Proverbs 21:2 ¶ Every way of a man is right in his own eyes:
but the LORD pondereth the hearts.
Remember, God searches you from the inside;
Proverbs 20:27 The spirit of man is the
candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
Also, remember what God has to say about those
who justify themselves.
Proverbs 12:15 The way of a fool is right in
his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.
Doc Ruckman has said that men have three needs
of the flesh; one to survive and to reproduce themselves, one to gratify
themselves, and one to justify themselves. I believe that many if not most of
our sins come from an obsession with and a perversion of one of those three
things. In this Proverb, man’s self-justification is laid bare and it is said
that God ignores your extolling of your own so called righteous intention and
goes right to your heart.
When the Hebrews came out of the Wilderness into
the Promised Land they fell into this trap. They were warned about
self-justifying, carnal religion in Deuteronomy 12:1-12 which is worth reading
and contemplating and praying about, and pay particular notice to verse 8.
8 Ye shall not do after all the things that
we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes.
The religion of Cain is an example of doing
whatever you think is right without regard to what God has commanded to justify
yourself in your own mind.
Genesis 4:2 And she again bare his brother
Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
3 ¶ And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of
the ground an offering unto the LORD. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the
firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto
Abel and to his offering: 5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not
respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
Like Cain, many of us have made up our own
religious practice and we say because we do it to glorify God that He must
accept it. That’s not true. First, God sees your heart. He sees and judges you
by your true intention. Does it please you and satisfy you or does it really
glorify Him? Second, if you don’t do things the way God has prescribed them
then they are not of God.
Paul warned the Galatians that the reason the Judaizers
wanted them to be circumcised was not to honor God, but as all self-righteous
religious people demand, “to glory in their flesh”.
Galatians 6:13 For neither they themselves
who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they
may glory in your flesh.
No matter what they say, folks, many people want
you to do fleshy, carnal minded things for God, the works they approve of, so
that they can glory in your flesh. It’s a way of justifying themselves. A man
can’t control the fruit of the Spirit. He can’t direct God working on you
through His words in the Bible by the Holy Spirit. Man sees from the outside
and God from the inside. Man sees the flesh and God sees the heart. You can
fool man. You prance and parade your self-assumed righteousness and holiness
around and satisfy man. You can’t fool God.
Self-justifying man knows you began your walk
with Christ in the Spirit but they want you to be perfected, completed in the
flesh so they can see you, control you, and judge you.
Galatians 3:3 Are ye so foolish? having begun
in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
The Hebrews in the period of the Judges
descended into this “Democracy”. Judges 17:6 and 21:25 both say essentially the
same thing. I’ll give the 17:6 version of these verses here.
Judges 17:6 In those days there was no king
in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
When our religious expression becomes a dog and
pony show, a sort of holy entertainment, an alternative to a rock concert but
just like one in response only not as wicked, or a professional football game
or boxing match but only without the foul language and scantily clad
cheerleaders and round card girls, when we go from emotional fix to fix and
emotional high to high, needing constantly to be recharged, to be rebooted
because we do not feed on God’s words every day and in every way, and neither
rest in Christ nor wait on His will we practice this form of self-justifying
religion where what we do is right in our own eyes and we arrogantly presume
that if we say we do it for God then God must and will bless it.
Fundamentalists like myself like to point
fingers at compulsive liars, gossips, thieves, murderers, drug addicts,
alcoholics, fornicators, and people who engage in homosexual behavior to
express our contempt under the heading of people doing things that are right in
their own eyes. That is true that people sin because people want to do what
they want to do and what people usually want to do is wrong and the natural man
or woman usually rejects Christ or even the concept that they are in need of
the Saviour. However, when you cross reference and link up verses in the Bible
with like phrasing and words you can’t help but come to the conclusion that
while God is, indeed, furious with those who have rejected Him in the visible
form of the Lord Jesus Christ, He is also frustrated with those who claim to be
His people who justify themselves and who insist on doing it their own way.
We’ll take one verse and focus on its
application in the lives of those among the church body because its expression
is satisfying to our flesh. But, yet we’ll ignore verse after verse about the
importance of other traits which God has commanded to be manifest in us which
are spiritual and can’t be judged or gauged by men and women easily. We judge
the outside of a person and imagine vainly that we know what they are thinking.
If church member A meets all the criteria we’ve decided in our own eyes smacks
of spirituality and holiness we approve of them even if they are playing “fake
it to make it” on the inside. We criticize church member B if his walk with
Christ doesn’t meet our approval because we personally can’t see or control it
and he or she doesn’t brag about it or trumpet it enough in meetings.
Christians will respect anger, paranoia, fear,
and rebellion because it can be justified as righteous indignation while they
view devotion to God’s word, waiting on God, and trying to cultivate the fruit
of the Spirit in your life expressed in your dealing with others within the
church and without as weakness, indecision, and a lack of a commitment and a
lack of being willing to sacrifice one’s personal needs and desires for Christ.
Our ways are right in our own eyes, but God knows our hearts.
Proverbs 16:2 ¶ All the ways of a man are
clean in his own eyes; but the LORD weigheth the spirits.
Proverbs 16:25 ¶ There is a way that seemeth
right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
The usual way of explaining these verses has to
do with others. Those wicked “others” we like to talk about, those
non-believers, who, as is exalted in our American form of political and
personal life are free to do whatever is right in their own eyes within certain
limits which, to us, are never limiting enough for THEM and always too limiting
for US.
But, I’m doing the unusual here for what Dr.
Ruckman calls jokingly, a “funnymentalist”. From a historical standpoint, flesh
satisfying, carnal religion leads to unbelief. Fleshy religious expression
leads to the death of faith. The more political and ritualistic the expression
of your faith becomes, the more it slides into apostasy.
We need to wake up. If we are to be true to our
faith, it needs to be Christ’s way or the highway. Not Jack Hyles way, not Joel
Osteen’s way, not Billy Sunday’s way, not Joyce Meier’s way, but Christ’s way.
Not simply a way that pleases our fleshly needs, expresses a Christian culture,
or copies a charismatic preacher whom we think is successful. Every way of a
man is right in his own eyes, but God sees what’s really going on inside of
each of us in a way we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around.
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