A Woman's Place is in the Tent?

Women, you are equally image bearers of God. God delights in how he made you. There is something special, unique, and incredible about being a woman. Like Deborah, you have voices that need to be heard. You have gifts that need to be drawn out and empowered.

I think about the vast differences between Jael and Deborah. God uses all kinds of women. There's not one way to be a woman who loves God and is used by God. God uses timid women. God uses bold women. God uses stay-at-home women. God uses working women. The Holy Spirit can use all of you and your gifts.

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You may be seated. We are returning to our study this week in the book of Judges. We're going to be in Judges chapter four and a little bit in chapter five. This is another longer text and has a lot of Hebrew names, so I'm going to read, and you could just follow along on the screen behind me as we read from Judges four and the first part of Judges five and the last verse.

Give your ears to the Lord.

The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord after 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 Harosheth of the nations. Then the Israelites cried out to the Lord because Jabin had 900 iron chariots, and he harshly oppressed them twenty years.

Deborah, a prophetess and the wife of Lapideth, was judging Israel at the time. She would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and those Israelites went up to her to settle disputes. She summoned Barak, son of Abinoam, from Kedesh and Naphtali and said to him, "Hasn't the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you? Go deploy the troops on Mount Tabor and take with you 10,000 men from among the Naphtalites and the Zebulunites. Then I will lure Sisera, commander of Jabin's army, his chariots, and his infantry at the Wadi Kishon and to fight against you, and I will hand him over to you."

Barak said to her, "If you will go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go."

"I will gladly go with you," she said, "but you will receive no honor on the road you are about to take because the Lord will sell Sisera to a woman."

So Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh. Barak summoned Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh. 10,000 men followed him and Deborah also went with him. Heber the Kenite had moved away from the Kenites, the sons of Hobab, Moses' father-in-law, and pitched his tent beside the oak of Zaanaim, which was near Kedesh.

It was reported to Sisera that Barak, son of Abinoam, had gone up to Mount Tabor. Sisera summoned all his 900 iron chariots and all the troops who were with him from Harosheth of the nations to the Wadi Kishon.

Then Deborah said to Barak, "Go. This is the day the Lord has handed Sisera over to you. Hasn't the Lord gone before you?"

So Barak came down from Mount Tabor with 10,000 men following him. The Lord threw Sisera, all his charioteers, and all his army into a panic before Barak's assault. Sisera left his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth of the nations, and the whole army of Sisera fell by the sword. Not a single man was left.

Meanwhile, Sisera had fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there was peace between King Jabin of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite. Jael went to greet Sisera and said to him, "Come in, my lord. Come in with me. Don't be afraid."

So he went into her tent and she covered him with a blanket. He said to her, "Please give me a little water to drink for I am thirsty." She opened a container of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him again. Then he said to her, "Stand at the entrance of the tent. If a man comes and asks you, 'Is there a man here?' say no."

While he was sleeping from exhaustion, Heber's wife, Jael, took a tent peg, grabbed a hammer, and went silently to Sisera. She hammered the peg into his temple and drove it into the ground, and he died. When Barak arrived in pursuit of Sisera, Jael went to greet him and said to him, "Come and I will show you the man you're looking for." So he went in with her, and there was Sisera lying dead with a tent peg through his temple.

That day, God subdued King Jabin of Canaan before the Israelites. The power of the Israelites continued to increase against King Jabin of Canaan until they destroyed him.

Then from chapter five: On that day, Deborah and Barak, son of Abinoam, sang. And the last verse:

"Lord, may all your enemies perish as Sisera did, but may those who love him be like the rising of the sun in his strength."

And the land had peace for forty years.

— Judges 4:1–5:31

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

So we're in a sermon series on the book of Judges, and I'm calling this the redemption cycle. And the reason I'm doing that is it's different from how most of the time if you've heard this book taught or preached previously, we always tend to focus on humans and human sin. So a lot of times, if you Google this or if you hear other sermons, this series is called the cycle of sin, the cycle of idolatry, the cycle of rebellion. And what I wanna highlight in this book, though, is God's faithfulness—the cycle of redemption. And today, as we look at this passage, we're going to meet two remarkable women, two very remarkable women. And my whole focus for this morning is how God includes women in his work of redemption. How God invites women into his redemptive story.

So here are my points with the little washing machine for the redemption cycle. Point number one: nailed it. Point number two: question, failed it? And point number three: the dynamic trio. Let's look at this together. I'm gonna give some background first.

So again, we read the people of Israel have done evil in the eyes of the Lord. God sells them to their enemies, which is kind of hard for us to read here. We'll talk more about God's purposes in that next week. But he sells them into the hands of an oppressor, King Jabin of Hazor. And Hazor's oppression of Israel is both incredibly powerful and incredibly cruel.

So on the powerful side, we read he had 900 iron chariots. That is cutting edge technology at this time. This is the Bronze Age. Iron was a relatively new development. For this king to have 900 iron chariots plus foot soldiers meant he had an overwhelming force, and he had the upper hand over Israel for years because of this.

So oppression was really powerful, but it was also really cruel. There's a part in the next passage we didn't read for today in chapter five where Sisera, the commander of Hazor's army, is looking out the window waiting for her son to come home, and she's excited about him coming back from battle, and she's like, bet he's late because he's raping the women of Israel. I mean, it's a horrible thing for a mom to be excited about with regard to her son, but it tells you something of the oppressive nature of this nation over Israel—the cruelty of the Hazorites.

Point One: Nailed It

So this is point number one: nailed it. God raises up two incredible women in this story and one man. There's a woman named Deborah who's called here a prophetess. She speaks over and over with wisdom into the personal disputes of people in Israel. Now this is the first person and the only person, honestly, in the entire book of Judges who is doing anything remotely like what we think of as a judge.

When we read the book of Judges, you don't see people functioning in personal disputes except for Deborah, and she is exercising judgment under a tree—this particular tree. People would go there and bring their personal disputes and she would resolve them. And she knows of the oppression of Sisera, and she calls Barak to come to her and come to lead the people.

Now notice the conversation between Deborah and Barak. She says, "You're the commander. You're supposed to be leading the people right now. Hasn't the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you? Go deploy the troops. Go take them to battle."

In a lot of senses, Barak actually is more of the typical judge in the book of Judges. We said this over and over again. We'll look at these. We'll continue to see these. The judges in the book of Judges are not what we think of as cloak and gavel judges. They're not most of them deciding disputes. Their role is rather as tribal warlords, and they are judges in the sense that they are enacting God's judgment on the people of Canaan for their evil, for their oppression, for the rebellion. They're agents of God's judgment.

So in this conversation, Barak says, "I'll go, but only if you go with me." And Deborah says, "Well, if that's the case, the glory for this battle is gonna go to a woman—not myself, but somebody else."

And I just wanna stop and say, Deborah is a remarkable woman. Here's this woman who's filled with wisdom, who exercises leadership. She's a prophetess. She speaks up. She calls Barak. She goes with him into the battle. She's an incredible person. And this battle ensues afterward. And she goes with him, and the Hazorites surprisingly get routed by the Israelites.

Sisera, the commander of this army—the commander of the Hazorites—flees on foot, and he goes to the tent, the encampment of an ally. We're told the Kenites are allies of King Jabin, and so he flees there. And the man of the house is gone, but his wife is at home—Jael. And she agrees to hide him. And he asks her, "Hey, could you hide me and can you give me water?"

Well, instead, she gives him blankets, and she gives him warm milk. And not surprisingly, he falls asleep.

And as he falls asleep, she grabs a hammer and a sharp tent peg. The tools of the home, not the tools of war. And she drives the tent peg into the temple of his head and nails him to the ground. This is again another incredibly brave woman. God uses her, this woman, to bring down this oppressor and this oppressor particularly of women.

Recently, I saw a T-shirt that I really loved. If it came in a male size, I'd put this up here. So you can't really see this very well, but it's artistically done with a skull there with a tent peg coming down the middle, and underneath it, it says "biblical womanhood." Now if that was not in a woman's cut, I would love to have that T-shirt. I think it's a great T-shirt.

My point of this is like both Deborah and Jael, they nailed it. Okay. Thanks for groaning at that.

Women's Voices in the Church

Right now we live in a time where women are speaking up on behalf of women, and this has been needed for a long time. The Barbie movie—I don't know if you liked it or not—but man, that monologue in that movie resonated with women. They're like, yes, I know what you're talking about. Or Taylor Swift has a song called "The Man," and it's all about being a woman. And there's a reason why that resonates so clearly. In fact, I think Taylor Swift would love that shirt. She'd wear that.

And yet, let's be honest: the church is a hard place for women many times. Many times.

In 2019, a prominent evangelical pastor was doing a conference all about gender and gender roles. And the host is playing a word association game going back and forth, and the name Beth Moore, who is a prominent female Bible teacher, comes up. And this evangelical pastor says, "Oh, Beth Moore, go home."

Now that was a very cringeworthy event because what he is saying is full of misogyny and actually belittling this woman who is a godly and wise Bible teacher. And I wish I could say that was an isolated event, but you know it's not. There's a lot of misogyny in the American church. There are a lot of men who stand on stages like me and say a lot of horrible things. Maybe you've heard them. Bad looks for the church like: women can't teach men; women who work outside the home are sinning; women can only teach nursery in church. All gross distortions of the Bible.

You know, it's like the church has missed Judges 4. It's like, "Oh, this chapter isn't in your Bible." It's in my Bible. God has no such disdain or misogyny against women in his story.

I mean, look at what do we learn from Deborah and Jael? Women, you are equally image bearers of God. God delights in how he made you. There is something special and unique and incredible about being a woman. Like Deborah, you have voices that need to be heard. You have gifts that need to be drawn out and empowered.

And I think about the vast differences between Jael and Deborah. God uses all kinds of women. There's not one way to be a woman who loves God and is used by God. God uses timid women. God uses bold women. God uses stay-at-home women. God uses working women. The Holy Spirit can use all of you and your gifts.

And I just want you to see the redemption cycle for women in this book. This book's full of a lot of other hard stuff about women, but this is a really important chapter.

Did Barak Really Fail?

Second, let's look at the man. And this is my question: did he fail it? With a question mark.

Remember the conversation between Deborah and Barak. She has to call him to exercise leadership. She warns him that his lack of initiative in exercising leadership will cause the glory for this battle to go to another person, to Jael. And Deborah eventually goes out with him, but she has to remind him yet again: go with the troops. It's time. It's time to go.

There's a real failure of nerve in Barak here in his timid posture. But I think there's actually something else going on here. That's not the whole story.

When you get to the New Testament, there's a chapter in Hebrews that we'll come to when we pick up Hebrews again this spring. Hebrews chapter 11 is often called the Hall of Fame of Faith in the Bible. It's a list of all these people who live by faith, and guess who is there? Barak is there. Barak is somebody who's lifted up as an example of someone who lived by faith. It's interesting.

That's why I don't think that we can just say Barak's some big failure. So I have the question: did he fail it? Did he?

When Barak says, "I will only go if you go with me," that is a hyperlink. Now, of course, there are no hyperlinks in your Bible, but the way that the Hebrew Bible works is there are so many places where these callbacks to other passages happen. And this is one of those. "I'm only going to go if you go with me." That's a reminder. It's a hyperlink back to Exodus chapter 33. Here's what's happening in Exodus 33.

Moses has gone up on the mountain with God to get the tablets, the 10 Commandments. While he's gone, the people in the camp below make a golden calf and begin to worship it. God is angry about this, and Moses is angry about this. Moses comes down, smashes the tablets, and yells at the people. He has this ensuing conversation with God that goes like this: "God, I don't know about these people." And God says, "I don't know about these people. I'm not going to go with them into the promised land." And Moses says, "I will only go if you go with me." Exact same phrase.

So I think there's something going on here. I think there's something more than just Barak failing. He's saying, Moses is saying, "God, it's so essential to me that you go with me." And Barak is saying, "It is so essential to me, Deborah, that you go with me." That's why I want to hear Barak's words in context.

A lot of people will gloss over parts of this passage and miss it, thinking, "Oh, she just had to step up because he abdicated his responsibility." No. No. No. I think he's saying there's something about her. I need her gifts. I need her with me. I see how God's hand is on her, and I want her with me.

Women, please hear this: You're needed. You are needed. You are essential to God's work in the world.

The Question of Women in Church Leadership

For two thousand years, the Church of Jesus Christ has debated the roles of women in the church. You might ask the question: Why, if Deborah is so awesome, don't we have women as pastors and elders in our church? That's a really good question. Women are clearly gifted enough, as demonstrated by Deborah.

We're part of a denomination—full disclosure—that doesn't ordain women to offices. We do so because passages like 1 Timothy and Titus in the New Testament limit the role of pastor and elder to men only.

Tim Keller, in his commentary on Judges, traces the roots of this back to the Old Testament. He says in the Old Testament, there are three set-aside roles that are perpetual: prophet, priest, and king—all roles that are fulfilled eventually by Jesus. Some women, such as Deborah, were prophets. Others were judges and queens, like Deborah, as well as many others. None were priests. Numbers 3 and Leviticus 21 show that all the priests were men descended from Aaron.

The Old Testament tells us that a woman is of equal value, dignity, and ability, created in God's image, given dominion over His creation. It also shows us that women were free to use their gifts in any role except for that of priest. There's something about that priestly office that's limited to men in the Old Testament, as pastor and elder are in the New Testament.

In the New Testament, there are women who are followers of Christ, ministry partners of Paul, deaconesses, and prophets, and yet never elders or part of the 12 disciples. Why? And this is Keller's answer: It's not because of any ontological difference. There are no limitations for women with regard to gifts. It's because of a theological purpose.

God is telling a story with gender. God has so ordered creation that men and women inhabit different aspects of God's image to tell a story about God—that Jesus would come to redeem His bride. That's the story behind gender.

Even Deborah in this passage exercises limits with regard to her role. She's presented with an opportunity for greater power. It's clear Barak is saying, "You. You." And yet she calls herself—this is chapter five—"the mother of Israel, a mother in Israel." She probably could have gotten the role as commander in chief, and yet she says, "Barak, you do it."

A Call to Honor Women

As a denomination that only ordains men, we have to work extra hard to echo the words of Barak here. A friend of mine, a good friend of mine—we were in a small group for years in seminary—he's a pastor now in Atlanta at a church in our denomination. He wrote this article several years ago. It's the longest quote, but every part of this is good, so bear with me:

Because the members of our courts are all men, we will always be tempted to act like a boys club, speaking about or gesturing toward women in subtly demeaning ways. I feel this temptation in my own heart, and I loathe it. It is the polar opposite of the heart of our Savior. Nothing in Scripture suggests that women are less capable than men in any of the character qualifications or tasks of eldership. In fact, every man who's honest knows from experience that many women are more capable than him.

And I want to add a hearty amen to that in this church. May it be anathema for any man in the PCA, especially elders, to even faintly belittle the mothers, sisters, daughters of our church. How will we know if we're doing this?

We must ask actual women repeatedly and trust that their answers are God's gift for our growth and sanctification. Most women in our churches do not want to be elders or pastors, but every single one of them wants to be respected, seen, and heard. Will our churches not only acknowledge, but cultivate and empower and deploy our sisters in the shared work of ministry? Will we proactively seek out their wisdom? Seeking the unique perspective of women is not an abdication of our responsibility as elders, but a faithful exercise of it. Jesus' under shepherds must cultivate the gifts of the body, the whole body, for the upbuilding of the whole body.

It's easy to be known for what we prohibit. But what if the PCA were known more for what we promote, especially in areas where our positions clash with culture? What if secular people consistently said of our denomination, "They only ordain men as elders, but every woman I know in a PCA church is thriving, and their male elders consistently honor and depend on them." Man, do we believe that, brothers? That it is not good for a man to be alone—and not in a marriage sense, in a body of Christ sense. Do we really say yes? We need our sisters in this church in every area. We really are better together. Do we believe that?

Who Is the Hero?

Finally, the dynamic trio: back to Judges 4 and 5. I want to ask the question: Who's the hero of this story? Who's the hero of this passage? You know, it's not Barak, obviously, but it's not even Jael or Deborah. God is the hero. And there's something about how you can read the story that tells you that.

Because if you read chapter 4, we read chapter 4 so you could get all the details. Chapter 5, though, is a song that repeats all the story in song form. It's like, "Turn to page 432. We'll sing the one about Deborah, Barak, and Jael." Right? This was a hymn that they actually sang. And it goes back through and tells the whole story all over again. But what's fascinating is in chapter 4, you get the story from a people perspective. God's name is only mentioned four times in all of chapter 4, and it's mostly the generic name for God, Elohim. Chapter 5, though, it's retold in a way that God is the center of the story. Twenty times in chapter 5, God is named, and it's always the covenant name of God, Yahweh—the revealed name, the most holy name. And the point is, this is a story about what God is doing.

Case in point: Chapter 4, we learned that the army was routed by Israel, but we don't know why. Well, chapter 5 tells us: God sent a storm. There's this huge rainstorm that comes and wets the entire battlefield. So as the Hazorrites come out with their iron chariots—you know how heavy iron is. What does it do in that mud? Sinks down. And suddenly, it's an equalized playing field, and the chariots are on the run, and the Israelites rout them. Because who won the battle? Not Israel. God won the battle.

Why am I emphasizing this? God as hero perspective is what we always have to look at in the Bible. That's what's being emphasized, and that's the backdrop for this last point: the dynamic trio.

The Dynamic Trio

This comes from old Batman and Robin comic books. They were called the dynamic duo. Well, in this passage, we see what we see all over the Bible. God's intention from the very first chapter of the Bible was the dynamic trio: God, man, and woman together in partnership for God's glory. This is how He designed it. This is what it's supposed to be—all of us together.

Sometimes we read chapter 5, and it's called "the song of Deborah." That's the heading in your Bible. But that's not actually what it says in the passage. Did you notice chapter 5, verse 1? Here's what it says:

On that day, Deborah and Barak, son of Abinoam, sang. — Judges 5:1

It's a duet. This is Sonny and Cher. This is Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton—"Islands in the Stream." This is Usher and Alicia Keys. This is a duet that they're singing together, and that's how it's supposed to be. That's what it's supposed to be. It's better like that. A dynamic trio: God, the man, and the woman together for His glory.

Right now in America, we are given false choices with regard to gender—both in the culture and in the church. Simplistic false choices. In society, we hear that gender is a relic of past ages, a made-up category like race, a distinction without a difference. So we should—here's how the logic goes—erase it, get rid of it, because it's an enemy to fairness.

But God designed gender, men and women, as an asymmetrical image of Himself, equally image bearers in the duality of men and women. The Bible shows us that gender is not an enemy to fairness. It's a gift to embrace.

If we can understand how God has created us and understand what God has in purpose for us as a redeemed partnership, what we see in Judges 4 and 5 is the special sauce of gender—the complicated dance of how God has made us together. Two image bearers that are incomplete without one another, not the same. Thank God. And yet partners for God's glory, co-laboring for God's glory.

False Choices Around Gender

In the church, we also have false choices around gender. People like formulas. Formulas are neat and clean because you don't have to depend on God, and it's not nuanced—it's complicated. So in our churches, we get into either complementarian or egalitarian positions. There's an old school complementarian view where it's only what the guys do. Or you have an egalitarian position where men and women are exactly the same, no difference. Both of them miss it.

There's a third way—between gender is nothing or gender is everything, between gender is your enemy or a Mark Driscoll kind of biblical view of gender that doesn't sound like Jesus. It's so much more complicated and messy to have a nuanced view of gender—to say not the same, not the same gloriously, and yet work together, that gender's a gift, not handcuffs. It's a special sauce. It's in partnership. It's a duet for God's glory.

We live in a sound bite generation. People don't want that nuance. I know we don't have great examples of this in our culture either—men and women partnering together for God's glory. But we have them all over the Bible: David and Abigail, Boaz and Ruth, Barak and Deborah.

You know, this third way posture we're taking as a church means that CTK is an awkward place. I don't know if you felt that. We're an awkward place when it comes to gender in churches. We have deacons and deaconesses. We have elders and we have a parakeleo team. We have women teaching Sunday school and helping distribute communion, but we have pastors—male pastors—who are giving the sermon and administering communion. And I know that makes us really weird, but I think it's biblical and I think it's worth it.

Hidden Figures and Shared Mission

In 2017, a movie came out called Hidden Figures. Maybe some of you saw it. It was about a group of female mathematicians—a true story—who helped NASA put a person on the moon, who figured out all the math to make the trajectory, to figure out how all that was going to work to get a human being on the moon.

One Christian writer studying that film commented on how there's an echo of a biblical view of gender in that movie. She says, "Hidden Figures is more than a feel-good celebration of girl power and pursuing your dreams. It tells a larger story about a shared mission that unites people across gender lines and racial lines, creating space for their gifts to flourish." And she says, "The modern church needs to hear this story. We need to watch this movie."

Suddenly, we're aiming at the moon, and it's all hands on deck. God intentionally sets a mission for us in the Great Commission beyond what we can reach—like reaching for the moon—to cause us out of isolation into mutuality and dependence, men and women. He intentionally set the frame of the Great Commission to need the participation of everybody. He intentionally set the moon out of reach just so we'll learn to trust Him beyond what we can do or think.

It's co-laboring that we see in this passage, that we see in Hidden Figures. It's actually a picture of the co-laboring that happens in the members of the Trinity in our salvation. Here's what we understand from the Bible: God the Father calls. Jesus the Son accomplishes. The Spirit applies. All working together. And since God co-labors in the Trinity, He calls us to co-labor as well.

The Greater Story

All these stories in Judges—all they do is point back to the greater story. There's a greater Deborah who comes and tells the truth. There's a greater Barak who is the warrior on behalf of God. There's a greater Jael even—the woman who crushed his head and shattered and pierced his temple.

His feet, he sank. He fell. There he lay. At her feet, he sank. He fell. Where he sank, there he lay dead.

A picture for us of our salvation. May God help us to dance His dance.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And we confess that we would like things much simpler many times. The way that we read these stories is challenging to us. It pushes us. It blows our categories. We pray, Father, Lord, that we would be a church that reflects the complexity and the beauty of your word. We pray that particularly with regard to men and women in our congregation.

We pray that our church would be a safe place for women, and it'd be a glorious place where, Lord, what you have purposed would be lived out among us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand and respond to God's word in song together?

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Thank you for listening to our CTK Raleigh sermons podcast. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. If you have questions about our sermon content or about our church in general, please visit our website at ctkraleigh.org.