? Iniquity ? ? Jehovah God the
great I am ? ? Forgives our sins through Christ the lamb ? ? Who
is a God like unto thee ? that pardoneth iniquity. His anger he retains no more,
his grace and mercy shall endure. A God of truth must punish sin,
but in His love He sent a man to satisfy the Lord's demands. For sinners numerous as the sands,
Who is a God like unto thee, That pardoneth iniquity, His
anger He ? Retains no more ? ? His grace and mercy shall endure
? ? Behold his love and compassion ? ? In the death of Christ his
Son ? The precious sin atoning blood reveals the love and truth
of God. Who is a god like unto thee? that pardoneth iniquity. His anger he retains no more,
his grace and mercy shall endure. He passes by the transgressions
of all his loved and chosen ones. In mercy God delights we see,
He cast our sins into the sea. Who is a God like unto Thee,
that pardoneth iniquity? His anger He retains no more. ? Mercy shall endure ? ? None can
with our great God compare ? ? He gives his son sinners to spare
? ? His anger he retains no more ? Christ died and God requires
no more. Who is a God like unto thee that
pardoneth iniquity? His anger he Please be seated. Good morning. That's a great
hymn. I want to ask you to do me a
favor. If you'll open your hymnals back to that hymn. There perhaps
are some hymnals that haven't been changed. The second stanza
that says, but in his love, he formed a plan. Our God is not
a God of plans. Our God is a God of purpose.
And we've changed those words to he sent a man. So if that
hasn't been adjusted in your hymnal, Please take a pen and
do that. He sent a man to accomplish his
purpose in putting away the sins of his people. And that man is
none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man. What great
hope. What great peace. If our God
was just a God of plans, we'd be in trouble. No, he purposed
everything for the salvation of his people. That's our hope. and that's our God, that's our
gospel. This will be on the back table
and it's a sign-up sheet for the cleanup schedule for the
conference, which will be here real soon. So if you'd like to
help out with keeping the building straightened up between the meetings,
please put your name on there, and we'll have that taken care
of. All right, so 14th, 15th, and
16th, is that right? Yeah. So that's three weekends
from now, is that right? All right, we're going to be
in the third chapter of Judges again this morning, if you would
like to turn with me there in your Bibles. He gave his son sinners to spare
is what we just sang. The gospel of God's free grace
in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ is for sinners. It's for sinners. It's only for
sinners. And it's for every sinner. My
hope this morning is that the Lord will cause us to see ourselves
outside of Christ as nothing but sin, and find ourselves in
Christ without sin, perfectly righteous. There's the gospel. And this is a faithful saying,
worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners. And then Paul said, of whom I
am chief. So may the Lord make each of
us the chief of sinners and cause us to flee in hope to the sinless
one for the salvation of our souls. Let's pray together. Our heavenly father, we come to this place again this
morning because you have brought us here. You have purposed the
events of our lives to have us here. And we pray that in this
physical place that you would give us ears to hear, to hear
your voice, to have you to speak hope and peace and comfort to
our hearts as we find all our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who himself is our life. We thank you for your word. We
thank you for how you blessed men to write for us the perfect
word of God. Lord, we pray that you would
send your spirit now just as you sent it then to Bless our hearts and enable us
to believe all that you've declared, all that you've said. We thank you for it and we ask
it in Christ's name, amen. There is a repetition in the
book of Judges that just keeps repeating itself. The children
of Israel sin against God. They turn back to their idols,
to their false gods. The Lord puts them into bondage
to the enemies of God. And in that bondage, they cry
out to God. And in response to their cry,
the Lord sends them a Redeemer. and then gives them rest from
their enemies. This cycle continues to repeat
itself over and over and over again. And sinners see themselves
in this history. For the children of Israel, it
was years between each of those cycles. And the reason for that was because
the judge died. When the judge died, the children
of Israel went back to their old ways. If our judge, the Lord Jesus
Christ, wasn't a living God, if he did not live in us, if
he did not promise to never leave us nor forsake us, the cycles
of our rebellion would be much, much longer than they are. So
what we see taking place historically for the children of Israel over
long periods of time take place in our own lives by God's grace
in short periods of time. We look away in unbelief. We try to find our comfort and
our peace and our assurance in things outside of Christ. The Lord lovingly rebukes us
and corrects us and puts in our hearts a cry of faith. We call out to him And he brings
us once again to see our hope in Christ and gives us rest in
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's history repeating itself,
and it's every believer's experience. And so I hope that the Lord will
show us this morning from his word how Merciful he is in delivering
us from this cycle of sin that we all find ourselves in. Notice with me in verse 11 of
Judges chapter 3, and the land had rest for 40 years and Othniel,
the son of Kinez, died. We're Judges chapter 3, verse
11. So as a result of Ophniel, the
Lion of God, a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, one of the judges
that God sent to deliver his people from their sin and from
their enemies, the children of Israel notice
in verse 12, and I get my title from verse 12, notice that the
verse does not begin with but, but it begins with and. And the
children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord. As soon as they lost sight of
their judge, they went back to their idols. And as I said, if
we didn't have a living judge, one that stayed with us and kept
us on a short leash, we would do the same thing. And yet, here's
our hope. Here's our hope. The Lord Jesus
Christ, raised from the dead, never to die again. He ascended
into heaven. He is seated at the right hand
of God Almighty. He sent his living spirit to
be with us and to comfort us and to convict us and to teach
us. And I'm just so thankful that our God keeps his dogs on
a short leash. He really does. And I pray the Lord will shorten that
leash even more for us. One of the means or one of the
ways that the Lord delivers us from our sin is to convict us
of the fact that our sin is all on us. Man has been playing the
blame game ever since the garden, ever since Adam accused God of
giving him that woman and it was all her fault, but really
it was all God's fault. It's amazing how proficient we
have become in accusing others of our sin, of our fault and
our problems. And yet when the Spirit of God
makes you to be a sinner, he makes you to own it all for yourself. And only then do we find ourselves
bowing and repenting and confessing and pleading with the Lord for
his mercy and for his grace. Notice in verse 12, and 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 in the sight of the Lord. And he gathered
unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek and went and smote
Israel and possessed the city of palm trees. Now, what does
Ammon and Moab and Amalek have in common? What do these enemies of Israel
represent for us? What do they teach us about the
gospel of God's grace? Well, all three of these individuals
are descendants or were the descendants of believers. You remember one
of the most shameful events in all of history and recorded in
the scriptures is found in Genesis chapter 19, when Lot, the scripture
says, a righteous man, a believer, who was delivered from Sodom, thank you, fled with his two daughters,
you remember? And his daughters got him drunk with wine, and
they ended up having an illicit relationship. And from that relationship,
his eldest daughter gave birth to Moab, and his youngest daughter
gave birth to Ammon. And then we have Amalek, who is a descendant of Esau,
who is a descendant of Jacob. So these enemies of the people
of God all came out of the people of God. My question is, who's our greatest
enemy? And where was he born? And the clear answer to that
is that your greatest enemy and my greatest enemy is our sin. And our sin is just as much a
descendant of us as Ammon and Amalek and Moab were of the people
of God. And it's not until the Lord enables
us to believe that that we can find any hope of forgiveness. to own our sin for our own. It must be, it's a work of grace
in the heart. I love the thinking about Isaiah
in the book of Isaiah in the first five chapters. Isaiah is
pointing his finger as a prophet of God and rightfully so to the
children of Israel saying, woe unto you, woe unto you. And then
in chapter six, in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah said,
I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And his train filled the
temple and the seraphim hovered over his throne and they cried,
holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. And when Isaiah
saw the Lord Jesus Christ seated upon his throne, what's the first
words out of Isaiah's mouth? Not woe unto you, woe is me. I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and
I live among a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the King. I'm, I'm, I'm a dead man. That's the work of the Holy Spirit,
isn't it? When God makes you to be a sinner. And it's all on you. You can't
blame anybody else. When David, you say, well, You
know, someone has sinned against me or they've done me wrong or
they've cursed me or something like that. And, you know, I have
a right to be unhappy and to be, you know, but yeah, there's
going to be a lot of that going on in the world. And yet I remind
you of 2 Samuel chapter 16, when David was fleeing the city of
Jerusalem after the overthrow of his own son, Absalom. And
David comes across a man by the name of Shimei, who is casting
stones at David and cursing David and calling David the son of
Baal. And David's commander, Abishai, says to David, let me
take the head off of this dead dog. Do you remember what David
said? David said, no, the Lord has
sent him. the Lord has sent him, all that.
You know, you see, as soon as we say, I'm not happy and it's
your fault, or, you know, I'm not at peace and it's your fault.
No, the reason that we're not happy is our fault. It's our
own sin. The Lord sends people and circumstances
into our lives to cast stones at us and to curse us and to
say all manner of evil against us. But the fact that we would
not see our problems as our sin is a lack of understanding. These things are all our fault. I thought about how you've had
people tell you, well, I don't go to church because there's
too many hypocrites there. And a person makes such a statement,
they don't realize all they're doing is revealing their own
self-righteousness and pride. You will never hear a sinner
make that statement. Why? Because sinners believe
themselves to be the biggest hypocrite of all. That's it. How can we look at someone else
and say, well, I'm not going to church because there's hypocrites
there. And by the way, what does a hypocrite being here have to
do with my need to be saved and to hear God and to worship God. What's that have to do with anything?
Hypocrites are at the grocery store and they're at the hospital.
They don't keep me from going there when I'm in need of food
or in need of medical attention. And I would say as well, if there's
a hypocrite standing between you and God, they're closer to
God than you are. We just don't think like that.
Sinners don't think like that, do they? The real reason men don't come
to church is because they don't have a need. Sinners, God's dogs
are found at the table where the crumbs fall down. And one crumb from the Lord is
more than all the things that this world has to offer for them. That's the message here. And
again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the
Lord, and the Lord gave them over to Moab and Ammon and Amalek
to be held in bondage by these enemies of God. Is this not our
experience? When we sin, we try to find some
other way out and someone to accuse, and yet the Lord in his
mercy convicts us and causes us to say, no, this is all on
me. And only then, only then do we
find hope in Christ. Only then do we find ourselves
crying out to the Lord to deliver us. Our Lord is always showing us
his tender mercy. He corrects us quickly, and so
very thankful for that. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
12. Hebrews chapter 12. Look at verse six. For whom the
Lord loveth, or yes, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. And this is the means by which
he chastens us. He causes us to see and to believe. that our sin is all on us. That's what breaks the heart.
And that doesn't happen until, like Isaiah, we see the Lord
in his glory and in his perfect righteousness, and we come to
conclude, woe am I. I'm undone. This is my problem. that Ammon and Amalek and Moab
are my descendants. It's my sin that has brought
me to where I am. Look at verse 7. If you endure
chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons. And what son
is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if you be without chastisement,
if you be without this conviction of sin, this realization that
it's all your fault, whereof we are all partakers.
All of God's people are partakers. If you don't, if you don't partake
of this, then you are bastards and not sons. You've been born
illegitimately. You don't really belong to the
family of God. Furthermore, we've had fathers
of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reference. Shall we not much rather be in
subjection unto the father of spirits and live? Here's what
this chastening does. It makes us to be in subjection
to the father of spirits. It makes us to bow to him. Here's
what happens again and again and again. This is the cycle
of sin, if you will. Sin and redemption and rest. And it just keeps repeating itself,
doesn't it? Go back with me to our text. The Lord raised up these nations,
and he will raise up in our hearts by his Holy Spirit. The Lord
said, it's expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not
away, the Comforter will not come. But when he comes, he will
convict you of sin, because you believe not on me. That's the
real problem, isn't it? It's our unbelief. Notice in verse 13 that when
these enemies smote Israel, they possessed the city of palm
trees. In Psalm 92 verse 12, the scripture
says, the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree. The city of
palm trees, the city of Jericho, it's a picture of the church. These palm trees, the trees of
righteousness, which are the plantings of the Lord, which
he has planted around the oasis of the river of life, the spring
of life that flows from the throne of God. And these palm trees
flourish there. This city of palm trees that
was taken possession by the enemies of God is a picture of what happens
when the believer in his unbelief is taking possession by his own
sin. Palm trees are not really trees
at all. They're not trees. You look it up. A palm tree is
in the grass family. It's not a tree at all. We call
them trees, and they sort of look like trees, but they're
a completely different species. And the scripture says, all flesh
is as grass. In Isaiah chapter 40, when the
Lord told Isaiah the prophet to speak a word of comfort to
the people of God, he said, comfort ye, comfort ye my people. speaking
comfortably unto Jerusalem, tell them that their warfare is accomplished.
Tell them that their sin has been put away. Tell them that
they've received a double blessing from God. He's imputed to them
his righteousness and he's taken away their sin. And you remember
the prophet Isaiah asked the Lord, he said, where do I begin?
What do I tell them to start with? And the Lord said, tell
them they're grass. Tell them that they're grass.
That'll be a comfort to them. Tell them that they have no righteousness
whatsoever. Tell them that they can do nothing
to save themselves. Tell them that they're completely
dependent upon me. That's the palm tree. And they
shall flourish. These trees that the Lord has
planted are really grass and they'll flourish. And you know,
another thing about a palm tree, most trees, the life of the tree
is right under the bark. but not so with a palm tree.
The life of a palm tree is right in the heart of the tree. And
that's where our life is. Our life is in our hearts. The
Lord comes to live in the hearts of his people. And this is how
the conviction of sin comes, when the Lord speaks to our hearts
and causes us to see that our life is in Christ. It's not in
ourselves. Other trees might carry it, skin
deep, but to the believer, it's a matter of the heart. So this
city of palm trees, I love in Revelation chapter nine, when
the fifth angel of judgment is sent by God to send a fire upon
the earth, the Lord tells this fifth angel, he says, and it
was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass. The judgment of God that was
going to come by fire against the world brought on by this
angel. The Lord said, don't hurt the
grass, but only them who don't have my name written on their
foreheads. So here's, here's the picture. The people of God, the city of
palm trees are taken captive by their own sin. And they lost
sight of Christ. And go back with me to our text. Look what happens. So the children of Israel served
Eglon, the king of Moab, 18 years. And when the children of Israel
cried unto the Lord, The Lord raised up a deliverer, Ehud. Ehud's name translated means
I will be praised. And here's our Lord raising up. You say, well, the Lord didn't
send a deliverer until they cried. That's true. But it was he that
put the cry in their heart. It was he that made them willing
in the day of his power. It was he that convicted them
of their sin and caused them to cry out. So we're not going
to enjoy the rest that our Lord gives us until we cry. We cry
by reason of our sin. We cry by reason of our unbelief. And the Lord sends a deliverer. He's the one who causes us to
cry. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
14. Look at verse 24. The Lord of hosts
hath sworn, saying, surely as I have thought, so shall it come
to pass. And as I have purposed, so shall
it stand. that I may break the Assyrians
in my land, and upon my mountain, and tread him underfoot. Then
shall his yoke depart from off of them, and his burden depart
off their shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposed
upon the whole earth, and this is the hand that is stretched
out upon the nations. For the Lord of hosts hath purposed,
and who shall disannul it? And his hand has stretched out,
and who shall turn it back? Oh, here's our Lord's hand. He's
the one that causes us to cry. He's the one that sends the enemies
to disquiet us and convict us. And then he puts in our hearts
a prayer of faith to cry out to him. And he sends a deliverer. He renews us in Christ. His mercies
are renewed every day. He delights in show. This is
a cycle of sin and redemption that is our lot in this world. Go back with me. Look at Ehud,
the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man left-handed, And by him, the children of Israel
sent a present unto Eglon, the head of the king of Moab. But
Eglon made him a dagger, or Ehud made him a dagger with two edges. What is this dagger? Oh, it's
the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. This is why
we're here this morning. Sinners have gathered together
in this place. And they've fought the fight
of faith, and you've struggled with your unbelief, and you're
hopeful that God will take His Word and make it a sword, a double-edged
sword, that it'll kill you and heal you at the same time. That's
what the sword of the Spirit does. It slays us. It causes us to see that, Lord,
we're dead left to ourselves. We have nothing but sin left
to ourselves. But what hope we have in knowing
that the Lord uses the other edge of the sword to bring healing
to our souls and to reveal to us once again the glory of our
Savior who has put away our sin. He's put them away by the sacrifice
of himself. He's buried them in the depths
of the sea. He said, I remember them no more.
The means by which God gives his people faith is his word.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of God. This
is that sword. And we're going to see that Ehud,
the one who is to be praised, was left-handed because the sword
was on his right thigh. And he reaches over with his
left hand and pulls the sword from his right thigh. And the
scripture, the scripture makes it clear that the sword of the
Spirit is at the right hand of God. It's on the thigh of the
Lord Jesus Christ, who we see coming in the book of Revelations
with his name written upon his thigh, King of kings and Lord
of lords. And his name is the word of God. And so the Lord takes his written
word and he reveals to us once again, the glory of Christ and
delivers us again and again and again from Ammon and from Amalek
and from Moab. Our own descendants who have
put us in the place where we are. Here's the picture. And here's the here's the gospel.
Look at look at. There's no salvation without
the Word of God. No salvation. And this is the word. which by
the gospel is preached unto you. There's no salvation apart from
Christ. And if we're gonna know Christ, he'll reveal himself
by his word. He'll pull out that sword or
draw your sword, kill me and my sin with one edge
of it and heal me with the other edge of it and make me alive.
Look what happens. In verse 16, Ehud made him a
dagger with two edges of a cubit of length, and he girded upon
his raiment upon his right thigh. And he brought the present unto
Eglon, king of Moab, and Eglon was a very fat man. Oh, how fat
and satisfied we can become in the things that are contrary
to the gospel. And when he had made an end of
offering the present, he sent away the people that bear the
present, but he himself turned again from the quarries. This
is Ehud now. Ehud comes and brings a present
to Eglon, the king of Moab. And then he leaves. But when
he gets to the quarries, and the word quarries here is the
word idol. This is the place where the stones
were being quarried in order to make idols for the Moabites
and for the children of Israel that they had turned to. And
when he sees those idols, he's inspired to go back and confront
Eglon. Verse 19, but he himself turned
again from the quarries that were by Gilgal and said, I have
a secret errand unto thee, O king, who said, keep secret, and all
that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came into him,
and he was sitting in a summer parlor, which he had for himself
alone. And Ehud said, I have a message
from God unto thee, And he rose out of his seat and he who had
put forth his left hand and took the dagger from his right thigh
and thrust it into his belly. And the halt also went in after
the blade and the flat, the fat closed upon the blade so that
he could not draw the dagger out of his belly and the dirt
came out. What a, what a graphic picture
that God has given us in his word of work. redemption this is a violent
story of of the Lord killing the man of sin and and out of
his out of his belly that the word the belly in the scripture
is a is used as a picture of the flesh and that's what it
is it's a you know the And we're, and we're drawn to the things
of the flesh by our flesh, just as we're, just as our bellies
are drawn to be hungry several times a day, aren't they? You
see how this, and here's what the Lord does. He takes the sword
of the spirit and he plunges it into our belly. And what comes
out? Dirt. Oh, dung. That's what Paul said. You know,
our sin is really because we're looking somewhere else for our
satisfaction other than the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our unbelief. the Lord takes the sword of his
spirit, and he plunges it into our flesh, and he causes this
sword to disappear in the belly, and he brings forth that which
is nothing but dung." Paul said, I had trusted in the fact that
I was a Jew, that I was of the tribe of Benjamin, that I was
circumcised the eighth day, that I was a Pharisee, that concerning
the law, I was blameless. I had done all these things,
all these things I was looking to for the hope of my salvation. But he said, I was alive without
the law once. But when the law came, when the
gospel of God's grace came, when the sword of the spirit came,
when God almighty spoke, sin revived and I died. And I now count those things
which I thought were gain. Done. The sword of the spirit
brought out the dirt from my belly. This is the work of God
in every believer's life, causes them to see that in and of themselves,
they're nothing but sin, that all their righteousness and all
their salvation, all their hope before God is to be found in
their Ehud, the one who is to be praised, the one who takes
with his left hand the sword from his right thigh, and kills
them again and again and again and again that they might be
made alive. This is what happened on Calvary's
cross when the Lord Jesus Christ bore in his body the sins of
his people and God took his sword and plunged it into the very
heart of his own son. Only dirt didn't come out. Blood
came out. That sword wasn't put in his
belly. It was put in his heart. That our bellies might be exposed
for what they are. Oh, here's our hope, brethren.
You struggle with sin, do you? It's all on you. It's all your
fault. You can't blame anybody else. Oh, like Shimei, you've
had people mistreat you. But you can't accuse your anger
or your unhappiness or your discontent on anything other than your own
sin. That's it. It's all on you. It's all on me. Isn't that the
way it is? It's Ammon and Amalek and Moab. They're all descendants from
me. Here's my mercy. God makes you
to be a sinner, you'll cry. You'll cry. As soon as you cry,
he sends a deliverer. And he brings out the truth of
what we are. And he slays that old man and
causes us to see our life in Christ. Go back to our text and
look at verse 27. And it came to pass when now
Ehud fled, he escaped after having killed Eglon, And in verse 27,
it says, and it came to pass that when he came, that he blew
a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim and the children of Israel
went down with him from the mount and he before them. Now that's
what I'm trying to do right now. I'm just trying to blow a trumpet.
It's just the voice of one crying in the wilderness. This is just
God blowing the trumpet of the gospel, saying, look, look what
our Ehud has done. He has slain the man of sin. He has put him to death. And he said unto them, follow
after me. Follow after me. For the Lord hath delivered your
enemy, the Moabite, 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. They killed them all. And that's
what happens when our Ehud, when the Lord Jesus Christ says, look
what I've done, come after me, and he leaves not a man alive.
He causes us to see that He slew our sin. He put it away. And they slew of Moab at that
time about 10,000 men, all lusty. That word lusty means fat. They
were all fat men. Again, that just goes back to
the picture of sin and the belly and the dearth that's in it. And they were men of valor. They
were proud men. They were self-righteous men.
That's what our sin is, isn't it? It's proud, self-righteous,
disobedient, obstinate, blaming. So Moab was subdued that day under
the hand of Israel and the land again. had rest for four score
years. Last time, Othniel gave him 40
years of rest. Jehud gave him 80 years of rest. Ehud gave him 80 years of rest. That's what you and I are in
need of. Lord, I need rest. I need rest from my sin. I need
rest from my flesh. Rest from this world. Rest from
the acute accusations. rest from my enemy. Lord, these
things were all birthed by my own flesh. You've sent a deliverer
and you put into my heart a cry of faith. Lord, save me." And
once again, he brings us to a place of rest. This story we're going
to find in the book of Judges keeps repeating itself over and
over and over again. Same story. Each one has a little
different details to it that I hope will be an encouragement
to each of us as we see these things being lived out in our
own lives. All right, let's take a break. Thank you.