YP Talk—Tim Whitaker
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Well, brothers and sisters, we can say that the, the, the Lord has really answered our prayers for this weekend and, uh, he has poured us out a blessing, but we have been sitting for, for three days. I know that. And uh, I'll make a deal if you look like you're paying attention. I'll keep it short. OK, But before we do anything, let's ask God for sale.
Gracious God, our our Father, we do thank Thee for this great love that we have just been singing about. We thank Thee for the gift of thy beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and for that work that he did on Calvary's cross, uh, for us. We thank you too for the living Word of God. And now as we have its pages open for a few minutes, we would just ask for help and we would ask for a blessing. And so we ask these things and thy name, Lord Jesus, Amen.
Amen. Well.
Earlier this afternoon, our brother spoke about the role of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. And I'd like to take just a few minutes. And I'd like to speak about the role of the Word of God and the life of the believer. And I'd like to do that by looking at an Old Testament character. His name is Ehud. So open your Bibles with me to Judges chapter 3.
Judges chapter 3 and we're gonna start reading, uh, in verse 12 Says then the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord and the Lord strengthened egg Long the king of Moab against Israel because he had done evil in the sight of the Lord. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek and went and smote Israel and possessed the city of palm trees. So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab 18 years. And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up and delivered Ehud the son of Gira.
A Benjamite, a man left-handed, and by him the children of Israel, sent a present unto Eglon, the king of Moab, but made him a dagger which had two edges of a cubit length.
And he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh, and he brought the president up to Eglon, King of Moab. And Eglon was a very fat man.
And we invade an end of to offer the present. He sent away the people that bear the present. And he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king, who said, Keep silent. And all that stood by him went out from him.
And he had came unto him, and he was sitting in a summer parlor, and that he had for himself alone. And he had said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he rose out of his seat, And he had put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.
And the half also went in after the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly. And the dirt came out, and he had went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlor upon him, and locked them. When he was gone, out his servants came.
And when they saw that behold, the doors of the parlor were locked, they said, Surely He covereth his feet and his summer chamber. And they tarried till they were ashamed of Behold, He opened, knocked 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 He had escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the quarries, and escaped under Sierra. And it came to pass when He was come, that he blew a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mouth, and He before them.
And he said unto them, Follow after me, for the Lord hath delivered your enemies no Moabites, and your hand. And they went down after him, And he took the forge of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not a man to Passover. And they slew of Moab at that time about 10,000 men.
All lusty and all men of valor and their escapes. Not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest fourscore years.
In the previous book of, of Joshua, it's a very different book than the book of judges. In, in the book of, of Joshua, we have, umm, victory. We have progress in the children of Israel taking the land, and we have the joy that resulted from that. But here in this story, it, it, the book of judges, it's very different. Umm, and today every man did that which is right in his own eyes. And so you have defeat, you have servitude to the enemy and you have the, the sorrow that resulted from those things. And it's been pointed out that taken before your side by side. And so it's a reminder to us, I believe.
That the spiritual state of the Christian is never is never a static ones. All is moving either in One Direction or on the other. And this is a very sad story, but yet I think there's some words of encouragement here for us. If we look at it closely. You know, in chapter one, the tribes of Israel came into the land and they didn't drive out the enemy that was there and you retrived after tribe. They didn't drive them out. And so some of them lost some of the practical good of their inheritance. The, uh, the, the children of Dan, for instance, they had to stay up in the mountains. They couldn't go down in the valley before they could farm. They were driven up and then we read of a generation.
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That knew not the Lord and they didn't know the works that he had done in Israel. And so here we have the children of Israel in the land not knowing the Lord. We have the children of the enemy in the land, obviously not knowing the Lord. And they take a look at each other and they find each other to be attractive people and they get married. And So what happens that idolatry comes in among the people of God and of course it's made the Lord says his anger burns hot, I think is the expression He was angry about this and he strengthens the enemy. Now the enemy was doing things that were worse than the children of Israel, but he strengthened the enemy.
And it's, you know, we've had before us that our God is the God of love and he's also a God of light. And it's a reminder of what we have in the book of Peter that judgment must begin at the House of God. And so, uh, you know, this is a picture to us of the, of the struggle that you and I are in. We have an enemy that's arrayed against us. And each one of these Old Testament enemies of the Lord's earthly people are pictured to us as we know of some aspects of the Christians, of one of the Christian three enemies, the world.
The flesh and the devil and, and you know, our enemy can't rob us of our, of our inheritance that's preserved in heaven for us, but it can, as we often say, rob us of the enjoyment of that inheritance. And umm, you know, when we look around and Kristen, Christendom today, we do see a mixture of things, that which is of God and that which is not of God. We see disorder, we see dysfunction. And sometimes it seems like nobody even wants to recognize the headship of Christ. And when we look at the room, we have to take our part in it. They were part of this ruined condition of things.
And two, the Lord's hand is upon us. Umm, but I didn't want to be negative tonight. I want to be positive. And I think we can find a few words of, of encouragement here. We're going to take a look at Ehud. We're going to notice this flaw. We're going to notice the weapon that he used, how he came about the weapon, how he carried the weapon, uh, and how God used him, uh, with his flaw and his weapon to deliver the Lord's people. And I believe it's, it's going to speak to us of self judgment. It's also going to speak unbelievable. We have in the book of Jude where it says earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints. So let's begin with the enemy that he defeated.
Umm, we don't have time to look at very many, many of the enemies here, so we're just gonna look at, at Moab, the, the enemy that he defeated. Umm, the origin of the Moabites we know from Genesis 19 was the offspring of Lot and his own daughter. And Lot was the one when he was given the choice of directions to go when his herdman couldn't get along with Abraham's herdman. He lifted up his eyes and he looked at and saw the land that looked good to his eyes, looked like he could live easily there. And I believe that's really what Moab speaks of. It's, it's the easy life. Umm, it's the life where, uh, of pleasure. It's the life of leisure. It's a life that's promoted. Umm.
By this world, it's a lie of state, you could say that's marketed by the world. And you know, each one of us has the flesh within us that responds to this lie. And we were just reading in Jeremiah 48, uh, in our, umm, Bible study on Lord's Day morning and Walla Walla. And we read about Moab being at ease from his youth and not being poured from, from vessel to vessel. It's like a faulty wine making process where uh, the, the undisturbed wine is left on its dregs and, and the sediment isn't, isn't taken out of it And so.
A life like that and the believers is, is, uh, not gonna bear any fruit, uh, for God, There's no characteristic of the Lord Jesus Christ gonna be developed in a life like that. And we see that their king, Edgon, we just read about, he's a man that was marked by overindulgence. He was a very fat man. He spent time, uh, with his habits to take naps with his feet covered in his summer parlor. And our society and our culture glorifies that kind of thing. We can pick up a magazine that we can see celebrities on the beach and it looks like an easy lifestyle.
And we can get taken up, our hearts can get taken up with it. That's one of the enemies that that we have. And it's very interesting to see who God raised up in order to defeat this enemy was this man, this man E HUD. And if we look at this man E HUD, we see that he had a defect. He was a left-handed man. And I don't mean to slide anybody here who's who's left-handed. My mother is left-handed. But the point is, is that it wasn't the hand that was natural for him to use the margin read. It was shot of his right. He was shot of his right hand.
And I don't know if his right hand was deformed or if his right hand was injured, but the point is that it was defective. And, uh, he's not a person that you might naturally put forward as a potential deliverer for, for a whole nation. But as was pointed out earlier today, sometimes the Lord uses people that you would least expect in his service and in a way that you wouldn't expect in his service. But we also see that he was a descendant of Gira, one of Benjamite, uh, Benjamin's son. And we learned from Genesis chapter 20 that left handedness.
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Uh, characterized a lot of those Benjamites. So you could say here was a man who was flawed from a family who was flawed, and yet he had, uh, God used him. And we see here in verse 15 that he was sent to pay a tribute to this king who had enslaved the Lord's people for the last 18 years. It was a ratification, if you will, of their subjection, uh, to this king. And Israel was in such a terrible state that they sent this, the very one that God had chosen to deliver Israel. They sent him with this gift.
Umm, to the king. And I just want us to get a hold of this, of this point.
That there were the gifts that had been gathered, there were people to carry the gifts and, and was there in charge of the whole thing. And there was a king that was there ready to receive the gift. My point is, is that there was a whole system in place and all Ehud was expected to do was play the role that had been assigned to him by other people. And everything would have gone just fine. Everything would have continued on, uh, in the way, umm, that they, that they had for the last 18 years. There was a system of things in place and, and he was deliver these gifts.
And I know enough of you young people, I'll speak especially to you right now. I know there's a lot of gift just not leaving you guys out, but right here, there's a lot of gifts. There's intellectual gift, there's athletic gift, there's social gifts, there are musical gifts, many different kinds of gifts. Uh, in this world, in this world has a system and it has a use for your gifts. It wants your gift and it will use them. But our time that we have here is very, very short.
And we shouldn't allow the gifts that we have to keep us in subjection to this world. It's not wrong to exercise your DS, but let's not get our heart taken up with it. Let's not let those gifts display the Lord Jesus's claim in our life. So here's this man, Ehud, and he has all these gifts, but he had a different plan. What did he do? He made himself a, a, a dagger, A2 sided dagger. It was his first resource. It was his only resource. And this of course, is a picture to us of the living word of God. And this is the crux of what I wanna say.
You know, Hebrews 412 Says the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. In Ephesians 6, we read that we're to take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And Ehad made this thing himself. And I believe, uh, that this time this speaks of time alone. You know, he had to go to a forge. And what do you find at the forge? You find fire, you find a hammer, you find an anvil, you find water. And you think about that picture of him there, you know.
We were talking earlier today about the fiery trials that we passed through and the circumstances that hammer on us and it's tough and we we get formed and we have the water there maybe a picture of the Spirit of God that will will harden these things in our heart.
I don't know exactly how to say that, but you get the point. And it's a process that's repeated again and again. And sometimes it's, it's in the fire, the fiery trials will be passed through that the Lord Jesus has made precious to our hearts. It's the times that, that, uh, the word of God is made real to our hearts and, umm, uh.
You know, it's a picture I believe Second Timothy 215 study to show myself approved unto God a work fund that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And so it speaks, I believe a skill in scripture and experience in application. We have to go through trials sometimes, umm, to reach that point. And when it was all done there, umm, you looked at this thing and, uh, it wasn't even long enough to be called a sword. It was just called a dagger, umm.
You know, we've, we've been hearing these meetings for three days and we've, we've heard brother, and that'll give us the four aspects of this and the three aspects of that. And seven times this is mentioned and the 10 times that is mentioned. And you know, if you're like me, sometimes you feel that your knowledge of, of scripture doesn't, doesn't quite measure up. I, I don't even have a sword. Maybe we have a dagger. You know, it's a dagger. And, and maybe we feel our left handedness when we, when we try to apply it. But there's a word of encouragement here because it wasn't, it's not the length of the sword.
That that brought the victory. It's not which hand used. It was the application of it and all of it that brought the deliverance here. Here was the man who was willing to ram the whole thing from the tip of the blade all the way to the hill into the situation at hand. And that's what brought the deliverance. The word of God applied in the power of the spirit, The life of the believer is what is going to bring us deliverance. It's also very interesting to see how you wore, uh, this sword. Two things he girded under his raiment. It was worn internally. He wasn't waving it around, showing the quality of the craftsmanship to his brother and saying, look at this. No, it was internalized.
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And I believe that this speaks to us of the fact that, that the word of God shouldn't be like an intellectual exercise, a recitation of doctrine, but the Lord would like us to have it in our inwards Pennsylvania part truth, in the inward part that speaks of the heart being affected by these things and not just being able to recite a doctrinal truth. And then we see that it was upon his right thigh, you know, it wasn't strapped on his left side. That would have been the normal way for a soldier to carry a, a, a dagger or a sword.
But, umm, he strapped it on his right side. Umm, the, the choice of weapons and, and, and how it's used has to relate to the person that that's using it, right? So he had to strap this thing on in a way that was useful to him. And David understood that basic concept before he went down to face Goliath, didn't he? He took Saul's armor and put it off him and he picked up a lowly, lowly sling. So the dagger had to fit Ehud in a way that, umm.
What's gonna be useful to him? Umm, and I think there's a lesson here that we can lose, uh, our spiritual effectiveness and the conflict that we have if we try to imitate somebody else. You know, God has made each of us, uh, different, with different flaws and, and, and different, uh, uh, weapons, if you wanna put it that way. You know, I, I get so encouraged when I just look at the first few chapters here of Judges that I made a little list of a few of the people that God used.
And the tools that he used there was E had a left-handed man that was using a short sword before him. Uh, we read of Osneal and he, he was not a first born son. That was quite a deal on the day. He was a younger brother of Caleb. Uh, after this there was jail a, a woman Speaking of weakness, no offense, but that's what it speaks of weakness using a, a, a, a tent nail, a lowly tent nail to defeat Sistra. And then we have, uh, Shamgar who used a weapon that was seemed wholly unsuited for the work. And yet he flew, I believe it was 600 men with that thing. So God has a special work for each one of you. We, we don't have to try to imitate somebody else.
Because, you know, Shamgar didn't use a nail from a tent and, and, and he had, didn't use an ox coat. God had a purpose for each one of each one of you. And if you feel your flock, you feel your left handedness, if you feel the shortness of your, of your sword as as I do, umm, the Lord has a purpose for us. He's not going to use you like the person next to you. And then we find that verse 19 that he had a secret message under the king. You know, it wasn't a public battle that took place like David and Goliath.
But it was one that took place in, in private. And if we're gonna overcome the world, it's a battle that's gonna take place in, in, in private. And then in verses 21 and 22, we have a very graphic, uh, uh, description of this violent act that Ehud committed against Eglon. And when we use the word of God in self judgment, it is a violent process. And it's a complete process that says the half went in after the blade so that he could not draw the dagger out or an old nature too must be exposed.
Uh, for what it is. And while it was a violent operation, we don't read of any struggle that Eglon gave them. We don't read of any stream, uh, we don't read of, of, of, of, of anything. And the reason for that is because that, that dagger was no match of, of the Eglon was no match for the dagger. And the, the point I wanna make here is that the weapon that we have is a divine one. It's a living word of God. And there's nothing that the world can say when we apply the word of God.
Uh, to us and to those tenancies in our own hearts to want, uh, the easy life. And umm, then we find that in verse 23, he shut the doors at the porch upon him and he locked them. And so this, I believe, would speak of us not dwelling on our past, but shutting the door behind us and going on to victory. Read of that victory in verses 27 and 28. The results of the act, the, the fruits of victory are reached and they retook the Fords of Jordan. They, uh, they cut off the way of entrance that the enemy had into the land.
And there was a victory, there was 4 score years of, of, of, of, of rest that was given to the land. You know, that's a lifetime, That's a strong lifetime. And how encouraging it is to see the older ones that have been walking in the path of faith for, for many years and you see the peace and the rest that they have. They're not struggling with this world, but what an example they give to us. And so I just would offer this as a word of encouragement to all of us to, umm, give the word of God, its rightful place.
In our life and we too are going to have deliverance until we reach that final deliverance, which actually may still be this evening, but that's what I had in my heart. Umm, maybe we could just commit ourselves to the Lord, but I give thanks to our freshmen too, probably. OK, let's give thanks. Gracious God, a loving Father, we thank you for this, uh, little passage in my words, uh, that's here to encourage us. We thank you for these three days that we've had, uh, with thy word open and considering, uh, something of the trials of life, considering thy great love. That's how it's had to us. We thank you for our Kirkland brother and we've opened their, their hearts and their homes and their Bibles to encourage us and.
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So that our understanding of thy beloved son would be deep in our appreciation of him.
Would be made more real to our hearts. And so we just ask the blessing on them and the remainder of our time together. We thank you for the, the food we're about to enjoy together as well. We ask a blessing on our conversation. And two, we would ask for safety as, uh, people will be traveling home tomorrow. And we just take one more opportunity to, uh, just pray in a special way for Jeff and Heidi and the Coleman family and just ask a blessing on them. We asked all these things, Lord Jesus and the most worthy and precious name, Amen.