Heroes? Deborah


Judges 4:1-5

Today is Lay Activities Special Day. Ever since God began choosing people, his Kingdom has always been all about the lay people, the regular people. There were always leaders of the people, but it is God who causes the ordinary people of God to become great. We humans look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

After Moses died, Joshua became the leader of Israel. They began their conquest into the Promised Land, including the famous battle of Jericho where God brought the walls down. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel. (Judges 2:7)

But after Joshua and his generation died, things went downhill fast. After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. (Judges 2:10-13) Because of their disobedience, God allowed their enemies to overrun them — in fact, the scripture says that the Lord’s hand was against them to defeat them!

So every time this happened, God would raise up a warrior leader (otherwise known as judge who would rule over the people and save them out of the hands of their enemies. But as soon as the judge died, the people became even worse than their ancestors. This happened again and again and again. 

One of my favorite judges was Ehud, the left-handed assassin, who killed the king of Moab and led Israel to eighty years of peace. But after Ehud’s death, the Israelites again did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.

So God hands them over to a Canaanite king. Finally, after twenty years of oppression the Israelites cry out to the Lord for help, and the Lord raised up for them a judge. This judge was different from all of the others because previous judges were all warrior-leaders, but Deborah was a prophet. In other words, Deborah did not just lead the armies, Deborah spoke for God. 

It was through Deborah that God delivered his people from the hands of their enemies. Now, in this period of history, women were not on the same level as men. You can even see this by the fact that Deborah is introduced as related to her husband — a woman received her worth from her father, her husband, or her son. But Deborah’s true worth comes from God and from her role as a prophet.

The story of Deborah is rather interesting — she had a word from God for the military leader who didn’t want to do what she told him to do unless she came along. She told him, “OK, but now a woman is going to do your job for you.” This can be a word for any of us; when God tells us to do something, God will give us everything we need to complete the job. God will equip us in every way to be obedient to him.

But the sad fact is, as long as Israel has a good leader, the people generally do what’s right. Then as soon as that leader dies, the people immediately turn to evil. In the Book of Judges, we see multiple times this phrase: In those days Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. (Judges 17:6; 19:1; 21:25) In those days the nations saw their king as the one God would pass blessings down to. He was then responsible to distribute those blessings to the people. God never worked that way, and we’ll see that even from the first days of Israel’s monarchy, this concept was abused. God didn’t work that way because he chose all of his people to be a kingdom of priests. All of God’s people were blessed by God to be a blessing to the nations! But it didn’t work. Because while they are being watched, the Israelites behave decently.

But as soon as that ruler dies, they do what’s evil. Integrity is doing what’s right when nobody is looking. If we always do what’s right, we would never even have to worry about corruption. But as humans, we sin and fall short. Again and again. And when we disobey, God uses many various means of discipline. But nobody can force us to realize the truth: that our sin, our issues, our problems, they all stem from our behaviors. And our behaviors stem from our values. We do what we prize. We follow what is important to us. But our values come from our beliefs. And our beliefs come from our unique belief systems, coming from our family, our tribe, our culture. 

So the fact was, Deborah came and as God’s prophet and judge, she led God’s people into peace. But in reality, until their belief system changed, until their view of God and themselves changed, there will be nothing different. This is why Paul writes in Romans 12: Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. At the end of Judges 5, after Deborah led the people to throw off the yoke of oppression, Israel had peace for forty years. But they had not been transformed. Their minds had not been renewed. So Judges 6 begins this way: The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord…

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Anonymous said…
Inspired

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