4 Christian Relationship Lessons from the Life of Samson (Judges 13-16)

there’s so many great stories in the Bible that can teach us how to honor Christ in our relationships one such story is that of Samson in this video we’re gonna study his life and learn about what he did wrong essentially there’s two main ways that we can learn we can learn through observation and we can learn through experience one of the hard things to do is learn through observing other people’s experiences and and learning from their mistakes rather than having to learn the hard way so to speak and make those mistakes ourself so here are four ways that Samson ruined his relationships and ruined his life because of his poor relationship choices number one Samson ruined his life by giving his heart to people who did not love God when you read through a judges 13 through 16 Samson just kept falling for godless women over and over and over again in each time he did this his life was just thrown into complete chaos in judges 14 Samson Falls for a Philistine woman and he marries her and right from the wedding day things just went terribly wrong I’ll kind of summarize it here I encourage you to read it for yourself in judges 13 and 14 but what happens is he marries this woman on their wedding day he presents this riddle to her family and basically makes a bet like if you can solve this riddle you know when they have this wager they if they solve the riddle they win if he they don’t solve the riddle he wins and they had all this money involved and so obviously this is a problem and throughout their 7 day celebration Samson’s wife is just complaining to him over and over tell me the riddle you know tell me what the answer to this is he finally breaks down because she keeps nagging her nagging him over and over and then she instantly tells her family samson gets super mad about all this he leaves then the father-in-law of the girl thinks that samson is never coming back so then he gives the daughter to the best man in Samson’s wedding samson comes back gets really mad obviously that his wife has been given away to another man samson reacts by setting the whole town on fire by you know this crazy thing he does with these foxes let’s I’m on fire sends him through the field and then the town comes out and kills his wife and the father in retaliation to Samson then Samson goes and kills a thousand of the Philistines so all of this occurred out of this godless relationship so you think that Samson would have learned but in chapter 16 Samson sleeps with a prostitute and during that time he gets ambushed and this whole big thing happens then and then in just three verses later in Judges 16 Samson falls for another woman and this one is really what gets him for good her name was Delilah and the Philistines came and used her to get the secret for Samson’s strength he she finally seduced him she wanted to know his secret Samson clearly didn’t trust her because you know she wanted to know a secret he kept lying to her over and over again because he knew she wasn’t trustworthy but for whatever reason he finally broke down and told her the truth about the source of his strength the Philistines come they shave his head which was the source of his strength and they capture him in judges 16 verse 18 it says this when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart she sent and called the Lords of the Philistines saying come up again for he has told me all his meaning he’s told her the secret of his strength so point one for us what can we learn from Samson’s life don’t give your heart away to somebody who hasn’t first given their heart to God each of these three women that Sampson got involved with we’re not followers of God they weren’t people who loved God but Sampson got involved with them anyway and because he did that he caused all kinds of chaos in his life the second mistake that Sampson made was that he refused to listen to godly instructions from all accounts as we read through judges 13 through 16 it seems like Samson’s parents were actually pretty solid people they wanted to obey God and do what he said and right from the start when Sampson started getting off track and wanted to marry the Philistine woman is the first woman in his life they instantly warned him against that so Sampson said to his parents in judges 14 verses 1 through 3 I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at tonight now go get her for me as my wife but his father and mother said to him is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all our people that you must go take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines but Samson said to his father get her for me for she is right in my eyes now to set the context there they weren’t concerned about like interracial marriage you know like Israelites and all that it was more so that the Israelites were those who were following God at that time and the Philistines were following pagan gods and weren’t lovers of the one true God and so his parents were saying why are you falling for this person they don’t love God and they’re gonna lead you astray which is exactly what happened proverbs 12:15 says the way of a fool is right in his own eyes but a wise man listens to advice if you don’t want to ruin your life through making poor relationship decisions you need to be humble and listen to the counsel of those people who love you now what I’m not saying is that you just blindly follow your parents or you know spiritual authority figures in your life you’re the one who really needs to make those choices so how do you know who you should listen to and who you shouldn’t well you have to pay attention not just because people love you but only when they’re offering you a godly biblical advice when you read through judges 13 before Samson was even born they actually had like an angelic visitation and they gave the angel gave his parents specific instructions on how to raise Samson and that’s you know not saying that’s gonna be happening in our life and you should listen to people who say they you know heard an angel on how you’re supposed to live your life we’re in a different time period in the biblical story because we have the Word of God and the Holy Spirit has come to live in our hearts which was a different thing going on in the Old Testament but the same principle applies godly instruction God was speaking to his parents and when God speaks to you through other people that means that they will be helping you understand what the Word of God says and how to apply it to your life so if someone’s doing that and showing you what the Word of God says and they love you you have to be humble to receive that if you don’t want to ruin your love life and just ruin your life in general pretty interesting in proverbs 30 verse 17 it says the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the Ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures when you see when you read the rest of the story in judges this is what it says about Samson in judges 16 verse 21 and it says and the Philistine seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles and he ground at the mill in the prison so it’s like a parallel passage there like they’re saying your eyes will be plucked out by vultures if you disobey godly instruction and that’s exactly what happened to Samson he literally lost his eyes now of course that doesn’t mean we’re all you know that that exact thing is gonna happen to all of us but that principle is true and we ignore the truth and people are trying to help us we’re going to cause ourselves massive pain and injury by ignoring those truths number three you’ll ruin your love life if you live by emotion rather than walking with God prayerfully when you read through these passages and judges on Samson it’s like one emotional outbursts after the other he’s just constantly following his most intense impulse in the moment he likes this girl he instantly marries her he wants to be with this prostitute he just goes and gets with the prostitute he likes Delilah he just goes in with Delilah he’s not using his brain at all he’s not using his mind at all he gets mad at the Philistines he likes the whole town on fire he freaks out and kills a thousand people with a jawbone like he’s just out of control he’s constantly running around acting on impulse in fact the only times he’s actually praise to God in these passages is when he’s in a total crisis and he has nowhere else to turn he’s not prayerfully walking through life he only turns to God when he’s in absolute turmoil it says in judges 15 verse 18 and he was very thirsty and he called upon the Lord and said you have granted me this great salvation by the hand of your servant and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised meaning those who don’t follow you judges 16 verse 28 says then Samson called to the Lord and said O Lord God please remember me and please strengthen me only this once o God that it may be avenged on the Philistines from my two eyes so those are the only two times in these chapters where Samson actually calls out to God and praise to him that is not the equation for peace and a healthy life a healthy relationship life either the way to peace is when you prayerfully live moment to moment so you can make right choices and not get yourself into all this trouble to begin with the equation the peace is not get yourself into trouble and then call out to God so he can rescue you out of that trouble like God will do that sometimes but he loves us too much to constantly let us just make poor choices – you know then rescue us all the time he’s gonna discipline us by letting us experience the consequences of our choices so again you’re not gonna live peacefully you’re not gonna have a great relationship by getting in all this trouble and then calling out to God when you really need him rather you got to walk with God moment to moment so you don’t find yourself in these terrible situations to begin with and finally point 4 you’re gonna ruin your relationships and your love life and just your life in general if you’re blinded by your own strength in other words pride you know pride it was really at the heart of what set Samson down this terrible road of destruction and his strength is what really blinded him and that’s so true of many of us a lot of us who are loners or don’t go to church or don’t rely on other people the reality is a lot of times we’re pretty mature we know the Bible we have a lot of strengths and that that actually blinds us and we think we don’t need these fundamentals that God tells us we do need because of our strength and that’s exactly what happened to Samson he just was so strong he had so much going for him that he let his guard down and thought that the rules didn’t apply to him Romans 12 verses 1 through 3 say for by the grace given to me I say to every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned for as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function so we though many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another so no matter how strong you are God says that you’re a part of the body of Christ and the body of Christ has different members we’re not all you can’t just complete a body on your own you need others and Christians to be a part of your support system and you need to be a part of supporting others because God’s given us all these different variations of his gifting so don’t be blinded by your own strength maybe you can last for a while but eventually if you keep playing games and keep running on the edge because you think you can handle it eventually it’ll catch up to you just like it did with Samson well I’m mark from apply God’s Word com hope you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up if you did I’d love for you to 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