Judges 3

Chapter 3. Shamgar, Deborah and BarakAnd what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. (Hebrews 11:32-34; compare with Judges 3:31 and Judges 4:14-15)The darkness of night allows us to see the stars. Similarly, it seems that the darkest times of national and church history are always occasions for the best types of genius and character to shine. The long, sad story of the judges revealed a Deborah and a Barak, a Gideon and a Samson, an Othniel and a Jephthah. The times of Ahab and Jezebel were made illustrious by the ministry of Elijah and Elisha. The dark night of the Middle Ages was made luminous by the testimony of a Wycliffe, a Luther and a Knox. The story of divine mercy and Christian faith is written on the dark background of human sin and crime. We are to look at a few of these stars of the night as they shine in the firmament of the book of Judges. Shamgar and an Oxgoad The story of Shamgar (Judges 3:31 and Judges 5:6) introduces us to a humble farmer in Southern Palestine. His only weapon was the implement of his daily toil and his battlefield was a country road, but he stands forever illustrious among the heroes of faith and the saviors of his country. One day he was following his simple plow and oxen and carrying in his hand the rude oxgoad—a long, wooden rod that was often tipped with a piece of metal and was used for driving draft animals. Suddenly, he found himself confronted by a large group of Philistines—possibly the precursors of another invasion of Israel. Seizing his oxgoad by the small end and turning it into a formidable club, he suddenly charged his foes. As they turned and fled before his fierce attack, he pursued them with such resistless fury that before the day was over 600 of them lay dead around him. Doubtless it was more than human prowess. But like David’s battles it was one of those times of supernatural inspiration, when God Himself took possession of His chosen instrument and one was able to chase a thousand, and send dismay into the hearts of a host of enemies. Doubtless this battle was a crisis in the history of the country, and stayed some greater invasion. For as these men went back to tell the tale of their strange disaster, their neighbors began to think that if one man could do such wonders, it would scarcely be safe to meet an army of such men. Shamgar represents in some very striking ways the spirit of Christian faith and victory. Here we see a man standing in the ordinary walks of life, and meeting an emergency as it comes to him without stepping aside from the path of ordinary duty. He does not need to mount a pedestal or be placed in some illustrious position to be a hero. He simply stands in the place where God has put him and there becomes illustrious through the force of his own personal character and conduct. He does not go out of his way to find a mission, but he meets the events that come to him in the ordinary course of life, and turns them into occasions for faith and victory. People in Secular Callings He represents the men and women who stand in secular callings, and who find a pulpit and a ministry just where God has placed them, amid the tasks and toils of daily life. He stands for the businessman at his office, who finds a thousand opportunities for fighting the battle of the Lord and doing good to his fellow men in the course of his routine. I know a humble shoemaker in a New England town who finds in his little shop every day a dozen opportunities for preaching Christ, as well as living the gospel. God has used him to lead many of his customers to the Person who transformed his own heart and life. I know a captain on a passenger ship who preaches the gospel in his plain and modest way to tens of thousands of his passengers every year. His cabin has been the birthplace of hundreds of precious souls for whom he lies in wait with ceaseless, watchful tact and love. I know more than one businessman whose office is an object lesson of Bible texts and divine messages, and who never meets a caller without some hint of eternal things, and who never writes a letter without some little enclosure which can speak for God and salvation. Our Present Resources Shamgar did not have to wait until he had a sword or a spear or a battle-bow to fight. He took as a weapon the thing that was in his hand and turned it against the enemy. Similarly, God wants your real resources just as they are, to be used for Him. He is asking you, “What is that in your hand?” (Exodus 4:2). Moses’ rod, Dorcas’ needle, Shamgar’s oxgoad, David’s sling and stone, Joshua’s ram’s horn, the lad’s five loaves and two fishes and the widow’s little can of oil are all that He requires for His mightiest victories and His grandest ministries. Give Him what you have, be faithful where you are, do what you can and He will do the rest. If you want a field of labor, You can find it anywhere. Shamgar’s victory may seem small compared with Gideon’s. If we just look at numbers, we could say that was true. But we have to see the larger picture. God used it to prevent a major invasion and to render needless some more costly victory afterward. Likewise, the little things we do, the faithfulness with which we meet some trifling opportunity, may prevent some greater disaster or be the occasion of some mightier blessing than we can see at the time. It may seem a small thing for a woman on a dark and stormy night to dash along the railroad track and signal the rushing train to stop before it reaches the broken bridge, but that single act of heroism saved a hundred lives. It may seem a little thing for a small group of heroes to hold a pass against an army, but that was the key to the whole battle. It may be a trifling thing for a quiet English girl to find a ragged street urchin and induce him to go to Sunday school by giving him a suit of clothes. Then, when he did not show up, she hunted him up weeks afterward and gave him another suit of clothes, only to find that he did not come to church. Refusing to be discouraged by the boy’s deception, she found him a third time. Her patience triumphed and that boy was won for Christ. To most it was a small thing; they surely felt the boy was not worth pursuing. But the day came when that act of tireless love was God’s first step in the evangelization of China. That boy was Robert Morrison, the pioneer of modern missions in the Far East. These are the little things that God loves to glorify! God help many of us to watch for these wayside opportunities and win these battles of faith and fortitude. The Ministry of a Woman Our next illustration is the story of Deborah and Barak. Here we are introduced to a new instrument in the work of God—the ministry of a woman. Deborah stands before us in strong contrast to the customs and prejudices of her time. She is called to lead in a national crisis, to stand in the front of both statesmanship and war as the head of the nation. This is an unqualified recognition of the part women play in ministry. With such an example, backed up by so many honored successors, let no man deny the place of women in the history of nations and the ministries of Christianity. At the same time, the story of Deborah is as clear in limiting as it is in permitting the ministry of women. It gives no encouragement to the “new woman” in her absurd attempt to usurp the place of men. A mannish woman is an outrage upon her own sex and a caricature of the other sex. She falls between two fires, for she falls short of manhood and she falls out of womanhood. Christ has established the natural and spiritual law that the head of every woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ (1 Corinthians 11:3). This is the type of womanhood that Deborah represented. Though she knew that she was called by her spiritual qualifications to lead her people to deliverance from the enemy, Deborah took particular pains to find a man to be the executive officer of her plans and the leader of God’s hosts in the divine campaign. Her chief business was to put Barak in the front, and then stand by him with her counsel, prayers, faith and wholesome reproof. Deborah was a practical and sensible woman. Her name signifies “the bee,” and she possessed the sting as well as the honey. She knew how to stir up Barak by wholesome severity as well as encourage him by holy inspiration. He is a very foolish man who refuses to be helped by the shrewd, intuitive wisdom of a true woman. While her head may not be so large, its quality is generally of the best; her conclusions, though not reasoned out so elaborately, generally reach the right end by intuitions that are seldom wrong. A woman’s place is to counsel, to encourage, to pray, to believe and preeminently to help. This was what Deborah did, and in this Deborah was the type of woman’s scepter, which is that of yieldedness and love rather than dogmatism and defiance. Man’s Helpmate We see in the story of Barak a man of weak and timid faith, losing much by his diffidence, and yet used of God and lifted to a more divine faith by the inspiration of Deborah. Barak shrank at first from the unexpected call to lead an army of 10,000 men against the large army of Sisera. He finally consented when Deborah agreed to go with him, but his timidity cost him the honor he would have won and his sharp and penetrating monitor, Deborah, plainly told him: “But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman” (Judges 4:9). There were really two women in this case, and Barak was sandwiched in between them, with Deborah in the front and Jael in the rear. Despite his hesitancy, even poor, weak Barak became one of the heroes of faith who shine in the constellation of eternal stars, upon which the Holy Spirit has turned the telescope of the 11th chapter of Hebrews. Yes, God can use the weakest instruments, and He generally does choose the poor in spirit and the temperaments that are naturally the opposite, to clothe them with His supernal might. God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Corinthians 1:27-29) Look at Isaiah when God called him to his splendid ministry. How little he thought of himself. “Woe is me!… I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips,” (Isaiah 6:5). Yet God used him to unfold the majestic visions of messianic prophecy. Look at Jeremiah as he shrank back into his conscious nothingness, and cried, “Lord,… I am a child,” (Jeremiah 1:6). But God took that trembling reed and made him a pillar of strength and a fenced, brazen wall of resistance against the kings, the prophets and the priests of Israel. He was the grandest figure of the last days of Jerusalem. Yes, God can take us in our weakness and nothingness and make us strong in His might to the pulling down of strongholds. Deborah’s Message Barak was not always weak. There came a time when he responded to the inspiring call of faith and became a hero. Deborah’s message to him is all alive with the very spirit and innermost essence of the faith which counts the things that are not as though they were. “Go!” Deborah cries, as she rouses him by a trumpet call from his timorous inactivity. “This is the day,” she adds as she shakes him out of his procrastination. “The Lord has given Sisera into your hands,” she went on to say, as she counted the victory as already won. “Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” (Judges 4:14), she concludes as she commits the whole matter into Jehovah’s hands and tells Barak to simply follow on and take the victory that is already given. Is it possible for faith to speak in plainer terms, or language to express with stronger emphasis the imperative mood and the present tense of that victorious faith to which nothing is impossible? Cooperating Instruments Another lesson we see here is that of mutual service. This victory was not won by any single individual, but God linked together, as He loves to do, many cooperating instruments in the accomplishment of His will. Deborah represents the spirit of faith and prophecy. Barak exemplifies obedience and executive energy. There were the people that willingly offered themselves—the volunteers of faith. There were the noble men of Zebulun and Naphtali who jeopardized their lives—the martyrs of sacrifice who are the crowning glory of every great enterprise. And there was Jael, a poor heathen woman out on the frontiers of Israel, who gave the finishing touch to the victory. She struck the last blow through the temples of proud Sisera (Judges 4:17-24). And high above all were the forces of nature and the unseen armies of God’s providence; for the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and the flood of the Kishon rolled down in mountain torrents and swept the astonished foe away. Still again, we see the curse of neutrality and the pitiful spectacle which seems always to be present—the unfaithful, ignoble and indifferent ones who quietly looked on while all this was happening. They not only missed their reward, but justly received the curse of God’s displeasure and judgment. And so in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:1-31), we hear of Reuben’s enthusiastic purposes, but ultimate debates and doubts, so that he does nothing. We see her sarcasm strike the selfish men of Gilead who abode beyond the Jordan; the careless Danites, who remained in their ships. We see the men of Asher who, secure in their naval defenses, lingered by the seashore and took refuge in their ports and inland rivers. But above all the echoes of her denunciation, rings out the last awful curse against the inhabitants of Meroz, a little obscure city that probably had taken refuge in its insignificance, because its inhabitants had refused to come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty. God’s mighty warfare is raging still. Let us beware lest we, too, hide in vain behind our littleness and meet at last the same curse the city of Meroz received because they refused to help fight: “Curse Meroz,” said the angel of the Lord. “Curse its people bitterly, because they did not come to help the Lord, to help the Lord against the mighty.” (Judges 5:23) In these last days, when millions are dying without the gospel and the coming of our Master waits but a few short years, perhaps we shall hear Him say, “Curse the servant who refused to use his single talent and his single pound—because it was so small—to the help the Lord against the mighty.” The final thing we see in this scene is a pattern page from God’s book of remembrance. Some day we shall read the other pages and find our names recorded either with the inhabitants of Meroz and Reuben or with the victors of faith who stood with Deborah and Barak in the battles of the Lord. Will we shine like stars in the night now, and then like the sun in the kingdom of our Father?