Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
This is the last verse in the Book of Judges.
When men do what is right in their own eyes we get a mess. In our text, the tribe of Benjamin had sinned and without seeking God the rest of Israel made a vow to God. They made a vow that seemed right in their own eyes. How stupid! They vowed not to give Benjamin any of their daughters in marriage. Then they killed all of the Benjamites except 600. Now they realize oh no we made a bad vow and because God says, Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 When you make a vow to God, do not be late in paying it; for He takes no delight in fools. Pay what you vow! It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.
So now their stupid vow made with the view of their own rightness has put them in a situation. The tribe of 600 will be completely destroyed because they have no one to marry. So once again they stupidly do what is right in their own eyes. They go to this one city and kill all the men and women except the virgins because the ones from this city had not made the vow. Then they give the virgins to the Benjamites. Do they go and explain the situation to see if they would give their daughters? No, because that doesn't seem right in their own eyes. Yet this sin that they commit while trying to keep from sinning by not keeping their vow only yields 400 wives so now they do what is right in their eyes again and figure if the Benjamites take 200 women from a festival without permission then the vow would be kept because the women weren't freely given. How stupid. Don't they realize how stupid it is to commit one sin to keep from making another? Let this be a lesson to us. When we do what is right in our own eyes we do stupid things just like them. We sin to do what looks right but we are doing wrong. Our eyes just don't see it. We must seek God as King to do what is truly right. We say, oh but I can see that what they did was wrong. I see it with my own eyes. Yes, but your eyes will show you what others do that is wrong, while they deceive you in what you are doing. That's the way things go when you have lost your consciousness of God as King. This is a huge problem and we can't see it with our own eyes!
I wonder how many of us when writing our biography need to end it with, "In my days there was no king in my life. I did what was right in my own eyes." Do we need to put that in so our readers can understand why we did such stupid things?
Or
Maybe we could just allow God to be our King and do what is right in His eyes!
Just a thought. Love Bro Scott