Samson: Cracks in the Foundation
Pastor Rollan Fisher
This is Pentecost Sunday
Focus: Just because we can, doesn’t mean that we should - we need to obey God.
A Question of Values
Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
Cracks and the Cross
A Question of Values
The choices that we make in life need to be aligned with God’s values in Jesus if they are going to be blessed.
If we don’t govern ourselves this way, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the consequences.
Judges 14:1-4 ESV
“Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, "I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife." But his father and mother said to him, "Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" But Samson said to his father, "Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes." His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time the Philistines ruled over Israel.”
This is wedding season
People say to me all of the time - “well God made my mistakes right in the end.”
The background here is that God had given instruction to the Israelites not to intermarry with the Canaanites who he was driving out of the land - not because of their difference in ethnicity, but because of their difference in values.
If they gave their sons and daughters in marriage to the people of Canaan, God forewarned that this would lead to the Israelites worshiping other gods, having other things other than Yahweh ruling their lives.
Deuteronomy 7:1-5
This is a theme that was repeated in the New Testament when God through the apostle Paul commanded the new believers not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers - those who were not trying to wholeheartedly serve Jesus.
II Corinthians 6:14-7:1
Have you ever been in a relationship where you were unequally yoked?
Who did you end up choosing in that relationship when it came to living a holy life - God or that romantic interest?
How was that a warning sign to you of things to come?
An important note needs to be made here - just because God used Samson’s disregard for the commands of God, doesn’t mean that God approved of it.
The issue is that God has plans that are bigger than any of our individual lives, and if he has to use our willful disobedience to accomplish his purposes, including our inevitable demise, he will.
Samson’s parents appealed to him not to live in disobedience to God, but Samson persisted.
If you have adult children who are wayward, do not condemn yourself.
They have decisions and a judgment from God that they must face on their own.
However, through your fasting, prayers, love and earnest appeals, you can make it as hard as possible for them to go to hell.
Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should
We think that because we have the the ability to live the way we want without immediate consequence, that somehow God doesn’t see or doesn’t care.
We couldn’t be more wrong.
Judges 14:5-9
“Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah, and they came to the vineyards of Timnah. And behold, a young lion came toward him roaring. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she was right in Samson's eyes. After some days he returned to take her. And he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. He scraped it out into his hands and went on, eating as he went. And he came to his father and mother and gave some to them, and they ate. But he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion.”
Samson’s parents eventually acquiesced to Samson’s appeal for the Philistine wife.
In parenting, especially with young children, you must not get worn down by their persistent disobedience.
Do not check out and begin to ignore their behavior, escaping into the entertainment and social media world.
*Love, clarity and consistency are the keys to godly parenting and discipline.
Judges 13-17 display 10 feats of strength and heroism by Samson - the first five mentioning the Spirit of the Lord; the last five not.
This is all very relevant as we consider the significance of Pentecost Sunday when God would pour out his Spirit on those committed to Jesus that they might be supernaturally empowered witnesses of him to the nations (Acts 2).
Rather than defeating the nations, through Christ’s gospel, we see a harvest of redeemed lives from the nations.
*Samson was developing patterns of dismissive disobedience.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit is in the world not only to empower the servants of God, but amongst other things, to convict the world in his kindness of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come.
You may identify it as your conscience, but the conviction that you feel when things are off is more than that - it is God’s law written upon your heart (Romans 2:15,16) and the Holy Spirit trying to bring you back to the blessing of God’s direction and commands.
Jesus said:
John 16:7-11 ESV
“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.”
What has the Holy Spirit been convicting you of that you have tried to ignore or remember running from years ago that set a trajectory for your life?
Romans 2:4-11 ESV
“Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”
Samson’s sin and secrecy started to have detrimental effects.
Samson had learned to live without dependence on the Spirit of God which would inevitably lead to his demise.
This is a great threat and danger to us all.
Yet Jesus, the better Samson, would live in step with the Spirit of God and would inevitably give his life to defeat his people’s enemies - sin and death.
Cracks and the Cross
When we recognize the cracks in our life foundations, the pattern of bad decisions that have caused inordinate trouble in our broken lives, it should lead us back to the cross of Jesus Christ.
Judges 14:10-20 ESV
“His father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, for so the young men used to do. As soon as the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. And Samson said to them, "Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can tell me what it is, within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes, but if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes." And they said to him, "Put your riddle, that we may hear it." And he said to them, "Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet." And in three days they could not solve the riddle. On the fourth day they said to Samson's wife, "Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?" And Samson's wife wept over him and said, "You only hate me; you do not love me. You have put a riddle to my people, and you have not told me what it is." And he said to her, "Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?" She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her, because she pressed him hard. Then she told the riddle to her people. And the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, "What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?" And he said to them, "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle." And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the garments to those who had told the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father's house. And Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man.”
We try to justify why we are where we are and our sin by convoluting them with life’s riddles and saying “this is just the way life goes.”
Yet Jesus sees through all of this.
The cross is our pathway home.
At the cross of Jesus Christ are forgiveness, restoration and healing.
Redemption can come when the family has lost its way and has gone astray.
Repentance and faith are offered by God.
Romans 3:23-26 ESV
“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
God is both just and wants to be the justifier of those who come to him through Jesus.
The gifts and call of God are without repentance.
Romans 11:29 ESV
“For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
May you listen to the Holy Spirit today as he is beckoning you to the cross and repentance to resurrect callings thought dead and reorder dreams centered on Christ.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher