Article by Dr. Les Hollon, Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church

 

The willingness to help, to make a good difference in our world, is particularly a great capability God gives all of us.  But like all gifts it must be known and used if it is to be enjoyed.

 

The willingness to help opens up the right opportunities to help.  Which is the truth behind this anonymous quote: “Once upon a time there were four people - Everybody, Somebody, Nobody, and Anybody. Whenever help was needed Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. But in the end Nobody did what Anybody could have done in the first place.”

 

Deborah, the prophet, was a somebody who helped anybody overcome the sense of being a nobody so that everybody could live a better life.  She helps us to see how we can successfully know this joy in our lives by our accepting and using our gifts to help people.

 

Deborah lived in troubled times.  We know about living in troubled times.  The troubles of her times were caused by everybody in her country “doing as they saw fit in their own eyes.”

 

We can imagine the troubles this level of collective selfishness caused in her times.  We know the pain of when the same happens in our times.  Regardless if what they did pleased God or hurt others, most people did as they saw fit (Judges 4:1).  Consequently, and our decisions always produces consequences, life was getting worse at an alarming rate.

 

What to do?

 

Well the difference was equally available for anybody to see but everybody was waiting for somebody else to act first and nobody took the lead until Deborah stepped forward.  How did she turn things around?  She got informed, involved, and inspired.

 

Her story opens with two straight and revealing verses, Judges 4:4-5.  “Deborah, the wife of Lappidoth, was a prophet who had become a judge in Israel.  She would hold court under the palm of Deborah, which stood between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came to her to settle their disputes. One day …”

 

And the story of Judges 4 & 5 unfolds how that one day became the day which turned life around.  Let’s see how the pieces of Deborah’s life connect the pattern that enabled her to do what she did …

 

1) “Deborah was married.”  She envisioned how family was the relationally building block for a trusting society.

 

2) She was a “prophet.”  Deborah trusted God, listened to God, and used her voice to teach others how God’s best was equally available for all people.

 

3) She was a “judge.”  Deborah was trusted by the people to make godly and wise decisions that helped them to live in a right relationship with each other.

 

4) “She would hold court under the palm of Deborah.” Her faithfulness to God strengthened Deborah to be consistently available to people so she could meet at the same place, at regular times, to decide justly so people could live in a more just society.  Her consistency caused her meeting place to be named after her.

 

5) Her meeting place was identified as “between Bethel and Ramah,” both of which had a storied history.  Deborah had a sense of history.  She, like any of us could, claim her place in history by rising to the challenges of history.  Bethel, meaning the “house of God” reminds us that Jacob had a vision of God that caused him to wrestle with God with such faithfulness that his name was changed to Israel.

 

6) “One day …” Deborah, as a faithful woman, was successfully doing the same leadership which culture normally reserved for men, Judges 4:6-10.

 

7) “One day …” She knew this moment in time included her but was not just about her.  She teamed up with Barak who also did not care who got the credit as long as God was honored and the job got done.

 

God helps us to help others.  And together we can sing Deborah’s & Barak’s victory song, “… ‘may those who love you rise like the sun at full strength.’ Then there was peace in the land for forty years.”

 

Grace & Peace,  

Pastor Les Hollon

 

Judges, Chapter 4

After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the LORD. So the LORD sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim. Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the LORD for help.

Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided. She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor. I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’ ”

Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” “Very well,” Deborah said, “I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the LORD will hand Sisera over to a woman.” So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh, where he summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men followed him, and Deborah also went with him.

Now Heber the Kenite had left the other Kenites, the descendants of Hobab, Moses’ brother-in-law, and pitched his tent by the great tree in Zaanannim near Kedesh. When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera gathered together his nine hundred iron chariots and all the men with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River. Then Deborah said to Barak, “Go! This is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the LORD gone ahead of you?” So Barak went down Mount Tabor, followed by ten thousand men. At Barak’s advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot. But Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.

Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there were friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite. Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Come, my Lord , come right in. Don’t be afraid.” So he entered her tent, and she put a covering over him. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “Please give me some water.” She opened a skin of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up. “Stand in the doorway of the tent,” he told her. “If someone comes by and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say ‘No.’ ” But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the peg through his temple into the ground, and he died. Barak came by in pursuit of Sisera, and Jael went out to meet him. “Come,” she said, “I will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there lay Sisera with the tent peg through his temple-dead.

On that day God subdued Jabin, the Canaanite king, before the Israelites. 24 And the hand of the Israelites grew stronger and stronger against Jabin, the Canaanite king, until they destroyed him.

 

Judges Chapter 5

The Song of Deborah

On that day Deborah and Barak son of Abinoam sang this song:

“When the princes in Israel take the lead,

       when the people willingly offer themselves—

       praise the LORD!

“Hear this, you kings! Listen, you rulers!

       I will sing to the LORD, I will sing;

       I will make music to the LORD, the God of Israel.

“O LORD, when you went out from Seir,

       when you marched from the land of Edom,

       the earth shook, the heavens poured,

       the clouds poured down water.

The mountains quaked before the LORD, the One of Sinai,

       before the LORD, the God of Israel.

“In the days of Shamgar son of Anath,

       in the days of Jael, the roads were abandoned;

       travelers took to winding paths.

Village life in Israel ceased,

       ceased until I, Deborah, arose,

       arose a mother in Israel.

When they chose new gods,

       war came to the city gates,
       and not a shield or spear was seen

       among forty thousand in Israel.

My heart is with Israel’s princes,

       with the willing volunteers among the people.

       Praise the LORD!

“You who ride on white donkeys,

       sitting on your saddle blankets,

       and you who walk along the road,

       consider the voice of the singers at the watering places.

       They recite the righteous acts of the LORD,

       the righteous acts of his warriors in Israel.

       “Then the people of the LORD

       went down to the city gates.

‘Wake up, wake up, Deborah!

       Wake up, wake up, break out in song!

       Arise, O Barak!

       Take captive your captives, O son of Abinoam.’

“Then the men who were left

       came down to the nobles;

       the people of the LORD

       came to me with the mighty.

Some came from Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek;

       Benjamin was with the people who followed you.

       From Makir captains came down,

       from Zebulun those who bear a commander’s staff.

The princes of Issachar were with Deborah;

       yes, Issachar was with Barak,

       rushing after him into the valley.

       In the districts of Reuben

       there was much searching of heart.

Why did you stay among the campfires

       to hear the whistling for the flocks?

       In the districts of Reuben

       there was much searching of heart.

Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan.

       And Dan, why did he linger by the ships?

       Asher remained on the coast

       and stayed in his coves.

The people of Zebulun risked their very lives;

       so did Naphtali on the heights of the field.

“Kings came, they fought;

       the kings of Canaan fought

       at Taanach by the waters of Megiddo,

       but they carried off no silver, no plunder.

From the heavens the stars fought,

       from their courses they fought against Sisera.

The river Kishon swept them away,

       the age-old river, the river Kishon.
       March on, my soul; be strong!

Then thundered the horses’ hoofs—

       galloping, galloping go his mighty steeds.

‘Curse Meroz,’ 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.’

“Most blessed of women be Jael,

       the wife of Heber the Kenite,

       most blessed of tent-dwelling women.

He asked for water, and she gave him milk;

       in a bowl fit for nobles she brought him curdled milk.

Her hand reached for the tent peg,

       her right hand for the workman’s hammer.

       She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,

       she shattered and pierced his temple.

At her feet he sank,

       he fell; there he lay.

       At her feet he sank, he fell;

       where he sank, there he fell-dead.

“Through the window peered Sisera’s mother;

       behind the lattice she cried out,

       ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?

       Why is the clatter of his chariots delayed?’

The wisest of her ladies answer her;

       indeed, she keeps saying to herself,

‘Are they not finding and dividing the spoils:

       a girl or two for each man,

       colorful garments as plunder for Sisera,

       colorful garments embroidered,

       highly embroidered garments for my neck—

       all this as plunder?’

“So may all your enemies perish, O LORD!

       But may they who love you be like the sun

       when it rises in its strength.”

      Then the land had peace forty years.

 

This article was written by Les Hollon, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church.  For more information about God and your place in His world, contact Dr. Hollon, click over to Trinity Baptist Church.

 

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