Year 1, Day 265: Judges 4

Consistency of God’s Word

I think Judges 4:4-5 might be one of the most misunderstood (or at least forgotten) passages in the history of Bible scholarship.  Okay, I might be using a little hyperbole there to get my point across.  But that doesn’t mean the point isn’t still a good one!

Let’s look at what we know about Deborah.  Judges 4:4 tells us that she was a prophetess.*  What is a prophetess but a female prophet!  What is a prophet but someone who brings God’s Word to the people around them!  So we know that Deborah was accepted as one who brought God’s Word to her contemporaries.  We also know that she was a judge.  What is a judge but a person who God raises up to lead people back into a spiritual relationship with God – usually by the means of doing battle against sinful oppression!  Let’s face it.  By calling Deborah a prophetess and a judge, the Bible is telling us without a doubt that Deborah is a spiritual leader of the people of God.

You might ask how it is that this passage talks about consistency of God.  Well, all throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament God is “doing a new thing.”  That’s a description for going against the ways of the world.  God doesn’t value manmade laws (neither does He deny legitimate ones that do not interfere with the worship of Him, either).  In fact, whenever God sees human tradition getting in the way of people realizing His will, God is actually quick work through the obstacle to illustrate the people’s blindness to them.

Think about several stories from God’s Word:

• Why does God choose Abel over Cain, Jacob over Esau, Judah over the rest of the tribes, or David over his brothers?  You can’t convince me that God couldn’t have worked through Cain, Esau, Reuben, or Eliab if He had wanted.  We’re all fallen people.  It is not us that makes God great, it is God who makes us great!  You see, everyone expected Cain, Esau, and Reuben, and Eliab to be the chosen one because of their birth order.  God intentionally works by choosing His representatives through a different means than the world chooses theirs.  God looks at the hearts, not the expectation of the world.
• Why does God chose wise men from the east to understand the prophecies about the birth of His Messiah while the prophets in Jerusalem from His own people couldn’t figure out the signs?  You cannot tell me that the wise men from the east were any more intelligent than the religious leaders under King Herod.  God chooses them to demonstrate His power.  The Jewish world expected the Hebrew religious leaders to know the Messiah when He came!  God worked a different way.
• Why does God choose a simple teenage girl and a lowly carpenter to be the parents of Jesus?  The Jewish world expected the Messiah to be royalty.  God chose a different path.
• Why does Jesus most often meet with women when dealing outside of the Jewish nation (See the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and the Canaanite woman of Matthew 15:21-28)?  Most Jews wouldn’t go near a Gentile, much less a female one!  Again, God chose a different path.
• Why does Jesus appoint Mary Magdalene to be the bearer of His resurrection to the disciples?  Perhaps the most significant message ever told to Jesus’ own disciples was told to them by a person who because of her gender wouldn’t even be allowed to give testimony in court!  Especially when the disciple that Jesus loved and Peter went to the tomb and Jesus didn’t appear to them!  God clearly chose a different way than the world would expect.
• Why does God choose a Pharisee who is persecuting His own efforts to become potentially His greatest evangelist to ever be born of two human parents?  In Paul, God chose someone way different than His own church would have ever guessed.  And the truth is, most of the Jewish Christians struggled to accept Paul and what God was doing through him his whole life.

I can go on and on.  My point is that God loves to do new things by going contrary to what the world would expect.  God is consistent in His ability to go outside the expected and do something new.  Deborah is a beautiful example of this principle at work.  If we did not pause to learn this lesson we would miss one of the greatest lessons this passage can teach us: accept the unexpected if God is present!  Pay more attention to the working of the hand of God than to the person through whom God has chosen to work.

Discovering God’s Hand at Work

So we need to ask the most important question when it comes to listening to someone in our life.  Was God present in Deborah?  Absolutely!  God is present in Deborah.  God doesn’t care about her gender.  God doesn’t pass over her because she isn’t a man.  God raises her up, appoints her as both prophetess and judge, and uses her!  The Canaanites are routed.  Deborah’s prophecy about a woman killing Sisera comes true.  God is clearly with her, and that is the only thing that matters!

So often we pause to ask all the wrong questions when looking for spiritual leadership.  We get so wrapped up in gender.  Or we ask about credentials.  We ask about pedigree.  We ask about references.  We ask about the pros and cons of choosing a particular leader.  But how often do we ask whether or not God is actually at work in the person?  Even as Christians we are so prone to ask all but the most important question.  So often we don’t stop and ask, “How is God at work in this person?”  That’s the lesson Deborah can teach us.  God delights in pointing out how blind we as human beings can become when we assert out tradition over His ways.

Jael the Kenite

Oh, for the record, much of the same could be said about Jael the wife of Heber.  God raised up 10,000 Israelites to go with Barak and Deborah to fight against Sisera and his 900 iron chariots – and probably a few thousand foot soldiers, who would attend and fight beside the chariots.  Surely someone out of those 10,000 people could have killed the opposing king.  But no.  God chooses a woman – a Kenite, even!  Who are the Kenites?  Remember Jethro, Moses father-in-law?  He was a priest of the Kenites.  The Kenites were a tribe of Canaanites who had respect for God.

I find it interesting that when it comes to killing Sisera that God finds a female Canaanite to do the job in the same story when Deborah is called to rise up and rally the people.  Certainly one of those Hebrew soldiers would have been the world’s expectation.  If there had been a betting pool, I doubt anyone would have put money on the “unknown Canaanite girl from a random tribe that worships our God.”  But that is absolutely who God picks put the nail in Sisera’s coffin – or head, as the case may be.

Want to know where God is at work?  Look for His hand at work, not the credentials of the people around you.  Look for God in the people around you, not at the people around you.  God can do amazing things through people we wouldn’t expect.  That’s the underlying message of this chapter – and much of the whole Bible if you think about it.

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*There are people out there that will tell you that the term prophet and prophetess are two different terms.  That’s silly, and it is evidence of a person not understanding how ancient languages work.  The difference between a prophet and a prophetess is the same as the difference between actor and actress, waiter and waitress, or steward and stewardess.  It’s the same root word and job description!