Where we're
continuing in our study through the Book of Judges.
We have a Bible and brought one with you and encourage you to turn there.
It's also the Scripture will be on the screens.
It's also on our app and follow along there.
I want to introduce you to a man in the history of Israel as a judge.
And again, these judges weren't judges in the judicial sense.
They were more leaders in the military sense.
And I guess you to one of those judges name is Samson.
He's probably the most well known judge of them all.
Nearly 20% of the entire book of judges
is dedicated to him and his story.
But before we get to Samson,
which is starts in chapter 13, I want to finish
chapter 12 just with a little just a little caveat for you
at the end of chapter 12, the Bible gives us three names
of three judges, and it really doesn't tell us anything about them at all.
It reads
like this after him, which is a a Amalek, the one that we
that was came before the judges, that came before these three,
after a symbolic man of Bethlehem led Israel.
Dot, dot, dot after him.
Elan of musk. No, it wasn't him.
Elan. The Zebulun night.
Have no idea.
Let Israel dot dot dot.
And after him Abdon led Israel.
And it just gives us this this little couple verses
that these men were also in this lineage of judges
as leaders, as commanders, people who helped lead the nation.
The interesting thing I find in that is that though
the world really doesn't know their name and know much of their story at all.
God knows those that no one remembers.
I want that to be a comfort to you.
God knows those that no one remembers.
If you've ever felt invisible in this world,
if you've ever felt that people just don't know.
You don't see.
You don't care.
God does.
There's a verse in Malachi
that says this.
Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another,
those who talked about God, those who fear God, those who reverence God.
Those who spoke about God.
The Lord paid attention and heard them
so no one else did.
And a book of remembrance was written before him, of those
who fear the Lord and esteemed his name.
I believe that God is recording
all those of us who fear the Lord, who talk about him.
Though the world might not know us,
though we appear to be invisible to those around us.
One of God's names is the God who sees.
He knows you.
He remembers you. You're not lost to him.
And especially in this culture, when this culture is so infatuated
with self proclamation, so enamored
with self perpetuation, you have to
so desiring someone, please notice and affirm me.
This is what drives social media.
Please notice me.
Please affirm who I am.
My desire for me and for us
is rather than self-promote.
Be willing to live in the shadows,
not to be known by the world, but to hear one day from God.
Well done, my good and faithful servant.
That's a life well-lived.
I was talking to one of my football guys the other day,
right before a football game, and he was so enamored with himself
and just wanted to pump his chest and say, I got to get my name out there, going
to get my name out there.
And I said, son, listen,
you need to throttle it down.
Here's why.
So, because every one who was false
and thin and fake has to self promote
the great ones of character.
You don't have to self-promote.
So just understand what you're saying
about yourself right now.
And it has to be enough for us
not to be known
in this world, but to hear in eternity.
Well done, my good and faithful servant.
Does that make sense?
Though the world knows not these three.
What they heard
that validated their entire existence.
Well done.
You served me well.
Maybe that's the only thing you need to hear today.
Hear it.
And then.
Chapter 13.
Samson.
Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
So the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.
This is a huge verse.
There's so profound because we see the cycle of the judges
over and honestly, we see a cycle of ourself
like, I'm going to trust you, God and God, you're so good and you're so good.
Your goodness is going to lead me away from you, and I'm
going to ignore you and your principles in your ways.
And I'm going to get I'm going to live in, in, in, in distant from you.
And it's going to create pain.
And in my pain I'm going to cry out to you.
And because you're merciful and gracious, you're going to deliver me.
This is how it works.
And in God's deliverance.
Thank you God, that was fantastic.
And then we ignore him and we live counter to His Word
and His way, and it's sin, and it leads us into great destruction of pain.
And in our destruction of pain,
we cry out to God, and God in his mercy and grace delivers us.
And again we walk away from him and live in sin.
And then in that sin it creates difficulty and pain and destruction.
And in that difficulty we cry out to him, and he delivers us this is the cycle.
And again, the Israelites and evil eyes and Lord, and it cause pain.
Only this time it was the Lord that delivered them
into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.
Sometimes God he knows his, sometimes he, he, he knows who we are,
and sometimes he has to allow us and sometimes creepiness to get our attention.
Yeah, yeah.
Most of us
in this room have come back to God because of the pain
we've been in previously.
And this lasted 40 years.
This is the longest recorded,
time of difficulty,
of occupation from a foreign country over the Hebrews up to this point.
40 years.
And it's the Philistines that were harassing them.
Now, let me just give you some knowledge about the Philistines.
The Philistines were a prominent enemy
of the of the Jewish people for generations.
They weren't a part of the original land of Canaan
that the Israelites moved into, and God gave them as a promised land.
They originally came from the Aegean Sea near, Greece.
They were a mighty seagoing people,
and they were mighty fierce warriors.
They, as a community in about 1200
BC, were attacked and thrown out of their country.
So they went down to Egypt and landed in Egypt.
And in Egypt they tried to overthrow the ruling powers of Egypt,
and they got their tails.
And so
because they were defeated in Egypt, they moved up the coast
and settled in the Land of Israel.
And when they settled, they settled five cities.
Some of them you've heard of.
One was Ashkelon, one was Ashdod, one was Ekron,
one was Gath, and one is Gaza.
You may have heard of the land of Gath.
Gath is where Goliath the giant was from.
These were huge people.
And you may have heard of the land of Gaza.
This is where the Philistines settled.
They were skilled in metallurgy or metal works,
and so they had very advanced tools for plowing, agriculture and weapons.
Ten times in the Bible,
the southern part of Israel is called Philistine.
In the Greek translation of the Hebrew text
for Lycia means literally Palestine.
So Palestine
is a nomenclature for Philistines.
Palestine was never
a word for the for the area.
Palestine was a Greek word about the people in the area.
And so for the Greeks
to talk about the Palestinians, what they meant
was the Philistines.
Today there are no Philistine people
left.
There's no Philistine
blood, pure blood left anymore.
But there are people that are called
Palestinians.
The Romans eventually
would take over the land of Israel in the New Testament.
And in 70 A.D.
they destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.
And at about 135 A.D., the
the Roman emperor Hadrian moved, took over,
and in a way to shame the Israel,
the Jews, the Hebrew people in Israel,
he renamed southern Israel and Judah Palestine,
because he knew that what he was doing
was calling that land the land of the Philistines,
in order to
shame Israel and to try to perpetuate
the myth that the land is not theirs, it belongs to the Philistines.
That's where the word Palestine comes from,
and that's where the nomenclature Palestinians come from.
It's really a throwback from a dictator
who wanted to shame Israel and remind him that
as far as they were concerned, they didn't belong in the land.
So when people talk about the Palestinians,
it's really an incorrect name, because what it refers
to is the Philistines that don't exist anymore.
No one in Israel will talk about that
land, even in Gaza as Palestinian,
you only want to talk about it as Palestinians are those
who live in Palestinian territories or those who hate Israel
do understand.
There is no nation of Palestine
and there's no bred Palestinians.
It goes back to the Philistines.
Now, other people may believe
news and propaganda from social media.
I don't want you to be ignorant of this fact.
That's that's this is the people and
this is the land we're talking about.
And so God gives them over for 40 years to
a certain man of Zorah and named Manoah from
the clan of Dana, had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth,
the angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, you are barren and childless,
but you're going to become pregnant and give birth to a son.
Now see to it that you drink no wine
or other fermented drink, and that you do not eat anything unclean.
You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never
to be touched by a razor, because the boy will be a Nazarite.
Pay attention to that dedicated to God.
From the womb he will lead.
He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.
This is the prophecy to this lady about this boy who will be born, who is Samson,
the angel of the Lord.
Anytime we read that in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord, we know
from Scripture that this is a what we call a pre incarnate
appearance of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity.
Before he took on human form.
I was born in a manger in Bethlehem, eternally existent.
The Bible tells us that the world was created through Jesus and for him.
This is his appearing before he took on bodily form in that child,
he shows up to this woman and says, you're going to have a baby,
but you're you have to set this course for this child,
and this child is to be a Nazarite.
Now, the Nazarite were those who took
a special vow of consecration to God.
They said, God, I'm going to serve you for this amount of time.
It's going to have a starting point and an ending point,
but I am consecrated to you.
Usually it was somewhere between 30 and 100 days long.
Their commitment.
And when they started this commitment, they would shave their head.
Praise God.
And they would.
Part of this vow was I would shave my head
and then I wouldn't touch it again with a razor.
Tell me if I was complete.
The long hair.
As part of this vow, they would promise to not have any wine or fermented drink.
They couldn't even have grapes or raisins
and they would come make a commitment
not to go near a dead body, be it human or animal.
So even if their dear family member died, they couldn't go to the funeral
and if any time during their commitment they broke their vow.
They had to start it all over again and shave their head.
The signaling
I have entered into this consecration with God again.
So you understand what never is.
Just as a side note,
I'm going to tell you why shave my head for
two reasons.
When I was down in Southern California, there was a lady in our church,
an older lady who had cancer,
and she had to go through chemotherapy,
and she was so concerned about coming to church,
having going through chemotherapy because she was going to lose her hair.
And she was just she was concerned about it.
She was like, I don't want people looking at me and talking.
I and I told her, I said, tell you what,
before you lose your hair, I'm going to shave my head
because everybody's going to look at me
and they probably won't even pay attention.
Even.
And you can sneak in with your scarf and sneak out.
And that's one reason I shaved my head.
The other reason
was because of this Nazarite vow.
Because this Nazarite vow says, when I'm consecrated a guy that will shave my head.
And when I break that vow and sin after shave my head again.
So every morning, like, yeah, I blew it yesterday.
Now I got to make this commitment all over again.
And every morning it reminds me,
Carl, consecrate yourself
a big screw up.
So that's a Nazarite.
And Jesus comes. This woman says
you're going to have this baby and this is who he is to be.
And this is what you must do, but you have to set the pace. Mom.
You have to set the pace for your consecration
to God will in part set up your son's consecration to God.
Parents, you understand?
And so she goes on and and the Bible says in verses six, seven and eight,
and I'll just read a little bit, you just kind of encapsulated,
the woman went to her husband.
She was like, hey, guess what?
This the angel of the Lord came and said, we're going to have a baby.
And she says, this is what you're the angel of God.
Very awesome.
I didn't ask him where he came from.
When I was reading, I thought, you know what?
That's what a great lesson.
Sometimes you have to remember just to keep our mouth shut and listen.
Don't talk so much.
You don't have to ask questions.
You need clarification.
Sometimes you just need to listen.
Especially when God speaks.
Just look.
This is what it says.
That's enough.
She said I didn't ask him his name.
He didn't tell me.
He said, you're going to conceive.
This baby has to be a Nazarite.
And so she reports to her husband and her husband.
Then this is his story.
Then, Manoah, pray to the Lord.
Pardon your servant.
Lord, I beg you to let the man of God you sent to us come again and teach us.
Look at us. Look at this question.
How to bring up the boy who was to be born.
He says, God, would you just allow that angel
come back to tell us how to bring this child up?
And if you read the next few verses nine, ten, 11,
you'll see that the angel that God heard his prayer and the angel of the Lord
Jesus came back and appeared to the woman again, but not him.
She's just sitting.
He's out working
and she's just being.
There's something to be said about being able
to hear from God when you're not busy.
He's busy.
He doesn't get to hear from God.
God comes back to her.
And and, and
and she's like, oh my gosh, my husband's going to want to meet you.
And and so as it goes,
Manoah comes, she gets her husband and the know comes and ask him
when your words are fulfilled, he is having a conversation with Jesus.
When your words are fulfilled,
what is to be the rule that governs this boy's life and work?
The angel Lord answered, your wife must do all that I have told her.
She must not eat anything that comes from the grape vine,
nor drink any wine or other fermented drink, nor eat anything unclean.
She must do everything I've commanded her.
No, I applaud them for going to God.
God, we're going to have this child.
How do you want us to to raise him?
I that's a great thing to do. However,
what did Jesus tell them?
Anything new?
Do you notice
that he, in answering their prayer about how to raise her?
They God gave them no new instruction.
All God did was reiterate
what he had already said.
You know why?
Because we already know what we're supposed to do.
God doesn't need to give us any more information, any more instruction.
He's been pretty clear.
Yeah.
And in essence, God says, listen, I don't need to tell you anything else to do.
You need to do what I've already said.
And until we have done everything God has already told us to do,
don't ask him what else we're supposed to do.
You know, I was thinking about this in the world of parenting,
and I thought, how many of us parents
and I understand, and it's good, but how many of us parents
pray over the future of our children?
That's what we do, right?
There's nothing wrong with that.
But just consider for a moment God has already told us
how we are to raise our children,
and he's given us examples of Scripture.
Joshua 24.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
This is the standard that dad sets.
That mom set, and this is what we will do in this house is what we're going to do.
And if you don't like it, you can move out and do your own thing.
But as far as this house, it's not open for discussion.
Ephesians six fathers, this is how you relate to your children.
This is how you run your household.
God has given us all this instruction. All right.
And I wonder, parents,
I just wonder
if rather than praying over the future
of our children so much, we spent more time frame
for the ability and desire to do what God has told us to do
as parents first.
Yes. And I'm saying.
Why don't we parents spend more time rather than God do this for my kids?
God watch everything against God, for my kids, for me, for the future.
Why don't we plead before God?
Father, please.
You've already instructed me on how to be a good daddy.
How to be a good mommy,
how to lead my family, how to raise my children,
how to set them up in the way they should go.
So when they're older, they won't want to give me courage to do it.
Give me faithfulness to be obedient.
You understand
it's not God's job to raise your kids.
It's your job.
And he's told us enough on how to do it.
Man, this ancient book is so relevant,
isn't it?
So God our gives or else instruction.
And then watch this.
Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, would you like
we would like to you to stay until we prepare a young goat for you.
I mean, they're super hospitable,
in the Middle East, that the angel of the Lord replied,
even though you detain me, I will not eat any of your food.
But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.
I'm not.
I didn't realize he was talking to so true.
But I don't want to eat your food.
I want you to.
If you're going to give an offering, offer to the Lord.
Here's here's what I want you to understand.
Our highest priority is to worship God.
Without a doubt.
Love the Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind, strength.
But worship always involves a sacrifice.
And that's what Jesus tells him.
Look, look, I don't want to eat.
I want you to.
I want your worship.
But that worship has to be a sacrifice.
It's going to be a burnt offering.
Guys, our highest priority is to worship God.
Love the Lord of the greatest commandment. Love the Lord
your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength that is worship.
But that worship always involves a sacrifice.
Whenever we worship, God enables either sacrifice of ourselves,
of my time, of my agenda, of my desires, of my life, of my resources.
There's always a sacrifice.
The Bible says, offer.
Enter his gates with a sacrifice of praise.
There's
always a sacrifice involved with worship.
And so as you read this in menos interaction with Jesus
is it says that they offer this burnt offering,
and they prepare it and they offer it, and.
Manoah says, he says,
look, what will will worship you, but what is your name?
And in verse 18 he replied, why do you ask my name?
It's beyond your understanding that the Hebrew word there is wonderful.
He says, my name is wonderful.
I am Mr. Wonderful.
Which is interesting
because over in Isaiah nine, chapter nine, verse six, we learn the name
of the wonderful counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
This is Christ
that that is standing before.
And they offer this burnt offering.
The Bible says,
this flame started from this altar and consumed it and sent it up to heaven.
And the angel of God, that Jesus went up into heaven as well.
And they realize, they realize then
this is God.
And the Bible says, and in verse 20, seeing this, Manoah
and his wife fell with their faces to the ground
like they realized they had been in the presence of Christ.
And their response is to follow with their faces to the ground and worship, having
offered the sacrifice here,
here's, here's what we got to stand.
Uninhibited worship is one.
The posture of the body reflects the position of the heart.
When you come in contact with God, when you come in contact with Christ
and you realize whose presence you've been in.
Now I realize that, you know we're a pretty proper church.
Unfortunately,
and we come from churches that are kind of proper and
don't get real boisterous or expressive.
I wish we were expressive in church as we were at a football game,
you know, or your kids soccer game.
But all through scripture, you see people who realize
they've come in contact with God and they can't help.
But like the position of their body reflects
the partnership, postures their heart.
Like you fall down in worship, you raise your hands, you clap, you shout.
You're like, I can't, I can't sit still,
David said when he danced before the Lord, I'll become even more undignified
if I can just worship God.
So they follow their faces
to the ground and worship.
And look at verses 22 through 25.
But Noah says, we're doomed to die.
We've seen God.
I mean, he understood the Old Testament,
God's words that no one can see the face of God and live.
And so he's like, we are dead.
And I love his wife.
She's so wise,
honey,
if the Lord meant to kill us, he wouldn't have accepted a burnt offering
and a grain offering from our hands, nor showing us all these things.
He just told us about.
So let me gives birth to a boy named Samson.
He grew in the Lord, and the Lord blessed him.
And the the Lord began to stir him.
Now I love this woman
because her husband is freaking out,
losing his mind.
He's so worried he doesn't have control of the situation.
He's worried about the outcome.
And I love the fact that she's gonna say, honey,
why do you do that?
Relax.
Quit trying to.
What is the matter with you?
I told my parents I wanted to marry a spiritual leader, and I got you.
You know, she doesn't do that.
Rather than.
Shame him.
She encourages him.
He says, I mean, God is so good.
Why would he tell us all this?
And then office. It doesn't make sense.
Let's just trust him.
Right?
What a good woman.
Oh, so then we get to chapter 14.
We start seeing Samson's life.
That was all set up to get us to Samson.
And in Samson's life. Look.
Look at this guy.
Samson went down to Timna and
and saw there a young Philistine woman.
When he returned, he said to his father and mother,
who saw a girl.
I have seen a Philistine woman in Timna.
Now go get her for me, for my wife.
This guy man,
if you read chapter 14,
you will see five times where it says of Samson.
He went down, he went down, he went down.
He turned aside and he went down.
Don't miss that.
He is called heavenward, but he goes
downward.
You and I are called heavenward.
But oftentimes we live downward.
Here's what we have to understand.
The trajectory of our life will determine the outcome of our life.
He says, I've seen this woman.
Now go get her.
This guy is supposed to be consecrated to God,
but he has no communion with the father at all.
He's supposed to be consecrated, his life given to God and the work of the kingdom.
Yet he has no communion with Christ.
He sees a Philistine woman.
God says, I don't want you to marry an Philistine people.
They're going to lead you away from worship of me.
And he's living in complete
objection to God's instruction.
Second, princesses,
don't be yoked together with, with unbelievers.
What for?
What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what?
What fellowship can light and darkness have with each other?
They can.
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?
Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
Don't get yoked.
Death
in serious, intimate relationships with people.
If you're a Christ follower with people who are.
I tell young people
this all the time evangelistic dating doesn't usually work,
creates more problems.
Motion.
There are three things that make a great, really great marriage.
There's there's the physical, the fun, and the faith.
There's got to be a physical like hello,
there has to be,
but there's got to be fun.
Like, we like being together.
If you like being with somebody.
But there's no, like, spark.
You're just going to be good friends.
If they're like, who?
There's a spark, but you hate being around each other.
So there's those two.
But the most important is the faith issue.
They can be hot
and you have fun, but not a person of faith.
And that marriage might work
for a little while, but it's going to be work.
And at some point, if you continue to follow
Jesus, it's going to implode.
All right.
That's my advice to young people all the time.
Look, you are drawn to the Woo-Hoo!
And the fun, but if you don't pay attention to the faith,
that's got to be priority one.
That's the way you make a marriage work.
Because the one who is going to be like
after a while.
And the fun doesn't stay fun forever.
But the faith keeps growing.
All Samson cared about, he was a he man with a sheep problem.
All he cared about was the look.
I've seen a girl, I like her.
Go get her.
See, Samson was called and chosen by God.
But living independently from him.
And God allows us that freedom
to be called and chosen by him,
and to make our choices, to live independently from him.
And when we do, our trajectory will be to go down
and to go down and to go down.
Follow me.
Now verses
three and four, his dad comes and his mom goes like, look, son, why?
Why do you go down to Tim off to a Philistine woman?
There's plenty of there's plenty of girls at church.
Like, why do you.
Samson's parents.
They were at this point in his life.
They were the ultimate helicopter and bulldozer. Parents,
like the helicopter was
just always around and always around and always around.
And he cannot do it. Always on. Always.
And both of those are parents that kind of prepare the road
for their child, bring up their child for the road, you know what I'm saying?
Very dangerous.
Parents.
And the parents never learn to tell their kid no,
you will not.
This is the line in the sand.
Don't you dare cross it.
Weak, limp wristed parents
raised, spoiled, entitled children
like Samson.
And he digs his feet and says no,
I want her.
Watch what happens.
Samson, what are those words
for them?
Yeah. Say it with your mouths open.
What do those words.
Yeah. See?
The trajectory of life
went down to Timna, together with his father and mother in tow.
As they approached a what?
A vineyard.
Anybody see a problem?
And that's right. Vouch.
Can't even go near it.
Getting close, flirting with sin.
Selling.
A young lion came roaring toward him.
The spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him, so that he tore the lion apart
with his bare hands, as he might have torn a young goat.
But he told neither his father nor his mother, one
then he went, what?
So you're never not going to see that now.
And then he went down and talked with the woman.
He didn't just see her.
Now he's engaging her.
We're not just flirting with sin now we're engaged.
In the electric.
Eye the so interesting to me.
And it's almost refreshing that he's going down and he's turning
and he's going down.
Yet the Spirit of God came on him.
I love the father.
And so I appreciate this about my God,
that even in those times when I am going down,
God, in his mercy and grace,
still chooses to empower, to use.
He doesn't ask me to be perfect.
He does ask me to repent.
You understand? I love that about God.
That even when Samson is turning away from God at times God still says, no, no,
I can still use you. You don't have to be perfect.
I love that about God.
And the verse six says, The Spirit of the Lord came on him,
and the power of the Lord came upon him.
And he told the latter part, like you would have.
And so let me just say, here's how they would dispatch of goats.
Back then, they were really easy to dispatch that you took both hind legs
and they just pull the goat apart and it split the goat right up the middle.
There really weak creatures.
And that's how you just take care of a goat.
You get when you.
And he did that to a lion
because the Spirit of God came on him.
That's pretty bad.
But here I'm going to throw something out to you just because
there's I can't prove it, but I think I can support it.
This is our view of Samson,
right?
Because he's a dude.
You going to tear a lion apart?
You gotta look like that, right?
He's going to tear.
He's going to tear a city gates off
and put him on his back and walk like 30 miles with them.
You got to look like that right?
I don't think so.
I think this is what Samson looked like in real life.
I think that Samson,
I really do.
You know why?
Because if that is Samson, you're like, well, of course he can beat up a lion.
Look at him.
I know if God's going to use someone for that type stuff.
It's got to be someone like that.
And there's a problem because I don't look like that.
Use me.
And so we start to elevate the vessel,
not the god behind it.
And if Samson looked like that
and tore a lion apart with his bare hands, you be like, how?
How did that.
If that guy tore off city gates, put him on his back
and walk 30 miles, you be like, oh,
what's behind that guy
that allows that to happen?
We get so enamored with the vessel
that we lose the awe of God.
It wouldn't make sense
if God did mighty acts through that.
It doesn't make sense for God to do mighty acts through that.
And that is the way of Scripture.
First Corinthians 127 God has
chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong.
Where in the Bible does God ever say, okay,
finally I got a specimen I can use.
Never.
Every one that God uses in these mighty ways starts with God.
I can't do that.
You. You got the wrong person.
And God says, Will you just trust me?
I want the high like me, not you.
Right?
Right.
Yeah.
Samson.
Makes everybody in awe of God.
Not self.
Some.
Sometime later, when he went back to marry her.
What did he do?
He turned aside.
I wonder how many times in this life we have turned aside
from the things of God,
the things we should not be giving our attention to,
to look at the lion's carcass.
And in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey.
He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along
in order to scoop out honey from a carcass of a lion,
you have to get very close to a deadline.
When he rejoined
his parents, he gave them some and they too ate it.
But he didn't tell them he had taken it from the honey
from the lion's carcass.
Do you notice what's happened, Samson?
You knows what's happening.
He's called him God.
He's acting as if he's consecrated to God.
But he has no communion with God.
He's on a downward trajectory,
all the while claiming God's identity.
The progression
turned aside,
looked at, acted against.
It's the story of my life.
Probably the story of yours.
When we turn aside from the things that God
and we look at
the things of the world,
and we act against the way of God.
See, Samson had the appearance of consecration
to God without communion with God.
He looked the part,
but there was no internal communion with the Savior,
with the father.
We have to be very careful
that we don't get so caught up in looking the part
outward. Consecration
without paying attention to continual communion with.
See, the appearance of consecration
without continual communion will result in compromise
and destruction.
This is the life of religion.
Religion says, do these things
look the part, act the part, be these things.
But unless that is prompted
and propelled by an inward communion with God,
all of the external
signs of consecration will lead to burnout,
religious exhaustion, and spiritual defeat.
The outward
acts of consecration must be in place
only as they are reflections of an inward communion
with God.
This was the downfall of Psalms.
You know, we didn't do communion earlier
in the service because I was saving it for this point.
I told Jeff, I said, Jeff, I want to I want to do communion together.
I want to lead it.
I want to lead.
At the end of my message.
Because I want our church
not just to look good on the outside.
But to be consecrated to God
because of the internal communion with him.
And so if you call yourself a Christ follower,
good,
your life ought to be.
Our lives ought to be consecrated to God, set apart for Him
and His work in his kingdom.
But I want us to be very careful
that we don't neglect the internal communion
with him.
If you've never accepted
Jesus as your Savior
and be set apart, consecrated to God,
today is your day.
And before we take this, I just want to lead us
all in the opportunity to set ourselves apart
for God again,
like a Nazarite wreath, establishing our vow
to be consecrated to God, set apart for him.
So I want you to join me in prayer, father.
Thank you.
That you love us so much so that you ask your son
to come to this world
to be innocent, yet to die on the cross.
Because I was guilty.
Father, this morning
I consecrate myself again to you.
I want to be set apart for you and your kingdom.
Friends, in this
moment, if you've never consecrated yourself to God,
I want to invite you in this moment.
In your own words.
But to come to God and say, God, thank you that you love me.
Jesus.
I believe that you died on the cross
so I could be forgiven of my sin
and be right with the father.
Today I give myself to you.
I choose to be consecrated,
set apart to you
and for you.
Today I accept you
as the leader of my life, my Savior
and my Lord.
Amen.
Whether you've done that for the first time or many times over,
as an act of outward consecration,
I want to invite you
to participate in an inward communion.
This is easier for those who have a relationship with Jesus.
And it's in communion with the father
that remember what these elements represent.
Jesus with his disciples
took the bread
and he told them, this is my body
given for you.
He said, whenever you do this,
I want you to eat this in communion with me,
consecrating your life to me, but communing with me
and remembering what I did for you on the cross.
You have a relationship with Jesus.
Commune with him.
So the element of bread that reminds us
of what he did.
In a very similar way,
Jesus said, I want you to commune
with me in remembering that it wasn't
just my body that I gave, it was my blood that I shared.
And this blood is the new covenant of my blood, shed for the forgiveness of sin.
You say you're consecrated to me.
Commune with.
By remembering my blood
that was shed for your forgiveness.
And take the cup.
Jesus, we remember you.
We want to be consecrated to you.
Help us to live in communion with you.
And you remember in your body, your blood.
As we walk through this strange world,
looking forward to a better home.
We love you, Jesus.
In the name of bread.
Listen
as you go about your week.
If you claim the name of Christ, you walk in communion with him
that every day you remember
the forgiveness that's been provided because of his body on the cross,
the blood that was shed.
So sin can be forgiven.
Walk in knowledge of that in communion with him.
As you go through your day,
and you'll find yourself walking in
step with the Holy Spirit within you.
And you will be able to be empowered
to live a consecrated life for him, not out of duty,
but out of communion in relation.
And it's a beautiful.
Church.
Are we good?
Is. And I want you to finish.
Read chapter 14 of Psalms
and 15 as well.
We're going to take a deep dive into this guy's life.
It's it's amazing. It's remarkable.
God's going to redeem it fully one day,
and we're going to see it.
We're going to see his recommitment to God to be beautiful
and tragic at the same time.
And it reminds me of.
Even in my debauchery,
God is so good and so gracious and so merciful
that he uses frail little nerds like me
and like.
He's a good guy.
Yeah, this.