Samson Dies Again - The State of Our Current Celebrity Culture

Today I want you to turn, if you don't mind, to Judges chapter 16 with me.

Judges 16 · chapter mention

Judges chapter 16, verse 23.

Judges 16:23

I'm going to ask you to stand in just a second in reverence to the word of God.

Is that all right?

And we're going to read several passages.

I'm going to read, and you can read along quietly with us.

And I believe this is going to minister directly to your heart, something the Lord has really been dealing with me on.

And I believe some of the things you're involved in here at Gateway are a direct answer to the proposition and what we're going to give you today through the scriptures.

If you found Judges chapter 16, verse 23, would you please stand?

Judges 16:23

Hallelujah.

Amen.

So I'm going to read, and you just kind of look along if you don't mind.

The word of the Lord in the book of Judges is, then the lords of the Philistines gathered together, them together, for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their God, and to rejoice, for they said, Our God hath delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hand.

And when the people saw him, they praised their God, for they said, Our God hath delivered into our hands our enemy and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.

And it came to pass when their hearts were merry, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport.

And they called for Samson out of the prison house, and he made them sport, and they set him between the pillars.

And Samson said unto the land that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them.

Now the house was full of men and women, and the lords of the Philistines were there, and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women that beheld while Samson made sport.

And Samson called unto the Lord and said, Oh Lord God, remember, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once.

O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, on the one with his right hand, and on the other with his left.

And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines.

And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the Lord's and upon all the people that were therein.

So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.

Then his brethren and all the house of his father came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zora and Eshteal in the burying place of Manoah his father, and he judged Israel twenty years.

May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of his word, and may you be seated today.

Today we're going to talk about a very simple, but I believe prophetic theme.

The title of our message today is Samson Dies Again.

Samson dies again.

Recently I was watching a great event on television.

I was watching the Whitney Houston funeral services.

And it was about four and a half hours long.

Anybody see that funeral?

Anyone here?

How many did not see it?

That was most of us did not see it.

So I've got the privilege of maybe introducing it to you.

The funeral was interesting in that uh Bishop T.D.

Jakes as well as uh Marvin Wynage made the declaration in that particular service that America was coming to church.

Literally, several major um news networks suspended their normal programming and played the funeral.

Also, my daughter and I were at my house, young adult daughter, uh, and we were watching on the internet.

And on the internet, they were logging on how many people were coming online to watch the funeral, right?

They got up to nearly a million people on just the outlet that I was watching on.

So it was a huge media event, literally all around the world.

And upon the end of the funeral, folks went out and they started buying up old music from Whitney, and the movies were out there going for sale, and it was an amazing thing that happened.

And there's an announcement that there is going to come out in this August a movie called Sparkle.

This is going to feature her life, and it's going to be much more kind of a story similar to her life, but talks about someone coming home to God and rededicating their lives to the Lord.

And so I believe that Whitney Houston was someone like Samson, who was called by God and anointed by God, ultimately to be a deliverer of her people, to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But like Samson, she veered away in the center of her life from her original moorings.

And because of her veering away, just like Samson, some tragic things happened to her, as did him.

But at the end, God's mercy is saying, I'm gonna let you do more damage to the kingdoms of darkness than you did during the rest of your life.

That would have been a great place for you to shout or clap or do something up in here.

Hallelujah! Praise God.

You say, well, why is this important?

Well, I believe that the funeral was a picture of what's going on in the American church, and not just the black church or the minority church or the uh the ethnic church in America, but the entire American church.

I believe that what we saw were people who wanted to in some way give glory and honor to God and also give tribute to Whitney, but in their doing so, they revealed their own spiritual state.

Does that make any sense to you?

And so as we were listening, we heard uh her mother talk about the fact that Whitney had had uh died and that a doorbell rang at her house and it rang repeatedly.

And she went to the door and tried to find out who was there, and then all of a sudden a strong wind came through and a door slammed shut, and she concluded that Whitney had come home to rest.

Where do you find that?

In your Bible.

It's really more folklore, if anything else.

Her bodyguard talked about the fact that during the time where she obviously was in the process of expiring, that he kept thinking about maybe I should go in, maybe I should do something and find out if she's all right.

He just had an inner sense that something was wrong.

But then later on he felt guilty about what had happened, and he said that Whitney's spirit had come to him and told him that she was at peace.

How many of the Bible is very clear that we're not supposed to communicate with the dead?

That Whitney's spirit did not come and talk to him.

And so what we have then is a picture of people who have religious intent but don't have religious grounding, that had a heart to honor a woman and honor her legacy and honor the God that she purported to serve, but really didn't know much about him.

One of the great problems in our nation today is that we have a religiosity that is not being backed up by real faithfulness in our day.

You say, why is that important?

Well, obviously, we are in a time of change in America.

Obviously, the nation is under pressure.

Would you agree with that?

And everybody except for Dallas and DC are experiencing a recession.

Isn't that right?

Come on, D.C.

is never gonna experience a recession.

You say, why, preacher?

Because we print the money, that's why.

No, nobody, we we never have a shortest.

Nobody's gonna miss anything in D.C.

Now, we may put the rest of y'all in debt, but in the process, but we're gonna keep printing the money.

But I believe that what God is doing in our generation is not about what happens in the political parties alone.

I've been an activist in that whole realm of the political realm and the moral realm.

But really, God is not dealing with American politics, he's dealing with the fact that the church needs to rise up and be the church.

Oh, come on, give the Lord glory in this place.

Hallelujah.

You say, What in the world do you mean?

God has always blessed America because he found the righteous remnant in the land.

God has always ordained his blessing to be upon the people who honored him, and the rest of the folk just got the overflow.

Some of y'all will get that on the way home.

Hallelujah.

No, no, no, no, no, that's really true.

How can you come to a country and the shores like the folks did down in Virginia, and they planted a cross and they said, We have discovered America.

Well, some of my relatives were Native Americans, and I want you to understand they knew that they were already here when he landed.

Are you with me?

He didn't discover America, but what he did was so important and powerful.

Those early folks, including the Puritans that came, they came to the shores of America and they dedicated themselves and their influence in the land to the purposes of God.

And so God transferred influence, grace, authority, and anointing to those who were dedicating themselves.

And God then gave them authority in the land.

Does this make any sense?

And this land has been blessed.

It's the greatest mission-sending country in the history of the world.

So many things about America are absolutely awesome because the God of glory has chosen to honor this great land in which a people honor him.

Come on in the house of God.

Wake up this morning.

Hallelujah.

So what's happening is God says, it's time for me to cut another covenant with y'all.

It's time for somebody to rededicate themselves to the true and living God.

It's time for the church to get out of the doldrums of being a place of compromise and confusion and come back to a place of clarity and authority and righteousness in the name of a living God.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.

So if you've got that understanding, let's look at Samson versus Whitney.

Let's think for a moment of the fact that, as I have already stated, both of them were anointed by God for unique delivering authority.

In other words, God gave them some abilities to do something that were not, some things that were not common in the land.

First, I think it's safe to say of Samson that he wasn't really fully discipled by his mom and dad.

One of the greatest problems in the American church is that we've got people who call themselves Christian, and as I earlier illustrated from the story of the funeral, they really don't know what being Christian really is all about.

Now, Samson was called to be a Nazarite, and the Nazarites had several rules.

They couldn't cut their hair.

You all know that, right?

And so at the end, when he finally told Delilah his secret, that his secret was in his hair, then there was a great tragedy when his hair was cut.

But do you know that Samson didn't even really understand the secret of his strength himself?

His strength was not in his hair.

The hair and the long hair was a sign of covenant with God.

His strength was in the anointing, the ability, and the authority that came from the true and the living God.

You missed a great point just to say, hallelujah, preacher, preach it.

That's right.

So since you're not gonna help me out, I'm gonna say preacher, preach it, all right?

I'll just say it myself.

Now, now, but this is very significant because Samson would not have understood what to do, how to move, unless his parents really gave him clarity and they trained him up in the way that he should go, then when he was old, he would not depart from it.

Y'all have heard that verse before, right?

And so they had kind of fuzzy understanding themselves.

In Judge chapter 14, if you were to look there, we don't have time for you to dwell on that.

But but his parents hear a grown man who is a judge of Israel say, Mom and Dad, I don't like the women of our group.

Go get me somebody from the Philistines to marry.

Sammy, that is a violation of the rules.

They did not say that.

They permissively just went along and said, Okay, okay, whatever you say, son.

They doted too much on their child.

You know, there's some people in America who have a great big problem.

You say, What's the problem?

They're trying to be their children's friend instead of their parents.

Come on now.

Let me help you out.

Your kid is never gonna like the fact that you make them do what's right, okay?

But if you do the right thing, later on, when they come out all right and realize that your diligence has helped them be spared from all kind of darkness and confusion, they'll love you for it.

Amen.

Hallelujah.

So Samson's parents were out trying to get him a Philistine woman.

Then Samson goes along and he kills a lion, and then he reaches into the lion.

Anyone ever read this?

And he takes out some honey, and he's sitting there eating this honey, and he gives some of the honey to his parents.

But one of the other tenets of the Nazarite vow is that you are never, ever supposed to touch the body or carcass of something that has died.

It actually contaminates you.

It breaks the flow of your consecration.

Your hair is a sign of a commitment to keep the rules, the like of which I'm declaring to you now.

Y'all still there with me?

Then he wound up in a place called the Valley of Sorek, where he met this woman called Delilah later on.

And the Valley of Sorek is famous for vineyards and wine growing, and the brother was not supposed to be hanging out with him, making and drinking wine.

Is that all right to say that?

So what happened?

Samson didn't wake up one morning and say, Hey, I feel a little tired, I think I'll backslide.

But rather, he slowly began to step over all the rules and the regulations of commitment and consecration, and he wound up one day in a bad place.

When they came in to get Samson, after he told Delilah where his strength came from, he thought, he suddenly got into a stance.

Literally, the scripture says he shook himself.

But it also is a phrase there that says, he wished not that the spirit had departed from him.

In other words, the anointing, the authority that made an average guy able to just tear out the gates of a city and do all kinds of things, it was gone.

You realize that for us and for Samson, that when we're really in the flow, God puts his super on your natural, and you can do things that other people cannot do in their own strength because the true and living God is with you.

Hallelujah.

So, how does this apply to Whitney Houston?

Whitney Houston wasn't discipled either.

She didn't know really how to walk with God.

She was never taught about the things of God.

The folks who taught her about singing never taught her about the God that she really was singing about.

Let me ask you a question.

How do you look at a three-year-old and a four-year-old and decide she's gonna be a star someday?

How do you do that?

How do you say, well, that singing of that four-year-old is so extremely extraordinary that I know someday she's gonna go all around the world, make all kinds of records.

I purport to you that you can't know that.

I purport to you that you see a modicum of a gift, but then you've got to discern the gift.

Then you've got to put some time in developing the gift.

Are you with me?

You gotta make sure that child goes to all these rehearsals.

How many know any 11 and 12-year-olds that want to be absolutely faithful of going when they could be outside playing and hanging around with their friends, they want to go to choir rehearsal?

I don't know, not narrow one like that.

Are you with me?

They'll always kind of lose focus, but her parents invested in discipling her into the art and the ability to learn how to sing.

They had a motive.

The church system she was in had a desire.

And unfortunately, there's more attention put upon the gift than upon the person who had the gift.

And manner of speaking, sometimes our religious systems prostitute us for what they can get from us instead of putting into us what we need.

Aren't you glad that you're in a church that is interested in your development?

Is interested in you growing, is interested in you coming for it?

Yeah, yeah, you're in the right place.

But let me turn it on you now for a minute.

You gotta take advantage of it.

Come on, you gotta show up at the class.

And when you show up, you gotta make sure that you aggressively take in what they're talking about.

You know, this this thing of spirituality, it's not gonna happen by osmosis.

You're not gonna be able to lay down tonight and put the Bible against your head and go, grow, grow, grow.

It's not likely to happen that way.

I know I'm being silly, but you get my point, right?

Amen.

So Samson wasn't disciple.

Whitney wasn't disciple, but they had to take responsibility themselves.

They broke their own covenant with God.

Samson was the one who said, Get me a Philistine woman.

Samson was the one who took the honey out of the lime.

Samson was the one who went hanging around out there in the wine country.

And he chose to do the wrong thing.

Marvin Winan stood behind the pulpit in the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, the same place where Whitney had sung on that church stage for the first time in public.

She came back to that same place.

Isn't it interesting?

Just like Samson, as you look read down, and we read that last verse, and we said that his family and his friends came and picked up his body, Samson's body, and they took him back to Zor and Esther all.

They were taking him back to his own New Hope Missionary Baptist Church.

And they buried him beside his father, just like Whitney was buried beside her father, back in the place where he first felt the anointing of God.

Back in the place where the glory of God and the call of God first appeared.

Marvin Weiner stood up in that place and he said, Whitney died too young.

Then he went on to say, You can't serve God and mammon at the same time.

And he preached, most of y'all didn't hear it, he preached the most powerful, clear articulation of the gospel that I've heard in many, many years.

And he began to say, if you want to be rich, you don't have to choose riches over God.

You're gonna have to go after the money and all those things God's way.

But don't sacrifice your walk with God, don't break your covenant with God with God, my language, not his, in order to get that which God will give you if you do it the right way.

His proof text was Matthew 6 33, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, his righteousness and all these other things shall be added unto you.

God's got an issue with America.

What's the issue?

Man, we're talking about God, but we're not loving him, we're seeking.

Stuff, but we're not seeking the kingdom.

We're seeking the benefits and the blessings, but not the person behind the benefits and the blessings.

So Samson broke his own covenant, number two.

Number three, Samson sinned against his own gift.

Whitney did too.

What do you mean, sinned against your own gift?

God gives you something and you don't preserve it.

You don't keep working with him so that the thing that he gave you can keep functioning on and on and on.

Whitney so abused her body with cocaine and other things and lack of rest that she was in great danger of losing her voice, then she wouldn't get surgery or any kind of treatment on it.

And so she lost, in a sense, the ability to use that incredible vessel, that incredible gift that she was given for periods of time.

But it was more than just the ability to hit notes.

There was an ability to communicate that had been given to her.

Somehow in her singing, she she gave messages and touched the very heart and souls of individuals.

It was a gift from the Lord.

Each one of us has a gift.

Many of us may feel like, well, I I was born in the wrong place.

I was born into the wrong family.

I had such a tough life.

No, no, no, no.

You don't understand.

God knows what He wants you to do.

He knew before the foundation of time, and He set you by divine providence into this very family, into the very place, into the very skin color or ethnic origin under which you were born.

Is this too deep for you?

But he did it because he's got an assignment for you.

See, your problem is you don't understand that concerning the world and yourself, you're like God's double agent.

You've really been sent forth by the kingdom of God, which is greater than any ethnic group, any class structure.

Come on.

Your allegiance to that should be first and foremost, and you've been sent by divine commission, and he's given you a temporary experience as a black man, a white woman, a Native American.

And while you're in this Native American earth suit, you're supposed to do stuff that glorifies the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And before the foundation of time, he recognized the stuff that would be out of order, the stuff that would vex you, traumatize you, but much of that stuff in your life that you call your baggage, guess what?

You have been sent by God to change.

Y'all still with me?

All right, all right, all right, all right.

Number four, Whitney needed a father.

Number four, Samson's parents should have been better parents.

See, fathers in our culture are strangely absent.

Fathers should provide for their kids five things.

I think you see those on your screen.

They should give affection, acceptance, affirmation, approval, authority.

They give a child a sense of destiny just by being there.

Sometimes we as men are feel so confused, we don't know whether a woman want us to act like some really compassionate person like uh Pee Wee Herman, or that we should act like Mucho Macho Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And in this dichotomy of what the culture and society wants from us, very often we don't understand that by virtue of the assignments of God, just being there as a man in the setting of your home, there are things you can do and call forth in your child by giving affection, acceptance, affirmation, approval, and authority that will release into that child's life something that God has ordained.

It is not because you're so special, but it's because the role has been divinely assigned and God, the master builder, has set it up that way.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Fifth, we're to make disciples.

What America needs in American church is disciples.

What Gateway needs now is it needs some of you to become disciples.

It needs you then to turn around and make your kids disciples.

It means that when you're bringing and including people into this great church, let's understand it's not just about winning souls, it's about making what?

You got it.

Do you realize that Matthew 28, 19?

The Lord tells us, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

And it tells us that in verse 20 that we're to teach them.

We're to make disciples of nations.

Last thought I want you to hear today is this.

In 1967, the summer of great love or the summer of love was celebrated.

Hate Ashbury in those places were celebrating drug abuse and free love, make love, not war.

But also during 1967, 68, a great movement rose up.

It was a Jesus movement.

Millions of people came to the Lord during the Jesus movement.

Many of us who are preachers got saved roughly within the parameters of that Jesus movement.

But now, 40 some years later, we had millions of people sold, but the culture is worse off today than it was before the millions of salvation in the Jesus movement.

Y'all got the picture?

What happened is we got people saved, they made commitments, their personal lives were transformed, but the Samsons of that generation were never discipled.

And because they were not discipled and made disciples, have a Christian worldview, stood against darkness with full authority and understanding of what they were called to do and to be, the culture rocks steadily along, and Satan begins to bring America progressively into crisis.

God can stop this economic problem we have.

He can turn around the crisis that we have of morality in our culture.

If you and I decide, number one, I'm going to be disciple, number two, I'm going to make disciples.

Number three, I'm going to support churches like this great one that is in the business of winning souls and making disciples around the world.

And I believe in a decade we can see America snatched literally out of the jaws of death and darkness.

Hallelujah.

Oh, I'm excited about it.

The best is yet to come.

Bow your head with me, please.

Let me pray with you.

Father, we thank you so much for this great congregation.

Thank you, first of all, for Pastor Robert for his faithfulness over the years.

Let your people, his people here, and those influenced by him have that same kind of perseverance he's shown over these many years, he and his family.

And Lord, we ask that we would let a calling resonate in our heart to both win souls and make disciples of a nation, to be a voice of clarity where there's confusion.

Let us be light where there's darkness.

Let us believe that you are setting before us an open door that no man can close, and that you want to promote us to positions of authority and power and the various mountains of authority in the land so that you can reclaim America through anointed people who are sold out to seek you first, to do your will, and to love you and your great name.

In Jesus' name I pray.

Amen.

God bless you, Gateway.

Pleasure being with you.