Introduction:
How to Conquer Dominating Sins (Judges 3:12-30):
- Go after the Biggest sin first. (Judges 3:15-23).
Romans 8:13 - ...if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
- Recruit Others to help you. (Judges 3:27).
- Believe Victory has already been won. (Judges 3:28)
- Don't stop Fighting . (Judges 3:29)
Matthew 3:8 - Bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
- Make no Excuses . (Judges 3:15-23)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:43-00:49
Open up your Bibles with me, please, to the book of Judges in your Old Testaments and in chapter 3.
00:50-00:53
We'll be picking up in about verse 12.
00:56-01:05
We started this series last week looking at a chapter of Israel's life when she was only partially obedient.
01:07-01:11
And that led to a cycle that you see throughout the book of Judges.
01:12-01:14
Over and over and over.
01:16-01:17
Israel turns to idols.
01:19-01:23
So God sends an enemy nation to conquer Israel.
01:24-01:26
Well, Israel cries out, "God, we're sorry!
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Please do something about this!" So God raises up a judge.
01:34-01:36
The judge saves Israel.
01:37-01:38
Peace in the land.
01:40-01:42
And Israel turns to idols.
01:43-01:44
Rinse and repeat.
01:45-02:00
Now, when we think "judges," when we hear that word, I think a lot of us might immediately think of like the person in the black robe administering justice in a court, right?
02:00-02:02
Some of you are thinking of Judge Judy.
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A judge was not that type of judge.
02:07-02:10
In the book of Judges, a judge was a military hero.
02:11-02:16
It's somebody that became a leader because of a crisis.
02:17-02:30
And judges did heroic feats, often with much violence and improvised weapons to swoop in and save the day.
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Judges were actually kind of like superheroes.
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Today we're looking at the second judge in Israel.
02:43-02:45
Let's pick up in v. 12.
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It says, "And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
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And the Lord strengthened Eglon I'm thinking of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
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Stop right there and notice something.
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You can't miss this.
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The Lord was the one who brought hardship to Israel to turn Israel back to Him.
03:18-03:20
And did you see how God chose to do it?
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He strengthened a wicked leader.
03:25-03:33
He appointed a horrible person to be leader over Israel.
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And I would just ask you, do you think God still does that today?
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When we refuse to turn from our sin, that God says, "Ok." And He strengthens a godless person.
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Picking up v. 13.
03:55-04:04
"He," this is talking about Eglon, king of Moab, "he gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites and went and defeated Israel.
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And they took possession of the city of Palms.
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And the people of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years." So this king Eglon of Moab, he linked up with two other enemy nations, the Ammonites, the Amalekites, and he took the city of Palms, which is probably Jericho.
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Verse 15, "Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.
04:32-04:41
And the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gerah, a Benjaminite, a left-handed man.
04:43-04:59
"The people of Israel sent tribute by him," by Ehud, "to Eglon, the king of Moab." Okay, so the people cried out to God, and God raised up this man, this Ehud, and he was sent to pay tribute.
04:59-05:02
That was basically the tax to the enemy king.
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Look at verse 16, it says, "Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes." Okay, here's where the story gets really interesting.
05:16-05:25
So Ehud had this 18-inch long - that was a cubit - an 18-inch long sword that it says he concealed it on his right side.
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Like, well, what's the significance of that?
05:27-05:31
Well, he concealed it where they wouldn't have checked.
05:33-05:35
Keep in mind, they didn't have metal detectors.
05:38-05:46
But because Ehud was left-handed, he was able to conceal it where they weren't expecting.
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Look at v. 17.
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It says, "And Ehud presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab." Now, Eglon was a very fat man.
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I don't think the Bible's just fat-shaming here.
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I think it's just telling us this is how it is, alright?
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Some of us have some more pounds on us than we need, myself included, but Eglon was a very fat man.
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How fat was he?
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When Eglon was in school, he sat beside everybody.
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Now the story gets really strange.
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Look at v. 18.
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and when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute.
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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.
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Dumb, okay?
07:03-07:13
You have a guy from the nation that you conquered, say, "Hey, I want to tell you something private." And you're like, "Okay, everybody leave.
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I'm sure it's going to be something nice." It's just dumb. Right?
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Look at v. 20.
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It says, "And Ehud came to Him as He was sitting alone in His cool roof chamber.
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And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you.
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"And he arose from his seat.
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And he had reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly.
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And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade.
07:48-08:02
For he did not pull the sword out of his belly, and the dung came out." I'm just going to stop here for a second, because I'm a product of the 80s.
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And do you remember those action movies in the 80s?
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Right before the bad guy was killed by the hero.
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You know what I'm talking about?
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The hero gave that line.
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You know what I'm talking about?
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Are you with me?
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He gave that really cool line right before you finish off the bad guy.
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You know what I'm talking about?
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Come on, don't leave me up here.
08:27-08:29
"I don't watch movies, Pastor Jeff.
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I read Scripture and fast all day." Come on.
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Do you know what I'm talking about?
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Thank you.
08:37-08:50
But I had to wonder as I read this if Ehud would have given one of those lines, this would have been the perfect chance because he's like, "Hey, I've got a message for you from God."
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(blows raspberry)
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Do you get the point?
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Or maybe it was this one, it was, hey, I got a message for you from God.
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Pulls the sword out.
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(blows raspberry)
09:06-09:10
Egon, did you ever get that feeling in your gut?
09:11-09:13
Okay, that one didn't work either.
09:13-09:14
All right, so let's try this one.
09:15-09:18
So, hey, I got a secret message for you from God.
09:18-09:23
And he pulls the sword out and Because I'm sure that's how it sounded going through all that fat.
09:26-09:29
And he said, "What's the matter, your highness?
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Don't have the stomach for this?" It was a lot funnier in my head.
09:40-09:43
At this point in the message I was going to say, "What about you?
09:43-09:47
Can you think of a great line to insert here?" and then I thought, no, I know these people.
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Don't offer that up.
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In fact, don't email it to me either.
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Because I'm sure you have some doozies.
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But yeah, that happened.
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Let's look at verse 23.
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It says, "Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them.
10:10-10:22
And when he had gone, the servants came, and when they saw the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, surely, he is relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber.
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And they waited until they were embarrassed.
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But 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." If this is your first time here, I certainly hope it's not your last.
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I was thinking about that this week.
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If we have visitors or guests this week, this is a strange sermon to be walking into.
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What did you guys talk about?
10:56-11:00
Some king got the crap stabbed out of him and locked in a bathroom stall.
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That's in the Bible?
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Yeah, it's in the Bible.
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And you see what happened here was the servants come.
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So Ehad locks dead Eglon in the cool chamber, essentially it's like the bathroom stall, and he locks and he leaves.
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So the servants come back and they caught the smell of the dung, using the biblical word, and they saw that the doors were locked, so they put two and two together, and they're like, well obviously he's in there going to the bathroom.
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And it says they waited until they were embarrassed.
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I mean, how do you think that conversation went?
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The servants are all just kind of standing around, like, it's been like 45 minutes, why don't you knock and see if he's okay?
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Like, no, you don't disturb the king while he's about his royal business.
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You knock, I'm not knocking, let's just wait.
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And they waited so long, they were kind of embarrassed.
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Like, this is, we've been standing here forever, and the king is still in there, and we still, get the scene?
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You're like, well, okay.
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Why is that detail in there? Right?
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Why did God feel it necessary that we have this detail?
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Here's why.
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It gave Ehud time to escape. You see?
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That's the reason this detail's in here.
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It's showing God's providence that the servants came and they smelled, and they assumed, and they waited until...
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And during all that time of them just kind of waiting around, it gave Ehud all the time in the world to get out of there.
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It's just God showing us sometimes He works in very strange ways to us.
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Look at v. 26.
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"Ehud escaped." Well, they delayed and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Sierra.
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"When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim.
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Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he was their leader.
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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.
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And they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites, all strong, able-bodied men.
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Not a man escaped." "The Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest for 80 years." That is a wild story.
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And as we read and study and preach God's Word, we have to acknowledge it's in there for a reason, right?
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I mean, when God gives us these things in His Word, there's some edification point for us, right?
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God's not just like, "Hey, I want to tell you a really hilarious story one time about this really fat guy that got stabbed." There's a reason that it's in there.
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And I guess it's my job to help you see what it's teaching.
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Well, here's the thing.
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We saw clear back at the beginning of this passage that this whole account was the result of sin.
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It was all the result of sin.
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Israel did evil what was in the eyes of the Lord.
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And because it was sin, it had to be dealt with on that level.
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You have to understand, this story isn't about nation versus nation.
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That's not what this story is about.
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This story is about Almighty God delivering His people from sin and the consequences of their sin.
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That's what this story is about.
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Therefore, when sin conquers us, which we have to fight to conquer it.
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The way Ehud was raised up to fight and conquer.
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So on your outline, "How to Conquer Dominating Sins." I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but how many of you in here would say right now I'm in a season in my life where it seems like sins are dominating me.
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My life isn't really right now.
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It's not a pattern of righteousness.
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And it's not a pattern of really seeking the Lord as I should.
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Really right now my life is dominated by sin, and God does not want you living there.
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So how do I get out of there?
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Well, there's five principles we see right here from Ehud that I want to give to you if you're in that place right now.
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Number one, go after the biggest sin first.
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Go after the biggest sin first.
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Notice, Ehud went straight to the top.
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He went right to the source of the problem.
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He wasn't like, okay, Moabites, I'm gonna pick them off one at a time, work my way to the top.
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Ehud's like, here's my plan.
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I'm going after the fat guy first.
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I'm going straight to the top.
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I'm gonna take him out, and he's the source of the problem.
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You know, it's true, spiritually, if you feel like your life is a mess, You have a lot of areas spinning out of control.
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I would encourage you to identify the biggest problem and go after that one first.
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The sin that seems to be causing you the most problem, you need to go after that sin and you need to pull out your sword and you need to stab that one right in the gut and you need to let the...
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Like, okay, okay, okay, Pastor Jeff.
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Why all the really gross details about the bodily stuff?
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And I know we kind of laughed and had some fun with it, but this is where it gets serious.
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Why all these really disgusting, gross details?
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And I think it's the Lord telling us and showing us Sin is never pretty.
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And dealing with sin often requires a measure of ruthlessness.
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And sometimes it just gets ugly.
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Is that a teaching in the New Testament?
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You better believe it is.
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Romans 8.13 says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Notice the wording here.
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What are you supposed to do with the deeds of the body or the sinful deeds of your flesh?
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What are you supposed to do?
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Not coddle them.
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Not ask them nicely to leave.
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Not tolerate them.
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The Bible says you need to kill that stuff.
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Put it to death.
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And you're going to find that if you seek the Lord's help for repentance in regards to the biggest sin struggle in your life, It gets so much easier to take on the others.
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It's like Ehud going right after Eglon.
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Start at the top.
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Start there.
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You take that one out, you're gonna find taking the other ones out a lot easier.
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Number two, recruit others to help you.
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Ehud knew he wasn't going to be able to destroy all of the Moabites himself, right?
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Right?
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This is a large group of people and they have this alliance and there's all this...
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He knew he wasn't going to do it all himself, so we saw in the story, he sounded the trumpet.
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And you too, born-again believer in Jesus Christ, I'm speaking to you, you are called to be a part of a body.
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Being a Christian, apart from being part of a church, is completely foreign to the New Testament.
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It just is.
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I don't see that.
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You are called to be a part of the body.
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And when I say be part of the body, I don't just mean attending church, not your once a week check-in.
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What I mean is your primary relationships should be found in the church.
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Small group ministry.
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Accountability with other believers in the church.
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The church carrying each other's burdens.
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None of us are meant to do this on our own.
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None of us.
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Because none of us can do it on our own.
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There's no shame in asking for help.
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There's only defeat in refusing to ask for help.
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So recruit others to help you.
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How to conquer dominating sins thirdly, believe victory has already been won.
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Now yeah, this is a story about Ehud using his cleverness with the whole hidden sword thing.
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But he knew.
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Maybe the battle was the Lord's from the very beginning.
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He knew that He was raised up for this.
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And by all accounts, we see in the story, Ehud went forth in the confidence that the Lord had already given him the victory.
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You see that?
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There was no wavering or hesitation.
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He's like, hey, God's got a job for me to do and I am doing it.
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The victory had already been won.
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And church, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, Sin was defeated.
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Once and for all.
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And I've got to tell you, when you're battling sin, you're fighting an enemy that's already lost.
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He just didn't get the memo yet.
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The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ lives within you, and He continues to give you the victory.
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You're a new creation in Jesus Christ.
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And you have every resource you need Because you have Him.
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And church, do you believe that?
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And I have to ask if we truly believe it because many Christians resolve themselves to defeat.
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They have this besetting sin in their life and they just kind of throw their arms up and say, "Well, I guess I'm never going to have victory over this." And if that's your attitude, I've got to ask you, are you saying that you don't think Jesus supplies the power to conquer that?
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Or are you unwilling to allow Him to reign?
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Because it's one or the other.
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But it has to start with believing that victory has already been won.
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You have to believe that.
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Sin and Satan and death were destroyed at the cross of Jesus Christ.
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They have no power or dominion over you.
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And you've got to believe that if you're going to have victory over sin.
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"I've conquered dominating sins." Number four, don't stop fighting.
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You notice in this story today, Ehud didn't throw himself a parade after stabbing Eglon.
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Like, "Woohoo! Kill the gang! Let's party!" No, he's like, "No, no, no." That was step one.
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And church, one battle doesn't win the war.
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Christians, repentance is not a one-time thing.
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Did you know that?
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Some people think, "I repented when I came to Jesus." Awesome.
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But it's not just a one-time thing.
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Biblically, repentance is an everyday thing.
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Matthew 3:8 says, "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." It's a daily thing.
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It's a lifestyle.
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continually turning from sin as long as I live in this sinful flesh.
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I've got to keep turning from sin.
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Because coming to Jesus Christ is not the end of my battle with sin.
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It's the beginning of spiritual warfare.
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A war, as we've discussed, it's already been won.
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So I want to tell you, if you're struggling with sin, do not stop fighting.
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Like, "Oh, Pastor Jeff, I had a really bad day yesterday." Oh, did you?
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Well, yesterday's over, and the fight continues today.
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So get back in there, in the victory of Jesus Christ, and in the power of His Holy Spirit, and fight!
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It's not over!
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It's not over!
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Don't let a setback get you out of the game.
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Keep fighting.
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How to conquer dominating sins, number five.
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Make no excuses.
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Do you know probably the most important detail about this story, aside from the Lord being sovereign over the whole thing?
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Yes, we get that. We understand that.
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Besides that, the most important detail of the story, do you see what it was?
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It was that Ehud was left-handed.
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How many of you here are left-handed weirdos?
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I'm just kidding about weirdos, kind of.
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Keep them up, keep them up, because we want to make sure.
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Brooke, write these people down.
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Sarah, really? Really?
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All your life?
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Gosh, you think you know somebody.
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I'm teasing, obviously.
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You know, I'm sure our left-handed friends would tell you, but sometimes being left-handed can be a nuisance or inconvenient, right?
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Because much of the world is crafted for right-handed people, because we're great.
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But in Ehud's day, in Ehud's day, being left-handed was considered a defect.
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You're like, "Really?" "Yeah." "Really?" Well, actually, even a generation ago, being left-handed was often considered a defect.
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When I was at my old church, there was this lady, she was an atheist, a proud atheist, who would come to my office just to fight with me.
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We had good times.
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But she, one of her big hangups was she told me she went to Catholic school growing up and she was left handed.
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And she told me this story so many times.
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She said she was left handed and when she'd go to write, the nuns would come along with their ruler or piece of wood or whatever and crack her on the wrist really hard.
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And say, "No, you have to write right handed, not left handed." She said they always made me feel like I was a freak for writing left-handed.
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I know it might sound silly to us, but that was such a thing to her.
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That was seriously traumatizing.
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This is how they treated me.
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This is who I am, and they treated me like I was defected.
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That's how it was in Ehud's day.
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Oh, you're left-handed, huh? I'm sorry.
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Sorry to hear that.
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And you can study the history of that.
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This is so many examples of left-handedness being such a bad thing, right?
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I want to give you one more example, though.
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You know the word "sinister"?
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Sinister, that means wicked or evil.
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Sinister.
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You know where that word comes from?
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It's a Latin word that means left-handed.
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I kid you not.
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So all you people that raised your hand a couple minutes ago, sinister.
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Well, Ehud could have tried to bow out.
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Like, you know what, yes, yes, yes, we got Moab, and we got Eglon.
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And I wish I could do something, but I got this defect.
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And really not much-- I can't really face the enemy, because I have this handicap.
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And really what you see is he had used his defect as a weapon instead of an excuse.
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Right?
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And I would say for us too, when it's time to go to battle, let's bag the excuses.
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I can't defeat this sin.
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I'm just unable and you don't know the stuff that I've had to endure.
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But you know what, let's bag the excuses.
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It's time to go to battle with sin.
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Make no excuses.
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Right now I would ask if the worship team would come forward.
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I'd ask if our elders would come forward.
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We're going to gather around the Lord's table.
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And I'm going to give you instructions for that in a minute.
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But you know, this whole story that we looked at today, you know what it really boils down to.
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If you were going to sum up the story in a sentence, Ehad's story boils down to this.
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Once upon a time, a left-handed man used his left-handedness to kill the enemy.
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And you know, so many of us are defeated by things in our lives that are no more significant than being left-handed.
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And it's a great source of encouragement to me.
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When you turn to God's Word, you know, there are so many examples in Scripture of defective people that God used to change the world.
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Right?
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Do you remember Moses?
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He's like, "I've got this speech thing going on, God, you're going to have to call somebody else." I was like, "No, I'm calling you." Defective. Changed the world.
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People like David.
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We talked about him last week in Bible school.
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Here's the little kid bringing the lunch.
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And youngest of the brothers, the shepherd kid.
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Rocked the giant to sleep.
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And then you turn in your New Testament, so many other examples, I turn in the New Testament to Paul, who in 2 Corinthians 12 talked about this thorn in the flesh that constantly made him feel weak.
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As we come to the Lord's table, I want to remind you of a couple of things.
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One is that God uses limitations.
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So often in Scripture, God chooses people He chooses methods that I probably wouldn't.
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And He does it so that no flesh can glory in His presence.
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So if you're sitting here today and you're like, "You know what, Pastor Jeff, sometimes I feel a little handicapped.
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Sometimes I feel a little limited.
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Sometimes I feel like I don't have what it takes." I've got great news for you.
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Your limitations don't disqualify you.
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Actually, it's your limitations that qualify you.
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And we come to the Lord's table again so that we might take our eyes off of ourselves.
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Because this brings us back to the reality that it doesn't matter what we think we have gone through for us.
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It doesn't matter what we think is going against us, because coming to the Lord's table is our reminder that nothing in us is sufficient, but everything in Jesus Christ is.
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2 Corinthians 3:4-5 as such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
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Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us.
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He says, but our sufficiency is from God.
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I want you to bow your heads with me please.
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The worship team is going to play quietly.
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And I want to lead us in a prayer.
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and then we're going to the Lord's table together.
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Father in heaven, we thank You for Your Word.
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And Father, to our minds and to our experiences, this account that we read today on the surface just seems like a very strange story to read in the Bible, but there it is.
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Because God, Your Word is real.
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And Your Word certainly isn't painting a portrait these people as being these squeaky clean, living on easy street, detached from earth kind of people.
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These are people who had to learn to trust you, had to learn to do battle with the enemy, and yes, sometimes it got ugly.
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Father, as we gather around Your table today, let this be our reminder that sin is already defeated once and for all.
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Death has lost its sting, and Satan is on borrowed time.
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Let us gather around Your table, Father, because it takes our eyes off of ourselves and puts them on Jesus Christ.
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He won the victory.
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He supplies the power.
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He is coming again.
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And He is making all things new.
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Father, we thank You and we praise You.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 3:12-30
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Read Judges 3:16-25. Why do you think the Lord provided so many graphic details in this account?
Explain how going after the most dominant sin in your life can help you attack other sins, too. (Judges 3:15-25)
Breakout
Have you ever felt that you had some limitation that would keep the Lord from using you? What was / is it? How does the story of Ehud speak to that?
Pray for one another.