Is the world actually a dark place? The facade of goodness falls away quickly under scrutiny. Consider John’s picture of a light entering a world that would rather stay in the dark.

How does a nation respond when it’s called to war? The range of modern reactions since Vietnam, from protest to willing service, frames Deborah and Barak’s very different response when God calls Israel to fight.

Christians are saved from the power of sin, not just its guilt. Consider Paul’s list of besetting sins in Corinth, pressing home the disconnect between claiming Christ and refusing to actually turn from sin.

The whole storyline of the Bible turns on one idea: man is a lost sinner in need of rescue, and God graciously provides a man to fight and save him. Consider the first of Israel’s judges as an early, flawed picture of that promised deliverer.

By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another, Jesus said. Paul’s rebuke of Corinthians taking each other to secular courts exposes a failure of that very love meant to mark them out.

Nothing is more frightening than thinking you’re saved when you’re not, believing you’re destined for heaven while actually on the road to hell. Consider Paul’s warning in Colossians 1 about the necessity of continuing in the faith.

Romans 6 paints a stark picture of two masters and one slave: one cruel and deceptive, working his slaves to nothing with empty promises. Consider Paul’s call to serve the true Master instead, the one who actually keeps his promises.

Judges 1 left us scratching our heads, with an underwhelming conquest that seems to put God’s own faithfulness in question. Trace how Israel’s half-hearted obedience leads directly to being handed over to their enemies.

Don’t judge is the golden rule of our relativist age, where objective truth has given way to competing personal truths. Consider Paul’s teaching on judgment within the church, and why refusing to judge at all isn’t actually loving.

We tend to read Judges as a book of heroes. Its real purpose is almost the opposite: an apologetic for the kingship of David, showing again and again what happens when everyone does what is right in their own eyes. This opens the book with Israel’s incomplete conquest of Canaan and God’s own verdict on it.