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Men, Judges chapter number three, we get into the book of Judges proper. Chapters one and two were introduction, and in chapter three here, we're actually going to talk about the three first biblical judges. You've got Othniel, the son of Kenaz, you've got Ehad, and then you've got Shamgar covered in this chapter. Now it says in verse number one of chapter three, now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan. So again, when the Bible talks about the Lord leaving these nations, it's because God's original intent was that the children of Israel would drive out all the nations of the Canaanites and inherit the entire promised land. They were supposed to get the whole thing, wipe out all the seven nations of the Canaanites, but because they failed to drive them out and they did not do the job completely, God said, well, I'm not going to do it for you. I'm not going to continue to drive them out. So I'm going to leave these nations here to test you, to prove you, to be a thorn in your side to see whether you'll serve me or not. Now the word prove in the Bible typically means to test something, okay? And so it says here that these nations are to prove Israel even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan. So what we're talking about is the next generation, the ones who knew the wars of Canaan, that's Joshua and his generation that came into the promised land, fought the battles, took over. Of course, they didn't finish the job, but they did, uh, take over the land. And then that whole generation died. Joshua died. All the elders that outlived Joshua died. And now you have this new generation that has not known the wars of Canaan. And it says in verse two, only that the generations of the children of Israel might know to teach them war at the least such as before knew nothing thereof, namely five Lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Zidonians and the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Herman under the entering in of Hamath. And they were to prove Israel. What does that mean? He blessed Israel by them to know whether they would harken under the commandments of the Lord, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. This might seem a little strange at first, you know, why is it that God wants people to learn war? You know, why does he want them to know about warfare or know about fighting? Wouldn't it be better to just have peace and to just not have to see the horrors of war and all the violence and battle? But here's why. It's that the children of Israel have been infected with all of these wicked, horrible, reprobate nations that they were supposed to drive out. They've been infected with that, and it's like a cancer among them and their sons are marrying their daughters and their daughters are marrying their sons. And so because they have this wickedness among them, it's just not possible for them to enjoy peace and just prosperity. The proof is that throughout the book of Judges over the course of 400 years, every time things are peaceful, every time things are going good, what happens? They start worshiping other gods. They turn away from the Lord. And so that's why God has to use warfare and use violence and use these other nations around them to get their attention, to wake them up so that they will come back to him. And it's a test to prove them and to see whether they'll keep his commandments because if they don't keep his commandments, then he allows these other nations to have the upper hand and then warfare is a result. Look, God wants us to have a peaceful life. That's his perfect will. But a lot of the problems that come in our life have to do with our disobedience. You know, if we would actually be a good steward of peace when we have it, then we could keep having peace. You know, if when things are going good, we keep loving the Lord, serving the Lord, making him the priority, then God doesn't have to bring war into our lives. But if we're gonna forget him every time things are going good and put him on the back burner and get busy with everything else, then sometimes God has to get our attention a little bit and it's our own fault. And we see here the children of Israel, they have to go through this because of their sinfulness and because they were mingled with the heathen. It says in verse 5, the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites, and they took their daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters to their sons and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served Baalim and the groves. And again, that word Baalim is plural. It means multiple different Baals that they worship. The word Baal simply means Lord, and so these false gods, they have their own false lords that they worship, and they call them Baal. And if you just look a little bit earlier in verse number 3 at the end there, notice there's a mountain called Baal-Herman, right? So that mountain is named after Baal, and you'll have Baal-Zeba, Baal-Ekron, Baal-Herman, all these different Baals that they worshiped in different geographies. So you know, this town over here has got their god, and then you go 10 miles away and it's a different god. You go 20 miles away, it's a different god. Probably the best analogy today would be India. You know, you go to India and you've got the god in this village, and then you go to a different town and there's a different god, different city has this other god. But the religion's all kind of connected in a sense. There's similarities where we'd look at all of it and say it's Hinduism. This is all Hinduism, but they've got this god, this god. It's the same thing here. You've got all these different Baals, but it's a similar Canaanite false religion that they all have in common. And so when the Bible says at the end of verse 7, they served Baalim, it's saying that they served these various Baals of different geographies, and they served the groves. Now what are the groves? Well, if you think about today, new age people, sometimes they like to go out in the woods to do their rituals or séances or, you know, whatever it is that they do to get in touch with the spirit world. And God specifically told the children of Israel not to worship him in the high places and not to worship him in the groves. So he did not want them to have these groves for whatever reason. These are places where there are trees, and that's apparently what the heathen would do. You know, they would go to the groves. And so God didn't want their worship to look like the heathen worship. So obviously there would technically not really be anything intrinsically wrong with going to a really high place and worshiping God. You know, going to the top of a mountain and worshiping God. What's wrong with that? Or, you know, planting some trees and worshiping God. But the reason why God prohibits worshiping in the high places or worshiping in the groves is because that's what the heathen do. And he doesn't want us to do what the heathen do. He doesn't want us to pattern our worship after a false religion. Does everybody understand that? You know, they're doing it. And it's the same thing with the word Baal. You know, the word Baal didn't start out as being a bad word. Because it just means Lord. And you'll even see that one of Saul, King Saul's sons, is named Ish-Baal. You know, man of Baal. But it just means man of the Lord. And so what you'll see, though, is that eventually in the book of Hosea, God says, don't refer to me as Baal. Don't call me Baal. Don't even use that word about me at all, okay? It says, thou shalt no more call me Baalai, but thou shalt call me Ishai. He's saying, don't call me that. Why? Because that's what the heathen call their God. They use that word for Lord about their God. You know, we don't want to use the same thing. You know, we don't want to call God Allah. Now, you know, is there anything technically wrong with the word Allah? Allah is Arabic for God. In fact, if you read the Old Testament in the original language, it says Allah in the book of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic. But here's the thing. Today, that name, even though it's just Arabic for God, it just means God, you know, that's become associated with Islam. So if somebody says Allah, you're just going to say, that's Islam. And so that's why we should never use that term. We don't want to like, hey, let's find some common ground with the Muslims. Hey, man, we're all worshiping Allah. I would never say that. Because I want to show that, hey, there's a difference between the God of the Christians and the God of the Muslims. You know, I wouldn't want to find that kind of common ground. I want to make sure that we know that Allah of the Quran is not the God of the Bible. Okay. So we need to understand that we don't want to try to be like other religions to reach them. You know, we should be distinct. We should be different. And so we don't want to make our church look like the false religion to reach the false religion or pattern our worship and say, oh, well, there's this really big church and let's pattern after them and we're going to pattern after the word of God. And we don't mind being different. We want to be different. We want to be distinct and not have a worship that's patterned after a false religion. You know, this is what's one of the many, many things that's wrong with the Roman Catholic Church. But they basically pattern their whole religion after paganism. You know, they took the Greek paganism and the Roman paganism where they worship all these false gods and they just adapted quote unquote Christianity where, oh, instead of all these different gods, you're just going to have a bunch of saints. So instead of having the river God, the forest God, the desert God, we're going to have the river saint, the forest saint, and the patron saint of this and the patron saint of that. There used to be a God for everything. Now there's a saint for everything. Hundreds of saints that the Catholics have and it's like, oh, this is the saint for when you lose something and you need to find it again. You pray to this particular saint. But if it's a lost person, you pray to a different saint than if it's a lost item. So you've got to know your saints. You know, and if you're a fisherman, you've got a saint and if you're a plumber, there's the patron saint of plumbers and the patron saint of carpenters and the patron saint of computer programmers and everything else, I don't know if they have that one yet. If not, they need to get up to date, you know. But the point is, you know, you've got a religion that is worshiping in the high places big time because they've got all these pagan looking temples and shrines and they've got idolatry and it's kind of hard to tell the difference between a statue of Mary and a statue of Athena or something, right? Isn't it kind of the same style in many ways? That's why it's called the Roman Catholic Church. And so what are they doing? Even if they had the right doctrine, which they don't, they're worshiping in the high places. They're worshiping in the groves. I mean, they're patterning their worship after paganism. And in fact, you know, what's with the monasteries? What's with the monks? What's with the nuns? Is that in scripture? Where does the scripture tell us about monks, nuns, monasteries? You don't find those things in the word of God, but you do find them in Buddhism starting around 500 BC before Christ. So what happened? They had Buddhists for 500 years with monks and monasteries. Right? Anybody who's seen a Kung Fu movie knows that, amen? But yet, Catholics come along and they borrow from Buddhism. They borrow from Hinduism. They borrow from the Romans. They borrow from the Greeks. Hey, we need to stick with what's actually in the word of God and not make our worship. I don't want somebody to walk in here and think, oh, this is just like the Catholic Church. This feels just like the Hindu shrine. This is just like a Buddhist temple. I don't want them to think that. I want to be distinct here. And so God didn't want them worshiping in the groves or the high places because he didn't want their worship or their terminology or their lingo to resemble that which was of a false god. So because they worshiped Balaam in the groves, it says in verse 8, therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he sold them into the hand of, and here's a good baby name, Cushan Rishithayim, king of Mesopotamia. And the children of Israel served Cushan Rishithayim eight years. And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer. So do you see how he got their attention? They're worshiping false gods. They're serving the groves. They've completely gone astray. But after eight years of Cushan Rishithayim, now they're humble. Think about it, maybe some of you, God put you through a rough period in your life. Maybe it was even eight years long or shorter or longer, but you go through that rough period and it gets your attention and now you're crying out to the Lord. Now you're praying. The key though is we don't want God to have to do that to us. Or if he's already done it to you in the past, you don't want him to have to do it again. So be smart enough to serve God when times are good. That's the main thing that I take from the book of Judges is hey, when things are going good, enjoy that 40 years of peace. Enjoy that 80 years of peace and don't make God have to slap you around to get your attention. And so he says here that God's anger is kindled and after eight years of this guy, they're crying out to the Lord. And God hears them and he raises up a deliverer. And the deliverer that he raises up is Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. So Caleb is obviously a powerful warrior, great man of God. And so his younger brother is following in his footsteps and delivers Israel. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, the Bible says in verse 10, and he judged Israel and he went out to war. And the Lord delivered Cushan Rishatthaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand and his hand prevailed against Cushan Rishatthaim and the land had rest 40 years. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz died. Here's what I want to point out. This is so key here. He judged Israel and went out to war. Why didn't he just go out to war? I mean why not just go out and fight the enemy and kill the bad guys? Because let me tell you something, the bad guys aren't the problem. Cushan Rishatthaim is not the problem, my friend. You want to know what the problem is? The wickedness of Israel. There would be no Cushan Rishatthaim if you weren't worshiping Balaam, if you weren't serving in the groves, there wouldn't be a Cushan Rishatthaim. So isn't it interesting that the book of Judges is all about these great warriors who deliver them, but what do they have to do first? They have to judge Israel first. People today, they don't like being judged. You know, planet fitness, the judgment-free zone. That's what people want, right? So planet fitness is a gem and they have this slogan, judgment-free zone. Okay, but let me tell you something, the house of God is not a judgment-free zone, sorry. The Bible says judgment must begin at the house of God. It doesn't begin at planet fitness, it starts right here, okay? And so people don't want any kind of a judgment or judging, you get up and preach the word of God and people say, oh you're judging, you're so judgmental, you say, hey, you know, you need to be pure when you get married. Don't sleep with someone that you're not married to, oh, it's so judgmental, hey, don't drink alcohol, oh, you're judging me, you're judging me for drinking, oh, oh, how dare you tell me not to cover my body in tattoos or cover my body in strange piercings or get drunk or take drugs or dress like a hoochie mama or hooker, how dare you, you're judging me. Isn't that what they say? But let me tell you something, that we need somebody to get up and preach God's judgments. Now look, obviously the Bible teaches mercy and compassion and love and all these things, but hold on a second, if we are going to be right with God and have God bless us, we gotta get the sin out of our life. And so we need someone to show us these things. That's why the Bible says to preachers, cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show my people their sins, show the house of Jacob their transgressions. Now look, I'm not going to walk up and confront people and tell, hey, here, you know, I've made a list of your sins, you know, I'm going to be dealing with the, you know, this other family next week, but you know, I've been focusing on your family, here's the list of sins. But look, I'm going to get up and I'm going to preach the word of God and I'm going to tell you what the judgments of the word of God are. And you know, guys like Othniel, they didn't just come in and say, alright guys, we're going to reform the military, we're going to learn how to fight, I'm going to teach you guys warfare, I'm a great general. No, they got up and they said, hey, we need to get right with God as a nation, we need to get rid of that idol over there, get rid of the groves, get rid of Balaam, quit worshiping other gods, we need to quit the fornication, the adultery, the drunkenness, the robberies, the murders, the abortions, the sodomites, hey, they got up and they rebuked sin and they judged the people and they got the people right with God and now they're ready to go into battle. And now they can win because the Lord's with them and they can even win against much more powerful enemies, against great enemies that totally outnumbered them because they were right with God. And here's the thing, when the preacher gets up and preaches against sin, it's not because he's mad at you or just, you know, he just enjoys just kind of just watching people squirm when he gets on their sin and just, you know, rip it on you. Folks, what's the purpose of the pastor getting up and preaching on sin? He's trying to help you get sin out of your life so that God can bless you. You're the one who gets blessed if you get the sin out of your life. You're the one who's cursed if you live a sinful life. So it's really in your best interest to listen and learn and get things right. And let's say someone who's actually close to you or maybe say your parents or your brother or your sister, you know, someone close to you actually comes to you or a friend of yours and says, hey, look, you know, what you're doing is a sin here. Let me help you. You know, how dare you? But here's the thing. That person probably loves you and is reaching out to you. Now, are there some people who have a bad attitude and just want to pick everybody apart? Of course. But you know what? Sometimes people in love are just trying to warn you so you don't go off the cliff. You know, they see you heading toward that cliff and they want to give you a warning. Okay. And obviously, like I said, there are people who have a wrong spirit and a wrong attitude that are going to just want to pick you apart and judge you in that sense. But a lot of times when people take you aside and correct you, rebuke you, it's done out of love because they care about you. You know, how many of us have ever seen a loved one heading toward the cliff and warned them? You know, we see them maybe mixed up with the wrong girlfriend or boyfriend or we see them dabbling in drugs or we see them begin to drink or we see them just making weird decisions or whatever. You know, and we do an intervention. Now, look, usually it's uncomfortable. You don't want to have to bring things up. You know, if you love people, if you care about them, you know, you say something, right? And I'm not going to ask for a raise of hand. Probably all of us have been there at some point where we had to intervene in someone's life, where we had to take someone and say, hey, look, you know, you're going down a dark path or hey, let me give you some advice. You know, let me just give you a warning here. Let me help you out. Okay. And today this is just considered the worst thing ever because you're judging and just judge not. But you know, the Bible tells us to judge. Now he says judge not that you be not judged for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged and with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again. What he's saying there is don't be a hypocrite. Don't judge people for stuff that you're guilty of and you got to first remove the beam out of your own eye before you try to remove the moat that's in your brother's eye. But there is a time and a place where judgment is appropriate. And we see that in the book of Judges, the deliverer here is a judge. He starts out by judging Israel. He doesn't say, all right, let's judge the Canaanites. Let's judge the Philistines. Let's go ahead and judge the mobiles. No, he's like, he's judging Israel and then Israel is ready to win. And I always loved how in the book of Acts, you know, they, when they're in Acts chapter seven, when, when Steven's telling that story about Moses and they say, who may be a ruler and a judge over us, you know, intended to say how to kill me as thou killest the, the Egyptian yesterday. And then the Bible says, God chose him to be a ruler and a deliverer. They see what they see as a judge. God sees as a deliverer because the judge and the deliverer are the same guy, aren't they? Othniel did what? He judged Israel and then he went out to war. So in verse 10, the spirit of Lord came upon him and the spirit of Lord allowed him to judge righteously and preach the word of God clearly and teach the rules that God wants people to live by. You know, and, and, and today everybody says, you know, we don't want a religion, we want a relationship. I want both, you know, I want a relationship with God and I also want religion, but you know, it's funny. I saw on my Facebook feed just this, it was a girl and just ultra short cut off shorts, super short shorts, Daisy Dukes, and she's wearing a t-shirt and it was, it was a sponsored ad for Christian clothing and it said on the shirt, no, it's not a religion, it's a relationship and she's in the Daisy Dukes and it's not a religion, it's a relationship and I'm thinking to myself, of course you don't want religion, of course you don't want the rules, but you know what Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. You know, I wonder what kind of a relationship you're going to have with your parents if you break all their rules. You think a child who breaks all their parents' rules is going to have a good relationship? No, they're not going to. Okay. So here's the thing. If we love Christ, we're going to keep his commandments and so that's how we're going to have a good relationship. So it's not like, hey, let me just put on real short shorts and just say, man, it's just a relationship. Well you know what? Tell the quality of your relationship with God when you're breaking his rules and you know what? I'm sorry, if you think there's nothing wrong with walking around half naked, you're wrong. Okay. Because the Bible tells us to cover our nakedness. The Bible says the women should be clothed in modest apparel and so sorry, Daisy Dukes don't qualify. Walking around your underwear doesn't qualify, but yet that's the Christianity that people want. That's what came up in my, in my feed in the last 24 hours, a Christian clothing brand and this is that, this is what they put forth, you know, and say, hey man, it's not a religion. It's a relationship. The Bible, the Bible used the word religion positively, pure religion and undefiled before God and the father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. So it's doing the work of the Lord, serving people and it's also keeping yourself unspotted from the world. Well, no wonder, no wonder people don't want religion today. They don't want to keep themselves unspotted from the world. They want to be super worldly and so it makes perfect sense why they would love that t-shirt. So the spirit of Lord came upon him. He judged Israel. He went out to war and he prevailed against him. Why? It's not because he's a better fighter. It's because God is on his side now that we've got the sin taken care of in Israel and got them worshiping the correct God and the land had rest 40 years. Isn't that great? 40 years of just peace, prosperity, enjoyment, things are great, but the problem is when things go too good, all of a sudden now people put the Lord on the back burner because things are going too good. Verse number 12, the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord and the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab against Israel because they had done evil on the side of the Lord. Look at this, God strengthened Eglon. Now look, is Eglon a good guy? Are the Moabites good people? Are they worshiping the Lord or worshiping a false god? God strengthened Eglon. Look when Israel does evil on the side of the Lord, he sides with their enemies. He's not just neutral. He's just like, well, I can't bless you anymore. I'll just be neutral. No, no, no. God actively fights against Israel by strengthening their enemy, Eglon, of the king of Moab. Yet today people think that, well, God's always on the side of Israel no matter what. Good, bad, right? Man, he's all, you know, you got to bless Israel. He's always on the side of Israel. Really? Even when they reject the Lord Jesus Christ? No, I think he's going to strengthen the king of Moab. I say, well, why would he strengthen the king of Moab? I don't know. You can ask him someday, but that's what he did. Because when God's people get out of line, he'll raise up enemies against them and he'll raise up enemies that are worse than they are and use them to punish. That's what happened here. So that's pretty profound here that the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel because they had done evil on the side of the Lord. God holds Israel more accountable than the Moabites. The Moabites have always been messed up. Israel was doing good. They knew the truth. And to him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin, and of whom much is given, to whom much is given of him shall much be required. So he strengthened Eglon. Verse 13, 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. Remember the first time? It was eight years. Now it's 18 years. 18 years is a long time. Think about where you were 18 years ago. How would you like to be serving Eglon all that time? How would you like to be enslaved or in bondage or in a bad... I mean 18 years is a long time. And you know what? After 18 years, they're ready to get right with God. The children of Israel, verse 15, cried unto the Lord. The Lord raised them up a deliverer. Eud, the son of Gerar, a Benjamite, a man left-handed, and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon, the king of Moab. Because here's the whole point. Why does a guy like Eglon want to take over Israel? For money, right? The love of money is the root of all evil. And when you look at the wars that are being fought today or wars that have been fought throughout history, typically there's a financial incentive somewhere. There's a financial motive somewhere. Wars are fought over resources, gold, oil, opium, whatever, trade. They want to make the money. And so that's what's going on here. They want money. So the reason a guy like Eglon or the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Amalekites, why would they attack Israel? They want Israel to pay taxes to them. They want tribute to be paid. So on a yearly basis or however often, they would have to bring the money. So they'd have to give a present. I mean, do you think that, man, we just really like Eglon. We're taking up a collection around the office for Eglon. Would you sign this card and put in $20? You think that's what's going on here with this present? We just really want to give him a present. They're giving him a present so he doesn't kill them. He's like a mafia boss or something. Or he's like the Vikings. The English had to pay the Vikings the Dane Gelt, it was called, where the Vikings will come in and raid and burn and pillage and take what they want. Or we can just pay the Vikings to leave us alone. So for many years, we're talking about almost 1,000 years ago, right? People in England, they had to pay money to the Vikings just to leave them alone. It's called the Dane Gelt. And so what we see here is something similar. They have to pay Eglon to leave them alone, you know, just pay taxes to these other nations. It's what we talked about last week and the week before about tributaries, right? So Israel is a tributary. They're paying tribute unto Eglon. So they send a present to Eglon. So this is going to be, you know, whatever gold, silver, precious stones. It could be whatever the minerals or fruits and vegetables or, you know, just whatever the good stuff, valuable stuff. They got to pay off the mob boss to get him to leave them alone. So they give a present unto Eglon, King of Bob. But verse 16, Eud made him a dagger, which had two edges of a cubit length. So a cubit is about 18 inches. It's about the distance from the end of your middle finger to your elbow, okay? So he makes a dagger this long. That's a pretty long dagger. And that length is going to become important later in the story. But anyway, you know, this is a pretty long dagger, right? So he puts this thing on his thigh, and he's left-handed, and he puts it on his right thigh. And the Bible says in verse 17, he brought the present unto Eglon, King of Moab. So he brings what, and we don't know what it was, you know, cash, gifts, money, gold, silver, whatever, spices. And Eglon was a very fat man. The Bible's not really sensitive about these things, the way it words them sometimes. You know, they could just say he was portly, he was stout, he was big boned. No, he was just a really fat guy, okay? He was a very fat man. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bear the present. So Eud is just part of this emissary group that's, you know, bringing the taxes, paying it to him. He sends everybody else away, but he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal and said, I have a secret errand unto the O king. So basically he leaves, you know, he brings the present, he leaves, he sends everybody else home, and then he comes back to Eglon by himself, okay? And he says to him, I have a secret errand unto the O king. Now a quarry, what's a quarry? They're mining. They're mining some kind of rocks or minerals out of the earth here. And he comes to Eglon and he says, I have a secret errand unto the O king, who said, keep silence. So he's like, oh man, you know, if it's a secret, I don't want anybody else to hear it. So you know, Eud is basically trying to get along with Eglon so that it's just the two of them, right? So he says, keep silence, and all that stood by him went out from him. And Eud came unto him and he was sitting in a summer parlor which he had for himself alone. And Eud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose 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. So he just goes for the biggest target, you know, he wants to hit something. So he stabs him with the dagger in the belly and it says that the haft also went in after the blade. So basically what happens is, remember, this thing's a cubit long, okay? And he thrust this dagger into Eglon's belly with such force that typically, you know, if you'd stab somebody with a dagger like this, it would probably stop at the handle, right? You know, the blade would go in and it stops. But you know, Eud had a really good follow through, okay? So he basically shoves this thing in so hard that the handle goes into his, you know, the blade goes in and the handle goes in. And he tries to remove it and he can't get the thing out because the hand, the fat just closes around it. And he's trying to yank this blade out and he can't because the fat closes around it. And then we have this statement at the end of verse 22, and the dirt came out. Now what does this mean, the dirt came out? Well, language changes a little bit over time and the English language has changed a little bit since 1611. When we think dirt, we're typically thinking of like soil. We're thinking of earth or soil or, you know, actual like dirt on the ground. But what the Bible actually is referring to here is dung. It's referring to excrement. It's basically referring to, you know, we use a restroom, that's the kind of dirt we're talking about here. So that's what that word means because those two words, the word for dung and the word for dirt, you know, are closely related. You know, I hesitate to tell this, but you know, when I went to Norway, you know, the first thing that the missionary told me, and I already knew this from studying Norwegian, but he told me, hey, he said, just, you know, I don't want you to freak out or anything, you know, but, you know, we use the S word a lot here because he said over here, it just means dirt. And it's the most normal word in the world to us. Your grandma will use it without even batting an eye. And so, you know, I don't want you to get offended if you hear me just dropping all these S bombs because of the fact that over here, that just, it just means dirt. It's just dirty. You know, if you read the Bible in Norwegian, you know, it's, it's talking about, you know, purging yourself of all the whatever of the flat, you know, it's just like you're going to, you're going to run into that word even in the, in the Bible, it's just, it's just a, in Norwegian, it's just a different word, right? So the point is, but, but in, but in our language, English, because English and Norwegian are very closely related languages, but in our, in our, uh, language, that S word is referring to excrement, right? Well, so you can see how this word dirt 400 years ago referred to dung, but today dirt is just referring to soil or earth. But not only that, but think about, we say things are dirty. It doesn't necessarily mean they have soil on them, does it? Cause we, if we walked into the gas station bathroom and there's whatever smeared around, we're going to say what? Are we going to say it's dirty, right? But that's what this means here. This is this, this word that when the Bible, and it makes sense what, you know, he doesn't have soil in him. Okay. And it's going to make more sense in a moment. So when he stabs Eglon, the Bible's pretty graphic here. It's pretty gross. You've got this super fat guy, you got an 18 inch knife going into this guy, handle and all, he's trying to get it out and instead of the blade coming out, something else comes out. The dirt comes out as he's yanking on this blade. And that's probably when he decided to give up, you know, because there's too much dirt coming out. So he apparently hit a certain, you know, uh, portion of the body that's used for excretion. You know, he must've, he must've hit the, you know, the intestines or whatever where this kind of, uh, dirt would be. And so the dirt came out and look what happened next. And you, you, you, you might be thinking to yourself, I don't know if you're right about that, Pastor Anderson. I'm not sure if you're interpreting the word dirt right, but look what the Bible says next says in verse 23, then Eud went forth through the porch. So he sneaks out the back door, basically he goes out the sliding glass door and shut the doors of the parlor upon, I realized they didn't have sliding glass doors back then. I'm just bringing it to life here. Okay. He shut the doors of the parlor upon him and locked them. And 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 cover at his feet in his summer chamber. Now why do they think he's covering his feet? What does it mean to cover your feet? Well, cover your feet in the Bible is a euphemism for using the bathroom. So basically get the picture here. He's got this little summer parlor and he sends everybody out. Eud's in there with Eglon and he stabs him, the dirt comes out, he heads out the back door and escapes and gets away. And so Eglon's in the parlor and by the way, before he had left, he locked all the doors. So he locks all the doors, gets out. So eventually Eglon's servants want to come back and talk to him. And when they get back, all the doors are locked and there's just a smell that they smell. You know what I mean? If you think about it, cause they're out there, that's why they don't say maybe he's covering his feet. They said, surely he covereth, surely he covereth his feet, you know? Because they smelled that smell. So then they wait. You know, they're like, we don't want to walk into that. We don't want to interrupt that. So they're waiting and waiting. It says they waited until they were ashamed. They waited until they get embarrassed, like, come on man, how long are we going to stand out here and wait? And so finally they end up breaking in. But here's the thing, because of this, it ends up buying Eud a lot of time because Eud's able to get out of there and flee and he can get really far away because they're a little embarrassed, they're probably laughing a little bit and they got the smell and they're waiting and you know, and hours probably go by. And that gives them a lot of time to get away, okay? And he gets away and Eud's able to rally the troops and basically say, hey, look, now's the time for us to strike because their leader is gone. And so, you know, when the enemy doesn't have a leader, they could be confused, they don't know who's in charge, they don't know what to do, and so that's a good time to hit them when they're vulnerable. So basically Eud assassinates Eglon and then he rallies the Israelites and says, alright, now's our chance, let's go, they don't have a leader. This is the time to strike, confuse them, get in there and fight them. Now, what is this, covering your feet is a term that's used elsewhere in scripture as well. If you remember, Saul is in the cave, he covers his feet. And this is just using the bathroom in any way, shape, or form, okay? Now why is it called covering your feet? Well stop and think about it. If you're a man and you're wearing pants and you go to use the bathroom, what happens to your pants when you go to use the bathroom? Where do they end up? Around your ankles and what are they doing? Covering your feet. So the Bible doesn't, the Bible uses what's called euphemism. It's sort of like when the Bible says, he lay with her, or, you know, he doesn't want to graphically describe what happened there, he just used the euphemism, or he knew her. And then here it's, you know, he covered his feet, it's just a way of saying he used the bathroom. Just like here's the thing, what do we say? Go to the restroom. You don't just go there and turn around and come back. You know, but we don't, you know, it's not polite to talk about these things. So therefore you use a euphemism where you just say, well, he covered his feet. Now one point that I want to make about this that is significant is that you'll have people that try to tell you, oh pants didn't exist back then. Which obviously pants existed back then. Pants have always existed, they're not that complicated, okay? It's a pretty standard invention of just having cloth on both your legs. But here's the thing, if these dudes were wearing a dress like a lot of the Sunday school materials show them in a tunic and a toga, you'd lift it up to use the bathroom and your feet wouldn't be covered, would they? But here's the thing, if you're wearing pants and you drop your drawers, now you've covered your feet. And obviously look, there are five, six different scriptures in the Bible that talk about men wearing pants. It talks about them wearing britches, hosen. But here's more proof that the Bible just, the standard term for a dude using the bathroom is that he covers his feet. He has to be wearing pants or making those, what's he going to do, just completely remove his clothing and wrap it around his feet? It makes no sense, right? It makes a little more sense that you just drop his pants, use the bathroom. And so obviously as some idiot preacher, I'm not going to name, said, well, you know, well, you think Saul used the bathroom in a cave? Yeah, I do actually. You know, and I've, by the way, I've used the bathroom in a cave. So there buddy, Trinity denying fool. But anyway, so this bozo that denies the Trinity tried to say, well, can't be used, you know, it just means take a nap. Taking a nap doesn't smell like whatever, okay? This guy, the dirt came out and they said he's covering his feet in there. It's using the bathroom. It makes sense. That's what, yeah, anyway, I don't want to go too far on that, but anyway, um, so they tarried till they were ashamed and behold, he opened not the doors of the power cause he's dead. Obviously. Therefore, verse 25, they took a key and opened them and behold, their Lord was falling down dead on the earth and he had escaped while they tarried. See that bought him the time. You know, he didn't even plan that diversion, but when the dirt came out, it was like, Whoa, this is an opportunity. You know, God worked that out obviously to distract them with that smell, confuse them and they don't know what's going on. So then, uh, that allows him to escape and he passed beyond the quarries and he escaped into Seirath and it came to pass when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in the Mount of Ephraim and the children of Israel went down with him from the Mount and he before them and he said unto them, follow after me for the Lord had delivered your enemies, the Moabites into your hand and they went down after him and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab and suffered not a man to pass over and they slew of Moab at that time. About 10,000 men, all lusty and all men of valor. Now what does that mean? What does all lusty and all men of valor? It's saying, look, it's not that the enemy was weak. It's that God's giving them the victory. It's not that the enemy was weak. It's that the Lord has delivered them into their hand. So it's telling us these weren't just 10,000 bad troops. You know, these guys are lusty men of valor. You know, the word lusty is just referring to their youthful vigor and vitality and their men of valor means they're not scared. They're not wimps. They're not cowards. They're brave men. They're energetic, youthful, powerful men, but God delivered them into their hand and their escape, not a man. Nobody gets away. I mean, it's just a, it's just a slaughter. They wipe out the enemy. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel and the land had rest four score years. That's 80 years of rest. That's pretty impressive. I mean, 80 years of peace. And you know what this shows is that, you know, it's possible to do the right thing, folks. It's possible to get right with God. It's possible to do the right thing. It's possible to have your children and your grandchildren serve God because, you know, you can last for 80 years here without having to have a major upheaval or battle or, or, or have to go into captivity or something. You know, 80 years, a considerable amount of time to serve God and be blessed. And so here's the, you know, what I would suggest to you, Christian young people, teenagers, youths that are here, you know, why don't you enjoy 40 years of rest? Why don't you enjoy 80 years of rest? You know, maybe your parents fought the battles. Maybe your parents came out of a rough background or, or, or came out of, uh, something sinful and you know, they fought their way into church and, and fought their way into the Christian life and they, they fought the addictions and they fought all the worldly influences and they've created a Christian home for you and they've created peace for you, right? Your dad, EHud, you know, he already stabbed the eglons of this world and he has created a peaceful land for you. Don't be an idiot. Don't be the one who screws it up. Why don't you start the 80 year clock right now and for the next 80 years serve God and enjoy peace. But eventually of course, you know, human nature, all good things are eventually going to come to an end and, and it always ends eventually, you know, 40 years, 80 years, whatever. But you know what? Let it not be on our watch. Let it be foolish descendants several generations from now. You know, let it not be my kids. Let it not be my grandkids. You know, let it be their, let it be my idiot great grandchildren that screw things up, but let it not be my kids. I want to be blessed under the third and fourth generation. Amen. I want 80 years of peace and blessings and prosperity on my family and I, you know, I want my great grandkids to do it correctly as well. I'm just kidding. But the point is, you know, we don't want to be the ones that mess it up after our parents fought so hard. I mean, look, this is a pretty cool story. Ehud's a pretty cool guy. This guy was, was, was pretty tough. He did a pretty, a pretty good, uh, stealth mission there. You know, you want to be the idiot to mess things up. 18 years, everybody suffers for 18 years. Everybody's miserable for 18 years. Ehud has the guts to fix it and, and, and, and he gets everything on track and he gets everybody rallied. He gets everybody serving God and then you're going to be the one to mess things up. Don't be that guy. Enjoy the 40 years. Enjoy the 60 years. Enjoy the 80 years. Enjoy the peace and prosperity that others have gone before you and fought the battles. You know, it's like this church didn't just spring out of thin air, right? This church was founded 15 years ago. There was nothing, right? And I had to work hard and, and sweat and bleed and weep and, and, and be used of God to start this church and now we're enjoying it. You know, it's, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot funner to go to a church with 300 some people in it that has all kinds of fun activities and social life and friends than meeting in my living room, you know, with eight people or 10 people. Now some of you were here back then and hey, it was, we, we enjoyed it. It was great. But you know what? We're enjoying it more now. Okay. So here's the thing. Let's keep it going. Let's keep on serving God. Let's keep thriving and let's keep growing. Let's not let the sacrifices of the past be in vain, right? You know, where you work hard and you do something, you know, you want to enjoy it and your parents, they worked hard too. You know, I worked hard to found this church, you know, through the, the Lord's work obviously. But what about what your parents did, you know, to, to establish a Christian home? You know, I founded a church, they established your home. You know, they worked hard to build a family, to, to have a marriage and to have children and to have a home and to, you know, uh, break some of the cycles, you know, of, of, of sin in their family history or, or from their background, you know, you don't want to mess that up. You want to enjoy that and you want to take what they've done and you want to build on it, right? We want to, we want to take what we've achieved here in the last 15 years and we want to build on it. We want to do more works for God in the future and, and start from here and go further. We don't want to start winding it down and running it into the ground and don't run your life into the ground. Don't run your family into the ground. Keep it going. Enjoy the peace. Verse 31, and after him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines 600 men with, with an ox code and he also delivered Israel. This is just kind of a little side note, a little anecdote, just giving this guy an honorable mention just for slaying so many Philistines. But at the end of that, in chapter four, verse one, it says, and the children of Israel again did evil on the side of the Lord when Ehud was dead. So we'd see this Shamgar is not really an era. Does everybody see that? Because it's more like when Ehud's dead, then that's when things go bad and it's sort of picking up where Ehud left off. So Shamgar is kind of a little commercial break thrown in here. He's not really an era. It's not like there's the Othniel era, the Ehud era, and the Shamgar era. Shamgar is basically just a great warrior who delivered Israel, sort of like maybe one of, I'd maybe compare him to one of David's mighty men or something. He's a man who's greatly used by God. He fought the Lord's battles, but the era was more like there's an Othniel era, there's an Ehud era, and then you're going to get into the Deborah era in chapter four. But Shamgar is just kind of thrown in there. We don't really know much about him except just that he's a warrior and that he fought the Lord's battles. He slew the enemies. Here's a funny story I'll tell you real quick here. If you've ever heard of the preacher Jack Hyles from yesteryear, he told a funny story. Back in the olden days, preachers, they would go around preaching a lot of the same sermons over and over again before the internet. I don't have that luxury because every sermon I preach goes on the internet. If I do a rerun, everybody's going to know it's a rerun. I don't want to do reruns anyway because it would be boring for me to preach the same sermon again. I want to keep preaching new sermons. But back in the olden days, preachers, they'd write a sermon and they'd take it on the road and they'd preach that same sermon all over America. They'd preach the same sermon 10 times, 15 times. And what's funny is when evangelists still do that even with the internet, it's kind of weird. There's all these MP3s and YouTube videos of the same joke, the same sermon verbatim. They don't get it. You can't do that anymore. It's 2020. Every sermon's got to be fresh. No leftovers. It's got to be fresh. Well, here's what's funny. So Jack Hiles, he was preaching at a school two days in a row, big giant Christian school. So he gets up and the first day he says, hey, who's ever heard of Shamgar? Who knows about the biblical character Shamgar? Nobody raises their hand or maybe one person raises their hand. So he preaches this big sermon about Shamgar. Well, he accidentally goofed up and he preached the same sermon the next day. He didn't realize, you know, because he got his wires crossed because you know, he's preaching all these different places. He's got like five, six, seven sermons. He's cycling them through. So he gets up the next day and he's like, hey, who's ever heard of Shamgar? Everybody raised their hand in the whole school because he just preached to them for like an hour the day before on Shamgar. So imagine the preacher coming to your school on Monday, preaches in an hour on Shamgar where he gets up on Tuesday morning and he's like, hey, who's ever heard of Shamgar? He's just like, and he's just like, he didn't know what was going on. Like this school is really teaching their students well. Like every, I mean, obscure Bible character, they all know it. They've got it down. You know, it reminds me of when you're watching the after the tribulation film and you're like an hour and a half in and I'm just like, who's ever heard of this movie Left Behind? And we've mentioned it like eight times, like leading up to that. But anyway, I don't know how brother Hiles preached for an hour on Shamgar because there's really not much here. So he, he must've been pretty creative. All right. So I don't have anything else to say about Shamgar except that fun story. All right. So the moral of the story with the book of judges, the thing we're going to see over and over again is just the fact that when things are going good, people let their guard down and they fall into sin and they put God on the back burner. And when things are going bad, they cry out to the Lord. And that's why God keeps having to make bad things happen. And you know, people are just like, why do bad things? We were just out soul winning this afternoon and, and, uh, or evening. And this lady said to us, she said, you know, well, why is it God protecting us from Corona? And I said, well, do you think that the, that our country has offended God? And she said, oh yeah, big time. And I said, well, there, there's your answer right there. You know, why would God protect America from every bad thing to come along when America is turning away from the Lord? So if America is going to turn from the Lord and ignore the Lord and serve mammon and, and, and turn away from biblical Christianity, is this going to surprise you if bad things happen? No, because it's like the book of judges. God's got to bring bad things in order to get our attention, but in our personal lives, we don't want bad things. I don't want bad things to happen. I don't want to go into bondage. I don't want to lose everything. I don't want to go through horrible, uh, chastisement and chastening for God to have to get my attention. You know what I want to do? I want everything when it's going good in my life. I want to look up to God and say, Hey, you've got my attention right now, even though everything's going good. God doesn't have to slap me around. So if you're smart, when things are going good, that's when you seek the Lord and you don't wait until you're in the fox hole and the bombs are going off and it's like, Oh God help me. You know, God said at that point, you know, he might just laugh at you at that point. You got to seek the Lord while he may be found, you know, and you've got to put God first in your life when things are going good, when you could be out enjoying and having fun. Hey, stop and get on your knees and pray and thank God and skip some of the recreation and go to church and said, skip some of the recreation. I'm for recreation, but you know what? Why don't you put some of that on the back burner and get involved in some soul winning and church and reading your Bible and praying while things are good, not like, Oh, I'm dying of cancer. Now it's time to seek God. Look, if you're dying of cancer, I'm for you seeking God. I want, I'm glad you're seeking God as you die of cancer. But you know what, how about those of us that are not dying of cancer? Let's see God to now let's not wait until things are bad. Let's serve. And look, I'm not saying bad things aren't going to happen. If you serve God, even when you're serving God, bad things can still happen. But here's the thing about bad things that happen when you're serving God. Even the bad things are good because all things work together for good to them that love God to them or the called according to his purpose. But when you're not serving God and bad things happens, it's just bad on bad. I want the good kind of bad in my life, not the bad kind of bad. You know what I'm talking about? I want the good kind of pain, not the bad kind of pain. You know what the good kind of pain is? The good kind of pain is like, you know, five, six, seven. The bad kind of pain is like, you know, cause you tore your muscles or something. The bad kind of pain is like, that's the bad kind of pain. I want the good kind of, I want to feel the burn of the good kind of pain. You know what? You know what the good kind of pain does? It makes you stronger, right? The bad kind of pain makes you weaker. It makes you laid up. You can't even work out, right? And guess what? When we're serving God and loving God and bad things come into our life, we're just like, yeah, I'm getting stronger, yeah. And then when we're not living for God and bad things happen, it's just like we blew out our knee. You know, we just blew out our shoulder, right? We just tore a tendon. That's what's going on when we're not serving God. Does everybody understand the difference between the good kind of pain and the bad kind of pain? So therefore, we want to make sure that we serve God and put him first even when things are going great, especially when things are going great. Why? Because we want to ride that wave. And you know what? The prosperity might last 40 years or it might last 80 years. I mean, in one chapter, we saw one example of 40 years of peace and we saw another example of 80 years of peace and peach. But which one do you want in your life? What do you want in your life? Do you want to have 40 years of good times and then it's just destruction or you want to go 80 years? I want to go 80. I want to go 100. You know, I want to go all the way. Guess who it's up to? It's up to you. God didn't just say, you know, you guys are a little too comfortable. Let's send in the Philistines again. No, it's because they're worshiping the roves. It's because they're serving Baalim. It's because they're patterning their worship after false gods. It's because they're marrying off their kids to unsaved people and mingling with the heathen. That's when he brings down the hammer. So let's be smart enough to serve God when things are good. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this great story, Lord, and Lord, I pray that people would just read the Bible because the Book of Judges is such an entertaining book, Lord. And I just pray that people would actually just realize how interesting these stories are, how enjoyable they are, and how much we can learn from them, Lord, and be inspired to serve you better, Lord. And so I pray that every single person would read their Bibles and learn from the Book of Judges and listen to these sermons and apply them to their lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Please take your psalm books and turn to hymn number 420. Hymn number 420, There's a Song in the Air, number 420. Let's lift it up nice and loud. Number 420. There's a song in the air, there's a star in the sky, there's a mother's deep breath, there's a baby's low cry, and the star reigns in sky, while the beautiful sing, for the manger of Bethlehem, great old St. Pete, there's a joy of joy for the wonderful earth, for the manger of Bethlehem, great old St. Pete, there's a joy of joy for the wonderful earth, for the manger of Bethlehem, great old St. Pete, there's a song in the air, there's a joy of joy for the manger of Bethlehem, great old St. Pete, there's a joy of joy for the manger of Bethlehem, great old St. Pete, there's a song in the air, there's a star in the