Judges 4

One of the most challenging things about the present age is that each day brings with it the possibility that we will sin and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord. We can go off track in a moment. That cannot be said about the age to come, where Christ reigns now with all the heavenly host. The age to come is somehow already there for us in the present heavens. We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We need help from there immediately.

God knows our needs. He is the one who brings us to the point where we will earnestly return to Him, crying out for His powerful aid.

The Lord used the enemies of Israel again and again to call His people back to Himself. In the days when Deborah was judging Israel, Jaban, a Canaanite king, and his military leader, Sisera, were pouring out their abuse upon the people of the Lord. Eventually they cried out to God and He defeated their enemies.

Deborah was a prophetess, a woman that the Lord used as the prophetic “man of God” in her day. Where were the men in Israel? God gave the Word to Deborah, and she called them to action against Sisera. She was even willing to go with them into battle. She assured Barak that the Lord would bring victory to Israel, but she also gave him the prophetic word that “the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.”

That woman would not be Deborah, but Jael, who would drive a tent peg into the head of the sleeping enemy commander. The Lord did use Barak and his men in battle, but Sisera himself escaped on foot, the only survivor of his army. God used this wife of Heber the Kenite, even though Heber had peace with Jaban the Canaanite king. Sisera felt the safety of a woman's care for him as Jael gave him milk to drink and covered him up. Then she killed him as a most unexpected agent of God's judgment against this sleeping man.

Jael went out to meet the pursuing Barak who was himself seeking to kill Sisera. She said to him, “Come, and I will show you the man whom you are seeking.” There he was in the tent, with the tent peg in his head.

That one action by the hand of a woman was not only the end of one brutal soldier. From that moment forward, Israel pressed harder and harder against Jabin, king of Canaan, until he was destroyed.

The Lord is able to bring deliverance for His people. One humble woman from Galilee played an important part in the account of the redemption of mankind through Jesus Christ. What a strange way to bring about the victory of heaven over sin and death: through the birth of a child. Jesus alone had the righteousness necessary to win eternal life for us, but God did use Mary as His servant, and even as the mother of the Lord.

She testified prophetically by the Holy Spirit, saying, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Jael needed a Savior, as did Mary. But that Savior, who was pierced for our iniquities, was born of a woman. God opposes the proud. He gives grace to the humble.