In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
– Judges 21:25
Judges 21:25 are the last words in the Book of Judges and they’re words that we’ve seen at other times in Judges. This is a summary of God’s people. In the Book of Judges, everyone did what was right in his own eyes and the result was horrible depravity. The Book of Judges is so hard to read because of so many evil wicked things that we read about. And this is what happens when people do what is right in their own eyes.
Judges 21:25 teaches us the danger of following our own wisdom.
I just want to encourage you today in a fresh way, do not live according to what is right in your eyes, what you think is right. This is how sin first entered the world with Adam and Eve saying, “We think it’s better to eat this fruit. We think we know better than God what is best for our lives.” And every one of us is tempted to live that way today, to live like we know better than God. And it plays out in so many different ways.
But I just want to encourage you to resist that temptation right now and all day long to believe that God is perfectly good, perfectly loving, perfectly wise, and he is perfectly righteous. And we are none of those things. We are not perfectly good or righteous or wise or loving. We don’t know what is best for our lives. God does and he loves us, and he will lead us today according to his Word and by his Spirit if we will trust in him and do what is right in his eyes.
Judges 21:25 shows why we need God’s wisdom over our own.
So I just want to pray that over you and me. Oh God, in light of Judges 21:25, we praise you as our King. We praise you, Jesus, as the righteous King who is all-wise, all-loving, all-powerful, all-good, just, merciful. And so we pray by the power of your Spirit in us, help us to do what is right today in your eyes at every moment. Help us to speak what is right in your eyes, to live according to what is right in your eyes, and to make decisions that are right in your eyes. We pray that you would save us, deliver us from ourselves and our temptations today to do what is right in our own eyes.
God, keep us, save us, deliver us from ourselves, we pray, and all the consequences of sin that flow from doing what is right in our eyes. God, help us to see in Judges 21:25, to be warned that doing what is right in our eyes leads to destruction. And Jesus, you’ve made it possible for us to live a totally different way today. So help us to do so. Oh God, I pray this over every single person listening right now. And God, we pray this over the people around us and the people of the world. We see the effects in a world of people doing what is right in their eyes. And you alone can save us.
So we pray, God, help us to spread your salvation today to people around us, that they might hear the good news of your grace and your mercy and your love for them, to save them from evil and wickedness. Save them from sin and themselves.
Prayer for the Wolio People
God, we pray that for people around us, we pray for that, for people around the world, for the Wolio people of Indonesia for 250,000 of them, oh God, please save them from doing what is right in their eyes in a way that leads to eternal death.
God, we pray, help us to spread the good news of eternal life in Jesus, the righteous one among the Wolio people of Indonesia and every people group in the world. Help us to use our resources toward this end, so that people around the world, including people around us, including us, might experience your deliverance, your salvation from wickedness and evil that come from doing what is right in our own eyes.
And God, I would even add all the ways we’re prone to think we know better than you when it comes to the plans for our lives, God, we pray that you deliver us from that. Help us to trust in you the Righteous One, and your good plans for our lives, even when we don’t understand them. God, help us not to trust in our eyes, but to look at everything through your eyes, with trust in you, not in ourselves. We pray all this according to your Word in Judges 21:25 in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
