By Shirley Rosemarie Evans
In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.
Judges 21:25 NLT
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all. Isaiah 53:6 NLT
One of my childhood memories is of the visits to one or another auntie’s house that would occur on Sunday afternoons, perhaps once a month We liked going to auntie’s house because this meant treats, and if it happened to be one of the aunties with children, it meant cousins to play with My mother would always give us the lecture before we left home about needing to be on our best behaviour, to respect the home and not take it upon ourselves to go upstairs, etc., without permission, not that we really needed to be told as you can be sure auntie would put us right. We always knew the boundaries in someone else’s home.
While God led the children of Israel via Moses and later Joshua, they had a clear sense of boundaries. That was not to say they always obeyed, yet there was always a clear word from the Lord to redirect them to the rule of God. We find this commendation at the end of the book of Joshua. “The people of Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him—those who had personally experienced all that the Lord had done for Israel.” (Joshua 24:31). There is something about personal experiences that foster relationships.
By the end of the book of Judges, we see a story of a people whom God had delivered from slavery in Egypt to be His own special people among all the peoples of the earth, a people that He would be king over now, seemingly without a king and therefore no rule, and the story is one of moral freefall, idolatry leading to depravity and as the book of Judges ends we find this telling statement “everyone did what seemed right in his own eyes.” Judges 21:25
This is the world today; the further we have moved from God, the more we have forsaken boundaries. We have, in effect, trashed Auntie’s house, and all restraint has been forgotten. Jeremy Rifkin, the American evolutionist, in his book, “Algeny,” wrote, “We no longer believe ourselves to be guests in someone else’s home and therefore obliged to make our behaviour conform to a set of pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation now; we make the rules, establish the parameters, and create our own world; because we do, we no longer have to justify our behaviour. We are the architects of the universe and are responsible for nothing outside ourselves, for we are the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever!”
This is the state of our world – everyone doing what seems right in their own eyes and only ending up making the world so wrong. Injustice, inequality, and iniquity abound as we cast off restraint in the delusional that we are our own gods. I, for one, am so glad that despite man’s best efforts, the rule of God is still clearly given to us in His Word, seen in the life of His Son and lived through the power of His Holy Spirit. Anything else is simply chaos.
Ask – Why does man want to deny and reject the rule of God?
Seek – The Word of God provides instructions for every area of our lives. How are you successfully applying His Word to your life? Or are you guilty of making your own rules?
Knock – Note any area of your life that you need to apply God’s Word. Then prayerfully ask God to direct you to His Word or someone to help you understand His Word and then apply what you know to be His will for your life.
