Depending on who ask, most people have their favorite board games. And on top ten lists of best board games, or most popular board games, or most influential board games, you’ll get games like, The Game of Life, or Clue, or Candy Land, and Scrabble. Some of those will be high or low on the list, depending on the person. And if you’re a board game enthusiast, your list might be vastly different from a standard pup culture list. But in the half a dozen or so lists that I looked up, there was one game that always cracked the top five, Monopoly. The game that brings you to the point of divorce with your spouse and alienation from your family members.
Today, my wife and I buy one board game every Christmas as a holiday tradition, but growing up, my family didn’t play a lot of board games. I know we had Candy Land, The Game of Life, and several others, but the only one I remember that we played as a family, was Monopoly. The reason I remember that we played that game, is because when we would play it, I would methodically wear my opponents down to where they would have to sell off properties as I amassed my real estate empire. Through this I would prolong the game slowly whittling away and demoralizing my family members. It got so bad at one point, that my mom told me I was the devil, making deals that seemed to help others, but really only benefited me.
Now I don’t even play the game, because my wife agrees with my mom’s assessment of my play style. Games that should be over in an hour, take days, because I want to gain every piece of the board before we quit. But that’s what I like about the game, it’s all about taking the right opportunities at the right time; whether that’s buying up the right properties, or making the right deals. It’s all about being an opportunist in a friendly game sort of way, unless you’re the people that I play with, then it’s the worst sort of way.
But it’s taking advantage of the opportunities that are presented to us, that brings us back to our new year series on being a sharp arrow in God’s quiver, where we’ll be returning to the Scriptures to the book of Judges, chapter 4, starting in verse 4. And as we open up to Judges 4:4, let’s look back on the first two week so far in our series.
In the first week we looked at the life of Abraham’s servant who he sent to find a wife for his son Issac. This servant loved his master more than earthly positions, wanted insight into his master’s plans, and was humble when those plans worked out. In this servant’s life, we saw how we, as Jesus’ disciples, are to be more concerned with our God’s will than anything else in this world.
In the second week, we looked at the warrior Caleb. A man who had an undeterred trust in God. He believed that when God gave a promise, that he would deliver on that promise, no matter what anyone else said. And because Caleb believed so much in God’s fulfillment of his promises, God gave him a special promise. Not only allowing him to enter into the land when all but one other person was denied, he was given a specific area to call his own. From Caleb we talked about how we, as disciples, need to have an unwavering trust in God.
These two follow each other, the will of God needs to be our highest importance, and trusting in God’s will is where the engine turns on.
Now that we have these two aspects of being a sharpened arrow in God’s quiver back in the forefront of our mind, let’s read from the book of Judges, chapter 4, starting in verse 4.
4 Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel at that time. 5 She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came up to her for judgment. 6 She sent and summoned Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh-naphtali and said to him, “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you, ‘Go, gather your men at Mount Tabor, taking 10,000 from the people of Naphtali and the people of Zebulun. 7 And I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the river Kishon with his chariots and his troops, and I will give him into your hand’?” 8 Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” 9 And she said, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. 10 And Barak called out Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. And 10,000 men went up at his heels, and Deborah went up with him.
11 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.
12 When Sisera was told that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, 13 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. 14 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 Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. 15 And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak by the edge of the sword. And Sisera got down from his chariot and fled away on foot. 16 And Barak pursued the chariots and the army to Harosheth-hagoyim, and all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword; not a man was left.
17 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. 18 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. 19 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. 20 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.’” 21 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. 22 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.
And it’s that last sentence why this story doesn’t get talked about in children’s Bibles.
The book of Judges is one of those books that incapsulates the whole of Scripture. There is a cycle that appears in the nation of Israel: Israel follows God and experiences peace and prosperity, then Israel stops following God and experiences war and poverty, the nation then calls out to God and he saves them. Rinse and Repeat the cycle for the whole of the history of Israel until they God breaks the cycle with an exile.
In one event within cycle that we just read, the context is that Israel as a nation was doing evil, once again. So it says that God sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan. In other words, instead of seeking the peace and prosperity that comes from serving the Lord, Israel went against their covenantal oath to follow God and began to do all sorts of things that God hated. So God sold them, which carries with it the idea of slavery. The Israelites would rather live in evil, being slaves of another human, than to be in God’s goodness and free. This is the implication of the cycle that Israel chose, and it took them twenty years living in this state before they finally cried out to God for help.
And that’s where the story of Deborah and Barak comes in. Deborah is a prophet and it’s her custom to hold court, or judgment for Israel at this certain location that came to be known as the Palm of Deborah. Her role was similar to the role that Moses held when he would judge Israel’s problems in Exodus 18.
But once the nation as a whole cried out to God, God moved and Deborah calls to the warrior called chose to bring his people back. This was Barak, but notice what she says to him, “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you…(v.6)”
That’s a question, and you know what that means? A part from this interaction between Deborah and Barak, God had already told Barak directly to do something. Yet he hadn’t. So from direct communication, God used one of his prophets to communicate the same thing, and when this prophet speaks with Barak, she asks him, didn’t God already tell you to do this? Implying, why haven’t you done it already?
This is something that needs to be said, when God speaks to us and tells us to do something, we don’t need confirmation, we need action. But Barak did not listen to God’s call, and had to be called twice. You ever get called by your parents more than once? How was their disposition the second time? Why do we so often make God call more than once for us to move?
But we see Barak’s hesitation for ourselves, when he asks Deborah to go with him. He won’t go, unless the prophet goes. Why? The prophet wasn’t called, Barak was. The prophet wasn’t supposed to go out to war, Barak was.
God’s call was on Barak, because for some reason, that only God knows, God wanted this victory to be done through him. But Barak rejected God’s call, and needed someone to hold his hand to follow God. So Deborah told him that because of his unwillingness to follow the call of God, not once but twice, the glory of victory he would have gain would go to a woman.
Now to our modern ears, this sounds sexist, but to his ears it’s a rebuke of his resistance to God’s call. It’s not saying that women are worth less, or that they couldn’t fight, because we know they can in this story, it was God’s way of saying to Barak that the intend glory that God wanted Barak to experience was going to someone who wasn’t even suppose to be out on the battlefield.
And the woman that would get this glory? Not Deborah, all she did was go. There’s nothing that I read that she did any military work. She didn’t lead the fighting. She didn’t ride out onto the field of battle. She just went with him, held his hand, and told him when to go.
And when the dust settled on the field of battle, Barak was the winner, but he didn’t get the glory. That fell to Jael.
The enemy, Sisera, ran from the furry of battle and wound up at Jael’s tent. Jael was a woman who was cunning, she gave the man milk when he asked for water. And she was a woman who was strategic, waiting for the exhausted man to fall asleep. And when he was asleep, BAM! She drives a tent pole through his temple.
It was Jael, not Barak, nor Deborah who got the glory of victory that day. And in Deborah and Barak’s song that comes in chapter 5 of Judges, we get this, “24 Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent-dwelling women most blessed. 25 He asked for water and she gave him milk; she brought him curds in a noble's bowl. 26 She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen's mallet; she struck Sisera; she crushed his head; she shattered and pierced his temple. 27 Between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still; between her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell—dead.”
Jael received the glory of defeating the enemy of Israel on that day, and because of her, Israel experienced forty years of peace, double that which they experienced in bondage.
So what should we walk away from this example? How should the arrow be in the archer’s care? Too often I hear that this story his about Deborah and Barak, and it’s used to say, that if men don’t step up, then God will use a woman. There is a truth to that, but I think that misses the bigger point of this story. It’s not so much a man verses woman thing, though I do think that men too often give up their roles, Adam did it, and humanity is always hurt when men don’t take their God given roles seriously.
But it’s more than that. Barak wouldn’t follow the call of God. God’s will didn’t matter to Barak, and neither did Barak trust God to fulfill what he said he was going to do. No, Barak needed someone else, someone more spiritual to fight his battles. I think we tend to do this too. The moment when God says to us “do this,” it’s real tempting to say, I better get the pastor’s council first. Or when we know we should share the Gospel with someone and we say, well I’ll point them to this video instead. When we do those things, without God moving us to do them, we are bucking the call of God on our lives. Getting council is fine, except when it’s to push off God’s call for a little longer. Giving people resources is fine, except when that keeps you from directly calling someone to repentance before God.
When God lays a call on our lives, we must do it. We need to be opportunistic in this way. Compare Barak’s unwillingness to Jael’s. She took the opportunity to take out Israel’s enemy. She had a shot, she took it. Did she need a call of God to do the will of God? No, because when our highest priority is the will of God, we will be seeking it in whatever we are doing.
I don’t need to be told by God to love my neighbor, I take the opportunities given to me and to do it. I don’t need to be told by God to trust him, I take the opportunities given to me and need to do it. I don’t need to be told to share the Gospel, I need to do it. I need to be looking for opportunities to do the will of God, because I trust that he is working and leading me into situations.
Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”
What he’s saying there, is that we are to have a continued mindset of rejoicing, of praying, of giving thanks. We should be breathing and eating this stuff. This constant communication is what keeps us on our toes ready for the will of God and the trust of God to meet and our action happens. If I’m constantly rejoicing in the Lord, praying, and giving thanks, I’m like a boxer warming up in my corner before the bell dings. Barak, wouldn’t take the opportunity God called him to, but Jael did.
God seeks to give us opportunities to experience great things, but if we reject those, that’s when we start saying things like, “I don’t feel God,” or “I can’t see God at work.” We can’t because we’re not ready to pull the trigger on God’s calling.
So let’s put into practice what we know of his will, ever ready for the opportunity that God supplies.
This is what the arrow does, when it’s plucked from the quiver it’s time to fly. We need to be like the arrow, ready to fly at a moment’s notice. The disciple of Jesus seeks opportunities from God to be used. And doesn’t shove them off onto someone more spiritual. Don’t push things off on the pastor that you are called to do. Don’t push it off onto the Bible study leader, or professor, or evangelist, or YouTube personality. Those are resources for you to respond to God’s calling, not crutches to push onto others.
My challenge for you this week is this. Ask God for opportunities to be used. Take 5 minutes every morning, start with a simple prayer like, “God I want an opportunity to be used by you today,” then for the next five minutes don’t say a word, just listen for God to speak. Then spend the day rejoicing in what is happening, praying about your comings and goings, and thanking God for what he provides.
Let us be a people who seek to be used by God, so that we can see him work his greatness out in our lives. Amen.
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