If you'd open your Bibles to the 16th chapter of the book of Judges, we're going to go through the verses as we work our way through the message. So before we begin our journey, let's bow and look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we bow in my presence tonight, recognizing thou art a sovereign God over all things. You are a God who can work in mysterious ways in things we do understand and also in things we do not. We want to commit tonight's study to thee. We want to commit the analysis of this passage to thee. We pray that you would use it as you've inspired it to minister to our minds and hearts. to do a personal work in each of us and for that we will thank you in jesus name amen now we're moving through this book of judges and sampson really is the last major judge from here on out we get into some crazy stories as if these have been normal stories but we get into some really bizarre stories but you don't really have any major judges anymore once you get beyond sampson and that Caused me to think this week who was the dullest judge in the whole book of judges Now we've come through some stories that have been riveting and in my opinion And this is just my opinion and I went through the book of judges again and kind of looked at this The dullest judge is found in judges 12. So if you just go back there for just a moment And you'll notice verse 11 and this is all we get about this guy Now, Elon, the Zebulonite, judged Israel after him, and he judged Israel 10 years. Then Elon, the Zebulonite, died and was buried in Ai Jalan in the land of Zebulon. That's all we know about Elon. That is not real exciting. When you come to the life of Samson, though, his life is anything but dull. It was not long, but it was not boring. He is the most colorful judge in the entire book of Judges. On the one hand, he's a fearless warrior for God. And on the other hand, he's a flesh-driven, controlled womanizer dominated by lust. In fact, his lusts are going to ruin him. Now, already in this book of Judges, we've seen him do some incredible things. He tore a lion apart with his bare hands. We saw him go back there a few weeks later, scoop honey out of a lion's carcass that was filled with bees. Then we saw him kill 30 Philistines just to settle a bet. We saw him leave his first wife in a fit of anger. Then he caught 300 foxes, tied their tails together, and burned down Philistine grain fields, vineyards, and orchards. We saw him break through ropes that were tied around him. And now, and last week, we saw him kill 1,000 men with a jawbone of a donkey. So whatever you think about Samson, never forget this point. This is a guy who'd fight for God. This is a guy who wouldn't back down. This is a guy who's willing to go to his death fighting for the Lord. He was weak. when it came to women, but he was a champion warrior when it came to fighting for the Lord. Now the story we come to in Judges is one of the most famous stories in all the Bible. It's a story of a broken man who gave into his flesh passions one too many times. He gets a very expensive haircut. At times, he looks pathetic. But when the story ends, the fact of the matter is he is a champion for the Lord who ends up in the faith hero chapter of Hebrews 11. What I'm convinced this particular part of Samson's life proves is that God sovereignly uses even disobedient people who are his own in miserable circumstances to accomplish his sovereign will. And when they cry out to him for help, He will be there to help them. Clear back in the book of Genesis, there's a story of Joseph who was sold by his brothers as a slave to the Egyptians. The reason why they sold Joseph is because they were evil. They were jealous of Joseph and their motives were evil for selling him. But years later, as Joseph looked back on that episode, he said, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. Their evil, sinful choices actually were used by the Lord to accomplish His will. That's the way it is when you look at Samson's life. He made some crazy decisions in life, but God turned those decisions around for His purposes to accomplish His will. Now there are three main parts to the finale of Samson's life and he has two major encounters with women that you can't dodge if you're a systematic student of scripture. The first sinful encounter is Samson spends an immoral night with a prostitute. You'll notice verse one, now Samson went to Gaza and saw a harlot there and went into her when it was told to the Gazites saying Samson has come here they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city and they kept silent all night saying let us wait until morning light then we'll kill him now Samson lay until midnight and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the city gate and the two posts and pulled them up along with the bars then he put them on his shoulders and carried them up to the top of the mountain which is opposite Hebron. Now, we don't know exactly when this episode occurred. It's in the latter part of his 20-year reign, because when this story and the next story is over, Samson's going to be dead. Now, these verses are obviously critical to the Samson story, or else God would not have put them in his word. And these three verses become a prelude to the next encounter that will lead to his death. Now, verse 1 opens with the fact that Samson went to Gaza. That name, Gaza, means strong place. Gaza, as you'll remember, was one of the five major Philistine cities. It was located about 45 miles from Samson's home in Zora. We don't know for sure why he went to Gaza. I doubt seriously he walked 45 miles just to visit a prostitute because there were many prostitutes in the area at that time a lot closer to his home. Because the name Gaza means strong place, it's probable that he went there to check it out, to determine what his next move was going to be against the Philistines. He had just come off that major victory where he had killed single-handedly a thousand of them, and Gaza was the real strong city. He probably went there to try to figure out what he was going to do next. He walked into the city and he was spotted by Philistines. He was hated by Philistines, but he wasn't afraid of Philistines. They didn't threaten him at all. So he walks into the city right out in the open and some of the Philistines obviously saw him and they knew about him because of what he had done to a thousand of their best trained soldiers. So there wasn't one guy who would have the nerve to go up and try to fight Samson when he'd taken out a thousand of your best trained Philistine soldiers and piled up their bodies like a stack of wood. When he got into Gaza, he spotted a prostitute. Now, under the Old Testament law, and the New Testament for that matter as well, it's not in favor of prostitution. But Samson is a high-strung type of man. He's not the kind of man who would deny himself anything pleasurable. And he was the kind of man who couldn't seem to say no to any lustful temptation. He should have been looking for a nice Israeli girl, but instead he finds himself in Gaza looking at a Philistine prostitute. He's obviously not interested at this point in doing God's will in this matter. In fact, as Gary Inrig said, at this point his life is totally out of fellowship with God. So, he decides, I'm in town for a night, I'll just fulfill my lust, I'll spend the night with her. According to verse 2, when word spread that Samson's over there at her house with that woman, the Philistines said, you know what, we'll trap her. We'll quietly, in a clandestine way, we'll surround that house and we'll ambush him when he comes out in the morning. We'll let him have the night, but when he comes out in the morning, we're gonna kill him. But, according to verse 3, at midnight, for some unknown, unexplainable reason, Samson decided to get up and leave the city. The text doesn't say why he decided to leave at midnight. We must assume, and this is where this gets amazing, We must assume that God stirred him to wake up and leave the city. Now at night, the entrance to Gaza, the gates were shut. These gates are massive gates. They were studded with nails. They were covered with metal to make them fireproof so nobody could come into the city. They were on two posts that were driven deep into the ground with iron bars. And they were locked there so there's no way anyone could get in or out of that city during the night. And apparently these gates were so secure that they didn't even bother posting guards, or if there were guards, they didn't feel they needed to monitor these gates because Samson just obviously walked right out through the gates. The text says that he was empowered by God to go to those gates. He pulled the post and held the gates right out of the ground. He put the two gates on his shoulders and he walked out of the city. And the text says he carried them up to the top of the mountain, which is opposite Hebron. Now, there have been a lot of discussions that have said, when they analyzed this text, you can't actually mean he carried those gates all the way to the mountain that's opposite Hebron, because the mountain that's located opposite Hebron is about 38 to 40 miles away. But when you analyze this in the English and certainly in the Hebrew, there's no other way to get around it. The text seems to say he carried those gates some 38 to 40 miles. That's from here to the Weyland exit. He's just carrying these two Gaza gates and he's doing this right through the promised land. He takes them up opposite Hebron where Jews can see it. It is an amazing demonstration of the power and strength of God. And here's what I want you to think about. I want you to put this in the context. Samson has just been involved in immorality. He's just been involved in committing sexual sin with a prostitute. And God, in His amazing grace and sovereignty, is still looking out for him. God, in His amazing grace and sovereignty, is still empowering him. God, in His amazing grace and sovereignty, is still using him. If Samson could have learned a lesson from this, if Samson would have quit right here, if he would have learned, you know what, I don't need to be involved in that kind of life. He could have had a life that ended entirely differently, but he didn't learn the lesson. But you know, there's a real practical application to all of this to you and me tonight. Perhaps you're here and you've done something immoral in your life and you know it. You did it years ago or perhaps recently. Maybe there was a time when you yourself were involved with a prostitute, or maybe you went on an immoral website, or you watched an immoral movie, or you went to some immoral place. You need to know a couple of things from this text here tonight. First of all, God can and will still use you in a great way if you walk away now. If you walk away from it, and you don't go back to it, you can be used greatly by the Lord. But you also need to know this. If you don't face it, and if you don't deal with it, Your life is going to continue to spiral downward and your ending will not be a happy one. Frankly, there's nothing more pathetic than a Christian sex scandal. God does not want his people caught up in that stuff. He doesn't want his people messing around with immoral things. So you spot those things, you flee those things, you run from those things, and God can use you, God can restore you. But if you don't, you can get in big trouble. Which brings us to his second encounter, Samson spends a moral time with Delilah. There's another Philistine woman who caught Samson's eye. Her name was Delilah. This is one of the famous stories in scriptural history, which frankly has fascinated the world. There are six facts we learn about Delilah. First of all, verses four to six, I want to read. Verses four to five. After it came about that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah, the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, entice him and see where his great strength lies and how we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him. Then we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. Now, there are six facts we know about Delilah. First of all, we know her name. Her name's Delilah. That's not your normal Philistine name. I've read many commentaries concerning what they think the name is, and frankly, we don't know. She probably was a Philistine, but she didn't have the normal Philistine name. We know where she lived. She lived in the valley of Sorok. That's not a real distance from Timna, which was the location of his first wife. It's very important because that would indicate that perhaps she knew the story of Samson and his first wife, because she lived in close proximity to Timna. Thirdly, we know that she was sexually attractive to Samson. This is the only woman in Samson's life where the text says he loved her. He had some very strong emotional attachment to this woman who would turn out to be a traitor. The fourth thing we know about Delilah is she was immoral. The relationship that Samson has with her is not based on meetings at church. These are meetings in a bedroom. More than likely, most speculate she was a prostitute. The fifth fact about her is she loved money. This was a woman far more interested in silver than she was Samson. This was a woman who would sell you out for the right amount of money, and she's going to be offered a whole lot of money, as we'll see in just a moment. And finally, we know she was not loyal to Samson. She's going to cost him his life. Now, if you look at those qualities, you'd say, boy, that's not the kind of woman I really want to get caught up with. That's not the kind of woman that's going to be a real helpmate. That's not the kind of woman that's going to be an asset to my life. But that's where Samson's at. His moral compass was so skewed that this was the kind of woman he was drawn to, and he was drawn right to Delilah. According to verse 5, each leader of the five Philistine cities came and offered her 1,100 pieces of silver, which if you take 1100 multiplied times 5, that's 5500 pieces of silver if she could find out the source of Samson's strength. Now I want to give you some perspective of the dollar value this woman is being offered to try to figure out where Samson's getting his strength from. If you go over to chapter 17, I'll draw your attention to verse 2 because we have 1100 pieces of silver mentioned there. We'll see that, Lord willing, next Sunday night. He said to his mother, the 1,100 pieces of silver, so you have that number mentioned there in verse 2. Now if you drop down to verse 10, Micah then said to him, dwell with me and be a father and a priest to me and I'll give you 10 pieces of silver a year. The annual wage that would be a good living wage at that time would be 10 pieces of silver a year. So if she's being offered 5,500 shekels, she's being offered 550 times the average wage of everybody else if she can find out where his strength is. So if you take an average salary of, say, $30,000, that's equivalent to $16.5 million. I'm telling you, they're offering her a lot of money if she can find out where is he getting his strength. And you know what that tells us? It tells us that there wasn't anything about the look of Samson that would give that secret away. If he would have stood nine feet tall, or over nine feet tall like a Goliath, or if he would have had bulging muscles like a linebacker of the NFL, they would have looked at him and said, boy, he's obviously got a lot of strength there. But apparently when they looked at Samson, they couldn't figure out where that strength is coming from. They needed to try to find it out. It's interesting because this week I read of a Marine Sergeant. In fact, I saw a picture of him. His name is David Douglas. He just set a bench press world record at Camp Pendleton. He bench pressed 738.5 pounds. He's 6 foot 272 pounds. He's been given the nickname the Beast. And when you look at him, and there was a picture of him, he looks strong. His arms bulge. They're huge. If you see his arms, you'd think, boy, he looks a lot like Pastor Thompson. Well, I might be a little off there. And apparently Samson didn't look like much. He didn't look like he had strength. And they said to Delilah, track down where he's getting that strength. You know, the world can't figure out where average believers get their strength. I'll never forget the first time I saw Dr. Haddon Robinson. He didn't look like anything spectacular. He looks better than me, I'll give you that. I look like Wilford Brimley. But he, when you look at him, you think, is that Haddon Robinson? And then when he gets up and opens his mouth, you go, what power that man has to open up the word. I think it's kind of like that way in a small way from Texas Corners Bible Church. We baffle the world. I mean, if the world could look at us and say, there's a mega church of thousands. They could look at it and say, boy, you can tell where they get their strength. They get their strength from their numbers. But we have a church of 400 to 500 people. And literally, we're known all over the world. Where does that come from? Prayer and commitment to the scriptures. And the world can't figure it out. These Philistines could not figure out where Samson was getting his power. So they said to Deliah, we'll pay you over $16 million if you can find out where this guy's getting his strength. So Delilah tries to entice Samson four times to find it out. The first enticement comes in verses six to nine. So Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength is and how you may be bound to afflict you. Samson said to her, if they bind me with seven fresh cords that have not been dried, then I will become weak and be like any other man. Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh cords that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. Now she had men lying in wait in an inner room, and she said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he snapped the cords as a string of toe snaps when it touches the fire, so his strength was not discovered. Now, in verse 6, Delilah tries a straightforward technique. She just goes right up to him and says, listen, where do you get your strength from? Tell me what we could do so you wouldn't have strength. And you would think Samson would have a brain that would operate and say, you know, that's an odd question for that woman to ask me. I mean, if you weren't married or you were dating some girl, the first thing she says is, hey, what's the combination to your safe? You'd think a little bulb would go off in your brain saying, I might be a little suspicious of this gal. But apparently, when it came to women, Samson didn't use a lot of his brains. So he decided he's going to play along with Delilah. In verse 7, he said, well, if you bind me with seven fresh cords or bow strings that haven't been dried, I'll become weak like any other man. But here's the thing about any gift of God. I don't care if it's a gift of helps or if it's a gift of teaching the word or if it's a gift of service or ministry. No gift of God is ever given so you can play games with it. God does not give a gift so you can just play games with a gift out in the world. And according to verses 8 and 9, Delilah had the men get her those cords. Probably while he was sleeping, she ties him up. She yells out, the Philistines are on you, Samson. He snapped those cords like they were a string that was burning in a fire. Which brings us to our second enticement, verses 10 to 12. Then Delilah said to Samson, behold, you've deceived me and told me lies. Now please tell me how you may be bound. He said to her, if they bind me tightly with new ropes, which have not been used, then I will become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson, for the men were lying in wait in the inner room. But he snapped the ropes from his arms like a thread. Delilah did the same thing again. Samson said, if you bind me with new, fresh ropes, I'll be weak like any other man. She yelled for the Philistines, and he snapped the ropes like thread. The third enticement is in verses 13 to 14. Then Delilah said to Samson, up till now you've deceived me and told me lies. Tell me how you may be bound. And he said to her, if you weave the seven locks of my hair with the web and fasten it with a pin, then I will become weak and be like any other man. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his hair and wove them into the web, and she fastened it with a pin and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he awoke from his sleep and pulled out the pin of the loom and the web. Now what she apparently did is she weaved his hair together and attached it to a weaver's beam. She pinned it to a beam. But I do want you to notice something odd about this one. He's beginning to get real dangerously close to where his strength is. He's letting her starting to toy with that hair. He's making a big mistake here. These games are about to cost him big time. And another thing I want you to see is this number seven keeps coming up. So obviously he's saying this is where I get my complete strength. My complete strength comes from this. Which brings us to the fourth entrapment, verses 15 to 21. Then she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You've deceived me these three times and have not told me where your great strength is. It came about when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him that his soul was annoyed to death. So he told her all that was in his heart and said to her, a razor has never come to my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb, if I'm shaved. then my strength will leave me and I will become weak and be like any other man. When Delilah saw that he had told her all that was in his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines saying, come up once more for he has told me all that is in his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. She made him sleep on her knees and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair. Then she began to afflict him and his strength left him. She said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out, as at other times, and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. And they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains. And he was a grinder in the prison. This time, Delilah went to work on him emotionally and she wore him down. She lived near Timnah. She probably knew the story of his wife. You'll remember she just kept nagging him until he finally broke and he told her that riddle. And day after day, Delilah did the same thing to Samson. How can you say you love me? Well, how can you say you love him? Look what you're doing to this guy. You're trying to be a traitor for money. You're trying to sell him out. But that's the way she's manipulating the situation. How can you say you love me? And verse 16 says, Samson was annoyed to death. That's what it says in verse 16. He was annoyed to death. Now you have to stop for a moment and ask yourself this question. Well, Samson, if this is annoying you, if you're annoyed to death, you're getting sick of this, why in the world don't you leave? Why don't you just get up and walk away? This woman's annoying you, and why don't you just walk away from the situation?" And the answer as to why he didn't is because he loves the pleasure of sin. And that's what sin does for a while. It gives pleasure for a while. He was caught up in that, but in the end, it's going to ruin him. In verse 17, he broke down. He said, my strength is in my uncut hair because I am under a Nazarite vow that has been made to the Lord. And he told her how he had made that vow, and at this time Delilah senses he's telling the truth. He had never before brought up God. But he brings up God now. After all, when you're in an immoral relationship, you're not about to start talking about God. When you're caught up in immorality, you're not going to talk about God or the Bible, or you're not going to sing hymns. But this is the first time he brings up the subject of God. And when he does that, it resonates with her. She understands he's telling me something here I haven't heard before. And verse 18 says that she contacted the Philistines, and apparently the Philistines thought to themselves, well, we're never going to be able to figure this out. She says just come one more time bring your money one more time because I figured it out this time So when Samson went to sleep? with his head in her lap She called for a man who was hiding in the wings to come cut off his hair and by the way Don't miss that point because if you ask most people how did Samson lose his hair? They'll say well Delilah cut it off. She didn't cut it off she called for a man who is hiding in the wings and he came out and he's the one who cut off his hair and According to verse 20, she again yelled, the Philistines are on you, Samson. And Samson didn't know that the Lord had left him. As far as him having his strength, it was gone. And the thing that led to him losing his usefulness, the thing that led to him losing his power was immoral sex. Dr. S. Lewis Johnson said, many a man has lost in Delilah's barbershop in the lap of vile, vicious vixen. Sexual immorality is not a temptation you want to get near. Because it'll ruin you, it will zap the power of God from you, it will destroy you. That is why over and over again the scriptures warn, flee immorality. Dr. S. Lewis Johnson told the story of a young man who he knew that was active in ministry. He said he was married to a great Christian girl, involved in a solid local church. As the years went by, he fell into immoral relationships and drunkenness. He was divorced from his wife. Dr. Johnson said the last time anybody saw the guy, he was walking on the streets of Dallas as a bum with a harlot on his arm. That's what immorality will do. It'll ruin you. And if you happen to be here and you're involved in some immoral situation, you flee it now. You flee it. You get out of it. You confess it to God. You turn to the Lord before it destroys you. You walk away before it brings you to ruin. Just like verse 20 says, Samson didn't even know the Lord had left him. Now God never entirely leaves his people. You're certainly going to see that in just a few moments. But he will stop blessing them and he will stop using them at a great level. But this is how insensitive Samson had become. He didn't even know when God was present and when he wasn't. Listen, our spiritual strength is found in our sensitivity to the Holy Spirit. And the moment we lose that sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, that moment that we're no longer under conviction by the Holy Spirit, our strength is gone. And I think there are many churches right now that don't know the same thing. They don't know the Lord has left them. He's not there anymore. His power isn't there anymore. There's no word power there anymore. There are no people who are falling in love with the scriptures anymore. There's no conviction of the Spirit of God anymore. There are no people truly getting saved anymore. There's no more growth because the Lord has left the church. The candlestick has been removed and most people don't even know it. And according to verse 21, the Philistines grabbed Samson and they gouged out his eyes. Verse 21 says they gouged out his eyes. And what they think is, if we gouge out his eyes, he'll never be able to hurt us again. They're wrong. The world will never figure it out and they'll never get it right. They're wrong on that. And they bound him with chains and they made him a grinder in prison. This was a powerful man of God who grabbed gates of Gaza and marched up a mountain and put him up there, and he's now in prison doing women's work of grinding up grain. That's where immoral sex will lead you. It'll ruin your life. You may find pleasure in it for a while, but you're going to pay a high price if you want to yield to your lust. Because sin always leads people in the same place. It leaves them humiliated. Sin never brings people honor. It always brings them shame. Which brings us to the final moment of Samson's life. He's avenged by God. Verse 22 says, however, the hair. of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off. Now the lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their god, and to rejoice, for they said, Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hands. When the people saw him, they praised their god, for they said, Our god has given our enemy into our hands, even the destroyer of our country, who has slain many of us. It so happened, when they were in high spirits, that they said, Call for Samson, that he may amuse us. So they called for Samson from the prison, and he entertained them, and they made him stand between the pillars. Then Samson said to the boy who was holding his hand, Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them. Now the house was full of men and women, and all the lords of the Philistines were there, and about three thousand men and women were on the roof, looking on, while Samson was amusing them. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, O Lord God. And I want you to notice the proper nouns he uses here. Capital L, capital O-R-E-D, Jehovah. O Lord, capital L, small case O-R-D, Adonai. Capital G-O-D is Jehovah. Please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, capital G, small case O-D, Elohim, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand, the other with his left, and Samson said, let me dine with the Philistines. And he bent with all his might, so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it, so the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life. Then his brothers and all his father's household came down, took him, brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. Thus he had judged Israel twenty years. As pathetic a man as Samson looks to be here, God was not done using him and God was still sovereign in his life. And according to verse 22, his hair began to grow back. He didn't get new eyes. But he did get a new growth of hair. There are consequences to sin. If you decide you're going to pursue it, you're going to pay a price. Samson doesn't get his eyesight back. But God's still going to use him. His hair starts growing again. And I don't want you to overlook the grace that's seen in this verse. God was ready to restore Samson and use him one final time. Now you would have thought the Philistines would have the brains to assign a barber to Samson. You'd have thought they'd said, let's keep, sure, his hair never grows back, but they just completely thought he was neutered. But God wasn't through using Samson. He was going to restore him and use him one more time. The five leaders of the five Philistine cities who paid Delilah close to $16 million got together to worship the false deity Dagon. They wanted to praise him because of the defeat of their enemy Samson. They were in a good mood. In fact, the text says in verse 25, they were in high spirits, which means they were drunk. They had been drinking and they were just about drunk. And they decided they're going to bring Samson out so they can laugh at him. They want to bring him out so that they can demean him and degrade him. That's what happens when a believer plunges into sin. The world gets a good laugh. So they had a little Philistine boy go get Samson and bring him out and stand in between two pillars. Now, as near as I can determine, and I've tried to figure this out and I've read volumes of pages on this, apparently these temples were constructed in which you had two center beams that were at one end and you had a network of lesser beams that were connected so you would have two center beams and you would branch out further and have more beams and perhaps more pillars outside but you had two that were relatively close together supporting a lot of the weight and Samson had been in Gaza he had seen the setup at this particular temple because he'd snuck around Gaza looking the city over and he said to this boy I want you to help me put my hands on those two pillars And the temple house was full of Philistine men and women. My goodness, there were 3,000 just on the roof. Now, Samson couldn't see the totality of how many people were there, but he could hear them. And he knew that there were people from five cities there represented. The temple was crowded with Philistines. It's a big party. This is like New Orleans Mardi Gras. Now, Samson had been to Gaza, so he knows just how this is constructed. Dagan's Temple, by the way, has never been discovered in excavations in the Gaza Strip. But there have been similar temples that have been found in the Middle East, and one was supported by two pillars that were slightly less than three meters apart. They were on two round stone bases. The average arm span of two arms is approximately 60 inches. And so you have these beams that were about 36 inches apart, easily within Samson's reach. And they're all laughing at him. And they're mocking him. And Samson called out to the Lord. And notice, this shows me he has truly repented. He uses three names for God in verse 28. Jehovah, Adonai, Elohim. In the days where he was blind, grinding out grain, he had gone back to the Lord. And he had thought through theology. And he says to God, would you strengthen me one more time? And he prayed about his own suicide. It's a prayer that God's going to answer. There are three different kinds of suicides that I know of. First of all, there's selfish suicide. That's the kind of suicide most people commit. Self-centered suicide. Somebody so absorbed with themselves they don't care about anybody else. They don't think about anybody else. They don't care about what they're going to do to anybody else. They kill themselves. That's selfish suicide. Then there's what I would call heroic. suicide that's what happened on nine eleven when that jet was uh... heading in pennsylvania and some american said well we gotta take this plane over and crash it or it's going to kill people and so in a heroic way they literally laid down their own lives but then there's what i would call kamikaze suicide in kamikaze suicide somebody is gonna lay down their life in order to destroy others that's sampson number three kamikaze suicide It's so ironic because the Philistines brought Samson out to entertain them. He's going to entertain them, all right. He's going to bring down the house with his entertainment. What he's going to do is he grabbed the two pillars, he bent the pillars, the house collapsed, he killed more people at this one setting than he did in his entire life. The Hebrew's tricky here. I've tried to analyze this. What did he do when he grabbed those pillars? Did he twist them? Did he push on them? Did he try to pull them in? And I can't quite figure out exactly what he did do, but I know this. With empowerment from God, somehow he dislodged those two pillars and that place came down and he killed those Philistines. And verse 31 says, his family came and got his body. They took him back home and they buried him. When you think through the life of Samson that we've been through in the last three Sunday nights, there are about six parting thoughts I'd like us to consider. First of all, you may have been a person who was involved in terrible immorality in past years, even as a believer. The counsel from Samson's story is you need to flee it. You need to turn from it. You need to get out of it. And you can be greatly used by the Lord. If you will flee immorality, that, as it were, metaphorically speaking, can cause the hair to grow again, and your strength can return, God can salvage your life, He can pick up the pieces, but you must call out to Him, you must walk away from the sin. Secondly, you need to stay clear of people and places that can pull you away from God. Now here we are tonight, over 3,000 years later, And there is the possibility that we have some Samson sitting here in the sanctuary. There's the possibility that there's some in the audience tonight. You have tremendous potential to do great things for God if you can just deal with immoral sin. But spiritual decay has begun to set in. And you've been hanging with the wrong people. You've been listening to the wrong things. Don't throw away your potential. You stay committed to understanding the scriptures. You stay committed to Christ. You stay committed to understanding the Word of God and you become a strong man and woman of God. Thirdly, you need to stay close to God because those who draw near God are going to see God draw very near to them. We're admonished in the New Testament to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. Jesus Christ warns the churches of Revelation, I'm coming quickly, don't let anyone rob you of your crown. The biggest threat you have to having yourself robbed of your crown is yourself. It's ourself. So we need to stay on top of our life, keeping always close to the Lord. Fourthly, as bizarre as Samson was, he does end up a faith hero in Hebrews 11. As bizarre as some of his actions in life were, deep down in that man's heart, there was a heart who loved God. And even if your past is a checkered one tonight, the story of your life can be you end up a hero for God. Fifthly, Samson's loss of strength and sight did not occur until many failures had occurred. Oh, learn that lesson. If he would have just turned at any point from his failure, he could have kept his strength, he could have kept his sight, he could have kept his life. His life would not have ended in suicide, but in spiritual success, but he did not walk away from sin and it cost him. And finally, and this is so incredible, even in your lowest points of life, If you are a child of God, there's always hope of forgiveness and usefulness. No matter how far you've fallen, you're not beyond the potential of God's forgiveness. If ever there's an illustration of that, it certainly is Samson. But there is one who did more by his death than all the people of the world will ever accomplish in their lives. It is Jesus Christ. You see, the reason he came into this world and died on that cross was to save the sinners of the world. May we pray. If you've never believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, right now in this moment, you can settle that. You pray something like this, God, I am a sinner, I know that. I face up to it right now in thy presence. And I invite Jesus Christ into my life to be my personal Savior. Our Father, this book of Judges is just a practical book because it, in some respects, becomes a mirror for us to look at ourselves, analyze ourselves, see where we're at in our relationship with You, I pray. I pray that our lives would never end in the tragedy of the life of Samson. But Lord, we want to thank you for the fact that you used him, did incredible things with him. I pray we'll learn the lessons we need to learn along the way so we never fall into the traps that consume him. If you'll do that in our life and in the church, we'll thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.