Judges 21

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

(Jdg 21:25)

We have talked about this verse a little bit already, but as the closing verse of this book, it sums things up rather nicely. We have a word in the English language that means the same thing as this verse. When there is no authority and everyone does whatever they want, we call it Anarchy. Anarchy always leads to a state of chaos, and ultimately ends in oppression of one sort or another.

The saddest thing to me is that all of this was so unnecessary… God wanted to be their king; He wanted them to live under a “Theocracy”; to be a people who were truly governed by God. The word “Israel” means just that in the Hebrew language, GOVERNED BY GOD. When the Israelites threw off God’s authority from their lives, they truly had no king, no leadership at all. They had been given laws by God to show them what it meant to love God and your neighbor, but they ignored those laws and chose to love themselves.

These people threw out the standard… rather than asking what God thought about something, they did whatever felt good and right to them. The Bible tells us that the heart is deceitfully wicked and NO ONE can know it. These people were “following their hearts” and it led them over and over again into sin, idolatry, bondage, and suffering. These people needed a leader, someone who would rise up and lead them back to the Lord. They needed someone who would remind them of the blessing that comes with obedience, someone who could be a mouthpiece for God.

In our world today, we are in a state of spiritual anarchy… from every side we are being told to “just do it” and to “obey our thirst”. Living this way will lead us into the same things it brought upon Israel. Will you be that mouthpiece? Will you point people back to Jesus? Will you be honest with others about where following your heart really gets you?

When we start 1 Samuel, we will see that Samuel was that man… the greatest of the judges, and the first of the prophets. In Ruth we will see what God can do for an individual in the midst of a culture that is so rotten… may it encourage you!