Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Understanding the Context of Your Life | Judges | Judges 2:11-3:6

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the Book of Judges. If you haven't subscribed to our new podcast, Truth Over Tribe, I'd encourage you to take some time and go do that right now. We've got interviews about culture, politics, and the things you really care about with people like John Mark Comer, John Tyson, Oz Guinness, and many, many others. It's going to be a great podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:33 I've been excited about the interviews and the topics that we've taken on. So stop right now. Go subscribe to Truth Over Tribe on your podcast player. The book of judges begins in an interesting way. It doesn't hop into all the stories of all the judges. Instead, it takes time to stop and set up the context for the judges and for the people who are living during this time. It's kind of like someone writing your story and opening up by setting the context in which

Starting point is 00:01:02 you live. It might say, you're Jeremy who lived in the days of Joe Biden, or your Tanya, who lived in the days of two-day shipping. Or you're Johnny and you lived in the days when more couples met online than in person. Or you're Keith who lived in the days of cancel culture and somehow survived. I mean, seriously, how did Keith survive cancel culture? But you get the idea here. You live in a context. It might be the days in which anxiety disorders have reached their pinnacles, the days in which people spend more time.

Starting point is 00:01:32 looking at their phones and they spend looking at their spouses. Do you know what your context is? The book of judges opens by telling us what kind of time, what kind of context, what kind of moment the people living back then found themselves living within. And they found themselves living in a time of cultural decline, a time when a vicious cycle of idolatry repeated itself again and again and again and again. Judges two lays out the cycle which will repeat throughout the entire book of judges. We'll pick up in verse 10. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Bales. And they abandoned the Lord.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Verse 14. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And they were in terrible distress. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of those who plundered them. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge, for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning

Starting point is 00:02:40 because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. And so that's how the book of judges begins. It sets out this cycle, which repeats itself of Israel,

Starting point is 00:02:59 descending into idolatry, God giving them over to conquerors, to wake them up, and them turning back to God, and him showing pity and sending a rescuer and people being faithful for a time, but then just as quickly falling back into the idolatry, and the cycle repeats over and over, and society declines into idolatry. As I read this story, part of me is always sad, because I know the truth that even during times of decline, there are faithful people, but those faithful people, they suffered. They suffered the exact same oppression and hardship as the unfaithful people suffered. They suffered because what was happening was society-wide. They suffered as a result of society-wide decline and idolatry.

Starting point is 00:03:43 For example, you can think about the story of Ruth and Naomi. They lived during the time of the judges, and they were faithful to Yahweh during this period, and yet they suffered tremendously as a result of the idolatry that was all around them, that they weren't participating in him, but they suffered as a result of. of it. Here's what's crazy, though. It never broke them. They were resilient in their faith. They resisted. They never let the social breakdown around them. Take their eyes off of Yahweh. They never let the suffering. Take their eyes off of God. What about us? What about you? A sober assessment of the West and America is probably dire. We are living in a culture that's in decline.

Starting point is 00:04:26 idolatry is rampant. In 2019, before COVID, suicide rates, depression, anxiety disorders, the use of SSRIs, which are drugs for anxiety and depression and other things like that. Gender dysphoria, all the things I just listed, they were skyrocketing. Before COVID, they were skyrocketing to heights never seen in the United States. Divorce numbers were going up, and this was after dipping for several years, secure attachment disorders, were going up. So this is basically if a parent has a healthy relationship. with the child, the child develops a secure attachment and you get disorders if this doesn't happen.

Starting point is 00:05:01 Those were all on the rise. All of this was happening before COVID hits. Everything was already at the worst that it had ever been and now it's gotten even worse than that. Rates of depression and anxiety have quadrupled since that time. Among young people, suicide rates have seen a unprecedented spike. Gender dysphoria, other sexual disorders have tripled among young people. and they've expanded dramatically. Millennials are having less sex, less out of wedlock burrs, but this seems to be the result of being more engrossed in pornography and their phones. Millennials are leaving churches and droves. We are standing in the middle of an unprecedented time, at least in recent history. We are in the middle of a culture that's in decline. The fastest growing

Starting point is 00:05:50 religion in the United States is nuns. That's not N-U-N-S. It's N-O-N-E-S. It's N-O-N-E-S. N-N-E-S. As in they get a form and they say, what religion are new? And they don't check atheist or Christian or Muslim or agnostic. They just say, none. I'm nothing. That is the fastest growing thing in the United States right now. And if you look at what's happening, you'll begin to realize that our culture is going through a cycle which is repeating itself.

Starting point is 00:06:15 First, there's the stage of reactivity. Some event happens, and there's this insane outrage and vitriol, and it's all over social media. And then the second step is blame displacement. where everyone starts pointing the finger at someone else or some system or or some identity group. And then there's a third step, the quick fix, where all of a sudden you have people rushing to say that if you just dismantle this system or if you take down that group or if you resist this set of ideas, then things will finally change. And after that, the fourth step is that healthy leaders who have nuance who say, let's think about this carefully. They're pushed to the margins, which leads to the fifth step, which is that people find unhealthy leaders, demagogues, politicians, warriors, ideologues, who say, come rally to my cause, we're going to change the world.

Starting point is 00:07:02 We'll start the revolution. And then the cycle repeats itself because a new event happens. And the new reactivity starts up and the vitriol and the outrage. And it continues on and on and on and on. Do you understand the context that you're in? Ruth did. Naomi did. They lived in the time of the judges.

Starting point is 00:07:22 They lived in a time of idolatry. a time of decline. But they didn't become culture warriors. They didn't give up. They didn't retreat. Instead, they put their faith in Yahweh. They resisted the idolatry. They built simple lives of obedience. They understood what was happening in their context. And while I'm sure they mourned it, they didn't let it crush them. And the only reason why wasn't because they had the great internal strength to just carry on and carry forward. it's because they kept their eyes on God. They knew that even in the midst of this ongoing cycle, he was there, he was present, he was with them.

Starting point is 00:08:05 How will you respond to your context? How will you respond to the cycle happening in our society? Will we be overtaken by fear? Will we mourn and cry and feel bad for ourselves because we're suffering? Or will we say, you know what, God, this is in your hands? We might not be able to change it. We might not be able to control it, but we can set our eyes on you. We can build simple lives of obedience.

Starting point is 00:08:30 We can construct small communities of love and generosity and kindness that might be a counter-revolution to everything that's happening around us. To the hatred, to the reactivity, to the poor leadership, come into our little communities where you might just see something different. Do you understand your context? Are your eyes set in the right place so that you can survive? Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

Starting point is 00:09:05 Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Understanding the Context of Your Life | Judges | Judges 2:11-3:6

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