"And
the children
of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of
Jehovah: and Jehovah
strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because
they had done that
which was evil in the sight of Jehovah. And he gathered unto
him the children
of Ammon and Amalek; and he went and smote Israel, and they
possessed the city
of palm-trees. And the children of Israel served Eglon the
king of Moab
eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto
Jehovah, Jehovah
raised them up a saviour, Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite,
a man
left-handed. And the children of Israel sent tribute by him
unto Eglon the king
of Moab. And Ehud made him a sword which had two edges, a
cubit in length; and
he girded it under his raiment upon his right thigh" (Judges
3:12-16, ASV).
"And
Jehoshaphat
stood in the congregation of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house
of the Lord,
before the new court, and said... And now, behold, the children
of Ammon and
Moab and mount Seir, whom thou wouldest not let Israel invade,
when they came
out of the land of Egypt, but they turned from them, and
destroyed them not;
behold, I say, how they reward us, to come to cast us out of
thy possession,
which thou hast given us to inherit. O our God, wilt thou not
judge them? For
we have no might against this great company that cometh
against us; neither
know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee" (2 Chron.
20:5-12).
Ehud - Unity or
Joining Together
In
our last
meditation we were considering Othniel, the first judge. We
now come to look at
the second, Ehud. Ehud means "joining together", or "unity".
Another meaning of
his name is practically the same as the meaning of Judah, that
is, "praise" or
"confession". We shall see that these two things are really
all of one.
Then
it is said
that Ehud was a Benjamite, and that fact in itself carries a
significance,
because, as we know from the Word, Benjamin means "the son of
my right hand";
but it is said that he was left-handed, which looks like
contradiction, though
it is not. Then he made a sword with two edges, and the length
of it was one
cubit.
That
is all we
need say about Ehud, because in those features we have all we
need to show of
the features of Christ which lead to deliverance from a
wrongful bondage and
limitation into which we as the Lord's people may come by our
own spiritual
decline, and which lead us out into that fulness of life and
fulness of victory
which is the Lord's mind for us.
Unity
of God's People
The
name itself
surely is significant, and I wonder if in the Holy Spirit's
fuller and deeper
knowledge and understanding of things, this name itself does
not go to the root
of the matter - unity or joining together. That may not have
to be understood,
in the first place, in the collective sense. It is quite true
that a good deal
of the condition among the people of God in this book of
Judges was that of
intertribal conflict and strife. They were a divided people,
and we read of
several very painful exhibitions of their state of schism and
division.
Probably Ehud has something to say to that, and as he speaks
of joining
together, or unity, he indicates quite clearly that there can
be no going on
into the fulness of the Lord, no knowledge of the Lord's
fulness in life and
victory only as the Lord's people are together in love. That
is distinctly an
Ephesian characteristic. The body builds itself up in love,
makes increase by
love. The Lord's people come really to the Lord's fulness in
life and power and
fruitfulness by being together in the true concord and
fellowship of the one
Spirit, in the one Body. There is no doubt about that being
true, and if Ehud
has a message for the church as a whole, that is the message
very largely. We
have proved it to be true both by the positive and the
negative side of it.
There is always loss, arrest, paralysis and defeat when once
the enemy can
divide the Lord's people. That is a master method of his to
defeat the end of
God which is the coming into the fulness of Christ. And we
know, on the other
hand, that apart from any organising or human efforts to bring
about oneness or
union, and apart from all the mechanical contrivances of
registers and what-not
to make a people one, if they come together in one Spirit and
one testimony,
there is a very great spiritual increase; there is an
enlargement of the Lord
among them; there is growth, progress, a pressing back of the
horizon to a
great revelation, vision, and unfolding of the purpose of God.
That is surely
known to us to some extent at least. Get the Lord's people
together on a
spiritual basis, and you get enlargement and enrichment.
Unity
of the Individual
That
is one side
of it, but Ehud has something more to say than that, and what
he has to say is
very largely in connection with the individual. The
application is true to the
company, but it is just as true, and just as important, for
the individual. The
individual has to be united. The individual has got to be
joined together. The
individual has got to be a solid whole. Just as a
master-stroke of the enemy is
to divide the Lord's people collectively, to break into the
fellowship of the
saints, so a master-stroke of the enemy is to divide the soul
of the
individual, to make the individual two rather than one. If we
for one moment,
for one instant, have a question as to the Lord, and as to our
standing or our
relationship with the Lord, the enemy makes full use of that
doubt to bring a
divided state in our lives. This will cause conflict with
ourselves and a
continuous warfare going on inside; we are divided against
ourselves. A house
divided against itself cannot stand. The enemy always makes
full use of any
kind of uncertainty in our hearts in relation to the Lord to
bring us down into
bondage, and to destroy us and prevent our spiritual progress.
That is a thing
to be recognised. We know it, but we need to lay that to heart.
Any kind of
dividedness within that is of uncertainty, of question as to
the Lord, as to
our relationship with the Lord, as to our spiritual position,
or as to our
place in the will of God, lays us open immediately to a
watching enemy who
takes instant advantage of that uncertainty, and encamps upon
it, and seeks to
force a breach in our own souls to our undoing. The result of
any question like
that is always to bring us into bondage, to arrest our
spiritual progress, to
turn us in upon ourselves, and to make us totally incapable of
serving the
Lord's fuller and higher interests in others unto the fulness
of Christ.
That
is why it is
significant that the Holy Spirit takes care to give us details
like that. Ehud,
meaning unity, joining together, was a Benjamite, "the son of
my right hand".
Surely that means standing in the place of strength. It speaks
to us of our
standing in the Lord, and a standing in the place of strength.
You will know
what we mean when we speak of our standing. Have you any
question about your
standing before the Lord, about your position, about your
acceptance? Have you
any question as to whether, after all, your sins are all
remitted, that the sin
question has been fully and finally dealt with, as far as you
are concerned?
Have you any shadow of a doubt as to your acceptance by the
Lord and that that
acceptance is an abiding acceptance, that you stand there not
on the ground of
what you are? If that were the ground, you would not stand
there two seconds,
but on the ground of what Christ is you are able to stand
securely. Do you
believe that Christ is settled in the presence of God, without
any fear
whatever that He will be ejected? Have you ever thought that
Christ will ever
be turned out of God's presence? Do you think it is possible
through all
eternity that the Lord Jesus will be expelled from the
presence of God because
of something in Him that is wrong? Such a thought is
ridiculous. We would never
entertain such a thought. Well, that standing is yours by
faith. If you will
only, by faith, take Christ as your standing you come into the
Son at God's
right hand. That is what it means to be in Christ:
established, settled, fixed
in the presence of God.
A
true acceptance
of that will never make us careless, it will never leave room
for presumption,
it will never lead to the sin of saying, "Well, I am saved,
nothing will alter
that!" A true appropriation of Christ, which is a true
appreciation of Christ,
will always smite anything like that in our hearts. When we
come to the place
of faith's settlement in Christ as the Son at God's right
hand, we have beaten
the devil of most of his tactics, and are delivered from
paralysis. Have a
question about that, and you are defeated; it is into that
crack which defeats
you that the enemy forces his way and he will drive it home
until you become
two in one, fighting within, the house divided, ready to fall.
This
Son at God's
right hand speaks to us of our standing, meaning we are whole,
a unity; we are
one, we are joined together. There is nothing like this faith
position as to
our standing in the Lord to make us a solid whole, and to
defeat all those
forces of the enemy that would bring us into bondage and
defeat, uselessness
and barrenness. This eternal questioning about the Lord, our
acceptance, our
sins, how we stand with the Lord, what His attitude is towards
us, and a
thousand and one forms which this questioning takes, can
destroy unity.
Ehud,
the Benjamite,
speaks of the divine side of things, that we are established
as a unity on the
ground of our acceptance in the Son at God's right hand. We
know that he was a
left-handed man. Paul was a Benjamite, and he was a
left-handed man. The Word
does not say that anywhere, but he was. What is meant by a
left-handed man
standing in a right hand position? "In me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no
good thing." As for myself, I am weak. Left-handedness in the
battle is a type
of weakness. It speaks of man's own weakness; here is a man
who in himself is
weak, who is regarded as less than others, a man who is at a
discount, under a
handicap in himself, and yet is nevertheless in the Son at
God's right hand.
There
are two
sides: there is the divine side, and our side. These two sides
must go
together; they are not contrary, they are one. We have to come
to the place
where we recognise our left-handedness; that is, that in
ourselves we are
nothing, we are weak. When we have come to the full
consciousness of that, we
are in the strongest position. Paul was of the tribe of
Benjamin, but look at
the two sides of that man. Was there a man more confident,
more assured, more
certain as to his standing? See the words he uses of positive
conviction: "...hath translated us out of the kingdom of darkness
into the
kingdom of the Son
of His love" (Col. 1:13). It is all quite certain on that
side, yet he was
always ready to confess his own weakness, his own faultiness,
his own
worthlessness.
Do
not think you
have got to feel tremendously able and worthwhile in yourself
to have this
assurance. We have got to know how utterly worthless we are in
ourselves before
we can fully appreciate our standing in Christ, because it
brings us to the
position that it is not what we are, but what He is. God
demands that, and that
is where God's strength is found.
This
left-handed
Benjamite, a solid unity in himself, made a sword with two
edges. See the man
who wields the Word of God to good effect! We are not dealing
with all the
typical elements in the book of Judges. If we were dealing
with Eglon, and all
that that man represents, you would see the point, but we take
the positive
side. Here is the two-edged sword, which leads us to think of
Hebrews 4:12:
"For
the word of
God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints
and marrow, and
is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."
This
sword goes
right through, as did Ehud's.
The Spiritual
Application
In
applying this,
first of all let us say that the only man who can wield the
sword of the
Spirit, the Word of God, to real effect, is a man who is a
unity. When you and
I have this dividedness of soul, this question, this
uncertainty, we can never
use the Word of God to real effect. We shall never be able to
take the Word of
God into our hands and do real work with it for the
deliverance of others. We
have to be sure of our standing, our acceptance, and place in
the Lord.
Ehud
made his
sword a cubit in length. A cubit is a measure from the elbow
to the finger
tips, and you will see that a cubit is said to be according to
the measure of a
man. That cubit from the elbow to the fingertips is therefore
representative
of the measure of the man. Ehud made his sword according to
the measure of a
man. That does not mean that the Word of God is brought
typically down to human
dimensions, but it means that the Word of God was vitally
related to his human
life.
It
is just
possible to take the wonderful revelations of the Word of God
and use them, or
talk about them, out of all relationship to ourselves, without
our having a
living, practical relationship with the Word of God. The very
first thing that
the Word of God has to do in the one who uses it is to measure
him up and deal
with him. If you and I use the Word of God out of
correspondence with our own
lives, then we have gone beyond our measure, and we shall not
be effective. The
Lord is able to say, "That man is talking about something
which he is not
living. That is out of relationship; that is not true in
life." The Lord will
bring conviction on such a one sooner or later. The Word of
the Lord has got to
be brought into active, immediate relation to the life of the
one who uses it.
Ehud was such a man. He was in living oneness with the Word of
God, typically
speaking; and, being this kind of man, he dealt with and
destroyed the power
that had imposed itself upon the Lord's people, and led them
out into liberty!
We
have referred
to 2 Chronicles 20. Do you see the parallel? In that chapter
the enemies Moab
and Ammon were mentioned. They came against the Lord's people.
It is very
inspiring to notice that what we have been saying is closely
related to this
chapter. Here you have these forces rising up, and you notice
that Jehoshaphat
says that these are the people whom the Lord Himself
dispossessed, and gave the
land unto His people. These dispossessed foes sought to
repossess themselves
and dispossess the Lord's people. Jehoshaphat made it a matter
of the Lord's
purpose, the Lord's mind, the Lord's intention about this. He
says, in effect,
"You never intended this; You showed what You intended when
You drove them out!
Now it is not Your intention that Moab and Ammon should
dispossess Your people;
Your purpose is the other way round!"
Then
you notice
that everything here is a matter of strong confidence. We are
left-handed in
ourselves, "but our eyes are
upon thee"! The Son of the
right hand!
Then
listen to
Jehoshaphat later: "Hear me, O Judah, and ye inhabitants of
Jerusalem; believe
in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe his
prophets, so
shall ye prosper." Isn't that what Ehud means? "Believe in the
Lord your God",
get rid of all doubts, uncertainties; get rid of the
dividedness of heart; get
rid of the questions; stand solidly in your God, "so shall ye
be established".
You
see the
message to our hearts. If there has come arrest, limitation,
defeat and a
falling short of what the Lord intended, and the forces
against us have
obstructed our way and imposed themselves upon us so that we
feel incapable of
getting through, what is it that is said to us regarding the
way of deliverance?
The
first thing is
faith's laying hold of God's strength. The second is coming to
a settled place
as to all questions concerning our relationship with the Lord,
our standing,
our acceptance; getting rid of all dividedness of soul and
standing by faith
firmly in the Son of God's right hand. Then, on that ground of
faith's
assurance of the Lord, the faithfulness of God, the certainty
of His will for
our being in a place of victory, rising up with the Word of
God closely related
to our own lives to strike those forces that are besieging,
that are hemming us
in.
We
have in our
remembrance how the enemy tried this very thing with Martin
Luther. He tried to
divide his soul regarding his acceptance with God, by bringing
against him his
own left-handedness; that is, his own worthlessness, his own
weakness, and the
devil sought to write his sins over his head as a charge
against him. Martin
Luther said he felt himself going to pieces, sinking, and
losing confidence and
faith, until he recollected the Word of the Lord. Then he laid
hold of the Word
of God and rose up and smote the enemy by declaring: Yes, all
that is true
which you have said but you have forgotten one thing, "The
blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanseth from all sin." The devil left
him, and Luther came
out in victory. This is a simple, and well-known illustration
of this very
thing.
If the enemy can divide our souls with doubt, with
questions or
uncertainty, we are a bound and defeated people; but, taking
our place solidly
upon the fact of Christ our life, Christ our righteousness,
Christ our
standing, Christ our everything, and refusing this dividedness
of soul, we can
take up the Word of God and use it against the forces of evil
and cleave a way
through. The whole matter resolves itself into a strong
standing on the ground
of our certain union with God in Christ, and refusing all
dividedness of heart.
If the enemy could have succeeded with us, very few of us
would be where we are
today. The enemy can create dark, dense and thick atmospheres
so that it seems
that heaven is closed and hell circles around. Then he
immediately tells you
that the Lord has a controversy with you, the Lord has left
you to your own
devices, and the Lord is not with you any longer. The devil is
always the
accuser of the brethren. How are we going to escape? If we
give in, that is the
end of our progress, the end of our victory, the end of our
spiritual growth.
How are we going to overcome? By being united in heart with
God's testimony
concerning His Son, and, standing on that ground, to use the
Word of God, "It
is written...". It was after the Lord Jesus had said those
words that the devil
left Him. It was when Ehud had triumphed that the land had
rest forty years. It
would have been much longer if the people had not gone wrong
again. While we
stand our ground there is the rest and peace of victory. The
Lord speak that
word to our hearts.