Following the reign of the left-handed man we get a woman
judge over Israel. These two things tell
us that there is a problem in Israel.
They would ordinarily not be judges but the men of Israel are failing to
lead. We see that in the hesitation of
Barak to go up without Deborah to face the king of Canaan. Her response is that she will go up but
because he is not man enough to go the Lord will not give him the glory of
defeating Sisera, the commander of the army, but rather this honor will go to a
woman. In the end, we see Jael, the wife
of a Kenite, whose kingdom was at peace with Canaan, offering to hide Sisera
from the Israelites and then driving a tent peg into his skull and killing
him. Indeed, Deborah was a prophetess
and a judge.
We are told of a group of women who had followed Jesus from
Galilee and were ministering to Him and these women were there to the end, they
were strong enough in their love for Him to be there to the bitter end. Joseph of Arimathea takes a great risk in
coming to collect the body for burial, he risks the disapprobation of the
religious leaders in caring for this condemned man and he also comes into
contact with a dead body which would also have been bleeding, thereby rendering
the man unclean for the coming feast. He
put Jesus into a "new tomb" because to have placed Him into an
existing one would have brought defilement to the whole. Matthew gives us the added detail of the
conversation between the chief priests and Pilate concerning their fears about
a theft of Jesus' body. Pilate want
nothing further to do with this thing and dismisses them to guard the body with
their own forces.
Peter steps up as the leader to say that they need to choose
another to take the place of Judas. He
proposes that the qualifications include only one who has accompanied them from
the time John baptized Jesus, through the resurrection and the day Jesus was
taken up from among them. Matthew's
Gospel tells us that at the ascension there were some among them that day who,
even then, doubted. Fortunately for us
who live 2000 years later the Holy Spirit is given to us that we might have an
equal witness in our hearts to those who were actually there. After this, we hear no more of Matthias, the
12th apostle, we do hear, however, a good bit about a man whom God chose, who
did not witness these things, Paul of Tarsus.
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