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This is our last day together of week three of our Look Through the Book of
Judges. We're going to look at chapter 13 verses 2 to 5 today. In the Book of
Judges, we've seen the examples of many, many great men and women, but I want to
focus on Gideon and Sampson, the two longest stories in many ways in the Book of
Judges.

They form a very interesting comparison. Gideon is a man who shows us the upside
of our weaknesses, and Sampson is a man who shows us the downside of our
strengths. Gideon's weaknesses became his strength, and Sampson's strength
becomes his weakness.

They both have a lot to teach us about faith. Sampson is one of the great
negative examples in all the Bible. He shows us how to not allow your strength
to become your weakness by doing it all the wrong ways.

A strength in your life, a strength in my life, it will not automatically remain
a strength. That's the example we see in the life of Sampson. Strong muscles, if
you stop exercising, they're going to lose their strength.

They're actually going to turn into flab. You can't lose your salvation. You
can't lose God's love, but you can lose your strength in serving God.

If you stop serving, if you stop ministering, all of a sudden you lose your
confidence in his presence. You lose your sense of his presence in what you're
doing. That is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9.

27, "Like an athlete, I punish my body, treating it roughly, training it to do
what it should, not what it wants to. Otherwise, I fear that after enlisting
others for the race, I myself will be declared unfit in order to stand aside. "
Paul recognized that as strong as his ministry had been, his strength could
become his weakness.

We started to take it for granted. One of the most sad occurrences in life is
the erosion of spiritual strength. But we need to know that that kind of
strength, it's like limestone.

It erodes easily. You have to keep it up. You have to keep it fresh.

It's the sadness of a car or a house that becomes dilapidated because no one
took care of it. A good worker who loses his or her drive because no one tended
that person's life, made sure that they still had that drive in their life. Or a
Christian that slowly slides away from commitment.

Samson's life is a life of warning. Samson is a man who was set aside to be
useful before God from birth. He was chosen by God, of God, to be useful from
birth.

He was encouraged in this usefulness before God by his parents. And yet his
life, at the end, erodes into uselessness. His life ends in disaster with one
hint of hope that we're going to look at next week.

As I read through Samson's life, the character flaws that led to his downfall,
they stand out like an iceberg in the Sahara Desert. You can't miss it. The loss
of his strength can actually show you and I how to keep our strength.

And that's what we're going to talk about the last day of this week and all next
week. How do you keep your strength? How do you make sure that a strength
doesn't become a weakness?

How do you keep your strength strong? Seven things we're going to look at that
strong people do to keep their strength strong. Beginning with the first one
this week.

Number one, strong people have boundaries. Strong people have boundaries in
their life. At the beginning of Samson's life, you see that his life begins with
high expectations, high goals.

Chapter 13, verses 2 to 5, "A certain man of Zorah named Manoah from the clan of
Danites had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth. 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. Now see to it that you drink no wine
or other fermented drink, and that you do not eat anything unclean.

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 Nazarite, dedicated to God from the womb. He
will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hand of the Philistines. " This
is an amazing beginning for this young man's life, yet somehow as you watch what
begins to happen in Samson's life, their love for him, their expectation of
what's going to happen in his life, begins to become expressed in a struggle to
trust God and in an aliniance towards Samson.

At the end of chapter 13, without reading all of the verses, Manoah has a hard
time trusting God, has a hard time trusting that God's going to work in the life
of Samson. His wife is in tune with God, but he's out of tune with God, because
of his worries, because of his concerns. He's allowed anxiety to begin to
overwhelm his parenting, and so anxiety begins to overwhelm his life.

In chapter 14, verses 1 to 3, something happens that often happens when parents
become anxious. You see that Samson's parents start to become very lenient in
their relationship with him. Okay, he's the chosen one of God, okay, we're
worried that everything's going to come out So they start to give him whatever
he wants.

Even when it's seemingly wrong, they haven't asked God about it. Now, amazingly,
many times God works it out, God works through it, but they're not asking God
about it. They're doing exactly the wrong things.

So you can't blame Samson's parents for his actions. It was his choices later in
life. But you can see the root of some of his problems in their refusal to set
limits.

In chapter 13, verse 3, that we just looked at, God from the beginning says
there have to be some boundaries in this man's life. He knew how much strength
he was going to give to Samson, so he also knew he had to have boundaries. So he
says from the beginning, he's got to take what's called the Nazarite vow.

His head is never be touched by a razor. God builds these boundaries into his
life from the very beginning. And as you watch Samson's life, Samson constantly
tested these boundaries.

Now the question is, is your life marked by living within God's boundaries or by
testing God's boundaries? If you're like me, if you're like most of us, the
answer is both, both. Sometimes I live within God's boundaries, but sometimes
something in me wants to test God's boundaries.

It's the selfishness in me, honestly. It's the fearfulness in me that comes from
that selfishness, honestly. We learn an important truth from Samson from the
very beginning.

Boundaries build usefulness. The lack of boundaries doesn't spawn creativity. It
actually builds undisciplined people.

Been a lot of studies done on this, where if you give no boundaries at all, it
actually does not cause more creativity, that the boundary of the size of a
canvas when you're a painter actually brings more creativity. Now you have to be
careful, obviously, you can't go too far. There's an obvious difference between
boundaries and bonds.

We're not tying people up in legalistic bonds, but what are some good, healthy
boundaries that need to be in my life, in your life, so that our strength
doesn't become a weakness? As parents, we have an opportunity to do this with
our children. You can encourage greatness in the lives of your kids by the use
of a single two-letter word, "no.

" Now, your kids are great at saying this word, by the way, but we need to be
better sometimes as parents at saying this word. As parents, when we say that
word "no," even when it's difficult, we're actually encouraging greatness in the
lives of our kids. When we set limits, we're actually encouraging greater
creativity in the lives of our kids.

But this is also true in my life, in your life, it's not just about parenting.
Where do you, in your life, need to make sure that a strength does not become a
weakness? By recognizing some God-given boundaries.

Maybe it's in your finances. God said you need to be giving, but you're not
giving. Giving is a boundary in our finances.

It keeps us from thinking of them as just for ourselves. If you're not giving at
all to others, if you're not giving a tithe, if you're not giving for
ministries, then you're not recognizing the boundaries. And that's a boundary on
your finances that God planned to put into our lives to keep us healthy, to keep
that strength in your finances from becoming a weakness.

Maybe it's a boundary that you need to recognize in a relationship. Maybe it's a
boundary you need to recognize in the sexual part of a relationship, the
physical part of a relationship, or the emotional part of a relationship. Or
maybe it's a boundary you need to recognize in not going too fast or not taking
advantage of someone.

What is it that you're not recognizing? Where are you cheating in a
relationship? Not recognizing a God-given boundary of kindness towards the other
person, simple kindness.

Maybe it's a boundary in the area of communication. All of us, the book of James
says all of us mess up with our words. So what boundaries do you need to put in
place?

How do you need to count to 10 spiritually sometimes? How do you need to give
yourself time to calm down? How do you need to make sure you don't allow
yourself into certain situations where you keep saying the wrong thing again and
again?

What words are there that you need to never say again, or at least say that you
need to never say again and start working on it? What boundaries do you need to
put into your communication? If you are a great communicator, if God uses you as
a communicator, I have no doubt that God wants that strength in your life to
become a weakness.

Now one of the keys to that not happening is putting in some boundaries. What
boundaries do you need to put in your life on the power that you have over
others? Maybe as a boss or maybe in your family?

Where do you need to recognize the God-given boundaries? It's one of the keys to
making sure strength doesn't become a weakness. Lord we come to you on this one
because we need your wisdom.

You're working in our lives to help us to recognize those boundaries. Those
places where we need to not keep stepping over the line and saying that thing or
not keep stepping over the line and putting ourselves in that situation or not
keep stepping over the line and trusting ourselves for our finances rather than
trusting you. So we come to you and we ask that you help us to be sensitive to
what your spirit's saying to us.

Help us to see where those boundaries need to be. We don't want to become
legalistic, but we also don't want to take license. We don't want to just do
anything and everything we want to do selfishly.

So help us to see what you're doing. Help us to be listening and then give us
the humility. Give us the humility to listen to what you're doing and recognize
those boundaries that you put into our lives and instead of fighting against
them, to embrace them, to recognize what you want to do in our lives through
them.

That's what we ask for and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well join us next
week.

We're going to end our study of the book of Judges by looking at six more ways
that you can keep a strength from becoming a weakness from the example of
Samson.