A sermon on Judges 4:1-16 by Rev Richard Keith on Sunday 22 February, 2026
Today we continue our series on Women in the Bible. Last week we looked at Joshua chapter 2, where the people of Israel were camped on the west bank of the Jordan River, across from the city of Jericho. Today we turn to Judges chapter 4, which tells the story of Deborah.
In Judges chapter 4, about 150 to 200 years have passed since the fall of Jericho. Joshua led the conquest of Canaan. The Israelites settled in and made the cities and farms their own.
Then began a series of alternating periods of faithfulness to God and turning away from him to the worship of idols. Judges chapter 2 says, “After Joshua’s generation died, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals.” The Lord, however, did not just let them walk away from him. Verse 14 says, “In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. They were in great distress.”
After a period of oppression by foreign forces, the Israelites would turn to the Lord and cry out to him for help. Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Some of these judges were great warriors. Others were shrewd and crafty leaders. Through the judge, the Lord rescued his people. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived. But peace rarely lasted long. When the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors.
It is a cycle we see time and again in the book of Judges. Israel serves the Lord. They fall into sin and idolatry and are enslaved. They cry out for help and God raises a judge, a saviour. Israel is delivered from their enemies and serves the Lord.
It is a cycle we see repeated in Judges chapter 4. After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Not just once, but time and again. The great evil that they did was idolatry, turning from the true and living God to put their trust in other things. They worshiped the creation instead of the Creator. They forgot God, who had rescued them from their slavery in Egypt and had kept his promise by bringing them to live in their own land. And they gave their thanks and praise to figments of their own imagination.
It is too easy to tell ourselves that idolatry is the sort of dumb thing that primitive people do. We may not bow down to golden calves, but whatever we love most, whatever we give our greatest attention to, whatever we make a priority in our lives, this is our god. It may be our career. It may be our relationships. It may be the approval of our neighbours or our status in the community. Whatever it is, if it has taken the place of the true and living God, it is like a weed in the garden of our lives, like a cancer cell in our soul.
It is serious because it not only shows our ingratitude toward our Creator who has blessed us with so many things, but it also means that instead of rejoicing in being made in the image of God, we try to make God in our own image.
So God allowed the consequences of their idolatry to fall upon them. God is the holy God who made us for himself, and whose purpose for us is made complete when we know him and love him and serve him with all our heart. To achieve his plans for us, he allows us to feel sharply the consequences of our sin. Judges chapter 4 verse 2 says, “The Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor.” Jabin was a Canaanite king, and his general was a man named Sisera. Israel fell under their dominion for twenty years.
Verse 3 tells us that Sisera had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron. Nine hundred iron chariots may not sound like a lot compared to modern military hardware, but in the Bronze Age this was overwhelming military power. It was the ancient equivalent of tanks on the battlefield. For twenty years Israel lived under the shadow of that power. Twenty years is a long time. Long enough to reshape expectations. Long enough to teach a whole generation that this is just how things are. Long enough to make the promises of God feel distant and hard to believe.
But after long enough, in their misery, the Israelites cried out to the Lord from their distress.
The Lord showed that he knows what we need even before we pray. That is not a reason not to pray. It is a reason to pray with even greater confidence, because we know that our God works everything for our good. In the time of Israel’s oppression, he had already begun working through a woman named Deborah.
Deborah was not simply an equal opportunity appointment or the best of a bad bunch. She showed every sign that she had been appointed and gifted by God to make her the right leader at this time of crisis. Deborah was a prophetess. The Lord spoke to her and gave her messages to give to his people. She was leading Israel even in the midst of their oppression.
Before Jacinda Ardern became known around the world during COVID, before Julia Gillard became the first female Prime Minister of Australia, thousands of years before Queen Victoria’s ships ruled the waves, Deborah was the highest-ranking individual in her land. To her court, situated about ten kilometres north of the future capital Jerusalem, the Israelites brought their disputes for her to judge. She was the undisputed head of the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government.
Through her, the Lord sent the signal to Israel that their deliverance was at hand. Deborah sent for Barak and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men and lead the way to Mount Tabor. I will lure Sisera with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.’” Deborah showed her authority in summoning and giving orders to the general of Israel’s army.
We need to be honest with ourselves here. None of us are prophets. None of us are judges with the right to settle other people’s disputes. None of us summon and command generals. In this story, Deborah is not our model. The point of the passage is not “be more like Deborah.” She was God’s appointed leader of his people, just as Moses was in his time, just as David was in his time, just as Jesus was when the fullness of time came.
The person in this story who is most like us, and from whom we have the most to learn, is the man she summoned: Barak. At Deborah’s prophetic command he replied, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”
Put simply, Barak said, “I won’t go without you.” It would be easy to read this as simple cowardice. Here is the general of Israel’s army refusing to march unless a woman holds his hand. But that is not what is happening. Barak believed Deborah. He believed the Lord had spoken. He was willing to go. But after twenty years of oppression, after twenty years of learning that losing is just how things are, trusting that promise with his life felt like a very long step.
What Barak was really saying was this: I need to know that God is with us. Deborah, the one through whom God spoke, the one who carried God’s word and God’s authority, was for Barak the visible assurance of God’s blessing. Where Deborah went, God went. So Barak would go, but only if God went with him, and only if Deborah, the visible sign of God’s presence, went with him too.
“I won’t go without you.” Those are among the most honest words spoken in Scripture. Most of us have said some version of those words to God. Not necessarily out loud, but in the way we hesitate at the edge of obedience. In the way we believe the promise but cannot quite make ourselves act on it. In the way we say, “Lord, I know what you have said, but I need to know that you are with me.”
Maybe it is forgiveness you know you are called to extend, but years of hurt make it feel impossible. Maybe it is a step of faith you know God is calling you to take, but the nine hundred iron chariots of your circumstances make it feel reckless. Maybe it is simply trusting God with something you have carried alone for a very long time. The word of God may be clear, but clarity is not always enough when discouragement has had years to do its work.
Notice how Deborah responded. She did not withdraw the call. She did not replace Barak with someone braver. She gave him the reassurance he needed, with a gentle rebuke. “Very well, I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honour will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman.”
“I will go with you.” That is grace. Not the grace that demands we arrive strong, but the grace that meets us in our weakness and walks with us anyway. Yet her words carried a quiet sting. “The honour will not be yours.” There are consequences for hesitant faith. Not the loss of salvation. Not the withdrawal of God’s presence. But something is missed when we hold back from full obedience. The same grace that meets us in our weakness also calls us out of it.
God’s purposes are not frustrated by our hesitation. He will accomplish what he has planned. But when we hold back from full obedience, God’s kingdom is not diminished, yet our experience of his blessing is. We miss something—some joy, some fruitfulness, some privilege of being more fully part of what God is doing. Full obedience has blessings that hesitant faith never tastes.
Armed with Deborah’s promise, Barak went, with Deborah beside him, with ten thousand men behind him, and with God ahead of him. Sisera mustered his nine hundred iron chariots and all his troops. Then Deborah said to Barak, “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?”
The victory that day did not come because Israel had superior weapons or tactics. It did not even come because of moral superiority. The victory belonged to the Lord and to those who stepped out in faith at his command. The Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots, and Barak pursued them until not one was left. As God had promised, the Lord had gone ahead of them.
This is where the story speaks directly to us. When God’s word is clear but obedience still feels like a long step into the dark, when the promises of God feel distant after long discouragement, when we find ourselves saying, “Lord, I won’t go without you,” the gospel answers with a question: Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?
It was the Lord who went ahead of Barak. It was the Lord who brought the victory. Deborah was simply the sign of that promise, the assurance that God was present. The victory was never hers to give. It was the Lord’s.
The Lord Jesus Christ himself has gone ahead of us—into suffering, into death itself, and out the other side. He faced the enemy we could not face. He fought the battle over sin for our salvation that we could not win. The victory over the forces of death and destruction belongs to him, not to our cleverness or moral superiority. And Jesus calls us to follow where he has already gone.
The book of Judges is a book of cycles. Israel forgets. Israel suffers. Israel cries out. God sends a deliverer. There is victory, only for the cycle to begin again.
But when Jesus comes, the pattern changes. He did not hesitate. He did not shrink back. He did not need reassurance. Where Barak said, “I won’t go without you,” Jesus went forward in perfect obedience. Because he did, the victory he won is not temporary. The judges delivered Israel for a lifetime. Christ delivers his people forever.
In Judges, the people were rescued but remained unchanged. In the gospel, we are rescued and given new hearts. The Spirit of God now dwells within us—not beside us like Deborah beside Barak, but within us—so that we do not face our battles alone. The cycle of forgetfulness and rescue exposes our need, but Christ breaks the cycle.
In Judges chapter 4, Deborah was a sign that the Lord had gone ahead of his people, a prophet and leader appointed and equipped by God. But she was only a sign. We have something greater than a sign. The Lord Jesus Christ himself has gone ahead of us.
So what does Judges 4 mean for us? It means this: when we see the weeds of idolatry in our hearts, we do not despair. We turn again to the One who has already won. When obedience feels like stepping toward nine hundred iron chariots, we remember that the Lord Jesus has gone ahead of us. When faith struggles to trust, we do not look for a sign beside us. We look to a Saviour who has already gone before us.
Because Christ has won the decisive battle, our obedience is no longer an attempt to earn victory. It is participation in a victory already secured. We do not fight for victory. We fight from victory. And that changes everything.