Southpaw Savior

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. He crushed his people's enemies through his own weakness like Ehud crushed Eglon. Just as Ehud's victory was a surprise to Eglon, so Jesus's victory came as a complete surprise to the forces of evil.

They literally didn't see it coming. The book of Judges shows you that God is going to send salvation in a way that nobody is expecting and a lot of people are going to miss. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and apologist J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today we are venturing into the book of Judges where God exposes the Israelites for their lack of courage. Has that ever been you?

I'm sure we've all been a bit exposed in this way at one time or another. Through this example, we'll discover how to overcome our fears and choose faith instead. Now, if you missed the first message in our new teaching series, you can always catch up online free of charge at jdgreer.com. Pastor J.D. has chosen an unusual title for today's message, Southpaw Savior. You'll see why in just a moment.

So grab your Bible and let's get started. Just out of curiosity, how many lefties do we have? How many Southpaws? Raise your left hand.

That's the right one. There we go. Several of our pastors got into a big discussion the other day as to whether it is in general an advantage or disadvantage to be left handed. One guy on our team who is himself a lefty says the disadvantages are pretty obvious. He said we live in a right-hand world.

There's just no way around that. He said, as a kid, when I had to learn to write it was always smearing ink across the page. Most scissors felt really awkward in my hand and still do. And he said good luck finding a golf club that works. He said are things that you right-handed people just take for granted?

You never think about. He said like when I hold my playing cards I can't see the numbers on the edge of the playing cards because they're made for people holding them in the right hand or a loaf of bread. When you're trying to cut a loaf of bread it's just you never think about it but it's you cutting it from the right. He said we have to cross our hands. A multiple choice test.

I cover up the answers as I'm trying to check what multiple choice I want to choose. He said are zippers. You've never thought about this righty. He said when you zip your pants every morning there's a little flap that makes it nearly impossible for a left-handed person to zip up their pants without it being awkward.

The advantages are not as obvious but they are there. Lefties are more likely statistically to be geniuses. You have a greater chance of having an IQ over 140 if you are a lefty.

What is the correlation? No one has any idea but it is true. In most sports opponents are not used to the movements that a southpaw brings so it introduces an element of surprise.

This is what made Rocky Balboa great as he was. Seeing underwater. Not kidding. I have no idea why but left-handers can see much better underwater than right-handed people. Throughout history pretty undeniable that left-handedness has been considered to be a weakness.

How have people treated this has ranged from the comical to the cruel. The Latin word for left is sinister which also means evil. The French word for left is gauche which means awkward. Even the English word left comes from an old English derivation that means weak. When I lived in southeast Asia when parents there would have a kid that was left-handed they were whenever they'd use their left hand they'd always smack their hand and say jankiri which means don't use your left hand.

Now to us that seems absurd. So you look back through history and you see that at various times left-handedness has been seen to be a weakness. Obviously that's not true but believe it or not that concept of left-handedness plays an important role in teaching us how God works in the world. One of Israel's first judges was a southpaw. The story that we're going to look at today is about a man named Ehud.

Ehud. Do you have a bible? Judges chapter 3 contains his story so begin to open it there. As you're opening before I really jump into his story I want to show you a little phrase that the author of Judges uses to set up these stories because it shows you the how God wants you to interpret these stories and how they apply to your life.

So he introduces the stories of the judges like this in Judges chapter 3 verse 1. Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test Israel by them that is all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars of Canaan. You remember Israel had come in and there was all these Canaanites there and God had promised to give them the land and when Joshua died there were still some left. Verse 2 it was in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war to teach war to those who had not known it before. What is the answer to the question of why God had left all these pockets of Canaanites in the land? Well in one sense the answer was that first generation of Israelites had not believed God enough to drive them out right? But did you see him there's verses a couple of other reasons why he did. Verse 1 do you see that he left the nations there to test them. Verse 2 it was in order that new generations might learn to fight wars in God's strength. Imagine that you were an Israelite child and you've just gotten back from from Sunday school or I guess Sabbath school and so you asked your dad you said dad today we learned that God had promised to give the Canaanite land to us and your dad says that is correct but dad there are all these pockets of Canaanites still in our land why are they still there and your dad says well that first generation grandma and grandpa and great-grandma and great-grandpa they didn't believe God enough to drive them out that's why they're there and so you as the inquisitive child responds you say but dad that's not our fault their sin is not our sin so after you know our great-grandparents grandparents died why didn't God just drive them out for us you know like through swarms of tracker jackers or hurt a wild billy goat or something like that and the answer if the dad knew judges 3-1 would be he did that to test us to see if we would choose God to see if we would learn to trust him to fight for us let me ask you do you ever wonder why God doesn't just cure us from sin the moment that we are saved I know some people that when they become Christians it's like whatever they were addicted to bam just gets turned off but more people I know continue to struggle sometimes for the rest of their lives against these same temptations why does God do that why doesn't God make us immediately pain-free why not go ahead and take us to heaven according to judges 3-1 and 2 it is to teach us to rely on his grace to teach us to fight in his strength the apostle Paul said that God leaves trials and weaknesses in our lives to keep us humble sometimes listen to this God will allow you to struggle with a lesser sin like anger or lust in order to keep you from a greater sin maybe the greatest sin and that is pride because if God suddenly cured all of your sinful tendencies in one kind of fell swoop the moment you got saved you would probably get really proud and think that you just dripped with spiritual awesomesauce and that you were really something that people ought to admire so God allows you to continue to struggle because he wants you to learn throughout your life that you are not saved because you became morally perfect you are saved as a gift of grace and God will allow these things to continue to plague you so that you will grow ever more dependent on grace because that's what spiritual growth means John Newton the writer of amazing grace wrote a letter to a friend 300 or so years ago he was in his mid-80s when he wrote the letter and what he said to his friend was he said now in my mid-80s I always thought that by this point in my life I would have been much farther past these sinful temptations that I dealt with in my 20s and 30s and 30s he said but I look at my life now in my 80s and these temptations many of them have gotten worse not better he said if spiritual progress is measured by you being free from temptations he says I'm actually spiritually regressed not spiritually progressed he said but I realize now that what real spiritual growth is is growing with an ever greater sense of wonder at the grace that God has used to save you and I know that God has allowed these temptations to continue in my life so that I would till my dying breath know that I am saved by amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me do you understand that about your life do you understand that's what spiritual growth is is continuing to learn that God's grace is what you are crediting the victory to and that God allows you to struggle that way sometimes I one of our pastors he's in his mid-50s we were talking this week and he said I was cleaning out my attic and he said I came across a thing of journals that I'd written when I was in my 30s he said and I started to read back through them and remembered why I quit journaling he said I quit journaling because every year I just rewrote the same struggles over and over again so my last entry is see previous year for the future he said you ever feel like that you ever feel like it just continues to cycle that's because God is is wanting to humble you and teach you what it means to fight in his strength and rely on his grace I've told you before that our first years told you last week their first couple years of marriage there were some rough spots to say the least in my marriage and you know I couldn't figure out why that was happening because I thought you know well hey I know God I love God she loves God we should just have a perfect marriage and from this point now I realized looking back but one of the things God was doing is he was humbling us humbling me because he knew that one day when I would talk to some of you in marriage problems he didn't want me standing up here on stage thinking well you just don't know enough of the Bible and you're not awesome like me and that's why you struggle he wanted me to know that my sinful flesh is the same thing as your sinful flesh and that what I really needed is God's grace and to boast in his grace and not of my strength so God allows us to go through these chapters so that the glory will be his and not ours that's what sets up the story in chapter three so if you look down in verse 12 you'll see the story of Ehud again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and because they did this evil the Lord gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel now Eglon was a bad man his name just sounds bad doesn't it Eglon that just sounds evil to me for 18 years he raped pillaged and murdered the Israelites again the Israelites cried out to the Lord and he gave them a deliverer Ehud a left-handed man literally it says in Hebrew he could not use his right hand which means he was probably disabled his right hand maybe it had been crushed or was just born withered now this was a society even more cruel to disabled people than our own so to have a guy whose right hand was useless would have meant that he was thought of as useless yet Ehud Ehud was brave and he was a man of faith he volunteered to deliver a tribute payment of gold to Eglon so he loads up his wagon with all this tax money and tribute money and extortion and he heads off to Eglon but he packs a little surprise verse 16 now Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a cubit long 18 inches or so which he strapped to his right thigh under his clothing he presented the tribute to Eglon who was a very fat man now that seems like an irrelevant detail doesn't it a gratuitous insult actually it's not verse 18 after Ehud had presented the tribute he said your majesty I have a secret message just for you and Eglon was like ooh a message a secret message this is like a hidden map on the back of the Declaration of Independence written in invisible ink he was excited about it so the king said to his attendants leave us and they all left verse 20 as the king rose from his seat Ehud reached for the left hand drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly now Eglon literally did not see this coming remember Ehud had a withered right hand so Eglon would not have seen him as a threat if he had seen him as a threat he would never have let him in his presence unattended but this is a disabled guy he doesn't even have a strong right hand so he's no threat verse 22 even the handle sank in after the blade and his bowels discharged now the NIV is actually being the NIV that I'm reading from is actually being a little bit polite there literally in Hebrew it says and the dung came out that's pretty disgusting right it gets even better Ehud did not pull the sword out and the fat closed in over it I meditate on that verse make that your scripture memory verse for the week I don't even want to imagine what that was like there was this loud sucking sound and then the blade disappeared you're listening to a new teaching series titled broken saviors here on summit life with jd greer if you would like to know more about this ministry or perhaps catch up on any teaching you may have missed visit us anytime at jdgrier.com and while you're there you can check out a daily email devotional from pastor jd that's delivered straight to your inbox couldn't we all use encouragement first thing in the morning to remind us of God's love for us to remind us where to fix our eyes I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy that we feel in our walk with God so why not cut those weeds away each morning with a specific word from the Lord and the best part the devotionals also follow along with our current teaching series here on the program so not only can you stay plugged in regardless of your schedule but you can also go just a little bit deeper each day into your understanding of God's word sign up for this free resource right now at jdgrier.com resources now let's return for the conclusion of our teaching today once again here's pastor JD then Ehud went out to the porch he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and then he locked them after he had gone the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked and they said he must be relieving himself in the inner room of the palace because that's what it smelled like right see previous verse verse 25 they waited to the point of embarrassment at first they you know made a few jokes hey you guys hear any movement in there no but I smell one uh you know and but then it got weird um then it got weird you can take the boy out of a job a youth pastor you will never take youth pastor out of the boy okay so when he did not open the doors of the room they took a key and unlocked them and there they saw their lord fall into the floor dead well by now Ehud is safely away from the palace and he rallies all the tribes of Israel who amassed their armies they rise up as one against Moab and verse 30 that day Moab was made subject to Israel and the land had peace for 80 years well again believe it or not some of the most essential keys for spiritual victory are found in this rather colorful slightly off color um somewhat disgusting story let me start with the most important i have five of them number one this story teaches us that god's savior would come in weakness god's savior would come in weakness with Ehud a very important trajectory has just been established in the book of judges and it is a completely unexpected one the book of judges you see is preceded by the book of joshua joshua had been a mighty general he led a strong israelite army he is exactly what you would think of when you think the ultimate warrior leader if i were going to choose someone to play him in a movie i would choose russell crow from gladiator yet even after a leader in success like that israel is still not faithful to god so just a couple chapters into judges the first major story of a judge that we come to after joshua is Ehud a left-handed crippled leader and at first he doesn't even fight with an army he kills Egwan all by himself it's only later that the army joins him to fight if i were casting for Ehud i would probably use Nicolas Cage the next judge is going to be deborah deborah is obviously a woman she is a story that we're going to get to in a couple of weeks she partners up with a somewhat cowardly man named Barack for this i would choose Meryl Streep and Ben Affleck this story is fascinating and how it elevates women which i'm going to show you but it shattered i mean the very least we see it shatters common israelite conceptions of strength that's what they're not thinking of is the replacement for joshua and whereas joshua and Ehud lead all the tribes into battle you're going to see that Debbie and Barack only lead two tribes though ten of them stay at home and only two go after that we come to Gideon who is a rather timid leader at first and has to be persuaded by god continually to actually go do it and then after he does he takes an army of 32 000 and god says i'm going to whittle that army down from 32 000 to 300 and with 300 he defeats the entire army of Midianites for Gideon i would choose Bradley Cooper then we have Samson who fights all by himself he is morally a scumbag and then he when he comes down to fight it's just him and he whips an entire Philistine army with the jawbone of a donkey for him i would recast Nicolas Cage because that man is a national treasure after the book of judges we come to David and David when we're introduced to him is a scrawny shepherd boy who writes poetry and sings songs and plays a harp and defeats a giant with a slingshot of course for that we would choose Justin Bieber do you see the trajectory going from Joshua to judges to first Samuel it's a very clear one we're going from strength to weakness we're going from Israel winning battles under the direction of a great warrior leader and to the strength of their army to god using a small weak shepherd boy who defeats the enemy by himself while Israel the Israel stands on the sidelines and watches and this points the way for the most unexpected and the most left-handed if you will of all persons Jesus Christ Jesus was an unlikely savior despised in fact and rejected by men you would never have looked at Jesus and thought there there is the savior of the world i hate to burst your bubble but he probably didn't look like Jim Caviezel he was poor he was probably not tall not great looking didn't have a commanding presence and he achieved the victory all alone just like David did on behalf of his people who did not lift a finger to help him he crushed his people's enemies through his own weakness like a who crushed egg-lon just as a huge victory was a surprise to egg-lon so Jesus's victory came as a complete surprise to the forces of evil they literally didn't see it coming the book of judges shows you that god is going to send salvation in a way that nobody is expecting and a lot of people are going to miss the way that Paul said this in the book of 1st Corinthians is Jesus was a stumbling block is a stumbling block to both the Jews and the Greeks because neither of them saw him coming you think stumbling block something that's in your path you don't see and you trip over it he said that's what Jesus was they didn't see him he was there but they didn't see him because when the Jews thought about salvation they were looking for a mighty warrior king who would rise up like Joshua that's what his name Jesus and Joshua had the same name by the way in Hebrew he was going to rise up and pull together the armies and overthrow all the Roman oppression Greeks were looking for a philosopher king who would educate and enlighten the world and dazzle them through his ability to come up with piffy statements and and insight nobody expected a savior who would not even own a home and be executed as a criminal in shame today people miss him because we're looking for a different kind of savior I heard Bart Ehrman who is the the skeptic over in the United States skeptic over at UNC Chapel Hill who teaches New Testament someone asked him in a debate one time what would it take to get you to believe in Jesus his response had he ended all suffering had he ended all suffering I would believe in him in other words Jesus is too politically weak to be a real savior from God but here's the question what if Jesus had a different way of defeating evil a surprising way because what if our main problem was not suffering on earth what if our main problem was separation from God what if the real tragedy was not that we suffer with cancer but that we die in the first place and what if Jesus saved us by removing that curse by suffering that curse in our place on the cross and then stabbing death in the heart with his resurrection so it would never have power over us again and we would look at the grave and we would say death where is your victory grave where is your sting because the sting of death is sin and the curse of sin is the law and Jesus has abolished them both listen church the entire bible points to Jesus the whole thing every single story when people ask me why I believe and trust in the Bible a lot of times what we point to is prophecy prophecy means things in the old testament that were written about Jesus before every guy here now there are two kinds of prophecy that are really convincing to me the first kind is what you traditionally think of with prophecy that's where you get these exact details about Jesus coming things like the fact that he would die on a cross and he'd be buried with rich people Isaiah 53 the fact that he would come into Jerusalem riding on the full of a donkey Zachariah chapter 9 that he would be betrayed by 30 priests of silver Zachariah chapter 11 that he would be born of the tribe of Judah Genesis 49 that he would be born in the city of Bethlehem Micah 5 2 and like 290 some others that are really impressive when you put them all together I mean they are very convincing I heard one mathematician say the odds of all 300 prophecies just kind of randomly coalescing on one guy is one in 10 to the 20 something power he said to put that in perspective he said cover the entire states the land area of North Carolina South Carolina Virginia and silver dollars six feet high and paint one of them randomly red and just you know out of all the millions that are in there billions trillions he said then take a blind man and kind of catapult him in there from somewhere in Maryland and let him choose one of the dollars silver dollars the chances of him choosing the one red silver dollar are the same as the chances of all 300 of these prophecies just kind of randomly occurring on Jesus Christ so yes it is very impressive when you see the specificity of prophecies but even more impressive to me to be honest is this kind of prophecy where you see that every page of the bible is telling the same story one that is completely unique among religions and that is that our salvation isn't going to come through strength it's going to come through weakness and surprise and substitution not strength and conquest that is completely unique among religions and it is told on every page of the bible and fulfilled to the letter in Jesus Christ God often uses the most unlikely people to accomplish his purposes that's one of the lessons we are drawing from this passage in judges you're listening to summit life with pastor and bible teacher jd greer this month we are offering a brand new digital bible study on the book of judges called broken saviors it's available to our listeners as a thank you when you donate to summit life the cool thing is that since it's digital you'll get it right away by email and here's the best part because it's electronic you've got our full blessing to share it with others or even use it in your small group or church so jd what makes broken saviors different from other bible studies on judges yeah well i think what makes it different is that we use this kind of approach called read examine apply and pray that's just a real simple little outline obviously spells reap it really i mean it'll help you with the book of judges but it also helps you anytime you read the bible right and um you're gonna find in there um throwbacks to the message itself you're gonna find some additional insights that maybe you didn't have time to get to and uh or maybe they just cut you know because it was the sermon was too long that happens a lot what they're gonna help you see is that these people that god used in judges they weren't exactly what you call role models i wouldn't do a lot of leadership you know great leadership studies out of judges but through these broken judges and broken saviors what you're seeing is patterns and questions that point us to jesus who is the truer and better deliverer the true and better judge um he's going to deliver us once and for all so yeah our goal in these isn't to help you learn to be like the judges you know the dare to be a daniel or i know daniel's not a judge but you know whatever it's like a deborah a dare to be a there you go see molly i want to tell you the feedback we get in this show is we need more molly the point is it's not how you become like the judges the point is how you hope in jesus so take a look today at jdgrier.com we'll send you this study today with our thanks when you donate to support this program call 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or you can donate online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich be sure to listen again friday when you'll hear more about the southpaw savior here on summit life today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries