quo?
[5:28] Even if they're happy just to carry on, you know, living like the world? What is God going to do? Have a look, for example, as we go back to Judges 3. Have a look at verse 12 there in chapter 3 where we read again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and because they did this evil, the Lord gave Eglon, king of Moab, power over Israel.
[5:50] So Israel settles down, accepts the idolatrous enemies around her as allies, worships their gods. They seem to at this point be quite happy with the status quo.
[6:01] God commanded them to go into the land and defeat all of these enemies, all of these idolatrous folk, these wicked people. God gave them a command. God knew that Israel would have to eject these folk from the land, otherwise they would indeed adopt their practices, you see.
[6:16] But no, Israel doesn't really want to go to all that effort, and so they just decide to quietly settle down and accept everything as they are, you see. But God doesn't abandon his church.
[6:29] God won't abandon his people, even if they abandon him. What does he do? Well, as we learn in the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, God disciplines his children, and that's exactly what happens here.
[6:40] What does he do? He raises up an enemy. He raises up this guy, Eglon, to teach Israel humility and to teach them of their need for him.
[6:51] He raises up a problem. He raises up an obstacle. And therefore, our title is, of course, as I've said, the assassin and the fat man. So let's have a look at the fat man first in verse 12.
[7:03] That is the guy that God raises up. Who's the guy that God raises up to discipline Israel? Well, here's the guy. His name's Eglon. And, well, on the surface of things, he seems to be quite a scary guy.
[7:15] In fact, on one level, I suppose he is a bit of a scary guy. He's a leader. He's a soldier. He is the king of this tribe or this group of people, this nation called Moab.
[7:28] Clearly, he is a man of some ability. In fact, in our passage, four times we read that he's the king. He's the king. He's the king. Four times. O king.
[7:39] We read Eglon Melech Moab in the original language. The king of Moab. He's the guy, you see. He's the scary guy. He's the tough guy. He's, well, on the appearance of things, he's the big man in the story.
[7:52] And he's leading this nation called the Moabites. By the way, they're the descendants of Lot, Abraham's nephew. And sometime after the Abraham story, as Israel becomes a nation, Lot's descendants, the Moabites, became enemies of Israel.
[8:11] And Eglon, therefore, represents the powers and the outlook of the world against God's people, against the church. Now, of course, when you read the story, you realize that Eglon is completely unaware of what's going on.
[8:26] Eglon is completely unaware of the fact that God has literally raised him up for his own purposes to spur Israel back to faith in him. Eglon isn't aware of the fact that God is going to use him to bring backsliding Israel back to faith in the Lord.
[8:47] Trouble for Israel starts when Eglon teams up with more of her enemies in the land. These are the countries, or these are the nations that Israel should have ejected from the land but didn't.
[8:58] By the end of the book of Joshua, by Joshua chapter 13 or so, you realize that they're in the land but they haven't really taken all of the land. And unfortunately, these wicked tribes, the Ammonites and the Amalekites, are still around.
[9:12] And a battle is fought and there is a terrible, tragic outcome because Israel loses one of her key cities. Maybe her key city at that point, and that is Jericho, the city of Palms.
[9:24] That God gave to her miraculously on the basis of his promise that she would take the land, you see. So she should have understood that there's something very significant about losing that city given to her by God.
[9:40] But what we have in the Bible today, in the story of Ehud, is not only a straightforward story from the Lord to the church today.
[9:53] It is that, but it is a story like much of the Old Testament of incredible subtlety and literary brilliance. Like so much of the Bible.
[10:04] Like so much of the Old Testament. Our writer, writing under the power and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he is a master of understatement, irony, and innuendo, and the subtle little word plays and puns that are going on.
[10:23] And we mustn't miss out on these because if we do, we're going to miss out on his genius and we're going to miss out on the full force of God's word to us as a church today. So we've got to have some kind of appreciation of what's really going on.
[10:38] We've got to dig a little bit beneath the surface to figure out what God is trying to tell us. And let's go back to this guy Eglon. Well, he's the scary guy and he's Israel's enemy that God has raised up.
[10:51] In fact, in verse 12, it literally says in the original language, God strengthened him. Then you've got the name Eglon. Now, Eglon in the original means little bull or little calf.
[11:07] And when you do a little bit more research, you realize that the word can also refer to that big fat cow that if you were a rich Israelite, you would have this big fat cow and you would give it the best food you would have available.
[11:18] You'd fatten it up because when you had a big sacrifice or a big party or if somebody of importance came to visit you, you would slaughter the fattened calf and have a feast, you see. And so the word Eglon is the same word that is used that can refer to this fat calf, this calf that is fatted up for the coming sacrifice, you see.
[11:38] Now, of course, Eglon doesn't know this. He just sees himself as the big shot here. And the word can also help us to recall another word. There's another word in the original, agol.
[11:51] Eglon? Agol, you see. And agol can, it actually means round or rotund. And then in verse 17, our author, beautifully brought out by Nick when he read out the story, our author is so much wanting to get us to get the point that he has to interrupt his own narrative.
[12:15] We call it a kind of an editorial insertion. He has to insert an interruption in verse 17 and he says, now, he was a very, very fat man. Eglon was a very fat man.
[12:27] So we begin to understand as readers of the text that our author is subtly poking fun at Eglon, our little boo, our little calf king.
[12:41] Our author is poking fun at him. He's clearly a man of appetite. He's a man who likes the good things in life. His creature comforts.
[12:51] He likes his hamburgers. God might have strengthened him in verse 12, but God is raising him up but as a calf for the slaughter. In fact, the word fat or word plays on this idea of being fat run all the way through the story.
[13:12] Now, have a look at your passage there in front of you. I hope you've got your Bible in front of you. Have a look at verse 12 and have a look at verse 15. Verse 12. The Lord, in the original, the Lord strengthened Eglon or the Lord raised up the fat man.
[13:27] Okay. Now, look at verse 15. We look at Israel. Now, Israel is complaining about the fat man because the fat man and his army are giving Israel a hard time and Israel is now subject to Moab. But now, have a look at verse 15.
[13:38] The Lord gave Israel a deliverer, Ehud. Now, bearing the New Testament in mind, we're going to come to the New Testament later, deliverer can also mean savior.
[13:50] So, God is in complete control. You notice those two verses? Simultaneously raising up both opposition to Israel and her deliverer in order to teach you a lesson about trusting God.
[14:02] But the deliverer is not going to be the kind of guy that you expect. In fact, God's deliverer turns out to be an assassin. Listen, this guy by the name of Ehud in verse 15.
[14:14] So, now we're going to have a look. We had a look at the fat guy. We had a look at the bad guy. Let's have a look now at the deliverer. And he's not what you expect. His name, first of all, is Ehud. And the text tells us there, in verse 15, that he's from the tribe of Benjamin.
[14:31] He's going to be the hero. He's going to be the guy who's going to rescue Israel from the bad folk. Now, let's have a look at his name. His name essentially means, where is the glory?
[14:45] So, there's something significant even about his name. The Spirit is speaking to us through the text. Where is the glory of God, we could assume, is the challenge coming here from the text.
[14:57] In other words, the glory of God, we could suggest, has departed from the nation because the Israelites are no longer really serving the Lord. There's a rebuke.
[15:08] There's a veiled challenge, even in Ehud's name. Where is the glory? But he's the great hero, you see. But he turns out to be a bit of an anti-hero.
[15:20] Recently, I watched the remake of The Magnificent Seven. And Denzel Washington takes the role of Yul Brynner in the old movie in the late 1960s.
[15:31] I loved Yul Brynner with his two six guns and he's dressed in black and he was all bald. I don't know how many of you are that old and enjoyed the first Magnificent Seven. But the second Magnificent Seven is even better with Denzel Washington as the hero, as the gunslinger.
[15:46] I don't think Nick's going to screen that on a Friday night, so you'll have to go and rent that one. But there's old Denzel Washington with these two nickel-plated colts. And he can shoot down about 20 people in about four seconds.
[15:59] And even though all the bullets are flying around, not a single bullet gets old Denzel. Now, that's a real good old American hero. Now, that's the kind of guy we would expect God to raise up to sort out all of these Moabites and the fat man.
[16:12] Well, let's have a look at verse 15. Let's find out what this hero is all about. Well, it says, Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord and he gave them a deliverer, Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gerah, the Benjamite.
[16:25] The Israelites sent him with tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. So you've got all of this miscellaneous detail and you open up the Bible and you read this particular verse and you say to yourself, Well, I don't really know whether that's got much to do with me in the 20th century.
[16:38] Do you find that's the case even in the 21st century? You find you open the Bible and you find these miscellaneous details and you say to yourself, Well, I don't really know how that's relevant for me today. Well, let me say this to you.
[16:50] Whenever you find what you believe to be miscellaneous irrelevant details, then you can believe you've missed out on something. There's something that you don't understand because there's never, ever irrelevant detail in the scriptures.
[17:01] So let's dig into that verse and let's see what's going on. Well, once again our author is showing tremendous subtlety. There's tremendous wordplay in this verse. He's the hero. He's the deliverer.
[17:12] Well, let's first of all consider where he's from. Very important in Israel. Well, he comes from the tribe of Benjamin. Now, Benjamin means what?
[17:24] Well, it means literally the son of the right hand. The tribe of Benjamin is the son of God's right hand. You see, that's what Benjamin means. Now, what is the right hand?
[17:36] Well, you know and I know that for most of us. The right hand is the hand of strength. The right hand is the hand of power. The right hand is the hand of action. So the tribe of Benjamin is God's strength.
[17:48] It's God's right hand. But look at this guy. He's left-handed. Now, that's a bit odd.
[18:01] He's left-handed. And more than that, when you consider the original language, and I go with a lot of scholars on this, the original language does not suggest that he's left-handed instead of his being right-handed.
[18:14] The scholars suggest, and I go with this, that in actual fact, Ehud is crippled in his strong hand. He's crippled in his right arm. He's a cripple. He's a loser. He's a cripple.
[18:26] He's son of the right hand. He's in the tribe of Benjamin, but he's crippled in his right hand, in his right arm. You know, a lot of folk think that the Bible doesn't have much of a sense of humor.
[18:38] Well, they need to read the Bible a little bit more. So God's hero is a cripple. Now, there's something more going on in verse 15, because what we also discover is that, well, in the ancient culture, if one more powerful tribe conquered another tribe, what sometimes would happen is that the two tribes would get together, and the weaker tribe, the submissive tribe, would say, Okay, let us just continue to live in your territory.
[19:06] You won the battle. Good for you. We'll pay you $100,000 a month or a million dollars a year, whatever it is. We'll pay you tribute if you can just leave us alone. Now, that seems to be what happened after the war between the fat man and Israel.
[19:22] The Moabites and Israel came into this kind of agreement. It was common for the time where Israel would send tribute every now and again to Moab.
[19:32] And it seems as if, although the Israelites are not very happy about the situation, they're crying out to the Lord. They don't like the fat man. But, of course, they're not willing to change their lifestyle. They're not willing to change their gods, you see.
[19:44] And, of course, this is extortion. This is the land that God has given to Israel. And now there she is. She's got to pay this fat guy large sums of money to keep peace with Moab and to keep him in hamburgers.
[19:57] You see, it's extortion. Now, at this stage, of course, Israel has no idea what's really going on. Israel has no idea what Ehud is all about.
[20:07] Israel has no idea that God is going to be doing something with this guy who appears to be a loser. In fact, they're ignorant that he's God's chosen instrument to rescue them from the Moabites, you see.
[20:22] So the Israelites sit down and they say, okay, it's the end of the month. We've got to send $100,000 to Eglon. We've got to go visit the fat man. We've got to pay the $100,000. We don't want to make waves. Now, that's ironic because Israel is supposed to have defeated the Moabites in battle, and they would have done so if they trusted the Lord.
[20:39] Oh, no, no, no, they say. No, no, no. Let's find somebody. Let's find the most harmless, the most inconsequential person in Israel.
[20:51] Let's find somebody who will be the least of a threat to Moab. We don't want to make too many waves. Let's pay them the money and be done with it. Let's find somebody who will be a complete non-threat to Moab.
[21:07] And they find Ehud and they say, let's send him. He's a loser. Nobody will ever think if we send him that we want to make trouble with the fat man. Let's send him to the fat man. Right, so they get all the money together and they say, right, we're going to send off Ehud to go and pay the fat man.
[21:22] So what have you got? You've got the church wandering from its way. You've got a picture in the Old Testament of God's people, Israel, the church, living in the world and being like the world.
[21:34] Loving the world. Israel says, let's send Ehud. He's a cripple. He's a loser. He won't make any trouble. He'll maintain the status quo. You see the irony in the story, the humor? All right, now let's come to verse 16.
[21:46] Because Ehud has got a cunning plan. Ehud is not the person that we think he is. Everyone in the story underestimates Ehud, this guy Ehud.
[21:57] The Israelites underestimate him. The Moabites underestimate him. And of course the fat man underestimates him. Just like he's God. People misunderstand and underestimate God. Just when you think you've got God taped, he's got you taped.
[22:10] You see? Nobody realizes what's about to happen. Now let's have a look at that verse 16. It's a disturbing verse, isn't it? Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a cubit long.
[22:21] That's about 18 inches. And he strapped it to his right thigh under his clothing. Again, miscellaneous details. Too much information. Do we need all this information? Yes, we do. Now a great deal of duplicity and secrets and surprises enter our story.
[22:38] Our author is having a whale of a time. Our author is enjoying what he's writing. He's a master storyteller. He builds up his tension to a climax. Forget about Shakespeare.
[22:48] Shakespeare's got nothing on the Old Testament. You see? Slowly we're starting to build up to a tension because Ehud is not the man he thinks. He's cunning. He's resourceful. He's even disturbingly ruthless.
[23:01] He had, past tense, he had made this terrible assassin's blade. In other words, he plans everything in advance. Anticipating bringing the tribute to Eglon, he now straps this 18-inch double-edged blade.
[23:19] I mean, it's like a commando knife. It's a double-edged, thin, stiletto-type blade. And he straps it under his tunic on his right-hand side. It's under his crippled arm.
[23:32] You see how clever that is? Because nobody's going to think of searching him there. In fact, nobody's going to think of searching him at all because he's such a loser. Nobody sees him coming because he's a man of surprises.
[23:47] So now we come to verse 17. And the tribute is brought to Eglon. Everything goes off without a hitch. The tribute is brought. They arrive at the palace. They've got the $100,000.
[23:58] They pay the king. And then what happens after that? Well, then Ehud, knowing that his fellow delegation members are probably not going to be very supportive of what he's about to do, he decides to go back home with them.
[24:12] But he's not done. So once he drops off his fellow delegate members, he then quietly returns to Eglon's palace, and he asks his guards to be presented again to the king in verse 19.
[24:27] So when you cast your eye over verse 19 to verse 20, the tension is really starting to build up. Let me read it out to you. Some delightful little repetitions there in subtlety.
[24:38] Your majesty. Do you see the irony? Your majesty. Here's this fat little hamburger sitting on his throne. Your majesty, I have a secret message for you.
[24:54] That's how Nick read it out. Nick got the literary intention of the text right. And the king said to his attendants, not leave us, but in the original, quiet.
[25:05] The king's very excited. And they interpret this as leaving, so they all left. And then Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of his palace and said, I have a message from God for you.
[25:21] And the king rose from his seat. So the assassin smiles. He comes back into the throne room. He approaches the fat man who no doubt is sitting on a little dais or little stage in his throne room.
[25:36] And you again, says Eglon. What are you doing back here? And Eglon slowly approaches, or Ehud slowly approaches the king. I have a message from you.
[25:50] And you can imagine this fat man. Well, you know, he can't contain his excitement. He rises from his seat in anticipation, you see. He rises from his seat in anticipation. And no doubt thinking, perhaps it's even more money.
[26:03] Maybe it's more tribute, more gifts, more hamburgers. Christmas has come to Moab. And the writer reveals that Eglon is in actual fact a buffoon.
[26:14] He's a buffoon. His bodily corpulence is matched by his incompetence. You see, the verbal root in the original language, to make fat, can also mean to dull the heart or the mind.
[26:29] Quiet, Eglon says to his attendants and the guards. And they interpret this as a command to leave the room. They are as dumb as Eglon is. They are happy to leave their king alone in the presence of their sworn enemy.
[26:41] And he rises up, exposing his fat stomach in the process. And again, building tension, Ehud repeats what he said a bit earlier. But he changes it a little bit and he says, I have a message from God for you.
[26:55] Now, there's word play on the word message because in the original language it doesn't have to mean a word or a spoken message. You could translate it as, I have a thing for you. And of course, the thing is the knife.
[27:07] It's the assassin's blade. Verse 21 to verse 22, everything just explodes into action. Ehud reaches with his left hand to draw the sword from his right thigh, plunges it into the king's belly.
[27:22] Even the handle sank in after the blade and his bowels discharged. Ehud did not pull the sword out and the fat closed in over it. In the original, it actually says the dung came out.
[27:34] It's there in the ESV translation. I think in the NIV, what they've tried to do is they've tried to sort of sanitize it a little bit. I don't think there's a reference to his dung. I mean, oh, this is hectic stuff.
[27:45] No wonder the kids had to go out. It's a demeaning, disturbing, even repulsive scene. As Ehud comes in and he kills the king. Eglon is this large, slow-moving target.
[27:58] He becomes the sacrifice. He becomes the sacrificial animal. God strengthens the fat man in verse 12, but look at him now. He's literally, in the original language, a pile of fat and faces.
[28:11] And Ehud kills him, doesn't pull the knife out because there'd be blood all over his clothes. He leaves the knife, climbs down through probably another window, goes out through the front palace entrance, marry as you please, and of course there's the king dead.
[28:26] The aftermath of the story from verse 23 to verse 30, well, it's very straightforward there because we won't go into too much detail. But Ehud just goes back to Israel and says, well, listen, we can't hang around and try and maintain the status quo any longer.
[28:41] You've got no choice now. You're going to have to fight because we've just become a stench in the nostrils of the Moabites. So whether you like it or not, we've got to do what God wanted us to do right in the first place.
[28:53] We're going to have to strap on our armor and our weapons. We're going to have to go and fight. But don't worry, I know in advance, God has given us our enemy into our hands. And even before the battle begins in verse 28, Ehud knows that God will give them victory.
[29:06] And that's what happens. They have peace, I think, for another 80 years, you see. And that's how the story ends. Now, in the minute or two that I've got left, because I don't have much time left, let's make a couple of deductions as I close, as we try to apply this to us today.
[29:21] Because I think like all of the Bible and all of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament, we are challenged, we are asked to look at the world differently. We are asked to look at the world through the eyes of faith.
[29:34] Isn't that so? The Bible asks us as believers down the ages to look at the world through the eyes of God. To look at the world through the eyes of faith is to do nothing other than look at the world through God's eyes.
[29:48] Don't look at the world, says our writer, through the eye of the fat man. Don't look at the world through the eyes of the world. Don't look at the world through the eyes of unbelievers.
[29:58] Don't look at the world through the eyes of the Moabites. But rather look at the world through the eye of Scripture and through the eye of the Gospel. It's hard to do that sometimes. Because superficially, the eglons of the world are scary guys.
[30:14] He was a scary guy. The writer might make fun of him, sure, but that's because he's got God's eye view. But when we look out at the eglons in the world, it's easy for us to get scared of them, to be intimidated by these guys.
[30:27] Well, what does the world look like to those with faith who trust in Jesus, the true deliverer? A couple of points as we close. Number one, first of all, the eye of faith, as we look at the New Testament, recognizes that Jesus' ministry will also be underestimated by the unbelieving world.
[30:46] We, thank God, don't have a deliverer like Ehud. Ehud wasn't a perfect deliverer, that's for sure. But there are one or two small overlaps between Jesus and Ehud. Okay, fair enough.
[30:56] Thank God Jesus isn't an assassin. But like Ehud, Jesus' ministry appears to be weak, doesn't it? Jesus' ministry appears to be inconsequential.
[31:10] When he dies on the cross, the world laughs at him. Our Saviour's ministry, our Saviour's work doesn't appear on the surface of things to be effective.
[31:22] Just as in the case of Ehud. Ehud appears to be weak. He appears to be ineffective. But of course he is God's instrument. And both Ehud and God are underestimated in the story, even by the church.
[31:39] Isn't that often the case with Jesus? Sometimes we begin to feel that perhaps God could have been more effective in saving us through some kind of other medium or other kind of Saviour. It's easy to underestimate Jesus, isn't it?
[31:53] Secondly, we learn from the eye of faith, as we look at the story, that God will build his church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
[32:04] It doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter how bad the opposition to the church gets. It doesn't matter how much Christianity is belittled in the media. It doesn't matter how the church herself fails.
[32:20] God will build his church. That's exactly what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 16 and verse 18. That at the end of the day, all of those who oppose God's purposes will fail.
[32:32] And that is why Christian work, church work, gospel work is always worth it. Don't give up. And then finally, in conclusion, the eye of faith, thirdly, recognizes that all believers are left-handed in one way or the other.
[32:48] You might say, Mark, that's not true. I'm right-handed. Now, that's not what I mean. I'm speaking metaphorically. We're all left-handed in the sense that, like Ehud, we're not perfect. Isn't that so? We all have our problems.
[32:59] We get tired. We're weak on occasion. We seem to lack resources. And together with Ehud, the world often regards us as inconsequential, as it did Jesus. Sometimes we look at ourselves in the mirror and we say, I'm a believer, but God can't use me because I am, in a sense, in so many ways, inadequate.
[33:18] I'm, in a certain sense, you could even call me a cripple, even though my right hand works perfectly well. Well, what a wonderful story. Because we are reminded that it is precisely those who appear to be weak and insignificant are the ones that God uses.
[33:34] Judges teaches us that whether left-handed or not, if you trust Jesus today, if you trust the promises of the gospel, you will indeed be an instrument in God's right hand.
[33:46] Isn't that wonderful? Because if God can use Ehud, the cripple, he can use you. Amen. Amen. Amen.