We're there for safety, my Lord, as we pray for his arms.
Where all freedom, all ages, sing glory around the white room.
Sometimes the true home sings for heaven,
and the glory's eye there shall be more.
What a joy that would be when my Savior I see.
In an even full city of gold, will never be grateful,
but Lord, I will feel the Lord's reign in the sky.
We'll pray to the death-side of glory,
for there we shall never more die.
We'll be there forever, transform the moment of time.
With glory we'll stand in his likeness,
the stars of the sun to come shine.
I'm bound for that beautiful city, my Lord,
as we pray for his arms.
Where all freedom, all ages, sing glory around the white room.
Sometimes the true home sings for heaven,
and the glory's eye there shall be more.
What a joy that would be when my Savior I see.
In that beautiful city of gold.
Father in Heaven, thank you for this gathering here today.
I pray that you please bless all the aspects of the service,
the song worship, the instrument playing,
and Pastor Anderson's preaching.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
And up to him, number 92.
How can I be lonely?
Number 92.
Singing out on this first verse together, number 92.
One is walking with me over life's uneven way.
Number 92.
Singing out all together now.
One is walking with me over life's uneven way.
I'm simply supporting me each moment of the day.
How can I be lonely when such fellowship is mine?
When my blessed Lord divine?
How can I be lonely when I'm Jesus only?
To be my companion and unfailing guide.
Why should I be weary?
Oh, my fasted weary.
When he's walking by my side.
If we bring their burdens and their trials as I go.
But my Lord is here and helps to keep me warm.
Why do we have his blessings for his losses or increase?
Jesus beats them all with peace.
How can I be lonely when I'm Jesus only?
To be my companion and unfailing guide.
Why should I be weary?
Oh, my fasted weary.
When he's walking by my side.
In the hour of salary and for a bitter loss.
I can find support and consolation at the cross.
Walk the walls for suffering all seem glorified with me.
Daily walks and talks with me.
How can I be lonely when I'm Jesus only?
To be my companion and unfailing guide.
Why should I be weary?
Oh, my fasted weary.
When he's walking by my side.
In life's rosary morning when the skies above are clear.
In its full-time hours when the bleeding water's near.
Or when evening shadows fall at posting of my day.
Jesus won't prevail away.
How can I be lonely when I'm Jesus only?
To be my companion and unfailing guide.
Why should I be weary?
Oh, my fasted weary.
When he's walking by my side.
All right.
This time, we'll go through our announcements together.
If you don't have a bulletin, put up your hand nice and high.
We'll get to you with one.
On the inside, we have our service time.
Sunday mornings at 1030 is our preaching service.
Sunday nights at 6 o'clock.
Sunday nights at 7 is our Bible study.
And tonight will be in Judges chapter 14.
We've got the soul-winning times listed there below,
as well as salvations and baptisms.
Across the page are the birthdays and anniversaries.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the trip to Safford.
19 soul winners, 15 salvations.
And there's a trip to Globe coming up this Saturday.
Show up Saturday morning and then get back Saturday evening.
All the details are over here on these clipboards.
You can also speak to Brother Raymond to get more details on that.
And then there's a trip to Safford next weekend.
That's a two-day trip leaving on Friday morning coming back Saturday evening.
And then on the back is the note about the gliders reserved for pregnant and nursing mothers.
And then the home school field trip to Out of Africa Wildlife Park has been rescheduled
for Thursday, March 18th.
So be sure to follow all the instructions there as far as RSVPing.
And also make sure that you get there on time.
Get there early.
Time to spare.
Just be sure to respect all of those things.
And that's about it for announcements.
Let's go ahead and count up the soul-winning from the past few days.
So going back to Monday.
Any soul-winning from Monday?
Okay, anything else from Monday?
All right.
Cool.
Anything else from Monday?
All right.
What about Tuesday?
Okay.
Gotcha.
Okay.
And then today, I know we had at least one for the van.
Was there anything else in the van that we missed?
I got Varen's.
Okay.
You got one more?
All right.
Anything else from today?
All right.
Very good.
We're starting Psalm 11.
You should find that inserting your hymnals there.
If you don't have one, please raise your hand.
And we'll get to it with one.
Psalm 11.
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand, but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.
So he's empty handed, he's faced with a young lion, and this is the first instance we see that Samson has supernatural abilities, supernatural strength.
You know, we saw the Spirit of God moving him, but this is where we get to see that he actually has supernatural strength.
And of course, that's the big thing about Samson throughout the story, is that he has incredible strength.
Now when I was growing up, I always pictured Samson as being just like this huge buff dude, just this monstrous muscle head kind of guy.
Who pictured Samson that way when you think about Samson?
And you know the Hollywood movie, they got a big actor and whatever.
But it was funny, when I was around 18 or so, you know, I had a guy at church that I was talking to, and he brought up to me, he said, you know, I think that Samson was just the size of an average guy.
And I was like, huh? What are you, you know, I thought, I was like, what are you talking about?
Well, because he said if he was this huge muscle head, then people wouldn't be saying, what's the secret to his strength?
You know, like, how can we take away his strength from him?
Because remember, that's what the Philistines are trying to do.
Eventually they cut his hair and he loses his strength.
Spoiler alert.
But, you know, what can we do?
If it was just this giant buff dude, they'd just say, well, you know, the guy is just a muscle head.
But I think that he looked like an ordinary person, but yet through the Spirit of God, he has this supernatural strength when the Spirit of Lord comes upon him.
That's why it's such an enigma to people.
They realize this is not normal.
And this is not a natural thing.
This is a supernatural thing.
So what does it mean when it says he rent this young lion?
You know, this is not like a rental, okay?
To rend is to tear something, right?
To rend something.
And so, you know, the Bible doesn't give us the exact detail about how this would work.
But, you know, you can kind of picture him basically grabbing this thing and tearing it into pieces, basically into two pieces.
So, you know, I've kind of pictured this a few different ways.
I've seen some different artwork.
Different people have tried to paint this over the years.
You know, one way that you could picture it is, you know, basically I've seen a painting like this where basically like grabbing its jaws and basically just ripping them apart.
Basically just ripping its face open.
You know, that would be one way.
Another way you could think of it is like tearing one of its limbs off.
Okay.
But it's saying he rent it as he would have rent a kid.
A kid is just a young baby goat.
So like you could just, if you were strong, you could just pick up that animal.
And I'm not, you know, condoning this or recommending this to do this to, you know, cute farm animals or something.
You know, you just pick up some small animal and basically just in one way or the other just kind of rip it, tear it, rent it.
You know, whether that's its face, its limbs, whatever part you chose to rent this thing.
You know, so he basically did this feat that would take incredible strength because obviously, you know, a young lion, there's going to be all this muscle tissue, bones, tendons, cartilage.
I mean, you're not just going to just rip the thing apart with normal strength.
And he doesn't have anything in his hand.
He doesn't have a knife.
He doesn't have a sword.
He doesn't have an axe.
This is just bare hands just ripping the thing's limb off.
Okay.
Like Beowulf or something, right?
And so he does this and his parents aren't aware of this.
So apparently he's traveling separately from his parents.
And he doesn't tell them what he did, but he destroys this lion bare handed.
And then it says in verse seven, he went down and talked with the woman.
You know, that's a good step in the relationship.
And she pleased Samson well.
And after a time, he returned to take her.
So, you know, he goes, he talks to her, he likes her.
His parents are down there.
They make the arrangements.
Okay, this wedding is going to happen.
We're engaged and so forth.
And after a time, he returned to take her and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion.
And you have to give Samson credit for one thing.
He's not a braggart because he didn't just start bragging and telling everybody.
He didn't tell his parents.
He didn't tell anybody.
So he actually did this incredible thing, but he did not say anything to anyone.
Then he wants to have a little personal enjoyment though.
You know, even if he's not going to have the joy of telling the story,
he wants to return to the scene and kind of check out his trophy.
You know, check out that dead lion.
See how it's decomposing.
And so he returns to go look at it in verse 8.
And it says, Behold, there was a swarm of bees and a honey in the carcass of the lion.
So he's torn open this lion.
And bees have set up shop there and have produced honey in this lion.
And he took thereof in his hands and went on to eat.
So just with his bare hands he scoops up some of this honey out of the lion's carcass.
And he's eating as he goes.
He regroups with his parents.
And he gives it to them, but he doesn't tell them where he got it.
He told them not that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion
because what they don't know can't hurt them.
Now, here's what you have to understand about this.
This is so ridiculously unclean.
We would look at this and say, hey, that's gross.
That's unsanitary.
But you've got to understand, it's not just that it's gross or unsanitary from that perspective.
Also, this is a major violation of God's rules and specifically for Samson.
Because remember, the children of Israel, they have all these sanitation rules,
the clean and unclean that they follow.
But then Samson specifically, as a Nazarite, cannot come near any dead body.
In fact, if someone just dies suddenly next to him, the Bible's really, you know, his thing's violated.
Even if somebody just accidentally dies next to him.
Let alone going to a dead body and it didn't even just die recently.
Okay, I mean, this thing's been dead for a long time and he's eating out of it with his hands.
Then he gives this to his parents, you know, which sort of reminds me a little bit of Eve, you know, giving the fruit to Adam to eat.
It seems like when people do something unclean or they do something sinful, they like to get other people to do it too.
And they like to involve other people in their sin.
And so they, you know, he gives it to his parents and gets them involved in it as well.
But they were innocent because they didn't know that it was something that they weren't supposed to eat.
Verse 10. And again, we, like, it wouldn't be a sin for me today to eat honey out of a dead body.
Now, I'm not going to do it. It doesn't sound like it would be a good idea or smart.
But if I did it, it would not be sin because we're not living under that mosaic.
Well, we still wash our hands and take showers and use common sense.
But back then, I mean, this is part of the law of God that they have to follow these rules of cleanness and uncleanness.
And certainly they're not supposed to be eating honey out of a dead body.
And so it says in verse 10, so his father went down under the woman.
And Samson made there a feast for so use the young men to do.
And it came to pass when they saw him that they brought 30 companions to be with him.
So remember, Samson has no connection down in the land of the Philistines.
It's a foreign country. He goes down there.
He is going to get married, but he doesn't have any friends. He doesn't know anybody.
So who's going to come to the wedding?
So he needs to be furnished with groomsmen and companions and people to sort of party with.
Because it's a seven day party associated with this wedding.
So he, you know, gets furnished with some kind of stock companions here.
30 companions to be with him.
In verse 12, it says in Samson said to them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you.
If you can certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast and find it out, then I will give you 30 sheets and 30 change of garments.
And the reason this is such a big deal is you have to understand the ancient world.
There are no sewing machines.
And so making clothing would take a really long time.
A lot of women, I mean, this is what they would do for day after day, week after week, month after month.
I mean, women in the ancient world spent a lot of time making clothing, making fabric.
Because, I mean, it's not just sewing the fabric. You've got to make the fabric.
You know, you've got to just start from scratch, create the fabric, create the garments.
And so you look at the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31.
It talks about her, obviously, making clothing and making garments and spinning and sewing and so forth.
So 30 changes of raiment.
This is very expensive.
You know, people back then, you know, they're not wearing a different outfit every day.
Okay.
They only have a few outfits.
All right.
Change of raiment is a big deal.
And so 30 changes of raiment is a great prize.
And then 30 sheets because, again, textiles are expensive.
And so 30 sheets and 30 changes of garment are the bet.
But if you cannot declare me, then shall ye give me 30 sheets and 30 changes of garments.
And they said unto him, put forth thy riddle that we may hear it.
So if you think about it, if Samson loses, he has to pay a lot.
30 garments and 30 sheets.
Each of these 30 friends, they don't really receive a lot, though.
They only receive one garment and one sheet.
He's paying 30 fold.
Whereas if Samson wins, he gains a lot because he wins 30 garments and 30 sheets.
Whereas if they lose, they're only paying a little bit.
They each pay one garment and one sheet.
So you can see that Samson is 30 times more invested in this thing than any one of those individual companions.
If Samson wins, it's a big deal.
If Samson loses, it's a huge deal.
But if the Philistines win or lose, it's not as big of a deal because the burden is shared over 30 people.
Okay.
And basically what they're doing is they're gambling.
You could say, well, it's not gambling because it's skill.
Come on.
This is gambling.
Okay.
This is just another style of gambling.
I mean, you could go down to the casino and some of those games have a skill element as well,
but you're still gambling and you've got the 30 to 1 set up here and that's what they're doing.
And so he gives them this riddle.
They agree to this.
They sign onto this stupidly that they're going to do it.
And so he gives them the riddle.
Verse 14.
And he said to them, out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness.
Now, don't you hate riddles like that?
I hate all riddles, but this is an especially irritating riddle.
And that's why the 30 guys get really irritated by this riddle.
Now, of course, the meaning is that he killed the lion and he ate the honey, so out of the eater came forth meat.
Meat in the Bible just simply means food.
So don't get confused.
When the Bible says meat, it's not the same way that we use the word meat in 2021.
The word meat in the Bible is referring to food in general.
That's why the meat offering is fine flour mingled with oil.
Think about our word meal.
Think about how it's just one letter different.
Meat, meal.
Other languages like Norwegian, the word for food is mat.
English used to be meat.
Now we say food for everything and we say meat, particularly for what the Bible calls, what's the Bible word for meat?
Flesh, right?
Flesh.
When the Bible wants to specify we're talking about what we would think of as meat, it says flesh.
We don't say like, hey, I'm going to go buy a couple of pounds of flesh for dinner.
So we just say meat.
Back then, this is a word that used to be more broad and it has become more specific over time.
So out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness.
So this is a very obscure riddle indeed.
And it came to pass, or it says in verse 14 at the end there, and they could not in three days expound the riddle.
So after three days, they're stressing about it.
Three days go by.
They can't figure this thing out.
And it came to pass on the seventh day that they said unto Samson's wife, entice thy husband that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house with fire.
Have ye called us to take that we have?
Is it not so?
So I guess you just invited us here, just rip us off, steal our money.
That's why we're here.
Isn't that what's going on here?
Now, folks, these guys agreed to do this.
They wanted to play this game.
They did gambling.
Now they don't want to live with the consequences of the gambling that they did because they're losing.
And Samson's wife wept before him and said, thou dost but hate me and lovest me not.
Thou wast put for the riddle unto the children of my people and hast not told it me.
And he said unto her, behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother.
Shall I tell it to thee?
So he hadn't told anybody.
Remember, I told you he did not brag about this.
He killed this lion with his bare hands.
He didn't say he, you know, he might've thought nobody will believe it.
So he didn't tell anybody.
But for whatever reason, he did not brag about this because nobody knows about his parents don't know about.
He hasn't told anyone.
He didn't even he didn't even impress the girl with it.
And she wept before him.
Verse 17, the seven days while their feast lasted.
And it came to pass on the seventh day that he told her, because that's when, remember, the seventh day is when she's being threatened, get it or die.
We're going to burn you and your father's house and everything else, right?
So she finally gets it out of him.
She just ruins his whole honeymoon.
And just on the seventh day, he told her because she lay sore upon him.
And she told the riddle to the children of her people.
And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?
And he said unto them, if you had not plowed with my heifer, you had not found out my riddle.
And the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he went down to Ashkelon and slew 30 men of them.
So here's where he's going to get his 30 changes of raiment.
He's going to go kill 30 Philistines and strip them of their clothing.
Of course, in the Hollywood movie, he just steals their clothes and doesn't kill them, you know, because Hollywood's like that.
They ruin every Bible story.
They just change them for no reason.
I'm talking about the movies from like the 50s or so.
I saw it as a kid.
It's Victor Mature or something.
But anyway, you know, no, the movie's wrong.
He killed them.
He killed 30 people.
He killed the 30 Philistines.
He took their garments and he gave the change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle.
And his anger was kindled and he went up to his father's house.
But Samson's wife was given to his companion whom he had used as his friend.
So basically, he's so mad.
He's so enraged.
He's not just mad at the Philistines.
He's mad at the wife because he told her the secret.
She told them he lost.
So he goes down, kills 30 Philistines, steals their clothes, gives it to them to pay off the debt.
And then he just leaves.
He just storms off.
So, you know, apparently, from the way this reads, it seems like the marriage probably isn't consummated yet.
Maybe the marriage seems to get consummated at the end of this week-long party.
And so apparently, it wasn't finalized because she is just married off to someone else now.
It's just like, well, okay, I guess Samson doesn't want her.
He took his toys and went home.
And he went back to his homeland.
He's in another country.
So apparently, he doesn't want her anymore.
But, you know, we got the party.
We got everything here.
She's ready to roll.
And so they end up just giving her to one of the 30 dudes as his wife.
Because they just assumed – because Samson didn't really communicate very well.
He just kind of storms off mad.
And they just figured, okay, well, I guess he changed his mind.
You know, the wedding's off.
It was all ruined.
So there's so many – there's so much to talk about here.
There's so many great things we can learn from this story.
But let's just take the gambling angle.
I mean, that's a great angle to approach this story.
Just think about it from the gambling angle.
Okay, what do we learn about gambling from this passage?
Number one is that people gamble and they don't want to live with the consequences of gambling.
Because guess what happens when you gamble?
You lose.
When you gamble, you end up losing.
And so the casinos have all those fancy LCD displays and – or LED or whatever.
Sorry.
LCD, LED.
Which one is it?
LED.
LCD was a little handheld really low-tech video games in the 80s.
But anyway, you know, they got the big fancy TV screen like on the outside of the building.
And they've got the luxurious stuff because they're just constantly stealing people's money and just taking it.
And people lose and they lose and they lose and they lose.
If you gamble, you're an idiot.
It's that simple.
If you play the lottery, you're an idiot.
If you gamble, you're an idiot.
It's stupid and it's also sinful.
Because the Bible preaches against desiring to be rich, making haste to be rich, the love of money is the root of all evil.
Okay?
So – and by the way, the thought of foolishness is sin.
And gambling because you think it's going to benefit you financially is a foolish thought because the house wins.
So we see the stupidity of gambling.
We see people gamble.
They get in over their head.
They end up not wanting to live with the consequences of what they've gambled.
But then the next thing we see is that people gamble stuff that they don't even have.
We see Samson here gambling with money he doesn't have.
He doesn't have 30 chains of raiment and he doesn't have 30 sheets.
He has to go steal it.
And so guess what gambling does?
It leads you into other sins.
Now obviously in this case, you know, slaying 30 Philistines was kind of what God had in mind originally.
But stop and think about though how gambling could get you to do some violent things in order to pay off your gambling debts.
And how many people, I wonder, have gotten into stealing because they got into gambling.
They lost a bunch of money gambling.
And then they have to steal to feed their gambling habit.
In fact, I'm thinking of some people that I've known personally.
Let's see.
If I think real hard, I could probably think of somebody personally that had a gambling habit and was stealing to feed that gambling habit.
Hmm. Is there anybody like – oh, I don't know.
But I can think of a few.
I can think of multiple.
Gambling leads you into other sins.
And it leads you into stealing money because you have to steal money to feed the gambling habit.
Because guess what's going to happen when you gamble?
You're going to lose.
And then you want to keep gambling because you're addicted to it.
Because gambling is addictive to a certain segment of the population.
Some people are more susceptible to that addiction than others.
But many people are highly addicted to gambling.
And then they don't have the money.
What are they going to do?
They're going to get the money by any means necessary, even if that means stealing it and hurting people, maybe even murdering someone to collect insurance or whatever.
I guarantee you, the love of money is the root of all evil.
See, you start loving money and you just do this innocent little thing called gambling.
And then you say, well, where in the Bible does it say not to gamble?
I mean, where does it specifically say not to gamble, you know?
And then you start doing that.
But here's what gambling is going to do.
It's going to lead you into fornication.
It's going to lead you into adultery.
It's going to lead you into stealing.
It's going to lead you into murder.
And you say, how do you know that, Pastor?
Because the love of money is the root, there's the root, of all evil.
There's the plant that grows out of it.
So when you plant this gambling seed, all these other evils grow up.
The fornication tree, all evil.
You name it, gambling will get you there because of the fact that the love of money is the root of all evil.
So it starts with covetousness.
It starts with loving money.
Next thing you know, you're stealing.
You say, oh, I would never kill anyone.
That's what a lot of people said until they knocked up some woman with an inconvenient pregnancy and then they murder that baby.
It's called abortion.
Twenty-five percent of women in America get an abortion.
Well, that's a lot of murder.
So people say, oh, I'd never kill anybody.
But you know what?
When you're telling your girlfriend or your wife or your concubine or your mistress or whatever, when you're telling her to get an abortion, you know what that makes you?
A murderer.
When you're telling a woman, get an abortion, you've committed murder there.
You have participated in murder.
And so gambling could lead to murder, theft, all kinds of horrible sins because the love of money is the root of all evil.
And so we see that Samson ends up getting violent and stealing in order to feed his gambling habit.
Now, obviously, God takes his evil actions and wrong actions and ends up ultimately using it for his plan.
But you know what?
I don't want to live a life where I do stupid stuff and suffer the stupid consequences, but ultimately, I was all part of God's plan.
I don't want to be part of God's plan and get, like, ground up through a meat grinder in the process of being part of God's plan.
You know, I want to be a part of God's plan, but I want to come through it in one piece.
Okay, now look, Samson here, yeah, he ends up being used by God.
He ends up being a part of God's plan and fulfilling the will of God.
I mean, it was God's will for this guy to be the great deliverer that would deliver Israel.
And basically, Samson makes every mistake, and he's basically trying as hard as he can to screw this up, but it still ends up happening because it's God's will.
And so God, just in spite of Samson, makes it happen.
And you say, well, I'm just kind of like Samson, you know?
I'm just kind of a Samson kind of guy.
Okay, you're a Samson kind of guy?
Great.
Just enjoy having your eyes stabbed out, Samson, okay?
Enjoy getting married and having your wife be with some other man.
You know, enjoy grinding at a mill like an animal and dying young and being made fun of and mocked and ridiculed by your enemies and being tortured.
Okay, you don't want to be Samson.
You don't want to end up like Samson, okay?
So what you should learn is that, yeah, God can take our messed up lives and still ultimately use it for His glory.
But you know what?
If we go out and live a sinful life, we're going to reap the consequences for that just like Samson did.
Samson does not live a happy life because he did not live a life where he followed God's Word.
You know, he's constantly violating God's Word and constantly suffering the consequences for that.
It doesn't mean he's a worthless person.
He had some good attributes.
He's in heaven right now.
He was used by God, but he lived a pretty messed up life.
And so you don't want to be like Samson.
You don't want to marry an unbeliever.
You don't want to get into gambling.
You don't want to go down this path.
So those are a few takeaways from the gambling angle.
Another takeaway from the gambling angle is that people who gamble cheat, right?
I mean, what do we see here?
Because this is like the gambling chapter of the Bible, amen?
This is a great gambling chapter.
You know, like everything you want to preach about gambling is all in this chapter.
Guess what?
Gambling is rigged.
Look, how many times have professional athletes gotten in trouble for losing on purpose because of gambling?
I mean, when people are betting millions of dollars, they're not just going to leave that to chance.
No, they rig the game.
The casino is a rigged game.
And just so you know, when you go to the carnival, those games are rigged, all right?
But I'm telling you that sports constantly have these scandals where people lose on purpose because of gambling.
You know, I was reading about one where the sumo wrestling in Japan, it was a big deal,
but there was just this huge amount of corruption where all these sumo wrestlers were losing on purpose
and it was all fixed because it was all a gambling thing.
You know, and you hear the same thing here in the United States about, you know, baseball, football, basketball.
There are a lot of corrupt things going on behind closed doors because people who gamble typically cheat in some way,
shape, or form because they don't want to just leave it to chance.
And the casino is cheating you.
And if you bet on professional sports, you know, people are cheating and so forth.
It really just ruins any fun that could possibly be gotten from sports.
When you hear about people cheating, it just kind of ruins it, doesn't it?
When they're doping and losing on purpose and all these wicked things.
And so that's another thing that we see in the story about gambling is that people who gamble are typically cheating.
Here's an, okay, but let's get off the gambling angle and let's think about another angle of the story.
How about the fact that when you marry that heathen girl, guess what?
She's more loyal to other people than she is to you.
Beware of this, my friend.
Let me tell you something.
When you're married, you need to be loyal to your spouse.
That is your number one loyalty.
My number one loyalty is to my wife.
My wife's number one loyalty is to me.
It's not like, well, I'm more loyal to my siblings or to my parents or to my friends or what.
No, your number one loyalty needs to be to your spouse.
But let me tell you something.
There are people out there, they get married and they're not loyal to their spouse.
They're more loyal to someone else.
And that is wrong.
Don't make that mistake in your life.
Okay.
And you know what?
Whenever you see wives leaving their husbands, because you know what?
I hear about this a lot, too, as a pastor.
I get a lot of these sad stories, unfortunately, where wives just leave their husbands.
And the husbands sometimes didn't even see it coming.
Maybe he did see it coming.
But the wife leaves him and he doesn't know what to do.
You know, 99% of the time what I've observed in 15 years of pastoring is that there's almost
always the complicit in-laws.
Basically, when the wife leaves the husband, it's because the wife's parents are supporting
her in that decision or even egging her on.
And so she's teamed up with her parents against her husband.
That is wicked.
And let me tell you something right now.
And I told this to my children, too.
I told my daughters, I said, you know what?
When you get married, you're not going to come crying to me about your husband.
You're not going to come, oh, can I come back home and live?
Nope.
Because it's till death do us part.
Don't marry a bozo.
Don't marry a loser.
Don't marry a phony.
But you know who I'm going to side with?
I'm going to side with your husband.
Because you know what?
You need to stay married to your husband.
And you need to think about that before you get married.
You know, you want to marry a rebel.
You want to marry a bad dude.
Well, you know what?
Have fun being married to a bad dude who just spends all the money on himself, cares only
about himself, maybe even cheats on you, treats you like dirt.
OK.
That's what you're going to get if you marry one of these bad boys, these cool dudes, you
know, that's just all edgy and worldly and rebellious.
And by the way, you dudes out there, you know, have fun if you marry that Barbie doll looking
thing that you're interested in.
You know, you're not interested in any of the nice, you know, not any of the girls of
our tribe or of the Christian tribe or the Baptist tribe or the fundamentalist tribe.
You know, you want that skanky looking thing out there.
You want that Barbie doll looking thing.
But you want her to be a virtuous woman on the inside and a whore on the outside.
You want a virtuous woman trapped in a prostitute's body, dressing like a hooker.
Folks, you are barking up the wrong tree.
And here's the thing, well, you know what, enjoy, enjoy when she leaves you six months
into the marriage or two years into the marriage and goes running home to her Catholic parents,
right, who will just, oh, honey, oh, you poor thing, oh, come on home.
And those words will never come out of my mouth.
Do not be complicit in helping your kids get divorced or helping them.
No, they need to be in it to win it, do or die till death do us part.
I don't care if that's popular or not.
Put it in your pipe and smoke it.
Okay, marriage is for life.
You're one flesh.
What God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
But you want to marry that Barbie doll looking woman.
Well, guess what she's going to do?
She's going to rack up your credit card and max it out to spend on her appearance.
She's going to max out the credit card and then you got to pay for it.
And you're going to be working overtime and you're going to be burning the midnight oil
so you can make a bunch of money so that she can burn it all up on the purses and the sunglasses
and the jewelry and the shoes and a bunch of other frivolous things that are totally
not necessary.
And she's not going to be involved in homeschooling and a good homemaker and a good cook and doing
these things.
She's going to spend three hours in front of the mirror every day, three hours at the
mall, three hours gossiping and an hour reading People magazine because she's an airhead.
Why don't you start looking for a godly woman?
And you know what?
You women, you young ladies, you need to marry a godly man.
It's even more important because he's the leader.
I mean, at least a good godly Christian man hopefully could lead a less spiritual woman
along.
But good night.
If you're a young lady, you better make sure that you're married to a godly man.
This is the guy you're going to follow his leadership for the rest of your life?
That's a pretty big decision.
You better be careful.
And beware, beware of the signs before marriage that that potential spouse is more loyal to
her family than she is to you.
That's a bad sign.
You need to leave, and to the men as well, you leave father and mother and cleave under
your wife.
You leave father and mother and you cleave your wife.
That's the loyalty.
Now look, I love my parents.
I'm loyal to my parents.
I have a great relationship with both my mom and my dad, and I'm thankful for that.
I have great parents.
I'm thankful for them.
But see, I would never choose my parents over my wife.
That is immoral and wrong.
Does everybody understand?
My wife is my primary loyalty.
And I love my parents.
They're important to me, but my wife is more important to me than my parents.
And you know what?
When my parents grow up, I want their spouse to be more important to them than I am.
I don't want to be, hey, Miriam, I'm always going to be the number one man in your life,
Miriam.
No way.
She's already shaking her head.
She's like, nope.
She doesn't even know who the dude is yet, and she's already more loyal to him.
But look, hey, I don't want to be the number one man in her life.
I want the number one man in her life to be her husband.
And I want to back him up, and I want to support him, and I want him to succeed, because
his success and her success are inexorably linked.
And I'm not going to be like, oh, poor baby, tell me about your big bad husband.
You married him.
You did this to yourself.
We warned you.
No, I'm just kidding.
See, hopefully she doesn't marry someone that I warned her about, right?
Hopefully she has the brains to marry someone godly, amen?
That's what we want for our children.
We don't want them marrying the Philistine gal who's going to go running to her parents
six months after the marriage, or one year after the marriage, or two years after the
marriage, go running to her parents, and then they're just going to be fine with it.
Well, I mean, if you're not in love anymore, you don't want to be in a loveless marriage.
I mean, obviously it's over.
And by the way, here's a sick thing that I've observed.
I've seen a lot.
Here's a sick thing that I've observed.
People who get divorced almost wanting their kid to get divorced.
It's sick.
Look, if you got divorced, hey, that's all in the past.
I'm not mad at you.
You can't change the past.
Maybe you're on your third spouse, second spouse, fourth spouse.
Hey, you know what?
Just serve God from here on out.
Love the one you're with.
You know, stay loyal to that marriage because you've made that commitment.
You've made that vow.
You know, maybe you broke the vow the first time.
Don't break the second vow.
But let me tell you this, though.
You should not want other people to go through what you've gone through.
Like, oh, here, I'm eating the dirty honey.
Here, you eat some of the dirty honey, too.
I ate the forbidden fruit.
Why don't you have a piece, too, Adam?
Well, I'm a three-time divorcee.
Well, hey, maybe I can be closer to my daughter if she gets divorced, too.
We can have, like, these little girl nights where we talk crap about men.
You think I'm making this up?
Or is it out there?
I've seen parents almost gleeful when their kid is getting divorced
because they've been divorced.
Look, you've been divorced.
I'm not mad at you.
But, hey, don't desire that for your children.
You're sick if you desire that for your children.
You're weird.
You're nuts.
Why would you want that?
It wasn't fun when you did it.
And you know what?
Look, I don't want my kids to make every mistake that I've made.
I would rather that they live a better life than I've lived,
that they do better, that they don't make mistakes that I've made.
Why would I want a kid to make a mistake that I made so that,
yeah, we both made that mistake?
Yeah, cool.
All right, we're bonding.
This might sound weird, but probably half the people in the building
are thinking, that sounds kind of weird.
What's he talking about?
The other half are like, yup, I've seen it a bunch.
You'll see it eventually.
And so she's more loyal to them.
And then there's so many great lessons in this story.
Here's another lesson from the story.
When people threaten you with stuff like, hey, you got to tell us this
or we're going to burn you and your father's house.
You want to know what ends up happening to her?
Here's another spoiler alert.
Guess what happens in the next chapter?
Her and her father's house all get burned.
So what's she afraid of happening?
She's afraid of me and my father's house getting burned.
What happens in the next chapter?
Her and her father's house get burned.
So by doing wrong here, by cheating her husband,
by being more loyal to other people than her husband,
more loyal to the Philistines than to her husband,
did she avoid what she feared?
No, the same thing is going to happen anyway.
Whereas, who knows, maybe the Philistines were just bluffing
because they didn't really have a whole lot to lose.
I mean, how much are they going to lose?
They each have to buy one change of raiment, one sheet.
They didn't have a huge amount to lose.
The burden is spread over 30 people, OK?
It's possible that they were just threatening.
Hey, if you don't tell us, we're going to burn your house
and burn it all down.
But by doing the wrong thing, she ends up having that exact dread
come upon her of having her whole family's house burned
and everything because Samson ends up destroying
huge amounts of their property.
I mean, Samson ends up just burning down.
Because in chapter 15, it gets real.
And in chapter 15, Samson is just like torching
acre after acre after acre after acre of the Philistines' food supply.
He's just like wiping out their crops,
wiping out their food supply, wiping out their wealth.
I mean, he's just doing just mass destruction in chapter 15.
Then, yeah, then all the Philistines are like,
burn this woman and her family with fire.
This is all your fault.
But they might not have reacted that extremely over just a garment.
Does everybody see what I'm saying?
Because what he does in chapter 15 is hundreds of times worse
than just paying a garment.
He does way more damage, OK?
And so cheaters never prosper, by the way.
That's another little gem of wisdom we could get from this passage.
If you cheat, you don't prosper.
You know, if someone's threatening you,
hey, do this wicked thing or I'll whatever.
Don't do it.
If somebody threatens you, if somebody said to me,
hey, you've got to deny Christ or I'm going to kill you, right?
You know, we need to just die for Christ.
And here's the thing, God might deliver us and we won't even die.
But if we seek to save our life, we'll lose it.
Isn't that what the Bible says?
And that's kind of what she's doing here.
She's seeking to save her life by betraying her husband,
being disloyal to her husband, cheating on this gambling against him,
and she ends up losing her life as a result, OK?
And by the way, I've taught this to my children.
You should teach this to your children, too.
If somebody ever points a gun at you, kids, kids, are you listening?
If somebody ever points a gun at you and says, get in the car,
you don't get in the car, period.
You run away screaming.
You don't get in that car because inside that car could be a fate worse than death.
Number one, number one, that car could take you to a fate worse than death.
Number two, 99% of the time,
they're not going to pull the trigger in a public place
when they're threatening you with a gun, telling you,
oh, get in the car to kidnap you.
And number three, even if they shoot at you,
you have a two-thirds chance of surviving even if you get hit by a bullet.
So you run away, OK?
So you don't get in the car when somebody points a gun, hey, get in the car.
So look, if somebody points a gun at me and wants me to do something wicked
or threatens me and wants me to do something wicked and says,
hey, you need to, you know, get up and preach lies or whatever
or, you know, change what you believe about this or that, you know,
I'm not going to do it.
And let's say I was just carnal and just said, OK, you know what,
I'm being offered money to preach these lies or I'm being threatened with death,
I'm getting a death threat if I don't do it.
You know, I'm just going to go to, you know, God might just kill me to say,
well, you know what, oh, you know, you're so scared of dying,
well, I can just kill you whenever I want.
Does everybody see what I'm saying?
Don't let evil people intimidate you into doing sinful things.
Don't let them scare you like, we're going to burn down your house
unless you stop preaching against the sodomites.
And then you get up next week like Jeff Owens or something and it's like,
a while back I preached a sermon that was unkind.
I preached a sermon a while back that was unkind toward gay people.
I sincerely apologize if I've offended anyone in the LGBT community.
I was very dumb and immature when I said those things.
In fact, when I said those things, I didn't even believe them myself.
I just love all the lesbians and gays and bisexuals and trans perverts.
Folks, that's what Jeff Owens said.
And you know what's so funny, Jeff Owens said,
oh, I was just young and immature, I was just stupid when I said that.
That's funny, he was the vice president of the largest independent Baptist Bible college in the world.
Oh, I'm sure he's a really just young, dumb.
Jeff Owens was the vice president of the largest independent Baptist Bible college in the world.
Thousands of students, okay.
He'd written two books on character.
He wrote a book called Character and then he wrote another book called More Character.
Those are the names of his two books, Character and then the sequel, More Character.
And you know what, I guarantee you that anybody who knew him,
the last thing that they would have ever described him as, this guy's immature.
This guy just had character to go with his character.
Very successful, high up in his position, he's succeeding at his work.
No, that was back when he was preaching right.
That was back when he didn't care.
That was back when he just called it like it was and then in his old age, he just became a loser.
That gets up and panders, and I'm sorry, if you're pandering to facts right now in 2021, you're a loser.
You're helping destroy America for our children and hand it over to the sodomites on a silver platter, okay.
It's wickedness.
Now why did he do that?
Did he just, did he just, he was just, he just couldn't sleep for weeks.
He's like, man, I offended all those fags years ago.
It's bothering me.
Is that why he apologized?
Because he just started feeling guilty and just like, you know, I just always want to make this right.
Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine who 20 years earlier had taken one of his fellow classmates in high school.
He took his sunglasses.
This kid was real proud of this pair of sunglasses.
He took the kid's sunglasses and like threw it down a well or something, threw it down a wall or something and just destroyed this kid's glasses and he felt guilty about it.
So 20 years later he contacted the guy and he said, listen, I'm sorry, you know, that I mistreated you back then.
I want to buy you their glasses.
I want to give you the money.
And he made it right 20 years later, you know, because he felt bad about it, right?
That's good, right?
Amen.
You know, he wanted to make it right.
He'd hurt someone and he wanted to fix it.
Do you think that's what happened with Jeff Owens?
Like he just, it's just something he thought about.
He's like, man, I feel bad.
Let me just make a public apology to homos.
No, I'll tell you what it was, is that people started threatening him because I know what it's like because I've gotten the threats.
I've gotten the attacks.
And so his sermon was, you know, was popular online.
You know, I don't know who made it popular online.
I'm not sure who.
I'm not sure who spread that clip around, but okay, I spread it around.
I pulled out the old sermon tape and I turned it into an MP3 and spread it around and whatever.
But anyway, here's the thing about it, is that the sodomites got a hold of that thing and they started, it started being in the media.
Even though it was something he had said like 15 years earlier or 10 years earlier or whatever, it went crazy in the media.
The left wing media was just, can you believe this Pastor Jeff Owens, he's so bad.
And so he got just huge amounts of backlash.
He was getting just attacked and persecuted.
And instead of, you know, withstanding in the evil day and having done all to stand, he just folded like a deck of cards.
And you know, you should watch the sodomite deception documentary.
Fantastic documentary.
Listen, if you have not seen it, it's not optional.
You must watch it.
It's your homework assignment.
You will not pass this class if you have not watched the sodomite deception.
Okay.
Look, Pastor Jonathan Shelley and them out in Fort Worth, they made this documentary.
It's phenomenal.
By some miracle, it exists on YouTube.
Okay.
But you don't know when the manna is going to cease, you know, and so you want to make sure that you can get it while it's there.
Watch it.
Do yourself a favor and watch it.
But anyway, you know, and it contains this clip of Jeff Owens.
You're going to see how accurate my impression was, by the way.
So look, you know, people threaten you, they scare you.
You know, I'd be scared to apologize to the homeless.
If I were Jeff Owens, seriously, if I were Jeff Owens, I'd be scared to get up and say this soft, lying junk, to get up and lie about what I preach.
Oh, I was just young.
I didn't even mean it.
You meant it.
You meant it and we all loved it.
The crowd went wild.
We all loved it.
I wasn't there physically, but I was there in spirit.
And so, you know, he gets up and lies and panders to the enemy, panders to this wickedness, because he's scared.
You know, he ought to be scared of God.
He actually ought to be scared.
You know, who am I more scared of?
Am I scared of, you know, sodomites putting a bomb in the building?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know if they would do something like that, but, you know, if I blow up a church building.
But anyway, you know, am I more scared of that or am I more scared of what the Lord could do to me?
I mean, here's the thing.
All the sodomites could do is kill the body.
And you know what?
Frankly, they're very unlikely to even do that.
God can protect us.
The angel of the Lord camps around them that fear him.
And so we have God's protection.
Yet, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
I've got God's protection.
But you know what?
God literally holds my breath in his hand.
He could literally, God right now, if God decided that he doesn't want me to live anymore on this earth, if I make him mad or whatever, he could just basically just go like this.
Wouldn't that be just super easy for him to do?
Super easy.
He could do that any time he wants to.
He could just, just extinguish my life.
Just like blowing out a candle.
My life's over.
Just like that.
Or, and here's the thing.
That's not the worst thing that could happen to me.
Because dying's not the worst thing that could happen to me.
Now, I don't want to die.
I want to abide here and remain and serve God and join my family and live my Christian life to the end.
Be like, Paul, finish the course.
But here's the thing.
If I die and go to be with the Lord, that's gain.
But you know what?
What if God just decides to make my life miserable?
He could have an easy time doing that.
He could mess with me physically.
Give me all kinds of illness, painful illnesses, diseases, you know, painful cancer.
You mentioned soul winning.
He was telling this guy, hey, you know, there's still reasons to obey God even though salvation is only by faith.
You know, he could give you a painful cancer or something to punish you.
That's how a doctor goes soul winning.
So basically, you know, God could do so many things to make your life miserable and punish you.
Way worse than what the weirdos out there could do to me.
You know, we don't need to fear them.
Fear the Lord.
Fear the Lord alone.
Only fear God. Amen?
And so there's a lot of great things that you can get from this passage.
I hope that you got something out of the sermon tonight.
But the thing I want to drive in as I close the sermon is just, you know,
the gambling, the marrying an unbeliever, okay, and the fearing of man and cheating and whatever
instead of worrying about what does God think about what I'm doing.
You know, look, do not get into gambling.
Do not marry a wicked person or an unbeliever or a super backslidden Christian or the rebel bad dude or the bad girl or whatever.
And do not fear man.
Fear God.
Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you for this wonderful chapter, Lord.
There's so much here to talk about.
We could talk about this story all night because it's such a powerful lesson.
And, Lord, we just pray that you would just help us be wise enough to not make some of the same mistakes that Samson made,
that Samson's wife made, and that these other Philistines made.
Lord, help us to have wisdom.
And, Lord, help us be blessed.
You know, help us to live godly, blessed lives and to worry about pleasing you above all else.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
And please take your hymnals if you need the words for this one.
Number 135, I know I am saved.
One hundred and thirty-five.
135, we'll sing it twice.
Sing it out nice and loud together.
I'll see his face in glory by and by.
I know I am saved.
For Christ set me free.
He ransomed my poor soul on the cross of Calvary.
And now I can see.
For Christ is my King.
I'll see his face in glory by and by.
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