How great was it to see the Matilda’s being honoured and recognized in the traditionally male sphere of football?  Their last game in the finals of the FIFA world cup being the most watched sporting event on TV.

One might think that women have only just recently got to the peak in their sporting abilities – but no, they have always been able to play sport – they just haven’t always been encouraged to do so or had the opportunities or same recognition as males!

Similarly, one might think that women have only been called and gifted in the past few decades to be priests and leaders in the Anglican Church!  We celebrated only 30 years last December since women were Priested here in Tasmania!

The Church may have been slow to encourage and recognize full female leadership, but God has always gifted and called women.  In today’s readings of Judges 4 and 5 we meet Deborah; a wonderful example of God using women to lead and rescue his people.  Of all the ‘judges’ she stands out as the most godly, wise, mature and capable Judge!

Last time we looked at the first 3 Judges, especially at left-handed, deceiving but clever Ehud.  We saw the pattern that occurs throughout the book of Judges: the Israelites do evil in the sight of the Lord, he raises an enemy to oppress them, after a period of being in submission the Israelites call out to God, he has mercy and raises up a leader/ judge to rescue them and defeat their enemy and they have peace for a time and then the pattern begins again.

Chapter 4 begins with the regular pattern of the Israelites again doing evil in the sight of the Lord and so God had handed them over into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan who reigned in Hazor.  This time the King as the evil enemy lurks in the background and it is Sisera, the commander of the army, who is the enemy’s front man in the story.

We have some interesting historical information here as we read that this oppressive army had 900 chariots fitted with iron.  This was the time in history of moving from the bronze to the iron age.  This description also tells us how powerful the enemy was, but God is always stronger.  The oppressors this time were Canaanites, the ones that God had told the Israelites to drive out of the land or else they would be a snare to them.  And what a snare they were.  The Israelites had been seduced by the Canaanite religion and drawn away from the true God, and now as a consequence, they were suffering.  After 20 years of cruel oppression, they remember their merciful God and cry out to him for help.

There are sometimes slight variations to the cycle in Judges.  Usually, we would then read that God raised up a judge, but this time we read that Deborah was already a leader of the Israelites.  It seems she was a more typical ‘judge’ as we understand, holding court and listening to disputes.  She was also described as a prophet.  Deborah was one who was in tune with God and spoke his words.

She was a very different character to Ehud, but like Ehud, she is an unexpected deliverer, precisely because she is a woman!  She had a husband, but he is not particularly noted at all.  It seems God had instructed her to call for Barak and she speaks God’s words to him.

It reads as if God is speaking directly through her to Barak, with the command to rally the Israelite troops to Mount Tabor where God will lead Sisera and his troops to the Kishon River and give them into the Israelite hands.

Barak knows how strong Sisera and his army are, especially with their ‘iron’ chariots and so is naturally dubious about this plan.  But he obviously reveres and respects Deborah and says he will only go if she goes with him.  To him, this would represent God coming with them, for Deborah was God’s mouthpiece and servant.  He trusts that God is with her.

She immediately agrees to go, not to attack the enemy herself, but to remind them that God is with them, it is God who sends them and will rescue them.  She then prophesies that the honour of Sisera’s capture will not be Baraks, as the Lord will deliver him into the hands of a woman.

At this point we might think that indeed it will be Deborah who will capture Sisera, but again we see God raise up another unlikely rescuer!  A woman called Jael, who is in fact a Kenite, and we read that the Kenites are in alliance with the Canaanites.  So why did she want to kill Sisera?  We are not told.  But God must have moved her to do what she did.  She is the one that fulfills Deborah’s prophecy.

Now Jael has more in common with Ehud, than Deborah, as like him, she uses deception to kill Sisera.  The Lord had indeed gone ahead of the Israelites and was delivering the enemy into their hands.  It is possible that like he did in one of the battles in Joshua, God used wild weather to throw the enemy into chaos.  For we read this in Barak and Deborah’s victory song in chapter 5…

“When you, Lord, went out from Seir,
when you marched from the land of Edom,
the earth shook, the heavens poured,
the clouds poured down water.
⁵ The mountains quaked before the Lord, the One of Sinai,
before the Lord, the God of Israel.”

It was the Lord who defeated the enemy, it was he who gave them into Barak and his troops’ hands.

And it was the Lord who moved Jael to murder Sisera, in a most unconventional way.

Sisera expected that he would be safe going into an allied woman’s tent.  She appears to be very hospitable as she offers him milk when he just asks for water and pretends to look out for him while he sleeps.  But like the unsuspecting King Eglon who left-handed Ehud surprised and killed, Jael takes a tent peg and with strength and skill drives it through his temple and kills him.

Immediately we read that Barak then arrives at the same tent, God has been choreographing this down to the last minute and detail.  Deborahs prophecy of a woman being honoured with the enemy’s defeat has been fulfilled.

Following Sisera’s death, the Israelites go on to subdue King Jabin and the Canaanites.  At the end of Barak and Deborah’s victory song in chapter 5, we read the typical pattern continues as the land then had peace for 40 years.

This story stands out in Judges with two women as the heroes.  They were very different characters.  Deborah is an upright public figure, respected, wise, in tune with God, speaking his words as a prophet.  Jael on the other hand was an ally of the enemy, she is ruthless, treacherous and uses deception to kill.  She flouts the laws of hospitality.  And yet God used her for his purposes.  Maybe like Rahab with the spies in Jericho, Jael recognized that the Israelite God was the one true God and so she shows allegiance to him, the true King rather than the oppressive cruel King Jabin of the Canaanites.

As the Matilda’s raised the banner for recognizing skilled women in football, Deborah is just one woman in the bible who stands out as waving a banner for gifted, capable, called and chosen women in leadership in the bible.

When Jesus comes, he continues to turn the societal patriarchal norms on their heads as he encourages and raises women.  From Mary who sits as his feet like a disciple, to the woman at the well, to the woman who is remembered for worshipping and pouring the most expensive perfume on his feet and to the women he appears to first when he is risen from the dead.

God used Deborah to lead his people, to speak his words, to encourage faith and bring peace to his troubled people in a time of trouble and crisis.

Are we willing to be used by God?  Are we in tune with him, to hear his words of courage and comfort for ourselves and others?  Will we encourage others to use their gifts, especially those who society or even the Church may not have encouraged.  Women, the young, the old, the supposed uneducated, those with a disability, those from a different cultural background or colour to us?

God is the one who calls and equips.  He is also the one we are to trust and follow, the one who always shows mercy when we call out to him, even when we are tempted to follow other ‘gods’ like the Israelites and do ‘evil’ in his eyes.  We thank God for Jesus who has defeated the enemy once and for all.  May we like Deborah, be willing to be used by him, and to live righteous, brave, courageous lives, living for and giving all the glory to God.  Amen.