Mission Impossible [3] - Neil Ryan
June 22nd, 2008 by sound
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Date: June 22, 2008
Passage: Judges 4-5
Message: Mission Impossible
Theme: You Be the Judge
Series in Judges [PM]
One of the hallmarks of being human is that we love stories.
What is it that makes a great story?
Some stories are told and forgotten, some stories are told over and over again!
Some stories are so good they are passed from generation to generation!
Now, my grandchildren say to me,
“Tell me more of the things you used to get up to growing up in Wallaroo!’
“Pa, tell us more about how Nanny chose you over hundreds of other good looking boys who were available at the time!”
“Pa, tell us again how far you could kick a football”.
Stories are great!
What makes a great story are the characters.
We want to be able to identify with them.
We want to be like them.
We want to be able to say,
“That’s me!”
Who hasn’t wanted to be a Rocky Balboa?
Underdog fighter with a bad accent but who fights for his girl Adrian!
Who hasn’t wanted to be Richard Geer who rescues Pretty woman from a life on the streets.
Who hasn’t wanted to be Braveheart like William Wallace who fights for country against tyranny and oppression?
Our story tonight has some great characters.
Deborah
Prophetess, a wife and a Judge
Interesting mix in a male dominated, violent world in which this book is written.
“The Book of Judges is one of the most exciting, colorful, and disturbing books of the Bible. It combines stories of political intrigue and assassination, lies and deception, rape and murder, courage and fear, great faith and idolatry, power and greed, sex and suicide, love and death, military victories and civil war.
New Interpreters Bible Commentary
God calls out a woman to take the reigns!
Good start to the story!
Barak
He’s the Bruce Willis of the story. The tough guy who’s called in the fight against the odds.
But he has a dark secret – he’s not so tough!
Read v8
In the end we wonder whether he is in the mould of a “Die Hard” or a “Try Hard”?
Sisera
He is the bad guy.
He is really mean and tough.
He has that air if invincibility about him.
He is captain of the armies of Jabin, who heads up an alliance of Kings around the Sea of Galilee.
Sisera has 900 chariots at his disposal and Judges 5:8 Israelites….not a spear or shield was seen among 40,000 in Israel.
We have a seasoned military general with all the latest technology up against a bunch of footsoldiers who fight with sticks and stones!
This guy is a winner!
We hate him already!
Jael
She’s the Joker in the pack.
She comes out of nowhere.
She’s the Alfred Hitchcock twist that you didn’t see coming.
She makes a great first impression but leaves you cold at the end!
Great story not only needs great characters but a great plot! This has a plot that you probably will never forget!!
By the way Judges 4 and 5 are the same story told differently.
Judges 4 – Prose
Judges 5 – Song [Very different to chorus’ we sing today]
v1-3
We can read these verses with such an air of detachment.
Do you know what it’s like when you take your kids shopping and they throw a tantrum and you can’t stop it.
It goes on for a minute and it feels like forever!
You whisper in their ear – if you don’t stop this then you are in really really big trouble!!!!!
They don’t stop!!
Do you know how that feels to have your kids out of control for 2 minutes!!!
What about 20 years?
For 20 years God whispered in their ear and said,
If you keep this up you’re in really really big trouble, and they kept it up!!!
…..God sold them
Let me tell you every parent has thought of that.
In fact I thought of giving them away!!
But God did it!
Reminds me of time years ago when a whole bunch of us were playing cricket at our house and my Dad was umpire.
One of my friends got out and he turned around and hit the stumps with his bat in a little show of temper!
A little while later I was batting and my Dad gave me out caught behind when I didn’t hit it so I turned around and whacked the stumps with my bat.
My Dad walked up, picked up the stumps, bat and ball and said,
“There won’t be any more cricket today!”
I was mortified and I said,
“Dad, that’s not fair. You didn’t call the game off when Wayne hit the stumps!”
He looked at me and said,
“Wayne is not my son!”
Listen to me.
God has expectations of us because we are his children.
That message has gotten lost in our generation where its all been turned around.
Today, we are the ones with great expectations of God. We are the ones who decide what God must do and what sort of God he must be.
If he doesn’t measure up we sell him off!
This story reminds us of the right order of things!
v4-5
This is right out of the blue!
We hardly give it a thought in our day of equal opportunity and anti discrimination laws but this is really one of those God things.
I hate it when preachers make something out of a text that’s not there.
This is not so much a woman thing as God thing!
This is about God doing the unthinkable.
It is about God doing the unexpected.
Throughout history God refuses to fit into our paradigms.
Just when we think we know how God operates, He moves right outside that paradigm and shocks us, even confuses us!
This is God at work!!
· We wouldn’t have picked Moses to deliver Israel – guilty of murder!
· We wouldn’t have picked Abraham and Sarah to have a child that would become Nation – they were nearly 100 years old!
· We wouldn’t have picked David over his older brothers, far more impressive than he, to be the king to Israel.
· We wouldn’t have picked Mary, barely a teenager in a nothing town called nazareth give birth to Messiah.
· We wouldn’t have picked Paul, devout Jew and a violent hater and persecutor of the Church, to become the great missionary to the Gentiles.
· We wouldn’t have picked each other!
Type-casting puts us into a straight jacket!
True in life.
There are some people who will never shake free from it.
If I mention the name Michael Richards – Kraemer
Doesn’t matter what he does for the rest of his life – he will be Kraemer!!
For old timers – Bob Denver = Gilligan
Shipwrecked on an island with The Skipper, Thurston Howell III, Mrs Howell, Ginger, The Professor and Mary Ann Summers
Denver died 3 years ago but was forever thought of as the goofy character he played in a sit com that only lasted 3 years!
This is a story for all of us who have been type-cast!
You’re a woman….
You’re too old…
You’ve got a history….
You know what it’s like.
You mess up at some point and people type cast you forever because of that one time in your life.
You know people think of you a certain way and inside you are screaming out….
“There’s more to me than you know. There’s more to me that you give me credit for!”
Why Deborah?
Because God raised her up for the task!
Because God doesn’t type-cast.
Because God doesn’t put you into a category.
Because God does the unthinkable.
V6-8
Barak hesitates!
He freezes!
There is nothing more dangerous that this!
For a moment he choses passivity!
He says,
I’m not going unless you go!
However you come down on Barak, God calls us to recognize the pull to be passive.
It is lethal!
Eg.
Garden of Eden – story of Satan seducing Eve to eat fruit of tree of knowledge good and evil.
One thing we overlook – where was Adam?
Gen 3:6 …..with her
Adam was passive.
He did nothing. He said nothing.
The result was catastrophic!
Passivity is the great enemy of faith!
Bottom line is this – he agreed to face the odds with Deborah.
He accepted God’s challenge.
We need to give up this notion that faith turns us all into clones.
We need to give up notion that the victorious Christian life has been pre-scripted, and will look the same for every Christian.
God has a place for the bold and the beautiful.
He has a place for the timid and the tame.
But here’s the thing.
Regardless of how you are wired up, will you face the reality of what God is calling you to do.
v12-16
You have to read Judges 5 to find out what happened.
Basically, God sent rain and all the chariots got bogged.
The weather conditions suited the footsoldiers and Sisera’s army was routed – Sisera escaped!
Despite his tentativeness, God still used Barak.
Hebrews 11:32
…..what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell you about Gideon, Barak and Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel…. Who through faith conquered kingdoms…
Barak slips in through the back door into the Hall of faith.
It reminds me that its better to show up late than to not show up at all.
We keep telling ourselves that we missed the chance.
Our time has gone.
Window of opportunity has shut.
We keep thinking we CAN’T because we DIDN’T.
God says
“Better of to show up late than not show at all!”
God doesn’t give up on us like we do!
v17-21
Jael seems such a sweet thing.
She has the gift of hospitality.
Deborah sings about her Judges 5:24-27
One of those songs you would open a worship service with!!
Right after this, Barak alias flawed Bruce Willis shows up and Jael says,
I’ve nailed the man you’re looking for!
You know a great story not only needs great characters and a great plot – but in the end it is all about a great author.
There is Deborah, Barak, Sisera and Jael – but in the end none of these are the focus of this story!
The whole story turns on the words that Deborah spoke to Barak in v14
Go…This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands….has not the Lord gone before you
When we tread stories like this it needs to lead us back to the AUTHOR.
What a God he is!
“When we succeed in focusing on God’s love to the exclusion of his wrath, we unsettle the whole moral universe. We create a God who may be patient, kindly, and compassionate but who is without the will to resist what is wrong, without the will to judge it, and without the power to destroy it. Such a God lacks the moral earnestness to attract our attention, let alone inspire our belief or warrant our worship. Such a God is not the God of the Bible, is not the God of Jesus Christ. (God in the Wasteland, D F Wells, p143)”