All right, Judges. Chapter 6 is where we left off. I'm going to summarize a little bit of chapter 6

before we get into chapter 7 because it's been so long since the holiday break on our study through the

book of judges. And so let me just, for the purpose of bringing us up to speed, if you're new to our Bible

study, particularly in regards

to the book of Judges, let me just let you know this cycle of sin that existed in Israel at this

particular time. This is why the book of judges was written. You have, if you start at the top of

the cycle with me, Israel serves the Lord. They honor him, they obey him, they love him. But then,

unfortunately, they fall into sin and idolatry. They become influenced by the foreign pagan nations

around them. They start to adopt some of these foreign gods, particularly Bail, which was the god of the Canaanites. Asher is the

female counterpart to Bail. And so Israel falls into idolatry. When that happens, then God basically

says, you don't want to live for me, then fine, if you want to live like these foreign nations,

I'll let these foreign nations come in, and then you'll cry out

for me. And so that's what happens. They get oppressed by their enemies. Then they cry out to the

Lord, and then God raises up a judge. A judge is not some, you know, legal, you know, officer of the court,

as we would think of a judge. These are military leaders that God

raises up to give oversight to the nation. The Hebrew word is choftim. The book of judges in a Hebrew

Bible is called choftim. It means judges after the list of the judges that appear in this book

that God raised up. And so then when a judge

comes up as God raises up a judge and gives leadership and calls the people back to repentance

and back to seeking God, that's what they do. And so they are delivered and then they serve the

Lord, but only for a time. And then they get back into this cycle. And so in the book of judges, we see 12 different judges named.

Now, there are a couple of more outside of the book of judges.

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