And I talked to Orlando yesterday, so he's going to get the grass cut today so it'd be cut before it rains tomorrow. And then it's going to be fast-moving front tomorrow, so I don't think it's going to rain enough. We've got two days to dry out, so I think that's going to work. So we'll all be prepared for a great time. The weather and temperature is going to be just perfect, so looking forward to that. And then the other announcement that I have is that for the last several years, I don't know how long it's been, but we have had the privilege of having Pastor Young here with us. And he has been called to a Korean church in the Maryland area just outside of Washington, D.C. So today will probably be his last night with us. Make sure you congratulate him and say hello to him because he'll be leaving to move there next Monday. So that's quite exciting. I know that he's quite enthusiastic about it. So be in prayer for him as he makes this transition to the church there. I think that's all we have for announcements. And I did get a little bit of rest while I was gone and managed to get away from the schedule and the stress for just two or three days. But it always takes me a while. I've been that way since my first year as a pastor. It takes like four days before I de-stress. And then it's almost time to come home. So anyway. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee, yea, I will help thee, yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension shall defend your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. for the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand forever." Before we have prayer I have two other announcements to make. The first announcement is that Thursday night we will not begin a study of Philippians as I have been announcing. I've decided that we're going to go back and I want to pick up, not pick up where I ended, but I want to reteach A series I was teaching when we left Preston City some 17 years ago on why we can trust the Bible. And so that was, I only did, I had it laid out as probably about 12 12 lessons and I only got eight of them done And so now that we have all the whiz-bang technology and video and everything else now, I think that's an important series That we need to get taught all the way through because that is always in every generation such an issue Can we really trust? the Bible so that will begin Thursday night and the other announcement is that Well, tonight is the first game in the World Series with the Astros playing the Braves. And I know that every one of you just cannot wait. And some of you will probably have your phone hidden somewhere where you can check the score. Don't let anybody know because Cheryl's taping it, and she's going to go home and watch it. So don't tell her what's going on. And so we'll open Bible class tonight by closing in prayer so we can watch the game. Just kidding. All right, let's go to the Lord in prayer. We'll have a few moments of silent prayer to make sure we're ready to study His Word and worship through the study of His Word. So let's pray. Our Father, it is our privilege to come together to study your Word, to worship you through the study of your Word, to come to understand how you think, come to understand how you have created us and what our purpose in life is. and how we as human beings, as believers, can have stability and certainty in our lives, that despite all of the chaos that surrounds us and all of the uncertainty, that we can just relax and we can rest in you because we know that you have all things in your hands and that all things will work together for good. And we can claim that promise and trust you. Father, we do pray for a number of people that we know that are struggling with COVID. Some are in recovery. Others are still trying to get to recovery. We pray especially for Tom Stegall up at Duluth Bible Church. And he has had such a great opportunity in ministry through writing and study. We pray for his recovery and his strength. And Father, we also remember that there's a number of people that we know, some we don't know, but I know they're out there that are in job situations, and some in the military, some are people we know in this church, some we know only through news reports, that jobs and careers are threatened, even their retirement is threatened if they're in the military. If they do not take the vaccine and so we pray for them and we pray that you would give them wisdom to deal with the situation that they face. And that for those who are dealing with legal issues, we pray that the constitution of this nation would be honored. And that we would not have citizens forced to do things like that against their will. And Father, we pray that as we focus on Your Word that You would remind us that in every generation they have to earn their freedom. Every generation has to decide whether or not they're going to trust You. And Father, we know that so far it doesn't appear that the generation coming up has made the right decision. But we pray that there will still be men and women who will be faithful in teaching Your Word and that the light will shine in this nation, and that we will be a light unto the world through the gospel once again. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, let's open our Bibles to Judges. We'll be in Judges chapter 4 again. I'll cover some review. And I think you've had a good dose of hot sore up to this point through what I covered a couple of weeks ago. And see what happened when I, before I taught that, I called Doug on the phone that afternoon or a couple of, about a week before. And I asked him if he would consider doing something on hot sore. And he said, no, I haven't looked at that material in a long time, but I've got something else in mind. And so I thought, well, since he's not going to do it, I'll do it. And then he changed his mind and we didn't communicate about that. So you got a double dose, but that's good because I'm sure he gave a lot of information. that I didn't cover and it was good for you to get that review. Now I want you to notice on the title slide, that underneath the title for the book study under judges I have changed the sort of title or slogan for the series and before it had to do with a nation collapsing and I was reading several things while I was gone and I read something and I can't even remember what I read or where I read it but this phrase flashed into my mind when chaos was king. Because, of course, the two verses that repeat one another later on in Judges that express the theme of Judges is that there was no king in the land and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. And that statement, there was no king in the land, is a reference to the fact that they had rejected God. God was their king under the theocracy established in the Mosaic covenant, and they had rejected God, so God was not their king. And because God was not their king, they had rejected the value system of the Mosaic law, and they were adopting the value system of the pagan culture around him. And that led to them collapsing as a nation. And that's what happens when chaos is king. And that's exactly where we are today. So I thought that was descriptive. And as we looked at the outline, we've seen that it describes the process of paganization. It goes through the leadership in this central part of the book from chapter 3, verse 7 to chapter 16, verse 31. going through these different judges, some of which are clearly stated to have been raised up by God. Others were simply raised up by God. And the description of God raising them up, which is what we have in the case of Deborah, is what we see in the text. It doesn't state it overtly, but it describes it implicitly. So we are now on that fourth judge, Shamgar, I have there. He's never called a judge, but he does provide a deliverance for Israel when he takes out the 600 Philistines. And it is said at the end of that verse, he also delivered Israel, which is the primary function, it seems, of a judge. And I'm making a point out of that because this word, judges, which is in the Hebrew, is a word that is translated judge, but probably has a closer meaning to what we would refer to as a governor, a leader, someone who is a military commander, sort of a mix of those things. But when we think of a judge, we think of someone who has a responsibility in what we think of as the judicial system, not the executive branch, but the judicial branch. and that they are to make decisions where there are conflicts related to either criminality or some sort of civil disruption. But that's not really the role that we have of a judge depicted in the book of Judges or the way that the word is used at all. There is a scene here in when Deborah is introduced that has often been taken that way, and I've probably taken that way in the past because of the way it's described. But from what we have studied, we have seen that that's really not what's going on in that passage. So I'm going to be doing some review today because it's been two weeks since we last covered this and I would suspect that you like me have thought about a lot of other things and we've probably forgotten a lot of what we said and I want to add a lot to things I said things I didn't say uh... the last time so we've seen this cycle of the judges that goes from their disobedience of the people the uh... sons of israel the phrase children of israel is really not a good translation it's always the sons of israel always refers to the national collective whole and they disobey god and god brings uh... divine discipline on the nation based on the mosaic law and then uh... they will cry out, they will scream in agony from their oppression, and God in His grace delivers them, and then they go through the cycle again. And what's really important, as I'll show in just a minute, is it's that deliverance that's the focal point in the text, that even though God is going to put them under a harsh oppression, The whole point is God delivers them whether they deserve it or not. And in most of these cases, they really haven't. So we just go through this whole process of the judges going through one cycle after another, all the way down to Samson, each cycle being worse than the time before. So here's our basic map of Israel. And we're looking at this judgeship. That was not supposed to happen. This judgeship. So we have Hazor. I thought I had fixed that on every one of these maps. But I guess... Well, there we go. Okay. We have Hazor up here. We have the valley of Megiddo, the Esdalon Valley. This is where in the future there will be the staging area for the campaign of Armageddon. This is the crossroads here. Everything is happening in this episode along this highway, which is the main trunk highway that goes all the way down to Egypt and then it cuts across in the middle of the southern Galilee and goes on up to Damascus. So it's your major trade route. You have fortifications at Megiddo, fortifications at Hazor in order to protect the trade route. It's about economics. So that orients us to where we're going. This area down here that is north of Jerusalem is the area where Deborah is going to be sitting by this palm tree. We'll get into that a little later. So just to remind you, the emphasis, one of the things that when you study, go through Bible study methods, one of the things that they teach you in observation, which is the first stage of Bible study methods, is just answering the question, what does the text say? And the counterpart to that in in my teaching is why we spend so much time looking at words, looking at maps, looking at the various phrases in the vocabulary, and the doctrine that's there is before you get to application you have to understand what does the text say. And Then the second question is, what does the text mean? That's interpretation. And the last stage is application. And the way most people look at Bible study is they think you ought to spend 5% of your time in observation, another maybe 10% thinking about what it means. But most of the time, what they're asking is, what does it mean to me, which is the wrong question. And then you spend the next 80% in application. But that's only how infantile Christians, and I use that word as a pejorative because that's a spoiled brat baby that's self-absorbed, someone who's infantile. And that's what they want. But as my professor of Bible study methods put it at Dallas Seminary, the reality is you should spend about 85% on observation. What is the text saying? And if you do your job well there, you're going to understand the interpretation, which is what does it mean. So you spend about only 10% after that on what it means, and you don't ask the question, what does it mean to me? And then you really only have to spend 5% on application, because if you've done your job on observation and interpretation, it's more than obvious what God expects of us. And so it doesn't need to be belabored. What you get in most sermons is probably about 98% misapplication. no observation, and no interpretation. And sadly, that's why we have infantile Christians running around. So in our observation here, what we see is that in the first cycle, you have one verse dedicated to describing their disobedience and departure. And this is really important. God doesn't spend all of his time browbeating us with our sin. Just one verse on disobedience and departure from devotion to Yahweh, and then two verses on describing the divine discipline, and two verses on deliverance. That's in the first cycle with Othniel. In the second cycle it's still one verse describing disobedience, devotion, and departure from the devotion to Yahweh. Then there's still two verses in discipline from the Lord, but now there's 16 verses related to God's gracious deliverance. And then when you get to the third cycle, disobedience and departure from devotion to Yahweh is still one verse. Notice God's not spending more time belaboring their rebelliousness toward Him and their sinfulness. It's still one verse and two verses describing the divine discipline, but now 21 verses that describe God's deliverance. And we'll see this kind of pattern through the rest of this book. So that tells us something, that the emphasis for us is on the gracious deliverance of God, whether we deserve it or not. It's not on God browbeating us and reminding us and rubbing our nose in our sin. It is about the fact that God will graciously deliver us. And so we looked at the beginning, which simply reminds us of the conclusion with Ehud. This is the background that after Ehud died, the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. that simply summarizes the time frame and the fact that they are in rebellion against God again. And then verse 2 describes the divine discipline. So the Lord sold them into the hand of Yavin, king of Canaan. And I've emphasized that the imagery that comes with that word, to sell them, is imagery that takes us to a slave market. They are being sold into slavery to be in bondage to this foreign power. That's the fourth cycle of discipline in Leviticus 26. So the Lord sold him into the hand of Yavin, the king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, the commander of his army of Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth, Hagorim. And then We see, we talked about what hot sore and I'm not going to go back over all of that because you've had quite a bit of that and I'll just remind you of its location to the north of the Red Sea. And our conclusion from our study was that Hatzor was destroyed twice, once at the time of Judge Joshua. Now, I understand that when Dr. Petrovich was here last week, he only talked about the first destruction. He didn't get into the second. So you'll get to come... He'll come back and we'll get the rest of it. And that this destruction was confirmed in later verses such as 1 Samuel 12, 9 and Psalm 83, 9. So the second verse, I'm going to skip that, what we learn from that is Sisera was a Canaanite name and it is probably a Hittite name or a Hurrian name like Shamgar. And so Sisera is probably someone who's been hired from the outside to run the military because of his skills would be superior to anything that that Yavin had close to him. So the result of the discipline is in verse 3. The children of Israel, or literally the sons of Israel, cried out to Yahweh, for Yavin had nine hundred chariots of iron, and for twenty years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel. So what we see in this particular verse is an emphasis on the fact that the suppression, the oppression rather, of the Israelites is due to a military superiority. That when a nation has not developed itself to the point where it can defend itself, then it is prone to be oppressed and attacked by stronger forces or taken advantage of by other forces. And the result of that is this 20 years of oppression. We'll see this as a pattern for Israel through this time. We're reminded that in 1 Samuel the Philistines had iron, so they had entered into the Iron Age. But the Israelites were kept from having blacksmiths to work iron, so this was a form of arms control. And so arms control has always been about preventing people from exercising any kind of freedom. and that is something that is evident in uh... that was evident to our founding fathers and they recognize this when they shaped the second amendment and that the second amendment is not talking about uh... people having uh... firearms and weapons in relation to sports or sporting activities or shooting activities, but in relation to self-defense. That's at the very core of the Second Amendment, and it recognizes that this is an unalienable right. That's what the Ten Commandments really focus on, the Bill of Rights. And these unalienable rights cannot be regulated by government in any way, shape, or form. Once we allow the government to regulate them, to license them, to certify them in any way, shape, or form, then it opens the door for all of them to be regulated, certified, or controlled by the government in one way or another. That they are unalienable rights recognizes the fact that they are inherent rights for every human being who is in the image and likeness of God. And therefore, the government is to protect those rights and does not have the authority to come in and regulate those rights. And once they are controlled by either a government or a foreign power, that is when a citizenry of a nation is under oppression. And so that is why we must always fight to protect the Second Amendment, and not only the Second Amendment, but everything in the First Amendment. And that reminds me that we have an election that is coming up in a couple of weeks. Maybe it's next week, isn't it? Is it next week? Next week. And there is at least one constitutional amendment there that prohibits, I mean, that you should vote for this one. I think it's three or four. Three? three. And that is talking about the fact that the Texas government and neither the Texas government nor any division or subdivision of the Texas government has the right to dictate when churches can meet or if they can meet. and that is just uh... that has said that we've come to that but that is a recognition of exactly what the first amendment in the bill of rights says and we have a number of states in the union uh... california illinois new york uh... many uh... michigan and a number of others where in violation of the constitution the governors of those states ship have dictated when churches can open and when they can meet and it is sad that the judiciary has failed in their responsibility to uphold the bill of rights and once that see once you open the door to that and set that legal precedent then there will be uh... more uh... violations of in unalienable rights. And this doesn't come from the government. These are recognized as rights that are ours from God. So this is a problem. And we see that as an application from what is revealed here is that the Canaanites now have have got weapons and equipment that is far superior to what the Israelites have and that results in their oppression for these 20 years. Now here's a slightly different map that I've put up here so that we can orient ourselves to the tribal divisions in Israel. And so again, we have the Sea of Galilee located here. And just north of that is Hazor, where I put the red circle. And this is the tribal allotment for Naphtali. And we'll discover that Barak, who is the general who will lead the Israelite forces, is from Naphtali. We also see here in the yellow the tribal division for Zebulon which comes down to the ridgeline. This ridgeline that really follows this line between the brown and the green and the brown and the yellow and the brown and the red is really the ridgeline of the Carmel Ridge. The Mount Carmel is where Elijah did a spiritual battle with the priests of Baal and the Asherah, and that's located somewhere right around where I'm showing on the pointer there. So these tribal groups up here in the north, Asher, Zebulon, Issachar, and Naphtali, are the ones that are mostly involved here, but probably also involve those who are down in the central hill country of Samaria. Across the Jordan, always from the perspective of Israel, is Transjordan. and you have the two tribes Manasseh and Gad on that east side of the Jordan River. But most of what we're going to be talking about here is all in this upper territory. Now, the other thing that you see here with this line that is just to the northeast there, runs from northwest to southeast, That's the path of the Kishon River. And so this brook, which in the dry season is almost nothing, if there are heavy rains, it can develop into an extraordinary flash flood, which is not described in the fourth chapter, but it's hinted at. And I'll show you in the verse when we get there. But this is the flash flood that's going to be described in the fifth chapter in the poem of the victory song of Deborah that God uses to destroy the chariot core of Sisera. So that's important. Geography is always very important in military battles. So this gives us that basic orientation here. Hazor is the area where Yavin is ruling, and Barak is from somewhere up in this particular area. and deborah is down south in the area north of jerusalem somewhere uh... located there between uh... the text says that she she is located between rama and beth el and in the mountains of ifrium which is in this area here so we're not told exactly at where where that was was located And so we have this situation where the Israelites cry out to the Lord in verse 3. And this, although the writer of of judges only mentions them turning to the Lord once, and this is not one of those times. When you get into 1 Samuel 12, verses 10 and 11, we're told then that there's a rehearsal of what has happened in the past, and there was a reminder. And Samuel says, then they cried out to the Lord and said, We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth But now deliver us from the hand of our enemies, and we will serve you." So this is giving content to their cry. And in verse 11 we see, And the Lord sent Jeroboam. And in the text, if you read that verse in English, it says bedan, B-E-D-A-N. Now the Hebrew dalet and the Hebrew R for resh, so the D and the R look very, very close to one another except for just a little bitty tiny tick off the top corner of the dalet, which is called the tittle. And that makes a difference. So if you misread that or it's not written clearly, then it would be easy to take that R as a D, and that's probably what happened here. So instead of B-A-R-A-K, they confuse the R with the D. And the K, the final K at the end of a word, looks very, very similar to a final N. And so they confused that. And so instead of writing B-D-N, they wrote B, instead of writing B-R-K, they wrote B-D-N. And so that's why there's a textual problem there. And then, but the Lord sent Jeroboam, that's Gideon. Barak, that's here, they're not in chronological order, Jephthah and Samuel to deliver you out of the hands of your enemies on every side, and you dwelt in safety. So that verse is talking about their call for for deliverance and God answers that and God answers that but instead of getting the formula that we've seen earlier where when the children the but for example back with Ehud in 315 but when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord the Lord raised up a deliverer for them we don't have that that clause here. And instead of that clause, what we have is the description of Deborah's activity. And in verse 4 we read, Now Deborah a prophetess, the wife of Lapidote, was judging Israel at that time. And she used to sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. And the sons of Israel came up to her for judgment. So there's several things that are said about Deborah here. First, she's said to be a prophetess. And second, she's said to be the wife of Lapidoth. And that ending, that O-T-H ending, is a feminine, is a plural ending on a feminine noun. So this is really strange. But what's important here is that it shows that she is not operating outside of the biblical norms for authority within the home. In fact, many of the key women that you'd find who are married in the Old Testament will be identified in relation to their husband, because God is respecting the divine institution of marriage where there's a distinct role for the wife and a distinct role for the husband, and so he is not operating in a way that would cause a fragmentation within the marriage or within the home. And so she is, just this reference to her as the wife of Lapidote is a reminder that she is under the authority of her husband as well, but God is using her in a unique situation. Now, we'll come back at the end of this because we need to talk about these issues related to the role of men and women because this is always taken out of context by evangelical feminists to so see God has women pastors because there's a lot of people in the Christian community that think that what pastors are, they're prophetic. and they have this role of like a prophet in the Old Testament. And that's just wrong. It's just completely bogus. The gift of pastor-teacher is not a gift of a pastor and does not, I mean, of a prophet and does not have the role of a prophet. But what we see in the Scriptures is that throughout the Scriptures there's a defined role within marriage. of for the man, the husband, and the wife. It never changes. It's the same before the Mosaic Law. It's the same after the Mosaic Law. It's all the way through the Old Testament. It's in the New Testament, and it is affirmed numerous times by both Peter and Paul in the New Testament. where there's a great warning that we are not to put women into positions of authority over men, and that this is abnormal. It's not according to God's normative plan for a woman to exercise authority over a man. And so the fact that God has put Deborah in this position of leadership indicates a couple of things that we have to go back and talk about a little bit. One of them is the stage is set when we went to Shamgar because we saw that Shamgar was not an Israelite and he was not a believer. His name indicated that he was a Hittite or a Hurrian and it doesn't say God raised him up. You don't have the typical formula for Shamgar. He's not called a judge. It is, as I pointed out when we studied him, God uses him because there's nobody in Israel that God can use. So he has to use somebody that is not an Israelite. And what that's in this text to reveal is that there's a problem with men being men and taking leadership roles in Israel as a result of the paganization of the nation. And throughout the Old Testament we often see illustrations of this as Israel goes into apostasy then there are problems with women, women such as Jezebel, women such as Athaliah, a number of others that come along that create problems. But in this situation, because there's a failure of men to be leaders, and then we come to the next leader, and he's no aggressive warrior at all that's Gideon and we see him and the angel of the Lord appears to him and sarcastically calls him a valiant warrior and he's hiding out in a wine press in order to thresh the wheat. And so he's not a great one to be a leader. And so what God always has honored women, they're all through the scripture, but they are not to take the place and the role of men. But this is a sign that the males have failed in their leadership here in a couple of different ways, as I'll point out. And this is a real tragedy. We see it. There's two books that I have read over the years. One is The Feminization of America, which was fascinating. And the other was The Feminization of the Church. And the Christian church, throughout the history of the church, has always had a huge problem with men, the failure of males to be spiritually focused. and to be leaders in the home and leaders in the church. And in the early church, you had the development of the whole idea of nuns and other things developed. And just about every cult that's developed has had a problem with male leadership they've had. Not everyone is the result of women, but many of them are led by women. And you have I think it's the third or fourth church of the seven churches in Revelation that has Jezebel in their congregation. And it's, again, a picture of rebellious women. And it's fascinating that there's a website that, I don't agree with this kind of a tactic, but they're constantly exposing false teachers in Christianity, and a vast number of them are women. And so this is a real problem. But the reason it's a problem is because of the absolute failure of men to be men and to lead as Christian men and to be focused on men. And what the church needs and what the nation needs is men who will be who will be oriented to scripture and exercise their male leadership under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and serving in the home as spiritual leaders. So this passage is not an attack on women, but it is a recognition that the males have failed, and so God raises up a woman to this particular position. And but there are some issues here that other issues here we have to address. So she is judging Israel at this time. Now, the concept of judging is one, like I said earlier, is one where we think of a someone on the judicial bench who is hearing a case and hearing the arguments for and against whether it's a criminal case or civil case. and then making a decision. And the way this is pictured and translated makes it appear that this is where she would hold court, as it were, and where individual Israelites would come to have their cases heard, and then she would bring a decision. But that misses the whole point of what's happening here. So it says that she's judging, and as I put at the bottom of the slide, the term judging, shofeta, which is the feminine ending of the verb, is usually seen as a governor or military commander, not a sitting adjudicator. Now, if it means a sitting adjudicator here, it's the only place in Scripture that it does. Okay? So, this doesn't mean that. And the reason I'm emphasizing that is because what happens at the end of verse 5, the children of Israel... Now, we've talked about this. Who are the children of Israel? This isn't this term, B'nai Yisrael, the sons of Israel. Every time it is used, it is talking about the congregation or the assembly of Israel coming together for a purpose. It is not talking about individual Israelites taking action. It is talking about the corporate nation. And so when it says the children of Israel came up, And this is also an important word because it is recognizing that they are formally coming to her. You would come up to Jerusalem to worship. The idea of coming up is an important word. And they're coming to her for her to render a judgment. Now, contextually, what's the case? The case is that they're being oppressed by the Canaanites. That's the issue. So we have to understand that this is a particular situation where she is the one they're coming to because she is called a prophetess. And so this is the primary term that we have to focus on, is that she is fundamentally a prophetess. And so we have to talk about the role of a prophet a little bit. Now in a few weeks on Sunday morning when we get to Ephesians 4, 11 and 12, and we talk about the spiritual gifts of apostle and prophet and evangelist and pastor-teacher. That's talking about a New Testament gift of prophet, and this is important background for understanding that. So, a primary way in which most of us have understood a prophet is that somebody who is either A, pronouncing judgment on Israel, or B, as part of that judgment, talking about future events. And when most people think about a prophecy, they think about somebody who's got divine inspiration and is foretelling the future. But we really have to disabuse ourselves of that, and I pointed this out a couple of weeks ago, but I've added more to this. Now, in Exodus 4, 15, and 16, in conjunction with Exodus 7, 1, and 2, we get a God's definition, or partial definition, of a prophet. He says to Moses, Moses is resistant. He doesn't want to go speak to Pharaoh. He wants to make up excuses and say, well, I'm not a good public speaker and I stammer and I can't really do this. And so God is speaking and he says, now you shall speak to him. and put the words in his mouth. He's talking about Aaron, Moses' brother. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what to do. So he, that is Aaron, shall be your spokesman to the people, and he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God. So God's creating this analogy. Just as God puts the words in the mouth of a prophet, then the prophet is the one who speaks the words that God gave him to the people. He's not making up his own message. He's not explaining it. He's just announcing what God tells him to announce. And this is further seen when we compare it with Exodus 7, 1 and 2. So the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you. And when we look at that in relation here to Exodus 4.15, Moses would be speaking to Aaron, you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. Aaron, your brother, shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron, your brother, shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of the land." So God would reveal the message to Moses. Moses communicates it to Aaron. And Aaron is the one who would communicate it to Pharaoh. So Moses was not speaking directly to the Pharaoh, but Aaron was. So this is a primary sense that the prophet is receiving a message from God and is communicating that to the people. So when we go back to Judges 4-5, the children of Israel came to her for a judgment. This judgment is the message from God in what to do about the oppression of Yavin. That's what context does for you. So What else does a prophet do? In Exodus 15, 20, and 21, we have Moses in Exodus 15 is written a psalm of thanks and deliverance to praise God for rescuing the people and escaping Egypt and crossing the Red Sea. And so they sing the song of Moses, but there is an echo, a chorus that the women sing. So it's obviously what is called antiphonal singing. The men are singing the main part, and the women echo with this chorus. And so Miriam is leading the women, and she is identified as Miriam the prophetess. the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out with her with timbrels and with dances." So, this indicates that her role as a prophetess is in relation to music and singing. So, Miriam answered them, that is, answered the men in the antiphonal singing, "'Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea.'" That was the chorus. We see this, I pointed this out a couple of weeks ago in 1 Chronicles 25.1 that David appointed the choirs and it is stated that those who were the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduth, and these were three of the different choir groups who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals. So it's vocal and it's instrumental. and the number of the skilled men performing their service was. So they're skilled at music, and that is called prophesying. Now that really brackets a number of times that this idea is used in 1 Samuel. And it's confusing for people because if you take this definition that a prophet is someone who's preaching or is foretelling the future and you fit that into these verses, you're just going to come away really confused. This is what I've added. So this is talking about Samuel, when Samuel was first anointed, and a little later in 1 Samuel 10 5, and that you shall come to the hill of God where the Philistine garrison is, and it will happen when you have come there to the city that you will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high place with a stringed instrument, a tambourine, a flute, and a harp before them, and they will be prophesying. See, it's very clear this is used in a musical context. The next verse says, Samuel is speaking to Saul about what is going to happen after he has been anointed. This is a sign of God's approval and recognition of Saul as the king. And we go on in verse 10. When they came to the hill, there was a group of prophets to meet him. Then the Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them. That's the fulfillment of Samuel's prophecy. Verse 11, And it happened when all who knew him formally saw that he indeed prophesied among the prophets, that the people said, Is Saul also among the prophets? Verse 12, Is Saul among the prophets? Verse 13, When he had finished prophesying. So all of this shows it has this musical context. In 1 Samuel 18.10, it happened on the next day that the distressing spirit from God came upon Saul. So this is a demon that is oppressing Saul. He's not demon-possessed. It comes upon Saul. He's external. Demon possession is internal control by a demon. This is demonic oppression or influence. And Saul The Spirit from God comes upon Saul and he prophesied inside the house. So he's singing. This is really bizarre. Don't ask me to explain what's exactly going on here because I don't know. But it has to do with prophesying is related to music. So David played music with his hand and Saul is calmed. But I think this is the case where Saul picked up his spear and threw it at David. 1 Samuel 19.20 Then Saul sent messengers to take David. And when they saw the group of prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as the leader over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied." Now it doesn't mention music here, but it fits with what we saw in 1 Samuel 10. In 1 Samuel 19.23, So he went to Nioth in Ramah. Then the Spirit of God was upon him also. And he went on and prophesied until he came to Nioth in Ramah. The idea of them preaching just doesn't fit the context. The idea of music and singing praise to God does fit the context. and verse 24 is just so bizarre because he also stripped off his clothes and prophesied before Samuel in like manner and laid down naked all that night and therefore it was said it's all among the prophets. So this is just There's some odd stuff going on here and I can't explain it. Again, in 1 Chronicles 25.2, the sons of Asaph, that's the musicians, were under the direction of Asaph who prophesied according to the order of the king. So when we come to Judges 5.1, Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam sang on that day. So who is she primarily? She's a prophetess. Now with her, as I pointed out the last time, that involves some other activities, but it clearly involves music because God, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has her write chapter 5, this victory song. And it refers to her as well as Deborah Oroz, a mother in Israel, focusing on her and highlighting her role as a mother in Israel. So we go back to prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth. And this word I mentioned earlier, it's a feminine noun, and it has a plural ending. And if there's any significance to it, the word has this idea of torches and flashes. It's just highlighting the fact that Deborah is functioning as a brilliant light in the dark days of Israel, just as you and I are to be sons of light in the midst of the darkness of our generation, a wicked and perverted generation. And then in verse 5 we read, And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah. That's what it became known as. That's the palm tree of Deborah. So this was, as it were, her platform when she would be called upon by the Lord to serve in this capacity. It's located between Ramah. Now, later Samuel will come from Ramah. That's his hometown. Bethel is later where they're going to set up a sanctuary. It's a place between Bethel and I was where Sarah and Abraham camped and later Jacob and he had a vision from God. So it is in the center of the mountains of Ephraim and about maybe 10 to 12 miles north of Jerusalem. And so it is in the format of this story, the people are crying out to God, and Deborah is introduced as the one who will give God's judgment, God's direction in the manner of this oppression of Jabin. Now, she's sitting under the palm tree or sitting under the oak tree, were common locations where prophets would exercise their ministry. So, notice she's not exercising a ministry of leadership over men. She's not exercising a ministry of military leadership. And even when she goes with Barak, she will not be in the role of military leader. She will be there as a representative of God which encourages the people. And then once this battle takes place, we don't hear about her activities again. In fact, because of what she says to Barak down in verse 7, excuse me, verse 9, where she's told that the glory is going to go to a woman. You expect it to be her. And then she just disappears from the narrative, and we're surprised at the end that it's a different woman. It's not Deborah. So we read that she comes, and the children of Israel came to her for judgment. So this is the word l'mishpat. And so you can see that you have the S-H and the P and the T. That's from the root shafat, which means to judge. And when you put the maim or the M at the beginning, that turns the verb into a noun. And then you stick a lamed, the L in front of that, and that is a lamed of purpose. So that's a preposition. So she came to her for a judgment, and the judgment is, what do we do now? As we talk about her location between Ramah and Bethel in the hills of Ephraim, it's interesting that she's not at Bethel or at Shiloh, which is just a few more miles north, which is where the ark is located. But she is just out in the countryside in the center of Israel where she is accessible to everyone. So we see just an aerial view here and we're looking from the south and we're looking towards the north and we have Gibeon is located here and Mizpah is located here where Israel had gathered for a reaffirmation of the covenant. and here's Bethel, one of these two locations. So she's generally in this area of the hill country and sitting under a palm. So the Israelites are coming to her for judgment and they can't go to the priests because the priests are all corrupt. not we can't say if it's right at this time, but generally in this period we see the corruption of the priesthood with Corpulent fat Eli the high priest and his sons and they're described their behaviors described in 1st Samuel 2 12 to 13 that the sons of Eli and the sons of the high priest are corrupt. They did not know the Lord. And the priest's custom with the people was that when any man offered a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come with a three-pronged flesh hook in his hand while the meat was boiling and take it out for themselves. And that was to be for God. So what happens next is in answer to their question and their searching for God's judgment, she acts rather than tells them, and she sends and calls for Barak. His name means lightning, and so her name meant bee, and so the bee calls for the lightning, Barak, the son of Abinoam from Kadesh in Naphtali. And she says to him, has not the Lord God of Israel commanded?" Now that's phrased in a way that indicates the answer is yes. This is a way that a prophet would speak in order to emphasize the command of God. And the command is to go and deploy your troops at Mount Tabor. Take with you 10,000 men of the sons of Naphtali, and of the sons of Zebulun. So they are to go to Mount Tabor, and it's easy to spot when you're there in Israel because it's this funny looking bump on the horizon. And this is located right about here, just below, let's say just below the E or the B in Zebulun. and Barak is coming down from the north from Naphtali down and this is where his troops are going to gather for the battle. And so we will stop there so that we can get caught up with where the Astros are tonight. But don't forget this and we will pick up here next week and go forward and describe the battle and what happens. Father, we thank You for this opportunity to study these things, to understand that You are working in all of these things. It is an expression of Your grace. And as we go forward in this chapter, we will see Your gracious, miraculous deliverance of Israel, even though they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered, and they do not have the weaponry None of that will matter because you will wipe out the Canaanite chariot corps through a miraculous flash flood. Father, we pray that we would come to understand this as an illustration for how we use the faith rest drill, that you will rescue and deliver us, but not by the way that we normally think should happen, not according to our plan, but according to your plan. And you will always make our path straight if we are trusting in you. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.