When the Weak Become Strong, Part 4

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Are you desire led or spirit led because you cannot be both? And if you are going to follow Jesus, you are going to learn to say no to what you want because you always say yes to what he wants and where it conflicts with what you want, you put his over yours. And some of you are being ravaged by the enemy because you cannot control your anger impulses. You cannot control your lust impulses.

You cannot control your pride impulses. It just speaks and you move and you're like a city that's broken down without walls. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch, and we are so glad that you're back with us today. We're continuing our teaching series titled Broken Saviors by looking at the life of one of the most well-known Old Testament figures. Samson's incredible strength made him seem larger than life and therefore hard to relate to, but we're finding out that we've got a lot more in common with him than we think. Just like Samson, we have all fallen into the trap of our own desires.

So what's the answer? Now, if you missed any of the messages in this study called Broken Saviors, be sure to catch up right away at jdgreer.com. Our website is full of free resources meant to help you grow in your relationship with Jesus, but right now let's rejoin pastor J.D. in Judges chapter 14. I want to show you that every morning when you wake up and you look in the mirror, you are looking at the greatest enemy of both yourself and what God wants to do through you and your family. The problem is not that God's power is not abundant and available to you.

The problem is that you and I are our own worst enemy. The first week we looked at Samson's birth. This week we're going to look at his life and his death. So if you haven't done so already, take out your Bible, turn it on, scroll down to Judges chapter 16. Then Samson went to Gaza. There he saw a prostitute and he went into her.

Whoa, now he's not just with a Philistine girl, he's with a Philistine prostitute. So in other words, he is getting more and more brazen in his sin. Well, the Philistines find out what he's doing. Verse two, they surrounded the place and sent an ambush for him.

They kept quiet all night saying, we'll wait until morning, then we'll kill him. Verse three, but Samson lay until midnight. And at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron. Now after this, he loved a woman whose name was, everybody, Delilah.

That's right. Verse five, and the Lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, seduce him, tell us where his great strength lies, how we can overpower him. So Delilah says to Samson, tell me where your strength lies, how you might be bound so that one might subdue you. Verse 17, and so he told her all of his heart. I've been a Nazarite to God for my mother's womb.

If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me and I shall become weak and be like any other man. Verse 18, and Delilah saw and recognized that he had told her all of his heart. And she sent and called for the Philistines and said, he's told me all of his heart, come again. Verse 19, and she made him sleep on her knees.

She called a man and had him shave off the seven locks off his head. Verse 20, and she said, the Philistines, aren't you Samson? And he awoke from his sleep and he said, I will go out just like other times and I will shape myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Verse 21, the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and they brought him down to Gaza and they bound him with bronze shackles.

And he ground at the meal in the prison. Verse 22, but the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Verse 23, now the Lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their God, and to rejoice, saying, our God gave us Samson, our enemy into our hand.

So they throw this big party. And when the people saw Samson, they began to worship their God. So they bring him out and they start mocking him and making him do tricks. And Samson is standing there in all this mockery. And he says to the young man who was leading him by the hand, he said, let me feel the pillars on which the house rests that I may lean against them. And Samson calls out to God and he says, God, I know that I've sinned. I know that I got myself in the situation, but one more time, one more time, give me that strength and let me be avenged against the Philistines. And Samson grasped the two middle pillars in 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 then he bowed with all this strength and the house fell upon the Lords and upon all the people who were in it and him as well. So the dead whom he killed through his death were more than those who he killed during his life. Now, what is it that we are supposed to learn from Samson's life? If Samson is supposed to represent all of the people of God, what are you and I supposed to learn? I have three, at least three major things here.

Here is number one. We are our own worst enemy. The problem is not that God has not made us strong enough. The problem is not that God has not given us power and promise and blessing. The problem is we have an internal weakness in our character that causes us to sabotage the good blessing and the power that God wants to bring through us. So let me break down Samson's weakness for you into five basic components.

I introduced them to you a few weeks ago. These are the five basic components of weakness, specifically male weakness, but I would say it applies to men and women alike. Number one, Samson is impulsive. He is commanded by his lust. He gets hungry, so he eats. He gets angry, so he strikes out or walks away.

He sees a girl that he wants and so he takes her. That one thing alone will destroy your life. I was reading this article this week. It was about texting and driving. You've probably read an article like this before. It was basically saying that everybody now knows the problems with texting and driving.

We've all heard the stats. It repeated them just in case you didn't know. He said you are 23 times more likely to have an accident when you have a phone in your hand than when you don't.

23 times. They said that texting and driving slows down your response time behind the wheel more than drinking and marijuana combined. So if you're going to text in front of your kids while you drive your car, you might as well go ahead and tell them you can drink smoke marijuana and then get behind the wheel because that's about what it does. Now the article is saying we know that.

We know that. Nobody here needs to be convinced it's dangerous, but we all still do it. This article was saying why do people keep doing it when they know? They said here's why and I thought it was fascinating.

I thought it was fascinating. They said because in the moment that the text comes in, the impulse is I have to respond. I got to say this back. I got to find out what she's doing. I got to post this on Facebook.

I got to see what he said. I got to say this witty thing back and we can't control the impulse so we are willing to put our lives, our family's lives, other people's lives at risk because we are too impulsive. Now the whole point of this is not don't text and drive.

That is a point that you should make sure that you don't, but I'm saying what if you think about that as a metaphor for your life. That it is your inability to control an impulse that ultimately is how the enemy destroys you. Proverbs 25, 28, a person without self-control is like a city that's been broken down and is left without walls. In those days city walls kept out wild animals. It kept out criminals.

It kept out the enemy and when you have a city without walls any enemy can just walk in and ravage the place. A person without self-control may know everything there is to know. They may have great intentions like many of you but if you can't say no to the desires of your hearts the enemy is going to ravage you like he did Samson. And I know so many people, Christians whose one criteria for decisions they make is it pleases me well. When you make a decision what's more dominant in your thinking?

What pleases me or what pleases God? Think back through the major decisions in your life. What you chose to major and where you went to college? Who you married? Where you chose to live?

What is the dominant factor? Is it what pleases you or what pleases God? Samson hoped that his decisions would also please God but Samson made sure that his decisions would please him.

Are you desire led or spirit led? Because you cannot be both. And if you were going to follow Jesus you were going to learn to say no to what you want because you always say yes to what he wants and where it conflicts with what you want you put his over yours. And some of you are being ravaged by the enemy because you cannot control your anger impulses. You cannot control your lust impulses. You cannot control your pride impulses.

It just speaks and you move and you're like a city that's broken down without walls. Which leads to number two, compromise. Compromise. Samson treated the commands of God casually.

He didn't mind breaking him. Think about it. You can probably hear him asking himself, I don't see what this would hurt.

Drink a little wine, beer. What does that hurt? I see lots of people do that. Oh, well, maybe I should, you know, I touched something dead. I've done it before and nothing happened. Cut my hair.

How could my hair possibly be connected to my strength? It doesn't make any sense. You know that when you and I evaluate the commands of God, isn't that the same question we ask? I just don't see what harm it's going to have or going to going to cause. What if, listen to this, what if the harm was not in the consequences of the action itself? What if the harm was driving out the presence of God from your life?

What if the compromise is you making integrity? What if it's true you could get away with them? What if it's true that everybody else was doing it? What if it's true that you don't see what harm it could cause?

Because everybody in this business does that. What if the harm that it caused was it drove off the hand of blessing of God on your business? What if you are like, hey, I don't see what harm looking at a little pornography is. It's a little harmless fun. It's not affecting my marriage.

Or maybe I'm not even married. What harm could it cause? What if the harm is that it's causing the spirit of God to remove his hand of blessing off of that part of your life? You see, my parents taught me when I was in high school and I first started to make money, they said, here's why you give to God. Here's why you give the first fruits to God, because you want the blessing of God on that part of your life. And so for all these years, I said, whenever I make money, I give God the first fruit. It's not like they explained to me, it's not like you're earning God's blessing.

It's that you can be sure that you'll drive it out, however, if you steal from God and you want God's blessing over this part of your life. And so all these years I've done that, and I've told you before, you cannot out give God. God has always put his hand of blessing on that. And it's something that I do because I know that I want his spirit more than I want anything. I want his spirit in my ministry. I want his spirit in my marriage. I want his spirit with my parenting. I want his spirit in my finances. I want the blessing of his spirit everywhere, which means that I will not compromise God's laws and standards, even if I can get away with it, because the greatest danger is that the spirit of God would pull back his hand of blessing off of what we do. Samson teaches you, don't take ever the blessing of the presence of God for granted.

What if the real harm was not in the consequences of the action? What if the real harm was in the God that you offended and what you did? Have you offended God lately?

Chances are we all have. A return in repentance is needed, so take that time today. This is Summit Life, and we'll be right back with the rest of our teaching in just a moment. You know, sometimes we have big questions about life, about faith, and about God himself, and we need to know how to give solid answers in these difficult moments. In our newest resource, Pastor JD quickly answers some of those questions that keep us up at night.

Is it okay to get divorced? Is there such a thing as unanswered prayers? You may recall volume one of this book called Honest Questions, Quick Answers from two years ago. We do still have some copies of that first book available as well if you missed getting it. Give a gift today by calling us at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgrier.com and reserve this resource today. Now let's return for the final moments of today's teaching. Here's Pastor JD. Number three, Samson is unteachable. Nobody can persuade him to do something different. He knows best.

His heart knows best. Which connects to number four? He's a loner.

Let me treat both of these together since they correspond. Did you notice that nobody's a part of Samson's life in all the stories? Samson's a loner. He's a one-man show. He's Wreck-It Ralph.

He's walking around destroying stuff. Here's my question for you. Are people close enough to your life they can actually speak into it?

How about this? Are you correctable with the people that are closest to you? Your spouse, your kids, your parents? Would they say that you respond well to criticism? Would they say that you're teachable? You can go ahead look at your spouse right now and just shake your head. Say no you're not.

How about this? What areas are off limits for people to comment on in your life? You ever know people like this? Oh you don't don't talk about you can talk about other areas but once you talk about that but don't you critique my parenting.

Uh-uh. Don't you talk about my marriage. Don't you talk about my business. Whatever area is off limits to criticism in your life is exactly the area that the enemy is destroying you because you are walking in pride.

You are unteachable. You're just like Samson and that's what Proverbs 18 one. An isolated man will always begin to serve himself. Whatever part of your life you isolate and make immune from criticism you will always begin to serve yourself.

It's like that phrase I gave you a couple weeks ago. Things that grow in a secret garden always grow mutants. There is no such thing as an isolated healthy Christian. People who get serious about Jesus get serious about the church because the church is God's plan A for how he works in your life. God will not change your life through preaching alone. He changes your life through community.

Things that grow in a secret garden always grow mutant. He was alone or he was unteachable. Number five he was proud. Samson was proud.

You see that in at least three ways. A. He assumed he'd never lose his strength.

B. He never gave God glory for it. Never. C. He felt entitled to use his blessings for his purposes.

Let me ask you this. Do you go through life thinking I'll always have these opportunities. I'll always have this ability to make money.

I'll always have this strength. James 4. Are you somebody who says tomorrow I'll do this and then I'll retire there and then I'll buy this and then I'll live there and James says all such boasting is foolish for you do not know what tomorrow brings. Your life is like a vapor that appears for a moment then vanishes away. And one statement by God, one moment God takes it all away. If you walk in pride you assume that tomorrow will be just like today and you're not concerned with the will of God. You're concerned with pleasing yourself.

How about this question? Do you use your gifts to direct more attention to yourself or to God? Right now your talents, your abilities, are they mainly spent in pursuit of you and your kingdom or in pursuit of the kingdom of God and the glory of God? Do you realize that your gifts and opportunities are all on loan from God to use for his purposes?

If you're getting ready to go into college, here's a question. If you're getting ready to go into college, have you honestly said to God, God here are my talents, here's what I'm good at, where do you want to use them? Or are you only making decisions based on how you think you can build your own kingdom? If you are in business right now, have you ever come to a point where you said to God these skills, these opportunities, they come from you. How do you want me to use this business, this skill? How do you want me to use it for your kingdom? I am not saying that when you ask that God's going to put most of you in a full-time Christian ministry like me.

In fact, most of you, he's not going to do that. What I am saying is that when you understand that strength has been given to you by God for a purpose, you'll start to ask God, not what do I take with these opportunities and strength, but what do you have for them? And you'll walk in humility, not pride, because you recognize they come from him. That's the essence of Samson's weakness. And that virus destroyed him and the incredible power that God had given him to bless and to save. And that same weakness, that same profile of weaknesses is what's destroyed.

The problem is not that the power or strength is not there. The blessing is there. The grace of God is there.

It's that you sabotage yourself, which leads me to number two. The world needed somebody greater than Samson. The world needed somebody greater than Samson. Remember, the first time I preached on this, I showed you this is the last story in the book. It's the book. It's the finale. Oh, and it starts out so well. Oh, miraculous birth.

Oh, the guy who comes really strong. This is going to be awesome. Don't you love it when you get to the finale of something? Like you readers, when you read a book and it's a good mystery novel or something, you get that last chapter and you're like, oh, it hadn't resolved. How is it going to resolve?

All right. So here you come to the finale of the book of Judges and it starts out so well. Imagine you're an Israelite reading this and you get to the end and you're like, what? That's how it ends?

There's got to be more to this story. And then 1100 years later, Jesus of Nazareth shows up. And if you're paying attention, you start to notice that there's all these things that are similar between Jesus and Samson.

Both of them are born miraculously. Jesus was born to a virgin. Jesus was born to a virgin. Like Samson, Jesus was given incredible strength. He had power over demons and disease and death that could speak a word and destroy them. Like Samson, Jesus was betrayed by somebody who acted like his friend and then handed him over to the Gentile oppressors. Like Samson, Jesus was chained up and tortured and then put on public display and mocked.

Like Samson, Jesus would die with his arms outstretched. Like Samson, through that death, when it looked like he was defeated, he actually defeated the enemy. But unlike Samson, Jesus wasn't put in chains for his sin. Jesus was put in chains for ours. Samson was a strong man made weak through his own sin. Jesus was the mighty God who voluntarily became weak to save us from the chains of our sin. He was mocked in our place, persecuted in our place, died in our place. And see, that's good news because we're all like Samson. We're all people who have been driven by our lust.

We're people who compromise and are proud, who've lived for ourselves and not God. But Jesus was wounded for that and bound for that. The chastisement for our sin was put upon him.

And when we behold that, it changes us. When you see that Jesus was given for you and you open yourself up so that Jesus can live in you, it infuses into you the fortitude of character that gives you the ability to be strong where Samson was weak. When you see that Jesus accepted you freely by his grace because he paid your penalty, even though you live like Samson lived, it is then that you are freed from the power of the impulses and the insecurity that made you weak like Samson. Which brings me to number three, the third and final thing we can learn from Samson's life. It is never too late to cry out to God. It's never too late to cry out to God. When Samson calls out to God, he's as low as you can possibly get, right?

He's in Dagon's temple, bound, blinded, grinding at the mill. And from the middle of Dagon's temple, he calls out to God. That's where that verse 22 comes in. The hair of his head had already started to grow.

Here's why that's important. Listen, it's a symbol. God's mercy is like Samson's hair grow new every morning. And they keep growing back even where sin has shorn them away.

And for many of you, you've shorn away God's mercy from your life. And it just kept growing back. It just kept coming back.

And it's actually there this morning. And even from the middle of Dagon's temple, where you are right now in the midst of being blinded and grinding and the monotony, one act of faith. Because God's grace never left. It just started to grow back in your life. And it's as it left you. Some of you have seen that video that went viral a couple of weeks ago of a homeless man. You've seen this?

Sarasota Springs, Florida art gallery puts out this piano on the sidewalk. And this homeless man comes up, sits down. I thought he looked remarkably like Matt Papa, for whatever it's worth. In fact, I thought, did Matt Papa just pull that off? Is that a joke?

No, it wasn't. This man sits down. This man sits down and you're expecting, this is a homeless man. The man starts playing the most beautiful music. Turns out it's Come Sail Away by Styx. But it is beautiful because it's from the 70s. And so it starts playing it. And it just blows everybody away. Everybody's just like, and so somebody pulls out their phone and they start to film it. And they post it on YouTube.

And as of yesterday, I think it had 16 million views. Well, it gives this guy this ability to tell his story. And it turns out in 1998, he had gone into depression because his wife committed suicide. He was an ex-Marine. His wife committed suicide.

They had a newborn son. And so he turned to drugs and alcohol and things kept going wrong. And so he got deeper into drugs and alcohol until eventually he lost his home. The social services came and took away his son when his son was three years old because he couldn't take care of him anymore. And since that time he'd been living on the street. Well, so this video, somebody starts a GoFundMe account for him and they, I think there's $60,000 in it now that's going to be available to him when he gets out of rehab.

This old college that he dropped out of, was kicked out of, has offered him a scholarship now to come back and finish his education. And they've reunited him with his son for the first time in 15 years. Now, I don't know where this story is going to go because these things don't always turn out well. I realize that, but listen, when I heard that story or watched it, there was something beautiful about the picture of it all. But here you got a guy that this song has stayed with him since he was a kid. It was always in there and he just sat down and he just let it out. And that song became the source of new life for him.

God's grace over your life is like that song. It's never left. It's still in there. And it just started to grow back after sin and shorn it away. And all you have to do is turn and embrace it. I don't know where this guy's story is going to turn out.

I hope it turns out well, but I know where your story can turn out. If you just turn and begin to embrace that song that God has sung over you since the day that you were born, and that song is Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound That Saves a Wretch Like Me. That God has always been faithful. He's never let you go.

He's always watched you. And when you walked away and when you put yourself in day God's temple, he just kept singing the song. If you turn and you embrace that song, he'll change you.

Amazing Grace. That's what the gospel is all about. You're listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. This is the final week to get volume two of our latest resource titled Honest Questions, Quick Answers. This new book by Pastor J.D. is full of new questions and answers like, how important is correct doctrine? Can you lose your salvation?

And how can I trust Christians when so many are hypocritical? Let's make sure that you get this valuable resource as soon as possible. We'll send it to you as our way of saying thanks for your financial gift of $35 or more to support this ministry.

And for a small additional donation, we also have volume one available for those who missed it the first time. Be sure to ask about it when you call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgreer.com. You can also write to us.

Remember to include a note asking for Honest Questions, Quick Answers, volume two. Our address is J.D. Greer Ministries, P.O. Box 122-93, Durham, North Carolina, 277-09.

I'm Molly Vitovich. Tomorrow we'll begin the final message in our study of the book of judges called Broken Saviors. We're learning about something Pastor J.D. calls Christian atheism. Discover what he means when you join us Wednesday right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.