Conquered (A Message for Men) — Glenn Meldrum

Israel’s Rebellion and the Philistine Oppression

So what we're going to do is we're going to look at Samson and Delilah. Turn with me to Judges, 16th chapter of Judges. But to set a picture of what's going on in this situation, I want to read a verse that's out of the 13th chapter in the first verse that says, 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.

And that sets the picture of what's going on in this situation. The children of Israel had rebelled against God, and so as is the typical thing in Scripture that you find, and this is a cycle that Israel went through on a constant basis, very unfortunate, but it is the reality that they faced.

And what it was is that they would walk with God, and as they would walk with God, God would bless them. They start taking for granted the blessing, and they start turning from God, looking to the blessing, trusting in the blessing rather than God.

And so then as they would begin to trust in their blessings, they would walk away from God, and then they would rebel against God. God would send prophets to warn them, to call them to repentance. They wouldn't heed the call, so then God eventually would bring oppressors upon them, and bring them into bondage, that they might feel the pain of their sin and their rebellion, that they might call out for repentance.

Then they would repent of their sins. When they would repent of their sins, God would begin to bless them. When they would be blessed, the whole cycle would start over again. And that's a cycle that goes on with Israel constantly, and it's also a cycle that goes on within the church, and it's also a cycle that goes on in a personal way in our own lives.

We face that same thing on a very personal basis. And so in this situation, they had rebelled against God, so God had allowed Israel to be oppressed by the Philistines. And so it lasted 40 years, and they began to cry out to the Lord, and so when they started to cry out to the Lord, God would raise up a judge.

And a judge would be somebody that would be there to bring deliverance to Israel from their particular bondage, because God wanted to be their king, and the ruler over them, he would have judges that he would rule through, not an earthly king.

Eventually they called for an earthly king, and I'm not going to take the time to go there. But that kind of sets the scenario. Israel is under bondage with the Philistines, they're being oppressed in a tremendous way, keeping them in a place so downtrodden, and abused that they couldn't rise up.

Samson’s Nazarite Calling and Spiritual Barrenness

And so God was going to raise up a man, and his name was Samson. And what the story is in Judges 16, is a man named Manoah, his wife was sterile. Sterility, they thought of as a curse from God. And that when he was blessing the man and his wife, he would bless them with fertility, if they weren't being fertile, there was something spiritually wrong.

And the spiritual idea of that is very true, I'm not going to take the time to try and build that, but it's very true too. If we're not being fruitful in our spiritual lives, then there's something wrong.

Barrenness in an individual, or barrenness in the church is never a blessing, it's always a curse, it's not a healthy thing. So Manoah's wife was sterile, an angel of the Lord came to her and told her that she would conceive a son, he must be raised as a Nazarite.

Then after she told her husband that, they went and inquired and had another confrontation with the angel that confirmed it to Manoah that he must be a Nazarite, that he must be raised in a particular way.

And the Scriptures just give a few ideas of what and the criterias of what a Nazarite was, but really the whole thing comes down to be that they were to be an individual set apart for God's use, sanctified for his use, and only for his use.

So they weren't to partake of the vine in any way, shape or form, which I think is really telling of where God's heart is, that they weren't to partake of the vine as far as grapes or grape juice or wine.

That they were totally to abstain from it, they didn't cut their hair as a sign of covenant with God. They were to walk in holiness and relationship with God. God was taking this newborn boy that they would soon have and raise him into a man and he was to be a man totally set apart for God.

He was to be a man holy for God, pursuing God with everything in his life. But there was a problem with Samson as he grew up in his life. There was a problem. We have so much of the Samson story brought out in our Sunday school classes for children.

I don't think Samson is a guy that really should be much looked at in that type of way. You know, we look at his strength and everything else. Wow, wasn't he a strong guy? But he was a self-absorbed, selfish man that was unconquered and refused to conquer his own passions and lusts.

He was a man driven by the lust of the flesh, by the pride of life, by his own desires. And when you look at Samson, there is of Samson nothing noble in that man. Nothing noble in that man. But what was the primary problem of Samson was that he had an unsurrendered will.

He did not want to yield control of his life to God. And so as a result, he set in motion particular things in his life and in the life of Israel on a whole and his family and in relationships that he had, he set in motion things that were destructive, things that were harmful.

The Moral Influence of a Surrendered Life

And we have to understand that we can set in motions things in our life that give life to others or things that give death to others. We can either have a character that is godly, that's imparting life to family members and to in the workplace and the church and the community, or we can have a character that is producing death and inflicting pain and suffering on others.

We can look at it from a radical standpoint in the sense of saved and unsaved. Manny Martin Luther, the founder of the Great Reformation, brought out this idea, and I'll just give it to you in my own terms.

But he said that there's nothing that an unsaved person can do that's good because there's nothing in them that's good because there is nothing in their life that pleases God. So no work that they do is acceptable to God.

So everything that's an unsaved person does is displeasing to God, everything, because their entire life is displeasing to God. And the only way that our works and our life can be acceptable to God is that we must first be accepted.

When we are accepted by God, then our works, our life becomes accepted to Him. And so when you look at an unsaved person, there's nothing in their life that's acceptable to God because they have not been accepted by God because they've not wanted to be accepted by Him.

But there's many times as Christians, we have these areas of our life that's not accepted by God because we've not allowed Him to conquer them. There are areas that cause us nightmares and cause other nightmares because we've not surrendered areas of our life.

So Samson chose, in his life, he chose not to live up to his calling. So the whole thing about Samson is he did not live up to his calling. Here was this tremendous calling put upon him, and he made these choices in his life to live contrary to that.

Now, what is the calling that we are given? We're called to be Christians. And what does that mean, really, to be a Christian? It means to be a child of God, to be Christ-like in our actions, in our love, in our care, in our mercy, in our tenderness, in our reaching a perishing world as Christ did, and so on.

We are called to be like Him and to live out what it means to be a son of God. We can do that same identical thing, not live up to our high calling, that we settle for something so low, a standard so low, that we're not willing to rise up to what Christ desires of us.

Constantinianism and the Lowering of Christian Standards

Something I learned while I was in grad school was a thing that was called Constantinianism. And what Constantinianism is, it's the idea that Emperor Constantine, which was in the fourth century, and he came into power in 313, I think it was, was when he made his Edict of Milan, and the Edict of Milan was where he legalized Christianity.

Prior to that, the church was a totally persecuted, separate entity from the worldly culture. They were not accepted by the culture. They weren't accepted by the government or anything else. They were persecuted for their faith.

When Constantine legalized the church, something happened. The standard of the church dropped. You can't even imagine how much it dropped. It all of a sudden just plummeted and masses of people came in because now it was popular and it was easy.

And instead of keeping the standard high, it says this is what it means to be a Christian, they lowered it to get in the masses. They had this concept that to make the people Christian, then you Christianize the people.

And what the thought was is that first you go and you force the people by sword point, which is what, there are accounts where the Catholic church would baptize thousands of people in a day by sword point.

Then they would say, you're Christian now, then they would think of how to Christianize them, how to somehow make them Christian in thought and action, which is an impossibility because they were never truly converted.

And that is a concept that we have incorporated today within the church, within areas of the Pentecostal church, within the whole concept of what is called the seeker-sensitive movement. It is trying to make the standard so low and so shallow that almost anybody can come in, then after they're supposedly in, then you somehow try to Christianize them.

And it's a total unbiblical approach to what Christianity is. Well, in essence, Samson was a man who tried to live a concept of relationship with God that was so low that it was almost non-distinguishable.

It's just, he did have a covenant with God, or let's say God made a covenant with Samson. And as long as he held to the very fringe of that, the very basic of it, God would still honor it to a particular point.

And as we will see, there was a point where he finally broke total covenant with God. And so then God was totally lifted from him. The presence of God was totally removed. Samson was a man who fed his sensual desires.

Samson’s Sexual Sin and the Addictive Power of Sin

And so in Judges 16, in the first verse, one day Samson went to Gaza where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. A man that's walking with Jesus and going to go spend the night with a prostitute.

This is not stumbling, okay? This isn't man just, I had a problem, you know? This is a man plunging in because he wanted what he wanted. This is really, excuse me, this is really put there to demonstrate the character of the man.

This is what the man was. This is how he lived. This was not a one-time event, though the scripture doesn't speak of it until we get to Delilah itself. And then we understand, okay, Samson, he had this thing that he wanted to sleep with women all the time.

He was a womanizer. And if he couldn't get one without paying for it, he would go and get one with paying for it. But this was what the man had become. This was his very character. He went and he lived out what he was.

Now, we may not necessarily be going to prostitutes, so we could be living it in our own hearts. We could be living it in our own imaginations or through pornography or something else that it becomes something that is lived out in the individual.

It's one thing if somebody's on the computer, something just pops up before them and it's just this rare thing that ever happens. And I'll be honest with you, I've never seen internet pornography. I don't want to.

I am so thoroughly careful because I don't want that imprinted on my brain. I don't want that there to become something that's going to haunt my life and affect me because something that I understand from my life as being in drugs is that sin is addictive.

Not just drugs is addictive, sin is addictive. Pornography is addictive. Lust is addictive. Pride is addictive. Hate is addictive. Every single sin is addictive to the fallen nature. I mean, it grabs hold of us and it starts possessing us.

And we, each of us in our own ways, the things we've struggled with, we know what it is to have something grab hold of us and start dominating our thoughts, dominating us, controlling us, where we start losing control in that area.

And you know what I'm talking about because that's a human condition we all face in one thing or another. And we become slaves to our sin, such as Romans 6 tells us, that whoever we yield ourselves to, we become the slaves to obey, whether sin unto death or righteousness unto life.

Whatever we yield ourselves to, we will be the slave to. And he was speaking to Christians. So it's not just those that aren't Christians. They're total slaves to the devil. They have given themselves over to him or never relinquished to Christ.

So by default, in essence, they are Satans. But we can give areas of our life over to him, in essence, as we yield to things and we become the slave to sin. And I don't even want to try and speculate where that point is that we become a slave to sin and eventually become a slave to Satan.

I don't want to get so close to compromise in the world in my life. I want to be so close to Christ and I'm as far away from that place of backsliding as possible. And there is a place in Christ where there is eternal security.

I believe in eternal security. If I love Jesus, I will absolutely be eternally secure. There is no hope of backsliding for those that remain in his love, that abide in his love. There is absolute, total security in Christ.

And so I can remain eternally secure if I remain in that place of intimacy with him. It's when I start walking away from that place of nearness that security is taken from us because we can step out of his hand.

And so here you see Samson that was a man that went after a prostitute because that's what he was. And he did not understand that he was sleeping with the devil. He didn't understand spiritual prostitution.

Spiritual Prostitution and Compromise

I want you to think about this for a moment. And this is a very challenging thought. In the Old Testament, Israel is accused again and again and again of being prostitutes, spiritual prostitutes, selling themselves.

Even in some places, they are accused of paying their lovers to do it. I mean, being so base, not even anymore to sell themselves, but to pay others to do it. And so that's what God was accusing Israel of, that they became baser than even the pagans with it.

And so again and again, he accused them of spiritual prostitution. But at the same time, the same concept is in the New Testament as well, such as in James 4. We're going to look at James 4 towards the end of this, and we're not going to touch on that point.

But James brings it out about being spiritual adulterers and adulteresses. And so it's a concept that's there. What is a prostitute? It's somebody that sells herself that is for sale for a price. There was this businessman that he goes onto a plane and he sits down in the plane and next to him sits this very beautiful woman.

So he's sitting there for a time after they start to take off. And then he starts up a conversation and he figures he's going to do something crazy or he's going to make a proposition to the woman. So he makes a proposition to her, says, how about a one night stand?

And she just gets angry at him. He says, well, what about for a million dollars? Give you a million dollars for one night. And she just started thinking about it. And so he kept talking to her. He tried to say, well, couldn't you use a million dollars?

And eventually she said yes. And then they figured out a place, a date, everything. The meeting was set. And after that one night, she would get a million dollars. And then they flew along in silence.

And then he speaks up again and says, well, I'd like to change my proposition a little bit here, make a little alteration to it. I don't have a million dollars. Would you do it for a thousand? And then she says, well, what kind of woman do you think I am?

He says, well, we've already established what kind of woman you are. We're just bickering over the price. The reality, she was for sale. Now the question we need to, and I want to bring to us, are we for sale?

Do we have a for sale sign on us? Will we give up our Christianity, our faith for a particular thing, for a look on a computer screen at something that we know is thoroughly ungodly from the very pit of hell?

Are we for sale for something? Is there a price on our Christianity that we will compromise the faith for a particular thing? If so, then we are being a spiritual prostitute and in essence, no different from a prostitute.

Now, I would rather be a man than a prostitute than Samson. Though he had great outward strength, he did not have a moral strength. And I would rather be a weak man in the flesh and have strength that is spiritual and moral than to be a man that's strong in the flesh and supposedly manly, but yet has no self-control and no ability to truly walk with God in a place of intimacy.

He was a prostitute. Though he went to a prostitute, he was really the prostitute. He was the one really selling himself out for a price. And that's a very serious thing that we have to look at. And it's a very major, a great problem with Samson.

Delilah, Temptation, and the Betrayal of Sin

The other issue with this is we have to be careful that we don't think well of sin and the devil. We can say that we don't think well of him, but what about in life? So let's drop down to the fifth verse of the 16th chapter.

It says, the ruler of the Philistines went to her, referring to Delilah, and says, see if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him.

Each one of us will give you 1 ,100 shekels of silver. Well, this is Delilah. You know, Delilah is not a nice woman. As we look at her a little bit more, we're gonna find she's not a nice woman at all.

She did not love Samson, did not love him. He was convenient for her, and in this situation, he became very profitable for her. But in the beginning, before the proposition was even there, it was just a situation of convenience, was not an issue of love.

I remember this one friend I have that was walking with the Lord for a time, and he started slipping back into sexual sins that he was very deep in at one time. And he went and started picking up prostitutes, and he picks up this one prostitute, and the prostitute goes to him and just starts laughing this demonic laugh.

And it says, I have you now, you're mine. Just the devil speaking to him, and he was so filled with his lust, he just said, shut up, woman. I wanna do what I wanna do. Even though the devil was laughing at him in the midst of it.

What a bizarre thing that we can give ourselves over to something, and even in the midst of that, the devil's laughing at us because he got us. That we start yielding to a particular thing, whether it is lust, whether it's pride, whether it's greed, whatever name of the sin we wanna put on it, is that he ends up laughing once he has control of us, once he's grabbed hold of us, and that begins to work in our life.

And so what's the situation here? The Philistines came to Delilah. They hated Samson because to a small extent, he was harming the Philistines, not to a great extent. He was a judge of Israel for a long time.

I can't remember off the top of my head how many years, but he was a judge of Israel for many years, and yet accomplished very little when you look at the whole of his life. And the reason why he accomplished very little because he would not walk with God the way that God wanted him to because there was this constant thing of a refusal to surrender to God, a refusal to yield these areas of his life.

And you know, as men, we can have this thing inside of us, a refusal to really yield. We'll go so far, so far, that's it, and I don't wanna go any farther. I remember preaching in Montana. There were some men there on Sunday morning.

There were no men back at any services except the pastor, and one other service, one other man came. And you know why? Because the very concept of cowboys is that's not for men. A thing so contrary to everything that Christ is, they thought they could be a Sunday morning Christian and be this particular thing and it would be alright, but we'll leave that to the women, and now men, we've gotta do man things.

The most manly person that there ever was was who? Was Jesus Christ. No more manly an individual. If we wanna see what true manhood is, we have to look at Jesus. And when we look at the world, we see a distortion, a twisting, a perversion of what manhood is.

And that's what we've been taught. And so we really have to change the way we think about what it means to be a man, what it means to really walk is what Christ called us to. Best definition of sin I've ever read in my life.

It comes from Susanna Wesley. It says, whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things. In short, if anything increases the authority and power of the flesh over the spirit, that becomes sin, however good it is in itself.

Now that changes everything, because we like it when we can go and put a few sins on the wall and say, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't do that. And we feel we can keep somewhat in that parameters of that.

But now all of a sudden, the whole concept of sin is totally different. Anything that feeds my flesh, anything, or anything that robs me of love of Christ. In itself, fishing, there's nothing wrong with fishing.

It's not a sin to go out there and have a rod and reel in your hand. But if it robs you of intimacy with Christ, then it's sin. Or if it feeds the flesh a desire to be away from God and just to do things and joke and get with other friends or people that aren't Christians, not for ministry stay, but just to hang with them.

Then you've fallen into a whole nother thing. Now you're in a place of sin. That which is innocent in and of itself becomes evil to us because of what we have done with it, because of what our nature has created out of it.

And so we can go back to that whole aspect of being a prostitute. We can put the for sale sign on for a particular thing. And how crazy it would be is I'll be a prostitute for a fish or for a tennis ball or for a golf ball or for a football on Monday nights.

And like I said, those things in and of itself are not sin, not like pornography, it's absolutely sin. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. These other things can be sin depending on what we do with it with how we treat it, whether it's robbing us of relationship or whether it's feeding the flesh in our life.

And so here was a situation with the Philistines coming to Delilah wanting to pay her to betray him and the very nature of what sin is that it is out to betray us. If we don't understand what Satan really wants to do to our lives, we will be deceived by it.

When he comes to us with little temptations, you know, he woos us with something as if it will satisfy us, not understanding. And sometimes we become these blind sheep going right into the slaughter and we're just letting that because we don't really believe that the sin is out to destroy us and that there is a demonic force behind it.

We often can just think of the devil in a red suit and a pitchfork. You know, if we see that knocking on the door, then we'll be concerned, but that's not how he comes. He comes as an angel of light. And the whole thing, we have to understand that he is a malevolent spirit that has one particular ambition.

That is his hatred for you is so, so evil just for your destruction. And why does he want to destroy you? Because of his absolute hatred of God and you are made in his image. So he wants to destroy you with everything that he can.

And so when we think that sin is a small thing or a little thing, we don't understand what is ultimately behind it, that there's this bargaining of our soul, the paying of the price in essence over it.

And imagine how Samson would be appalled if he would have really heard what was happening, but because it was secret, because he didn't hear it, he really didn't think it was taking place though he was selling himself.

The Persistence of Temptation and Guarding the Heart

There's a persistence of temptation. We've got to really understand this is something that we face as individuals. I'll just give you this story from a natural situation. You know, I'm originally from Detroit.

That's where I was born and bred and that's where I pastored inner city for almost 12 years. And so I was pastoring inner city. There was this whole move for almost 12 years that I was there, I would say probably took place in the whole 12 years to try and get gambling in the city of Detroit.

Six times it came up to vote and six times it lost. But each time it came up to vote, first the margin was huge, then it was a little less and it was a little less and it was a little less. And each time when the people who wanted it, no matter what the mass of the people said, the individuals who wanted it, they tried to deal with the arguments and they came at the next set of arguments and those last arguments until the seventh time they brought up to vote, it barely passed.

And you know, I think of that exactly the way that sin works in our life. The devil comes. Just keep coming at it. Well, when we raise up an argument, then he says, okay, I'm going to come here and he's going to keep hitting at that thing because he knows the weaknesses of our life.

And as if we are not diligent and serious about it, he's going to keep hammering until he can find a door. Solomon brought up this tremendous verse that he himself failed totally with, but he says, guard your heart for out of the flow of the issues of life.

Solomon didn't guard his heart. He gave himself to the women, you know, having 300 wives and 700 concubines. You know, he gave himself to it, then built temples to the idols that they worship that became a plague to Israel until they went into the Babylonian captivity.

Only then were they destroyed. And so we have to understand these things can constantly be hitting at us and if we are not diligent and vigilant in it, then we can be brought down. And so in Judges 16, in the 16th verse, it says, with such nagging, she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.

So he told her everything. Now, you know, when you look at the story of Samson, you think, is this guy nuts? I mean, would you, and let's just think of this in a practice, would you, as if this woman is coming after the very source of your strength, if you had that same strength, and she's coming after, tell me the source of your strength, and you lie to her, and she tries to take you, and the Philistines come upon you, I mean, are you gonna tell her now what it was?

I mean, are you really going to? And so she comes back again and again until, what was this, the fourth time I think it was? Finally, he tells all. Because she kept prodding him and prodding him. The thing that we think is that we're not like Samson.

We think we're not like him. We think that, well, if the devil comes, you know, I'll keep doing it, you know, and fighting him and everything else. But if we're not diligent, and if we're not really wise, the constant prodding of this will become something that eventually will break us down.

Now, one reason, well, I won't say one reason, the reason why I am so careful on the internet is because, like I said, I know pornography is absolutely addictive. It is more addictive than crack cocaine.

More addictive than crack cocaine. And the reason why it's more addictive, crack cocaine is something you take inside of you. Lust is something that is naturally in you. And so it grabs hold of your emotions, it grabs hold of everything, and it can be a drive that is harder to find deliverance from than crack cocaine.

And I understand that if I open the door to it, who am I that I could stand when multitudes of others have fallen? And if I just give the devil a little bit, you think he's gonna stay satisfied with just giving him a little bit when he wants all of it?

Because if I give him a little bit and just open the door to crack, he's gonna be stuffing his foot in there and everything he can to try and rip it open because he is out for my very soul. He's out to destroy me.

And ultimately, what he wants to do also is he wants to destroy through me. Not just destroy me, he wants to destroy through me. Because the more influence we have, the greater repercussions our sin will have.

But we have to understand something as well. The greater influence we have, the greater repercussions our righteousness will have. In James, the first chapter, and James, he's probably one of the toughest preachers other than some of the Old Testament prophets.

He is a tough preacher. But in the first chapter of James, in the 14th verse, it says, but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire is conceived, it gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death. Now, I think it's just so graphic how he illustrates this. He says, but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away. Temptation only comes at us at the areas where we love sin.

If I didn't love sin, there would be no temptation. Or if there was no areas of weakness. So what does he do? He comes at the weak areas of the wall. He beats and he beats and he beats at those things he's hoping to try and make it crumble.

Then every time he sees a few of the bricks fall down, he hits it a little harder with a little more persistence. Maybe he'll back off a little bit because maybe we'll start to wake it up a little bit with it.

But he knows that, well, if I just give him a little rest, he'll fall back asleep to it. He'll open the door once again. He'll put his guard down. But we have to see that he's out to get us. And he wants to drag us away.

And then he brings out this idea, says that after the desire has been conceived, the idea of conception in the womb, and then it gives birth to sin. And sin, when it's full grown, gives birth to death.

The idea that the sin just becomes this little seed inside the womb. But then eventually it gives birth to a child and the child then grows up and eventually produces death. That little thing, if we open the door a little bit, what it can produce.

Deliverance, Relapse, and the Cost of Compromise

Now we all know areas of our life that we know haven't been conquered by God and that we fought and fought and fought, tried to get the victory. When I became a Christian, He delivered me from drugs. He delivered me instantly from drugs, smoking alcohol.

I was instantly set free. Now I am thankful I didn't go back to those same old things, but I've known many people that have gone back to smoking. And so for whatever reason, stress comes into their life.

And guess what? That stress is that there's a devil beating at that portion of the wall when the stress comes in. And then you open the door up and you pick up this pack of cigarettes and you start smoking.

You just say one pack, but it's got you now. And so then you go back to God and you say, okay, God, give me this great deliverance. But what He did in the beginning, He did in tremendous mercy to a newborn babe in Christ.

You will not find that easy the second time. Now you'll have to go through a crucifixion. Now there'll have to be the agony of it. And that is always the way it is. I found that in my own life. God gives me victory of something and it may be easy at first time, but boy, you give into it again and then you've got this battle in your life.

That's why it's always wisest to grab hold of the victory and not let it go. God will give us a victory when we're foolish enough to let it go, but it's gonna cost us and it's gonna cost us dearly sometimes.

But that really comes down to be desire then. Do I really want victory? You wanna know one reason why as men we don't overcome? Because we really don't want to. We really don't want to. We don't want the fight.

So it's easier to give in. What is the goal of Satan? What is the goal of sin? You know, and this is something I know we know. So I'm not saying anything new and greatly enlightening, but I'm just trying to bring the reality to us.

In this 19th verse, it tells us, having put him to sleep, Delilah, having put him to sleep on her lap, she called a man to shave off the seven braids of his hair and so began to subdue him and his strength left him.