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WHEN YOU PLAY WITH FIRE (9 OF 10)

by Jeff Schreve

Scripture: Judges 13:1-25, Judges 14:1-20, Judges 16:1-31
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"When You Play with Fire" (9 of 10)
Series: Judges - Before There Were Kings
Pastor Jeff Schreve
Primary Scripture: Judges 13-16


Amen.

If you have your Bible, please turn to Judges chapter 13. I've entitled the message today, "When You Play With Fire." Most of us know that expression, "When you play with fire, or if you play with fire, you're going to get burned." And we're going to see our last judge, Samson, how he got burned playing with fire.

Now, in the late 70s, early 80s there was an athlete who played football. He was an all-star in high school. He got recruited by the Ohio State Buckeyes. He was their starting quarterback. Three years in a row he was an All-American. In his senior year in college, he was one of the Heisman hopefuls, Heisman finalists. He was drafted number four in the 1982 draft by the Colts organization. They were the Baltimore Colts. Now they're the Indianapolis Colts. His name was Art Schlichter. Art Schlichter had tremendous potential. And when the Colts drafted him, they said, "This is our future. This guy is going to be it for us in the quarterback position." They had high hopes. But he came to training camp, and he was out of shape, and they said he was distracted. They didn't know why. One NFL pundit said about Art Schlichter, "He had great promise, but it never materialized because he was never focused on what he was doing." Well, one of the problems with Art Schlichter - there's a picture of him, as a Colt, a handsome guy, so much potential to be great, but he had a problem. And the problem in his life was gambling. And it wasn't just a little issue with gambling. It was a gigantic issue with gambling. The story I read about him said from the winter of 1982 to the spring of 1983 he ran up a gambling debt of $490,000. He wiped out his whole signing bonus just like that. And then he began to be in tremendous debt. Well, he didn't play well in professional football. He didn't last long. He ended ...

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