Judges: God Uses Unimpressive Servants to Advance His Kingdom Judges 3:12-31

Basil O’Connell Jones

Basil O’Connell Jones is not your ordinary evangelist. He walks with a severe limp. He suffers a speech impediment. He needs his wife to help him with most of his daily needs. Despite all of this, he preaches the gospel and has seen many turn to Christ in Zimbabwe.

Jones was not always disabled. He was once a vibrant young man who lived in Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe. After being caught up in the drug scene in the 1970’s, Jones joined the Rhodesian Light Infantry and had been involved in fighting against terrorism for 2 years. On the 1st of February 1977 he and his team were ambushed and he was shot through the head with an AK 47 assault rifle. The bullet went through both sides of his brain and he died. For 28 minutes he was physically dead.

He speaks of having an out of body experience which lead him to believe that death is nothing more than a comma, its not an end. He had questions, however, than needed answering and a lot of anger then needed healing. By God’s providence he found himself in a medical facility with a Christian medic who led him to the Lord. Listen to his own words,

“In the time of searching I found myself in a rehabilitation centre for army guys who had been injured during the war. We were casually talking one afternoon about our different experiences and injuries. I always spoke openly about my injury and the fact that I had died as I was always looking for somebody to answer the question of life after death for me.

Little did I know that there was a medic listening to our conversation who would later come and engage me on this very topic. That evening he sat with me at the dinner table and started to share his conversion experience. We spoke for a couple of hours about Jesus, salvation, sin, life after death and many other things. That night I found myself broken, at the end of myself, and asking Jesus to please save my soul from sin. I fell into a beautiful sleep and the next morning when I woke up I knew I was a new creation. Everything was different. I had peace and joy in my heart for the first time ever. I had truly been born again!” Basil O’Connell Jones

For the last forty years Jones has been faithfully preaching the gospel in Zimbabwe. He does not look like much when he rolls up into a village. He needs help getting out of the car. He walks with people beside him. He looks frail and weak, and yet, He is God’s instrument of grace to deliver his message of salvation. Like Ehud, he is not impressive in form, but that does not matter to the Lord. You will see this morning, like Basil O’Connell Jone, through the judgement of Ehud,

God uses unimpressive people in extraordinary ways to advance his kingdom.

The cycle of sin continues Judges 3:12-14

Israel forgets the Lord after forty years of rest in the land, when Othniel dies. The Lord hands them over to an alliance of kings led by King Eglon of Moab (Judges 3:13). God raised up Eglon with his alliance and they defeated Israel and took possession of the City of the Palms, which you know the as the City of Jericho.

Loosing Jericho had to be humiliating. Jericho is where God displayed the power of his deliverance and his favor for Israel when He gave it into Joshua’a hands. Now God gave Eglon, Israel’s enemy victory over his people for eighteen years (Judges 3:14).

After eighteen years of subjection, Israel cried out to the Lord, as in the last cycle. For eighteen years, Israel paid tribute to Eglon, forfeiting some of their wealth and prosperity. Eglon was not as wicked and oppressive as King Cushan-Rishathiam, but Israel suffered nonetheless. God heard their cry and responded to their suffering under Eglon’s rule. He raised up a judge, but not one whom you would expect.

Othniel was an ideal deliverer. He was a warrior of the tribe of Judah. He served the Lord with a singleminded, heart united, loyal love. He was Spirit-empowered and joyfully obeyed the Lord’s will. If Israel was looking for a deliverer, you might say that Othniel was the man for the job. Ehud, on the other hand, was not Othniel. In many ways, he is unimpressive.

God uses unimpressive people to advance his kingdom (Judges 3:15-26)

Ehud was a Benjamite, of the tribe of Benjamin. Benjamin means “son of the right hand.” In verse 15, Ehud is described as a lefthanded man. The author is making a distinction with Ehud using word play, meaning Ehud is an odd choice to be a deliverer. Being left handed was a sign of oddity, even weakness.

God’s deliverer is unimpressively weak.

There is a lot of discussion on Ehud’s left hand. The majority opinion is that he was a skilled warrior who was likely able to use both hands in battle. Scripture mentions that the tribe of Benjamin had 700 warriors who were skilled swordsmen with their left hand (Judges 20:15). This makes Ehud the likely choice to take out King Eglon.

On the other hand, the Hebrew literally reads “he was unable to use his right hand.” In the scriptures, the right hand is a symbol of power and ability. The left hand is a place judgement and scorn. If Ehud was was unable to use his hand because it was disabled in some way, it would better explain why Eglon allows his servants to leave him alone in the room with Ehud, and even get close enough to harm him.

In my opinion, Ehud’s right hand is disabled, and his culture and society would’ve seen him as weak and ineffective.

In Leviticus, God made special commands to protect the disabled from exploitation and harm (Leviticus 19). It was not uncommon in antiquity to commit infanticide of babies who were born with a disability.

Plutarch, several hundred years later than Judges, described the process Spartan parents had to go through to keep a newborn child:

“The parents were to bring the child to the elders of the their tribe for examination. If the child was ill born or misshaped, the child was to be thrown into the pit at the place called Apothetae, below Mt. Taygetus, as it were neither better for the child or the city for him to remain alive, as from the start he does not have a good start towards becoming healthy and strong (Lyc 16.1-2).”

To be healthy and strong was primarily aimed at becoming a warrior. It is through this cruel lens that Ehud would’ve also been seen as a man. Furthermore, because he was disabled, it is likely that his peers would’ve assumed God’s disfavor. Thy would’ve thought that he or his family sinned greatly against the lord and Ehud’s disability was punishment for that sin. Jesus’s disciples felt the same way when they passed a blind man on the street in John 9. They asked Jesus, “Who sinned? This man or his parents?” Jesus had to correct their understanding that it was not sin that caused this man’s disability, but the sovereign will of God for the purpose of God’s glory. God likes to use unimpressive weak people to display his glory.

John Milton, blinded in 1652, wrote his masterpiece Paradise Lost after the loss of his eyesight forced him into retirement. Isaac Watts was handicapped with a severe physical deformity, yet he became a preacher and the father of English hymnody. Though weak and sickly, he wrote six hundred sacred songs, several books of poetry, and many influential doctrinal discourses. Fanny Crosby, accidentally blinded at six weeks of age, triumphed over her handicap and gave us more than eight thousand hymns. —Our Daily Bread

Don’t assume for one second your weakness and brokenness keeps you from being used as an instrument of God’s grace for His glory in His kingdom. Always remember, God’s power is manifested greatly in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

God’s Deliverer is unimpressively shady

Unlike Othniel, who is a portrait picture Hebrew), Ehud is a little more shady. Othniel id described as faithful and zealous for the Lord. The Spirit of God falls upon him and God delivers the wicked king into his hand.

Ehud is an assassin. You don’t read of God’s Spirit coming upon him. After verse 15, God is not mentioned with Ehud’s story except when Ehud speaks of him to Israel. Ehud uses cunning and deceit to bring down the king of Moab. I’m not saying he is immoral. I am saying he is not your typical protagonist hero. He’s not David, not does he have to be.

God is impressively sovereign

God is sovereign and can use who every he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants, to accomplish whatever he wants.

God can use evil unbelieving men to accomplish his will. It was God who raised up the Moabite king Eglon and Cushan-Raithaim to oppress Israel. God worked in the officials in Daniels’ day to give Daniel an his friends favor with their captures.

God even raised up Pharoah in the Exodus for the purpose of displaying his power (Romans 9:16-18). God is not limited by human condition or even willingness. God will bend the human will however he pleases, whether it is to serve him or reject him.

We have a tendency to put God in the free will box, and we have to be careful about that. We like to say things like, “God will never do anything against my will. I must ask him first. Yes we are moral beings who make moral decisions. We cannot say, however, God will never act against out will; Paul would disagree with you in Acts 9 on the road to damascus. Jesus invaded his life and told him he would suffer for to advance his kingdom. Another who would disagree with you would bo one of the world’s most notorious kings, King Nebuchadnezzar.

King Nebuchadnezzar became very proud of His kingdom and he did not give God the glory. God came to Nebuchadnezzar and told him because he did not honor the Lord properly, Nebuchadnezzar would spend seven years in a field eating grass like a cow (Daniel 4:28-33). Listen to what God said to Nebuchadnezzar,

Daniel 4:31–32 (ESV)

While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you,

and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.”

After seven years of being mad and eating grass in a field, Nebuchadnezzar was given his mind back by the Lord,

Daniel 4:34–35 (ESV)

At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;

all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

There is no one like our God. What king can come against our Lord?

Proverbs 21:1 ESV

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.

What limits impair him from accomplishes what he delights?

Psalm 135:6 ESV

Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

Can anyone or anything thwart God’s purposes?

Job 42:2 ESV

“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Everything you have, and your enemy has, comes from the hand of the Lord.

Listen for God’s impressive sovereignty in David’s prayer. He prays,

1 Chronicles 29:12 ESV

Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.

Nothing in this life is absent or absolved from God’s sovereign hand; not even Satan himself is able to defeat the Lord. God defeated him when he sent his Son to die on a cross for weak shandy sinners like you and me.

Colossians 2:15 ESV

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

Augustine says of God’s sovereignty and wickedness,

“It is true that wicked men do many things contrary to God’s will; but so great is His wisdom and power, that all things which seem adverse to His purpose do still tend towards those just and good ends and issues which He Himself has foreknown.” Augustine of Hippo

Or, as Thomas a Aquinas concisely says in his great work Summa Theologica,

“God is so powerful that He can direct any evil to a good end.” Thomas Aquinas

It does not matter that Ehud is weak and shady. The God he serves is great and sovereign. God uses weak, shady, unimpressive characters like Ehud to deliver his message to the kings of this world.

Ehud is charged with delivering Israel’s tribute to King Eglon. A tribute is like a tithe to the oppressing king, and it is more than likely a large sum of food. In verse 16, Ehud made himself a two edge sword that was approximately 18 inches long. He attached it to his right thigh under his clothing.

There is intrigue at this point of the story. Right handed warriors would hold there sword on their left side. When Ehud brought his tribute to the king, he appeared to be unarmed, and with is right hand disabled, he was not a threat. In verse 17, however, he is not able to get close enough to the king to use an eighteen dagger. First of all, Eglon is an obese man. Second, the situation didn’t work out at the time because in verse Judges 3:18-19 they leave and make it all the way to the idols of Gilgal before Ehud turns back alone. Seeing the ideals at Gigal shows the state of Israel’s heart. Gilgal was the place the Lord made his covenant with His people, and os Ehud sees the physical idols were an outward sign of an inward corrupt reality.

In verse 19, Ehud makes his way back and says to the king that he has a secret message from God. The wording seems to imply that Ehud was appealing to Eglon’s vanity.

His arrogance underestimated this unimpressive left handed man. Eglon dismissed his guards and attendants and locked himself in a room with God’s deliverer. Eager to hear God’s message, Eglon arose from his seat, and received and eighteen inch dagger into his lower abdomen. He could not conceive that Ehud would reach with his left hand to grab a sword on his right thigh. Eglon was so fat that the handle of the dagger was enclosed and concealed in his stomach. He was struck with such force that the text literally says, “the dung came out.” The king of Moab laid in his porch defeated and utterly humiliated. The name Eglon means calf. Being that he was an obese man, he was literally a sacrificial fattened calf ripe for slaughter.

No doubt, Eglon was surprised and humiliated by God’s message of judgement; and so will many of our friends, family members, and neighbors.

The Bible says that God’s judgement will come like a thief in the night (Matthew 24:42-44), meaning it will come swiftly and unexpectedly. It will be unbearable for those who reject God’s salvation (Luke 10:13-14).

Like Ehud, we have a message from God. We have a double-edge sword that proclaims God will judge your sin. It is appointed for man to die once and then face God’s judgement. The wages of sin is death; an eternity in hell suffering God’s wrath for your treason against his holiness. God’s judgment will be just and swift; just like Ehud’s double edge sword into the belly of Eglon.

What does God do to fix your weak un-impressiveness?

God, however, has done something supremely impressive for you and I. God’s sovereign grace provided his own sacrifice for slaughter. God sent his Son to be a substitutional atoning sacrifice for unimpressive weak sinners like you and I.

What does Substitutionary Sacrificial Atonement mean?

Dr. Gregg Allison explains it in seven affirmations:

(1) The atonement is grounded in the holiness of God, who, being perfectly holy, hates and punishes sin. Thus, the sin of humanity against a holy God necessitates the atonement.

(2) It is an objective, not a subjective, work. The atonement is what Christ accomplished by his death, not its application (which is another divine work).

(3) A penalty for sin must be paid, and paid in full.

(4) No sinful person can pay for his or her own sin and be saved. Rather, the penalty is death.

(5) Only God can pay the penalty for sin and rescue sinful people, but he must partake of human nature to save them.

(6) The God-man Jesus Christ paid the penalty for sin.

(7) The atonement had to be accomplished in this way.

In this story, you and I are like Eglon. We have offended God’s holiness and wounded his love. We deserve the dagger. God, in his sovereign mercy, sent his son to stand in between Eglon and Ehud, to receive the dagger (metaphorically speaking), so the Eglon’s like you and I can have our sin atoned and be saved from God’s judgment. Jesus is your substitute, your perfect sacrifice, your atonement for sin, if you will receive him. It’s your only way of escape from God’s wrath.

God made a way of escape for Ehud. He escaped through the latrine. While he exited through the toilet, the attendants were distracted with thinking Eglon was using the bathroom. Once they figured out what was going on, Ehud was already to Seirah.

You might look at verse 24-26, and see how crude and numerous is the scene. Ehud has to slip through the toilet, more or less, to escape. Through the sewage of Eglon, he escaped to Seirah to help deliver his people. You may look at this as silly or humorous. He was likely covered in dung when he got back to Israel. Who would take such a person seriously? But that is God’s way, isn’t it? He provides a way of escape through the seemingly crude unimpressive ways that seem foolish to the world.

Christ, our deliverer had to endure the cross, the curse of God, to provide your escape. The world looks at the cross as crude and foolishness, but to us it is salvation. It is our victory. It is our rest.

In Judges 3:27-30, Ehud was able to sound the alarm and arouse the people to war. God used this left handed man, as Tim Keller says, to save a left-handed people. All of us are broken. Our only hope for restoration and reconciliation is the redemption Jesus offers us through his death, resurrection, and ascension.

In Christ, God can use your weakness to show the world his glorious salvation. Paul says to you and I, as broken and weak saints,

1 Corinthians 1:26–27 ESV

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

You don’t have to be impressive. You have to be loyal and obedient. When you love God with a single minded heart united loyal love, God uses you, who are weak (and even a little shady) to shame the strong. Lay down your idols. Lay down your manipulation. Lay down your life. Submit to the Lord’s will today and be used by him for joyfully advance the kingdom of God b making much of Jesus until the church, community, and home joyfully abide in Jesus.

Trust that God is sovereign and always working, even when it does not look like it.

Do not let any other voice in this world tell you that God will not use your broken weak heart and disposition to joyfully advance His Kingdom b making much of Jesus. Look at how he is using Basil O’Connell Jones. Look at how he used Ehud, and you will see how he can use even you. Amen.