Voice of the Nazarene 12-7-25

Voice of the Nazarene 12-7-25

Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

Ray, coming to you from North Central Ohio. We share with you the voice of the Nazarene a week by week, venture into the Word of God, sponsored by the Bucyrus Ohio Church of the Nazarene. We join our pastor, Reverend Ray La Salle and the voice of the Nazarene.

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 0:18

We started the series a few weeks ago, from zero to hero, and we talked about Abraham and his altars. We talked about Enoch and his example. We talked about a journey with Joshua. And today, I'd like to share with you a sermon from Samson here in the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, verse 32 it's dealing with some of the different heroes, and I'm picking up this one. And what shall I more say for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and of Barak and of Samson. There he is, right in that great passage. And so I want to talk to you about a sermon that is life is preaching so loudly to all of us here in Judges, chapter 13, an angel had come down from heaven visited a little woman, we don't even know her name, and told her that she would have a child. I believe that. I believe God has a purpose for every child born. I believe he had a purpose for children that didn't even get born. There are accidental parents that make a lot of mistakes, but there's no accidental children. Every child is a gift from God, and it ought to be treated as such. And God gave them this special child, and he was to be a Nazarite unto God from the womb and catch this here's his purpose. All of us have a purpose, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the fustians. Now, I believe that all of us have some heroes along the way. Some of you may have had Spider Man. Remember him? Well, I wasting my shot on that one. What about Superman? Is that too long ago, too What about Captain America? Are these old ones? What about the incredible hawk? As a kid, parents didn't have TV, but I snuck over and watched a couple of his little scenes, and I imagined myself as the incredible hawk. I mean, I got in front of the mirror, and I thought I almost looked like him in my in my mind, that's why I'm wearing glasses. Now, I didn't see well, but he rose. And in the Old Testament, you come to this character by the name of Samson, and such a powerful guy, it appeared i He took the jaw bone of a donkey and slew over 1000 Philistines. And another time, he was in a city, and the Philistines tried to capture him, and so they locked down all the gates. And he waited till around midnight, and when he got to the gate, it was locked shut, and he literally picked it up, pulled the post out of the ground, set it on his shoulders, that massive gate, and carried it up to a mountain top. There was another time that he came across a lion that attacked, and he literally ripped it apart with his bare hands. And so in my mind, when I envision this champion of the Israelites, Samson, to me, he must have looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He looks pretty good, you know, or used to. Or what about Hulk Hogan? He recently died, but boy, he would get up there and strut his stuff and tear that little thin t shirt. I think I could have handled it too, or maybe Andre the Giant. And yet, when I begin the process of studying into this account, obviously it wasn't the physical looking body of Samson that gave him his strength. For the Philistines paid Delilah to find out what is it that makes him have the strength and he's able to kill so many of us find out wherein his strength lieth. And when they looked at him, they couldn't see that. Can I just suggest something to you today? His strength came from the Lord. The Lord is our strength. Fact of the matter, the Scripture said, I can do all things through Christ, who what strengtheneth me. It's not our exploits. I'm glad it's not in our. Abilities that we accomplish, it's through the strength of the Lord. Now we have this couple here in the Bible, and an angel said, you're going to have a baby, and you're barren, but you're going to conceive, you'll bear a son, and they named him Samson. Do you know what the name Samson means sunshine? So she would rock him and sing, You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. Well, maybe not. And he used to be a Nazarite. And so I looked up what that meant. And there's three criteria. You could not eat anything unclean that's even touching a dead body. You were not to touch any thing of the vineyard, such as grapes or raisins or wine, and he was to never cut his hair. Now I haven't wrapped my brain around that one yet, but when I do, I'll tell you about it, and I've been hoping somebody else would find it out and tell me, and they haven't. So here I am without a knowledge, but he was never to cut his hair. And so here's this boy, Sunshine Samson, going to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. And if God said it, it's going to happen. And according to judges 13, one the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. For 40 years, they're in bondage, and they're slaves to these Philistines. I don't know if you know anything about the Philistines. They were giants. Fact of the matter, they inbred to have this extraordinary height. In gigantic proportion. They were a frightening group. Goliath was a Philistine. And you say, Well, Pastor, I'd like to study about this man. Samson, well, there's a book called The Book of Judges. It's in the Old Testament. And from chapter 13 to chapter 16 is the background of this guy by the name of Samson. He was a judge for 20 years over Israel. And I'd like for us to learn several things today, I think, from maybe lessons from his life. And they're very simple. Number one, learn from our mistakes. Soon you say, Pastor, I don't have any mistakes. No, no, no, you got plenty of mistakes. Just ask your spouse, and they don't even have time this morning to enumerate them all. It's not if or when you have a mistake, you're going to have a mistake once in a while. In the past, I used to counsel with people who, and I do a little bit now, who are going to get married. And it reminds me, I haven't gotten back to a couple, but I will, if you remind me, okay, I'm a bad boy, and sometimes I'll ask a couple. Sometimes they would be a bit older, and we want to get married, and I would say, have you been married before? And if they say yes, I ask them, Do you remember what it was that caused your former marriage to fail? And if they can't answer me immediately, I know this relationship is not going to turn out very well either. Okay, so we need to learn from our mistakes. Soon, if you fall down, not only get up, but pick up something on your way back up, learn from your mistakes. Somebody said experience is the best teacher. No evaluating experience is the best teacher. Look quickly at what mistakes you've made and learn from them. Soon. Don't keep making the same mistake over now. What were his mistakes? I'll give you two. He didn't harness the heat. He had anger management issues. He could get so angry, and he had the ability to get even he had made a riddle up and and the first scenes came and pressed his wife and told her, said, You'd better tell us to explain that riddle. We got so many days. And if we don't, we have to pay him. And if you don't tell us, we're going to burn your house down and burn your family's house down. And she began to press him, and she cried and pleaded and begged. And you know guys, don't you. You don't have to say, man, you're not allowed to. You get an elbow where it hurts, where that missing rib is. And finally he told her the answer to the riddle. And the first teams came, and they, they, they told him the riddle, and he said, The only way you would have known that you plowed with my heifer. Now you better be Samson if you're going to call your wife a heifer, I'm telling. You, I've never said that about my wife. Don't you walk out of here and say, I did, I didn't. That wasn't me. And so here he is. He gets angry, and immediately he goes and he slays these 30 Philistines. Killed him in cold blood, and he got upset at another time, and he caught 300 foxes. Read it. I'm not making all this up. Part of it's true. And he tied their tails together and made a torch out of them and lit their tails. And, boy, those foxes took off. I mean, there's a fire behind them, and they go through the barley fields and they burn. That burns all of the barley crops down for the fifteens. There's another time he picked up the jawbone of a donkey and slew 1000 men. Now here's what I know. His problem was, he never harnessed the heat. Let me tell you something. If you don't learn to harness the heat in your life, it's going to get you in some trouble. You're going to have problems. Somebody said, Well, she made me mad. No, you just got mad. He made me mad. No, he didn't make you mad. You chose to be mad. I lost my temper a few times as a boy, but my dad helped me to find it. Have you ever got in a fuss with your spouse? Just say yes, I know it's not just a church up the street. I know some of us do. And it gets hot and heavy and we're really going at it, and she's getting loud, and you're getting loud, and then the phone rings, and you say, Hello, how's how's it going? Oh, we're really doing great. Well, you weren't a few minutes ago, suddenly you turned it off. Why? Because it's a choice. You chose to straighten up. I remember grandma and grandpa. Grandpa drank a lot, and he was pretty brutal, and he was really giving it to grandma, and she was standing there crying, and there was a knock at the door, and he told her, straighten up your face. Straighten up your face. I don't want to hear about this as you straighten up. Grandma had to go to the door bloodshot eyes and face wet, and she had to get it dried off to try to look like everything's good. Well, make a choice. Make it good. Turn down the heat, harness and control areas of your life, and that was one of his main problems. Now I've been at some of these athletic programs around this town. I had two kids. My wife, she had two that made two, and my boy played basketball for one, and and Renee thought she was a cheerleader for two, and we'd get in these games, and I couldn't believe some of the way people acted. Have you ever been to a ball game? People go nuts. People you never would dream would act crazy. In fact, no matter one of our own Nazarene pastors got kicked clear out of the basketball game. Wouldn't that be humbling? Have to get up in front of some of your people, and the ref says, Get out. Try to get out. And you got to live it down. You can't live it down. One of the pastors here in town, he got so excited about the games over at Winford a few years ago, 10 or 15 years ago, and they made him leave the game. He had to leave the house. Think is one basketball game worth losing your testimony of a lifetime over because you can't harness the heat? Is it worth killing your influence in a local town? I don't think so. And I'm simply saying, what are the mistakes that Samson had? He never harnessed the heat. You better harness that tongue of yours. I had some lady say to me, 35 years ago, this is what he said, and I can't lay it down. You know, once you say it, it's out there. And some of you don't know it, all of this electronical stuff and and all this Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok and all of it, it's out there forever. Whatever you put out there, it's going to be out there forever. Better be sure you want your kids to read it. When you become a parent, it's going to be out there. Somebody's going to pick it up, somebody's going to store it and just words at all. I mean, there's death and life and the power of the tongue and it, once you say it, it's out there, and it's hard to let those things go. So I'm saying harness the heat, harness that lust and harness the gossip and harness viciousness and harness all of these attitudes that we get and and the jealousy and all of it, but his second mistake Samson was a he man with a she weakness. Here's the guy supposed to deliver Israel from the Philistines. He's supposed to be the man, the anointed man, but wait here in Judges 16 one then went Samson to Gaza and saw harlot. Okay, so you saw her. That didn't end there. But he went in to her house. He's going to a prostitute. I mean, the one that was supposed to be chosen of God, he's had a prostitute. And it wasn't just there. Later on, he goes down to delilah's house and just on and on and on. You say, Well, when did it all start? Go back to judges 14 one Samson went down to Timnath and saw a woman. He goes four miles from home and can't keep his eyes where he should have what got him in trouble. Pastor verse five tells you. Let me show you. Then Samson went down and his father and mother to timoth and came to the vineyards of timoth. Didn't we talk about being a Nazarite? Did I mention that he's not supposed to eat unclean things, touch dead bodies, supposed to let his hair grow, one of the things he was not to touch any grapes or raisins or or wine. So what's he doing at a vineyard? He's at the wrong place, and when you're in the wrong place, it's easy to do the wrong things. When you're in the right place, it's kind of hard to do the wrong thing. He's at the wrong place, it'll get you in trouble every time. And his father and his mother said to him in verse three, is there not a woman among the daughters of your brother? Is there somebody that you can take for a wife, why do you want an uncircumcised Philistine girl? And Samson said to his father, get her for me. For she pleaseth me. Well, the Bible said the first thing it ever said about him, he saw a woman, and next, get her for me. And they said, Samson, you're an Israelite. She's a Philistine. And the gods they serve as the gods of Dagon, the fish gods, who's believed to be the father was, was Baal and those gods. And why would you as a believer want to get involved with a unbeliever if he had listened to his mom and his dad, things would have sure turned out a lot better for his life. So what are the principles you're trying to teach us? Pastor, learn from your mistakes soon. And then secondly, choose who you associate with slowly. I believe the Bible teaches us that we ought to be friendly with everybody. When I meet people, if they don't speak first, I still try to slow down and speak. I have even turned around and gone back because I realized I'd forgotten and I spoke. Be friendly. I try to be friendly with everybody. We're to be friendly with everybody, but not everybody should be our friend, though careful who you surround yourself closely with. Fact of the matter of Proverbs, 1320, He that walketh with wise men shall be wise. And Samson, not only was in the wrong place, but champson. Samson chose wrong people, and he got in trouble. Choose who you associate with. Slowly. Here's my last thought. Remember that God is a God of mercy and restoration, forever, forever. Now he's down into the harlots house. He'd been the guy that was supposed to deliver Israel, and he leaves that house and he goes to Delilah. I don't know her background. I don't even know if she was a flistine, but she was for sale. She was one of these kind of people that you could hire, you know what I'm saying, and they offered her from three to $5,000 in our kind of money today, if she could find the secret of this guy named Samson, who was destroying the Philistines. He was the judge for 20 years over Israel and when Israel couldn't even fight their battle. He was a one man army. They wanted to know where his strength was, find out where his and three times, he misled her on the fourth time he told her, where's your strength? She was for sale. You heard about the guy that he said to a beautiful looking lady, he said, I would for a million dollars. Would you go to bed with me? She said, Yes. He said, Well, what about 100,000 Well, I guess so. He said, What about 100 bucks? She said, What do you take me for? He said, we've already established that we're quibbling over the price. Now, this is the way it is with Delilah, we're quibbling over the price. And she settles for whatever they're offering. And she pleads and why? Why do you have a strength that. Nobody else has he said, if you cut my hair, I'll become as other men read it there. And she's running her fingers through his hair and breaking him down. Course, she's after his scalp, really. And he falls asleep in her lap, and she calls for the Philistines Bring the scissors and they cut his hair. And she said, The Philistines be upon thee. And when he arose and shook himself, he wished

Unknown: 20:30

not that the Lord had departed from him.

Pastor Ray LaSalle: 20:34

What an awful, awful scene. His strength came from the Lord. Now the Bible said they gorged his eyes out. Now the text in the Hebrew actually says they literally burned his eyes out. And as the curtain falls, the last thing you see of him before we move to the final act is down at the mules of humanity grinding. He's grinding the wheat and the grain and the Philistines, they're celebrating in verse 23 of chapter 16, they're saying, our God, Dagon, hath delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hand. And then verse 24 then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon, their God. And they're excited. They're worshiping their gods. He's delivered Samson, they're saying, and they plan this big service. It's going to be held in the gigantic, kind of a theater, like building that would house 1000s. It was called the Philistine temple. It was massive. There were 3000 listings gathered on the roof, and they were going to bring Samson in, and they're going to make sport of him. They're going to mock him. He's blind now, and and a boy leads this former great champion of the Israelites into that temple, and they're chanting and they're calling and they're making fun. And Samson is making his way past all of the chants, and he says to the boy, would you put me my hands on the pillars that holds up the building? I need to lean against the pillars. And the boy brought him to those two big, massive pillars, with a right hand on one and a left hand on the other. But there was something they didn't know. What they didn't know is Samson had repented. You know what the word repent means? Re means to return. Pent means and it comes from the derivative penthouse. Penthouse is the most expensive one, in the hope it's the highest position in the hotel. So when you repent, God doesn't kind of let you crawl back in. God restores you totally and entirely and doesn't hold a thing against you. God doesn't just parole you. God literally pardons you and washes you and gives you a brand new start. Verse 22 said, how be it? The hair of his head begin to grow again. After he was shaven, when he repented, things started happening again. And when life starts happening again, love and joy and peace and and things begin to grow again. And they're saying, let's bring Samson to the main floor to mock him. Here's what happens. Verse 28 Samson called unto the Lord and said, O Lord God, remember me. I pray thee and strengthen me. He knew where his strength came from. It was from the Lord only this once O God, that I may be at once avenged for the Philistines for my two eyes. Verse 29 and Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood and on which it was borne up. Of the one with his right hand and the other with 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 Lord's and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he saw in his death were more than they which he saw in his life. What are you saying? Pastor, what I'm saying is Samson is getting back to the purpose that God had created him for, for there in Judges 13, verse five, he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. When he repented, God continued to use him again for that purpose of being a deliverer. And I'm saying God is a God of mercy and restoration forever. Now back in Hebrews chapter 11, and that 32nd verse, it's the hall of faith chapter, and there's Noah's name, and I expected it to be there. There's Abraham's name, and I knew it. Would be there. Sarah didn't surprise me that her name and Moses, he just should have been there. But I can't believe it as I read it, Samson's name is there too. For you read, what more shall we say? For a time would fail me to tell you of Samson. Samson made it into the hall of faith. God didn't remember Samson for his failures. God remembered him for his faith. Learn from the mistakes you made. Soon choose who you associate with slowly and cautiously and carefully, remember God is a God of mercy and restoration forever, I said in my office a bit ago, and just read the story quickly again in between services, and I wrote down just five little lessons that I learned called to live A holy life if I learned anything from that story, we're called to live a holy life. Two, God can use bad situations to fulfill His purpose. And third, free to choose, but not free from the consequences of your choice. And fourth, choose a mate within your faith and five, use your strength for God's work. Use the ability that God's given for His Kingdom. Don't waste it on yourself. Use it for the glory of God. Samson fell, but he got back, and I don't know what weaknesses that you're dealing with and what you need to get harnessed and get under control. But I want you to know something. All you've got to do is return and call on God. God, there's one more time. Would you give me a fresh start and a new dream and put a new fresh hope in my heart? And God will do it every time, Father,

Unknown: 27:03

thanks for being a part of the voice of the Nazarene. Visit us every Sunday at 9am with BNC pastor Ray La Salle for more information regarding B and C, visit Bucyrus nazarene.org, you.