Deborah and Barak: Calling All Leaders, Both Male and Female

Well, I feel a deep sense of gratitude this morning for those members at every campus of our parking team, so why don't we put our hands together for them.

It is bad enough that we make them where there's dorky orange vests every week, but then to put them out in the freezing rain, that just goes above and beyond. For those of you that are new to our church, I have three daughters. One is named Kara, she is age 11. Ali, who is nine, and then Raya, who is seven years old. Then on December 25th of 2009, we finally squeaked in a little boy right at the buzzer. He is five years old now. This is a picture of our family here.

So that is the Greer clan there. You guys can pray for Adam, my son. In some ways, I feel like the deck is really stacked against him. He has four moms instead of one who dress him up like a princess and carry him around our house. He is a pastor's kid, and then on top of all that, he shares a birthday with Jesus. So I feel like he's got a lot to overcome in his life. He's pretty late in developing his speaking and his walking abilities, at least relatively late compared to our daughters. People a lot of times will ask me why I think that was.

It is very simply, there was no reason at all for him to do any of those things himself for the first four years. Everywhere he wanted to go, one of his four moms carried him around, and between them, enough words transpire in our house that neither Adam nor I feel like we have a lot to add. But anyway, that is the world that I live in, and I share that because this passage in the book of Judges today has very special significance for me as a dad of three very smart, very, shall we say, high-spirited daughters. This passage speaks to what I hope for them, what I dream for them, what I pray over them. It is the story of Deborah, the only female judge.

Now, guys, do not zone out because I'm telling you there is plenty in here that you can learn from too. So if you have a Bible, Judges 4 is where we are going to be. Judges 4 and 5, we're going to look at the story of Deborah and Barak. Deborah and Barak. Judges 4, 1, the story begins, Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Now that left-handed Ehud was dead.

Remember, left-handed Ehud was the southpaw savior. We looked at a couple weeks ago that delivered Israel. Well, as long as he was alive for 80 years, the people followed God, but when he died, they wandered back into their ways, and so the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, the king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, had 900 chariots fitted with iron. If you remember, I told you the first week that chariots of iron in those days were like the tanks of modern day.

You know, it's like the panzer tanks, and so they could mow down hundreds of foot soldiers. Israel didn't have any of them, and so Sisera has a decided tactical advantage over Israel, so he cruelly oppresses the Israelites for 20 years. Now Israel cried to the Lord for help. Verse 4, Now Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lapidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the palm of Deborah, creatively named, and the Israelites went up to her to have their disputes decided. You know, is it a gold and white dress, or is it a blue and black dress?

They would ask her questions like that. Just out of curiosity, how many of you gold and white? Just raise your hand. How many of you blue and black?

You guys are crazy. I wore a gold shirt just in honor of it this weekend, but she settled things like that for them, and so she sent for Barak and said to him, The Lord, Barak, the God of Israel, commands you, go and take with you 10,000 men, and I will lead Sisera into your hands. Barak said to her, If you go with me, I'll go, but if you don't go with me, I won't go. So Deborah responds, and you've got to read in this a very deep sigh, Certainly I will go with you, but because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman. Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the Kenites and had pitched his tent up by the oak in Zaninim, which is near Kadesh.

That seems like a random detail that came out of nowhere, right? We're talking about Deborah and Barak in an imminent battle, and now all of a sudden we learn about this guy named Heber who can't get along with the other Kenites, and so he takes his trailer with his wife, and he moves out to the desert, but it's not a random detail at all, as I will show you. So meanwhile, back at the palace, verse 12, Deborah directs Barak and the army down to a region at the base of Mount Tabor.

It's a river basin, which is another important detail I'll show you in a moment. Verse 14, Then Deborah said to Barak, Go, this is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands, as not the Lord galled ahead of you. And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot. We're going to find out in chapter five that the reason Sisera had to flee on foot was a sudden rainstorm had come and the river flooded, so Sisera's 900 chariots of iron got stuck. Now what is remarkable about that is all this took place during the dry season when it never rained. Had there been any chance at all of rain, Sisera would never have taken his 900 chariots down into a river basin.

So what you see is that God sends, essentially, a snow in July is how it would be for us. And in a matter of just moments, he, with a little moisture, takes Sisera's huge tactical advantage and turns it into a liability. So Sisera is now running on foot and with his 900 chariots behind him. And he comes, verse 17, to the chin of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.

Remember them? Sisera would never have run anywhere near an Israelite city. So now he's running out to the wilderness and there you have Heber, the guy that can't get along with the other Kenites, and his wife that have pitched their trailer out there all by themselves. Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, come, my lord, come in, right in, don't be afraid. So he entered her tent and she covered him with a blanket. I'm thirsty, he said, please give me some water. She didn't give him water, she opened up a skin of milk and she gave him a drink and covered him up.

There, there, big warrior man needs a little nap, doesn't he? She starts to sing him a little lullaby and he drifts off to sleep, verse 21. Then Jael, Heber's wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep. She drove the peg through his temple and to the ground and he died. I'm not sure that last sentence was necessary to be honest with you, but you didn't see that one coming, did you? Do you all know this story? Neither did he, that was kind of the point.

She walked outside and said, nailed it. And that's the end. Now you read that and you say, what a smashing salvation story, but what is there that we can learn from it? I know some of you say, that seems really violent.

Stories like this and judges are violent, I don't understand it. I'll come back to that toward the end, but here's the question. What piercing truths can we learn from Deborah, Barak and Jael? Let me give you five of them, okay?

The first one is the longest. Number one, God gives to women the same spiritual gifts He gives to men. That's one of the things you can learn from that story. You see this story, as much as perhaps any in the Bible, gives you a glimpse into the role that God has for women in His kingdom. Deborah is called a prophet. She is a wise and respected leader in Israel. Some people have said that the only reason that Deborah was a prophet is because there was no men. There were no men around to lead, which somehow indicates the moral degradation of Israel, but there is nothing in this passage that would indicate that. It's true that you see Barak demur or waver in his faith, but even before that, Deborah was an established leader and teacher in Israel.

She's not there because Barak has failed. She is there because she is wise and the Spirit of God has anointed her and set her up to be a leader, which leads me to emphasize something we believe very strongly here at the Summit Church, and that is that women have access to every spiritual gift that men have access to. You see, there is a myth alive in certain parts of the church that men in the church ought to be taught deep, rich theology, and women ought to learn how to match their curtains with the pillows on their couch or how not to feel sad on rainy days. I saw one Christian author point out that any time you go to a Christian women's conference and they teach out of the book of Ephesians, the only part they ever focus on is Ephesians 5, where Paul talks about how wives are to relate to their husbands, as if the rest of the book is written for men and just that one chapter is written for women. The entire book of Ephesians, and the whole Bible for that matter, is written to women, and you women need to learn all of it. I did not marry a weak, superficial woman. I am not raising my daughters to be weak, superficial women, and I do not want this church to create them either.

So our ministry here at the Summit Church aims, yes, we are here to help you ladies be better wives and mothers if that is a role that God has given to you, but we are also passionate to see those of you whom God has called to be leaders become those leaders. Now, having said that, in both the Old and New Testaments, God establishes certain positions that he wants only men to play and others that he wants only women to play. In the Old Testament, for example, women could not be priests. Or you see right here in this story that Deborah won't lead the army. When Barak demurs, she doesn't say, well, I'll do it. No, she encourages him. Or did you notice that when she is introduced in chapter four, she's identified as the wife of Lapidoth. You see, the writer never does that for the men. The writer never says Joshua, the husband of Kim, or Barak, the husband of Michelle.

Just to pick a random name there. That is a Hebrew way when he does that of indicating that she has an identity in a home led by her husband. Even though she is the most important person in all of Israel, arguably the wisest and the best leader, she has identified herself in a home led by her husband because that is a role that God has given him to play. In the New Testament, Paul says very clearly in 1 Timothy 2 and 3 that women should not serve in the role of pastor, elder at the church. But that does not prohibit them from leading in other spheres or from exercising all the same spiritual gifts that men have, including leadership and teaching, just not in the capacity of pastor, elders. There's a really controversial statement in Paul's letter to Timothy, chapter two, verse 12, where Paul says, in a church, a woman should learn with all submissiveness. And we read that and we say, well, what does that mean? Well, let me tell you what it can't mean. It can't mean that women do not speak prophetically in the church or teach or even teach mixed audiences.

Here's how I know that. We see them doing that all through the New Testament. They're called prophetesses. They're all deaconess. Priscilla, in Acts 18, is said to be the tutor of the great preacher, Apollos. Paul tells you exactly what he means by that statement in the next couple of verses. Unfortunately, in the English Bible, there's a break between 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Timothy 3 that somehow mask for us, or usually mask, the flow of thought. Paul tells you exactly what he means by that statement in chapter three when he says right after that that women are not to be the ruling elders in the church.

That's all that he means. Of course they teach. Of course they prophesy.

Of course they explain the Bible. We see that happening all through the New Testament, just not in the capacity of pastor or elders. Tim Keller says it this way. God forbids one kind of role in the church to women, as he did in Israel. We must not jump from that to forbidding all teaching and tasks to women. And we shouldn't assert all sorts of specific tasks are off limits to women.

For example, working outside the home or teaching males over 12 or speaking in the front of church services. It is better to say that everything a man who isn't an elder can do, a woman can do also. You see, there's been a false dichotomy put forward in the church. On one side, you say, well, either you believe there is no distinction of roles at all, or the other side, you believe women can only serve in some kind of diminutive role because women don't have the capacity to lead. We need to reject that dichotomy at this church and instead adopt what the Bible puts forward as our standard. Women are equals without being equivalents. The Bible teaches equality of position, equality of gifting, but with distinctive roles to play in the family and in the church. So specifically to the women of the Summit Church, I wanna say three things. Number one, God has a calling on your life. Yours is not simply to sit on the sidelines and make coffee and have kids. Do you know what that calling is? Have you risen up to obey it? Like Deborah, you need to get into the fight and not just sit on the sidelines and cheer for the men. Number two, you are a leader with spiritual authority. I know a lot of women who are entirely too dependent on their husbands, who never take spiritual responsibility. That's not what you see in Deborah.

Here you see a leader of the highest caliber. She is the wisest and most courageous person in all of Israel. Number three, you can do all of this while respecting God's order, as you see Deborah do here. She refuses to take positions that God had assigned to men and she identified herself in a house headed by her husband. You see, we need to reject both sides of the dichotomy that God doesn't give the women the same gifts he gives to men or that there's no distinction of roles in the church.

I mentioned that I have three daughters. One of the things I pray for them literally is that they will become Deborahs. That is literally how I have it written down in my prayer journal. I pray over Keras, Ali and Riah that God will raise them up to become Deborahs because we need a lot more Deborahs in this church and in the kingdom of God. We need Deborahs in the home speaking courage into their children and their husbands. We need Deborahs in ministry that are calling us to give and pray and go and sacrifice and get in the fight and leading us in that. I thought of a dozen women at our church I could use to illustrate, but I chose two because I didn't have time to get either their permission.

So these are the two that I knew that I could just do it and they would just go along with it. One is Jamie Warren, who is sitting right here in front of me. She leads my personal prayer team at this church and she helps lead our prison ministry. I thought of Bonnie Shrum, who is now on our staff. She was a corporate executive at a very high position, a vice president at a large corporation around here who resigned that and came to help organize and lead in our missions ministries here at the Summit Church.

I did not get their permission, but I figured if Barack had shoved Deborah into battle, I could bring these ladies forward and at least use their names and they wouldn't complain about it. We need more Deborahs in society who rule and lead and teach with wisdom and courage and faith and that is what our ministry to women here at the Summit Church is all about. By the way, to that end, you will see in the little newsletter, monthly newsletter you got, there is something in there about a women's conference that is coming up.

I can tell you exactly what is going to be covered at that women's conference and that there are a handful of people excited about it. It is about how women can grow in gifting and leadership in the kingdom of God. Men, let me say to you, maybe you're married to a Deborah. Maybe you're married. Maybe you're Lapidoth.

You need to platform her like Lapidoth did. He's kind of the unsung hero in this story. He gets one mention, but because he did what he did, he allowed her to bless Israel the way that she did. Maybe you're married to a Lapidoth and that's the way that you're gonna serve the kingdom of God. Cindy Peterson who leads our women's ministries here told me just this week, she said, you know, two years ago, when I came on staff here at the Summit Church to lead the women's ministry, she says, I never told you this, but I had actually made up my mind to say no. I just felt like there was so much going on in our family and our lives and John's life and ministry that I just felt like I couldn't. She said, my husband, John, sat me down and said, one day I have to stand before God and I have to answer for how we stewarded these leadership and teaching gifts that God gave you. Cindy, do not make me stand before God and have to explain why you sat on the sidelines and I did not give you the ability to bless the Summit Church the way that God has gifted you to bless the Summit Church.

There are men of you that are married to this kind of woman and you need to platform her and you need to be behind her and you need to release her. That is lesson number one. God gives to women every spiritual gift that he gives to men.

There's more though, that's just rule number one, but I told you it's the longest. The others are in the next chapter, chapter five, because Deborah writes a song and in that song are four important lessons for both men and women. By the way, if you happen to be one of those people who feel like women should never teach you in church, you should probably excuse yourself during this section because this entire chapter is written by a woman and so you might have a conflict of conscience or you could just change your mind and quit being an idiot.

Quit being an idiot. Number two, when the leaders lead, when the leaders lead, the people praise the Lord. That's the first thing she says. Chapter five, verse one, Deborah says, when the princes in Israel take the lead, when the people willingly offer themselves, praise the Lord. My heart is with the willing volunteers among the people. Then in verse 13, she begins to list out the various tribes of Israel and she talks about which ones joined the fight and which ones did not. For example, verse 14, from Ephraim they came to help. Verse 15, the Issachar faithful followed us into battle. Verse 18, the people from Zebulun, anybody here from Zebulun, risked their very lives.

Verse 17, however Gilead remained in Jordan and Dan, oh, Dan, Dan lingered with the ships. Blessed are the ones, she said, who stepped forward in faith to fight. Now, you could apply this to both men and women but specifically she talks about the men because princes, not princes but princes, is male. She's saying when the leaders lead, when the princes lead, then the people praise the Lord. So let me direct this point specifically toward the men.

We have a lot of men hanging back by the ships that ought to be out in the fight. You see, there's one way of reading Genesis 3, the story of the original sin, in which you see the original sin as beginning with passivity on the part of the man and refusing to take the lead. God had given the man instructions that they were to eat of every tree except for this one. And when Genesis 3 opens up, you see the serpent having a conversation with Eve and we are tempted to think that Adam was somewhere raising crops or doing his quiet time or something and here's Eve out talking with the snake. But the way it's written, it doesn't really come clear in English but in Hebrew it says that Adam was with her when this conversation was happening and with her means he was standing right beside her. So he's watching this thing go down, he's letting the serpent have this conversation with Eve. He knows that God has said, the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. So he's gonna let her take the first bite like a crash test dummy and be like, I wonder if she's gonna drop dead.

Oh, if she didn't, no, I'll take some. So the first, the original sin, there's one way of reading it where you could say before there was a sin where anybody actually did anything wrong, there was a failure of the man to do anything, period. The temptation of men, the great temptation of men is not that you do something evil, the greatest temptation of men is that you do nothing.

Even Barak here demurs at first and won't go without her. The great temptation of men is not to do evil, it's to do nothing. The same is true today. We got a lot of guys who are not bad guys. They're just hanging back by the ships when they ought to be out leading in the fight.

You want a great example of this? The International Mission Board whom we send most of our missionaries through says that for the last five years in a row, when you look at the places in the world that are the hardest to reach, the places where it's the most dangerous to spread the gospel, women applicants to those places, serve in those places, outnumber the men four to one. Praise God for the women that are stepping forward to do that.

Where are the guys that are hanging back by the ships who ought to be out leading in the fight? It is when the princes lead that we praise the Lord. Deborah says, Men, God has given you a crucial role to play that cannot be replicated by anybody else. And if your family is gonna praise the Lord, it's gonna be because you step forward to lead. Every sociological study of its type done points to the fact that the leadership of the Father is the greatest determining factor in how the kids turn out.

For instance, one study that I have right here in front of me, and I've shared it with you before, says this. If a child in a family is the first one to come to faith in Christ in that family, there is a 3.5% chance that everybody else in the family will become Christian. If the mother is the first one to come to faith in Christ in a family, there is a 17% chance that everyone else in the family will become Christian. If the father is the first one to come to faith in Christ, there is a 93% chance that everyone else in the family will come to faith. It is when the princes lead, she says that we praise the Lord.

When the princes advocate their duties, duties, the people suffer. I'm reading a book right now given to me by a friend. The book is written by Dr. Meg Meeker, a pediatrician who works with teenage girls.

And the book is called Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters. It tells, she tells a story about a girl named Leah who sat in her office one afternoon, very sullen, exuding, she says, all the symptoms of depression. After some questioning, the girl revealed to Dr. Meeker that the son of a family friend had date raped her. As Dr. Meeker continued to question her, Leah revealed that she had told her dad about it. And his response was, well, boys will be boys.

And he kind of shrugged it off. Then he and Leah's words went golfing. Dr. Meeker says the assault was devastating to Leah, but the blow that really seemed to have brought her down was the fact that her father didn't care for and defend her. She says a sexual assault is possibly the most traumatic event a girl can experience. Now consider that many psychologists and psychiatrists say that your response to your daughter's assault, especially dad, if you are the first one that she comes to, is among the most important factors in shaping your daughter's future emotional health after the event.

She continues, when a child is humiliated or harmed, her natural instinct is to get back at the offender, to fight, to defend herself, but she's physically weaker than her attacker. Now she sees you in her eyes, dad, you are big, you are tough, you are smart. Her gut tells her he can help, he's the answer. My dad will make things right because he loves me.

He'll stand up for me. Before you even learn what has happened, she has imagined your heroic response. If you do what your instinct tells you to do, if you get angry and you take action, she will feel loved. She will feel defended. She will feel a sense of justice.

She will move closer to a sense of closure over the incident. Had Leah's dad responded the right way, she said, had he acted as a man, rather than shrugging his shoulders in weakness, I submit he might have prevented Leah's depression, or if he didn't prevent it, he might have at least helped mitigate the depth of it. Dr. Meeker talks about how in our culture, masculinity has been disparaged by feminists or been distorted by rap artists. True masculinity, she said, is the moral exercise of authority. You were made a man for a reason. You were made a man to be strong, a loving husband and father.

So listen to your instincts and do what's right. Be a hero. That's what Deborah says.

When the princes lead, the people praise the Lord. There are plenty of guys in the world, too many guys, too many dudes. We need men. So men, I will tell you, Deborah up, maybe is a good way to say it.

It's time for you to Deborah up and be a man, which leads me to number three. God curses spectators. When Deborah lists out the people who sat on the sidelines, she comes to a crescendo in verse 23. "'Curse morose,' said the angel of the Lord.

"'Curse its people bitterly.'" Because they did not come to help the Lord, to help the Lord against the mighty. It doesn't say that the people of morose did anything bad. It doesn't say, oh, they hung back and smoked dope and slept with prostitutes and raided everybody's tents.

No, it just says they did nothing. You guys hear me from time to time rail against those people at our church that look at this church like a religious event they attend. They come, they're, you know, two to three times a month, they're here at the church and they, you know what I mean?

I was like, you're dating the church and sometimes they'll try to tell you what you're missing out on. Here's what you see from this passage. God curses that kind of inactivity.

That's not me being harsh, that's me just reading the Bible. Sitting on the sidelines not only robs you of reward, it puts you under a curse. You active in the kingdom of God with your time? Have you leveraged your talents to be of use in the kingdom of God? How about your treasures and your resources? How much of your resources, how many are engaged in the expanse of God's kingdom? You wanna know the difference between a budget that God blesses and one that God does not? Has a lot to do with how much of what God has given you is engaged in the expanse of God's kingdom. Do not tell yourself that you're okay as long as you're not committing crimes and as long as you are somewhat regular at a church attendance. You see, there's more than one way in God's eyes to be wicked.

Wickedness can come from what you do, but wickedness can just as easily come from what you fail to do. You see, when Jesus called his disciples, he didn't say, hey, watch me intensely. He didn't say, listen to me.

When Jesus called disciples, he said, follow me, which means that some of you need to stop listening and watching and start following. You need to act on that this weekend. You say, oh, I don't even know where to start. What do I do? Well, you start by joining the church. You could get involved.

You could start to invest your time and your talents and your treasures. You could talk to your campus pastor and say, how can I serve in the kingdom of God? I had a friend this week say, how do we help people that are being persecuted for the faith all around the world? These 21 that were killed in Egypt, what can we do? I mean, we can't all go over there and fight for them or whatever.

Here's what I told him. Yes, we can do that. But did you know that the summit church has people in those same regions that are serving? Your representatives are serving there. So what you can do is be a part of a church, an active part of a church that is praying and serving and giving. And when we act locally here, when we become that church, then we have our way of supporting what is going on over there.

You can get involved. That is what God, I think, tells us through this is blessed are the people when they willingly offer themselves. Number four, the story shows us that all that God requires of us, all that God requires of us is simple obedience. You see, we see in the story a recurring theme in judges.

Don't we? God brings down the most powerful tyrants in the world with very weak instruments. In this case, a housewife with a tent peg. A tent peg in those days, by the way, was a very common household item. It would be like me saying to you, she killed him with a frying pan or an iron.

She took an iron and whacked him on the side of the head. Over and over, the book of Judges teaches us in so many different ways, God does his work in the world never through our ability. He doesn't need our ability.

He does it through our availability. You see, there's a contrast that's set up in this chapter that I wanna make sure you don't miss. In chapter five, verse six, in those days the highways were abandoned, the villagers ceased their travel. It was so dangerous that people were so weak they wouldn't even go outside their houses.

Watch this, verse four. But when the Lord rolled out, oh, he wasn't scared. The earth trembled, the clouds dropped water in dry seas and the mountains quaked. In other words, the Lord, everybody's so scared they wouldn't go outside their house.

The Lord opens a garage door, rolls out, puts the top down, turns the music up and just rolls down the street. And the earth starts to quake. I love that image of an earthquake because something quakes when the pressure against it is too much. Or think like an ice quake. I know we don't ever use that term, but an ice quake would be if I were to try to walk across a frozen pond that the ice wasn't thick enough. There's a group of squirrels out there and there's three or four squirrels and they're running around playing, do whatever squirrels do, wrestling, throwing nuts at each other.

And I think that looks fun so I'm gonna go out there with them. And so I start to walk out there but because I weigh significantly more than the squirrels, when my feet hit the ice it begins to quake and eventually it splits and I fall through. Those poor little squirrels, if they were trying to pierce the ice, could jump up and down and do backflips and never gonna make the ice move but I have so much weight that I can just split it just by walking on it. So what happens is you got the little Israelites running around like squirrels and there's this ice of oppression over them.

There's this ice of inability and as much as they hop up and down, they can't do a thing. And what God does is he rolls out, puts the top down and the earth just quakes because a little moisture that comes out of his mouth is gonna do more than the Israelites could do in a thousand years. What God needs is a housewife with a tent peg who says, here am I, send me, not a man with an army. What God needs from you is not your ability, it's your availability. God has never needed you to crack the ice.

God has just needed you to obey. And what you see in the stories, you see Jael looking back up at Jesus, looking back up at God and saying, here am I, send me. Blessed above women, blessed among women is Jael is what verse 24 says.

You know what's amazing about that? That phrase is repeated one other time in the Bible. It's in the New Testament and it's said about Mary. Blessed among women is Mary. Here you've got another impossible situation where God comes to a woman named Mary and says, you're gonna give birth to a child who's gonna be the savior of the whole world. She's a virgin.

A virgin has obvious limitations for bringing forth a savior for the world. What does Mary say? Be it unto me according to your word. That is a prayer of both surrender and faith because it says, God, I'll do what you tell me to do. I'll give where you tell me to give. I'll go where you tell me to go. I'll serve where you tell me to serve, but I'm gonna leave the results entirely to you, which means I'm gonna rest when you tell me to rest. Have you prayed that prayer of surrender and faith?

That's the question. Had a man come up to me just after the last service who said, he's from Ghana. He came here to go to business school. He said two weeks ago when you made the point that it's not our availability, it's not our ability, it's our availability. He said immediately the spirit of God told me because he's basically come to a renewed faith here. He said that the church culture I come out of in Ghana, he said is totally, they don't, I feel like understand the power of the gospel. And I felt like God was telling me that I need to go back and explain to my church.

He said, but I don't have any money to do that. So I just said, God, this is what you've told me and I committed it to him. He said, that afternoon I called and he said, somebody, I talked to somebody and they talked to some other people and they bought my ticket and I'm flying back over there tomorrow and I'm just gonna go preach. Can you help me come up with something that I can preach?

And I'm like, we can do that. The ice quakes when God moves. God doesn't need your ability, he needs your availability. Number five, the story teaches us God will one day right every wrong. Toward the end of Deborah's song, she begins to mock Sisera. Verse 28, she sarcastically puts words in Sisera's mother's mouth.

Deborah pictures Sisera's mother standing by the window wondering why is my son Sisera taking so long to return? The sycophant ladies of the court all around her say, oh, it's because there's so much Israelites spoiled to divide up. That's why it's taken them a long time to come back. In verse 30, they say really crudely, oh, and there's a womb or two for every man. In other words, the men have girls to rape.

That's why it's taken them a while to get back. Meanwhile, Sisera is in a tent being killed by a woman. You see what's happening?

Perfect justice is being served. Sisera has spent his life oppressing and abusing women. In the end, he's brought down by a woman with a frying pan. This is the Old Testament version of Kill Bill. In verse 26, Deborah sings. She struck Sisera, she crushed his head, she shattered and pierced the temple. That's probably not the tune, but scholars do say that the way this is written, she is mimicking the blows of the hammer against Sisera's skull. She writes this with really staccato, kind of short phrases.

You would read it like this. Between her feet, he sank, he fell, he lay still. Between her feet, he sank, he fell, where he sank, there he fell, dead. Israel loved these stories of how God delivered them. They loved to savor them like a fine wine, sip by sip. If they enjoyed recounting the songs of their deliverance, how much more should we? And so Deborah ends her song this way. So may all your enemies perish, Lord.

May all who love you be like the sun when it rises in its strength. You say, but we don't always see justice served. Not every rapist, not every sexual predator is brought to justice.

That person that messed with me, that person that messed me up seemed to have gotten away with it. And that is true if you're only evaluating by this life. We often see the guilty go unpunished, but that doesn't mean the discussion is over. You see, in this story, we get a glimpse of how it is all going to end. God is going to settle all scores. This story, like all the stories of the judges, all it does is point us forward to the ultimate judge, Jesus.

Like Jael, he will be the unexpected savior who everybody assumes is weak, who slays the enemy by surprise. In him, oppression is ended, justice is restored. And for those of us in Christ, the son of God's love and life rises on us in its strength.

It melts the ice of oppression and makes the fog and darkness of what we're in today disappear. This story tells you eternity is coming. It is not that far away when you're going to be in a land that is bursting with the brightness of justice and glowing with the glory of love. Where God says he will wipe away every tear from our eyes where there will be no more pain or crying or mourning and that the old things have passed away and all things have become new.

One of my favorite images for heaven is that there needs to be no sun and no moon there because there's no darkness there. That the Lord our God is the light where he brings glory and love and acceptance and oppression has ceased. That's what this story tells you to look forward to. Now, before I end, let me deal with one other objection.

I alluded to it at the very beginning. Some people read this story and they say, well, these stories are so violent, lead us to violence. People taking justice into their own hands and killing their enemies, not at all. Not at all if you understand them correctly.

In fact, if you understand them correctly, they do exactly the opposite. God commands us, listen to this in Romans 12, never to take vengeance into our own hands because, key word, the Lord will repay. In other words, I know that one day God is going to serve perfect justice. Therefore, I don't feel like I have to take it on myself. You see, when an atheist believes that there is no God who serves out justice in eternity, who bears the burden of making sure justice is served? Well, you must. See, when you don't believe that there is a God who brings justice, when you suffer injustice, you seethe under it and you have to get back at them.

You have to avenge yourself. What kind of world does that create? Fearful, hateful, vengeful. The cross of Jesus Christ creates a different kind of world because in the cross I see two things. Number one, I see that all wrongs will be righted and I see, number two, that the wrongs that I have done personally, they were put on Jesus' head. And what that means for me, you see, listen, is that means that every sin that's ever been committed against me is going to be rectified.

It'll either be paid for by that person in the judgment or Jesus is gonna pay for it on the cross the way that he paid for mine. And because I know that God carries around the 10 pegs of justice in his hand, I don't have to carry them around in mine, driving them through the skull of everybody that hurts me. Because I see that God carries those pegs and that God will avenge wrong and I know that when it came time to avenge my wrong, God took the peg of justice that oughta go on in my head and he put it into Jesus'. And that creates a spirit in me that looks at the Siseras who have destroyed me and hurt me and it makes me say to them, I hope that you can come to faith in Christ and find forgiveness of your sins as I have found mine. There is one message in the book of Judges and that is there is a savior who is coming, a savior who can save, a savior who can sustain, and if you try to save yourself, you are going to fail, you will live a life of hate, you will live a life of fear, you will live a life of envy and vengeance, but if you trust in Jesus, you will live a life of peace, you will live a life where you know that all things are working together for good and you can finally be free. Which way are you living?

Why don't you bow your heads if you would? Two ways to live, two ways to live. Are you in control, are you trying to save yourself or have you submitted to Jesus? Where's the worry and fear dominate your heart?

Where do you hate, where do you have vengeance? Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus just to take him at his word, just to rest upon his promise and know, thus says the Lord. Maybe you're a spectator and maybe the Holy Spirit of God has said, it's time to quit hanging out by the ships and let's go get in the game.

Maybe you should resolve right now to take that step. Maybe for the first time in your life, maybe you finally understood, listen, that every story in the Bible, every verse of scripture, every chapter is about Jesus. It's all one story about a Savior who came to save. A Savior who did for you what you couldn't do for yourself. Every story have you come to that one point the Bible's making, which is you need Jesus. Maybe today, right now, you could submit to him. Father, we trust you, we look to you. You are our Savior, a Savior greater than we could have hoped for, a Savior who took our sin, a Savior who made the sun rise on us in strength, a Son who forgave rather than judged. We thank you for that, God, in Jesus' name, amen.