Doing what is right in your own eyes

In this message Pastor Shane formulates a biblical response to recent events in the public life and values of America. Click here for the recording of this 10/5 Service, and you can fast-forward to 25:08 to get to the start of the sermon.

Our text comes from Deuteronomy Chapter 12.1-8

1 “These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully follow in the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth.

2 You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you are going to dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every leafy tree.

3 And you shall tear down their altars and smash their memorial stones to pieces, and burn their Asherim in the fire, and cut to pieces the carved images of their gods; and you shall eliminate their name from that place.

4 You shall not act this way toward the Lord your God.

5 But you shall seek the Lord at the place which the Lord your God will choose from all your tribes, to establish His name there for His dwelling, and you shall come there.

6 You shall bring there your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your vowed offerings, your voluntary offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock.

7 There 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.

8 “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes;

Introduction…

Where we are in 2025

• Greater disunity than at any point in my lifetime

• The shift from objective Truth to subjective truth

• The denial of fundamental reality- male/female

• The redefinition of marriage

• The abandonment of institutions that make up the moral fabric of a civilized society- biblical man/womanhood, marriage, a work ethic, childrearing, familial norms, the family meal

• Once evangelical institutions/academies abandoning biblical truth on marriage, sexuality

• The shift from student as learner to student as customer

• The evangelical pulpit becoming a place to give people what they want rather than what they need, along with biblical illiteracy

• People moving from church to church rather than working through conflict or division

• Open violence against biblical truth- being silenced in the academy, the death of Charlie Kirk

• Church violence- since 1980, 150 people killed in 32 separate church shootings

• The rise of AI and the loss of independent thought

• The refusal of boys to grow up into biblical manhood and the silence of the Church on biblical manhood

Pejorative labels

• Christian nationalism- the promotion of Christian views in order to achieve prominence in political, cultural, and social life.

• The rejection of traditional male gender roles with the view that these roles are Toxic toward women- toxic masculinity

• Fundamentalism-  a form of religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture

• Evangelical- salvation through Jesus Christ alone, his atoning work on the Cross for all of humanity,  the authority of Scripture, the evangelization of the world; increasingly today this is becoming less a theological term and more of a political term

“everyone did that which was right in his own eyes”

• This phrase occurs 3x in the OT- Dt 12, Judges 17 and judges 21

1. A clear lack of moral leadership

2. No objective standard of truth- a lack of a shared commitment to God’s truth

3. This led to Moral chaos

What Deut 12 is calling for

1. Completely abandon every form of idolatry- what are our idols today?

2. Passionately seek the Lord in a place set aside for His name- where is that place today? The local church!
   A place of worship, sacrifice, giving, discipleship

3. Disciple, train and transmit belief in God from one generation to the next- if we fail to disciple the next generation, we fail

4. Reject subjective truth for biblical truth

What we need going forward- if we are to be missional along the 30 corridor…

1. Moral courage in the pulpit- the truth, spoken in love, Eph 4

2. A grammatical/historical method of scripture interpretation to prevent false interpretation

3. Discipleship, discipleship, discipleship- “go and make disciples…”

4. Biblical manhood and discipling men to be the spiritual leader of their home

5. Expecting our boys to become men

6. Parents continually monitoring their children’s phone and online habits- parents are to lead, not follow

7. Hypervigilance regarding public and church safety