Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Breaking Bad in the Bible | Historical Books | Judges 18

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

How do believers end up straying from God? Do you shape God in your own image? Are your choices leading you closer to Jesus? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Judges 18 encourages us to live knowing that there is a King on the throne. We love to hear from you all! If you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment below and tell us your biggest takeaway from today's episode. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Judges 18

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. And the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. There are a number of television shows that I've started, gotten invested in, and then had to quit at some point because they got too dark. The characters devolved so rapidly into chaos and evil that I truly couldn't stand to watch it. One show that I did push through was Breaking Bad. My husband loves the show and wanted me to see. see it, which is really the only reason why I stayed strong. But it was no different than the other shows. If you're not familiar with it, it tells the story of a high school science teacher, with frankly, like a sad, normal life, who finds out that he's going to die from cancer.

In an effort to leave behind a legacy and money for his family, he begins creating and selling meth. The man at the end of the television series is not the same one for the family. He begins to be able to from the outside. His choices, the paths he walked, the violence that he chose, the lies he told, all drove him further and further into evil, until he's almost unrecognizable, willing to kill for his own gain. If his intentions were maybe noble at first, his motives are deeply selfish and tainted by evil at the end. Now, I'm not the first to make the comparison to shows like breaking bad and the narrative that we follow along in the book of judges. That's because we're not going to find a happy ending here. The author isn't interested in one. He is interested in showing

bluntly and boldly the effects of our choices and where they can lead us. He doesn't want us running at the first sign of darkness saying, we can't handle that sort of thing. He wants us to lean in, to not glorify the violence, to not be excited by it, but to mourn it, maybe to even be repulsed by it, to see it as a warning. A reminder of the evil that we're all capable of, even a gentle high school science teacher or the chosen people of God can devolve into chaotic and repulsive evil. Now, Judges 18 is a continuation of sorts from Judges 17, where we met Micah, an Israelite who's set up his own house of God. He has carved his own idols, his own ephod. He's set up his own priest of the Levite lineage to attempt to gain legitimacy. And in doing so,

he has neglected the laws of God and fallen deeper into idolatry and apostasy. And then, chapter 18 verse 1. In those days, there was no king in Israel. This opening verse is setting the tone and will be repeated at the beginning of the next chapter as well. There was no king in Israel. It follows the theme of another mantra found in judges they did what was right in their own eyes. The people are no longer following anyone's lead. There is no king. There's no king to guide them in God's way. They're lawless and see what comes out of it. And in those days, the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking for itself an inheritance to dwell in, for until then no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them. Now, the people of Dan do not have an inheritance, not because God did not give it to them,

but because they failed to push out the inhabitants of their portion of the inheritance in the time of Joshua. And so now, they're seeking for themselves a different inheritance. From the beginning, we should catch that this is a chapter of events motivated by a people acting on their own, for their own purposes by their own power. They're not looking to God. They're not seeking out their inheritance that God laid out for them. They're forging their own path. And so they send out five spies to scout the land for their inheritance. And on this journey, these spies, they run into the Levite, who was residing with Micah over his idols as a priest. And so they ask him, inquire of God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed. And the priest said

them, go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the Lord. Now, it's important to note that this Levite is not an actual priest of God. It is important to note that this Levite is not an actual priest of God. It's also important to note that he just says that they're under the eye of the Lord. The Lord is sovereign over everything to come. He's watching. But he does not give any indication that God is pro their actions, or that he will fight for them. But they take his word to mean exactly that. When you want something, when you've justified it in your own eyes, at times, it could be easy to shape God into what you need him to be, to say what you want him to say, to justify your choices, to form Jesus into someone who looks, thinks, and acts a lot like you do, rather than be formed by

who he is. But we should expect nothing less from a nation so far from God. These spies leave the priest, believing themselves to have God on their side, and they find a town of people who are vulnerable to attack. They were quiet, unsuspecting, they had wealth, and they were unproductive. When they returned to their tribe, this is what they report. They said, arise, and let us go up against them, for we have seen the land and behold it is very good. And will you do nothing? Do not be slow to go to enter in and possess the land. As soon as you go, you will come to an unsuspecting people.

The land is spacious, for God has given it into your hands, a place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth. These spies, they speak for God. When they have yet to truly inquire of their God at all, They create a narrative based on the words of a false priest guarding idols. They have fallen so far from what God has commanded them that they cannot even see the wrong they're doing. They're acting for their own benefit, using God as a prop in their plans. And they act. They set out, they overtake Micah's household plundering another tribe of Israel

and steal his idols, convincing their priest the Levite to come with them to be their priest. and he agrees. They traveled to the town of their choosing, and they struck them down and burned the city with fire. There was no deliverance for the people. The tribe renames the city after their ancestor, Dan, and then were given maybe the most enlightening and saddening information yet. We learn the identity of this Levite priest we've been hearing about in the last two chapters.

Verse 30 and 31, and the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves. and Jonathan, the son of Gersham, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set up Micah's carved image that he made as long as the house of God was at Shiloh. This is the grandson of Moses.

We are a mere two generations out from Moses, the man who walked and talked with God, who was given the law, who part of the Red Sea performed miracles and delivered God's people, his grandson is now setting up idols, serving as a priest in a temple of idols, speaking on behalf of God as part of a false priesthood. How quickly the people of Israel have fallen into disrepair.

And we learned that they will continue for generations more to worship these idols. How did they get here? How did it get so bad, so fast? I think the answer is in the first verse. There was no king in Israel. The people were making their own choices. They were accountable to no one. They sought out their own inheritance. They did what was right in their own eyes and they twisted their knowledge of God to fit their own agendas. The choices they made one after another powerfully moved them away from God and away from His goodness. from a high school science teacher to a murderous violent drug dealer. We should heed the warning of these stories, lest we think we are incapable of the same. We make choices every day, and each choice has the potential to bring us further in step with the ways of Jesus or out of step. We can make choices that submit us to the rule and reign of Jesus as our king, or overturn his throne for our life. Our choices, each and every day, will be defined by a guiding belief.

Is there a king on our throne or not? Are we seeking to daily submit our lives to the God who is king, to live under his rule, to find our place in his kingdom, to seek after his values of love, justice, and mercy, to live in step with his spirit, cultivating fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, in self-control? Or are we seeking our own good, our own desires, forming God into our image, morphing his desires for us to be identical to our own? If your Jesus always wants what you want,

if your Jesus always believes what you believe, if your Jesus is fully in support of all that you do, they're not following the real Jesus. You're following an image of Him. him that you've made up in your mind. You have replaced the real king Jesus with a lesser version, with yourself. And the consequences they're real. It did not take long for Israel for Moses's own lineage to fall into disrepair a shell of itself, abandoning the ways of God, learn from them. Learn from the book of judges put a good king back on the throne. Let Jesus reign in your life. Let him sit on the throne, submit yourself to his authority, his rule and reign, because in doing so, you invite him to produce good in your life,

to use you as an instrument of justice and mercy, to grow you, to be more like him and not the world, to allow goodness and not evil to infiltrate every area of your life. Put Jesus back on the throne.