Last week I told you that the people wanted to "…do what was right in their own eyes…" and chaos was the result.  You may have missed the first part of the verse:  (Judges 21:25)  "In those days there was no king in Israel."

After the people did evil under their leaders, Moses and Joshua, God gave them judges.  That didn't work either, so the people begged for a king.  They promised that they "would be good" if they had a king.  So God let them have a king.  Which was not what God had wanted, but I suppose that his plan may have been to show them that nothing was going to work.  They had to be "good" from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Ken taught Sociology at a college after he retired from the USMC.   Yes, I know, strange combo. Fighter pilot, Sociology Prof.   But as he was finishing a degree at OSU in Aerospace Studies, he took a class in sociology and loved it.  It was right after the Viet Nam war and hippies filled the Sociology classrooms.  Their mantra was  "Make love, not war."  That was to be the new social order.

When he was teaching, he used to tell his students to think of the human social behavior as a circle within circles within circles, and drew a picture on the board.  "When you are pushed from the outside, you will accommodate some changes in your behavior.  You discard the outside circle and conform to some of society's demands.  Stop at stop signs, etc.  But as you are pushed and discard circles, there comes a point--call it your inner core--that won't change anymore.  You've had it."

But with God, all the pushing comes from the inside out.  Our inner core has been given over to His will and we change by the power of the Holy Spirit to conform to His Image.
Ephesians 4:16, 17a  "That he would grant you…to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;  That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith…"

We change not because we have to.  Not because of some law.  We change because we've been changed.