How do things get to the point where such wickedness is acceptable to so many people?

The reality is there is a God. He has proclaimed loss. There are right and wrong. Truth is eternal.

Doing whatever you want, it sounds like freedom, but it leads to captivity.

We have to be smart enough to know what our weak spots are and then fortify them.

Just because I served a mission

or got married in the temple, doesn't mean I've just checked all the boxes. Maybe I had a strong

start, but what will the finish be?

Today we're going to wrestle with what might be the saddest verse in all of Scripture.

It's the last verse in the Book of Judges.

Now we don't know for sure when the Book of Judges was written and we don't know who wrote

it.

The Book of Judges covers about 300 years of Israelite history.

It's telling us what happened from the time that the Israelites went in and conquered

the promised land until the time when Saul became the first king of Israel. The book is called

the book of judges because that's the title of the different rulers who were helping

the Israelites at this time. And you think that with a bunch of judges, it would be a happy book. But it's actually filled with troubling stories.

We read about a man who helps Israel worship idols.

We read about another who makes a rash promise that ruins his family.

And another judge brings about the death of hundreds of innocent people.

And these are the heroes of the book. But the deepest

tragedy could be in the book's final line, the saddest verse in the Bible. But don't jump

ahead to look at it yet. First, I want to see a big picture of the book of judges. And then

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