Unlikely, Part 2: Ehud and the weakness God plans to use

Do something for me. Hold up your left hand. Wiggle your fingers and look at it for a second.

The first time I told this story, our whole church was sitting in the grass at the park, kids and dogs and lawn chairs everywhere, and a few hundred left hands went up. Now put it down, because this is the weirdest, most action-movie story in your Bible. The one your Sunday school teacher skipped on purpose.

Here's the idea to hold onto: the thing the world calls weakness is often the very thing God plans to use.

The Deliverer With the Wrong Hand

For eighteen years Israel paid tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. His name is related to the Hebrew word for calf, and the Bible tells us plainly he was a very fat man. Hold onto that. Then Israel cried out.

But when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man. (Judges 3:15, NASB)

Here's what most readers miss. Benjamin means "son of the right hand." And the Bible introduces a man from the right-hand tribe by telling us his right hand doesn't work right. The Hebrew literally means "bound in his right hand."

In that culture, the right hand was the hand of blessing and honor. The left was considered unclean. So here's God's deliverer: wrong-handed, from the right-hand tribe, sent to face the bully of eighteen years.

The Blade Nobody Checked

Ehud made a double-edged blade about eighteen inches long and strapped it to his right thigh. A right-handed man carries his sword on the left so he can draw across his body. So guards checked the left side. Nobody checked the right thigh.

The thing the culture called a defect got the weapon past security.

Ehud delivered the tribute, which means the protection money itself was his cover to get close. Then he came back alone and said, "I have a message from God for you." The king stood up, expecting a holy moment, and got the wrong hand instead.

The servants found the doors locked and assumed the king was relieving himself. That's honestly what the text says. They waited until they were embarrassed. By then Ehud was gone, blowing the trumpet in the hill country. Eighteen years of tribute ended, and the land had rest for eighty years.

My Wrong Hand

Every one of us has a wrong hand. Something the world called a defect. Your body, your mind, your personality, your past, your age, your address.

I spent most of my life hiding mine. I was nothing special in school. What nobody knew, including me, was why. I'm dyslexic, and I fight an attention deficit every day. But this was the eighties and nineties, and nobody was looking for that in a kid like me. There was just a boy who couldn't make the words sit still on the page, and a world that quietly filed him under "not that smart."

And think about what God did with that. He called a man who struggles to read to spend his life studying one Book and preaching it.

After high school I enrolled in Bible college, then dropped out within a year and joined the Army. People thought I was backsliding. Looking back, God was strapping the blade to the other thigh. The Army taught me how empty people are without Jesus. The weakness I hid for years is the reason I prepare the way I prepare and never stand in a pulpit trusting my own strength.

My wrong hand was never in spite of my calling. It has been the engine of it.

God Chose the Weak Things

but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong (1 Corinthians 1:27, NASB)

He didn't tolerate them. He chose them. Moses, who stuttered. David, the kid brother nobody invited. Peter, who denied him three times. And at full scale, the cross itself: God winning the greatest deliverance through the very thing the world despised.

Three Things to Take With You

• Don't hide your wrong hand. Give it to God.
• Look at the people the world overlooks. God is probably already looking at them.
• Don't miss your deliverance because it didn't look the way you expected.

This week, name your wrong hand out loud, first to God and then to one trusted person. Then ask him: how do you want to use this, not work around it?

Pastor Josh

This post is adapted from Unlikely: The Heroes You Read Right Past. Join us Sundays at 10 a.m. at 501 S Main St in Sheridan. Plan your visit.