“People to meet in heaven: Deborah”
Judges 4:1-9
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Let me take you back in time for just a moment, to the year 1412, to a town called Domremy, on the eastern edge of France. And there we’ll meet a woman named Joan, Joan of Arc.
Now in many ways, she was very much like any other woman in that time and place. Her father was nothing but a poor farmer. Her mother cared for the home.
But what made her different from any other girl is that when she was just thirteen years old, she said that, while she was out working in the fields, she saw a bright light from heaven and heard voices. And the voices, she said, were either saints or angels or even God, telling her to go to meet the king of France.
So that’s what she did. She cut her hair short, dressed in men’s clothes and rode a horse for eleven days, just to meet Charles VII, the king of France. And when she met him, she told him that God had sent her to save France.
So with permission from the king, off she went to save France. But in the spring of 1430, in the midst of battle, she was thrown off her horse, captured by the English and thrown into prison. A year later, she was found guilty and burned at the stake.
Now let me ask you a question—how old do you think she was when she was captured by the English and burned at the stake? Was she forty years old? Maybe thirty?
The correct answer is, when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, she was nineteen years old!
The world has known some amazing women! Think of Marie Curie who won a Nobel Prize, (the first woman ever!), in Physics, then another one for chemistry. Next time you have an X-ray, you can thank her. And think of the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, or American poet Emily Dickinson, or abolitionist Harriet Tubman, or British author, J. K. Rowling.
The world has known some amazing women!
And the Bible has its share too. Ruth was a widow from the land of Moab, far from the land of Israel, yet she became the great-grandmother of David the king. Elizabeth, even at such an old age, became the mother of John the Baptist. Priscilla shared the gospel, right alongside the apostle Paul. A grandmother named Lois and a mother named Eunice taught young Timothy the Christian faith. And a teenaged girl named Mary became the mother of our Savior Jesus.
The Bible is full of amazing women!
Today, I’d like to introduce you to yet one more, truly one of the most amazing women of all, one whose name was Deborah.
Please turn with me in your Bibles to Judges chapter 4, found on page 258. I’ll start at verse 1: “And 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-hagoim. 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.”
Let’s stop there for just a moment.
If you didn’t already guess, times were tough in the land of Israel. Turn back a page to page 256, and you’ll see what I mean.
Look at chapter 2, verse 11, where it says “Israel’s Unfaithfulness”: ‘And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord…”
Now look on page 257, at chapter 3, verse 7: “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.”
And look at chapter 3, verse 12: “And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
So now on page 258, in chapter 4, verse 1, here we go again: “And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”
Time after time, the people of Israel turned their backs on God and worshipped false gods. And their constant rebellion and idolatry made the Lord so angry, that now, chapter 4, verse 2, says that He “sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor.” Verse 3: “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.”
Nine hundred chariots of iron. What does that mean? It might not mean much to us, but to Israel, it meant they were completely and utterly defeated.
You see, iron chariots were the “smart bombs,” the “drones,” the cutting-edge, military weapons of their day. They were killing machines that soldiers used to roll over and chop down their enemies while they were in retreat. And they had nine hundred of them!
So with those nine hundred chariots of iron, Jabin, king of Canaan, had, for all practical purposes, defeated Israel. He cut the country in two, threatening its very existence. He cut off all the routes to the mountains. He held the plains. And there wasn’t a thing anyone could do about it.
But all of a sudden, out of the blue, that’s when we meet a woman named Deborah. Look with me now at chapter 4, verse 4: “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.”
A woman? Prophetess? Judge? Deborah must have been some kind of woman! Which is why we want to meet her in heaven!
Now Deborah wasn’t a judge like we think of today. She didn’t dress in black robes or sit on a bench. And she had no bailiff or deputy armed with a gun. We’re not talking Judge Judy here. We’re talking Judge Deborah! She sat under a palm tree down by the city gate. That’s where she “held court” and judged the people of Israel.
And since she was so loved and respected by those who knew her, there were many who came to her for judgment and to hear her wise words. Just like the judges who came before and after her--Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Gideon, Samson and Jephthah--she spoke for God in that place and time.
Is it any surprise God would use a woman in that way? It shouldn’t be. God is more than willing to have women do His work. It was a woman, (His mother, Mary!) who asked Jesus to perform His very first miracle. It was women who ministered to Him during His public ministry. It was a woman who anointed His body before He was crucified. It was women who stayed with Him through His trials and crucifixion. And it was women who were the first to witness His resurrection.
And now as the people of Israel live in fear--crushed, defeated and oppressed--God would use a woman once more.
Look at chapter 4, verse 6: “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.”
What happened next? It was a rout, an incredible, miraculous victory! Just as soon as Sisera saw those 10,000 men march out onto the plain, he took the bait and fell into the trap. Within moments, the earth quaked and rain fell in torrents and there wasn’t a thing those cutting-edge, nine hundred iron chariots could do, except get stuck. And just as Deborah promised, the Lord gave a loud and resounding victory!
So what does all this mean to teach us?
Probably the best thing we could ever hope to learn from this text is found in this: the destiny of our life and our nation doesn’t lie in our weapons, our tanks, our planes or our bombs. It lies in the plan and the purpose of God.
What we ought to do, what we must do, as a people and as a nation, is to look up to heaven, to look up to God, for He alone is our strength and shield.
That’s what it says in Psalm 20: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” And Psalm 33: “A war horse is a false hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot rescue. But the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, who hope in His unfailing love.”
Even more, when God sought to defeat our greatest enemies—sin, death and Satan—how did He do it? Not by might. Not by power. He sent His Son, born of a woman, laid in a manger, and crucified on a rough, wooden cross.
That’s what Jesus said in John chapter 3: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”
One more thing to mention before we leave this text, about Joan of Arc. When men were about to burn her at the stake, as 10,000 people gathered to watch, they tied her to a tall pillar. And she asked them to do one thing for her before she died. She asked them to hold a cross up high so she could see it as she died. And as they lit the fire beneath her and the smoke and the flames reached up toward the sky, she cried out one last word before she died. And that was the name: “Jesus.”
As a pastor named Henry Lyte once wrote just before he died: “Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes; shine through the gloom and point me to the skies. Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee; in life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”
We thank You, dear Father, for the many women who loved and served You, especially this one named Deborah. Give us that same trust and confidence as we put all our trust in You. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen