Sunday School, Samson and Delilah - The Judge with Poor Judgement

Father God. We just thank you, we love you and

appreciate that we have this opportunity to come here gathered

in your name, with ac and your word. And so

we just asked that as we open it, that you

would be glorified, that your word would not return void

as it goes out, work out, but that it would

produce in us the fruit of righteousness, and that Lord,

you would draw us to yourself, if we do not

know you, if we are far off from you, Lord God,

that you would call us home. And so we thank you. Lord.

We just asked you we'd use this time to your

glory Jesus name. Everyone said, amen, all right, now kind

of have a question to start. Is anyone here a

fan of history? Okay, awesome, there we go. That's fine,

that's totally okay. And well my question is, I don't

want you to say it out loud, but does anyone

know what happened on April fifteenth, nineteen twelve? You do? Yeah? Okay,

does anyone think that they know? Maybe you don't have

to say it, but maybe I'll give you a little

you just take credit for it. Well. On April fifteenth,

nineteen twelve, on its maiden voyage, across the Atlantic. The Titanic,

nicknamed the Unsinkable Ship, struck an iceberg in the early

mornings or early hours of the morning, and within three

hours was fully submerged, sinking to the depths of the icy,

cold ocean, and it was consequently ending the lives of

over fifteen hundred people. This magnificent ship, nicknamed with pride

the Unsinkable Ship, within only five days of leaving shore

had sunk. And much like the Bible story, we're gonna

actually be looking at today. Even though this incredible marvel

had the appearance and strength of an invincible force, its

incredible strength didn't matter when it had blind spots and

weaknesses that were left unchecked. And so today in our text,

we're actually be looking at the strongest man in the Bible.

We're gonna see the strongest man in the Bible fall

because of the unchecked sin in his life. So, if

you're taking notes, today's message is titled Samson and Thelilah

the Judge with poor Judgment. Now, if today is your

first time joining us, we've been in a series called

Sunday School where we've been going through some of the

most popular, some of the most famous Bible stories contained

in the Old Testament, and we've been re looking at

some of these stories that if you grew up in

church you should be pretty familiar with. But as you

might know that when we learn them as children, sometimes

those rough parts of the story, those more edgy parts

of the story get kind of smoothed out or left out.

And so what we want to are doing through the

series is we're going back and examining these stories to

take them in fully so we can truly understand what

these stories are meant to teach us. Now, we're gonna

be looking at a very popular story in the Old Testament,

and that is the story of Samson. And the story

of Samson is found in the Book of Judges. And

so actually, if you want to turn there with me now,

and if you do not have a Bible, please go

grab when we have them out on the desk available

for you. But we're going to be in Judges, and

we're gonna be the story of Samson actually starts in

Judges chapter fourteen, but will primarily be spending most of

our time in chapter sixteen. Now, the Book of Judges

as an entire book is kind of a dark time

in the history of Israel, God's people. The beginning of

the book starts with Israel's failure to obey God to

completely drive out the wicked inhabitants of the land God

had given them. And now the result of that we

see Israel start to become like the pagan nations around them,

worshiping other gods. So then basically the entire book has

a very similar a similar repetition to it as it

descends darker and darker into madness, and that is that

God's people do what is evil in his sight, God

gives him over into the hands of their enemies. Things

get really bad. The people eventually cry out to God

for help. God raises up a judge who's kind of

like a savior or someone who would help deliver them

from their oppressors, and then everything's good until it's not,

in which case people start doing whatever they want to

do again and God's like, what the heck and starts

to deal with it all over again. So this happens

over and over again. It's a dark time of rebellion

in Israel's history because they continued to do what was

right in their own eyes, which just so happened to

be what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.

So finally in the Book of Judges, we get to

the last judge of Israel, Samson. And now Samson is

an interesting case because when the story starts, it actually

feels very very hopeful. Once again, the people of Israel

did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord,

and so the Lord gave them into the hand of

their enemy, the Philistines for forty years. But an angel

comes to a barren woman and tells her that even

though she has never had any children, that she was

going to conceive and bearrass Son, and this son was

to be set apart from birth by taking a Nazarite vow,

and a Nazarite vow just for context, it's kind of interesting.

It's something that it's like a vow that someone would

normally take and it would be for set time and

then it would be over. But what's interesting about Samson's

case is that he was to be a Nazarite from birth,

so all the days of his life he was to

be a Nazarite, which also had some kind of things

to go along with it, which meant, if you're going

to be a Nazarite set apart for God to have

this vow you would never cut your hair, you would

never drink any alcohol or eat anything unclean. And the

result of this for this young man was that God

was going to use him to begin to deliver the

people of Israel from their enemy, the Philistines. So the

child is born and named Samson, and it tells us

that the boy grew and the Lord blessed him. So

we're doing pretty good. So far things sound all right,

where nothing about this sounds too bad. But then we

actually read the story of Samson, we start to notice

two things. First, incredibly, the Lord had given Samson supernatural

strength to do incredible Some of the things include he

killed a young lion with his bare hands. He struck

down over a thousand Philistines with just the job on

of a donkey. He carried the gates of or the

gates of a city and put it on top of

the hill, like it's just crazy stuff. He's like the

Hercules of the Bible, but real. So we see these

incredible feats. We also see that Samson is a judge

with poor judgment. That Samson, like the reflection of the

people of Israel in his day, seemed to do what

was right in his own eyes, which led him into

all kinds of trouble. The Lord still used him and

worked through Samson's poor choices to inflict the enemies of Israel.

But when we look at the story of Samson up close,

it's very interesting because we actually see very little example

to follow, and if anything, more of a cautionary tale

to heed, because though God had set him apart to

be a savior to Israel, we see that he is

just like Israel, doing what was right in his own eyes.

For example, he sees a Philistine woman and the people

who are oppressing the Israelites at the time, and he

tells his parents, she's right in my eyes, go get

her for me. I want her. This was against God's

command to his people, telling them not to marry into

the pagan nations lest their wives turn their hearts to

other gods. We see him eat unclean food and even

give them to his parents by specifically eating honey that

he finds in the dead carcass of the lion that

he killed. And then when it says he gave them

to his parents a set and he didn't tell them

where it came from, which makes sense because he would

have gotten in a lot of trouble. He also ends

up seeing a prostitute and sleeps with her. So Samson

was physically strong, but he's morally weak. And today, in

Samson's story, we're going to learn that your strength can't

save you from your sin. Your strength can't save you

from your sin. And today we're going to look at

the last portion of Samson's life. I'd encourage you to

go read the whole thing, but we're gonna be able

to get a good snapshot of kind of what Samson

is all about in this story. So, as we said,

Samson's story is a caution to heat and more than

an example to follow. His example is a bad example,

one that we can look at and Lord willing, we

will learn from, because I believe as we look at

Samson's story, we're going to realize that we really aren't

that different from him, because we also often try to

rely on our own strength to save ourselves and get

us through all the while neglecting the sin in our

life that is trying to destroy us. So we're actually

going to see four things today as we're walking through

this text that I think will be helpful for us

and also applicable. The first thing that we're going to

see is the craftiness of our sin. We're going to

see the carelesses or our carelessness with sin. We're going

to see the consequences of our sin and the crushing

of our sin. So let's start with the first part

of the text we see, and if you're taking notes,

you can write the craftiness of our sin, and we're

going to be starting in verse four of chapter sixteen

says after this, he loved a woman in the valley

of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And this is a

different Delilah than that famous plain white tea song, although

it would be fitting. It is kind of a fitting

love song. Once again, Samson finds another woman he is

interested in, and it says that he loves her. But

the text goes on verse five and the lords of

the Philissines came up to her and said to her,

seduce him, and see where his great strength lies, and

by what means we may overpower him, that we may

bind him to humble him. And we will each give

you eleven hundred pieces of silver. So Delilah said to Samson,

please tell me where your great strength lies and how

you might be bound that one could subdue you. So

the Philiossines come to Delilah and employ her to find

out Samson's weakness. What we see here is that the

Philissines are no match for Sampson's brute strength, and so

what do they do? Start looking for weakness? And if

Samson had any weakness, it was definitely his poor judgment

with women. We see this because this is not the

only time that his lover was willing to sell him out.

His Philistine wife that we mentioned before, had sold him

out to her people by giving them the answer to

a riddle that he had put forth to him as

the whole thing, you should go read it from chapter fifteen,

I believe. So she tells him tells them the secret

answer to the riddle, and that whole fiasco ended with

his wife and his father in law being killed by

the Philistines, leading to more conflict between Samson and the Philistines.

Like basically, everything ended up leaving him to have confrontation

with the Philistines. The Philistines know that they can't go

toe to toe with Samson's strength, so instead they use

his weakness to find out the source of his strength.

Samson liked how these women looked on the outside, but

he did not care about what was on the inside.

And as Proverbs thirty one thirty says, charm is deceitful

and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the

Lord is to be praised. And he definitely could have

used that in this situation, someone who is rooting for

him rather than ready to sell him out. So Deliah

starts to ask him honestly, which feels like kind of

like a huge red flag of a question. I mean,

if you're being honest, She's like, where is your strength

come from? And how could someone like capture you? You

know what I mean? Like that feels kind of like

a that's a suss question to be asking. She wants

to know the source of his strength and his weaknesses.

And this is exactly what sin looks for in our

own lives. This is why sin is so crafty. I

don't know if you've ever noticed that sin doesn't necessarily

strike where you're doing the best, but it usually finds

those areas that you're not doing too hot in. Maybe

sin isn't seeking to hit you where you're succeeding the most,

but instead he's trying to find some kind of backway in.

What's actually crazy going back to the Titanic is that

the Titanic was prepared for a crash on the bottom

of the Titanic. I gotta learn about the Titanic this week, guys. Uh.

At the bottom of the Titanic, it was reinforced just

in case it scraped the bottom. And on the front

it was reinforced just in case it crashed into anything.

It wouldn't sink the boat. But do you know where

the iceberg hit it? Not on the bottom, not on

the front. It hit it on the side, the one

place it wasn't prepared, the one place where it wasn't reinforced.

It didn't hit the parts prepared for a collision, but

where it wasn't prepared. And I believe that very often

the sin isn't going to come where we're strongest or

where we're most prepared for it, but where we're weakest

and where we're least prepared for it. Sin is sneaky,

and sin is so sneaky that it often tries to

get us to think that the sin around us is

more problematic than the sin that's inside of us. These

Philistines are trying to use the lust inside of Samson's

heart to compromise his strength and so be able to

bring him down. And I was actually thinking about it

today when I was going over my notes. How many

famous pastors, how many famous Christian leaders usually have fallen.

It wasn't because of something that really had to do

with their public ministry. Most of the time, it wasn't

some sideway something that went sideways with their successful ministry,

because their ministry was successful. Usually what brings them down

or discredits them later is the secret unaddressed undealt with

sin still in their life, and that ends up blowing

up everything else that they do have going. But it's

always because of the unaddressed sin in their life. So

do we pay close attention to the sin in our

own hearts? Do we pay attention to that? A lot

of us right now might be deceived into thinking that

our biggest problems are the things outside of us. Then

with the wickedness of our own hearts. If you think

our biggest problem is what's out there rather than what's

in here, well that's the sin of pride. Most of

us don't realize just how sinful our hearts truly are,

and honestly what's worse is most of the time we're

able to excuse our sin because of those sinning around us.

Sin is crafty, and if we leave it unchecked in

our life, it will run rampant and start working to

undermine the areas we are doing well in. But the

text goes on, which leads me to my next point,

our carelessness with we see this in verse seven, Samson

said to her, Remember she just asked him, where's your

strength come from? Samson said to her, If they bind

me with seven fresh bow strings that have not been dried,

then I shall become weak and be like any other man.

Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her

seven fresh bow strings that had never been dried, and

she bound him with them. Now she had men lying

in ambush in an inner chamber, and she said to him,

the Philissines are upon you, Samson. But he snapped the

bow strings as a thread of flax snaps when it

touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was

not known, Samson, what kind of game are you playing here?

Look at the pride of Samson. Samson, against all better judgment,

even gives her an answer. It was a lie. But

he He still answers her and goes along with it.

She asks for a secret, He tells her a lie.

She binds him, The Philistines show up, he breaks free,

the secret is kept safe. Samson looks awesome, and Delilah

is big Matt and she you know what's even crazier

is this happens two more times. This happens two more times.

She's like, you're mocking me. Why are you doing this?

Tell me what the real secret is. And he's like, fine,

actually you have to buy and like she'll give some

other crazy random thing, and then she's like, they're here,

and he breaks free. He does it two more times,

and Delilah accuses Samson of mocking her and lying to her,

which he is, and then she proceeds to ask him

again for the truth. He lies again, She binds it

me again, he frees him again, or he breaks free

again and rints repeat. So Samson, here in his pride,

is out here playing games just straight up, and he's

sleeping with the enemy like everything that. He's just like

he's doing whatever he wants and he's kind of getting

away with it. He feels confident in his strength and

is being careless against the better judgment that should clearly

show that Delilah is trying to trap him once again.

As I was thinking about this today, like we really

have two options when we look at this story. He

was either kind of like I don't I don't know

if I don't want to be rude and say like

meathead or something like that, but I kind of just

said it anyways, like he's either just kind of like

a big, kind of strong dummy who doesn't see what

she's doing, or worse, he's kind of even a bigger

dummy who's strong, who does know what she's doing and

doesn't care. And I think we could point and laugh

or scoff at Sampson, But how many of us do

the same exact thing with our sin. We have our

pet sins or our sins that we love, and so

we put up with them and tolerate them, even though

they're trying to destroy us. Our sins are literally trying

to kill us, and yet we still keep them around.

We toy with them, and we see how much we

can get away with, how much can we toe the

line and still get away with it, each time, growing

more confident in our ability to tolerate sin, But just

like we see how foolish Sampson is being, how do

we not our call that out and ourselves when we're

doing the same exact things. We two are foolish when

we play games with our sins and temptations. We know

what they want, we know what our lust wants, but

yet we will watch shows that feed that lust. We

know what our greed wants. But how much do we

just keep on making excuses to keep a little bit

more for myself? Instead of resisting our temptations, we play

games with them, We toe the line until we inevitably fall.

We like Samson, are way too careless about our sins,

and most of the time they aren't as hidden to

us as we like to think. Right, I think sometimes

we're just like I don't know, I don't know what

I'm going through, I don't know what I'm struggling with.

But I think most of the time we do know

what they are, and we know what they're trying to do.

But we still love them and keep them around. Even

though we've been called out of darkness and into light.

Our flesh loves it, and as believers, we just keep

on telling the spirit like, hey, Thom's be quiet about it.

That's fine. Stop sounding the alarms. No, it's okay, this

is all right. The spirit's like, this is not fun,

this is not okay. We need to deal with this.

But I think we need to remember that the thing

that we love it does doesn't love us. It doesn't

love us. It's using us. It's trying to kill us.

Not to mention, it just keeps us from walking by

this spirit and glorying or glorifying God. The way that

we ought, which my wife actually pointed out to me

when I was going over this with her, is like

Frodo in the Ring. She pointed out that the point

was for him to destroy it, Yet as he gets

closer to destroying it, he begins to love it more,

even though it's taking over his life and using him.

And I have to say props to Jesus for giving

me a wife who quotes Lord of the Rings to

me to help me with my servant prep. But if

we're careless with our sin, it's only a matter of

time before we're fully caught up in it. Like as sinners,

as people, I think we know that that we can

go for so long in our sin until it's it's

too much. We fed the lion when it was a baby,

and then it eats us one day, which is what

we see next in the text. So if you're taking notes,

you can write the consequences of our sin. She said

to him, how can you say I love you when

your heart is not with me? Now, I just gotta

stop and say that totally sounds like the conversation that

would be had. How can you say you love me

and your heart's not with me. He's tricked her three

times thus far. You've mocked me these three times, and

you've told you've not told me where your great strength lies.

And when she pressed him hard with her words day

after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.

She literally pestered him and annoyed him to the point

of breaking. And he told her all his heart and

said to her, a razor has never come upon my head,

for I have been a Nazarite to God from my

mother's roomb. If my head is shaved, then my strength

will leave me and I shall become weak and be

like any other man. Sampson finally caves. He finally gives in.

After guilt trips and persistent pressing, he gives in. Samson

was physically strong, but his moral character, his integrity, his

internal fortitude were clearly weak. By the way, this is

what happened with his Philistine wife, how she got the

answer to the riddle out of him too. He didn't

want to tell her, and then she was like, no,

tell me, and it went on until he finally caved.

This is a part of who he is. But we

know how persistent sin is. Even when we beat it yesterday,

we know that it will still be there tomorrow, beckoning again.

I think that a reason that it's gonna it's there

tomorrow is because we're still careless with it, refusing to

fully give it up. If I don't get rid of it, well, yeah,

it's still gonna be here tomorrow. We keep it in

our back pocket just in case. Rather than putting it

to death and bearing it with our old self, Samson

stayed with the backstabbing Delilah, and she pressed him until

he caved and finally gave away the source of his strength.

And this was Samson's downfall because right after this, Samson

sees that he she broke him clearly takes the answer,

runs to the Philistines, and she's like this time, I

got him. We're good this time. So then she goes

back to Samson, makes him fall asleep on her lap,

and has his hair cut. We see this in the

next part of our text, verse nineteen. She made him

sleep on her knees, and she called a man and

had him shave off the seven locks of his head,

which is also kind of cool. She not that she

shaved it, but that he had seven locks. You know,

it seems kind of hardcore. Then she began to torment him,

and his strength left him, and she said, the Philistines

are upon you, Samson, And he awoke from his sleep

and said, get this. Listen to this, pay very close

attention to this. Right now, he says, I will go

out as at other times and shake myself free. But

he did not know that the lord had left him.

And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes

and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with

bronze shackles, and he ground at the mill in the prison.

But the hair of his head began to grow again

after it had been shaved. Delilah did not love him.

She sold him out. Samson, in his pride thought even

with his haircut, he could still do what he had

done before, But in his pride and arrogance, Samson lost

sight and so literally ended up losing his sight. He

tried to rely on his own strength and went out

to fight like all the other times, but didn't even

realize the Lord was no longer with him. He got

full of himself, and it ended in Samson's being blinded, captured,

and humiliated. She's exactly the result of our sin. It

leaves us blind, captured, humiliated, filled with shame, and even

more than that, it ultimately leads to our death, as

James tells us in James One fourteen through fifteen. But

each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed

by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived,

gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown,

brings forth death. Samson is a tragic tale that shows

us that even if you are strong in certain areas,

it doesn't make up for being weak towards sin. If

you are physically strong, or even successful, as the world

defines it in this life, but are morally weak, your

fall is inevitable. I think that many of us feel

secure in our strengths, and because of that, we allow

ourselves to be vulnerable to our sins and weaknesses. But

those sins, left unchecked, left undealt with, they will ultimately

subvert our strengths and the rest of our lives. Because

sin doesn't want some of you, it wants all of you.

Just like James told us, sin isn't something that is

an out there problem. It's an in here problem. And

I think we all kind of know that because I

think a lot of us might know people. Just think

about yourself, don't think about the other people. We might

know people who no matter where they go, there's always

a problem. Right If I'm not content in here, it

doesn't matter where I go. If I don't deal with

the lust that's in here, it doesn't matter where I'm

gonna go. Our sin that is undealt with is going

to go with us everywhere that we go. Our hearts

are sinful and wicked, and I I think we just

excuse ourselves too much. We give ourself excuses because the

clothes that other people wear may not help our lust.

But first and foremost, that's a problem that is starting

with us. The crew, joking, unwholesome speech that other use

around us. It definitely is not gonna help us. But

if we give in, that isn't on them, that's on

us and famous Piritsan preacher once said, be killing sin,

or it will be killing you. And that doesn't mean

I think this needs to be clarified. That doesn't mean

that we pick up the sword and start hacking everyone

around us. We're like, because you're the sin in my life,

you're the problem. But that's how we treat it. But

we need to pick up the sword of the spirit,

which is God's word, and go to town on the

sin still in our hearts. We need to let the

word of God expose the sin in our hearts and

start to root it out of us, as Hebrew four

twelve says, for the Word of God is living an

active sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the

division of soul and spirit of joint sin of marrow,

and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So

once we expose that sin by his word, we need

to kill that sin by his word, which leads us

to the last portion of our text. And if you're

taking notes, you can write the crushing of our sin,

and I need the band to come up please, So

believe it or not, that was not the end of

Samson's story. The Philissines are very haigh that this troublemaker

is finally caught, is finally vanquished, is finally dealt with.

And so what they do is they decide to throw

a giant party. They're going to throw a party to

their false god, thanking him for victory over Samson. And

while everyone is partying, they decided it would be really

great to bring Samson to the party so that he

can entertain them, that they can parade him around and

enjoy looking on the person that used to cause so

much trouble, now defeated, blind, humiliated, right in front of them.

So they bring him out and put him between two pillars.

And so Samson, now blind, weak and humiliated, has his

enemies celebrating around him. He asks the young man who

had to lead him by the hand to let him

feel the pillars so that he could lean on them.

And the text actually tells us that the lords of

the Philistines were there and on the roof were over

three thousand men and women. This is a party. It

was a big party. It was a big deal, and

then we see something incredible. Samson cries out to God.

Samson cries out to God. Verse twenty eight says, then

Samson called to the Lord and said, Oh Lord, God,

please remember me, and please strengthen me. Only this once,

Oh God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines

from my two eyes. And Samson grasped the two middle

pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his

weight against them, his right hand on the one and

his left hand on the other. And Samson said, let

me die with the Philistines. Then he bowed with his

or with all his strength, and the house fell upon

the lords and upon all the people who were in it.

So the dead whom he killed at his death were

more than those whom he had killed during his life.

Samson cries out to God one last time for strength,

and Samson, fulfilling what God had said that he would do,

crushes his enemies, strikes this devastating blow to the Philistines. Samson,

much like Israel at the time, started off strong, but

as time went on, he got more sidetracked and fell away,

until at the bottom, when he was weak and humiliated,

he cries out to God for rest thank you, and

God answers him. It's beautiful to see him cry out

to God, showing his faith in God to answer and

still be mindful of him. He could have discredited himself

and just be like, this is my lie. I guess

this is what I get. But he still knows is God,

even after just living such a reckless life, And in

this moment he realizes he can call out to him,

and he does so, and God is mindful of him

and answers his prayer. And with that, Samson, the sinful Savior,

one last time, though it would cost him his life,

defeats Israel's enemies. In the end, Samson gave his life

to defeat the enemies of Israel. Samson had victory in

his death. But for us and our sin, how do

we have victory over our enemy? How do we have

victory over our sin? Because I believe many of us

are just like Israel, just like Samson, doing what's right

in our own eyes, leading us away from God, having

the consequences of our sin come to light, and then

we turn and cry out to God again. This isn't

just a pattern for Israel, but it's a pattern for

all of us. Every single one of us falls short,

we sin, we turn away, and after other things, the

sin within us is still occupying rooms in our heart.

Though many of us have tried in our own strength

to root out the sin in our own life, it

never does any good and usually comes back with a vengeance,

and we try and white knuckle our way through. We try,

through our good works to outwork our sin. We try,

through our own strength and success to outweigh or ignore

the areas where we're weak and failing. Yet sin still

lives on in our hearts. The problem is still there.

We start to wash the outside of the cup while

we rot on the inside. We think, if we do

enough good, or let everyone see our strength, or maybe

even let others benefit from our strength, that we have

an excuse for our sin. But we too are like

Samson and Israel. Our fall is inevitable. Our strength is

too weak, our good works are too sin stained. We

need something more than our own strength can provide, and

we need something more than we even have to offer

when it comes to us and our sin. We've already

and concluded that our strength can't save us from our sin.

But just like Samson, just like Israel, when things get dark,

when the sin rages on, we too can cry out

to God for help. We too can cry out to

God for strength, and we can find salvation from our

enemy because of what God has done in Christ. Jesus,

our Lord, that, just like Samson, though sinful, was a

miracle baby blessed by God to save his people, but

then was betrayed for pieces of silver and was ultimately

captured and humiliated by his enemies, he would still have

final victory over them through his death. So to Jesus,

the Messiah, the sinless Savior, the miracle baby born of

a virgin, sent to save his people. He was betrayed

for pieces of silver and ultimately humiliated, mocked, and killed

by his enemies. But it was through his death that

Jesus accomplished an even greater victory than Samson. Because Jesus

defeated the greatest enemy of us all and that is

our sin that leads to death. Through Jesus's death, he

made the only way for sinful man to be made

righteous before our Holy God. Jesus crushed our enemy sin

by being crushed in our place, pierced for our iniquities,

that the sin within us that is trying to kill us.

Jesus put to death by dying on the cross. We

see this in One Peter three eighteen. It says, for

Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God. Being put to

death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit,

Jesus is the only one who can save us from

the ultimate consequence of our sin. Sin brings death, but

Jesus has conquered death by his own death. Jesus takes

our sin on himself and the cross and dies on

our place and gives us his perfect righteousness, so that

when God the Father looks at us, he doesn't see

our sin stained wretched hearts. He sees us. He looks

at us, and he sees Christ and his perfect righteousness.

It's beautiful, and now we can crush the sin within

us because it no longer has power over us. When

we believe in Christ, we have been set free from sin.

So now when we choose the sin, we're just going

back to something that Jesus has already set us free from.

But as Christ died for our sins, we need to

die to our sins. As Romans tells us in Romans

six six. It says, we know that our old self

was crucified with him in order that the body of

sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would

no longer be enslaved to sin. Actually, fast forward a

little bit to verse twelve says, let not sin, therefore

reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness,

but present yourselves to God as those who have been

brought from death to life, and your members to God

as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion

over you, since you were not under law but under grace.

As I said earlier, when the Titanic hit the Iceberg,

it didn't get hit where it was prepared to be hit.

It was hit in a location where it wasn't prepared

for it, and so it sank. Something that's interesting is

that because now that they know where it was hit,

boats are now reinforced all the way around. They are

now prepared for collisions in any direction. Learning what they

can from what happened to the Titanic has actually helped

better equip large boats now to make sure that that

doesn't ever happen again. And I believe that the story

of Samson serves the same purpose for us. That when

we look at the downfall of Samson and consider how

he let single unchecked in his life and how it

stripped him of everything, believe we can learn from that.

It's a caution to heed. Please don't fall his example.

I believe if any of us right now are trying

to rely on our own strength to save us, we

two will be sorely mistaken. We cannot let the things

that we do well be the excuses for the other

things that we do not do well. Just because we

have the most perfect attendance and serve every Sunday doesn't

mean we get to be harsh with our wife. Just

because you serve at church, you serve your family. It

doesn't mean that you don't have to submit to your husband.

Just because you give generously doesn't mean you get to

look at pornography. Just because you make sure to love

your family well and try to make the most of

the years that you have left doesn't mean you get

to neglect your church. You don't get to neglect serving

and giving and being a part of the mission that's

going on. Just because you don't get drunk anymore, doesn't

mean you get to smoke weed. What I'm trying to

say is just because you obey God in one area

doesn't give you free reign to disobey him in another.

It should be an obvious thing, but we just like

sin is sneaky. Once again, when we go back to

our hearts, I can go like, well, I'm doing really

good over here, and so why don't I just focus

on that? We can ignore everything else going on over here.

The problem is that your strengths won't save you from

your sin. You cannot rely on them. And I believe

it's God's Church and individual believers. Until we address the

unaddressed sins in our life and start to walk in

the truth and light that He's called us to, we're

hurting our witness and our effectiveness for the good things

and good works that the Lord has in store for us.

We need to start crushing our sin and doing so

by the strength that the Lord provides through Jesus, through

his spirit, and through the promises found in his word.

Because our biggest problem isn't what's outside of us, but

what's inside of us. And I pray and hope today

that as we look at the story of Samson, that

we take heed of a cautionary tale, that we would

see our own strength can't save us from our sin.

But as we look at the story of this sinful savior, Samson,

that we would be reminded of our need for the

perfect and sinless savior, Jesus Christ, which is the only

way to truly put our sin to death and be

set free from our sin that so easily entangles And

I pray today that you would walk out of here,

and walking out of here today, that you would start

to take sin seriously in your life, knowing it's trying

to kill you, that you would no longer fall for

its craftiness. They would no longer be careless with your sin,

but that instead you would be set free because of

what Jesus Christ has done and how he frees us

from the ultimate consequence of your sin by putting your

faith in him and trusting in Jesus and his sacrificial

death on your behalf, so that you can be found

righteous and be made reconciled to God the Father. No

longer blind, no longer enslaved, no longer filled with shame

because of your sin, but instead now seeing and being

set free because of the grace and strength provided for

you in Christ Jesus, and because of that hope that

would know that it would cause you to put to

death and crush the sin in your life that you've

let go unchecked for so long. Your strength won't save

you from your sin, but Jesus can, and so let's

not let the sin in our heart go on any longer. Amen,

All right? Would you please stand to your feet