SPEAKER_00: All right, exciting.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today uh we're continuing on our series on broken heroes that we've been looking at uh throughout taking a look at the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Judges, as we've been through these past five weeks, uh it's really not a clean book.
SPEAKER_00: It is dark, it's not easy.
SPEAKER_00: You see this cycle over and over again, which many times mirror ours experience as we try to follow Jesus, where things are going really well, things are awesome, we begin to compromise, we get off track a little bit, we begin to do the things that we know we shouldn't do, and then we get into trouble with our consequences, we cry out to God and we say, God, I'll never do this again.
SPEAKER_00: I I uh I remember as a kid, uh I would I would run into trouble.
SPEAKER_00: I have uh it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, but I I have uh issues with regulating the amount of food that I eat.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember as a kid, the thing that I would hate to do more than anything else was to throw up.
SPEAKER_00: It was like the biggest fear that I have in life.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember all the time, like our favorite favorite restaurant that my parents would love to go to is Sizzler, and you have a salad bar, and then you have like that, then you have the soft serve ice cream, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I remember I would just go back, and every single time I would eat too much, and I this is no joke.
SPEAKER_00: I would remember praying to God and then like, please, God, I will never overeat again.
SPEAKER_00: This is me as like a seven-year-old, I will never, I will, I won't have three servants of soft serves again if you just please make it so I don't throw up this one time.
SPEAKER_00: And I distinctly remember doing that over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And I was God kind of I kind of brought that to my mind this week, and it's kind of like exactly what you see God's people do in the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: They do stupid things that they know they shouldn't do, and yet they always promise this will be the last time I swear.
SPEAKER_00: But over and over again, they just continued to sin.
SPEAKER_00: And God brings about these heroes to save them, except these people are broken.
SPEAKER_00: And as you see God's people begin to be continually broken and broken, the heroes get more broken again.
SPEAKER_00: And as you read the book of Judges, we read last week in the book of Jephthah, that he sacrificed his daughter to God, a human sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And as you read this, you should say, what is going on in this Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can you read, you know, and I've heard that before.
SPEAKER_00: Like, how can you read this Bible?
SPEAKER_00: There's horrible things that happen.
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the point.
SPEAKER_00: When you read God's word and you see the horrible things that go on, it's trying to show us something.
SPEAKER_00: It's that, hey, when we get off track and we make bad decisions, this is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: It's the point.
SPEAKER_00: It's it shows how horrible and evil we could be.
SPEAKER_00: And so these people that even saved God's people were not great people.
SPEAKER_00: And that is the point.
SPEAKER_00: The point of the book of Judges, the hero in the book of judges isn't these different judges we looked at, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephtha.
SPEAKER_00: Or the point is that God is the ultimate hero of the book.
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing in our lives, right?
SPEAKER_00: We can say, oh, this person's my hero, or this is the person I look up to, but really God needs to be the ultimate person that we look up to.
SPEAKER_00: He's our ultimate hero.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today we are taking a look at the last judge that we see in the book of Judges named Samson.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson is somebody that I think just fits the perfect picture of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: Because Samson is somebody who's like the climax of everything.
SPEAKER_00: He is famous, he's dramatic.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the book of Judges, it reads like a soap opera.
SPEAKER_00: There's so much craziness that happens with Samson.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm gonna kind of summarize like Samson's whole life here, and it's just absolutely insane.
SPEAKER_00: He's, I would argue, the most famous judge in the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_00: And this is also somebody, if you've never grown up in church or really been around, a lot of people have heard of Samson and Delilah.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a story that a lot of people know just as we get through here.
SPEAKER_00: Last week, as I mentioned, we talked about Jephthah, who sacrificed his own daughter to God, thinking that that's something that the God would want.
SPEAKER_00: And that represented a deep understanding of the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: That you could talk like you know what God wants, but you really have to truly know who this God is.
SPEAKER_00: And Jephthah didn't.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today, what just is distinct about Samson is that Samson is somebody.
SPEAKER_00: If Jephthah had a distorted view of God, Samson has a distorted view of himself.
SPEAKER_00: Where Jephthah misunderstood God.
SPEAKER_00: Samson looks inward, and he is not who he thinks he is.
SPEAKER_00: He was supposed to be set apart from the very beginning of birth.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read the story here in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: He's set apart, he's somebody that has prophesied over as soon as before he's born, that he is going to be the deliverer of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: But then immediately he goes after a Philistine woman, like the enemy, the person that you shouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: We read an interesting story of him and a prostitute one night.
SPEAKER_00: We also read that he meets this woman, Delilah, right, who betrays him.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we see that Samson does some of the craziest things in the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_00: These amazing things that he does.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the perfect picture of judges blended together.
SPEAKER_00: But what's so tragic about this story is that he keeps living as if the rules don't apply to him.
SPEAKER_00: And this is an ultimate warning for us as well, that we can live and even have some gifting and even do some quite amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: But if we start living as if the rules don't apply to us, we're in for a bad time.
SPEAKER_00: We're in for trouble.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read here, Judges 13.
SPEAKER_00: As we read here, this is at the very beginning in the in the story of Samson.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us that uh right before this, that the evil, that the Israelites once again did evil in the sight of the sight of the Lord, and you have the Philistines that conquered Israel's people.
SPEAKER_00: And then it says right here that you see that uh to Samson's mother, you have an angel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It says an angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son.
SPEAKER_00: Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink, and that you do not eat anything unclean.
SPEAKER_00: You will become pregnant and have a son, whose head is never to be touched by a razor, because the boy is to be a Nazarite, dedicated to God from the womb.
SPEAKER_00: He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: So from the very beginning, this story is steeped in promise.
SPEAKER_00: Like this is a great thing.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine you have an angel coming to a woman and say, You can't give birth, that you that your womb is barren, but miraculously you're gonna give birth to a son, and he will be a Nazirite.
SPEAKER_00: And what a Nazirite was in the Old Testament, we see in numbers that if you felt called to be extra consecrated, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you just kind of felt like, I just believe in Yahweh, and I just I want to do that next level and create a vow, you would do three things.
SPEAKER_00: You uh wouldn't touch a dead body, you wouldn't drink any wine or grape juice, which in that culture was a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, that's the majority of what you drank over water.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, you would never you wouldn't cut your hair.
SPEAKER_00: And it was three things that you did, and that signified anyone can do it.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just for priests, anyone could do it, and it was just a way to kind of show extra devotion to God, kind of that next level.
SPEAKER_00: Say, I am set apart for Yahweh's purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Usually that was done for like a couple of months, maybe a couple years, but this this person was gonna do it from birth.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the ultimate picture.
SPEAKER_00: If you think someone who is set up to succeed well, it is Samson.
SPEAKER_00: Because from the very birth, he will not touch anything dead, he will not drink any wine or grape juice, and a razor will never touch his head.
SPEAKER_00: So we pick up in Samson's story in Judges 14 and 15, and like I said, I'm gonna summarize it because it's weird and odd.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like the ultimate soap opera, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: This would be like a good mini-series.
SPEAKER_00: You see all these mini-series, like Samson's life as you go here.
SPEAKER_00: So the next time we see Samson is this is the deliverer of the Philistines, and he sees a Philistine woman and just lusts after and says, That's the person I'm gonna marry.
SPEAKER_00: And his parents are like, you know, these are the people, these are the enemy, these are the people that you're supposed to deliver.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe let's, you know, marry somebody who's part of our own tribe, right?
SPEAKER_00: Who's kind of part of God's people.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I want to go ahead and do.
SPEAKER_00: So he just says, I'm gonna go ahead and do it.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's on his way over to the town where she is, because he's gonna marry her.
SPEAKER_00: And while he is walking, he sees a lion, and a lion attacks him, and he kills a lion with his bare hands, which is absurd.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've only I've done that once when I was younger.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't ever done it again.
SPEAKER_00: Just a joke.
SPEAKER_00: Supposed to joke.
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: Um so he kills this lion for with his bare hands on the way to marry this Philistine woman.
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of see like two things about Samson that really define the rest of his life.
SPEAKER_00: That he's drawn towards the things that he shouldn't want, right?
SPEAKER_00: But yet he's also incredibly powerful.
SPEAKER_00: So then the story keeps getting stranger.
SPEAKER_00: Later, a couple days later, he walks by the lion carcass.
SPEAKER_00: This carcass is there, this dead lion, and he sees that honeybees have created a hive in this lion.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes and he grabs the honey and he starts eating the honey.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is somebody who should not be touching dead things.
SPEAKER_00: And not only does he touch the dead lion, he starts eating honey from the dead lion's carcass.
SPEAKER_00: So immediately we're kind of like, wait a second, this is somebody who should be set apart from birth.
SPEAKER_00: And like, not only are you like accidentally like touching, you are just completely defiling yourself and defiling your own vow.
SPEAKER_00: So then he gets to this wedding.
SPEAKER_00: What's also interesting, you're not supposed to, it says that he goes to a wedding feast in this type of feast.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't like the actual wedding, it was almost like the equivalent of like a bachelor party.
SPEAKER_00: It's a big feast that you do with drinking and everything else before you get married.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where he's walking to when he's eating this.
SPEAKER_00: So right there, you kind of see strike number two.
SPEAKER_00: He's going around in a place that if you were a Nazirite, right, you would not go to this wedding feast with all of this drinking and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: So you already see, like early on with Samson, like this Samson is not doing what he should be doing.
SPEAKER_00: He's eating, touching dead things, eating things from dead carcasses, going to this.
SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, you kind of see his pride.
SPEAKER_00: He gives this weird riddle about the honey that he's eating, and he it's with the lion.
SPEAKER_00: It also doesn't make a lot of sense.
SPEAKER_00: But he talks about he gives this riddle about the honey and the lion, and nobody really knows what this riddle is.
SPEAKER_00: So then they pressure his wife to be, hey, tell us what this riddle is, because this is a huge bet and a lot of money that's on the line.
SPEAKER_00: And he conf, he tells his future wife, yep, this is this is the answer to the riddle.
SPEAKER_00: The Philistines get the riddle, and he's just embarrassed in front of everybody.
SPEAKER_00: And so what he does is he goes, storms off, realizes that he has been played, and just kills a bunch of Philistine men, Philistine men.
SPEAKER_00: Take all their clothes and use that, sell those clothes and use that to pay off the bet.
SPEAKER_00: So, under like again, you have this like supposed to be this separated from birth guy who's like these weird bets and these weird things that happen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Philistines obviously are frustrated and angry at this.
SPEAKER_00: So they find his future wife and they kill her, as well as her husband.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson is completely just upset and devastated.
SPEAKER_00: He then captures foxes, gets torches, ties them on the end of their tail, and lets them loose, and all of the Philistines' crops are just burned.
SPEAKER_00: It just scorched earth.
SPEAKER_00: So you see that on this weird way, he's supposed to conquer the Philistines, and he does it, but he also does it in like a way that's steeped in like revenge and anger and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: He's he's sort of doing the right things, but go about in the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: So it's very odd.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Philistines again, they get up, they come after him, and all of a sudden he grabs the jawbone of a dead donkey, and then he uses that to kill a thousand Philistine men with that jawbone.
SPEAKER_00: And when you read this, now he's supposed to deliver God's people, the Philistines, which is a good thing, but again, he's touching a bone of a dead animal, something that he shouldn't do.
SPEAKER_00: Samson's story is so weird because he has these glimpses of conquering like God's enemies, but he's doing it in a way that is just completely against everything he should be about.
SPEAKER_00: Samson is like the perfect picture of like, this is just weird.
SPEAKER_00: It's an odd thing.
SPEAKER_00: And then we get to the end of his story, Judges 15.
SPEAKER_00: After this story, it says Samson led Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_00: You have somebody who is leading Israel, who is yet doing amazing things, but at the same time really impulsive-driven, right?
SPEAKER_00: Constantly acting out his stuff with women.
SPEAKER_00: He can't, he can seem to master what's going on and what to do on the battlefield, but Samson is the ultimate picture of what happens when you can't master what really is going on inside your own soul.
SPEAKER_00: You see this dichotomy between what you do and who you are.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this cautionary tale of what happens.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he has three vows that he should do not cut his hair, not drink, and not touch animals we know, or anything dead, and he's already done that.
SPEAKER_00: He's already shown signs of compromise in his life.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think as I was reading about this, and I think that this is something that is a theme that can show up for all of us, where we can look much stronger on the outside than we are actually on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it so easy for us to have portray, like we have it all together, that we are doing all of the right things, and yet the inside our souls are just completely ripped apart.
SPEAKER_00: Who we are in public is not the same person as who we are in private.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that Samson is somebody who just lives that as his ethos.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's something that all of us should be aware of.
SPEAKER_00: All of us should look and focus on the inward life and what God is doing in our hearts and souls versus what God chooses to do through us.
SPEAKER_00: I remember there was somebody, he uh, it was a pastor friend of mine, he took over a church, and I remember that he he tells this story, and there was somebody who was on the council, someone on the business council, so like a really important position, and he was like the lead elder of this church, and he was even told by everybody, he was like, Hey, you're gonna take over this church, you're gonna meet this guy.
SPEAKER_00: He is the ultimate, like godly man, he is just so great, he was very professional in business, like a husband, like great husband, great father, and all of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like this is really the person, and despite all of the church and all the changeover with getting a new pastor, this is the person who's kind of been holding the church together.
SPEAKER_00: And he sat down and finally met met this person, and he was, you know, came in.
SPEAKER_00: He was like, I think he was a I can't remember if he was a doctor or he was something, but very professional doctor or lawyer, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who like, if you had daughters, you want to you want your daughter to marry some guy like this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he was talking with him and he just said, Hey man, just tell me what like what's going on with like how like tell me what's going on with your soul, with your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that he his phrase was just tell me about something that God's been doing in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy said, I'll tell I'll be honest with you, I don't really believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: It's like really but he was like, Tell me more about that.
SPEAKER_00: Like, just a joke, dry humor.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Yeah, I just you know, I I just really love it.
SPEAKER_00: My I was just kind of asked to do this.
SPEAKER_00: My wife is really important, but I just I don't really believe in God.
SPEAKER_00: I don't really believe in a lot of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm doing all of the things, but I mean, to be honest with you, my my heart's not really in it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just kind of here for the sake of being here.
SPEAKER_00: And it was in that moment that my friend was just like, it's just so interesting that you had like this one guy that from the outside, everything looked great.
SPEAKER_00: Everything looked awesome, and everything looked like it was great, but yet you had somebody who was like in this like number one leader in the church, who just was basically like, Yeah, my heart's really not in this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm not somebody who really even wants to do any of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And it was just a very striking moment.
SPEAKER_00: He just said, and this is what this pastor says, he said, from now on, whenever I meet with somebody, every single thing I always ask them, how is your soul doing?
SPEAKER_00: Because I always want to make sure that before I talk with anybody about what's going on in their life or anything else, I want to know how is your soul?
SPEAKER_00: Because we can forget a lot of those things about the inward life that we have and how important and critical that is.
SPEAKER_00: Samson, I think, is that ultimate picture where he does great things, but yet his inward soul is someone who isn't there.
SPEAKER_00: When we next get to the more famous parts of the story, Samson and Delilah.
SPEAKER_00: It says, sometimes later, Samson fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sarek whose name was Delilah.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where Samson's compromise over the last 20-25 years has finally caught up with him.
SPEAKER_00: He is leading Israel, he is subjugating the Philistines, he's doing that, and they recognize that Samson is in love with this woman named Delilah.
SPEAKER_00: And they come to Delilah and they say, Hey, tell us how we can defeat this guy.
SPEAKER_00: There's gotta be some weakness or something.
SPEAKER_00: We can clearly see that he is a powerful person.
SPEAKER_00: So Delilah comes to Samson and starts asking him, tell me what the secret of your strength is.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, there's something different about you.
SPEAKER_00: And so Sam, so Samson, rather than like stopping it immediately or being like, hey, I think that this person is not, you know, doesn't have my best interest at heart, kind of begins to play with her a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: And so first he tells her, if anyone ties me with seven fresh bowstrings, then I'll become weak like any other person.
SPEAKER_00: So what does she do?
SPEAKER_00: She then tests it.
SPEAKER_00: She gets seven fresh bowstrings, ties them, and then immediately he says, The Philistines are here, and he breaks out of them and gets ready to fight.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, if I was Samson, I think any of us were Samuel would be like, wait a second, I feel like something with this lady is off.
SPEAKER_00: But he's just so blinded by the inward heart, so blinded by this desire, by this passion that he can't see in front of his face.
SPEAKER_00: So then all of a sudden, he's she's like, Okay, tell me honestly what it is.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if anyone has fresh ropes, ropes that have not been used on anything else, you tie me up with fresh ropes, then do it again.
SPEAKER_00: Happens again, boom, bust out of the rope.
SPEAKER_00: Philistines are paying you, bust out of the ropes.
SPEAKER_00: And then she just is like, What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: So this is where Samson, now he goes for a third time and says, All right, fine, I'll tell you the real deal.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where it begins to get his downfall.
SPEAKER_00: Is we know as a Nazirite, there are three different vows that you have, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's you don't touch dead bodies, which is already done, the wine drinking, which is already done.
SPEAKER_00: There's the one last one with the Nazirite where a razor has never touched your head before.
SPEAKER_00: And so his entire life, he's never had a haircut.
SPEAKER_00: So you can imagine sometimes if you see Samson, you have like hair down to here, his hair was massive.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he he was, you know, he never had a haircut.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so he's just this big, you know, hair and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, if you weave the seven braids of my hair, so we had seven braids, into fabric on a loom and tighten with a pin, then I'll become weak, which is not true.
SPEAKER_00: But he says this thing and he kind of brings up his hair as the thing of his downfall.
SPEAKER_00: She does it, doesn't work again.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, Deliah's like, You don't love me, you never loved me.
SPEAKER_00: Think of all the things that you see on all those reality shows, whatever else.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, he's like, fine, I'll go ahead and go.
SPEAKER_00: And then we have the verse here, Judges 16.
SPEAKER_00: With such nagging, she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.
SPEAKER_00: Just like worn down.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Mother's Day, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit like, yeah, we're doing Samson on Mother's Day, but you know, it's how we roll.
SPEAKER_00: Till day after day was sick to death of it.
SPEAKER_00: So he told her everything.
SPEAKER_00: No razor has ever been used on my head.
SPEAKER_00: Because I have been a Nazarite dedicated to God from my mother's room.
SPEAKER_00: If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.
SPEAKER_00: When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of Philistines, Come back once more.
SPEAKER_00: He has told me everything.
SPEAKER_00: So the rulers of the Philistines returned with a silver in their hands to pay Delilah.
SPEAKER_00: After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him, and his strength left him.
SPEAKER_00: Then she called, Samson, the Philistines are upon you.
SPEAKER_00: He awoke from a sleep and thought, I'll go out as before and shake myself free, but he did not know that the Lord had left him.
SPEAKER_00: That word to me, that last line is kind of Haunting to me.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I first read it, I got goosebumps.
SPEAKER_00: Even now I'm kind of getting them.
SPEAKER_00: Samson was somebody who lived his constant life after compromise after compromise after compromise.
SPEAKER_00: And he thought that this was just another one of those mini compromises that he did.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I've, you know, I've already kind of done this, I've already touched dead bodies, I've already done this, I've already, you know, there's also, like I said, he has a story uh earlier where he like sleeps with a prostitute and they try to kill him and he ends up escaping, like just living a life that isn't there and just continue down.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that in life though many times though, that once you begin with that small compromise, compromise leads to compromise, leads to compromise, leads to compromise, and all of a sudden you turn around one day and you're like, How did I ever get here?
SPEAKER_00: Samson is somebody who is just living that path.
SPEAKER_00: And it was in that moment that he didn't realize that it was that moment that the Lord had left him.
SPEAKER_00: This is the I think one of the most dangerous kinds of drifts that we can do.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind that you don't even notice anymore that you're drifting.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even notice anymore that the little things that you do begin to pile up and add, and then one day you find yourself falling asleep with the Delilah shaving your braids off, and you realize that God has just left.
SPEAKER_00: And you just realize, whoa.
SPEAKER_00: And Samson's tragedy isn't just sin, it's not just lust, and it's not just Delilah, it's not just this one idea.
SPEAKER_00: I think Samson's biggest sin is presumption here.
SPEAKER_00: He drifted so far he didn't know that he had drifted.
SPEAKER_00: And I think the most dangerous type of compromise in our own life is the compromise that can begin to feel sort of normal.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Those things in life that you do, they're like, I probably shouldn't do this, but after a while, you just begin to do it and it just becomes part of your normal life.
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most dangerous places to be spiritually is the place where you still think you are fine.
SPEAKER_00: Samson's tragedy is that he overestimates himself.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks he's stronger than he is.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks he has an ability that he doesn't have.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks he can keep playing with the compromise and not fall.
SPEAKER_00: I think this happens with us too.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there are some times in life that we wake up and we decide to wreck our entire life with like one decision.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's sometimes we do that.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we will do that, and one decision can determine the course of your life.
SPEAKER_00: But I think more often than not, when we find ourselves and we begin to get off track, it's by making little decision after little decision and we begin to go and go and go, and then all of a sudden we turn around and realize, wow, I left God and he's way back there.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things, this pattern that we see with God's people over and over and over again, is that they begin to make the wrong decisions and they begin to turn and walk away from God.
SPEAKER_00: The passage that we read is that Samson realized that God was no longer there, that God's power had left him.
SPEAKER_00: But really, I don't think that's an accurate view of what happens.
SPEAKER_00: I think what happens is that God doesn't leave us.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of choose to leave him.
SPEAKER_00: We know where he's at and we choose to walk away, and we choose to go little bit by little bit by little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the mercy of Samson's story is that in the end, God is still merciful in some way.
SPEAKER_00: So the Philistines, they take Samson, they gouge his eyes out, and they turn him into a slave, where you have this big wheel that they would grind grain with, and you would basically hold this pole and you would turn around in circles, and then as you did that, stones would kind of go together and it would just crush grain.
SPEAKER_00: And he did this all day, every day for years, over and over again, blinded.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine somebody who like was the top of their game, lived life and did everything, ruled Israel, had all these women and all this fame and did everything else, and yet he's just subjugated in that life, and he's doing that over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: They would bring him out as a spectacle and say, Hey, look at this strong man Samson and everything.
SPEAKER_00: But there's just one little verse, Judges 16, 22.
SPEAKER_00: But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
SPEAKER_00: See, the author is not just giving us like a hair update.
SPEAKER_00: He's not giving us a beauty tip or anything.
SPEAKER_00: This is a mercy line that we're seeing.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little signal that, like, hey, over time, as Samson is going, these vows begin to grow back.
SPEAKER_00: And God's mercy shows up.
SPEAKER_00: The amount of times that Samson is just sitting there, I can imagine the guilt and shame that Samson is in, right?
SPEAKER_00: Man, I was supposed to be set apart in birth and look at where I'm at.
SPEAKER_00: Look at where I used to be, and look at where I'm at.
SPEAKER_00: God could have chosen to completely abandon Samson, but he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: He gives him one last chance.
SPEAKER_00: So as Samson's hair is beginning to grow out, he's blinded.
SPEAKER_00: The Philistes, Philistines bring him to this massive feast.
SPEAKER_00: They're uh celebrating their god Dagon.
SPEAKER_00: And they are celebrating the fact and they say, See, look at Samson.
SPEAKER_00: Dagon gave us victory over Samson and his and his God Yahweh.
SPEAKER_00: And they begin to mock Samson.
SPEAKER_00: Look how great our God is, because their God's biggest, fire, mightiest warrior is here, blinded right here, and they're just mocking him and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: And then they put him between two pillars and they're just hurling insults at him.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine throwing things at him, he's blinded and everything else.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, Samson just prays, and the Spirit of God rested upon Samson, and his strength returned to him.
SPEAKER_00: And then he pushes these pillars aside, and the entire house collapses.
SPEAKER_00: And it says in the text that he killed more Philistines through this one thing in his death than he ever did in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that he killed and he did lots of things to the Philistines who were subjugating him.
SPEAKER_00: So it's ironic here, and then Samson is also crushed with everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: So there's this tragedy to Samson, but it's also this picture that in this one last kind of hurrah, I guess, of pushing these pillars over, Samson is able to accomplish the thing that he was born to do.
SPEAKER_00: That God, rather than abandoning him in a way, he was able to give Samson the power where Samson was able to do the one thing he'd been trying his whole life to do, which is his purpose for being born.
SPEAKER_00: Samson's life, when we look at it, I think is kind of the tragedy of a wasted calling almost.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: It's like somebody who was called from birth and somebody who was called to do great and amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: And yet through compromise after compromise.
SPEAKER_00: So many things that we can look at.
SPEAKER_00: I think the biggest thing in this story is we look at Samson.
SPEAKER_00: Again, he's not somebody to be emulated, but I think it's a good reminder for us and just say, where are our compromises?
SPEAKER_00: Where are the things that we have chosen just to compromise a little bit in?
SPEAKER_00: And not necessarily bad things.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, touching a dead body or drinking wine isn't necessarily in and of itself a bad thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: The things that we saw Samson do.
SPEAKER_00: It's just he was supposed to be different than everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: His calling was different than everybody else's.
SPEAKER_00: He was called to something greater.
SPEAKER_00: He was called to a higher standard, but he began to act like he was common.
SPEAKER_00: He was acting just the way everyone else act in those days.
SPEAKER_00: What are the things in your life that maybe you look and you feel like you I am called to do something great?
SPEAKER_00: God has asked me to do this.
SPEAKER_00: These are things that I know that I should be, but we'll look at everyone else and just say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I'll just do what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: It's a way that we begin with the small compromises, but after small compromise, after small compromise, after not living up to our calling, we can see that when we begin to put our faith in our own ability is when we get into trouble.
SPEAKER_00: This story of Judges points perfectly to the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I think it's the point of judges.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I love this slide that Gina made, this idea of you know, you have the justice and the blind justice, but you kind of have this mighty picture of these leaders who are supposed to lead God's people and yet they fail miserably every time.
SPEAKER_00: Similar to how all of us as leaders and all the leaders that we know ultimately fail over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we still continue to put our hope and faith in people.
SPEAKER_00: Judges is pushing us towards the true king, the true deliverer, the true person.
SPEAKER_00: Judges is making us thirst for an actual savior.
SPEAKER_00: To say, man, I'm just so tired of trying to do things on my own.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired of looking up to other people.
SPEAKER_00: And as we get to the end of the series, as we wrap it up, it's a very simple invitation, but it's very weighty.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation is don't lean on your own strength.
SPEAKER_00: Don't become casual with holy things.
SPEAKER_00: Don't assume that yesterday's faithfulness can cause drift today.
SPEAKER_00: I resonate with last week we talked about Jephthah that how easy is it for us to do things for God and not really know God.
SPEAKER_00: How easy it is for to confuse our gifting with surrender or confuse power with intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: And many times we can confuse being used by God by actually walking closely with God.
SPEAKER_00: I've said this over and over again, just about every week, that we see even in church leaders, you see great Christian leaders many times fail over and over again, or men who we think are great men, but then all of a sudden things come out.
SPEAKER_00: And it's really a story as old as time.
SPEAKER_00: God will choose to use broken people, and yet there's something that happens when we don't have a close intimacy with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to happen.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen in one fell swoop, like I see with Samson.
SPEAKER_00: It comes from the daily, everyday bits of small compromise after small compromise.
SPEAKER_00: So the message, I think, of broken heroes isn't try harder not to be like these broken heroes.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we should not try to be like them, but the point really isn't like, hey, see all these things?
SPEAKER_00: Just try super hard not to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because we know that as we try and as we do things, we're gonna fail.
SPEAKER_00: Even when we try to do the right things, really the story or the point of the book of Judges is that thank God that we have a true hero.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God that we have a true hero that we can emulate, that we have a true hero that can enter into our hearts, that we can pray for, who's there.
SPEAKER_00: That is the ultimate story, the ultimate takeaway from judges.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God is that we have a true hero that we can rely on.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God that we have a true hero that can come into our hearts that can allow us that intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: Only Christ can save us from the things we need saving from.
SPEAKER_00: Only Christ can change our lives the way that we want our lives to be changed.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stand as we end.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, I just want to thank you for this book of judges as we've gone through the constant repetitive theme that is just repetitive in our life, that we can continue to drift and continue to turn away from you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But in the midst of all of this turning away and all of this compromise and everything else, what undergirds everything else is that you gave us the person of Jesus, that no matter how many times we turn away from you, you turn towards us.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, thank you for those words of the parable of the lost sheep, that even when we're lost and we wander, you leave everything else to come for us, God.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Forgive us the times that we have put our hope and faith in institutions or things rather than the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, I just pray, forgive me for the times that I have just drifted compromise after compromise after compromise.
SPEAKER_00: And thank you that there's no amount of speed which I can run or intensity that I can run that you can't overcome.
SPEAKER_00: That you will continue to pursue after us and chase after us.
SPEAKER_00: Give us boldness to change and to turn towards you, God.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray for today for Mother's Day and celebrating, just pray for an extra special blessing and all mothers or motherly figures that everyone would just feel honored.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for revealing yourself and your nurturing side of your character and the side, the strength in great women that we can look up to and have helped us, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In your name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I leave you with this blessing as we go.
SPEAKER_00: That the Lord bless you and keep you.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord turn his face towards you and give you his shalom.