Transcript
Open your Bibles will you turn with me once again to the book of Judges, chapter 4. Judges 4, verse 1.
When Ehud was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth Haggoyim.
And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, for Jabin had nine hundred chariots of iron. And for twenty years he harshly oppressed the children of Israel.
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. She would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.
Then she sent and called for Barak the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, “Has not the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, ‘Go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor. Take with you ten thousand men of the sons of Naphtali and of the sons of Zebulun. And against you I will deploy Sisera the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude at the River Kishon. And I will deliver him into your hand.’”
And Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, then I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.”
So she said, “I will surely go with you. Nevertheless there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. He went up with ten thousand men under his command, and Deborah went up with him.
Now Heber the Kenite, of the children of Hobab the father-in-law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent near the terebinth tree in Zaanannim, which is beside Kedesh.
And they reported to Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor. So Sisera gathered together all his chariots, nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people who were with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the River Kishon.
Then Deborah said to Barak, “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you?” So Barak went down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand men following him. And the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army with the edge of the sword before Barak. And Sisera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot.
But Barak pursued after the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. And all the army of Sisera fell by the edge of the sword. Not a man was left.
However, Sisera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. For there was peace between Jabin king of Canaan and the house of Heber the Kenite. Then Jael went out to meet Sisera and said to him, “Turn aside, my lord, turn aside to me. Do not fear.” And when he had turned aside with her into the tent, she covered him with a blanket.
Then he said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink, for I am thirsty.” So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him. And he said to her, “Stand at the door of the tent, and if any man comes and asks you, saying, ‘Is there any man here?’ you shall say, ‘No.’”
Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple, and it went down into the ground. For he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.
And then as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said to him, “Come, I will show you the man whom you seek.” And when he went into her tent, there lay Sisera, dead with the peg in his temple.
So on that day God subdued Jabin king of Canaan in the presence of the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel grew stronger and stronger against Jabin king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan.
Now skipping a few verses to chapter 5 and look at verse 24. Chapter 5 verse 24.
Most blessed among women is Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite.
Blessed is she among women in tents.
He asked for water, she gave milk.
She brought out cream in a lordly bowl.
She stretched her hand to the tent peg, her right hand to the workmen’s hammer.
She pounded Sisera, she pierced his head, she split and struck through his temple.
At her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still.
At her feet he sank, he fell.
Where he sank, there he fell dead.
Woodbridge, Illinois, is about twenty miles southwest of Chicago. Just last year on Saturday, April the 19th, a woman was arrested in the parking lot of a drug store near Woodbridge. At the time that she was arrested she was incoherent and freezing. When the police arrested her they took her to the Elgin mental health center and she was committed to the institution in order to receive psychiatric treatment.
But there was one thing about this woman that the police did not know. She was a mother. Now the car that had been left in the parking lot contained a toddler’s seat. But because they were unable to follow up on that because they didn’t have an address. But by a strange coincidence in the week that followed, on two consecutive days the police went to the apartment where the woman lived. The door was locked on both occasions and the police didn’t enter because they didn’t have permission to do so.
But just hours after their last visit there on Thursday, a man telephoned the manager of the apartment complex and expressed concern over the whereabouts of his grandson. This brought the police back to the apartment. This time they entered through a patio door and guess what they found. They found a twenty-three month old little boy had been home alone for five consecutive days. He was in good health and they turned him over to his grandparents.
Now they don’t know. A mental health department spokesman, Joel Orfear, said that it is customary whenever a person is committed to an institution to do a screening. And that as a part of the screening they always inquire about children and they always try to find out if arrangements have been made for taking care of them. But when they screened this woman they found out nothing because she was incoherent.
So how did the little boy manage to survive so well all by himself for five consecutive days? Well he did it by whipping down bread, beef and ice cream. Now the headline to the story in the Dallas Morning News I think said it all. The headline read like this, “Stranded toddler survives alone.”
You know years ago I was talking to a young man who had just recently gotten saved. He just recently believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for everlasting life. He knew he was saved. He knew he was on his way to heaven. And we were discussing the Christian life and I will never forget what he said to me. He said to me, “Zane, I can’t do it alone.”
Now he wasn’t talking about trying to do it without God’s help. As a matter of fact, in the context of our conversation what he really meant was, “I can’t do it unless I’m married. I can’t do it alone.” And that remark that comes to my mind from years ago leads me directly to the question that I would like to ask each and every one of you this morning. And the question is, can you do it alone?
And you’ve probably already guessed that the question is also the title of my message to you this morning, Can You Do It Alone?
Many of you have already heard my often repeated story about the time I was overseas in the land of Israel. And I was with a tour group that had been touring the old city of Jerusalem. Now the old city of Jerusalem is right next to the new city, but it’s surrounded by walls that date from Crusader times. And when you enter the gate of one of these walls it’s kind of like stepping out of a time machine. You feel like you’ve stepped out of the 20th century and you’ve stepped into Bible days.
And we had a fascinating tour through the streets of the old city. And then that afternoon they gave the tour group several free hours. And I decided to take an independent tour of the old city of Jerusalem. So I went back into this walled city. It wasn’t very long before I found myself wandering in a maze of narrow streets in the center of the old city. I had lost all contact with the direction in which I was going or any of the tourists who were there.
The only people that I saw there were several mean-looking Arab men dressed in turbans and the long flowy robes just like you see in the movies. And a thought crossed my mind. They may think that I am a rich American tourist with hundreds of dollars in my wallet and I am probably a prime target for a mugging.
Now I spent some very anxious minutes trying to find my way through the streets of the old city of Jerusalem. And imagine my pleasure when I saw at the end one of the street gates and outside the gate other tourists were passing. I made a beeline for the gate. I joined the tourists and I want you to know that that was the last independent tour that I took during the entire trip.
But my little experience in the old city of Jerusalem kind of prepares me in a small way to empathize with the man that we read about just a few moments ago in the book of Judges. You see although I only had to worry about several mean-looking Arab men, the man that we read about had to worry about nine hundred chariots of iron.
You see once again things were bad in the nation of Israel because the children of Israel had turned away from the Lord their God. They had done evil in the sight of the Lord. And as a punishment for their departure from Him the Lord allowed them to fall under the oppressive dominion of Jabin king of Canaan who reigned at a city called Hazor.
Now please remember that the Israelites in the period of the judges were a long way from the nuclear age and they were certainly a long way away from the age of aerial combat such as we have been through in the recent century. As a matter of fact they were back at what we might call the Bronze Age. They hadn’t even entered the Iron Age and they did not possess the technology that was needed to create iron weapons much less to create iron chariots.
It is thought that the technology of making iron implements came to Palestine possibly through the Philistines. It might be that Jabin got his technology from there or maybe he got it from somewhere else. But it is obvious that he had put it to excellent use. He had made nine hundred chariots.
Now you’ve probably visualized here a small vehicle with two wheels usually drawn by a couple of horses. One man stayed in the vehicle and he was the driver and usually there was another man with an archer. Maybe there were two men besides the driver.
And if you happen to belong to an army that only had bronze weapons or maybe only had wooden implements to fight with and you found yourself facing an army with nine hundred chariots and they were galloping toward you with their horses galloping as fast as they could and the archers letting fly arrows, I can guarantee you that would be a very, very fearful sight.
And it is not at all surprising, is it, that Jabin king of Hazor armed in this way with the chariots was able to suppress the children of Israel for twenty years. For twenty long unhappy years the children of Israel served this man.
But Israel had a secret weapon of its own. It had a secret weapon which Jabin knew nothing about. Really. Whose secret weapon was a woman. A woman who possessed the gift of prophecy. A woman whose name was Deborah and who judged Israel in those days.
Now you may be interested to know that Deborah is the only female judge in the entire book of Judges. And it’s obvious, isn’t it, that Deborah was not the kind of person that pomp and circumstance surrounded. Because when she was holding court she simply sat out under a palm tree which came to be known as the palm tree of Deborah. And the children of Israel brought up to her their lawsuits, their pleas for judgment. No doubt using her gift of prophecy she decided on behalf of the person who was in the right and she condemned the person who was in the wrong.
And one day Deborah summoned into her presence a man by the name of Barak, the son of Abinoam, a man who lived in a village called Kedesh in the territory occupied by the tribe of Naphtali. And Deborah said to Barak as he stood before her, “Has not the Lord commanded,” did you notice the word command here, “saying, ‘Deploy troops at Mount Tabor. Take with you ten thousand men from the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. And I will deploy against you Sisera the commander of Jabin’s army with all of his chariots and with all of his army. And I will deliver him into your hand.’”
And Barak said, “My, what a splendid opportunity. I am getting the privilege of leading a relatively small number of soldiers from the land of Israel against the entire chariot army of Sisera and I’m guaranteed to have victory. Deborah, thank you, thank you for conveying a message like that to me.”
What’s that? You’re saying you don’t find those words of Barak in your Bible? Well no wonder because he didn’t say that. In fact he didn’t say anything like that. And I’m going to give you the Hodges free translation of what Barak said to Deborah when she delivered this message. In a rough paraphrase Barak said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it alone. Deborah, if you will go with me then I’ll go. And if you will not go with me I will not go.”
Now folks, as far as I know this is the first time in the history of the world that a potential commanding general said, “I am not going out into battle unless a woman goes with me.” Hey, how about that?
Now I may get into trouble with the other men in my audience today because I may be revealing secrets that the male fraternity would prefer not to have out in the open. I will take my chances anyway. I am convinced, because I know a lot of men, I am convinced that there are a lot of men who say deep down in their heart, “I could never, never live the Christian life or be victorious in Christian warfare unless I’m married, unless I’ve got a woman by my side.”
Now I don’t want to speculate on what my ladies might say. Is it possible, I’m asking, is it possible that there are women who say deep down inside, “I could never really live the Christian life unless I was married.” And other men and women who would say, “You know I have a good Christian friend. That Christian friend is so dedicated, so strong, so spiritual. They are a real support to me. And if something happened to take them out of my life I couldn’t live the Christian life because I can’t do it alone.”
I know somebody whose name I do not know. The following story he said, “I went into the police station one night to pay off a parking ticket and there was an old lady in front of me who was trembling all over.” He said, “I went and paid the parking ticket and as I was headed out I saw the lady sitting in a corner, politely absorbed in a book. And so I said to the lady, ‘Is there any trouble? Is there anything I can do?’ And the lady replied, ‘No thank you.’ She said, ‘You see I was home alone reading this mystery book and I got so scared as I was reading it that I decided to come down and finish the book under police protection.’”
Now folks I think there are a lot of people for whom the Christian life is just a great big mystery and they’re scared. They’re scared and they feel they need to try to live it under the protection of somebody else: their spouse, the church, their friends, their relatives. Because deep down in their hearts they don’t have enough confidence in God to see them through and therefore they say, “I can’t do it alone.”
Did you notice how Deborah responded to this show of weakness by Barak? “Are you a man or a mouse? Shame, shame, shame on you. Don’t you have courage? Don’t you have faith in God? Why aren’t you the man that you ought to be?”
Now if she had said something like that she would have been right on target. But instead her answer to Barak is tinged with the mercy and also the firmness that is characteristic of the God that she served. And so she said, “Barak, yes I will surely go with you. But I want you to know that there will be no glory for you in the journey that you are taking. And God will give Sisera into the hands of a woman.”
Hey folks, is this ladies’ day or what? I mean we have the only female judge. We have a man who won’t go to war without a woman. And the judge says God’s going to give the honor of executing the opposing general to a woman.
Well that’s what happened. Everybody got up and went with Barak and Deborah. And Barak claimed to be a very good recruiter. He gathered an army of ten thousand people from the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. And he went up to Mount Tabor. And the scouts of Sisera reported that that’s what he had done.
And so Sisera, going out from the place where he lived at Harosheth Haggoyim, mobilized his entire army: his nine hundred chariots all with his military forces. And there they were mobilized in the valley near the River Kishon.
And if you had been in the army of Barak up on Mount Tabor and you looked down at that huge force of soldiers and iron chariots, I’m betting it looked pretty scary.
And did you notice it wasn’t Barak who gave the command to attack. It was Deborah who said, “Up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you?”
And so Barak and his men swarmed down from Mount Tabor. They swept through the army. And amazing folks, the Bible says the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army before Barak and his men.
How did this happen? Well we shall see next time. There are some clues in the next chapter. Apparently just before the battle or during the battle it rained very hard hail and the River Kishon was swollen and overflowed its banks. And guess what? The ground all around must have become very, very muddy.
Think what it would do with the chariots. Can’t you just imagine the chariots getting stuck in the mud and the drivers trying to whip the horses into action and the horses rearing up on their high front legs and trying desperately to pull the chariots. And the archers, some of them falling out of the chariots. And the whole army was in mass confusion.
And Barak and his men swept through them and struck them down. Not a man of them was left except Sisera. And when he saw that the battle was going against him, guess what he did. He hopped down off his chariot. No use trying to drive a chariot through the mud. And he took off on foot.
And Barak took off after him. But he was never going to catch up with Sisera because the Lord would not permit the glory of defeating him to Barak, the opposing general.
Can I tell you about one of the observations that I have made over more than four decades of Christian ministry? Here it is. There are lots of families where the man will not take the spiritual leadership of the family. And sometimes you see the wife and kids at church while the man is back home watching television.
And men like this hardly ever gather their family around and read and discuss the Bible with their wives. And truly they hardly ever gather their family together for family prayer. They leave it to the wife to lead in the spiritual battle while they sit back and don’t do their part, much less take the lead.
Would you like my view of this kind of situation? Maybe you wouldn’t. I will give it anyway. You know if the Lord had given me a nice Christian wife and had given me children too, and I wasn’t fulfilling my role, speaking the way, blazing the path for God, do what I feel like doing? I feel like going home and falling into a closet and shutting the closet door and hiding there for shame.
Fathers, guys, if you will not be the obvious, evident leader of your home spiritually, shame on you. Shame, shame, shame on you for that.
There was an incident that happened right here in Dallas I don’t know how many years ago. But chances are good that it happened down at the State Fair but I’m not positive of that. There was a prize-winning hog on display. You know how prize-winning hogs work don’t you? They are fat. I mean they’re fat. If hogs can have a contented expression they have contented expressions on their face. And sometimes I should watch them. To hear some of them sleep it looks like they don’t do much but eat and sleep and that’s probably true.
And there was this prize-winning hog on display. And there was a boy who was displaying the hog and he had a cool, sallow color on his face. He was thin and emaciated and he seemed to be trying to find out how many cigarettes he could smoke in the shortest amount of time.
And guess what? The hog, the prize-winning hog belonged to the father of this boy. And it means from the outside it looked as if the father had been more successful in raising his hog than he had been in raising his son.
Fathers, are you like that? God doesn’t give you any prizes for raising prize-winning hogs and showing them off down at the State Fair. He doesn’t give you any prizes for having a good job or buying a nice home or putting food on the table, clothes on your children’s back because that’s what you want to do.
The prize comes when you raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and they grow up to walk with God. They are the prize-winning treasures and trophies.
And I used to live like that unless you lead your home. And even if your wife will not cooperate, listen to me, even if your wife will not cooperate you can do it alone with the help of God.
So there he was running for his life. He had once been commander of a chariot force of nine hundred. Now he was reduced to the level of a foot soldier trying to get away. And as he runs he sees a tent. He recognizes it. It’s the tent of Heber the Kenite. This was not a Jewish man. He was a descendant of Moses’ father-in-law. And there is peace between Heber and Jabin king of Canaan.
And so Sisera said to himself, “You know I think I’ve got it. I think I’m safe now. I can just get into this tent and I get hospitality. Then the laws of hospitality will protect me from my enemy.”
He comes to the entrance of the tent and Jael, Heber’s wife, whose name was Jael, comes out and she says, “Come, turn aside, my lord. Turn aside to me.” And he goes in and he’s really, really very tired. So he lies down and she puts a blanket over him.
And he says to her, “Please bring me some water. I’m really thirsty.” So instead of bringing him water she brought him milk, probably goat’s milk or maybe it was cow’s milk. I don’t know. But please remember that this was a long time before refrigeration. So this was not a nice cold glass or bottle of dairy milk fresh out of the icebox. The chances are good the milk was warm. And he drank the milk.
And because he was so tired and because he was covered with a blanket and because he had drunk warm milk he’s about to fall asleep. And he says to Jael, “Please go outside and if any man comes and says to you ‘Is there somebody inside?’ just say ‘No.’”
You know like in the mystery book, can’t they just say no? And he falls asleep. And instead of going outside and standing guard, Jael picks up a tent peg, one thing like this, maybe like a nail or maybe a wooden stake. She grabs a hammer and very softly she steals in the direction of Sisera.
And if we had been standing there we might have said, “Jael be careful. What are you doing? Don’t you realize you’ve got a man’s tools in your hand? I mean isn’t it the men who have to drive the nails into the ground with the hammer? You sure you know what you’re doing Jael?”
I bet she didn’t know what she was doing at first. I bet every time Heber moved and the men got out there setting up the tent again the Jael went out with them pounding in the tent pegs with the other guys. And she certainly knew what she was doing.
And when she got to Sisera she raised that tent peg and raised the hammer. I don’t think her hands were shaking. I wonder if I’m gonna miss and wonder if I’m gonna hit the ground and wake him up and then I’m done for. No. I think she was very confident. And apparently one blow and the tent peg went down through Sisera’s temple, all the way through his head and into the ground beneath him.
And then Jael goes out and she meets Barak and she says, “Come see the man that you’re looking for.” And Barak went in. There was Sisera dead. And guess what Barak discovered. That a woman had done his work for him. A woman had done his work for him.
And my friends all over the world, all over the world there are gracious women whose husbands have left them, whose husbands have deserted them, whose husbands refused to take leadership. And the mother does what the man should have done. And the man whose is the reward and he raises the honor of his children as it ought to be raised. And the honor and the praise goes to the woman who did it herself.
Now I’m going to close and I’ve got to be very careful what I say in my closing remarks. Okay? This week we have had a newspaper headline filled with and our television screens filled with a sex scandal that concerns the President of the United States and an intern who was at the time twenty-one years of age, not very much older than his daughter.
And I want to say right up front that I don’t know any more about it than you folks know and I can’t say for sure what actually happened. All right? I can’t say that for sure. And if it should come to pass as has begun to be suggested even by one of his former Chiefs of Staff that it might be better for him to step down and that Al Gore will become president, if that comes to pass it will be a very enormous, a shameful thing for him.
And I feel like that in all of the coverage that we’ve had so far one thing has been forgotten. The most innocent victim of all of this has been forgotten. Because the most innocent victim of all of it is Chelsea Clinton. Who is going to college out on the West Coast. Can you imagine how she must be agonizing now as these stories fill the news media? And she’ll feel better if he’s exonerated. But if he’s not exonerated, if he leaves the presidency, can you imagine how she must be feeling? How can I ever face my friends, my fellow college students again?
Maybe she’ll find the courage and determination to do it if that happens. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. So one thing I want us all to understand is that if parents, starting with fathers, but if parents fail to fulfill their obligations before God as husbands and fathers, as wives and mothers, the chief victims of all of this will be the children. They are the ones who suffer most.
So if you’re a father this morning or if you’re a mother or even if you are a person who thinks that someday you will become a father or a mother, let me urge you to live the Christian life with complete confidence in God’s ability to see you through. Trust totally in Him no matter what the opposition looks like. And never, never, never say, “I can’t do it alone.”
Shall we pray?
Father, if You are with us we are not alone and we don’t need anyone else with us but You. We pray that You’ll teach us this and through our confidence in You will be the opportunity to win magnificent victories for Your glory. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.