11/17/19 Judges 4:1-24 “The Ladies and Barak”

15 Nov 11/17/19 Judges 4:1-24 “The Ladies and Barak”

11/17/19     Judges 4:1-24    “The Ladies and Barak”

Today we are going to take a look at two of the women of the Old Testament.  When I first started thinking about this topic I thought that we could sing something like, “I am woman, hear me roar.”  Although the idea is rather intriguing, I think that there may be more appropriate songs than that.  Anyway, you heard me step out of my comfort zone a couple of weeks ago and sing and I’m not going there again, for now.  And besides, this reading is not really about women and their roles in ministry and the church.  It does show these things but that is not the focal point.  Once again, the focus today is on the disobedience of Israel.  Let’s see if we can see this kind of disobedience in ourselves and find a way out of our worldly mess.

There is an old story of a traveling salesman that is told by Victor Yap.  The salesman was lost on a side road so he stopped to ask for directions from a ragged man sitting in front of his dilapidated house.  After he had gotten the directions, he made a little small talk and asked, “How is your cotton coming?”  “Ain’t got none,” was the reply.  The traveler continued, “Did you plant any?”  The ragged man replied, “Nope, afraid of boll weevils.”  So the inquisitive visitor asked, “How is your corn doing?”  To which the man quipped, “Didn’t plant none.  Afraid there weren’t goin’ to be any rain.”  Undaunted, the stranger asked another question, “How are your potatoes?”  And the reply came, “Ain’t got none; scared o’potato bugs.”  Now the salesman was somewhat puzzled but he asked on more question, “Really, what did you plant?”  The answer was, “Nothin’, I just played it safe.

One of our main characters today was playing it safe.  But before we get to this we really need to know what has been happening.  This is the time between Joshua and the kings.  For several hundred years the Israelites were ruled by judges.  And during this time and really during all times, even during the kings, Israel went through a cycle.  First the people would do good in the eyes of God.  Then they would prosper greatly as the grace of God was with them.  Soon they would forget about God again and turn their backs to Him and worship other gods.  Then an enemy would come and oppress them.  After a time of oppression, the people would cry out to God and God would send a deliverer, in this case a judge.

Israel had just finished the cycle under Ehud where they had really prospered.  Then they did evil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord left them to their own devices.  Jabin, the king of Canaan, took over the country.  His main general was Sisera.  Together they oppressed the Israelites until after 20 years they cried out to the Lord for help.

Good grief, folks.  It took them 20 years of severe hardship and near slavery before they decided to come back to God.  If we look closely, this isn’t any different than what happens today.  How many people have to live years and years in an alcoholic stupor before they realize the way out is through Jesus?  How many people do you know that are beaten in life time and time again and they still are too stubborn to come to the Lord?  I meet people like this every day.  There are lots of them out there.

There are so many of them in fact that we really have to ask the same question about our country.  How long will we last as a country if we keep our backs to Jesus?  We now have a country where immorality reigns.  Nudity is everywhere.  We allow so-called same sex marriages.  We slaughter our unborn children.  We murder our neighbor over a football game.  And we allow our poor to go hungry.  I get the strangest feeling that we have already turned our backs to Jesus.  And whatever comes of all of this will be a result of that.  Jesus will leave us to our own devices, just like He did to the ancient Israelites.

This is why we need revival so badly in this country.  And we can do it.  After the last elections, there was hardly a place where I could go where I didn’t hear that the world was ending because we elected the wrong man to be president.  I heard the exact same thing after Obama was elected.   Neither of these were necessarily my choice but I’m not going there.  However, I will urge you, that if you don’t like it, then gear yourself up for the next election and change it.  That is the beauty of our style of government.  But before you do any of this, make sure that you are in a relationship with Jesus and you are indeed on the right track.  Jesus loves us and wants us to turn back to Him.

Getting back to our reading, God raises up Deborah as the nation’s leader, a prophetess, and a wife.  The reading doesn’t make a big deal out of a woman leading an ancient nation.  But it was something that just wasn’t done.  We have talked before about how women of those times had no rights.  They were almost treated as slaves.  Yet, Deborah rises up as the leader.

This should be a lesson to all women and especially the girls and young women.  And really, this can be applied to anyone.  If you have Jesus Christ living in your heart and you are obedient, you will be able to do just about anything.  You will be able to do the impossible, like Deborah did by becoming leader. If any of you watching today, from the young to the old, male or female, dedicate your lives to God, then great things will happen.  These cycles of unbelieving and believing that the Israelites went through are no different than the personal cycles that we go through.  When you finally decide that you need God and are going to live your lives accordingly, then good will follow.  That is one of the messages of the Bible.

So anyway, Deborah calls in Barak, her general, and gives him the message from God.  Remember that she is a prophetess and God speaks through her.  But Barak doesn’t like the message.  The Canaanites have a vastly superior force and the Israelites really have no chance.  So instead of refusing his leader, he plays it safe, like our man in the opening story, by saying that he will go if she goes and he won’t go if she doesn’t go.  He thought that he had it made.  She would never go because she wasn’t a warrior and she knew nothing about battle.

But did she ever surprise him!  She not only went with him to the fight but she told him that because of his treachery and disobedience, he would not get the glory of winning the battle.  It would be given to a woman.

Hopefully we can infer from this that Barak had a problem.  He had a faith problem.  He had strong faith but it was in something else and not God.  Or maybe he was hedging his battle bet by bringing the prophetess of God with him so he could be near God or the prophetess at all times.  Either way, his faith was in the wrong place.

We have talked about this many times before.  Our faith may lie in money or hard work or some similar human endeavor.  Today I would like to ask is your faith in God or a church?  Many times I have heard people say that their church is the best because of the praise music, which is popular today, or the building or even worse yet, the preacher.  They never mention God.  Their faith is in the wrong place.  And worse still are the preachers who try to perpetuate these false gods by glorifying all the things around them plus themselves.  If anyone here comes to see this service for any of these reasons then you may have your faith in the wrong place.  God is the reason that we are here today.  Hopefully, God works through our music on YouTube, our service and through me every week.  So I hope that if someone asks you why you watch this you are able to answer, “Because God is here.”  If you cannot do that, then we all have some work to do.

Now Barak goes on and wins the battle handily because God is with him.  There is absolutely no way that Barak could have routed Sisera unless God was with him.  He won but that is not the end of the story.

Sisera escapes and flees to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite.  Now the Kenites were relatives of the Israelites.  But Heber had left the other Kenites and Israelites and pitched his tent with the Canaanites because they were vastly superior.  In other words he was trying to be on the side of the winner and save his family.  And of course, his wife, Jael, knew all about this.

So Sisera comes and seeks refuge from the attack in the tent of Jael because they are now allies.  And Jael then lets him sleep as she stands guard.  But instead of guarding the general, she kills him.  She goes back to the side of the Israelites because she knows that they have won the war.  She wants to be on the side of the winner.  And notice that she doesn’t just kill the leader; she drives the spike right through his head and buries it into the ground.  She stakes him to the ground.  It took some heated emotion to do this.

Because of this, it is hard to say what her emotions were ecactly.  If she was trying to be on the side of the winner, she was making a very emphatic statement.  Or maybe she was sick of the Canaanites and what they had done to her family and friends.  Or maybe she was just tired of all the killing.  Whatever the reasons were, Deborah had prophesied these results earlier.  Barak did not get the glory but the woman, Jael, did.

So that is the story in a nutshell.  There are many different lessons that can be pulled from all of this.  The obvious lesson is how God will use women in ministry.  Even though women of these times were rarely in positions of power, God made Deborah powerful.  Women were and are important.  Ruth went on to be the great grandmother of King David.  Esther became the queen over Babylonia.  Mary was the mother of Jesus.  Mary Magdalene was the first to carry the message of the resurrection.  And Lydia established the church in Philippi to name just a few.  God will use men, women, children and anything else that He chooses to further the message.  You young girls remember this.  You are very important in the eyes of God and God loves you dearly.

The second thing I want to bring up is our faith.  This whole story is about our faith in God.  Deborah was the heroine of this story because of her faith.  Barak was not the hero because of his divided faith.  And the nation of Israel was in trouble because of a total breakdown of faith.

Our nation today is in trouble because of a breakdown of faith.  We can elect all the great leaders we want and they will still not get us out of this crisis.  We need to quit relying on so-called human power.  As a nation we need to cry out in unison to God for mercy.  Don’t listen to the empty promises of our politicians and leaders.  Listen to God.

We also have many Barak’s in our midst.  So often our leaders tell us that abortion, homosexuality and even sorcery are good things.  They say they are not only good but they are the right things.  These people have a divided faith and that is giving them the benefit of the doubt.  We need leaders who are going to do the right things even when they are not popular.  We need to go back and learn what is right and what is wrong.  And the only source for this is our Bible.

And this will bring us back as individuals to our faith in Jesus Christ.  It will bring us back to the faith of Deborah in this case.  I would guess that everyone here today has faith.  Some may be stronger than others and that is just fine.  I would also guess that everyone here today could be a little stronger in their faith.  That is also fine.  If you are serious about being a Deborah and not a Barak, then get serious about reading the Bible, earnest praying and good Christian fellowship.  Work on these things in the coming weeks and months and then tell me how much difference it makes in your life.  We may all be amazed.

In closing I would like to tell a story of doing the right thing.  James Drake tells of Pastor Chuck McIllhenny who was at a San Francisco city council meeting where they were discussing a gay rights issue.  Before they put the issue to a vote they asked if anyone else had something to say.  Pastor Chuck couldn’t be quiet.  So he stood and went to the microphone.  He said, “I have nothing to say for myself but I would like to quote three individuals.”  Then he read from Moses in Leviticus, one of the psalms by David and from Paul in Romans 1.  He didn’t preach, or scream or sermonize.  He just read.  Before he could sit back down the council asked, “Who were those people, Moses and David and Paul?”  Then one member said, “You were reading from the Bible weren’t you?”  Pastor Chuck just said yes and sat down.  Then one of the council members said, “I vote no.”  Then another and another said the same.  The issue didn’t pass.  Pastor Chuck was thinking straight and right and with courage.

This is the courage we all need, the courage of Deborah and Pastor Chuck.  Jesus loves you so much that He will be beside you if you only believe.  It doesn’t matter where you go, Jesus has promised to be with you.  Put your total faith in the one who has been around forever.  Put your faith on someone sure.  This world is not a sure thing and I praise Jesus that He is.  Thank you Jesus for your love, guidance and patience, and thank you for first loving us.  Let’s pray.