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Transcript

Good afternoon, everyone.

Hope you’re enjoying the day, being able to really experience winter here in Ohio. I’ve been for years thinking, “I wish we could just get a good Canadian winter.” We got a good Canadian winter, and now I’m ready for it to be over, so it’s definitely been one for the ages. There’s enough snow out there. But as I get to the message today, we’re going to go a little different than what I would normally cover and kind of how I would cover it because there are just times when you read about people or characters in the Bible that they strike you as someone or people or experiences or however you want to say, parallel the lives you and I live today.

Maybe not in obvious ways, but in spiritual ways that really can draw you into the character or the person or their experiences. As you go through the Bible, it is a story... it’s a book of accounts, the stories of those who either succeeded greatly or failed immensely and sometimes both, depending on who they are. Some were fearful, and they failed because of that or weakness or ignorance, depending on what the circumstances were, but there are others who failed because they didn’t achieve what they could have achieved. It may not have failed in the end, but failed to reach what their potential could be.

The Bible shows that there are great figures who achieved much, failed greatly, like David, but yet went on to succeed, repented, but because of their failures in their lives, they didn’t achieve what God had originally intended them to do. So, we’re going to look at someone today that’s not about whether they made it, because you’ll see clearly the Bible says they did, but about how they didn’t govern their lives or experiences to get where they should have gotten and the route that God would have intended them to do. You’ve probably all thought about or heard about or read about the story of Samson.

When you do, you picture in your mind usually what most of us do, what I would do when I heard that, Okay, he would Nazarite vow, he had long hair, and he was really strong, and made some mistakes, but ultimately, if you tell this story, especially if you have children, the conclusion of the matter is his strength got him through and then eventually he did the right thing, but did he do the right thing? Maybe in the end. When God recorded the story of Samson, he didn’t record it to show God’s power because that was ultimately what he gave him. God really recorded it to show what the waste of power could be, the waste of potential, but before we get into it, you’ve got to rewind your mind.

We’ve got to go back in time and picture the time when Israel was repeating the addicts’ problem of improving and falling back into stuff, improving and falling back into stuff. Over and over, Israel did this, over and over again. A judge would be raised up. They would rally and obey God, and then they would start to rest on their laurels, and everything would come crashing down again. It’s just the cycle was over and over, and this account, it’d been about forty years that the Philistines dominated Israel. They were oppressed. Entire generation, in fact, grew up under that oppression.

When God finally intervened this time, he didn’t do it in the dramatic ways in some of the other accounts were. There’s many other accounts when Israel failed. They raised up a judge, a powerful figure, man or woman, whoever it was, and they led Israel out of slavery, out of captivity, but that wasn’t the case, the account of Samson. Wasn’t a judge, wasn’t an army. God started quietly in this case, very quietly. He started in a barren woman, in an obscure family, in a nation that had gone incredibly weak, and before anyone knew what was happening, God had already intervened.

He decided to act. He wanted to change the state of what Israel was experiencing, but he was going to do it in a different way than he had done before. To understand where Samson fell short, we need to look how early God invested in him, and then as we go through this message, some of them will just be dead obvious, but I’ll try to point out those that are less so, but many lessons for you and I, because we have been given incredible power, incredible strength, and a specific purpose where God invested in us very, very early, but if we don’t show discipline, we don’t show submission to Him, we can squander that potential.

We may make it in the end. We may be in the family of God, but not achieve in this lifetime all that God would want us to do. So, Samson warns us about this, and we’re going to go through this account and really build the picture of it, because the story didn’t begin with failure, of course not. Before anything happened with Samson, it started in Judges thirteen. Let’s turn to Judges thirteen as we open our Bibles. You may want to put a marker here in Judges, because we’re going to be jumping back and forth.

Judges thirteen. Let’s start in verse one, Judges thirteen and verse one. If I had a dollar for every time this is said in the Bible, if it wasn’t so tragic, it’d be funny. “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord.” “Again” is the emphasis here, but aside. “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.” So, again, a generation was raised up.

“And there was a certain man of Zorah in the family of Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and bore not,” so she couldn’t have children. “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, ‘Behold now, you’re barren and bare not, and you shall conceive and bear a son.” So miraculous. “Now therefore beware, I pray you, and drink not wine nor strong drink, eat not any unclean thing. For, lo, you shall conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come to his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb.”

Stop for a moment and picture this account. He is a Nazarite from the womb, so this angel of the Lord didn’t even want the mother to do things that would break the Nazarite vow, drink alcohol and whatnot. Verse five, and it continues, and what is his purpose? Why did God do this? Why did he intervene? “And he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” God intervened before Samson ever existed.

That vow meant he was supposed to do something special, unique. It separated him, and then his purpose was defined at that moment of conception, when he was in the womb. God gave him a mission when he still had nine months before he was a baby, but that mission, that purpose did not guarantee Samson’s faithfulness, and again, I’m not saying this in the context of Samson was a complete failure. We’ll see in the book of Hebrews that he made it. Brethren, it’s not about whether we would make it.

That of course is our ultimate goal as Christians, but what are we doing on the road to get there? Sometimes it’s so easy for us to... especially if you’re in an environment, you have a congregation, Headquarters, wherever you are, if things are going well, it’s easy to put our feet up and rest on our laurels, trust in our own understanding. Just relax. Like, no, I’m doing all the basic things to get to the Kingdom, but you and I were called this day and age for a purpose. Unless there was a purpose for us to be part of the hundred and forty-four thousand, a specific time, then God’s being a respecter of persons, and that purpose today is to prepare to be part of the kingdom of God.

Yes. To prepare to be part of the family of God, one hundred percent, but you and I are here today because we have a job to do in supporting and backing the work of God, backing His Church in this day and age. Let’s go to Jeremiah chapter one. Again, you may want to leave that bookmark in Judges. In fact, I’m going to follow my own advice and put one there. Jeremiah chapter one. Jeremiah chapter one and verse four. Jeremiah one, four. Verse four reads, “Then the word of the Lord came unto me saying,” verse five, “Before I formed you in the belly, I knew you,” to Jeremiah. “And before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you and I ordained you a prophet unto all nations.”

So, what happened to Samson isn’t without precedent. Jeremiah was ordained in the womb before he came. That’s miraculous, isn’t it, brethren? But it’s really not. It’s really not. You and I were picked to be where we are today before the foundation of the universe. Not in the womb, the universe, before the foundations of the world, that everything existed. God looked through time, space, however He does that in ways we can’t even begin to conceive, and He picked you and I.

That’s far more complicated than determining someone’s role when they’re conceived, so you were picked, called in effect, not actively until you were ready and God determined it was the right time in your life, but He had determined before you were born that you would be called or be born into a family where your parents were called and obeyed God or multiple generations. That’s extraordinary. That’s even more extraordinary than Samson. Let’s go ahead to the New Testament, Luke chapter twelve. Luke twelve. So, you can’t grow until you’re called.

You can’t become mature until you’ve reached a state of maturity. You can’t become spiritually effective until you become more spiritual, you’re baptized, you’re converted, you receive God’s spirit, but once you do, then everything changes. Luke chapter twelve, and right near the end of this chapter, verse forty-seven, Luke twelve, verse forty-seven, “And that servant, which knew his Lord’s will, and prepared himself not, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.”

And verse forty-eight, “But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be much required, and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” To much is given, much is required. Knowledge brings with it the responsibility to act on that knowledge, understanding, means you and I have to perform.

The more we know, the more it’s expected of us to achieve that potential that you and I have been... that God has put inside of us. Strength, power. Having God’s spirit in us is so much more than the strength that Samson had, but again, you can look at him as a figure of the power he was given, came through God’s spirit, which is the power that’s in us, that innate strength. That was physical.

We have spiritual. Strength, protection, purpose were given to Samson. He had a job to do, but none of those jobs changed the fact that he had to obey. Brethren, you have incredible power inside of you with God’s spirit, either inside you, or if you’re a young person or prospective member working with you, that’s the same power that created the universe, and God said, “I will give it to you,” as He gave it to Samson, and Samson had power and strength beyond what we can even possibly imagine.

It’s incredible what God gives us because we understand things about human nature that no one understands, and God gives that to you freely, that power, that understanding freely, but then allows us so much rope, and this is the hardest part of Christianity, is we’re given rope as we learn and are explained and come to understand what’s right and what’s wrong, and then it’s given to us, to choose to do what’s right, and forego those things that are wrong. Because if we’re strong and we receive strength and we receive power, but we’re not disciplined, oh, things change.

I spent a lot of my years growing up taking martial arts, specifically Wing Chun Kung Fu, and a lot of what that was, and there’s a lot of negatives to this. This was before I was in the Church, get into a lot of mysticism and martial arts, but one of the elements of Wing Chun in particular was actually created by a woman, and so, therefore, it was more about diverting of power or reinterpreting it or shifting it than it was about force on force, but those classes were drilled into us when I was an early teenager about how it was all about defense, that you will very quickly be able to hurt other people and you have to control yourself.

I was given, in that sense, a physical strength, but I was taught, and it was drilled into our head over and over and over again, that this is a defensive martial art. This is not something you’d use offensively because you have to be responsible for that power, and society knows that. If someone gets into a fight, two people get into a fist fight, one of them is heavily trained and one of them is not. It’s got to go a certain way. The one, even if they started the fight, is beaten to a pulp by the heavily trained one, the one who started the fight can file for assault, assault with a deadly weapon, if the person is trained enough.

Power requires responsibility and self-constraint. Without it, all that strength, all that power becomes a liability, and what does God talk about when He talks about power? You’ve heard this word. Remember when I first heard it in the Church, I thought, “That doesn’t make any sense to me. Never heard it before,” but it’s called in The Fruits of the Spirit, which we’ll read later. It’s called Temperance. That’s self-control. Okay, back to Judges. Judges fourteen. Judges chapter fourteen. If you have your bookmarks, you got there quickly. Verse five. Judges fourteen, five.

“Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath, and behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of Lord came mightily unto him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid.” A goat. Not a child, but like a goat. “And he had nothing in his hand, but he had told not his father and mother what he had done.” Samson was already starting to show examples of lack of self-control. He hit this moment, he reacted, and obliterated that lion. Incredible story, because you think, this is a man against a lion, but what did he do? He hid it. He knew he had done something wrong.

He went too far, but it was also amazing evidence of just how much power God had given him. Samson’s strength was undeniable, but strength does not equal righteousness. You and I have to exhibit and perform righteousness because of the strength we’ve been given. Again, much is required of us because we have been given much. Temperance is not something that you and I can make optional in our lives. It is a fruit of the Spirit. Let’s look at it. Galatians five. It’s a memory verse, but it’s apropos to read here. Galatians chapter five and verse twenty-two.

Galatians five, twenty-two. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, against such there is no law.” If we can control ourselves, the law, in effect, doesn’t apply because we won’t break the law, and all of the other fruits of the Spirit can grow and develop under that framework of temperance. If you have love and joy and peace and all of those, no matter what you do, if you just are out of control, you don’t have self-control, we don’t exhibit the temperance of God by his Spirit in us, then the other fruits don’t matter because we’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to sin.

We’re going to do whatever comes to mind, and instead of leaning on God, we’ll lean on our own understanding and do those things that we think are right in our own eyes as opposed to looking at God’s will in our lives. Self-control has to be evident in all aspects of our spiritual maturity. It’s power governed by restraint. The restraint, thinking back to martial arts or Samson or any of those things, evidence. If you are stronger with a man and a woman, there’s a reason in the Church, if a man hits a woman, he is immediately removed, disfellowshipped, out of the Church, and then we determine what happened.

Because the man has the... and the one with the weaker vessel, the wife, has the responsibility and the fact that he’s stronger and more powerful to restrain himself with someone who would need that restraint. You have to have that temperance. When it’s not there, things can happen very badly and very quickly. Samson over and over through these accounts demonstrated strength, strong, powerful, amazing, but you know what he didn’t demonstrate a lot of? Temperance.

Ironically, the Nazarite vow was all about showing discipline, showing restraint, but like Solomon, who did the right thing early on, started to change, and his abilities, his wisdom had him stop focusing on how to please God but more focused on how to please himself, and Samson did that as well. Let’s go to Proverbs twenty-five. Let’s see what the Bible says about this. Proverbs twenty-five. Right near the end of the book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter twenty-five and verse twenty-eight. Just one verse here. Verse twenty-eight. “He that has no rule over his spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.”

No control over ourselves means we are defenseless against whatever comes against us. Leaves us exposed, vulnerable to attack, allows the devil to get in and get in our minds because we don’t have that moment of pause. Because really, that’s what self-will is. It’s that moment of self-will. It’s that moment when you are tempted or someone provokes you or there’s a moment you think, “Oh, could I do this,” or a thought, but yet, what you do, or what we should do, is self-will, or self-constraint, or the ability of having self-control, allows us to stop and consider.

Ironically, Samson was strong enough to defeat every single one of his enemies. He was powerful enough to destroy lions, but he couldn’t command or control himself. Brethren, it’s the same for you and I today. It’s so easy to see the problems in the world around us, to be able to see how society is collapsing, and not just in America but all countries around the world where problems are getting worse and worse and worse, and spiritual problems are completely unsolvable, but it’s harder to look in the mirror and see when those spiritual problems are our own, to govern our own selves, but God never intended you and I to do this alone.

That’s why you sit in a congregation, you’re watching this video, you’re in whatever situation you are, you were called into God’s Church, because it’s not meant to happen alone. Never mind that God’s Spirit in you is the strength and the power that allows us to do that. As it says, “Through Christ, all things are possible.” That’s the strength we’re given, but without temperance, oh, it starts to become reckless. We start to be able to see through things that we shouldn’t be able to see through. I joked before that one of the interesting things about human nature and being a Christian is before you and I were called, we were subject to human nature in the same way everyone else is.

You would just simply follow it because you were never given the instruction manual to be able to understand how it operates, so you come into God’s Church, and this is especially true for young people, we have to be careful because you can manipulate people. You have the ability to know how their brains work, how Satan is controlling them, and you have the instruction manual to do it, but to be Christian, to be righteous, you don’t take advantage of that. You use it to be a tool to help. Instead of... If you don’t control it, it becomes a liability of that knowledge as opposed to a blessing to help us control ourselves.

When temperance is missing, desire just simply takes over. This leads to Samson’s next failure. Instead of loyalty to God, trusting in God, he started to give in to his desires. Let’s go back to Judges fourteen. Judges chapter fourteen. You and I will express lack of self-control, lack of temperance in different ways. Sometimes it’s about diet. We may decide, “You know what? I’m going to overindulge, I’m going to eat that chocolate bar, I’m going to have that cake, I’m going to go to McDonald’s.”

Whatever the case may be, that may be your vice, if you will, the area in which self-control is the weakest. Temperance is the... it wavers. It could be alcohol. It could be lust. It could be the need to keep up with the Joneses. It manifests itself the... If we go back to Galatians, we can look at the elements that are the nature of Satan, the fruit, if you will, of the flesh, but you and I are going to manifest lack of temperance in different ways because it’s whatever proclivity it is in us, but the same thing applies. In Samson’s case, the issue was lust.

Chapter fourteen, verse one. Verse one of Judges fourteen. “And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.” Okay. He was born to help Israel begin to, as the Bible says, free Israel from captivity under the oppression of the Philistines. So, what did he do? Verse two, “And he came up, and told his father and mother, and said, ‘I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines, now therefore get her for me to wife.’” “I’m going to marry her, so go get her for me,” so his father and mother made a first pass, but there’s multiple mistakes here.

“Then his father and mother said unto him, ‘Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that you go take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?’ And Samson said unto his father, ‘Get her for me’ ‘Why?’ For she pleases me well.” That is not good marriage counseling. If a couple was getting married and the husband looked at her, and we were sitting in marriage counseling, say, “What do you see in this woman and da-da-da?” “She pleases me.” “What anything else we got?” “She pleases me.” “Are you comfortable with that young lady?” “She pleases me.” There’s not a lot going on on this side.

That was his approach, so there’s multiple mistakes being made here. One, the parents tried. They made a first pass. He was grown at this point to be married, so he was over twenty, but they fell short, didn’t they? Because of the nature and the custom of the time, the parents would sign off on these marriages, even incorrect ones. He forgot about interracial marriage. He forgot about all the elements of aspects, and the father backed down when he should have stood up and said, “Absolutely not. If you go do this, it is against my will. I will not condone this. This is wrong. This is against God’s law,” but he didn’t.

Parents, we have that responsibility. We build our children in love and care and help them become strong and effective and decision-makers and have their own mind and personality, but there is a line in the sand when we say, “That’s against God’s law. You have to obey it just like we have to obey it,” and if we’re not obeying it, oh, how can we draw that line? Because kids sniff out hypocrisy at a level that adults don’t ever achieve. When your children look up to you, they see you. They don’t see you living Christianity. They don’t see you walking through day by day when the trials and the struggles and the decision-making is hard behind closed doors.

If they don’t see you praying and studying and fasting and doing all the elements that what it means to be a Christian and live it, they’re not going to follow. Why should they? Their best example is someone who’s being hypocritical, so we have to live it too. We have to walk this way. We have to be able to do all that’s right in the sight of God because then we can help and draw the line just like Samson’s parents should have drawn the line and said no, but they didn’t. They allowed Samson’s personal pleasure, his desire to outweigh obedience. “She pleases me well.”

Not a deep, thoughtful consideration of this, and this is lust, but lust in the Bible is not necessarily just sexual impulses. It is, that’s an element of it, but it’s about self-centered desires. When we want something, it takes over our mental faculties, and that becomes our focus. People do what people want to do. I heard Mr. Pack say that years ago, when you’re counseling and working with someone, ultimately people will do what people want to do. What does that mean? Well, you could sit down, and they’re going to buy a car or a house, get married or baptized. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, but everyone goes into a counseling situation with a bias, and that’s fair.

As human beings, we all have our natural biases, but the point of going to get counsel is to reconnoiter those biases or those thoughts or those preferences to align with what God says in the Bible, and if someone does that, they take the counsel, and what they want to do ends up being the righteous thing to do. If they don’t, then they do whatever it was they went into the conversation with and they go do it because they don’t care. They just wanted an approval, and if you don’t give them the approval, they’ll find fault with the counsel because human beings will do what they want to do, and in this case, that’s what Samson did.

Let’s go to First John chapter two. She pleased him, so he went and did what he wanted to do. First John chapter two. Starting verse fifteen. Some simple verses that tie these together. First John Two, fifteen. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, self-centered desires, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away in the lust thereof, but he that does the will of God abides forever” because he’ll be in the family of God. He will be eternal.

All of this worldly stuff will go away, and when you’re in the middle of worldly stuff, that’s hard to keep your frame of reference. It’s hard to see the city of far off and think, “No, I’ve got to focus on the city of far off. That’s where I’m going. I want eternal life.” Because then all the stuff around you starts to crowd that thinking, and sometimes that’s just... life is hard. If Christianity was easy, everyone would be doing it, but life can get hard. It can be difficult. You can have experiences, trials, or just your normal day to day.

Your job is demanding. You have a baby. There’s crying. You’re not getting sleep. Whatever it is. Life can get difficult, and we start to focus on those things. We forget of where our goal is, and all that’s in the world, verse sixteen says, “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life,” that lust starts to compete for God’s attention. It replaces obedience, because if you have twenty-four hours in the day, there are only so many hours to do certain things. If we replace some of our thinking, our time, because of those elements crowding our lives, the lust of the flesh or the eyes, whatever it is, our self-centered desires, that leaves less time for God, less time for study and prayer.

Lust is temporary. It usually turns out poorly, but Samson repeatedly chose to do what appealed to him. We could cover the positive elements of Samson throughout this message. That would be easy to do. We could tell the story of the fights and the battles, the stuff when you’re talking about Samson to little kids. That’s the exciting... Little boys love to hear that stuff, but brethren, it’s like a spokesman’s speech evaluation.

Well, the sandwich approach, as we say, we start with something positive, but really, and we all know this, the part that you and I are listening to when we’re given those evaluations, thank you for the fluff part, but we’re all focused on the middle part where it’s, “What can I grow on? What did I do wrong? How can I become better?” But when the lust, the cares, the self-centered desires become our focus, it’s no longer lust. It’s something different.

Go to Colossians chapter three. Again, think it as self-centered desires, not just sexual lust, because that simplifies something and it really fights what we’re going to look at in Colossians three. Verse five. Colossians three, five. “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.” So, this is what it means to have and be flesh. “Fornication, uncleanliness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, covetousness, which is idolatry.” Brethren, when lust takes over, when self-centered desires take over, we’re not being self-willed. We’re worshiping idols. It’s not just a statue or a picture of Mary or a cross on the wall. Those are physical idols.

That’s child’s play compared to what spiritual idols can do to you and I. It’s funny, when you’re in the Church for a while, those things start to become personally a little bit amusing and just creepy, like “Why are we worshiping this picture of someone we don’t even know? That’s not Mary or Christ or any of those.” We’re told not to do it, but regardless, it wasn’t even who they are. He wasn’t even put up on a cross like that. It was a stake, so they become not comical but somewhat. No, for you and I, the danger is our idols exist inside our hearts, what our minds do.

Only God knows your idol, unless it’s something very obvious. If gluttony is your idol and you eat too much, okay, we’re going to see it. Maybe not at first, but week three or four, when those suit buttons are starting to push a little hard, we’re going to see it. If idolatry happens quietly in your mind, pornography or things that happen behind closed doors or thoughts or lusts or other weaknesses that are not as obvious, no, only God’s going to see that, but it becomes idolatry. Uncheck desire. That’s where it goes. Your obedience ships into appetite.

Appetite against what God wants and lust and desire and that self-servingness becomes the force that’s now driving your life. It becomes the impetus, the fuel of what you want to do, what you desire, and how your thinking evolves. Whatever is replacing God in the center, from the center of your focus is an idol. I don’t care if it’s your interest in cars or technology or any aspect of life, when we are not centered on God, Christ, the Church, all of those elements, we are allowing other things that we should not be worshiping to become things we worship, and the more we do it, the easier it becomes.

The more we give into those lusts, the less we think about it, just like anything. When you start practicing an instrument or learning to sing or doing an exercise or trying to run a marathon, whatever you set your mind to do physically, we’re talking, as you do it a little bit more, it becomes easier. I have recently discovered on my watch, it’s connected to a Fitbit, so when I got my new watch, I got this Fitbit premium and they just released an app.

That’s an exercise program, if you’re not aware of it, tools, and it has an AI built into it now, and I thought, “You know what? I have some goals and I want to reduce the size of my midsection and get a little bit better in shape and be fit, so let’s talk to this and have it work through” because I exercise, I had a routine, and I had a routine that was so efficient. It was twelve minutes. I would be done. It was a full-body exercise. Then I run a bit. It was done, and I would do it, so I thought I had figured it out, but after a week of having this AI make me do different exercises, oh, there are parts of me that hurt that I didn’t realize could hurt.

Shoulders and back and all sorts of things because I’m working muscles that I haven’t worked before. However, if I keep doing those exercises, those muscles stop hurting. Those exercises get easier. I start to almost be able to do them without thinking. You notice this as a runner. When you start to run, it’s hard, you taste that iron in your mouth if you push yourself a little bit, but there becomes a point when running becomes easy. You’re just running. Your body gets used to it. It gets more efficient. Actually, you burn less calories as the longer you run because your body compensates and becomes more efficient. It becomes easier to do that thing.

Brethren, sin is exactly the same way. Over time, especially if it’s a particular sin, a particular lust, a weakness, a focus, a desire, it becomes easier to do without thinking about it. It can start to become automatic, and Samson did this over and over again. He served his desire so many times, sin became easy. It didn’t cause him to flinch, to pull back. His loyalty, his purpose, and focus on God was replaced by this desire, and it got worse. Back to Judges chapter sixteen. Judges sixteen and verse one, and this is the one that we all know about when we think about Samson.

What happened to him, how he fell, how the story shifted is usually our minds is here when he runs into, we’ll see, the harlot Delilah, but we’ll just pick it up in a moment, so Judges sixteen. This is the one we think about. We think, “Oh, Samson was amazing. He was doing all these things. He was working so hard. He was bringing Israel out of captivity, out of the oppression of the Philistines, being strong.” And then Delilah came along. Oh, brethren, no, no, no, no. We’ve seen. He had a pattern well before this happened.

Judges sixteen, verse one. “Then Samson went to Gaza.” He also kept spending time in the areas of the Philistines, which is a problem too, and “Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there and…” then resisted, thought about it, decided, “What should I do? I’m thinking about God, and I’ve already had this one woman.” No, that’s not what it says, does it? He saw there a harlot and went in unto her. “And saw there a harlot, and went in unto her.” The only thing that separated him from the moment he saw to what he went in and did is a comma. There’s really no pause there. No resistance. No hesitation. No concern obeying God. No concept of what was right and wrong, just went into her.

That didn’t happen because he was being obedient and she was so beautiful and tempting. She was a prostitute. This wasn’t like the Queen of Sheba or someone powerful that would have came in, and Samson was overwhelmed by her beauty and her power. No. She was just a prostitute, and his eyes led him to do the thing he kept doing. He went into enemy territory, and instead of being vigilant, he just let lust operate. No resistance. When we allow idols to take over our lives, it starts to change our priorities. Things that we would have never done become routine.

I see this with people who leave the Church. They think they can walk away from the Body of Christ or they think they can leave God’s way of life. They think they can hold fast to all the things we were taught in Worldwide, ignoring all that we’ve learned and putting their head in the sand. They think they can do those things and not compromise anything else. They never do. It’s sad, but they never do. About half of them, maybe more, give up everything and they’re putting up Christmas trees, and the other half go to the splinters and then start to accept standards and doctrines they would have never ever considered when they were connected to the vine, when they were in the Body of Christ.

Idolatry reshapes our priorities. Obedience will erode before it collapses. We will disobey, disobey, disobey, and our obedience to God starts to erode. It gets weaker and weaker, but at a point, it just collapses. When we allow that lust or idolatry to become normal, we will compromise. Which leads us to what Samson did next. He stopped holding fast to the things that he realized he should have done. He wore down any level of temperance or self-control that he had left. Turn back in Judges here. We still should be in Judges. Go back to chapter fourteen. Read a passage before we jump forward again.

Judges chapter fourteen. In verse eight we’ll start. Judges fourteen, eight. “And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the dead lion.” So, this is back to that account we talked about before, the first harlot, if you will, that he saw. “And he took therefore out of his hands and went on eating out of an unclean lion, so the lion is unclean. It’s dead, which makes it unclean, so this was not a good decision-making process, and went on eating.

Came to his father and mother and gave it to them, and they did eat, but he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of a lion. He hid it. He’s not making decisions that are right anymore. This is two chapters earlier before we got to Delilah. He was already giving up the obedience and the things that he should have known, that he was raised with, and understood since he was in the womb.

Brethren, if someone can fall slowly, ultimately to their failure, we’ll see, their death, how important is it for you and I to intercept these sort of desires, these lusts, these idols in our lives now, immediately, before they erode our ability to obey God? Because the longer we let them sit in our lives, the more difficult they will be to extract. They’re like a fungus that burrows its way into our lives. If you get a fungus or a growth or you see mold forming on something, if you see it early and skim it off and get rid of it, it’s much easier to get rid of.

If it’s dug in deep because it’s being ignored, it’s much harder to extract, and over time, it poisons and kills, and we lose the interest to remove it. It’s idolatry sin, same in our lives. We lose the interest to remove it. Samson just over and over again did things that he didn’t have to do. He wasn’t forced to go take the honey out of the lion. He wasn’t going to do something that was unclean. He didn’t have to. That was a treat, but he chose to and he concealed it and hid it. He was putting sin upon sin to the point where he was starting to lose concept of what righteousness was. He was starting to fall off the path.

You and I can do the same, and the story of Samson is powerful, brethren, because we can fall off track. We can get into things that are a mistake, and if we seek God, seek counsel, the ministry, ask for help, encouragement from those around us, we can get back on track. We can become re-centered. We may lose some of our reward. That’s the story of Samson.

He lost some of his reward, even if he ultimately made it, but we don’t have to delay like he did. It doesn’t have to get to a point that’s so dramatic that you have to call out to God and your life is lost, but I want to get ahead of ourselves, because God commands you and I to hold fast. Let’s go to Deuteronomy chapter ten. Deuteronomy ten, verse twenty. This is the base. This is the base of what you and I should do. Deuteronomy ten, twenty.

“You shall fear the Lord your God, and you shall serve him, and you shall cleave and swear by his name.” Everything we do is about obeying God. Everything we do is about cleaving and obeying and swearing by him, doing the things that he would have us do. To obey God, we have to be close to God, and sin, pride, elements, idolatry separate us and therefore make it more difficult. Samson just gave up. He didn’t realize he was giving up, but he gave up by giving in. By giving in to his lusts and desires, he gave up his ability to properly understand what the will of God is. Back to Judges sixteen.

Judges chapter sixteen, and we’ll start in verse one. Judges sixteen, verse one. We read some of this already, when Samson up to Gaza, and he saw there a harlot, and went unto her. “And it was told the Gazites, saying, ‘Samson has come here,’ and they compassed him, and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, ‘In the morning, when it is day, we shall kill him.’ And Samson lay until midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them,” so of his strength, he ripped off the gates of the city. “bars and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill that is before Hebron.”

In verse four, “And it came to pass afterward,” So, he did this mighty thing, exciting thing, the story of legends thing. He grabbed those gates, carried them up. That’s what you and I often think about when we think about Samson. His power, his strength, all that he did. We don’t necessarily focus on the foundation that was crumbling underneath him spiritually. Verse four, “And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.”

That’s often what we think of Samson, that this is the moment, this is when he started to make mistakes, this is when things went downhill. Samson should have fled. He should have left. The account goes on to explain how Delilah was faithful to her people, not to him. We’ll see more. He gave in to lust yet again. He saw Delilah, who was a prostitute, and showed weakness. The more we give up or give in, the more easily we’ll do so. We can just simply fight the fight that we should be fighting, which he did in elements.

Brethren, you and I can do good things in elements of our life. Just because we’re not drunk on a street corner and making horrible decisions and homeless doesn’t mean we don’t have areas in our lives where we sin. We sin. We all do. That’s what we have to get out of our lives. The good stuff is great. That’s where we’ve grown and developed and we can be encouraged and excited that we’re not the same person we were when we were first called, but that doesn’t stop us. That’s separate from sin.

We can’t let the foundation start to erode because we’re excited about the good things we’ve done. Be excited about the good things you’ve done. Let it be an encouragement, but Christianity is about keeping doing and removing sin and idols and lusts and all of those from our lives day by day by day. It’s thousands of little steps that get us to the point where we have a list of things where we achieved, but achieving got us there because we did the hard work, and that’s what we can’t compromise. Because if we don’t, if we compromise and let it fall, what will start to happen is we will start to justify.

We will justify why those things are not so bad, why I just have some weaknesses, and there may be things you struggle with your entire life right up to the kingdom of God. You may have a cross to bear that you just have to bear. It doesn’t mean when the Bible says, “Well, pick up your cross, and you have to bear that cross,” it doesn’t mean you’re not working at chipping it away and getting rid of it. It just means it’s a weakness of yours and you’re going to struggle with it right up to the kingdom of God, that’s life, but it doesn’t give us license to ignore it.

We have to keep working at it. If it’s at stake, you think about it, that you have an axe, you’re trying to chisel away at it or chip away at it, so it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, and it may never disappear. There may be some sins in your life that you just... you struggle with anger, and you’re better than what you used to be and you keep working at it, but you still find it pop up, because guess what? You’re flesh. You’re human. There are going to be sins in your life right up to the kingdom of God. That’s not meant to discourage you. That’s just meant to reframe that you’re a human being. You are flesh. So am I.

There are sins I will have right up to the kingdom of God. That doesn’t change that I and you have to keep working on them. Because if we don’t, we give in, we’ll start to justify, and justification leads to self-will. We’ll stop looking for God’s will and we’ll superimpose God’s will on self-will. It’s easy to do. It’s so easy to take God’s will and superimpose it, force it on top of our will, and we just simply say, “Well, I’ve searched the Bible. I’ve studied.” You see this when people leave or they get caught up in sin.

They find ways to put God’s will on terrible, sinful decisions. “Well, I studied and I fasted about it.” Okay, that’s great. Those are two things that you can do, but if they’re not driven by the will of God via counsel and various other aspects, then it’s just a physical act. Just like baptism without repentance is a bath. You’re just going underwater, getting wet, and you’re coming back up. Nothing happened without repentance. Actions such as fasting, prayer, study, without spiritual focus, seeking God’s will in our lives are physical actions.

All you’re doing is worldly meditation. That’s all that is, or if you’re fasting and you’re not drawing closer and the purpose is to draw closer, not to have God accept what you want, you’re just hungry. That’s all it is. That hunger, that weakness, is supposed to get us to a point where we say, “I’m not good enough, God. I don’t have the strength to do it,” but it will replace it. Back to Judges. We should be there, Judges sixteen. I think we never left.

Verse fifteen, self-will can replace God’s will, and this is Delilah, a little further down in the account, “And she said unto him, ‘How can you say I love you?’” Samson was foolish in so many different ways. “When your heart is not with me, you have mocked me these three times and have not told me where and how you gained your strength.” The Philistines were trying to figure out how Samson was so strong so they could defeat him because they couldn’t, “And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him so that his soul was vexed unto death.”

That should have never happened because he shouldn’t have been there, and if he had will, if he had temperance, self-control, he would have resisted, but he had worn his self-control down way before this. There was no chance he was going to withstand her. Verse seventeen, “And he told her all his heart, and said unto her, ‘There has not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb; if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall be weak, I will be like any other man.’” Samson gave up his strength. He gave up what was special, what was unique. His emotions were out of control. His lusts drove his decisions. He justified in his mind through his self-will that he could trust this woman, this prostitute that was a Philistine, and gave away his secret. He didn’t obey God. He assumed God would bless him no matter his conduct. He assumed he was on top of this.

Continuing in the account, verse eighteen, “And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he has shown me his heart. And then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought money in their hand.” Bought her off, she was a prostitute that Samson decided to go see. “And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. And she said, The Philistine be upon you, Samson. And he woke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at all the other times, and shake myself. For the LORD was departed from him.”

He thought he could just keep doing it. He thought he could just keep disobeying God. But he reached a point that he had gone too far. There were going to be repercussions. Did God throw him away? No. God didn’t throw him away. But there were repercussions now to what he was doing. God was going to show him something that he didn’t think was ever going to happen. He didn’t seek prayer. Even in this account, think about what he did. He woke up, didn’t even notice that his hair was gone, but got up, didn’t think, “Okay, the Philistines are here. God, what would you have me do? Should I go out? Should I stay in? What is your will, God?”

No, he didn’t pray. He didn’t seek God. He had no caution. He had no focus, no temperance. He wasn’t exercising the fruit of the Spirit. He was relying on himself, on his strength, on his power, on his own understanding. And he was charging out there and going to do the thing that he’s always done because, “Of course, God is with me.” He never questioned that. He never ensured God was with him. Because brethren, you and I can sometimes, “Oh, is God with me?” The way you know that is, are you or am I doing the things that would have God be with me? If we say yes, of course, He is. Because even with Samson, God didn’t throw him out. He just needed to teach him a very bitter lesson.

Let’s go back to Proverbs chapter three. This is what he should have been doing. Proverbs chapter three and verse five. Proverbs three, five. “Trust in the Lord with your whole heart; and lean not into your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.” When we understand we’re just human beings, we don’t have that power, we don’t have that strength, we are not the ones that should be guiding our steps, then God directs our paths. He helps us make the decisions, helps us avoid the decisions that would lead us down the path that Samson went.

But Samson didn’t do it, did he? No, he leaned on his own understanding. He trusted his strength instead of trusting the one who gave him that strength. Thinking, “I am powerful, I am strong,” not “I am just a servant of the being who is powerful and strong.” We can do the same thing. If we’ve lived this way of life for a while, we start to think we got it. It becomes easier. And we can trust in our own understanding, forgetting that we got to where we are today because of the being who gave us the opportunity to be converted, to change and grow, the power behind us.

Let’s go to John, back to the New Testament, chapter five. Christ emphasized this, John chapter five, just one verse here. Verse thirty, John five and verse thirty. “I can of my own self do nothing.” This is Christ. “As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of the Father who has sent me.” Brethren, we should be constantly seeking the will of the Father. Christ rejected his self-will as a begotten Son of God. He was God. He had the experience of being God. And he said, “No, it’s not my will, it’s the Father’s will.”

“I know I’m flesh right now. I understand people, I’ve watched them for all the time they’ve existed, for the thousands of years. I know I have those weaknesses as flesh. I’m not going to do my own will.” He knew all the verses of the Old Testament, what happens when you’re flesh. He said, “No, I’m focusing on the will of the Father.” God’s will directed his actions, gave him his strength, made him more powerful, not weak. Conversely, Samson did the opposite. He didn’t seek God, he didn’t look for God’s will, he didn’t look for God’s understanding, and over time eroded his ability to be able to see it all, anything spiritual. And then he was defeated. God removed his strength, but he did it for a purpose.

Go back to Judges chapter sixteen. Judges again, chapter sixteen. Brethren, sometimes you and I go too far. Not so far that we’ve given up God’s Spirit. If you ever think, “Oh, did I commit the unpardonable sin?” If you are worried about committing the unpardonable sin, you have not committed the unpardonable sin. The nature of worrying about it means you still have God’s Spirit picking at the inside of you. That means there’s still hope for repentance. If you choose to ignore that counsel that I just gave you, you’re choosing to ignore the Spirit in you. Then you’re on a path to it. Yeah, sure, you can go there. But God lets you go a pretty far distance before you lose His Spirit.

People, look at the Bible. Look at the figures in the Bible, the things, some of the terrible things they’ve done. Look at Samson that we’re looking at today. Terrible things. Judges sixteen, verse twenty-one. Verse twenty-one, “But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, blinded him,” which is fitting, since spiritually, he had become very blind, “...and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.”

His strength was gone. He was weak. He was blind physically and spiritually. He lost God’s backing. He received punishment, didn’t he? He received correction. Not to hurt him, although having your eyes gouged out was probably not pleasant, but why did it happen? Why did God allow it to happen? The same reason God allows trials, tribulation, difficulties, experiences, the things in our life that are hard. Because we have gone off track in some way that God says, “I don’t want to lose this potential God being, the one who could be part of the hundred and forty-four thousand, so I’m going to course correct them.” And that can come, brethren, in a whole multitude of ways.

We can, proverbially speaking, have our eyes gouged out. It could be extremely painful, but it’s done for a purpose. Correction comes with us, at us, and for us, for a purpose. Sometimes, when we are humbled by correction becomes those moments when we start to be able to see. It’s the irony of this. Laodicean age, this is the age where the people are blind. They can’t see because their self-will has gotten so strong; their spiritual eyesight has dimmed. Samson’s spiritual eyesight had dimmed so much God said, “I’m going to make you lose your physical eyesight as well.” And in the irony of it, losing his physical eyesight was the first step in getting his spiritual eyesight returned.

God didn’t abandon him. He corrected him, severely in this case. Sometimes God severely corrects you and I. We take that correction. We grow, and we develop. We’re never given things that are more than we can handle. But we have to be willing to take the correction. We have to be willing to go through what God wants us to do so we can come out the other side better, more effective. And Samson did. His punishment made him reconsider. His pride deflated. His arrogance, his self-will, his decisions, all the things that led up to this moment, caused him to see.

Brethren, correction, no matter how severe, comes at us so we can spiritually see. We want to be able to course correct, be able to make the right decisions. We want to be in a place that we don’t go this far as Samson went before God can get us back on track. We have to root that out, that sin out, the lust, the idolatry out early, so the correction doesn’t have to be so severe. It can be instruction or exhortation. It doesn’t need to become severe correction if we do it early.

So he continued on in verse twenty-two and continues, “And then, howbeit, the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.” It started to grow back. So sometimes the Bible hides the meaning in the words. It’s like, “Look at that, Samson had magic hair. As soon as the hair grew back, it all just came power.” No, that strength, that power came from God. He could have let Samson’s hair grow back because he broke his Nazarite vow by having his hair removed, that when you break a vow, it is broken. But no, God saw his heart. He saw the change. He saw that he took the correction.

It wasn’t a loud, mighty, powerful restoration of his strength. His obedience, his submission to God, his repentance happened in his heart, and God blessed him with his strength again. God humbles us in situations because that’s how he gets our attention. He’ll abase us. We can only humble ourselves. But God can abase us and push that pride out of us if we choose to, if we accept it. Pride can make us fight God’s abasement, or we can accept we made a mistake, we fell short, we didn’t do the thing we should have done.

Psalm one hundred and nineteen. Psalm chapter one hundred and nineteen, or the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, if you will. Verse sixty-seven, one hundred and nineteen. Just a simple verse, but it drives the point home. Psalm one hundred and nineteen, verse sixty-seven. “Before I was afflicted, I went astray. But now, after being afflicted, have I kept your word.”

Brethren, that’s what we have to do. Sometimes we have to be afflicted for God to get our attention. And again, that can happen through ministry, through people, through experiences, through trials. When we see God guiding our lives because he picked you before the foundation of the world. He wants you to succeed. He doesn’t want to lose any of us. But sometimes, to get us back on track, we have to be corrected. And sometimes that correction can be severe.

Let’s go back to Judges. Here’s where the story of Samson becomes a little sad, in a way. Because he had so much potential. He had so many opportunities from the day he was born to be able to do great things. And he did great things. Ultimately, he repented. But he missed the opportunity in his life. Chapter sixteen, you’re there, verse twenty-three. Verse twenty-three of Judges sixteen. “Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice and said, Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands. And when the people saw him, they praised their god and said, Oh, our god has delivered into our hands our enemy and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.” Oh, they were proud.

“And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house. And he made them sport and set him between two pillars.” They were going to humiliate him. They were mocking God. He was their object of entertainment. And at a point, either then or in the process, because a switch doesn’t flip. We don’t sin and fall into sin with a flip of a switch. But we also don’t reach repentance at a flip of a switch. Decisions lead us to where we go.

Verse twenty-six, because Samson finally turned to God, repented, gave in. “And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may fill the pillars upon where this house stands, and I may lean upon them.” Now, the house was full of men and women, and all the lords were there. And there was upon the roof about three thousand men and women that beheld Samson made sport. And then a big decision was made. “And Samson called upon the Lord and said, Oh, Lord God, remember me.”

Do you ever fear that God sometimes forgets us? He won’t if we choose to obey. If we choose to repent, if we make the changes, he won’t. “Remember me, I pray you. Strengthen me, I pray you. Only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” It wasn’t, “I’m strong, and I’m going to do it. I have the power. I know what to do. I’m leaning to my own understanding. I’m the man.” Oh, no, he was in a very different place, wasn’t he? He changed into a very different place.

Verse twenty-nine, “And Samson took ahold of the two pillars upon the house stood, on which they were born, and one in his right hand and the other on his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all of his might, and the house fell upon the lords and all the people therein. So the dead which he slew in his death were more than they which he slew in his life.”

God granted him repentance, but it cost him his life. That was his victory. That was a life that missed its potential, that missed what it could do. It lost time. It didn’t redeem the time. Head to Hebrews chapter eleven. So we come to a close here. Hebrews chapter eleven and verse thirty-two. Hebrews eleven, thirty-two. “And what shall I say more? For the time would come to fail me to tell of the work.” So this is the faith chapter. This is talking about those greats who have made it. “So we know to tell of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, Jephthah, and David, and Samuel, and all the prophets.” All those who made it.

He’s on that list. He repented. It’s never too late to change. Brethren, don’t go as far as Samson. Don’t get to the point where death is the only option to repent. God shouldn’t have to or need to strike you with something that’s going to kill you for you or I to see that we need to obey him. Do it early, do it now, do it quickly, so you can redeem the time that we have to get back on track, to get stronger, to get closer to God, to achieve the potential He’s given you to be able to do in your lives the talents, all of the things that He’s given you.

Don’t let Samson’s example become your reality. It’s great he repented. It’s wonderful. We’ll see him. And I’m sure the stories he tells and how he can teach and help people will be great because of his mistakes. But let his mistakes teach you now. Take that time that you have now and don’t let his death, if you will, go for naught. We don’t have a lot of time left in this age. It’s coming to a close. We have to redeem every single minute that we possibly have. Take Samson’s example. Take his mistakes. Look and understand his missed opportunities and apply it in your life. Change where you are. Get back on track with whatever facet is pulling you away. And don’t lose any missed opportunities on this great calling God has given you and I today.