Samson - Small Compromises

Intro:

Intro, welcome

When I was in my first year of university, it was the first time in my life I was separated from Christian community.

I went to church my whole life, missions trips, camps, you name it.

I pretty much had the standard, copy and paste Christian life.

I went to a Christian high school, took a gap year after to participate in a short term Bible school in Europe, and when I came home from that, I went off to university.

It was my first time living among non-believers, as funny as that sounds.

I obviously had non-Christian friends, I didn’t necessarily grow up sheltered, but all of my closest friends were always my church friends and we, within reason, had our heads on straight.

When I went to university it was different though, and it was a little bit of a shock.

For the first time, I was living in a city where I didn’t know any of the churches, I didn’t have a single person that I knew, and I was living in a university dorm with people who didn’t know Jesus.

I thought I was strong enough to get by.

I tried out a Christian group on campus that met for services, but I had a hard time connecting, and didn’t want to go.

I looked for a church in the area, but didn’t want to take the bus for half an hour to get somewhere, so I wasn’t going to church.

Eventually, the compromises I was making took me further and further from everything I grew up as, but nothing seemed significiant becuase though I was taking so many steps away from God, I was only ever moving one step at a time.

In the moment, it’s hard to identify how far you’re moving when you’re only taking a step at a time. Once you get used to the new position, one more step doesn’t seem so bad.

Judges 13:2–5 ESV

There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”

A Nazirite was someone who was consecrated to God

There were three main laws separate from the rest of the Israelites the Nazirite’s abided by

abstained from drinking alcohol

refrained from cutting hair

avoiding contact with anything dead

A lot of times, an Israelite would vow to be a Nazirite and it would be for a period of time, but for Samson, it was to be for his whole life. The angel who appeared to the wife of Manoah said it would be Samson who “shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.”

I can relate a lot to Samson’s story. He grew up as someone who was set apart, 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that as believers, we’re a new creation.

He grew up with rules, like not being able to cut his hair, drink, or touch dead things

I grew up not being able to drink, didn’t ever feel a desire to touch dead things, and couldn’t watch Harry Potter, basically the same thing.

But I think the most relatable thing when looking at Samson is how he got from powerfully being filled with the Spirit to entering into Gaza, seeing a prostitute, and spending the night with her.

Judges 15:20 KJV 1900

And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.

Judges 16:1 ESV

Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her.

Very direct wording here, not a single question as to what Samson did and where he did it when he saw this prostitute.

I read this and I think to myself, how can Samson be a leader delivering the Israelites for the next 20 years in one verse and in the very next verse, see a prostitute and sleep with her.What happened in those 20 years in between these two verses?

There’s a lot that can even happen in one year.

Maybe you start dating someone and the farthest you’ll go physically is kissing, but after a year of dating you’re sleeping together and you stopped feeling any conviction for it.

In the year of dating, what probably happened was you slowly pushed the boundaries farther and farther until they didn’t exist anymore.

Maybe you used to have a drink once in a while, but you started using alcohol to take the edge off and now you can’t go a day without a couple drinks in the evening.

It’s not like you planned to be an alcoholic, but slowly you started to replace God with alcohol and let it become your god.

You can pretty much fill in the blank here. I think so often we can look at any of our sins and actually trace them back to see where they started and from there, we can start to undo them.

And maybe even if we can’t back track enough to see if it was a series of compromises over time, we can be more aware of it in the future.

Let’s look at Samson again

Verse 5, chapter 14: Samson approached a vineyard

Uh oh, why’s he hanging around a vineyard, he can’t drink wine.