Sermon Tone Analysis

- As one of the ministers in town, I wrote a Crossroads article to go in the Riverine Herald this week

- In it I spoke about the problem of sin & related it to a pandemic & lockdowns & how it was impossible to irradiate sin on a human level

- That every person is infected & are not able to maintain a proper, healthy, relationship with their Creator

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- I spoke about how Jesus as Saviour, came with the purpose of bringing people to God

- Remember, He said these words…

- Incredible words!!

The judgement of the world has now come & the division has been established between the saved & the unsaved

- The pivotal factor in all of this is the Person of Jesus

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- When He is lifted up upon a cross – His death – He will draw all men to Himself

- Now drawing all men doesn’t mean that it excludes women & it doesn’t mean that it includes every single person

- What it means is that all mankind (generically) who look to Jesus will pass over judgement & over death into life as Jesus says here…

- Judgement has come & it sits on every person who does not believe that God sent Jesus & hence that does not believe that Jesus is the Saviour who saves us from our sins

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- Prior to the coming of Jesus, there was no appropriate remedy for sin & people who were unregenerate (referring to those who do not have the Holy Spirit dwelling with them as Christians do) could not stay on track with God

1.

The Merry-Go-Round of Sin and Restoration

- This brings us to the big issue in Judges

- The Israelites are now in the promised land; they have the law of God & they know that there is only One God & it is this God – Yahweh – who brought them out of the land of Egypt & out from under the slavery/oppression that Pharaoh had put them under

- However, the Israelites failed to conquer all the land that God had planned for them to conquer

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- As a side note, driving the occupants out – to put it simply – is like driving temptation out

- The people of the land were great sinners who constantly offended God by their behaviour

- Not only were they under the judgement of God in which they were to be driven out of the land, but they were a source of great temptation to the Israelites who must stay true to Yahweh

- Not only this – but they would be a source of oppression to the Israelites – that was the reason they left Egypt, wasn’t it!

- But it’s not in the “DNA” of people who don’t have the Spirit of God to believe that God can & will do what He says

- So looking only at what was before their eyes – “Oh my gosh, iron chariots” – they lost heart

- We come then to Judges…

- They started making covenants/agreements/bargaining with the people of the land

- But we should call it by the proper name – compromise

- Perhaps, it went like this – “let’s not go to war, how about we benefit from each other, say by trade & the like”?

- But those covenants with the people of the land was a violation of the Covenant Israel had made with God

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- After a time, people who shared different values from the people of God (Israel had the values from the Law) would act differently & they then started to act ruthlessly & oppressed the Israelites

- I remember the harsh criticisms labelled at Neville Chamberlain who was the British Prime Minister from 1937 – 1940 when World War II began

- Like the rest of Europe, he wanted to avoid any more war like WWI so he, like Europe, had a policy of appeasement & signed a deal with Adolf Hitler that whilst allowing Hitler certain parts of Czechoslovakia, Hitler would not go any further with his ambitions

- Good luck with that – Hitler hated the fact that he made that deal, threw it out & attacked Poland – that was the end of the appeasement policy in Europe & the start of WWII

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- The Israelites, likewise, should have reflected on the reason for why God wanted all the Promised land cleared out & no deals to be made with the inhabitants of the land

- But it happened – the Israelites fell for the temptations placed before them by the ungodly nations in the land & fell for their gods & their sins

- They also came under oppression from what were technically superior nations & the Lord was no longer going to drive them out but let the Israelites suffer for their own sins & choices

- But in compassion, He would hear their cries for help & respond by raising up special people to relieve them of their situation

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- The book of Judges records a repetitive cycle that shows us the raw problem of humanity

- The circle: people “do evil” by serving other gods / Yahweh sends a nation to oppress them / The people cry out to Yahweh / He raises up a deliverer / The oppressor is defeated / The people have rest

- This is the repeated history & story in the book of Judges

- Round & round they go

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- 5 times the phrase “did evil” in the sight of the Lord occurs in Judges

- “In the sight of” is more significant than we realise

Q.

How many people would think that they do evil “in the sight of the Lord”?

- In the sight of our sexually liberated country rarely, if ever, do people think that they do evil in the sight of the Lord

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- We read that the Lord “sold them” into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan

- This is what happens when people turn from the Lord

- They go their own way & the Lord gives them over to the enemy

Q.

How can anyone expect the blessings & protection of God when they decide to turn to idols or other gods – or give themselves over to the sins of their contemporary culture?

- The apostle Paul explains the result of this in Rom.

1…

- After this, Paul goes on to give another 2 denouncements of “God gave them over…”

- God says: If you want to live life without Me, then know the full force of life without Me

- Know the pain that sin & unbelief brings, the evil, the emptiness, the vacuum

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- It seems that only after pain, suffering & distress do people finally wake up & do something about it

- Israel cried out to the Lord – there was repentance, sorrow

- It’s just a pity people don’t have the wisdom to stick with the faith

Q. Do you remember the old Mortein ad, if you’re old enough to remember it – “When you’re on a good thing, stick to it”

- Everyone needs to remember this about the Lord

- Let us not get involved in the perpetual cycle of sin, judgement, repentance & peace that we see here in Judges

2. The Actions of Women Who Save a Nation

Q.

You never thought I’d preach on this, did you?

Q.

Does this pose a problem for male leadership that we find in the NT?

Q.

Is this showing that women can be leading men?

- Of course, some might like to read that here, but it would be a mistake

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- We should always be careful to not bring our own cultural baggage & context into a passage like this to determine & to generalise role relationships in marriage & in the church

- Here, in this passage, God raises up two women to deal with the king Jabin & his commander Sisera

- Sisera has 900 Iron Chariots (with wood as well) & they oppressed the sons of Israel for 20 yrs

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- These people are part of a broad group of people labelled as Canaanites

- The Canaanites were a sophisticated people

- They are culture much like our own with superior technological & scientific advancements, but morally & ethically bankrupt in the sight of the Lord

- Notice he had 900 iron chariots – being similar in technology to the Philistine people who could lord it over Israel because the Israelites only had weaker metals such as bronze

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- Deborah, which means “Honeybee” was both a prophetess and judge of Israel

- People would bring their disputes to her to have her render judgement

- She would have been in that position by virtue of an acknowledgement that she was a prophetess of the Lord

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- Through a prophesy of the Lord, she sends a message to the commander of Israel’s army, Barak, to go take 10,000 men & fight against Sisera to defeat him & his army with their 900 iron chariots

- The Lord has said that He will be with Barak & give him victory

Q.

What was his response to Deborah, who he knew was a spokesperson for the Lord?

- Are no, I will not go “unless you come & hold my hand” – is the gist of it

- This gives us an insight into the calibre of men at the time

Q.

How do we know this?

From Deborah’s response to him

- Make no mistake, this was meant to be a humiliation to men

- Deborah knew it & reminded Barak of the consequences of her going with him

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- She did not summon the people of Israel to battle - she encouraged Barak to do this

- Rather than asserting leadership and authority for herself, she affirmed the rightness of male leadership – of Barak to lead.

- She affirms to Barak the problem of his refusal to go without her

- In that it won’t be noted that an Israelite man saved the nation, but a woman

- Barak should have acted like a man & not insisted that she come with him

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- Jeremiah speaks about the demise coming to Babylon for what they did to Israelites & the temple in Jerusalem

- He says that the armies of Babylon will become like women

- It is the disgrace of a nation when its warriors become women

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- Nahum takes up a similar taunt of judgement against the city of Nineveh

- This is not to denigrate women, but to point out that this situation in Judges says something about the calibre of the men of that time

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- This is also reinforced here, in this passage, because another woman is noted as the one who finishes off the commander of their army