Judges 3: Single Handed Savior Audio Transcript
Judges: Scandalous Saviors
03 – SINGLE HANDED SAVIOR – Ryan Aufenkamp
Intro
Amen. It’s so good to sing of Jesus as our lighthouse. You know, I fear that maybe sometimes those that aren’t super familiar with church or even us that are really familiar with church, we might get the impression that we only ever sing happy triumphant songs.
You know, a song like that is so happy and triumphant. And, you know, I just, I want to point out that Jesus is our lighthouse, not when the seas are smooth and when it’s light outside, but Jesus, our Savior, is our lighthouse in the darkness, right?
When we are in our worst moments, Jesus is our lighthouse, and He is the one that brings us safely through those moments. He is the one that gives us hope in the depths of our needs. And so that is why we rejoice this morning. We have a Savior that helps us navigate the tumultuous waters I’m glad to be with you.
I’m glad to join my voice with you. My name is Ryan. I’m one of the five pastors here, and I get to share the pulpit with Toby. If you have your Bible, go ahead, get it out, turn it on, open it up to Judges chapter three. That’s where we’re going to be at this morning as we get into our first cycle of the Judges.
Superhero Love
The last two weeks have been the first and second introduction to the book of Judges. It’s kind of like first breakfast and second breakfast, if you catch what I’m saying. And now we’re getting into our midday meal.
These, the first Judges, they, well, almost all the Judges, they pretty much single-handedly save the Israelites from their oppressors time and time again. And one of the things about Judges, we’ve been talking about this, is sort of maybe a dark tunnel for us over the next, we’ve got eight more weeks in the book of Judges.
And there’s a lot of darkness in this book, but there are also a lot of just fantastic, fantastical, memorable stories in this book. We’re going to read a story today, the story of Ehud, that is probably one of the most memorable and crazy stories that we’ll read in all of the scriptures.
So I’m excited to get into that with you. When I think about the Judges, what comes to mind for me is, they’re kind of like superheroes. Anybody a superhero fan, you know, Marvel, DC? All right, six of you, that’s fine. I love superheroes. We could go so deep in the weeds of superheroes because there’s so many of them.
So we’ll stay like real surface level. All of you know the superhero Superman, right? Yeah. Okay. Superman is like the prototype superhero because he gets all of the powers, right? Other superheroes, they get like maybe one or two powers. Superman has super strength and super speed and heat vision, and he can fly.
And of course he has invulnerability. He has x-ray vision. He is super hearing. He is a genius. And to top it all off, he’s just a super guy, right? Like he’s Superman and he’s just like super nice. He’d be someone that you want to talk to. He’s basically unstoppable, which makes it fun to read his stories because it’s not a question of, will Superman win the day?
It’s a question of, how will Superman win the day? And then if you’re not a Superman fan, you probably fall on the other end of the spectrum and you’re likely a Batman fan. Any Batman fans in here? Okay. You’re dark people. No, not actually. But Batman, he’s like the antithesis of Superman, right?
Like he’s everything Superman is not. He had to work for all of his super powers. He’s a genius, so I guess we’ll give him that. But he makes all of his equipment and he has to learn how to sleuth and how to become a master at martial arts to karate chop people.
And so these are superheroes that maybe you grew up with. I certainly grew up with them. I grew up as a kid playing with superhero action figures. I longed to have super powers. I wished that I had super strength or that I could shoot laser beams from my eyes, right?
And I’d like run around the house pretending that I could do these things. And I just, I’ve been wondering about that. Like what makes superheroes something that we as human beings, we just gravitate towards. Why do we love these like jacked up superhuman beings so much?
And I think it’s because we as humans, we love and we long for the idea that somebody with super powers has the ability to actually change the course of humanity, to actually rush in and save the day, right? And I think that our love for superheroes, it actually points to a deep longing in our own souls to be used and to be useful, right?
We love superheroes because when we read their stories, we’re sort of vicariously living through them, thinking about, man, I wish that I could be used in awesome ways for the good of the people around me. At least I would hope that that is something that you are thinking of.
This morning, we’re going to look at our first of three judges who single-handedly deliver their people in various ways as superheroes of sorts. And my hope is that we can draw a line from those judges to us in how those judges point to Christ. And my hope for you as we enter into these texts is that you won’t come away actually looking at these judges as a group of superheroes like Superman or Batman, but that you’ll come away looking at how these judges are examples of how God uses the means of people, ordinary people, even people like us, for extraordinary purposes in the world.
And so with that, if you have strength to stand, we’re going to start by reading Joshua 3, 7 through 11 this morning, looking at our first judge, Othniel. I’m reading from the ESV. Judges 3, verse 7, it’s the word of the Lord.
Judges 3:7-11
The Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. The spirit of the Lord was upon him and he judged Israel. He went out to war and the Lord gave Cushan Rishithim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand.
And his hand prevailed over Cushan Rishithim. So the land had rest 40 years. Then Othniel, the son of Kenaz, died. Let’s pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you for your church body that is gathering this morning. Thank you for breath in our lungs and for the abilities that you’ve given us to drive our cars, to get here, to walk in these doors.
And thank you that we are opening your word. Lord, we aren’t turning on YouTube this morning. We aren’t turning on social media to listen to what the talking heads have to say. We are opening your word. And in your word holds knowledge about who you are, that you have given to us.
You have imparted the word to us. And Lord, help us to deal with it faithfully this morning, to see more of you and to see how you would use us as just ordinary people, as instruments of your grace to the world. Lord, I pray that you would do that in Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen. Amen.
- Single Handed Deliverers
Go ahead and have a seat. All right. So the first of our three, I’ll call them single-handed deliverers, is Othniel. I want to make just a couple of observations about him and then we’ll move on. We’ll spend a larger portion of our time talking about Ehud this morning.
Othniel
First and foremost, I just want you to notice in verses 7 through 11, we see the very same spin cycle that we saw last week in the introduction to the book. In Judges chapter 2, we’re set up to see the cycle that we’re going to see six times throughout the book of Judges.
That is that the people sin, right? They go after the gods of the Canaanites, Baal and Asheroth, and they are oppressed because of their sin. They’re given into the hand of Cushan Rishithim, and they groan in their oppression after eight years. They cry out to the Lord, and the Lord hears their cry and has mercy on them and sends a deliverer.
And this deliverer, his name is Othniel. And Othniel delivers them, and for a time, for 40 years, for one generation, the people have temporary peace, right? So this is the cycle that we will see in the book of Judges. Just two quick observations about Othniel.
First, we read that he is the son of Kenaz, who is the brother of Caleb. So Othniel would be Caleb’s nephew, right? And we learn, if we read, just do a little word study on the book of Caleb. Actually, Emily and I did this when we were naming Calvin. We named him Calvin Caleb, and we did a word study on Caleb.
Nothing bad is ever said about Caleb, which is a rare thing in the Bible. Caleb is this awesome character, and so Othniel, it’s expected that one of his offspring or one of the people down his family line would be raised up to be a deliverer. I want us to see that.
That’s an expected thing. And second, Othniel is from the tribe of Judah, who is the ruling tribe of the people of God. We see that Joshua commissioned Judah first to go up and take the rest of the land. Judah is supposed to be the one that people like this, deliverers, come from, right?
So that’s the point I want us to see, is that Othniel is an expected deliverer.
He’s somebody that we would expect for God to raise up to lead his people. And just side note really quick, I think this is fun, that king that he goes up against, Cushan Rishithim is his name. And if you actually look at the Hebrew there, that whole phrase, Cushan Rishithim, king of Mesopotamia, we saw that a couple times, those words are Cushan Rishithim Aram Nahayim, right?
If you read that six times fast, you would get tongue-tied. But his name, I just think this is like the greatest thing ever, Cushan Rishithim’s name means the dark one of double evil. And like if we’re talking about superheroes, like Othniel is going up against the super villain, right?
The dark one of double evil. It sounds like something that Batman would actually go against.
But Othniel goes up against Cushan Rishithim, delivers his people, and they have peace for 40 years. He’s an expected, he’s someone we might expect. In contrast to our next deliverer, whose name is Ehud, and he is not at all what we would expect of a deliverer of the people of God.
And I think in some ways, Othniel is presented first in the narrative of the book of Judges as a sort of measuring stick. We’re going to measure all of the other judges up against the standard of Othniel. And Ehud is somebody that is far different than Othniel.
Ehud
And we’ll get into that in just a moment. I’m going to read the story of Ehud, but I’m going to sort of break it up. It’s verses 12 through verse 30. And so I’m going to stop at various points as we’re reading through the narrative and just make some comments about the text.
So bear with me on that. But if you have your Bible out, look down at verse 12. And I guess I want to give one more note before we get into this story. And that’s that my hope this morning is all of us, whether you’re aware of it or not, we came in wearing glasses.
Some of you physical glasses, but all of us came in wearing 21st century Western perspective glasses. All right. All of us have those. And when we read the scriptures, we’re reading with those glasses on. It’s not a wrong thing, but my hope this morning is that you will take those glasses and you’ll set them aside for a minute.
And then hopefully you brought your ancient Israelite goggles. Did you? Did you bring them? If you have them, I want you to put them on. All right. Because I really want us to see this story from the ancient Israelites perspective. This story is actually, it’s hilarious.
It really is. And if we read it with our modern 21st century sensibilities, I don’t think that we’ll find the humor in it.
If we read it like an ancient Israelite would have read it, this story is funny and it’s intentionally so. So let’s pick up in verse 12. And the people of Israel, again, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites and went and defeated Israel. And they took possession of the city of Palms. And the people of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, 18 years. A couple of brief observations. First, you remember in the biblical narrative, the last time that the people of God came up against a king of Moab.
If you don’t remember, think back to Numbers chapter 22. Numbers 22, the people of God come up against this guy named Balak, King Balak, who’s king of Moab. And Balak is the guy who hires Balaam, right? You remember that story. God completely takes this evil magician sorcerer guy, who’s hired to curse the people of God.
And God hilariously only allows Balaam to bless God’s people. And he totally shames Balak in this incredible way. And so apparently, God is putting an exclamation point on kings of Moab. He’s saying that I have something to say when my people go up against these kings.
I’m going to make these stories very memorable.
And in our narrative, we see that the king of Moab, Eglon, has captured the city of Palms. That city is the city of Jericho. Jericho, the walls came falling down, and apparently there’s still a city center there. And so Eglon sets up his residence and his camp there in Jericho.
You can think of it kind of like his summer residence, like his beach house down in the valley there. And then lastly, I want us to notice as well that during Othniel’s time, the people were oppressed for eight years, and then they cried out. During Ehud’s time, the people are oppressed for 18 years before they cry out to the Lord.
One more generation removed, and the people are oppressed, and it takes them 18 years to cry out to God for mercy. And God continues and still has a listening ear for their cry. He hears them, and we pick up in verse 15. Here’s what he does, then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gerah, the Benjaminite, a left, wait, a left-handed man.
Right? How many of you are left-handed and you’re rejoicing this morning in this? All right, good. Two of you. That was like not very many. Okay. All right. Three. Three of you. A left-handed man.
The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon, the king of Moab. And Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes. And he presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man.
All right, that’s a detail. So the Lord raises Ehud, and we see two key things about him. First, Ehud is from the tribe of Benjamin. And this might get lost on us if, you know, we don’t know much about the tribes of Israel. But it’s important to note that really up to this point in the biblical storyline, all of the people that God has used to deliver his people, all the people that God has raised up to lead the Israelites have been from the tribe of Judah or from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh.
These bigger tribes among the people of God that are given blessings that are favorable in Genesis chapter 49. And here we see that God is unexpectedly raising up a deliverer from the tribe of Benjamin. It’s a smaller tribe among the people of God. And then secondly, as we pointed out, Ehud is a lefty, right?
How many of you, you know, have read through your Bible read through plans, and you got to this moment in Judges chapter 3, and you saw that the Lord pointed this out, that Ehud was left-handed and you just felt seen? Anybody? Right? Like, the Lord is, no, you know, one of the things that I think is important is when we’re reading through the scriptures, when there are details like this in the text, it’s not just because the narrator was feeling like pointing out that he was left-handed.
It’s actually a critical detail for us. And if you go and you look up just references to the right and the left hand throughout the scriptures, almost always the right hand is counted as the favorable hand. If you look up the references to God’s right hand, we see that there are pleasures forever more at God’s right hand, right?
And we see that God’s chosen servant sits at his right hand and the Lord swears by his right hand. And we also know just from the context of the ancient Israelites that most, I’d say all actually, of the men that were trained for war were trained with their right hand.
They were trained to use a sword with their right hand. It would have been completely uncommon for somebody who was left-handed to be trained for war. And it actually leaves some commentators to believe that Ehud had some sort of disability in his right hand.
That the reason he was left-handed is because he was either paralyzed or couldn’t use his right hand. The point for us to glean is that Ehud is somebody that you would not expect at all to be raised up to lead God’s people, all right? So that’s what I want us to notice or hone in there.
We’ll get to the details of why that is important in just a moment.
And then lastly, that little note in there, verse 17, now Eglon, the king they were under that they had been oppressed by for 18 years, was a very fat man, all right? And it truly, it’s supposed to be funny. That’s why that is in there. We’ll continue on with why that’s an important detail.
Verses 18 through 25, the story gets kind of strange. Buckle up. Verse 18, when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who had carried the tribute. But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said, I have a secret message for you, O king.
And he, that is the king, commanded silence.
And all his attendants went out from his presence. And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you. And he arose from his seat. And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly.
And the hilt also went in after the blade and the fat closed over the blade for he did not pull the sword out of his belly. And the dung came out. Yeah, that’s in the scriptures. Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them.
When he had gone, the servants came. And when they saw the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought surely he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber. And they waited till they were embarrassed. But when he still did not open the door of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them and there lay their Lord dead on the floor.
Wow. That’s quite the story, is it not? Okay. This is fantastic. Really, it’s meant to be this moment in the history of the Israelites that sticks out. The Israelites can look back to, and this is supposed to be memorable for the ancient Israelites.
And how memorable is this story? You probably won’t soon forget the details of what happened with Ehud, especially if you didn’t come in this morning already knowing the story. Ehud gives this tribute and takes his two-edged sword that was stashed on his right hip, right?
And most warriors would have it stashed on their right hip. And just a side note, apparently the guards of Eglon’s palace, they needed lessons from TSA about how to pat somebody down because they did not do a good job here, right? They just let him waltz in with a sword strapped to him.
I don’t know how that happened, but it did.
And at first, Ehud finds no opportunity when they present tribute, which is probably food to King Eglon. And so they turn back and Ehud, as he’s going with everybody that was bringing the tribute, gets to Gilgal and decides, I’m going to go back and I’m going to enact this plan, right?
And I wonder if the reason that he turned back, it says that he turned back at the idols at Gilgal. And this is a sad note in the text, I believe. If you remember, Gilgal is the place that the Israelites first camped after they had crossed the Jordan River, right, in Joshua chapter 4.
And they set up memorial stones that were from the Jordan River there. And now, apparently, there are idol statues at this place where God used to command his armies, where God had sent his armies out to go and take the promised land. Now they’re full of Canaanite idols.
And so I wonder, this is just my conjecture, but I wonder if Ehud gets to those idols and he says, no more. I’m turning back and I’m going to do something about this. I’m going to take on King Eglon. And so he goes back to the palace and that’s where we get these details.
He goes in and tells the king, I have a secret message for you, right?
And apparently he knows that King Eglon is probably pretty dense to be able to fall for that bait because Eglon is like, oh, if it’s a secret message, my guards shouldn’t hear it. So I’ll dismiss my guards, right? If you’re an ancient Israelite and you’re reading this story, you’re just snickering to yourself.
Like how dense could you be to send your guards away, right? But he does. And so Ehud goes up to the cool roof chamber, just another room in the house, probably a room for relaxing where the king is. And he changes his message a little bit. Ehud says, I have a message from God for you, right?
And the message is not, say hello to my little friend. But it actually kind of sort of is.
But he says that and he uses the term, not I have a message in the Hebrew, it’s not I have a message from Yahweh for you. It’s in the Hebrew Elohim, which would have been a general term for God, right? And so this intrigues or it piques Eglon’s interest and he rises from his seat and Ehud sees this as his moment to strike as he grabs his sword with his left hand and he strikes, right?
And it goes all the way in to Eglon, who was a large man and so far in that the whole of his sword is encompassed in his excess. And this is gross, but the detail is that and the dung came out, like his bowels emptied themselves on the ground right there.
And that is nasty. Just a side note, because I am a middle school boy still, I wrote that scripture on our bathroom in the addition. You know, like it’s scripture, right? Like, okay, anyway, you can think less of me. That’s fine. That’s fine. It’s, it’ll be covered up, but it’ll be there, so.
This is the kicker of the story, like what, what is it that allows Ehud to escape? So he sticks him with the sword, gross things happen. And then he locks the doors and he goes out on the porch and he escapes and his guards come to the doors, see that they’re locked and, and they, they must’ve come to the doors and they, they smelled like there’s, there’s something going on behind those doors, right?
This would be a bad time to barge in on the king. That’s what’s going on here. And so what allows Ehud to escape is these guards who think that the king is relieving himself. And they wait so long that they’re embarrassed. They’re like, is it really taking the king this long to go to the, use the restroom?
And they eventually open the doors and find that their king is on the floor dead and Ehud has made his escape, right? What, what is the point of this story? So two, two things that I want to point out here, one, I want us to see, just remember for a moment that the, the people of Israel were under the hand of King Eglon for 18 years.
They were oppressed, they were groaning, right?
And God beautifully, miraculously sends a deliverer and, and he’s going to put an exclamation point on it. An exclamation point so memorable that his people who were weeping, who were oppressed and groaning, he does something so miraculous that their sorrow is going to turn to joy and laughing, right?
Think about, think about this story as it’s being passed down from generation to generation. They have 80 years of peace under Ehud, right? And I’m just, I’m picturing like a family around a campfire and a young boy is asking his father like, hey dad, can you, can you tell a story?
Like I want to hear about how God delivered us. Do you, do you remember that story about the left-handed guy? What was his name again? Oh, right. It was Ehud and the, the really large king, right? And what were the details of that again? This is a story that is presented to us as God turning what is oppression and sorrow into delight.
And our God delights to enter into our own darkness and our own sorrow and our own weeping. And maybe it’s not right now in this season, but he delights to turn what is weeping and sorrow into joy later. And you might have questions about how is he going to do that?
I’m sure that the Israelites had questions when they were oppressed by King Eglon. How is he going to turn our sorrow into joy? And he does it in this incredible, miraculous way. And our God delights to do that in our own lives. And second, I want us to see that this Deliverer Ehud, he was completely unexpected.
He was somebody that you wouldn’t think much of. Likely, he was disabled with his right hand. And yet, God, for his purposes, decided to use him. Used him by filling him with his spirit. All things considered, Ehud is a pretty ordinary person, not somebody you would expect, but it is Ehud who goes and strikes the decisive blow to the enemy.
And we’ll read verses 26 through 30 in just a minute, but I wanna just park here for a second.
As thinking about the Lord using Ehud and just thinking about my own time here at Evergreen Bible Church, I’ve been here now for almost nine years, which is crazy. And a lot of you know my story of how I came to be at Evergreen and came to pastor here.
Many of you don’t, but I essentially got a random phone call. This is a picture of us candidating. We were just like children, Emily and I. In so many ways, I mean that sincerely. I was 22. And we were just taking questions from the church and I was feeling like unsure about the answers I was giving.
Is this helpful?
I got this random phone call actually from Greg Plitt. I think it was you. And Greg, one of our elders at the time, he was a big mentor to my brother. And when they couldn’t hire my brother, they just kind of went down the lineage and said, well, he’s got a younger brother.
Maybe he’d be interested in the job. And so they called me out of the blue and said, hey, would you be interested in applying to be the youth and worship pastor at Evergreen? And my first response was to laugh. Seriously, I just thought, you don’t even know me.
Like, and I’m not qualified for this. Like I have a degree in English literature, right? And I went to this secular university up at Western Washington University.
And we did a nine months of candidating. And during that time, the church was vetting Emily and I, and we had lots of conversations and they asked lots of questions. And Emily and I drove back and forth from Bellingham to Vancouver, which is about a four and a half hour drive.
I don’t know, we probably did it 15, 20 times. And so we had a lot of time in the car to talk. And most of our conversations were asking each other and asking the Lord, are we really qualified to do this? Like, is this something that we should even pursue?
Right, I thought maybe one day I would go into ministry, but it all seemed to be happening super fast. And if there’s one thing that I have learned loud and clear over almost nine years of ministry here at Evergreen, it’s that those that God calls, those that God uses as servants for himself, they aren’t always the most qualified.
But God is the one who qualifies those whom he has called. And I’ve seen that story in my own life. God, when I got here, I was 22. And still to this day, I’m so dependent on the Lord for his strength to get to pastor and grateful for that. But it has been a lesson of learning that God continues to be the one that qualifies me.
And the reason that he qualifies me is because he’s filled me with his spirit. And the reason that he would qualify any of us is not because of degrees or like, those things are important. It’s important to go to school. It’s important to get degrees.
But ultimately, if you’re gonna be used as a servant of the Lord, the thing that qualifies you is God’s spirit inside of you.
I think that we see that in Ehud’s story. I certainly see it in my own story.
Shamgar
We’ll turn our attention to our last single-handed deliverer. His name is Shamgar. Look at verse 31. After him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox code.
And he also saved Israel. The end. Right, like, isn’t that a stark contrast? We get all this detail about Ehud, and then we get to Shamgar, who uses an ox code to kill 600 Philistines, and we get one verse, right? I am like begging the, like, I wanna know more about that story, right?
I don’t know about you, but I’m picturing like Kung Fu in my head, like a guy with a bow staff just going at it.
No, like, why is Shamgar in here? Why? I think this detail is in here, in large part because of Shamgar’s name. Shamgar, if you just look through the genealogies of the Israelites, Shamgar is certainly not an Israelite name. And so it is more than likely that Shamgar is actually a Canaanite, or at least one of his parents was a Canaanite, and he is converted to Christianity, or converted to the God of Israel.
And I think that this is here as an example that God can use anyone, anyone for his purposes, even those whom he has drawn to himself that are not ethnic Jews in the Old Testament.
God is not bound by ethnicity. He uses whomever he pleases for his purposes and plans. So what or whom do all of these single-handed deliverers point us to? As we stated last week, though these deliverers, they save for a time, they don’t save for good.
They can’t, because they all die. But all of them point not to a deliverer, but a savior, who is the true single-handed savior, that being Jesus Christ. In some ways, Jesus Christ, our single-handed savior, is like Othniel, and that he is the expected one, right?
- The Single-Handed Savior
We read the Old Testament, and we see inklings all throughout the Old Testament of the Messiah who’s to come.
Jesus Christ
Genesis chapter 49, we read that the one who’s gonna come, and all nations, including the Israelites, will bring tribute to him, and he’s gonna be from the tribe of Judah. So we sort of know who we’re looking for, and then we also know in 2 Samuel 7, it says that this ruler is gonna be from the line of David.
And so we sort of know when Jesus shows up that he is from the line of David, he’s from the tribe of Judah, this is the one that we expect to come. But in so many ways, Jesus, our single-handed savior, is unexpected, just like Ehud. Just think about the way that Isaiah 53 tells us that our savior, the Messiah, looks.
He doesn’t look like what we would expect a savior to look like. Isaiah 53, two, he had no former majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him.
Think about, if you fast forward in the story of the Israelites to when they chose their first king, remember the first king that they chose, his name was Saul. And the reason that the Israelites chose Saul to be their king, does anyone remember? It’s because he was really tall, right?
And the inference in the text is also because he was beautiful, because he had really nice hair, right? That’s a horrible reason to choose a king. And Jesus comes, he doesn’t look anything like that. Right, he’s unexpected. Jesus, you would expect him to come, the Israelites expected him to come and conquer Rome.
And yet, he didn’t come to conquer Rome, he came as a servant. He came proclaiming to his disciples and those who he was ministering to, that in John 18, that my kingdom is not of this world.
And that would have been a shock to his own disciples. Right, wait, I thought you were here and you were gonna save us and you were gonna set up your throne here. And Jesus says, no, my kingdom’s in heaven. And Jesus didn’t come for the religious leaders like everyone thought he was going to come for.
Jesus came for the sinners, not those who were already self-righteous. He associated with the lowly, dining with tax collectors, with the sick and the unclean, calling them out of sin. He rebuked the self-righteous leaders. And Jesus lived and he suffered and he sacrificed.
And Jesus died, not just for native Israelites, but for all. He commissions his disciples in Matthew 28, saying, go therefore and baptize all nations, right?
Not just Israelites in my name. And Jesus, like Ehud, he, our unexpected savior, he is the one that strikes the decisive blow. Right? I think of Revelation chapter one, what a triumphant verse. This is the reason that Jesus is savior, not just deliverer.
Revelation 1, 17 through 18, he says, fear not. I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold, I am alive forevermore. And I have the keys of death and Hades. Jesus strikes the decisive blow by dying for the sins of all who would believe in him by faith, atoning for them and living a perfect sinless life.
He dies, takes the wrath of God on himself and rises three days later and he is alive forevermore. And he holds the keys of death and Hades, right? As he says in the book of Matthew, the strong man has been bound, right? That’s what Jesus did when he came to this world.
He struck the decisive blow, but here is the unexpected plot twist about Jesus’s life. At the end of his ministry, you would expect a superhero to go back to their tower or their justice league and continue to rule on this earth. Jesus says, no, I’m gonna leave because Jesus, our single-handed savior, he’s a single-handed savior with many hands and feet.
- The Savior’s Many Hands and Feet
And what he does unexpectedly is he comes to this world and starts his ministry and he strikes the decisive blow. And then he says, and the way that I’m gonna finish the war, the way that we’re gonna continue to wage war is through the church, through my hands and feet.
His Church
They’re gonna continue on the ministry that he started. And jump back to Judges 3 with me for just a minute. Judges 3, back into Ehud’s story. Here’s what happens after Ehud escapes, picking up in verse 26. Ehud escaped while they delayed and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Syrah.
When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim.
Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country and he was their leader. And he said to them, follow after me for the Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand. So they went down after him and seized the fords of Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over.
And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men, not a man escaped. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel and the land had rest for 80 years. So Ehud goes and he strikes this decisive blow to the enemy and then he goes back to the people of Israel and he says, look, the enemy has been given into our hands.
Come with me, follow me.
Let’s go and make war on them. And they go and they’re victorious. This is what Jesus has done for his church. He has struck the decisive blow to the enemy. He has won the victory already. The battle is still being waged right now. And how he is waging the battle is through you and it’s through me.
And the battle, lest we think it’s against people like the Moabites or the Mesopotamians, the battle is against spiritual forces. Paul says in Ephesians 6, verse 12, we do not wrestle against the flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Now we started this morning talking about why we love superheroes, why we love jacked up people who are able to go and actually affect change in this world. And at the risk of making you all think that you’re superheroes, you’re not. And I’m glad, I’m glad that we don’t all like run around wearing tights everywhere.
I’m glad that I don’t. We aren’t all superheroes, but we are all empowered. We’re all empowered because Jesus leaves and he doesn’t leave the disciples with nothing. But he leaves them to be filled by his very spirit. And I wanna make the case this morning.
We read these fantastical stories of the judges and we see that they are empowered by the spirit of God. It’s the very same spirit of God in Judges 3 that is working and empowering these men as is at work in you.
You have that very same spirit of God inside of you. And Jesus has called you to continue on with the mission that he started. Right, that is, that is what we are as the church. Not just a group of people who come and listen to a sermon, but we are to be a beacon of light to the nations, to be a beacon of light to Vancouver, Washington.
That’s why it’s so important that we gather. Church, we are empowered by the Spirit of God to be forces and agents of good in this world, of change in this world. And here’s the incredible thing. We may not be superheroes with super strength or super speed or whatever, but we actually have something better.
We have a promise from God and a guarantee that our efforts in Him, they won’t be wasted. That God will use every single one of them. First Corinthians 15, 58, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Jesus has struck the decisive blow, and now we get to minister in His victory, knowing that the enemy is bound, right? And so that is the hope. When we proclaim the message of the gospel to lost and broken people, the hope is not that you are able to articulate with the most clarity the gospel to people.
The hope is not that you somehow wrestle somebody out of their sin. The hope is that the enemy is bound and that the gospel has power and you are empowered with the Spirit. And so when you speak it, the Spirit actually works and opens people’s eyes to the hope of the gospel.
That is our hope when we go and evangelize to our neighbors or our coworkers or our friends. It’s not just in our own strength, but it’s in the strength that God supplies. Church, you might be here thinking this morning, like, okay, but how might God use me?
Like, I’m just ordinary. I’m just a stay-at-home mom, or I’m just a janitor, or, you know, maybe you’re a doctor.
But you know, after a while, being a doctor just becomes something that’s a routine. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. Maybe it never becomes routine. That actually is probably a false statement. But you could be in myriads of situations. I’ve said this before, but God has placed you where you are to be used for His purposes and He’s empowered you to be used for good, for the good of the world.
And I want you to also just be encouraged. God uses ordinary, and honestly, He uses messed up, broken people for His purposes all the time.
Just think of the few examples in the New Testament. Think of Peter. All right, Peter is not the shining example of somebody that you would say, like, yeah, this is a guy that is going to go on to do great things for the kingdom of God. Like, he is a hothead, right?
And then he goes on, he denies Jesus three times. And yet, Jesus comes to him and says, guess what? I’m going to build my church on you. Right? Think of Paul, right? He was actively conspiring to kill Christians. And God meets him and turns his life around to be used to be like the greatest missionary that the world has ever seen.
Think of Mary Magdalene, who is living a life of promiscuity until Jesus called her out of it. And then she has the privilege of being one of the ones to see the resurrected Lord for the first time. And then is sent to go and tell the rest of the disciples of what she saw.
God uses ordinary people all the time for extraordinary means. He is the one that qualifies the called. And that’s you. Because you’re all commissioned with the great commission to go into all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all the things that Jesus has commanded.
And so church, I want you to be encouraged this morning. There’s so much more. Man, I want to preach a whole sermon.
You guys have another hour? You don’t have lunch plans, right? Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, the Spirit is poured out on God’s people. God empowers his believers individually, uniquely with different functions that make up the whole body. Right? He hasn’t made us all the same.
And so he’s given all of us a measure of different gifts to be used, to function as the body of Christ, to continue on with the ministry that Jesus started. And you need to know that, that you have been given gifts to be used for God’s glory. And there’s a myriad of ways that you could try to decipher what those gifts are.
There are various tools or tests that you could take online. One quote that sticks out to me that Pastor John Piper used, a definition I found really helpful of spiritual gifts. He says, a spiritual gift is an expression of faith that aims to strengthen faith.
Right? And I think that that simplifies it. Maybe sometimes we think of spiritual gifts as being this like high and lofty thing. It’s just that you are really good at articulating letters to people. And your spiritual gift is just to encourage people by sending letters.
Or maybe you have a spiritual gift where you are just somebody who loves to host. The amount of impact that you can have in somebody’s life just by having them over for dinner is incredible.
Right? Don’t downplay that. God has given those gifts to his church for good, for the good of the world, for the good of our community, for the good of our city. So what gift do you have and how can it be used to strengthen the faith of others? I want to challenge you that with this week.
Think about that. How am I using my gifts for the encouragement of other people’s faith? And friends, I want us to know Jesus, he has left us, his church body, as a continuation of his ministry. That’s a beautiful privilege that we have as the church.
May it not get lost on us. I’m going to invite the worship team up to help us to respond.
Communion
The way that, one of the ways that we’re going to respond this morning is by doing one of the things that makes us the church. Jesus gave two, he calls them sacraments to the church, that being baptism and the Eucharist or this table, the communion table.
Right? And part of why we take communion every single month is one, to remind us of who our savior is, but it’s also to remind us of who our people are. There’s a vertical aspect of communion and then there’s a horizontal aspect of communion. Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?
And the bread that we break, is it not participation in the body of Christ?
Right? So partaking in this meal means that we’re partaking with the Lord and entering in, remembering that he has died to save us. And it’s also, he says in verse 17, there is one bread and we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
Church, when we take this meal, it reminds us that we’re part of a people. We’re part of a people and it’s more than just an individual act. It’s what yokes us to each other. We are yoked to Christ and in Christ, we are yoked to each other as the church, as a force of influence to be a beacon of light to the world.
And so that’s why we are doing this this morning. And so if you’re a Christian this morning, if you’ve proclaimed faith in Christ, this table is open to you.
Ushers, if you want to go ahead and take the covers off, the worship team is going to play a song and help us to respond. If you would, outside sections, come to the inside aisle and around and grab the elements. Middle section, if you want to go to your right and grab the elements, grab the communion elements, hold on to them.
We’re going to take them all together this morning after the song. Church, the tables are open. Come and receive this gift that Christ has given us.