Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible podcast. Happy Saturday. It is Men's Bible Study Saturday. It is, man. I'm so pumped. I can't wait to preach. I'm just jumping at the, it was amazing to see 700 men show up at that. That was unexpected, to say the least. But we didn't even fit in. That room could not fit. It's amazing. We had to move it outside. Yeah. Had to preach open air. It was great. Fantastic. People were getting saved. Yeah. Although. The protestors throwing the dead cats at you was a little, that was a little much, man. I enjoyed it, dude. I saw it as a sacrifice of praise. I'm like, this is great.

Guys that used to happen to Whitfield. Can you believe that Whitfield would be open air preaching? He had a dead cat thrown at him, dude. That's when people used to know how to heckle. That's when heckling was good. Today heckling. Come on. That's nothing. Not until people are throwing dead cats. Do I consider it actual heckling? This is nothing. It's funny though. That's great, man.

Yeah. Ticket in stride. Speaking of heckling, there's this guy that is a fan of the San Francisco Giants. He's gotta be a season ticket holder. 'cause he's got a whole Instagram page that this is his whole bit. So while he's there, he heckles the players on the field and he'll yell at him. And he had one where he was like. Jackson Merrill, who plays for the Padres, he was like, Hey, Jackson. Oh, I know this guy. You probably three putt

every green. You bum. Yeah, he does. He does that to, it's not just a it's all the sports. Baseball. Yeah. Football. I don't know. He does. He's all over the place, which is great. Funny.

He's clean with

it.

At least I haven't heard him. He's funny. He

says

things

like, you probably kiss your mom before you go to bed. You bomb. It's one of those things. I love that guy.

He's running. Yeah. If anybody heckles me like that on a Sunday morning that

would be funny. We'll see. We'll see what happens. I'd like to see that happen.

Yeah. Hey let's talk we had a long on ramp to the text yesterday and we even covered some of the text that wasn't in the text that were supposed so eager yesterday to get done. Maybe today let's just get to the actual text and talk about what we're supposed to talk about. Let's see about that. I know we've got some people that enjoy our longer episodes. We're looking at you Garrett, but, we've also got some people that appreciate our brevity, but the other 7,000 are less excited about it. A 10th of them were at men's Bible study, so a 10th. Yeah,

that's

it. Yeah. So we could get more, we could get more than that. Oh yeah. The other thing that's going on today, we're doing the the Easter outreach today. That's going on this morning. There's a team going out to, to hit some homes and pass out some invitations, so hopefully that'll go well also. Yeah. Alright. Judges 16. Here's Samson and Delilah. This is what we started to talk about yesterday and now here it is. And so remember, 'cause we covered it in such great detail. Yesterday there were the 300 foxes, there was the jawbone and a thousand people that were killed. And I'm fascinated by the foxes. Catching 300 foxes and then tying their tails. Tying their tails with torches in between. That's impressive. It is impressive. Yeah. I'd like to see how he did that. I would too. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so the Philistines are not happy with Samson, let's just put it that way. And so they come to him and they begin to intreat his wife to say, Hey, why don't you tell us the secret of his strength? Now, you were saying yesterday that there's no indication that they showed up every single time that happened.

Or that they appear that they were there hiding, but that they actually appeared. It seems like they might have stayed hidden until they had certainty that he actually was bound. You would

think at least the first one, they would've showed up, right? Because they they've gotten a reason to think that he's lying at that point. Maybe

the text doesn't say that. Yeah. That's why I'm saying I, I don't know. Maybe they waited until they, they could tell for sure because he was such a

rascal. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. The Philippines are upon you, Sampson, and then the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber, but he snapped the ropes. Yeah. So it just says they were in an inner chamber that didn't say Yeah, they were just

hiding. Waiting. Yeah. So he could have been like, oh, come on girl. Really? Let's stop playing this game. So if they never show up, it makes more sense to me that he would be easily diluted by Delilah. See that alliteration there? I did see that. I was raised in a Southern Baptist seminary, so he gets tricked by her and she, he's just thinking she's messing. I. He doesn't see the actual threat because they never appear until the last one. Yeah, that makes sense to me. It makes him look like less of a moron, and maybe he still was but I'm just thinking, okay if he's meant to teach us something, it's to teach us our own vulnerability. We're all easily diluted by Delilah's. Not all of them are the same. Delilah, there's different Delilahs that dilute us. But so many D's, so many D's. But I think the important point is that we are easily swayed by sin. We're our eyes are blinded by sin, as they'll soon be for him, and we ought to be aware of those things. Yeah.

She keeps pestering him and keeps pestering him and keeps pestering him until finally he, in verse 16, his soul was vexed to death. When the Proverbs writer of Proverbs says it's better to live in the corner of a housetop than with a nagging wife or a nagging wife is like a dripping faucet. Here you go. This is what happens. Samson's soul is vexed. To death because he just can't shake this. And so in verse 17, he tells her all his heart a razor has never come. My come up on my head for, I've been in Nazarite from birth. You know the rest of the story. She cuts his hair while he's asleep. And this time the Philistines do show up and they do some pretty awful things to the guy. This is a not a good situation. It's not like they're just arresting him and then he's taken and he gets to pull the pillars down. They're doing some pretty awful things to him to torture him before his death. But his hair begins to grow back. Which you made the point. It's not that his strength was necessarily physical. And it's interesting that his hair growing back is noted here by. The author as the reason in part that his strength returned. And so you wonder if this is evidence of repentance from Samuel A. Little bit here because I think we, I think so. Yeah. We would agree that this is not necessarily connected directly to his hair. But that the hair was a symbol of his Nazarite vow. So maybe he even. Was repentant and reengaging, recommitting to that devotion to the Lord, and then that rededicated his life. There you go through the pine cone in the fire. Yikes. Yes. And so he's brought in to entertain these Philistine lords and he grabs the pillars and pulls the whole building down on top of himself. And it says he killed more in his death than he killed during his life, which is significant. This must have been a pretty large venue that he was yeah. They brought into e Yeah.

People have noticed he kills himself and yet the text doesn't seem to say that was a bad thing. It seems it's almost commending the fact that he died in this way. What would you say to that?

I would say, I think this is an act of war in the sense that he is a warrior on God's behalf and he's fighting God's enemies. And so I would say less than this is more of an act of battle than it is him killing himself. It's a, not a one for one correlation, but it's the guy who jumps on the grenade. To save his comrades. He's not killing himself in the truest sense of somebody who kills themselves out of his selfishness, but he's killing himself for the good of someone else. And in here it seems that this is an act of devotion to the Lord. Samson is ending his own life, choosing to end his own life in order to end the life of the enemies of God at the same time. So this is more of

a sacrifice as opposed to an act of cowardice. Yeah. Something valorous versus something cowardice. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. That's helpful. Yeah.

Yeah. Alright chapter 17, then we get into Micah and the Levite. This is a, just a unique, interesting situation here. Again, it's just judges does not get any better, by the way, if you're waiting for okay. Windows judges finish. It doesn't, it gets worse and worse. Pretty much from here on out. This is just it's all downhill. Yep. Micah and his mom sin in, in creating an idol from some silver and worshiping it as their household. God. And then Micah Compounds matters by hiring a Levite to become his personal household priest. And we're reminded in verse six, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And so the authors giving his commentary here. He's also gonna do that at the very end of the book too. Chapter 21 verse 25. He's gonna say the same thing over again. Again, just in case we're wondering, okay, so was all of this commendable? Was this good? Was this not good? Did God like this? Yeah. So that's a statement to say, this is not good. None of this is good. And so this is created by Micah and they're worshiping in it. And then in judges 18, the people of Dan, we, we find out, we, you've mentioned I think PR that, that they didn't stay in the land that was originally allotted to them, but then they were ousted from there. And so they're looking for new land. They come through here, they find Micah and they take his idol and his Levite, and basically they. When Micah bows up and comes back at them, they're like, what are you gonna do? You're gonna fight all of us. And Micah's I guess not step back. And so then they settle in ish, which is in the north part of of modern day Israel, now known as Dan. And and that's where the tribe of Dan ends up landing. And that's judges 17 and 18.

So what's some of our takeaways from these last few chapters here? We've made the repeated observation that things are not good. Is there anything here that you could think of that would be helpful for us to take away as we read through the period of the judges? I know a lot of Christians are thinking yeah, this happened a long time ago and these are bad things, but is there

anything for us today? I. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think I mentioned it a couple days ago. In one of our episodes we have our own idols. They're not the monkey, god that's being built in downtown Frisco. They're, or was I guess not built, but was proposed. We all have our own gods, just like Micah set this up and idolatry is rampant. And what you'll notice here is we're not finding anyone in the book of judges that's standing up. And being the prophet, prophetic, voicing, this is wrong. We shouldn't be doing this. This is not okay. We need to be following the Lord and we need to be repenting. We there, there's no Daniels anywhere in the book of judges. And so I think maybe one of our takeaways is just to say, man our world is sideways. I. We've got a lot of idolatry in, in our community. We've got a lot of idolatry. We've got a lot of of, health, wealth and prosperity churches that are in the area. Plus, we've now got a heavy Hindu population. There's a growing Muslim population here. We need to make sure that we are men and women of integrity who are living out Christianity as it's. Supposed to be lived out and we need to be voices of not prophecy in the sense of having the gift of being a prophet. 'cause we believe that's ceased. But we need to have those, that prophetic voice in nature saying, we, this is what's wrong and we need to do what's right and we need to obey the Lord and follow him with everything that we have.

Yeah, I would be slow to look at the judges of the past and say, wow, man, those guys are jacked up. And not be quick to say, oh, but Lord, but for the grace of God, go, I, yeah. We are so prone to go the wrong direction. I really resonate with that line from the hymn prone to wander. Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love now. There's no ultimate leaving. There's no ultimate wandering. We would be quick to affirm that, but I would also say, man, I know that my heart is wicked. I know that really when I look at these guys I mentioned it with Samson. I don't look at Samson and say, what a complete buffoon. Why didn't he should have, how dumb was he to do A, B, C, or D Samson is just a reflection of me. I could be Samson. You could be Samson. We all could be Samson diluted by Delilah's. And I think it's an important point for us to see how quickly we can stray from God if God simply removes his hand from us. Yep. And that's the point. Everyone does what's right in their own eyes and the result is anarchy. Everyone's living out their truth, and consequently God is allowing them to act in all of these foolish ways we self-destruct when we live according to our own compass and not God's compass. I think that's an important point. As you read, judges don't read it saying Those guys, they should have, man, if I were there, I would have. I think the point is that we all would go astray. We all would be. Going backward and doing dumb things like this if it weren't for the grace of God restraining us. And furthermore, because we have his word that gives us direction, that's such a good thing that we have. What a great blessing it is that you're doing this, going to the Bible, learning from it, but don't look at it and say, that's the past. This is today. There's no way we could do the same thing we totally could.

Yes. Yes, a hundred percent we could. Lemme pray and then we'll be done with a little bit of a shorter episode of the Daily Bible Podcast here on a Saturday, which I'm sure you got other things to go out and get involved in and be doing with your family or like men's bible study, men's bible study or whatever reaching I. The neighborhoods together. Yes, that's right. All the things. God we Thank you for this day. We do pray that men's Bible study would be just excellent. God we pray that it would be a time of encouragement for our men that they would be built up by the word that Pastor Rod would preach a message that is Christ exalting and that these men would be challenged to lead and strive for godliness. This character that you've laid out, not just for pastors and elders, but really for all of us as men. And so we just ask that our men here at our church would be strengthened and that you would create. Strong families and strong family units as a result of our investment in them. God we pray for the outreach that's gonna take place today for our church as well. We just ask that people would show up and would see these invites to extravaganza in our Easter services and decide that they wanna come and be a part of what we're doing here. What you're doing here. At Compass. And so we look forward to this Easter season and just pray that we would be taking advantage of the time that we have with the lost in our midst, and that we would be inviting them and pleading with them to to join us and to come to church. And that we'd be utilizing even the facility that we have. God we, I was thinking about it earlier today and another meeting that I had the idea that if we don't use it, we'll lose it. And we have plenty of room to grow where we're at right now at the school, even as much as we would love to be in a 24 7 facility, God, we have the ability to go to multiple services and u utilize more space. And God, we want to use what we have and not not end up losing it because we haven't been faithful. I. To, to see more people come to faith. And so make us a church passionate about evangelism and reaching the lost. And may we be effective in that. May you affect faith in the lives of the lost around us, such that they would repent and believe in Christ and join our midst to worship you as a part of campus. So we ask this and pray for this and plead for this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.