Samson (Pt 4)

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First, Judges chapter 16.
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Then Samson went to Gaza, and he saw a harlot there and went into her.
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And when the Gazites were told Samson has come here, they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city.
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They were quiet all night, saying in the morning, when it is daylight, we will kill him.
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And Samson lay low till midnight.
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Then he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gates of the city and the two gateposts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
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Now afterward, it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sarek, whose name was Delilah.
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And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said, entice him and find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him, and every one of us will give you 1,100 pieces of silver.
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So Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and what you may be bound to afflict you.
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And Samson said to her, if they bind me with seven fresh bow strings, not yet dried, then I shall become weak and be like other men.
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So the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bow strings, not yet dried, and she bound them with them.
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Now there were men lying in wait, staying with her in the room, and she said to them, the Philistines are upon you, Samson.
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But he broke the bow strings as a strand of yarn breaks when it touches fire, so the secret of his strength was not known.
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Then Delilah said to Samson, look, you have mocked me and told me lies.
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Now please tell me what you may be bound with.
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So he said unto her, if they secure me with new ropes that have never been used, then I shall be weak and be like other men.
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Therefore Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to them, the Philistines are upon you, Samson.
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And there were men lying in wait, staying in the room, but he broke them off his arms like a thread.
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Then Delilah said to him, until now you have mocked me and told me lies, tell me what you may be bound with.
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And he said to her, if you weave the seven locks of my head into the web of the loom, so she wove it tightly with the baton of the loom and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson.
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But he awoke from his sleep and pulled out the baton and the web from the loom.
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Then she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You mocked me three times, have not told me where your great strength lies.
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And it came to pass when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him so that his soul was vexed to death.
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Then he told her all his heart and said to her, no razor has ever come upon my head for I have been a Nazarite to God for my mother's womb.
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If I'm shaven, then my strength will leave me and I will become weak like any other man.
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When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the Lords of the Philistines saying, come up once more for he has told me all his heart.
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So the Lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hand.
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And she lulled him to sleep on her knees and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head.
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And she began to torment him and his strength left him.
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And she said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson.
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So he awoke from the sleep and said, I will go out as before at other times and shake myself free.
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He did not know that the Lord had departed from him.
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Then the Philistines took him and put out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and they bound him with bronze feathers and he became a grinder in the prison.
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However, the hair of his head began to grow again and as it had been shaven.
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Now the Lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer great sacrifice to Dagon their God and to rejoice.
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And they said, our God has delivered into our hands, Samson, our enemy.
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When the people saw him, they praised their God.
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For they said, our God has delivered into our hands, our enemies, destroyer of our land and the one who multiplied our dead.
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So it happened when their hearts were married that they said, call for Samson that he may perform for us.
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So they called for Samson from the prison and he performed for them and they stationed him between the pillars.
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And Samson said unto the lion who held him by the hand, let me feel the pillars which support the temple so that I can lean on them.
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Now the temple was full of men and women and all the Lords of the Philistines were there.
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In fact, there was about 3000 men and women on the roof who watched while Samson performed.
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Then Samson called to the Lord saying, oh Lord God, remember me I pray, strengthen me I pray just this once oh God that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes.
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And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars that supported the temple and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left.
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And Samson said, let me die with the Philistines and he pushed with all his might and the temple fell on the Lords and all the people who were in it.
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So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life.
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And his brothers and all his father's household came down and took him, brought him up, buried him between Zorah and Eshkolah in the tomb of his father Manoah, he had judged Israel 20 years.
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So we come now to the final account of Samson.
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So if you haven't looked at the board, look at the board, I put this up this morning and I hope you can read some of the things that I put up there.
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Because here's what came to my mind.
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As we've been going through this, that as I think about Samson, this is what I think about.
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He's all over the place.
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He's a judge, he's a thief, he's self-serving, he's strong, he's a picture of Christ, he's deliberate, he's cunning, he's a fornicator.
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I mean, wouldn't you not agree with me that if you just looked at the life of Samson, I don't think any of us would encourage any of our kids to live like this.
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I don't think any of us would encourage any of us to live like this.
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And here's the problem is as we start to get in, I think it's very hard for us.
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And we had that discussion last week as brother Mike was bringing it out.
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I think that we always try to connect the dots.
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We always try to kind of put things, piece things together and come out with a perception or come out with a view.
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And many times we take it from where we are today, right? Would you not agree that we, it's very hard for us to live a hundred years ago, right? It's very hard for us to think about things that happened a thousand years ago.
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We're so accustomed to evaluating things by our, the way we live and the times we live.
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So I guess what I'm trying to say, if you try to connect these dots, I don't know what you get out of it.
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To me, and I will say it this way, because this is where I really think about it.
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Samson is an absolute mess.
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Mike called him a moral train wreck.
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I'll call him a mess, but at the same time, he's God's moral train wreck in that way, right? He's God's mess.
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Just like you and I, we're all God's mess.
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And if you don't think that, let me put it to you this way.
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How many of us, if we did something like this about our own lives and the issues that we deal with in our own lives, that we wouldn't have things kind of somewhat scattered all over the place too.
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So as I thought about that, I just wanted to put that up just as a visual, because in my mind, I go, Samson's over here and then he's over there, and then one minute he's this and one minute he's that.
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Like I said, but nevertheless, he is the one that God has raised up and we cannot lose sight of that, can we? In other words, even as we quote the fact that the heart of the King is in the Lord's hand and like a river of water, he moves it wherever he wills.
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And as we stand on the truth that God does whatever he wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and there's none that could stay his hand, none that could say to him, what are you doing? At the same time, and I was going to write it on this side, but I didn't.
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As we finish this account of Samson, keep in mind both the sovereignty of God and what's the counterpart to that? The responsibility of man, right? And we brought it up in the past about God's secret will and God's revealed will, his decreed will and his perceptive will.
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But there's a reality that God is going to use Samson, not only in delivering Israel from the Philistines, but God is also going to use Samson as an example.
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Remember what it says in first Corinthians, right? The things that were written before time were written what? For I admonish and instruction upon whom the ends of the world would come.
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Lance, you wanna say something? Yes, I get bored there and I think to myself, well, you know what? There's certain parts of my life I could go.
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Yeah, I think we all can if we...
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Now, here's the other part of this.
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If we wanted to say, well, which one of these would we rather be to not rather be? I think we would start excluding.
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I mean, I don't really wanna be known as a thief as a child of God or a liar or a fornicator.
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But some of these other things, he in a sense, he's a servant.
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In a sense, he's pretty cunning too, by the way, right? Samson, he's pretty slick.
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At least he thinks he's slick.
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So yeah, I agree and that's what I...
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And again, if I started to try to figure out where I am, I'm a mess too, so...
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But we're now gonna come to the ending account of Samson.
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I just remember, God is sovereign, man is responsible and God is always going to be what? Glorified, right? No matter what happens and remember behind this all is God's ultimate purpose to give Israel that land and to raise Israel up and ultimately what to do with Israel but to bring forth progressively the true savior, the true judge, the true deliverer, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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So it has to be kept.
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I think we can easily fall into the ditch on one side or the other.
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We lose sight of it in a historical progressive way rather than just trying to pinpoint certain things.
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So let's try to walk through the text a little bit and we'll go from there.
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And so it starts in the first couple of verses.
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Here's his, I'm gonna call it his first fling.
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He's already done this, but look what it says.
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Samson went to Gaza and he saw a harlot there and he went into her.
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When the Gazites were told, Samson had come there, they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city.
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And they were quiet all night saying in the morning when it's daylight, we will kill him.
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Samson lay low till midnight and then he arose at midnight, took the doors of the gates of the city and the two doorposts and pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
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So just a couple of thoughts.
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And if you have some thoughts to add in, that's great.
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We're not really told a timeline here from what had happened previously.
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All we know is what it says.
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And I don't know of any other place where it gives us any sort of timeline that at some point now he goes to Gaza.
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And guess what? He's going to do basically the same thing that he's done.
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He's gonna be a lustful, self-serving person.
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So he goes to Gaza and Gaza would have been, as far as I understand, Gaza would have been further towards the water, further towards the sea.
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And it would have been one of the chief cities of the Philistines.
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And remember, that's where his issue lies is with the Philistines, right? And that's why God had raised them up.
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So at some point now, after this, what we looked at last week as brother Mike brought up, and after the whole thing with the tying of the foxes together and all that stuff, at some point, Samson takes another trip and he goes to Gaza and lo and behold, again, as I said, the same thing happens that has happened previously in his life in that he's back at it again.
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He's following his desires.
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And I wanna make a point.
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The point is this, if we do not consider rightly desires that come up within us, they don't have to be in that sense to the degree that Samson took them, but if we don't put to death the desires that work in us and on us, I really believe ultimately those illicit desires will do us in.
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In other words, I guess when you look at the character of Samson's life, one of the great characteristics of his life is that he follows his eyes, he follows his loss, his desires rule over him.
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In a sense, there's a verse in Psalm 32 where God says, I will guide you with my eye.
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He says, don't be like the horse and the mule because the horse and the mule, you have to put the bit in the bridle in their mouth in order to get them to go where you want them to go.
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And in the sense, that's ultimately what God's gonna wind up doing with Samson.
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Basically, we'll see it towards the end of the chapter when God brings down on him in many ways, whether you wanna call it God's chastening, God's judgment, and yet God uses him to deliver.
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But again, you and I, brothers and sisters, if we learn nothing else from Samson, that's something that we can take away as value, which one of us would say, we don't have desires that we know are not right, and yet we find ourselves at times playing with them.
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And Samson has been playing with his desires, and now he goes to this, and I try to see what some of the commentators say about this whole thing with Gazza.
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Some of them say he basically goes to a bar.
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That's the way it was set up, that he finds an entertainment center.
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Maybe it's an inn, maybe it's a place where, let's put it this way, it's not the place where you would want people to gather.
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I always think of the thing in the Star Wars.
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Remember the first Star Wars, and the guy, they go into the bar there, and there's this freaky looking thing playing the flute, and it's like really dark and weird? He goes to Gazza, and what does he do? He goes back into the very atmosphere that's conducive to fulfilling his lusts and his desires.
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And that's why I say to you, if we don't control and seek to put to death those desires in us, ultimately, they will find their way to afflict us.
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Almost like, people wanna play with snakes, not me, I don't even understand people who wanna play with snakes, but nevertheless, there are.
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But how many of us wanna play around with a poisonous snake for too long? I don't wanna play around with any snake.
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I don't even wanna play with a dead snake.
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But my point is, Samson continually is playing with the snake, and ultimately, what does God say? Ultimately, the snake is gonna bite.
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And when the snake bites, the poison is really dangerous.
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So here we find him again, and like I said, at some point, he goes back, and he sees a harlot there, and he went into her.
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And so again, that's why some believe she might've been the innkeeper or the barkeeper.
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I think we can at least, in our minds, think about it.
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He goes to Gaza, and he finds there, and he fixes his eyes on this woman, and guess what happens? Same thing that's happened before with Samson, the same thing that's, and that's another thing.
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There were so many people, let me pose this as a question, and if you have a thought.
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Isn't it amazing to watch people get caught up in the same sinful activity, and then we find them either sorrowful, or they get out of it, or they escape it, and then we find them in the same thing all over again.
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And people just go from one, it's almost to me like frogs, they jump from one lily pad to another lily pad to another lily pad, but the whole pond is poisoned, and they think just keep moving around, it'll be better than, it doesn't, does it? You know anybody like that? Believe me, I know people like that.
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They just seem to go from one trouble spot to another trouble spot to another trouble spot, never can get themselves clear.
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And so here's Samson, and he meets up with the harlot, and he goes into her, and now in verse two, Samson's pretty well known, I think, at this point.
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I mean, remember what he did in the beginning? He killed 30 people to steal their clothing, right? At the first situation.
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Then he has tied the foxes together, right? Sent the foxes through the field to the Philistines.
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Then he, as Brother Mike brought up last week, then he killed 1,000 men.
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So I would say that somehow the word has gotten out through the land of the Philistines about Samson.
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He might be the most wanted man on the Philistines' FBI list, as far as I know.
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But nevertheless, he's well known, and yet it's interesting that he still goes there.
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You know, you could say, well, that's because he was Philist, and in some ways he was Philist.
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We could also say, couldn't we, that God is behind it? Even if Samson's not behind it, God is behind it, right? So he goes, and he's well known.
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And so they find out, and Samson has come here, and they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city.
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Here's what I've been thinking about.
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And maybe you have a thought on it.
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If they really wanted to, if somebody wanted to, could they have not shot him through with an arrow? Could they not have somebody snuck in while he's asleep and run a, you remember what happened when, who was it? Was it J.L.
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that put the nail through the head of Cicero's head while he slept, right? Could not somebody have done this somewhere along the way? Slipped him some warm milk? Yes, yeah.
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Could they not, could not the Philistines have found some way to destroy, that's why I say God is behind and through all this.
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And now we find them and they're laying in wait.
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Were they laying in wait because they're afraid to go in there? Were they laying in wait because they think we got them? Did they surround the city? Maybe they didn't know what house he was in.
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Maybe they didn't know he was in room 3B.
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I don't know.
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Well, what I do know is that he is discovered and now the Philistines, and you would think they're thinking, we got him.
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We've cornered this dude and now we'll get him.
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And maybe they're afraid.
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Because again, I would think, I don't know about you, but if I knew that somebody had killed 1,000 men and tied two foxes together, I would surely not want to go meet him by myself.
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So maybe that's what's behind it.
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So nevertheless, they lay in wait all night and they were quiet in the morning.
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When it's daylight, we'll kill them.
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And when it says they waited for him all night at the gate of the city, basically I think they have him surrounded.
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He's got nowhere to go.
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So they think.
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And then in verse three, Samson lays low to midnight and then he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two gateposts, pulled them up bar and all, put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
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So thoughts, why do you think he got up at midnight? The original CrossFit game.
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Huh? The original CrossFit game.
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Could it be that God warned him? Could it be that he found out that the Philistines were surrounding him? Could it be he just woke up at midnight? Could it be that the woman told him? It could be a whole lot, right? I don't have the answer to that, nor do I think it's absolutely important, but here's the thing I do know.
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For whatever reason, Samson gets up at midnight.
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And I think the Philistines, they think they got him.
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So they're resting in the camp and they're waiting for daylight and then they're gonna do their thing on him.
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So he gets up at midnight and he carries the gates and the doors of the city.
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It says he carried them on his shoulders to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
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So one of two things.
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First of all, and I wanna make it, and you can agree with me or disagree with me and I'm fine with that.
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Again, if you disagree with me, talk to brother Mike or brother Keith.
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But here's the thought.
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I think about how Samson in some ways is a type of Christ.
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Will we not agree in some ways, Samson is a shadow or a type of the Savior, of the judge, of the deliverer.
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I think it's interesting that we have this recorded for us that he pulled up the gates, carried them on his shoulders and brought them out to face the hill or on the hills towards Hebron.
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I think about Christ and I think about how he said that the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against him.
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I think about how he in and of themselves, he's the door and that he carried the gates of the prison that we were in bondage and sin on his shoulders when he went to the cross.
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Now, you might say, you can't really make that jump.
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Well, I can in my mind.
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And I think we have to try to see, because isn't it true, should we not try to see Christ in everything where we can? Now, some people take it to excess, right? And they'll make a rock, they'll turn a rock into a prophetic uttering.
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But I do think it's interesting that he, that it does lay out for us that he took the bars, the doors of the gates, put them on his shoulders and he carried them out to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.
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And I thought about this and I went to some of those that have kind of studied this probably much better than I.
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And they said that Hebron would have been about 20 miles from where he is.
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And some suggest that he didn't necessarily carried the bars of the prison on his shoulders for 20 miles.
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Although we have the reality that Samson's really, he's really strong, right? So that could be, some have suggested that what he did was he brought him up on a hill that faces towards Hebron, maybe not 20 miles away, but that's where, again, that's where we all have to consider things for ourselves.
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So that basically is his first, the first fling in chapter 16.
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And remember now, Samson is marching towards capture and Samson is marching because of his lifestyle into a pit.
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And we're gonna see that.
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And I don't think I'm gonna finish this morning, but we'll definitely finish it next week.
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But I wanted to at least try to get us to think about it.
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So let's try to get a little bit further and start to consider, so he has his encounter, he gets out of it.
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And then we begin in verse four through verse 22, basically is the next fling or the next encounter or the next woman that Samson begins to find.
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And this one is going to be the one that is used to bring his ultimate downfall.
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And again, as I read through this and I've been thinking about it, I just can't understand apart from the purposes of God and the grace of God and the plan of God, how Samson still continually seems to slip out up until a point.
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And as we begin to see this, this is where that, if you will, the doors begin to close in on him.
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And again, it doesn't give us a timeframe.
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Look at it in verse four.
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Now afterward, or now afterward it happened, he loved a woman in the Valley of Serekh whose name was Delilah.
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Yeah, again, no timeline, but I would say that as we know how long he judged Israel, this is, we're getting towards the closing act.
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Wouldn't you agree? This is where the curtain is gonna come down on him.
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And so again, no specific timeline, but I do think it's close to the end.
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And so he loved the woman in the Valley of Serekh.
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I just looked up what Serekh means.
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It means choice, vines, and whose name was Delilah.
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Anybody know what Delilah means? Yeah.
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And also- It depends on how you wanna say it.
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And with that in mind, you just begin to, again, we all name kids different names for different reasons.
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Ask Ms.
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Anne.
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She just called on you, didn't she? Didn't you teach him Delilah? No, we didn't.
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We were hoping you were gonna correct us.
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She's being gracious.
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Yeah, it really, and that's kind of a contrast, right? In one sense, it could mean she's feeble or frail.
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And another- Is she the delicate woman of the night? Yeah.
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She probably, well, I'm just gonna leave that alone.
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She probably took well care of herself, right? And she probably presented very well.
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But nevertheless, there it is.
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And he loves her.
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It doesn't say he married her.
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I don't see anywhere where it says she became his wife.
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And in verse five, guess what? The Lords of the Philistines came up to her and enticed her.
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So now they find out about this.
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Again, the news has to travel.
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They might not have Facebook, Instagram.
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They might not have all that stuff, but somehow the news has gone about what Samson has done.
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And now the Philistines come up there again and entice him and find out where his great strength lies and what means we may overcome him, that we may bind him and afflict him.
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And every one of us will give you 1,100 shekels of silver.
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Now, that had been a bit of money at that point, especially if she's a delicate lady of the night.
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I think that would have been a pretty good night's fare in her mind.
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But the point is that she's gonna be used to entice Samson and she agrees to this.
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And here's a thought that I had.
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How many people are taken over by bribes? How many people do things that are motivated by recompense, reward, making money? How many people have found themselves in ungodly actions, not that she wasn't ungodly before this, but the money is used to entice her.
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And so she is enticed by what? By the money.
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And now she's gonna entice him to find out so that she can collect on him.
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She must've thought, I got this, dude.
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I got this.
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And just keep in mind, and I know we've been talking about it a little bit on Wednesday nights.
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And I wanna be careful how I say this so it's not misunderstood.
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A delicate woman is a, I mean, let's go back.
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Any woman is a true blessing and can be a true curse, especially if the way the woman presents herself is in an ungodly way.
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I don't think any of you would disagree with me with that.
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And that the enticement, and even as we looked at in Proverbs chapter five, and then back in chapter six, and it continually goes in the book of Proverbs, but my point is she takes them up on the bribe.
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She says, okay, I'll do this thing.
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And so she begins to, verse six, so Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and what you may be bound to afflict you.
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And there's a number of times she goes through this.
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And one of the things that kind of stood out to me was she does this in a very subtle way and she starts kind of gentle and it's like a train, it builds.
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Let me see if I can just show you that.
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So she agrees and please tell me where your great strength lies.
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And so he gives her this baloney story, right? He's good at creating, fabricating stories.
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And so he tells her all this stuff about the bow strings and whatnot.
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So the Lords of the Philistines brought up, come up in verse eight and they're lying in wait, staying with her in the room or somewhere close.
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And again, that's why I don't understand why they couldn't have vanquished Samson anytime they wanted.
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But the Philistines are upon you and he broke the thing.
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Now look at verse 10.
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So now she's enticed him.
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He thinks she thinks she's got the answer.
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She calls the Philistines, I'm gonna cash in.
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And then she says in verse 10, look, you have mocked me and told me lies.
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Now please tell me where you may be bound with.
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So she goes back and I think it's getting a little more intense now, right? She's disappointed.
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She thought she had him at the first cut and it didn't work.
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And she probably feels kind of like a fool and kind of she's out of her reward money.
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And so to me, it gets a little worse in verse 10.
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You mocked me.
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And then he gives her another story, right? He talks about the new ropes and Delilah took the ropes and bound them when it was said to him, the Philistines are upon you.
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And he breaks the ropes like a thread.
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Now look down in verse 13, here's Delilah again.
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Then Delilah said to Samson, until now you have mocked me and told me lies.
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Tell me what you may be bound with.
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And he said to her and he talks.
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And here's the thing.
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I think you could see the progression.
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Samson's getting weaker in this thing.
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He talked about bow strings and he talked about ropes.
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And now all of a sudden the focus becomes, well, you gotta weave my hair.
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And I think he's starting to lose sight.
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And she gets a little angry at him.
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And then he breaks that out.
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And then in verse 15, and this one we'll just stop for a minute.
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Look what she says to her in verse 15.
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So he's lied to her three times.
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She's trying to cash in.
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God's using Samson to deliver Israel and the Philistines.
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I mean, this is, to me, this is almost like a movie plot, right? Verse 15.
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Then she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? Just stop there for a second.
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I thought, what hypocrisy? She's telling Samson that he doesn't love her because he won't tell her where his strength is.
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And she's trying to sell him for 1,100 shekels of silver.
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Where's the love on the other side? It's hypocrisy to me.
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She's a, not only is she whatever she is, she's a hypocrite.
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She don't love Samson.
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She's just looking at her.
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She never says that she loved him.
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No, it never says that she loved him.
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And hey, she acts behind him and it goes completely over his head.
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Three times I've asked, do you want to find me so that we can update you? He's like a dumb ox going to the slaughter, right? And that's what it says about a man following after a strange woman.
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It's like an ox to the slaughter, right? You just plow ahead till your head's chopped off.
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But it is interesting.
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And I wonder if Samson's thinking, I got this.
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I wonder if there's a sense of arrogance in Samson where he thinks that his strength and whatever else he thinks he's going to be able to overcome.
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Because you think about it, he's overcome before, right? He's been trapped before.
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And so maybe he's playing with Delilah.
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She's trying to trade him in for money.
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The Philistines are trying to kill him.
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Like I said, there's a whole lot going on, but I just thought it was interesting.
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What hypocrisy to tell Samson, if you really loved me, you would tell me.
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Yeah, let me really tell you where my strength lies so you can get me killed and you can make money on the deal.
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What a wonderful woman.
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Stop with that because Samson's in many ways no better.
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So, okay.
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Verse 16, it came to pass when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed them so that his soul was vexed to death.
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That's how the new King James puts it.
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Who's got a different version? Mike, what do you got? Let me put that in my notes.
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This way, this way.
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She's pecking away at him, right? Is that what it says? She's annoyed him to death? Annoyed him to death.
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And that's something to think about.
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And I'm certainly not saying it about women only.
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I'm saying we need to be careful that we don't fall into this kind of character on either side, right? I have a big issue with repeating myself.
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I don't know if anybody else does, but I do.
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I will tell Candy something, even if it's like really small, I'll tell her like 16 times.
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And about the eighth or ninth time, she said, you told me that 3,000 times already.
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And then I'll say, well, I didn't tell you 3,000.
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And then we'd go back and forth.
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But I do that in a, I peck at, and I'm pecking at her, but I peck at whatever it is that's in my, and I'm really trying to break myself for that because I think that's, I don't think that's the right thing to do.
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It's just the way I kind of, one of the issues, one of the many issues in my own life that I gotta work.
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So she annoys him to death, pecks away at him.
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And in verse 17, and maybe we'll end it with that.
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He told her all his heart and said to her, no razor has ever come upon my head, for I've been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb.
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And if I am shaven, then my strength will leave me.
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And I shall become weak like any other man.
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So just, let's just take a minute to think through this.
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Do you really think that Samson believes that his strength really resides in his hair? I'm glad you all have an opinion about this one.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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He's like, he's less than 130.
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Sir? He's less than 130.
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His identity as being a deliverer and the Nazarite vow is wrapped up in his hair.
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And he knows that's the last identity that he has to being the servant of God.
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And we go through this just right here in these three paragraphs, or four paragraphs up to here.
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He's violated the Nazarite vow.
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He's violated the North Pole law.
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He's made himself unclean by touching another piece of a cork with an impose ring.
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He made his fresh tendons.
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I'm sorry.
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It's just.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I mean, like I said, that's the whole thing with him.
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He's.
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He has disregard for God's law.
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He has disregard for basically everything except Samson.
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Right? He, Samson wants what Samson wants.
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And.
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He glorifies Samson.
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Huh? He glorifies Samson.
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Yeah, he's self-serving.
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That was the other thing I put up on the book.
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He's self-serving.
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And maybe we'll start here again next week, but it's interesting to me, and I'll just mention it to you.
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I have tried to look at a wide range of commentaries on this.
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I don't depend on commentaries too much anymore, but I looked at as many commentaries as I could find.
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And I would say the main majority of them somehow tried to vindicate Samson.
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Tried to make Samson look like he's got a couple problems.
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They almost make him sound like he's a carnal Christian to put it in a New Testament sense.
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Oh, he's got a lot of issues, but he really loves the Lord and he just, he can't get out of his way.
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And he's really the great hero at this point.
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And to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And I will say this, and I will end with this.
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If that verse was not in the book of Hebrews, I think we all would have a lot of problems with the life of Samson.
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Look at the life of Saul before David.
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Lots of things to think about with that.
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But we do have that scripture in Hebrews, but it cannot be that he really thinks that it's all about just his hair.
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It has to be what's behind it.
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He knows, right? Because his mother was told that she was gonna be, he was gonna be a Nazarite.
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I think Mrs.
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Menorah told him that.
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I think that there's been some real understanding on his part.
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Plus he's seen the victories.
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Again, he's seen God help him overcome, overcome, overcome.
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And he tells her all heart.
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And that must've been an interesting moment because she just, again, we'll end.
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She says in verse 18, uh-huh.
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Just come up one more time, fellas.
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We got him.
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We got him.
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And don't forget to bring the money with you because we've got this guy where we want him.
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And so let's end with that.
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And then like I said, we'll finish this next week.
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It's just too long because this whole other side of him with the Philistines and the judgment and his destroying them is something we can consider next week.
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Let's just close.
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Our father in God, thank you for this time, Lord.
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Thank you for who you are, Lord.
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Thank you that as we look at your word, your history and those that you have been pleased to reveal to us that there are so many things for us to learn, so many things for us to avoid, so many things for us to emulate.
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But Lord, we thank you this morning that we do have the Holy One, the Lord Jesus Christ, that we can look to, that we should desire to imitate, that we can always find as the pure one, as the one who did always the things that please you.
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Be with us in our worship this morning in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Thank you.