Beauty in being Left-Handed
"But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help, the Lord again raised up a deliverer to save them. His name was Ehud son of Gera, a left-handed man of the tribe of Benjamin" - Judges 3:15
Read Judges 3:12-30
Many of you read this passage and probably thought, ‘This is a strange story, what does it have to do with me?’, but this passage teaches us that God can uses us just the way he made us… yes, even you.
Ehud’s name means deliverer. He was a foreshadowing of the perfect Deliver, Jesus Christ. Where Ehud delivered Israel from its enemies, Jesus Christ delivers us from our sin, our greatest enemy.
The Bible makes it a point to state that Ehud was a ‘left-handed’ man for a reason. Being left-handed in Ehud’s day was considered a handicap. Left-handed people were considered awkward, weak, and definitely not considered a threat. But God used Ehud’s perceived weakness to defeat the king and give Israel victory.
God often uses ‘left-handed’ people to fulfill his mission and to do His will. This is obviously not referring to those who are genetically considered left-handed, but figuratively describes all of us as believers.
“Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important” 1 Corinthians 1:27-28
Even Christ Himself was figuratively considered ‘left-handed’. Scripture describes Christ as unattractive:
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. – Isaiah 53:2
Furthermore the Jews believed that the Messiah would come as a great and powerful warrior who would gather all the peoples of Israel and Judah, from all the countries of the earth, and bring them back to Jerusalem and the land of Israel, where he will rule the entire world with power, glory, and justice on the throne of his ancestor, King David. However he came as the son of a virgin, born in a manger, a carpenter by occupation, displayed the humility of a servant and the meekness of Lamb, then died a horrible death on a cross. To the Jews, Christ was not a likely candidate to be the Messiah, Savior of the World.
But just like Christ, God uses even us for His will and purposes, and like Ehud, God is calling us to fight in the battle of spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12). God is in the business of using people who are not impressive according to the world’s standards. He uses ordinary people like ourselves to do extraordinary tasks, and He is capable of using our fears, shortcomings, insecurities, wounds, and even our physical disabilities for His glory.
Be encouraged,
