Latest / Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers / #115 Samson: The Flawed SuperHero

Transcript

#115 Samson: The Flawed SuperHero · Deep-Grace Diving with Tim Wright and Terey Summers

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[music]
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SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, Tim Wright here, along with John Burgess.
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SPEAKER_01: Hey there.
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SPEAKER_00: Deep Grace Diving Podcast,
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SPEAKER_00: still without Terry,
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SPEAKER_00: who is still doing Les Miserables and will continue to do so through the end
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SPEAKER_00: of October.
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SPEAKER_00: John, the other day I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man.
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SPEAKER_00: Brand new day.
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SPEAKER_00: Loved it.
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SPEAKER_00: Went to see it with my grandson Judah and his dad, Corey.
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SPEAKER_00: Big, big fan.
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SPEAKER_01: You're not the only ones who's loving that movie right now.
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SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
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SPEAKER_00: Who's your favorite superhero?
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SPEAKER_01: Iron Man, no question.
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SPEAKER_01: Iron Man, yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: Mine has always been Batman, as in the 1966 Batman.
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SPEAKER_01: Bam Pow.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Bam Pow, that's right.
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SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who don't know who that is, just Google it, Adam West.
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SPEAKER_00: They played it straight, but it was just straight goofball stuff.
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SPEAKER_00: I was a kid when it was on, so I was about nine, ten years old when it came out.
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SPEAKER_00: One of the first shows in living, vibrant color.
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SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a color TV at that time,
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SPEAKER_00: but my friend Johnny Green,
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SPEAKER_00: it's kind of a funny name for a guy with a color TV,
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SPEAKER_00: he had a color TV and we got to see Batman.
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SPEAKER_00: The first time I saw that thing and all those vivid primary colors, man, it was...
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SPEAKER_00: It was trippy.
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SPEAKER_00: It was so cool.
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SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to be Batman.
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SPEAKER_00: And man, I love that show.
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SPEAKER_00: And I love it even more as an adult because now I get all the humor to it.
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SPEAKER_00: The reason why we're talking superheroes is because we have a superhero story from
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible today we're looking at.
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SPEAKER_00: We're second week into a series looking at flawed men of the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: And the reason why we say men is because while there are instances of some women in
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SPEAKER_00: the Bible who were evil, i.e.
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SPEAKER_00: Jezebel, for the most part, the women of faith come across quite well.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, we've got exceptions with Sarah who manipulates to get her husband pregnant and
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SPEAKER_00: then isn't crazy about it when he gets her slave woman pregnant.
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SPEAKER_00: And we've got Rebecca who schemes to get her son Jacob the birthright.
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SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, the women in the Bible, the women of faith, hold up.
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SPEAKER_00: It's the men who seem to have a problem.
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SPEAKER_00: And we're looking at some of them.
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SPEAKER_00: Last week, we looked at the story of David.
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SPEAKER_00: And today,
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SPEAKER_00: we're going to look at the story of Samson,
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SPEAKER_00: who was played magnificently in the 1940s movie,
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SPEAKER_00: Samson and Delilah, starring Victor Mature.
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SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who don't know who Victor Mature is,
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SPEAKER_00: you want to look that up and Google it.
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SPEAKER_00: One of my all-time favorite actors, just a quick story, and then we'll go into it.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm a huge fan of Victor Mature.
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SPEAKER_00: And the first movie I ever saw of his was a sword and sandal movie called Demetrius
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SPEAKER_00: and the Gladiators, which was the sequel to The Robe.
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SPEAKER_00: The Robe was the first movie made in CinemaScope.
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SPEAKER_00: Google it, my friends.
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SPEAKER_00: And I found on eBay the helmet that he wore in the movie during his gladiator scenes.
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SPEAKER_00: And I bought it.
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SPEAKER_00: And my wife walked in 10 minutes after I bought it.
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SPEAKER_00: She said, did you just spend so and so amount of money, such and such amount of money?
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SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, I did.
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SPEAKER_00: I prayed about it for a week, and the button just pushed.
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SPEAKER_00: So I had this gladiator helmet from a 1954-1955 movie, which was just cool.
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SPEAKER_00: And during COVID, I made some videos wearing it, playing Goliath
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SPEAKER_00: against David.
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SPEAKER_00: And then just a couple of years ago, I thought, well, I think it's time for me to offload it.
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SPEAKER_00: We were getting rid of stuff.
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SPEAKER_00: So I sent it out to a prop store in California,
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SPEAKER_00: in Hollywood, and they had a big auction that went on and it didn't sell.
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SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: So I thought, what am I going to do with this thing?
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SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know what?
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going to get a hold of his daughter.
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SPEAKER_00: Her name is Victoria.
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SPEAKER_00: And I got ahold of her through her Facebook page.
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SPEAKER_00: And I said, I have this helmet from your dad's movie, Demetrius and the Gladiators.
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SPEAKER_00: My wife and I are going to be in the LA area.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know where you live.
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SPEAKER_00: I would love to give this to you.
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SPEAKER_00: And it just so happened that she was in LA at the time that we were going to be there.
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SPEAKER_00: So she said, let's meet at Bob's Big Boy.
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SPEAKER_00: Which is one of my favorite restaurants.
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SPEAKER_00: And it was one of the original Bob's Big Boys.
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SPEAKER_00: We got to meet at this iconic Bob's Big Boy restaurant.
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SPEAKER_00: And I had lunch with Victoria Mature, Vic's daughter.
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SPEAKER_00: And we talked about his movies.
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SPEAKER_00: And she took a video of me wearing the helmet.
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SPEAKER_00: And she posted it on her page.
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SPEAKER_00: And every once in a while, she'll check in with me.
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SPEAKER_00: And, um,
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SPEAKER_00: so you are now,
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SPEAKER_00: uh, like two degrees away from Victor mature two or three degrees away.
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SPEAKER_01: Cause I've never thought I'd get there.
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SPEAKER_00: And then our audience, of course, right.
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SPEAKER_00: Four or five degrees from Victor mature.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is, and so it's amazing.
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SPEAKER_01: Now, is she basically your age or my age
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SPEAKER_00: or she is, uh, she's actually younger than I am.
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SPEAKER_00: He was in his sixties.
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SPEAKER_00: I think when he had her.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting talking to her because she said she really knew her dad as
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SPEAKER_00: an older man and she'd been watching all of his movies to see what he was like as
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SPEAKER_00: a younger man because she never knew him as a young man.
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SPEAKER_00: And of course, to have all these movies.
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SPEAKER_00: And he's the one who,
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SPEAKER_00: by the way,
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SPEAKER_00: the quote is different for different contexts,
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SPEAKER_00: but he was once trying to get an apartment And they said,
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SPEAKER_00: we don't have, we don't hire, or we don't lease out to actors.
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SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, that's not a problem.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm an actor.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not an actor.
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SPEAKER_00: And I have 60 movies to prove it.
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SPEAKER_00: So he was not one of the most well-received.
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SPEAKER_00: He had a few movies where he just got big bopful reviews and a lot of them
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SPEAKER_00: where they were just sort of, but every movie I've seen him in, fantastic.
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SPEAKER_00: Victor Matur, highly recommend it.
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SPEAKER_00: So you all say, well, what does this have to do anything?
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SPEAKER_00: Well, it has to do with the fact that he played Samson.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And Samson is one of our flawed heroes.
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SPEAKER_00: And I want to give this disclaimer again.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to talk a lot about it this week because I talked about it last week.
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SPEAKER_00: We need to be careful when we look at these stories to read them as they are meant to be read.
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SPEAKER_00: And we're in a day and age where there are certain people,
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SPEAKER_00: certain Christian leaders,
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SPEAKER_00: who use these stories and misuse these stories to justify their actions and
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SPEAKER_00: to justify the actions of their political leaders to say,
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SPEAKER_00: look, this is what God does.
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SPEAKER_00: He uses flawed people.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's not the point of these stories.
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SPEAKER_00: The point of these stories is the damage that is done when people of God go off the rails.
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SPEAKER_00: And the carnage that they can cause.
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SPEAKER_00: And so this is not an endorsement of evil people.
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SPEAKER_00: These are stories about men of God who make really bad decisions.
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SPEAKER_00: And as we saw last week in David's story,
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SPEAKER_00: he essentially raped Bathsheba,
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SPEAKER_00: murdered her husband,
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SPEAKER_00: and he was a diminished man after that for the rest of his life.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're trying to go ahead.
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SPEAKER_01: Tim, I keep thinking,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: we're trying to sort of walk this fine line of,
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SPEAKER_01: you know, these are heroes of the Bible.
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SPEAKER_01: There's there are lessons here.
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SPEAKER_01: There's beauty here.
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SPEAKER_01: There's they're in the Bible for a reason.
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SPEAKER_01: And at the same time.
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SPEAKER_01: We don't want to excuse the flaws.
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SPEAKER_01: Just because there's another side of the coin.
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SPEAKER_01: So we want to do something that I don't think many people do,
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SPEAKER_01: and that's discuss them all and learn from them all.
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: I think it's good to say God uses flawed people,
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SPEAKER_00: but God does not delight in the flaws and the pain that those flaws can cause.
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SPEAKER_00: And God does not delight in The rebellion of these flawed leaders who act
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SPEAKER_00: on their own for their own egotistical purposes to the detriment of the people
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SPEAKER_00: of God.
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SPEAKER_00: And so God does call them back.
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SPEAKER_00: God does offer forgiveness, yes,
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SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't excuse the carnage that these men often commit
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SPEAKER_00: when they take their eyes off of God and start to pursue their own agendas,
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SPEAKER_00: for example.
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SPEAKER_00: So this is not in any way, shape,
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SPEAKER_00: or form an endorsement to say,
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SPEAKER_00: well, this person isn't a man of God, but God uses flawed leaders.
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SPEAKER_00: No.
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SPEAKER_00: If they're evil or if they do hurtful things,
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SPEAKER_00: God doesn't endorse them,
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SPEAKER_00: just as God doesn't endorse the pain that Christian leaders can level
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SPEAKER_00: against other people.
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SPEAKER_00: So these are cautionary tales.
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SPEAKER_00: About what happens when we take our eyes off of God or off of Jesus and
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SPEAKER_00: yet how God will come and will bring about restoration.
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SPEAKER_00: But as we saw in the story of David,
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SPEAKER_00: he ends up a diminished man and it doesn't end well for Samson either.
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SPEAKER_00: So let's put these into context.
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SPEAKER_00: These are cautionary tales meant to help us remember that we're called to be people of God.
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SPEAKER_00: Not people who simply wear the name God and then act in ways that are opposite
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SPEAKER_00: to what God wants.
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SPEAKER_00: So that's my disclaimer.
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SPEAKER_00: So let's talk a little bit about Samson.
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SPEAKER_00: Samson, and you can find his story in the book of Judges,
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SPEAKER_00: starting in chapter 13 going through chapter 16.
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SPEAKER_00: And I love this story, even though, you know, I learned it in Sunday school.
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SPEAKER_00: And again, we sort of glossed over the heart of the story.
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SPEAKER_00: But I can remember in the old day flannel boards and flannel, you know what flannel is.
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SPEAKER_00: And then you would just put these cut out colorful characters on and you would tell
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SPEAKER_00: the story that way.
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SPEAKER_00: Samson, now the judges,
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SPEAKER_00: by the way,
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SPEAKER_00: are leaders that God would raise up when they're before there was a king in Israel.
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SPEAKER_00: And the purpose of these judges was to call the people back to God.
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SPEAKER_00: So Samson is born.
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SPEAKER_00: It starts in verse 13.
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SPEAKER_00: Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.
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SPEAKER_00: So the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.
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SPEAKER_00: So this is a regular progression in the book of Judges.
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SPEAKER_00: The people of Israel rebel against God.
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SPEAKER_00: They end up in trouble.
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SPEAKER_00: They're ruled over by an evil empire like the Philistines,
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SPEAKER_00: and then God raises up a judge to lead them,
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SPEAKER_00: and they're, okay,
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SPEAKER_00: we're all in with you,
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SPEAKER_00: God, and then they turn against God again, over and over and over, same pattern.
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SPEAKER_00: So God calls a family,
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SPEAKER_00: and the husband and wife,
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SPEAKER_00: she was childless,
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SPEAKER_00: unable to bear a child, not unlike the story of Abraham and Sarah.
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SPEAKER_00: But God comes to them through an angel and says,
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SPEAKER_00: you're going to be pregnant and you're going to have a child.
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SPEAKER_00: And these are the things that we want.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't want this child to drink wine.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't want him to eat anything unclean.
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SPEAKER_00: We don't want a razor to touch his head.
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SPEAKER_00: This is the vow of the Nazarite.
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SPEAKER_00: And we don't understand them a lot,
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SPEAKER_00: but basically the Nazarite was someone who was dedicated to God.
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SPEAKER_00: And part of their dedication was they wouldn't drink alcohol.
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SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't cut their hair.
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SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't touch dead bodies.
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SPEAKER_00: Right.
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SPEAKER_00: They would follow the law.
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SPEAKER_00: They would follow the law as written out in the Ten Commandments and all
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SPEAKER_00: the other things that explain them.
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SPEAKER_00: So they have a baby.
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SPEAKER_00: They name him Samson.
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SPEAKER_00: And they have committed that they're going to raise him to be this man of God.
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SPEAKER_00: However, Samson doesn't necessarily
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SPEAKER_00: want to do what he's called to do.
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SPEAKER_00: And so we see over and over again in the story of Samson that he breaks the law
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SPEAKER_00: and he does certain things that break kind of his commitment,
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SPEAKER_00: his parents' commitment for the Nazarite vow.
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SPEAKER_00: So, for example, he wants to marry a Philistine woman.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, this would make him unclean.
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SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: his parents aren't crazy about this,
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SPEAKER_00: but the Bible writer says,
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SPEAKER_00: well, this is a part of God's plan so that he can defeat the Philistines.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, is he writing from hindsight and saying, well,
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SPEAKER_00: we look back now and we see this was God's plan because we know
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SPEAKER_00: that he was essentially breaking the law by doing this.
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SPEAKER_00: So you see some conflict in the story between what God wants and what the writers say.
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SPEAKER_00: And let's remember, this is an ancient story.
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SPEAKER_00: And at the time of the writing of these kinds of stories,
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SPEAKER_00: they have this belief that everything good that happened,
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SPEAKER_00: happened at the hands of the God.
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SPEAKER_00: Everything bad happened, happened at the hands of the gods.
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SPEAKER_00: And some of that bleeds into this story.
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SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, he is going down to...
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SPEAKER_00: Find himself a wife.
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SPEAKER_00: And on the way, he comes across a lion and he's got superhuman strength, which is in his hair.
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SPEAKER_00: Comes across a lion and he kills the lion.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, on his way back,
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SPEAKER_00: sometime later,
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SPEAKER_00: he finds the carcass of that lion and there's honey in it and he's hungry.
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SPEAKER_00: And so he eats the honey.
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SPEAKER_00: Now the honey's in there because the bees have come in and they've inhabited the body.
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SPEAKER_00: And either beknownst to him or unbeknownst to him,
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SPEAKER_00: he has touched a dead carcass, which he's not supposed to do.
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SPEAKER_00: So he has violated the law by touching this dead carcass.
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SPEAKER_00: So he creates this riddle out of it.
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SPEAKER_00: He makes it into a riddle on his
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SPEAKER_00: During his kind of his bachelor party,
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SPEAKER_00: he's going to marry this woman and they're having a feast for Samson.
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SPEAKER_00: And Samson says, let me tell you a riddle.
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SPEAKER_00: If you can give me the answer within seven days of the feast,
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SPEAKER_00: I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 sets of clothes.
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SPEAKER_00: If you can't tell me the answer, you must give me 30 linen garments and 30 sets of clothes.
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SPEAKER_00: Tell us your riddle, they said.
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SPEAKER_00: Let's hear it.
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SPEAKER_00: Out of the eater, something to eat.
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SPEAKER_00: Out of the strong, something sweet.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, they would have no idea what he's talking about.
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SPEAKER_00: What he's talking about is the lion he killed, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Out of the eater, something to eat.
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SPEAKER_00: Out of the strong, something sweet.
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SPEAKER_00: Well,
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SPEAKER_00: they couldn't figure out the answer to that riddle and the Philistines didn't want
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SPEAKER_00: to be embarrassed by him.
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SPEAKER_00: So they essentially threatened his fiance's family, said, you better get us the answer.
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SPEAKER_00: And so she finally begged and pleaded and cried and he gave the answer.
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SPEAKER_00: And so Samson's angry,
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SPEAKER_00: and he goes and he grabs a bunch of foxes,
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SPEAKER_00: he ties their tails together,
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SPEAKER_00: puts torches in between the pairs of foxes,
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SPEAKER_00: and they go running through the fields of the Philistines and burns them all.
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SPEAKER_00: And of course,
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SPEAKER_00: that didn't necessarily go over well with the Philistines,
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SPEAKER_00: nor did it go over well with the Philistines in regards to Samson's fiancee.
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SPEAKER_00: The father ends up giving her to someone else and Samson is angry about that.
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SPEAKER_00: So he has another incident where he is confronting the Philistines.
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SPEAKER_00: The spirit of the Lord comes upon him.
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SPEAKER_00: He picks up the jawbone of a donkey and he kills hundreds of Philistines.
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SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of this thing back and forth where Samson, he kind of breaks a lot of God's rules.
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SPEAKER_00: But then when he needs to fight the Philistines,
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SPEAKER_00: God's spirit comes upon him and he defeats his enemies.
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SPEAKER_00: And so this kind of goes back and forth.
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SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, he does risk the people of Israel.
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SPEAKER_00: He puts them at risk because the more he angers the Philistines,
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SPEAKER_00: the more endangered the people of Israel are going to become.
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SPEAKER_00: So, you know, for him, it's not about It's not about serving the people of Israel.
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SPEAKER_00: It's about him.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, then he falls in love with Delilah.
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SPEAKER_00: And
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SPEAKER_00: so the Philistines come and they bribe her.
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SPEAKER_00: And they say, hey,
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SPEAKER_00: if you will find out what the source of his strength is, we'll give you some money.
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SPEAKER_00: So they're We're doing their thing.
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SPEAKER_00: And then she says, hey, by the way, Samson, you're so strong.
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SPEAKER_00: You look at those muscles.
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SPEAKER_00: Samson, you look like Victor Mature.
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SPEAKER_00: And you are outstanding.
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SPEAKER_00: You are a manly man.
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SPEAKER_00: And of course, his ego is just growing and growing.
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SPEAKER_00: And she said, well, tell me what it is.
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SPEAKER_00: What is it that gives you your strength?
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SPEAKER_00: Now, he's not supposed to tell anybody that his strength is in his hair.
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SPEAKER_00: And so he says, well, here's the thing.
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SPEAKER_00: If you, let's see, I want to find the first one.
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SPEAKER_00: One of them was, if you braid my hair in a loom, I will lose all my power.
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SPEAKER_00: So she kind of plies him with a lot of wine.
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SPEAKER_00: He falls asleep.
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SPEAKER_00: She braids his hair in a loom.
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SPEAKER_00: He wakes up and she said, Samson, the Philistines are here.
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SPEAKER_00: And he wakes up, he pulls the loom out of his hair and he beats up the Philistines.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, you would think at this point that he would sort of figure it out,
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SPEAKER_00: that this is not a good woman for him.
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SPEAKER_00: But he stays with her.
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SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: I can really relate to this,
19:41
SPEAKER_01: as I know you can, these problems that men have with their long flowing hair.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you and I,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: and just to be fair,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: you and I,
19:53
SPEAKER_00: because it's always been such a temptation to brag about our hair and
19:56
SPEAKER_00: to show off our strength, we've shaved it all off.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is not a video podcast.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: This is just an audio podcast.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: But just think of two old men who are bald,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: and that would be the two of us,
20:08
SPEAKER_00: because we've decided it's more important to be bald and weak And they have a lot
20:13
SPEAKER_00: of hair and be egotistical.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: So we use our testosterone for other things.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly why I shave my head.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: So, uh, so then she says, okay, well, uh, you know, you, you were kind of playing with me.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, really what's the source of your strength?
20:28
SPEAKER_00: And he said, well, if you use new ropes and you bind my hands, um, I'll be powerless.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: And so she basically plies him with more wine.
20:37
SPEAKER_00: He falls asleep.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: And she says, the Philistines are here.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And he immediately breaks the ropes and he beats up the Philistines.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: And she said, okay, now you're making a fool of me.
20:52
SPEAKER_00: And so this goes on and on and on.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: And finally, she cries, she whines.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: How can you say I love you when you won't confide in me?
21:06
SPEAKER_00: This is the third time you've made a fool of me and haven't told me the secret
21:09
SPEAKER_00: of your great strength.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: And with such nagging,
21:16
SPEAKER_00: the Bible says,
21:17
SPEAKER_00: such nagging,
21:20
SPEAKER_00: she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: So he told her everything.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: No razor has ever been used on my head.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: I have been a Nazarite dedicated to God from my mother's womb.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: If my head is shaved, my strength will leave me.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: I will become as weak as any other man.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: And she realized she finally got the truth out of him.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: So she plies him again with a lot of wine, shaves his head.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: Samson, the Philistines are on you, and he is weak.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God has left him.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, we could stop there and say, was it in the hair?
22:03
SPEAKER_00: And that's why God left him.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Or can we say he just did not take his relationship with God seriously
22:11
SPEAKER_00: and he becomes, like David, a diminished man.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: And he basically loses his strength.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: He loses his connection to God.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: They burn his eyes out.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: They put him, they tie him to a
22:34
SPEAKER_00: A mill that grinds wheat and he spends his days pushing that wheel around and around
22:40
SPEAKER_00: and around as a blind man.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: So this man of God with all of this superhuman strength becomes
22:49
SPEAKER_00: a diminished blind man who is a servant now to the Philistines he was called
22:53
SPEAKER_00: to destroy.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: So here's a guy set apart for God.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: And yet the cautionary tale is,
23:07
SPEAKER_00: when we live by our own stuff,
23:10
SPEAKER_00: it's not that God was punishing him, these are the consequences of his actions.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: And it hurt not just him,
23:18
SPEAKER_00: but it also put the Israelites in great danger because now their protector was gone.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: So finally,
23:26
SPEAKER_00: the rulers of the Of the Philistines,
23:29
SPEAKER_00: they have a big banquet and they're drunk with wine and they say,
23:31
SPEAKER_00: hey, let's bring that Samson guy out.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Remember him?
23:37
SPEAKER_00: And let's just, let's pick on him and let's pick on his God.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: So they're kind of in the temple of their God, surrounded by their gods.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: They bring him out.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: And by this point, Samson's hair has grown back.
23:55
SPEAKER_00: So you know this has been a long time.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a few weeks.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: This has been a long time.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: His hair has grown out enough for his strength, quote unquote, to be back.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: And he says to the kid who's leading him out, put me between the two pillars.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: Now, that particular facility building was built on two pillars.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Those two pillars held The entire weight of the building.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Now there were other pillars, but those were the two main ones.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: You lose those two pillars and the thing will cave in.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: So Samson is standing between those two pillars and Samson prayed to the Lord,
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Sovereign Lord, remember me, please God strengthen me just once more.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: And let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: bracing himself against him,
24:59
SPEAKER_00: his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Samson said, let me die with the Philistines.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: Then he pushed with all his might and down came the temple on the rulers and all
25:08
SPEAKER_00: the people in it.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Thus he killed many more when he died while he lived.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: Did God use Samson?
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: Did God still love Samson?
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: But Samson, in many ways, disqualified himself from the calling that God had for him.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: And we can only imagine how God might have used him if Samson had followed God
25:39
SPEAKER_00: with his whole heart rather than follow his own agendas and his own desires.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Was Samson God's ideal choice?
25:51
SPEAKER_00: You've got to imagine God was thinking to himself, man, this was not my best choice.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: So it's a cautionary tale.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Does God use flawed people?
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, God uses flawed people.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: But does God excuse their flaws when those flaws are used for selfish purposes
26:09
SPEAKER_00: to hurt other people?
26:10
SPEAKER_00: The answer is a resounding no.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: What God wants is for God's people To follow him and to use their gifts and talents
26:21
SPEAKER_00: for good,
26:22
SPEAKER_00: noble work that builds people up,
26:25
SPEAKER_00: that sides with the oppressed, that sides with those that God sides with.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't want to hold Samson up as a hero and say,
26:34
SPEAKER_00: well, see, God uses people like Samson.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: That's not the point of this story.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: The point of this story is what Samson could have been
26:44
SPEAKER_00: and how Samson disqualified himself, diminished himself.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: And God stepped in, yes,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: and in the end,
26:52
SPEAKER_00: God put a,
26:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you'd call it a great ending to his story, because he died.
27:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, climactic maybe.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but
27:05
SPEAKER_00: God did not overlook the damage that Samson did.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: And again, God didn't punish it.
27:15
SPEAKER_00: These were the consequences of his own actions.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: But we read a story like this and we say, what could have been?
27:24
SPEAKER_00: What could have been if Samson had stayed true to his faith and to his God?
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what could have been, Tim?
27:34
SPEAKER_01: And also,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: a lot of times we will read through these stories together and you will say,
27:39
SPEAKER_01: what are they trying to tell us about God as well in this story?
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: So was God not...
27:46
SPEAKER_01: We talked about this a little bit last time about consequences, that sort of thing.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: But was God not true to the promise that God made to Samson regarding the hair and
27:54
SPEAKER_01: the strength and how that was going to work?
27:58
SPEAKER_01: And even before his hair was cut,
28:02
SPEAKER_01: there were still flaws that you could see in Samson's behavior.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: And God was continuing to be true to the promise that he made to Samson.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: And then the hair was cut and those consequences were The consequences
28:15
SPEAKER_01: that Samson was warned about specifically.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: And then at the very end,
28:20
SPEAKER_01: did God not come back and show grace upon Samson in the midst of his humanity
28:25
SPEAKER_01: and his flaws and say, okay, I hear what you're asking for now.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: There was that you, you, you, you are surviving the consequences of your actions.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Now, are you not, I'm going to work with you and what you want at the very end.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:42
SPEAKER_00: And, and again,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: I think, um, Part of what we want to say is that
28:49
SPEAKER_00: God remained true to his promises.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Samson kept taking himself out of those promises, not unlike the prodigal son, for example.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: He diminished himself, as did David.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you kind of look at David's life and Samson's life and you think, what could have been?
29:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that's important in both stories,
29:14
SPEAKER_00: in the story of David, David repents for his actions.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Samson does too here.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: He's basically saying, God, I've really messed up.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: And so one last time, would you hear my prayer?
29:29
SPEAKER_00: And God, of course, says yes.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: And God doesn't hear their prayers because they repent necessarily.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: But the point is,
29:36
SPEAKER_00: these two men realized That they had strayed away from God's best intentions
29:44
SPEAKER_00: for them.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: They realized that they had diminished their own lives and what could have been.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of think of the regret that both of them must have lived with.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: David, as he was watching his kingdom crumble around him,
30:00
SPEAKER_00: and Samson,
30:01
SPEAKER_00: who's pushing this mill thing around like a donkey
30:04
SPEAKER_01: for
30:05
SPEAKER_00: probably months,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: if not years.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: But again,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: they both come to a point where they say,
30:15
SPEAKER_00: okay, they turn back to the God who loved them.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: They knew that God still loved them,
30:24
SPEAKER_00: and they had the courage to repent and to turn back because of God's grace.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: But they really diminished themselves.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, they disqualified themselves from the leaders that they could have been.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: And so God, yes, does God use flawed leaders?
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: God used David.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: God used Samson.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: And let's say they had never made the decisions they made.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: There still were going to be flawed men because we make mistakes.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: The issue is when leaders make these decisions intentionally to secure power
31:05
SPEAKER_00: for themselves or to hurt other people in the process.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's what both David and Samson did.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: They both acted for themselves and hurt other people in the process.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: And that's not God's will.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't bless that.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we need to really be careful when we read these stories.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: These are not stories that we hold up as examples of this is who we should be.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: These are cautionary tales of what happens when we choose our own agendas over God
31:43
SPEAKER_00: or when we raise up leaders who have no agenda other than their own and then try
31:49
SPEAKER_00: to cover it over by saying, well, God uses flawed leaders.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: That's when we get into trouble.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: And I think I just have to say the same thing that we said last time as a reminder,
31:59
SPEAKER_01: like, we're all flawed.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: We're all flawed.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't have a choice to choose the one that's not flawed
32:06
SPEAKER_01: because he doesn't have that kind of a bench.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: But I also think,
32:11
SPEAKER_01: can't we also say, Tim,
32:12
SPEAKER_01: that in both of these stories,
32:13
SPEAKER_01: remarkable that, you know, God never turns from these people.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: Nope.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: No matter what they're doing, God is right there.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: He keeps calling them back, keeps calling them back.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: But he will not,
32:27
SPEAKER_00: he does not endorse actions by leaders,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Christian or not, that are self-serving and that hurt other people.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And excuse that, just because God uses flawed people is to misunderstand these stories.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens when we don't We surrender our flaws to Jesus as human beings
32:52
SPEAKER_00: and as leaders.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And we suffer the consequences.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: People around us suffer the consequences.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: So God does use flawlessly.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: He uses all of us in our flaws,
33:02
SPEAKER_00: but it's not an invitation to use our flaws for our own selfish agenda,
33:06
SPEAKER_00: to hurt other people and then say, well, God uses flawed people.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: That's the point these stories are trying to make.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:13
SPEAKER_01: It's not an excuse.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: So next week,
33:16
SPEAKER_00: we're going to turn to a little different kind of story because it has
33:21
SPEAKER_00: a far different ending to it.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the story of Peter and his denial of Jesus.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to see how that story really positions itself differently than
33:34
SPEAKER_00: the two that we've looked at so far.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And I think that will help set up a good contrast.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And then I think, John, in two weeks, we're going to have a...
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Free for all, we're going to bring back Father Scott, right?
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to have a little debate that's going to be led by John,
33:59
SPEAKER_00: Lutherans versus Catholics.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to take the gloves off.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: This is going to be one for the ages.
34:07
SPEAKER_01: Get ready.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: We're going to satisfy some long standing problems.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: So it'll be very fun.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: We love this guy.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: He's been on our show twice now.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: And he's up for,
34:20
SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be really fascinating,
34:22
SPEAKER_00: especially for those of us who don't know a lot about the Catholic Church.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: We're going to learn some really good stuff and find out that they're brothers
34:28
SPEAKER_00: and sisters with us in Jesus.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: So that's coming up.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: We hope you'll continue with us.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: This is the Deep Grace Diving Podcast.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're glad you're here.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: And see you next week.