Deborah and Barak
Judges 4 and 5
Intro: Some people never seem to learn. A man pulled into a gas station, walked over to a soda machine, and stared at the sign, which read, “Soda: $2.00.”
“Two dollars for a soda – that’s incredible” the man said.
“Wall, it ain’t really two dollars”, said the attendant. “That machine’s broke. I put up an outa-order sign, but people kept puttin’ their money in anyway, and I’d hafta get it out agin, so I put up that sign and I ain’t had no trouble since.”
Ill. Einstein, known for his theory of relativity, said something else that may have an even greater impact on humanity than the other: he said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
The Jews were in trouble again. You’d think they’d learn. It was instead an example of mass insanity, it seems, as Einstein described it. It was the same old cycle of peace and prosperity, rebellion and punishment, remorse and repentance, restoration and recovery. Then the downward spiral would begin again. The cycle never seemed to end. And they were in the middle of it once again.
In Chapter one, they failed to drive out the inhabitants from the land.
They forgot God, they served the Baals, they forsook the Lord, and they followed and worshiped various gods of the people around them.
They prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. God sold them into the hands of their enemies, just as He said He would. They cried out to The Lord because they were oppressed by the peoples around them.
The Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of the raiders. They obeyed God as long as the judges lived, but once they were dead, the people went back to their rebellion and turned from God. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways (2:19).
God became angry at their stubborn ways and said, “Because this nation has not kept the covenant that I laid down for their fathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out from them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel to see if they will keep the way of the Lord.”
Read Judges 4:1-3
Now the Israelites once again did evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord sold them into the hands of the Canaanites. Their king was Jabin, and he reigned in Hazor. The general of the Canaanites was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. The army had 900 iron chariots and cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.
Then they cried out to the Lord.
App. Have you ever cried out to the Lord? If so, about what? Did you confess your sins and the trouble as being your own doing?
Ill. Jean Valjean was in a dilemma. An old man arrested for stealing apples had been falsely identified as the notorious and long-sought after ex-convict, Jean Valjean. What should the real Valjean do? A crises of the soul began. All night long he wrestled with the most difficult choice. Should he keep silent, or should he reveal his identity and return to prison?
His first impulse was to say nothing and do nothing. The next morning, however, his carriage arrived to take him to the court where the innocent man was to be sentenced. He arrived just as the sentence was to be pronounced, and he stood up and said, “I am the real Jean Valjean.”
As he left the courtroom in chains, he said, “All of you consider me worthy of pity, do you not? When I think of what I was on the verge of doing, I consider that I am worthy to be envied. God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and it is enough.”
Ill. A number of years ago, a Lutheran church in Pittsburgh established “The Listening Ear” service. It enabled people to telephone ministers at the church, confessing any guilt or burden they had. For the most part, the ministers said nothing; they simply listened until the person got it off his chest.
Sometimes, all we can do is cry out to God. Psalm 40:1-3 says,
PS 40:1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
PS 40:2 He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.
PS 40:3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And put their trust in the LORD.
Now comes a judge that is different from all the others. This judge is a woman. A woman! Can you imagine that? A woman. A woman. What goes through your mind when I say it like that? A woman? In our culture, that doesn’t sound implausible. We say that a woman can do anything, that she has equal rights with the men, and though that does not get carried out perfectly in reality, we are still a far cry from ancient Israel, where women were more or less viewed as property owned by men. In a world of men, run by men, it was a bit unusual to have a woman hold such an important post.
Deborah was a prophetess who held court under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. The Israelites came to have their disputes settled there (2:4, 5).
God will use anyone who is willing to be used by Him.
Look at some of the people God used in the Bible: prostitutes, shepherds, tax collectors, kings. People who seemingly had nothing to offer by way of greatness, God used to accomplish mighty things. But they all had one thing in common – they all were willing to be used. Not always enthusiastic; not always happy about the mission, but always willing to go and do.
Deborah had a message for Barak: He was to go down and destroy Sisera, the army general of Canaan. This was not good news. Didn't she know that Sisera had 900 iron chariots at his disposal? Iron Chariots! What could he do against that? Was this a set up? Had he done something to displease God? Surely He must be joking, or at least Deborah was. So Barak comes up with a little test. He will go if she'll go too. That would test the waters to see if this was a joke or something. Surely she wouldn't go along. War was a man's game, certainly not a place for a woman, even if she was a powerful prophetess. Much to his surprise, she said she'd go, but with the understanding that he would not receive the credit, but that a woman would get it (Vs. 4-7) Barak thought, “Why not? Everybody knows that Deborah is a prophetess and has a hotline to God already, so what's the big deal? When the dust settles and this thing is over, everyone will know that it was me that actually pulled this thing off, not her. What was she going to do, single-handedly take out Sisera and his chariots? Wave her hand and all their wheels would just fall off. Not likely. A woman indeed! They'll know. They'll all know.”
Notice that Barak doesn't deny that he is supposed to go. He does not deny that the message is from God. He only says that without her, he will not go. Why is this?
1. He felt like since she was the messenger, she should go too.
2. He needed confirmation that this message was from God.
3. Maybe he didn't trust God.
4. He was a wimp and was afraid to go alone. Is it alright to be afraid? And does being afraid make a person a wimp?
Ill. John Wayne said that courage was being scared to death and mounting up anyway.
Barak agrees to go, so they both went together down to Kadesh where he summoned ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulon.
Barak had believed Deborah, but never dreamed that the route would be so swift or so complete. After seeing Sisera’s chariots coming across the valley floor, his heart had melted to butter. What had he gotten himself into? He and his army was no match for those chariots, and they all knew it. But what is this sound? He turns around to look, and the mountains behind him are slowly disappearing as torrents of rain come sweeping down the slopes. As the rain roars past, he watches as the valley below slowly turns to mud, and the heavy iron chariots gradually slow down and then stop completely, the horses unable to pull any more. None of them are going anywhere. This was the opportunity he’d hoped for, but never believed would happen. Now was his chance. He may not have 900 chariots, but he had ten thousand men who were hungry for victory. With a mighty shout, they went charging down the hill toward Sisera and his army, who were leaping from the chariots and running in every direction. His army gave chase, with Barak himself in hot pursuit of Sisera. He wanted this guy for himself. A woman? No, if he captures Sisera, he will be the champion of the day, not Deborah.
In the things of God, it doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as God gets the glory.
God will share the credit, but He will not share His glory.
Ill. There was a man who gave his business to God one night. He had hassled over it for years. In fact, he had fought it for two decades and could never really get it going the way he wanted it. It paid the bills, but was not what one would call successful. One day, he decided, “That’s it; I’ve had enough.” He had heard in a Sunday School lesson the value of turning everything over to God. As he drove away from the church service that morning, he decided he’d worried enough. By the time he got home, he had totally and unequivocally committed his business to God.
That very night, his place of business caught on fire. He got an emergency call and calmly drove himself to the business district and stood on the street corner, calmly watching his business, now God’s business, go up in flames. He had a slight smile on his face.
One of his employees showed up and raced to his side, alarmed at the calm look on his boss’s face. “Man, don’t you know what’s happening to you? It’s…it’s burning up?”
He replied, “I know it. I know it. No problem, Fred. Yesterday, I gave this business to God, and if He wants to burn it up, that’s His business.”
This man understood the importance of giving the glory to God, even when we don’t understand Him!
Barak had to admit, that guy could run. It just goes to show you that the speed of a man's legs are determined more by who's doing the chasing rather than by whose being chased. Through all the rain and mud and confusion, Sisera got a head start, but Barak knew which way he'd gone. He ordered some men near him to follow him and off they went. After an hour or so of chasing, they came upon the compound of Heber the Kenite. Could he be here? Not likely. Everybody knew that the Kenites were cozy with Jabin, king of Hazor, and this would be the first place they'd look for Sisera. Barak figured they'd stop for a drink and a brief break (maybe some goat barbecue). Jael comes out of the tent and says, “The man you are looking for is in my tent.” Barak reaches for his sword, alarmed that she is talking so loudly. Sisera will certainly hear her and flee out the back. Jael sees the look on Barak's face and laughs, saying, “Don't worry, he won't be going anywhere.” With a toss of her head, she motions for Barak to follow her into her tent. There she uncovers Sisera, eyes bugging out of his head, not moving or breathing, flies already buzzing about, a tent peg sticking out of the side of his head, the other end embedded into the ground. After covering him up and making sure he was asleep, she had swiftly but silently driven the tent peg through his temple. He never knew what hit him. She’d had enough of pandering to this pagan troublemaker. He won’t be coming around and bothering her anymore. Driving tent pegs since she was a child had paid off in an unexpected way. One strong arm; one heavy hammer; one sharp tent peg and one hard blow, equaled one great victory. It was that easy.
Barak is dumbfounded. All that chasing and running and sweating and here is Sisera, lying there dead as a…well, as a tent peg, killed by a…a woman.
“All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.” Not even Sisera!
Doing things with God brings total victory.
We may never see it; we might see it and not recognize it. But the Bible tells us that the victory is ours when the battle is the Lord’s. God never wins half-way: Jesus never performed half a miracle; God’s armies never won half a victory; God never kept half a promise. When God does something, He does it completely.
Was it here or later that it occurred to Barak that Deborah's prediction about a woman getting the credit came true? All along he thought it was Deborah herself that she had meant, but instead it was Jael, the nomadic wife of Heber the Kenite, a lowly tent-dweller.
What does it take to do something big for God? What is required to be a leader for the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church? Simply to understand these three things – God will use anyone who is willing to be used by Him; it doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as God gets the glory for the work of His people; and doing things with God brings total victory.
Only by submitting to God can we do a good work for Him – and even then the outcome may surprise us, will, in fact, surprise us! And the surprise is that God, who can do anything He wants, chooses to use people like Barak – people like Jael – people like us – to do His work.
God is looking for some people who want to do something big for Him – Will you be one of them?
