FAILURE AND FAITHFULNESS (4 OF 4)
by Craig Smith
Scripture: Judges 16:1-22
This content is part of a series.
Title: Failure and Faithfulness
Series: The Illusion of Strength (4 of 4)
Scripture: Judges 16:1-22
Author: Craig Smith
I. Where Are We Headed?
I want to talk to you today about making sure your trust is in the right place.
Opening story? [about watching these young guys boulder. trusting purely on strength and watching one guy take a big fall and thinking "that's just like Samson...way too much trust in his own strength"...then I thought I could do the same route using better technique...and I got past where he had been and then missed a grab for a hold and hit hard...everyone was like "are you ok?" which is all they said, but what I heard was, "are you ok, old man?" And I lay there thinking: I'm no better. I put my trust in my technique...and it got me into trouble, too.
Trusting in the wrong thing is a recipe for trouble. So I want to talk to you today about making sure your trust is in the right place.
If you want to follow along, we're going to be in Judges 16 today, but we're going to start in the final verse in chapter 15:
II. What Does God Say?
20 Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines. (Jdg. 15:20)
Now that's very similar to the last statement in the stories of each of the other leaders in the book of Judges and if we'd been reading Judges all the way through up to this point, we'd be conditioned to see this statement as the end of Samson's story. But this isn't the end of Samson's story. There's one more chapter. So why tell us something that sounds like the end of his story before telling us the end of his story? Because this is God's way of telling us that how Samson died is more important than how he lived.
To really understand the story of Samson...to avoid misunderstanding the story and thinking it's a celebration of strength instead of a revelation of the illusion of strength... and to get out of his story everything that God put in there for us, we have to look at Samson's whole life throug ...
Series: The Illusion of Strength (4 of 4)
Scripture: Judges 16:1-22
Author: Craig Smith
I. Where Are We Headed?
I want to talk to you today about making sure your trust is in the right place.
Opening story? [about watching these young guys boulder. trusting purely on strength and watching one guy take a big fall and thinking "that's just like Samson...way too much trust in his own strength"...then I thought I could do the same route using better technique...and I got past where he had been and then missed a grab for a hold and hit hard...everyone was like "are you ok?" which is all they said, but what I heard was, "are you ok, old man?" And I lay there thinking: I'm no better. I put my trust in my technique...and it got me into trouble, too.
Trusting in the wrong thing is a recipe for trouble. So I want to talk to you today about making sure your trust is in the right place.
If you want to follow along, we're going to be in Judges 16 today, but we're going to start in the final verse in chapter 15:
II. What Does God Say?
20 Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines. (Jdg. 15:20)
Now that's very similar to the last statement in the stories of each of the other leaders in the book of Judges and if we'd been reading Judges all the way through up to this point, we'd be conditioned to see this statement as the end of Samson's story. But this isn't the end of Samson's story. There's one more chapter. So why tell us something that sounds like the end of his story before telling us the end of his story? Because this is God's way of telling us that how Samson died is more important than how he lived.
To really understand the story of Samson...to avoid misunderstanding the story and thinking it's a celebration of strength instead of a revelation of the illusion of strength... and to get out of his story everything that God put in there for us, we have to look at Samson's whole life throug ...
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