All right, well, hello, church. Open to Judges 16. This will be our final week on Samson. Judges 16, I'm gonna read just two portions of this chapter. We'll start in verse one. God's word says this, Judges 16, verse one. Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute. And he went into her. The Gazites were told, Samson has come here. And they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, let us wait till the light of the morning. Then we will kill him. But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he rose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron. After this, he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came to her and said to her, seduce him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him that we may bind him and humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. So Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound and one could subdue you. I'm gonna skip over verses seven all the way to 18, this interchange between Samson and Delilah and move us to verse 18. When Delilah saw that he had told her his whole heart, she sent and called the Lord of the Philistines saying, come up again, for he has told me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. She made him sleep on her knees and she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. And he began to torment him. And she began to torment him and his strength left him. And she said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I'll go at it as the other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shekels and he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Now the Lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their God. and to rejoice. And they said, our God has given Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their God. They said, our God has given our enemy into our hand and ravaged the ravager of our country who has killed many of us. And when their hearts were merry, they said, call Samson that he may entertain us. So they called Samson out of the prison and he entertained them. And they made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, let me feel the pillars on which the house rests that I may lean against them. Now the house was full of men and women and all the lords of the Philistines were there. And on the roof, there were about 3000 men and women who looked on while Samson entertained. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may avenge on the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson grasped the two pillars on which the house rested and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, let me die with the Philistines. Then he bowed with all his strength and the house fell upon the Lords and upon all the peoples who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life." Father, we remember this historical event that happened about 3,000 years ago. And we remember the man, Samson, a narcissistic man, a selfish man, a man with besetting sins and addictions, a man with idolatry, and who had turned away from worshiping you, Lord. And Lord, his problem is very common to us. And so, Lord, we pray that you would help us to see ourself in this, wherever it applies. Lord, wherever our hearts have turned from the living God to worship idols, Lord, we pray that you would reveal that, and that you would also do a work in our hearts so that we would turn from those idols to the living God, and we would give ourselves fully in worship to you. We ask you to do these things through the preaching of your word, by the power of your Holy Spirit. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as y'all know, we are continuing a series called Common Problems, where we're going back to narratives like this one we just read, about 3,000-year-old stories with different Old Testament characters, and we're seeing that their problems are like our problems, except we've put new, psychologized names on them, but it's the same problem. So we saw first, the first week on Samson, that he's a narcissist. I think that's not difficult to prove. And we saw, secondly, that he is an addict. That argument for his being a man of addiction will be furthered today with what we look at because we're going to get underneath his narcissism, his selfishness, his addictions. What's up underneath that? Idolatry. That's what we need to see here today. And so the hope is that as we look at his selfishness, we'll understand something about our own As we understand how He continues to go back to the same sin over and over again, we'll learn something about ourselves. Why do we go back to the same sin, even as Christians, over and over again? And so we need to do a study on idolatry, and in this case, Samson's idolatry. And so simple outline, three points from chapter 16, physical idolatry, or what I'm going to call paganism. Secondly, heart idolatry. And then I want to, at the end, talk about how to overcome idolatry. So let's start with paganism. begin to think through this. This is really the larger context of this narrative, and we need to understand this. But I thought back, what is the first interaction that God has with paganism in scripture? And many would go to the Abrahamic narrative, the interaction with Abraham, where God finds Abram, at that time before Abraham, in Earl of the Chaldeans, as a moon worshiper, a pagan moon worshiper, and to Abraham makes a covenant with he and his offspring to give him land, a land, a particular plot of land that Moses and then Joshua after him began to assume. And then listen in Exodus 23, it says, I will begin to drive out, God says, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you. And little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you possess the land. I will set your border from the Red Sea," listen, "'to the Sea of the Philistines, for I will give you the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you will drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them or their gods. They shall not dwell in your land.'" And then he gives two reasons why, why should, these false idols and gods not live in the land, one, lest they make you sin against me. Number two, if you serve their gods, they will become a snare to you. So God's saying, I don't want you to be ensnared or enslaved to what they're enslaved to, and I don't want you to sin against me. Therefore, remove the paganism from your midst and from this land, including these pagan nations. That's our larger context to the book of Judges, and regarding paganism. Now, let's drop down into this text and see in verse four, it says this, Samson loved the woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And listen to this, the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said, seduce him, see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him and humble him. And we, so there's a few of them, will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver." Now, many of the commentators will say on here there's five Philistine lords. I won't get into all the reasons why they would say that, but we'll assume that they're right. And there's five of them, that makes 5,500 shekels of silver they're offering Delilah in exchange for her to figure out where his strength flies. A lot of the commentators also try to help us see how much money we're dealing with modern day. And you do that based off of the average wage for the day, which is estimated at 550 times the average annual wage. And so I took the numbers the commentaries gave, And I took all of that historical information, asked our brother Jeff Bentley to run the numbers, CPA and our financial administrator, and double checked me on these numbers. What are we looking at? Estimate on the current amount of money he's being offered. You ready for this? 25 million, $25.9 million is what the current, rate would be with how much Delilah is being offered from the Philistines. That's hard to resist for almost anybody, especially if you love money, which most people do. And that's why Jesus even said the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Now, here's a legitimate question that I think arises from this, is if Samson is walking around looking like the Hulk, he's just this huge steroid-induced bodybuilder-looking man, are you going to pay someone any money to try to figure out where his strength comes from? No. It's quite obvious where his strength comes from, all of his muscles. right? His huge nine foot stature, right? If this is what he looked like, it wouldn't have been a question where his strength came from. And so I think that he looked normal. I think that a lot of the kids' books, if you're reading the kids' books, picture books, and they show Samson being this huge, huge guy, you know, I don't think so. I don't think that that fits with the confusion they have over where his strength comes. It seems that they recognize his strength is of supernatural origin, which it was, and they're perplexed by this, and they want to figure out why. He's so strong. So Delilah seeks to figure this out. She deceives him, which leads to the cutting off of the hair. That moves us to verse 21. And look at this. It says, the Philistine sees him gouge out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza. That's where he lifted up the bars of the city earlier. And now he's bound with bronze shekels and he's grinding at the mill in the prison. We'll come back to that in a minute. But listen to this shocking picture of paganism in verse 23, the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their God, and to rejoice. And they said, our God has given Samson, our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their God. So here's the first point on pagan idolatry in the worship of Dagon is it sounds like the English word for dragon, doesn't it? If you just add the word R or the letter R into the word Dagon, it's dragon. So there's something right there, but Dagon is also related to the word for fish. And so if you go back and you look at ancient, archaeological findings and historical findings. You'll see old paintings on walls where they found a creature that's half fish, half human, and people bowing down and worshipping. That is Dagon. And so he's a fish god. And you say, why would the Philistines worship a fish god? Well, the Philistines were a series of five cities on the coast of the Mediterranean. And they were very wealthy cities. All their livelihood came from the trade and the food and the fishing and the military warfare that happened along the coastal land. And so historians tell us that Dagon was first worshipped by the Canaanites, then the Philistines conquered the Canaanites, and Dagon became the chief god of the Philistines. And when we think, I don't know how much, you know, if you think of pagan worship in the Bible, what first comes to your mind? But for many of us, it would be Baal. We would think of Baal worship. Baal is mentioned many times in the Bible as a pagan god that people worshiped. Well, we need to understand Baal is actually the son of Dagon. In fact, all the pagan gods are sons of Dagon. He is the father of all of these ancient gods. You would think maybe that would garner some respect from the God, from Yahweh, that Dagon was so popular and powerful in the minds of many. It does not. In fact, nowhere does God seem to show respect for these pagan gods. And I want to go over just a few instances where God actually mocks all of the gods of paganism, starting with Baal. Remember in 1 Kings 18, God wants to make the point that he determines when rain falls and when rain does not fall. And so Elijah prays for three and a half years that it would not rain, and it does not rain for three and a half years. That sets up a scene where 450 prophets of Baal go against one prophet of Israel, Elijah. and they have this showdown on Mount Caramel, where Elijah essentially says, put some offerings on the altar and the ones that the fire consumes without any fire being put on them, the fire will come from heaven, that will show which God is the real God. And he's doing this for Israel's sake, mainly to say, you got to pick, you can't worship Baal and Yahweh. And so he lays it out and the bail worshipers, these priests of bail, they go first and they can't get their gods or their God to bring fire down on the altar. They're spending all day. And it says this, listen to this description of paganism. It says, they cried out and cut themselves after their custom. After their custom was swords and lances until the blood gushed out upon them. And no one answered." That is no God answered and no one paid attention. And then Elijah seeing this says, bring all the sacrifices, put them on the altar. And I want you to dump water on the sacrifices and on the altar and repeatedly do this to the point where it's drenched. The sacrifice is drenched. And then he says, he called to the God of Abraham and Isaac in Israel, answer me that this people may know that you, O God, are God. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and all the people saw it and they fell on their faces and said, the Lord, he is God. God having no regard for the God of Baal, but rather mocking it through his prophet Elijah. We see this also in Egypt with the 10 plagues. We teach those to our kids early on, these 10 different plagues, and we don't always put a context to that. Why the plagues? What's the point? But if you read closely, it actually tells us exactly what these plagues were about. Exodus 12, 12 says, God says, I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. that's the plagues, is an act of judgment on all the gods of Egypt. And then Numbers 33, three says, they marched out of Egypt for Yahweh had brought judgment on their gods. And you can search Google later if you want, polytheism in ancient Egypt, and you'll see a list of all the pagan gods that the Egyptians worshiped. And you'll see a correspondence between the plague and the Egyptian God. And what is happening is God is mocking each of their false gods with a plague that corresponds to that God. I'll give you a few examples. The God Happy, H-A-P-I. is the God of the Nile River. In Egypt, there was no Egypt without the Nile River. It's their whole way of life, their irrigation, drinking water, food, commerce, everything came through the Nile River. And Happy, H-A-P-I, is their God of the Nile River. So what does God do? He turns it to blood. essentially crashing their stock market, draining their oil supply, an act of power over that God. The goddess of birth has a frog head. What is one of the plagues? The multiplication of frogs. What is God saying? Oh, you like frogs? Here you go. The god Set, S-E-T, was the goddess of the desert storm, and God brings gnats to cover the land like a desert storm. The god Hathor and Apis are symbols of fertility with cow head or a bull head. And what does God do? He kills all the livestock. The goddess Sekhmet and Isis, I don't know if I'm pronouncing those right, have power over disease and healing. A healing goddess, so God brings boils on all flesh. Nut, N-U-T, the sky goddess, and Osiris, the god of the crops and fertility. God brought and made fall from heaven hail to kill the crops. The sun god, Re and Horus. You've got two gods related to the sun. Sun is essential to live, for everything to live. What does God do? He brings darkness. to mock the sun gods and to show his power over them. The final plague is the death of the firstborn. Many in the Hepaket are reproductive gods that helped women in childbirth and protected children. What did God do? He killed the children, the firstborn. And even Pharaoh's firstborn was thought to be a god and God killed Pharaoh's firstborn. What is all this showing? God is not play nice with the false gods. He loves the people of the false gods. He oftentimes includes them in and grants them salvation, but he mocks the false gods. In Psalm 96, 5, all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens. And so the argument is, if there is a God who created all things, He is God, and there is no other God. And all the gods of the people are, as it says in Psalms 96, worthless idols. And so God has no regard for them. We see even in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 10 20, what pagans, and it uses that word, what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. To demons, which is telling us behind Baal worship, behind the Egyptian gods, behind Dagon, behind many of the gods even being worshipped now in the East, are demons. And I would even say there are supernatural powers behind many of these false gods oftentimes. We see that in the interchange in Egypt where many of these magicians were mimicking some of the signs in some of the plagues that were happening, and it keeps people deceived. This leads to Dagon in the last example, and we know obviously in our narrative that God through Samson mocks the god Dagon, but there's another instance where the Ark of the Covenant came into the temple of Dagon. Many of you remember 1 Samuel 5, the Ark of the Covenant gets brought, set right next to Dagon in this temple, and the next day when they walk in there, Dagon is laying face down on the ground toward the Ark of the Lord, bowing down to it. So they go, oh, this must just be nothing. They set it back up. And they walk in the next day and it's laying downward facing the ark of the Lord, but the head of Dagon and both his hands are laying cut off and only the trunk of Dagon was left. Again. showing God, showing His power over Dagon. And I want to just say, I've been doing a lot of research. Dagon has interested me in the last few weeks. I've been doing a lot of research outside of Scripture regarding Dagon. There's a lot in the Maccabees, 1 Maccabees on Dagon. There's a lot historically in the 1st and 2nd century with temples to Dagon. The writings of the Holy Inquisition indicate Dagon worship spreading into numerous places in Europe, with corresponding human sacrifices, I should add, to Dagon and to the demigods they would supposedly swim up the rivers in these coastal regions, these gods would, and people would make human sacrifices to Dagon and to what are called the Deep Ones, that were demigods or smaller gods working with Dagon. And then I dug a little deeper and I found, interestingly, the French explorer Pierre Le Mayon, who actually discovered Mobile Bay. came up on an island that had not been discovered at that time. This is 1699. And he discovers an island. He finds a large pile of human bones, around 100 of them, and called it Massacre Island. That is now called Dolphin Island. You'll remember just about an hour and a half down the road, I took a trip there last week to check out some of this, but what's interesting is that this explorer, this French explorer, began to find that there's pre-Native American tribes were on this island and that they had traveled down these coastal regions because there's these shell, what they call shell mounds, that you can find on Dolphin Island. where they would travel annually, they would come down and make these ritualistic sacrifices on these shell mounds on Dolphin Island. And some even report, some historians would even go so far as to say they were worshipping in these coastal places to the god Dagon. and to the corresponding demigods, the deep ones that come from an esoteric order of Dagon, which gets pretty dark and demonic, quite honestly. You say, okay, pastor, that's pretty interesting. What is the need to bring this up? I think this is valuable on a few levels. One, for those of us who've lived in this area for very long, we think Mayflower, first Thanksgiving, Native Americans, settlers, early settlers, we think back about that far. We don't think back 3,000 years. We don't think back to the very time of Samson lived, but think about this soil here and what was happening here about 3,000 years ago. This is very interesting to think of the Gulf Coast 3,000 years ago. We're talking Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi line. And for those of you who are doubters on my research, please go research the Mississippi River and shell mounds, or Indian shell mounds, and you'll find Aztec-like structures that could be five stories high along the Mississippi River and these mounds. You say, what is the significance of the mound? Well, what does it say in Jeremiah 19.5 that happened on high places with paganism? Anybody remember what might've happened in high places? It says, to Baal, they burned their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal. So you've got these pre-Native American tribes, 3000 years ago, building high places on the Gulf Coast, probably, well, we know they weren't worshiping Jesus, but it's very likely there were other types of worship happening. And I just want to remind us, and I put this before us primarily to just hopefully put in our hearts some sense of renewed gratitude for those who brought the gospel to these lands. For Christianity reaching these areas that we now live in, we should be deeply thankful. And people can debate all of the historical pilgrim Indian relations if they want. The only thing I'm saying is the gospel was brought here. Hasn't always been here. This was the land of paganism for a long, long time. They knew nothing of the living God. They knew nothing of Christianity. Many are actually projecting now that we're moving back to paganism in America. Peter Jones is one who's pretty convincingly arguing that many people are getting tired of secular humanism and it's so irrational that they're actually moving back to a form of what he calls pagan romanticism. where he talks about the emphasis on Mother Earth and the worship of the Earth, the increased popularity of Eastern spiritualism, Carl Jung's humanism that's built off of pagan mythology, even into things like transgenderism, where you have male and female just mushed together as one androgynous being in a universe that has no God, that's paganism. You think about the worship of animals and how many venerate animals and lift up animals at the level of humans, that's paganism. These are types of paganism, but none of that paganism that we're beginning to see or we'll see in the future is anything like the paganism that still exists in many places of the world today, which is why we just sent out the Matthews. It's why we sent out the Graces. It's why we're praying for the Kramers that we've sent out to an unreached people group. I mean, guys, like if we, when we pray here, we just prayed a moment ago for these unreached peoples. I hope we realize what we're praying for and what the context of the gospel reaching some of these places is. There's still much work to be done. You know, in what was it, 1 Thessalonians, where it says that Paul said to the Thessalonians, you have turned from idols to serve the living God. And we want more to be able to say that they have turned from idols to serve the living God. Now, how does this relate to Samson? I'm not arguing that Samson is bowing down to Dagon. What I am arguing and what I want to argue now is that he was an idol worshiper. He was an idolater at the heart level. He's demonstrating to us a type of heart idolatry. And idolatry, if there's a few massive themes in scripture, idolatry is one of them we have to understand. David Powelson said, idolatry is by far the most frequently discussed problem in the Bible. Ligon Duncan says the whole Bible is written as a full scale assault on idolatry. And so if this is one of the biggest problems, and I think you could argue that this is one of the biggest problems in the world is idolatry. I mean, three out of the 10 commandments are about idolatry, by the way. The first two we know are about idolatry, but then the 10th one is about idolatry because it says what? Do not covet. And what does Paul say about covetousness in the New Testament? He says, covetousness, which is idolatry. This is a huge problem, even in our country, idolatry. Paul warns about this to churches, to Christians, converted people, that they could be coveting and He calls that idolatry. So I wanna argue that Samson is coveting, he's desiring, he's demanding, he's sending to get, he's disregarding God to have, he's treasuring and loving above all women, which by definition in his case was idolatrous. And I find it interesting even that the Apostle John writing to Christians ends his letter or his epistle by saying, keep yourself from idols. And you go, was John really actually concerned that these Christians are going to get a little household God and put it on their shelf and bow down to it every day? Was that really the concern there? Or could he have a broader understanding of idolatry that even related to heart issues? You know, many people from the East come to America, and they come from countries where they see people bow down to little statues and carved things, and they worship these things. And they go, you know, I come from a country where people worship little gold statues, but I come to America, and it seems people worship everything. They worship their sports teams, and their body, and their health, and their food, and their money, and their job, and their house, and their possession, and their pets, and everything gets worship. And look, I wanna be careful to not make us think that literally everything we're worshiping, everything that we like or everything that we love, that's not what I'm getting at. But what do you say when a good thing becomes a God thing? When a created thing is being treated like the creator should be treated? That's what Romans 1 is talking about. How do you know if you have an idol? Well, the first thing I would say is, what's coming to your mind when we begin to talk about this? Maybe that's your idol. Idolatry isn't so much bowing down your body to a little statue as bowing your heart to something you treasure more, you fear more, you love more, you serve more than God. G.K. Chesterton said, when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing We worship anything. And here's what he's getting at. We're worshipers. We were made to do this. If we don't worship God, we'll find something or someone to worship in place of God, because we're worshipers by design. And our hearts, as Calvin said, have this strange ability to manufacture idols. What if Calvin was right? What if John Calvin was right when he said our hearts are idol factories? They can actually produce idols that we worship. Now, I don't think a Christian manufactures idols at the rate a non-Christian does. Our hearts are given to the Lord in a very, in a regenerate way. Our hearts are different, but could a Christian heart still manufacture an idol and then love that thing and maybe hide that thing away and secretly worship it and keep it around? I think it's very possible. like Rachel hiding Laban's little idol in the tent, a Christian could have a secret God that they returned to. For Samson, that was women. He cared most about them. He demanded to have them. He thought about them. He got angry most about not having them. He sinned to obtain what consumed his mind, what he would take risks to get or to keep, what he would make sacrifices for, women. I mean, there's a weird instance where he even offers a young goat to his wife, the Philistine wife, at one point. It's like a peace offering or something. A little odd, I don't know if I want to connect that too much to idolatry, but it's just pervasive. He's given over. And I think more than anything, he's idolizing Delilah. And there's a few things I want to notice about his interactions with Delilah. The first is this, idols demand centrality. They demand it. They will not take no for an answer. Delilah didn't. She would not take no for an answer. She wanted to be most important. She wanted things to revolve around her. She wanted to get her way. She wanted to be accommodated too. And because he's deceived, he thinks I can say no whenever I want to say no. I've got control of her, she doesn't have control of me, and so what does he do? Three times, we'll do this, and then I'll lose my strength, or do this, and then I'll lose my strength, and then do this, and then I'll lose my strength, and she keeps going, you're mocking me, you're mocking me, you're mocking me, and she's wearing him down until it gets closer and closer to the truth, and then he eventually tells her, Look at verse 15, she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You've mocked me these three times. You've not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words, day after day, urging him, his soul was vexed to death. The idols are demanding. And it says, he told her all his heart. Idols will demand your whole heart. Your whole heart. Listen for that language. You hear it sometimes with parents. My child is my heart. My child is my whole heart. My child is my life. As we post a picture. Could it not be that we're saying behold my little God? that I love more than anything with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength is devoted to this one." Now you say, well, are we not supposed to love our children? Look, every parent here would die for our children and should be willing to. We will deny self every day for our children, but our children are not our whole heart. And if they are, we've made them an idol. God gets our whole heart. What does he say? Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And out of that love for God--" listen, this is important. Out of our love for God that gets all of our heart, somehow there's an ability to love our neighbor as ourself. And that's where kids fit. And that's where spouse fits. And that's where people fit, neighbor love. But God gets all of our heart, or else we're idolizing. It's very, very important to remember. Samson loves Delilah like he should have loved God. He's willing to give anything for her because she's his God. You know, idols are ultimately about love because we worship what we love the most. That's how it works. That's why we want to love God the most and then we'll worship him. But if we love something else more than God, then we'll worship that thing. We'll be devoted to that thing. We'll serve that thing more than we serve God. That's how we're made. This is how our hearts work. And so Samson's deceived. He wrongly thinks that there's some pleasure, there's some experience, there's something with Delilah that God can't give him. There's something in relation to her that God's withholding from him and that he won't find in the will of God. And that's the deception that Samson's operating under. His idols have blinded him. This is so close to what we talked about last week with addictions. These things are so similar. They render you unable to see reality. What is reality? That the idol will kill you. that the idol will destroy you. He doesn't see that because every time he's gotten away, he went to the idol, served the idol, got away, served the idol, got away. So he thinks I can get away again. But something changes this last time. And verse 21 says, the Philistine seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza bound with bronze shekels and he ground at the mill. Listen, these categories are significant. Blinded his eyes. The same eyes that did what? Looked for that woman. I want that woman. With these eyes, he finds a woman, demands her. Those same eyes are now blinded. Slavery. He thought he had freedom to go to Timnah, to go be with this woman or this woman or this woman. And now what is he? He's not only enslaved in the city, same city that he thought he had freedom, But on top of that, he's doing the work of a slave woman grinding at the mill. Do you see the irony there? This is a lot of irony. The idolatry of his heart with this woman has now led him into a pagan worship festival of Dagon. And here's what this is vividly illustrating for us. This, you become what you worship. That's what this is illustrating. You become what you worship. G.K. Beale, great theologian in our day, wrote a book on idolatry. That's the title of it. You become what you worship. And where's he getting that from? Well, from stories like this, but also Psalm 115, which says, their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but don't speak, eyes, but don't see, ears, but don't hear. And he goes on and he says, those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them." Look, here's the principle that we need to get. When you give yourself over to anything, you become more like that thing you're giving yourself over to and less like the thing that God wants you to be given to. Let me say that again. When you give yourself fully over to anything, you become more like that thing you've given yourself to and less like what God has called you to become. Guys, here's the objective proof that Samson is an idolater. He's not living out his God-given identity as a Nazirite. That's the objective proof. That's why nobody can come and say, he wasn't really an idolatry pastor. Yes, he was. Because his identity, he never lived out the identity as a Nazarite as he should. He disregarded his identity from God for the sake of his idol. That proves objectively he was an idol worshiper. At least in those instances. Guys, why don't we turn to idols? Well, the first reason is because we forget our identity. We forget who we are. We forget what God has called us, how God thinks about us. He calls you beloved. He calls you loved. He calls you holy. He calls you a saint, a chosen one, consecrated, set apart. I mean, we could go, the things that he calls us, the affection that he has for us as his people, but we forget our identity. And we think that things created could somehow fulfill us, could somehow make up for what we've forgotten that we are in Christ. That's the first reason we turn to idols. But look, here's a more, I want to emphasize this as my last point. How do we overcome idolatry? If you were to say, give me the short answer, how do I overcome an idol? Here's one word, consecration to God. Consecration to God. Samson would have avoided idols in his life if he would have lived consecrated to God. If he would have given himself fully heart, soul, mind, and strength to God, there would have been no competing idols. Consecration to God is the only sure protection against idolatry. How do you get that idol-producing factory to stop producing idols in your heart? Give yourself fully to God. Consecrate yourself to God. That's what Romans 12.1 says. Offer your body as a living sacrifice of worship. offer your body as a living sacrifice of worship. When Samson finally consecrated himself fully to God, all of his narcissism, addiction, idolatry, gone. In that moment, it's gone. That's what he's illustrating for us. And I just want to remind you, if you're a believer, you have consecrated yourself to God at your baptism. And every week at the Lord's Supper, this is a consecration moment where we offer ourselves to God again because He offered Himself to us. And I hope every morning for us that we'll get alone with the Lord, open the word, pray to Him, and offer our bodies as a living sacrifice of worship every day to Him. And you know what? If you're genuinely doing that, you won't turn to idols. We can offer ourselves consecrated to God, not because Samson did, but because Jesus did. I want to end with this thought as we move toward the table. I want to think about, just very quickly, how Samson is greater, or how Christ, rather, is greater than Samson. Look at verse 23. Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their God. They rejoiced and said, our God has given Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their God. And they said, our God has given our enemy into our hand and the ravager of our country who has killed many of us. So Samson hated people and killed his enemies. Christ loved and died for his enemies. They're both hated by their enemies. Verse 25, they made him stand between two pillars. Christ was made to stand between two thieves. Verse 27, 3,000 men and women worshiping Dagon, Samson called to the Lord and said, O Lord God, please remember me, please strengthen me only this once, O God. And Samson grasped the two middle pillars and bowed with all his strength and the house fell upon the Lord's and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life. I heard a prosperity preacher one time say something and just completely misunderstood this. He said, you know, Samson shouldn't have prayed that he would die with his enemies. He should have just prayed God would bless his enemies. And what that prosperity preacher was not understanding is that Samson is a type of Christ. There's something of Christ we should see here. It's not a perfect picture, but there's something to see here that Samson is doing that illustrates Christ. Samson is vindictively dying with sinners. Christ sacrificially died for sinners. That is a fundamental difference. Samson, in his dying word, says, let me die with the Philistines. Let me die with my enemies. Jesus was dying, said, let me die for the Philistines or instead of God's enemies. Samson died to bring death and judgment. Jesus died to bring life and salvation. And in verse 30, it says that Samson killed more in his death than in his life. Christ saved more in his death than in his life. Glory to Christ, the great deliverer, the one greater than Samson, the one who can bring salvation even for his enemies. When we look at Samson in this moment of defeat, this last moment, everything looks like he's lost. His enemies are rejoicing, they're mocking. He's utterly weak and he dies. And Christ on the cross, he's nailed there. He's being mocked and scoffed at. And in that moment that looks like defeat, we have victory. That's what this reminds us of. This is the hope that we're remembering in the supper. Let's prepare our hearts to go to the table. For those of you who have consecrated yourself to God by faith, trusted Christ, and done that through baptism, please come and join us at the table. For those of you who have not, there is in the red bulletin some meaningful prayers that you can pray and make this a meaningful time for you. Let's go to the Lord. Father, Lord, we thank you that you did not leave us with deliverers like Samson. Lord, we pray that you would remind us of the simple thought right now, as we go to the table, that Christ has delivered us from all our enemies. That in his death, he saved more than in his life. And he saves to the uttermost those who come to him by faith. And so Father, send us to this table in faith and strengthen us by your spirit to live consecrated to you and to overcome and put away all idols. You're worthy of it, Lord. We pray you would do this for your namesake and for the good of this church. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.