Derek Thomas

But there comes a tipping point.

When the iniquity of the Canaanites or the Amorites is full, it has reached such a degree of malevolence and evil that God says, enough.

And he comes in his righteous judgment and

using instruments like Ehud, this left-handed judge, the second judge in their history, to do something that, well, this is not a story that you'd read to your children at bedtime, perhaps.

they would have all sorts of questions, and the answers would be difficult, perhaps, to provide in all honesty.

But this is history.

This is the history of the people of God.

This is the history of the church.

And when we think of Ehud slaying

Eglon, the king of Moab, and the graphic detail of the dung coming out on the floor, this is part of the way God delivered his people.

It was precisely what Israel needed at that time.

This was no time for a peacemaker.

This was a time of war.

There was a declaration of war against those who would try to destroy the people of God.

Well, there are going to be more, or less,

There's messy characters in our study, but this is definitely one of the messiest in the history of Israel.

Pilgrim's Progress is a tract to help Christians understand the reality of death and to be able to face it with assurance, with expectation, with hope, with confidence that although we may fear the process of dying, we have no need to be afraid of death itself because Christ has conquered death by His resurrection from the dead.

We come to what is one of the most wonderful descriptions of death and passing through the river and into the gates of the celestial city.

We were in the delectable mountains in our previous study.

And you remember, among other things, Christian and Hopeful were taken to a mountain ridge called Clear.