This morning we’re going to go through one of my personal favorite stories in the Bible. I have to warn you, it is a violent story, but it’s also full of irony and dark humor, and an epic twist that’s worthy of the Lord of the Rings. We’re going to be in Judges 4, and we’re going to look at another judge and another instance of God delivering His people, even when they hadn’t deserved it, this time in the most unlikeliest of ways.
I’ve had this mulling around in my brain for some time, and as I was considering that today is Palm Sunday, I couldn’t help but think that as the people gathered in Jerusalem all those years ago, awaiting the man that claimed to be the Messiah, they were jubilant and excited! They welcomed Him into the city with shouts and praise, the waved palm leaves for Him. They called Him blessed. But, He turned out to be what they didn’t expect. They expected a mighty warrior, someone who would lead them in victory over their enemies. I wonder if maybe they expected someone like Othniel or Ehud who we learned about last week. Or maybe they expected someone wise like Deborah who we’ll read about today. Maybe they even expected someone who had the strength of Samson. They certainly expected someone like David. But that’s not who they got. God worked in unexpected ways then too.
In fact, this whole account that we’re going to go over in Judges 4 this morning, is full of God working in the most unlikely of ways, and perhaps that’s why it’s so amazing!
Let’s start with Judges 4:1-3, “Then the sons of Israel again did 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; and the commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth-hagoyim. The sons of Israel cried to the Lord; for he had nine hundred iron chariots, and he oppressed the sons of Israel severely for twenty years.”
We’ve been looking each week for the past few weeks at the pattern that the ancient Israelites got into: sin, consequences of their sin, crying out to God, deliverance and repentance, and then peace, before they would go back to sin. The people would do this after the judge who had delivered them would die. So, what we see here, is the continuation of that pattern: Ehud, the previous judge died, and the people again did evil in the sight of the Lord. We know, from what we’ve been looking at the last few weeks that the evil that the people kept going back to was worshiping Baal and other gods instead of the Lord. That’s the case here, once again.
Now, the next part of the story is a little odd. We’re told that the Lord sold them, the people, into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan. I want to talk specifically about the words here, because when we read passages like this, we should ask questions. Did God really sell them to the king of Canaan? Wouldn’t this mean that God is working against the people He’s worked so hard to deliver? If it’s true, what does that say to us about how we should see God?
This reminds me in many ways of the account of the Israelites in Egypt, when we’re told that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against God’s own people. It’s the same sort of predicament which raises the same sort of questions. Did God really hardened Pharaoh’s heart? Wouldn’t this mean that God was working against His people while also trying to deliver them? If that’s true, what does it say to us about how we should see God?
We need to dig a little deeper here, so we can see what is truly happening because it goes deeper than what’s happening on the surface level. The word that we have here “sold” is translated in many ways as it’s used throughout the Bible. Sometimes it’s translated as “sell” or “sold” or “to make a sale”; other times it’s translated as “betray to others”; but other times, it’s translated as “surrendering over” in the same way that you would if someone had bought something from you and you were giving it to them, which is how the word is used here.
So, what’s being said here through this word choice is that God handed the Israelites over to Jabin because a price had been paid for the Israelites. Now, that price was the evil that they did, the sin that they committed of worshiping someone other than the Lord. Their sin paid the price for them to be sold into slavery. They sold themselves into the king of Canaan’s hands, God just handed them over after they had sold themselves by their own actions.
Now, this isn’t my point this morning, but I can’t help but think about how similar this is to our own lives. Don’t we sell ourselves into our own slavery through our sin? We make the choice to sin and we end up entangling ourselves in bondage. Galatians 5:1 tells us that we must stand firm against sin so we do not become slaves again.
Let’s get back to the story though. Though the Israelites have been handed over to the king of Canaan, Jabin, the main bad-guy, if you will, in this story is the king’s commander, Sisera. He’s a very, very bad guy. He was the commander of the king’s army, as we read, but in Judges 5, which is a song celebrating the Israelite victory that we’ll see soon, it’s implied in verse 30 that when Sisera, the commander was victorious, that he took his spoils of war in the form of women of the enemy, forcefully, and he had this reputation.
I want you to keep that in mind because that is an important detail in the story. The people are enslaved for 20 years, and then once again, they cry out to God.
He delivers them again, this time through a female judge named Deborah. We’re told that she was a prophetess, so she spoke the word of God to the nation, and we’re told that Deborah would sit under a palm tree and the people of Israel would come to her to have her give her wisdom and guidance for different issues.
Since my main point this morning is that God does the unexpected, and often works in the least likely of ways in the least likely of people, I want to mention here that Deborah was the only female judge, and that through her story we see that God does indeed call and equip women to speak His word, sometimes even to men, as was the case with Deborah. It’s also worth mentioning that she had the full confidence of the commander of the Israelite’s army, Barak, so much so that he risked disobeying God if it meant having Deborah by his side when he rode out into battle.
Finally, I also want to point out that it was God who put Deborah in a place of authority over the whole Israelite nation, He was the one who chose and raised up Deborah to deliver His people. It was unlikely, yes, because the culture dictated that a man should be the leader, but, again, like we see when we look at what the people expected the Messiah to be and look like, we know that God doesn’t always work in the ways that we think He should, and in this case, He worked in the least likely of ways.
Let’s look at verses 6-7, “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. 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.’”
Deborah heard a prophetic word from God, that He had already delivered Sisera and his chariots and troops to the Israelites, and she sends Barak, her commander, out to take the victory. Now, I mentioned before that Barak had so much confidence in Deborah and her ability to lead the people, even though she was the unlikeliest of leaders, that he told her he wouldn’t go into battle without her. Now, it’s good that he had that much confidence in Deborah, we should have complete confidence in our leaders, but we don’t ever want our affiliation and devotion to our leaders to outweigh our obedience to God. I could turn that into a sermon in itself, but for now, we’ll just sort of mark that in our memory.
Now, here’s where things get even more unlikely and unexpected. See, Deborah agrees to go to battle with Barak, but because he didn’t directly obey what God had asked of him, Deborah tells him that the victory won’t be his, but Sisera, the enemy, will be killed by a woman. Again, we see God working in a way that’s unexpected.
They all go into battle, and just as they come into a crucial moment in battle, the battle is about to be decided, and it begins to rain. Judges 5 says that it rained so much that it made it impossible for Sisera and his army of 900 chariots to move forward, to advance the battle, and they basically got stuck in mud. Barak, the Israelite commander then led his army onto the battlefield and slaughtered all the men, every single one fell by the sword, Judges 4:16 says, except Sisera, the bad guy.
He flees, and again, God does the unexpected. In verses 17-22, we read the very violent end to this story. Sisera, who’s running away, trying to hide from Barak and his men so he isn’t killed, and he goes to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber and she tells him to come inside her tent. Now, Jael’s husband Heber is meant to be a friend of king Jabin, so there was no reason for Sisera to think that he wouldn’t be safe if he went to Jael to seek safety.
Jael even treats him pretty good, she gives him something to drink and helps him hide. Then, when he’s fast asleep, she takes a tent peg and a hammer, and drives the tent peg through his head, which kills him of course. Now, why would she do this? Her husband is supposed to be friendly with king Jabin. Sisera and Jael should be on the same side, right?
Here’s the thing though, remember that I told you that Sisera had a bad reputation for forcefully taking enemy women as his reward in battle? It seems to be a well enough known fact that even the Israelites knew it. Perhaps, Jael knew it too. Perhaps, she feared that Sisera would try to force himself upon her. Perhaps she feared for her safety or maybe even her life, even though they were meant to be on the same side. Whatever the case, once again, we see God working through the unexpected. He used this woman, Jael, wife to a friend of the enemy to give Israel the victory.
In Judges 5:24, Jael receives high praise, “Most blessed of women is Jael, The wife of Heber the Kenite; Most blessed is she of women in the tent.” And there’s another connection here between the unexpected way God delivered His people and the then coming Messiah. I want to quickly just read for you Luke 1:42, when Mary had been told that she would carry the Son of God and she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John, the Baptist. When Elizabeth saw Mary, the little baby John leaped for joy inside her because he recognized, even in the womb, that Mary was carrying the Messiah. Luke 1:42 are Elizabeth’s words to Mary, “And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
I can’t help but see the connection here because these two verses, Judges 5:24 and Luke 1:42 are the only two times in the entire Bible that this phrase “blessed are you of women” is used. I think it’s a connection that reminds us that God does the unexpected, He works in unexpected ways and He works through unlikely people. He did the unexpected here in Judges 4, but even more so when He sent His Son Christ Jesus to the world, not to be the conquering hero, the mighty warrior that would lead them in battle and in victory over the physical enemies of Israel, but instead to suffer, to be beaten and shamed, and to die a bitter and cursed death on a cross; and to bring spiritual victory through His death and most importantly what we will celebrate next Sunday: His resurrection.
When Barak came looking for Sisera, Jael, showed him Sisera’s body and we end Judges 4 with these two verses, “So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the sons of Israel. The hand of the sons of Israel pressed heavier and heavier upon Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin the king of Canaan.”
So it has a happy ending once again. But, once again, God worked in the most unlikely of ways to make all of this happen. Not only did He raise up a female judge to lead the entire nation of Israel, but He achieved the final victory over the enemy’s armies through a woman.
1. How might God use you to do the unexpected during this time? How has He been working in you in unexpected ways? Be specific.
2. How does this story show the importance of simple obedience to God?
3. Why do you think Barak hesitated to do what God had directed him to do through Deborah?