He’s not asking.  He’s telling them.  “Hey mom and dad, get her for me as my wife.”  Wow!  You’re talking about rebellious.  You’re talking about someone going down.  Students listen to me, young people listen to me; whenever we disobey and disregard our parents’ directives, we’re going down.  You have godly parents.  You have parents who teach Scripture.  You have parents who are passionate Christ followers.  If you disobey them, if you turn from them, I’m telling you, you’re going down.  It seems like such a small thing, an insignificant thing.  Just four miles off the track.  Just four miles away from where Samson was living.  Just going down to Timnah, to Timnahtation.

Look at verse 3, “His father and mother replied, ‘Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?’”

I mean, come on look at these beautiful Israeli girls.  Why the Philistine filly?  Check out Samson’s response in Judges 14:3. “But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me.  She’s the right one for me.’”

Now this is tough, isn’t it?  Because Samson’s parents had to practice tough love here, didn’t they?  They had to release him.  And that’s a very difficult thing, isn’t it parents?  To watch our kids who maybe are mature, who are maybe older and to watch them go down to Timnah and listen to them tell us what to do.  We tell them, “Wait a minute, here is what the Scriptures say.” But Sampson’s parents released him.

So they planned this wedding.  And the wedding was going to happen about eight weeks from this time and Samson found himself going down to Timnah again. And check out where sunshine is.

Sonny, I’m talking about Samson, is walking through a vineyard.  Samson, what are you doing in a vineyard, my brother?  What are you doing smelling the grapes? I’m sure popping two our three in your mouth?  What are you doing?  The Nazarite vow tells you not to eat grape products.

You’ll strip yourself.  You’re abusing yourself.  When you get dressed, ladies, look at yourself in the mirror and ask, ”Does this glorify God?  Can I glorify God with this outfit?  I mean, am I?”

Or, maybe if you don’t get it because some of you are confused…  I’ll talk about that in a second.  See, we’ve got to think about confusion.  A lot of you are confused, but you don’t know you’re confused. That’s why you’re confused.  If you knew it, you wouldn’t be confused.  Does that make sense?  Yeah, it did.

If you can’t make that call yourself, ask a trusted friend, a trusted girlfriend who’s a mature believer.  What do you show?  What do you reveal?  That’s what you attract.  That’s what you’re giving away.  So many women are so hollow because they’re just showing everything.  Clothe yourself.

I talked to a friend of mine a while back, and we were talking about lust.  Here’s what he told me.  He said, “Ed, you know where the number one place is that I struggle with lust?”

I said, “No. Where?

He said, “At our church.”

So, we have got a solution for this, ladies.  Next summer, we’re going to crank the air down to like 52 degrees!

I hope you know I’m not being legalistic and I don’t expect, nor do we expect you to become one.  I’m talking to Christian ladies.  And moms, you’ve got to lead out and step out with your family.  What are your kids wearing?  A lot of you can’t say very much to your daughters because of the way you’re dressed.

Let me keep going and get off that kind of sensitive subject.

Let’s get back to the I Thessalonians passage. Verses 6-8 say, “The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you.

Pray for those who persecute you.  Hit the deck.   You hit the deck and you realize God is getting ready to do something supernatural through this reaction.  God never wastes an experience.  Every experience is a courtesy in your life and mine.  Every tortilla of death is there for a reason is to make us better.  It’s to take us to the next level.  It also gives us the ability to mark and to press Jesus Christ on the life of the other who has damaged us.  So hit the deck.

Number 2.  Do something else, consider the crowd.  David was in the cave; 400 guys were watching him; he had a crowd checking him out.   And, I’m here to tell you, you have a crowd checking you out when you’re served up the tortilla of death.  You say, ah, I don’t have that many people watching me.  People don’t watch me.  I’m telling you, they do.  We want realize the ramifications and the implications of the power in the influence in our lives until we get to heaven.  When we get to heaven we’re going to be like, I had no idea I had that kind of UMP in peoples lives because people would rather see a sermon than hear one any day.  I know I would.  How is he gonna react?

There’s the tortilla of death with organic peanut butter, how is she going to react?  Four hundred people in the cave were watching David, encouraging him to, to, eat the tortilla of death and that will encourage you and me to do it too.  But to mark them we have to have this supernatural, one of a kind response.  This non-revengeful response.  Jesus one day said, picture a guy walking through the dusty streets of Jerusalem and picture a group of his friends standing around talking about typical guy stuff, sports, stocks, whatever.

Well, when I quoted that verse to you last time, John 4:34, “Jesus said, ‘My food is to do the will of God and to finish the work of him who sent me.’”  When I quoted that to you, I didn’t think about the context of that verse.  I just quoted the verse.  I didn’t think about the venue of the verse.  The venue in John chapter 4 is Jesus talking to a prostitute.  The whore in John 4, you might say.  Or the young people would say, the ho in John 4.

This prostitute talked to Jesus.  And when I heard about it this week, when someone alerted me to that I thought “Wow! Is that crazy?  I talked about that when I talked about the opportunity that I had to share Jesus with a porn star.” And it parallels this whole situation Jesus had with this woman from Samaria.

John 4:4. The Bible said that Jesus had to go through Samaria.  What does that mean?  You want to talk about racism?  I mean, you want to talk about racism.  The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other.  Really, the Jews are the ones that hated the Samaritans because the Samaritans, the Jews said, were half breeds.  Go back in history. They intermarried, the Jews did with the Assyrians and they began the Samarians.  So the Jews hated the Samarians.

So Jesus was going to a place, the Bible said, called Galilee.  He had three routes.  And devout Jews would never walk through Samaria.  They would go the other ways even though the other ways were longer ways. But they wouldn’t walk through Samaria.  The Bible said Jesus had to go through Samaria.  In other words, it was a beautiful collision orchestrated by his Father for their paths to cross.

Fifteen years ago we kicked off Fellowship Church with about 150 of us in a small rented office complex in Irving, Texas. We made one decision. We said, “You know what? Fellowship Church is going to be a Bible teaching, Bible believing church.  It’s our authority.”

So whenever someone asks you, “Hey, what kind of church is Fellowship Church?” It’s very simple. We’re a Bible teaching, Bible believing church. It’s our authority. We have no manmade creed; no group in Australia or Denmark or in some other part of the world telling us how high to jump or how to do church. We’re under the authority of the Bible. We believe the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. We even believe the maps!

The Bible is the word of God. It is our authority. The Bible is what it is. The Bible is what it is.

DENY

Some people, though, deny the Bible. You know some people like that? There might be a few here. Not very many, but some just deny it.

That’s like me saying, “Well, I deny that there’s a four and a half foot drop off from this stage to the floor. I just don’t believe it. I just don’t buy it. I’m sorry, I just don’t. And I’m going to take a run right here and I’m going to show you that there’s not a four and a half foot drop off.”

But I would fall and get hurt. I don’t care how much I disagree or deny the fact that there’s a drop off, there is a drop off. This stage is what it is. The Bible is what it is. You can say you don’t believe it, you can do whatever, but it is what it is. It is the word of God.

We have got to worry about who we are before God.  Some of you, figuratively speaking, need to take a giant pair of sheers and clip the strings.  I am powerless to control other people.

I am powerless to cope with my habit.  I can’t do it alone.  I am powerless.  Have you admitted that really?  James 4:6, “God opposes the proud but gives grace (amazing grace) to the humble.”  Recently I have been traveling a lot and one thing never ceases to amaze me.  The plane is packed and a least one traveler is trying to carry on about four bags.  I watch while he whacks every single person in the head with these bags.  It is like a bunch of dominos.  And I am waiting for just one guy to turn around and nail him.  Isn’t that kind of stupid for people to do that?  It is just dumb.  All they have to do just say, “Hey, would you check these please?”

As God looks at your life and my life, He sees all these bags on us.  “OK God, I am ready to board Your flight.”  And God accepts us but He says, “Hey, stop before you board my flight, and I’ll take care of the bags, you can’t deal with them.”  Why don’t we admit that?  Why don’t we admit that right now.

DRAMA BREAK

When we try to run our lives it is like a bunch of mannequins thinking they can run a department store.  We have got to realize that God is the King of the Jungle, He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Step one.  I have to admit that I am powerless to change my problem.  Step two.  I have to believe that Jesus Christ has the power to heal me of my condition, of my shortcomings, of my problem, of my habit.  I believe that Jesus Christ has the power to do it.

The root of my problem is my sin nature.  The result, the 4F club.  The remedy, admit that you are powerless, and listen to me, watch this, to change the past.  Admit you are powerless to change the past.  As God looks at the vehicles of our lives, many of us have a huge rearview mirror and a small, little windshield, and we spend all of our time looking into the rearview mirror, back in the past.  “That girl never called me back.”  “My parents really hurt me.”  And a rearview mirror is important.

We need to learn from the past.  It gives us perspective.  But, if you have a giant rearview mirror and a tiny little windshield, you can’t enjoy the present, you can’t get on with your life.  The Apostle Paul said in a classic scripture verse, “I forget what lies behind, I reach forward to what is ahead.”  I enjoy the moment.  In this series, the scripture is going to reduce the size of our rearview mirrors and expand the windshield.  I am powerless to change the past.

I am powerless to control others.  Don’t we love to control other people?  We love to.  I remember the great Jim Henson, and I have watched Sesame Street for years and years and years due to our large family.  Jim was a master with the Count, Big Bird, Ernie and Burt.  And he controlled these puppets with strings and wires and things and they looked real.  Even for me, I would say, hey this Count guy is a nice fellow.  I think the Cookie Monster really likes chocolate chip cookies.  It was believable.  Henson, though, was controlling everything.  I try to control others sometimes.  And you do to.  And it is frustrating.  I am powerless, you are powerless to do that.

You’re not going to do that.   You’re not going to give up your law degree from Harvard or Yale.  You’re not going to give up all your multi-millions of dollars.  You’re not going to do that.  What are you trying to do?  You’re trying to identify and connect with me?!”

You would think they would have that kind of expression, but they don’t. Instead they have crocodile grins and they’re applauding.  They’re like, “Yeah!” What they are really saying is, “At least this guy tried.  At least he tried to connect with me and identify with me.  At least he tried.”

These people are settling for what? An illusion of identification.  Our God did not accept an illusion of identification when he sent Jesus Christ to be born, to die on the cross and rise again.  No, no, no.  Jesus didn’t just do a quick fly over.  He didn’t just come in some cosmic motorcade and walk into a donut shop, smile for the cameras for a couple of minutes and then cruise off to the heavens.  No, no, no.  He identified with us.  He connected with us.  Jesus was fully God and fully man.  Something we can never totally comprehend in our finiteness.

However, it’s something we better study and better try to understand. Because if we truly understand the whole identification process of Jesus, we will leave this place (I’m talking about Fellowship Church) a different person than the person that entered this church.  The identification of Jesus.  Jesus identified with us.  “Well, Ed,” you might be asking, “How did Jesus identify with us?”

The fourth F is the old failure F.  We have got fear, frustration, fatigue and failure.  Proverbs 28:13, “You will never succeed in life if you try to hide your sins.  Confess them.”  That means to articulate.  “God, I have messed up.”  And to many of us here there is a dangerous four letter word that we are afraid to admit, H E L P.

Yesterday I did something that I have only done one other time in my life, I attempted to water ski.  My family and I went out with some friends and I was riding in the back of the boat when my friend say he would like to see me water ski.  He had been with me during my first attempt, and encouraged me to try again.  Well you know, I am kind of this macho male and I don’t want to do something that I can’t do well.  I jump in the water, it is cold.  I try to remember what I was supposed to do, I refused to ask him because I believe I can do it with no help.

We start off and I fall and fall again.  Finally the boat comes around after about the fifth fall in a row and I say, “I need some help.  What am I doing wrong here?  Help.”  I think so many of us are in that situation.  And you are saying to yourself, well I’ll put it off until next week or next year.  I can control it.  I can do it.  If you could control it, if you could do it, why haven’t you done it?  Say help.  Confess your sins.  Say God here is the baggage, and give them up.  Then God will show mercy to you.