Samson: Portrait of a Derailed Life (Part 1)

Transcription

1 Samson: Portrait of a Derailed Life (Part 1) Rich Nathan August 14, 2011 Judges: Ordinary People, Extraordinary God Series Judges There are lots of reasons for train derailments. Some are caused by natural disasters, floods, earthquakes, landslides. Others are caused by mechanical failures. But the most memorable are often caused by human error. On September 12, 2008 an engineer on a California passenger train ignored a red warning light and he ignored a dispatcher s verbal warning before he crashed the passenger train into a parked freight train at 40 mph. This engineer s ignoring of warnings resulted in 25 deaths and 135 injured, 40 of them critical. Investigators discovered later that the engineer texted several teenagers just moments before the crash. Here s a guy driving a passenger train with hundreds of people aboard and he is texting while the train is hurdling down the tracks. Tim Irwin used this image of a derailed passenger train in writing a wonderful book on leadership failure that he titled: Derailed. Tim Irwin is a management consultant and teacher of leadership development. He discovered in his work many, many gifted, competent leaders, who reached extraordinary heights in the corporate world through brilliance and hard work and strategic vision. He discovered many leaders who achieved extraordinary results at some point in their career. But then something happened. The company doesn t reach the expected destination after a spectacular launch. The company and this person s career go into a nose dive. So Tim Irwin asked the question: What is it that derails people? Why do really high achieving leaders suddenly go off the rails? What he discovered over and over again is that what derailed people are what he calls the dark side of our persons. Great leaders also have glaring weaknesses, a capacity for arrogance, or narcissism, or lust, or selfishness. These dark impulses are either managed or restrained, or they explode out destroying relationships, and institutions and lives. We hear of folks like Anthony Weiner, the hard-charging New York City congressman who had to stand up in public and admit that his twitter account 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org

2 had not been hacked and that he had sent a picture of himself barely clad to a stranger in Seattle. Or Dick Morris, who is the engineer of President Clinton s political resurgence; he convinced the President to start talking about family values and conservative public morals. All the while, Dick Morris was crafting this brilliant political strategy, he was spending the weekends with his wife in Connecticut and many week nights with a high paid prostitute in a Washington DC hotel just blocks away from the White House. In fact, Morris dark side so engulfed him that he even made calls to the White House from the prostitute s room and occasionally let her listen into conversations between him and the President. What causes derailment? The cause of derailment Patrick Lencioni, who is a world famous management consultant and the author of some of the best books that I ve read on leadership books like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team wrote this in the forward to the book Derailed: In my work as a consultant, I can honestly say I ve never discovered a company I thought was just too dumb to succeed. Nor have I found a CEO whom I felt could have been great, if only he or she was smarter. When it comes to the people who are responsible for making the organization healthy, it is all about character. Yes, character. Now, I realize that this word has been overused and misused, and much of its impact has been lost. But there is no reason to abandon it and go back to IQ tests, and business school diplomas, and resumes as our best predictors of success. Again, those are easier to measure and compare. But give me a leader with humility and integrity who graduated from Chico State University or SUNY at Buffalo, or Colorado State University over a brilliant, but character-challenged honor student from an Ivy League school any day. What are we talking about by character? Christian thinker and author, said: Os Guinness, a brilliant Externally, character provides the foundation of trust that links leaders with followers. Internally, character is the part-gyroscope, part-brake that provides the leader s deepest source of bearings and strongest source of restraint. In many instances, the first prompting to do well and the last barrier against doing wrong are the same character Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 2

3 See, people s lives are not taken down by a lack of celebrity. You could fill Ohio Stadium multiple times over with people who are famous for being famous people like Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan, Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen, Snooki, or any of the people in all of the reality shows on TV. You could make up your own list - just lean over to your neighbor and say, Here s someone famous for being famous. But you wouldn t follow any of them, if they were leaders. What derails people is not the absence of celebrity. What derails people is not the absence of charisma. Almost anyone these days can get media training and learn how to dress for success. My goodness, look at who is leading the Senate Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. You wouldn t say that they are oozing with charisma. What derails people is not the lack of intelligence. If intelligence and character were the same thing as Tim Irwin rightly notes in his book Derailed, then President Nixon and President Clinton would have been two of our best presidents of all time. Intelligence and charisma and capacity may get people jobs at the beginning. What keeps people going year after year after year is character the stuff that a person is made of; the thing Os Guinness called part-gyroscope, part-brake that provides a leader with the deepest source of their bearings and the strongest source of their restraint. We ve been doing a series over the course of the summer from the book of Judges, a series that I ve titled: Ordinary People, Extraordinary God. Today and next week we re going to look at the life of probably the most famous of the Judges in ancient Israel s history the life of a man named Samson. I ve titled today s talk, Samson: Portrait of a Derailed Life. Let s pray. Samson s story is A story of decline and derailment Here is what we read in Judges 13:1 5: Judges 13:1-5 1 Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years. 2 A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth. 3 The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. 4 Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean. 5 You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 3

4 His life began in a blaze of glory. An angel appeared to Mrs. Manoah and Mrs. Manoah was barren. An angel came to her with a birth announcement: You are going to get pregnant; you are going to give birth to a son and he is going to begin the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. Your son is to be consecrated to the Lord forever. He was to be a Nazirite. A Nazirite was a sacred person, a person who was consecrated, or devoted to God s service for a specific period of time. A person could become a Nazirite by taking on a Nazirite vow. The vow would be that I will for this period of time not eat anything that comes from a grapevine no grapes, no raisins, and absolutely no wine or alcohol. I will refrain from anything that comes from the vine. No alcohol at all. Second, I will not touch any dead body. Third, I will not cut my hair. The generation of the 1960 s that I grew up in would have been happy with the last two of the Nazirite vows no dead bodies, no cutting of hair. That first one about alcohol would have caused us a little problem. Samson was not someone who was called to be a Nazirite for a specific period of time a month or a year. He was called to be a Nazirite for his whole life. Some people speculate that Samuel, the prophet, and John the Baptist, were also called to be lifelong Nazirites, a sacred people consecrated to the Lord in a unique way for their whole lives. But despite the fact that Samson s life began with this blaze of glory, the rest of the story of Samson is a story of decline and derailment. And in this Samson is a portrait of the moral condition of the nation of Israel. A nation s leaders generally reflect the morals and the desires of the people. God rarely airlifts a leader with radically different morals and radically different standards into a group of people. There is so much complaining these days about the leaders in Washington. The problem, friends, is much closer to home. Could it be that the petty thinking and unwillingness to sacrifice and selfish ambition is a reflection of our own petty thinking and unwillingness to sacrifice and selfish ambition? We ve seen in the history of Israel, as recorded in the book of Judges, that there is this terrible cycle. As I described last week the cycle is not so much of a cycle as it is a spiral down. Each leader is more flawed than the last. The sin of the people not only repeats itself, but intensifies and is amplified. Samson s life, the lives of the children of Israel, and our own lives are testimony to this reality that great beginnings do not guarantee great ends. So many people start off the Christian life with great zeal. There is a blaze of glory; they re made into leaders after six months, a year or 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 4

5 two years. They re leading in their teen fellowship or campus Christian group. They might even go off to seminary and become pastors and have great beginnings. And then like the people of Israel and like Samson, there is decline and derailment. What are the warning signs of decline and potential derailment? The warning signs of decline and potential derailment How do you know if you are like that engineer on the passenger train blowing through red lights and verbal warnings as you are obliviously texting away rushing headlong to disaster? The first warning sign that we see Samson ignore in his life is deafness. Ignoring the warning sign of deafness Look with me at Judges 14:1 3: Judges 14:1-3 1 Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. 2 When he returned, he said to his father and mother, I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife. 3 His father and mother replied, Isn t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife? But Samson said to his father, Get her for me. She s the right one for me. Samson s parents knew Samson s calling. I m sure they spoke about the circumstances of his birth many, many times to Samson as he was growing up. Samson, you have a special destiny. God s hand is on you. There are great things that the Lord has planned for your life. Remember, Samson, you are not just living for yourself, God wants to do something great through you for our whole people. What an incredibly painful thing it must have been for Samson s parents to watch Samson walk away from his calling. When you know that God has something for your child; God made you a promise; he spoke to you perhaps while your child was still in the womb. Maybe your child is a miracle baby. They weren t supposed to live. You couldn t conceive. Maybe God reached out and supernaturally rescued and protected your child, healed your child from a disease, or protected them from accident or illness. You know that God has something special for them and to watch them reject that and walk away because they won t listen to your counsel and direction. It must have been really painful for Samson s parents watch him dating women outside of the faith and becoming more and more compromised with the standards of the world Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 5

6 Becoming deaf to counsel; being unwilling to listen to correction is always a sign of potential derailment. Proverbs 12:1 says this: Proverbs 12:1 Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates correction is stupid. Proverbs 15:10 reads: Proverbs 15:10 Stern discipline awaits those who leave the path; those who hate correction will die. And Proverbs 19:20 more positively says: Proverbs 19:20 Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise. Let me tell you a story. Bob Nardelli had a dream of playing professional football, but he was too small. So he channeled his aggressiveness into business. His father worked in the factories for General Electric. Bob got a business degree and went to work for General Electric (GE). He quickly rose through the ranks and became a serious contender to take over GE upon the retirement of their very famous boss, Jack Welch. But Welch went in a different direction. He tapped a different person for his successor. And when Nardelli bitterly demanded an explanation from Jack Welch, Why, he said, Why did you pick someone else? My numbers are great. I ve got the talent. I ve got the drive. I ve got the ambition. Why did you pick someone else? Jack Welch simply said, I had to go with my gut. Wake up call: Bob Nardelli. Someone s opinion you highly value sees certain flaws in you, something that would make you unsuitable to run a big company. What are they seeing? What needs to change in my life? Well, Bob Nardelli ran through that warning signal. He was snapped up by the founders of Home Depot, Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus, to run Home Depot. Home Depot sales were lagging. There were problems with internal controls. The profit growth had slowed. So when Bob Nardelli became available, the two founders of Home Depot snapped him up Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 6

7 The founders had created a certain culture. They were in the stores hugging people, high-fiving executives, joking with employees. Nardelli came in with a different style. He didn t really like being around other people. He used to take a private elevator up to his 22 nd floor office suite. He ran everything from a computer that sat on his desk. Good people started to leave; instead of motivating by his example and by his enthusiasm and by praise and hugs, Nardelli motivated by fear. He sent out incredibly insensitive s to subordinates. More people left. The talent drain caused Home Depot profits to plunge. And finally there was a showdown at a shareholder meeting, a showdown that one management professor said would forever label Bob Nardelli as Exhibit A for the tone-deaf Chief Executive. A shareholder named Samuel Yake came to the meeting. He stood up and echoed the sentiment of most of the shareholders at the meeting and the vast majority of employees when he said this: Mr. Chairman, I want to make just one point. Arrogance is a great destroyer in corporate America and really in all human relations. Arrogance is a terrible poison. I came today wanting to buy more stock. I love Home Depot. I shop there. I ve read Built To Last, a great book. I love your founders It is a wonderful company. And I don t understand it. I m really perplexed. I m not an opponent of the company why not take questions?...if you don t listen to people, if you don t interact and you aren t humble and decent you will destroy this company. And that s my only point. Nardelli looked at him and said thank you and then ended the meeting. A few weeks later Bob Nardelli was fired as CEO of Home Depot. If you don t listen, you will destroy this company. How many husbands have refused to listen to their wives? How many wives have refused to listen to their husbands? Honey, something is wrong. I m not happy. You need to change your spending habits. I m concerned about your drinking. You can t keep talking to me that way. Why won t you listen to this wakeup call? How many spouses, how many children, how many have been deaf to the warning signals until the day when everything blows up? The warning signs of potential derailment? We see in Samson s life his ignoring the warning sign of disobedience. Ignoring the warning sign of disobedience Look with me at Judges 14: 5 10: 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 7

8 Judges 14: Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. 6 The Spirit of the Lord came on him in power so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her. 8 Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion s carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. 9 He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the lion s carcass. 10 Now his father went down to see the woman. And there Samson held a feast, as was customary for young men. Remember the Nazirite vow that I spoke to you about a few minutes ago? Samson was consecrated to the Lord. He was supposed to never drink any alcohol, never eat anything associated with the vine. He was not supposed to touch a dead body and he wasn t supposed to cut his hair. What do we find Samson doing? He s walking through a vineyard. He is reaching into the dead body of a lion. And he is attending a feast, literally a drinking party. The only thing that was left in his life was he hadn t yet cut his hair. But coupled with his desire to marry outside of Judaism against the commandments about intermarriage found in the Torah, we see a growing insensitivity in Samson s life to his disobedience to the Lord. You know, we get derailed when we don t pay attention to signs of slippage. We don t throw the brake on as our lives are careening downhill. Friends, do you see signs of slippage in your life? You say: Gosh, I used to be at church every week. Now, if I m tired or I want to stay up the night before and watch a movie until 3 a.m., I m not ready for church the next day. If I have to shop for work, I just blow off public worship. Gosh, I used to be in a small group and it was good for me. But it has been weeks, months or years. I m watching stuff that I never used to let myself watch. There is a coarsening inside, a growing insensitivity to God s Spirit. I m hanging out with friends after work having a drink, or two, or three. I never would have done that in the past. You say, this particular sin, if you want to call it that, it is a minor thing. There s not that much slippage. I don t need to throw on the brake. Friend, if you were cooking and the oil that you were using in a pan caught on fire, would you go inside and sit down on the couch to watch your favorite TV show ignoring the fire that was blazing on the kitchen stove? That s what sin is like. It is like a kitchen fire. If you don t put it out, it will burn the whole house down Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 8

9 Jesus says to take decisive action against sin in Matthew 5:29-30 when he says: Matthew 5: If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. How about you? Do you see signs of spiritual slippage in your own life? Will you by God s grace take decisive action? Samson blew through the warning sign of increasing disobedience. And then we see Samson ignoring the warning sign of a loss of self-control. Ignoring the warning sign of a loss of self-control Judges 15:1-8 1 Later on, at the time of wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat and went to visit his wife. He said, I m going to my wife s room. But her father would not let him go in. 2 I was so sure you hated her, he said, that I gave her to your companion. Isn t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead. 3 Samson said to them, This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines; I will really harm them. 4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, 5 lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves. 6 When the Philistines asked, Who did this? they were told, Samson, the Timnite s son-in-law, because his wife was given to his companion. So the Philistines went up and burned her and her father to death. 7 Samson said to them, Since you ve acted like this, I swear that I won t stop until I get my revenge on you. 8 He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam. You see this escalating cycle of revenge. The woman intended to be Samson s wife was given to another. So what does Samson do? He burns all the fields of hundreds of Philistines. They come back and kill the fiancée and her family. And so what does Samson do? He notches it up to a whole other level and kills a thousand of them. You know the brake has gone off when you see yourself expressing out of control anger. When little sparks set you off, you know as the old saying goes, There s gas in them thar wells. You have something under the surface that needs to be drained off. You are growing more irritable, more angry; small things 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 9

10 are getting under your skin wake up! Those are wake up signs of decline and potential derailment. In my own life what I have historically seen is that when someone says something to me that offends me or is rude or unfairly critical, in the past I would sort of put my head down and kept going. Well, I just need to toughen up. I need a thicker skin. But recently the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me about my need to very intentionally take hurtful words or offensive conduct and place those things in the hands of Christ. The gas in the well needs to be drained off in dialogue with Christ. Someone at work, your mother, your mother-in-law, your ex does something that offends you. Your sibling knows just the right words to get under your skin. Instead of sucking it up, what about dialoguing with Christ about this, acknowledging that that hurt, Jesus, and I want to turn this hurtful statement over to you because you, Jesus are the world s sin-bearer. Friend, there is only one person that God the Father appointed to bear the sins of the world and it is not you and it is not me. It is Jesus. The rest of us, we can t handle the sins of the world without derailing. We need to put those things on the head of Christ. Samson s lack of self control and self-management is not only seen in his escalating anger, but also in his escalating lust. Here is what we see in Judges 14:7: Judges 14:7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her. Do you want a definition of lust? Here is the definition of lust. I see it and I want it. Even though God tells me it is something that I shouldn t have, even though God has drawn limits for sexual desire, we are not content with what we have or with what God would provide for us; we have an appetite for more. We want something more than our spouses. We crave something more than our singleness allows for. I see it and I want it. And of course this is not just in the area of sex that we experience lust. If you look at the magazine covers in the grocery stores you see that every single cover is designed to create an appetite for what isn t yours yet. It could be a car the latest hottest sports car. It could be financial security. Or it could be a woman whose pouty lips are open on the cover and she is basically saying, Wouldn t you like to mentally undress me? It could just as easily be a guy who is showing off his abs. There is a notion in a good deal of American culture right now that says, What is wrong with a little bit of lust? It gives a thrill to life. There is no harm adding some thrill to an otherwise gray day Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 10

11 You know, there are a lot of things that are thrilling. I mean if you are swimming in the ocean and a large shark comes toward you, I guarantee you your heart will race and your blood with pump faster. There are very few things that are more thrilling than an encounter with a large shark in the water. But that encounter could kill you. And person after person has discovered in their lives that cultivating lust, desire for what God says no to, is more deadly than a shark attack in the water. By entertaining lust and acting on lust, we actually increase desire in our lives. C.S. Lewis was marvelously helpful in his children s story called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in describing how lust grows. In the story there is a witch who gives this food called Turkish delight to a little boy named Edmund. And this Turkish delight is so delicious that Edmund can t stop eating it, but it is the kind of food that creates an appetite for more food. Instead of satisfying his appetite, Turkish delight only increased his appetite. Do you know that every time you act on lust, giving in sexually to what God says no to, you increase your appetite for more? Lust is never satisfied. And nowhere do we see this truth played out more tragically than in the area of pornography. American culture treats pornography as no big deal, as if pornography actually brings about a lowering of sexual desire. But any person who has been bitten by the pornography bug will tell you that pornography is one of the most addicting things that they have ever been exposed to. 97% of Christian men who have been exposed to pornography say that there exposure was positively harmful. 70% of Christian men said that their exposure to pornography became addictive. It is like Turkish delight. And the younger that someone is exposed to pornography, the more addicting, the more shaping it is on the person s thoughts about sex, the person s future sexual behavior, on their ability to find satisfaction in a married relationship. Many, many men and some women find themselves absolutely hooked, their wills nailed fast, they feel unable to pry themselves loose because they have given in repeatedly to lust. That s why here at Vineyard we have recovery groups for folks who cannot free themselves from lust. SLIDE 180 (Men s Ministry) Contact John Doyle at Men Building Integrity Contact Justin Fogt at Justin.fogt@gmail.com Support and Recovery Ministry Contact Toni King at Well, the story of Samson goes on and this particular relationship brought him all kinds of heartache. Eventually, this Philistine woman is taken away from him and Samson returns to his career as a super hero. And then in Chapter 16, 20 years later, we read, 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 11

12 Judges 16:1 One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. He has gone through incredible heartache with this Philistine woman. He opened the door to lust, and it practically killed him. And then he gets hooked up with a prostitute. How do you explain this for a man who supposedly has a walk with God? Let me give you an illustration here. You know what is going on in the secret recesses of a person s soul is often the cultivation of lust. Sometimes I picture lust in our souls as being like a toxic waste dump where a person decides they are just going to keep this lust in this little storage tank of their souls. They are just going to keep this little nuclear waste growing there. And by lust, let me tell you I am not only talking about this voracious kind of appetite. I mean a secret emotional attachment to an old boyfriend or an old girlfriend, a fantasy about a co-worker, a little bit of flirtatiousness with a boss or secretary, or someone at your small group or in a ministry here at church and that lust sits there like toxic waste and because it glows and provides a certain amount of thrill inside you have this secret little life, this secret little fantasy that you can tap into and it gives life a warm glow. I just feel so alive with this little emotional attachment. But you know there is something about toxic waste. It doesn t remain forever in the container. It starts eating through the walls, and if it is not cleared up, after a while you are going to have that waste seep through the container. So maybe for a little while you can contain your lust through little fantasies and occasional involvements with pornography, watching things you shouldn t watch, and imagining these little romantic flings. But you are not going to stay at that level of danger very long. The waste in your soul will seep through. Samson carried around lust in his heart for a very long time before it ate through the wall of his soul. He had this corrosion in his soul that was never cleaned out. Let me ask a personal question. How many of you men and women have toxic waste in your souls that have never been cleaned out? How many of you are carrying around secret thoughts, secret choices, and secret habits that are just eroding you out from the inside. How many of you can trace a weak vein of lust back to puberty and before and you have not dealt with it? Let me put it this way. God created the world and God created our bodies and God created our sexuality. There is a pattern, there is a divine order, and there is a grain that runs through all of the reality that God has made. And when you run your hand across the grain of God s reality, you are going to pick up splinters. There is a pattern; there is an order to physical reality. And when we violate physical reality by jumping off of a building and trying to defy the law of gravity, we destroy ourselves physically. There is a pattern to biological reality. When we 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 12

13 ingest certain substances we can destroy ourselves biologically. There is a pattern to relational reality. When we hurt another person, when we abuse another person, when we repeatedly are insensitive to a person who is close to us we can destroy ourselves relationally. And what the story of Samson tells us is that there is a pattern to sexual reality. And when we violate God s pattern, we destroy ourselves in multiple dimensions. We pick up splinters by trying to run across the grain of what God has established. There is a way for sexuality to work healthfully and there is a way for it to destroy us. But Samson ran through the warning signal. And then we see the ignoring of the warning sign of renaming sin. Ignoring the warning sign of renaming sin Judges 15: The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. 10 The people of Judah asked, Why have you come to fight us? We have come to take Samson prisoner, they answered, to do to him as he did to us. 11 Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, Don t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us? He answered, I merely did to them what they did to me. 12 They said to him, We ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines. The people of Israel are so compromised; they re so used to living under the Philistines that when the Philistines retaliate for Samson s attack on them, the people of Israel don t line up with Samson. They don t say, Samson is fighting our battles. We need to support him. The people of Israel are so used to living in this low state, living under the oppression of the Philistines that when the Philistines punish them for what Samson did, they go after Samson. Isaiah 5:20 says this: Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. You know that we are experiencing serious decline when things get relabeled, when the person who is trying to call attention to the problem suddenly becomes the problem. A New York University professor at the Stearns School of Business recently shared in a blog post that he had caught a bunch of students in his class cheating. There is apparently a website which contains a gigantic database of 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 13

14 sources. He found 22 of the 108 students in his class had plagiarized some of their assignments. He gave those who had plagiarized the assignments lower grades. When it came to filling out teacher evaluations, the students struck back and they lowered his evaluation by a whole point. What did the chairman of the department do at salary time? He gave this professor his lowest increase ever in salary citing the student evaluations. And some senior professors came to him and lectured him. You shouldn t have made such a big deal about the plagiarism. It is your fault because you didn t change the assignment from the previous year. You know that a system or a family is dysfunctional and heading for derailment when pointing out a problem gets you labeled as a troublemaker. You know, we didn t have any problems before. It was only when you started talking about dad s drinking that all the problems came up. It was only when you went to talk to that teacher or that social worker about our family that all the problems started. You re the troublemaker; it is not our drinking. It is not the abuse; it is not my out of control anger. It s you. Have you ever been labeled a troublemaker because you stood up to injustice? Have you ever been labeled a troublemaker or worse because you confronted sin? Have you ever labeled someone else a problem person because they put light on a problem that you didn t want to face? Finally, we see in Samson s life that he ignores the warning sign of hubris. Ignoring the warning sign of hubris What is hubris? Hubris is extreme arrogance. It is Bob Nardelli shutting down a meeting when someone calls him to account. Extreme arrogance- it is breaking through every boundary and every standard that God has set up. This is what hubris is. The ancient Greeks used to write about it. It is the creature exalting itself above the Creator. Read Judges , 11, 13 and 17 Judges 16:4-7; 11, 13, 17 4 Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. 5 The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver. 6 So Delilah said to Samson, Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued. 7 Samson answered her, If anyone ties me with seven fresh thongs that have not been dried, I ll become as weak as any other man. 11 He said, If anyone ties me securely with new ropes that have never been used, I ll become as weak as any other man. 13 Delilah then said to Samson, Until now, you have 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 14

15 been making a fool of me and lying to me. Tell me how you can be tied. He replied, If you weave the seven braids of my head into the fabric on the loom and tighten it with the pin, I ll become as weak as any other man. So while he was sleeping, Delilah took the seven braids of his head, wove them into the fabric 17 So he told her everything. No razor has ever been used on my head, he said, because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man. What do we see going on with Samson? His special relationship with God is being taken for granted. In his dialogue with Delilah, he is dancing closer and closer to the edge. He is cavalier about the danger that he s facing. Initially, Samson says, Well, my strength will be taken away if you tie me with bow strings. Then he says, My strength will be taken away if you tie me with ropes. I m toying with you. And then he gets close to the edge of the cliff and says, My strength will be taken away if you braid up my hair. The one thing that still served as a reminder of his Nazirite vow, his hair, and he is going to start playing with that one thing left. He had already broken the vow of staying away from alcohol and vineyards. He had already broken the vow of not touching a dead body. And now the one place in his life where he had always drawn the line his hair the one standard that he kept, he s allowing even that to be hollowed out so that the barrier to complete dissolution is getting thinner and thinner. And finally, it gives away when he tells Delilah the truth in v. 17. Judges 16:17 So he told her everything. No razor has ever been used on my head, he said, because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man. Hubris; an over-weaning pride; a cavalier attitude towards God is the pattern that we see. The person who believes, I am bullet proof. Nothing will ever touch me and take me down even though I m dancing off the edge of the cliff. My life won t fall apart. My marriage won t fall apart. The stuff I m into won t destroy me or my reputation or my ministry. Samson has lost the fear of the Lord. And what happens? Here is what we read in Judges 16 after Delilah cuts his hair in Judges 16:20. Judges 16:20 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 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 15

16 For the last 25 years I ve considered Judges 16:20 some of the saddest words in all of scripture. Judges 16:20 20 I ll go out as before and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Samson told himself I m the same person I was before I sinned. I can still do the same good for God. I still have the same spiritual power. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. Have you ever watched a minister, a Christian leader, a worship leader, in spiritual decline? Shaking themselves, going through all the gyrations that they used to go through in past ministry, only the power is gone. One of the most spiritually powerful men I ever watched minister he would pray for people and it was like a bomb went off in the room the Spirit of God would just fall. But he had a double life. He was overtaken by hubris and a cavalier attitude towards God. He lost the fear of the Lord in his life. He began having affairs with a number of women across the country. I watched him at a conference before any of this was revealed. And he was like Samson, shaking himself, going through all the motions, telling all the same jokes, playing around with the audience, who was laughing. But there was no spiritual power. Jesus was no longer there. God had pulled the plug. I watched it and I thought, Something is wrong. This is like a giant charade. Let me ask you, friends, do you pray in your own soul for a healthy fear of the Lord? Do you shudder to think of yourself as a hollowed out woman or man just gong through the motions of religion, but having none of the reality in your own life? Samson s life was completely derailed. We read in Judges 16: these words: Judges 16: 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 grain in the prison. 22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. The Philistines were not content to kill him. They wanted to humiliate him and shame him. That s what the enemy of your soul wants to do. The enemy of your soul is not content to just let you die a peaceful anonymous death somewhere. The enemy of your soul wants to shame you and humiliate you, hold you up to public ridicule. We see in Judges 16: 22 the great hopeful word of scripture, But 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 16

17 Judges 16:22 But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Here is the turning point in Samson s life. His hair begins to grow back. It is a sign that having hit bottom, he is developing again an authentic relationship with God. God does not punish his children longer than is needed. God had not deserted Samson. God will not desert you forever. God still had purposes for Samson s life and God still has purposes for your life, for your children s lives, for your siblings lives, for your friends lives for anyone s life who has hit bottom. God still has purposes for those who have bottomed out, who ve derailed. The Philistines may have imagined that they were on top. The enemy always overplays his hand. He imagines that this is our end. See, you ve gone ahead and done this stupid thing. You gave into temptation. That s it. But God doesn t throw us away in the trash bin. When we are at bottom and we look up and turn to God in brokenness and sorrow, he comes to us in grace and in forgiveness, allowing us to renew our relationship with him and to recover a sense of purpose for the rest of our lives. Samson s hair began to grow back. The promise that God gave to Samson s mother so many years before is about to be realized. He ll begin to affect a deliverance from the Philistines. The grace of God is always there for anyone whose life has been derailed by sin. Let s pray Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 17

18 Samson: Portrait of a Derailed Life (Part 1) Rich Nathan August 14, 2011 Judges: Ordinary People, Extraordinary God Series Judges I. The cause of derailment II. A story of decline and derailment III. The warning signs of decline and potential derailment A. Ignoring the warning sign of deafness B. Ignoring the warning sign of disobedience C. Ignoring the warning sign of loss of self-control D. Ignoring the warning sign of renaming sin E. Ignoring the warning sign of hubris 2011 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 18