She Brought Life To Her Village Series

Deborah - "She Brought Life To Her Village"

TEXT: JUDGES 4 & 5

Being a mother isn’t easy, and anyone who thinks it is... probably has never been a mother.

Erma Bombeck in her book, "Motherhood the second Oldest Profession" writes;

"I have always felt that too much time was given before birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn’t wake up until the child was ready to start school), and not enough time is given to how to mother after the baby is born.

Motherhood is an art. And it is naive to send a mother into the arena for 20 years with a child and expect her to come out on top. Everything is in the child’s favor. He’s little, he’s cute and he can turn tears on and off like a faucet.

There have always been schools for children. They spend anywhere from 12-16 years of their lives in them, around other children who share the experiences of being a child and how to combat it. They’re in an academic atmosphere where they learn how to manipulate parents and get what they want from them. They bind together to form a children’s network, where they pool ideas on how to get the car, how to get bigger allowances, and how to stay home when the parents go on vacation. Their influence is felt around the world. Without contributing a dime, they have more ice cream parlors, recreation centers, playgrounds, and amusement parks than any grownup could ever pull off.

They never pay full price for anything.

How do they do it?

They’re clever and they’re educated.

Some people think mothers should organize and form a union. I think education is the answer. If we only knew what to do and how to do it, we could survive."

Erma goes on to say that she is one of the luckier moms whom came into motherhood with some experience.

"I owned a Yorkshire Terrier for 3 years.

At 10 months, my children could stay and heel. At a year, they could catch a frisbee in their teeth in mid air. At 15 months after weeks of rubbing their noses in it and putting them outside, they were paper trained."

Today is Mother’s Day, Happy Mother’s Day to every Mom here!!

It’s true!!! Being a mom is perhaps one of the toughest jobs in the world. It requires a special person with special talents to be a mom, that is why men are not moms - we couldn’t handle it.

Now, I am confident that just about every mom wants to be a good mom. And their are many books written, that for a price will tell them how to become good moms.

Today, as we celebrate and honor Mothers we will look at a book, but not just any book - we are going to look at the Bible, and we will specifically look at the life of Deborah. You find Deborah’s story in the book of Judges...

Prayer..........

Now before I tell you Deborah’s story - we need to do a little background work together...

The book of Judges covers a period of 300 years. During this time God’s people lived in the promise land, but they have no king. It’s the period of time in between Joshua leading Israel in conquering the promise land and the time Israel gets her first king.

Now, the law given to Moses at Mt Sinai was still the law of Israel, but after Joshua died there was no national government to enforce it. And the enforcement by the tribes or families was not consistent, and more often then not - people did whatever they thought was right, "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit..." Judges 17:6

The period of judges was characterized by God’s people going through the same cycle 7 times. Here’s the cycle -

Stage One: the people would be doing good.

Stage Two: after these years of prosperity they would turn their backs on God....

Stage Three: God would allow an enemy to oppress them

Stage Four: The people would cry out to God

Stage Five: God sends a deliverer

Stage Six: the people start doing good again (Repeat stages)

The entire book of Judges dramatically illustrates God’s willingness to forgive time and time again. (Hey, why don’t you take that truth home with you today, IF you desire to change and you seek God’s forgiveness - it’s there!

Deborah’s story takes place during one of these cycles...

God’s people were once again doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord, and as always this drifting to wrong started when they began to worship false gods & idols...when they left the one true God to pursue gods of man’s own making....