Gooding, David: 2 - Ehud

Now, shall we begin our study by reading in the book of Judges and chapter three. The book of Judges and chapter three. And we begin to read in Judges chapter three at verse twelve. And the children of Israel did again that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel, because they had done that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and he went and smote Israel, and they possessed the city of the palm trees. And the children of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, a savior, Ehud, the son of Jera, the Benjamite, a man left-handed. And the children of Israel sent a present by him unto Eglon, the king of Moab. And Ehud made him a sword which had two edges of a cubit length, and he girded it under his raiment upon his right thigh. And he offered the present unto Eglon, king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man. And when he, that is Ehud, had made an end of offering the present, he sent away the people that bear the present. But he himself turned back from the carved images. And I pause there to ask you to notice that translation. It could possibly be that in your translation it might read something like the quarries, but the word actually is referring to certain carved images, religious objects, perhaps also boundary stones that were used in Mo- in Moab according to their customs. He turned back from the carved images that were by Gilgal and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king. And he said, keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him, and he was sitting by himself alone in his summer palace. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand and took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And the haft also went in after the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly, and it came out behind. Then Ehud went forth into the porch and shut the doors of the parlor upon him and locked them. Now when he was gone out, his servants came, and they saw, and behold, the doors of the parlor were locked. And they said, surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber. And they tarried till they were ashamed. And behold, he opened not the doors of the parlor. Therefore they took the key and opened them. And behold, their Lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the, the carved images and escaped unto Sarah. And it came to pass, when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he before them. And he said unto them, Follow after me, for the Lord hath delivered your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand. They went down after him and took the fords of Jordan against the Moabites, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they smote of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, every lusty man and every man of valor, and there escaped not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the la- land had rest four score years. May God give us grace and perception to understand and apply the lessons which he meant to convey by inspiring the historian to record this story. Now, in these four sessions together of a Sunday evening, we are studying the book of Judges. Not, of course, the whole book of Judges, but certain parts of Judges, with the idea that we might perhaps, in these four brief sessions, come to see what the main lessons of this book of Judges might be, and what practical relevance they would have to us in our modern day. We found last week, as we introduced ourselves to the topic, that Judges is full of the idea of God's salvation. What a savior God is, isn't he? He can scarce write a book in all his word, but what somewhere or other in it, he is keen to illustrate the glory and the wealth of his salvation. So it is in this ancient book of Judges. It is in the main the story how God from time to time raised up saviors, raised up deliverers for his people Israel. And that simple observation will help us at once to see where this has practical relevance for us. These stories of God's salvation in the past will help us to see the wealth of God's salvation for us in the present. Nor merely will they point us to our Lord Jesus and that initial work of salvation that he does for us when first we come to him, and he saves us in the sense of forgiving our sins, and he saves us in the sense of giving us eternal life and putting his Holy Spirit within us. But they shall tell us of that ongoing salvation. For Judges records how that from time to time God's people, through their weakness, through their folly sometimes, through their failure to keep God's word, and sometimes through their positive and deliberate disobedience to God, got themselves in all sorts of muddles and pickles, and came into captivity and bondage to this enemy and that. When they saw to what lengths their sins had brought them, and they cried to the Lord, God in his mercy raised them up saviors. What a word of encouragement that is for us still. I don't know about you, but I know my own experience well enough to know that, yes, I have forgiveness of sins through the saving work of Christ. Yes, I have eternal life through the saving work of Christ. And I've been a Christian now, I suppose, I daren't tell you how many years, somewhere about fifty and more. And would you believe it? Of course you would. I still get myself into muddles and difficulties and bondages of one kind and another because of, as you might guess, my weakness and folly and ignorance of God's word and sometimes disobedience to God's word, and sometimes even when I would keep it, I find I have an old enemy within, and it does the very opposite. Oh, what a lovely thing it is to know that he who saved us at the beginning is a savior all the way along the road. I don't care, my brother, my sister, what kind of a hole you've got yourself into, if perchance, by some unlikeliness, you have got yourself in a muddle as well. You have a savior, if you are a believer, that can save you out of the muddle and bring you back into happy fellowship with God and into victorious Christian living. We found last week that these saviors of Israel in the days of Judges operated in two special ways. First of all, they judged Israel, and that was part of their salvation, you know. For here they got themselves into bondage to some heathen king. Yes, but why had they got themselves into bondage? That was the point. Oh, well, they'd done this, that, and the other. Oh, and why? Well, people said, you know, it doesn't matter all that much, and times have changed. I mean, we're not living in Moses' day. What does it matter everybody does this and that and the other? Why shouldn't we? And it seemed sense at the start, but then they found it led to bondage. How were they saved from the bondage? They were saved as God raised them up deliverers who judged them. Who took God's holy word and said, well, now you found out, haven't you? The word of God said that. And we foolishly felt it didn't matter. Now let's judge ourselves in the presence of God, according to God's holy book, and let us repent where we have disobeyed it. And let us agree with God that what he says is wrong and evil is wrong and evil. They judged themselves. And our blessed Lord, according to one Corinthians eleven, still invites us to do the same. Why, in that most sacred of all occasions, when as believers we gather to remember our Lord in the breaking of bread and in the drinking of the wine. Then he calls upon us to judge ourselves. If we would judge ourselves, we should not be chastised by the Lord. Oh, how many a sorry experience we might avoid if we would take God's word seriously and judge ourselves in the light of it. Whereas, of course, if we will not judge ourselves, then God has to allow us to find out that sin is sin and evil is evil by experiencing the bondages that come as a result of our disobedience. And when these saviors had got Israel to judge themselves in the light of God's word, then in God's mercy he led them to a victory over their enemies and to recover themselves out of their bondages. And therefore we saw, or thought we saw last week, that this book of Judges might have exceedingly practical relevance to our lives as believers. Of course, we no longer fight the battles of the Lord with carnal weapons. The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, not literal guns, bombs, grenades, machine guns, and so forth. The weapons of our warfare these days are spiritual weapons. Although we fight on a higher plane and with spiritual weapons, we fight the same evil principles of sin as they did in those ancient days. And so, first of all, we looked at the, uh, list of main deliverers that we find in the book of Judges. There they are, the major judges. And we noticed that, uh, the, uh, enemy on each of the occasions was different. In the first case, Israel came under the domination of the Mesopotamians. In the next, under the domination of the Moabites. In the next, it was the Canaanites that overcame them. In the fourth occasion, the Midianites defeated and oppressed them. In the next time, alas, it was one of their fellow Israelites that afflicted and oppressed them. And then in Jephthah's case, it was the Ammonites, and in the time of Samson, it was the Philistines. So the enemy was different on each occasion. And then we notice that, of course, as is natural, the deliverer was different on each occasion. There was Othniel and Ehud, Deborah, Barak, and Jael, Gideon and Jephthah and Samson. And then we noticed that the tactics that these saviors used were different on each occasion. Othniel beat the enemy in straightforward warfare. Whereas our friend of tonight, Ehud, he battled, but the secret of his success was that he took a dagger, sought an interview with the king, and plunged the dagger through the king's belly. On the other hand, here, the final coup de grâce was given to the enemy by a woman named Jael, who broke the man's skull, just like the woman on this other case, uh, defeated Abimelech by breaking his skull. But then the tactics were different, for this woman took a tent peg and drove it through the commander's brain, where this woman took a millstone, heaved it over the wall, it landed on top of the man's skull, it wasn't big enough to support the millstone, and it caved in. You'll see there were different tactics used from time to time in the course of the battles of the Lord. And that led us, therefore, to say to ourselves that we, as we study Judges, will look for four major things to see, uh, whether we can, uh, find them. That with each captivity, we shall look, first of all, to the point, where did Israel go wrong? Sometimes we are told in detail, and sometimes we're t- scarce told anything. And then, having found where they went wrong, we shall ask ourselves the nature of the enemy, for the enemy was different on each occasion. And just as today, different nations have different national characteristics and different ideologies and different ways of looking at life and different customs. So, of course, in those ancient days, these ancient nations were not just the same. They had their different gods, their different way of looking at things, their different ideals and ambitions in life, their different national characteristics. And if we're going to fight the enemy good and hard and intelligently, we shall need to do a little reconnoitering on each occasion and find out just exactly the nature of the enemy that we're meant to be fighting. And then, as we look at the deliverers, we shall ask about the qualifications and the preparations of the deliverers. How were they qualified to be saviors, and how did they prepare themselves for the task? And finally, we shall look at the strategies and the tactics that those different deliverers used. And so tonight we come to, uh, the first question, where did Israel go wrong? And all we are told on this occasion is that Israel did wrong, they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and no more is said. Last week it was, uh, a specific charge, namely that the Israelites disobeyed God's word and gave their daughters to the heathen in marriage and took the heathen women from the nations that were around them and married them, and they stole their hearts away from the Lord. Now, this week we find simply the bald statement that they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and that's that, and we can get no further except it was wrong. But perhaps we can, uh, uh, find out a great deal if we now turn to our second quest and consider the characteristic of Moab as it is described to us by the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament and the New. And I'm going to run briefly through these critical passages, crucial passages in the history of God's people, and ask you as I do so, whether you can see some common theme in the character testimonial that the Holy Spirit writes for Moab in the course of inspired scripture. Moab, where did he begin? Ah, that's a sorry story. And one would wish that one didn't have to tell the story in any detail. For Moab began his life as the son of Lot, produced by Lot's incestuous relation with his own daughter. What a sorry thing that was. Fit to break a believer's heart, isn't it? When we remember where Lot started, he too started out with Abraham, living in Ur of Chaldees, that bright and wonderful civilization. But with Abraham, he caught sight to the vision of the glory of God and set forth from Ur of Chaldees and from Haran to come into the Promised Land. For they looked, did Abraham and his company, they looked for the city that hath foundation, whose builder and maker is God. And Lot, the New Testament tells us, was a righteous man, justified by faith, even as Abram was. But ah, the sorry thing that happened to that true believer. For the sake of business, he went down near Sodom and Gomorrah, and that was a very risky thing to do, and presently entered into Sodom and was sore vexed by their way of behavior in Sodom. And in the course of Sodom, he lost his testimony. They laughed at him. Worse than that, he lost his wife, and he lost his son. He came out of Sodom's fire, saved by the skin of his teeth, saved so as by fire and ended up in a cave outside the city of Zoar. Oh, what a sorry story. A man who had started in Ur of Chaldees, that was no cave, that was a bright civilization. See him now, a true believer, at last living in a cave and behaving like a caveman. It's a solemn thing, isn't it, to think how far a true believer can fall. Therefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall. Oh, there's no temptation that will ever face you, but what is common to men. The Lord makes a way of escape. But we have our part to play. We must take heed, lest we fall. Lot then, father of Moab, by incestuous relation with his daughter, conceived on a night when he was blind drunk. Let's move on in history a little bit and come to Numbers chapter twenty five. And this is the story of the terrible thing that Balaam did to the children of Israel. Balaam, as you know, had been hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel and had to give up in despair, saying, how can I curse whom God has blessed? God has not seen perverseness in Israel. God has given a commandment to bless, and I cannot reverse it. Then, because he couldn't curse Israel for the king of Moab, says the New Testament, he taught Barak, king of Moab, to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to teach them to eat things offered to idols and to commit fornication. That was a dastardly move, wasn't it? For here were these Israelites slogging, foot slogging across the wilderness, and that's hard enough going. And when you've been running out of water and supplies have been difficult and you're hard slogging across the wilderness under a pitiless sun, you crave for ease, don't you? And you crave for comfort. When Moab couldn't, uh, stop the Israelites by straightforward warfare and opposition, they tried another tack and came with their attractions, and the girls of Moab came out, and all they were bright things. They were a little gaudily painted, you have to admit that, but they did in those days, some of them. Very gaudily painted, but, uh, two men that were going across the wilderness and rather drab surroundings, oh, this did look attractive. Wow. Ha. And the girlies invited them home to tea, and they asked Mama, and Mama said, I don't know about that, and oh well, perhaps it'll be okay. And off they went to tea. And of course, at tea, being old Moabites, they offered the food in, uh, in, uh, sacrifice to their gods. And the young chaps didn't know if that was quite right thing to do, but there you are. What can you say when you're at tea? And then they found what sacrifice to the gods meant, and before they knew where they were. They had fallen into id- into fornication. That sounds lurid to us, perhaps. I don't know, for I'm old fashioned these days. But our Lord himself had to protest in the New Testament, didn't he, to one of the churches at Pergamon, indeed. For they were Greek living. And though they were believers, many of them, and saved and justified by faith, there were some in that church that had risen up to tell the believers that it didn't really matter if you offered ate- ate things offered to idols, and in the end it didn't really matter if you had sex before marriage. Mm. There are some Mondays and Tuesdays when I'm feeling rather grim, you know, and glum, like an old Dutch uncle. Uh, it occurs to me these stories mightn't be all that ancient. Might equally describe some parts of our civilization. Some leaders in the Christian church in modern times have risen up to tell young Christian people that really sex before marriage, fornication, and the rest of it isn't really lo- wrong, so long as you are truly loving. It would be wiser to listen to the Lord himself. And what does Jeremiah say? We'll come down the centuries, shall we, to the time of the prophet Jeremiah. And the Holy Spirit through him gives a long write-up about Moab, from which I select these two things. In Jeremiah forty eight verse eleven says the Holy Spirit, Moab hath been at ease from his youth. No wonder some of them tended to get ra- rather large and corpulent. But nationally, says the Holy Spirit, he has not endured any afflictions and commotions and oppositions of the enemy, and he's grown flabby. And we've heard of his pride, says Jeremiah. He's exceeding proud and haughty and arrogant, and wow, he can lose his temper and get wrathful. It sounds extraordinarily like that terrible, uh, list of what Paul calls the works of the flesh. But I mustn't anticipate. We come finally then to Judges, and if this be the character of Moab in the remote past in Genesis, in his origin, the way Moab behaved in the wilderness time of Israel, and the way they were still behaving in the time of the prophet Jeremiah, let's come to Judges and see about them then. Meet the king, ladies and gentlemen. As he rises off his throne with a little difficulty and totters to his feet. Ha! He is a very fat man. He's got plenty of flesh. Yes? He was in his summer cooling parlor. I don't blame him because Jordan is a pretty hot place to be in, but if you laze around like that at your ease too much, well, you haven't got much of a chance against the old battle of the bulge. You're liable to develop rather a lot of flesh. And God, with the precision of a divine warrior, who always goes for his enemies in their strongest place, he had the man killed through his belly. God didn't do that with everybody. There was, as perhaps you noticed from our earlier list, a certain Sisera. He wasn't a flabby man, by any chance. He was a military commander in charge of the nine hundred chariots of that technological age produced by the Canaanites, a kind of a helicopter thing by our standards. He was a hard-headed business kind of a fellow, as well as a military commander. He was an enemy of the people of God, no less. When God killed him, he didn't kill him through his belly, killed him through his brain. It is a sad thing that our brains can turn to enemies of God. But tonight we consider a man, and I'm going to suggest to you that the character that the Holy Spirit has painted through the Old Testament of Moab makes the matter as clear as clear can be. Moab is the nation whom God has selected to show us ourselves and that part of ourselves that the Bible calls the flesh. Before I then, uh, proceed to, uh, think from the New Testament about this thing called the flesh, yes, let's just liven ourselves up a bit, shall we, after that gruesome, uh, catalog. Isn't it a lovely thing at the bottom here? Perhaps you can't see it, never mind, I'll read it for you. Do you know the most famous merbite in all the world? Well, I tell you, it was Ruth the Merbitess, antistress of our Lord, bless her heart. Oh, what an honor given to a merbitess, Ruth the merbitess, of course, a converted merbitess, I hasten to add. But what supreme grace of God to take a woman from a nation like that, convert her and cleanse her, and fit her to be an ancestress of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Oh, the magnificent grace of God. With what materials is he building his heaven? And if it should be that, as the New Testament, uh, says, such were some of you, if this ugly catalog of sins and weaknesses finds us out as well, and our past hasn't been as spotless as it should have been. Oh, my brother, my sister, such were some of you, says Paul, but you have been cleansed, you have been washed, you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of God. How does it come then that flesh, uh, takes this bad name. Well, just as we proceed, just let's notice another little thing to see how serious the matter was. As we study these captivities, we shall find that each captivity denies a first principle of Israel's existence. Last week we found that the enemy came from Mesopotamia and brought Israel into bondage, and we thought what a curious thing that was, for Mesopotamia was the very land that Abram came from at the very beginning. That was the land he was converted from as he came out from Mesopotamia and Haran and came into the Promised Land. And here were Israel in the Promised Land. Uh, another king of Mesopotamia had come in by the back door and overpowered them once more. Now this enemy, Moab, he came and takes, took the city of Jericho. You say, where does that say that in the Bible? Well, perhaps it didn't in your translation. It said he came and dwelt in the city of palm trees, but it's the same place. Only, of course, Moab didn't like to call it Jericho. Jericho had rather unfortunate connotations, you know. It was the city that Israel had had to subdue and to destroy in order to enter their inheritance. And when they had destroyed it, they cursed it in the name of God, and God forbid that it should ever be rebuilt. It was a city of the curse. The first big victory of Israel as they came into the land. And now, in Israel's weakness, they have sinned against God, and the enemy has come in by the back door. And if you please, he's taken again what they thought had been a permanent victory. Can happen, can't it? To be converted out of the world, to go on well for a time, then through one cause and another, the enemy comes in at the back door. And And we we fall again into the same bondages that we knew before we were saved. How then, I ask, did this question, how this thing flesh? For now, let's turn and think, uh, of the, uh, theological significance of the word. If that fat old Eglon reminds us of the flesh, then let us think for a moment of the New Testament and what the New Testament says about it. Let's start with the idea of flesh, and you say, surely flesh is a very good thing. It's what we're made of anyway, and we didn't make ourselves. You say, indeed, now I come to think about it, was not the glory of our Lord Jesus that, being the eternal Word of God, he became flesh and dwelt among us? Oh yes, there's nothing bad in flesh in and of itself. It's part of the human constitution, isn't it? But you see, man as originally made was not just flesh, he was flesh and spirit, and his spirit was in fellowship with the Father of spirits. Therefore, his f- his spirit was in control of his flesh and made of it a beautiful thing for the expression of man's personality and the satisfaction of his right and healthy desires. But when man fell, he died spiritually. As Paul of us all, it is true that before we were converted, we were dead in trespasses and in sins, carnal men and women, not having the spirit. Then our fleshly nature rose up through the fall and became a rebel. And the apostle speaking in Romans chapter eight points that out. He says, you know, the mind of the flesh is enmity with God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And how many of us have found the truth of it? We like to think we're kings in our own castle, don't we? Woe betide anybody that bashes in the front door and tries to tell us how to go on. We resent it immensely. But in the castle of our own personality. Oh, do you know sometimes I'm confined to the attic, and it's a drafty old place up here, huh? And the flesh rises up. Wrath and bad temper and envy and jealousy and goodness knows what else, and tries to take over. I don't know about you. And you try to put him down, and you find what the Bible says, the mind of flesh is, is, is enmity against God. Not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be, and we're not quite kings and queens in our own castles, are we? We have a fallen nature, and it affects us not merely in things that are strictly immorality, uh, in the strict sense of that term, but in a whole ugly brood of things. You'll see it's not merely in the vices of the world, it can affect us in religious things. Paul writes to the Colossians, and he says, now, now come now, my dear believers, you're, you're very nice lot, I know, but, uh, all this business of angel worships and visions and things, and seeing angels and getting puffed up, do you know that's not true spirituality at all? That may sound good and marvelous and super duper spirituality. It isn't, says Paul. It is but an exhibition of the flesh, vainly puffed up by our fleshly mind. You know, flesh can masquerade as spirit. Some forms of religion are mere caterings to the flesh. That is notably so about salvation. We have to be taught, don't we, that, uh, we must not put our confidence in our own human effort, that is, in our unregenerate flesh, and think by our flesh and its efforts that we shall find justification and acceptance with God. We have to learn to remove our confidence completely from the flesh, put our confidence solely in the Lord. The flesh can assail us in the work of the Lord, can it not? The church at Corinth didn't like Paul the Apostle very much. Why not? Because he wasn't a very good orator. Wow, you listen to some of the Greek orators. That's what they studied in the universities. No wonder the universities were brilliant in those days. They studied oratory. And you weren't a speaker at all unless you could bamboozle the audience and get them absolutely entranced and off their seats nearly with the brilliance of your oratory. And Paul didn't. In speech he was contemptible. And he has to rebuke his Corinthian friends. You're putting your faith in fleshly weapons, he says. The only things that will convert people, the only weapons that God can use, are spiritual weapons. Let's speak all as best we can. Let us make sure we do not put our faith in the power of the flesh, even in the work of the Lord. Well, let's come to the victory. How did it happen? Well, we are told, first of all, of, uh, Ehud's preparation. You know, he had been chosen, apparently, as the leader of the little group of people that from time to time took a present to the king of Moab. Well, that's what they called it, some people. That sounded better that way. Actually, it wasn't a present in that sense. It was tribute, actually. Ha ha. You could have pretended, now I'm going to make a present of the king, and then he won't want anymore, see? Give him a nice little bit, and then he'll leave you alone the rest of the year. So you try it. Present if you like, but it was tribute. He demanded it, and he demanded it, and he demanded it, and would never be satisfied. Ehud had enough of that. Now he says, I'm going to face it. We shall never get rid of this enemy just by giving into him and giving him little presents. So he made himself a sword. I like that bit because it shows his intention. There was going to be a war against the flesh and not a little putting to death, obviously, if you start making a sword. Has made himself a sword. And it has got double edges on it. And the very adjective carries with it all sorts of connotations, doesn't it? And do you know what? When he came into the, uh, king's presence, he said, Your Majesty, I have a message from the Lord to you, and out came the sword and into the man's belly. So the message turned out to be a sword, and the sword turned out to be a message. You got a sword like that? Of course you have. The Epistle to the Hebrews in chapter five tells us that the word of God is living and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the viding of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. Oh, how it can penetrate into those deep wells of our motivation and our action. The Word of God living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. Oh, my brother, we need to take it. My sister, we need to take it. We watch our blessed Lord Jesus in the desert fighting against the devil, and when the devil came to him first of all at the level of his physical appetites and said, make these stones bread. How then did our Lord defend himself against the temptation to take that satisfaction against and before and without the God-given permission? Our blessed Lord got out his sword and said, it is written. It stands Stands written. written. When at last they came to take him in Gethsemane's garden, and Peter drew his physical sword and would have cut off a man's ear to prevent the arrest. Our blessed Lord told him to put the sword into his sheath. Said he, Peter, do you think I couldn't call to my father and he would give me twelve legions of angels if I wanted them to avoid arrest. Standing in the garden, said he to Peter, but then Peter said he, if I don't go through with this thing, how then shall the scripture be fulfilled? Oh, what a marvelous savior we have. He doesn't ask us to do what he didn't do himself. He had a sword bound to his own thigh for use, particularly when the great emergencies and temptations came upon him. The Bible is a sword, of course it is. But Ehud made himself a dagger, you know, which is a small version of a big sword. It's got two edges, of course, and the steel is just as good. It's a bit more handy to use, you see. Ha, no good going into Moab with a mighty great thing from here to the wall, for Moab will see the thing, and then it's not very, you know, for use in close quarters and getting in the right places, bit difficult to wield. He made himself a nice little dagger. Ooh, beautiful. I dare say he practiced it now and again, don't you? What a oops. See if I can... now see how quick I can draw it now. Let's have a go. Oof. Yes. If you won't mind my saying, you'd be advised to make yourself a sword too. Isn't it difficult when you're leading an unconverted person to the Lord? And of course you believe in the Bible, and the Bible is the word of God, and it's a jolly good sword. And you say to your friend, now, hum, for the Bible says, prepare to meet your God. Uh, um, uh, I can show it to you. Now, where is that? Corinthians, uh, no, no, it's not Corinthians. Uh, no, it's Romans. No. Oh, well, bother that one. Oh, I see. No, you say, it says, the wages of sin is death. That that's, um, you know, it says it here. No, now wait a minute. I knew where it was yesterday. What use is that? We need to make ourselves swords, don't we? My younger brethren, my younger sisters, at your very fingertips. Crucial things. Ready for use on the appropriate occasion. Ha. So he made himself a dagger. Then came the turning point in the campaign. What I've called the right and the wrong use of the knife. That sounds a very odd phrase, doesn't it? But I'm referring to the fact that when he had taken the tribute for the last time, then Holy Scripture says that he sent all the other people away, and he himself turned back by the carved images, verse nineteen, that were by Gilgal. It was the turning point in the campaign. Oh, how full of significance those two things were, weren't they? On the one hand, the carved image. On the other side, Gilgal. Yes, carved image. It may well have been a boundary stone of Moab, or if it wasn't a boundary stone, it was an idol of some kind, all carved out with beautiful ancient art. Cool, they could make them look nice. If you like that style of art. Now, for myself, I have to confess, I don't altogether understand it. They would be calculated to give me a nightmare, but ooh, they were marvelous, almost ultra modern, weren't they, some of these, uh, uh, stones that they carved. They did their honest level best as quite brilliant and perceptive artists to represent the various forces of nature, which then they bowed down to in their religion. Worshiping the forces of nature, worshiping the old animals as gods, and in the end, coming to live like animals. The use of the knife to carve the image, to make religion attractive to the flesh. And over away Gilgal, with its holy but stern memories. Gilgal is the place where, when Israel came to it, Joshua commanded them that they were make to thems- they were to make to themselves knives, sharp knives, and circumcise themselves and cut away the flesh. Ah, we have to make that decision, don't we? Our blessed Lord is exceedingly beautiful and attractive, that I am not denying. And God is indescribably beautiful, and holiness is a thing of beauty. But we must not be trapped into the false notion of beauty and attractiveness, trying to make religion attractive to the unregenerate mind by indulging his unregenerate desires, his unregenerate ideas, and his unregenerate propensities. Says Paul in a heavy indictment to certain people who preached that salvation was achieved by ritual performed upon a baby at eight days old, says he, they who demand you to be circumcised, why do they do it? They don't keep the law of God themselves, then why do they insist on your being circumcised? They do it, he says, that they may make a fair show in the flesh. All tell a man he can do something to earn God's salvation, and he'll feel very flattered very often, won't you? In that sense, the gospel is stern and severe. It bids us get out the knife and cut off the flesh. True circumcision is that attitude that has no confidence in the flesh, save only in the Holy Spirit of God. Ehud came to the turning point in the campaign and in his life, as he turned by the carved images that were by Gilgal, the wrong use of the knife to make religion attractive to the unregenerate mind, and the true use of the knife. To teach man to have no confidence in the flesh, but to put his faith in the living God and in God's Holy Spirit. With that, he came into His Majesty's presence. I like the directness of his tactics, I must say. Your Majesty, he says, I don't like you. No, he didn't say that. Because His Majesty might have said, and who are you? Said he, Your Majesty, I have a message from the Lord for you. Oh, have you? Said His Majesty. And with some difficulty, he wobbled up out of his seat and stood there. I have a message from the Lord to you, said he, and woof, in it went. Do you know, it really went in because the handle of it went in as well and came out behind. Ha. He didn't say, now, sorry, I gotta hurt you a little bit. Oh, oh, I'm sorry I hurt you like that. No, no, let's have another go. No, of course not. He wasn't being rude. Uh, but the way to deal with the flesh. Listen to Paul, if by the Spirit you put to death the works of the flesh, it will mean decided, decisive action and the deliberate use of God's word and the power of his spirit to crucify the flesh, to put it to death. And he left that old mountain of flesh on the floor, went out, locked the doors, and went off. And eventually came to the River Jordan. Oh, what memories Jordan had for them, and I hope for you as well. Jordan? That was how Israel came into the Promised Land, wasn't it? And what a story it was. When they came, the river was in flood, and the question was, however did you get into your inheritance? And God asked them to believe him to do a miracle. They had to walk until their feet were right in the water, as though they were going into a watery grave, and then God parted the water, and they went down to the very bed of the river and came up the other side. And God told them to take stones and put some in the bed of the river and some on the bank, so that when the waters came back, they could go and stand by those stones and say, well, do you believe? Do you see all that water there? Do you know, once upon a time, I was right down there on the bottom. God brought me up. Does that sound like a parable to you? If it doesn't, just go to sleep for two seconds while I talk to the others. Do you know the way into our great inheritance is to be conformed to the death of God's son. Not just get rid of the bad bit, but the whole of me. To go down, dying with Christ, buried with Christ. That's God's verdict on my flesh, the whole of me. That I might rise the other side to walk in newness of life and be conformed to his out resurrection from the dead. The warfare against the flesh. And I'm going to let you go home, and my elders will congratulate me for having improved this week and stopped by twenty to ten or quarter to ten or just a little thereafter. But just before you go, let me suggest how you might perhaps check a little bit to see whether we have in fact got our explanation of these things correct. For now, I'm going to leave Judges three and very briefly I'm going to s- recite in your ears the main details of Philippians three from the New Testament. It won't be altogether my fault if you should see certain similarities between the two chapters. Make of them what you will. But in Philippians three we meet another Benjamite. Ehud was a Benjamite, wasn't he? So was the Apostle Paul. I too am an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, with all the religious background that a man could desire, a Pharisee of the Pharisee. And if anybody has a right to have confidence in the flesh, in the religious flesh this time, well, I more. If ever a man could have got to heaven by putting his confidence in the flesh and the flesh attempt to keep the law of God, then that was Saul of Tarsus. Saul reminds, Sa- Saul of Tarsus, Paul, now the apostle, reminds his fellow believers that there is a right and a wrong use of the knife, doesn't he? In this chapter, Philippians three. Beware, he says, of the concision. We are the circumcision, and pray what is concision? Well, he's actually referring to the rite of circumcision in which they got a knife to cut off the flesh. But now he uses a term of almost abuse. It's a mutilation, he says. For here were people, and they were taking that Old Testament rite of circumcision, and instead of using as it should be used, they were preaching that by that external right, by keeping that e- external right, you were contributing to your salvation. They were putting their confidence in the flesh for salvation. We need to be warned against that wrong use of the knife. Salvation comes not by any ritual. Not the labor of my hands can fulfill thy law's demands. Could my tears forever flow? Could my zeal no respite know? Ah, but I couldn't attend, uh, atone for sin. I must learn to use the knife rightly, not concision, but circumcision. We are the circumcision, says Paul, who have no confidence in the flesh and worship by the Spirit of God. Ah, did I talk about Jordan a moment ago? Well, let me talk about something else from the New Testament. If you need the way of salvation, says Paul, it is this first to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of your own at all. I threw all away that confidence in the flesh, and my object is to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness which is of my own. And then what? Then to pursue the path of ongoing holiness, that I might be made like unto the Lord Jesus, conformed to his death, if by any means I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. Our citizenship, he says in Philippians three, is in heaven. Not in some cursed earth like Jericho was. Our citizenship is in heaven. Let us not mind earthly things as others do. Our citizenship is in heaven. However, says Paul in Philippians three, if anybody is any otherwise minded, God shall reveal this too. Oh, look out. Ha ha. When Ehud said, I've a message from the Lord for you, there came a dagger all of a sudden and went right through the man's belly. Now listen to this other Benjamite. If you are any otherwise minded, he says, God shall reveal this to you. For some there are, of whom I've told you before, their God is a belly. In it goes, doesn't it? That's talking right straight. Ha, Moab was subdued by that kind of tactic. We look for a better and a more glorious victory. Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior. Ah, Ehud was a savior in his day. Thank God for this supreme savior, even Jesus Christ our Lord. He's coming again, my brothers. If Moab was subdued in that ancient time, then when the Lord Jesus comes, says Paul, he shall subdue all things to himself, all the glory of it. When our salvation is at last complete, he shall take even this body of our humiliation. Seen of so many battlefields. Seen of some victories, scene of many defeats, yes. Our poor old body. Ah, but we have a savior. He shall come from heaven, and according to that power whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself, he shall change our very bodies and conform them like unto the body of his glory. Until that day come, the Lord encourage and strengthen us to fight a manful battle against the flesh and all its works. Shall we pray? O Lord, we have labored long and stayed long at the study of thy holy word this evening. But in some sense tonight, Lord, we have been in thy spiritual military academy. We cannot but expect the lessons to be severe and hard. Make us good soldiers of Jesus Christ, we do beseech thee, that we might fight loyally by the power of thy Holy Spirit, having no confidence in the flesh, but every confidence in the rightness of thy word and in all its commands and prohibitions. We thank thee now for the Savior and the prospect that one day he will complete our salvation. In the meantime, Lord, we beseech thee, help us to treasure thy word, make from it our own personal swords, that we might be diligent and faithful and zealous, putting the flesh to death, fighting the battles of the lords, and if it please thee, by thy grace, being used in our turn as saviors of others. Hear us, we beseech thee, and dismiss us with thy blessing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.