Nathan George | The Surprising Strength of Weakness

Sunday Evening, November 30, 2025
Given by Nathan George | Pastor of Worship, Christ Covenant Church

The Surprising Strength of Weakness

Luke 1:5-25

Watch on YouTube

Download our mobile app

Transcript

If you would, please turn to Judges chapter 3. Leading up to tonight, I've had a couple people come to me and say, "Really? Is Judges chapter 3 one of your favorite passages?" They ask it almost with, at least with, some surprise, if not a little disgust, like, "Who are you, Nathan?” Well, I think the response is it was one of my favorites as a kid. I loved coming to this passage. It's like ooh, Judges. We get to read Judges now, whenever we were working our way through the Scriptures. So, it has sort of stuck there in the back of my mind as a favorite from when I was a little boy and thought the guts and the gore was really cool. Join with me in prayer, and then we will begin. 

Father, I do pray that you would open your word to us, that you would encourage us, that you would convict us, that you would cause us to lean upon your kindness and your mercy afresh. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. 

I suspect that one of, or some of, the most quoted movies in sermons are either from The Lord of the Rings or The Princess Bride. Tonight, it's The Princess Bride. And if you've not seen the movie, well, bless your heart. Near the beginning of the movie, two swordsmen meet. Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black. And after making their way up the Cliffs of Insanity, Inigo Montoya gives the Man in Black a few moments to rest before they enter a sword duel. It's one of the most watched sword fights in movie history, and it is hilarious and amazing. In any case, they begin, and by the way, the music background is just perfection. It's just great. Anyway, back and forth, over the rocks, under arches, like, gymnastic flips. It's just great. Just wonderful to watch. But at some point, Inigo Montoya is on the defense, being backed up. And yet, the Man in Black looks at him and says, "You're smile – why are you smiling?" And he says, "I know something that you don't know. I am not left-handed." And he switches his sword and begins to win the fight. And just before death is inevitable for the Man in Black, he says, "I ought to tell you something. I am not left-handed either." And the fight begins again. And you'll have to watch the movie to find out how it ends. They both had a concealed and secret skill. It's, of course, hilarious, and it's brilliant filming. And tonight, we get to read a story about a left-handed man. I'm going to have a bit of a longer intro, and then we'll read through the passage, section by section. 

Well, as you may know, the Bible contains several genres of literature. There's, of course, history, there's historical narrative, there's proverbs, there's poetry, there's lament, there's prophecy. And each of these types of literature, types of communication in the Bible, need to be understood according to its own nature, its purpose, its intent, its structure. Didactic passages, such as New Testament epistles, should be approached very differently than, say, a poem or a lament. Well, tonight, we're looking at historical narrative. It's both history and it contains elements of a good story. And there are several things to keep in mind when approaching these different types of literature. Think about – just with me, for a moment – think about a fable. What's a fable written for? Well, it's to teach you a moral lesson. At the end of a fable, you get “and the moral of the story is such and such,” right? Or take a fairy tale, on the other hand – it's written to give us a sense of our world through vivid imagination. It helps us make sense of our existence, emotion, good and evil, desperation – all these sorts of things – and we know that this fantastical storytelling, we intuitively know, it's not history. Phrases like “once upon a time” are very different than “in the third year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.” Very different opening to a phrase, a story. Leland Ryken says, "History tells us what happened. Literature tells us what happens." The interesting thing about certain portions of Scripture is that you sometimes have history and literature happening at the same time. It's actually a major feature of the Scriptures. When we come to passages like Judges chapter 3, we quickly realize that it is both history and a pretty amazing story. And this type of story gives us clues that it's connected to the bigger story of all eternity. 

When one comes to the story of, say, Hansel and Gretel – it seems like this has been the year of Hansel and Gretel in the George home. But when one comes to that type of story, that type of fairy tale, you intuitively know that we're not talking about history. It's also about no one in particular. You can't point to a Hansel in history or a Gretel in history. It's about no one in particular, but it is sort of about our shared experience in the world. On the other hand, our story about Ehud is history. So, they're very different, and yet there is a common thread, and that is that neither one are about you. They're not about you. It's, for example, it's a literary mistake to read Hansel and Gretel and then ask your child, “Now, were you Hansel, or were you Gretel, or were you the wicked witch, or were you the breadcrumbs?” No, that's the wrong way to read that type of literature. It's an educational mistake that kills the imagination and raises up a bunch of narcissists. That's not the purpose of a fairy tale, though there are parallels in the fairy tale that connect it to bigger stories. Even so, it's not an allegory. That seems to flatten and kill a good story. The breadcrumbs represent this. The gingerbread house represents that. It's a mistake to read a story like that and break it down into a textbook fashion. No, it's just supposed to grip your imagination, and the child is supposed to respond with, “Read it again!” And over time, these stories help little children deal, and adults too, deal with fear, emotions they don't quite know what to do with, the unknown, what's going to happen. That's the purpose of all these wonderful stories we've inherited through time. 

Given enough time to ruminate on the old stories, we begin to see similarities and parallels to the true, eternal story. But in our case, in everyone's case, your child is not Hansel or Gretel or the wicked witch. Rather, it gives you an intuitive sense of how to view the world. Likewise, scriptural narrative is not about you. Now, I know in our hymnals, we have a hymn, a song, called “Dare to Be a Daniel.” And while it might have been an inspirational Sunday school song at one point, that's not the way to deal with narrative. It's easy to accidentally turn narrative into a prescriptive or turn everything into a moral lesson or an allegory or worst of all, a textbook. Now, I'm not saying there's no room for grammatical detail, to dig into a passage, critical study. That's necessary. It's good for us to do that. However, for our purposes tonight, historical narrative, such as the one we're about to read, are to walk us through real history and, at the same time, lead us to what I'll call meta principles – big ideas that are supposed to shape our heart and shape our ideas, give us a sense of the reality in which we live. They help us make sense of guts and gore and oppression and deliverance. And therefore, at the same time, they're helping us understand a historical context and giving us a sense of our experience. They help us intuitively understand a little bit more about what God is like. 

In any case, it's not about you. It's not about me. So, don't – as we read this, don't think to yourself, am I Ehud or am I Eglon? Am I an Israelite? Don't think like that. It's just a story to be enjoyed, to capture your sense of imagination, or in this case, disgust or relief, and you should respond with, “Read it again!” And as you read it again, you begin to understand a little bit more about the character and nature of God. So, I have three sections here: the prologue, the story, and the epilogue. The prologue starts in verse 12. Judges chapter 3, verse 12. And I'm including just the first phrase of verse 15 as well, because there's an important point we need to make. Verse 12:

“And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites and went and defeated Israel. And they took possession of the city of Palms (that's Jericho) and the people of Israel served Eglon and the king of Moab 18 years. Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.”

We'll stop there for just a moment. We've seen this several times in Israelite history. And if you spend time in Judges, you see this over and over again. If they follow the Lord, they do well. And if they forget the Lord, the Lord uses the nations around them to chastise them. And when those nations grow too big for their britches – they grow proud – then the Lord rescues Israel and defeats the nations around them. That's the cycle we're in here in Judges. Also, I want you to notice a couple common refrains, especially in this section of Judges. Number one: “the people again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” And then number two: “then the people cried out to the Lord.” In his commentary, Dale Ralph Davis – who I'll probably refer to several times either as just Davis or Ralph Davis – he notes that there is nothing in this crying out that indicates that there was repentance connected to the crying out. It's an interesting point. He traces the Hebrew phrase za ak and comes to the conclusion that only three times – three or four or five times – is it connected to repentance. Generally speaking, it just means they were hurting, they were in distress, and they cried out. The scenario is this: they did evil, they were subjugated to slavery and oppression for 18 years, they cried out, and God has pity. The fascinating part about this is that God seems to care and act simply based on their distress. Even more fascinating is that their distress and their servitude was brought on by whom? Themselves. They sinned and entered into this servitude. Even so, God heard them when they cried out. God cared about their oppression. He cared about their problems, their pain. He could have said, "You idiots, you got yourselves into this fix. You get yourselves out of this fix." Have you considered the kindness, the extreme kindness, of God. He cares about your pain, your distress, your hopelessness, even if you've brought it upon yourself. Amazingly, at least on the face of it, repentance doesn't seem to be the prerequisite to turn to God. Pain seems to be the prerequisite. After all, didn't God love us while we were yet sinners? 

Sometimes I think we over-spiritualize our lives. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. Maybe we become a little fatalistic. We can begin to think that the Lord may care about our eternal state, but the fact that my leg was just cut off is just stuff that happens in history. Or he may care that I'm more sanctified this year than last year, but my failing business is just my problem. You've heard the old joke: what does the Calvinist say when he gets to the bottom of the steps he just fell down? Glad that's over. If we begin to think about life like that, we don't know the character and nature of God. We might think all that, right up until our leg is actually cut off or the creditors come calling. Then we have the emotional impetus to go, "Ah, Lord, help!” Your leg may have been lost because you were drinking and using a chainsaw. Bad idea. Your business may be failing because you were lazy and don't know how to take advice. And yet, though the Israelites were syncretistic and forgetful, when they finally buckled and cried “uncle” and could stand no more, they cried out. What happened? The Lord responded. He heard. He acted. When they hit the proverbial bottom of the barrel and they wailed for help, the Lord responded. Davis writes, "Who, then, can ever plumb the abyss of Yahweh's pity for his people, even his sinful people, who are moved more by their distress than their depravity." This kind of mercy and kindness, it could be taken advantage of, but of course, it shouldn't lead to license. As we learn from Romans 2, chapter 4, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing (and this is key) – not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” What's so incredible about the nature of God is that he moves toward the sinner first. Are you in distress? Maybe there's no immediate fault on your own or of your own. Cry out. Or maybe you can draw a direct line from your sin to your pain. Still, cry out. We need to know the riches of God's kindness. Cry out to him. Experience his forbearance, his forgiveness, his patience, and he will aid you in repentance. Now, I'm not trying to lay out a new one-size-fits-all method for repentance. That's not it at all – just merely pointing out that God responds to desperation. Are you sick of your sin? Cry out. Eventually, either life – maybe from overcommitment or accidents or looming death or disease or the effects of sin – whether generally or specifically, eventually it will bear down upon you. So, how long will it take? How much will you bear before you cry out? Before you cry “uncle,” before you look to the God who delights to save his people. Stupidly, sometimes I wait a long time thinking it's just my issue. Don't do that. I'm a great counselor. Don't do that. Cry out or sing, and if you can't sing, just whimper. Come, thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free – from our fears. Ah, what a good song. Let us find our rest in thee. Chapter 3, verse 15. Let's continue:

“Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. And the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjaminite, a left-handed man. The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon, the king of Moab. And Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length. And he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes, and he presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. Now, Eglon was a very fat man. And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute. But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said, ‘I have a secret message for you, O king.’ And he commanded, ‘Silence.’ And all his attendants went out from his presence. And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in the cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, ‘I have a message from God for you.’ And he rose from his seat. (That's Eglon, rose from his seat out of respect.) And Ehud reached with his left hand and took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly, and the dung came out. Then Ehud went into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him, and locked them. When he had gone, the servants came. And when they saw that the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, ‘Well, surely he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber.’ And they waited until they were embarrassed. And when he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them, and there lay their lord, dead on the floor. Ehud escaped while they delayed, and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Seirah. When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim. Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he was their leader. And he said to them, ‘Follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand.’ So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over. And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men. Not a man escaped. And so, Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel.” 

We'll stop there for just a moment. If I were a betting man, I would bet that this story was number one on the storytelling charts for a good generation. I suspect especially among the Benjaminites – they just probably loved this. Now, after my long introduction about how to read stories, the last thing I want do is pick this story apart. But just note a few earmarks of really good storytelling. There's suspense. What's going to happen? There's hope for deliverance. A weakness or an oddity then becomes a strength. There's a concealed weapon. There's deception and daring. There's blood and guts and details galore. There's even satire and making fun of the enemy. There's humor and surprise. There's even a little bit of potty humor in there. And we have embarrassment and foolery. And it closes with glory and victory and deliverance. That's essentially the outline of The Lord of the Rings. It makes for a great story. A quick note: the idols mentioned in this passage could be translated “carvings,” and they may actually be the stones that the Israelites set up at the Jordan. 

Also, it's interesting that our story hinges on the fact that Ehud was left-handed. Now, as you know, in general, left-handedness has always been a little less common and traditionally been seen as a weakness, unless you're a left-handed pitcher in the majors. But some older folks can even tell you horror stories about teachers rapping their knuckles if they were writing with their left hand, so that young students who are left-handed would write with their right hand. I've heard that. And in the last 20 years, it's changed, but for a long time, if you were left-handed and you wanted to play guitar, you just had to turn it from over here to over here. Such persecution in the world. Commentaries deal with this in different ways. Some say it was weakness, others say it was a strength. But I think we can confidently say two things. One, Benjaminites were known for being really skilled with their left hands. Probably ambidextrous, but at least we know they were really good with a sling to a hair's width. And number two, cultural expectations and norms and stereotypes have always been with us. And Eglon didn't consider a reach with the left hand to the right thigh to be a threat. And his assumptions turned out to be his downfall. Often a perceived weakness or a concealed power is a great strength, and all the little Benjaminite children probably would have sat just a little taller at this point in the story. 

Of course, while many find these little tidbits interesting, many others question this whole story in general. Why all the guts and the gore and even an assassination? Some have asked, "Really, should we celebrate this story? I'm not so sure. Doesn't it impugn God? How could God be party to such a story?” And of course, those who object will gladly watch a really dark thriller. But questions like this simply reveal that we're not in touch with the experience of 18 years of oppression, 18 years of theft, 18 years of a heavy hand on Israel – so much oppression. And after all this, an Israelite reaction to this story would have been nothing like our western sensibilities. They would have responded with, “Hurrah!” Some try to deal with what they consider to be embarrassing passages of Scripture by explaining it away. And I'm going to read a short paragraph from Ralph Davis. He writes this: “Their solution is such that Old Testament narratives don't mean what they say. For example, Ehud's dagger is the sword of the Spirit, a la Ephesians 6; the word of God that is sharper than any two-edged sword, a la Hebrews 4. But I doubt if King Eglon got the point that way. Or if we don't allegorize the text, we try to moralize it, especially by looking for what lesson it may teach us. The result: Ehud seems to be vengeful and hateful. Don't be like him.” 

Or how about a sermon on the peril of being alone, as if we're trying to identify with Eglon? Looking for a lesson dredges up some strange candidates, like how to make and use daggers or lefties make more successful assassins. This is decidedly not how a Benjaminite audience would have heard this story. First of all, they were supposed to hear a story that highlighted a God who delivers. A delivering God who personally opposes oppression. Through the telling and retelling of a funny and gross and crazy deliverance, they learned about God's character. When a story was – when this story, perhaps, was told around the family fire, there would have been children potentially laughing at the fact that the guards didn't get it. Don't they know we're all left-handed? Hahahaha. There would have been groans of “gross” and “yuck” and sympathetic pains and hurrahs and shouts. Eglon had it coming to him. Rise up, lefties. 

Stories are supposed to capture your imagination and give you a sense of the world, a gut intuition about God's created order. And they give us heart and culture-shaping ideas that are supposed to sink deeply into our bones. And the idea that should be sinking, or should have sunk, into the Israelites bones, and ours too, is that God hears, God cares, and he will not let the oppressor have the final word. He will deliver. What's fun about the story is that he used a man with a perceived weakness or a concealed strength to bring about deliverance. 

Finally, the epilogue. The epilogue is, “And the land had rest for 80 years.” All I need to say about this is to this culture and heart-shaping idea that we're supposed to have sinking into our bones, we add God gives rest. The big idea is he hears you, he cares, he will not let the oppressor have the final word, and he brings rest. You see, the story is not about us or whether or not we should be assassins. It's about the character and nature of God, who will not let the great, evil assassin win. This should shape both our hearts and our desire to repent. 

So, in wrapping this up, I suspect that you, if you have heard good preaching on the book of Judges, you have heard about this cycle of following the Lord and then doing evil in the sight of the Lord and then oppression and then the people crying out and then God delivering them, and then there's one more common phrase that I know you've heard before – and that is that then, whether we're talking about Othniel or Ehud or Deborah or Samson, each of these deliverers die off. And then, of course, the Christological point is that we need a lasting deliverer, an eternal deliverer, a savior. And that, of course, is an excellent point. 

But I'd like to conclude with two other ideas or parallels that I think can be drawn from the New Testament. Firstly, we read this earlier in the service, but 1 Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise." God chose the weak in the world to shame the strong. You see, to Eglon, Ehud was no threat. The wisdom of Eglon and his guards made him a sitting duck. Ehud's left-handedness, his apparent lack of power, or power concealed – he had a plan of devastating effect. The wise and the strong man were shamed, and the weak and the misunderstood were truly strong. That's sort of one of the big ideas that comes to us, and this should permeate our understanding of God’s created world. Then secondly, I wonder if we, like perhaps the Benjaminite children, ever react with similar exuberance when we hear that Jesus Christ came as a child. Do we ever react with, “Did Satan know what was going to happen?” Do we ever say, “Read it again!”? Didn't your heart soar in Kevin's excellent retelling of the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John coming? Yes, tell me the story again. Do we have the ability to hear the story of Jesus and think, "Ah, Satan's not omniscient. He probably couldn't see that death was going to defeat death." Satan and Jesus entered a duel, and all along, Satan was using his right hand, his strong hand. He played all his cards. He enticed Herod to kill off the babies. When that failed, there was Jesus – human, weak, frail. So, Satan tempted him in his weakness and his hunger, not at the Cliffs of Insanity, but at the cliff of temptation. Satan tried his best to foil this man. He turned God's own people against him. Satan was fighting dirty. He enticed a friend to betray him. He trapped him. Christ was weak. He could be killed. But Jesus replied, as it were, “I know something you don't. I am the ultimate left-handed man. I have been weak, but I am strong. I will be hung on a tree, but in doing so, I will deliver, and I will ravage your spoils, and you will not be able to take one that I have called my own.” Christ became weak, and his apparent lack of power concealed a plan of devastating effect, at least from Satan's point of view. And the great enemy, in all his short-sighted wisdom, in all his cunning, has been shamed. 

Two applications. Number one, God cares about your pain. He hears you. So, cry out. He may not fix every detail of your life, but he will bring a weary heart rest. And number two, Christ cares about your pain. Cry out to him. He will not let the oppressor have the final word. And he who became weak that you might be strong will deliver you from the great oppressor into your eternal rest. Please pray with me. 

Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set thy people free. From our fears and sins, release us. Let us find our rest in thee. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.