The Indictment Before the Deliverance Text: Judges 6:7-10
Introduction: The Ache of a Guilty Conscience
The book of Judges is a book of cycles, a nauseating merry-go-round of sin, oppression, crying out, and deliverance. Israel sins, God hands them over to their enemies, they suffer under that oppression, they cry out to God for help, and God raises up a deliverer. And then, as soon as the deliverer dies, they go right back to their idols, and usually manage to be even more corrupt than their fathers were. It is a grim and bloody history, but it is our history. It is the history of the human heart.
In our text, Israel is once again at the bottom of the cycle. For seven years, the Midianites have been ravaging them. They come up like locusts, devouring everything, forcing the Israelites to hide in dens and caves. They are impoverished, beaten down, and desperate. So they do what they always do in such straits. They cry out to Yahweh.
But this time is different. Before God sends a deliverer, He sends a prophet. Before the sword of Gideon, God sends the word of an unnamed prophet. Before God deals with their external problem, the Midianites, He first deals with their internal problem, their sin. Israel is crying out because of the consequences of their sin, but God wants them to understand the cause of their sin. They feel the pain of the oppression, but they have forgotten the pleasure of their idolatry that brought it on. They want relief, but God demands repentance.
This is a critical lesson for us. We often want God to be a cosmic paramedic, rushing in to fix our immediate problems, to patch up our self-inflicted wounds, while leaving the underlying disease of our rebellion untouched. We want Him to deliver us from our troubles, but not from our sins. But God is a physician, not a paramedic. He is interested in healing the disease, not just managing the symptoms. And so, before He gives them Gideon, He gives them this searing indictment. He reminds them of who He is, what He has done, and what they have done in return. He holds up a mirror to their covenant unfaithfulness so that they might see their predicament for what it truly is: not a political problem, but a spiritual one.
The Text
Now it happened when the sons of Israel cried out to Yahweh on account of Midian, that Yahweh sent a prophet to the sons of Israel, and he said to them, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors and drove them out before you and gave you their land, and I said to you, “I am Yahweh your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But you have not listened to My voice.” ’ ” (Judges 6:7-10 LSB)
God's Gracious History Lesson (vv. 7-9)
We begin with the context and the divine response.
"Now it happened when the sons of Israel cried out to Yahweh on account of Midian, that Yahweh sent a prophet to the sons of Israel, and he said to them, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘It was I who brought you up from Egypt and brought you out from the house of slavery. I delivered you from the hands of the Egyptians and from the hands of all your oppressors and drove them out before you and gave you their land...'" (Judges 6:7-9)
Israel cries out "on account of Midian." Their motive is pain, not piety. They are not crying out in repentance for their sin; they are crying out for relief from their suffering. But God, in His mercy, hears even this selfish cry. And His first act of mercy is to send them a prophet. A prophet is God's mouthpiece, His messenger. His job is to speak the unvarnished truth, to say "Thus says Yahweh." This is not a negotiation or a therapy session. This is a divine indictment.
And what is the first thing God does? He reminds them of their history. He recounts His mighty acts of redemption on their behalf. Notice the repetition of the pronoun "I." "It was I who brought you up... I delivered you... I drove them out... I gave you their land." God is re-establishing the foundation of their relationship. Their existence as a free people in the land is not the result of their own strength, their own cleverness, or some happy accident of history. It is the result of a unilateral, gracious, powerful act of God.
He begins with the Exodus. "I brought you up from Egypt... from the house of slavery." This is the cornerstone of Israel's identity. They were a slave people, helpless and hopeless, and God broke into history to set them free. He did not just deliver them from the Egyptians; He delivered them from "all your oppressors." He then "drove them out before you and gave you their land." The conquest of Canaan was not their achievement; it was His gift. Every square inch of the Promised Land was a grace-gift, soaked in the covenant faithfulness of God.
This is a tactic God uses throughout Scripture. When His people forget who they are, He reminds them of what He has done. He points back to His great redemptive acts. For the Christian, our Egypt is our bondage to sin and death. Our exodus is the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we are faithless, He remains faithful. And the beginning of our repentance is to remember the gospel, to remember that we are who we are not because of what we have done, but because of what He has done for us.
The Central Command and the Tragic Failure (v. 10)
After reminding them of His grace, God reminds them of His command and their treasonous response.
"...and I said to you, “I am Yahweh your God; you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live. But you have not listened to My voice.” ’ ” (Judges 6:10 LSB)
This is the heart of the matter. After all that He had done, God gave them one central command, which was really the summary of all the others: "I am Yahweh your God." This is a covenant declaration. He is their God, and they are His people. Because of this relationship, one thing follows necessarily: "you shall not fear the gods of the Amorites."
Notice the language. He does not say, "you shall not worship" or "you shall not serve," though those are certainly included. He says, "you shall not fear." This goes to the root of all idolatry. Idolatry is not primarily an intellectual mistake; it is a misplaced fear. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but the fear of anything else is the beginning of idolatry. The Amorites had their gods, their Baals and Asherahs, which were essentially fertility cults tied to the land. The Israelites, living in that same land, began to think that perhaps they needed to pay tribute to the local spiritual landlords to make the crops grow and the cattle multiply. They feared what would happen if they did not. They feared crop failure, they feared economic insecurity, they feared being different from their neighbors. The fear of man, or in this case, the fear of fake gods, brings a snare.
God's command was to replace this creaturely fear with the fear of the Creator. Having seen His power in Egypt and the conquest, whom should they fear? The God who split the sea and toppled Jericho, or the block of wood that can't even plead for itself when Gideon tears down its altar? The choice is absurd, but it is the choice every human heart makes when it turns from God. We trade the terrifying glory of the living God for something we think we can manage, something less demanding, something that will serve our appetites.
And then comes the final, devastating verdict: "But you have not listened to My voice." The Hebrew is "you have not shema'd My voice." To shema is not just to hear audibly; it is to hear, to heed, to obey. They heard the command, but they did not do it. All of God's mighty acts of redemption, all of His covenant promises, were communicated through His Word, His voice. To reject His voice was to reject Him. Their idolatry was an act of cosmic treason. They had plugged their ears to the voice of their Redeemer and listened instead to the seductive whispers of the impotent gods of the Amorites.
Conclusion: The Only True Deliverance
This prophetic word does not end with a promise of deliverance. It ends with an accusation. It hangs in the air, leaving the Israelites with the weight of their own guilt. God forces them to sit with their sin before He sends the savior. This is always how God works. The law must first wound before the gospel can heal. We must see the depth of our sin before we can appreciate the height of His grace.
Israel's problem was that they feared the wrong things. They feared the Midianites, and they feared the Amorite gods. The one thing they did not fear was Yahweh, their covenant Lord. And so God, in His severe mercy, gave them over to the Midianites to teach them that the gods of the Amorites could not save them. Their idols were useless. Their only hope was the God they had abandoned.
The application for us is direct and sharp. What are the gods of the Amorites in whose land you live? What are the idols that you fear? Is it the fear of financial insecurity, so you compromise your integrity? Is it the fear of social disapproval, so you remain silent when Christ is mocked? Is it the fear of discomfort, so you refuse to obey God's clear commands for your life? Every act of disobedience is an act of idolatry, born from a misplaced fear. You are saying, in effect, that you fear something or someone more than you fear the living God.
The good news of the gospel is that God has not left us in this cycle of sin and misery. He sent a final Prophet, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the very Word of God incarnate. Jesus did not just speak God's indictment; He absorbed it. He came to a people who had not listened to God's voice, and He became the one who listened perfectly, who obeyed perfectly, even to the point of death on a cross.
And He is the final Deliverer, our greater Gideon. He defeats not just the Midianites of this world, but our ultimate enemies: sin, death, and the devil. He does this not because we cried out in our righteousness, but while we were still sinners. The indictment this prophet brought to Israel, we all stand under. We have not listened. We have feared other gods. But God, who is rich in mercy, sent His Son. Therefore, the call to us is the same. Stop fearing the impotent gods of this age. Repent of your idolatry. Listen to His voice. Fear God, and you will have nothing else to fear.