The God Who Penetrates the Minds of Friends and Foes Alike

You will know that we are in the book of Judges. Hopefully, we've been working through that for the past two weeks. And so we are back in Judges this morning. We're gonna turn to Judges chapter 4. Gonna read the whole chapter.

And it's the story of another fairly famous judge in Israel's history, famous leader in Israel's history called Deborah. The female judge. And because she was the only female judge in Israel's history, she was an extraordinary person. And so we're gonna be reading about her, but also the story of Barak, the general or the commander of the army that she interacted with, and then another lady called Jael. And we'll get to her as well very soon.

So we're gonna read Judges 4:1. The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord after Ehud died. And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Hagoyim. Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord for help.

For he had 900 chariots of iron, and he oppressed the people of Israel cruelly for twenty years. Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak, the son of Abinoam, from Kedesh Naphtali, and said to him, has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you? Go gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun, and I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the River Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand.

Barak said to her, if you will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh.

And Barak called out Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh, and 10,000 men went up at his heels, and Deborah went up with him. Now Heber, the Kenite, had separated from the Canaanites, the descendants of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses, and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zaanannim, which is near Kedesh. When Sisera was told that Barak, son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera called out all his chariots, 900 chariots of iron, and all the men who were with him from Harosheth Hagoyim to the River Kishon. And Deborah said to Barak, up, for this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand. Does not the Lord go out before you?

So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot. Barak pursued the chariot and the army to Harosheth Hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. Not a man was left.

But Sisera fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, turn aside my lord, turn aside to me, do not be afraid. So he turned aside to her into the tent and she covered him with a rug. And he said to her, please, give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty. So she opened a skin of milk, and gave him a drink, and covered him.

And he said to her, stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, is anyone here? Say, no. But Jael, the wife of Heber, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.

And behold, as Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, come and I will show you the man whom you are seeking. So he went into a tent and there lay Sisera dead with the tent peg in his temple. So on that day, God subdued Jabin, the king of Canaan, before the people of Israel. And the hand of the people of Israel pressed harder and harder against Jabin, the king of Canaan, until they destroyed Jabin, king of Canaan. So far, our reading.

Now last week, we looked at the story of Ehud, where God delivered Israel from their enemies down in the southern part of Israel. At the end of the story of Ehud, Judges 3:30 says that there was eighty years of peace for Israel. There's a single verse that separates chapter 3 and chapter 4, where it said that there came another judge after Ehud. And it's just one sentence, one verse. A judge by the name of Shamgar, who presumably also ruled in this eighty years of peace.

But then we come to chapter 4 verse 1, and we read that opening line that we're gonna become very familiar with over the next few weeks. And then Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Once again, after eighty years, Israel forgets that they are God's people. They forget that they are called by Him and set apart for Him. But even in this eighty years of peace, we see that there is a bubbling disobedience, at least in a passive way.

Because it seems that Israel loves this peace so much that they still don't take on board God's command given to them now many hundreds of years ago to take possession of the entire land, to take possession of the promised land. They love this peace, and so they stay in their towns and villages, but we see that this is a problem. Why? Because up comes this king of Canaan called Jabin, the king of Hazor. Why is this a problem?

Well, because Joshua, two hundred years ago now, came into the land of Canaan and conquered the city of Hazor, destroying it, burning it down to the ground. Interestingly, in Joshua's time, there was a king also of this city, which was probably sort of the Canaanite capital of Hazor. His name was also Jabin, which leads scholars to believe that Jabin probably isn't a personal name, but rather a Canaanite term for king. He was the king of the Canaanites. Jabin probably means king.

And so, Israel has previously conquered Hazor, but they don't take possession of it. They don't conquer it in such a way that limits the growth or the resurrection of the Canaanite people because here, Hazor still exists, has been rebuilt, and there is again a Jabin king of Canaan. Eighty years go by, and Israel again falls into apostasy and idolatry. And verse 2 says, the Lord sold Israel into the hand of Jabin. God hands Israel over to the Canaanites.

And for twenty years, the Israelites are oppressed by these Canaanites, by this king, and we're introduced to his very powerful general commander, a man called Sisera. Sisera is a fearful opponent because he leads an army of 900 iron chariots, the Bible says. The people cry out to God after twenty years. Again, you're wondering why does it take so long? Because they forget who God is.

After twenty years of oppression, they cry out to God. In this time, however, Israel is being ruled by a judge, a ruler, by the name of Deborah. She rules from the central part of the Kingdom of Israel. And what we read here is that she is seemingly a respected leader. She is respected in her role.

She's respected as a person because people from all over the place will come to this Deborah and come to what is called the Palm of Deborah between Bethel and Ramah in the kingdom of Israel, and they will come to hear her judgment, it says, her rulings, her decision making on issues within the kingdom. She's sort of portrayed almost as this oracle. And people respect her, and they admire her, and they go to her for advice. When God decides to act and deliver Israel, God uses Deborah to give a message to a man called Barak, from the northern tribe of Naphtali. These events are happening in the northern parts of Israel, mind you.

And Deborah says that you are to take Barak, 10,000 men from the tribes, the two tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. She says to him, the Lord is going to deliver into your hand the enemy general Sisera. It seems, however, that Barak is a little bit timid. He is a little bit scared. He's hesitant.

He says he won't go unless Deborah goes with him. Now, there's some debate about whether this is a lack of faith, or whether Barak is just very self effacing, that he wants the glory to go to Deborah, that he's saying to her, you are the leader, you are the judge here, I don't wanna take any of the glory. Tim Keller, his commentary, and I had this commentary here a few weeks ago, it's worthwhile getting. In his commentary, he prefers to think that Barak is this very humble man who wants to give the honour to Deborah, and wants her to come along with him so that she gets the glory. But most commentators that I've read seem to think that Barak is actually lacking trust in God.

He's lacking faith that this is truly what God can do. He's fearful of these 900 chariots of iron, and he wants Deborah to be there because she is the prophetess. She is the holy person here. And she is sort of the magical token that's gonna win this battle for them. This interpretation is what I prefer because it fits very well in what she says to him next in verse 9.

She says, you are not gonna get this glory. She says, fine. I'll come with you, but you are not gonna get the glory for this victory. Verse 9, the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Now, as we read the story, we see that it's not the hand of Deborah, but another woman by the name of Jael.

Meanwhile, Barak ends up fighting Sisera. We are told that he miraculously beats these 900 chariots. And Sisera ends up fleeing, and we see that he winds up coming to the tent of a man called Heber, who belonged to a tribe or a people group called the Kenites. Again, this is a little bit convoluted or tricky, but the Kenites are a different people group to the Israelites, even though they are connected loosely with the Israelites, having had their ancestry with one of Moses' brothers-in-law. So that is the connection here, but the Kenites don't belong to the Israelites.

Traditionally, the Kenites lived in the southern parts of Israel, but this man breaks away from the tribe and he goes and he lives up in the North where this battle had taken place. And it seems that Heber also had made a truce with the Canaanite king Jabin. So he's not an enemy. That's why Sisera comes to him and believes that he will find rest in this tent. But it seems that Heber, this Kenite man, isn't at home, so his wife Jael is there to greet him.

She invites Sisera into the tent. She gives him milk when he simply asks for water. She gives him a nice cosy blanket, tucks him in, so that he can have a nice long sleep after his running. And then she goes and she stands guard at the front of the door of the tent as he had asked her. And when Sisera falls into a deep, long, restful sleep, she takes a tent peg and a mallet, and she drives that tent peg through his skull in his sleep.

Talk about a plot twist. Sisera never saw it coming, literally. And there's just so many puns that you can make right now. Sisera died of a splitting headache. What was going through Sisera's mind at the time?

A tent peg. So the story is that Deborah's prophecy is true, comes true. Because we find that Barak comes, still chasing Sisera into the tent and realises that Sisera had died by the hand of Jael, this Kenite woman. The end of the chapter, verse 24, ends the account of Deborah and Barak and Jael, saying that Israel then started pressing harder and harder against Jabin, the king of the Canaanites, and they destroyed him. The end of chapter 5 says, they had peace for forty years after this.

That's the story in summary. So what is happening in this text and why is it important for us? Well, I thought this morning, I would like to break down the story in a way that will be hopefully helpful to us, to teach us how to read passages of Old Testament and New Testament narrative. The genre narrative. Because we know across the Bible, there are different types of literature.

We know that there are stories. We know that there are letters. We know that there is poetry. We know that there is prophecy, and all these different types of genres. And so in my preaching, in my working through these sort of texts, this is the process that I take.

And I thought it would be helpful for us because we're going to be spending a lot of time in the narratives over the coming weeks to work through three questions that are worthwhile writing down, remembering so that when you read a narrative segment of the Bible, you can go through this very process. The first question we ask when we read a story in the Bible is, what does this story proclaim about God and His relationship to His people? What does this story proclaim about God and His relationship with His people? Well, firstly, it seems that this is a story about Deborah, Barak, and Jael. And yet, if we read carefully, we see that God is the agent of the change of what is happening here.

We see that God is the powerful rescuer who is working through unexpected individuals to rescue His people. It's a similar theme to the one from last week with Ehud. So how does God, as a powerful rescuer, work through unexpected individuals to rescue His people? Well, we see that God is the one who controls the outcomes of the victory that is being fought here. And amazingly, He controls the outcome of that through controlling the natural world itself.

If you skip forward to Judges chapter 5, the next chapter, you see another genre in the Bible, which is poetry. And this again, if you were to read this, you'd read this differently to the way we've just read narrative. But this poetic chapter is actually the same content, just told differently. This is a victory song that is sung by Deborah and Barak about what has just happened. And so, if we look at Judges chapter 5 at various points, we actually read some colour from the story.

Chapter 4 is very historical. It's written by a historian, but we find some great detail in chapter 5. And one of these details is that there is a moment where God opens the heavens in this battle. Have a look at verse 4 in chapter 5. Deborah is, you know, honouring Israel, honouring Barak and says, the Lord, when Lord, when You went out from Seir, when You marched from the region of Edom, so this is to God, the earth trembled.

So God is on His warpath in front of the armies of Israel. The earth trembled before You and the heavens dropped. Yes. The clouds dropped water. The NIV says, it rained.

It dropped rain. And so, what we actually see here in some of these details, and knowing also what happens in the narrative where we find that the battle takes place in the plains near the Kishon River, is these chariots probably got bogged in flood plains. This is the amazing thing is, it's unseasonable, this weather, that it doesn't, you know, it's not predicted to be raining. Generals knew what was a good time to fight, and that's when they had these battles. Sisera thinks this 10,000 foot soldiers is easy pickings.

He goes on the plains, which is flat, great terrain for his chariots, and then God sends rain. And you can imagine the rain and the combination of a flooding river just absolutely neutralises these chariots. And 10,000 foot soldiers come and they overwhelm these chariots. It's a massive victory. It's a miraculous victory.

Now, this is also significant, however, for those first generation Israelites hearing of this story because the gods that they were starting to worship, the idols of Baal and Asherah, were fertility gods. They were their prosperity gods that gave the rain, that sent the floods to water the farmlands. And so here we find God sending rain in order to protect His people. When God comes to the aid of Israel, He saves them by sending unseasonable rain. God, therefore, shows Himself to be the one who controls nature.

And it's a powerful indictment against Israel in how they had been trusting those idols. God is the one in control. But then God also shows that He is sovereign not only over nature, but that He's also the one who uses those not necessarily in His kingdom to accomplish His will. We hear the story of Jael. She's not an Israelite.

She's a Kenite. The Kenites don't worship God in a way that the Israelites do. Yet, it is Jael that is moved by God to put an end to Israel's greatest enemy. So we have to understand and we have to accept that God, while He could move a faithful Israelite, because they have faith in God and that's very easy for us to accept, God uses an unbeliever to accomplish His purposes. God has that sort of power to reach into the hearts and the minds of those who don't even profess faith in Him.

And we see that this is not unusual in the history of Israel. During the exile, for example, hundreds of years later, God would use the powerful Nebuchadnezzar, the emperor of Babylon, to give safety and peace for God's people, to protect them. God uses a Gentile to protect the people of Israel. Later, God uses the king Cyrus, king of Persia, to send Israel back to the promised land. These people aren't necessarily believers, and yet God uses His power, His sovereignty over the hearts and the minds of those individuals outside of His kingdom.

So this tells us something about God. What does it tell us about God? God is very powerful. God does not need to respect my heart, my mind, my soul. God has created every part of it.

He owns every part of it, and so He is sovereign. He reigns over every part of it. He is the sovereign King of the universe, and He can call whoever He wishes. So what does it tell us about God? It tells us those things about God.

Then the next question we ask, how does this message of God's power connect with the Bible's larger story of Jesus? Well, God uses three individuals, Deborah, Jael, and Barak. And these individuals have respective strengths and weaknesses, but they accomplish one task. Three individuals doing one task, which is to rescue Israel. They all, these three individuals contribute necessary aspects to accomplishing this task.

Now, I wanna preface this by saying, in the commentaries I read again, the scholars that have been working with these ancient documents, they don't present this opinion that I'm gonna present to you. So please take it on with some advice, with a bit of advice and prayer. But I can't help seeing this thread in this amazing story. We see three people. Deborah, the prophetess, who speaks the word of God.

We see Barak, the military leader who rescues and defends the people of God, like a king would do. And then finally, we see this woman, Jael, execute the judgment of God, the judgment on the sin of this man, like a priest would have done. And as I read this, I I can't see these three offices, these three roles that is happening here, that ultimately achieves this one tremendous victory. And so we see God needing three individuals to do this one task. Now, we also see that while these three individuals had these roles, in their strengths, they did these things, but they were also weak and needed the other individual to do this.

So while Deborah proved to be a wonderful civil and spiritual leader as the prophetess and the judge of God's people, she doesn't have the military capability to fight. Which is unusual because all the other judges in the book of Judges, the Samsons, the Ehuds, the Gideons, they all fight. They are at the front lines. Deborah is the only judge that doesn't or can't. She needs Barak.

Barak is faithless, timid, scared. He needs Deborah with her faith, her courage, her trust as the prophetess. But he will go and do this job of defending God's people. And then we come to Jael as the executor of God's judgment of saying, this is the punishment that will be measured out to you, but she is dodgy. The story here is absolutely appalling to ancient Israelites listening to it because a man comes into her home.

A home that has a truce between her husband and the king. She should have protected this man. Even in modern day Palestine now, in the Middle East now, if you are in someone's home, even in Pakistan when I was there, if you are in their home, it doesn't matter who came for you with an AK-47 or a rocket launcher, that family is defending you. They may not even know you, but you are under their protection. And here, it's promised to Sisera protection.

And Jael does the opposite herself and kills this man. This is appalling. A questionable moral character. And yet throughout the story, we see these three roles, prophet, priest, and king. And again, we read throughout Israel's history and we see God raising these various leaders at various times.

Prophets, priests, and kings to fill the roles of God's people at various times to lead them. And this points us forward to Jesus, where in the New Testament, the disciples, the apostles recognised Jesus to be the one in whom the three offices of priest, prophet, and king is fulfilled. He needs to fulfil those three things in His final work as the Messiah, the perfect one who was to come. Why? Because in His life, He was a prophet.

He preached, He proclaimed, He taught God's word. In His death, He became a priest, offering the sacrifice, dealing with the punishment of God. And then in His resurrection, He is King. He wins the victory over sin and death. And Jesus, the threefold offices that was constantly being foreshadowed in Israel's history is fully and finally fulfilled.

Jesus is prophet, priest and king. And so Deborah, Barak and Jael, they are foreshadowing Jesus. And so the third question, once we've asked how does this message connect with the Bible's largest story of Jesus, the third question, the final question is, what encouragement does this story offer us in our daily walk? Well, God uses both our strengths and our weaknesses. I think that is the story here in the story of Deborah.

He uses our abilities and our limitations to accomplish His purposes. This is the mind boggling power of God. We think we need our ability. We think we need to add our ability to make our work for God effective. But most of all, we need to know that we only need to offer our availability.

Each of these three main characters in the story have their own individual weaknesses that God is able to wonderfully capitalise on and use, and their weaknesses are supported by the other one's strength. This is a wonderful reminder of why we need the church. This is a wonderful reminder, even in COVID times, of why it's important for us to try and meet together, to be in small groups, to be together regularly enough because we have gifts, strengths to support the weaknesses in the body of Christ. We are better when we live and work together. But I think the real amazing part in the story here is that the power of God is seen even in our weaknesses, even in our frailties.

Why? Not to make us feel necessarily good about ourselves, but that God's purposes may be fulfilled and He gets the glory. We see this in the story if we look at it very closely. Firstly, we see, okay, sure Barak, if he had simply trusted enough, if he had simply been obedient enough and had gone out, when Deborah said, go and take on Sisera, he would have received the glory. Sure.

We can we can make that argument. God would have given Barak the personal satisfaction of dispatching Sisera himself, but we see Barak is weak in his faith. God knows that. And so God, through Deborah, says that Jael will have this final victory, this final act. Now someone could argue, well, doesn't God get the same results either way?

Either way, this Sisera is dead. Whether it was through Barak or Jael, the enemy is destroyed. Yes. But here is the amazing detail in the story. This is what makes God's word so wonderful.

Let's go back to the start of the chapter. Verse 2, it says that the Lord sold them, this is Israel, into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan. This is a construction to have sold the people into the hand. It's an exchange of slaves. You sold slaves like this way.

If you look at the other instances, with Ehud and with Othniel and earlier on, when the Israelites were handed over, it said handed over. God gave them or God it says with Ehud, God strengthened the hand of Eglon. It's the same thing, but the language is significant. Here, there is a language of slave exchange. And it hints at something that we also then read in chapter 5, where we find this victory song of Deborah and Barak.

And in verse 30, we're told of this hypothetical account of, well, actually, starting in verse 28. Out of the window she peered, the mother of Sisera, who was wailing through the lattice. She's waiting for her son Sisera to come back. And she asked, why is his chariot so long in coming? And it says that her wisest princesses, her ladies in waiting, answer her, verse 30, have they perhaps not found and divided the spoils?

Are they maybe celebrating the bounty that they've won, the booty? It says, perhaps they've found a womb or two for every man. That gives a really ominous insight into what the spoils of war was for Sisera. The rape of women. This is the character we see of this Sisera, this man, and it ties back to why God needed to destroy Canaan.

They were an evil people led by evil characters. And so here is the profound, poignant point that is being made here. God sells like slaves Israel over to Jabin. They are literally sex slaves. And the victory would have resulted in the rape of women.

God not only spares them, but ironically uses two women to kill Deborah and Jael. The irony again is just so powerful for this ancient Israelites hearing is because where this happens for Sisera is so embarrassing. How this happens? The women in those days were the ones who set up tents. When they moved, the men would go out to secure the area, make sure it's safe, look after the livestock and so on, and the ladies would stay and put up these tents.

So these tent pegs and this mallet, it was as stereotypical for a woman's tool as a rolling pin was in the nineteen fifties for housewives. And Sisera, the woman raper is killed with a rolling pin. Now, think back. God could have allowed Barak to have done this. God could have said, this is such a frustrating situation.

I I wish Barak would have done this. And yet, He knows the weakness of Barak. Says, okay Barak, you're not gonna get the glory, and powerfully, ironically uses a woman to so humiliatingly kill Sisera. God uses even weaknesses to accomplish His purpose. Now, this isn't a surprise to us because if we know our Bibles, we know that God's giants have always been weak people.

God uses even our weaknesses to accomplish His purposes. Some of the greatest heroes, some of my greatest heroes, people like Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, who is regarded as the godfather of modern missionaries, who almost single handedly brought the gospel into mainland China. Even Hudson Taylor came to realise how God works through His weakness. He was once complimented by a friend on the impact of his mission. And Taylor answered, it seemed to me that God looked over the whole world to find a man who was weak enough to do His work.

And when He at last found me, He said God said, he is weak enough and so he will do. Hudson Taylor, this godfather of modern missionaries, came to learn how God would use his weakness in order to accomplish His purposes. And so what this means for you and for me is that even in those areas where we are so painfully aware that we just don't stack up, that we just we can't offer enough to God, we just don't feel like we have anything to give Him. We're so painfully aware that we are just not right. Some of us, it may be in our ability, and some of us, it may be that we feel our sin and the whole of our sin is too strong, or that our mind or our body is too weak, or you might be surrounded by thousands of doubts.

The story of Deborah, Barak and Jael is that in the hands of our great God, even our weaknesses are being used. And so this is what we need to do again and again. We need to gladly give God our weaknesses. We need to honestly pray and say to Him, God, these are the things I know that I am weak in. These are the things I know I am not doing, I can't do right now.

And I offer them to you and your strength. And we pray when we do that, do as You wish with them. Do what You need to do with them. And Lord, give me the honour, give me the joy of seeing how powerfully You can use these things for Your purposes. Our great joy in acknowledging these weaknesses, in honestly recognising them in ourselves, and not trying to hide from them, not trying to downplay them proudly and sort of live in denial about them.

Our great joy in acknowledging our weaknesses is offering them to God. And then we realise that as we do, Jesus was the only one who needed to be perfectly strong. And He was. He needed to be priest, prophet, and king on our behalf, and He was all of them. He is our strength, therefore.

He is our victor that goes and fights for our behalf. He is the one that brings and punishes evil. He is the one who speaks a word of peace, even today. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we have this rich, incredible story with all its wonderful detail, the interweaving of the surprising, delightful twists in the story.

And so we marvel, God, at how You are able to use the brokenness, the realness of weak individuals. Individuals that at times are very admirable and impressive, a faith like Deborah, a strength like Barak, a conviction like Jael. That You can use individuals in their strengths, but Lord, You receive so much glory when You use their weaknesses. Oh God, we pray that You will take our weaknesses up today, that You will receive them, that we can acknowledge them to You, the weakness of our sin that we wrestle with. Oh Lord, but just the weakness of our mind and our body, of our psyche, of our emotions, Lord.

The things that are just out of kilter at the moment. And we ask, Lord, that You will receive them, that You know about them, and God, that You will redeem them and use them for Your purposes. We thank you, Lord Jesus, that You were the one that was perfect. We thank you, Lord, in You that was all strength, that was all courage, that was all conviction. And so, Lord, we simply profess again that we need You to have been this perfect saviour for us.

And so even in our humble, limping way, Lord, help us to accomplish something beautiful in response to this. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen.