In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. – Judges 21:25
These words are the final line from the book of Judges. They really are a summary of the whole book of Judges. They didn’t have a king to provide leadership, so all the people just did whatever they thought
was right. If you read the book of Judges, you’ll see that what they thought was right was most often wrong. Time and again Israel failed to carry out what God told them to do, and time and again they did
the very things God had told them not to do. The book of Judges, in a lot of ways, is the story of Israel’s total lack of self-control.
In the New Testament, we see that one of God’s expectations for the Church is that we practice self-control. In fact, this is the 9th and final fruit of the Spirit Paul lists in Galatians 5. Sometimes Christians make
the mistake of using God’s forgiveness and grace as a license to do whatever they want to do (the way Israel lived). If God is so forgiving, why not take advantage, right? But that’s never the way we should
respond to God’s grace. Having been saved by His grace should make us want to honor God in everything we do, to live the way he would ask us to by exercising self-control. It’s a lesson Israel never caught
onto, and one that we need to catch onto.
Don’t do what’s right in your eyes, do what’s right in his.