DEBORAH A LEADER IN A NATIONAL EMERGENCY
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE:
JUDGES 4
Key Verse
“But Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time”.
Judges 4:4
INTRODUCTION.
All of us are called by God to be a part of His family. It is therefore very important to teach children so that they will realize that they too have family responsibilities. All of us in the family of God are given special roles to play or tasks to do and to enable us to do those tasks and please God. God gives special gifts to those in His family. People in the family of God are therefore not left to do things on their own and to please God by their own strength. Human beings are not capable of doing that by themselves. So there are special tasks and some people are appointed in a special way. These people are called prophets and prophetesses. Males are called prophets and females are called Prophetesses. Most of these specially called people listed in the Bible happen to be male. But there are many woman that are also named as Prophetesses
Remember that these are divinely appointed by God who has been given them the office to announce the will of God. They do not do things on their own but do as God commanded them to do.
Some of these Prophetesses named in Scripture are Miriam, the sister of Moses, Deborah, Huldah (2 Kings 22:14), Noadiah ( Nehemiah 6:14), Anna ( Luke 2:36), and the four daughters of Philip the Evangelist (Luke 21:9).
Their duty included encouraging the people of the nation to do their duty, to point out their sin to them and get them to repent, and to call on the people to be reformed.
Since these people were appointed specifically by God the rules governing how they behaved were extremely strict and so Deuteronomy 18:22 tells us about their responsibility and how to test them to make sure that they are true prophets or prophetesses of God. It states:
“But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.
And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord,, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him”.
This is the rule that applies to both prophets and prophetesses and so when people nowadays tell you that they are prophets and prophetesses you know that they are not true if they do not speak and agree with what the Scriptures have stated and have a 100% accuracy in their words.
So you can understand how important a prophetess is for if she is a servant of God dedicated to reveal the will of God and the commandments of God. This prophetess Deborah revealed God and the wisdom of God in the nation of Israel when that nation was in its darkest hour. The people kept sinning, worshiping false gods, disobeying the commandments that God had given them, and getting into serious trouble. This made God angry with them and God allowed the wicked nations around them to take them into captivity and make their life very difficult. The people of Israel suffered at the hands of these pagan nations and when it got really bad they cried out to God for help. God help them by sending these prophets and Prophetesses to help them to understand God and to obey God and to take them out of difficulty. But as soon as the people were out of difficulty they started singing again and the cycle kept repeating itself.
In this Lesson, things were so bad in Israel and the corruption was so deep, that God raised up Deborah to teach them the ways of God. God told her to call a man called Barak to go get together an army to fight against a king called Jabin and the captain of his army named Sisera. Sisera controlled 900 chariots of iron and that made them a powerful army. The people of Israel however had no chariots and hardly had any weapons and so were very defenseless. It was only the grace and power of God that could make them win that battle against Jabin and Sisera. Even though Barak was a powerful Army person he did not want to go into the battle by himself and he asked Deborah the prophetess to go along with him. She agreed to bolster up his strength but she warned him that because of what he did the honor of killing Sisera would go to a woman and not to him. This of course would make Barak not feel so good, but he accepted what the prophetess Deborah had told him because God had told her that that was what would happen.
So the battle was finally fought and Jabin and Sisera were defeated by the power of God who sent a great flood of water in the river that flooded the place and made the chariots of Jabin and Sisera sink into the mud so that they could not move and fight.
We can learn a lot by looking at how Deborah behaved and how she trusted God and followed what God had said. She was the only female judge in Israel at that time but she was brave,, wise and had unwavering faith in God. She depended on God for God’s guidance and so we know she had a deep relationship with God. Deborah teaches us the importance of obedience to God’s calling even when the circumstances might seem difficult and the way ahead was not clear. We learn from her that leadership is found in both males and females and so she would be given authority to settle disputes and provide spiritual guidance to the people. Deborah’s story shows us that leadership is not confined by gender for God can call both men and women to lead, to serve, and to make a difference, especially in times of national emergency. We might have ideas of our own about who should lead and biases of our own but remember that it is God that determines who He wants to bring courage to the people in the times of adversity.
We certainly can learn from Deborah and the mistakes made by her nation that it is not good enough to feel bad about the mistakes you make and to then repent and promise to change your ways. Parents can teach the children that they have to do everything they can to make sure that they never forget their resolutions despite the temptations they might face. The only way that children can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again is to know the Lord and remember Him. It was when the Israelites stopped keeping God’s commandments that they lost His protection and was defeated by their enemies. But children should be taught to remember that even when they make a mistake and their enemies attack them they should cry unto the Lord so that the Lord would raise up a deliverer to help them. Parents should emphasize that Jesus Christ is their Deliverer and when they follow Him like Deborah followed God they would inspire others to have faith in the Lord.
So we should have courage and that means we should have a willingness to move forward, to go ahead in spite of the difficulties that seem so challenging. Children have to learn to encourage and support others to follow God for that will bring great reward and blessings. Children might have some doubt sometimes but parents must teach them to remember that God is the source of their success and the source of their blessings. They should never forget that. Deborah is a great example for all of us. She teaches us how to live.