The Tent Peg

Unlikely, Part 4: Jael and courage in the place nobody is watching

Every war has a front line, and everybody watches the front line. But the battle in Judges 4 wasn't decided there. It was decided in a tent, in the middle of the afternoon, by the one person nobody picked.

Here's the big idea: God decides battles in the places nobody is watching, through the people nobody expected, when they find the courage to act. Courage, not credentials.

The Courage the Qualified Didn't Have

Israel had lived for twenty years under Jabin, a Canaanite king whose general, Sisera, commanded nine hundred iron chariots. To a nation of foot soldiers with farm tools, that was a nightmare.

God spoke through Deborah. She told Barak to take ten thousand men to Mount Tabor, and God would give Sisera into his hand. The outcome was guaranteed in advance. And Barak, the trained, credentialed general, hesitated.

Then Barak said to her, "If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go." (Judges 4:8, NASB)

Deborah agreed to go, but she told him the honor wouldn't be his: "the Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman" (Judges 4:9). Everyone assumed she meant herself. She didn't.

The Place Nobody Was Watching

The battle went exactly as God said. The iron chariots bogged down at the Kishon, and Sisera, the most feared man in the country, ran away on foot. Not to a fortress. To a tent.

It belonged to Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. She wasn't an Israelite, a soldier, or a prophet. She was a woman keeping a tent in the middle of nowhere while the war happened somewhere else. Except now the war was standing at her door, breathing hard.

Sisera gave her orders like she was harmless. She gave him milk and covered him with a rug, and the most dangerous man in the land fell asleep because it never crossed his mind she was the danger.

The enemy guards against the sword. He never guards against the tent peg.

The Moment She Could Have Let Pass

Nobody would have known if she did nothing. Every voice of self-preservation was shouting: this isn't your war. Wait for the army.

She didn't wait. She picked up the tools of her ordinary life, the peg and mallet she'd used a thousand times, and ended a twenty-year nightmare in one act of nerve (Judges 4:21). Ten thousand men couldn't lay a hand on Sisera. A woman in a tent did.

And heaven made sure we'd remember. Deborah's song calls her "most blessed of women" (Judges 5:24). The world overlooked her. Heaven decorated her for valor.

The Front Line Rarely Looks Like the Front Line

When I joined the Army as a combat engineer, I pictured blowing things up and finally standing out at something. I reported to Fort Hood in 1997, and instead of a line company, I was placed on division staff as a driver. I spent my whole enlistment filing transfer paperwork for the Korean DMZ, begging to be sent to the front line. The Army kept saying no.

Here's what I couldn't see from inside the tent. Because of where I was stuck, I got a security clearance. I was handed computers and became a Unix administrator. That "mistake" became more than twenty-five years in IT security, the trade that lets me serve a small-town church as a bivocational pastor.

The desk I kept trying to escape is the reason Issachar Church exists. I spent six years asking God to move me to the front line, and he never answered that prayer, because I was already standing on it.

Your Tent

Your tent is the place you actually live: the kitchen, the shop, the classroom, the cubicle, the hospital room. It feels like the middle of nowhere. It isn't.

Somewhere in that ordinary place is a moment God is asking you not to let pass. A conversation. A stand nobody else can take, because nobody else is standing where you stand. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's acting while afraid, because you trust the God who put you there.

This week, name the moment you've been letting pass, and act on it within seven days.

The battle may be decided in your tent.

Pastor Josh

This post is adapted from Unlikely: The Heroes You Read Right Past. Join us Sundays at 10 a.m. at 501 S Main St in Sheridan. Plan your visit.