“Deborah said to Barak, “Arise! For this is the day in which the LORD has given Sisera into your hands; behold, the LORD has gone out before you.” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. 15 The LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak; and Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot. 16 But Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth-hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not even one was left.”
Here’s a revelation for you. It’s not easy picking a title for a sermon about a Bible character when it’s difficult even to figure out what that character did that deserves mention.
I saw that Deborah means ‘honeybee’, and Barak means ‘lightning’, so I thought of calling the sermon “The Adventures of Honeybee and Lightning”.
As this sermon progresses however, you will see that even that would not have been entirely appropriate.
I was certain that I remembered the writer to the Hebrews mentioning these folks in the eleventh chapter of his letter so I went there. Much to my surprise, Barak is mentioned but Deborah is not, even though she seems to be more of a major player in this story than her General, Barak.
He doesn’t even catch the bad guy!
Sisera, the bad guy, is taken down by a woman named Jael. Jael means ‘mountain goat’ and Sisera means ‘battle array’. But the title, “Mountain Goat Meets Battle Array” just didn’t do it for me either.
The more I thought about it, and after reading Judges 4 about three times, the more I felt the biggest complement I could give Barak was that he was present. He was there.
Now I don’t like to be too critical of Bible characters, especially when they have found their way into the Hebrews Hall of Faith. So when I find myself thinking disparagingly of them I try to compare myself to them and that usually takes the wind out of my sails a little bit.
When I applied that exercise to Barak it occurred to me that very, very often, little can be said of me other than that I am present.
If you can agree with that assessment and are willing to admit that the same can occasionally be said of you, then we are ready to go to this story and find some nuggets of gold.
THE SETTING AND THE PLAYERS
Let’s begin by naming the key players and putting them in their respective roles:
Jabin: King of Hazor in Canaan; a tyrant
Deborah: a Jewish judge; a woman of faith and courage
Barak: a reluctant Jewish general
Sisera: captain of Jabin’s army
Heber: a Kenite neighbor, at peace with Jabin
Jael: wife of Heber; handy with a hammer
Jehovah God: in charge of wars and weather
(above from Wiersbe, W. W. 1996, c1994. Be available. An Old testament study. Victor Books: Wheaton, IL)
Now we see from the last part of chapter 3 of Judges that under the leadership if Ehud, a Benjamite, Israel was delivered from the Moabites and thus enjoyed peace for 80 years.
Verse 31 is a very interesting post script to that chapter.
”After him came Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; and he also saved Israel.”
Although Shamgar is not specifically named as one of the judges of Israel, he is given honorable mention here as one who had a significant role. Just a simple statement, but powerful. Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with a sharpened stick. Don’t you just love the way things are often said in the scriptures so matter-of-factly? No fanfare, no flourish, just the facts. I love the Bible.
But Ehud finally died and the people once again did evil in the sight of the Lord.
That’s when you know your religion isn’t real; when as soon as you are free of accountability you slip back into your old ways, following your fleshly desires and forget the Lord.
So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, king of Hazor. This is the pattern through the book of Judges. Oppression sent by the Lord to chasten, the repentance of the people, deliverance from the oppressors, also provided by the Lord, and the return of the people to apostasy.
Israel was in a pathetic state at the time God raised up Deborah to judge for Him. Verses 6-8 of chapter 5 give us a better picture. This is in what is called the song of Deborah and Barak, sung after God gave them victory over Jabin and his general, Sisera.
“In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, In the days of Jael, the highways were deserted, And travelers went by roundabout ways. 7 “The peasantry ceased, they ceased in Israel, Until I, Deborah, arose, Until I arose, a mother in Israel. 8 “New gods were chosen; Then war was in the gates. Not a shield or a spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel.”
Now what can we glean from this word-picture?
First, Shamgar, the guy with the lethal cattle prod, was a contemporary of Deborah and Barak. Now I don’t know why Deborah mentioned him right here in her song. Maybe it was to say that despite the presence of such a mighty warrior, the highways were not safe for travel.
The reference to the peasantry means the small, un-walled villages of Israel.
They were not safe from harm, people didn’t venture out, trade was hindered if not non-existent. The reason is seen in verse 8. “Not a shield or spear was seen among forty thousand in Israel”.
No one had weapons, no one was prepared for battle. Jabin and his 900 chariots of iron therefore, would have been seen as weapons of mass destruction to an unarmed people.
But the people of Israel were not just militarily weak. They were spiritually pathetic. As soon as Ehud was dead they had turned back to serving false gods. That’s at the beginning of verse 8. “New gods were chosen”.
Chosen.
And none of this information demonstrates the depths to which the people had sunk more strongly than Deborah’s own declaration in verse 7.
“Until I, Deborah, arose. Until I arose, a mother in Israel”.
In a male-dominated society and in a time when women were almost as important as the oxen who pulled the plows, what a shameful statement does this make about the men? They needed a mommy. They needed a woman to go to for advice as she sat under a palm tree in the hill country of Ephraim.
“Deborah, Achan took my best idol right off my wall while I slept. Will you make him give it back?”
Hey, let’s not think the situation unique to ancient Israel.
How many of our churches are run by the women, who have long-since usurped the authority of the men in the congregation, because the men didn’t have enough spiritual backbone to stand up and be the men of the church?
What’s the problem there? Is it laziness? I don’t think so. I think it’s cowardice. What if I have to make an unpopular decision? What if I have to take a decisive action? What if I have to actually submit myself to the Lord and He calls me to step up and do something for the Kingdom that interferes with what I want to do for me?
“Now she sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali, and said to him, “Behold, the LORD, the God of Israel, has commanded, ‘Go and march to Mount Tabor, and take with you ten thousand men from the sons of Naphtali and from the sons of Zebulun. 7 ‘I will draw out to you Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his many troops to the river Kishon, and I will give him into your hand.’ ”
Ok, Mommy, if you’ll go with me and hold my hand. If you won’t go, I won’t go. There’s big scary chariots out there.
WHOSE VISION IS IT ANYWAY?
Before we go further with the story let me say a couple of things about God’s use of women in ministry.
First of all, Deborah was not the only prophetess in the Bible, and there is no indication that God used women in this capacity only because the men weren’t available.
Moses’ sister Miriam was a prophetess (Ex. 15:20); and other biblical passages speak of Huldah (2 Kings 22:14), Noadiah (Neh. 6:14), Anna (Luke 2:36), and the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9).
Some very Godly women in the Bible spoke from God when He gave them His words to say. So there is no doubt that Deborah was God’s woman for the moment and that she spoke for Him here.
Could I say something here about the role of women in the church?
I am well aware of the official stand of our denomination concerning women in a position of teaching and leading men. Some very strong feelings are expressed about that.
I am also well aware that, as I mentioned a minute ago, there are a number of women in both the Old and the New Testaments who are called ‘prophetess’, which means they spoke God’s Word to the people when inspired to do so.
My goodness, does anyone notice women were the first to preach the resurrection?
Now here is what I have to say about that, and it is said in context of this chapter of the book of Judges.
If the men of the church of Jesus Christ are going to give a stiff-necked, wooden application to the policy of our denomination that women are to be in submission to the men and that they are not to teach or lead the men, then the men had better, by golly, step up to the plate and act like men!
Be Godly men, submit to the Lord, learn the Word, lead the church, fill the roles, protect the women, be the spiritual leaders, or please, shut…up.
Not that I have strong feelings about this or anything like that…
I want you to notice that in chapter 4 verse 6 it says that Deborah summoned Barak to her, and she said, “Behold, the Lord, the God of Israel, has commanded,…” and from that point on through verse 7 it is God talking. That is, she is relating to Barak, God’s words, which comprise a command and a promise relating to that command.
God said ‘I will draw out Sisera”, “I will give him into your hand”. Yet Barak’s reply is not to the Lord, but to Deborah. “If you will go with me, then I will go”.
The Lord has just said that He would be with Barak, and Barak turns to the prophetess and demands that she go along.
Now Barak is mentioned in the letter to the Hebrews as one who by his faith gained approval with God. So what is the problem here? I think the problem is that it’s not his vision; it’s Deborah’s vision.
Every man woman or child of Adam’s race who has accomplished anything for the Kingdom of God has gone out, not following someone else’s vision, but with one of their own; a calling of their own.
The disciples followed Jesus and they were faithful to Him, but they were following His calling, not their own. It’s why we see them time and again, stumbling, misunderstanding, unfocused, until after the day of Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and after they stepped out of the Upper Room with their own vision they couldn’t be stopped.
Isn’t that what has been going on in the church for many decades, at least? Christians largely following the vision of some man and pretty much just along for the ride?
What if, within the context of the local body, believers sought and got their own vision for what God wanted to do through them in their particular role in the bigger picture and then stepped out in obedience to their own calling; even if that calling, that vision, sent them away from the local body, as an extension of the local body, with the support of the local body, to minister for God in a place they otherwise never would have considered going?
I personally think this is what finally happened with Barak. It wasn’t his vision. He was just there. Present. And his vision didn’t come when he first heard the call, and that’s why he gave a faithless response. No, Deborah, you have to go with me. And that’s why he lost the privilege of the glory kill.
But I think after he did go, and I repeat, he did go, maybe seeing 10,000 men from his own tribe and the neighboring tribe of Zebulun emboldened him, awoke him to the fact that this really was God’s doing, and from there he went out in faith.
There is an old song that was sung back in the 1930’s by Nelson Eddy called Stouthearted Men. The chorus went:
“Give me some men who are stouthearted men,
Who will fight for the right they adore.
Start me with ten who are stouthearted men,
And I’ll soon give you ten thousand more”
Maybe that’s what happened to Barak. Another part of that song says “Hearts can inspire
Other hearts with their fire”
When we peek back at chapter 5 again we find that volunteers from the tribes of Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh poured out to join the fray until the numbers rose to 40,000.
The song says, “And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah; as was Issachar, so was Barak; into the valley they rushed at his heels” vs 15
And in verse 18, “Zebulun was a people who despised their lives even to death, and Naphtali also, on the high places of the field”.
This reminded me of our own “America the Beautiful” which says,
“O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life! By Katharine Lee Bates
Do you think this is where Barak earned his place in Hebrews 11? I think so. I think he finally caught the vision. I think he finally broke loose from the apron strings and started trusting in God’s Word to him, not God’s Word from Deborah.
If we go by Deborah’s song in chapter 5 verse 8 they didn’t even have any weapons but their own personal swords. So any combat would have to have been done up close and personal. But they rode out behind Barak in answer to the call, because ‘hearts can inspire other hearts with their fire’.
OXGOADS, RAINDROPS AND TENT PEGS
Chapter 4 is not clear on the details of battle. It just tells us that Barak and his original 10,000 chased down Sisera’s army with their 900 chariots and killed them all by the sword.
Verse 21 of chapter 5 however, indicates that God sent a torrent of rain down on the land, overflowing the Kishon River and turning the valley into a sea of mud.
How this scene must have emboldened the army of the Israelites who remembered stories of the chariots of Pharaoh, sinking into the mud at the bottom of the Red Sea.
Sisera trusted in his chariots of iron and these were the very things that brought his entire army to destruction.
Says the Psalmist (20:7) “Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the LORD, our God.”
And again, Paul to the Corinthians:
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” 2 Cor 10:3-4
And again,
“For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; 27 but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, 28 and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 29 so that no man may boast before God. 30 But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, 31 so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.” 1 Cor 1:26-31
God uses the weak things, the silly things, the simple and seemingly useless things to show forth His might and to rescue His people.
Using a man who is brave and faithful, yet only one man, He gives him a sharpened stick that a farmer would employ to keep his oxen plowing the furrow, and gives him the strength and endurance to kill 600 armed and hardened enemy soldiers.
Calling his army out more as witnesses than as fighters, He sends down rain and buries the chariots of the dreaded Sisera in mud, making them so useless that the general himself abandons his vehicle and runs for the hills while his army is being slaughtered.
Then God uses a little Kenite woman to finish the job. Let’s take just a moment to look at the circumstances.
Here comes Sisera, weary from running, Barak’s men probably coming up behind as soon as they realize he is not among the fallen.
He comes upon the tents of Heber the Kenite, who for his own personal safety has withdrawn himself from the people of Moses and aligned himself with Sisera’s boss, king Jabin.
Now Heber’s wife, Jael, is not stupid. General Sisera would not be trudging up to the compound, covered with mud, on foot, no soldiers with him, if he had won the battle. So she has to know that things have not gone well for the people with whom her husband has politically aligned himself, and those he has turned his back on will soon be coming up the road.
So she invites the man into her tent and offers to hide him, and when he asks for water, she gives him something better. Milk. Oh, what a gracious host! Nice, warm, fresh, milk on the stomach of a weary man.
Soon he goes to sleep, and grabbing her hammer and a tent peg she … well,… secures his position in the tent.
“Out of the window she looked and lamented, the mother of Sisera through the lattice, ‘Why does his chariot delay in coming? Why do the hoofbeats of his chariots tarry?’ 29 “Her wise princesses would answer her, indeed she repeats her words to herself, 30 ‘Are they not finding, are they not dividing the spoil? A maiden, two maidens for every warrior;” Judges 5:28-30
There was another time when God used simple hand tools, hammers and spikes, to defeat the enemy of His people. Through a Man whom He had appointed, not a soldier, yet the greatest Warrior of them all. Not in the role of a conquering king, yet One who through death became Conqueror of death and the grave and according to His great victory will return to reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
“When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, 14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.” Col 2:13-15
The fact is, Christians, that it simply is not about us. It isn’t about our talents, it isn’t about our strength, it isn’t about our good intentions.
When God calls us to Himself it is for His purpose and His glory and He is the one who establishes both.
He just calls us to be available, so through us and for us He can show His power and might.
What about you? Are you just, present? Following someone else’s vision?
Or are you willing to catch a vision of your own and ride out in obedience even if you don’t know exactly what God plans to do or how He is going to do it?
I promise that whatever it is He’ll surprise you. Because while we’re sharpening our swords and saddling our horses and making our plans He’s usually filling some schmuck’s hand with a pointed stick, or gathering a cleansing rain or teaching some little girl how to use a hammer.
But oh, gracious and merciful God that He is, when it’s all over and He has accomplished great things, He smiles down and says, “Look at the faith of My child who responded to My call”.
And look at the lives that were changed because of one person’s simple faith! He might have been slow... but he went, and the land had rest for 40 years.
Because hearts can inspire other hearts with their fire. - Stouthearted Men
