SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Ben Carruthers.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the director of student and family ministry here.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day and a special Happy Mother's Day to my mom who's watching online.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day, Mom.
SPEAKER_00: So glad to be here worshiping with you on this Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a sermon series called Story Context Symbol, where we are taking stories from the scriptures and giving you a little context, which is incredibly important when you read the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta understand what's going on, who's all involved, helps us understand really what the story is about.
SPEAKER_00: And then this symbol, this idea of what's the symbol of the story?
SPEAKER_00: What's the takeaway of the story?
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning I chose Samson, obviously, because we have the same barber and the same every, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, as we dive into the story of Samson, uh, besides fantastic hair, I realize I have a lot more, unfortunately, in common with this guy than I'd prefer to.
SPEAKER_00: The story of Samson is one that we all may know, but we're really gonna dive into it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And we're really gonna kind of look at what that symbol is because I think when we think of Samson, we do think of the hair, the long hair, his strength, where he gets his strength from.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning the sermon title is called Long Hair, Don't Care, because as we find out, it's not about his hair.
SPEAKER_00: But we can't talk about Samson without talking about strength, physical strength.
SPEAKER_00: I have I have three sons, and my oldest, Isaiah, is 14.
SPEAKER_00: There they all are, flexing for you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, my oldest Isaiah, he's really into fitness right now.
SPEAKER_00: So he gets up every morning and does his push-ups and his sit-ups and uh his planks.
SPEAKER_00: And my two younger sons look up to him, uh, which I'm glad they do.
SPEAKER_00: He's a great role model.
SPEAKER_00: And so then they get down and start doing push-ups and sit-ups with him.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah's great at him, he can really pump him out.
SPEAKER_00: Arlo there in the turtle shirt, he's pretty good too.
SPEAKER_00: Ezie, the little guy, he's four years old.
SPEAKER_00: If you ask him, he says he does the best push-ups.
SPEAKER_00: And when he does them, he looks kind of like the worm, like the dance move, the worm.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty entertaining.
SPEAKER_00: These guys, my sons, once upon a time, looked at me and literally said to me, You are the strongest person in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, you're correct.
SPEAKER_00: And then, unfortunately, about a year ago, we sat down for a family movie night where we just order some pizza and watch a movie and we watched the remake of Jumanji starring this guy.
SPEAKER_00: That guy.
SPEAKER_00: After the movie, Arlo comes up to me and he looks at me, he's like, Dad, that guy's way stronger than you.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, all right, that might be true, right?
SPEAKER_00: But then he goes on and says, But dad, don't worry, your tummy's way bigger than his is.
SPEAKER_00: So he's grounded for life, anyways.
SPEAKER_00: You can't talk about the story of Samson without talking about strength.
SPEAKER_00: But we have to get those images out of our minds as we dive into the story.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's moments in his journey where he has this incredible superhuman strength, and that's incredible and it's an amazing story, but that's not the real symbol here.
SPEAKER_00: The symbol is not necessarily his physical strength, but strength in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: This story is about strength in God.
SPEAKER_00: Not about us, not about in our physical appearance or the things that we can do physically.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the strength that God has that we tap into.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the piece of the story that Samson misses, and unfortunately, it's the piece of the story that I think we also miss in our daily lives as well.
SPEAKER_00: So before we dive into this story of Samson, let's just pray and ask God into our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Lord God, would you give you thanks and praise for this morning?
SPEAKER_00: An opportunity to dive into your scriptures, Lord, a story that maybe many of us know or heard in Sunday school or seen a movie about.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, I pray as we kind of dive back into this very popular story that you speak truth to us.
SPEAKER_00: That you open up our hearts to hear a word maybe we've never heard before.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we also pray that as we go through, Lord, if we feel a little convicted in our lives of what's going on, maybe we're a lot like Samson, Lord, that you give us the strength to return to you.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, speak truth in these moments.
SPEAKER_00: It's in your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So the story of Samson, let's get a little context here, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's in the book of Judges, which is in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson appears after Moses.
SPEAKER_00: So the Israelites have been freed from Egypt into the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Moses is their leader.
SPEAKER_00: Moses does not go into the promised land with them.
SPEAKER_00: A guy named Joshua does.
SPEAKER_00: Joshua leads the Israelites, and then Joshua dies, and then they set up this system called judges, which are like leaders, leaders for the Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson along this line is the 14th judge.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So by the time we come to Samson, we're far removed from Moses, far removed from Joshua, and we're 14 leaders into judges by the time we get to Samson.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the book of Judges, it starts off okay, right?
SPEAKER_00: The leaders are okay, but the longer you get in the line, the worse they become.
SPEAKER_00: And so by the time you get to Samson, he's living in a time where there's been really poor leadership for the Israelites, and the Israelites have this kind of circle system where they grow closer to God and then they fall away from God, and then the leadership falls away from God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really important to know that because as we look in the story of Samson, it's not a great story.
SPEAKER_00: He's not really that heroic figure that we might think of.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, he's living in a culture, in a context that he has seen for years before.
SPEAKER_00: He's seen poor leadership, and he's in a culture that is pretty far away from God.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to give him a little slack there.
SPEAKER_00: And so that is kind of where a little bit of context before Samson comes into the scene.
SPEAKER_00: Samson comes into the scene around chapter 13 of Judges, and when he's born, he's born to be a Nazirite.
SPEAKER_00: A Nazirite is someone who is set apart for God, to be a very obedient person following God.
SPEAKER_00: And a Nazarite would have vows.
SPEAKER_00: They would take vows or promises to God, and of course, one of them is the uncut hair, right?
SPEAKER_00: No razor should touch his head or his face as a symbol of obedience and following God.
SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, we have Samson's baby picture.
SPEAKER_00: Looks something like this.
SPEAKER_00: There you go, right there.
SPEAKER_00: That's real.
SPEAKER_00: That's not that's a real baby with a head of hair.
SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic, all right?
SPEAKER_00: So, vow number one, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like no razor, no nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have the story of the hair, and Samson really holds on to that through his life.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the only thing that set him apart.
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of other vows that a Nazarite would make that we don't really focus on when we talk about the story of Samson.
SPEAKER_00: One is that he's not supposed to have anything to do with corpses or graves or grave sites, anything of that nature.
SPEAKER_00: No grape products, which really means no wine.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he's supposed to not do all these things to be set apart for God, to be obedient, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's not that bad of a list when I look at it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't cut your hair, shave your face, no problem, right?
SPEAKER_00: Avoid corpses and graveyards, phew, no problem.
SPEAKER_00: But I like grape jello.
SPEAKER_00: So that way I'm out.
SPEAKER_00: I can't be a Nazirite.
SPEAKER_00: So those are vows made.
SPEAKER_00: Those are really important because as we go through the story of Samson, he forgets a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00: So here we are.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Nazirite set apart, he's a leader of Israel, and his story begins.
SPEAKER_00: Now, his story is long, we can't cover it all, but what I'd like to do is tell you about some upsides to his life, and maybe a few downsides before we get to the story of Samson and Deliah, the one that we maybe all know.
SPEAKER_00: So there's three photos up here depicting the life of Samson.
SPEAKER_00: The first one comes from Judges chapter 14, verses 5 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson is on his way to a surrounding village with his mom and dad.
SPEAKER_00: He's going there to take a Philistine wife, which is a no-no right out of the gate.
SPEAKER_00: And on this journey, on this walk to the next village, a lion comes out of nowhere, which happens all the time when you're on walks, right?
SPEAKER_00: And starts to attack him and his family.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture tells us that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he tore that lion apart as he would a small baby goat, which is a really weird analogy because I don't know who's doing that, anyways, right?
SPEAKER_00: But that's what he said.
SPEAKER_00: It's so easy for him, right?
SPEAKER_00: This incredible story of amazing superhero strength.
SPEAKER_00: This is a story that Israelite parents would tell their children about the mighty hero Samson.
SPEAKER_00: The next picture is just Samson did a lot of amazing things when it came to the Philistine battle.
SPEAKER_00: There's something important we have to remember.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites and the Philistines were at constant war.
SPEAKER_00: Israelites are God people, Philistines are people trying to get these people to become slaves again.
SPEAKER_00: God's people become slaves again.
SPEAKER_00: They were at constant war.
SPEAKER_00: And part of Samson's story, part of the context that might not make sense to us, that might make us feel a little uneasy, but viewed Samson as a hero, is that he slaughtered and killed thousands of Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: And these were moments in his story that were viewed as an upside to Samson, of him being obedient to God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard part of the context, and that might make you feel uneasy inside, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: This also would make a great question for our U Pick series coming up in June for Pastor Ryan to answer.
SPEAKER_00: So keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_00: But it's an important piece because as we talk about Samson, that's his upside is that he used his strength to defeat the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: Thousands, kill thousands.
SPEAKER_00: And that was viewed as a good, obedient thing for him to do.
SPEAKER_00: And so he did that.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the stories, in particular, he went and slaughtered 30 Philistines in a village.
SPEAKER_00: And that last picture there is not just 30, but a thousand Philistines he killed with the jawbone of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: And we hear these amazing superhero stories of Samson, the stories that would be told to their children, and the stories that we tell in Sunday school.
SPEAKER_00: But for every upside of these stories, when you dive into the story itself, when you dive into the pages of scripture, when you see these moments of being obedient to God, every moment of obedience is brought on by disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: In that very first picture where he defeats the lion, when he's on his way back from that village, the carcass of the lion is sitting there, and inside of it, bees have started to make honey.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes inside the carcass and takes the honey and eats it.
SPEAKER_00: Really gross, I know.
SPEAKER_00: But that's part of his vow.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, part of the vow of a Nazarite was not to have anything to do with dead things.
SPEAKER_00: And he broke that vow in disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: The second picture there, where he slaughtered, uh, that's more than way more than 30, but you get the idea.
SPEAKER_00: 30 Philistines, is he did that because he lost a bet.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he took that Philistine woman as his bride, and at his wedding, he made a bet to the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: And he gave them this riddle.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, if you can solve this riddle at the end of the seven-day festival of our wedding, I will give you clothes and garments and riches.
SPEAKER_00: And so these Philistines went to Samson's new bride and says, Listen, you have to tell us the answer.
SPEAKER_00: We can't pay this debt.
SPEAKER_00: Samson beats us all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an opportunity for us to win.
SPEAKER_00: You have to get the riddle from him.
SPEAKER_00: And so every day Samson's wife went to him, begging for the answer.
SPEAKER_00: This story might sound familiar.
SPEAKER_00: And every day he didn't tell her, he didn't tell her.
SPEAKER_00: Finally, on the last day, she begged, Samson, if you love me, tell me the answer to the riddle.
SPEAKER_00: So he does, and she runs and tells the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines come back, gives Samson the answer to the riddle, and he's furious.
SPEAKER_00: And so he goes into a Philistine town, kills 30 of them, and takes all their clothes, all their money, all their stuff, and brings it back to pay a debt.
SPEAKER_00: See, we see the obedience story, but the disobedience is hiding right behind it.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, the last one where he kills a thousand people with the job one of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: That whole thing happened because he took a Philistine for his wife, which he wasn't supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: Samson, yes, and had amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: And each one of these stories, there's a line that says, And the power of God came upon him.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.
SPEAKER_00: And he did these amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: But behind the scenes, he was a man who was very disobedient.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the true Samson.
SPEAKER_00: A man of somewhat obedience, but lived in a world filled with disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: There was much more in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: He visited prostitutes.
SPEAKER_00: He had a lot of pride and self-absorption.
SPEAKER_00: He had problems.
SPEAKER_00: But he also had moments, moments where God used him in amazing ways.
SPEAKER_00: So this is all leading up to our Samson and Delilah story.
SPEAKER_00: The one that we may have heard about, the one that we may have seen the movies about.
SPEAKER_00: Once again, Samson sees this beautiful Philistine woman, and her name is Delilah, and he has to have her for a wife.
SPEAKER_00: And so he goes to her and they start a relationship against his parents' wishes, against a lot of people's wishes.
SPEAKER_00: He just wants what he wants.
SPEAKER_00: And the Philistines again go to his new bride and say, Listen, we need to defeat Samson.
SPEAKER_00: You need to ask him, where does his strength come from?
SPEAKER_00: How can he do these heroic things?
SPEAKER_00: And so night after night, for two nights, she begs him, What is the secret of your power?
SPEAKER_00: And each night he tells her some lie.
SPEAKER_00: It's in this, it's in this.
SPEAKER_00: And the Philistines try to take away that power.
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines come in the room in the middle of the night, and Samson breaks the chains or breaks whatever it is and destroys the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: This happens two nights in a row.
SPEAKER_00: The third night, Delilah's had it.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, Listen, you've lied to me twice, you've made a fool out of me.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me where your strength comes from.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, Samson hasn't picked up what's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: He's got problems there too, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So he finally says this: he says, Listen, I am a Nazirite.
SPEAKER_00: No razor has ever touched my head.
SPEAKER_00: My strength comes from my hair.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's pause there for a second.
SPEAKER_00: I am a Nazirite.
SPEAKER_00: I made a vow.
SPEAKER_00: The strength comes from my hair.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, there were a lot of other vows that he took.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: A vow to stay away from dead things, a vow to stay away from grapes.
SPEAKER_00: And as you read the story of Samson, it's hard to think that he wasn't a partier and drinking some wine from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: He broke those vows.
SPEAKER_00: But it's this one that he thinks about.
SPEAKER_00: It's this one that he thinks holds the power.
SPEAKER_00: He's forgetting an important piece of the puzzle.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look back at these moments of great strength, right?
SPEAKER_00: At each and every single one, what does scripture say?
SPEAKER_00: It says the spirit of the Lord came upon him.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit of the Lord came upon him and he was able to beat the lion.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit of the Lord came upon him and he killed a thousand with the jawbone of a donkey.
SPEAKER_00: The spirit of the Lord was the strength, not his hair.
SPEAKER_00: You see, where does your strength come from?
SPEAKER_00: Does your strength come from some other symbol in your life that think that you think feeds you and gives you that strength?
SPEAKER_00: Do you run to something or someone else when tragedy hits your life for that strength?
SPEAKER_00: Samson had it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He misses it.
SPEAKER_00: It was never his hair.
SPEAKER_00: These things were symbols of obedience to God, not where his strength came from.
SPEAKER_00: Where does your strength come from?
SPEAKER_00: I was quote I had to deal with this question last week.
SPEAKER_00: My mom called me on Monday.
SPEAKER_00: She was pretty sad.
SPEAKER_00: You could hear in her voice.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Hey, we need to tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: My dad, who's 70 years old, is being forced to retire at his job.
SPEAKER_00: He's been there for over 50 years.
SPEAKER_00: And at the time they want him to retire within two weeks.
SPEAKER_00: And when I heard the story, and I know my dad, my dad was planning on working at least two more years.
SPEAKER_00: My dad loves to work.
SPEAKER_00: He's worked his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: He's that kind of guy.
SPEAKER_00: And so I know inside that must be crushing him.
SPEAKER_00: And I got really angry when my mom was telling me this story.
SPEAKER_00: And I on the phone, I was like, mom, give me this guy's name.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna call him up.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna write him an email.
SPEAKER_00: And I was just getting on fire with all these things, and my wife is sitting there shaking her head, like, what are you doing, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, no, this is injustice.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get the whole Cruthers clan down there and pick it, man.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get something happening.
SPEAKER_00: And I get all angry and excited, and then that gets my mom angry and excited.
SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, the Cruthers clan, let's go, let's call everyone up.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna fix this, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, all right, I'll talk to you later.
SPEAKER_00: I hang up the phone, and I'm like, oh, this is injustice.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe this is going on.
SPEAKER_00: And my wife looked at me and she's like, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I gotta do something.
SPEAKER_00: These are the things that I can do.
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, You can't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: This is a situation that you can't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And it's one of those moments as a husband, you're like, oh, she's right, but you don't want to say it, right?
SPEAKER_00: She was right.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what I said?
SPEAKER_00: I said these words.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess I'll just give it up to God and pray.
SPEAKER_00: I guess I guess I'm just gonna give this problem up to God, the creator of the universe, the guy who loves me completely, who sent Jesus to die for me.
SPEAKER_00: I guess as a backup plan for me not being able to do it, I'm gonna give it to him.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds insane, but we do it.
SPEAKER_00: It's in all the movies, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're in the emergency room and the ER show, and the doctors are doing everything they can, and what's the last thing they say?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's in God's hands now.
SPEAKER_00: Like it never was in God's hands.
SPEAKER_00: We do this.
SPEAKER_00: We use God as our strength, as our last resort after we have done everything possible we can, which is nothing compared to the strength of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do that?
SPEAKER_00: I think the same reason Samson did.
SPEAKER_00: Because we think we can.
SPEAKER_00: Because maybe we get by doing it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's this thing, these things in the world that maybe fill us with this faux strength that we get.
SPEAKER_00: Why is it when the bad stuff comes in our life that the last place we go and turn to is God for our strength?
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like if you went to God first?
SPEAKER_00: What would it look like with my mom on the phone if I would have just said, hold on, mom, let's stop.
SPEAKER_00: Man, this is a really sticky situation.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just pray about it right now?
SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds like a weird, like, you know, it's a Christian response.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it is a Christian response, and it should be.
SPEAKER_00: Because once we hand it over to God and go to Him for our strength to get through this, then we do our part.
SPEAKER_00: I I was reading this book called Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, and one of the disciplines is on prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I'm reading it, and I got two pages into a very long chapter on prayer, and I didn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: I felt like he was saying that when you pray, you should expect to get what you pray for.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, this is horrible theology, and I put the book away.
SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that I'm adult and I should read the whole chapter and see what he was saying.
SPEAKER_00: And I also realized I had a paper due on it, so I really had to read the whole chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad I did.
SPEAKER_00: Because it changed the way I look at prayer and it changed the way I view my relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Richard Foster says on prayer.
SPEAKER_00: He says this, it'll come on up.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most critical aspects of learning to pray for others is to be in contact with God so his life and power can flow through us into others.
SPEAKER_00: You see, as I continue to read this chapter, it wasn't about praying for what you want and getting it.
SPEAKER_00: It was about the more you pray, the stronger your relationship with God gets.
SPEAKER_00: The more you pray, or if you are in constant prayer, it's just like any other relationship, the more you talk to someone, the more that you're with that person, that relationship grows.
SPEAKER_00: And with God, the more you're in relationship with Him, the more in tune you are with the Creator, you pray for His will.
SPEAKER_00: You pray that His will is done.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not our thoughts or our desires or our wants, but whatever His will is.
SPEAKER_00: And if you pray for His will, your prayer is answered.
SPEAKER_00: But it's about this relationship, this relationship that we need to strengthen between us and our Creator, because that is where our strength comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Our strength comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: The story of Samson as it ends is a pretty sad one.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he gives Delilah the information, he says it's in his hair, which it's really not.
SPEAKER_00: She ties up his hair, shaves his head, and the Philistines come upon him, and the spirit of God has left Samson.
SPEAKER_00: And so they take him, they take him away, they beat him up, they take out his eyes, and he's in prison.
SPEAKER_00: And then they bring him out for this great festival to the Philistine god, Dagon, and they're gonna make fun of him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the clown there.
SPEAKER_00: But imagine this: imagine being Samson with the strength that he had and the person that he was, he has never known weakness.
SPEAKER_00: And here he is, completely weak.
SPEAKER_00: He has no sight, and he's being made fun of by his enemy.
SPEAKER_00: And it's at this point, it's at his weakest, where he does something that he hasn't done.
SPEAKER_00: And we read it in the scriptures earlier earlier.
SPEAKER_00: In the before in the scriptures, it was the spirit of the Lord came upon him.
SPEAKER_00: Here, when he is at his weakest, when he realizes he needs God, he cries out for God.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Remember me.
SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit of God comes upon him again, and he pulls the pillars down, and thousands of Philistines are killed.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when I read that last part of the story, I had to ask myself, why?
SPEAKER_00: Why God?
SPEAKER_00: Why God now do you come back to Samson?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you come back and bless him with this strength, with this power when he has really led a life of disobedience?
SPEAKER_00: Why at this moment?
SPEAKER_00: And there are two reasons, I think, when I read scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I think.
SPEAKER_00: One is that when we are at our absolute weakest, God is at his strongest.
SPEAKER_00: Samson was at his absolute weakness, which means that his life was no longer about him, which means he was able to push his whole self aside and allow God to do incredible things through him.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it takes us trying to figure out the problems of this world and the problems of our life to become completely weak before we're ready to surrender.
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing I think that happens here is it's never about us, but always the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, his story ends with that line that says, in this motion, in him pulling down the pillars and the building coming down, he killed more Philistines in his death than ever when he was alive.
SPEAKER_00: It was never about Samson, it was never about his hair, it was always about the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: The story of Samson isn't really that uplifting one, right?
SPEAKER_00: Here you are on Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: This is a pretty depressing story because we can see ourselves in Samson.
SPEAKER_00: We are see ourselves as missing the mark, as being disobedient.
SPEAKER_00: So where's the hope in this story, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there is great hope.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, and I'm gonna leave you with this thought.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11 is a really cool, powerful part of scripture because it talks about the heroes of faith.
SPEAKER_00: It talks about the heroes of the Israelites' faith, of the Hebrew people's faith, of the Old Testament stories.
SPEAKER_00: It's in there where you read people like Moses and Aaron and Solomon and David, these heroes of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: And amongst all those names, you see Samson.
SPEAKER_00: This man whose whole life was to be set apart in obedience to God, who lived an entire life of disobedience, but with his last breath was redeemed by God.
SPEAKER_00: It just takes a little bit of faith for God to do something incredible in you and through you.
SPEAKER_00: So, Central, the question I leave you with is where does your strength come from?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.