This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to week four. This is our last week in our study of the
book of Judges, day one. You remember last week we started a look at the life of
Samson, a man whose strength became his weakness.

A man who when you look at the lessons of his life, he really teaches you how to
stay strong. There are eight things that people who stay strong choose to do. I
think maybe last week I said there were seven things, but in the week between, I
think maybe there are eight things.

So we're going to look at seven to add to the one that we did last week. Last
week we talked about the fact that strong people have clear boundaries. What
else do strong people do?

What else do you need to do in your life to stay strong? Well, number two, what
we learned from Samson is strong people develop strong motives. Samson was a guy
who had the right actions without the right motives, and that's why he lost his
strength in the end.

He did do what God asked him to do. He did fight and destroy the Philistines.
You see it in chapter 14 verse 19 and chapter 15 verse 5, chapter 15 verse 15.

He's doing what he's supposed to do, but his motives are wrong. He always seemed
to be doing the right thing for the wrong reason. So in chapter 14 verse 19, his
motivation is not serving God, is not obedience.

His motivation is anger. Listen to this verse. "Then the Spirit of the Lord came
powerfully upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and he struck down 30 of
their men.

He stripped them of everything and gave their clothes to those who had explained
the riddle. Burning with anger, he returned to his father's home. " So his
motivation is anger.

Now that riddle, we're going to talk about that a little bit later this week, so
hang on to that. But here I want you to notice the motivation. It's anger.

Or sometimes his motivation is revenge. In chapter 15 verse 3 and then verse 7,
verse 3, "Samson said to them, 'This time I have a right to get even with the
Philistines. I will really harm them.

' And then down in verse 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. '" So no doubt about
where his motivation is. His motivation is never because God has chosen him or
directed him or he wants to be obedient to God.

It's anger. It's revenge. Samson was reacting instead of acting.

He was reacting to what other people were doing instead of trusting in God,
acting in trust in God. And when you spend your entire life reacting to other
people instead of making your own choices, it's going to weaken your life. Down
in verse 11, he makes this classic statement, "I merely did to them what they
did to me.

" That's the statement of a reactor. They hurt me first and so I've got to hurt
them. We never had the right motivations.

Have you ever used that excuse? They hurt me so I have to hurt them? Most of us
probably have at one time or another.

When you use that excuse, you are weakening your life. Resentment, getting even.
It is a waste.

It's a waste of your life. It's a waste of your time. It's a waste of your
energy.

It's a waste of your creativity. It's a waste of your time to get even. The
whole time that you're angry, you're stewing and spewing, you're angry, you want
to get even with that person.

The person that you're upset with, they're probably totally oblivious to the
feelings that you have. It's not bothering them one bit. They don't even know
what you're feeling.

Resentment is hurting you more than it's hurting the other person. It always
does. They've forgotten it, but you are wasting your time thinking about that
emotional hurt, that relational hurt, that real hurt that happened to you.

They've forgotten it, but resentment is still tearing you up inside. Resentment
always hurts you more than it does the other person. It's a waste of time.

It's also a waste of energy because you're spending all of that energy getting
upset, being emotionally disturbed. So you get depressed. You get fatigued.

You get worn out inside because you have nothing to do with that resentment that
you've allowed to build up inside. Maybe the greatest lesson we learned from
Sampson and maybe the worst thing about resentment is it's a waste of your
creativity. Many of us, maybe most of us, when you get angry at somebody, you
get extremely creative.

You start to think of ways to get back at that person. You start plotting. You
start planning.

There are movies that are built entirely on the creativity of some kind of
revenge against somebody and we love those kind of movies because they got back
at them in the end. But it's really a waste of the creativity that God put into
your life. He didn't give you that creativity for the purpose of revenge.

He gave it for the purpose of ministry. He gave it for the purpose of loving
others. He gave it for the purpose of worshipping him.

When you look at Sampson's life, you have to admit he was pretty creative at
getting even. In Judges 15, verses 3 to 5, look at what he does. Sampson said to
them, "This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines.

I will really harm them. " We read that verse earlier, but then look at what he
does. Verse 4, "So he went out and he caught 300 foxes and he tied them tail to
tail in pairs.

And then he fastened a torch to every one of the tails, lit the torches and let
the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the
shocks and the standing grain together with the vineyards and the olive groves.
" Now that's pretty creative, you have to admit.

Tying, first he had the strength to catch 300 foxes so he could do something
none of us could do, but tying their tails together and tying a torch in so that
when they ran they set everything afire. I would have never, you probably would
have never thought of that as a way to get revenge, but Sampson did. He wasted
his creativity.

When you get angry, when you get resentful, you're wasting your creativity. If
you use that same amount of creativity that you did on revenge on other ways to
love people, on other ways to serve people, you would make a tremendous impact
on this world. One of the truths behind the life of Sampson and behind this
issue of struggling with the reason we do things, the motivation that you have
for doing something is, and you might even write this down if you're somewhere
where you can write, the why of life is more important than the what of life.

The why you do it is more important than what you're doing. Many people do even
good things. They serve God, but the real motive is competition.

They want to beat somebody else or pride or guilt or even just habit. They don't
serve out of the right motivation. The why of life is much more important than
the what of life.

Now, how do you get your motives right? It's one of the most difficult things to
do in life because we don't know our motives. Sometimes we think we can judge
other people's motives, which is pretty foolish because we don't even know our
own motivations most of the time.

It's hard to figure them out. So how do I get to a place where I'm having the
right kind of motives in life so that I can have a new strength in my life?
Well, the place to start, I think, is with 1 John 4.

19. 1 John 4. 19 says, "We love because he first loved us.

" The place to start, if you want to have the right motives in life, is you
start with love. And you don't even start with your love. That might be a good
place to start, but you don't even start there.

No, you start with his love. You start with his love for you. And you let your
love for him and others flow out of his love for you.

And out of that love, you do ministry. Out of that love, you say the things that
you say. Out of that love, you think the things that you think.

When love becomes the foundation, not your love, but his love for you, when his
love for you becomes the foundation of your life, that's going to begin to
result in the right motivations for your life. So the lesson we learned today
from Samson is strong people have strong motives. And the way to have strong
motives is to focus on Christ's love for you.

So let's do that for a moment right now. In your heart, would you just say,
"Jesus Christ, thank you that you love me. " Nothing can change that.

Nothing can separate me from your love. So I pray today that my motivation would
come not out of my pride or my feelings of insecurity, not out of my anger,
certainly not out of comparing myself with somebody else. Father, I pray that my
motivation would begin with your love for me shown in Jesus Christ.

And out of that would come my love for you and my love for others. That's what I
pray would happen in my life today. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Join us tomorrow. Samson's example is going to show us three more ways to make
sure that a strength does not become a weakness.