Men, so last week on Sunday morning I preached about the song of triumph at the Red Sea from
Exodus chapter 15 right after we read about the story of what took place at the Red Sea.
Then in chapter 15 we have that song, looking back, and we talked about that last week.
Well, in the book of Judges here we have another situation like this where the narrative is
interrupted by a song because in Judges chapter 5 we actually have the song of Deborah and
Barak and in chapter 4 we have the story.
And so when you compare the story with the song there are a lot of interesting insights
that come out.
Now the thing that I really want to focus on about this story this morning is in verse
number 12 of chapter 5 where the Bible reads, Awake, awake Deborah, awake, awake, utter
a song, arise Barak and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinuam.
And so this story is really a story about reversals, about the tables being turned as
it were because it starts out here in the song saying that Barak is going to lead his
captivity captive, meaning he's going to turn things around on his captors.
But that's just a small part of the reversals that take place within this story.
So let's go ahead and go through the story really quickly and then we'll get into some
of the applications here.
But starting out in chapter 4 verse 6, we already read the whole chapter but we're just
going to kind of go through the story quickly.
It says in verse 6, And she sent and called Barak, and this is of course Deborah, sent
and called Barak the son of Abinuam out of Kadesh Naphtali and said unto him, Hath not
the Lord God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor and take with
the ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun.
And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with
his chariots and his multitude, and I will deliver him into that hand.
So Deborah is judging Israel at this time, which is of course very out of the ordinary
because obviously the Bible continually teaches that men are supposed to be in authority.
All the other judges throughout the Bible are men.
So this is kind of a reversal here in itself that you have this female judge, Deborah.
So she sends a message to Barak telling him that God has commanded him to go do this.
You almost get the idea that maybe he already had heard this command and maybe has been
delinquent because the past tense of, you know, well, hasn't God commanded you to do
this?
Hath not God commanded you to do this?
And so Barak answers her in verse number eight and said, if thou wilt go with me, then
I will go.
But if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go.
So we see some weakness on Barak's part instead of just obeying the Lord and being the leader
that God has commanded him to be, he wants to kind of lean on Deborah, who is not obviously
God's will as the leader of the nation because God has consistently ordained men to be in
authority, to be in public leadership roles.
And so Deborah is trying to get Barak to step up to the plate and lead the army.
But he says, well, I'm only going to go if you go with me.
And of course, Deborah is not impressed by this answer because it's a, it's a weak answer.
And she said in verse nine, I will surely go with thee, notwithstanding the journey
that thou takest shall not be for thine honor for the Lord shall sell Sisera into the hand
of a woman.
And Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kidesh.
Now of course, we already read the story before the service.
You've probably already heard this story before in your life, but let's say you had not already
read this chapter, then what you would think is being said here is that the victory is
going to go to Deborah, right?
Because we have Deborah and we have Barak and then Deborah kind of corrects him and
says, well, okay, I'll go with you if you're going to be like that, but it's not going
to be for your honor because God's going to sell Sisera under the hand of a woman.
You assume that that woman is Deborah because that's the one that's going with them.
That's the judge and so forth.
But of course, God is going to defy that expectation.
Jump down if you would to verse 15, it says, and the Lord discomforted.
Now it doesn't say discomforted, all right, because that would be a very big understatement.
Discomforted means like confused, confounded, uh, you know, set in disorder.
So the Lord discomforted Sisera and all his chariots and all his hosts with the edge of
the sword before Barak so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot and fled away on his
feet.
So he loses the battle.
Sisera loses the battle, Barak wins the battle and Sisera is just running away by himself
on foot, just fleeing the battle.
Now as he's fleeing, he comes upon the tent of Heber the Kenite and Heber the Kenite is
a guy who had previously been an ally of Sisera's boss.
So Sisera's boss is allied with Heber the Kenite and so when he sees the dwellings of
Heber the Kenite, he thinks, I'm saved.
You know, this is a friend, this is an ally, these people are going to help me out.
It's a safe house for him.
And so it says in verse 18, Jael went out to meet Sisera.
Now Jael is the wife of Heber the Kenite who is supposedly this guy's buddy, supposedly
his ally.
And she said unto him, verse 18, turn in my Lord, turn into me, fear not.
And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle and he
said unto her, give me I pray thee a little water to drink for I'm thirsty.
She opened a bottle of milk and gave him drink and covered him.
Again he said unto her, stand in the door of the tent and it shall be when any man doth
come and inquire of thee and say, is there any man here?
Thou shalt say no.
Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a nail of the tent and took a hammer in her hand and went
softly unto him.
So she creeps up to him with a hammer and one of the tent spikes and smote the nail
into his temples.
Of course, the temples are this soft part on the side of your head right here.
And it says that she fastened it into the ground for he was fast asleep and weary.
So he died.
And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said unto him, come,
I will show thee the man whom thou seekest.
And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead and the nail was in his temples.
What a sight.
That's not what Barak expected.
You know, he's chasing after Sisera and here's Jael showing him this ghastly sight of what
she's done.
Now, why did Jael do this?
The Bible doesn't tell us because remember her husband is supposed to be this guy's ally.
But for some reason, she's on Israel's side or she's against the, you know, Jabin and
Sisera and these guys.
We don't know exactly what her motives are, but she performed this grisly deed of destroying
the Lord's enemy by driving a spike through his head.
Okay, so that's the basic story.
But when we get into Judges chapter 5, we get an interpretation of the story and it's
a song.
So it's poetry, it's poetic, right?
And I'm really just going to focus in on the end of the song because a lot of the song
has to do with the battle and the different tribes that participated and so forth.
But I want to jump in and talk about the song starting in verse 24, where it actually talks
about the tent spike story, okay?
And again, what's one of the great themes of this song in Judges chapter 5?
The turning of the tables, the reversing of roles is one of the big themes.
Remember it says that Barak is going to lead his captivity captive, turning things around
and making the captor the captive and so forth.
So let's look at this song carefully, beginning in verse 24, it says, blessed above women
shall jail the wife of Heber the Kenite be.
Blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
He asked water and she gave him milk.
She brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail and her right hand to the workman's hammer.
Now let's stop and talk about this for a moment.
Now why does she give him milk instead of water, right?
He asked for water.
She gives him milk.
There's a couple of different ways you can interpret this is that she's going above and
beyond.
Maybe she's really laying it on thick, what a good hostess she is and how she's really
going to take care of him.
But it actually goes a little bit deeper than that because of the fact that there's a theme
in this chapter of mothers, okay?
And I'm going to explain what this means.
But a little bit earlier in the chapter, Deborah says, I arose as a mother in Israel, right?
So Deborah calls herself a mother in Israel.
And then if you think about jail, the way that she treats Cicero when he shows up at
the tent, you know, she puts a mantle on him and then it tells us that she gave him milk
to drink and then she actually tucks him into bed.
It says twice that she covered him.
So it makes a point about her covering him, tucking him in, glass of warm milk, good night
Cicero, sleep tight, don't let the Ted spike bite, you know, whatever.
So she's laying him down and treating him like a mother.
So on the one hand we have Deborah calling herself a mother in Israel and then we have
jail sort of mothering Cicero.
And then a little bit later we're going to be introduced to Cicero's mom, which is kind
of strange why Cicero's mom would come into the story at all.
But anyway, let's keep going.
Notice how she put her hand to the nail in verse 26 and her right hand to the workman's
hammer.
Now again, a little bit of a reversal here.
Just as Deborah is not who you would expect as a judge because the judges are typically
going to be men, they're supposed to be men, right?
So that's a reversal by having a female judge.
But not only that, we have jail not exactly operating in a very feminine manner, okay?
Because this isn't really the type of deed that you would expect a woman to do something
this brutal.
And not only that, but she's got her hand to the workman's hammer.
You know, again, it's kind of a manly object, a manly tool that she's using to perform this
deed.
She could have killed him in any number of ways, but this is the way that she did it.
So it says she put her hand to the nail and her right hand to the workman's hammer and
with the hammer she smote Sisera, okay?
Now this goes into a little bit more gory detail because in chapter four it talks about
how she smote the tent spike, right?
But here's the thing, when you put a hammer in a woman's hand, she's not necessarily going
to hit the nail on the head every single time because if you've ever tried to nail things
and you weren't really that experienced, you miss a lot, right?
You know, you put the nail and you're, you know, how many of you have ever hit your thumb
with a hammer when you were hammering it?
Pretty much anybody who's ever used a hammer has done that because when you first start
using it, you're not that good.
Obviously expert carpenters, they're not hitting their fingers and thumbs and so forth, but
you know, unless you're an expert, you're going to miss and you're going to hit your
fingers, you're going to hit the nail sideways and bend it and have all these things.
So anyway, she gets a little wild with this hammer apparently because she uses a tent
spike and she hits the tent spike into his head and fastens it to the ground according
to chapter four.
But according to chapter five, she smote Sisera.
So she hits Sisera and that's why it says she smote off his head when she had pierced
and stricken through his temples.
Okay.
Now obviously when Barak shows up, he's laying there with the spike through his head fastened
to the ground.
So obviously when it says she smote off his head, it's not talking about his entire head.
Okay.
But she smote the nail with the hammer and she smote Sisera with the hammer and at least
part of his head comes off.
Okay.
You know, it just gets a little messy, okay, for lack of a better word.
Verse 27, at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down, at her feet he bowed, he fell, where
he bowed, there he fell, down dead.
Now that might seem a little bit of a strange verse, but it's because it's a song.
And you know how songs repeat things over and over again.
So that's why it repeats things like that.
It's poetry, so there's a lot of repetition.
Now this is where the poem really gets interesting, okay, because it brings up Sisera's mom, which
you don't really expect to think about the villain's mother after the villain gets destroyed.
I mean, how often does the Bible really say, hey, let's talk about the bad guy's mom, how
she feels about the situation.
It's kind of strange, right?
But it says in verse 28, the mother of Sisera looked out at a window and cried through the
lattice.
Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?
Her wise ladies answered her.
Yea, she returned to answer to herself.
Have they not sped, have they not divided the prey to every man a damsel or two to Sisera,
a prey of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needlework.
Of divers colors of needlework on both sides meet for the necks of them that take the spoil.
So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord, but let them that love him be as the sun when
he goeth forth in his might.
And then the song's over, and then it has this footnote at the end, the land had rest
40 years.
Now what is the significance of Sisera's mom looking out the window, waiting for him to
get home?
Again, it goes with the theme of the mothers that we've seen so far, but how do we kind
of put all this together?
Well again, it's all about the reversal, the turning, the tables.
Barak leading captivity captive.
Now if you think about it, Sisera is setting out to fight against Israel.
He wants to dominate Israel.
What's going on with the sound system here?
Is this my microphone?
Is this another microphone?
Are all the other microphones turned down?
Do we know what's going on?
Is that on or off?
Leave it on.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
Sorry about the technical difficulties, folks.
Every once in a while, it's all wireless and just every few months you have to keep changing
the channel because, I don't know, somebody started a pirate radio station or something
and whatever the reason, it sometimes acts up.
So sorry about that.
But the reversal, right?
So Sisera, according to what his mom is saying, right, as she's longing for him to get back
and waiting for him to get back, she says, oh, well, I know why he's not back.
It's because he won the battle.
He defeated the enemies and right now he's just kind of enjoying the aftermath of that
victory.
And she brings up a couple of specific things that Sisera would be enjoying or the type
of prey that he would be getting.
Look at verse 30, it says, have they not sped, have they not divided the prey to every
man a damsel or two?
Now this right away kind of jumps out at me, a damsel or two.
This is very strange because number one, two is excessive.
What do you mean a damsel or two, right?
That right there shows greed and excess on the part of Sisera and his ilk, right?
Because God has always intended for marriage to be between one man and one woman.
And this isn't even marriage.
I mean, this is talking about just taking women captive.
This is talking about possibly ravaging women, taking them captive, abusing them, whatever.
This isn't about even marriage, but not only are they going to violate a woman, but they
say, you know, a damsel or two.
What's even weirder is that his mom is talking about this, you know, that his mom is bringing
this up.
Okay.
So it shows the wickedness of the culture that he's coming from, that his mom would
be comfortable talking about something like this and just the greed of Sisera that he's
trying to take something that doesn't belong to him.
You know, God has granted this land to Israel and Israel has a certain inheritance and he's
getting greedy and trying to expand his kingdom into their territory and take what doesn't
belong to him.
So you got the damsel or two.
And then the other thing that's mentioned as the prey is clothing because it says to
Sisera a prey of diverse colors, a prey of diverse colors of needlework, of diverse colors
of needlework on both sides.
And of course this is just repetitive.
Bottom line, it's a prey of diverse colors of needlework on both sides that are meat
for the next of them that takes oil.
So what are we talking about?
An article of clothing that goes on the neck that's very ornate or decorated, some kind
of a textile.
Now what's ironic about this statement is that Sisera does in a sense get a damsel or
two, quote unquote, and he does get the garment that he's looking for, but not the way he
wanted it.
Notice how this is the end of the song, right?
This is the coup de grace at the end of verse 30.
And then it just has this little epilogue, so let all thine enemies perish O Lord.
So stop and think about this.
Sisera is a wicked man.
He's an enemy of the Lord and he's setting out to go take the Israelites captive, to
dominate Israel, to defeat Israel, to keep them subjugated, to keep them under his thumb.
He ends up having that turned around on him and losing the battle.
The Israelites are worried because they're coming with all these chariots, but Sisera
ends up leaving his chariot and running away on foot.
He comes in a chariot, he leaves on foot.
He comes with the intent of getting himself a damsel or two, of violating a damsel or
two, of kidnapping a damsel or two, but what actually happens to him?
He ends up getting defeated by a woman.
Just as he's going to go and kidnap a woman or do something terrible to a woman, a woman
ends up doing something terrible to him.
And what's interesting too is that it's not a damsel who does this to him because a damsel
implies a young maiden, right?
Whereas the two women with whom Sisera has to do are Deborah, who's a mature married
woman and Jael, who is also a mature married woman.
So remember the story started out and we're supposed to think that Deborah is going to
be the one to defeat Sisera, but then it turns out it's actually Jael who is the one who
kills Sisera and so that's kind of the woman or two because it starts out you think it's
one and then ah, it's two because this other woman comes out of nowhere with a hammer and
a nail and does this.
And so Sisera expects to have a damsel or two, but a woman or two actually has their
way with Sisera, right?
And he ends up going into a bed but not in the way he expected because he ends up getting
a tent spike driven through his head as opposed to enjoying something.
Not only that, Sisera expects at the end of the battle to go home to mom when it's done.
He thinks he's going to enjoy mom and he does come home to a mom at the end of the
battle, but it's not the mom that he grew up with.
It's Jael who's a kind of psychotic kind of a mom, right?
I'm joking, obviously she's not psychotic because she's actually doing the will of God,
but I'm just saying from his perspective when she's creeping up on him with that hammer
and nail, it's pretty scary.
So you see how all of the things that Sisera expects, they all kind of happen to him in
an ironic way.
He's going to violate some women, some women violate him.
He's going to go home to his mom, he goes home to a different kind of mom that has a
different kind of a bedtime story for him and that's why she gives him the milk because
she's picturing that mother figure.
And then what else is he going to get?
Tell him what else he gets.
You know, Rob, he's going to get a diverse prey of needlework and what's the first thing
that Jael does when he shows up is puts a garment on him.
Alright, here you go buddy, you won the battle.
Here's your garment of needlework, meet for the next of a man such as yourself and not
only that, but you know, you wanted a woman, well you get me.
So it's kind of interesting how everything's backwards in this whole story.
Everything's reversed, everything's flipped over, everything's ironic when it comes to
what happens to Sisera in the end.
Now what do we, what's the application here?
Well if you would flip over to 1 Samuel chapter number two, 1 Samuel chapter number two and
while you're turning to 1 Samuel chapter number two, let me just kind of give you a little
side note about this term captivity captive because she says arise Barak and lead thy
captivity captive.
And again we talked about what that meant in the context of the story.
The Israelites are subservient to the Canaanites, they're subjugated by the Canaanites and Barak
is going to turn that around, right?
And lead the captivity captive, lead his captivity captive I should say.
So what does that expression mean?
It means to turn the tables on the captor and make him the captive.
That's what happened because the guy ends up being captivated, that is fastened to the
ground in jail's tent.
Now here's the thing about this phrase.
It's used in two other places in the Bible and when we study the Bible we've got to compare
scripture with scripture.
Well in the book of Psalms we have this quote about leading captivity captive and then that
quote is used in Ephesians chapter four about Jesus, okay?
So you don't have to turn there but I'm going to read this for you from Ephesians chapter
four about Jesus.
It says wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave
gifts unto men.
Now that is a quote from Psalm 68, that part about, you know, he led captivity captive
and gave gifts unto men.
And then the Bible kind of explains in Ephesians four how that quote applies to Jesus.
It says, now he that ascended, Jesus who ascended up to heaven, what is it but that he also
descended first into the lower parts of the earth?
He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill
all things.
So Jesus Christ, before he ascended into heaven, he descended first into the lower parts of
the earth, the Bible says, okay?
And that is mentioned in context of leading captivity captive.
Now we already know what leading captivity captive means from the Deborah and Barak story.
And so if we apply that to the statement here about Jesus in Ephesians chapter four, what
are we talking about?
Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, his soul was buried in the, or sorry, excuse me,
his soul wasn't buried because you can't really bury a soul, can you?
When he died on the cross, his body was buried in the tomb because you bury a body.
But his soul descended first into the lower parts of the earth.
His soul descended into hell.
And that's why the Bible says in Acts chapter two, verse 31, this spake he of the resurrection
of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption.
So Jesus Christ's soul was not left in hell, but what happened three days later?
He rose again from the dead and he bodily rose.
He walked out of the tomb, he showed him the holes in his hands and the hole in his side.
And so Jesus Christ conquered death.
He conquered death.
Now in the book of Revelation, Jesus said, I am he that liveth and was dead and behold,
I'm alive forevermore.
Amen.
And have the keys of Helen of death.
So Jesus says, I was dead, right?
Because the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
We want to make sure we get every component of that death.
Now Jesus was not half dead, part dead, sort of dead.
Part of him was dead.
Jesus was dead.
Okay.
The death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus is what we believe in.
Jesus died.
And that's why Jesus even said in Revelation, I was dead.
So he was in a state of being dead for three days and three nights.
So Jesus said, I'm alive.
I was dead.
Behold, I'm alive forevermore and have the keys of hell and of death.
Now Jesus conquered death.
Jesus conquered hell.
And so now he has the keys of hell and of death having ultimately conquered them.
Now isn't that leading captivity captive?
Because if you think about it, death or hell, you know, would hold someone captive in a
sense that you don't just leave when you want.
You can't get out.
Right?
It's not a parable, the story about the rich man and Lazarus, not a parable, parables don't
use people's names, but in the story about the rich man and Lazarus, it talks about how
people who want to leave hell can't.
And you know, of course that rich man's begging for a drop of water on his tongue cause he's
tormented in the flame and he can't get out, he can't leave.
And he's told by Abraham, you can't, you can't leave.
You can't come over here.
And so it's a place of captivity.
But the Bible says of Jesus that he was loosed of the pangs of death and it was not powerful.
It was not possible for him to be hold enough of death, right?
So he led captivity captive, meaning that hell and death had had him captive.
And then what did he do?
He conquered hell and death and now he has the keys of hell and death.
So who's in charge now?
Who's the boss now?
Jesus.
Okay, so you can see how Jesus led captivity captive.
He died, his soul descended into hell and then three days later he rose again from the
dead having conquered death and hell, holding the keys of hell and death.
He led captivity captive.
Now look, I think that that's pretty easy to understand because we've got the Barak
story, then we've got Ephesians four and Ephesians four has the descent into the lower parts
of the earth right there in the context.
And so it's right there for us.
But yet over the years all kinds of people have come up with all kinds of strange doctrines
about what leading captivity captive means.
Just in the last week or two I heard somebody say, oh you know it's a doctrine of the harrowing
of hell.
And this person said that the harrowing of hell is when Jesus takes all of the people
from before the time of Christ, all of the righteous heathen and takes them to heaven.
Here's the problem with that, there aren't any righteous heathen.
You know what, last time I checked there's none righteous, no not one.
Last time I checked for all of sin and come short of the glory of God being justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
There's only one way to heaven, it's through Jesus.
It's not like, well I know you're a heathen but because you were a good guy, you were
a pretty cool dude, you've done your time in hell, you get a pass.
That's a false doctrine, this harrowing of hell doctrine.
And then other people will say, well no no no, what he did was he went down there to
hell and he preached to people down there and kind of gave them a chance to get saved
if they wanted.
And it's like, let me think about it, I'm in hell, it's kind of crazy right?
Or other people will say, well you know, nobody could go to heaven before Jesus died on the
cross so they're all in Abraham's bosom and then captivity captive is when he kind of
ran a shuttle from Hades to heaven.
But boy you're pulling an awful lot out of those two words, captivity captive.
Because the shuttle from Hades to heaven theory is pretty much relying on these two words.
That's not what those two words mean, those two words mean the same thing they made back
in Judges.
Jesus led captivity captive, Jesus defeated and conquered hell and death and he has the
power of hell and death.
That's what it actually means.
But a lot of people, they struggle with this doctrine of Jesus going to hell for three
days and three nights but at the end of the day it's what the Bible says happened.
His soul went to hell for three days and three nights.
Now obviously some people will try to create a straw man like, oh the devil was tormenting
hell and Jesus, or the devil was tormenting Jesus in hell for, no.
That's not what the Bible teaches at all.
Let me explain something to you.
The devil is not ruling and reigning in hell.
He never has been and he never will.
You know Satan worshipers have a saying that they like to use where they say it's better
to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.
Have you ever heard this saying before?
This is what satanic people will use but it's stupid because they're not going to be ruling
in hell.
The devil's not going to be ruling in hell.
The devil's not some porky pig with a mustache and a pointed tail, you know, poking people
in hell.
The devil right now is on this earth by the way.
He's walking about seeking whom he may devour.
And someday the devil will be cast into hell but he's not there yet.
But someday he will be cast into hell and when he goes to hell he's going to be punished
there.
He's not going to be doing any ruling or reigning, no.
He's going to be punished.
The person who's in charge of hell is God.
The person who's in charge of hell is Jesus.
Jesus is ruling in hell, not the devil and his minions.
God is the one who has control over those things.
And by the way, the angel of the bottomless pit in Revelation is working for the Lord,
opening it and shutting it, locking the devil in, getting rid of the key, right?
And making sure that he stays bound for a thousand years.
He's not in charge down there.
So look, that's not what we're saying when we say that Jesus descended into hell or that
Jesus was in hell for three days and three nights, we're not saying that he's down there
subject unto the devil or something stupid like that, okay?
But he is down there paying the price for our sins as part of the redemptive process.
He died, his body's buried, he spends three days and three nights in hell, his soul re-enters
his body, he resurrects from the dead.
That's what happened, okay?
And by the way, we talked about the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
What's the significance of his death is that he died.
He actually died, he didn't swoon or go into a coma or lose consciousness, he's dead.
But he didn't even just die physically, he also went to the place of death, he went and
descended into a place called death, hell itself.
So he was also dead in that sense.
Because if he was just kind of hanging out in paradise for three days or hanging out
in heaven for three days, that's not considered death because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are
in paradise and they're not considered dead, they're considered alive.
God's not the God of the dead but of the living, that's Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Now what's the significance of the burial?
The burial is the fact that you bury a body, not a soul.
And so that means that if we have a death, burial and resurrection, that means that the
resurrection has to be a bodily resurrection or the burial wouldn't make any sense.
Because a lot of people will say, well Jesus just resurrected spiritually.
Okay, well then did he get buried spiritually?
No.
The death, burial and resurrection, the reason the burial is key is that it refers to the
fact that it's a bodily resurrection.
Dead body, buried body, risen body, okay?
If you don't have a risen body, you don't have the gospel because the Jehovah's Witnesses
will come along and say, well the resurrection is just when his soul left his body or spirit
left his body.
That's called dying.
The body without the spirit is dead.
That's called dying, okay?
That's not called resurrection.
And that's why when Jesus walked out of the tomb, he showed him the holes in his hands
because it's a bodily resurrection.
So here's the thing.
A lot of people would deny this teaching that Jesus went to hell for three days and three
nights.
I believe it's crystal clear in Acts chapter 231 and lots of other verses.
But Acts 231 just explicitly says that his soul was not left in hell.
But there are people out there who don't believe that.
And some people will say like, well are these people unsaved?
No, they're not unsaved because the part that you have to believe to be saved is the death,
your own resurrection, which is clearly talking about the body.
You understand what I'm saying?
So basically, as long as we believe that Jesus died for our sins and was buried and bodily
rose again and we have all of our faith and trust in him for salvation, we're saved.
If someone disagrees about where he was for those three days and three nights or whether
he descended into hell, you know, that's just, they're just wrong about that one point.
But it doesn't make them unsaved.
It's not absolutely necessary for salvation to understand that particular doctrine.
The thing that you need for salvation though that is absolutely essential is the resurrection
of Jesus.
And that's a bodily resurrection because it's a burial resurrection.
Okay, so I hope that that's clear.
I hope that makes sense.
So I just want to touch on that while we're here talking about this idea of captivity
captive.
Now, 1 Samuel chapter two, we're going to get an application from the whole story here.
What's the story about?
It's about the tables being turned, everything going the exact opposite way of how Sisera
expected it to go, right?
Instead of his damsel or two, he gets a pretty mean woman or two who's got some hair on her
teeth.
Not exactly what he expected.
But look at 1 Samuel chapter two verse three, it says, talk no more so exceeding proudly.
Let not arrogance he come out of your mouth for the Lord is a God of knowledge and by
him actions are weighed.
The bows of the mighty men are broken and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
Now notice this, and we'll find this in other Psalms and other prayers and songs throughout
the Bible.
This in particular is Hannah that is speaking in 1 Samuel chapter two, the mother of Samuel.
Hannah is speaking and she starts to talk about these type of reversals where she says
the bows of the mighty men are broken and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
See how things have turned around?
The weak have become strong.
The strong have become weak.
The Bible says in verse five, day that were full have hired themselves out for bread.
Isn't that a reversal?
And they that were hungry ceased, meaning that they cease from being hungry.
They stopped being hungry.
So that the barren hath borne seven.
You know, the woman that couldn't have kids, she had seven kids.
And she that hath many children is waxed feeble.
So everything's getting flipped backwards.
The Lord killeth and make it alive.
He bring it down to the grave and bringeth up.
The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich.
He bringeth low and lifteth up.
Verse eight, he raises up the poor out of the dust and lifted up the beggar from the
dung hill to set them among princes and to make them inherit the throne of glory for
the pillars of the earth are the Lord's and he has set the world upon them.
He will keep the feet of his saints and the wicked shall be silent in darkness.
Watch this for by strength shall no man prevail.
What's the Bible saying?
That don't get prideful or arrogant because of your strength and your might and your power
because God can bring you down whenever he wants.
Just like Jabin and Cicero, they had all the chariots, they had all the power, they had
all the advantages.
They're already they're already planning on their excessive victory aftermath with a damsel
or two and all the needlework and all the things they're going to get.
Hey, you spoke too soon there, buddy, because God really turned things around on him, didn't
he?
Don't get prideful because God can bring you down.
And then the flip side of that, the positive side is that, you know, when you feel like,
oh, man, everything's going against me, everything's going wrong.
My life's a mess.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
Hey, God's able to lift you up out of any situation, any poverty, any illness, any problems
you know, God can choose to turn things around for you any time he wants.
And this can either be good or bad.
He can take a good situation and make it turn bad really quickly.
Or he can take a bad situation and make it good really quickly.
Right.
This is what God does frequently.
And the wicked, they end up getting destroyed in the end, no matter what.
They will get what's coming to them.
And the righteous will always get what's coming to them in the end.
And that's why the Bible says that by strength shall no man prevail at the end of verse nine.
Human strength cannot go against what God has ordained, what God wills.
And so if God is out to get you, it doesn't matter how strong you are, you're going down.
And if God is for you, who can be against you?
Because one man of you shall chase a thousand, two of you shall put 10,000 to flight.
Why?
Because God is the one who has the power to reverse any situation, to flip over any situation
for his glory.
It says in verse number 10, the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces.
It's going to happen.
Maybe not immediately, but in the long run, the adversaries of the Lord are going to be
broken to pieces, no matter how strong they are, no matter what resources they have, no
matter what advantages they have.
God is able to turn the tables on anyone whenever he wants.
You know, how many times have we seen in our lives examples of people who were so popular
and they went from just being so popular to just being just a pariah, just being hated
and execrated and just the biggest loser in everyone's mind?
How people could go from being so popular or how many times have we seen people go from
being just hated and execrated and then they become so popular?
You know, just all the time you see these things turn around.
The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces.
Out of heaven shall he thunder upon them.
The Lord shall judge the ends of the earth and he shall give strength unto his King and
exalt the horn of his anointed.
Now this is specifically prophesying about the King of Israel, God's anointed, and it
could also be prophetic of Christ who is the King of Israel and God's anointed.
But also even we as Christians can apply some of these things because God has made us kings
and priests and we've been anointed with the Holy Spirit as believers and so God can lift
us up.
The Bible says if we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God then he will exalt
us in due time.
And so don't rely on your own strength and your own power but rather trust in the Lord
with all your heart and let the Lord be the judge.
We don't have to go out and avenge ourselves on the wicked.
God will break them in pieces and we don't have to worry about lifting ourselves up.
What we need to worry about is just doing right in the sight of God.
If we do right in the sight of God, God can turn our situation around any way he wants
to, any time he wants to.
And by the way, out of weakness many who trust in the Lord are made strong and God will use
the weak to defeat the strong.
I want to say Barak.
See here's the problem.
I've been pronouncing this Barak my entire life.
Who grew up with this story and it's Barak?
Nobody.
Who grew up with a different pronunciation?
Because Barak, Obama came along and all of a sudden I'm supposed to change the way I've
been pronouncing this and it's hard for me.
And by the way, who names their kid Barak anyway?
Because he's kind of a weak dude.
There's probably a lot more Debra's out there than Barak's.
We've even got more jails in our church than Barak's.
And so the thing is, there's this one certain crack whore who named her kid Barak.
But anyway, that's another story.
So I don't know where I was going with that.
But anyway, in this great story with Barak and Debra, what we learn is that God can even
take a guy like Barak who's not necessarily the strongest, mightiest, most powerful leader.
Debra kind of has to take him out there kicking and screaming to go do what needs to be done.
But in the end, he ends up actually doing well.
And we typically don't really emphasize the battle because we're so fascinated by the
tent spike story.
But you know, there was a battle and Barak does lead the troops into battle and he does
do a great job and he does defeat the enemy.
And out of his weakness, he waxes strong and God uses him and he ends up doing a mighty
work.
All of us have weaknesses, none of us is perfect.
We all have flaws in our character and personality traits that we wish were better than they
are.
We're human, we're sinful, we're weak.
But God says my strength is made perfect in weakness.
And so at the end of the day, even though Barak is a weak dude, he obeyed the Lord.
Even though he did a little bit reluctantly maybe and has to bring Debra as a sidekick,
he still obeyed, God still gave him the victory.
And so in spite of our weaknesses, in spite of our shortcomings, we just need to make
sure that we follow the will of God and obey the commandments of the Lord and do what God
tells us to do.
And in the end, we've got to trust in God that whatever situation in our lives has got
us down, God can turn that thing around.
And conversely, if we get back sledding, if we get away from God and we're not in church
and we're not reading our Bibles and we're not serving the Lord, God can take whatever
good thing we have going and he can turn that around pretty fast too.
We need to understand that it is God who ultimately holds our destiny in his hands.
Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this great story and all the wonderful things that we
can learn from this passage, Lord.
First of all, Lord, we thank you for Jesus Christ leading captivity captive and turning
the tables on death and hell, which is pictured also by Barak turning the tables on Sisera.
Lord, we're thankful that now that we're saved, now that we've believed on Christ as our savior,
that Lord, we have you as our counselor, our friend, our guide, our defender, our protector.
Lord God, I pray that we would always prioritize your service over anything else because of
the fact that you are the one who ultimately can give us the victory, Lord.
I pray that you would give us the victory this morning.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.