Judges 3 - Sinistrality

When I was in Grade 8, I did a project on sinistrality (sin-iss-tral-i-tee). How about that for fancy words you don’t hear every day? Sinistrality means “being left handed,” and I learned some really cool things while working on that project. Like, did you know that only 1 in every 10 people is left handed? That means that if you’re in a class of 30 kids, only 3 of you should be lefties. Don’t believe me? Then check for yourself the next time you’re bored in class how many of your classmates write with their left or right hands.

                                

At my house though, I’m actually the odd one out. I’m right handed, but my parents are both left handed. As a result, I’ve learned to do some things with my left hand – like using a computer mouse – without even meaning to! My parents keep the mouse on the left side of their keyboard, and I just thought everybody did it that way. It was only after I started seeing mice on the right side of the keyboard while at school that I learned to use a mouse with my right hand. Which means that now, I’m ambidextrous with computer mice! (That’s another fancy word that means I can use both hands equally well to do something.)

Actually, it’s because I’m a rightie and my parents are both lefties that I decided to do that project in Grade 8. But it’s also the reason I like today’s story. Well, that and because some of the things that happen in this story are absolutely ridiculous.

So today, we’re going to be talking about how God prepared a guy named Ehud in an unexpected way to do an unexpected job. This job was being a judge. No, not like those people who sit behind a big desk in a courtroom and bang a hammer on the table. Judges back in Bible times were very different.

See, for a really long time in Israel’s history, the Israelites were stuck in what we call the “cycle of disobedience.” God had promised the Israelites that as long as they worshipped Him and obeyed His law, then God would protect the Israelites and they would live happily in their own land. But after a while, the Israelites started to disobey God. They mainly did this by worshipping the false gods of the nations around them made out of wood and stone. Soon after that, the Israelites would start breaking God’s law even more by being mean to each other, stealing from each other, and doing a whole bunch of other terrible things.

Now because the Israelites were disobeying so much, God stopped protecting them, just like He had said He would. And when that happened, one of the nations around Israel would come in and conquer the Israelites. This other nation would turn the Israelites into slaves and make their lives so miserable that they would cry out to God for help.

This is where the judges came in. When the Israelites were truly sorry for disobeying God and begged Him to save them, God would raise up a judge who would rescue the Israelites from their enemies. Sometimes the judges even stuck around to make sure that Israel got back on the right track and started listening to God again. And because the people were worshipping God and following His laws, God would protect Israel! At least, that is until the Israelites started to disobey again…

Side note: Each of us has to deal with our own mini cycle of disobedience too. Even though God has told us how we should live, every single one of us has disobeyed God. And because of that, our lives have been taken over by an enemy power too: sin! But thankfully, when Jesus died on the cross and rose again, He broke this cycle for us. This means that when we call out to God for help, Jesus rescues us from sin’s power! And even more importantly, when we believe in Jesus and ask Him to forgive us for all the times we’ve been bad, there is nothing we can do that will separate us from God’s protection and put us back under sin’s power. The cycle of disobedience, for us at least, can be broken!

Unfortunately for the Israelites, however, Jesus hadn’t come yet during the time of the judges. This means that even when the Israelites said they were sorry and tried to live rightly again, they would fail and get taken over by another nation again. Sometimes Israel would obey God for a long time (like 80 years), while other times they stopped obeying after only a few years. But eventually, the Israelites would start worshipping other gods and disobeying God’s law. And then the cycle would start all over again.

This is exactly what was going on when the Bible introduces us to Ehud. The Israelites had disobeyed, which meant God stopped protecting Israel, which allowed the Moabites to come in and conquer Israel. But now the Israelites were crying out for help, so God chose Ehud to be the judge who would defeat the Moabites!

And let me tell you, the way that God wanted Ehud to get rid of the Moabites is pretty great. See, because the Moabites had conquered the Israelites, the Moabite King – his name was Eglon – demanded that the Israelites give him a bunch of money every year. So God told Ehud to pretend to be one of the messengers who was supposed to drop off some of that money.

But there was one big reason that God chose Ehud to be this messenger, and it has to do with that sinistrality thing that we talked about earlier. Ehud was left handed. Now you might not think that’s a huge advantage. After all, how does writing with your left hand instead of your right help you sneak into a castle? But the fact is that it was Ehud’s left-handedness that let him get into Eglon’s room with a weapon!

I should probably explain. Like I said earlier, most people in the world are right handed, which includes the soldiers of Bible times! And when a right handed soldier wasn’t using his sword, he would keep it in a scabbard (a fancy word for “sword holder”) on the left side of his body. Keeping the sword on the left side made it way easier for a right handed soldier to draw his sword quickly if he needed it!

But Ehud was left handed… This means that he would have kept his sword in a scabbard on the right side of his body. Now again, you might be wondering why that matters…

Well, Ehud couldn’t get into Eglon’s room until he got past some guards, and no guard was going to let a guy with a sword into the king’s room, no matter how much money Ehud was supposed to be bringing. Now Ehud knew that the guards would be expecting a right handed soldier, meaning they would be checking the left side of his body for a sword. But Ehud was left handed!  The guards probably wouldn’t expect a left handed messenger, meaning they probably wouldn’t check the right side of his body for a sword, meaning that Ehud would probably be safe.

Now that’s a lot of probably’s, and I’m sure that Ehud was still super nervous as he walked up to the guards. Ehud knew that if he got caught trying to sneak a sword into Eglon’s room, he could end up in jail or worse! But remember: God knows what He’s doing. God chose Ehud for this job because God had made Ehud left handed! So even though Ehud’s heart was probably pounding the entire time the guards were searching him, God had chosen the perfect person to do His work. There was never any reason to be worried! But even so, I’m sure Ehud was relieved when the guards let him pass without discovering his sword.

As Ehud entered, he told King Eglon that he didn’t just have money to give the king. Ehud also had a message to deliver. This would probably have confused Eglon. What could this mysterious message be? Was it a spy report? Was there a problem with the money delivery? Did Ehud want to recite a poem about Eglon’s greatness?

Whatever the case, Eglon wanted to hear it. And from the look on Ehud’s face, this message seemed extremely important! So Eglon told all the guards to leave. The guards probably looked at each other nervously – leaving the king alone with this stranger didn’t seem like a good idea – but they obeyed their king’s command.

When all the guards had left the room, Ehud took a step closer and said, “I have a message from God for you, King Eglon.” From God, thought Eglon. I don’t believe in that Israelite God! What kind of messenger is this? And Eglon was so angry that he got up from his throne. And, as we all know, standing wasn’t something that King Eglon did very often. I’m sure you can guess why…

No? Oh, sorry, I probably should have mentioned that King Eglon was kind of fat… Well, more than just kind of. Eglon was a REALLY big man. He was so fat that when he stood up, his whole body jiggled a little bit!

“What is the message?” Eglon said, growing angrier and angrier by the second. But before Eglon could say or do anything, Ehud grabbed his sword (with his left hand of course) and plunged it into Eglon’s stomach.

Now this is where this story gets kind of gross. The Bible tells us that Ehud didn’t even pull the

sword back out of Eglon’s stomach again. In fact, because Eglon was so fat, his belly ended up closing overtop of the sword! (Judges 3:22, NIrV). Ugghh!!

And with that, our story wraps up pretty quickly. Ehud left Eglon out on the porch, locked the doors, and then got out of the palace as quick as he could. It took the guards a really long time before they found out what Ehud had done, and by that time, Ehud was well on his way to rounding up the Israelites and getting them ready to fight. And when they did, God gave Israel the strength to beat the Moabites and kick them out of Israel!

But what’s so great about this story is who God chose to be his judge here. Some of you will remember that we talked about Samuel a few weeks ago and how God is willing to use anyone to do His work, no matter how old! But what we learn in the story of Ehud is that God makes each of us special for a specific job God has chosen for us.

God knew exactly the kind of person that He needed to lead the Israelites to freedom. He didn’t need the strongest person or the biggest person. The guards would have probably stopped those kinds of people right away. Instead, God made Ehud left handed – something super uncommon and unexpected – so that Ehud could easily do the job God wanted.

God used the thing that made Ehud different – that made him unique! – to defeat the Moabites. Now you might not be left handed, but there are all kinds of things that make us all unique. And you probably can’t even imagine how God might use those things that are unique about you to do something incredible!

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And speaking of unique people doing incredible things, we’re going to be diving into a three part story starting next week from the book of Ruth. God used the people in these stories to do some amazing things, and I hope you’ll come back next Thursday to hear how it all begins. I know I’ll be there!

~Brentagious