Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today on Telling the Truth, Jill Briscoe shares how you have an essential role in the unseen battles going on around you. That's coming up, but first: When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life, and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times. "Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth.

So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now here's Jill with today's message, "How to Fight Your Battles."

Jill Briscoe: This is the story of Deborah and Barak. Deborah's name means honeybee, and Barak's means thunderbolt. I love it. And all week I've been thinking about the story I would tell you about Honeybee and Thunderbolt. He'd shot his bolt and she stung him into action. And that's the story we're going to be hearing about today. Names are very interesting; you should always dig around a little bit and find out just what they mean.

Let me give you some background to the Book of Judges, which is where we find the story of Deborah. Joshua had died. Now, that was bad news because as soon as he died, things sort of fell apart for the rest of the tribes that were now in the Promised Land. They were, however, loosely organized, and they didn't always occupy the territory that had been given for them. They got a little bit in disarray, and I'll tell you the reason for that in a minute.

But the period of the judges marked the start of a new nation in their own land, the initiation of a new people on the world scene, the inauguration of a national group selected by God himself as his special people. Israel was to be the model nation to all other nations of what to look for for inspiration and direction. God wanted there to be one nation in the world that gave due allegiance to him because no nation was doing that.

The prophets, as we've talked about already, didn't have a government function in this hierarchy of help for Israel. They acted as recipients and conveyors of God's word, God's message. They waited for the time of revelation. Now, the priests didn't have to wait; they had the law to explain. That was their teaching function. But the prophets had to wait for the time of revelation, for when God leaned out of heaven and said, "This is my message for you; take it and tell the people, proclaim the truth, preach it," and that's what they did.

Now, there was another group of people in the time of our story today called the judges. Who were they? Well, a new generation arose after Joshua had taken them into the Promised Land and gained great victory. Everything was going great, the people were obediently serving God, but Joshua died, his generation died, and suddenly they had this new generation who had a big problem. They were second-generation believers, and they decided they didn't believe what Joshua's generation, their parents, had believed.

And so now we have all the tribes in Canaan. They had been assigned the territory which they were supposed to take, tribe by tribe, trusting God to win their battles for them. But they were backing off the whole plan, and the whole scenario was beginning again. Man was rejecting God all over again. And as soon as that happened, God allowed the Canaanites, he allowed the Philistines, he allowed other people that were heathen people to encroach on the territory that Joshua had won for the people of Israel and punish them in a sense, hoping they would turn back to him.

And in order that God should help them to turn back to him, when some of the people in some of the tribes tried to, he raised up a judge from that particular tribe who would take that tribe back to victory and perhaps even inspire other tribes to do the same. There were 14 judges. Deborah was one of them. She was also the only woman and was also the only prophetess. She was a prophetess and a judge and a woman, so in a sense, she has some distinctives that none of the other judges had.

God raised these special people up for a special time in the history of Israel, and we have much to learn from them. The first three judges that God raised up did all right; they turned some of the people back to God. But by the time Deborah was judging Israel, the Canaanites had come down into the hill country around Galilee. The two tribes that were given that region were Zebulun and Naphtali, and so they began to get chipped at by all these guerrilla raids and terrible things were happening.

Now, one of the things the judges did was hold court. They would find a place and people in trouble would come to them, and they would judge the matter, they would give wisdom, they would give advice, they would give comfort. And of course, with Deborah's extra gifts of that of prophetess, they would also take God's message for the people, select leaders, and encourage and motivate those leaders into winning the battles of the Lord.

So, Deborah set up court under a palm tree. 200 years later, after her death, that palm tree, that great big palm tree, still stood in the place that she had judged Israel. She was a very, very revered, honored judge of Israel. And Deborah's palm tree was a place that the people of Israel would travel to see, rather like somewhere that the tourists would travel to see.

And so as Deborah sat under her palm tree, all these people came from Zebulun and Naphtali and said, "Listen, the Canaanites are giving us a terrible time. They're stealing our animals. We have to go by the back roads everywhere." You can read all about this in Deborah's song of victory in Judges chapter 5. But she tells us in that song, which is really a recounting of the whole story of Judges 4 in poetic form, she tells us that they were having to sneak around. They couldn't use the highways; they'd got out of their villages, they were living in the hills and eating berries and trying to keep alive.

And so they came to Deborah, who was judging Israel, and they said, "You've got to do something about these Canaanites. It's terrible." So, Deborah in her song says, "I arose a mother in Israel, and God told me to call Barak to be the one who would rise up as our commander, our fighter, and win this battle for the Lord." I love this phrase "she arose a mother in Israel" because what it really means is she had this maternal sense of compassion for the people she was caring for.

And that's what the judges should have had, that's what you and I need to have. We need to be Deborahs. We need to arise, especially as women, as a mother in Israel in the sense that we say these people are in trouble. They're having all sorts of trouble in their lives politically and in problems and in all sorts of ways. I arose a mother in Israel. I cared enough about it to use the gifts that God had given me to be God's honeybee, to sting people into action, to motivate people to fight the battles of the Lord.

So, she was certainly a compassionate woman, and she arose to do something about it. She had leadership qualities; that's obvious. She was involved; that's also obvious. She was involved politically, she was involved socially, she was involved relationally, she was involved spiritually. She used her gifts to encourage and call men and women to fight for Him. She was gifted. She was gifted and talented. Literally, talent was just oozing out of her fingertips. One of the commentators that I was reading about this says that her song in Judges 5 is one of the greatest, finest Hebrew masterpieces of poetry and poem in the Hebrew language.

Guest (Male): Don't go anywhere; there's more life-giving truth from the Briscoes headed your way. Tellingthetruth.org and the Telling the Truth app are great resources to help you grow in your spiritual life. Packed with videos like Ask the Briscoes, articles from Stuart and Jill, and encouraging audio teaching content, you'll find a treasure trove of resources to encourage you and others in your faith.

And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource when you give a gift to help more people around the world experience life in Christ. So visit us online or download the app today. We look forward to connecting with you. Now, here's more from Jill.

Jill Briscoe: So here we've got one great woman who certainly changed her world. Let me tell you how she changed her world. Barak was called for, he came, he responded. He was a mighty man. He's called in Hebrews one of God's best; he's in the list of heroes in chapter 11. He was certainly lacking in a little self-confidence; he certainly respected and revered his leader who God had raised up and put over Israel at that time.

And he said, "I'll do it, but I'll only do it if you go with me." He was a man who was not threatened by a woman's gifts; that's for sure. And Deborah said, "Well," shows a little bit of lack of self-confidence, and she sort of rebuked him for it and said, "You know something, God's going to give this whole battle into the hands of a woman instead of your hands, which is rather a shame." And she wasn't talking about herself; she was talking about another woman who wasn't even an Israelite.

But she said, "That's all right. If that's what it'll take to get the job done, let's do it together. Let's do it together." And so they went to Zebulun and Naphtali, the two tribes that obviously would give them the men because they were the ones that were having the trouble. And so Sisera, who was the commander of Jabin the king who was giving them all the trouble, a king of the Canaanites, saw that they were amassing 10,000 troops.

So, he got his 900 iron chariots ready and he took off to Galilee, which was a very silly thing to do because iron chariots are fine in the plain in Megiddo. That's all right, and on the plain and on the flat places. But when you get to Galilee and you've got hills, try and take an iron chariot with the poor horses trying to get up the hills and down the hills and you're in trouble. God lent his miraculous intervention in overflowing the banks of the river Kishon as well, which helped because the poor little horses got their feet stuck.

And in Deborah's song, you see the horses prancing, pulling their feet out, trying to get their feet out of the mud. And of course, when they couldn't, they eventually did get their feet out of the mud and Deborah sang they threw their hooves in the air and of course upset the chariots and the people in it out into the river. And so this was one way that God got rid of the firepower of the Canaanites and put the men on their feet where they were not nearly as effective against the 10,000 certainly outnumbered army of Israel that were rushing down from the mountains like a thunderbolt is the word.

And I love it. You see, here's Thunderbolt. We've got Honeybee on one side, we've got Thunderbolt on the other, and the combination is a powerful combination. And he came down, Deborah sings, using his name as a funny little twist in her song. He just came out of that mountain like a thunderbolt with 10,000 men. Deborah did not go with him. This was the thing he needed to do; she had done the thing she needed to do. But they did it together.

Now then, let's draw some lessons. If we are going to be a Deborah and change our world, we must be like her. And I could take any of those things I've just touched on: her leadership ability, her giftedness, her compassion, the sense of maternal care for those that were in need. But I chose an aspect of her that I want to remember for myself; probably selfishly, I went off on this. I chose the aspect of her character that had this fight about it. She was a fighter. She was a fighter.

She fought the battles of the Lord. And I have been hugely challenged as I have looked at this woman's life in my own spiritual experience. And I want to bring that aspect to you now because we are not going to change our world unless we're fighters. Unless we realize there's a battle going on, we understand what it's all about, and we, like Deborah, decide to fight the battles of the Lord, then we'll change our world.

He calls us to do it, he equips us to do it, and we have to remember it's his war. Souls are at stake. Christ is our commander, and we are his soldiers. Men and women both are to be involved as he calls and places us. And God hasn't come to take sides; he's come to take over. He said, "Listen, the battle is mine; I'm calling my people to it. I expect them to be fighting the cause of sin and to be above all winning souls for Christ."

Because when you win souls for Christ, they stop having abortions. When you win souls for Christ, they get into government and make good rules. When you win souls for Christ, they stop killing each other. When you win souls for Christ, they have the power to overcome the drug habit. So let's be careful not at all to put down involvement. Deborah was involved on a social-political level. But let's remember that she had the bigger picture in mind.

She said to Barak, "The captain of the Lord of hosts goes before you. He's come to take over. We submit to him and under his authority, let's get the job done." So, Christ is our captain. But remember, too, it's an unseen battle that we face. We are his soldiers. Let me just say one thing. I heard a talk on Deborah and Barak once that really upset me. Now I think I'm more equipped to deal with why I was upset and the answer to it.

But a quite well-known Bible preacher was talking about Deborah and Barak, and he said this, because I wrote it down at the time, didn't know why it had upset me. He said, "Deborah was an all-right lady; she was fine. But Barak was the man that God really wanted to use. But because Barak hadn't got his act together, he had to use a woman. He had to use Deborah." And I thought, that doesn't sound right.

He said, "The reason is that Deborah was a woman and she shouldn't have been the leader of Israel; she shouldn't have been the judge. That Deborah was a woman and she shouldn't have been the prophetess. But because there was no one around who was a man who was shaping up, God didn't have a prophet and he didn't have a leader." I don't buy it. I want you to know now, I do not buy it. I didn't buy it then, but I didn't know why I didn't buy it then.

But what that man was really saying was, "Well, God didn't say, 'My plan is to use Barak but Deborah will have to do.' His plan was to use Barak, yes, but to use Deborah too, to sting him into action. And not even to sting him into action, because I don't want to put Barak down, and I don't buy that either. And that's what this man was saying. He was a weak-willed man, so God had no alternative but to use a woman who wasn't weak. I don't buy that."

God calls women as surely as he calls men. God doesn't use women because he doesn't have men, in other words. God wants to use, and I'm going right back to my Eve story, God wants to use both of us in harmony, in unity, in submission to each other and to the authority that he has placed over us. And in this case, sometimes in an extraordinary way, God uses a woman to do what men usually do.

And I believe with all my heart that God called Deborah to be judge of Israel. And I believe with all my heart he caused her to be gifted as a prophetess. And I believe that God calls men and women equally to win and to fight the battles of the Lord. You see, nobody else could be his Honeybee but Deborah, and nobody else could be his Thunderbolt but Barak. And that's so important to hear and to listen to in this day and age.

With a lot of women getting into muddle thinking, saying, "That looks like a man's job to me, this looks like a woman's job," be very, very careful. Because sometimes God chooses a woman to do what he has been choosing a man to do. There was one woman and 14 men, but she was not there by default. She was not there because there was no one else to use and she was the best that God could find. I believe that God anointed her, raised her up, and chose her as surely as he raised Barak up and chose him.

And I think they give a wonderful example of working together to fight the battle of the Lord. And so, how do we become a fighter? How do we become his Honeybee? How do we become his Thunderbolt? How do we do it? We do it like Deborah did it. We say, "I'm willing, God, to have you call me to whatever you have created me to be." And I come back to this theme: You designed me, you gifted me, to match up to what you've designed me to do. My gifting, my calling matches up to the plan and purpose you have for my life. That's where you go. That's where you start. And every single one of us can be a Deborah in that sense. And God wants us to be. And when we are, then we'll win the battle of the Lord and He will be glorified.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ. When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning his concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life, and rest assured he cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times. In "Weathering the Storms of Life," Jill teaches from the Gospel of Mark, examining the disciples' experience in a sudden storm to address the issues of suffering and faith, challenging you to examine your belief in God in the midst of trouble.

Her teaching and the scripture cards will encourage you as you discover how you can be sure of God's love for you and his control over every circumstance, no matter how sudden, severe, or unexpected. "Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth.

So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being here today. Come back again for more biblical truth to help you experience life. Join us next time on Telling the Truth.