God’s Unexpected Deliverance

All right. Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions this morning. We are at Judges chapter 4. We're gonna talk about a special lady She's her sister Esther We don't have an Esther. Yeah, you type in this to this one Esther was for Bible memorization not for coffee and devotions. Well, you literally have a sister who we're gonna talk about Let's have some coffee.
We'll pray into God's Word Let's pray. Father, we thank You so much for this day. We thank You for Your Word. God, we pray that You would please help us to understand Your Word. We pray that we would be Lord, that we would be taught by your Holy Spirit. Our minds could be distracted with many other things. Our hearts could be hard. God, I pray that you would please teach us this morning in Jesus's name.
Amen. All right. So we are going to try to work through the entire chapter. It's all of Judges chapter four. OK, don't joke, man, it's only 23 verses, so why don't I read I will read the first 13 verses and you can read, well, I'll read the first 16 verses and you can read to the end. First 17. Okay.
When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth Hagoyim. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel. Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging in Israel at that time. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.
Then she sent and called for Barak, the son of Abinoam, from Kadesh in Naphtali, and said to him, Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded, Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor? Take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali, and of the sons of Zebulun. And against you I will deploy Sisera, the commander of Jabin's army, with his chariots in his multitude at the river Kishon, and I will deliver him into your hand."
And Beric said to her, "'If you will go with me, then I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.' So she said, "'I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking. For the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman."
Then Deborah rose and went with Barak to Kadesh. And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kadesh. He went up with ten thousand men under his command. And Deborah went up with him. Now Heber, the Kenite of the children of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent near the terebinth tree at Zanim, which is beside Kadesh. And they reported to Sisera that Barak, the son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor. So Sisera gathered together all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, all the people who were with him, from Harosheth Hagoyim to the river Kishon.
Then Deborah said to Barak, Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone 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 with the edge of the sword before Barak.
And Sisera alighted. from his chariot and fled away on foot. But Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth, Hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. Not a man was left. However, Sisera had fled away from the foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between the Jeban king of Hezer and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, turn aside to meet Sisera and said to him, turn aside my Lord turned aside to me, and knew me not fair.
And when he had turned aside with her into the tent, she covered him with a blanket. Then he said to her, Please give me a little water drink, for I am thirty. So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him. And he said to her, Stand at the door of the tent, and if anyone comes and inquires of you, and says, I, is there any man here, you shall say no. Then Jael, Abel's wife, took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him, and drove the peg into his shupple, and it went down into the ground.
He was fast asleep and weary, so he died. And then, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, Come, I will show you him, and said to him, Come, I will show you the man whom you seek. And when he went into the tent, there lay Sisera dead with a pig in his temple. So on that day, God subdued the Jabin king of Canaan. And the presence of the children of Israel grew stronger and stronger against Jabin king of Canaan until they destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
Okay, so we have three questions. A. What is this about?
B. What is the best thing for us to summarize? And C. What do we call it today? OK, I'm going to grab a my Hebrew, one of my Hebrew Bibles here off the shelf. I want you to talk about who the three different characters are, main kind of three or maybe who are the main characters in this story? I think it's more like three. OK, so who are they? Um, there's Cicera. Okay, so Cicera, who's he? The person who's keeping them under control. Okay, so Cicera is a Canaanite, good.
And then there's Deborah. Okay. There's Barak. She's, I don't know, the leader of the army, I think. Yeah, right. We don't really get any information from about him other than then she sent and called for Barak, the son of Abinoam, from Kadesh, in Naphtali. Doesn't give a try, but just, here's a guy. Boom. He's on the scene.
OK. OK, so there's Barak, there's Deborah, there's Sisera. And there's Jael. And then there's Jael. That's right. Which is kind of important. Yeah, why is Jiala important? Because she's the one who actually killed Cicero. Very nice way to. Yeah. Right. So she's the one who who kills Cicero. Good. All right. So as we talk about this, so we let's talk about just kind of what goes on. Walk me through the story.
The children's lord turned away from God. God's like, you did it again, I'm gonna have to punish you. So they go to, they get captured by Canaanites. And Deborah says, doesn't the Lord say you just gotta take your army and he's delivering them in jail? Oh, who's Deborah though?
She's the judge. There's a woman judge? Mom judge. Yeah, your mom does judge. But yeah, there's no doubt here. It calls her that they would go to her for judgment, right? She was judging, right? It's mishpat, right? The same word that the book is named for, mishpatim, right? Judges. So she's definitely a judge. Interesting. She's not a judge at the city gate like normal. This seems like an abnormal type thing. She's like in a tree. Deborah's tree. Yeah, she's a Deborah's tree, right? It's like it's almost like there's no men in the cities to actually do the judging.
Right. So this is an abnormal thing. So she calls Barack and and yeah, what? Right. Go, go and do the thing. And what's his response? OK, but only if you come with me. And what's her response to that? Like, I'll go with you, but you're not going to get any glory.
It's going to be in the hands of a woman. Yeah, right. So there's all sorts of undertones of like that shameful, right? The men should be doing this work. You should have the courage, Barack. You should be leading. You should be doing this. But instead, you need a lady. All sorts of this is abnormal, isn't it? OK, so anyway, so you're not going to get the glory.
So what's Barack do? He says, okay, and they go and he wins but then sister keeps running away Yeah, right. So sister He hightails it. He ditches his area He hightails it on foot he runs like crazy the dude is so tired he shows up where At jail's tent yeah between getting a so supposed to be the peaceful just okay so he throws up there and and how's the scene unfold there oh you're good yeah you're here you're fine mm-hmm you're pointing at enemies and then he asks for stuff she gives it him she even gives it better instead of just giving water she gives milk yeah right gives him a little bit of milk for his tummy all right and then he's like oh if anybody says like is a man here just don't tell them and then Squish squish. It's a pretty gory thing, right?
Why would you do that? It's like false hospitality Probably because I Actually know yeah, right I think it's because she trusts the Lord Right. She's actually part of the family of Moses's father-in-law. I I forgot it explained like how it was like So I think she's she's one of the people who starts following the Lord afterwards and so I think that's revealed when afterwards and then what as Barack pursued Sisera JL came out to meet him and said come I will show you the man whom you seek and When he went in to her tent there lay Sisera dead with the with the pig in his temple, right? So this is her Saying like Barack. Hey, I got him now interest. Isn't that interesting?
Is it Deborah that gets the glory or somebody else who gets the glory for killing Cicero? jail jail JL gets the glory It's not Deborah's jail who gets the glory for defeating the king. I think I think sometimes when like sometimes I don't know this but like I've noticed like through history is like lots of like prophecies and like somebody likes to try to interpret it so it fits them and you're like oh wow yeah that makes sense and then you're like oh duh it wasn't about them at all i wasn't yeah so how does the final thing close in 23 and 24 um let's see i close to um 23 and 24 So that day God subdued Jabin, king of Canaan, in the presence of the children of Israel. All right, so who gets the win? Israel. God. Yeah, God does ultimately, doesn't he? So Israel eventually gets strong enough, they did defeat Jabin altogether. All right, so we've talked about the story, we read the story. Now tell me real quick, what do you think this is about?
What did it mean to those people it was written to at that time? uh oh so let me get hey what's that big but um that that they couldn't have gotten Cicero just like by themselves. OK, so I took away from it. All right. So maybe like the Lord delivered Cicero over. Yeah. Right. And I think this is one of the actually the fun things is you weren't in here when Daniel and I talked about Yeehud. Right.
But this left handed assassin. Right. So it's kind of you wouldn't expect this guy to be the hero here. Nobody expected J.L. to be the hero. Right. You might expect a strong man like Barack shouldn't be the hero, right? But it's no, it's a woman who's has the courage to do something all by herself. Did you know she had to sneak up? Softly, right? She was going quietly. She's like a spy, right? Just an assassin. She risked her life, right? She could have died, but she had the courage to go do it. Nobody else around. but going and doing what she knew should have happened. So, yeah, so it's the Lord, right? It's God who's raising up judges, hearing their cries, even though they're apostate people, showing them mercy. Apostate people? Yeah, so apostate meaning, so maybe they're not all apostate, right? So apostate means that they're turning away from the Lord. But normally with the apostasy, it's like full apostasy.
You're saying like, the judge is full. I was like, I don't think that was, No, no, so apostle I'm talking about the people so and the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, right? So so They're turning away from the Lord. They're going towards idols, right? They're doing these things God brings an oppressor They cry out to the Lord make the judges up a judge. They believe him in And then they turn away. And the Lord gives them deliverance, right? Now, every time they're hoping they won't turn away, but for some reason they do. Interestingly, chapter 4 is followed by chapter 5. That's not interesting. But it's a song. It's a victory song that Deborah's gonna have in chapter 5. Not interesting. Deborah would like that. Maybe I should call Deborah in for this next time. So the point being, right, is that Uh, you bring, uh, God's bring the victory. God cares for his people, even though they continue to stray away. So, all right. Well, it's a big passage.
I'm not going to make us choose the best verse. If somebody online once said, let us know what they would choose, but do 24. I probably do. Okay, Nathan is gonna choose the best verse. 1-24. 1-24. You guys are horrible. All right. So tell me see calling.
How does this show you Jesus Christ and what do you call it to do? Sometimes God gives you jobs that aren't yours to do. The devil wasn't called to. The devil didn't have to go into battle. The elder had to do what she didn't. Could could have just said um, okay, so do your duty If it doesn't even make sense Yeah, but I'm not sure that that fits the overarching. Well, that's true, right? I don't want to squash him.
I Do want to say that I think one of the things the Lord is trying to point out again and again and again Right, is that he is going to deliver? his people though that they continue to be faulty and failing people God remembers his side of the covenant, even though the people continue to fail.
I think it is God displaying his mercy to people who are constantly driven by fear and idolatry. That's so helpful to me because I'm too often like that. And how has he shown us the depth of his mercy towards us as sinners? by saving us again and again. And by giving us Christ. Right, for giving us 70 times, seven times.
You ready to pray? Yep. Lord, we pray that you would please let the men of your kingdom step up and do what they are called to do. We pray that we would not be cowards. Lord, we pray that you would please raise up Deborah's in jails, in the church, that even when the men fail to do their jobs, that you not be left without a witness. Lord, we thank you that you are faithful, that even though we are sinners, so often cowards, afraid, and driven by our own hearts, Lord, You're so faithful to draw us back to Yourself. So please, God, help us turn our eyes to Christ. Strengthen us, Lord. Let us walk in Your ways by the power of Your Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. May the Lord bless you. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ, and we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.