Judges 10:6-16 – The danger of forgetting God

Israel had degenerated badly. They have sunk to a new low. Verse 6 says that they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him. Just put yourself in God’s position for a while and imagine the hurt it must have caused Him. Here they were, after all the mighty deliverance they had experienced at the hand of God, they left him to serve other gods. It was bad enough for them to serve Baal and Ashtaroth, Baal’s female companion. Now they were even chasing after “the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines.” What was the cause of their problem? Forgetfulness. They were suffering a state of spiritual amnesia. And this will lead to unfaithfulness. Forgetfulness always manifests itself in ingratitude. Such was the situation of the Israelites. They had forgotten what God had done for them in the many years before. They had forgotten how he had delivered them with timely intervention now and again. So that angered God and He allowed them to be crushed by the Philistines and the Ammonites. For 18 years they suffered at the hands of these two groups of people. We are told that Israel was greatly distressed. Who would not?   

In their distress, they cried out to God in desperation. Here they confessed to the fact that they had forsaken the LORD and they had turned to serve Baal. The way God responded tells us that He could have detected their insincerity. Repentance before God must always be accompanied by sincerity. God can detect our insincerity very quickly. Repentance is a matter of the heart. When the heart is not radically changed, God cannot be moved. To make them realize how far they had fallen, God responded by recounting what He had done for them since He delivered them from Egypt. God asked them a very probing question: “Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians, the Amorites, the sons of Ammon, and the Philistines?” He reminded them of how He had also delivered them, “… when the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you, you cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hands.” Then God followed up with this very sad statement, “Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods….” God was telling them how gracious He had been with them. No matter how many times they had hurt Him in the past, He overlooked them and came to their rescue when they called upon Him. As if to dig at them, God asked them why they did not call on the gods they so willingly served to come to their rescue, and test them out to see if they could do a thing for them. Deep in the hearts of the Israelites, they knew none of the gods could do a thing for them. For it was those gods that had caused them to suffer the displeasure of the LORD. So, they confessed their sins and abandon themselves to Him by removing all the foreign gods from among them. God was moved and verse 16 tells us that “He could bear the misery of Israel no longer.” In other words, God could no longer bear to see them suffer so miserably. What a great God!

To be grateful people, we must constantly recall what God has done for us. In the sea of voices and human experiences, we can be led to a point where we forget whose we are. We must always put at the forefront of our mind that He had redeemed us with a great price. We are called to serve Him only. We must be single-minded about serving only Him, regardless of how attractive the enticement of the world may be. Make Jesus’ reign over our lives a priority. Always be grateful and stay focused!