Human Understanding, Philosophy, Protestantism
Then we come to the next enemy, Jabin the king of Hazor, and Deborah and Barak, those through whom God overthrew him. We saw that Jabin was the name of a king whom Joshua had overthrown more than a hundred years before this time, and yet here he is revived again with all his old power, and unless God interpose, the whole land of Israel will be under his sway. His name is "Understanding." It is the intellect exalted against the knowledge of God. It is the opposite of what you have in Christ, who brought all His knowledge and everything else to His Father's feet, and had simply His Father's will as His one thought. He also put that before men, "If any man will do His will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself." Christ is the very opposite of Jabin. If we want true understanding it must be as we know Christ, for in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. When the Church took to philosophy instead of Christ, it put itself under the sway of Jabin,—of the understanding.
There is is only one remedy for that, and that is what we see in Deborah and Barak. Deborah means "the Word," and Barak, "Lightning;" you might say the power of the Word applied. When weakness, which is what the woman speaks of, applies the Word of God to all the wisdom and understanding of man, it crumbles into dust. So it is through weakness that the victory is won—Christ presented to us. As you might say, it is Christ without any of the strength that the world can appreciate. The world despises the Word of God. It despises that which presents Christ to us.
It is feebleness and weakness that you get in Deborah, and in Jael, and that you have also in Barak himself, in holding back and hesitating in helplessness until the faith of the weaker vessel, the faith of the woman presses him on to do what God would have him do. Weakness is written all over that part. The entire narrative speaks of weakness, and yet it is the brightest in the whole book.
Victory is there, perhaps, more complete than in any other portion. This victory of Deborah and Barak over Jabin is celebrated in a song of triumph, and yet, as I say, it is the celebration of weakness simply, a weakness that exalts Christ, as the apostle puts it. You have here that beautiful song of praise and triumph that Deborah and Barak sing after the work is over, the only song of praise that you get in the whole book of Judges. There would have been more songs had there been more weakness leaning upon almighty strength. There would have been greater triumphs and more lasting, had there been more like Deborah, whose name hides her from view, and simply presents Christ, as He is revealed to us in the Word of God. Ah, beloved, to be covered, as it were, by that which speaks simply of Christ, and God's Word, so that people cannot think of us, cannot think of the instrument that God would use, but simply of Christ Himself, and of the truth of God as presented through Christ.
The cold intellectualism of Sardis—the Protestant period of the Church's history would answer to the bondage of Jabin, and the similar one under Ammon; while in the Victors we see something at least of the spirit of Philadelphia.