There's always something left to do. I'll explain on this edition of He-Light. This is Key Life with Steve Brown, an honest and refreshing look at Bible doctrine as it applies to daily living. If you have a Bible, get it. And here's Steve Brown, the teacher. Thanks my guy. Hope you had a great weekend. Hope you were taught well as eyeballs by my bastard on the Lord's Day. If you have your Bible, turn to the book of Judges as we continue with a multi-year, multi-century study of the Old Testament. Actually, that's not what we're doing. What we're doing is we're taking just maybe two or three weeks with each book of the Older Testament. And if this gets really old because it's a long trip, we'll stop and go do something else and then come back to this because I really want to do it. I think it's important that the older Testament be user-friendly to the believer. And for a lot of us, that's just not true. We carry around a little new Testament. We hardly ever read the Old Testament except the 20th or so. And so we're doing an Old Testament survey and we're up to the book of Judges. Before we turn to the book, it's our practice to go before the throne, so let's do that. Father, we come before you at the beginning of our week, thankful that we belong to you. We remember where you found us and sometimes we think about home. Father, sometimes we think about those who are already home. The ones we loved, sometimes it gets really hard here and we yearn for home. Father, thank you for holding us in the between times. Thank you for always being faithful to us in the between times. Thank you for teaching us that you are sufficient in the between times. Father, you know everybody who's listening to this broadcast, some of the people who listen are going through really tough time. Father, come yourself, come yourself and grant comfort and guidance and wisdom and healing. Father, we come to you because we've been every other place and we know that you have the word of life, that you're sufficient for every need that we have. And then Father, we praise you. We don't praise you just because of the good stuff that you've done for us because of your generosity and your kindness and your love. If you had never come, if you had never cared, if you had never reached out to us, you're still God. You're the creator, the sustainer and the sovereign ruler of all that is, and you are worthy of our praise. So we offer our praise and our worship and our adoration. Father, as we study your word this week on key life, we pray for the one who teaches, forgive him his sins, for they are many. We would see Jesus and him only, and we pray in Jesus' name. I'm in. All right, we have done the introductory lecture on the Book of Judges kind of a dull time last Monday. And then we spend some time on that on Tuesday and then we're looking at some of the major themes in the Book of Judges. Then when we finish this probably next week, I'm going to be a tour guide as we go through and I lift up some of my favorite passages in the Book of Judges. At any rate, we have seen a philosophy of history that is taught in the second chapter of the Book of Judges. And simply stated is, you do it God's way and it's going to turn out most of the time right. You don't do it God's way and it's going to turn out most of the time wrong. As Queen Victoria said to the Archbishop of Canterbury, because God doesn't balance his books on Thursday, it doesn't mean that God's not going to balance his books. And divine earthly retribution suggests that because God says do it this way, there are important and amazing implications to that in our present life, not just heaven and hell later on, but right now, the Puritan work ethic is a biblical work ethic. If you're a Christian, you ought to work hard. You ought to give it all you've got, you ought to play hard, you ought to laugh hard, you ought to work hard. And there is following there upon some really good stuff because that's divine earthly blessing. And if you decide I'm going to go out and I'm going to violate all the Ten Commandments, I'm going to do some really bad stuff. I'm going to desert my family, I'm not going to care about anybody but me, I'm going to look out for number one, you're going to get in trouble. Not because you're a Glean, your mother dresses you funny, but because that's the way the world works. That's called divine earthly retribution. Well, I don't want to spend any more time on that, we spent three days. And then we saw another major theme as the doctrine of leadership, don't you ever say to me that you don't count. You're valuable, you're count, you're important. The reason Christians are pro-life isn't because we think people who have abortions are horrible sinners and we're pure, we're that way because every human being is important and valuable. And not only that, every human being can count and that's the doctrine of leadership. The doctrine of leadership is that when God tells you to stand up and be counted, He will honor it even if you feel incompetent. Now let me give you a brand new theme in the Book of Judges. You'll find this in Judges 221-23. The Book of Judges not only gives us a philosophy of history, a doctrine of leadership, it also gives us a reason for trials. Judges 221-23, I will not henceforth drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died. That by them I may test Israel whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not. So the Lord left those nations not driving them out at once and He did not give them into the power of Joshua. Does that sound like you? That sounds like me. You ever think you got it down and then you find one other thing. You ever work on some sins and you just about got it together and then something's sticking out of the suitcase? You ever think, you know, if I could just do this right, I'd be doing it all right. Let me tell you something, it's never going to happen. So deal with it. It's never going to happen. I'm an old guy and I know and I've tried as hard as anybody I know. Now, when I tell you I'm a sinner, some of you think I'm humble. That has nothing to do with it. I'm simply obligated to tell you the facts. And I really am a sinner, but let me tell you something. You don't know of anybody who's tried any harder, who in his heart wants to please God more than I do. And I can't. Some of those pagan nations are still in the land and I can't get rid of them. Eric is the producer of this broadcast. The reason it takes us a long time to do the recording is that we get to talking between programs when we're recording them. And we talk about philosophy and then we talk about some things that I wouldn't even share with you. Sometimes we do all about theology. Sometimes we talk about the Bible. And Eric was telling me about a Bible study he was involved in. And how everybody was talking about how God was so kind and blessed them and loved them and they went to him for comfort. And Eric said, you know, don't do that. Sometimes I think God's really angry at me. And then he said, Steve, I've been sitting under your teaching two years and I still feel that way. And then I thought about the time when Eric was first a Christian. Man, he was fanatic 101. I mean, he absolutely was going to straighten out the world. He got it all right. He even stole some shorts from a department store a number of years before. And he felt guilty. But he went by eight or the shorts were gone. It happened a long time ago. And he went back and confessed it to these department store people. And they thought he was some kind of weirdo. We asked him on another broadcast what the shorts looked like and he described them. And they were so ugly, we decided it wasn't a sin to steal them. But Eric and I were talking about that. And Eric is one of the most vulnerable honest people that I know. If he gets it all together, if there aren't any nations left in his land that need to be conquered, he's going to be a jerk. He's going to be a fanatic. He's going to judge everybody because he's pure and they aren't. And God's not going to let that happen. So Eric's going to have to deal with the nations that are stealing his land and their nations in my land too that haven't been conquered. And probably won't be, although I've made a little bit of progress. Some of that land has been conquered. I'm better in my walls. I love more than I did. I care about people more than I used to. I'm a lot more obedient than I was 20 years ago, not much more so than I was five years ago, but a little bit. I'm still working on the nations that still dwell in the lands and that's the reason for the trials that we have. You say, well, Steve, the text says that God is doing that to test them. Why do you think for who's benefit? You think God would be surprised at how they do on the test. Sometimes I get, I get my students study questions and I draw the exam from those study questions. And I think anybody's willing to sit down, work out these study questions. It's going to get an A on my exam and some don't. I don't understand that. I mean, it's not that it's that hard, that it's not that hard for them to get an A. And sometimes I'm just surprised that one of my best students gets a C. Do you think God's like that? And he says, Steve, I expected an A from you and you know, you're doing C work. And I want you to I'm not that happy with you. No God knew I was a C student. God knew that I was going to mess it up. He test me so I can see who I really am and what I really do. And then what I do, then I run to him and I get forgiven and I get hugged and I get helped. And that's not half bad. And so they're always nations in the land. If you could give your kids a life without any trials or tribulations or difficulties for besetting sin, would you do that? No, you wouldn't. You might at first think you would, but you really wouldn't. Because you know, it's only in those places that they grow, that they're driven to the throne, that God becomes the sufficient cause of their life. You are too. You think about that. I mean, listen, do you have our key life catalog? If you'll ask me, I'll send it to you free. And once you get it, you'll know why it's free. It's not a big deal. It's just kind of a listing of everything that we got in the warehouse. So if you have a particular question and don't want a particular book, you just pick up the phone and get it. So just let me know, ask for the catalog. I'll send it to you free. Ask for the question and answer booklet that we're offering to. I'll send that to you free. You can call 1-800 key life 24 hours a day or you can write key life post office box. 5,000 Madeleine Florida 32794 key life Canada post office box 32150 Cambridge Ontario in 3H5M3. Or you can email us at steve at keylife.org. Hey, by the way, check out our webpage. You're going to like it. It's key life.org. And there's a lot of great stuff there. Listen, when you get the free material, it's really free. But if you can help us financially, I would appreciate that too. This is a very expensive industry. And a lot of stuff, a lot of people who can't afford developers. Be as generous as you can. If you can, you can charge it on a master guard visa, discover guard or include a contribution in your envelope. 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