NFL Football Player Barry Sanders of the Detroit Lions, who rushed for over 15,000 yards, ranks third all-time in NFL history. If you’ve ever watched him run backwards to go forwards you’d say that his running style was unconventional.  

What if we’ve domesticated God in our culture and in doing so, created a safe and conventional God when in reality, He has been unconventional all the time?  And if we have made God conventional, then would that mean that perhaps we are worshipping and following a God created more in our image than a God who has created us in his image? And one who is really much more unconventional and in turn, unpredictable, and unsafe than we ever imagine him to be?

The story of the judge, Deborah, in Judges 4 and 5 reveals to us how unconventional God really is.  It tells us how God operates in ways that surprise us, confuse us, stretch us, irritate us, inspire us, break us, and remind us that he is God and we are not. 

The Conventional Story
After the judge Ehud in verse 31 of chapter 3 came Shamgar and only one verse mentions him in the book of Judges.  He kills 600 Philistines with an oxgoad and in doing so, saved Israel again. (That’s all that is said about him).  After Ehud dies in 4:1, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord.  Often we imagine that the Christian life is a straight road.  We enter the pilgrimage of following Jesus and we imagine that each day, we take another step growing closer to Jesus, that each day we get a little more like Him and that each day we sin a little less.  In reality following Jesus is a curvy and at times treacherous road.  The people of Israel mirror this truth over and over again in Judges.  The author is careful to put the words “once again” in the opening verse of chapter 4.  Once again, when the leader, the judge dies, and there emerges a vacuum of godly leadership, the people go astray and feed their own passions instead of the passions of God.  This is the old, old story that does not surprise us in Judges.  God raises up a deliverer. The people follow the deliverer. The deliverer dies. God’s discipline falls upon the people. They eventually are full of despair and desperation. God, because of his love and covenant promise, raises up another deliverer. They are released from their desperate state only to fall back into their depravity when the deliverer dies.  This is their predictable and conventional pattern.  Before we get really down on them, we have to realize that this is also the predictable and conventional pattern in our life.  Realize that God is still working the same way in our life and we too act like the ancient Israelites.  I am still, at some level, struggling with the same core issues as I did 10 years ago as a follower of Jesus Christ.  And by God’s grace I have progressed; yet these struggles have surfaced at different seasons in my life.  The struggle breaks me. I cling to Jesus with greater passion and commitment than ever before, well at least for a season, and the cycle continues. 

On this side of eternity, all of us who are new creatures in Christ will struggle as we are constantly opposed by the sin that lives within us.  And yet God demands holiness. He demands that we be formed more in his image, that our life is more about the Creator than the creation.  And God loves us so much and so desires to grow us that he will not leave us alone, just as he did not leave the Israelites alone.  This is the irresistible love of God that can be found in the trials and godly discipline of life. 

Even though the Israelites experienced both the wrath of God and the logical impact of their disobedience, God’s dangerous love is experienced throughout Judges.  So the predictable and conventional part of God is that he will never stop loving us, and he will do what it takes, and allow what needs to be allowed in life for us to continually run to Him, and grow more like him. 

A first reading of the story in Judges 4 is very predictable.  The judge dies, and the Lord sells them into the hands of Jabin, the King of Canaan.  Jabin is not a nice guy and he abuses the people cruelly for 20 years, in verse 3.  In their despair they cry out to God.  God raises up a judge, Deborah, who along with Barak, leads an army against Jabin and his military leader, Sisera.  They are victorious against a much greater military power, and Sisera is killed fleeing from the battle.  Later, King Jabin is also destroyed in verse 24.  Now jump to the end of the story in 5:31 - they had peace for 40 years.  And in chapter 6:1, again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

The Unconventional Story
But a closer look at this conventional story illuminates a God who is very unconventional.  A God who is good, and loving but who works in unusual, and at times, even never-seen-before ways in biblical history and in our lives.  I want to break out all the parts of the story that are truly outside the box in how God operated in Judges.  Chapter 4 is a narrative story of what occurred.  Every other story in Judges is also a narrative story, but in chapter 5 we are not introduced to a new judge but a majestic poem that Deborah wrote and sang with Barak, celebrating the great victory.  Ancient songs about military victories were written to taunt the defeated enemy.  Like our “Na na na na, na na na na, hay hay hay goodbye.”  And they were also written as a tribute to conquering heroes as songs of thanksgiving, like Exodus 15 and Psalm 68.  The song ultimately praises the true Judge in the book of Judges, God himself, and fills in some of the gaps of what occurred in chapter 4, the narrative version.  Very unconventional. 

The countercultural unconventional
Deborah was unique in many ways.  First she was a woman who led Israel.  The language used in the text emphasizes her absolute leadership of all the people.  Clearly, the leadership gift that God doles out in Romans 12:8 is not gender-specific.   She would not be the last woman that God would use as a leader in the Bible, but she is the first woman to be described in such a high-capacity leadership position. She not only led the people, but she was also the only judge to have a judicial role as well.  The people would come to her as she sat under the palm tree to have their disputes settled.  This was a well-traveled part of the northern part of the land, so it would be a regular occurrence for Deborah to settle disputed matters.  The palm that Deborah sat under stands for stateliness and gracefulness.  In addition, the palm is associated with prosperity and leadership.  Not only is she a leader and a judicial judge, but she is also a prophetess, and so what she said was taken as directly from God himself.  The only parallel to Deborah’s position up to this point in the Old Testament is one of the greatest leaders of all time, Moses, who as leader, also held a judicial and prophetic position.  Deborah would not be the person the people would have expected to lead them.  Israel was a patriarchal society that treated women better than most of the people groups around them but still ultimately saw them as property.  Yet God chose the countercultural person Deborah to fulfill his divine will.  Have we ever limited God’s desire to use us because we didn’t feel as though we fit into the model of what others have told us a person who leads for God looks like?  Have we ever been guilty of being a roadblock for a person who wants to be used greatly for God because they didn’t fit into how we think God usually works?

The unconventional voice of God
Deborah sent for Barak, a man who was to lead 10,000 men against the armies of Jabin led by Sisera in accordance with God’s direction.  Deborah is clear that the Lord is the one who will ultimately deliver the Israelites. God will do not what the armies of Barak can accomplish.  This is a good thing because there is a technological transformation going on and the Israelites had fallen behind.  The culture was moving out of the Bronze Age into the Iron Age.  The people in the land of Canaan had 900 iron chariots. Not only was this a sizeable force for the day, the chariots were also made of iron. The wheels would have sharp iron spikes that could tear apart an enemy as they rode by.  This was the F-35 fighter of their day.  Understanding the size and technological advancement of the armies Barak needed to face helps us understand his reaction in vs. 8.  He is a straightforward kind of guy.  Speaking to Deborah, he is clear that if she goes, he will go, but if not, he won’t.  Barak knew that if Deborah was with him he was assured a victory.  Deborah, not Barak, was the representation of God amongst the people. She was the clear voice of God.  Like the Ark of the Covenant in the past guaranteeing military victory, so Deborah would do the same for Barak. Very unconventional. 

A safe God?
Deborah answers and she represents the voice of God that is immediate and clear.  “I will go with you but because of the manner you’re asking, or the conditions you are putting on this, the honor will not be yours but a woman’s” (v.9).  This is good stuff!  God is still going to accomplish his purposes through Barak, the people are still going to be delivered, they will still experience 40 years of peace, and God will still ultimately be the one who gets the glory in a song that was sung about this victory for generations.  Everything is accomplished but Barak doesn’t get the honor of taking out Sisera. That honor would be given to a woman, which in ancient Middle-Eastern culture was considered a dishonorable death.  It’s not as if Barak is bothered by this or even punished in any way because of his requests.  When we read this story, we tend to get down on Barak as a man with little faith, or limited faith, or conditional faith, and use him as an example of how not to obey God.  I see that in the story, and it is true that some of us put conditions on God, and because of it never experience authentic faith; never taste the full abundance of a life with him. The shalom of being at peace with God and at peace with each other.  This is often the place where we use big theological words and systems to explain why God doesn’t operate in a specific way any more.  We say God just doesn’t do that any more.  So we don’t risk anymore for God, and we don’t pray bold audacious prayers anymore and we stay safe in our little theological God-box never tasting what he would have for us.  Have you put so many conditions on how God operates that you are not experiencing the full potential of what he wants to do in and through your life?  Have you created just a safe God who no longer does the miraculous?

An often-unseen path
But what if there is another way - an often-unseen path of understanding what Barak is doing?  What if it is not so much about his conditions on God as his humility and faith in Deborah as the mouthpiece of God?  What if it’s not really about his total disregard for getting the honor but more about total confidence in God’s leader?  Besides Barak not receiving the honor of killing Sisera, there is no rebuke for him.  In fact he celebrates with Deborah in chapter 5.  Barak would have also been the military leader who led the Israelites against Jabin, the true evil power behind Sisera and his forces.  He has no issue with Deborah going with him, and when Deborah says that Sisera will be given over to a woman, there is no complaint voiced from Barak.  What if Barak actually knew that in order to get the 10,000 men he needed, he needed Deborah to build confidence amongst them, which only makes Deborah more of a leader and influencer in the story.  When you jump to the New Testament in Hebrews 11:31, Barak is mentioned among the ones who through history have had tremendous faith.  Deborah is not mentioned and we will see that the other heroine of the story, Jael, is not mentioned, but Barak is.  His faith that seems tainted by his conditions on God was remembered by the early church as being great. Wilcock writes, “So what are we witnessing when Barak refuses to set out without this woman?  Not cowardice - far from it - but faith: faith, that is, which is the glorious combination of a humble confession of his own inadequacy and a sure confidence in the grace of God, known in this case through his mouthpiece Deborah…He does his duty; let others have the glory.”  Perhaps how God works in our lives like the lack of faith of Barak or the faith of Barak is not always as clean and obvious as we would make it out to be, and yet it is good and right. 

An unexpected heroine
In the story there is this battle and God delivers the enemy into their hands through an unseasonal storm that in fact is occurring during the dry season, flooding the river so that the very heavy iron chariots get stuck.  The storms details are sung about in chapter 5.  The leader of the opposition, Sisera, knows he is defeated so he flees and hides in the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite.  Let’s stop and rewind.  Back in verse 9 when Deborah says the honor will be a woman’s, if you didn’t know the end of the story, every one would have imagined including Sisera himself, that the woman would be Deborah.  But God is unconventional. He is mysterious.  Another woman enters the story.  Jael takes action and encourages Sisera to enter into her tent.  Sisera has confidence in this woman because of the friendly relations between Jabin and Heber the Kenite.  One small fact that Sisera probably didn’t know that would have made him nervous was that this clan was related to Moses. 

Jael is not only the woman who gets the honor of taking out Sisera, but we also realize that she is not even an Israelite.  God uses someone outside of his covenant people to accomplish his covenant purposes.  And she fulfills God’s ways by breaking just about every Middle-Eastern hospitality rule.  Even in our culture we have some basic rules of hospitality: Don’t feed guests one week old leftovers – wash the sheets of the bed you are having them sleep in – put the Glade spray in close proximity to the toilet – and never drive tents stake through their temple while they’re sleeping.  Basic hospitality rules.  In the Middle East, an invitation to stay with you was an invitation of safety.  You would not harm the person who is your guest.  It would never be the woman who invited the guest in, but the man.  She did however make him comfortable by providing the normal Middle-Eastern hospitality of covering him. And she gave him a more expensive drink than water, a milky yogurt drink.   Sisera, still nervous, asks her to deceive anyone who comes looking for him.  Jael now breaks the cardinal rule of protection and picks up a weapon she would be familiar with, as it was the women who set up the tents and took them down.  She drives the tent peg with so much power (the word is ‘thrust’ and is the same word used for the power with which Ehud drove the short sword into a prior king’s fat belly), that it goes through his temple and pins him to the ground.  Just in case we didn’t think that that would kill him, the Bible says he died (v.22).  Sisera finally catches up and sees that what Deborah prophesied came true, though in an unconventional way.  The woman was not Deborah, not even an Israelite, and the weapon that killed this great warrior was not even a weapon, but a tool used for setting up tents. 

Our unfathomable, unconventional God
What if we consider ourselves so wise that we believe we now understand God’s workings, and in doing so, we’ve created a safe and conventional God, when in reality he has been unconventional all the time, and we have been dead wrong about him?  And if we have made God conventional, then it would mean that perhaps we are worshipping and are following a God who is created more in our image than a God who has created us in his image, and is really much more unconventional and in turn, unpredictable and unsafe than we ever imagine him to be?  What wonder, healing, joy, opportunity, adventure, grace, forgiveness and Kingdom impact would occur when we truly embrace that God is good and desires to work in our lives in unimaginable ways when we trust in Him, even when he operates in ways that seem just totally outside our conventional theology of how God should be. 

On the Journey together,

Jason Esposito,
Senior Pastor