Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: God's not looking for perfect people; he's looking for available people. If he's looking for perfect people, he'd only had one guy on his side, and that's Jesus.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Heroes. Let's listen as JP gives us part two of Samson.

JP Jones: So Delilah said to Samson, "Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued." Samson answered, "If anyone ties me up with seven fresh thongs that have not been dried, I'll become as weak as any other man." Then the rulers of the Philistines brought her seven fresh thongs that had not been dried. She tied him up with them. With men hidden in the room, she called to him, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" But he snapped the thongs as easily as a piece of string snaps when it comes close to a flame. So the secret of his strength was not discovered.

Now, you would think at this point in time Samson would go, "She asked me the secret of my strength. I told her a story. She did what I told her, and then all of a sudden the Philistines were there. I don't think she's someone I can trust." But he wasn't thinking; he was just being driven by his lusts.

Verse 10: Then Delilah said to Samson, "You have made a fool of me. You lied to me." Think about it. She tricked him, called the Philistines in to kill him, but she says, "You fooled me. You've lied to me." He said, "If anyone ties me securely with new ropes that have never been used, I'll become as weak as any other man." So Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. Then when the men hidden in the room, she called to him, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" But he snapped the ropes off his arms as if they were threads.

Delilah then said to Samson, "Until now you have been making a fool of me. You've been lying to me. Tell me, how can you be tied?" He replied, "If you weave the seven braids of my hair into fabric on the loom and tighten it with a pin, I'll become as weak as any other man." So while he was sleeping, Delilah took the seven braids of his hair, wove them into the fabric, and tied it with a pin.

Now you've got to picture what's going on. He's obviously falling asleep on her lap. And he says, "You know, you weave my hair," because he had all these long braids of hair. He says, "You weave it together with other fabric on a loom, then I'll become weak like any other man." You've got to go back to the ancient near-Eastern custom of how they did this.

There was a big loom. This was a big wooden contraption with all this thread in it. It was sitting right there. She takes his hair and weaves it into it. So now his hair is connected to this loom. If you've been tracking what's going on in the past, you can figure out what's going to happen here again.

So now she does this, she tightens it with the pin, and verse 14, again she called to him, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" He awoke from his sleep, pulled up the pin and the loom with the fabric. So he must have gone, "Wham!" and the whole thing just jerked up in the air. And then he went and attacked the Philistines with his hair still connected to a weaving loom.

And then Delilah says, verse 15, "How can you say 'I love you' when you won't confide in me?" I'm going to change—I said that the title of this story is "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." I'm going to change it, and it's going to be called "How Women Can Make Men Crazy." That's what the story of Samson is really all about.

So here now three times she's asked him, "What's your strength?" He tells her some story. She does what he says. The Philistines come, but it's not really the secret, so with superhuman strength he defeats the Philistines and he keeps coming back for more because he was totally deceived by his lusts.

Verse 16: With such nagging, she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death. So he told her everything. "No razor has ever been used on my hair," he said, "because I've been a Nazirite and set apart to God since birth. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man."

When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, "Come back once more; he has told me everything." And so the rulers of the Philistines entered with silver in their hands and, 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.

And then she called, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you!" He awoke from his sleep and thought, "I'll go out as before and shake myself free." But he did not know that the Lord had left him. And then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison.

I mean, we look at it now and it's laughable, but it's tragic because it tells us how a man can be completely deceived by his lusts. How a godly man, a man that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon, can be completely defeated and destroyed because of lust.

One last observation just looking at the story: Samson's life ended with a victory over his enemies because the best line in the whole Book of Judges in this story about Samson is a little line, a little throwaway line. They threw him in prison, and it says, "But the hairs of Samson's head began to grow back."

You see, the hair was the symbol of his Nazirite vow that he was consecrated to the Lord. The hair of his head began to grow back. God was not finished with Samson, and God isn't finished with any of us. There's not a person here this morning that God has said, "I'm finished with you." Everybody here is someone whose life can end with victory.

Judges 16:25-31: While they were in high spirits—that is, the Philistines—they shouted, "Bring out Samson to entertain us!" And so they called Samson out of the prison. He performed for them. They were making fun of him. They would bring him out. Here was the guy who had judged the Philistines, who killed a thousand of them with the jawbone of a donkey. Maybe they had him do different feats. Maybe they dressed him up like a clown, who knows? He was blind, and he would come out, and they would poke fun at him, and they'd boast about how their god was stronger than the God of the Israelites.

Verse 26: Samson said to the servant who held his hand, "Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple so that I may lean against them." Now the temple was crowded with men and women. All the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about 3,000 men and women watching Samson perform.

So they'd all gathered inside this colonnade. It was supported by pillars, and up on top were 3,000, plus the ballroom area. And they put Samson next to the pillars. There were two main pillars that held it up, and Samson said, "Let me feel it," and he stood between them with his hands like this.

Then Samson prayed to the Lord, "O Sovereign Lord, remember me. O God, please strengthen me just once more and let me, with one blow, get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes." And then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood, bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.

Samson said, "Let me die with the Philistines!" And then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived. And then his brothers and his father's whole family went down to get him. And they brought him back and they buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. And he had led Israel 20 years.

The good, the bad, and the ugly: Samson. Now, what are some of the principles that we are to learn from the life of Samson that apply to each one of us? Here's the first one: If God can use Samson, he can use me. If God can use Samson, he can use you. Nobody is outside the scope of God's selection for relationship and ministry and Kingdom advancement.

Every person here is someone that God can use. Don't count yourself out because God doesn't. Don't write yourself off because God doesn't. God delights in taking ordinary people and doing extraordinary things from their life. God delights in taking losers and making winners. God delights in doing supernatural things in our lives.

God's not looking for perfect people; he's looking for available people. If he's looking for perfect people, he only had one guy on his side, and that's Jesus. Every other person who's ever lived was a sinner. Every person here is a sinner. Every person here has weaknesses. Every person here has flaws. Every person here has a past. Every person here has struggles.

God isn't looking for perfect people. He's looking for available people, he's looking for usable people, he's looking for teachable people. He's looking for people who will say, "Lord, take me, every part of me, warts and all, and use me." If God could use Samson, he could use us. We just need to ask for his help.

And Jesus said, "If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" We just need to say, "God, give me your Holy Spirit to change me, to transform me, to give me courage, to give me faith, to give me eyes to see, to remind me of my forgiveness in Jesus Christ, to restore me to fellowship with you, to use me in this situation." It doesn't matter how many times you've blown it in the past; God can use anyone of us, and he delights in doing so.

Here's a second application: When God calls us, we need to be obedient to his plan for our lives. Isaiah, in Isaiah Chapter 6, has a vision of the holiness of God. He becomes immediately aware of his sin, and he says, "Woe is me." And God reminds him that he's forgiven and restored. And then God says, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Do you remember Isaiah's response? "Here am I, send me. Here am I, send me."

Isaiah just made a confession: "I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips. I got a potty mouth. How could God do anything with me?" And God says, "I forgive you. I need someone to go for me." And then Isaiah said, "Okay, well then send me." God wants our response to say, "Here am I, send me."

If God calls you, say yes. And you know what? God's calling every one of us. He's calling every one of us to a relationship with himself. I know that with certainty because Jesus said, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink, and out of his innermost being will flow rivers of living water."

Jesus knows we're tired, thirsty people. He invites us. He calls us to salvation. So everyone here is called to salvation. And God just wants us to say, "Here am I, send me," and say yes to Jesus. And beyond that, Jesus has a Kingdom plan. He says, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations."

He wants to use us to establish his Kingdom here in this community, in the school that you attend, in the neighborhood you live in, at the workplace where you're employed, in your home. He wants to do that around the very nations. So if God's calling you—and he is—say yes.

Here's a third application. I said that Samson was the strongest guy who ever lived, bar none. But every time he does a superhuman feat of strength, it's prefaced with "the Spirit of the Lord came upon him." True strength comes from the Spirit of the Lord. Spiritual strength, emotional strength, the kind of strength that causes a man to be faithful to his wife, the kind of strength that causes a mom to keep on loving her kids, the kind of strength that causes a man to just do his time at work even when he doesn't enjoy the job but he's providing for his family, the kind of strength that it takes to say no to sin, the kind of strength that it takes to believe God's promises, the kind of strength that it takes to love the unlovable, the kind of strength that it takes to live every day in the fear of the Lord—that comes from the Lord.

True strength comes from the Holy Spirit. I used to think—and I've changed my mind about it, who knows? When I get to heaven, I'll find out—I used to think Samson must have looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had to just look ripped, buffed, huge. Now I think he probably just looked like a normal guy because it wasn't his physical strength. It was the Spirit of the Lord that came upon him. He probably just looked like a normal guy. But the Holy Spirit came upon him so powerfully that he did superhuman, supernatural things.

And we have the same Spirit of God. In fact, 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?" And Ephesians 1:13 says, "You also after listening to the message of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise."

And so we have the Holy Spirit. And that's why we're exhorted in Acts 1:8 to be empowered by the Holy Spirit and be witnesses for Jesus in our Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and even to the remotest parts of the earth. That's why we're told in Galatians 5:16 to walk by the Spirit, and we won't carry out the desire of the flesh.

That's why we're promised in Romans 8:13 that we are to, by the Spirit, put to death the misdeeds of the body, and we will live. We can do supernatural things in the power of the Holy Spirit because true strength comes from the Spirit of the Lord.

Here's a fourth thing, and we saw it so vividly portrayed in Samson's life, and that is: lust is a powerful temptation that can ruin our lives. It can ruin our lives. And every person here could be a victim to this desire that can destroy us. The word "lust" in the New Testament is the Greek word epithumia. It just translates "desire."

We've been created with the capacity for desire. Don't ever pray God take away all my desires. Don't pray that. One, God's not going to answer it, but two, that's denying who you are in creation in God's image. The issue of desire is what is the object of our desire? You can have an epithumia for righteousness, a lust for righteousness. You can have a lust for God, a passionate desire to seek him, to know him, to worship him, to obey him. Or you can have a passionate desire for some type of immoral gratification.

We've been created with the capacity of desire. What God wants to do is to take all of that desire and passion that is God-given and have it channeled towards righteousness and towards God himself and towards God's Kingdom purposes. The same testosterone that can cause a man to struggle with lust is what can lead him to do great things for God. That energy—may God raise up here an army of men who take all of our energy to become servant leaders for God, to love our wives and our kids, to love righteousness, to love the Kingdom, to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

So how do we keep that in check? Well, Romans 13 says, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh." Put on Christ every day. Don't even give the flesh an opportunity. Hebrews 3 says, "See to it that no one develops an evil unbelieving heart and falling away from the living God. Encourage one another day after day as long as it's still called today, lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Make sure every day you got accountability and encouragement in your life from people who encourage you to follow God and not become deceived by sin.

Galatians 5:16 says, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." Make sure every day you're walking in a Spirit so you don't carry out the flesh's desire. Colossians 3:5 says, "Put to death immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry." Put it to death. You see, the Bible is filled with positive exhortations for how we can deal with this temptation. But make no mistake about it, lust is a powerful temptation that can ruin our lives.

And one last thing: If you failed, the hairs of your head will grow back. And for some of you men, I know that's really encouraging. If you failed, God can still use you. In fact, I want you to be honest here because I will be. If at some time in your life you failed in some area of your life, would you just raise your hand?

We're all a bunch of losers here. But God can still use us. God can still use us. So it doesn't matter whether your failure was small or big, whether it was spiritual, emotional, relational, financial—it does not matter. It doesn't matter if you were a fool in the way that you failed or you failed thinking you were doing the right thing. God can still use you.

Today can be the day that we say today, doesn't matter what happened in the past, but today I'm going to follow the Lord. Today I'm going to walk in the Spirit. Today I'm going to put Jesus Christ first place in my life. Today I'm going to live as a Kingdom advancer because God can do great things through my life. Because if God could use Samson, he can use me.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP Jones provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just five dollars. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250. For your gift of twenty-five dollars or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, Facing Goliath.

Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a minute, but before we do that, Pastor JP, did you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. We're looking at the story of Samson. The life of Samson tells us something about God and his plan for us. It tells us that God is sovereign, that he's in charge, and he's in charge of the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives. It also tells us that God is a God of redemption. God has a plan to change us and to use us for his Kingdom purposes.

You see, Samson was a person of great potential. He was the strongest man who ever lived. He was a person that was used to judge Israel. God did some great things through Samson's life. He fought the enemies of God and boldly took a stand for God's cause. But Samson was also a man with great vulnerability and with great lusts.

And Samson was a man who compromised his faith and who sinned in disobedience to God. But the end of Samson's life was a redemption. The end of Samson's life was Samson returning to his faith, yielding himself to God and asking God to use him one last time. You know, we can learn from Samson that God can meet us anywhere in life. We don't have to be perfect people. In fact, there are no perfect people.

The only perfect person is Jesus Christ. But we do have to be available. We do have to be seekers. We do have to be people who are humble before the Lord. In fact, the Bible says that if we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God that he will exalt us at the proper time. And Jesus said that we have to humble ourselves and become like children if we're going to enter into the Kingdom.

We have to be people who cry out to God and say, "Use me and change me, redeem me." Samson was a person who at the end of his life, recognizing how he'd blown it, turned and said, "One more time, God, use me." God wants to use us. We don't have to wait till the end of our lives. That's the good news.

We can do it as a young person. We can do it as a teenager. We can do it as an adult. Or even if we are at the end of our lives, we could still cry out to him. Jesus is the example of this when he died on the cross. There was a man crucified next to him. At the point of death, he said, "Lord, would you remember me when you come in your Kingdom?" And Jesus said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise."

Wherever you are in your journey, you can cry out to God and ask him to redeem you and use you. You see, the story of the gospel is the story that in and of ourselves, we sin and we fall short. We are unable to measure up to God's standards. That's true if we've yet to cross that line and become followers of Jesus. And you know what? It's true for us who are followers of Jesus.

It's not like Jesus starts us off on the Christian life and then we kind of complete it on our own. No, we begin with Jesus and we have to stay with Jesus all throughout our lives. We are completely dependent upon him. We can cry out to him at any point in our life and at any point in our journey, and God will hear our cry. God will forgive our sins, and God will do something new through us.

We can be people who are examples of God's saving grace and examples of God's forgiveness and redemption. Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you want to be a person who experiences God's power to change your life? If you do, you need to ask him. You need to repent. You need to cry out to him. You need to ask God to do for you what only God can do. Would you ask him right now?

Lord, I admit I am a sinner. I cannot live up to your standards. God, I fall short. God, I have parts of my life that I can't control. I'm out of control. I'm a slave to sin. Forgive me. Cleanse me. Make me a new person. Thank you that you love me and that you are a God of redemption. And I believe that and I trust in that, and I call out to you now. And because I call out to you, I know that you hear my prayer and that you're saving me and making me a new person. I trust in Jesus Christ, and in his name I pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.