Unlikely Saviors

Good morning, everybody. Thank you all for being here today. I want to reiterate the dinner that’s coming up in March. It is indeed for the wild men. Okay. So yeah, now it’s for any guy wherever you are on the spectrum of wildness. You know, you might be vanilla, but if you’re rocky road, we’ll take you too. That’s for men and their sons. So men, if you got a boy that you want coming with you, teenager, upper elementary, something like that, probably not your your baby, you know, probably not like your five-month-old son, but you know, your 5-year-old son, your 15-year-old son, man, they’re totally welcome to that. Yeah.

So, every Sunday morning, we have a portion of our service where we dedicate just to prayer, and we just spend a month at a time praying for the same thing every week. And this month, we’re going to be praying for our student ministry. So, I want to introduce you to our student ministry director, Becca. If you would just briefly introduce yourself other than your name.

I’m Becca. I know most of y’all, but if you don’t know me, I am Jeremy’s wife, and we have three cool kiddos and another one on the way. And, I’m really excited to be the student director for this season. I’ve been serving with students for the past couple years and gotten to know them and they’re really awesome group of young people and I’m just excited for what God has for them. And I think God has really big plans. I’m excited to be a little part of it.

That’s right. And I personally think that she’s the prettiest student director in all of Charleston. So there you go. But

you second that I think that or you also think that.

You don’t have to answer that. Tell us a little bit more. Why are you excited to be the student ministry director? Yeah. For this season, however long this season is.

Yeah. Just because I know them and I’ve got relationships with them and I’m excited to see what God’s going to do in their life.

Yeah. What’s at stake, Becca, if we don’t take student ministry seriously, man? The other day, I know we just kind of started Judges, and it’s a confusing book, but a couple of weeks ago when Jeremy preached in chapter 2 of Judges, verse 10 says, “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.” And man, our Sunday school class talked about this. It doesn’t give a lot of details. Why does the next generation not know? Was it because they were stubborn kids and they closed their ears to their parents or was it because their parents failed to teach them? And I mean I think just the aspect of human nature more of the responsibility falls on the adults, you know, and that just like since I’m into this role like that verse just stood out of like man like we have got to pass on the knowledge of the Lord and His works to the next generation. Not just for those of us who have biological children but just all of us in the family of God. So it’s really important and and I’m excited. We’ve got a great team of student leaders who are going to be helping on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. But I want to just say to all of you all, too, even if you’re not volunteering in that capacity, all of us have a role. The February newsletter in the back of the church, if you haven’t gotten a chance to get it, it’s got some prayer points for our students. And that that’s a way that you can pour into the next generation, just praying for them. Every young person in all generations. The transition to adulthood is challenging, but I think there’s some unique challenges at this point in history. So, praying for them. And also one of my favorite quotes that a lot of you have heard me say already is that the number one indicator of if a young person keeps the faith into adulthood is a meaningful relationship with an older Christian. And so that that’s a place that all of us can step in. You know, if there’s a young person in here and you don’t know them, you can just go up to them and say, “Hey, I haven’t met you yet. My name’s Becca. What’s your name?” and they may think that’s kind of awkward. I don’t know, students, how you’re going to respond. But it’s worthwhile. It’s worthwhile to make that Connection. >> That’s right. Cody, I’ve got money on you. If someone introduces themselves to you, you’re not going to be awkward. Okay. Thanks, Beth. So, students, we have to invest in them. If we don’t invest in the next generation, then Lord knows what happens to our community or our country or the world over time. >> So the stakes are very high. What then is the vision that you have to meet the challenge? >> I think the Lord was really gracious to kind of give this vision. But Sauldam Students exist to help sixth through 12th graders belong to the family of God, believe the gospel and become mature disciples of Christ. And I mean this is what it’s all about. And I want them to know they are full-fledged members of the body of Christ and not just know the gospel like they’ve heard it one time, maybe they prayed this special prayer one time when they were younger, but really believe it and know how it impacts every area of their life and then begin their walk with Christ to become mature disciples. >> So, how do you hope to get at that vision? >> Yeah, the next slide’s got some core goals and we’re Baptists, so they all start with E’s, which made me really excited. But encouraging relationships with the family of God, especially a caring network of adults. Explaining the gospel and how it applies to every part of life. That’s something I didn’t understand until well into adulthood, how it really applied. It’s not just the diving board, but the gospel is the whole pool. So, I’m excited to get at that with them at a younger age. Equipping students to read and understand the Bible, empowering students to use their gifts and serve. They are full-fledged members of the body of Christ. We want them to serve here and in the community and we want to empower them to do that. And then engaging students in God’s global mission. Like I’ve said, I think God has great plans for them and they have a purpose even right now as they’re young and He wants them to join in. >> Amen. Amen. So, what I want to invite you all to do is to pour into the student ministry right now through your prayer. So, if this is new to you, then welcome. I’m going to introduce you to something that could change your life. If you’ve been with us for any length of time, then this is going to feel pretty normal to you. We don’t just want to be a church that prays, but we know we need to become a praying church. So, I invite you, grab a neighbor and pray out loud for the student ministry that God would get a hold of our 6th through 12th graders and He would do something dramatic in their lives and use them to do something dramatic in the lives of others around them. Y’all take it away. I’ll put a bow on it here in a second. Thank you guys. Holy Spirit, love to hear the voices of Your saints praying to You on behalf of the middle and high schoolers. Some of them, I think, for the very first time out loud. God, thank You. Thank You for what You’re doing. Thank You for Your kindness to us, Lord. Thank You in accordance with Ephesians chapter 4 verses 11 to 12. God, You’ve given us a new leader to help serve in this church in Becca. God, I thank You for her. I thank You for all the work that she’s already done to pour into the student ministry. God, I pray that You would bless her in that. And thank You, Father, for it’s about a dozen adults that have joined her in serving on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings and with special events. God, thank You for bringing them forward to help pour into the middle and high schoolers. God, help us to be a church that would look at every generation that You have blessed us with and to say, “How can we help that generation know You deeply and help others know You as well?” God, make that true of us as we [inaudible] God is kind of like relaunching the student ministry. I pray that You would bless us in that. Father, I pray for all the middle and high schoolers. Lord, some of them do know You as Lord and Savior. Some of them don’t yet. And I’m begging that You would bring all of them to a powerful and an undeniable saving knowledge of Yourself. Lord, something that would be contagious in their schools, on their sports teams, the clubs that they are part of, God, their workplaces. I pray that You would release them into Your mission, God. Just because they can’t drive yet, or some of them do, just because they can’t vote yet or whatever it is, that doesn’t make them JV Christians, God. They are full-fledged members of the kingdom. And I pray that You would help them to see themselves that way. And I pray that You would help us to see them that way as well. God, we love You. Thank You for loving us. Thank You for gathering us here this morning. Thank You for giving us another morning where we get to reflect on Your word. I pray that You’ll please get a hold of us, that You would do something inside of us as a body of people here, Lord, that we walk away. We’ll be able to reflect and say, “The Lord God, the God of the heavens and the earth, met with us this morning.” Please, God. I pray for anybody in the room that does not know You as Lord and Savior yet. Just like I did for the students, I pray for all of us. And I’m begging You, get a hold of them this morning. You help them to see that You are good. You’re powerful. You’re loving, but You’re also holy. And sin has taken them away from You, but You have sent Your Son to come and bring them back to You through His own sacrifice and His own life and death and resurrection. I pray that You would get a hold of them with that message. You would transform their lives. Please, God, we love You. It’s in Your great name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Well, I invite you to go ahead and grab your copy of the Bible and open up to Judges chapter 4. Judges chapter 4 is where I’m going to meet you. The passage this morning has a couple unlikely heroes, a couple unlikely saviors. And as you’re doing that, I just want to remind you of a couple unlikely saviors. I think about Remy. Remy is a rat that lives in France. He’s got an unusual dream. Some of y’all recognize this is from the movie Ratatouille. Remy has dreams of becoming a great chef at a restaurant in France. But the problem is obvious. Rats are dirty, unwanted, and usually banned from kitchens. At least the good ones. Everybody around Remy, all of his friends and his family members, his dad and the whole like, they keep trying to tell him his dream is ridiculous. It’s impossible. Remy, how could you become a chef? But through this wonderful and uplifting and encouraging movie, Remy finds a way to play ventriloquy with the guy and he pulls his hair and makes all the stuff happen. So, it’s kind of silly. He’s an unlikely hero in that movie.

There’s another movie about an unlikely hero though based on a true story. I was given a gift as a middle schooler of the movie Rudy. Anybody watched Rudy before? Rudy is a true story about a guy. His last name was Rutiger, so they nicknamed him Rudy, played by Sean Astin. And that’s the real guy on the right. Rudy, one of those just tried really hard, worked really hard in high school, played football, one of those kind of like all city guys, but he’s just too small, too slow, not athletic enough to be able to play division one football. Coaches told him over and over he did not belong. There is no way. The Rudy though dreamed of playing football for the University of Notre Dame. Rudy kept showing up. He kept working, kept training, kept practicing until he finally makes the team as a walk-on. He only played one snap in an actual game against Georgia Tech. But he made the tackle that prevented a touchdown. And he gets carried off the field in this beautiful moment where everybody’s shouting Rudy, Rudy, and all that unlikely hero.

This is also February, Black History Month. I think about some other unlikely heroes. Think about a lady named Harriet Tubman. Harriet was born into slavery, grew up with no freedom, no education, and constant danger. She actually suffered a serious head injury as a child that caused lifelong pain and seizures. However, eventually she was able to escape to find freedom. And she did something that I would deem honestly just unthinkable. She goes back. She goes back to plantations again and again and again, rescuing other slaves using the Underground Railroad. Harriet, if we would have met her in real life, we would have found a woman that was very small. We would have found somebody that had a bit of a—I just—a kind of an odd affect because of her head injury. But God used this unlikely hero to do something beautiful and powerful in the lives of scores of former slaves. She never carried power, wealth, or protection. She only had courage and conviction. But against impossible odds, she too became an unlikely hero. From the joke of Remy the rat in a French kitchen to the real-life heroes of Rudy Rutiger or something way more monumental like Harriet Tubman, you see that the best heroes are the unlikely ones. God, I would say, loves to use the unlikely.

This morning, you may feel unlikely. You may feel like God wants to use you for something that seems larger and bigger than you could ever ask or imagine. You might say, “God, I see that You want to do this good thing in my family or in my community, but why me? I’ve—I’m so ill-equipped. I’m so inadequate. I’m so unlikely.” If that’s you, then today you’ll really appreciate the passage. This is Judges chapter 4. I’m going to start with verses 1 through 3.

The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord after the judge Ehud had died. So the Lord sold them to King Jabin of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Heresh of the nations. The Israelites cried out to the Lord because Jabin had 900 iron chariots, and he harshly oppressed them for 20 years.

If this is your first time with us or first time in a long time, we’ve been walking through the book of Judges, which is this history, this chronology of these temporary leaders that God would raise up to save and deliver the people of Israel from outside oppressors. Those outside oppressors were just a mirror image, an example of the internal sin that Israel kept failing to fight.

The chapter opens with this bleak situation. The Israelites again are committing evil. Let me help give you an idea of the story of Judges through a graphic because what you will see is that the story of Judges is not up and to the right like we like our personal finances to work. The story of Judges is actually down. Sin, servitude, separated from God, God saves them, and then silence. They fall back into sin, which leads to more servitude. So they had to call out to God. God saved them again, and they fall back into sin. So what you see at the end of Judges is that the people of Israel are worse off than before. And that’s where we start with the passage this morning. Israel again is doing evil in the sight of the Lord.

This is a little heavy, but I just want to go ahead and offer this. Don’t entertain sin. Some of us need to be warned this morning because we are willfully indulging in and entertaining something that God hates. Don’t entertain sin. Every time Israel falls into this pattern of walking away from God and committing evil against Him, God would bring in these outside armies and these nations to come and oppress them. Man, God takes sin really seriously. So, if it’s something you watch online and you know you’re not supposed to, if it’s cheating on your taxes, lying to people, man, whatever it is, don’t entertain it. We’ll come back to it in a—in a few minutes, but man, the—the sin that we entertain eventually comes to dominate us. Man, my—my—my warning to you this morning from God’s Word is please don’t entertain sin.

In fact, there are four lessons that we take away from the story of Judges chapter 4. If you’re taking notes, I want you to write this down. You will reap what you sow. That’s not me, that’s Jesus. Jesus said that what you sow into the world like seed, you will harvest back into your life. What you reap, you will sow. And in the area of sin, let’s just take it a little further. Some of us are disso—are sowing dishonesty into our relationships. You will reap lack of trust. This is what that looks like. You start by sowing small lies and half-truths where you reflect and you say, “I didn’t tell the whole story because maybe they wouldn’t have understood all the details. I just told them what they would like to hear so that everything could still be smooth in the end.” And you sow those dishonest moments, those small lies, those half-truths, eventually what you will reap is that people will stop trusting you. Even when you Do tell the truth, you’ll constantly be the little boy who cried wolf. So that one day when you cry wolf one more time and it’s for real, nobody’s going to be there to help you because nobody trusts you anymore because what you’ve been sowing has been lies. What you reap you will sow.

Some of us are sowing unchecked anger into the world. What you will reap is isolation. This is how that looks. You sow harsh words to your family. You sow sarcastic comments to your friends. You sow explosive reactions and grudges. And what happens eventually is that people that you love will walk on eggshells around you or they’ll just walk away from you entirely. If you are constantly angry with other people and you show that, then you will end up alone so that the only one you are angry at anymore is yourself.

Some of us are sowing sexual sin into the world. Here’s how that looks. You view others as objects of your pleasure. Sex is something you get to consume, not a covenant gift you give to a spouse. And I mean it, a spouse. Or you are habitually watching pornography. And when you sow sexual sin into your life, what you reap is that you won’t be able to have intimacy with anybody. You won’t be able to trust people. People won’t trust you. You’ll never be vulnerable with others. You’ll never have intimacy even if you get a ring on your finger. What you sow, you will reap.

Israel is learning that lesson for themselves. They are doing evil in the sight of the Lord. So what God says, “Okay, I’m going to punish you for it.” You see, sin doesn’t just break God’s rules. Sin breaks God’s world. When you sow brokenness into your life, don’t be surprised when you harvest brokenness right back at yourself.

So this situation where Israel is sinning, God is punishing them. God also raises up the first unlikely savior. Look at verses 4 through 11 with me. Deborah, a prophetess and the wife of Lapidoth. She was judging Israel at that time. She would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. And the Israelites went up to her to settle disputes.

She summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kadesh in Naphtali and said to him, “Hasn’t the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you? Go deploy the troops on Mount Tabor, take with you 10,000 men from the Naphtalites and the Zebulonites.”

Verse 7, this is still God speaking through Deborah. Verse 7, then I, God, will lure Sisera, commander of Jabin’s army, his chariots, and his infantry to the Wadi Kishon to fight against you, and I, God, will hand him over to you.

Verse eight, Barak hears the word of the Lord through Deborah. This is what he says. If you go with me, I will go. But if you won’t go with me, I’m not going to go. I will gladly go with you, Deborah says to him. But you will receive no honor on the road you’re about to take because the Lord will sell Sisera to a woman.

So Deborah gets up and goes with Barak to Kadesh. Verse 10, Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Those are two tribes of Israel. He summons them to Kadesh. 10,000 men followed him, and Deborah also went with him.

Now Heber the Kenite had moved away from the Kenites, the son of Hobab, Moses’s father-in-law, and pitched his tent beside the oak tree of Zaanaim, which was near Kadesh.

All right, so we’re introduced to a couple key figures. If this is a lot to keep up with, my encouragement to you, if you’re taking notes, grab your piece of paper and draw two vertical lines so that you would have three blank spaces. All right? In one of those lines, I want you to write the names Deborah and Barak. You go ahead and do that. Write Deborah and Barak. Maybe put them all the way to the left. And then I want you also to write the names Jabin and Sisera all the way to the right. And in the middle, you should have no names yet.

So Deborah and Barak are on the left hand side. Jabin and Sisera are on the far right. And you have no names in the middle.

Deborah and Barak. These are two of the key figures. Deborah, the Bible tells us, is a prophetess. That’s just a female prophet. God would give her the word of the Lord and she would speak it to the people. And in that, she is actively judging Israel. She is leading Israel. She’s helping settle disputes. She does it for so long, as somebody pointed out in Sunday school this morning, that they name a tree after her. All right? It’s a little bit of Charleston right there in middle Israel where something’s named after a person of respect and being respected. She is indeed she is respected by everybody. People know if we have some sort of dispute, if we’ve got a problem, if we got something we’re trying to figure out, let’s go to Deborah at Deborah’s tree and she will help us navigate all this.

But then there’s Barack. Barack is a military leader. He’s a general of some sort, yet he’s unwilling to go to war. Barack is a little bit more like the military guy at the recruitment office than he is a field general. He likes to wear the suit, likes to wear all the fatings and talk about the glory of battle, but probably enjoys pushing the pencil a little bit more. That’s Deborah and Barack.

Now, on paper, which of these do you think is supposed to lead Israel? Which is supposed to be the savior? Barack. That’s right. Thank you guys. It’s supposed to be Barack. It’s supposed to be the military guy. It’s supposed to be the one with the armor and the sword. It’s supposed to be the one who’s been conscripted into military service. It’s not supposed to be Deborah. She’s the unlikely one. Yet God likes to use the unlikely.

So this unlikely helper, this unlikely savior looks at Barack and tells him the word of the Lord. Verse six, look at it with me again. Hasn’t the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you. Go deploy the troops. Take with you the troops. Then I will lure the enemy to you. Y’all will fight, but I’m going to hand the enemy into your hands. Do this. Obey me and I will reward you. Follow my directions and then you will get what you need.

In fact, that’s the second lesson I want you to take away from this passage. What we see from Deborah’s words, it’s that obedience comes before reward. Obedience comes before the reward. Man, you see this in your life all the time. If you want to be healthy, you have got to exercise your body first. You’ve got to eat good food first. You got to get good sleep first. You don’t just say, “I’m healthy and then you start doing those things.” You got to put those practices and then you get to healthiness.

Or it’s like teenagers in the room. Perhaps you get an allowance or your parents help, I don’t know, pay for things you’re supposed to do around the house. I don’t know what that means yet. I’ve got a 5-year-old. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But what you know is that you have to work before you get paid, right? You have to earn the money before you’re rewarded for it.

That’s what God is doing here. He’s saying, “Barack, if you would obey me, if you call the troops, if you go to the field of battle, then I’m going to hand the enemy into your hands. Muster the troops, begin the battle, put your neck on the line, then I will route the enemy.” Reward comes on the other side of obedience. Reward comes, I would say, after a risk. God still works this way.

You know, Hebrews 11:6, something that we’re memorizing in our men’s groups, says this, without faith, it is impossible to please God since the one who draws near to Him must believe that He exists and He rewards those who seek Him. Man, if you want to be rewarded by God for some risk to attempt for God, you’ve got to obey Him first. You’ve got to make the risk and then God rewards you for that.

I want to ask you this morning, how is God calling you to obedience today? There may be something in your life going on where you just know God’s got His finger on you and He’s like, “Hey, you got to get out of this relationship. This person’s not good for you.” Or, hey, you got to stop watching this TV show. This isn’t good for you. Hey, you need to start serving in the kids ministry because Kim needs you. Not serving in kids ministry is not good for you. She didn’t tell me to do that, but she really does need people to serve in kids ministry.

In the words of Lee Newton walking through the halls, he looks at one of the kids classes this morning and turns away says, “Woo, that’s a full house in there. What reward are you trying to get from God before you obey Him? If I could just be a little more personal again, I think often times we try to get a reward financially from God before we obey Him first. Where we say, “God, I would love to have the house. I’d love to have the car. I’d love to have the clothes. I’d love to have the toys. I want the things.” And God is saying, “Okay, I might give that to you, but you’ve got to obey Me first.” Malachi 3:7-10 puts it this way: “Since the days of your ancestors, you have turned from My statutes. You have not kept them. Return to Me and I will return to you, says the Lord of Armies. Yet you ask, ‘How can we return?’ Will a man rob God? Yet you’re robbing Me. ‘How are we robbing you?’ you ask. ‘By not making the payment of the tenth and the contributions. You are suffering under a curse. Yet you, the whole nation, are still robbing Me.’ Verse 10: ‘Bring the full tenth into My storehouse that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this way, says the Lord of armies. See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.’”

I will be unashamed in telling you this: when you hoard all of your finances, God will take those things away. But it’s in freely giving to God and obeying Him in a biblical tithe of 10%. And then you give on top of that. When you do that to the Lord, He gives you not just what you need, but oftentimes most of what you want. And man, we we fail to operate this way. We think that we deserve God to reward us, which would incentivize us then to obey Him. It don’t work like that. There are times where God meets you 100% of the way where God just says, “Hey, I’m just going to be kind and show unmerited favor to you and I’m just going to totally take care of you.” And God woos us into something. But man, so much of spirituality and a healthy Christian walk is just simply obeying what the Bible says and letting God handle the rest.

For Barak in this passage, God was telling him, “Muster the troops, go to the field of battle, get ready for a fight, and then I’m going to route the enemy in front of you.” Obedience comes before the reward. Barak had to learn that. We’re still having to learn that. Surely Barak wanted the fruit of peace in the land. Surely Barak wanted safety from foreign armies. Surely he wanted the reward of good times. And all of that to be promised by God. But through Deborah, the first unlikely hero, Barak learns that he will have to obey God before being rewarded by God.

So what does he do? We just read it a second ago. My man Barak, he obeys. He takes the army. He musters all the troops. So much so that it was even reported to Sisera. He should be on your right hand. Okay? Sisera sees that Barak is mustering all the troops of Israel. Sisera, this foreign general, he gets all of his troops. They meet on the field of battle. And then what does God do? Verse 15, the Lord threw Sisera and all of his charioteers and all of his army into a panic before Barak’s assault. God does what He said He was going to do. God delivers this foreign army into the hands of the Israelites. Deborah still had to encourage and convince Barak to go. But when Barak did, God goes before him and does what He says He’s going to do. Does that surprise us? It shouldn’t. Thank you so much, Mary Beth. It shouldn’t surprise us.

The next lesson that I want you to write down is this: God keeps His promises. Man, God keeps those things. Whenever God gives you a promise about something He’s going to do in this world, you need to know you can take that to the bank. God always keeps His promises. God is true to His word. He does not change yesterday, today, or forever. God will keep His promises. That’s what you see in this passage. God makes this promise to Barak through Deborah. And He says, “If you obey Me on the front end, I will take care of you on the back end.” And that’s what He does. He takes care of it. He totally delivers this foreign army into the hands of the Israelites. And man, verse 16, Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Heresht of the nations. That’s where Cicora lives. Imagine being beaten so bad that the enemy drives you back to your door, your own doorstep. Barack pursues them as far as home and the whole army of Cicora falls by the sword. Look at how many men are left. How many men does it say were left? None. Not a single man. God completely faithful to fulfill His own promises. God always keeps His promises.

Man, on some blue Monday that you’re going to have coming up where everything seems wrong, where you’ve had another argument with your loved one, where you lost your job, you get that diagnosis or that phone call, what I want you to do is open this, read God’s promises, and know that God has the final word on your life. No doctor, no attorney, no police officer, no spouse, no parent, no kid, no boss. They don’t have the final word. God has the final word and He will keep His words.

In all of this success though, one person does escape. Cisora. All right, you’ve got Deborah and Barack on the left hand side. You’ve got King Jabin and his general Cicora. On the right hand side, Cicora escapes, which sets the stage for what I could only say is a soap opera drama of incredible proportions. It also sets the stage for our second unlikely savior. Look at verses 17-24.

Meanwhile, Cicora has fled on foot to the tent of JL, the wife of Hebrew the Kenite, because there was no or because there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the family of Hebrew the Kenite. I’ll get back to that in a second. JL, a wife, goes out and greets Cisora and said to him, “Come in, my lord. Come in with me.” Ah, don’t be afraid. Now, I get a little weird just reading that out loud. So, he goes he went into her tent and she covers him with a blanket. He says to her, “God, please give me a little water to drink. I am thirsty.” That man’s just ran 20, 30 miles. Of course, you’d be thirsty. So, she opens a container of milk. Not exactly what I want to rehydrate with, but she gives him some milk, gives him a drink, and covers him back up again.

Then he said to her, “Stand at the entrance to the tent. If a man comes and asks you, ‘Is there a man here?’ Say no.” He falls asleep. Verse 21. While he was sleeping from exhaustion, Hebrew’s wife JL takes a tent peg, grabs a hammer, and goes silently to Cicora. She then hammers the peg into his temple, drives it into the ground, and he dies. When Barack arrived in pursuit of Cicora, JL went out to greet him and said, “Come, I will show you the man you’re looking for.” So he went in with her, and there was Cicora, lying dead with a tent peg through his temple. That day, God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites, and the power of the Israelites continued to increase against King Jabin of Canaan until they destroyed him.

Little bit of context here. Moses, way before the time of the judges, is a leader for Israel. He’s the guy that goes to Pharaoh and says, “Let my people go.” He’s got a father-in-law named Jethro/Heber. He’s from the tribe of the Kenites. The Kenites were not originally part of Israel, but through Moses, they have been adopted into the people of Israel. So, the Kenites, those are supposed to be some good guys. Way down the line, you don’t understand why exactly, but way down the line, you got this guy named Heber. Now, Heber for some reason has separated himself. That’s what verse 11 told us. Oh, sorry. I think I just mixed up some names. This is where it really gets confusing. Hobab is the same as Jethro. Hobabjthro has a great great great great great great grandson named Heber. He verse 11 tells us moved away from all the Kenites, isolates himself from this tribe that likes Israel and he binds himself to the Canaanites, King Jab, Cicora.

In the middle of your paper, if you’ve written those names, I want you to write the name Heber. We don’t exactly know why he would have separated from the good guys. Maybe it’s just circumstance. Maybe it’s an argument he had with a family member, maybe a business deal gone wrong, but he’s somewhere in the middle. He’s somewhere in the gray. Heber is such good friends with Cicora that Cicora knows if he flees the field of battle, he can find refuge in Hebrew’s tent. So that’s exactly where Cicora goes.

Now when Cicora arrives at the tent, Heber, the husband, is gone. JL, the tent wife, is there. And in a risque maneuver, even back or especially back then, even more than it would be today, JL convinces Cicora to come into the tent. What seems to be a move to hide and protect Cicora changes immediately when she grabs the tent peg and the hammer and she takes the situation into her own hands.

Literally just an interesting fact that I learned this week preparing for this message is that the Bedawin people—that’s who we now refer to them as—semi-nomadic folks of the ancient Near East. The Bedawin people give the responsibility of constructing the tent not to the husbands but to the wives. She would have been extremely handy with a hammer and a tent peg. It would have been no issue for her whatsoever to square it up without touching his skin and to drive it in one fell swoop.

That shouldn’t surprise us whatsoever. What surprises us is that the wife of the enemy takes out the bad guy through this second unlikely savior. God then conquers Cicora and starts to fight back against Jabin through Israel. Deborah’s legacy as a judge is marked by peace from the Canaanites under the reign of King Jabin. And that’s how it ends. What an interesting story. What an odd conclusion to this moment.

Here’s a final lesson that I think we’re supposed to learn from this, though, is that God uses the unlikely to do the unstoppable. You remember I said earlier that God always keeps His promises. Promise kept. And God does not use a likely savior to do it. Even when Barack musters the courage to go and pursue Cicora and to take the battle to the enemy. Even in that moment, God doesn’t use the military guy. He uses the wife of a defector. He uses someone allied with the enemy. God uses the unlikely to do the unstoppable.

Like that time where God would use a stuttering Moses to speak for Israel and declare that God is going to free His people. Or that time when God would use a shepherd boy to defeat Goliath and free Israel from the Philistines. Or that time when God would use an unwed teenage girl to give birth to the Son of God. Or that other time where God would use a homeless preacher executed at 33 for crimes He didn’t commit to save us from our sins. God uses the unlikely to do the unstoppable.

And someone is in here this morning and you just need to hear that—that God has saved you through His unlikely means of Jesus Christ, a Nazarene born in the ancient Near East thousands of years ago to do the unstoppable, which is redeem your soul from your sin. And we all need that.

You see, in the very beginning, God made us to live in harmony with one another and in this world and with Him. We were supposed to live forever in a state of peace and joy and love and perfection and beauty and all the other good things you could ever imagine but only just scratched the surface of. And after living like that for some amount of time, Adam and Eve sinned and they go against God’s plan in a way that it brings brokenness and death and hatred and division into this beautiful world that God had made. And the Bible says that like Adam and Eve, you and me and your grandmother and Billy Graham, we have all sinned. We’ve all gone astray. There is no one good. No one does anything of any spiritual good before a holy God who sees the motivation behind everything you do.

We have an unstoppable problem, which is the fact that death is coming. And when death happens, we will be totally trapped in the cage of our sin before God. So God takes our problem not just seriously, He takes it personally. And He sends His Son Jesus Christ to come and do what is just unlikely. This man who would never have a home of His own where there would be no place for Him to lay His head comes and makes His home in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

And this is how He does it. Jesus. Jesus. He comes and He lives the perfect life in our place that we were supposed to live. Always obeying the Father. Always keeping all of the rules and always doing it from a heart that truly loved God and wasn’t just trying to get things from God. Jesus keeps all the rules, always being tempted to fall away from God, but never once stumbling in his walk with holiness. And after Jesus kept all the rules for 33 years, Jesus then offers Himself as a sacrifice on the cross so that God would take our consequence and our punishment that we deserve for our sin, and He wouldn’t pour it on us, but He would pour it on Jesus. And on the cross, Jesus drank the punishment that you and I deserve. Every white lie you’ve told, Jesus has already been punished for. The pornography you watched, Jesus has already been punished for. The tax fraud you committed, Jesus has already been punished for. The gossiping you’ve done, Jesus has already been punished for. And it’s not just everything in your past. It’s everything in your future, too. When I’m going to be angry with my kids this week and lose my temper and when I scream at them, Jesus was already punished for that. And He makes that offer for everybody so that anybody could have new life in Jesus, could be completely forgiven, because Jesus wasn’t just sacrificed for our sins. But after Jesus really died and He really was in the grave, He came back to life. So that death started dying that day because life itself had conquered death. And Jesus offered this to everybody. The greatest—the greatest enemy you have is not some foreign army. The greatest enemy you have is the sin that lives inside of you. And Jesus has already made a way for you to be freed from it through His own sacrifice. God used this unlikely savior to do the unstoppable for you. The question is, have you embraced this gift? You know, Christmas is a lot of fun because you get to get a lot of good, cool gifts. Or if you’re a parent, you get to spend all your money and give your kids things that they’re going to walk away from a week later. But what if you go through Christmas morning and your parent or your loved one or your friend gives you this gift, it’s still wrapped in the box, and you say, “Thank you so much.” And you just put it on the shelf and you never open it. You never get the benefit of the gift even though you think you’ve accepted it. That’s how some of us treat Jesus. See, new life and salvation is a gift. It’s a box that’s meant to be opened and played with and worn and enjoyed. But some of us, we—you—you—you hear me preach the gospel and share this message, and instead of opening the box, you just put it on the shelf. You say, “Man, that’s great,” and you never personally do anything with it. I want to invite you right now just to close your eyes, bow your heads. I want you to open your hands palm up on your lap as if this is Christmas morning and you’re being offered a gift. And I just want you to ask God, “God, have I actually embraced the gift? Have I actually accepted this yet?” If you feel like He’s telling you no, or if you still feel like you’ve got to do something to earn God’s love and His forgiveness, if you’re still scared of going to hell and being punished for your wrongdoing, or if God is still just some abstract person that preachers like me talk about, but not someone, you know, then I think you haven’t embraced the gift yet. What I want you to do if that’s you is just to say, “God, I admit I am a sinner and I can’t save myself and I want something more.” You say, “God, I believe that you sent Jesus as the sacrifice for my sin. I believe that He is God in the flesh. That He died for me and He resurrected for me, too.” You say, “God, I don’t understand all this, but today I choose to turn away from sin and I turn to you. I want to love you instead.” If you prayed that prayer really and for the first time, all I want to ask you to do is tell somebody today. Just tell somebody. God, thank you for using unlikely saviors to do what’s unstoppable. Thank you for rewarding us for our obedience. Thank you for keeping your promises. Thank you that we can draw life from your word. I pray for those this morning that have just for the very first time embraced salvation and embrace the gift of the gospel. And I’m begging you would solidify that work in them. And for everybody else who has already tasted and seen that the Lord is good, I pray that you would help us to Find somebody to tell this message to. Please, Lord, let us all respond to Your word by worshiping You through song. Thank You. Amen.