Learning from the Wisdom of Samson

Crowdbreaker:

As the old saying goes…hindsight is 20/20.

That saying takes on all new meaning in light of the year that we’ve all experienced in 2020. We encountered our first global pandemic, which was not a short lived event, rather it’s been a months-long saga that still continues into this new year. This pandemic restricted our freedoms, closed down our entertainment, forced us to seclude into our homes away from friends and extended family members -even to the point of celebrating Thanksgiving and Chrsitmas alone.

But it wasn’t all bad. In the midst of some very difficult times, we’ve also gained some fresh perspective and learned a few important lessons along the way. I want us to pause here at the onset of a brand new yerar to look back at a few of the lessons we learned over the past 12 months. .

What was the most important lesson you learned about youself in 2020?

What was the most important lesson you learned about your marriage/family in 2020?

What was the most important lesson you learned about the Lord in 2020?

Looking ahead, what is one change you’l like to see take place in your personal walk with Christ in 2021?

INTRO:

Welcome to another brand new year! If you are anything like me, you probably love the idea of New Year’s: It offers us a fresh start, a clean slate, a brand new beginning! It offers us an opportunity to reflect on our lives over the past 12 months and plot out some major course corrections in hopes of being able to enjoy a better 2021.

There’s something incredibly hopeful and powerful about new beginnings...

it suggests that our past mistakes will not continue to define us

that our temporary setbacks are unable to permanently sidetrack or sideline our impact and effectiveness for the Lord

that our inability to stay on track with our goals, dreams and aspirations this past year, don’t have to plague us in this new one.

New Year’s is a season that serves us much like a lifestyle navigational system or GPS. As it provides each of us the opportunity to re-route our lives back towards what really matters, helping us to reallign our priorities, our strategies and our giving us insight into those things that took us off track and off course which prevented us from being and doing what we feel God calling us to do.

I want you to give yourself the gift of a fresh start this morning.

free yourself of all your past mistakes…leave them in 2020 and refuse to drag them into a new year. You can’t do anything to alter or change them anyway, so just let them them be. Repent of them if you haven’t already but let those sleeping dogs lie.

free yourself from the chains of bad thinking - leave those worthless, insecure and unstable thought patterns in the dust of 2020. They didn’t serve you well last year, and they certainly won’t serve you any better in this new one. Allow the truth of God’s Word to form new thought patterns, new strongholds which will protect you from the lies and the deceit the enemy throws your way this year.

Leave behind your doubts and fears from last year. Your fear of Covid, your fears about the unknown, your fears concerning all that came against you. Look around…you’re still standing! You’re still here. God has been faithful. He has upheld you. He has provided for you. He has helped you weather every storm that came into your life in the past 12 months. TRUST That he will do this again for you this year. His faithfulness knows no bounds or limits.

This is a New Start. There’s no need to drag those things into yet another new year.

This year, you can live differently!

This year you can increase your faith!

This year you can walk more closely with Christ

This year you can be even more filled with the Holy Spirit than last year

This year you can shatter the glass ceiling that’s prevented you from taking further ground in the areas of personal devotions such as scripture reading, memorization, reflecting and journaling as well as prayer and fasting.

This year can be different from past years.

I’m not encouraging you to make Resoltions that you have no intention of ever keeping.

studies show that 60% of people make new years resolutions, yet only about 8% ever follow through on committing to them

By February 80% of these resolutions are abandoned - never to be given any thought to until next January. Just drive by a gym tomorrow morning on the way to work and marvel at all the cars crammed into the parking lot. And then drive by again next month and you will see lots of empty spaces!

I don’t want you to make New Year’s Resolutions this morning, rather I want you to invite the Holy Spirit to birth in you a spiritual revolution that will change and enhance your walk with christ in unimaginable ways throughout the next 12 months.

I want to encourage you open yourself up to God’s wisdom, his insight, his mighty power and allow His Spirit to take greater possession of your being this year than ever before!!!!!

I titled this message, “Learning from the wisdom of Samson.”

That title is intended to be ironic and a little tongue in cheek. After all, if we want to pursue wisdom, we would normally run to Solomon who was given more wisdom than any other man on the earth.

But Samson?

He wasn’t very wise.

He didn’t use much discrection.

He didn’t keep himself under control.

Yet we can learn a lot from his mistakes.

We can learn a lot form his shortcomings.

We can make certain that we don’t live foolishly and carelessly live like he did on so many occassions...

Samson was the poster boy for how now to be used by God

For even though God did use Samson to deliver his people from the Philistine’s, God used Samson in spite of himself. He used Samson in spite of his behavior, in spite of his character and in spite of his disobedience.

If you have your bibles with You, please open them to the book of Judges. We don’t have time to read it all through, so we’re just going to hit the highlights. We’ll be flipping through these pages throughout this message so just be ready to go there with me when I tell you to...

The first lesson I want us to learn from the life of Samson is this...

1. Don’t Put Your desires above God’s plans for your life.

We’re first introduced to Samson from a visit from an angel to Samson’s mom in Judges 13:5

“You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and his hair must never be cut. For he will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite from Birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.”

In verse 24, it speaks of Samson’s early years like this, :

“When her son was born, she named him Samson. And the Lord blessed him as he grew up. And the Spirit began to stir him...”

The NAZARITE VOW was a sacred vow taken by certain individuals to consecrate themselves to God and separate themselves from the things of the world.

From everything we read about Samson, we expect him to grow up to be a man after God’s own heart. We expect him to be righteous and true.

We expect him to be a role model for living a life that pleases the LORD…Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Look at chapter 14, verse 1 “One day when Samson was in Timnah [the territory of Israel’s greatest enemy- a place he should not have ever been], one of the Philistine women caught his eye.” He immediately demanded that his parents get this woman for him so that he could marry her.

When his parents objected because the woman was a foreigner, Samson responded in verse 3

Verse 3 says, “Get her for me…she looks good to me!” NLT

“she pleases me!” KJV

" she’s the one I want.” MSG

How many of us know that often times the things we want and desire....the things we think will make us the most happy are actually the very things that will bring us the most heartbreak? After all isn’t this how we break our diets, ruin our marriages through affairs, destroy our finances through unwise spending????

Doing the things WE WANT rarely ever brings us the benefits we hope for!

It certainly didn’t for Samson.

From this moment on, Samson began to live a life that was determined more by what was pleasing and satisfying to HIM rather than what was pleasing and satisfying to the LORD. And it produced disastrous result for him personally.

We all run the same risks. Our desires and our wants can quickly get the best of us. They can get us into some really hot water. They can side track us from what God has planned for our lives.

This is certainly true in the case of Samson.

Though his physical abilities would prove to be strong under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, his spiritual and emotional well being were constantly weak as a result of his selfish and sinful desires.

Samson traded the great plan God had in store for his life, for the momentary pleasures of sin.

As we embark upon a brand new calendar year, I want to encourage you not to make the same mistake Samson did.

Don’t abandon God’s plans and dreams for your life so that you can go off and pursue your own.

You were created for divine destiny and purpose.

You were given life so that you can bring eternal life to others.

You were set apart from sin and worldliness so that you could participate in God’s great plan of redemption - rescuing people from the foolishness of thier sins.

However you will not be able to be effective in that mission if you allow your mission to side-tracked by your own sinful and selfish desires that run contrary to the Lord’s plans for you.

if there is any desirs in you that is getting in the way of your faithfulness to the Lord - that is the very thing that needs to be ended in your life.

Your need to be on control

you need to to escape from pain

your desire to be liked and accepted

you desire for things and nice stuff

2. Refuse to learn from your past mistakes.

The last time Samson followed his passions and did what felt right in the moment, he forced his parent’s hand to get him a Philistine wife. That relationship ended very badly - in fact wasn’t even allowed to consumate the relationship due to his own stupid behavior and more bad choices…God ultimately used the situation to give Samson an opportunity to kill over 1,000 Philistines yet, as we’re about to see, Samson refused to learn anything from the entire expeirence.

Fast forward 20 years later.

20 long years, where Samson had the opportunity to learn from his mistakes

Where he had the opportunity to grow and mature in his walk with the Lord

Where he had the opportunity to repent and seek after God’s own heart instead of listening to his own....

Yet that is not what Samson inevitably

did. Look at Judges chapter 16 verse 1.

“One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute.”

Now, Scripture doesn’t specify why Samson went down to Gaza.

It likely wasn’t for the purpose of finding a prostitute, as those could be found right there in Israel.

Perhaps he was scouting out the land or pre-meditating an attack on his enemies for what they did to him two decades before.

Regardless of why he went there…scripture records that he did go there and that he did a very unfortunate thing upon his arrival.

It didn’t happen all at once…it came in stages and steps.

There is about 25 miles between where Samson lived and the town of Gaza. And becuase there was no Uber or taxis back in Samson day, he had to travel there by foot. Samson walked 35 miles into enemy terriroty to see a prostitute.

Thatls 56, 250 steps.

Samson didn’t ruin his life all at one time. He took It took his close to 56,250 steps in the wrong direction.

It’s the same for us. We never set out to wreck our lives or our carreers or our walk with Christ…it never happens all at one. Instead it happens one bad decision at a time. One wrong habits, One illicit desire. One poor choice, followed by another.

3. Samson allowed his gifts to outpace his integrity and character.

Blessings from God and success in our work for God don’t make us immune from temptation and spiritual danger.

We have a cunning enenmy and a fallen nature…as a result, we must be diligient to make sure that our gifts and blessings don’t outpace our integrity and our behavior.

Samson likely justified his behavior due to the power of God that would come upon him when he needed it the most. He wrongly assumed that God’s blessing and favor would always rest on him regarldess of the way he acted or conducted his life.

It wasn’t until that fateful day with Deliliah in verse 20 that he realize that the Lord’s spirit had left him.