The Danger Of Doing What Is Right In Your Own Sight

The Danger of Doing What is Right

in Your Own Eyes

By

Bishop Melvin L. Maughmer, Jr.

PRAYER:

SCRIPTURES: - Judges 17 – 21

Deuteronomy 12:8 says, “You shall not do as we are doing here today, everyone doing what is right in his own eyes”. That is not a request that is a command.

Judges 17:6 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes”.

OPENING: - Compromise always paves the way for Spiritual, moral and ethical decline. The book of Judges we see a repetitive pattern because the Children of Israel would always compromise and end up in a situation they could have avoided if only they would not have compromised themselves.

The people compromise the Laws of God, abandon God and turned to idol worship, God gets angry and punishes Israel, the people cry out to God in repentance, God raises up a deliverer, the people repent and turn back to God until they compromise again, abandon God and turn back to idol worship. This is pretty much the pattern of the book of Judges. However, the last 5 chapters of the Book of Judges reads like an R rated movie or something you would see and hear on unsolved mysteries, the first 48, there’s, rape, murder, genocide, kidnappings, lies, deceit and a civil war.

A Levite consecrated by Micah was a man-made priest that was supposed to fulfill the Divine Order of Levite Priesthood who worshipped idols, took a concubine for a wife, and was more concerned about achieving monetary gain and being popular than honoring and upholding the Law of God.

The horrible story of chapter 19 where this Levite takes his concubine gives her to the sons of Belial (base fellows) who rape, sodomize, and abuse her all night long and when morning comes the Levite, who no doubt slept comfortably while his bride was being abused, rises in the morning and finds her lying at the front door dead and says to her “Up and let us be going” and when she doesn’t answer because she is dead he takes her home cuts her into 12 pieces and sends her body parts to all the 12 tribes of Israel passing the blame of what has happened to her to everyone else. Then we have a Civil War amongst the tribes of Israel 11 tribes against 1 Benjamin that nearly annihilates that tribe altogether leaving only 600 men who fled and hid in the wilderness. Then the 11 tribes make a vow not to give their daughters to the tribe of Benjamin that is left, so they devise a plan to have the ones that didn’t help in the fight against the Tribe of Benjamin be destroyed and save only the female virgins for the men of Benjamin. Once that was done there were only 400 virgins for the 600 men of Benjamin, so they come up with another plan to have the remaining men of Benjamin kidnap the daughters of Shiloh when they dance at the feast. It is a true horror story; however, regardless of how horrific this passage is, God has a message for us today. The people of Israel had become barbaric and are ruled not by God, not by a king but by the philosophy of doing what is right in their own sight.

We live in a time much like what the Children of Israel were living in during the last 5 chapters of Judges. People are doing what they believe is right in their own eyes. Everyone follows their own heart and does what they think is best for themselves and fill justified in doing it. They are not ruled by God, or a king but by the philosophy to do what is right in their own sight.

We have a Governor of one state treating people inhumanly at the border demanding that they be refused the necessities of life because they feel as though the people trying to cross the border are less than human. Then he transports them inhumanly to places without any direction, concern, or guidance as to say as long as they are not here, they are not my problem. Breaking the golden rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) if not a cornucopia of others.

Another Governor who believes they are part of the educated elite making asinine laws and turning culture upside down because in his eyes people of color are a second-class human at best that benefitted from slavery. In his eyes he believes he is doing what is right and totally contradicting the Greatest Commandments – Matthew 22:36-40 says, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”.