Unexpected Heroes

Judges 4:4-10

July 19, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Superheroes have become big business in the last decade or so, which I absolutely love. I grew up reading the exploits of the Fantastic Four and Spider-man and the X-Men in the pages of Marvel comics, so to see those sorts of stories on the big screen has been exciting. I haven’t yet missed a Marvel movie! Of course, when I was a kid, Superman was on the big screen every few years, but he didn’t seem to make the splash that superhero movies do now. Of course, now the film industry has the technology available to make the exploits of those heroes look realistic. You almost believe Robert Downey Jr. can fly! A lot of people have spent a lot of time analyzing why these movies have become so popular, but I believe it boils down to the God-given longing deep inside of us to see justice done. We want to believe that the good guys will win. We want to see someone who will stand up for truth, justice and the American way, right? Especially in a world that seems to be falling apart, heroes give us hope that there just might still be good in the world.

That same hope led to celebrating first responders during the worst waves of COVID-19. There were cities all across the country where people would step outside their homes and apartments at 7:00 p.m. every day and applaud all the nurses, doctors, EMS personnel, police, fire, and other rescue workers who were being overtaxed and overworked battling the virus. And rightly so. They were and are heroes—and I’m not just saying that because my daughter will be a registered nurse very shortly! They deserve at least a round of applause, and not just when there are crises happening. A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting someone from our church in the ER and I knew the nurse who was taking care of him. So I took a moment that evening to send a note over Facebook to say, “I know you can’t talk about it, but you did a great job today.” They may not wear capes, but those folks are heroes in every sense of the word.

Who are the heroes in your life? You might include teachers and bus drivers and principals and all the rest of the folks who make the schools run, especially as we’re just about a week away from school starting—once again in the midst of uncertain pandemic times. Here at the church we would add all the volunteers who work with the children and the youth, all you who volunteered with VBS and last Sunday’s musical, those who give incredible amounts of time to serving others. You can add the ones who cook and serve your meals, the ones who deliver the groceries to the stores, the ones who sweep the streets, the ones who tirelessly work behind the scenes doing things we will never know but things we could not do without. Who are the heroes in your life? I bet your list would be long, and I’m willing to bet they are pretty much ordinary people who, in some way, do extraordinary things in your life.

This morning, we’re beginning a new series of sermons called just that: “Ordinary Heroes.” I don’t know if you’ve realized it or not, but for the last several years in the fall we’ve been working through significant stories from the Old Testament. We started with Genesis several years ago and now we are up to the book of Judges. It is a book of high energy stories, brutal warfare, violent imagery and a faithless people. Kind of makes you want to read it now, doesn’t it? Well, hopefully you got started this past week reading along because we’re not going to have time to visit all the great stories in this book on Sunday mornings. Rather, we’re going to hit four of the highlights, four ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, four people who I believe can teach us a bit about how to live in the extraordinary times we find ourselves. So next Sunday, we will look at Gideon, followed by Ruth and then Samson, but today we begin with a rather unassuming woman named Deborah.

Before we get to her story in particular, though, we need to understand who these “judges” were, what their purpose within the society of Israel was. When we hear the title of “judge,” we typically picture a man or a woman in a black robe sitting on a high bench with a gavel in hand. Judges are those who make legal decisions, who hand down, well, judgments on whether you’ve done good or bad, right or wrong. Judges in the Old Testament weren’t terribly different from that, though I doubt they wore black robes, and they didn’t typically sit behind a desk. This is a time before Israel had human kings. So Israel at this point is not so much an organized nation like we would think of it as they are a loose confederation of tribes whose king was God. They didn’t yet have a human king but they did have various people who represented God before the people. The prophet was one such person, someone who spoke the word of God to the people. And the judge was another. The Judge’s main job in this time was to resolve conflicts, carry out justice, enforce God’s law and uphold what was considered normative behavior. Basically, it was the Judge’s job to do whatever was needed to keep or restore the well-being of the community (cf. Stone, “Judges,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 3, pgs. 188-189). And I say “restore” because the pattern of the people’s lives at this time went something like this: We love God. We forget God. We do whatever we want. We get in trouble. Suddenly we remember God. God sends a judge to rescue us. Yay for God…and then the pattern starts all over again. Here’s how the book of Judges describes the people in this time: “Everyone did as they saw fit” (17:6), or translated another way: “All the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes” (NLT). Does that sound like a familiar situation, where everyone does whatever they think is right, no matter how it affects anyone else? Can you imagine what it would be like if people just made up their own truth? Is the book of Judges maybe a little more relevant than you at first thought?

So into the midst of such a time, after eighty years of peace, the people “did evil” (4:1). We’re not told what the evil was, but it doesn’t really matter. The point of the story here is that they forgot God (again), didn’t live God’s way, and so God sent punishment in the form of a Canaanite king who had nine hundred chariots. That king, Jabin, made the people of Israel his slaves for twenty years. Yes, twenty years. That’s how long it took them to remember, “Oh, hey, has anyone heard from God lately? Has anyone talked to God lately? Maybe he could help us!” Maybe he could, if they would just ask. And so they do; Judges says, “They cried to the Lord for help” (after twenty years) (4:3). And this is where it gets really good.

The judge in this story is Deborah, which is a surprise to some people who believe the Bible strictly forbids women in leadership of any sort. Here is a strong woman, leading Israel and making decisions designed to help the people stay connected with God. According to Judges, Deborah was a wife and probably a mother, and she even has a palm tree named after her—the Palm of Deborah. How about that? You know you’ve made it when you have a palm tree named after you. We could name this tree out here, “The Oak of Dennis.” How does that sound? Anyway, she regularly “holds court” at the palm tree named after her, and from there she settles disputes and leads the people. Her name, by the way, means “Bee,” and as one author puts it, there is a sting in her words, especially on the day she calls for Barak (Goldingay, Joshua, Judges & Ruth for Everyone, pgs. 100-101). Deborah tells Barak to gather an impromptu army to go against the Canaanite army commanded by Sisera. Barak’s army is going to consist of ten thousand men (15:6). Sisera’s has nine hundred chariots (15:3). But above the body count, God assures Barak through Deborah that Barak is going to win this one. All he has to do is be obedient; do what he’s told.

And this is where Barak falters. He's going to have ten thousand men. He’s got God’s assurance that his army will win. And still he doesn’t want to do it. He says he will only go if Deborah goes with him (4:8). That’s a strange demand. Ater all, Deborah is a judge, not a warrior. And yet deeply ingrained in the Hebrew culture of this time is the idea that if the man or woman of God is present, they will have guaranteed contact with the Almighty. They remember when Moses would be with the people in a battle and how if Moses was there they would win. He thinks the same thing is true of Deborah. If she is present, then that will for sure 100% guarantee a victory. Deborah is Barak’s ancient equivalent of a lucky rabbit’s foot or whatever lucky item you might own. It’s superstition, and it’s a lack of real faith. And because of that lack, Deborah says this: “Okay, I’ll go with you. And we will win. But you won’t get the credit. A woman will. How do you like them apples?” Okay, maybe that’s a loose translation (cf. 4:9), but the point remains. Barak gives up his chance of getting credit for victory in battle (which, believe me, was a big deal back then) and the credit will go to a woman.

Now, we assume that woman is going to be Deborah, but that’s not what happens at all. When you read the rest of the story (which hopefully you did this past week), you learn there’s another woman in this story, a bold and tough woman named Jael. We’ll meet her in a moment, but first Barak and Deborah go out to battle and lo, and behold, they win, just like God said they would. Before they can capture Commander Sisera (because capturing the commander is an important part of actually ending the battle), Sisera gets out of his chariot and runs away (4:15). Yeah, big tough battle commander, running away from the battle. Sisera runs to the tent of Jael, someone he thinks is an ally, and she invites him in (4:18). She plays along for a while, offering him drink and a warm blanket (because we all know that if someone is in distress, you offer them a warm beverage). Sisera asks her to tell anyone who comes by that no one is there, and Jael plays along until Sisera is asleep. While he sleeps—let’s just say he gets a splitting headache. Literally. This is pretty gross, actually—it would probably be rated “R” if it were a movie. Jael takes a tent peg and hammers it through his head into the ground (4:21). What an army of ten thousand men couldn’t accomplish over the course of a battle, one woman does in a matter of minutes. Now the battle is really over (4:23-24). Israel has once again been delivered, protected and rescued. Chapter five is their celebration of that freedom—a freedom that lasts…until the beginning of chapter 6 where they once again “do evil” (6:1).

So what does this story have to tell us, then? First of all, I think it reminds us that our times aren’t that much different from their times. Despite all our advances in technology and knowledge, we’re not all that different as people. It’s “chronological snobbery” to believe we are so much better off than those poor souls “way back then,” because it’s simply not true. Human beings haven’t changed all that much in thousands of years. We still go through cycles of faithfulness to the one who made us, then we forget him and we “do what we want” and we end up in a mess. What part of that cycle do you think we are in right now? This story (and the book of Judges as a whole) also reminds us that as God’s people, sometimes our calling is simply to remain faithful to God no matter what the world is doing. It’s hard, I know, and it couldn’t have been easy for people like Deborah. But our calling is still to remain faithful and to call the world around us back to God by our word and by our deeds.

And because of that, we should not second guess what God wants to do through us. What if Barak had simply obeyed? He was told very clearly what God wanted him to do, yet he refused to do it in the way God wanted him to. How might God have used him? Don’t second guess what God wants to do through you because—and here’s the main focus of this story, I believe—God can and will use anyone to accomplish his purposes. When Barak refuses, God turns to Deborah and to Jael. God will finish what he begins, even if you refuse to be a part of it. You’ll just miss the blessing.

Let me stop here for a moment and mention this: I know the violence in the Old Testament, and especially graphic violence like we have in this story, often upsets people today. We struggle with it, honestly. We struggle with the idea of a God who would basically command or at least condone the murder of particular people—though if you read this text carefully, killing Sisera wasn’t necessarily the command Barak received. Nevertheless, the violence causes some folks to back away from the faith because they can’t square what they call “the violent God of the Old Testament” with the love and grace and mercy of Jesus in the New Testament. Some people even believe there are two different gods, but that is not our faith. God is God, the same God in the Old and New Testaments, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So how do we make sense of all this? That’s a topic that a lot of ink has been spilled over, but for our purposes this morning, let me just say that it’s clear God works within each culture. He doesn’t override the culture, as much as we might wish he would. He works within it, in language and actions that they people can understand. The really ancient world, the world of the Old Testament, was a violent world, much more violent than even the Old Testament itself depicts. In fact, God’s law tempers much of the violence, with commands like, “Do not murder” (cf. Exodus 20:13). But he still speaks their language. By the time of the New Testament, it’s a much different world. The Roman Empire is far different than the confederation of tribes and city-states of ancient times. And so God speaks their language, which may seem to be less violent (you know, until you get to Revelation) but no less divisive. Because the point in both testaments is that you can either live God’s way or not God’s way. There is no middle ground. The ones who are “heroes” in the Bible point us toward God’s way without compromise.

So, who are the “Deborahs” in your life? Who are the heroes who have been willing to stand with you, to help you accomplish what God called you to? Or, we could ask it even another way: who are the unexpected people God has used in your life? Deborah and Jael are unexpected heroes in this story. No one would have expected them to become the heroes of this story. So who has God brought into your life unexpectedly?

The first Deborah who always comes to my mind is Esther Beard, my high school Sunday School teacher. I’ve talked about her before, how she would call each person in our class on days like Christmas Day just to let us know she loved us and Jesus loves us. Esther had perfect attendance for over twenty years while she taught that class, but I don’t think she ever followed the curriculum she was given. Basically she just wanted us to know Jesus loves us and she would do pretty much anything to show us that. Esther also worked at the little local Christian bookstore, and I would stop in there from time to time. Esther always had time to talk, to encourage, to come alongside me and a bunch of high schoolers so that we would know the love of Jesus. Esther has long been my hero.

So is another Esther—my Grandma Esther. When I was little, she lived just a couple of blocks from my home and so my brother and I would go over to her house often. She was never too busy for us, even when she remarried and moved to Rossville. Then we would often go to her house after school until my folks picked us up. One of my most prominent memories is seeing her teaching her Sunday School class at the Rossville Church, week in and week out. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but they didn’t even have a classroom; they met in the back pews of the sanctuary before worship began. And every week Grandma was there. She passed that kind of faithfulness on to her son, my dad, and my folks passed it on to me. I also was there as Grandma had a series of strokes, not terribly debilitating, but they did make her life challenging. We spent a lot more time with Grandma then, moving in on weekends to take care of her. As a middle schooler and high schooler then, I watched Grandma struggle to regain her life and herself. Eventually, the health challenges from the strokes took her life, but Grandma remains to this day one of my heroes. Her influence, passed down through my dad to me, is a big part of who I am today.

Another hero I met much later in life, during my first solo pastoral appointment. When I arrived at Brushwood, Dorothy Torbet was already up in years. She and her husband, Kenneth, had been married sixty years at that time, and in fact, the night the superintendent came to announce who their new pastor was going to be, Dorothy had just gotten out of the hospital but she wanted to be there to meet us. Over the years, I came to deeply appreciate Dorothy and Kenneth; sometimes I’d go to their house to just listen to their stories, mostly incredible stories of God’s faithfulness to them and to the church through the years. Dorothy was always supportive and stood by me to encourage me even in some difficult times. I like to imagine Grandma and Esther and Dorothy all together in the kingdom, cheering me on. And they probably are, you know, because the letter to the Hebrews says we have a “great cloud of witnesses” surrounding us and cheering us on (cf. Hebrews 12:1). The unexpected heroes of the faith who have gone before us cheer us on and encourage us to live out our faith each and every day, in ways we usually can’t see.

This morning, we’re going to gather with that great cloud of witnesses, heroes of the faith (including two Esthers and a Dorothy), as we gather around Christ’s table. As believers have done for centuries, we are going to partake of the bread and the cup that remind us of Jesus’ body and blood, given for us. And maybe as we remember Jesus this morning, we might also remember and celebrate those who have constantly and consistently stood beside us on our journey toward him. Let’s prepare our hearts to celebrate as we come to the table.