When There Seems to Be No Way

Remember we talked about the Israelites falling away from God after conquering the land of Canaan? Unfortunately, they didn't get back on track with God very well and went through a time when judges led them against their enemies. Deborah, the only female recorded to be a judge, went from giving counsel on situations to accompanying men to fight the enemy. Can you imagine. . .a woman, in those days going to battle? (Judges 4,5)

Let's picture this battle. They take ten thousand men onto a dome of a mountain, Mt Tabor, that sits 1,929 feet above the valley floor. As they gather to await further instructions from God the Cannanites arrive on the valley floor with 900 chariots, and foot soldiers, ready for battle. As the authors of A Visual Guide To Bible Events put it, these chariots were the equivalent of tanks.

Can you imagine? Unarmed farmers going up against tanks? Surely they asked themselves. . ."What is God thinking? We wanted to be rescued from this awful leader and this is God's answer? We have no horses or chariots, how are we going to beat them? Will they come up to fight us?"

So, they're safely on the mountaintop, the enemy arrives with weapons, it starts to rain, and God directs them to go down to the valley to fight. Even though the odds look to be against them and they might not have understood why they were leaving the better fighting position, they followed God's instructions through the prophetess Deborah.

The battle ready Canaanites were probably rejoicing that they didn't have to leave the protection of their chariots to fight an uphill battle against the ill prepared Israelites. Each and every charioteer would have thought victory was soon theirs. But they forgot one little thing. . .it was raining.

God gave the Israelites this one advantage. If you look at pictures of the landscape or see a map you'll notice there is a creek bed, called the Kishon River, that runs by Mt Tabor. Now from pictures I've seen it resembles Texas in this way. . . when it rains the creek becomes a torrential river, quickly. And dry land can become impassable before your very eyes.

Now let's look at the scene again. The Israelites are on the top of the mountain. God tells them to go down to the valley floor just as a downpour begins. And when they get to the bottom of the mountain, water has pushed out from the overflowing Kishon River and is flooding the entire area.

The Canaanites run for their lives, leaving chariots and probably weapons behind as they run away from the torrential flooding waters. The Israelites are able to catch up with their enemy and bring them down. The victory is theirs. But only because God made a way.

You know, as I look at this scene and apply it to my life and the experiences of those around me, I have to say that God still works that way. Sometimes when things look lost God brings a victory. And sometimes he does it by asking us to do the strangest things at the strangest times.