Deborah: A Woman Who Lived Her Faith
Do you ever wonder if God gets tired? I don’t mean physically tired like when I say, “I have got to sit down. My feet are killing me.” I don’t even mean mentally tired, like, “I cannot make another decision. Somebody else decide where we go for dinner.”
No. I wonder if he ever gets tired of me, my whining and complaining, my bad attitude, my selfish nature, my pride. I wonder if he listens to my prayers, thinking, “Here she goes again. ONCE AGAIN, she is asking me to forgive her for that thing she continues to do over and over and over.”
At Highland Oaks, in Dallas, we are in the midst of a sermon series called Faith of our Mothers, and I have been asked to preach on Deborah. Her story comes at a pivotal time in the life of the Israelites, and we get to witness God’s overwhelming steadfastness, his long-suffering nature, and his unstoppable grace.
There is so much to love about Deborah. She is a wife, a friend, a singer, a songwriter, a prophet, and a judge. Deborah is a woman of fierce faith. Wise. Courageous. Bold in word and deed. She has tremendous credibility among the Israelites, both men and women, who line up to hear her prophecies and to receive judgment, to the point where they name a tree after her, the Palm of Deborah, and she sits under it so people will know where to find her.
In the book of Judges, the Israelites are in Canaan, the Promise Land, only they don’t drive out the Canaanites as God has told them to do, nor do they destroy their idols. In their minds, a better idea is to use the idol-worshippers as forced labor. Further, their ancestors, the ones who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, have all died without passing their faith on to the next generation. The last verse in Judges sums up the problem:
“In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”
These Israelites go from overlooking the idol worship to joining in with the idol worship. They even give their sons and daughters in marriage to these idol-worshippers.
And there are consequences. God decides not to help them fight their enemies. They are distressed, and they cry out, and he saves them. This happens over and over throughout the entire book of Judges. This cycle has four phases:
Rebellion - This generation of Israelites who were not taught about God from their ancestors are doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord, yet what seems right in their own eyes. They run away from God and worship idols.
Reckoning - God lets them have what they think they want, and they have to live with the consequences. Yet God is with them in the consequences; his justice AND his mercy are ready to receive them when they call his name.
Repentance - They are running back, because of the pain, and cry out to the Lord.
Restoration - God heals and restores all of the broken things. In Judges, it includes God raising up a judge to deliver them.
Each time the Israelites journey through this cycle, God uses a judge to deliver them, and there is rest in the land for a while after that judge dies.
In Judges 4:1, we see the cycle beginning again. The text says, “the Israelites AGAIN did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” This time, their consequence is that God gives them Jabin as king. He is an idol-worshipper, and he oppresses the Israelites for 20 years. After this, the people of Israel cry out to the Lord.
Enter Deborah.
Deborah has already been gifted by God and is on assignment, bringing peace and order as the prophet and judge of God’s people. His plan and his purpose are already in motion. He’s just waiting for the people of God to cry out to him.
She summons Barak, a military commander, and she tells him that the Lord God wants him to take 10,000 men and position themselves at Mount Tabor, and God will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, and hand him over to Barak.
Barak says, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” This one statement demonstrates the respect Barak has for Deborah. He knows, strategically, that it is in his best interest for her to go with him. This is somewhat surprising, given that this is a massively patriarchal society. But Barak does not hesitate. He knows that this woman of God is speaking the truth of God.
Barak and Deborah go into battle, and the entire army of Sisera falls by the sword. Sisera escapes this fate by getting off of his horse and running away. He ends up at the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite who is in good standing with King Jabin, so it seems like a safe place for him to hide.
Jael goes out to meet him and reassures him that he has nothing to worry about. She invites him into her tent, and her hospitality exceeds his expectations. He asks for water, and she gives him milk. She covers him with a rug so he can take a nap, and he asks her to stand guard at the entrance to the tent. She waits until he has fallen asleep from exhaustion. And then she goes softly to him, and with a tent peg in one hand and a hammer in the other, she drives the peg into his temple until it goes down into the ground. And verse 21 says, “And he died.”
YOU THINK?
Honestly, I don’t know how she had the courage. I have a very difficult time killing a roach with a fly swatter. Too juicy.
Two women. One day. Changing the course of history. One woman with a fierce faith, called by God to lead. Her life is a testimony to what living your faith looks like. And the other woman fulfilled Deborah’s prophecy that the Lord would use the hand of a woman to change history.
We see this paradoxical nature of our God, fully just and fully merciful. He is the high and lifted up GOD—and also God the son who humbles himself, comes down as a man, and dies a criminal’s death on the cross.
Because our God is so mysterious, we don’t know what to do with a God who is fully just and fully merciful, so we usually pick one.
Some of us order our lives around the God of justice. We see the Bible as a set of rules, and we try our hardest to follow all of the rules, but we fail to love our neighbor as God loves us.
Others of us order our lives around the God of grace and mercy. We love everyone but are surprised by the consequences for the decisions we make based on what seems right in our own eyes.
Thanks be to God for the profound lesson of the story of Deborah: God’s overwhelming steadfastness, his long-suffering nature, and his unstoppable grace.
