Audio Recording Sermon manuscript: One of my goals as a pastor is to help you read the books of the Bible for yourself with more enjoyment and with greater understanding. We Lutherans do not read the Bible on our own like we should. Part of the reason for this is the spiritual problem that afflicts all who are born of Adam and Eve. We naturally are inclined to be bored by God’s Word and are eager to do other things instead. It is similar to that other great spiritual problem of ours with the second commandment. It is mysterious why we have such a hard time calling upon God’s name in every trouble, praying, praising, and giving thanks. Even Luther complains about that. He said that praying was the hardest work for him to do properly. But besides these great spiritual evils that cling to our flesh, we also have some difficulties when we are unfamiliar with what some portion of the Bible might be talking about. It’s kind of like jumping into the middle of a movie. When you don’t know what comes before or after, it is difficult to orient yourself to what is going on. It requires real effort. No doubt this is why we don’t often watch movies starting at the middle of them. We watch them from the beginning and thereby can understand it better. I can understand how it is frustrating for people to pick up the Bible, not knowing much about it, and not getting a lot out of it. Going in cold requires a lot of effort. So your homework assignment, if you should choose to accept it, would be to read the book of Judges during this advent season. Over the course of these three midweek services we will be looking at chapters 2-4. What we heard about tonight serves well as an introduction to the book as a whole. In the two weeks that follow we will begin to look at more specific people and events. Let’s begin our series tonight by talking about the time period we are dealing. Genesis tells us about the three great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob is given the name “Israel” by God, and his twelve sons become patriarchs for the twelve tribes of Israel. When Jacob was an old man a severe drought and famine gripped the land of Canaan, which God had given to Abraham and his descendants, so they were forced to move to Egypt where Joseph was able to help the whole family. Now over the course of time the descendants of Jacob somehow eventually become enslaved by the Egyptians. The Bible doesn’t go into any detail about that beside saying that it happened over the course of 400 years. So the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not living in their promised homeland in Canaan for 400 years, because they become slaves. God heard their prayers while they were being oppressed and sent them the mighty deliverer, Moses. This story is told in the second book of the Bible, Exodus. As you know, God did many signs and wonders through Moses so that Pharaoh was forced to let God’s people go. They end up at Mt. Sinai where God gives them the 10 Commandments and the rest of the Law. The way that the story was supposed to go after that was that the Israelites were supposed to immediately enter into the land of Canaan, take it over from the inhabitants, and settle it for themselves and their descendants. But this did not happen. When Moses sent 12 spies into the land, 10 of the 12 came back and frightened all the people concerning the power of the Canaanites. These spies told the people that there was no way that they could ever win against the people who lived there. Only two of the 12, Caleb and Joshua, believed that the Israelites could win by the grace of God. Because the people believed the 10 spies who were frightened, God punished the Israelites with 40 years of homelessness in the desert wilderness between Canaan and Egypt. After those forty long years were over, God finally brought the people into their inheritance. They did under the leadership of Joshua, one of the two faithful spies, because Moses died before they crossed over the