The Danger of Doing What Is Right in Your Own Eyes

In Judges, Chapters17 to 21, we read about the idolatry, the immorality and the wars among the Israelites, which reveal the degraded state of a nation that God had chosen to be His representatives on earth. They had sunk as low as Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Judges 17:7-13, we see the first case of a paid professional preacher in the Bible, who was willing to go wherever he got the best salary and the best perquisites. Here was a Levite who agreed to serve as a priest to the highest bidder. A businessman came along and offered him a good salary, a new set of clothes every year, and free housing and boarding. The preacher signed the contract immediately! The businessman who paid him thought that God would now bless him because he had employed a preacher who had graduated from the school of the Levites!!  How very like what we see happening today. One would almost think that that was a 21^st-centruy story! The reason for this pathetic state of affairs is given in the verse immediately preceding the description of this incident: ”Every man did what was right in his own eyes”(17:6).

And that verse sums up everything that happened in the days of the Judges. And so this statement is, very appropriately, repeated as the last verse of the book (Judges 21:25): “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

That was how the Israelites lived in those days.  And that is how many Christians live today. Jesus is not King in their lives and so they do whatever they feel like. They spend their money as they feel like and they live as they feel like. The preachers go wherever they can get the largest salary. They all live without any reference to the will of God or the perfect plan of God for their lives.

God has given us Jesus Christ now as our Example. If we don’t follow Him as our Lord and our King, we too can end up like those Israelites described in the book of Judges.

Destroy Satan’s Fortresses in Your Mind

When David sees Goliath threatening Israel, notice his intense concern for the glory of God’s name and the honour of God’s people: “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should taunt the armies of the living God?” (1 Sam 17:26). While the Israelites were all as unbelieving as their forefathers who had wandered for 40 years in the wilderness, David knew what God had done to the Canaanite giants through Joshua and Caleb. And so, he offered to go and fight Goliath.

When Saul laughed at David saying he was just a youth (David was probably about 17 years old now), David told Saul about some incidents in his private life, which he had never told anyone about before – not even his parents. He told Saul, “When I was tending my father’s flock, sometimes a lion or a bear would come and take a lamb from the flock. I would go after the wild animal, rescue the lamb from its mouth and kill the wild animal. I have killed both the lion and the bear.” (17:34-36). David had known what Samson did when the Spirit came upon him. So after Samuel had anointed him, David felt that God would help him too, just like God helped Samson. And God did.

How many shepherds in Israel would go after a lion just to save the life of a wee, tiny lamb? When God saw this care that David had for the littlest lamb in his flock, He decided that David was fit to shepherd Israel. When Satan gets hold of a weak brother, it is the shepherd’s duty to go after Satan in spiritual warfare and to rescue that brother from Satan’s grip. That’s the type of shepherd God is looking for today.

This story also teaches us that we have to slay the enemies in our private life first, before we can face Goliath publicly. If you have not overcome the lion and the bear in your private life, don’t imagine that God will call you to face Goliath in public. Many would like to have a public ministry that demolishes Satan’s fortresses. But they must start with destroying Satan’s fortresses in their own mind first. They must show a concern for God’s name and for the little lambs in private first.

Saul then told David to at least put on his (Saul’s) armour. That would offer some protection against Goliath. Was David to trust in Saul’s armour or in God? Finally David took it all off and went forth trusting in God alone. He told Goliath, “You have come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord” (v.45). Thus he killed Goliath with a single stone and used Goliath’s own sword to chop off his head.

This is how we are to go against Satan today. And God uses Satan’s own weapons (Goliath’s own sword) to destroy him. “Through death, He destroyed him who had the power of death” (Heb.2:14). Once Goliath was killed, the other Philistines ran away (1 Sam.17:51). This teaches us that once we kill the giant sin in our life (“the sin that so easily entangles us” – Heb.12:1), we will find that many other sins in our lives are conquered too.