THE WORD OF GOD GOES TO WAR - Deborah
The Word of God Goes to War---Deborah
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Judges 4-5
Sunday Evening Service
@ Celebration of Life Church
June 1, 2014, the Year of our Lord
In preparation for our annual conference, “The Call of the Warrior”, I will be preaching a series of sermons on the “call”, “enduement of power”, “commission” and “weapons of warfare” of the Kingdom warriors empowered by the Holy Spirit.
The Word of God went to war through the prophetic gift of Deborah in the battle against the “Canaanite Army” (sexual perversion, idolatry, Baal worship–storm god). Idolatry results in war and weakness. (See below for demon spirits associated with the Canaanite curse.)
After the death of Ehud, a righteous judge of Israel, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. The Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin (carnal mind) king of Canaan. The captain of whose host was Sisera.
Sisera kept Israel under subjection for 20 years. He had 900 chariots of iron (bondage). Those chariots of iron became the downfall of his army.
Then enters Deborah a prophetess and judge of Israel. She is the first prophetess mentioned in the Bible since Miriam in Ex. 15:20. She is the only woman in the line of judges and the only judge who was a prophet until Samuel. Deborah would be worthy of special mention even without her military exploits, because of the dis-respect for woman-hood in the Middle-East.
The question she faced was whether Israel could exist as a nation split in two by a powerful Canaanite force. In calling for mobilization in Yahweh’s name, she prophetically stood for all that God had set forth in his original covenant with Israel.
“She judged” proving her to be one of the 16 judges of Israel in the period between Joshua and the kings of Israel (520 years). “She dwelt under the palm tree.” Ramah was 5 miles north of Jerusalem, and Bethel 10 miles to the north; so the palm tree must have been close to Beeroth, about halfway between those two cities.
She sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedesh, Naphtali. She gave him a Word:
“Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded saying, ‘Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with you then thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulum? I will draw Sisera with his chariots and his multitude unto you at the river Kishon. I will deliver him into your hand. Barak said to her, If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, then I will not go.”
As a prophetess, it is the Word of God that goes to war. Barak is dependent upon her hearing from God to tell him when to attack. The Sept. adds at the end of verse 8, “For I do not know the day when the Lord would prosper the angel with me.”
I do not judge this as unbelief, but wisdom and humility. Barak recognized and respected her gifting and wanted the gift of God (the Word of God) to direct the battle.
4:9: “She said I will surely go with you; notwithstanding the journey that you take shall not be for your honor; for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh.”
In Barak’s defense, I think he was a man of great faith who was not concerned about his honor, but desired victory over the Canaanite’s. The Holy Scriptures commends his faith not his unbelief. For this, his name is also in the Hebrew 11:32-35, Hall of Faith Fame.
“What shall I say, for time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson…, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness… waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens…”
The glory of victory was shared by two women: Deborah’s call to a Holy War and Jael finished it. However, Barak is the one honored for his faith.
Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. He went up with ten thousand men at his feet. It took faith to call two tribes of Israel together and amass an army of 10,000 based on the spoken Word of God (by a woman).
Deborah went up with him.
Sisera gathered together all his chariots of iron and all the people were with him.
Deborah again spoke the word of the Lord to Barak: (Vs. 14) “Up; for this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into you hand; is not the Lord gone out before you? So Barak went down from mount Tabor and ten thousand men after him. The Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet.”
“Up---this is the day” is the battle cry of the prophetic utterance of the spoken Word of God. After which the conflict moves quickly to its conclusion. The battle was in the marsh fields near the river, Kishon. Chapter 5:20 fills in the details. Apparently a cloudburst turned the wadi into a raging torrent, sweeping before it all in its way. The further effect in a valley created an instant quagmire in which chariots would hopelessly be stuck. 5:4-5: “Lord when you went out of Seir, and marched out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds dropped water. The mountains melted before the Lord, even Sinai from before the Lord God of Israel.”
One of the forms of Baal-worship was that Baal was a storm god (Isa. 19:1). The Lord God Almighty revealed Himself as the power over all the elements. In the 21st century the altar of “global warming” is again a false worship of the idol of Baal. The rain and flood neutralized these chariots of iron.
The lightly-armed Israelites were in no way affected. Barak pursued the chariots, and smote them with the edge of the sword, but Sisera fled to the tent of Jael. “There was not a man left” (utter defeat).
Jael went out to Sisera, put him in her tent, covered him with a robe, (he must have been wet and cold). He asked for water. She gave him a bottle of milk which is believed to be an Arabic sleeping aid of “leben or yogurt”.
Jael and her husband, Heber the Kenite had been the ones to warn Sisera of the mobilization of Israel (4:11). He no doubt thought he would be safe with her. He preferred the woman’s tent to that of Heber, because of secrecy and supposed safety there. According to Eastern custom no man was permitted to intrude into a woman’s tent or the apartments of women; to do so meant the death penalty. Thus Sisera was brought under the death penalty, and it was permitted of God to fulfill the prophecy of verse 9.
Then Jael, Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent and took a hammer in her hand, and smote the nail into his temples…so he died.
As Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him, come, and I will show you the man who you seek.
So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the children of Israel. The hand of the children of Israel prospered and prevailed against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
Chapter 5 is the Song of Deborah and Barak praising God for victory. It is written as a duet.
“Praise you the Lord for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves”
Israel forsook God for new gods that could not deliver them.
With God’s prophetic word and the prophetic action of the two warriors, Deborah and Barak, an army of 10,000 without arms defeated a well armed army with 900 chariots. By faith they went to war based on the Word of God.
The Lord again chose a new species of war, and Himself subverted the gates of the enemy. What was this new species of war? (1) The prophetic Word of God and call to war came through a woman. (2) God put it into the hearts of 10,000 men to have faith without arms to overcome a greater company. In Gideon’s time, a little later, there were only 300 who showed evidence of this kind of faith.
When Barak obeyed the prophetic war cry of “Up; this is the day which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hands…” God began to act, causing terror and confusion throughout the Canaanite army who threw down their arms to flee. The routing was instantaneous and complete. The entire army was slain by men and the captain by a woman. This was the new species of war that brought deliverance in Israel.
The angels of heaven and the stars in their courses fought for Israel on this day, for it was a crisis in the history of the people of God who were the chosen ones to bring the Messiah into the world, and produce the Scriptures as a revelation from God.
Israel is the “altar” of God and the furnace of his fire. From Israel came the Messiah, the Word of God, the Kingdom of God on earth, the Church, and the Apostles.
If they had been defeated in this battle, it would have meant the extermination of those who fought as well as the tribes that did not co-operate in the struggle. This verse is just one of many scriptures teaching that wars are lost or won on earth on the basis of wars lost or won in the heavenlies between the forces of God and Satan (Dan. 10:13).
5: 20-21 suggests that the stars in their courses fought for Israel. The heavens sent great thunder, lightning, rain and perhaps even great hail on the armies of Canaan. The great flood in the river bed of Kishon swept away multitudes downstream to the Mediterranean. On other occasions God sent such storms to defeat the enemy.
God’s control of nature is the key to victory and also his triumph over the storm-god, Baal.
Verse 23 is interesting and a future study. “The angel of the Lord (Jesus) bitterly cursed the inhabitants of Meroz; because they did not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”
5:31: “Let all your enemies perish, O Lord; but let them that love you be as the sun when he goes forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years.
Thirteen (13) sins i.e. demon spirits of the Canaanite Curse:
(Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible)
- Homosexuality – Gen. 13: 13; 19; Lev. 18:22 “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman, it is an abomination.”
- Incest – Lev. 18: 6-30 “None of you shall approach anyone close of kin to him to have sexual relations. I am the Lord. The nakedness of your father … nakedness of your mother, you shall not uncover; she is your mother, you shall not have intercourse with her. The nakedness of your father’s wife, you shall not uncover, it is your father’s nakedness. You shall not have intercourse with or uncover the nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father or of your mother, whether born at home or born abroad. The nakedness of your son’s daughter or of you daughter’s daughter…mother’s sister…mother’s near kinsmen…father’s brother…brother’s wife…daughter-in-law…near kinswoman…it is wickedness.
- Inordinate Affection – Lev. 18: 19-30
- Adultery – Lev. 18: 20-30
- Idolatry – Lev. 18: 21-30
- Beastality – Lev. 18: 23-30
- Witchcraft – Lev. 20:6 – “And the soul that turns after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.”
- Profanity – Lev. 18
- Whoredom – Lev. 20
- Dishonor to parents – Lev. 20
- Murder – Deut. 12:31
- Stealing – Lev. 19
- Lying – Lev. 19:11
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.