Israel’s victories are not won by military strategy or strength of arms, but by the intervention of God’s presence with his hosts of angels. This is plainly depicted in Barak’s battle with Sisera, revealing a world not governed by mechanical, natural forces, but personal, spiritual agents. How does this affect our view of providence, and what is and (is not) possible? Rather than asking “what can I do in this situation?” and running a simulation in our heads, we should simply ask, “what should I do?” and leave the rest to God.

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Whereas in one part of the church, singing anything but the Bible’s psalms is viewed as worldly progressivism, and in another part, singing psalms at all is viewed as backward primitivism, in fact scripture reveals the need to continually write new psalms. After going to war and defeating their enemies, Deborah and Barak model the proper response: a victory psalm commemorating God’s help. But what is the pattern of such a psalm? Does it look like contemporary Christian music? Old hymns? Or something else?

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Yael, the lady of a house in league with the Canaanite king, defies her husband by deceiving and slaying Sisera, the principal of the Canaanite army. What should we make of Yael’s treatment of Sisera? Is she a liar and a murderer? Or is she indeed blessed among women? And if so, what is the implication for women in the church, and spiritual warfare?

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Jesus distilled his wisdom about worry into seven simple arguments in his Sermon on the Mount. We can follow these arguments to reason our way out of anxiety, and into mental fortitude. His fourth argument is against the futility of worry: that we cannot make ourselves grow in any way by it; rather the opposite. When we worry, we could be doing literally anything else of value, and the outcome would be better. We should therefore give our anxiety to the One who can do something about our problems.

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Scripture tells us we are to participate in Christ by forgiving our enemies — sacrificing ourselves and our anger, knowing that ultimately God is the one sacrificing us for the sake of shaping us into his image. Yet the New Testament doesn’t give much practical instruction in how. This is because the Psalms already do.

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Contrary to popular belief, we can and must forgive even those who wrong us unrepentantly. Repentance is not a necessary precondition for forgiveness — but, in fact, forgiveness is a necessary precondition for repentance. The doctrine of the cross helps us to understand how and why — and the scriptural distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation.

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Jesus distilled his wisdom about worry into seven simple arguments in his Sermon on the Mount. We can follow these arguments to reason our way out of anxiety, and into mental fortitude. His third argument is that God provides food for all creatures through various means — even birds who don’t have to work for it. Since we are of superior worth, we should trust that God will provide our food also, through the means he has ordained for man: work.

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After 20 years, a new generation has been raised up by Deborah to war against evil—led by Baraq, the lightning-man, to fight the lightning-god Ba’al. While modern readers haughtily interpret Baraq as a man of defective faith, he has the trust in God (along with the confidence of 10,000 peasants) to engage a humanly suicidal strategy to defeat 90,000 Canaanite soldiers, consuming them as fire from heaven on the mountain of Tabor.

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Because Israel has failed to represent God’s father-rule into the world, its own fathers are unable to rule. For as long as it takes to raise a child for battle, they are thus without a savior — and a married woman under authority must judge them. Yet through grace, this curse turns to a blessing, as Deborah the holy mother raises up a spiritual son as a warrior-savior.

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Jesus distilled his wisdom about worry into seven simple arguments in his Sermon on the Mount. We can follow these arguments to reason our way out of anxiety, and into mental fortitude. His second argument is that rightly ordering our concerns in a proper hierarchy is foundational to cultivating peace about the future: placing the lesser things beneath the greater, and taking care to how they fit together in our lives.

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