Introduction:

Welcome to Preacher P.S. Today, we’ll hear some additional thoughts about this past Sunday’s teaching shared at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ll get inside the meaning of the sermon and the heart of the preacher as we consider the why, what, and how of the message.

Tommy Branagh:

I’m your host, Tommy Branagh, and today I had the privilege of having a conversation with Bart Garrett, who preached the sermon on Sunday, May 3, entitled Deborah the Judge. A link to that sermon is in the show notes. Great to be talking with you, Bart.

Bart Garrett:

You too, Tommy.

Tommy Branagh:

Well, Bart, you had a ton of the narrative of scripture to cover this morning in a very abbreviated fashion with a first Sunday. We try to keep our sermons at 15 minutes. And so that’s a lot to do in a little bit of time. And I’d be curious, as you were thinking about this today, how you came to the particular structure that you had. As I was listening, it felt like you had kind of three movements to your sermon. There was introductory comments, kind of aimed at the kids. And then you showed that sheep video which was both services absolutely loved. You moved into a kind of brief explainer on Deborah herself. And then I feel like the bulk of your sermon you moved into a question about conquest, which was arranged around four questions. So I’d be curious if you could take us a little bit through your process of how do you go from, you know, the whole book of Judges and honestly some of the themes of Joshua before you and land where you landed?

Bart Garrett:

Yeah, yeah. Such a big question, an important one. How did you write your story exactly? Yeah, well, I think generally speaking. So we did a little debrief as a staff this week on this series where we are, if you’re new to this podcast or to our church, spending a year in this one book, one year, one story, one life, you know, telling the story of scripture. And I made the comment as we were debriefing and it wasn’t self protecting. It’s not like I’m second guessing the series, but it was like, yeah, if we were to do this service, it’s probably more like a three to five year moment where we’re taking the scope of scripture and even then we’re still only scratching the surface. So we have these massive epics that we’re contending with week to week. And Student Sunday last week was the whole of the book of Joshua and the conquest that the quote unquote, as we talked about taking of the land this week is Judges, where God is configuring a way to set up the people to flourish in the land. But there’s still a lot of battles to fight. And so that coupled. So the large swath, coupled with student Sunday last week, special baptisms of some students this week, just the notable reality of a lot of new people in our church. I tend to, as I would Christmas Eve and Easter, defer to people like that because I feel like our people will continue to develop and grow in all sorts of ways. Like, the sermon is kind of the iceberg tip of our training and development here. There are podcasts, there are resources, there are middle hours, there are community groups. There are all these things. So when I can, I defer to that outsider who might be looking in, peering in, stepping in. And so that was very much on my mind as I was writing the sermon. I knew it was the first Sunday because you or someone reminded me a week and a half ago. And so for the first movement to your question, I thought, oh, man, I want to really incorporate the kids. And maybe the best way to do that is to just find an illustration that everyone could relate to. That allows me an opportunity to just simply say, look, this is the good news. Like, this is the bottom line story that we’re telling. So there was that first movement. The second movement, where I did leave quite a bit on the cutting room floor is, yeah, we’ll come back to that. Getting into Deborah, her life as a judge, as a prophet, as a warrior, all the things, and then recognizing, I mean, as I was cutting some pieces out of that second movement, it was really. Because I felt like it’s really impossible to show up in this moment in the story and not deal with what feels deeply problematic. And that’s God telling his people to eject other people from their land and take it over. And so I ended up cutting a lot out of that too, because as you said, 15 minutes. But anyway, that’s kind of how it all came together.

Tommy Branagh:

Well, that does bring me to my next question, which you’ve spoken to a little bit already. But, you know, in the breadth of things that happen across Joshua and Judges, that question of conquest is where you zoomed in. And I’d be curious. I mean, I have some, there’s some, I think, apologetic reasons as you’re talking about, that that that can be a challenging bit of scripture for people who are new to faith to wrestle with. Honestly, it’s. I’m sure you get this as well. Anytime a member of our church embarks on a Bible reading plan where they’re going through the through in the year. You can almost bank on getting some questions about that even from longtime Christians, because they’re challenging passages and ideas for sure. And then you couple that with some of the things going on in the world around us. And so I guess I’d just be curious how you thought about what were kind of the compelling factors for you in wanting to zoom in on conquest and what are some of the things that you’re contending with internally about how you want to answer that and what things are important to highlight?

Bart Garrett:

Gosh, your questions get bigger with each one. I’d like to tap your heart and your mind on this very question as well. But I’ll start where you ended. I do take a grievous posture with me into our present world when I look at, you know, the never ending wars, but also the wars that I mean, Ukraine, Russia, invasion of Iran, like all the stuff that’s happening. And I think, you know, God’s heart is always grieved with war. I do really think the spiral of violence should have properly ended with Jesus. We recognize there’s an already not yet nature of God’s kingdom coming, just as there is in all sorts of ways that there is still violence in a world where tribe is set against tribe and nation is set against nation is yet another outcropping of that. So we grieve with hope, of course, that all is not done and finished with the world. But yeah, I want to be able to name those things in a way that is true to the scriptures, true to my own journey, true to how Christians might be, should be showing up in the world. I do think that there is a lot of us in them. There is a lot of God is on our side. There is a lot of this is a just cause or a just war. I think there are some robust theological categories for just war. But I just think we tend to willy nilly apply things to conquest and conflict in the world today. And I want to, I’m naming it more explicitly here because I don’t want to make it a, a political speech in a sermon. But I just am mindful that we tend to, we, we. By we, I mean late moderns living in America today tend to experience war on our Instagram feed or in our news outlet. It’s very detached, it’s very arm’s length. And I just think, you know, if you’re hearing this text under the threat of war or in the midst of a war, I mean, think about some of the people we read during World War II, for instance. Yeah. So that’s a big part of it. Church is not a place to just escape the world, but to be thoughtful and step in in a prayerful way. So that’s the biggest part, I think, just the problematic nature of Scripture. Like, it’s. You know, I’d love to hear you. You riff on this too, but I feel like one of the things I’m forever bumping up into as a pastor when I’m trying to get people in love with scripture and committed to reading scripture is like. And I think Tim Keller’s used this analogy for. In another way. But it’s like, yes, it’s. It’s shallow enough that a toddler can play in it. Like, it’s easy to understand and make sense of a lot of things, including how we can be safe through the work of Jesus, but it’s also like, deep enough for an elephant to get lost in. And I think it’s complicated, it’s complex. It should make you think more deeply, not less deeply, you know, so trying to convey that in a way that renders Scripture accessible without it seeming imminently easy is important to me. What about you?

Tommy Branagh:

Yeah, I think they’re. I’ve never quite leaning on the. A way to explain this as well as I. It makes more sense to me internally than I’ve been able to explain it externally. But I think just in the same vein of what you’re saying, you know, you talked about the transcendence and imminence of God. And if we really do have a God who is transcendent, who’s big enough to be over everything, then he. We also have to be able to account for the whole of human history somehow fitting within the world that he rules over.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

And we have a world that is full of war, famine, destruction, all of this stuff. And I think it is not. We don’t have neat answers for how all that coexists under the Word, the world that God rules, and what ways he’s working in and through that, in what ways he’s using it to curb evil, while also at the same time, war itself is a creation of more evil. And so I think it’s really complicated to know how to specifically ascribe God’s role within things like war. But I have always, in some sense, has taken comfort that the Bible is not sort of excluding all of those parts of what happens in history. It is weaving God into the real history that happens. These were really people who really fought with each other, who really fights over the land. And we don’t believe that that is somehow outside of the story that God is telling. And it’s not super easy all the time to understand how God is woven into that story, but it’s we. I think it’s clear that he’s not separate from it.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah, that’s very well articulated.

Tommy Branagh:

But I loved the Joshua passage that you brought in where the angel of the Lord appears and makes crystal clear before any action of conquest or battle that God has not written a blank check to anybody to go wield authority in his name.

Bart Garrett:

That’s right. That’s a great way of putting it.

Tommy Branagh:

He is only for you insofar as you are for Him.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

And so, you know, that doesn’t make everything simple or unravel at all. But those are threads that I held on to.

Bart Garrett:

I would add the one more thing I’d add to this question is, and I already mentioned in the sermon, but I think anytime you’re building a framework of understanding, you do have to help people acknowledge that God deals with and addresses people where they are to pull them forward for sure. But I. Or forward to deepen their sensibility. The reformers called this the condescension of God. John Calvin has an entire chapter about it in the institutes. God is not being condescending, but he condescends in a way that we can understand. So I always like to say it’s like a Cal biology professor explaining metamorphosis to a kindergarten class. So that happens with the state of affairs in a broken world where nations are warring against nations. It happens in marriage. With all the polygamy we see in Scripture, you can say that God’s ideal is for a faithful, monogamous marriage, but it doesn’t look that way in so much of the Old Testament. And that’s because God is dealing with the world as it is, as he’s deepening it and maturing it. And I think that’s uncomfortable, but we have to just name it and wrestle with it. There’s no other way around it.

Tommy Branagh:

Yeah. That’s another place where I find myself really grateful for a lot of the Old Testament law in which you hear God speak clearly on something, because in so much of the narrative, God is not actually rendering the judgment in real time. So you see these events described without any evaluative statements about it. And you’re kind of like, well, this is in the Bible, so does that mean that that’s good, or God approved of that?

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

But then you can go back and say, oh, actually, no. When the ruler is oppressive and when the people are not being well cared for or when, you know, the marriage is looking.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

Insane because there’s 50 people involved in it. Like, oh, God has already spoken to say what he thinks about that. And that standard applies here still, even if it’s not restated in the story.

Bart Garrett:

It’s very important distinction. Yep.

Tommy Branagh:

Well, this was a sermon titled After Deborah. And you spent kind of the second movement of it talking a little bit about Deborah, but probably not in the fullness of what you might have intended originally. So just would love to hear any further illumination on Deborah the judge.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is we don’t have a lot about Deborah. The scriptures speak. I mean, she shows up in two chapters. She’s alluded to, I believe, two more times. But you don’t have a lot to go on in Scripture. There’s not anything written around scripture about her. But what you do at least get are three things only alluded to. She is a prophet, just like Miriam Moses, sister. So I believe she’s the second female prophet mentioned in scripture to that point. Don’t quote me on that. She is. You heard it here, Bart Garrett, she’s a judge. The Judges were set up to essentially intervene in the conquest of the land after it was being settled. You had all sorts of. Of bickering and biting with God’s own people. And then there were still these skirmishes and battles that were waging. So the Judges were thirdly for Deborah to were warriors, they were generals, and she served alongside Barak, I think is the son of Abinoam. I don’t know who Abinoam is. I don’t know who Lapidoth is. Who’s. Who’s Deborah’s husband, but we know enough to know she was one of the good and wise. And I think you used the word in the call to worship faithful judges. Sadly, the way the book of Judges unfurls with seven different cycles, they get worse as they go. So Gideon is about to show up. Samson’s not far behind them, behind him. You know, Gideon was the one that threw out the fleece. So now everybody says, I’m going to throw out the fleece and see which was actually a bad thing. That he.

Tommy Branagh:

Not a credit to his faith.

Bart Garrett:

It wasn’t a credit to his faith.

Tommy Branagh:

A kindness of the Lord, but not a model to follow.

Bart Garrett:

So all to say, this thing is like winding out pretty severely. We get Deborah at the top, who led with righteousness, who led with faithfulness, but we don’t have a whole lot beyond that. But yeah, in a more patriarchal context that scripture is elevating women in that moment. I think it’s important for us to name and elevate. So that was one reason why we landed on Deborah. When we talk about all the judges,

Tommy Branagh:

it is interesting to me, too, to that effect that it does say the name of her husband. Because this isn’t sort of a. You know, there are some monastic or not monastic, monarchic. There are some, like, monarchies in which if a woman can ascend to the throne only if there’s no male.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

You know, to kind of preserve the family line.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

You’re like, oh, this was Deborah, seemingly of her own merit and qualifications.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

Is given the position of judge.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

While having a husband. So it’s not like, oh, her husband was judged and now she’s got to take it up.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

So it’s. It really does, I think, is an early attestation to the ability of women to have authority and lead and be entrusted by God with significant roles.

Bart Garrett:

Yeah. I don’t even know how much time we have, but. One more minute.

Tommy Branagh:

Go for it.

Bart Garrett:

Moving back to the third piece, there was one thing I left out of the sermon that I just didn’t have time for. But the way I wrote one of the questions initially is what sort of world did they live in? And what sort of world do we live in? Because I do think another important question that didn’t even get touched today in a short sermon is, is religion perpetually used for ill, for violence? You know, because whatever your world religion, are you always appealing to your God to fight your battles? And is this. And I would say, yes, that is true. But let us be mindful that there is a guise of religion in our secularity that is still using God for our ends. So, like, even in the 20th century, you could say 120 million people lost their lives to the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, who are actually secular in their regime. I mean, yes, there was lip service given to God in parts, but I don’t think getting past religion is. The point I’m making is helpful. I don’t think religion poisons or pollutes. Everything has been said. I just think we’re going to find other ways and reasons and means to fight with one another, which is why Jesus is so unique in particular in the escape and release and forgiveness and peace that he provides so totally.

Tommy Branagh:

I mean, I think to that end, we see it Old Testament, New Testament, it’s all across Scripture. But there’s the. I find it so compelling about the God of the Bible, the story of the Bible, that there’s no one who is a harsher critique of that use of religion than who we believe is the one true God.

Bart Garrett:

That’s right.

Tommy Branagh:

He’s not ignorant to the fact that many people will use his name for ill. Yeah. And it’s one of the reasons it’s in the top three commandments that you can’t do it.

Bart Garrett:

That’s right. Yeah.

Tommy Branagh:

Yeah.

Bart Garrett:

Well put.

Tommy Branagh:

Well, Bart, thank you so much.

Bart Garrett:

Thanks, Tom. What a beautiful day. It was fun celebrating alongside of you.

Tommy Branagh:

Yeah, it was a great day.

Bart Garrett:

See you next Sunday, people.