[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] This is Rick. Welcome back to the Nomad Pastor podcast.
[00:00:12] If you've been listening for a little bit, this is going to be episode four of Judges. We're going to talk about Ehud and just a little recap, right? We did episode three about Othniel, and, and that episode probably felt kind of steady grounding, you know, a little bit calm.
[00:00:28] And today this is where Judges kind of starts to turn a little bit. This is the moment when the book begins to feel a little more uncomfortable, right? And that discomfort that we may feel is intentional.
[00:00:43] And so again today, we're going to talk about Ehud. And I want to say this right up front.
[00:00:50] This story is probably unsettling and strange, and if we're honest, it doesn't fit nearly into how many of us want God to work. But that's kind of the point, right?
[00:01:02] Judges is not here to affirm our preferences. It's here to confront what we assume.
[00:01:09] And so in Judges 3:12, it opens with words that we've already heard in Judges, right? We recognize them. And it starts with, the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord.
[00:01:23] Yet again they did.
[00:01:26] So we can see this is a pattern. It's not a one time failure. They had peace under Othniel for 40 years, but that peace that they had did not produce faithfulness. It produced complacency.
[00:01:40] And complacency always leads to compromise. And remember I talked about last week how afraid we are to lose our convenience, how afraid we. So a lot of people come, become complacent in that convenience.
[00:01:58] So that is where we are, right? So because people become complacent, because people care more about convenience, God allows Israel to fall under another oppression yet again.
[00:02:11] And this time that oppression is under Eglon, the king of Moab.
[00:02:16] 18 years of oppression. Almost two decades that Eglon dominated them, humiliated them. Almost two decades of hardship for the people of Israel.
[00:02:28] Let that sink in, right? 18 years, two decades.
[00:02:32] 18 years is long enough for people to forget what freedom felt like.
[00:02:38] And that's how sin works. It's over time and over time that bondage starts to feel normal.
[00:02:46] So if you've been complacent for a long time and you're hearing this and your life feels normal, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
[00:02:55] So then, just like the last week, God chooses a deliverer, right?
[00:03:01] Verse 15 says, you know something that we, we heard last week? The sons of Israel cried out to the Lord. And once again God responds, but this time he chooses Ehud.
[00:03:12] And everything about Ehud breaks what our expectations are.
[00:03:17] Scripture tells us that he was left handed.
[00:03:20] That's not a random detail for it to be mentioned in scripture. There's a reason, because in that culture at that time, being left handed was actually seen as a weakness. It was basically a defect.
[00:03:35] So he had his already outside the norm because he's left handed, he's defective. Basically.
[00:03:43] God doesn't choose the strongest. He doesn't choose the most impressive person.
[00:03:49] He chooses someone nobody expects.
[00:03:53] And if I'm being honest with you, that's an encouragement to me. It should be an encouragement for all of us that God's not limited by what others label as a weakness or what others label as being defective or a failure, so to speak.
[00:04:11] Because look, I mean, I could have just as easily been, you know, labeled defective and God still chose me, you know, and so as we dive into this, this is kind of where the story changes a little bit, right?
[00:04:28] Ehud takes a concealed dagger, he straps it to his right thigh, right? Knowing guards will not check his thigh, he gains access to King Eglon under the the scheme or the guise of delivering a message, and he kills him.
[00:04:50] And the description is graphic and explicit and frankly, uncomfortable.
[00:04:57] Let me say this very clear to start with. The Bible is not glorifying violence in this situation.
[00:05:03] It's showing us the reality of a fallen world and the lengths God does to deliver his people, the lengths that God goes to deliver his people when they are deeply compromised.
[00:05:16] This isn't how God wanted things to be.
[00:05:19] This is how bad things had become.
[00:05:23] And as Israel drifts farther away from God, that deliverance becomes messier each time.
[00:05:31] And that's a thing that we really need to think about and sit with that, that the principle of the further Israel drifts, the messier the deliverance gets.
[00:05:47] That's kind of where the story should challenge us.
[00:05:51] We want this deliverance, but we want it to feel clean.
[00:05:55] We want God to work in ways that align with our preferences and frankly, our convenience. You've heard me talk about that last week, you heard me talk about it earlier.
[00:06:08] This convenience that we're so afraid to lose.
[00:06:11] We want God to work in a way that aligns to that convenience and how we prefer things to be.
[00:06:19] We want redemption, but we don't want discomfort.
[00:06:24] And we want justice without any mess.
[00:06:28] But the problem is Judges reminds us that when the sin runs deep, the deeper the sin, that rescue is almost never clean.
[00:06:43] And the story of Ehud forces us to confront that truth.
[00:06:48] God is committed to rescuing his people.
[00:06:53] He's so committed to rescuing. He's more committed to rescuing his people than protecting our comfort.
[00:07:00] He's more committed to rescuing us than protecting our convenience.
[00:07:05] Because that's what comfort is, that convenience is comfortable for us.
[00:07:12] So sometimes the way God intervenes, it doesn't look like we think it should.
[00:07:19] And we see this tension today every day.
[00:07:24] You know, if you go on social media, you'll see people say things like, I want God to fix this country.
[00:07:32] And then a day later, an hour later, the next post, two minutes later, they're rejecting repentance.
[00:07:40] They refuse to repent for all the sins, and everybody sins. This isn't me saying, oh, those sinners over there, look, I sin, everybody sins, right?
[00:07:53] But it's ironic to me that they're like, I want God to fix the country, but they won't repent for the sin they've committed.
[00:08:01] Or they'll say, I want justice, but to them, it's only justice if it benefits their side of the argument or the real one. I want truth, but they only want truth if it doesn't challenge their lifestyle.
[00:08:21] You know, you hear people on social media all the time say, oh, that's my truth, or their truth, or this truth, right?
[00:08:27] I've done a podcast about objective truth and subjective truth before.
[00:08:34] But you can't say, I want truth as long as it doesn't challenge the lifestyle I've chosen. Sin is sin.
[00:08:43] We want God's results without God's methods.
[00:08:50] In this Book of Judges, during this time, Israel wanted relief from this oppression of 18 years.
[00:08:57] But they didn't want to change.
[00:08:59] And even though they didn't want to change, God still delivered them.
[00:09:05] But the deliverance method reflected the condition of their hearts.
[00:09:10] Think about that for a minute.
[00:09:14] The way Ehud delivered them was by killing the king.
[00:09:26] That pretty graphic.
[00:09:30] If you actually go read those verses, it's pretty graphic, but it does show us that God uses imperfect tools.
[00:09:41] He was not some moral hero.
[00:09:45] He was strategic and calculated and deceptive, and God used him.
[00:09:54] Now, let's be very clear, because that doesn't mean God approved of everything he had did.
[00:09:59] It means God works through broken people in broken systems to accomplish his purpose.
[00:10:07] And this is where I think a lot of people, or some people, not a lot of people, I think this is where some people struggle with the Book of Judges.
[00:10:15] They want every character in the book to be this moral example.
[00:10:20] But what we got to recognize is that the Book of Judges is not about moral examples.
[00:10:26] It's about a Faithful God working in a morally collapsed nation.
[00:10:32] The nation of Israel was collapsed, and we had a faithful God there to help.
[00:10:45] And as people decline, the leaders reflect that same decline.
[00:10:52] Do you remember the last episode?
[00:10:55] I said, like, you know, who's watching you and who are you watching?
[00:11:01] That should be a sobering truth.
[00:11:07] As people decline, the leaders reflect that decline.
[00:11:14] And just like, just like Othniel, right after Ehud acts Israel rallies, throws a party, defeats Moab, and the land has rest for 80 years.
[00:11:28] 80 years through this morally corrupt individual. I would say those are my words, right? Morally corrupt. He wasn't some hero.
[00:11:42] God brought peace again to the nation of Israel.
[00:11:49] But if you notice, there's something that didn't change.
[00:11:57] And that thing that didn't change was the people's hearts.
[00:12:03] Peace returned for 80 years, but that repentance didn't last.
[00:12:09] And frankly, that's where we need to be honest with ourselves, right?
[00:12:14] Relief from oppression, relief from pain, relief from whatever it may be is not the same as transformation.
[00:12:24] It's not even close to the same.
[00:12:26] I've seen this in ministry, man, I don't even know how many times, right?
[00:12:33] Somebody cries out to God in desperation, and God rescues them. He breaks those chains.
[00:12:40] He restores stability in their life.
[00:12:44] But they don't change anything on the inside.
[00:12:48] There is no repentance.
[00:12:52] They wanted that relief, but they never wanted to surrender.
[00:12:59] Here come those chains again.
[00:13:04] See, Judges is teaching us that God will rescue.
[00:13:10] But we have to remember that rescue without repentance always leads back into that same cycle, right?
[00:13:18] Last episode, it was 40 years apiece. This episode, it's 80 years apiece.
[00:13:27] How do we break the cycle?
[00:13:33] In today's world, far too many people want this amazing outcome of deliverance or somebody to fix it, or whatever it may be, but they want it without obedience.
[00:13:51] We want peace without holiness.
[00:13:54] We want true healing, without true repentance.
[00:14:01] And when God works in ways that challenge us, I've seen this, I don't know how many times, we call it offensive or we claim it's outdated.
[00:14:16] There is nothing outdated about the Bible. There is nothing outdated about God.
[00:14:26] If something's outdated, it's your belief.
[00:14:31] It's not offensive. God is going to challenge us in ways that we don't like.
[00:14:38] And Ehud reminds us that God is not bound by our expectations.
[00:14:46] You see this episode, it kind of marks a shift in Judges.
[00:14:52] The stories are going to continue to get worse.
[00:14:55] The leaders, the deliverers, they are going to be more flawed.
[00:15:01] And the deliverance out of the oppression that Israel sees will grow more extreme.
[00:15:08] That's not because God is changing.
[00:15:11] God's the same.
[00:15:14] Past, present and future never changes.
[00:15:19] It's because people drift farther and farther and farther away. Just look at society today.
[00:15:27] It's easy to see if you take off your blinders, if you stop living in your bubble, you can see how far people have drifted away.
[00:15:44] On the next episode, we're going to talk about Deborah and Barak. And we'll see what happens when God raises up a faithful woman in a time when men refuse to lead.
[00:15:55] And that conversation is going to speak directly to our leadership crisis today.
[00:16:06] So just like last week, I'm going to leave you with a question.
[00:16:13] Do you want God's deliverance or do you want God himself?
[00:16:20] Because if all of you want is relief, it's never going to change.
[00:16:27] But if you want God truly God himself, he will change you from the inside out.
[00:16:38] You see, Judges is uncomfortable for a lot of people. And I know a lot of people who just won't read Judges.
[00:16:45] But the reason it's uncomfortable because it tells the truth.
[00:16:49] And the truth is simple.
[00:16:52] When we as a people or individuals or as a nation walk away from God, the road back is never easy.
[00:17:04] But we got to remember that God is always willing to walk with us.
[00:17:11] No matter how hard the road is, God will walk back with us.
[00:17:18] So as we close today, I want just think about that question again.
[00:17:22] Do you want God's deliverance or do you want God himself?
[00:17:28] Because they are two different things.
[00:17:33] And if you want God himself and you're struggling and you don't know where to turn and you don't know who to talk to, Send me an
[email protected] I'll help you find a local church. I'll help you find a local recovery group. I will help you find what you need that is wholesome and Christian, Bible based wherever you are, if you truly want God himself.
[00:17:59] So again, this is Rick with the Nomad Pastor podcast.
[00:18:03] Subscribe, Share.
[00:18:05] We're on all the major podcast platforms, so we're not hard to find.
[00:18:11] If there's a topic you want to talk about or if you just need prayer, send send me an email. Again, it's helloomadpastor.org and I want to remind you to love God and love people.
