Hebrews 11 verse 32. It says, And what shall I more
say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of
Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah, of David also, and
Samuel, and the prophets. And then he describes what faith
does, what faith accomplishes in these people. And notice,
I'm just gonna read through this because it's good for us to have
this in the context. It says, what shall I more say
about these things? He says, who through faith, listen
to this list, subdued kingdoms, not just a few people, but kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of
the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in
fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received
their dead, raised to life again. And others, notice, in the first
group, they were delivered. through faith in this life. But notice in the second group,
they were delivered through the trouble. even though they died. Women received their dead raised
to life again, and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance
that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had
trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wandered about
in sheep and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented,
of whom the world was not worthy They wandered in deserts and
in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these
all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the
promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that
they without us should not be made perfect." That's the conclusion of chapter
11 of Hebrews, the chapter of faith. the book of Hebrews was
written to the Hebrew people, the Jews, who had come to believe
Christ. They had grown up under the old
covenant. They had lived by the ceremonies
and ordinances of the law. And then they heard the gospel. They heard about the Lord Jesus
Christ. And yet they did not yet fully
understand the implications of it. And so they lived their lives
wondering, what else? We have God's law. We have these
outward ordinances. We have the physical temple.
We have real priests. And they began to doubt whether
or not the Christ they believe was really enough. And so let
me show you what this says in the book of Acts, in Acts chapter
13. Listen to the way the apostle
preaches to these people, the same kind of people, as is written
here. The apostle Paul says in Acts
13, verse 38, After he rehearses the Old Testament and his fulfillment
in Christ, he says, Be it known unto you, therefore, men and
brethren. He's talking to those who knew
the law. Be it known unto you, therefore,
men and brethren, that through this man, which man? Jesus Christ. is preached unto you the forgiveness
of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things
from which you could not be justified by the law of moses that's what
they heard now you cannot be justified by the law of moses
but all who believe christ have the forgiveness of sins and are
justified that's the gospel That's the gospel. Christ has done it.
And now the book of Hebrews is written to those who believe
Christ, who did not understand that the New Testament was the
fulfillment of the old, and that the New Testament was fulfilled
by Jesus Christ in his shed blood, in his obedience to the law.
He fulfilled all that God said before. And this is what the
Old Testament was about, what he would do in his sufferings,
and his death, and the glory that would follow. Now I want
to take you to a few scriptures in the New Testament that show
us what the Old Testament was all about. Go with me to the
book of John, in John chapter 5. I'm just laying the foundation
here for what we're going to see in the matter of Barak. In John chapter 5, He says this,
turn to John 5 in verse 39. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees
and to the scribes, and he says to them, search the scripture,
for in them you think you have eternal life. They thought they
were good to go, that they had eternal life. And they, the scriptures, are
they which testify of me. Jesus is saying, and you will
not come to me that you might have life. If you understood
the scriptures that you claim to trust, you would understand
they speak of Christ. And if you knew that, you would
come to Christ and believe him. That's what Paul said in Acts
13, 38, 39, all who believe him are justified from all things
which the law could not justify you. And then in John 5 also,
notice this, he says in verse 45, Do not think that I will
accuse you to the Father, there is one that accuses you, even
Moses, in whom you trust. Verse 46, For had you believed
Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of me. So what is Jesus saying here? That the Old Testament scriptures
are about him, and they are intended to bring us to believe on, to
trust Jesus Christ. Not our own personal obedience,
but his obedience. Look also at Luke, the book of
Luke in chapter one. In Luke chapter 1, this is Zechariah,
the father of John the Baptist, who's speaking in verse 68. He
says, Zechariah says, by the mouth of Zechariah, the spirit
of God is explaining. He says, blessed be the Lord
God of Israel, for he, the God of Israel, has visited and redeemed
his people. And he has raised up a horn of
salvation for us in the house of his servant David. That horn
is Christ. As he spake, notice verse 70,
as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been
since the world began. What was the message of the prophets
since the world began? the one God would raise up to
redeem Israel, the one who is himself God, who is the Christ
of God. Notice, let's go on and read
here, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the
hand of all that hate us. That's what he would save us
from. The Lord, coming as Christ, would save us from our enemies
according to what? All the prophets since the world
began. to perform the mercy promised
to our fathers, to remember his holy covenant, the oath which
he swore to our father Abraham that he would grant to us that
we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve
him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him
all the days of our life." And so he goes on saying that John
would be the child who would give knowledge of salvation to
his people by the remission of their sins. This is the fulfillment
of what the prophet said. Look at Luke chapter 24. In Luke
chapter 24, these are the words of Jesus. In chapter 24, the
angels are speaking here in verse 6. Luke 24 verse 6, the angels
said to them in verse 5, why do you seek the living among
the dead? They went to look for Jesus in the tomb. Why are you
seeking the living among the dead? Verse six, he is not here,
but is risen. Remember how he spake to you
when he was yet in Galilee? And this is what he said, saying,
the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men
and be crucified in the third day rise again. Do you remember
that? It must be, he says. And then look over at verse 24. Verse 25, he says in the same
chapter, Then Jesus said to these two that were walking with him
on the road to Emmaus, O fools and slow of heart to believe
all that the prophets have spoken. And he gives them that message.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into
his glory? It must be. Ought not it? Should it not be that Christ
should suffer? They were wondering, why did
he die? Listen, he says, this is what the prophets have been
talking about. Don't you understand the message
of the scriptures that Christ must suffer? It was necessary. Why? Because it pleased the Father. that through him, through his
death, he would deliver those who were subject to death, his
people, and by their sins. Look at verse 44. Look at verse
44. I'm sorry, in verse 27, "...and
beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them
in the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." In all the
Scriptures, Christ laid out to these two men those things the
Scriptures spoke of concerning Him. In verse 44, He goes on,
He says to these who are with Him in this room, He said to
them, these are the words which i spake to you while i was yet
with you that all things must be fulfilled which were written
in the law of moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning
me and then he opened their understanding that they might understand the
scriptures thus it behooved christ Thus it is written, and thus
it behoove Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third
day, and that repentance and remission of sin should be preached
in his name among the nation." Christ would go to the cross,
he would suffer at the hands of wicked men, die, and then
in victory rise and justify his people and declared to them what
He had done, the remission of their sins. And they would believe
Him, and in so believing, they would receive that truth to themselves. And now one more scripture. Look
at Acts chapter 10, in verse 43. Acts 10, 43. Notice, to Him,
Christ, give all the prophets witness. What was the message
of the prophets? the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that would follow, the sufferings and the death
of Christ, his conquest over sin, delivering us, redeeming
us from the hand of our enemies, that we might serve God in righteousness
all the days of our life. That's the message of the prophets.
Now, the book of Hebrews is explaining that message. It's explaining
that the Lord Jesus Christ actually accomplished all that was recorded
in the scriptures of the law. And remember what the law is?
What is the law? It's the requirements of God,
God's requirements upon us for our obedience, first of all.
Don't do this, but do do that, remember? You must worship the
Lord your God alone, no idols, and on and on. Do not kill, do
not steal, do not covet, do not lie, don't bear false witness,
keep the Sabbath holy, and all of these things in the law. But
the other part of the law, besides God's requirements for our obedience,
was what? It was a sacrifice needed in
order to make atonement for our sin. The Lord Jesus Christ did
both. His obedience fulfilled the requirements
for our obedience. His sacrifice of himself took
away our sins because it made atonement to God. It made a propitiation. It satisfied God in his blood. Now, Hebrews is explaining to
the Jewish believers all that Jesus Christ accomplished. His
work, his work, he fulfilled it. The priesthood of the Old
Testament could never make anything perfect. Christ made all of his
people perfect by his one offering of himself to God for our sins. That's what Hebrews is about.
And then he tells them, now faith is the big thing. We live by
faith. We don't live by our own personal
obedience to God, hoping God will accept us at the end. No,
that's the law, and no one was ever justified that way. But
we live in dependence upon what Christ has already accomplished,
finished, perfected by His one death. One historical act of
Christ, his life and death, to make his people perfect before
God is all of our salvation, and that's called the New Covenant. The covenant, Jesus said, was
made in his blood. His bloodshed fulfilled the conditions
by which God fulfilled all promises to us, given to us in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And so when the writer to the
Hebrews is speaking about faith, he refers back to these people
in the Old Testament who also believe God, according to the
prophets, according to what they heard. Faith came to them by
hearing, and the message they heard spoke of what? Christ. Again, that's the message of
the prophets. Jesus Christ and Him crucified,
the sufferings of Christ, the glory that would follow, and
our salvation by what He did. The finished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ for us, to deliver us from our sins, our enemies,
in order that we might be given the Spirit of God and life and
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and live by faith in Him. We
live now by faith. And so the Hebrews were tempted
to go back to thinking that the whole matter was a fulfillment
of the Old Testament they needed to make by their own obedience,
by conditions they fulfilled. And our whole mindset as fallen
sinful people is to think that God accepts us because of what
we do. And we even translate that false
concept into faith, where we think, well, God accepts me because
I believe. But he doesn't accept us because
we believe. He accepts us because Christ
obeyed and he believed and the faith that we're given to see
that enables us to receive in our own experience the truth
of it so that we're persuaded and we embrace it and we live
in confidence and in victory because of what he did. In other
words, Christ has already obtained our victory. And he sits on heaven's
throne, and he gives us the victory. And the way, the means through
which he gives that to us is seeing his victory through the
gift of faith, being persuaded of it. And so he says in Hebrews
11, if you still have your finger there in Hebrews 11, just to
remind you of this, in verse 1 he says, now faith is the substance
of things hoped for. What do we have in this world?
How do we know that what God has said is true concerning Christ,
that we're saved in the Lord Jesus Christ? How do we know
these things? Someone says, how do you know
God created the world? Because God said so. Well, how
do you know God said so? I believe him. The gift of faith. God gives us faith. He gives
faith to his people. because Christ sits in glory
and he gives them the reward of his obedience. He gives them
that faith by his spirit through the word of God preached to us
concerning what he did and what he accomplished in our salvation
and we say that's it. We are justified by him, by this
man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And so faith
doesn't bring something to God. Faith says, yes, Christ is all
and sees that God not only provided, but received him for us and tells
us, declares to us what he's done in his son. And that's what
he's telling the Hebrews. But in this, here's the thing.
Just as Joshua brought Israel into the land of Canaan and gave
them that land, that land of rest, by his conquest over their
enemies, so the Lord Jesus Christ brings us into our eternal rest,
our salvation in Christ, by his conquest over our sin and Satan
and death and hell and everything that is our enemy, our sinful
nature even. But the fact is, is that after
the book of Joshua comes the book of Judges. And in that book,
what do we find? We find the strangest kinds of
things happening. We find a man killing his enemy
with a dagger shoved into his belly. And then we find this
woman named Deborah who's a prophetess. A woman who's a prophetess? That
seems contrary to other places in scripture. And then we find
Gideon when we find all these other men, Samson and Samuel
and David, all these prophets, and they all had one message,
Jesus Christ and him crucified. But we don't see it so clearly
when we first read through it until we get to the New Testament
and in the book of Hebrews is expounded to us. So that as believers
now, even though Christ has saved us by his work on the cross,
what is our experience? The book of Judges. We find ourselves
failing. We find ourselves tempted. We
find ourselves weak. We all have different experiences
and are in different circumstances. Some of us experience the greatest
of trouble, and others it seems like we're worried that we don't
have enough trouble. And some of us are constantly
tempted and falling, and others are looking, you know, well,
I don't feel so much problem with that. And then they have
problems with other things they're not even aware of. So we all
have different personalities and circumstances, but God has
given us the same faith. And that faith has Christ as
its object. We're not saved by how strongly
we believe. We're saved how strongly Christ
obeyed and how he believed God, and what God thinks of his obedience
and his shed blood. You see, faith is not something
we work up. Faith is not something we bring
to God to get things. Faith is God's gift to us. We
don't have it. God has to give it to us, and
he gives it to us to see what he has done in his son for us.
But in this life we live now, we struggle so much with sin
that we wonder, how is it possible that I'm even a believer, or
how is it possible that God would actually save me from my sins?
And what does God say? Looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. You see, the whole struggle in
the Old Testament, in the book of Judges, And outside of that
book in Exodus and these other places, book of Numbers, they're
constantly at war with their enemies. It shows the utter failure
and the weakness of God's people in the experiences of their life.
And yet, and yet, It shows us that even though in themselves
they are weak and tempted and often failing, what does it say?
That Christ prayed for their faith so that he upholds that
faith in himself. He causes them to look to him
and expect, expecting that he will fulfill his word even though
in themselves they're utterly unable to bring it about. That's
what Hebrews 11 one says. Faith is the substance of things
expected, of things hoped for. The evidence, the one thing we
have in the time experience of our life is this God-given faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are justified by his blood,
by his obedience. He sits in glory now as proof
of that and that God is going to give us victory over our sin
and deliver us from our sins by his grace and not by our own
personal strength or virtue, or obedience, or our tenacity,
or anything that comes from us, but all because of Christ. And
so what we see here is in this list in verse 32, Hebrews chapter
11 verse 32, what do we see here? Look at the list again. What
shall I more say, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon,
Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets, seven
different groups of people. And in all these people, what
do we find? We find failure, we find weakness, we find different
circumstances, we find different personalities, but they all had
one thing in common. They had the same Savior, and
they had the same God-given faith in that Savior. They had the
same Lord who ruled in heaven for them to save them from their
sins, and they trusted Him. They were all united to Christ
by the same Spirit. in the same faith, and they were
all given the victory. Some of them were delivered out
of their problems because through this God-given faith, like Barak
and Gideon and so on, like David with Goliath. And yet they were
miserable failures in themselves. Remember how Gideon doubted God
so much he had to have a sign after a sign, show me a sign,
show me a sign. And Barak, he had to hear God's
Word from a woman, and he had to have her go with him. He wasn't
even going to go to fight without her going with him. That seems
unusual. And David, remember him? After
he killed Goliath, then he goes and commits adultery with Bathsheba,
and murdered her husband, and covered it up. It's like he had
the grossest sin possible. And so we see the weaknesses
in all these men, even Samuel. Samuel was afraid of Saul. And
so when he anointed David, he had to do it secretly. Jephthah
made a rash commitment that whatever comes out of my house first after
this battle, if you give me the victory, I'll give that to you.
And it was his daughter. So these people were just ordinary people.
They were people who had weaknesses and different personalities,
just like us. We're not the same. You're different
than I am. But we are the same in this way.
We all have sin. And we all have a savior declared
to us from God's word. And we all love that savior because
he saved us from our sins. And that's why we join together.
Because he has called us, like the Hebrew writer warns him,
now don't forsake the assembling of yourselves together as the
manner of some is. And so much the more as you see
the day approaching. But exhort one another daily.
So we gather together as sinners from different backgrounds, diverse
in personality, in status, in life, and yet we're humbled because
of our sin, we're utterly dependent upon Christ to save us from our
sins, and with that, we rally together and praise his name,
that he's the one who has promised, actually accomplished our salvation. So then all the weaknesses of
our current condition, we realize that it's the tactic of Satan
to try to discredit Christ in casting doubts in our minds that
he can't save us from our sins. And so we give up. We say, yeah,
I'm too great a sinner, or my sins are too great, and so I
can't trust Christ. And that, again, is just pride,
thinking that somehow we have to come up with the goods. We
have to make our contribution. We have to fulfill our part,
knowing that we could never and would never have fulfilled our
part, that Christ had to do it all. The Hebrews were no different
from us. They had the same. Now go back
to Judges chapter 4. I just gonna have to make a few
comments here for time sake, because we read a lot of this
and it was long, and I wanna give you just distill some of
these things. You can see them now. With the
background in mind, faith is the victory. Remember the song?
And faith is not us coming up with something that God can look
at and say, okay, now I see you've done, you've met your commitment,
you've done your part, you've laid down your life, and I'll
give to you the promises. No. Faith is seeing that Christ
is all. God gave him the promises, and
he fulfilled the conditions when he laid his life down for us,
and he obtained them. He sits in glory because he accomplished
our salvation. Now, we know how this is in our
life, don't we? We go through our lives and we
doubt, we fear, we fall, and sometimes we feel stronger than
others. We're up and down. The Lord never changes. The Lord
never changes. His strength is never diminished
by our weaknesses. His purpose is never altered.
His victory is never lost. He's never going to say, well,
you made it, but man, You know, you would have done a lot better
if you would have done your part. No, he was never disappointed. He brings all of his sheep and
he perfects all of them because it's his work. So that we're
given this view of Christ and his work, that our salvation
in him is so secure and so perfected that we now already sit with
him in glory. He predestinated us to the adoption
of children. He called us by his grace. He
justified, he glorified all of it spoken as a done, accomplished,
finished, past event. And it comes to us now in seeing
God's word, stating to us what's done in Christ and simply trusting
him. It takes the stress off. It almost
makes us giddy with happiness and causes us to feel such great
peace in the midst of turmoil, especially our doubts about ourselves.
that the Lord Jesus Christ has actually saved me, and I sit
now with him in glory. And even though I have nothing
but this faith, that's the substance, that's the bedrock of things
hoped for. It's the evidence of things I
cannot see, because Christ did it, and God tells me about him
from his word. All right, so Judges chapter
4. So Deborah was a prophetess. Why? Why did God use a woman
here? I mean, in this age that we live
in, at this time, we would get offended if we were to say, God
did not, He does not speak, He does not allow a woman to teach
and preach in the church. We get offended at that. In fact,
most places will actually boast in the fact that a woman is a
preacher in their congregation. But what does God say? Well,
in 1 Corinthians 14, he says, I don't, let me just read a few
verses to you. So you understand this is the
background. So we can see the beauty of this, what God has
done here in the Old Testament. Remember the Old Testament was
in many ways a shadow of what would come. So he says here in
1 Corinthians chapter 14, find this here. He says in verse 31, for you may all prophesy
one by one that all may learn and all may be comforted. He's
talking about each of the people in God's church which have been
given the gift to speak the gospel, to teach and to preach the gospel. But they might think that this
is a gift that every person, male or female, has. So he corrects
that potentially wrong view. He says, He says, now, you may all do
this, and the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
You can't, you don't just stand up and say, hallelujah, brother!
No, that's not, that is not control. God has not given you this uncontrolled,
I gotta just jump up and say something right now in the middle
of the service. No, that's a mistaken notion. Let me be as kind as
possible. That's just a misguided notion of how God wants us to
operate in the church. No way. People are not jumping
up and down and piping off in God's... No, you have control
over your spirit. That's what he's saying. One
at a time. in an orderly way. God is not
the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches.
Now he says in verse 34, and I don't mean to offend anyone
here, but this is what God says, so don't take it from me, take
it from the Lord, let your women keep silence in the churches.
For it is not permitted unto them to speak, to speak in prophecy,
teaching and preaching. but they are commanded to be
under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn
anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a
shame for women to speak in the church." Okay, so that's clear,
isn't it? This is the New Testament. This
is the apostle Paul, he's saying, no, women are not supposed to
teach and preach in church. And this is repeated also in
the book of Timothy, 2 Timothy. Let me see if I can get this.
Reference, right? Just so you get two or three
witnesses on this. He says in 2 Timothy, well, I'm going to have a hard
time finding it. So I'm not, oh yeah, here it
is in 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy 2, he says, let the
woman learn in silence with all subjection. You know, that's
actually a relief. Let me tell you, it's a burden. It's a big, big burden to speak
and to ask the Lord to actually guide you to actually say the
truth and not to say more or less than the truth. And it's
a huge responsibility. Be thankful that you can just
sit and listen. So he says here, let the woman
learn in silence with all subjection, but I suffer not a woman to teach
nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Why? For Adam was first formed, then
Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived
was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be
saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity
and holiness with sobriety." So he's going back to the garden.
Remember Adam was first created and then Eve. Adam was not made
for Eve. Eve was made for Adam. He was
first created. And this is a parallel to Christ
in his church. Christ was not made for the woman.
The woman was made for him. The church was made for Christ.
And so he's trying to set in order that the reason God has
given this mandate in the church that the woman keeps silence
in the matter of teaching and preaching is not to, not because
the woman is somehow inferior to the man, in our everyday thing,
because in Galatians 3.27, it says there's neither male nor
female in the church. You're all one in Christ. But
the matter comes down to what God has done in Christ and what
he does in our physical, in matters of our relationships now, to
teach that, to hold it up as a type of that. Children are
not born with the authority over their parents, are they? No. And God doesn't give parents
authority over their children by their greater intellect, does
he? It's not because they're smarter,
although they usually are when the children are young. It's
not because they're somehow better. It's because that's God-delegated
authority. God-delegated authority. So the
woman in the relationship in the home is supposed to be in
submission to her husband. And the husband is supposed to
be in submission to Christ. And therefore, as a husband in
submission to Christ, what does he do? He's going to be feeding
his wife and his children with the living bread, with the scriptures
concerning Christ. That's the God-given structure.
and is that way in the church as well. Because these two places,
the home and the church are where God makes known his order and
his glory in the preaching of Christ, okay? Not in the civil
governments, it's not gonna happen there, but it is in the church
and it is in the home. So we need to understand this.
And when we bring the gospel in our home, We bring it as God's
revealed truth, don't we? We don't tell our kids, look,
I figured it out, therefore, this is what you need to do.
We say, no, the Lord has said this, and I'm under his authority. So the parents are instructing
their children, look, you need to obey Christ. If you don't
obey Christ, then you and I are both disobedient. You need to
obey him because he's given me this God-given role as a parent
to bring you up in the fear and the nurture of the Lord. Don't
take it as my greater strength and my greater wisdom. Take it as from the Lord. That's
the only way we're saved is by receiving the objective revealed
truth concerning Christ. You and I, we're both sinners. We have to take God's word as
the object of faith. Okay, so back to Deborah. So
why was Deborah an exception then? Well, because it says in
Isaiah 3, in a couple of places in Isaiah 3, that God would use
this inverted order in order to shame his people. He said,
children will rule over you and women will rule over you. in
Isaiah chapter three. This was in a consequence of
their sin and disobedience to him. They would not submit to
him as the woman should to her husband, the church to Christ.
And so he inverted the order in the experience of our life
in order to shame them and bring them under the subjection of
God's word as a humbled sinner. And so now this woman. But yet,
even though he had done this in order to bring them to Christ,
because what is Deborah? Look at Judges 4, verse 4, Deborah
is a prophetess. So therefore, what does she speak?
God's Word. And what do prophets speak? Well,
we just rehearsed it in all those scriptures. They tell of the
Lord Jesus Christ and His sufferings and death for our salvation and
His glory that would follow our total victory over our enemies.
Isn't that the message of Christ? The total victory of His people
over sin and their sinful nature. and Satan and his kingdom and
death and hell and everything that is opposed to them in honor
of God's law by the obedience of Christ in his satisfaction
that he made to God by the sacrifice of himself in submission to his
father in love. That's what fulfills the law. That's our salvation. And that's
what Deborah therefore would have been speaking about, even
though it might be cloaked in the historical relationship of
these people, their enemies and these people. OK, does that make
sense? Deborah was a prophetess. She
spoke of Christ and him crucified. Those who needed to hear it would
hear God's word from her. And that would humble them because
they would have to hear it from a woman, which was an inverted
order. And yet, And yet, here's the thing of scripture, all of
God's people together, what are they called as the church? The
bride of Christ. And how do we come into the kingdom
of God? Through birth. And how does that
birth occur? By the spirit of God. How? Through
the preaching of the gospel. And where do we hear the preaching
of the gospel? It's through the people of God,
right? So even the church is compared
to a woman giving birth to children, through the husband Christ by
his spirit, through the gospel being preached. So we ourselves
are born. This one and that one is born
of her, remember? And even the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, what does it say? In the fullness of time, God
sent forth his son made of a woman. So here we see a picture of the
Lord Jesus Christ in his incarnation and his people subject to the
gospel in the new birth and in all of their dealings so that
we are subject to one another, aren't we? In Ephesians chapter
four, we're subject to one another. Not because someone says, oh,
go pick up that can over there and throw it in the garbage.
That's not him. He's talking about a subjection to one another
in love through the gospel. We're constantly ministering
to one another as we speak of Christ and our salvation in Him,
aren't we? In God's glories, we're praising
God and thanking Him for the salvation as we gather together,
speaking to one another in love and in truth. All right, so Deborah
was a prophetess. And Barak, therefore, had to
hear God's word through this woman. so it goes on. I want to just take you to back
to some of these verses. Look at verse 6 of Judges 4.
She sent, she called Barak the son of Abinoam of Kedesh Naphtali,
and she said to him, Hath not the Lord God of Israel commanded,
saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten
thousand men of the children of Naphtali, and of the children
of Zebulun? And I will draw to the river to the river Kishon,
Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, and his chariots, and his
multitude, and I will deliver him into thy hand. So Barak was
a man, he was a tribe evidently of Naphtali, or Naphtali, however
you say it. And Deborah was told by God,
call Barak. And Deborah was told to tell
Barak, you call 10,000 men of these two tribes, Naphtali and
Zebulun. So what is this saying? God ordained a specific number
of people from specific tribes to go out against the enemy and
then he was going to fight for them and they were going to,
the enemy was going to be delivered into their hands. That's what
he's saying by his word through Deborah. And so what does Barak
do? He hears what God promised from
his word concerning the victory over their enemies. And what
does he do? And Barak said to her, if you
will go with me, verse eight, then I will go. But if you will
not go with me, I will not go. What does he need? He needs God's
word. I need to hear from God. And
if I don't hear from God, if he doesn't speak to me, I'm not
going to do it. That's the way I understand this.
Even though in his weakness, in his own personality, in his
individual circumstances, in his situation, he couldn't just
take what God said from Deborah. He had to actually have her go
along with him. So you can see his weaknesses here. And yet
God used, through faith in Christ, God used his weaknesses to show
himself strong. And notice verse 9, she said,
I will surely go with thee, notwithstanding the journey that thou takest
shall not be for thine honor. For the Lord shall sell Sisera
into the hand of a woman. And so Deborah arose and went
with Barak to Kedesh. So even though Barak trusted,
he trusted that this was God's word, and he hazarded his life,
went into the battle, he called these 10,000 men, ordained by
God to go and fight, And he went down according to this obedience
of faith, trusting that God was going to do what he said. He
heard that word from Deborah. And even though he did that and
went down with her, it says that the journey is not going to be
to his honor, not to your glory. Isn't that the way God brings
us? in salvation, we come to the point where we are saying
in our heart, it doesn't matter how I hear God's word or who
I hear it from. I don't care if it's an infant
or an old man or an old anybody. I just need to hear from Christ.
I need to hear, I need to know that his saving work for me is
all my salvation. And so that's what Barak is saying
here. I can't go without you, without having the one through
whom God speaks, speaking to me of Christ, because that's
what she would have been doing. And I don't care whether I get
any honor out of this. I do not care. just save me i
don't deserve any honor i don't want to stand before god and
all of his holiness and try to make up some story that's not
true it's not true i don't deserve any glory christ did it all i
was a helpless and hopeless sinner and he saved me by his grace
you see god said he was going to do something
that he was going to deliver it now look at verse 14 I'm not
going to go through every verse here, because we summarized that
as we were reading it. But he says in verse 14, And
Deborah said to Barak, Listen up, for this day, this is the
day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand. Is not
the Lord gone out before thee? What is the message of the gospel?
It's what Christ has done. How he went out before his people. Before time began, he entered
into a covenant with the Father and pledged himself as the surety
for his people, that he would stand before God's justice and
answer with himself for them in all their sins. And then he
would subdue all their iniquities. He would silence their enemies
and subdue them because of his victory at the cross. That's
the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has delivered your enemies
into your hand and he will go out before you. And therefore
it says in verse 14, so Barak went down from Mount Tabor and
10,000 men after him. Faith heard what Christ had done,
that he went out first before us, and faith goes down again,
faith goes into the valley to fight with the enemy. Now here's
the thing, We know that we're justified by what Christ has
done. We know that God looks upon him
and accepts us only for what he thinks of his son, don't we?
Are we convinced of that? We ought to be. That's the very
core of our belief. Faith doesn't make things happen.
Faith sees that Christ did it all. Faith doesn't come to God
with his value. Faith says all the value is in
Christ. We understand that, don't we?
Take a look at the bulletin, I tried to capture some of these
things in there. So here's Barak, he's going down
to fight a battle that the Lord says he had already delivered
him into his hand. Isn't that the way we live in
our life? We have sin, we have temptations. What does God say
to us? Christ has done it all. Salvation
is done. He finished the work. Isn't that
the message of the gospel? You are justified from all things
by the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet we have to go into the
battle. Fight don't we and we find ourselves
in the experience of our daily lives constantly at war with
our old sinful nature and With our doubts and our fears wondering
am I say can I ever be? Will I ever find a point where
I can just say finally? No, you won't you're always going
to be forced to this one point My salvation is all done by Christ
That's it, that's it. And in 1 Corinthians chapter
10, there's a verse here I wanna take you to. And maybe I'll close
here because it's getting long. 1 Corinthians, he says, in verse 11, now, excuse me. Now all things happened unto
them, the Old Testament saints, for our ensamples, or for a type,
for us. And they are written for our
admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore,
let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. You saw
their lives, right? Most of them fell in the wilderness. Remember the wars in Canaan?
Remember their idolatry? Remember how they cried to the
Lord and he delivered them? And now he says in verse 13,
there has no temptation taken you, but such as is common to
man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that you are able, but will with the temptation also
make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. What's
he saying here? I'm facing this temptation in
my life. It seems like it comes up every day. Oh, what am I going
to do? I'm just going to resolve to
avoid this problem. I'm going to stand up and shout
down my temptation. No, that's not the way we overcome
sin, is it? Try it. Go ahead. How's that
working? It's not because that's not the
way grace works. What God does in temptation is
he forces us into that posture of utter helplessness and weakness
because we know that unless he holds us up, we're going to fall.
And in fact, when we fall, he has to hold us up. Remember Peter? Remember Peter? Here he stood
on the Mount of Transfiguration and Jesus has transfigured before
him and he sees Jesus in all of his glory shining forth. And
he hears God the Father speaking from heaven, this is my beloved
son, hear ye him. And then comes that night when
he denied Jesus three times. What happened? He utterly failed,
didn't he? But before he denied Jesus three
times, what happened? Jesus said, but I have prayed
for your faith. And what was the way that Peter
escaped that temptation? Christ gave him faith. And that's the way we escape.
We look to Christ and we're often delivered and often we fall and
then we look to Christ and we're able to bear it, aren't we? We're
able to stand by this faith. upon this grace, wherein we have
access into this grace, wherein we stand. You see, that's the
way the Christian lives his life as a weak and helpless and doubting
and fearful person. Facing circumstances that seem
unique to us, that other people seem to have all confidence to
get through, but we can't until the Lord shows us it's all in
Christ. And we stand, and we wonder, and when God speaks to
us from the gospel, we realize it's all in Him. And that's the
key. That's the faith God gives to
us. And so even though we see no evidence in ourselves, our
evidence is Christ has done it all. And we have been given this
grace to just say, yes, it has to be him. It has to be him alone. or I'm lost, lost. And the book
of Judges is all about our weaknesses and failure and how God sends
these judges to speak to us of Christ and Him crucified, these
prophets who would make us know where our salvation is, just
like in the book of Hebrews. He brings them back to this to
say, it's in Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, His sufferings
and the glory that should follow by which He has redeemed us from
our enemies. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for
this encouragement, this exhortation from your word to us that even
though we're all unique from one another, we're common, we're
joined to Christ by his spirit, members of his body, individually,
each one of us depending upon him with the same grace of faith
by your spirit to see that Christ has done it all. He is our salvation. He sits in glory. We are with
him seated there. Help us to know, Lord, that our
salvation is something we now have, and yet we are experiencing
the victory of it day by day as we continue to look to him.
Give us this grace, Lord, to see and this persuasion that
comes from you only that we might gladly embrace what you've done
and embrace Christ and love him and to see our brethren and realize
that our brethren are easily overtaken in these faults and
so encourage one another daily and exhort one another daily
and not forsake this joint, this coming together so that we might
do so in Jesus name we pray, amen.