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(upbeat music) - Welcome back for day three of week four of our study of the
Book of Judges, learning from Sampson how to make sure that a strength does not
become a weakness. We've learned that strong people endure emotional pressure,
they stay connected to their calling. We've learned that strong people are the
kind of people who have clear boundaries.

And we're coming to number six today. Strong people discipline their desires. We
all have areas in our life, every one of us, where we struggle with discipline
of our desires.

For Sampson, it was his relationship with women. Sampson never did exercise
discipline in his relationships, especially his relationships with women. So as
you read through the Book of Judges, what began with a foreign, forbidden wife,
continues in his relationship with a prostitute, it ends up in a
self-destructive relationship with Delilah.

In Judges chapter 16, verse one, one day Sampson went to Gaza where he saw a
prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her. There you see, Sampson sees
it, he wants it, he does it.

There's no discipline on his desires. This wasn't just true with Delilah, but it
was most true with Delilah. With Delilah, he couldn't get away, he couldn't stay
away from what he knew had to be destroying him.

There's a lot of parallels to our lives in this. Some of us can't stay away from
things that we know must be destroying us. And you see this in Sampson's life.

So in chapter 16, verse four, some time later, he fell in love with a woman in
the Valley of Sarech, whose name was Delilah. 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 1,100 shekels of silver.

So Delilah said to Sampson, tell me the secret of your great strength and how
you can be tied up and subdued. So as you read through this chapter, Sampson
makes a game of it. He tells her to tie him with bow strings, but that doesn't
work, he immediately breaks those.

And then to tie him with a rope, same thing, he breaks those. And then to weave
the seven braids of his head, his hair together on a loom, on a weaving loom.
But that's not the secret either.

So playing this game through, down in verse 15, here's what happens. Then she,
Delilah says to him, how can you say I love you when you won't confide in me?
This is the third time you've made a fool of me and haven't told me the secret
of your great strength.

With such nagging, she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of
it. So he told her everything. No razor has ever been used on my head, he said,
because I've been a Nazarite dedicated to God for my mother's womb.

If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me and I would become as weak as
any other man. When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word
to the rulers of the Philistines, come back once more, he's told me everything.
So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands.

After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the
seven braids of his hair and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him.
Now, before you blame Samson too quickly for his stupidity here, the truth is we
all have things that are destructive to our lives that we can't seem to stay
away from.

It might be lust. It might be anger. It might be unforgiveness.

It might be gossip. It might be overspending. It might be food or alcohol or
drugs.

Anything that's left uncontrolled in your life will eventually weaken you. And
anything that you leave in your life that you know is destroying you is
destroying you. Now, there's all kinds of excuses for this self-indulgence.

Our typical excuse, the number one excuse for self-indulgence is just this one
time. It couldn't hurt just this one time. Satan's favorite rationalization is
it's just a small thing.

Just this one time. Samson is just a small thing. Just this one time it led to
his destruction.

Strong people discipline their desires. Now, when you look closely into this
story what happens with Samson and Delilah, it gives you some insight into
ourselves, into our human nature. To understand why you and I struggle with
this, why we allow things to stay in our lives that we know are destroying our
lives, let me ask you a question to understand that about us.

The question is, why did Samson tell Delilah? Why did he tell her in the end
when he knew she'd done all the other things, she was going to do this thing as
well, that he was going to lose his strength? I think the answer is in verse four.

In verse four, you remember at the beginning of the story the Bible says Samson
loved Delilah. He fell in love with a woman named Delilah. He truly loved her.

And so he was seeking intimacy with her. He was willing to risk everything to
gain that intimacy. The intimacy that he was seeking was a place where he was
fully known and also fully loved.

He wasn't loved for his strength. He was loved for himself. He was loved even
though he had weaknesses in his life.

Samson was trying to find in a relationship with Delilah something that we can
only find in a relationship with God. And so the key that you learn in this
story, the key to disciplining your desires is recognizing that the fulfillment
that you're looking for in that thing you're allowing to stay in your life, it's
found only in God. It is not found in that thing or in that person that you
desire that you're allowing to stay.

It's found only in God. Now, this is not, what I'm talking about now is not
something any of us automatically know. It's something all of us are having to
learn the rest of our lives.

And one of the keys to learning this, how do you learn to discipline your
desires? How do you learn to say no to the wrong things that are hurting your
life? One of the keys to this is in the example of Samson.

And it's something you've seen in your own life as well. How do you learn to
discipline your desires? You do it by keeping your commitments.

You learn to discipline your desires by making the right commitments before God
and keeping those commitments. Samson, you look at Samson, he flirted with
disaster all of his life. The only thing that keeps him safe in the midst of
most of his life was keeping the hair on his head, keeping his commitment to
that Nazarite vow.

His life was literally hanging by a hair, the hair of that commitment, the one
commitment that he was keeping. He wasn't keeping many of them, but at least he
was keeping that one. And when he broke that commitment, everything fell apart.

You have some commitments like that in your life. The one commitment that you're
keeping that's keeping your life from falling apart, even during a time of
struggle. It might be being at your small group every week, even though you're
struggling.

It might be being at church every week, even though you're struggling. And
that's the one thing that's keeping everything from falling apart. You might
have a desire to try to find satisfaction in materialism.

So you make a commitment to tithing, a commitment, a biblical commitment to
tithing, and you keep that commitment. And as you keep that commitment that
you've made, God will change that desire that materialism is the only way to
have satisfaction. He'll change that desire through the years.

Now I said years, yes. This doesn't happen in a moment. What's the one
commitment that you need to make sure that you keep?

Maybe that Satan has tempted you right now to let go of. That last thing that
Samson let go of that destroyed his life. What's the one commitment you need to
make sure to keep right now?

Maybe it's a commitment to your marriage. Maybe it's a commitment to your
children. Maybe it's a commitment to be together with other believers in
fellowship.

Maybe it's a commitment to a group of people that you're serving. And right now
you're being tempted to let go of that commitment. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Make a fresh commitment to that right now because it is the one
thing that's keeping you in a place where God can begin to grow you and then
strengthen your commitment in that thing. As you trust God in the keeping of
that commitment, God will transform your heart.

Let's take a few moments to pray together. Father, as we look at Samson here,
every one of us can see his stupidity, but also every one of us can relate to
him because we allow things to stay in our lives that are hurting us. In the
words that we say and the thoughts that we think and the things that we do.

Lord, we don't want to do that. We want to discipline our desires. We need your Holy
Spirit's strength to do that.

We want to discipline our desires. We need the right commitments in our lives and
the right motivations for those commitments to do that. So Lord, show us the
commitments of love before you that we need to make and then help us to stand on
those.

Give us the strength to stand on those. In the end, our life is going to be
measured by our commitments. We're going to be the sum total of our commitments.

And so Lord, right now, we refresh our commitment to you. We refresh our
commitment to the people in our lives. We refresh our commitment to the habits
of growth and maturity.

We refresh our commitment to the power of your word. We refresh our commitment
to our love towards you. In Jesus' name, amen.

- Well, join us tomorrow. We're going to see one of the greatest lessons you're
ever going to learn about how to stay strong in life.