Judges 4:4-7 “Deborah’s Faith”

I just want to throw some context out for us in order to understand the Scripture about Deborah. What we heard takes place about 200 years after Joshua crosses the Jordan. The Hebrew slaves that Moses led out of Egypt and into the Sinai for forty years have been struggling to establish their nation in the Promised Land. They have conquered some limited areas, but for the most part they are stuck in the highlands with limited food and resources. The good valley lands are still in the hands of the Canaanites.

The Hebrew tribes do not have a king of any kind. The time of Saul and David is long in the future still. The tribes instead have judges over them. These judges stem from the tradition of Moses appointing judges in the wilderness to look after the daily concerns of the people. It really was their job to sit and judge disputes.

Exodus 18:13 The next day Moses was settling disputes among the people, and he was kept busy from morning till night. 14 When Jethro saw everything that Moses had to do, he asked, “What is all this that you are doing for the people? Why are you doing this all alone, with people standing here from morning till night to consult you?”15 Moses answered, “I must do this because the people come to me to learn God's will. 16 When two people have a dispute, they come to me, and I decide which one of them is right, and I tell them God's commands and laws.” 17 Then Jethro said, “You are not doing this right. 18 You will wear yourself out and these people as well. This is too much for you to do alone. 19 Now let me give you some good advice, and God will be with you. It is right for you to represent the people before God and bring their disputes to him. 20 You should teach them God's commands and explain to them how they should live and what they should do. 21 But in addition, you should choose some capable men and appoint them as leaders of the people: leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. They must be God-fearing men who can be trusted and who cannot be bribed. 22 Let them serve as judges for the people on a permanent basis. They can bring all the difficult cases to you, but they themselves can decide all the smaller disputes. That will make it easier for you, as they share your burden. 23 If you do this, as God commands, you will not wear yourself out, and all these people can go home with their disputes settled.” 24 Moses took Jethro's advice 25 and chose capable men from among all the Israelites. He appointed them as leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. 26 They served as judges for the people on a permanent basis, bringing the difficult cases to Moses but deciding the smaller disputes themselves.27 Then Moses said good-bye to Jethro, and Jethro went back home.

How was Deborah chosen to be the judge over Israel at that time? How did a woman rise to that office? Well, the must have run out of honest men? The answer is simple and yet intriguing: She was chosen by God. You see, in the bible all the great leaders were chosen by God because of their faith. Moses was chosen because of his faith. Joshua was chosen because of his faith. King Saul and King David were chosen to lead according to their great faith. The people see that great faith and elevate leaders accordingly. Nobody would have been bemoaning her leadership by asking: “Who elected Deborah to be a judge?!” People recognized that God had chosen her to lead.

Now, my first point this morning that I think we should take to heart is that indeed God has set people in our lives who are of such faith that we ought to go to them and be advised by them. If we are struggling with what is the will of God right now in our lives, go seek out a “Deborah” who is of such great faith that he or she can help to dissolve the disputes and make your life godly once more.

The Apostle Paul puts out this concept in the early church. Check out Acts 20:28, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.” The term “overseer” here is ἐπίσκοπος–from whence we get the term “episcopal” church. The idea is that there is someone who oversees the lives of the church members. This idea is exactly what matches Deborah’s being a judge of Israel.

In my own life, I cherish those people who I consider to be so attuned with God’s Will in the world that I will go to them constantly to shake my own will out of the decisions I make. One of those souls is Pastor Merritt of the Baptist Church. So many times I have laid out a situation to him, and he just pins God’s will into it–”Okay, this is how I see God’s Will in this. . . .” Please, go find those people in your life. Go find a Deborah to sort things out.

Our text from this morning also points out that Deborah was a prophetess. Now, if you have been to Sunday School you can probably name all of the prophets of the Bible without thinking too much about the list. There are twelve minor prophets and two major prophets, and so on. All this being affirmed, we never name Deborah as one of the prophets although the Bible itself clearly says she is.

I think part of what is going on with that may be the fact that she is a woman. However, something else is going on here as well. Can any of you name a modern prophet or prophetess? We have come to not trust “revelatory speech” in our lives anymore. If anyone comes up to us and says: “Hey, I am speaking for God,” we tend to laugh them off. This we do despite the fact that at the time of the Pentecost, we see the promise that we should all be prophesying. Acts 2:18, “Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” These words are spoken by Saint Peter but are the recitation of the Prophet Joel’s writing.

Think about this, one of the signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God, the Second Coming of Jesus, is that we ALL will be prophesying, yet we today cannot think of even one modern Christian prophet. We should ALL be prophesying. That is, we should be opening our mouths and letting God speak through us. Let God speak through you to others. This will bring down the Kingdom of God from heaven!

I am going to answer my own question about modern prophets: Maya Angelou, Karen Georgia Thompson, Jane Kenyon, Len Pennie, and other modern poets I would consider to be modern prophets. Just read the poem “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon and tell me you do not hear the voice of God! Strangely enough, these all happen to be modern women poets! Now, you can probably name other prophets when you think about it this way.

Because we are the first church on Kauai and share part of the royal history of the Kauaian Kingdom, I must mention another Deborah, who took her Christian Name from this Deborah in the Old Testament. She was the last Queen of Kauai, Deborah Kapule, the third and favored wife of King Kaumualii. She was in fact one of the first seven members of this congregation.

When it came time to build this church, she is the one who provided the oxen and cart and the labor to bring the stones and lumber together to build this structure where we worship this day. She was best friends with missionary Mercy Partridge Whitney; both are buried here in our historical cemetery. Mercy and Deborah together worked to start the first school on the island and later to establish 52 Christian schools here. They educated all the people so that Kauai at one time had the highest literacy rate in the world.

Queen Deborah Kapule took the name “Deborah” as the name means “bee,” and she held that was her Aumakua Spirit. She would always be as busy as a bee. Building our church was not enough! She also built a church in Wailua that was later moved because of a flood to Kapaa. This is today “The Hawaiian Church of Kapaa” also known as “The Queen’s Church.”

This is the Spirit of Deborah! To be busy for the Lord! To be a judge for God! To be prophesy with the Word of God out to the world. I hope we can leave today with this incredible spirit of Deborah.

Amen.