Gooding, David: 3 - Deborah, Barak and Jael

Now, shall we turn to our book of Judges and read there in chapter five. You will perceive, perhaps, the importance of this third captivity suffered by Israel in the time of the judges, and the splendor of the victory that God gave them when he saved them from their oppressors. You will perceive that from the fact that the Holy Spirit devotes two whole chapters to the description of the matter. I should like to think, and I'm going to assume, that you have read the prose, uh, narrative of the story. That is the one we find in chapter four. Tonight, I suggest that we read chapter five. That gives us an inspired comment through Deborah in poetry, enabling us to perceive the inner spiritual significance of this great event. Now, the experts in Hebrew tell me that the Hebrew of this chapter is in parts obscure, and therefore you may well find that the translation I read from, which is in fact the Revised Version, differs in some part from the translation that you may have. I am not going to swear to it that the translation given in the Revised Version is necessarily correct in all its particulars. But enough here is certain for our purpose tonight that we shall be able to get the major drift of what is being said. Judges chapter five, then beginning at verse one. Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Ahinoam on that day, saying, for that the leaders took the lead in Israel, for that the people offered themselves willingly, bless you the Lord. Hear, O you kings, give ear, O you princes, I, even I, will sing unto the Lord, I will sing praise to the Lord, the God of Israel. Lord, when thou wentest forth out of Seir, when thou marchest out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, yea, the clouds dropped water. The mountains flowed down at the presence of the Lord, even yon Sinai, at the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel. In the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through the byways. The rulers ceased in Israel, they ceased until that I, Deborah, arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. They chose new gods. Then was war in the gates. Was there a shield or a spear seen among forty thousand in Israel? My heart is toward the governors of Israel that offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless you, the Lord. Tell of it, you that ride on white asses, you that sit on rich carpets, and you that walk by the way. Far from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, even the righteous acts of his rule in Israel. Then the people of the Lord went down to the gates. Awake, awake, Debora. Awake, awake. Utter a song. Arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam. Then came down a remnant of the nobles and the people. The Lord came down for me against the mighty. Out of Ephraim came down they whose root is in Amalek. After thee, Benjamin, among thy prophets, among thy peoples. Out of Machir came down governors, out of Zebulun, they that handle the martial staff. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, as was Issachar, so was Barak. Into the valley they rushed forth at his feet. By the water courses of Reuben, there were great searchings of heart. Why satest thou among the sheepfolds to hear the pipings for the flocks. At the watercourses of Reuben, there were great searchings of heart. Gilead abode beyond Jordan. And Dan? Why did he remain in the ships. Asher sat still at the haven of the sea and abode by his creeks. Zebulun was a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death, and Naphtali upon the high places of the field. The kings came and fought, then fought the kings of Canaan in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. They took no spoil of money. They fought from heaven. The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. The river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon. Oh my soul, march on with strength. Then did the horse hoof stamp by reason of the prancings, the prancings of their strong ones. Curse ye Merots, said the angel of the Lord. Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Blessed above women shall Jael be, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Blessed shall she be above women in the tent. There, let us break off our reading of the poetry, but with that phrase from the earlier verse in our minds, arise, Barak, and lead captivity captive. Let's just refresh ourselves, our minds of the context where similar words as that occur in the New Testament. And they occur, of course, in Ephesians chapter four. Ephesians chapter four, verse seven. But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. Now this phrase, he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men in craftiness after the wiles of error, but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him which is the head, even Christ, from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart. And may God give us good understanding of his holy word. And truth to tell, I am almost tempted this evening to apologize in advance that our study tonight cannot be so simple and straightforward as it was last week, nor so easy to follow. That in part, in great part, is my fault, but not altogether my fault. For we are currently studying, as you know, the Book of Judges, that we might learn from it principles of spiritual warfare. That means, of course, as we read the old battles of literal warfare with carnal weapons, we have to make a lot of changes in our thinking. For as Christians, we are told straightly that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. It was a thousand pities and more when in the early centuries the Christian church came to look upon such scriptures as the Book of Judges as their warrant for trying to defend or promote the Christian faith with the use of literal weapons. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, and therefore, as we study these ancient battles, we have to make necessarily a number of transpositions. On the other hand, of course, it is true that sin is monotony- monotonously the same in all generations. What the Israelites were fighting in the name of God and at his instructions were some of those ugly expressions of that universal disease, that rebellion against God, that is sin and transgression. Therefore, we shall find that essentially the enemies that they fought against are enemies that we too in our day must fight, though more often or not we shall find the enemies not external to ourselves, but hiding in our own hearts and in our own minds. Last week, the enemy was easy to reconnoiter, for we were considering the ancient nation of Moab. I cannot tell you anything about the modern successors of Moab, but in the Old Testament, God's characterization of Moab was very clear. From first to last, a nation tainted with immorality, with the indulgence of carnal appetite. So, having read the prophets, we came to consider the king in Israel's day against whom Ehud fought, and found him to be a very fat man, loaded down with his wobbly old flesh, and we noticed that God destroyed him by a dagger through his belly. And the whole nastiness of it reminded us of those powerful remarks of Paul in the New Testament, where he has, with tears, to tell his fellow believers to beware of dogs, beware of the concision, for there are some, he says, I tell you again, weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, their God is their belly. And in went the sword of the word of God into such spiritual abnormality. So, as I say, last week our lesson was easy to follow. Tonight we shall find it much more complicated. Because when at first we encounter the nation that oppressed Israel, and we look at their features, we shall not find anything that immediately seems to be bad. Indeed, some of the things that are said about them seem almost commendable. So, nevertheless, have patience with me. Because, though I would like to tell you that the enemies of the Lord are always simple, and the battles of the Lord are always easy, and it is always child's play to see what is right and what is wrong and where to draw the line, that wouldn't be true. We fight an enemy who is exceedingly sophisticated. So sophisticated that he did not hesitate to approach the incarnate Son of God himself, and put before him temptations that were subtle in the extreme. So if some of us had been there instead of the Lord himself, we might have found it very difficult to see what was wrong with the suggestion that Satan made to our blessed Lord. So we shall find in our spiritual warfare that not all things are immediately clear and simple and straightforward, but we shall have to look at life with care, for his satanic majesty will set up all sorts of ambushes and all sorts of in i- i- situations that look innocent in the extreme to us, but are the very artifices of the enemy day d- designed to catch us and to bring us into bondage and to render us inefficient as the people of God. So then now let us look immediately at the enemy, first of all, in general feature. And here is the background story. And for that we go back in history, as Deborah taught us in the opening verses of her poem. We go back in history to that August event, when, if the Bible be true, God himself, the transcendent Lord, came down upon Mount Sinai and met his people Israel in the wilderness. Oh, what a story it is. Challenging us, our challenging our faith to its very foundation. What a story. I repeat that the eternal God came down on Mount Sinai, presented himself to the people whom he had redeemed, and proceeded to journey with them and lead their armies into the land of Canaan. For according to Old Testament, God had great purposes indeed for that nation of Israel, and the first objective was that he brought them into the land of Canaan and settled them there as a nation. One day it was his good pleasure to bring in through that nation the very savior of the world. So dealing here in our planet with that vast rebellion that had broken out in heavenly places. And as we think of the story and the initial stages of the campaign, our hearts bow in worship, don't they? We are told in holy writ, in words that condescend to our weak understanding, that the very heavens are not clean in God's sight, that somewhere in those remote ages there broke out a rebellion in those exalted spirit beings that inhabit the heavens. Their great leader, the anointed cherub that covered the presence of God, rose up against God, saying in his heart, I will be his God. Not only did he fall himself, but falling vented his spite, so we are given to understand, on our world. We watch as history begins, the beginnings of God's countermeasures. In answer to the rebellion of the heavens, God was pleased to center that campa- the campaign on our little planet Earth. God created man in his image. His satanic majesty then set about immediately thwarting the purposes of God and bringing man over to his rebellious side. God, in his mercy, far from abandoning his great purpose, proceeded with it. And here is one of the further stages in God's answer to this great satanic rebellion. God himself came down, delivered this, uh, unknown, this, this poor, small, and largely unknown nation out of the hand of the Egyptians, brought them across the wilderness, came down on the mountain of Sinai, and led their armies personally himself into the land of Canaan. And as they came into that land, there was a king called Jabin. Let's call him Jabin the First. We read of him in the book of Joshua and chapter eleven. And Jabin gathered together a great confederacy of kings with the sole purpose of thwarting this invasion, of stopping Israel becoming, uh, the residence of that land. Whether he knew what he was doing or not, thwarting the purposes of God in redemption and all that God subsequently intended to do through Israel. And Joshua, we are told, defeated him, and Israel entered the land and began to settle. Ah, but then at a subsequent time, some a hundred years and more later, there arose another Jabin, Jabin II, we will call him, who had Sisera for the general of his armies and nine hundred chariots of iron. And then there came a revival of the Canaanite kings and of their civilization, with the result, we are told, that, uh, for forty years they mightily oppressed the people of Israel. What a sad picture Deborah gives in the opening verses of her poem. There was Israel in the land, all right, but see them now, fragmented, broken. There's scarce any intercourse between the tribes. Anybody that dares travel from one place to the other goes skulking down the country lanes, dares be seen openly and publicly. Israel loses her leaders. Under the, uh, Canaanite oppression, the people become unarmed. Says Deborah, was there a shield or a spear to be seen among the forty thousands of Israel? Oh, what a sorry sight. The people of God's great purpose, instead of being united, one united nation standing solidly for God, bearing their testimony to the purposes of the God of heaven. They're all fragmented into tiny little bits, and Dan over here has scarce any intercourse with Gad over the way, and certainly not with Judah down the bottom. Very little intercourse, leaderless, without defense, without shield against their enemy, and without spear worth talking about to mount any aggressive evangelism. And so you will see that they have now denied once more a first principle in the nation's existence. We have been interested, as we have studied these stories, to observe that in each of these captivities, a basic principle of the nation's existence is denied. We noticed in the first captivity that Israel came under the domination of the king of Mesopotamia, ironically enough, for it was out of Mesopotamia that Abraham had been called. What use the holy nation being now in the land of promise, if they have come once more on the, under the domination of the king of Mesopotamia? And in the second captivity, we noticed that Me- Moab came up and took the city of Jericho. And Jericho, we remember, was the first city that Israel had taken as they came over the Jordan to begin their conquest of the land. And here they had gone on taking city after city, city after city, and oh, so sad, as they had gone on, the enemy had come in behind and taken Jericho all over again. What's the good of making progress and defeating further enemies if the enemy is coming in behind and reestablishing himself in places that we thought we had already conquered. And now you will see that under the Canaanites, it is said that Jabin, the king of Canaanites, he mightily oppressed Israel. Well, that's exactly what Pharaoh did in Egypt. And it was wonderful to be redeemed out of the oppression of Pharaoh in Egypt. But what practical use is it to be in Canaan? If now in Canaan the people of God are going to be mightily oppressed by their enemies? You say, however did they get at this sorry state of affairs? It not only denies a basic principle of their existence, but as you see, it makes a nonsense of the purpose of God for them. All those great eternal purposes of God that destined that Israel should be taken out of the nations and planted in the land and be the vehicle for the testimony of God and God's truth among the Gentile nations. Till all the nations could see the truth that Jehovah is God in all his glorious uniqueness and the beauty of his holiness. Jehovah is true, as distinct from all the idolatry of the Gentiles. Now Israel that should be standing for that truth are fragmented. They scarce dare open their mouth. They are defenseless and without spear for aggression. What's come over their testimony? And you perceive also how the purpose of God seems to be thwarted, that one day through that nation the Messiah shall come. That looks a forlorn hope now. Who would begin to believe it if you saw these Israelites so fragmented, so weak, so miserably oppressed? You say, how did they come to such a grievous situation? Deborah's verdict is very succinct. They chose new gods. That's how it happened. What a sorry story. They chose new gods. I don't know how, grown tired perhaps of the real living God who had redeemed them from his wrath in Egypt and brought them safely through the wilderness, who had deigned to presence himself among them as the God who loved them and loved to be their God and invited them to be his people. And in their fickle heart, they compromised the truth of the one true God, the unique savior of men. Instead of standing in Israel amongst the nations, crying to all the nations, as Isaiah subsequently did, in the name of God, look unto me and be you saved, all the nations of the earth, for there is none other, neither is there salvation in any other. Israel herself compromised the very basic truth of her existence and went after other gods. They chose new gods, says Deborah. Then was war in the gates. As we read those far off stories, we cannot help remembering, can we, ourselves? It is possible for us as believers in the Lord Jesus to do similar things. We too have been redeemed. God has for us likewise purposes grand beyond description. We are meant to stand in this world, as the early apostles did, witnessing to the unique glory of Jesus Christ our Lord, saying in the face of all comers, there is no other name given unto men whereby you must be saved. In him alone is salvation. It is all too possible that we get deceived and turned aside. Listen to Paul talking to the f- his fellow believers in Corinth. It's Corinthians chapter two and verse nine. I'm afraid, says he, I'm afraid lest that rascally old serpent who deceived Eve by his cunning corrupt your thoughts from their wholehearted devotion and loyalty to the Lord Jesus. It's possible for believers to get caught out in theological college, perhaps, to imbibe theories that, if you push them to their logical conclusion, call in question the deity and omniscience of Jesus Christ, our Lord. It is possible for believers in this present day to be so influenced by the modern spirit of the world that they are inclined to say, Christianity, oh, we mustn't be proud and bigoted. Isn't it time we admitted that it is just one religion as distinct from many religions? It is one way to God, but there are many other ways to God. Though some people like to think it is Christian charity to talk like that, it is nothing short of utter fundamental disloyalty to the blessed person of our Lord. There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. Let none say this is bigoted, this is glorious. His sacrifice was so big, you don't need any other. Isn't that glorious? His salvation so powerful, his person so great, you don't need any other savior. All other systems of salvation are, in the end, idolatrous. They depend on human effort and human work. Jesus Christ, Jehovah incarnate, stands unique among the religions of the world. He offers you a salvation that is free, not by your works, not by your merit. Look unto me, says the Jehovah of the New Testament, for I am God and there is none else. Look unto me and be you saved. Oh God, prevent us from compromising this fundamental point of our Christian testimony. God, grant it never be true of us that then they chose other gods. But let us now come and look at the features of this enemy that so deceived Israel and in the end oppressed them. And what we are told in the book of Judges is as follows. Here is the enemy as Deborah and Barak and Jael saw him. First of all, there was their king. His name was Yarbin, Yarvin. Again, some of the experts tell us that his name possibly means something like he perceives. And if that is so, that was probably given him as a kind of an honorable title, like some rulers in Europe in the past centuries have been called the wise. It's always good to flatter your king, isn't it, and tell him he's wise, even if he isn't. Or it could be that the name was quite a common name, who knows, and therefore we attach little importance to it. But if he did lay claim as king of the Canaanites to wisdom, he had some justification, hadn't he? For look at the next thing that he's told us about this king. He had nine carats of iron. Well, now you smile. What is that compared with your computers and your space probes and your laser beams and Star Wars and all that kind of thing? You smile at these crude objects from the ancient world, but I'll have you know they thought they were just as clever as you. They got chariots of iron. You think of the advanced technology it was for the people in those times. Israel's heart sank into their boots when they saw them. All they got was a fashioned, old fashioned club and one or two spears that they'd knocked out of a bit of a secondhand sardine tin. And here was Jabin, and he got the very latest technology you could possibly get hold of. They had discovered, it had been discovered a long while, but now the Canaanites had got it, like the Chinese have got the atomic bomb. Now the, now the Canaanites have got it, you see. They knew how to smelt iron. That was something for people in that far off day. And when they got the iron, they knew how to work it and create chariots of iron, if you please. What could you do ba- against an enemy like that if all you've got is a homemade spear? It's like fighting a Russian tank with your fists. You begin to perceive, I hope, that these folks weren't, so to speak, like that flabby old king of Moab that we read about the other week, letting himself grow overweight in his summer chamber, taking life easy. This was the industrial north, the Ruhr, and what Birmingham used to be in days gone by. Great center of metalworking and engineering and invention, and betokening no ordinary amount of brains. And then we're told that he was king of the Canaanites. Now the Canaanites have a long history in the ancient world, and at different times they covered less or wider territories. But one of the features that marked them in their history was that they were famous as merchants. It was one part of their descendants that became Tyre and Sidon, and all of us remember from our reading of the prophets or history what merchantmen the people of Tyre and Sidon were. And of course, the thing goes together, doesn't it, somewhat? They were leading the technology of the day. They were also merchantmen. How else could you be? You had to import horses for your chariots. Then you like to sell your mo- your Mark two chariot if it was better than somebody else's chariot, you see, with all your other wares that you had invented and made, and little jars to keep the Israelites quiet. And so they became great merchantmen and so famous as merchantmen that the name Canaanite became a synonym in the ancient world for merchantman. Just like some of the Babylonians, the Chaldeans were so famous as soothsayers that in Latin the word Chaldeus means a soothsayer. So in subsequent centuries, the word Canaanite can on times mean merchant. So when you read, for instance, in Zechariah fourteen and verse twenty one, of the prophet's vision of the great day when the Lord shall have come, and everything shall be restored according to the ancient promise. In that day, the house of the Lord will be cleansed of all that offends. In that day, says the prophet, there shall be no more a... and now we don't know how to translate it. There shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of the Lord, or no more a merchantman in the house of the Lord? Perhaps the latter. But when you read such a promise, you can't help thinking of how our Lord f- found the temple when he was on earth. He came to his father's house, expecting it to be a house of prayer, and lo and behold, religion had become infected with the spirit of merchandise. And religion had turned into a way of making money. What a sorry feature that has been, and Christendom has not been guiltless. There are some, says Paul, that imagine that godliness is a way of making money. And there are some, says Paul, that hoax to the word of God. They're in it because they get a vast profit on their books and their literature and their relics and their religious knickknacks. Merchantmen, but I wander from the truth. Um, Canaanite then, uh, a merchant. And then we notice that Sisera, the captain of the host, was eventually killed through his brain. And that might have seemed out to us just a little i- insignificant detail, were it not that we have noticed that, uh, the tactics in the book of Judges are very carefully emphasized by the Spirit of God. Last week we saw how fitting it was and how significant that the enemy was killed through his belly. He was a fat man. He spoke to us of man's flesh and his fleshly nature. This week we are to meet a man who is not killed through his belly, he's killed through his brain. He was commander in chief of the forces. He had a tremendous regiment of nine hundred tanks underneath. You don't put a soft, flabby fellow in charge of nine hundred tanks. Hard-headed military commander of that leading technological nation. Brilliant, I suppe- I suspect, in his brain power, and God went for his strongest point and had him killed through his brain. Now perhaps you perceive what I promised you at the beginning of this lecture. It's going to be a little bit difficult. For you say, well, if that's what the Canaanites were, what was wrong with them? What's wrong with technology? Well, nothing as far as I know. Ha. I'm very glad of my car. Comes all the way from Germany. And I'm delighted with the Japanese that managed to sell me transistor radios far cheaper than the English would. Aren't you? And I am thankful to God for the technology that has provided the medics with X-rays and all sorts of wondrous body scanners and whatnot. Very grateful to God for modern technology. I wouldn't prefer to be a savage in the jungle, nor would I think it more pious to be one. What's wrong with brain power? Nothing. Surely not. God made our brains. Moreover, he calls upon us to love the Lord our God, not only with all our soul, but with all our mind. We may not all have minds equally able. We may not all be scissorers or Jabins, but what minds we have, God calls upon us to use to the utmost of their ability. We are to think. We're not to be lazy with our intellects. And all my dear young folk, as you are in the youth of life, and your brains are as the sharpest they'll ever be, pray give your brains to Christ. Think! It is an absolute slander that you can't be a Christian unless you're prepared to, um, put your head in the sand and not think. It's God who asked you to think, love him with all your heart and your mind. What's wrong with commerce? I- I- I- uh, nothing, I hope. I enjoy tomatoes from the Canaries. Don't you? And a full few sultanas that won't grow in Northern Ireland, they do come in very acceptably. Thank God for commerce. And you say, what's wrong with it all then? Ah, now I ask you to notice the last significant thing for the moment. We are told that Sisera lived in Harosheth of the Gentiles. Nobody's quite sure where Harosheth was, but notice that last phrase, it's Harosheth of the Gentiles. And at first you might incline to think that that is not very significant. You say, but everybody other than Israelites were Gentiles, surely, so bound to be Gentile, wasn't he? Well, in a way, that's true. But then let me call your attention briefly to the ways that the Holy Spirit of God characterizes people and nations in Old Testament times. God will talk in the Old Testament, for instance, of the Amalekites. Now, all nations were sinners by definition, but when God talks about the Amalekites, he says the sinners, the Amalekites. Or again, he talks about the uncircumcised Philistine. Now, many nations outside Israel were uncircumcised. Now, when God talks about the Philistine, he frequently calls attention to this specific characteristic, the uncircumcised Philistine. Now let us notice that when God begins to talk about these Canaanites, he observes that they live, the Sisera lived in Harosheth of the Gentiles. For he lived up north in the area that subsequently beca- came to be called Galilee, and even in New Testament times, it is so described, Galilee of the Gentiles. That is where Israel had immediate contact with Gentiles and with a Gentile way of life. For now, let us notice from the way the New Testament talks, that Gentile in the New Testament is not merely an ethnic description. It carries with it certain moral and spiritual characteristics, so much so that the New Testament warns us believers about behaving or thinking like Gentiles. In Matthew chapter six, for instance, our Lord is heard saying, don't you pray like the Gentiles pray, for they think they shall be heard for their much speaking. Don't you pray like Gentiles. And then to the end of that chapter, our blessed Lord warns us about having the same objectives as Gentiles as we go to our daily work. After all these things the Gentiles seek, don't you be like the Gentiles, says Christ. Then in chapter four of Ephesians, Paul warns us against the Gentile mindset. Don't please continue in the Gentile mindset, but learn to look at this world and think as truly regenerate people. And so it's not the things in themselves, the technology and the brains that were wrong, or the merchandise. It was using these things in a Gentile way that was wrong. And for a moment now, I want to concentrate your mind on certain practical exhortations in the New Testament that ask us not to be- behave like Gentiles. First of all, the Gentile attitude to work. Our Lord begins his exhortations by saying, now look here, you cannot serve God and mammon. You will serve one, you will serve God, or you will serve mammon, but you won't serve both. So watch it when you go to your daily work, for in your daily work you will be serving one or the other. You will be serving God in whose service there is perfect freedom. But if you go to work with the motivation of a Gentile, you will be serving mammon, and you will bring yourself eventually under bondage. How then should I go to work? Says our Lord, when you go to work, don't you seek after food and clothes? But you say that's that foolish. I, I mean, why else would anybody go to work if it weren't to seek food and clothes? That's, I mean, that's impractical. Goodness me, that's the whole reason why I go to work, to seek food and clothes. If I didn't have to, uh, seek food and clothes, I should be retired like certain other people. I wouldn't go to work. Oh, fancy that. Hadn't we better think a bit, because our Lord says that's what the Gentiles do. When they go to work, that is what their motivation is. They're going to work to seek food and clothes. Don't be like Gentiles, says the Lord. You say, well, why should I go to work then? Well, says our Lord, when you go to work, seek you first the rule of God, the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek you first the kingdom of God. First before what? When I was a youth and a little bit more senseless than I am now, I used to think that meant that before you go to work, you should take the pains to give out a few tracts. You know, do the Lord's work first. Put the Lord's work before your daily work. And I suppose that's good advice. I- I- I- I suspect it is. I've come to think that that's not what the Lord means. He means something bigger than that. Not first attend to the Lord's interests and then your own interests, but when you go to work, there let your first motivation be the thing that you're seeking in your daily work. Let your first motivation be the rule of God in your life and the righteousness that that rule produces. That, according to our Lord, is what daily work is about. It is the most sacred thing, is daily work. It doesn't really matter whether you're in merchandise with computers or whether you be sweeping the streets and keeping them lovely and clean for us. The real thing is, in your daily work, are you seeking the Lord's rule? And the righteousness that comes thereby. You say, what do you mean by seeking the Lord's rule? Well, very simple and practical things, my dear brother. It is God's great purpose to have us one day in glory conformed to the image of his son. That is the purpose. He has a vast inheritance for us, incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven, and he is in process of wanting to lead us into it. How shall he conform me to the image of his son? If I'm going to be conformed to the image of his son, I shall need to be honest. I mustn't be lazy. I mustn't be selfish. I must be loyal and faithful and responsible, mustn't I? Now I can read it in the Bible, gooding, you ought to be honest and truthful and unselfish and loyal and efficient. And I say, that's marvelous. Now I've learned the lesson. No, says God, of course you haven't learned the lesson. That's only the theory, old boy. Having learned the theory, now you've got to put it into practice and actually get training in being honest, in being faithful, in being truthful. Well, where shall I get that experience from? God sends me to my daily work. And you businessmen know what a tough school it is, don't you? To live in a Gentile world where businessmen sometimes cut the corners, and the pressures are immense. What it is to be a factory manager and stand between the bosses and the unions and try your hardest to be fair-minded. And sometimes you wish you could get out of it all because of the colossal pressures of being in a modern world. Oh, my brother, let me encourage you if I could. That's why God sent you to work. For by the very disciplines of daily work, you are learning to be honest, learning to be faithful to God, learning to be true, learning to be unselfish. That is the point of life. God is preparing you for the great inheritance in glory. Seek first his rule. You say, but yes, I've got to get my bread and butter. Of course you have. Says our Lord, your heavenly Father knows that you need that. Of course he does. It's not wrong to go to work in order to get money to pay the grocer's bill, of course not. And if you don't work, says scripture, neither shall you eat. But it mustn't be the first motive for going to work, simply to get clothes and food. If you do that, you're serving mammon. And in the end, you are in danger of bondage. See this good man, he's a Christian of sterling character, but he's in a very difficult, complicated business situation in his factory. And he's desperate now for money. And the only reason really that he's in the factory is to make the money to get the clothes to keep the children at school. And the boss demands that he cooks the books. If he goes along with the crooked method, he'll get the money. If he refuses to be dishonest, he can get the sack. If we were merely in work for the sake of the food and the clothes, do you see what would happen? He would tempted to be, he would be tempted to be dishonest, wouldn't he? You get the food and the clothes and lose the very reason why God sent him to work. And the whole purpose of God in conforming the man to Christ be hindered. And the testimony of the church in the world and the testimony of the gospel be hindered. You don't have to cheat in business for it to become an oppressor, do you? How many a budding young academic, because of the pressure of competition, spends nearly twenty four hours a day at his studies, and has no time for scripture and little time for prayer. And in the end, his spiritual health comes to be at an all-time low. Can it not happen? That because a man sets himself for business, for clothes, for car, for home, and the end, in the end, he pays a very big price. His knowledge of God's word, his communion with the Lord, his ability to minister to his fellow believer from holy writ goes by the board. The Canaanite has got him in bondage. Now there's another fellow. His trouble is he's got too little work. I speak to somebody here tormented by the fact that he's unemployed. You're a young man or young woman, and it seems to you the world doesn't want you. Your trouble is not too much work, but too little. My dear friend, if work were everything, you would be in a poor state, wouldn't you? Let me tell you that the whole point of life is to seek the kingdom of God, to seek his rule and the righteousness that comes thereby. That you can seek in your daily job. And if you haven't got a daily job as men count it, you can still seek it, can't you? To develop a Christ-like character. Oh, my friend, you can find something to do that will help to develop you in your Christian character. That's what life is about. Can you not see there's a big difference between the Gentile way of looking at things and the Christian way of looking at things. Ah, but then it's not only in things material, is it, that we shall need not to behave like Gentiles. But in the strictly spiritual realm, we shall have to beware of unregenerate wisdom. Listen, the purpose of God is this. He sent his son to deliver us. Now his son is raised, and in a sense we are seated with him in the heavenlies. But says Ephesians chapter four, in another sense, we as believers are not yet come to the unity of the faith. And the great purposes of God in the church await their final fulfillment, and we are to grow up unto Christ. It's common knowledge, for you can scarce read an epistle in the New Testament, but what you will find, God's holy truth, assaulted from every possible angle. Galatians will tell you how certain false teachers were ass- assailing the doctrine of justification by faith. And Colossians will tell you that there were others that were assailing the doctrine of the fullness in Christ and telling people they needed philosophy and angel worship and penance and goodness knows what else in order to become more holy. John the Apostle of love warns us, he says there are many antichrists come out, and what do they do? They deny the person of the Lord Jesus. It's common knowledge in the New Testament that his satanic majesty, even in those days, was attacking the truth of God from every conceivable angle. We are called upon to fight the battles of the Lord. Not merely now to abstain from carnal indulgence, but to stand solidly and loyally for the truth of God. For the truth of God's great purposes in history, that he sent his son, that Jesus Christ was indeed born of the seed of David, was born of a virgin birth, did die, rose literally from the dead, and has literally gone back to heaven. That one day he shall come again, and it is the purpose of God to have every believer united with him in glory, the body of Jesus Christ, who is the head. That is God's revealed truth. That is God's revealed plan. And because it is God's revealed plan, Satan will use every technique he knows how to defeat God's truth, to stop God's people arriving in their heavenly destiny, to undermine the whole purpose by casting doubt upon the truth. We are called to fight the battles of the Lord, not just to be good people, but to be spiritual people. How was the battle done? I can soon let you home to your bits. But it was a battle in two stages. First of all, there was Deborah and Barak. And if you followed the details of her perm, you will have noticed what happened. The battle took place up in the north. And Deborah, taught by the Holy Spirit of God, instructed Barak to go up north to Mount Tabor. Now, Mount Tabor is a sizable mountain in those parts. And said Deborah, by the word of God to Barak, when you get up there, God will draw Sisera and his chariots towards Mount Tabor, to the River Kishon. Then said Deborah, and now what you're to do, Barak, is arise, my boy, and come down the mountain. And when he heard that, he must have been horror struck. Come down the mountain. What does this woman know about fighting? Would you believe it? I mean to say, Canaanites had chariots, nine hundred chariots. And of course, you use chariots on the plain, don't you? Israel go up the mountain, the chariots can come up the mountain, and Israel are pretty secure, and they can fight an odd guerrilla warfare, poking their noses around a rock here and out of a cave somewhere else, you see. But come down the mountain with a few, with ten thousand men who scarce have a spear and stand on the plain while nine hundred chariots go charging round you, will they cut you to mince meat? Come down the plain. Sounded utter folly to expose their weakness to the enemy like that. And that's precisely what I want you to do, says God. Come down the mountain to where the enemy is and the chariots are, and says God, I shall come in front of you. You know what happened that turned that apparent folly into brilliant tactics? When they got down the mountain, God caused an enormous great cloudburst. There was such torrential rain that it turned that little river Kishon into a mighty raging torrent that swamped the whole plain. And before Sisera knew where he was, the whole thing was a quagmire, and his chariots were all bogged down in the mud. He had to get off his chariots and try to run to save his life. You say there's an advantage, surely, in being in touch with God, to being a prophetess and knowing God's revealed truth. Yes. Pray, see the wisdom of God that seemed folly, but was glorious strategy. And as I have talked about Barak coming down the mountain, and it seemed folly, oh, you may forget it. Allow me just to remind you God's central strategy in the great war of the ages. How the blessed Son of God came down the mountain, didn't he? Down to our planet, and allowed the enemy himself to nail him on a cross. Oh, for the weakness of God! Oh, for the folly of it! Jesus Christ delivered over into the hands of men. Ah, but it was the most superlative wisdom you ever came across. Wisdom such that the prince of this is, princes of this world never knew, for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. I must restrain my emotion from poking fun at his satanic majesty, but oh, what a mistake he made. When all seemed lost. Message of the cross. Foolishness to them that perish, but proving to be God's effective strategy unto salvation to everyone that believes. Yes. A- a- a- and I can't help thinking as I think of these things, how they thwarted Cicero's hopes. There were all his ladies. Mama, Cicero's mama, I mean, Queen Mother, and his wife, and all their ladies looking out of their castle saying, why is Sisera Dea not coming? We would have thought he would have been here by this time, having mopped up those miserable little mice, the Israelites, and brought back the spoil. Oh, there'll be dresses, and there'll be five or six women for each man, and all those sorts of things, as my son Sisera will make a spoil and lead them away like spoil. He didn't know, did he? Sisera came down, uh, uh, uh, uh, Barak came down the mountain, and God was in front of him, and he took his captors captive. It was Barak that divided the spoil. And as I think about it, my mind turns to bigger things. Oh, our blessed Lord, he not only came down, you know, but the one that came down is the one that's gone up. And he's gone up victorious. And he has led captivity captive and given gifts to men. What a lovely story it is. Let me tell you of one of the big captives he took. His very chiefest of enemies was a man called Saul of Tarsus, who thought he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus and went around assaulting the believers and casting them into prison. But our brilliant Lord Jesus Christ captured the man, defeated the man, led him captive on his own admission, two Corinthians chapter two, and gave Paul to the church for the building up of the church, that one day it might be a church fully complete, achieving the unity of the faith. What a lovely story of triumph it has been all down the ages. Millions of men and women who were once in the power of darkness and serving his satanic majesty, captured by the blessed Lord and given to his church as gifts towards the perfecting of his people. The victory was in two stages. First, there was what Deborah and Barak did by coming down the mountain with God leading the way. The great initial victory. Then there had to be the second part, which was the mopping up. For Sisera the great captain, he got down off his chariot and ran for his life, and eventually came to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. Now Jael has been much criticized for what she did. I have the notion that people haven't always understood the situation she found herself in. Here was a fully armed man. One slice of his sword would have ended her life forever. She invited him in. What else could she do? She gave him milk. He said, now stand at the door of your tent, my dear woman, and when anybody comes here and says, is there a man here, you say no. Well, that was impossible. Barak was coming up the road presently, and if he had come to Jael's tent and said, uh, Jael, have you got a man inside here? And Jael had said no. That would have been the end of Jael, but Barak would have killed her if he'd found out. She had to make up her mind on whose side she was going to stand. Making up her mind to be loyal, not to her recent friends, the Canaanites, but to be loyal to her long distant friends where her loyalties really lay with Moses and the Israelites. She decided now to take her stand once more positively. She reached for a tent peg and she hammered it through the man's brain. So will you have to do. The Lord has won the victory and has gone back to heaven. He's placed us as gifts in his church, having rescued us from the enemy, given us to his people. My brother, there's some fighting to do. My sister, there's some fighting to do. You'll have to face this matter of the Gentile mind, the Gentile attitude to business, the Gentile attitude to God's truth. You'll have to take your tent peg and put it through the Gentile attitude to life and take your stand in the battle of the Lord with the blessed Lord and his people. So did Paul appeal to the Corinthians. Look here, my dear brethren, he says, you stand fast for the gospel. The only thing that can save men is not men's philosophy. The only thing that can save them is the gospel of the cross. As members of his church, we must take our tent peg and put it through the brain of all mere human imagination, the human mind setting itself against God's revealed truth. We must take our stand on the message of the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ our Lord. We must take our stand on the way we run our churches. If any man seems to be wise in this world, as when it comes to running the church, let him become a fool that he may be wise. We must examine our churches in the light of God's revealed truth and ask ourselves, how far have we compromised God's truth in the way we have run our churches, running our churches simply by the dictates of mere human reason? And if need we me, we must become fools, put our tent peg through human wisdom and determine to go by God's revealed truth. And tomorrow, as we go to our work, that could be hard, couldn't it? And difficult. But we must seek God's grace to put our tent peg through the Gentile mindset. And not go to work like Gentiles go to work, merely to get their food and clothes. Go to work, that we might serve the rule of God and his righteousness. There's a battle to be fought. We have a chance to be in it. Hear then Deborah's song. Oh, for the rulers in Israel that offered themselves willingly, praise the Lord. Naphtali and Issachar, they risked their very lives for the sake of God and the battles of the Lord. Praise the Lord for such marvelous devotion to the Lord and his truth. Dan? Can you tell me a thing about Dan? He wasn't there, was he? You say, what do you mean he wasn't? Well, when the battle was going on. Dan wasn't there. Oh, where was he then? Oh, in the ships, apparently. So was Asher. Oh, I see. In the ships? What was he in the ships for? I don't know. Suppose that's how he made his money, I suppose. And he was so busy making his money, like all the other Gentiles, that when the big battle of the Lord was on, he just wasn't there. Oh, my brother, why did Dan abide in the ships? God grant that in the great battles of life, where we fight for the Lord, we all shall be there and not immersed so much in other things that we have no time for the deliverance of God's people. The Lord bless his word and compensate you for your great powers of endurance. It has really been a battle, hasn't it, sitting on those seats for such a long while of a Sunday night. And let us pray. O Lord, now we bring thee thy holy word. We confess before thee, Lord, that studying thy word can be tough and hard. Uh, we call to mind that we are in a battle school, and for the sake of the Lord Jesus, we are prepared by thy grace to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. If the lessons have been a di- little difficult to follow and to learn tonight, Lord, we ask thy grace and the workings of thy Holy Spirit that we might progressively understand them in the days to come. But the hardest thing, Lord, will be not the learning of the lesson, but the putting of it into practice. Give us thy divine wisdom, we beseech thee, and confidence in thy word, and confidence in thy redeeming strategy. O God, save us from becoming entangled and in bondage to the affairs of this world, but rather we may so live and work as to honor thee, seek thy rule, develop thy righteousness, and be found efficient and free to join in the great battles of the Lord, that we might share at last with our Savior the joy of the final victory for his name's sake. Amen.