morning message is already there. So we're going to turn to the book of Judges tonight, and we are concluding the book of Judges. And as I have been mentioning for the last three times that I have preached these, last three messages are difficult messages. And the last three chapters of Judges all go together, going back to Judges 19 when the Levite was traveling home and he went to the city and they raped his concubine to death. And then he cut her body up and sent her throughout the 12 tribes of Israel. And then last week we saw the 12 tribes of Israel going down and attacking the Benjamites and the Gibeonites because of that. They almost wiped out the entire War happened within Israel and the children of Israel fighting amongst themselves and they almost wipe out the entire tribe of Benjamin. So the concluding chapters, the concluding chapter is going to be sort of the concluding event to that. What are they going to do now? The tribe of Benjamin is almost gone. They wiped out all the cities and there's 600 men that are left. So what are they going to do? How are they going to respond to that? And so we do want to remember that the messages that we have preached, we have seen the wickedness that resides in the heart of man. And it's unbelievable the extent to which man will go in wickedness when everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. When you have no moral compass, do that. It's unbelievable the depravity that resides in man's heart. We will always keep in mind this, always keep this in mind. It's God's grace that you're not acting upon that depravity because that depravity resides in your heart. The wickedness of man and every man is evil and the only like we can be thankful for that. Like we mentioned this morning, we need to be thankful for the fact that God has opened our hearts and opened our eyes and opened our ears that we can receive And then tonight we're seeing the wickedness that resides in the hearts of man. And we need to be thankful that the grace of God has kept us from making decisions like these men are making. So this is a terrible story. But God doesn't hold anything back. One of the great things about the scripture is that God does not hide the sins of his people. God is very open with his men and how they have gone away from him and they have sinned against him. He doesn't hold anything back. And this is quite possibly the most wicked, these last three chapters in the book of Judges. Wickedness is on display. So let's read beginning in verse 1. Now the men of Israel had sworn and missed, but saying, there shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin the wife. And the people came to the house of God and abode there till even before God, and lifted up their voices and wept sore, and said, O Lord God of Israel, why has this come to pass in Israel, that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel? It came to pass on the morrow that the people rose early and built there an altar, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the children of Israel said, who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the Lord? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the Lord to Mizpah saying, he shall surely be put to death. And the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin their brother and said, there is one tribe cut off from Israel this day. How shall we do for wives for them that remain seeing we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them of our daughters to us? And they said, what one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to Mizpah unto the Lord? And behold, there came none to the camp from Jabesh-Gilead to the assembly. For the people were numbered, and behold, there were none of the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead there. And the congregation sent through their 12,000 men of the valiance, and commanded them, saying, go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children. And this is the thing that you shall do. You shall utterly destroy every male and every woman that hath lain by man. And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead 400 young virgins that had known no man by laying with any male. And they brought them into the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. And the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock rimma and to call peaceably unto them. And Benjamin came again at that time. gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh and Gilead and yet so they suffered them not. The people repented them for Benjamin because that the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, how shall we do for wives for them that remain seeing tribe be not destroyed out of Israel? Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters, for the daughters for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin. Then they said, Behold, there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh, yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel, and on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Sechem, and on the south of Labona. Therefore they commanded the children of Benjamin saying go and lie in wait in the vineyards and see and behold if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance and dances then come you out of the vineyards and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. at this time that you should be guilty. And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught, and they went and returned them to their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelled in them. And the children of Israel departed thence. At that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they went out from thence, every man to his inheritance." And I'm going to stop there. I know I didn't read the last verse. I'm the one who's reading it. But you know, if you're not a yearly Bible reader, if you're not someone who reads through the Bible and has made a determination that you want to read from Genesis to Revelation, these last few chapters of Judges, you might not recognize they're in the Scripture. And if you've not read through the Bible very often, this might be new material to you. You may never have just stumbled across this. Now, hopefully, the majority of you, this is something that you've read in the past. This is not new information to you, but you have read this. But this is difficult. It's difficult to read. And I'll go into a little more detail as we go along. But this is wickedness to the greatest extent. and we'll talk about it. Before we do, let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we just thank you, Lord, for another opportunity we have to be in your house tonight and to open your word and to read your word and to study your word. God, I pray that you'll open our hearts, that we can receive. God, that you will direct us. Lord, help us to not make poor decisions as these Children of Israel here, help us to always seek to follow your word and your way, and never make rash vows that cause us to make rash decisions. Lead us, we pray, and help us as we attempt to follow you according to your word. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray, amen. The title of the message tonight is Vindicating God's Honor? What a mess the children of Israel have gotten themselves into. In trying to bring justice to the land, they almost extinguished one of the tribes from existence. Again, remember, they're trying to answer the wickedness that was done by the tribe of Benjamin. And in bringing the sort of justice, they kill all but 600 men of the tribe of Benjamin. What follows is a travesty. One commentator explains it like this, great evils flow from men taking the vindication of God's honor into their own hands. A great wickedness has happened and we need to do something about it. And so they take action. don't seek God's leadership, and they take wrong action. And because they've taken wrong action, they try to correct that action, and they make another bad decision, a sinful decision, to try to correct the original sinful decision. And that still is not sufficient, and so they make another sinful decision, all without consulting God. The great evils attempting to vindicate God's honor will be our subject this evening. And so we find, first of all, we find a rash vow was made by the children of Israel. And the rash vow was that, listen, the children of Benjamin have created a great sin. There has been a great sin. So none of us are willing to give any of our daughters So we are understanding a rash vow was made. This is not a vow that is directed by God. It's not a vow that they find in the scripture. They can't go back to the Pentateuch and look in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and say, now here's how Moses said we ought to address that decision and this situation. And so they go back and they look at the Pentateuch and they make their decision based upon that. No, they're just doing what they felt was the right thing. They made a rash vow. will get you into trouble. Remember, Jephthah made a rash vow earlier in the book of Judges, and it caused him to commit a horrible sin, and he lost his daughter because of his rash vow. Sometimes people like to think about spontaneity. You know, we want to be quick on our feet and we want to be spontaneous and we want to be fluid. But really, sometimes spontaneity is just being rash. Rashness can cause you to make poor decisions. One of the things that is one of my greatest struggles, not about sinful things, but about some things, I sometimes make rash decisions. And so you've got to guard against that, because if you're prone to making rash decisions, sometimes you can maybe get yourself in, you'll overcommit financially maybe sometimes. And so you've got to be careful about being rash or spontaneous, because spontaneity can get you into trouble. So they've made this decision about not giving their daughters to Benjamin to wife, and this rash decision has gotten them into trouble. So we find in verse number two that they cry unto God, and they lifted up their voices, and they wept sore, and they asked the Lord, why has this come to pass in Israel, that there should be any today one tribe lacking in Israel? And they know the answer to the question, The answer to the question is, you made a foolish decision when you tried to wipe them all out in the first place. You're trying to vindicate God's honor by trying to take matters into your own hands, and you overstep your bounds. You go too deeply. You try to wipe out the sin in the best way you know how, and because of that, you rash in your decision. It says, they came to the house of God. They wept and they cried, but you'll notice They didn't wait on the answer. God, why does this happen? Why does it come to pass? But you'll notice that they didn't wait. They weren't patient and wait upon the Lord. You'll notice what they didn't. They also did not say, Lord, we're in this circumstance. We're in this situation. We kind of overstepped our bounds. We went down trying to vindicate your honor, and we've almost whacked out a tribe of Benjamin. Lord, how do you think we should move forward? What should we do about this situation? Give us some wisdom. Give us some understanding. And they did not say to wait on the Lord. Notice verse 3 said, or verse 4, and it came to pass on the morrow. They didn't wait very long. They just, hey, we can't wait around on God. We gotta go. We gotta move. We gotta do something. They didn't wait on the Lord. They moved quickly. And they made another decision according to their own wisdom. They made offerings. Making an offering just to do your religious duty is not sufficient. And they made a rash vow. And the children of Israel said in verse number five, who was there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with a congregation unto the Lord? For they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the Lord to miss, but saying, he shall surely be put to death. Now think about the wisdom here. We've almost wiped out the Benjamites. So how are we going to resolve that? We're going to go over here and wipe these people out. We're going to go over to the JPEX Gileadites, and we're going to wipe them out. The way I'm going to solve this problem over here of wiping somebody out is to go over here and wipe somebody else out. That's not very logical, is it? But that's exactly the decision they made. They're making an unnecessary, decision. They repented of the decision they made earlier of almost wiping out the Benjamites. But they didn't respond to that poor decision in a good way. Notice the effects of that poor decision. Verse 7 says, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? And so They've got this situation on their hands. They made a poor decision by going down and attacking the Benjamites. And they've got these men. And they can't have the Benjamites wiped out. And they've got these 600 men that are hiding over in the Rock of Rimem. And we need some Benjamites because we can't have one of the 12 tribes of Israel go out of existence. And so what are we going to do about wives for those men? Here's what we'll do. We'll go over to Jabez Gilliam. And we'll go in and we'll kill all the men. We'll kill all the women. We'll kill all the children, except the women that have not known man. We'll save the old. That's wicked. How are we going to get wives for these 600 men? We're going to go down to this city and we're going to steal them. We're going to go down to this city, and we're going to wipe out the city. We're going to destroy that city, and we're going to take those, we're going to kidnap those women, and we're going to take them from Cheb Ashkelon, and we're going to take them up to Ramon, to the mountain of Ramon. And these women that we've kidnapped, we're going to give them to these men to wife. That's a God-honoring decision, isn't it? No. But that's the decision they made. Jabesh Gilead did not send warriors to fight against the Benjamites. Jabesh Gilead was a city on the east of Jordan. It was within the limits of a half-tribe of Manasseh. Apparently, there's a small section of Manasseh that borders the Benjamites' border, and they had some close ties to the tribe of Benjamin. And so there were some close ties to the tribes of Benjamin. Therefore, the men of Jabesh-Gilead did not go up to fight against the men of Benjamin. They did not send warriors. The interesting thing about Jabesh-Gilead in the future, this is a city where King Saul will fight his first battle. When Saul is becoming king and And Nahash, the Ammonite, is going to come down against Jabesh-Gilead. The men of Jabesh-Gilead are going to send to King Saul, and King Saul is going to come and rescue them. This is the place where King Saul's first great battle is going to be fought. Again, let's think about the decision they're making. We've wiped out the Benjamins, Mike, about 600 men. They need wives, so here's how we're going to do it. We're going to go over here to Jabesh Gilead because they didn't come and fight the battle with us. We're going to destroy everyone in that city except for those young women, virgins, who have not known a man. We'll steal them. We'll kidnap them. We'll kill everybody else in the city. We'll kidnap these ladies and these young girls and we'll take them over to the men that are hiding in the rock and we'll give them to those men and they will go back to Benjamin in that area and they will re-inhabit the tribe of Benjamin. The evil continues to grow. One commentator asked this question in studying this passage. When they went and fought against the cities of Benjamin, why didn't they just save the virgins of the cities of Benjamin? They'd wiped all him out already, remember. They'd already wiped out all the virgins in the cities of Benjamin. It would have been better to keep them instead of going over to Jabesh Gilead and kidnapping the virgins of Jabesh Gilead. But that's exactly what they did. Here's the thing about making rash decisions. When you're making a rash decisions, you're not likely to think through all of the consequences. And that's what happened to them. They were so enraged about what was going on in the tribe of Benjamin that they didn't think through, OK, now if we go down and we fight in all the cities of the Benjamites, what will happen if we wipe out the entire tribe, or what's going to happen They don't have wives. They didn't think through all the consequences of that. And so therefore, anger got the upper hand and they found themselves in a situation that they didn't know how to resolve. They should have, here's what they could have done. When they went to the house of God and they made their offerings and they sought peace from the Lord, they could have waited on the Lord and sought the wisdom of God. And they could have found the answer from God. But instead of waiting on the Lord, and they find themselves that they're compounding their problems. Can you imagine what this abduction must have looked like? Inside Israel, they go and attack a city. They wipe them all out, but they kidnap virgins. Folks, this is human trafficking. Ancient human trafficking. We don't want to give it a better name or a better idea than what it is. They murdered the men of Jabesh Gilead. They wiped out the cities. They kidnapped the girls. And they trafficked them from Jabesh Gilead to Benjamin. Wickedness. But this is the place of the children of Israel. found themselves in because they made rash decisions. Verse 13 and 14 tells us that they sought peace with Benjamin. The whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were unto them. And Benjamin came again at that time, and they gave them wives, which they had saved the lives of the women of Jabesh-Gilead, yet so they sufficed them not. So there's 600 men that are hiding in the cave, the rock rimun. And when they went down and attacked the city of Jabesh-Gilead and attacked the young virgins there, there were only 400 of them. So they take the 400 young ladies and give them to the 600 men, and there were still 200 left. This thought has gone through my mind this week. Okay, there's 600 men, there's 400 virgins. I wonder how they decided who got the 400. Anyway, you can imagine what went on in You can imagine what went on that day when they were, and imagine what those girls felt like. You've watched your city being wiped out. More than likely, your mother and father were murdered before your eyes. You were captured and taken to another city. What do you think, where were their hearts? What must have been going on in there? Are you getting a grip on your understanding of how wicked this is? They still need 200. So they still find themselves in a problem. They still need 200 virgins. I mean, if Benjamin is going to be repopulated, every one of these 600 men need a wife. They can't wait for, you know, until these other 400, you know, they go in and they have a daughter and we'll wait, you know, 12 years or however long, 11, however long it was they waited until, and they'll have a daughter and then we'll, you know, that ain't happening. So what are they going to do? We still need 200 women. What are we going to do? Will the lessons of the past teach them how to respond? Will they say, let's go to God, let's seek God's will, let's look in the law and let's see if we can find an answer to this question. Let's go to God and ask God to give us direction. Will they do that? Will they seek an answer from the Lord? Or will they once again take matters into their own hands? You know, this is sort of like, problem with lying. You know, you tell a little white lie the first time and you need to try to tell another lie to cover up the white lie and then cover up that lie. You've got to tell an even bigger lie. You know, before long, you had to lie so much you don't know for sure what's the truth. You know, you just keep making poor decisions and you never know where this is going to lead. And this is a situation that the children of Israel are in. They have taken matters into their own hands and they have made poor decisions. And every poor decision that they make is leading them to make another poor decision. And so what do they decide to do now? Verse 15, and the people repented them for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, how shall we do for wives for them that remain? Seeing the women are destroyed out of Benjamin. And they said, there must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. How be it we may not give them wives of our daughters, for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, cursed be he that giveth a wife of Benjamin. So here we have another poor decision that they made in the beginning. We're not going to give them any of our wives. They made a vow. Once again, the desire to act overrides the need for patience and prayer. They seem concerned that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. And they should have thought about that earlier. And where is the wisdom? And we're not going to give them any of our daughters to wife. We don't know what the wisdom is in that. Where is the precedent? Where is the command? Why have they made that decision? We don't know where they come up with that. We just know that that is the decision they made. And because of that vow that they had made, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go murder somebody because we made a vow, so we're going to go murder somebody. We made a vow, so we're going to go kidnap somebody. I mean, this is the place that sin gets you into. When you commit sin, you just make the problem worse by trying to take matters into your own hands. Instead of saying, let's do what the Word of God says, You try to formulate your own plan, your own idea, so you don't have to do exactly what the Word of God says, or maybe you don't care about what the Word of God says, you just try to make up your own idea, and you just get yourself in a greater mess, and that's where the children of Israel find themselves. Hey, here's what we're going to do. Here's how we're going to resolve this issue. Down at Shiloh, there's going to be a festival every year. And when they have that festival, we're going to tell those 200 men that when the young girls go down at the festival of Shiloh, when they're honoring the Lord, you just go down there and kidnap your wife and take her back home with you. We're laughing, but it's sad. Maybe we're laughing because we can say, I've seen myself do some stupid things in my lifetime, too. And I made that stupid decision, which made that stupid decision, which led to that stupid decision. We'll never kidnap anybody, hopefully. But what a condition. Children of Israel have gotten themselves into because they will not seek the Lord. Shiloh was the place where the tabernacle was after the conquest. When the children of Israel first crossed the river Jordan and they came into the land of promise, Shiloh was the place where the tabernacle was. This is a city where Israel would gather together. When they needed to have a council of all the 12 tribes of Israel, they would go to Shiloh. Shiloh is the central city of worship. And these dances that were held, they were held during a feast of Israel. The dances were to reenact the dances of Miriam after the crossing of the Red Sea. This was a time for celebration for Israel when they remembered and recognized that God brought them out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, God had protected them for 40 years in the wilderness, and they had brought them to the promised land. They were celebrating God's glory in rescuing them from oppression in Egypt. It was a time of celebration, of remembrance of the glory of God. going to kidnap young girls in the middle of that celebration. It shows the lack of respect for the things of God and that the sanctity of the worship of Jehovah had been lost. Tells you where their heart is. They're going to go and kidnap Do you remember the outrage worldwide when the Boko Haram kidnapped those 276 girls in Nigeria? Do you remember that? That's been some time ago now. 11, 10, 11, 12-year-old girls. I mean, it was all over the news. And there was outrage about that happening. What about what's going on in Afghanistan right now when the Taliban are kidnapping young girls and forcibly making them wives for the Taliban? There's outrage. And rightfully so, there's outrage, right? But that's exactly what the children of Israel I tried to bring a couple of modern day instances so you could feel what it must have been like to be in those cities at that time. Think about it, if you're a young daughter, you send her off, it's such an honor to send your daughter off to be a part of the dances of Miriam and the worship of God in the feast there at Shiloh. It's an honor to send your daughter, but she doesn't come home. She's been kidnapped. She's taken to Benjamin and she's someone's husband today. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Man, this is foolish! How do they get themselves into such a condition? So what's Israel going to do? How are they going to respond? You can imagine the citizens of Shiloh and those men that have sent their daughters down to Shiloh to worship, and 200 of them are kidnapped and taken away as sex slaves and wives. You can imagine those 200 men are furious. They're going to go, justice must be done. They kidnapped my daughter. We've got to go down and get her. We've got to do something. Are you just going to let your daughter be kidnapped and taken to another city to be somebody else's husband? And you go, oh yeah, that's cool, that's fine, that ain't no problem. No, there's big trouble coming because of this. How will they respond? Verse 22 tells us. And it shall be when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain, that we will say unto them, be favorable unto them for our sakes, because we reserve not to each man his wife in the war, for you did not give unto them at this time that you should be guilty." In other words, one's like, don't worry about it. You know, it's okay. You're not going against the vow that you made earlier in Miskah not to give any of your daughters to wives. Don't worry about it. In other words, they're going to take up for the men of Benjamin. Where is honor? Where is the desire for righteousness? Let's remember, this is the people that are supposed to be holy unto the Lord. This is the people that God says, they're the apple of my eye. I've chosen them as a peculiar treasure unto me. These are the people of God. Look where they're at. The leaders of Israel are going to deflect the anger. They will encourage them not to worry about breaking their vow because they didn't give them to the Benjamites. The Benjamites just took them. Don't worry about it. Remember, the most important thing is verse 24. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and his family. And they went out from thence, every man to his inheritance. The important thing is focus on the inheritance. We're saving Benjamin alive. I know you lost your daughter. But listen, the tribe of Benjamin is more important than your daughter. And listen, it's not like you lost her. She's got a Benjamin. You can go visit her. And you're going to have double inheritance. You're going to have an inheritance there where you're at. And you're going to have an inheritance from Benjamin. So listen, it's better for you than it was before. They're trying to, you know. They're trying to smooth it over. Gil has this to say. This they proposed to say to quiet them and make them easy, to which other things might have been added as that these were their brethren and not strangers they were married to. and not to mean men, but to men of large estates, having the whole inheritance of the tribe of Benjamin devolved upon them, and their daughters would be the original mothers of the posterity of that tribe in succeeding ages. So look, I know they were kidnapped, but listen, it's going to be better for them in Benjamin, because they're going to have all the inheritance of the tribe of Benjamin. wickedness, upon wickedness, upon wickedness. I do want to mention this just to think about the significance of the tribe of Benjamin. This tribe of Benjamin that was almost wiped out, that there were 600 men left and they of repopulated this tribe of Benjamin. Where's the first king from? King Saul, the Benjamite. Who else is a Benjamite? Saul of Tarsus is a Benjamite. That's interesting. I don't know where to take that to, but it's just some thoughts that I've thought about, about all of those who are Benjamites in the future and how they came into being. They are, so King Saul would be, A descendant, his mother or his grandmother, or however far back it is, would be one that was either kidnapped from Jabesh Gilead or Shiloh and Saul of Tarshish the same way. His descendants either came from Jabesh Gilead or Shiloh. He was a descendant. Doesn't really add anything to it, just something I was thinking about. But here we are. Can you believe they committed this wickedness? Murdered an entire city, kidnapped women from Jabesh Gilead, kidnapped women from Shiloh, and they go back and they repopulate the Benjamins. This is the state of wickedness that resides in man's heart. This is what happens if we read verse 25. In those days, there was one old key in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. This is the danger. Everyone is just doing what is right in their own eyes, with no moral compass, with no document to guide them. This is why, listen, the New Testament is our rule of faith and practice. How we operate as a church, we don't operate according to what Brother Mark thinks is a good way for Emmanuel Baptist Church to go. The New Testament is our rule of faith and practice. The New Testament guides our decisions. And if we just decide to say, hey, let's have a church. And I want to have a church because I'm going to have a church. And whoever's the leader of the church is the one that's going to make the decisions. You're prone to get yourself into conditions that the children of Israel found themselves in. And anytime you deviate from the word of God as that which directs your steps, you're prone to get yourself in a situation that the children of Israel found themselves in here. When everyone is just doing what is right in their own eyes, it only leads to depravity. And the reason our nation is in the condition that it's in, today is because people are doing what is right in their own eyes. Hey, what I do in the privacy of my own home is nobody's business. I'm not hurting anybody. I can do what I want to. And besides my body, my choice, I'm going to make my own decision. What I feel like is the best thing is the right thing to do. and it only leads to wickedness. It's why we ought to stand firm on the Word of God being the rule of faith and practice, the New Testament for our church, and we ought to stand for the Word of God being that which is the moral compass for our society. Because when everyone does what is right in their own eyes, it only leads to wickedness. So this verse. There was no king in Israel and every man did that which was right in their own eyes has played a large part in the study of the book of Judges. Again, I'm going to read my notes. The truth contained in this verse is how the nation found itself in such a deplorable condition. This verse also describes how this world in which we live today has devolved into the condition it is in today. What we see happening in our land today is because everyone is doing what is right in their own eyes. The only way for this world to change is for people to begin to realize that doing what is right in their own eyes only leads to heartache and destruction. Only through repentance of sin and following the Word of God can our world be changed. It's the only thing that's going to change families also. You want your family to change? You want your family to be one that is honoring God, let the Word of God be your rule of faith and practice. You operate inside your family using the Word of God as your guide. We want Emmanuel Baptist Church to continue on and be successful and a church that honors God. We need to make sure that the Word of God is our rule of faith and practice. because when everyone does what is right in our own eyes, only they lead us to destruction. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the example we find in your word. And I pray, Lord, that you will help us to understand that when we make rash decisions, doing things that we seem like are right in our own eyes can sometimes lead us into making poor decisions Guide us according to your word. Help us to honor you by following your word. God, help us not to do what is right in our own eyes, but what is right in your eyes. And may we always honor you with our obedience to your word. We thank you for your word and have God.