Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon.

You probably know by now that we are going through the history of books of the Old Testament

this year on TMBT, and right now we're in the book of Judges. I love this book. It's full of

interesting stories, and there's so much to learn about the human condition and my own heart.

Judges is also one of the darker books of the Bible, meaning that it shows what happens when

people indulge in sin without restraint. It's not pretty. I know it's difficult for some of us to look at sin and its

ugly consequences, but it's necessary to do that to appreciate the great salvation that we have in

Jesus. Today we're only covering the first 10 verses of Judges chapter four, so let's read through them

and see what they have to teach us. The chapter starts with, again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that

Ehood was dead.

If you listen to the previous episode by Jeff, you know that Eud was one of God's judges

that he raised up to deliver Israel.

Now we learn in the first verse of chapter four that Eud is dead and again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.

That word again is really important.

Proverbs 2611 says, as a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly.

Israel is acting foolishly because they keep returning to the sin that

enslaves them, oppresses them, and makes them miserable. The sin they keep returning to is

worshipping false idols that the nations around them worshipped. For them, it was bail. They

were tempted to worship, but for us, it's the idols of our culture the idols of sex or money

or pleasure or consumerism or family or sports now remember that idols are always good things that we make

ultimate things idolatry happens when we worship the creation instead of the creator. But the fact that the

...