Friday, January 26, 2024
The Danger of Flirting with Sin
Then she cried out, “Samson! The Philistines have come to capture you!” When he woke up, he thought, “I will do as before and shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize the Lord had left him. (Judges 16:20 NLT)
Talk about sleeping with the enemy. Samson fell asleep in Delilah’s lap and took a one-way trip to the barbershop, not realizing what he was doing.
Delilah had been hired by the Philistines to discover the secret of Samson’s strength. But so far, she was getting nowhere. So she said, “How can you tell me, ‘I love you,’ when you don’t share your secrets with me? You’ve made fun of me three times now, and you still haven’t told me what makes you so strong!” (Judges 16:15 NLT).
In other words, “If you love me, you’ll do this.”
Anyone who would ask you to prove your love to them by compromising your spiritual principles is not someone you should be involved with. That is not love. And Samson should have known that.
But after a while, Delilah was wearing him down. The Bible says that “she tormented him with her nagging day after day until he was sick to death of it” (verse 16 NLT).
Finally, Samson told her the secret of his strength, and this time when the Philistines came to capture him, he couldn’t free himself.
This brings us to one of the most tragic statements in the Bible: “But he didn’t realize the Lord had left him” (verse 20 NLT). Samson had not only lost touch with what was going on, but he had also lost touch with God.
The passage goes on to say, “So the Philistines captured him and gouged out his eyes. They took him to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze chains and forced to grind grain in the prison” (verse 21 NLT).
If this were a story about running a race, Samson would have just fallen—and fallen hard. In fact, it would appear that he wasn’t ever going to get back up again. Ironically, Samson once had the ability to win the race, but he was down. And it looked as though he was out of the race.
This is so typical of someone who has been trapped in sin. Everyone else knows what is happening, but they don’t know. They refuse to listen to the warnings, and they continue down a path of destruction. And then one day they wake up and realize how far they’ve gone.
Sin blinds us, and we do completely irrational things. That’s what happened to Samson. Sin blinded him.
Sin finds us. There may be an initial excitement that comes with crossing the line in a certain area. But we need to be aware that eventually, our sin will find us out (see Numbers 32:23).
Lastly, sin will grind us. Ultimately, we will pay the miserable price for our sin, whether it’s a broken marriage or a betrayed trust or a damaged witness and reputation.
Sometimes we try to overspiritualize things that have an obvious solution. Sometimes, the way of escape is as simple as walking out the door. Samson flirted with sin, and it destroyed him. We need to take practical steps to resist temptation.
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