Judg 17:6, In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. 
There has been something working in the hearts of many people in this fellowship. It is based on the way in which this current American society has so manifestly and maliciously turned away from any recognition of the Sovereignty of the Lord God Almighty. This verse is being fully carried out in the core essence of the heart of our once God-fearing nation. It fully details our current social norm. Everyone is doing what is right in his or her own eyes. 
As a result, I have been urged to repeat last week’s warning and call to faithful service unto the Lord. This completely goes against the societal pressures and taunts and practices which are so vehemently set against any allegiance to the honor of God. I pray that those who have previously heard this message will once again listen to what the Word of God has to say to us today, right here, right now! I know that even in the continued preparation of going over and over and over this message again this past week; I have been challenged as to where I am putting my faith, my trust, and my hope. This is a chilling statement of where any man, woman, or child will find oneself when faced with the choice of following the Lord or following the way of the peoples surrounding us. 
It is very easy to say that we are for the Lord and will obey Him no matter what pressures there are in this age to turn our backs on Him. We fully think that we are committed to a living relationship with Our Savior and Lord. However, the desperate power of this world, in its death throes against the triumphant victory of the Lord Jesus Christ and His glorious resurrection, will do anything vile and sinister to besmirch the stand of the faithful. There will be all sorts of attacks, some blatant, and some so subtle and secret that they only rear their ugliness after they have dealt their poisonous venom into the hearts and the minds of those who are letting their guards down. 
This is the course of the walk of the people of God on this earth. We are never defeated as we hold true to Christ and keep our eyes on Him and His victorious Dominion over all of His creation. It is when we may allow our eyes to wander to the distractions of this age that we will begin to veer off the straight path of Christ’s righteousness. It is when we put the emphasis on our place, our rights, and the things that we think we deserve that we will find ourselves removed from that course of right standing. It is then that we will find ourselves in the miry filth that would try to drag us down from our faithful walk with God in Christ Jesus. 
It is because of this alluring siren call of society to every one to do what is right in our own eyes, that I will once more present, as encouragement to me and to you, this message to hold to the course of Christ’s supreme victory. Jesus has done the work. He is triumphant! We need to hold our thoughts and our minds captive to this truth! We must urge one another to hold to the faithful and true course. We dare not allow ourselves to become a casualty of the easy, self-centered way of this age. This will only serve to hinder us from growing into the full depth of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. 
Therefore I beseech each one of us to ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, and our souls to that which is of utmost urgency right now, this very moment. Please bear with me as I repeat last week’s message of both warning and of encouragement to walk the course that Jesus has set before us! This is only through the guiding and abiding power of the Holy Spirit. It will always be absolutely in line with God’s precious and so beloved Word. 
The disintegration of our social conscience is massively hurtling us into utter disorder and anarchy. We are faced with disgusting and rampant displays of what is deemed proper and right for the individual. This is at the expense of a clearly defined right and wrong which protects the whole. Personal wants and cravings and lusts have utterly and foolishly cast aside those guidelines which insure stability and order and the generally accepted proper treatment of mankind. 
Today, we are a people who want instant gratification at all costs, including a decent respect for hard work. We do not want to wait for the satisfaction in the rewards of earned and valued laborious effort. Rather, we live in a social climate of the entitlement of wants, rather than in one that values the hard and tedious striving for that which is needed. We are a throw-away society with no regard for human life or virtue or respect of others and their rights or property in any measure. This especially rejects the high and ultimate standards that God has set before us as the beacon of what should be our utmost desire and goal for the manner of living our lives. 
To consider the life-long race unto the fullness of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, as detailed by the Apostle Paul in Phil 3:7-16, is anathema to the cravings and the self-centered motivations of this age. Our society is now characterized by rampant abortion and homosexuality and crossing over which all manifest selfishness beyond all previous scales of consideration! 
Spiritually speaking, there is no willingness or desire to put in the strenuous toil necessary to seek after the things of God. This is especially the case in terms of having to endure long and copious year after year exertion to learn patience and kindness and humility and thankfulness unto the Lord for the way in which He meets our needs, not our wants or our self-centered desires and lusts.  
Phil 3:7-16, But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. 
Rather than this dedication and consecration and determination to know the Lord with all our hearts and all our minds and all our souls, there is a wonton disregard of anything other than what meets my cravings and my desires after self-satisfaction and the filthy lucre of this age right now, this instant! This brings us back to that which has always been the heart of defiled and lawless humanity … every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Moses had to deal with this selfish heart of the Children of Israel, as detailed in the first 13 verses of Deut, Chapter 12. He was giving instructions as to what was so necessary for the people to hold onto their abiding relationship with the Lord God Almighty, Jehovah, Yahweh. He urged them to obey The Lord and His wonderful statutes and those ordinances which would fully serve to protect them and to keep them from the defiled ensnarement of this realm. 
Deut 12:1-13, "These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. And you shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods, and you shall obliterate their name from that place. You shall not act like this toward the Lord your God. But you shall seek the Lord at the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and there you shall come. And there you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your votive offerings, your freewill offerings, and the first-born of your herd and of your flock. There also you and your households shall eat before the Lord your God, and rejoice in all your undertakings in which the Lord your God has blessed you. You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you. When you cross the Jordan and live in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you so that you live in security, then it shall come about that the place in which the Lord your God shall choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice votive offerings which you will vow to the Lord. And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance with you. 
Again, the key pronouncement which needs our utmost obedience this very moment …You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you... 
There is an aspect inherent in this command which we would be greatly blessed to take to heart. There is no resting place or inheritance of peace and well-being when we are doing whatever is right in our own eyes! As much as we might think that we are getting what we want, when we want it, how we want it, we will never find peace and joy and the expressed love of God. This is our inheritance only in Jesus Christ as we trust Him and as we obey Him! 
When we are infected with our selfish view of what we want when we want it, we will be utterly miserable. We will be stuck with a devastating sense of lack and loss at not having sufficient means to even briefly satisfy our endless lusting and craving after something better and bigger and grander! There will be no settledness in the beauty of the Lord as our eyes, bedazzled by dangling and alluring trivial trinkets of this age, dictate what our self-centered heart wants! 
Additionally, as so set forth before us by the Psalmist, in Ps 12:1-4, we are surrounded by those who are corrupt and who earnestly seek to destroy any testimony of holiness and purity and righteousness in this age. There is that wonton sense of having to drag others into the miry pit of selfishness in which we find ourselves. As the futility of our wallowing in the quick sand of this realm’s lies and deceits engulf us, we want to drag as many others down with us so that we are not alone in our desperate misery and panic.
Ps 12:1-4, Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases to be, For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men. They speak falsehood to one another; With flattering lips and with a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, The tongue that speaks great things; Who have said, "With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?" 
	This is further delineated by the writer of the Proverbs within the course of this urgent observation. We would be wise to consider some of those warnings at this point. 
We will start with Prov 12:15-23, wherein the comparison between the fool and the wise is set in the fact that the fool thinks that he is ok. He thinks that he can rule his own lusts and that he can make his own way in this realm. The heart of the fool is one which declares that I am alright in my sin and there is no shame because this is the correct course of action for me to take in my own eyes, no matter what the Lord has declared in His Word.
Prov 12:15-23, The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But a wise man is he who listens to counsel. A fool's vexation is known at once, But a prudent man conceals dishonor. He who speaks truth tells what is right, But a false witness, deceit. There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, But the tongue of the wise brings healing. Truthful lips will be established forever, But a lying tongue is only for a moment. Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, But counselors of peace have joy. No harm befalls the righteous, But the wicked are filled with trouble. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, But those who deal faithfully are His delight. A prudent man conceals knowledge, But the heart of fools proclaims folly. 
Prov 14:12, details exactly what man receives when he goes against the way of the Lord. This is in choosing that which seems right to appease himself, rather than to obey God.
Prov 14:12, There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. 
The Lord also sets before us the whole crux of the matter in Prov 16:1+2. Herein is the fact that what man wants is ruled by that motivation after self interests and self approval and self centeredness. What is shown of the heart of humanity is the fact that there is nothing of concern other than what will elevate the creation over the Creator. This is what has been in the heart of humanity since the fall in the Garden. Man is deceived by his own heart into this futile planning after that which has no chance of success in the whole spectrum of eternity. Everything that man does to justify the course of his walk will undergo the intense and Omniscient scrutiny of the Lord.
Prov 16:1+2, The plans of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the Lord weighs the motives. 
This manifest divine scrutiny is also highlighted in Eccl 11:9+10. Eccl 11:9+10, Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. 
Next, please turn to the words of the Lord given by the Prophet Jeremiah in Jer 44:1-17. Jeremiah details how the Lord brought forth the truth of the difference that following the proper commandments and the honoring of the Holiness of God will bring. This is in complete opposition to the defiled and deceitful ways and actions and motivations of men apart from God. 
And yet, despite the virtuous and righteous declarations of God, the people still chose to close their hearts and their minds. They rather desired to deliberately and defiantly seek after those ways which they knew were wrong and were filled with extreme misery and abject failure and emptiness and utter destruction.  
Jer 44:1-17, The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Jews living in the land of Egypt, those who were living in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and the land of Pathros, saying, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 'You yourselves have seen all the calamity that I have brought on Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah; and behold, this day they are in ruins and no one lives in them, because of their wickedness which they committed so as to provoke Me to anger by continuing to burn sacrifices and to serve other gods whom they had not known, neither they, you, nor your fathers. 'Yet I sent you all My servants the prophets, again and again, saying, "Oh, do not do this abominable thing which I hate." 'But they did not listen or incline their ears to turn from their wickedness, so as not to burn sacrifices to other gods. 'Therefore My wrath and My anger were poured out and burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, so they have become a ruin and a desolation as it is this day. 'Now then thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, "Why are you doing great harm to yourselves, so as to cut off from you man and woman, child and infant, from among Judah, leaving yourselves without remnant, provoking Me to anger with the works of your hands, burning sacrifices to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you are entering to reside, so that you might be cut off and become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth? "Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? "But they have not become contrite even to this day, nor have they feared nor walked in My law or My statutes, which I have set before you and before your fathers."' "Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, 'Behold, I am going to set My face against you for woe, even to cut off all Judah. 'And I will take away the remnant of Judah who have set their mind on entering the land of Egypt to reside there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt; they will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine. Both small and great will die by the sword and famine; and they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation and a reproach. 'And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem, with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence. 'So there will be no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there and then to return to the land of Judah, to which they are longing to return and live; for none will return except a few refugees.'" Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by, as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah, saying, "As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! "But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and were well off, and saw no misfortune.
	What an intensely devastating statement of the condition of the heart of the men and women who had known of the goodness of the Lord and yet deliberately chose to follow the foolishness of their own idolatrous hearts. …As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! "But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths… 
They deliberately turned away from the path of their salvation to their utter ruination in seeking after that which they valued above the Lord. They did what was right in their own eyes, rather than what was right before God.
	The entirety of this message is to us, this day, living in a society which has fully turned away from following the Lord! Our social norm is now the promoting of doing that which is right in the eyes of each individual. We are faced with a vital and absolutely urgent choice right now, right here!
Are we going to follow the Lord or are we going to join in the folly and the destructive manners of this age? This option is before us as each day dawns. Do we obey the Lord and seek after Him and His way of perfection through the course of our moment by moment obedience unto Him? Or do we set our eyes on the tawdry and oh so temporary and unfulfilling temptations of this world? We do so at the supreme cost of setting aside the peace and joy and satisfaction that is our heritage in Jesus Christ!
You and I need to ask this before God as we face what we think is right in our own eyes! Do we choose to obey Him and abide by His Word, even as that means that we dogged set our feet on the path of longsuffering and intense labor? This is the only way that will teach us of the depths of the grace and the mercy and the love of God! Or, do we choose the tantalizing shortcut of doing what is right in our own eyes, which so surely leads only to despair, and depression, and utter devastation?  I pray that we will all choose to follow the course that God has set before us and not the one that appeals to our selfish motivation after instant gratification at the cost of our every joy and peace in Jesus Christ! So be it!
In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 27:4. One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord, And to meditate in His temple. Amen.