Hall of Faith: Samson - Message Only

in the book of hebrews chapter 11 we find the hall of faith an impressive collection of people who put their trust in god on display for all to see among these people we find samson whose story on the surface doesn't seem to belong during his life he broke his god-given oaths murdered countless men burned his enemies fields and was seduced by a deceitful woman why is samson mentioned in this list of faithful men and women let's continue our journey through the great hall of faith [Music] well as we get started today i want to say welcome to those who are joining us online as well as those on tv and those in person at our multi-site campus and we are in a series called the hall of faith and we have been talking about these great heroes of the bible people who weren't always perfect but people who always trust in god no matter what and about two months ago todd came up to me he said hey andrew i want you to speak during the hall of faith i was so excited because i was like maybe he's going to ask me to speak about david or abraham or moses or someone else and he said no andrew i want you to speak on samson and i was like really todd i mean samson was such a mess his life was absolutely derailed by sin and as i studied it i found that samson's life was really lived out with the consequences of sin and his story becomes so important for all of us because sin is something that we will always struggle with but sin has become a very loaded term for us nowadays most people when they think of the concept of sin they think of a real churchy or a real judgmental person somebody who's older someone who's a parent or someone else but they don't really understand what the term sin really means and the word sin actually comes from a hebrew word which is hit you have to say that with lots of guttural kent which basically means to miss the mark you had a target that you were aiming for but you missed it you missed those standards that were set up for you in simplistic terms simply it's all the wrong things that we do that are against the standards that we find in the bible now the bible has given us lots of different standards for us to live by now those standards aren't meant to make our life harder or worse it was made to make our life better it was made to help our relationships to be more solid and just think back to the ten commandments just a few of them there's the commandment to not lie think about how lying destroys relationships how it destroys trust it can destroy your reputation and in fact if you are caught in a lie you know how difficult it is if somebody lies about you on social media it always hurts doesn't it think about the sin of adultery if you know anything about adultery it destroys families when someone cheats in a relationship it breeds mistrust and it's almost irreparable it's so hard and difficult and generations after an affair can be pushed away and there could be problems from that point on think about the sin of stealing have you ever had anything stolen from you it always hurts you always feel violated about a year ago i had my iphone 9 stolen from me it was so sad because all my pictures my phone the thing that i looked at every day my best friend was now gone somebody had taken it away from me and i just felt violated now some people look at those standards that we have in the bible and they say oh those standards they're just so archaic i mean anybody who lives like that is just a prude i mean nobody can really hold to all those different things and that folks is just what the evil one wants us to believe the evil one wants us to think that god is actively holding out on us that god doesn't want us to enjoy life that he doesn't want us to have any fun but when we live that sort of way we only find ourselves alone empty and holding the bag we are the ones who have to bear the consequences of not living up to god's standards samson was a mess he had a hard time living up to the standards of god but what i love about samson's story is that out of the ashes of defeat hope rises and samson's story begins with lots of promise because samson is born to a couple who are unable to have kids of their own but an angel of the lord comes to them and they gives them the word that they're going to have a baby boy now this baby boy is going to be different because they're he's going to save all the people so he's to be raised a certain way as set apart from everyone else as a nazarite now the nazarite had three different standards that they had to live by the first was he can't drink wine or eat grapes i love grapes that would be hard for me second one was he can't touch a dead body or anything unclean and the third was he can't shave his head now samson had three standards to live by it was very clear it was easy to understand these three things there wasn't any mixed messages but a lot of times even though we have some standards we have a hard time following them for example in the poe house we have some standards for our kids to live by the first is do not fight very important do not slam your door and do not lie and there's a few others that we've added to the list but it might surprise you that even my pastor's kids have a hard time living up to the standards in fact about four years ago i took my kids to costco which costco is always a sagebrush magnet i don't know what happens there but i always see sagebrushers in costco so i'm walking around costco my wife's not there she's at work that day and i'm walking around with my three kids and they are just acting up the whole time i mean they are fighting they are punching one another actively they are screaming and yelling now as a pastor i live in a little bit of a fishbowl everybody is watching to see how i will respond to different situations so i'm doing my best at costco to be nice and smiley pastor andrew but i'm also giving them the evil eye and i'm like you've got to straighten out and this whole time i'm just getting angrier and angrier finally we get done checking out a costco and i push my basket with all my kids to the car i didn't even put the groceries in i said kids get in the car so they got in the car now my trunk was open the groceries were in the back i got into the front seat and i laid into them i was like you kids have misbehave you are gonna cost me my job my reputation everything else you know not to fight you know not to hit and all these different things and i am letting them have it afterwards i jump out of the car door and i slam it then i see these two ladies who are white as a ghost at the back of my car and they're like hey pastor andrea see my kids and me we all have a hard time living up to the standards and samson is no different he has a hard time living up to the standards that were set for him so after samson's born we find the first thing that takes place is he's walking along this river when he's a little bit older and he sees this philistine woman and she is beautiful she is gorgeous and samson was a little bit controlled by his eyes when he saw ladies so he sees this philistine woman and philistines and the jewish people like they hated one another they never got along i mean this is straight shakespearean romeo and juliet these are two people from opposite ends of the world and their families hated each other well he sees this woman and he goes to his parents and he says hey i want her as my wife and his parents are like come on samson isn't there a beautiful jewish girl that you can marry and samson insisted but what his parents didn't know that all this was a part of god's plan here's what it says in judges chapter 14 it says his parents did not know that this was from the lord who was seeking an occasion to confront the philistines for at that time they were ruling over israel so god had a plan for samson and god wanted to use him to accomplish his purposes now during that time the spirit of the lord worked in a different way now when you become a follower of jesus christ the spirit of god the holy spirit lives inside of you but back in the old testament the spirit would come upon people and it would use them to accomplish some very incredible things as was the case with samson shortly after he wants to marry this girl we find that he is walking down the road and as he's walking down the road there is this lion that jumps out at him we're not talking about a little kitty cat we're talking about a ravenous ferocious lion it jumps out at him the bible says the spirit of the lord comes on samson and he tears the lion in two and he throws the lion on the side of the road so we're talking about samson as this incredibly strong guy when the spirit of the lord comes upon him so a lot of times we think of modern day samsons like if you grew up in the 90s you remember fabio mr i can't believe it's not butter himself right by his like flowy hair and his muscles and everything else now for my kids they wouldn't think of samson uh as a fabio but they would think of him as thor from the marvel movies so chris hemsworth because he has big huge muscles and that long flowy blonde hair but from the bible we don't know if samson had this physical appearance that was really strong we don't know if he worked out a lot if he drank protein shakes or if he ever skipped leg day okay we don't know if he was super big and super strong he could have looked like any one of us something like this oh yeah we don't i'm moving that um we don't know what he looked like but what we do know was that when the spirit of the lord came upon him he had this incredible strength and this incredible power to do these great great things for god but after that we see that the story kind of changes samson begins to go against all those standards that he was to live by just about seven days later he's walking down that same road and he sees the dead lion that he is torn into on the side of the road and he notices that there's some bees buzzing around the lion and that they've made a hive inside of it now samson knows he's not supposed to touch anything that's dead but the honey is so sweet and that's us isn't it we know the things that we're not supposed to do but when temptation comes the honey is so sweet and sometimes we even put ourselves in situations where we're about to compromise why because we know the gratification that comes with giving into that sin it may be that you know that you are an alcoholic that you struggle with drinking but you still go to the party it may be that you're in an inappropriate relationship with your boyfriend or your girlfriend but you still go over their house late at night it may be that you struggle with gambling but every time you drive past that casino you can't help yourself you get off and you go inside it may be that you're a huge spender and every time you see those red letters at target you just can't stop yourself you have to go in see samson was that way the honey was so sweet he not only touched the dead body but he takes the honey he eats it himself and he shares it with his parents shortly after that samson marries that philistine woman they had this big huge wedding ceremony now wedding ceremonies back in the bible were way different than our wedding ceremonies wedding ceremonies back then didn't last just a few hours then you eat some weird chicken dish and then you have some stale wedding cake back then wedding festivals actually lasted seven days seven days and in the bible it often records weddings as the people being in good spirits which means that they drank a lot of alcohol so we can easily make the connection that samson was a party or two so he's broken two of those standards but he still has one left that he's hanging on to and here's what i love about samson in spite of all of his inconsistency god still wanted to use him don't you love that about god in spite of the fact that we don't have it all together in spite of the fact that we've made mistakes god still wants to use every single one of us that my friends is what i love about god he takes us and he wants to use us you could clap for that [Applause] he takes us and he wants to use us well things go from bad to worse for samson he gets married to that philistine woman and shortly after that the philistines get angry with him so they take that philistine woman and they give her to another man well this causes samson to rage a little bit and so as a retaliation the philistines actually kill his wife and the rest of her whole entire family well this puts samson in a rage he kills many many philistines at that point and the philistines are like man we have got to get rid of this guy samson has retreated to a cave he's all by himself so the philistines threaten to invade the israelites territory and they say hey if you give us samson we won't invade your territory so the jewish people go to that cave to get samson to bring him to the philistines and samson makes a deal with them he says hey if you don't kill me i will let you tie me up and why don't you just give me over to the philistines you see samson knew that this was all a part of god's plans so the jewish people tie samson up and they deliver him over to the philistines so samson goes in front of the philistines they deliver him over and immediately the spirit of the lord comes upon samson and he breaks free of all of the ropes but he has no sword or anything else and this is when the bible gets really gross he grabs a fresh jawbone of a donkey now we don't know if the donkey had died a while later or how he found a fresh jawbone but he grabs this fresh jawbone of the donkey and he uses it as a weapon and he kills a thousand philistine men that day then samson gloats he says with the jawbone of a donkey i have made donkeys out of them the king james version is so much better you can read it later he takes all of them he gloats and then at that point samson begins to rule over all of israel as their judge he rules actually for 20 years and we don't know much about his story we don't know how he ruled or the good or the bad decisions that he made but the next thing that picks up in the story is samson goes to see a philistine prostitute again this guy always struggled with women i mean it was his greatest weakness that he never got in check he struggled with women he struggled with lust and so much more but what i love about the bible is it's so honest it's so honest here is the judge of israel sleeping with a prostitute and now the philistines here that he's in the city of gaza with this prostitute so they think oh this is our chance this is our chance to trap samson so they lock down every single one of the gates in the city of gaza well samson wakes up in the middle of the night and he goes down to the gate and it's then that the spirit of the lord comes upon samson and he rips the gate off not just the gate the posts and everything around the gate it would have weighed about 10 000 pounds he picks it up and the bible records that he carries it about 36 miles to the outskirts of hebron we are talking about somebody who is incredibly strong i mean we're talking about superhero strength and in the israelites mind man samson was their superhero he was bigger than life and you would think that with all of that samson would have learned his lesson but he doesn't you see samson never got his weakness in check he never got help for it he lived with a sore spot for women his whole entire life my question is what about you what's your weak spot what's something in your life that you know you shouldn't be doing but you still consistently go back to all the time samson never got this area in check and in fact shortly after this we find that he shacks up with a woman named delilah now we don't know much about delilah but we do probably think that she was a prostitute because of samson's checkered past so delilah as a prostitute has kind of brought samson in and the philistines hear about it so they go to delilah and they're like delilah if you can find out the secret of samson's strength we will pay you an exorbitant amount of money so delilah being all about money at this point is like well i'm going to get this out of sampson so she tries as hard as she could to get the secret of samson's strength and if you know the story samson messes with her for a while he's kind of toying with her and everything else but delilah's not giving up says in judges chapter 16 verse 16 this with such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death i mean don't you love that visual picture i mean here she is she just keeps going and going get going and going she will not stop and samson is like enough is enough samson's like i can't bear this any longer and being a really dumb guy he gives in here's what it says so he told her everything no razor has ever been used on my head he said because i have been a nazirite set apart to god since birth if my head were shaved my strength would leave me and i would become as weak as any other man sampson gives up that last thing that he had left so delilah goes and she tells the philistines the secret of samson's strength the philistines come in that night and they shave samson's head and then they wake him up they say samson the philistines are upon you and i'm sure when samson woke up he thought it's going to be okay he thought that the strength of the lord was going to come back to him he's thinking i am god's messenger i'm special god wouldn't leave me in this situation i'm going to get out of this situation just like every time before but the strength of god had left him you see that's where we arrive as well with the consequences of our own sin empty alone and powerless we're truly left holding the bag and that's where samson is at he has to bear the consequences of all those bad decisions that he had made so what is it that the philistines do they take him the philistines sees him they gouged out his eyes and took him down to gaza binding him with bronze shackles they set him to grinding in the prison so the philistines take samson and they gouge out his eyes they make him blind so even if the strength of god came upon him again he couldn't do anything with it because he couldn't see anything they take him and they put him in bronze shackles and they attach him to a millstone so that he could grind grain for them in the prison now don't miss this because the work that samson was doing was the work that a donkey would usually do the philistines wanted to get sampson back the philistines wanted to say hey you thought you could make a donkey of us now we're going to make a donkey of you so here's samson in that prison cell and he is grinding grain he's walking around his freedom has been taken from him his sight is gone and all he can do is think all he can do is think about all the bad decisions that he had made not only was he in a physical prison but he was in a mental prison locked down by his own regrets he's sitting there thinking about all the wrong things that he had done and to make matters worse the philistines they throw a big party they throw a big party to celebrate in the temple of dagon now dagon was one of the gods that they worshipped and dagon was a merman so weird but he was half man up top and half fish down below we're not thinking the little mermaid here this guy was grotesque and terrible as an idol and a god that they worshipped so to celebrate they throw this big party in the temple of dagon and over 3 000 men and women are gathered on top of the roof of the temple now that's just the people who are on top of the roof there would have been many more down below to celebrate this great victory and they were celebrating and saying a few different things to the jewish people here's what they were saying first they were saying our god is better than your god you think that your god is great that yahweh that you worship the god of the jewish people he's nothing our murman is much better than your god that's exactly what they were saying then they're saying your champion is weak that guy that you lifted up your superhero do you know what he's doing right now he is grinding grain in our prison we have made him weak he has no eyes he has no way to fight us back there's no chance that you're going to escape this then they were also saying we are celebrating your defeat now nobody ever likes a sore winner somebody who gloats over another person and that's exactly what the philistines are doing in this moment and to make matters worse they begin to sing a song they say our god has delivered our enemy into our hands the one who laid waste our land and multiplied our slain while they were in high spirits that means very drunk folks they shouted bring out samson to entertain us so they called samson out of the prison and he performed for them when they stood him among the pillars so here is how bad the situation is they take samson out they chain him to those pillars and they force him to perform for them in that moment and folks if the story ended here it would be nothing but a tragedy but the story doesn't end there and i love that the story goes on there's a little verse in the bible that says his hair begins to grow that hair that symbol of his covenant begins to come back here's what the bible says but the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved that symbol of his commitment to god begins to come back then he begins to return to the lord he turns back to god he realizes what a mess he has made of his own life and he says enough is enough i'm returning to the lord and he prays it says then samson prayed to the lord o sovereign lord remember me what's he doing he realizes that he's made a mess of his own life so he's now actively turning back to god and then he asks god for strength he says god give me that strength one more time god help me out and so he prays this prayer it says oh god please strengthen me just once more and let me with one blow get revenge on the philistines for my two eyes so he prays to the lord and he says god i know i've made a mess of all this but would you please give me strength one more time and so with that prayer god pours out his spirit once again and samson takes his two arms that are pressed against the pillars of the temple and he knocks the temple down and with one blow he kills more philistines than his whole entire lifetime the jewish people were liberated from those oppressors the philistines and the people were once again free and once again the very name of god was defended what is god saying god's reminding the people that there is one god of the universe that he reigns on his throne and he will have the last word that's what our god was saying so as i look at this story i still wrestle with why is samson on this list i mean with all that he did and even at the end he gave his life so that others could live but why is he really on this list here's why i think that god put him on the list number one because god has a heart for sinners see god loves people who are messed up samson has to be one of the worst of sinners on the whole entire list and i believe god put him on the list so that you and i would know how much he cares about sinners and he wants nothing more than for people to turn away from that empty life that empty life that they used to live that they would turn to him and they would find the peace and the hope that we have inside of god i find also that god's plan will always prevail now whether you're inside of church or whether you're outside of church you may not believe in god altogether you may thumb your nose up at god's standards and you say oh that's not for me well let me let you know this that that end is always met with destruction every single person will find that man when they live a life of sin it is unfulfilling but god had another plan god sent his son jesus to die on behalf of every wrong thing that you and i have ever done and he sent jesus to set us free from our sins so now we as broken people can come to him and we can find freedom then i find this this is why he's on the list because god turns our weakness into strength you see god can take that area of your weakness that greatest area of sin and he could turn it around for good he can use you for great things i love what it says in second corinthians chapter 12 verse number nine he says but he said to me my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in your weakness therefore i will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that christ's power may rest on me you see that passage of scripture is so important because god isn't looking for people who are arrogant god isn't looking for people who are proud he's looking for people who understand that we're all broken that we're all sinners in need of a savior and that's the type of people that god can use that's the type of people that god says i'll take you in all of your weakness and i'm going to use you for greater things and that's the power of god at work that he can change lives and i can tell you at sagebrush that god is in the business of changing lives i've seen people who are addicted [Applause] i've seen people who are addicted who have been set free and now god is using their past to help other people you see when we're weak that's when god is so strong so today before us all is an easy way in a hard way the easy way is living according to the standards that we have in the bible that's where true life is it's not always easy per se but i believe that god helps us along on our journey the hard way is exactly what samson lived it he chose to live not according to god's standards his own way and he only ended up empty alone and holding the bag so today we all have a choice will we choose the easy way the way that lives in alignment with god's standards or well we chose to go the path of the evil one where we're left empty alone and holding the bag the choice is yours friend let's pray together god thank you for this message god you know how hard this message is even for me to preach because you know how i fall short and how i struggle to live up to your perfect standards but in light of that god i thank you for jesus jesus who paid the price for all the wrong things that i've ever done and he not only paid the price for me but he paid the price for all my friends who are here today with us whether in person online or on tv and god i pray for the ones who are watching this or here with us who don't know you that god today might be the day that they stop trying to live their own way today would be the day that they choose that easy way of following you instead of the hard way that only leads to the path of regret i pray right now even in this moment that people would have the courage to make decisions i ask this in jesus name amen

Channel: Sagebrush Church

Views: 370

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: daily devotions, christianity, bible study, church social media, pastor, social media pastor, youtube pastor, sagebrush, sagebrush church, Albuquerque church, New Mexico church, todd cook, pastor todd

Id: 8ZNFAnBFnEU

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021