Right Hand Man

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

In the early 90s, I collected baseball cards and one of my favorite players was a pitcher named Jim Abbott. Jim is famous for being the only one-handed pitcher to ever play Major League Baseball.
Jim was born without a right hand. He kept his baseball glove tucked under his right arm and had to quickly move it to his left hand after every pitch. From little league, to high school, to college, to the pros – every team tried to exploit his disability by bunting to his right side.
But Jim played in the majors for ten years and in 1993 he pitched a no-hitter for the Yankees! It’s one of my favorite underdog stories.
And I have another good one for you today… my favorite story in the book of Judges. We will continue our Road to Emmaus series in Judges 3.
7 And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
8 Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia. And the people of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim eight years.
9 But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel, who saved them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.
10 The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he judged Israel. He went out to war, and the Lord gave Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand. And his hand prevailed over Cushan-rishathaim.
11 So the land had rest forty years. Then Othniel the son of Kenaz died.
There are two things I want us to pause and notice here.
First, this is the pattern in the book of Judges. The people of Israel start worshipping false gods. God then gives them over to their enemies. The people cry out to God and He sends a deliverer. That’s the pattern of the whole book.
Second, notice that Othniel is a typical warrior-type leader. His story is simple and unremarkable… and that’s on purpose, because the writer wants us to focus our attention on the second man in chapter 3. Let’s read his story.
12 And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
13 He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites, and went and defeated Israel. And they took possession of the city of palms.
14 And the people of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years.
This is an embarrassing failure… crushingly embarrassing. If you know a little Old Testament history, the Moabites were the descendants of Lot – Abraham’s nephew. In fact, Moab was the lovechild of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his own daughter after she got him drunk!
The Moabites had also been afraid of Israel during the conquest of Canaan. And so, it brought great shame on the nation of Israel to be conquered by Moab. They even lost the city of Jericho – the city God had miraculously given to Israel when they first entered the promised land.
And now they were forced to serve a wicked king for eighteen years.
This was an embarrassing failure. We are supposed to feel it. We are supposed to hang our heads and mourn that the people of God would sink so low. Conquered by cowards. A devastating loss.
Surely you have felt like this at some point in your life. I know I have. There have been moments when I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, “Mike, what is wrong with you? How could you? What were you thinking?”
Sin is embarrassing failure. Idolatry is embarrassing failure. It leads to death.
But there are times when God allows us to taste that failure – that shame and guilt – for a purpose. He bruises our egos on purpose. Pride cannot flourish in the midst of embarrassing failure and sometimes that is the only way to humble us.
Think of the way Peter must have felt when he saw the risen Christ. Think of how it must have felt to look Jesus in the eyes. Could he even do it? Knowing that he had abandoned and denied his friend and rabbi? But God used that failure to humble Peter and make him a better leader.
Sometimes embarrassing failure is part of the plan. Now, watch how God turns it around.
15 Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man.
This is really funny in Hebrew, because “Benjamin” means “son of the right hand”. So, Ehud, a “son of the right hand” is “left-handed”.
But it actually means more than that. The Hebrew suggests that Ehud was physically unable to use his right hand – as an obvious handicap or a physical deformity. He was not only left-handed but possibly disabled in some way from using his right hand, or else specially trained to use his left hand instead of his right. You’ll see why that is important in a minute.
The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon the king of Moab.
16 And Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes.
17 And he presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man.
18 And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute.
19 But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said, “I have a secret message for you, O king.” And he commanded, “Silence.” And all his attendants went out from his presence.
20 And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, “I have a message from God for you.” And he arose from his seat.
21 And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.
22 And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.
23 Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them.
24 When he had gone, the servants came, and when they saw that the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, “Surely he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber.”
25 And they waited till they were embarrassed. But when he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them, and there lay their lord dead on the floor.
26 Ehud escaped while they delayed, and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Seirah.
27 When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim. Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he was their leader.
28 And he said to them, “Follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies the Moabites into your hand.” So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over.
29 And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men; not a man escaped.
30 So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest for eighty years.
31 After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an oxgoad, and he also saved Israel.
And this is the book of Judges. It’s like the wild west of the Bible!
Judges 3 is a story about a political assassination and a rebellion, but the hero is not someone we expect.
Othniel was a typical warrior-type leader with a brief story. Shamgar was a typical warrior-type leader with a single line. Those men come before and after Ehud.
But Ehud gets a longer story because he was the most unlikely person to lead a rebellion. He was not a typical warrior-type hero. As I mentioned, he was possibly even a physically disabled man. Ancient civilizations were very cruel to handicapped people. If you had a physical ailment, everyone assumed you were being cursed in some way.
If Ehud had some deficiency or deformity in the right hand, as I believe he did, then he was not a natural born leader. But that also made him the perfect assassin. How can you get a king alone with an enemy? Put him in the room with an enemy that he would never see as a threat!
And that is what happens. Ehud is able to gain a private audience with Eglon because no one regarded him as a threat.
This is often God’s way. He’s in the business of producing unlikely heroes. He uses unlikely people on purpose – not by accident. And the Apostle Paul tells us why in 1 Corinthians 1:
25 The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 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.
27 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;
28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
This is the cycle of Judges and the heart of our story today. God humbled His people, allowing them to suffer an embarrassing failure. Then God used the most unlikely of men to deliver them.
In Corinthians, Paul goes on to explain that the power of the Gospel is always manifested in this way, because the greatest act of God to deliver His people was the cross of Jesus Christ.
And that was a deeply humiliating, even shameful display – for the Son of God to be tortured and killed in a violent and public execution. They mocked him for what looked like weakness. “Come down… save yourself if you can.” Why would the all-powerful Creator and Sustainer of the universe allow something like that to happen? And then use it to help people who deserve what He endured?
That is the nature of unexpected grace. Grace is never expected, because it is never earned. That has always been God’s way. He uses the weak so that His power is on display, not ours.
How should we respond to this? Our world doesn’t give much honor to the weak or the humble. But how is God calling us to respond?
Well, some of us may need to be humbled – so that God’s power can be displayed in our lives.
And some of us may need to be encouraged. No matter what humiliation, or setback, or failure we have experienced, God can one day use it for His glory. He’s not done with you, and God always finishes what He starts.
The Apostle Paul dealt with something he wanted God to take away. He called it a thorn in his flesh. We don’t know what it was, but we know he wanted God to fix it. 2 Corinthians 12:
8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
We only know who Ehud is because God used his weakness. And the story isn’t even about Ehud, just like it is never really about me or you. It is always about God. Psalm 44:3 –
Not by their own sword did they win the land,
nor did their own arm save them,
but your right hand and your arm,
and the light of your face,
for you delighted in them.

Psalm 118:14-16 –
The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation.
Glad songs of salvation
are in the tents of the righteous:
“The right hand of the Lord does valiantly,
the right hand of the Lord exalts,
the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!”

The right hand of the Lord is Jesus – the unlikely hero who defeated death in the most unlikely way. God has raised Him to glory and by faith we are united to Christ Jesus in his death and resurrection.
We are people of embarrassing failures, but our God is the God of unlikely heroes and unexpected grace.