The Lord’s Day Evening
October 11, 2009
Judges 4
“Torrents and Tent Pegs in the Hands of a Delivering God”
Reverend Jeremy H. Smith
The fourth chapter, Judges chapter 4, and we’ll read all the verses of this
chapter. What do you do when you
find yourself in trouble, one of the troubles of this life, and it seems as if
the Lord has turned His face away from you?
You look around and you have this sense that God has abandoned you, that
you’re all alone. And as you think
about these things, and think about them more, you come to realize that there is
a very direct correlation between what you have done and this present trouble
that you find yourself in. You can
trace it - you can draw a line between the things that you’ve said, the things
that you’ve left undone, or the things that you have done in this present
experience, as if God has abandoned you.
What do you do in circumstances like that?
Well that’s precisely where Judges 4 takes us.
That’s precisely the circumstances of this chapter.
This occurs in
the period of time between the initial conquest of the Promised Land and when
that period of time that we’re studying with Derek on Sunday evenings, when the
monarchy is established. It’s that
two or three hundred year period between Joshua and Saul and David.
The people have come into the Promised Land, but their enjoyment of it
has been in bits and starts. They
control a large section of it, but not all of it, and there are many pockets of
resistance. And a pattern will
develop where the Lord will raise up enemies that will oppress the people, and
it’s just in one of those times that we pick up our reading in Judges chapter 4.
But before we do, let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
Heavenly Father, these things happened a long time ago in a place far from here,
and yet it reads relevant to us and our circumstances and our situations even
tonight. And so we ask that you
would bless us. Bless us not
because we deserve it, but because You are good, because You love us.
Bless us by Your Word we pray, for Christ’s sake.
Amen.
Judges chapter 4:
“And the people of
Now Deborah, a
prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging
Now Heber the Kenite had
separated from the Kenites, the descendants of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses,
and had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zaanannim, which is near
Kedesh.
When Sisera was told that
Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera called out all his
chariots, 900 chariots of iron, and all the men who were with him, from
Harosheth-hagoyim to the river Kishon.
And Deborah said to Barak, ‘Up!
For this is the day in which the Lord has given Sisera into your hand.
Does not the Lord go out before you?’
So Barak went down from
But Sisera fled away on foot
to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between
Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite.
And Jael came out to meet Sisera and said to him, ‘Turn aside, my lord;
turn aside to me; do not be afraid.’
So he turned aside to her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug.
And he said to her, ‘Please give me a little water to drink, for I am
thirsty.’ So she opened a skin of
milk and gave him a drink and covered him.
And he said to her, ‘Stand at the opening of the tent, and if any man
comes and asks you, ‘Is anyone here?’ say, ‘No.’” But Jael the wife of Heber
took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand.
Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it
went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness.
So he died. And behold, as
Barak was pursuing Sisera, Jael went out to meet him and said to him, ‘Come, and
I will show you the man whom you are seeking.’
So he went in to her tent, and there lay Sisera dead, with the tent peg
in his temple.
So on that day God subdued
Jabin the king of Canaan, before the people of
Amen. Thus far the very words of
our God.
What do you do when you’re in trouble and it’s your fault?
When you’re in need of deliverance and you are the culprit?
That’s where God’s people find themselves in this chapter.
And in this chapter we find a rather surprising deliverance I think,
surprising for a number of reasons.
Surprising I think because of who is being delivered and surprising by how they
are going to be delivered.
Surprising deliverance along those two lines then.
First then, the people. They have
been under the thumb of this man, Jabin, this king of
Imagine being alive in that late, great unpleasantness, that particular war that
goes by various names in these parts.
And now imagine that you lived somewhere between Atlanta and Savannah
when General Sherman made his march for the sea, destroying property, destroying
places, destroying all sorts of things and causing all sorts of havoc – this
“scorched earth” policy as it’s called now.
And imagine that, through the circumstances of history, you were now in a
position to bring retribution upon General Sherman and his descendants.
Maybe you would exercise mercy, maybe you wouldn’t, but here is King
Jabin able to exercise his justice without regard to mercy – no rule of law,
only the rule of might. His army is
free to oppress God’s people. They
have the upper hand.
Now how do God’s people find themselves in this position again?
Well, the story is clear.
They had not driven out all the Canaanites from the Promised Land, so for
hundreds of years, they’re going to struggle against those inhabitants that had
been left behind, who will reform, who will form armies, and who will be a thorn
in their side. But more
specifically, to begin chapter 4, we are told, “And again the people of
And way back in chapter 2 he’s defined that for us.
He said the people had done several things.
On the one hand, they had forgotten the Lord.
They had turned their back on Him – it was apostasy.
They no longer considered the Lord their greatest treasure.
They no longer lived for him.
They had said in their hearts, “We will no longer serve You as our God.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Thanks for all the things that You’ve done in the past, but we’ll take it from
here. You delivered us from
But they had turned to other gods as well.
There were gods in
They are, in fact, exactly where they deserved to be, aren’t they?
When Sisera’s army marches through the towns of Naphtali and he pillages
and he takes for himself whatever he sees and whatever he wants, and his
soldiers are set loose to do whatever soldiers do on their own when they don’t
have restraint. There’s a sense in
which you can look at that and say, “That’s justice.
That’s what the people deserved.
They deserved to have this external enemy raised up against them and to
be under this heavy yolk of oppression because that’s what their sins deserve.”
And there is something about that line of thought that I think can be
very accurate, but also not enough – that it can be accurate to the extent that
it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
We can adopt an attitude that sinners deserve the just rewards of their sin and
say no more. That’s sometimes a
Christian’s response. They look at
folks who are trapped in a cycle of poverty.
And they look at that cycle of poverty and they say, “Do you see how that
person has contributed, how that community has contributed to that cycle of
poverty? They’ve made those
choices, they’ve been unwilling to do those things, and because they’ve made
those choices, because they have refrained from doing those things and instead
have gone after those things, they are now wrapped up in this cycle of poverty.
They’re getting what they deserve.”
That has sometimes been the response of Christians to the AIDS epidemic -
the AIDS epidemic on the continent of
We sometimes don’t know what to make of the sin and the judgments that we see
visited in this life. On the one
hand, there’s a temptation to say, “You know, he sins and she sins and I sin and
we sin and they sin – you know, let’s not make such a big deal about this.
Let’s move on and talk more about grace.
I don’t want to hear about this sin stuff.
After all, we all sin.” But
I don’t think twenty years of oppression gets us off the hook quite that easily.
I don’t think if you were alive in these days you would say simply,
“Well, you know we sin and they sin and Jabin sins and Sisera sins and well,
that’s the way it goes.” They were
serving hard time under this thumb of this evil Jabin and his commander Sisera.
It’s not enough just to say, “They sin, we sin, she sins, let’s not talk
about sin.” But it’s also not
enough to simply say, to look at the sinner and say, “Well, that sinner’s
getting what they deserve.” – look at that sinner reaping the consequences of
their sin and say no more, because that’s not where this passage ends.
If that were the end of the story, the whole book of Judges could have
ended after that first verse – “The people of
Instead, we see something of the heart of God.
Yes, we see judgment to be sure, and the author of Judges will connect
the activities of God’s people, their sin, and the judgment that comes upon
them, but that is not the end of the story.
But instead, there is something of the heart of pity that God has on
sinners that is front and center in Judges chapter 4.
When God looks down on His people, under the oppression of this man
Sisera, His heart is moved to pity.
It’s not what you would have expected.
It’s a surprising deliverance – surprising with respect to the people,
but it’s also surprising with respect to the method.
There’s this woman, Deborah. She
lives in the central portion of the country.
She lives down in the hill country of Ephraim, and she is a prophetess
and a judge. She has some sort of
judiciary function. People come to
her with their problems and she deliberates and she decides and they go off and
that is the judgment of her court and it carries with it a final decision.
But she also serves as a prophetess.
She receives words from the Lord.
And in this case, she has received a word from the Lord.
She has heard God speak, and so she summons Barak to her. She says, “Come
to me. I’ve heard a fresh word from
the Lord.” And she says to him,
“Has not the Lord said that He’ll deliver His people from the hands of Sisera
through your efforts, Barak?”
That’s her message that she has gotten.
Now it takes the shape or the form of a question in our translation, but
there’s no uncertainty in Deborah’s prophecy.
She is saying, “The Lord has spoken, and He will deliver through you.
He will deliver this man Sisera into your hands and He will defeat him by
your hands. Go and raise an army.
Go and raise an army of 10,000 men among the tribes of Naphtali and from
Zabulun. Bring them to
We have a tendency to be a little bit hard on the characters and the people in
the book of Judges. Barak doesn’t
seem to have the most faithful response, and sometimes he gets a hard treatment
over the way he responds to this initial word.
He says, “Listen Deborah, I hear what you’re saying, and if you’re going
to go with me, listen, I will go.
But if you’re not coming, I don’t think I’m going.
I want you there with me.”
And sometimes Barak gets a pretty hard rap for that decision.
Now he’s up against insurmountable odds.
All he’s known in his adult life has been the oppression of Sisera, and
as we’ll see in a moment, he has a tremendous military disadvantage.
This is a radical word of deliverance that Deborah is here speaking.
Give Barak a bit of a break I think in this passage.
He gathers this army though and brings them to
And Sisera has every military advantage because he’s got technology on his side.
He’s got chariots, and iron ones at that – 900 of them.
Deborah perhaps suggests the method for how this deliverance comes about.
If you look over to chapter 5 and especially to verse 20 – “From the
heavens the stars fought, and from their courses they fought against Sisera.
The torrent Kishon swept them away, the ancient torrent, the torrent
Kishon. March on, my soul, with
might!” They might be thinking
there’s not much there, but I think Deborah has given us the clue that we need
to understand how this military advantage is going to be overcome.
They’re fighting down in the valley, down by the river Kishon.
And it would seem as the armies of
Sisera in fact, looking to escape when he sees how the battle is going, and he
gets out of his chariot. If his
chariot were functioning, surely he would have stayed in his chariot and gotten
away, but he crawls out of his chariot.
He’s been at battle, he’s exhausted, he’s just seen his army wiped out,
and he knows that if he doesn’t get moving, he’s next.
So he’s running, and he’s scampering, and he’s sliding around in the mud
and he’s hot and he’s thirsty and he’s tired and he’s exhausted.
And he’s traveling for miles and he finally comes to this settlement.
And there’s a familiar face and a voice that he recognizes and she’s
bidding him to come here. “Come
inside, Sisera.” It’s Jael.
That’s why verse 11 is in there.
The Kenites are a group of people that, earlier in the book of Judges, we
are told settled in the south, but now we’re finding them in the north.
And verse 11 is just there to tell you, “Oh by the way, all the Kenites
except for one group of Kenites, lived in the south.
That’s why these groups are found in the north and she’s from that group.
She’s married to one.” Jael
invites Sisera into her tent and says, “Listen, I’m covered in mud.
I’m exhausted. Could you get
me something to drink?” And she
brings him a glass of milk and she covers him up under the rug.
And he says, “I need you to stand guard.
If somebody comes, just tell them there’s nobody here.”
He can’t keep his eyelids open.
Maybe he’s thinking about what he’s going to do – the next military
strategy. He’s got to go back, he’s
going to have to raise a new army, he’s got to get new chariots ordered.
He’s going to need to figure out a way to exact revenge on these
Israelites for their battle today, but he can’t keep his eyes open anymore.
He’s just exhausted from the day and sleep sets in.
And there he is, lying on the floor under the rug.
Warm – his belly’s full; exhausted from the day.
And Jael sees him. She goes,
she picks up a tent peg. These were
nomadic people. They moved their
tents from time to time, and she’s pretty good with a tent peg.
She finds that mallet. She
tip-toes over to him. He’s snoring
and she doesn’t want to wake him.
She puts that tent peg on his temple, right above it, and does she practice a
couple of times? You don’t want to
miss. If he wakes up, and there’s a
woman with a tent peg over his head, the game’s over!
She’s got no chance! So she
holds that thing. Is there going to
be a moment of hesitation? Does she
measure it up a few times? And then
she drives that mallet onto that tent peg into his head.
And then the Bible tells you, “Oh by the way, he died - just in case you
were wondering.”
This is a glorious end to say the least to a man who had been such a terror on
the people of
You see, the Word of the Lord had already come.
He had already spoken to Deborah and had said, “I am going to deliver My
people.” The outcome was no longer
in doubt. God had spoken.
The instrument that He’s going to use - somewhat inconsequential; the
fact that He’s going to use torrents and tent pegs, rain and this woman Jael -
not important. Because what is
important is that God has looked and has heard the cries of His people.
He’s been moved by pity, pity for them in their desperate circumstances,
and He has delivered them in the most surprising and ordinary and unexciting
kind of way, because that’s what God can do.
This is a picture, in a sense, of Biblical hope – the separation and the promise
of God and the carrying out of what God has promised - the waiting around for
what you know is going to happen because God has said it’s going to happen.
God said to Deborah, “I’m going to defeat Sisera.”
And in fact, Sisera will be defeated.
It happens to take the shape of rain and this otherwise unknown woman,
Jael, but because God had spoken, its certainty is sure.
We began by wondering, “What do we do when we find ourselves in desperate
situations and there’s little doubt that we’re the cause of those desperate
situations?” What does this passage
have to say to us? Let me leave you
with just a couple of thoughts.
First, sometimes God does not deliver like we think He should.
There might be a sin in your life that you have struggled against and
prayed against and sought deliverance from, and in your way of thinking, you
think God ought to deliver you from it.
Sometimes, in His good pleasure and out of His infinite wisdom, He does
not. Sometimes that happens, and
yet in each of those instances, God’s promise is the same – His grace is
sufficient. He may not remove that
thorn in the flesh from Paul, but He will promise to him that His grace will be
sufficient to live with that thorn.
But secondly, we can say that God’s timing may not be what we expected.
Twenty years is a really long time – a long time to be oppressed by Jabin
and Sisera, to live in fear, to have his soldiers run wild in your Promised
Land. How many men had been
slaughtered? How many women had
been abused? How many atrocities
have been accomplished during these twenty years?
Twenty years is a long time to be oppressed, and yet it’s not until the
end of those twenty years that God comes in deliverance.
Sometimes we need to remember that God’s deliverance doesn’t fall on the
time table that we would think.
But the third thing, and I think the most important thing from this passage, is
this – that God’s heart is moved with pity when He looks down and sees the sad
condition that sin has left His people in.
That’s God’s response. Our
response sometimes can be a little harder, but God’s heart is not like that.
He sees this people, in the predicament of their own doing, and His heart
is moved to pity, and so we have this deliverance.
Surprising? It’s not what
you expect, but it’s just like our God.
Let’s pray.
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