Hebrews chapter eleven. And verse thirty-two. And what shall I more say, for time would fail me to tell, of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Sampson, and of Jephthah, and of David, and also of Samuel? Time would fail me to tell. Now, I'm going to pick out from verse thirty-two one name. And if you're taking any notes, I'm not giving you any analysis, just character studies. You can put down Samson, S-A-M-S-O-M, right in the middle of that verse. a name that is only mentioned once the bare name in the whole of the New Testament. But, strangely enough, four chapters in the Bible are devoted to this amazing character. Judges chapter thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and sixteen give us the record of his life in the Old Testament. It's a strange life, an amazing life, and we are going to call him the boy who failed. As you look at his school career in the School of Faith, we see a brilliant start and then a strange slackness And in that neglect and that carelessness, you see failure increasing until at last you feel you can write him right off as far as his school days are concerned. Then very graciously God comes in in answer to his weakness. God's strength is made manifest in weakness and gives him his greatest victory in the closing moments of his life. and the Spirit of God has taken the character, Samson, and brought the character into the record of the school of faith. Now there is one verse in the New Testament which I would especially ask my young friends to note in one Corinthians chapter nine, verse thirty-seven. I'm sorry, verse twenty-seven. One Corinthians nine, verse twenty-seven, Paul is talking about the Christian race. He has said in verse twenty-four, Don't you know that all line up and start the race, but only one receives the prize? He says, verse twenty-five, every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. You'll find a good boxer or a good runner will give up drink and smoking. He'll give up late nights. He'll give up excessively luxurious food. He will abandon all lustful sex life. And he will give himself to the great task of being fit for the fight or fit for the race. And if men sacrifice for a race or fight, how much more the Christian for the race of faith and the fight of faith. Temperate in all things, now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainty, So fight I, not as one that beateth the air. There must be a real purpose in this battle, this race. Now I'll say a verse, the important verse. But I keep under, I bruise. I actually fight my own body to keep it in its rightful place. I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, bondage. lest by any means, when or after that I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway, should be rejected, should be disqualified from the race, should be laid aside as no use. You see, Paul saw the danger of being a good, successful servant of God, and yet, and yet, falling out of the race, being written off, disqualified. And I am sorry to say it, Samson gives us a record of one who became for a time a cross to weigh, laid aside, and yet God in his tremendous mercy heard his prayer and in the closing moments of his life gave him the biggest victory that he ever had. And so this morning we are pondering Samson's life. We want to meet Samson, the old boy of the school of faith. Now, dear Christian friends, I feel that the one solemn lesson that God would teach us is this. In your Christian life, God says sin shall not have dominion over you. These words are not spoken to sinners. You can go to the gambling tables. You can move amongst the multitudes of the children of Adam in the flesh. You see their sin abounding, but these words aren't spoken to them. They need the ministry of reconciliation. These words are spoken by Paul in Romans, and he says, Romans six, fourteen, sin shall not have dominion over a blood-bought child of God. You see, is it possible? Possible? Do you know your own heart? Possible? Do you keep your eyes open amongst the saints? When you say I don't drink, I'm not immoral. Do you tell tales and rob people of their reputation? Do you pass on nasty little news flashes about the meetings? Do you find pride sitting on the throne of your life? Do you find self again and again wanting to push itself forward? This is the sin that dominates God's children, and God has made every provision for sin not to have dominion over the child of God. Now, sin can blast and spoil God's best. We shall see this in Samson's life. And there's only one way of dealing with sin. It must be confessed. It must be dealt with. And the only hope of Christians living victoriously and proving the strength of God for victory is a surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and then by faith. moment by moment, faith resting in the risen Christ, kept by His love. Moment by moment, life from above, looking to Jesus till glory shall shine. Moment by moment, O Lord, I am thine. Now in our study, I'm going to ask you to take a key verse. Will you turn back to Judges? and find those four chapters, and right in the heart of those four chapters I want you in chapter sixteen of Judges to notice verse six. And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee. Now here is an amazing picture. A delightful, wonderful, beautiful, charming woman of the Philistines, Delilah, is looking down into the face and the eyes of this big, strong man who was raised up of God to be a deliverer of Israel from the Philistines. and she can't understand him. She wants to find out the secret of that life. She's heard of his great exploits, of the tremendous strength that surges through his body. And she wants to find out this secret sadly enough to rob him of it. She knows that this man into whose eyes she looks is a man of like passions with all other men she's ever met in her life. He wouldn't be in her home if that wasn't true. And yet, strangely enough, he's different. And she wants to find out the secrets of that difference. What is the secret of his strength? And she looks into his face and she says, Tell me, wherein thy great strength lieest, and wherewith thou mayest be bound to afflict thee. Now this boy was called Samson at his birth. And you might note this, I want some of the young ones to jot it down in the margin. The word Samson means sunny. Now don't you put down in your margin S-O-N-N-Y, please, just stop a minute. You put down S-U-M-N-Y, sunny, for the word Samson means sunshine. In other words... He is sunshine, and isn't it lovely to have a boy who's a little bit of sunshine, sunshine all along the way, instead of being a miserable little brat? Oh, I tell you, if you've got a boy or a girl who's sunshine, you've got something in your home, a little bit of sunshine. Sunny, sunshine. Now, what does this mean? It just means this... that this boy at his birth was given the name Sunshine because he was a Nazarite, set apart to the Lord, separated to the Lord, and there would be nothing between him and his Lord. And the Sunshine of the love of God. He would live in it. Why, sometimes when we are trying to describe the word joy to the boys and girls, we say, J, oh, why, J stands for Jesus, and why stands for you, and there's just a great big north between. And when there's nothing between you and Jesus, that's joy, and it is. The joy of the Lord comes when there's nothing between you and Jesus. And this man was born to be a Nazarite, to live his life with nothing between his heart and life and God. And God was going to entrust this Nazarite with divine strength to be a deliverer, to beat the Philistines and deliver God's children. Sunshine. Now the story of a Nazarite, if you want to look it up, I'm not going into it, much as one would love to, is found in Numbers chapter six. Anyone could be a Nazarite, a man or a woman, a young person. They could vow the vow of a Nazarite, which was separation to the Lord. They could keep that vow for a number of years, and then they could give it up if they wish. But Samson, from his birth, was born to be a Nazarite, separated unto the Lord. And in his separation to the Lord, God called him to a life that was holy. Now again, I press this point, and I want my young friends especially to get it. Don't you be frightened of the word holy, or holiness. The word holy simply means H-O-L-Y, and you can enlarge it a bit, put a W in the front, W-H-O-L, slip an L in, Y. Holy God. Holiness simply means spiritual health. And if I go to any young Christian, I say to them, Now look here, I am talking on the physical. Would you like to be a strong boy? Oh, yes. Would you like to be a beautiful girl? Oh, yes. You see, now to be a strong and beautiful Christian is holiness. The strength of the Lord and the beauty of the Lord upon a life that is holy is. And you should never be frightened of holiness. Be holy, said the Lord, as he is holy. God calls us to this life. Now, the gracious filling of the Holy Spirit is not something to be frightened of. Do you know there are two sides to a coin. I've got in my hand a half a dollar. And if I said to you, what's this side, you would say, at least I suppose you would, we do down in Jamaica, that's heads and that's tails. There are two sides. And sometimes when you're tossing up for some game or match, what is it, heads or tails. And there are two sides to the coin. You can distinguish between the two sides, but you can't separate them. I can't take the heads and give it to you and slip the tails in my pocket. There are two sides of one thing you can distinguish but you can't separate, and in the Bible there are two sides to a great subject but you can never separate them. There's the Lordship of Jesus Christ, inner life and the filling of the Holy Spirit of God, and you cannot separate them. You can distinguish between them. Now, bluntly, and it hurts sometimes, if you are not filled with the Holy Spirit, then Jesus Christ is not Lord of your life. The filling of the Holy Spirit is the gracious, ungrieved, Holy Spirit possessing, possessing the possessions of Jesus Christ your Lord. And if he's Lord of your religious life, and Lord of your social life, and Lord of your sex life, and Lord of your bank balance, and Lord of your sport, and Lord of your reading, and Lord of all the areas of your life, an ungrieved Holy Spirit can possess Christ's possessions, and under his gracious control magnify Christ in your life and body. And this is the life that God called Samson to from his birth. From his birth he was separated to the Lord, and the Holy Spirit of God began, of course, to take possession and mightily magnify God in that life. Now, I don't want to spend any time on the negatives, but I would just say this, in his separation to the Lord, he was separated from certain things. And if you read through that great chapter, the Nazarite's vow, number six, you will find he was separated from the fruit of the vine, which is wine. He was separated from long, short hair. He had to have the hair long. It was an outward mark, and he mustn't touch dead bodies. And I suppose the Christian who bears the marks of a Nazarite today will really show his part of separation by not going to worldly places and mingling with the world in their places of sin and amusement. He will say no, just as the Nazarite said, I can find my joy apart from wine. I find it in the Lord. so the joy of the Lord is our strength. Then the question of a man's hair, it's a shame for a man to have long hair, and a man to go out with long locks was out of fashion, and everyone said, Oh, he's a Nazarite. And so the Nazarite was not following worldly passions. The mark showed that he wanted only the eye of the Lord to watch him and say, I'm pleased with him. And when it comes to dead bodies, of course, it means he wasn't to be defiled by death. And the old call, come ye out and be separate. Touch not the unclean, the sin, the defilement, the death, the stain of that world that gives Christ no place. And so these marks of an Ezraite are seen today in God's children, in their separation to the Lord. And you know, Christ should satisfy. There should be no need. I don't like to think of any preacher who stands up all the time and says to young Christians, You've got to. You've got to. You've got to. You mustn't. You mustn't. No, Christianity is not a negative thing like that, even though our young people must have standards set for them, and they must be trained. I love to think that Christianity is the power of a new affection gripping a life, and a young person saying, Lord Jesus, I want to be separated to thee. You've captured my heart. I want you to be Lord of my life. I want to live victoriously and taste of thy strength. Now, if you have Judges open, you might like to look in four chapters... at a little chorus that begins to unfold through these chapters. It's very, very thrilling. Judges chapter thirteen, verse twenty-five. And the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of the Lord, began to move Samson at times. Isn't that lovely? In a separated life... The Holy Spirit, ungrieved, can begin to do His great movements in that life. Now you look at the next chapter, verse six. Judges fourteen, verse six. And the Holy Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Samson. This is the chorus that's going to run all through these chapters. In a life that is separated to the Lord, the Spirit of God in His mighty movements is strengthening Him for adventure after adventure. And He's tasting what we can taste of to be strengthened with might by God's Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith. Turn over the page, chapter fourteen, verse nineteen. and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon Samson. Look at chapter fifteen and verse fourteen. And when Samson came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him, and the Holy Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords and his arms became flat. That's the story of Samson's life. That's the little chorus as he began to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. In other words, Samson's muscle and skill and personality and body was under the gracious control of the Holy Spirit. And there were untold possibilities that Samson would be the instrument in God's hands to bring victory to God's people. But you know, the world and the flesh, the Philistine world, the outer foe, the flesh, the inward foe, and somewhere around it all the great infernal foe, the devil, the world, the flesh and the devil combine to try and attack that life and bring it down to defeat. They want to break down the separation of Samson to his Lord. And, oh, if you read these four chapters through carefully, you'll be asking some strange questions. Sampson, are you an altruite? Yes. Are you separated to the Lord? Yes. Are you tasting of the Lord's strength? Yes. For years. Sampson! What were you doing messing about in the vineyards of Tamneth, amongst the grapes? Weren't you told to be separated from the vine and the fruit of the vine? Oh, yes, I just turned in for a bit. Sampson, where did you get that honey? You gave them the riddle. Out of the strong came forth sweetness. Where did you get it? Was it a dead body? Yes, oh yes. I killed a lion, and I went in and put my hands in the body. The bees had made a nest there. Weren't you told not to touch a dead body? Sampson, when they surrounded the city and caught you in Gaza, and you went out and carried the great gates away for twenty miles and dumped them on a hillside, why were you there? And unfolding in these chapters is the slow breakdown of this man's separation to the Lord as a Nazarite. Didn't come in five minutes. No, like those great big beachy head cliffs on the English Channel, the winter storms beat on them and beat on them and undermine them for years sometimes. getting into the caves, eating out the foundations. And one night, one night, in a great storm, all of a sudden there's a tremendous crash. And hundreds of thousands of tons fall down into the English Channel. Let me tell you, if you ever hear of an evangelist or an elder or a dear Christian woman, and all of a sudden there comes the crash of disgrace and weakness in their life, don't you think it's a matter of five minutes? Don't you think it's a matter of temptation and sudden fall? It's not. It's the breakdown of their separation to the Lord through years. They gave up the morning watch. They got out of bed and shaved their chin and had their coffee and went out into the day without any spiritual food. They began to play with the world here and nibble with the world there and allow a little habit to come back there and slowly and steadily. What happens to Samson happens to many today and they become castaways. They're out of the race and the fight, laid aside, not lost, but rejected. This qualifies. Poor Samson. Listen. Think of the man who went into that room to meet him. And think of the man who came out. He went in a conqueror. He came out a trap. He went in a victor. He came out vanquished. He went in an overcomer. He came out overcome. He went in a deliverer. He came out defeated. He went in commissioned. He came out a castaway. He went in a master. He came out mastered. He went in powerful. He came out powerless. He went in seeing. He came out sightless. He went in strong, he came out weak. He went in filled, he came out empty. He went in with a shout of joy, and he was led out with a moan of despair. Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength life, and wherewith thou mayest be bound to afflict thee. And at first he wouldn't tell her. She wanted to get that secret to rob him. And I can only say to you, dear Christians, young and old, oh, God in Yosemite, if only we Christians were as eager to lay hold of the secret of Samson's strength as that woman was to rob him of it, that we might enjoy that strength in our Christian lives. What a difference it would make. Samson told her three lies. You'll find them in chapter sixteen, verse seven. He said, first, if you bind me with seven green bow-springs. You'll find a second lie in verse eleven. If they bind me fast with new ropes. The third lie in verse seventeen. No. Verse thirteen, if thou weavest the seven locks of my head with a web. Christians, we are telling these lies. Oh God, I told them. I've heard Christians telling them for years. Why can't you be the victorious, strong and beautiful Christian displaying the magnificent Christ that God planned? Why? Well, you see, I'm bound with seven green bowl strings that were never dried. I'm tied up to seven days of circumstances. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Seven days I'm tied by circumstances that don't fit me to being the victorious Christian you're talking about. You see, it's all right for evangelists and missionaries and those who could have plenty of spare time. But I'm just so busy and tied by circumstances, it's not for me. That's a lie. You dare not go to that throne of grace that we've been hearing about and look into your gracious Lord's face and say, Lord, you never gave me sufficiency to live victoriously. I was tied by seven green bow strings, seven days a week. My circumstances robbed me of ever being a victorious Christian. That's a lie. You dare not look into the face of your Lord and talk like that. Have you ever heard the new ropes told as a lie? Oh, you see, it was all right when I was a young fellow of eighteen and nineteen, but now I'm married and look at my responsibility and my new happenings in life, and I am tied by new low ropes. Oh, sir, no, madam. You dare not talk to your lord like that. He's made all sufficiency for you. You cannot bring these lies to the throne. What do you know down in Florida last, let's see, January, February was it? A big dear businessman from one of the northern cities came up to me. He said, it's all right for you fellows who've got all your time to be victorious Christians. He says, we are tied to business in Chicago. And I said, sir, that's a lie. He didn't like it. As Ed Samson told it long ago, he said, If you take my hair and you tie it to the weaver's beam, I'll be like any other man. And when she tied it, he shook it, and it was a lie. No, no, no, no. The Lord, risen from the dead as given of his spirit, his own life, to live it through you victoriously. to be magnified in your bodies. But today the Nazarite separation to the Lord is broken down. The nibbling into the cliffs sometimes produces the awful disaster of the clifffall. There came a moment when God who watched over sunshine said, I can't trust him anymore. And as he came out giving that woman all his heart, She urged him. She said, tell me, you say, you love me. You won't tell me the secret. You're telling me lies. The divided heart of Samson that was divided between his Lord and a Philistine woman told her all his heart. And that moment, as she pressed him daily, and he did it, the task. It's my hair, the outward symbol that speaks of my separation. And asleep she took the seven lovely locks off his head. The Philistines are upon me, Samson, and he wished not. He didn't know that the entrusted power of twenty years that had surged within him was gone, removed, and disqualified, laid aside, and cast away no use as an instrument in the Lord's hands. He shook himself and said, I will go out as at other times, but it wasn't there. And they got him, and they gouged his eyes out, he lost his sight, and they bound him, he lost his liberty. And I say it with a breaking heart, there are Christians today on the Californian coast, and they have no vision for God. No vision. They're blind, Christian guests. And they've known liberty. They're bound, just like Samson was. If you ever hear them give a testimony, they talk about what they used to do thirty years ago. Oh, it's a shocking end, but it doesn't. There's a thrill about it. You say he was lost man, no he wasn't. At the expense of Jehovah Deacon gets the glory as they watch him grinding at the mill, a slave. But I can see him putting his hands out to his scalp. They've taken off seven locks, but they couldn't get the root out of his scalp. His hair began to grow again. Thank God, a born-again believer always has the root of the matter in him. I believe in eternal security. I don't believe a soul that's born of God can ever be unborn. They may disgrace the Father, they may wander as a prodigal. But as he feels the hair growing, and he sees that great mass of people gathered in the Philistine Palace, He comes to the place led by a little boy where his arms go round the key pillars. And let me tell you that last prayer of Samson is most revealing. I can see him as he stands there, praying for the strength to come back. Verse twenty-eight, verse chapter sixteen. Oh, God! Lord, God, remember me. I pray thee. And strengthen me. I pray thee. Only this once. I pray thee. That I may be avenged of the Philistines from my eyes. And all of a sudden it came, what he had known moving in him for twenty years, what he had almost grown used to, and had taken for granted, and played with at times. He pulls three key pillars in, and the crash comes. The story ends, he slew at his death more than they that he slew of the Philistines during his life. Verse thirty. Brothers and sisters, take warning from Samson, the boy who failed, the boy who failed. And yet in his failure, the moment he touched the place of weakness, O Lord, in all my weakness, you strengthen me again. God's strength was made perfect in his weakness. May it be a solemn letter. All front of the battle of the fight and pressing toward the mark for the high calling of God. To the younger ones or to any who are defeated, take it as a solemn warning. His name is in the register of the men and women of the old boys, the old girls, the school of faith. And yet you can see the story of Samson being enacted today, even in nineteen sixty-four, in the lives of some of God's deitude. God bless you.