Session 5 - Satan’s Design for Humanity: Four Types of Ungodly Men

Kootenai Church

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You're listening to the expository preaching ministry of Kootenai Community Church, located in Kootenai, Idaho.

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We pray that Christ is exalted and your spirit is blessed by the teaching of God's Word. For more information about Kootenai Church, please visit us online at kootenaichurch .org.

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Okay, so what we're going to do now is we are going to consider four types of men from Scripture in this session.

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And then in the last session, as I said to you this morning, I've switched a few things around and we're going to end on a high point with David.

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We're going to end with King David as an example of godly manhood and as a type of Christ.

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Okay? So that is what remains before us in terms of my material, then we have a Q &A to close out our time together.

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What I want to do first then with you in this session are four deficient types of manhood.

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And before we dive into those four types, I want us to understand the context of toxic masculinity.

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Men are said, as I alluded to last night, to be toxic today. And I reject the idea out of hand that there is something toxic about manhood.

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So I don't affirm that. I think it is very dangerous for us, for example, to tell our young men, our boys, that they are toxic in a special and unique way.

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I think that is tremendously damaging to boys and young men and men for them to hear that.

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And that's why the book you received graciously from Pastor Jim and the elders for this conference is

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The War on Men, The War on Men, because men are said to be toxic.

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And I would encourage you, hearing the sound of my voice, to know that men are hearing that message today, and young men are hearing that message today, and they're internalizing it, and it's not having good effects.

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So I really do believe there is a war on men and on manhood more generally.

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But that doesn't mean, as we've already talked about, that men don't have sin to face, because men definitely do.

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And as we're going to now talk about, there are four major ways,

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I think, that men fail, or if you will, there are four major types of deficient manhood that I want to cover with you in our brief session now.

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The first of them is the lost man, the lost man. This is the kind of man we see in Genesis 3, verses 1 through 7.

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Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did

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God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it.

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She added that, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

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Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

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Let's pray. Father, as we embark in this discovery, this session, this time, I pray that you will bless us and you will strengthen us.

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And I pray that you will help us to help men. I pray that the men in the room will identify sin and you will help us to kill it.

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And I pray, Father, for your blessing on men in this church, that you would remake them by the power of your gospel.

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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. The reason, by the way, we focus on these four types is because the stakes are so high with men.

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Because if you do not train men well, you're setting yourself up for disaster. You can't avoid it.

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And when men struggle, by the way, very quickly, when men struggle, it's not only men who are affected, right?

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It's women who are affected and it's children who are affected. So you can't simply say, oh, men are struggling, well, whatever.

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That's on men. And feminists will argue it's not a bad thing that men are struggling nowadays.

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It's kind of good that men would get to wear the struggle hat for a while because men have had it so good for so long in the world.

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Now it's their turn to be in the cultural penalty box. Again, that's not a sound way to think.

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That's not a gospel -driven way to think. And furthermore, when men struggle, I'm at pains to say that everyone else will be struggling as well.

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So you can't just say, women are doing great. Women have leaned in. Women have leaned forward.

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Women are leaders now and men have stepped back. Yay, feminism. This is going to be great.

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This is going to be golden hour in America. No, it's not. If men aren't men, if men are not strong men, again, disaster is coming for you.

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This very week, as some of you have seen on social media, the pictures and the videos, numerous veterans of D -Day, on the 80th anniversary of D -Day, were flown over to Normandy, France, and walked the beaches.

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There were a number of reporters who were embedded with this group of veterans, basically all of whom now are in wheelchairs, very much in wheelchairs, a number of them 100 years old.

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And it was a great week for us as a civilization to reflect on the state of men.

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Because I'm not sure if a D -Day was needed today in cultural terms.

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I don't know that we could pull it off. I honestly don't. And I don't say that, you know, ripping the rising generation.

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In a lot of cases, young men haven't been trained in manhood, haven't been discipled, haven't been helped, haven't been fathered, and so on.

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But that's just a little picture of where we are, that there was something in past generations, not that they were all a

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Christian, they weren't, but there was instruction in manhood. And I fear a lot of this is lost today.

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Well, this is a problem as old as the earth, because Adam is our first lost man in this scene in Genesis 3.

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Remember how important it is that the Lord God said that Adam's charge was to work

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Eden and what? Keep Eden, right? Guard Eden. That's the whole call to protection that we've talked about earlier today.

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It turns out that Adam didn't heed and respond to that call at all.

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He had the Lord God say to protect Eden to Adam directly, and Adam failed in the mission.

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The serpent came to the woman, the woman stepped into the man's place and engaged the serpent and got numerous things about the command of God wrong, didn't identify the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by that term, called the tree, the tree that is in the midst of the garden, added a prohibition to not touch it.

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And so the woman was not doing well in this conversation, this real historical conversation in Genesis 3.

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Then the serpent rounds on the woman and tells her, you will not surely die if you do what

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God has forbidden you to do. That's the voice that we were talking about in our previous session. That's the voice of paganism talking, because paganism is a dummy animated by the devil.

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The lie that our culture, that pagan cultures believe is exactly that, that you can live according to the flesh and you will not die.

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But remember that Paul in Romans 1 said that people who live in that way know that they deserve to die for their sin, and yet they live that way anyway.

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This is a chilling passage because it disabuses us of the notion that if God would just show up and do our evangelism and apologetics for us, everybody would obey.

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That's a very common way for you and me to think. The reality is the human heart can be so proud and so slow to hear that God himself, this is a weird thing to say, but it's true.

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God Himself can give you divine instruction, and then you can have an opportunity to put that instruction into practice, and you can completely disregard what

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God just said. That's what Adam does here. That's what Eve does here. They don't at all obey

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God. They don't listen to God. And that shows us the capacity of the human heart for pride.

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Talk about pride month. It's been pride history for all of human history since this moment.

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We're living in a pride world, not in a happy way. Don't have a ticker tape parade about it. That's the reality, though, that our hearts can hear divine instruction.

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Don't think that your discipleship and your Christian faith would necessarily be all the better if Jesus had just personally discipled you, because Jesus can personally disciple you, and you can reject what

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He has taught you to do. The Lord God Himself can give you instruction, and you cannot hear it.

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That's what happens with Adam. Adam had a threat come into the garden. Adam had the devil target his wife, and he did basically nothing.

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All he did was stand there passively and eat the fruit that she gave him to eat.

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And this is a sign of one way we men fail. In a place where we need to step forward, and we need to show

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God -given, God -identified strength, we instead shrink back.

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We disappear, and we allow ourselves to get lost. And that is happening with men all around us.

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We still have men in our midst, but we have men who, in many cases, have abandoned their calling, and as a result, many are suffering in our time.

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That is one kind of deficient manhood that we see in the Bible. The second type is this, the angry man.

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The angry man. We've talked about this some. But we meet an angry man in Genesis 4, in one of the sons of Adam.

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Now, Abel, verse 1, was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time,

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Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

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And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering He had no regard.

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So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

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The Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?

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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

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In this passage, we see that Cain is rebuked by the

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Lord, and Cain does not respond in faith, Cain does not handle reproof well.

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And I think a lot of us, man and woman alike, can see a scene like this and know that this isn't necessarily our favorite moment on the monthly calendar, the time when we get reproved.

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Is this making sense to anyone? The time when your spouse has a word of slight tweaking in your behavior, the thought that there could be something that you are not necessarily doing perfectly in all respects, and someone around you suggests that to you.

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We all fail in this regard, some of us more than others. And it can be hard for us, all of us, men and women alike, boys and girls, to hear reproof, to hear just critique.

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And Cain gives us a picture of how to handle criticism abysmally.

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The way to handle criticism abysmally is to reject it out of hand and to get very angry at it.

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That's exactly what Cain does. We know this instinct well, all of us do.

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We don't all have the same personality. We don't all respond sinfully in the same ways, but we at least know what it is to have our blood run hot when someone says to us,

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I don't know that you want to keep going that way. I think you might have hurt their feelings.

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Maybe we should do this a different way. The Lord has no regard for Cain's offering, and Cain doesn't handle this with humility and graciousness and listening, a listening spirit.

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Instead, Cain handles God's disregard for his offering. Here again, this is

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God's verdict, right? You and I can think, well, if God corrected me, it would be done so well that then

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I would just handle it great. But instead, my spouse doesn't know how to say these words to me, and so it hurts me and it ticks me off because they don't say it the right way.

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And they may not say it the right way, but even if God said it to you himself, you still, you still could get very mad.

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That is what happens precisely with this man. Cain did not rule anger.

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Anger ruled Cain. In fact, it basically took him over.

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He lived his life angry. It's not hard to do this, man and woman alike.

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It's not hard to do this as a man. And men have that much greater capacity for strength, right?

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50 to 60 % more upper body strength on average. Men have, on average, 2 ,000 to 3 ,000 % more testosterone than women, which is why we relax as boys or men by forming sports that allow us to hit one another and collide into one another for fun, and why when it is time to relax, we turn on a war movie, which is somewhat ironic if you think about it, or even a

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Western like Tombstone where people shoot at each other for fun. Okay, this is what we do as men.

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It's not though because we're toxic. It's because we are wired for action and we have this capacity in us that a little bit like catnip can make us a little bit crazy on the outer edges of it.

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Let's be honest. We have this inner drive and that can be used for tremendous good and that can be used for real evil.

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And we have to know that we have these capacities as men. We don't all look the same. We don't all bench press the same, but we have, as we become an adult man, we have some physical strength at least, a lot of us do, and we have that energy, that testosterone in us.

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And if those instincts and those capacities aren't channeled for the glory of God, specifically if we are not born again, those can do tremendous damage to the people around us, just as they can be used for amazing good.

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Cain then is a warning to us. He's the angry man. He kills Abel. He goes on to do this in verse eight.

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Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. When the Lord shows up in a kind of reprise of Genesis 3 to ask

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Cain where Abel was, Cain denied being his brother's keeper, but Abel's blood, righteous

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Abel's blood shouted from the ground, verse 10, in poetic language.

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Let's learn then, men, from the image of the angry man here in Genesis 4.

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There's other images, there's other examples of this found throughout the Bible, but this is a directly biblical example very early in the

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Scripture of the way of the angry man. And I would just encourage us all, sometimes we're angrier than we know.

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Sometimes we don't even realize how disgruntlement or grumpiness or challenges are affecting us and we're bringing that home.

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Again, we may not even be aware of it, and that can have an effect on our wife and our children around us.

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And so our challenge here is not to hate ourselves or see ourselves as worse than women or something like that, but our challenge is to think in a gospel -driven way.

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Our challenge is not to be proud like Cain, but our challenge is to pursue humility.

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We want to be strong men in God. That's a very good instinct.

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It's right that little boys want to grow up to be strong. It's right that boys look up to soldiers, policemen, firefighters, men who put their lives on the line for others.

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We want that. I love that my son, when he sees a policeman, this isn't, you know, I'm not telling a story to praise my wife and me.

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My son has always done this. He looks up to men in uniform as so many boys innately do, and he'll go up to them and ask them all these questions about their line of work and that sort of thing.

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We want that. But we've got to recognize that it is not only our calling to be strong, it is also our calling to be humble, to be humble men.

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Cain is not humble. When someone is not humble, they literally don't hear.

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That's the mark of pride. You don't hear. And Christian discipleship is many things.

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At base, it is hearing. It's listening. It's paying attention. How many times do dads and moms say that over the course of years zero to 12?

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Pay attention. Can you pay attention? Are you paying attention? Did you pay attention to that? Did you hear that? I just said that.

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Did you not hear that? Right? We say it to our kids. Our parents said it to us. It will continue down the generations until Jesus returns and everyone is paying attention.

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Okay. Isn't it significant that you hear the trumpet and he returns? Pay attention. You get my point.

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It's a congenital defect of humanity that we don't pay attention, but that's what humility, that's what the

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Spirit works in us. It's not just pay more attention, Christian. Be more humble, Christian, man or woman alike.

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It's the Spirit working in us to produce humility. It's a fruit of the

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Spirit. And so let's embrace this. Let's go hard for humility.

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Let's take opportunities to listen. This is not the easy button of the

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Christian life. This is not the fun part. When you get critique, when somebody's speaking into your life, when somebody's speaking into your marriage, when somebody's speaking into your fatherhood, when someone's speaking into your singleness, not the fun part, but this is the part where we grow.

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This is the part where we grow like crazy when we are humble and we listen.

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So we need to pray that God would keep us from being a cane and God would make us one who listens, who pays attention.

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Tomorrow's sermon is on David hearing Abigail when

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David is about to slaughter people. And Abigail barely, barely shows up in time.

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And on the spot, David and his warriors with their swords strapped onto their thigh, ready to cut throats, stop in their tracks and listen to this one woman,

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David and 400 warriors and not, you know, toy soldiers, men who have killed many others in the past.

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And instead of acting foolishly, David listens. That's the power of humility.

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Everybody wants political power today. And understandably, we can know why people want to put things to rights.

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It's actually a good instinct in many respects. But the Bible concentrates power in such surprising places.

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It's not the guy who's yelling at everybody and forcing them to go his way, who's the powerful man.

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You want to know who's powerful? The man who has the spirit working in him and who is self -controlled and humble.

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That's spiritual power. That's when you're powerful, not in yourself, but by the working of God in you.

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You're under control. You're not a city without walls to quote Proverbs, but you're a man who's disciplined.

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You're a man who listens and you're a man who can grow because you can actually hear what someone's saying to you.

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Cain couldn't hear a word, even with almighty God talking to him. What a place to be.

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What a powerful thing. The natural fallen heart is God himself speaking to you and you gritting your teeth and making excuses.

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It's a dangerous reality. Third type, the soft man, the soft man.

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We find this figure not in the book of Genesis, but we find this figure in Judges.

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We find an example of the soft man, the wavering man, the fearful man in Gideon, the figure of Gideon.

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We find Gideon in Judges 6. We find Gideon in Judges 7.

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And so Gideon is a crucial player in the strange, surprising, weirdly encouraging and troubling book of Judges.

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Two of the examples we're covering here are from the book of Judges, Gideon and next,

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Samson. Gideon's the soft man. He's the opposite of Samson, who's the out of control man.

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Gideon had a father who openly worshiped the false God, Baal.

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This is a hard situation from the outset. Gideon was afraid of his dad.

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His dad led many men in Gideon's town to worship Baal.

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Gideon lived a fearful life. He harvested wheat at night because there were evil tribes around him, namely the

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Midianites, who wanted to destroy Gideon and his family. And so Gideon harvested wheat at night when he could be safer.

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In Judges 6 .12, the Lord came to Gideon and an angel addressed

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Gideon as a mighty man of valor. This is not actually what

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Gideon had shown himself to be, but this is what God was calling

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Gideon to be by His own grace. This is very similar to what we were talking about with Proverbs 31.

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It is not that Proverbs 31 is a list that you're supposed to throw at women and say you're failing at this.

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It is supposed to be aspirational and a beautiful picture of what a woman can be by God's power.

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Similarly, God addressed Gideon as a mighty man of valor, even though Gideon was actually a very fearful man.

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But what God was signaling is that Gideon, this is what you're going to become. This is what

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I'm going to make you. And that should be very encouraging to us. God takes weak, soft, passive, fearful men and He changes them.

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He changes us into something much greater. The Lord's call to Gideon was a very easy one.

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It was to destroy his father,

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Joash's idolatrous altars to demonic, false gods.

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Wow. Are you tracking that? Anybody ever had some inter -family dynamics?

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You ever felt how hard it is to go against a dad or mom who you disagree with?

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You tried to witness to family members who aren't Christian and don't want to hear it. My family back in Maine, sadly, largely unsaved.

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One time I tried to witness to my grandfather and the conversation started going into church life and I tried to witness to my grandparents before and my grandfather, who was a strong man, not a

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Christian, but a strong man, looked me in the eye without blinking and said, stop.

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Like that. And that was it. That was the end of the conversation. I know how hard it is, as some of you do, to have family members who are not walking with the

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Lord and you try to be a witness and you feel so weak and it's hard.

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Well, Gideon knew this firsthand. And God didn't just say, have a dinnertime conversation over the decaf about how things are going with Joash.

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God said, take a hammer and destroy your dad's idols.

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This is quite a calling. Gideon did so. Gideon in the middle of the night, as was his custom, destroyed his dad's idolatrous altars.

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And Joash found out the next day. And in Judges 6, 28 to 32, we see that Gideon's God -inspired courage actually turned the tide in his surroundings.

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Gideon feared that Joash was going to probably attack him and kill him, which was not an unreasonable fear.

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And instead, Joash, the dad, stood up for his son and things changed in the town.

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And so we're getting a picture here, as we will in our next session with David, of this equation.

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Cowardice begets cowardice, but courage begets courage.

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And oftentimes, it's one man, one person who will stand up to evil.

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It's not usually in the Bible, lots of people. No, it's often one person.

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It's often one person standing in the gap who will say, no.

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And God uses so frequently, one person.

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Isn't that the opposite of the way many of us are thinking about America right now? Turning America around, whatever that would look like, how we want that.

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I'm guessing many of you want that. I want that. Don't you think, well, I don't know, maybe we're outnumbered and outgunned.

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I think we might need a revival. I think we might need, you know, tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of people to turn this around.

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And I just think that's impossible. Oh, really? Do you know about a book called the

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Bible, where over and over again, there's not an army.

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There's no army. Or excuse me, there's an army of one. There's one person.

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This is what happens with Gideon. One man turns the tide of a town, and not an impressive man, an afraid, passive, timid man.

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And yet God works in him, and everything turns around. Could it be that way in America?

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Is God weak? Is the gospel not powerful anymore? Christian, whatever happens in days ahead, don't live in fear.

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Stop living in fear. Live in hope. Live in God -centered trust. Your God is invincible.

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Your God is not cowed or worried by the opposite side. Your God is strong.

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He'll choose to do whatever he chooses to do. He gives people up, doesn't he? He gives societies over.

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He lets civilizations crash. He does whatever he pleases. Whatever he does is right.

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Yet know this, he's not outmatched. He's not outmatched by paganism.

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He's not outgunned. He's very strong, and frequently in history, and in the church, and with unsound doctrines, and unsound movements, and wokeness in the church, and governments closing the church down, and terrible things happening among the people of God.

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You think, oh no, we don't have the numbers anymore. No, you may not have the numbers, but you know who you have?

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You have God. You have God. And as Knox said, to re -quote it, one man with God is in the majority.

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Do you believe that? Is that in your bones? Let that sink into your bones.

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It's true. It's true. God lets Gideon experience this principle keenly in Judges 7.

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Very quickly, Gideon amasses an army of 32 ,000 men, yay, strength in numbers.

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Here we go, 32 ,000, right? Does Gideon go into battle with 32 ,000?

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You learned that in BBS. You learned that on the flannel graph, right? You remember that? The Lord makes a cut.

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He has Gideon do a test with the 10 ,000. He initially pairs the army down from 32 ,000 to 10 ,000.

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And then this next major cut is with a test where the men are to lap water.

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They're to go to a stream and see who drinks water in what way.

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And the Lord God tells Gideon in Judges 7, 6 that He is to keep for His army only those who kneel down to lap water and put their hand to their mouth.

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I've been told I'm ranging outside of the camera. Sorry, I'm so sorry. But I'm reaching the point in the preaching and teaching.

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This is a lot of preaching and teaching and I'm needing to, testosterone speaking to me, move around a little bit.

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But anyway, near the stream and the only ones Gideon can keep are the ones who do this.

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They lap water. Uh -uh. It's not just that they lap water. It's that they scan the horizon.

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You see, actually, the only ones Gideon is to keep are the ones who have a warrior mindset.

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It's the true warriors. Not necessarily in the terms of the bigness of their biceps, but the ones who are protectors.

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The ones who, even when they're drinking water, are scanning the horizon.

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Later in the Old Testament, this type of man is going to be called, it's one of my favorite terms in the

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Bible, a watchman, a watchman on the wall.

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That's this type of man. Everybody wants a warm bed at night, right, then and now.

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But there's a certain type, you find them all through the Bible. They're also called mighty men with David.

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And these are the types who, yes, they like a warm bed, just like the rest of us, but they have other priorities on their mind.

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Specifically, they have the good of other people on their mind, even when they would love to relax.

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That's what this type of warrior is. He's always scanning the horizon. That's the type of man we need.

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We need men who are watchmen on the wall. We need men who are protecting and defending when they would rather not be on the wall.

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They'd rather be down there where everyone else is, sleeping. But instead, they're watching.

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We need these kind of men, young, middle -aged, and elderly.

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We need these men single, and we need these men married. We need to train our boys to be these kind of men by the grace of God.

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We need men, you see, returning to this concept, who pay attention.

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Few things are more deadly than a man who doesn't pay attention. Think about your phone for a minute.

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Mine's on the table. One stratagem of Satan, I'm not against smartphones, mine is right there, but one stratagem of Satan is to get us just lured into not paying attention because of a smartphone, which sounds silly when

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I say it, but we all battle this now, don't we? So many of us battle this, not paying attention because of a phone.

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Just think about how silly that is, but that's the temptation, yes? So again, considerations of smartphones aside, we need men who, even when they're drinking water, pay attention.

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We need men who are protectors. We need men who understand themselves as warriors.

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People laugh at that when you say that now. People laugh at warrior manhood.

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There's nothing funny about it. I don't mean that you necessarily carry around a Braveheart broadsword with you, you know, all through life or something, you know, one of those seven -foot

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Scottish swords. You can try that, by the way. You can try carrying a Scottish broadsword like William Wallace had all through life.

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That's a joke. Okay, anyway, I don't know how that's going to go for you, especially with TSA, but what you really need to do is not carry a sword.

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You can pack heat, depending on your state, but what you really need to do is be a spiritual watchman and think of yourself as a warrior in the mold of the greater

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David, King Jesus. Well, we don't have much time to talk about this story.

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I have to conclude Gideon's narrative very quickly. Long story short, with just 300 men remaining, the

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Lord gives the victory to Gideon and his forces. The Lord routes the

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Midianites. Thousands of them die, and God shows up for this weak man.

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Brothers and sisters, the Bible is trying to get our attention, and the

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Bible is trying to teach us that the kingdom of God doesn't work according to human metrics.

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It doesn't work that way. The power of God is not determined by man's statistical patterns, because there's no reason

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Gideon's army should have won, but Gideon's army routed the enemy forces.

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Are we reading our Bibles? Are we hearing the Old Testament? Are we knowing that God is loading us up with encouragement in stories like this?

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And the message to conclude this little disquisition on Gideon is this.

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God takes those of us who are weak men, and He makes us strong, and He uses us for good.

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So be encouraged by that. That's an encouragement. That's a very encouraging biblical reality.

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Fourth, and finally, the exaggerated man for this session, Samson. Ah, so much to say about Samson.

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The figures in the Bible are more interesting than anything Hollywood's ever come out with. Our Bibles are so engrossing.

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Samson's real. Samson's real because of the Nazarite vow. Samson has the greatest strength any human being has ever had.

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Samson's the strongest human who has ever lived. He's a fascinating figure and character.

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Samson is the exaggerated man. Samson is the man that many men want to be, unregenerate men.

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Samson is who, in our natural strength as men, we crave to be. Samson is Andrew Tate, but actually a lot stronger.

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Samson is red pill manhood with no gospel. That's Samson. He can defeat anyone.

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Samson's exploits seem like someone has fictionalized them.

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No one has fictionalized them. Samson is threatened by a roaring lion in Judges 14 .6.

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What does Samson do? Well, we read this, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him.

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Although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat.

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Samson is attacked by a lion, the alpha predator of the natural world.

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And Samson rips its jaws apart. This is strength. This is incredible strength from the spirit of the

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Lord. This is in your Bibles, by the way. You can read this. Men can find this interesting. It's true.

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Yes, there's a lot there to study. And it's not made up. Samson goes to Lehi, and he's in Philistine territory, and the

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Philistines come shouting to meet him. This is Judges 15, 14, and 15. Guess what happened?

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The spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms he's tied down became his flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands, and he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, rut -row,

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Nazarite vow, but I digress, and put out his hand and took it. He took a jawbone, and with it he struck a thousand men.

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This is mind -blowing. This is all real. This is all history. This is Samson. This is the strongest man who's ever lived.

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He did things that, you know, they have to do CGI to make happen in the movies nowadays and all these superhero movies.

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Samson really did it. He slew a thousand men. This isn't Jason Bourne. This isn't

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Tom Cruise. This is the real thing. This is all because the spirit of the

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Lord was upon him. Are you picking up the biblical pattern? If God blesses you, no one can stand against you.

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If God is not with you, woe betide you, and that's what happens to Samson.

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Samson didn't just live by his muscles. He lived by his eyes. His eyes drove him.

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It was a theme throughout his life. Judges 16 .1, in Gaza, he saw a prostitute, and he went into her.

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He lives by his flesh. He lives by his strongest passions. He followed his heart.

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He had no regard for the Nazarite vow. He had no sense of just how immensely blessed he was of God to have these capacities.

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Do you know what God gave him this strength for? God gave him this strength so that he could be the alpha defender of the people of God.

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He's a one -man army against the Philistines. One man. There's our principle.

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One man. But he doesn't care. He lives by his eyesight, so he sees a prostitute, and against all his training and teaching, he goes into her.

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But then he meets his match, Delilah, and eventually, as you know in this story,

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Samson reveals the secret of his strength, and so Delilah has his hair cut, and the

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Philistines rush upon Samson, and in Judges 16 .19, capture him.

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And that is the end of his story. Nope.

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Nope. The man who lives by his eyes, we're almost done, break.

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The man who lives by his eyes has his eyes gouged out, and he's then taken into captivity.

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He's taken into the hall of the Philistines, a great hall, and they host a banquet to celebrate the capture of the greatest warrior who has ever lived.

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Human strength. Samson is chained between two pillars. The Philistines are worshiping their demonic god,

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Dagon, in this hall. It's feasting, it's revelry, it's sin of all kinds around him. Samson's eyes are gone, can't see a thing, but his hair is growing back.

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Philistines have forgotten. They're not paying attention. And so for the only time in the narrative of Samson, the only time he prays,

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Judges 16 .28, oh Lord God, please remember me.

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I'm getting choked up. I don't know Samson, but it's just so powerful to think of what this man had and squandered.

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Excuse me. Please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, oh

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God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.

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The Lord grants his request. Philistines have no idea he's just prayed this, probably prayed it under his breath, standing there bowed in defeat.

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And then in one final display of strength, he gathers all his might and he pulls down the pillars and every

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Philistine dies because this is the power of God.

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And one man with God can do unspeakable things to the kingdom of darkness.

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So Samson is such a sad tale. He's the exaggerated man.

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He's the alpha, but he's the alpha who though loved by God, blessed by God, I think known by God, doesn't really care for God, doesn't see his life as worship.

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Remember that theme? This is the epitome of somebody who has every spiritual gift and blessing and doesn't want to worship

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God. He doesn't want to worship God. You know what he wants to be? He wants to be a Philistine.

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He's the man under the Nazarite vow who wants to be a Philistine. That's what happens with us when we live for the flesh.

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We want to be the world. It's not just that we're struggling with a certain pattern. No, you want to live like the world.

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You want to be an unregenerate person. And we have to repent of that. We all do regularly throughout our life.

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Lord, forgive me for thinking that thought, for having that wicked desire run through me.

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Forgive me for that conversation. Forgive me for entertaining that course of action. That is pagan.

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Forgive me for that. We all, we all have to live a life of repentance and confession of sin.

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And we're not just forgiven in the moment of our conversion. We all have to keep getting forgiven.

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Samson is such a sad story, but you know what Samson is? Samson is a redemption story, isn't he?

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Because at the very end of his life, he understands who

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God is and who he should be by the power of God. And God uses

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Samson, one man, arms outstretched, sound familiar?

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To deliver his people. And there will one day come a greater

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Samson who will not abuse the calling of God, but who will perfectly walk in the ways of God and store up perfect righteousness for sinners like you and me, and who will then stretch out his arms and cry out for forgiveness and give up his spirit and die for us.

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And that's the greater Samson, Jesus Christ. So even in the Bible's cautionary tales, there's hope.

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Thank you for listening to the latest podcast from Kootenai Church. If you'd like to learn more about Kootenai Church or to donate to our church ministry, you can do so online by visiting kootenachurch .org.

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We hope you enjoyed this podcast and pray you'll join us again next time. Once again, thank you for listening.