What's the Difference?

Good morning. Morning. Great to see everybody. We’ll go ahead and start finding those seats. Getting seated again as we are coming to our time of congregational prayer. We might start doing something new where the last person standing has to pray out loud in front of everybody. We might start doing that. We can test it today if we need. >> [laughter] >> That’s hilarious. Awesome. Okay. Now that I know that that that threat works, that’s great.

So we are coming to our time congregational prayer. We spend a portion of our service like you guys know every Sunday just praying for needs of the church and needs of the community. Want to put a couple things in front of you. We are officially launching a season of fundraising this Sunday today for Martin Hall renovations. So what we are doing is we are looking to raise about $70,000 to renovate Martin Hall, take care of the kitchen. You know, what that room does for us on a weekly basis is you know providing a place for deeper community for our church, for deeper discipleship. I mean creating a place where we get to practice some of the New Testament pattern of gathering together, breaking bread, enjoying fellowship with each other. You know, it’s more than just putting some paint on the walls or updating some kitchen appliances. It’s it’s an investment into the life of our church. So we are looking to raise $70,000 to take care of that need. If you have any questions about what that project will look like, I just encourage you to go to Kenneth with the properties committee and they will give to you all the details that you need there.

But in addition to investing into our church, Sauldam has opportunity to invest into the life of couple other churches as well. Last month at the business meeting, I introduced you to a couple of my friends at least digitally. Jake and Rachel Borum, they are planting a church in Greenville, South Carolina called Storyline Church. Greenville is the fastest growing metro in South Carolina and South Carolina is one of the fastest growing states in the country. So more and more people are moving to Greenville, which means we need more and more churches preaching the gospel. Jake is a great friend of mine and Becca’s. He and His wife, we were all part of church together a couple years ago and so what they’ve asked is for us to consider being their sponsor church. For the South Carolina or for the Southern Baptist Convention, we believe that churches plant churches, individuals don’t plant churches. So, for them to be a church recognized by our convention, they need another church to give them the seal. But, they don’t just want us to put our name on a document. They’re looking for Salt ‘n’ Light to pray for them regularly, to encourage them, to help them out, and to be full-fledged partners with them however we can be. You know, in the first 20 years of Salt ‘n’ Light’s history, we have an incredibly rich legacy of helping plant four other churches in our community. And God is bringing us back into helping do that same exact work and being the sponsor church for Jake and Rachel Borum in Greenville.

So, we’re going to pray for that. We’re also going to pray for a church closer to home. Dinton and Caroline Lee. Dinton is the pastor of what is now called Live Oak Church. Live Oak is a church that began seven or eight years ago. They were started by James Island Baptist. James Island planted a church on John’s Island. And Live Oak, unfortunately, already in its short lifespan has already reached a place where they needed to reboot. And so they brought Dinton in to help pastor that. So Dinton, closer to us, over there on John’s Island, they need all the prayer support that we can offer them.

So, what we’re going to do for the next few moments is pray that God would help us raise these funds to take care of our facility, but also that God would speak and help us have clarity and, in praying for those two other churches. Storyline Church up in Greenville, but also Live Oak Church on John’s Island. I can get you more information about those two other churches and what partnering with them will look like. Right now, we’re just praying for them. So, I encourage you to grab a neighbor. Let’s pray for a few moments for our needs, but also for these other churches. >> Holy Spirit, thank you for today. Thank you for gathering us. Thank you for bringing us together for giving us Just a really, just a few minutes to kind of circle up with you. Jesus, I thank You the the promise of Your Word that when we gather together, surely You’re here with us. We don’t have to ask for You to be here. You’re here. But God, I do ask that You would do something particularly divine this morning. As we pray, as we look at Your Word, as we say good morning, as I’m begging that You would get a hold of these next few moments so that whenever we walk out of here, it wouldn’t just be we attended church. It would be that we as a body encounter the living God.

Father, I I pray for Denton and Caroline over at Live Oak. I pray God, I I bet right now he’s opening Your Word, he’s preaching, and I’m begging that You would give him a lot of freedom and a lot of success as he shares from Your Word. I I pray that somebody over at their church would be saved, that they would meet You for the first time. Just like I’m I’m praying that in our room. Lord, I want to thank You for Jake and Rachel up in Greenville, and I I thank You that You are calling them to start a new church in a community that desperately needs it. I beg that You would draw their team together, that You would give him a very clear vision for what that church is supposed to look like. And God, I thank You that he’s asked Sauldam to pray about being their sponsor church. Lord, if that’s the right move for us, I pray that You would make that unanimous amongst our congregation, that we would get behind them and we would propel them however we can.

God, thank You for the legacy of Miss Dosha Peoples Martin. God, who donated property that we are currently sitting sitting in and standing on. Lord, she helped provide a physical place for our fellowship and our community and our discipleship. And Lord, we’ve we’ve honored that legacy by naming the fellowship hall after her. Father, I pray as we raise these funds to renovate that room and do right by her memory, God, that You would just You make us extravagant in our generosity like You’ve been to us. I pray that how we give our money would be a reflection of how You’ve given Your best to us. That we would trust You, that we’d have full faith, that we wouldn’t be anxious about tomorrow. But that You would help open our hearts, and as a response of that, we would open our checkbooks and our wallets, please.

But for right now, over the next 30 minutes as I get to share from Your Word, You please move. Holy Spirit, would You breathe on us? Would You powerfully get a hold of us and accomplish something in our souls? God, for anybody that doesn’t know Jesus as Lord and Savior, as rest rescuer and Master, would You please get a hold of them and help them to see that Jesus is good and He’s done everything necessary for them to know You. And for those of us that do know You, Jesus, our Savior, would You send Your Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin, inspire us toward greater faith and godliness, please. God, we love You. Thank You for loving us. It’s in Your great name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

Will you go ahead and find your way back to your seat and open up your Bible to Judges chapter 15 as we continue this series that we’re calling Broken Saviors, looking at the judges, these military and social leaders for the people of Israel in this in-between time where they occupy parts of the promised land, but they don’t yet have kings. God is giving them judges. We’re going to look at a little bit more of this guy, a raging man, who runs from confrontation to confrontation. And as his passions and emotions escalate, his actions get more and more destructive, which leaves a trail of dead bodies that grows wider and wider, seemingly by the day. That raging man is named Samson, and like Mr. Sam joked a second ago, I’m glad I don’t have enemies like Samson. The funny thing is though that Samson was God’s hand-picked servants to save His people. God’s number one choice to save and deliver His people is this raging bull in a china shop named Samson. Last week we celebrated the redemptive truth that God can use anyone and anything. And that’s great news for us. Raging as we are, frustrated as we are, tired and worn out and Broken bodied as we are, God can use anyone and anything to accomplish His purpose. This morning we’ll embrace another truth related to that. It’s the Holy Spirit out muscles our weakness. The Holy Spirit out muscles our weakness. How does God use anyone and anything? It’s by out muscling it. How does God use broken people? He dominates us. He uses us. How does God use raging, frustratable people? He out muscles us. How does God use despairing, depressed people? He out muscles us. And that’s a good thing. We’re going to see that in the life of this passage. Samson is a man of unrelatable, superhuman strength. But, he is also a man of highly relatable, very human weakness.

Let’s look at how it starts to play out in Judges 15. I’m going to read verses 1 through 8. Follow along with me. Later on during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and visited his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said, “but her father would not let him enter.” “I was sure you hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her away. I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead?” Okay. Verse 3, Samson says to them, “This time I will be blameless when I harm the Philistines.” So, he went out, he caught 300 foxes, he took torches, he turned the foxes tail to tail, he put a torch between each pair of tails, then he ignites the torches, released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and the standing grain as well as the vineyards and the olive groves. Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” “Who did this?” They were told, “It was Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because he took Samson’s wife and gave her to someone else.” So, the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death. I told you at the beginning, this is like HBO in the Bible. Then, get this, verse seven, Samson tells them, “Because you’ve done this, I swear I won’t rest until I’ve taken vengeance on you.” So, he tears them limb from limb. He then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.

Goodness gracious, man. If God can use Samson, surely He can use me, right? Goodness gracious. Samson is a man of just straight, vengeful rage. I think if you were to interact with Samson today, he’s the type of guy that probably is pretty buddy-buddy until the exact moment you tick him off, until he just flies off the handle. Samson is the type of dude that you are not trying to upset. Passage relate to some of Samson’s rage, at least at the beginning. Husbands, put yourself in his shoes. Samson gets upset at the wedding reception, goes to cool off for a little bit, probably left for a little too long, comes back to his wife’s hometown, wants to visit her, only to find that his father-in-law had married his wife off to some other guy. I’d be pretty upset. Any other husbands in the room be pretty upset your wife got Thank you, Rick. I appreciate that.

So, Samson’s got this relatable rage, but man, what Samson can’t do is get out him of his own way because his spark of anger turns into a literal wildfire against the Philistines. So, Samson, in his moment of anger, takes all these foxes that somehow he catches and he starts tying tail to tail. I’ve got so many questions. Where did he find the foxes? Where did he store the foxes? Does he just have 150 torches lying around ready to be lit or something? I’ve got no idea. And who stores that many torches around all this dry wheat? So many questions. Samson, though, in his anger was able to think through all these details and he figured it out. So, Samson, in his moment of anger burning against these people, lights all of their crops on fire. Y’all, wheat, olives, and grapes. That’s what the Middle East has going for it, at least from an agricultural standpoint. That was their entire economy. That was the basis of all the food they would eat and drink all year. Remember, they’re not shopping at Publix or Aldi’s storing up every week. It’s whatever they pull in during the harvest they’re managing for the rest of the year. For Samson to go into the fields and burn up all of their freshly harvested wheat and to totally engulf the olive groves and to totally destroy the vineyards, Samson is crippling an entire economy for a region. One man and his actions totally destroying the livelihood of hundreds and thousands of people. Yet, Samson’s vengeful rage is God’s tool to deliver Israel from the Philistines. Remember, God’s whole purpose in choosing Samson is to choose a guy that would begin to deliver His people from their enemy. I can’t do all the theological math that helps make this feel okay, but what I can do is say that God in His wisdom has ways that are higher than mine and thoughts that are higher than mine, and He is able to use anyone and anything to accomplish His plans, even a hothead like Samson.

See, Samson’s life, when I look at it, is just one compounding issue after another. Sparks of sin that catch fire in the fields of his life and everyone else’s until these little fires become wildfires that destroy everyone and everything around them. In this situation of nearly unstoppable destruction, God is still at work. And I just want to say for your life, if your life feels like one compounding issue after another, one spark that’s burning in your family, or maybe the whole thing is about to come down, God can still be at work in that, too. The raging wildfire of your frustrations and your family situation, God can still use for His glory and for your good.

Let’s see how God involves Himself in this situation. We see the Holy Spirit’s power in Samson. Remember, this is God’s chosen instrument. The Holy Spirit is going to show up. Let’s look at the Holy Spirit’s power in Samson.

The Philistines, verse 9, went up and they camped in Judah and raided Lehi, one of the cities. So, the men of Judah said, “PHILISTINES, YO, GUYS, WHY ARE Y’ALL ATTACKING US?” They replied, “We have come to tie Samson up and pay him back for what he did to us.” So, then 3,000 men of Judah go to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they go and find Samson, and they say, “Hey, Samson, don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? What have you done?” Samson calls to them, “I have done to them what they did to me. They burned my wife, I’m going to burn their fields.” So, they said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” So, Samson replies, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.” “No,” they said, “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” Presumably, so that they can kill you. So, they tied him up with two new ropes and led him away from the rock.

When they came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting, war cries, drums beating. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully on Samson, and the ropes that were on his arms and the wrists become like burnt flax and just fell off. He finds a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, takes it, kills a thousand men with it. Then Samson, feeling himself, sings a song. “With a jawbone of a donkey, I’ve piled them in heaps. With a jawbone of a donkey, I have killed a thousand men.”

God uses verses 1 through 8 to set up verses 9 through 16. Remember, this is part of God’s plan to use Samson to free Israel from the Philistines. But even in this, even in this moment of God the Holy Spirit coming on Samson to free Samson and use Samson, Samson’s brokenness and his uncontrollability is on full display.

Y’all remember over the past couple weeks we’ve been talking about the role Samson was going to have, not just as a judge, but as a special type of person called a Nazarite. We’ve been talking about this when God appeared to Samson’s parents before that before you got pregnant with [inaudible]. Remember, God told the mom and told the dad, “Hey, I’m going to give you a son, but that son is supposed to keep some special rules. He’s going to be a Nazarite. He can’t cut his hair, he can’t drink alcohol, and he can’t touch dead bodies.” But even last week in Samson’s first actions recorded as an adult, Samson is happy to start breaking these rules left and right. In this moment with the Holy Spirit on him using him to deliver God’s people from the Philistines, Samson keeps breaking these rules. He reaches out and he grabs the fresh jawbone of a donkey. Once again, I’m not sure who’s leaving donkey carcasses laying around, but they were. Samson surrounded by thousands of Philistine soldiers, they’re all armed. Probably a fair amount of swords on a hip. Samson doesn’t go for the sword, he doesn’t go for the spears that I can see in my mind, he doesn’t go for a club in somebody’s hand. Samson says, “There’s a donkey carcass. I’m going to take the jawbone.” I don’t get it, but my name’s not Samson. This is actually though it piques a different question for me. Maybe you’ve got it, too. Was physical violence always part of God’s plan? Was physical violence always part of God’s plan to create flourishing for His people? ’Cause remember, Samson is God’s choice. The Holy Spirit is on him. God needs to deliver His people from their enemy. And Samson sure likes to kill people in that regard. And the answer is no. Physical violence is not always part of God’s plan to create flourishing for His people.

You see, in the very beginning, God created this entire world to exist in harmony, in order, and peace, and life. In fact, God’s design for this world was so good that life would just come up from the ground. That fruit literally would just grow on trees. That our food, we wouldn’t have to work for it and sweat and toil in the way that we do now, but that we would do the work of simply going and gathering it, simply grabbing it from the earth. And in that regard, our relationships with one another was supposed to reflect that same unity and harmony we could have with the soil so that you and I, in our friendships, would never experience the fruit of hostility or vengeance or anger or jealousy. No backbiting. No slandering, no gossiping. No raging.

We don’t know how long the world existed in that state, but eventually the very first people, Adam and Eve, the Bible tells us, they, despite all of God’s goodness and His sovereignty and His wisdom. Despite how good their relationships were with God, each other, and this world, they decided to go against God’s design, and they listened to the lies of the serpent instead of the promises of our God and maker. That’s called the fall. They thrust sin into this world so that now, the Bible says that we work by the sweat of our brow, childbirth is difficult and painful, and our relationships, instead of being marked by consistent peace and harmony, now have these speed bumps of anger and hostility and judgment and division. So that no matter how good of a friend or a brother or a mother you are, you at some point, soon, will experience discords in your relationships.

Now, what day that will not be the case anymore? God promised to Adam and Eve that one day Jesus would come, and He would defeat the saint the serpent Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve and thrust the fall into this world. God promised that He would redeem this world. And we know that Jesus Christ did this for us on the cross. For Jesus absorbed the wrath that you and I deserve for our sin. Jesus absorbed that for us. Paid that debt. He took care of that consequence for us. So that one day, for all who have placed their faith and their trust in Jesus Christ, God would bring them into a new creation. A place without tears. Where families aren’t broken up by divorce or death. And where friendships and siblings never have to deal with the sin that would divide us.

Physical violence not always part of God’s plan. But we have to recognize that when we are reading the judges, we are reading between the fall and redemption. Jesus isn’t on the scene yet. God’s playing with with these capacities knowing that one day the physical violence being done by His judges will be experienced by His son. So that Jesus would not be the one piercing and killing, but Jesus would be the one pierced for our transgressions. So that we who put Jesus on the cross through our sin and our wrongdoing would get to enjoy the peace and the love of God starting now into eternity.

So no, God’s plan to create flourishing did not always include physical violence. For right now in this book of judges, it does. And one day we’ll get to settle that one with the Lord. But it’s interesting, like Jesus, Samson as the savior of his people is also betrayed by his fellow Jews. Don’t you see it? Look back at Look back with me. Samson has killed so many Philistines. Remember ’cause they burn up his wife, they burn up his father-in-law. He takes vengeance on them and all the Philistines come up against him. Samson starts slaughtering them limb from limb. In verse 8, the Philistines then regroup. They start to raid the city named Lehi. All the people of Judah, instead of finding Samson and saying, “Hey, let’s go ahead and let’s get it. There’s this Philistine offensive. They’re at our doorstep. Surely if kill all these men with your bare hands without any help, if we would just rally around you, maybe we could drive them back to the Mediterranean Sea and push them back over into what we now call Europe. The people of Israel, the people of Judah, instead of going to Samson and saying, “Lead us. We’re ready. Let’s do it.” They go to get Samson to betray him into the hands of the Philistines. What? Do you see what I’m trying to point out to you? God’s people are rejecting God’s leader and instead choosing to be oppressed by their enemy. They’ve got Samson. The ultimate friend that you would never want to make your enemy. They’ve got him on their team. But instead of instead of embracing him, they say, “Let’s tie him up and deliver him over to our enemy.” But the same thing happened to Jesus. The same thing, the exact same thing. The book The book of John says that when Jesus came to the world, He was rejected by us. He was rejected by His people. And that rejection would happen in the most intimate setting. On the night where Jesus gave them the Lord’s Supper, where they’re recognizing the Passover meal, and Jesus is passing the bread, He’s passing the wine, He knows that He’s about to die on the cross, and one of those 12 disciples is the very one that goes and finds the enemy to lead them to their Savior, Jesus, so that Jesus could be bound and delivered into the hands of that very same enemy.

Samson, with all his flaws and all of his issues, is ultimately supposed to point us to the ultimately betrayed Savior, Jesus Christ. And in that, God is happy to use Him. So, Samson does what he’s not supposed to. Breaks his Nazarite vow once again. Grabs that jawbone and slaughters a thousand Philistines. As Samson keeps breaking the rules of his Nazarite vow, God’s mercy keeps overpowering Samson’s brokenness. I’ll say it a different way. The Holy Spirit continues to out-muscle his weakness. In that, God keeps using the man who keeps failing to live up to the standards God has set. God keeps using the man who keeps failing to live up to the standard. Romans 3:23 says that you and I are like that. We all fall short of God’s standard. We all fall short of His holiness. You and I every day fail to live up to the standards that a holy and perfect and infinitely good God has set for us. Yet, praise be to God that He continues to use people like you and me.

Man, you have not been imbued with divine strength like Samson has, but you can take your human weakness and offer it to God as the arena of His faithfulness. You may not be called to deliver God’s people from an idolatrous enemy army coming in, but you certainly have an enemy in the world and the flesh and the devil. And God wants to use you to create goodness in that dark world where the devil currently reigns and where people are giving themselves over to the passions of their flesh. You may not have a call like Samson to defend the land from this foreign invader, but you do have a call to take the gospel to lost people at Publix and in your neighborhood and maybe even in your house. You see, we may not be like Samson called to be judges over Israel, but we are as followers of Jesus called to be the hands and the feet of God in a world that desperately needs Him. Every day, we fail to live up to that standard. I fail to live up to that standard. We all fall short of it. And yet, if God can use Samson, He can use you and me. Amen.

But despite God’s work in his life, chapter 15 closes with Samson’s arrogance and self-centeredness. God keeps using him. The Holy Spirit is on him. Verse 17, though. When Samson finishes his little song, he throws away the jawbone, and he named the place Jawbone Hill. Incredible. Thank you. Whoever laughed, thank you. Now, he became very thirsty, and he called out to the Lord, “You’ve accomplished this great victory through your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” I read that pretty sarcastically. So, God splits a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water comes out of it. Let me say it again. God splits the ground and just makes water come forth. After Samson drinks, his strength returns, and he is revived. That’s why he named it Hakkore Spring, which is still in Lehi today. And he judged Israel 20 years in the days of the Philistines.

Look at what’s going on here. Who gets the credit for Samson defeating a thousand Philistines? Just pop quiz. Who accomplished that? Was that Samson, or was that the Holy Spirit on Samson? The Holy Spirit on Samson, yeah. Who gets the credit for delivering Samson from his foolishness every time? Is it Samson’s ingenuity, or is it God? It’s God. Okay, thank you, guys. Yeah.

But look at who Samson’s remembering. Verse 17, he names that place Jawbone Hill. He names it after the weapon he picked up. Not after the God who provided the victory. He doesn’t name it God, you got the victory. He doesn’t name it God provided. He doesn’t name it God the warrior. He names it after the weapon he chose. A weapon he wasn’t supposed to touch as a Nazarite.

And then look at how he memorializes the spring where God fed him. Your Bible should have a little letter or number after Hakkore Spring. Directly translated, that means the spring of one who cried out. Not the one who hears. Not the spring of the God who split the ground. Not the spring of the faithful God who hears the cries of His people. The spring of the one who called.

Man, the weapon and the provision, Samson keeps looking at himself. He keeps directing attention at himself. So that everybody who would enter these places would remember Samson’s efforts, not God’s. Man, Samson is so incredibly arrogant. So incredibly self-centered. And unfortunately, for me, so incredibly relatable.

I want to look at this and say, “Why does Samson keep doing this?” Why does he keep making life all about him? Then the Holy Spirit gets on me and says, “Jeremy, are you any different?” I look at some of the success of our church. I look at the baptisms. I look at growing attendance. I look at growing giving. And I’m sorry, guys. I want to name that strategy hill. Leadership hill. Faith hill. Not the God who gives fruit. Not the one who has held Sauldam for 185 years. I want to memorialize me.

Or when life gets hard, when I get thirsty in the dry place, I want to look at God and say, “God, don’t you see me? Don’t you see the effort I’m giving? Don’t you see what I’m trying to do for you?”

Y’all, this is personal. This is a week and a half ago. I’m laying in bed with a fever and sick. And I’m wondering, “God, where are you? I’m stuck here in this bed. My wife’s got to take care of everything for our family. I can’t keep any food down. God, where are you? I’m thirsty. Where are you, God?” And God’s looking at me. He is like, “Jeremy, your world. How small is your mind that you are so trapped in this 24-hour period of discomfort that you can’t see a lifetime of My faithfulness to you? How small are you to think that any good thing happening at church is because of you? Jeremy, I can take you out and put somebody else in your position tomorrow. And I would not miss a beat.”

Man, you and me, I hope you recognize there is not a thing different between us and Samson. Can I offend somebody? You make life about you, too. But guess what? God can use anyone and anybody. And the Holy Spirit out-muscles our weakness.

What’s the real difference between you and Samson? It’s not your cultural background. Ladies, it’s not your biological sex. Guys, it’s not our lack of superhuman strength. The ultimate difference is the presence of the Holy Spirit in an ongoing pattern. Samson had the gift of the Holy Spirit resting on him momentarily for a time. You and I, because of the finished work of Jesus, have the opportunity of the Holy Spirit inhabiting us for the rest of our lives.

Look at verse one with me. Later on during the wheat harvest there were three special festivals in the life of Israel, three times when all the men of Israel were supposed to gather in Jerusalem and make special offerings back to the Lord. Three times when all of Israel was supposed to descend on the city of Jerusalem and gather around the temple for God to do something special for them. One of the times was Passover. We see Jesus use that in the upper room when He gives us the Lord’s Supper. Another one of those times was remembering the Exodus when they would all sleep in tents. The final time is the Feast of Weeks when they would celebrate God’s faithfulness during the wheat harvest. That would later be renamed Pentecost. 50 days after the Passover, God’s people would celebrate their deliverance from Egypt through the Exodus. 50 days after they would recognize God’s redemption, they would celebrate God’s faithfulness and His provision of life. New life that’s restored every year.

Acts chapter 2 comes around eventually and it’s this moment where all the Jews from different cultures are gathered in Jerusalem celebrating Pentecost, celebrating the provision of God through the wheat harvest. And that’s the day the Holy Spirit would use to descend on the 120 gathered disciples in an upper room. Disciples who were deathly afraid because they just saw Jesus Christ die on a cross and then inexplicably they can’t find Him in a tomb, but He keeps appearing to them with these nail scars in His hands, with this puncture mark in His side saying, “Guys, I died for real. I died. NOW I’M BACK TO LIFE.” THAT keeps happening. And then Jesus ascends up to heaven. And you know what they’re doing? They’re afraid and they’re waiting and they’re praying in an upper room. And then the Holy Spirit descends on them. Not on a particular individual like anointing Peter for his leadership, but the Holy Spirit descends on all 120 of them. So that they all are filled with the Holy Spirit and they go out of that upper room and they start preaching the gospel. A message that they themselves were just starting to understand for the very first time. They start preaching it and then God used that to start saving thousands of people and accomplishing these miraculous works. And you know the best part of it? The Holy Spirit never left. He never left their souls, but He stayed inside of them walking with them for the rest of their lives.

What’s the real difference between you and Samson? It’s not that he could kill a thousand people and you can’t. It’s that the Holy Spirit would come on him for a moment, but you have access to the life of God in your soul for ALL OF YOUR LIFE. MAN, you don’t have to look at Samson and say, “God, if you could just let me do something like this once.” God’s looking at us saying, “I put my Spirit inside of you.” Man, I’m offering you a better way. I’m offering you a way out of your rage, a way out of needing to manipulate, a way out of your depression, and it’s Me in you.

Samson is us. We are Samson. The sparks of our issues grow with the raging wildfires in our lives, and we destroy people that we should love. It’s just the issue or the difference is Samson’s sinful sparks become literal wildfires, whereas our sparks just become issues with people where we judge and we burn against them. We need God. We need Him to change us. One of the reasons I love the Old Testament is because I get to see me without the help of God. This is who we are.

For you, it might be the spark of a white lie. Just a little fudging of the truth. And it grows into this fabricated story, and it ends with this consuming, embarrassing reveal where all your credibility is gone. For you, it might be the spark of a moment of lust on your phone. You see a waitress at the restaurant. And that spark grows into a fixation where you’re wondering about that person or that image day after day, and that fixation ultimately becomes an addiction to pornography or a moment of adultery. For you, it may be the spark of jealousy at a social media post. You’ve seen she posted again and her life is still perfect. And you’re bitter and you’re jealous cuz your life doesn’t look like the life that she’s curated online. And that grows into this frustration and this bitterness against her and all of her friends. So, you start judging her and eventually you’re slandering her and then ultimately you’re cutting people off feeling more isolated than you ever were. I’m not sure what your sparks are. But, I know for me that when my sparks grow, they become these wildfires and it hurts people.

God offers us a better way. See, we need something better than just a divine hero like Samson to deliver us from a momentary affliction. We need something even better than the divine law of God in the Old Testament, which reveals sinfulness but can never actually change it. Divine visit from the Holy Spirit for this momentary moments of power. We need God’s life inside of us. But, thankfully, the Holy Spirit out-muscles our weakness.

So, how’s He do it? How does the Holy Spirit change people like you and me? You see, it’s through our willing submission. Some of us, I’m convinced, we live life wrestling against the Holy Spirit. And He just wants to accomplish something beautiful in your soul. Even in this church. And He comes in and we try to put the Holy Spirit in a headlock and make Him do something that we want. We disallow Him access into the intimate parts of our lives or we cut Him off.

And God, you know what He’ll do if we resist Him? He’s happy to resist us. And He’ll just move, ’cause the eyes of God go to and fro on the face of the earth just looking for somebody that will call on His name. So, how does God out-muscle you? Or better question, how does God use you? Through you willingly submitting.

The first step is to recognize your weakness before God. Recognizing your weakness simply looks like confessing your sin and claiming the fact that you need Him. The first prayer that you pray every morning should be, “God, thank you,” and, “God, I need you.” Thank you for keeping me another night. God, I need you to help me today. God, thank you for holding me through the dark of night. Now, God, help me to walk in the light of Your presence today. God, I am sorry for my temptations. I am sorry for my frustratability. Lord, please get a hold of me today. You recognize your weakness before God.

But, you don’t just recognize your weakness, you also draw near to God. You draw near to the Holy Spirit. And I’ll tell you, we want to get real mystical about this. What’s the secret of feeling God’s presence? What’s the secret of this experience with God? And God’s like, pray. Read your Bible. Participate in church. Just draw near to God. Draw near to the Holy Spirit. Read your Bible every day. Pray more than just saying a wrote grace prayer over lunch today. Like pray as if God really is listening. And participate in the life of this church. Now, I’m talking come to Sunday school. Come on Wednesday nights. Be part of what’s happening in… Drawing near to God always requires drawing near to His people. Draw near to Him by drawing near to His people.

So, you recognize your weakness, you draw near to the Holy Spirit, and then finally, you’ve got to listen and submit to Him. ’Cause the Holy Spirit’s a person. And He wants to speak with you, Paula. Oh, and He wants to speak to you, man. Mr. Michael, the Holy Spirit, man, He wants to talk to you. You listen to Him. Ms. Diane, when He speaks, you do what He says. Rick, when He speaks to you, man, you submit. You do what He says.

He speaks to us through convictions and impressions. He tells us to stop doing bad things and start doing good things. Again, we want to make this so mystical, we want God to spell it out in our Cheerios, we want Him to put it up in the clouds, and sometimes it’s just the little voice that tells you, “Hey, you should stop gossiping.” It’s the little voice that says, “Get off your phone.” It’s the little voice that says, “Dude, stop looking at her.” And God’s just convicting us, He’s speaking to us, and other times it’s these impressions where it’s like, “Hey, yes, you can start tithing a full 10%.” “Hey, you can share your faith with this person.” “Hey, you should offer to pray for that need somebody just shared with you.” Man, if we will just listen, we will hear God all the time convicting us of the bad and giving us impressions toward the good.

You recognize your weakness, you draw near to the Holy Spirit, and then you listen and submit. See, like I said at the beginning, Samson is a raging man who runs from confrontation to confrontation. And as his passions and emotions escalate, his actions get more and more destructive, leaving more and more death in his wake. Yet, God had a plan to transform and use Samson. Are you ready for God to transform and use you? I’ll ask it again. Are you ready for God to transform and use you? I’ll ask it a different way. Where do you need the Holy Spirit to out-muscle your weakness? Maybe It’s in your financial habits, leading you further and further into a pit of debt that you can’t get out of. Maybe it’s uncontrollable anger that keeps boiling up against the people you love in these outbursts or seething resentments. Or maybe it’s to help you keep doing the good works that you’re trying to establish in your life, but you don’t have traction with yet. Maybe you need the Holy Spirit to out-muscle your weakness so that you can take a faith step, like getting baptized.

I want to close this way and help everybody. The first step I said is to simply recognize. Simply to recognize what might be going on in your life. If you will, you just close your eyes and bow your head with me. I’m not going to manipulate. I’m not going to force you to do anything. Ask this question to the Lord. Ask it as if you really believe He’s speaking. God, where do I need You to out-muscle my weakness? You just ask Him that on your own. Could be some sin you’re trying to fight. Or it could be a good thing that you’re trying to start. God, what’s my weakness I need You to out-muscle?

God, for those that are standing up, they are in touch with their weakness, and they are asking You right now to get a hold of them in their lives. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it’s impossible to please You because we must have faith to draw near to You. God, as these people stood up, they drew near. Now, I need You, God, to answer them. For the sin they are fighting, give them grace. For the steps of faith they they that they want to take, God, give them Your power. And for all of us, standing or seated, Holy Spirit, would You fill us and get a hold of our lives?