Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Follow a DIY God? | Judges | Judges 18

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the Book of Judges. Hey, Patrick and I are starting a new podcast. It's called Truth Over Tribe, where we talk about cultural and political issues from a Christian point of view. If you're interested, subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player, so you won't miss any of the episodes.

Starting point is 00:00:32 Everybody loves Legos. Kids love Legos because it's fun to build things. Parents love Legos because it seems a lot better for them than watching television. You can play Legos with other people or you can play Legos by yourself. The only problem is they're a little pricey, but they're probably worth it. When our kids were younger, we would buy them a Lego set. And of course, they come in a box that you can use to build a spaceship or a robot or something else that's pretty cool. Now, when you try to make that spaceship or robot, it's a little hard to do, especially the first time.

Starting point is 00:01:09 You've got to follow the directions. And directions, well, they're boring. They're restrictive. They're a hassle. You have to take extra time to figure out what piece goes where and you got to find the right pieces. You've got to lay them all out and you've got to kind of have some order and structure to it. So at our house, what would happen is we would make that cool spaceship once or twice, but pretty soon all the Legos end up in one big pile and you just kind of go down and sit at the table

Starting point is 00:01:37 and you build whatever you want. It's more fun to do your own thing, to reach in and grab one of the Lego pieces and connect it however you want to the thing that you're building. You get to do whatever you're feeling in the moment. Feelings guide you, not some outside authority-like directions. Now, that's great for Legos. The problem is that we treat God like a a big Lego set. Yeah, like we don't want to let the Bible define God. We get tired of following the directions because the God of the Bible, well, he's a little bit restrictive. Like he holds us accountable. It's kind of a hassle to have to read the Bible and to listen and obey it. So what we do is we take all these attributes of God and we throw them into a big pile and then we pick and choose which

Starting point is 00:02:25 attributes we like. We let our feelings guide us in our view of God, not some outside authority like the Bible. And so what we end up with is a customized God, a God that likes, and to be frank, dislikes the same things that we like and dislike. There's this old line that says God made human beings in his image, and ever since we've been returning the favor. Like God made us in his image, but then we try to make God into our image, a God that is customized to our tastes, kind of like a Lego set God. Well, we're back in Judges, this time in Chapter 18. And Chapter 18 is a long, complicated, and to be honest, kind of a dark story.

Starting point is 00:03:11 The opening verse of the chapter tells you the direction the story is headed. It says this in Judges 181. In those days, Israel had no king. Now, if you're asking if Israel had had a king before this point, that's a good question. And the answer is, they did and they didn't. They hadn't had any human kings thus far in Israel's history. But that doesn't mean they didn't have a king. God had been the king of Israel.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Listen to what God says to the prophet Samuel at right about the same time the book of judges was written. And the Lord told him that Samuel, listen to all that the people are saying to you, It is not you they have rejected. They have rejected me as their king. So back in Judges 181, when it says that Israel had no king, that's true because Israel had rejected God as their king. They decided they didn't want to listen to an outside authority, but instead they wanted to create their own spirituality. They wanted to create their own God. They wanted that God to be customized according to their taste, their preferences,

Starting point is 00:04:20 they wanted their own Lego God, a God that was convenient, a God that told them what they wanted to hear. Now, when you reject God as your king, that's a really big decision. Because when you reject God, you reject purpose and happiness and protection and your convictions and your identity and authority outside of yourself. You reject a relationship with God. Let's just look at a few of those. When we reject God as king, we reject the purpose. purpose that we crave in life. None of us want to live a meaningless, purposeless life. We crave it,

Starting point is 00:04:58 and yet we can't give ourselves purpose. Purpose something bigger than ourselves, something that we can give our life to. A Lego piece doesn't have purpose until it becomes a part of a larger construction project. Our life finds purpose when it's part of God's eternal plan to establish His kingdom. Now, when we reject God as king, we also reject his protection in this world. As the leader of the military, the king protected the citizens from outside enemies. We've seen in the Book of Judges that when the people rejected God as their king, they soon ended up under the authority of a foreign nation. Rejecting God as our king means that we are making ourselves vulnerable to spiritual attack. When we reject God as our king, we end up enslaved to another

Starting point is 00:05:50 king, a king that doesn't love us, that doesn't want the best for us. When we reject God as our king, we end up losing our convictions. In the book of judges, we've seen this play out over and over and over. When Israel rejects God's authority, they begin to act like the people around them. Their convictions prove malleable and change to fit their circumstances. So when they reject God as their king, they just start trusting in the same false gods all their neighbors. do. And of course, the same thing happens to us. When we reject God as our king, we forget who we are. We lose our identity. Today we're obsessed with the possibility that we can create our own identity, or in some cases, more than one, create our own identities. We can choose who we are, who we express

Starting point is 00:06:43 ourselves to be. But this is a foreign concept to most people in the world today, and to everyone in the world throughout history. For them, your identity, who you are, is defined by your community. You're a brother or a sister, a mom or a dad, an American or a Kenyan. You are a union member or a management. When we reject God, that means that we leave the most valuable identity anyone could possibly have. Child of God, heir of the king. Finally, when we reject the true God, we end up worshiping false gods. We were made to worship God. When sin ruptured that relationship that we had with God, it's not that we stopped worshipping. It's just that we started worshipping other things. Romans 125. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things

Starting point is 00:07:36 rather than their creator. Created things that we can worship? Well, that's an endless list. You can turn any created thing into an ultimate thing that replaces a God in your life. So when we reject God as king, we also compromise our morals. In other places in the Book of Judges, when you read, in those days Israel had no king, it's followed by so everyone did what was right in their own eyes. See, when you reject God as king, you just end up doing what's right in your eyes. Your view of morality is directly tied to your view of God. If there's no God, or if there's no God that you need to submit to, or if you've created a customized Lego God who says, hey, you do you, I don't care, then it makes sense to do what you think is best. Imagine you see from a distance a person walking their dog, and the dog relieves himself as dogs are known to do.

Starting point is 00:08:38 The dog walker looks around to see if anyone is looking before walking away without picking up after their dog. Now, why did the person look around? Well, obviously, they're looking around to see if anyone is watching. When you reject God as king, then you no longer must give an account to him. You must no longer answer to anyone. If no one is watching, then you don't pick up after your dog. If there is no God who is watching you, if there's no God that you're accountable to, then everyone simply does what's right in their own eyes.

Starting point is 00:09:10 The good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the king who came to defeat sin and death and restore his kingship over all creation, his kingship over our lives. Embracing King Jesus means that we repent of rejecting God as king, that we submit to Him, that we give our loyalty to Him, and that we find our purpose, our identity, our protection in Him. We worship and follow the true king. His name is Jesus. Thanks for listening.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Follow a DIY God? | Judges | Judges 18

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