Introduction:
1 John 2:15 - Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
2 Timothy 4:10 - For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.
Three Truths About Separation: (Judges 13:1-25):
Romans 12:1-2 - I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
- Separation is NOT about focusing on External things.
- Separation is a Reality and a Process.
Galatians 6:14 - But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
- Separation was Modeled perfectly by Jesus Christ.
John 17:15-17 - I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:01-00:02
Judges 13.
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While you're turning there, let's just bow our heads and pray for a moment as we approach God's Word.
00:08-00:12
Our Father in Heaven, You have told us in Your Word that You have exalted Your Word even above Your name.
00:13-00:14
We take it very seriously.
00:15-00:20
Father, while we don't worship the Word, we worship the God that the Word points us to.
00:21-00:26
And apart from Your Word, we wouldn't really understand who You are or what You've done.
00:26-00:32
Father, it's so easy to come in here this morning There is so much to distract us right now.
00:33-00:44
But I pray, Father, that Your Spirit would just sort of clear out the clutter that's in our hearts and minds right now, and that we would be open and ready to receive what Your Word has to teach us today.
00:45-00:47
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
00:48-00:50
Judges chapter 13, are you there?
00:50-01:11
We're going to be beginning a five-week series on one of the most fascinating people in the entire Bible. And his name is Samson. We get more information about him than we do any other judge. But unfortunately, too often it's negative. It's a negative example.
01:12-01:29
So let's look at Judges chapter 13, verse 1 says, "And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. Stop there.
01:30-01:36
This is the seventh cycle in the book of Judges, where Israel once again abandoned the Lord.
01:37-01:40
And this time the Lord used the Philistines to conquer.
01:40-01:46
But the Philistines, they didn't typically conquer the way we think of a nation conquering another nation.
01:47-01:51
They didn't typically come in with their weapons and like mow them down.
01:51-01:53
You know how the Philistines conquered?
01:54-01:57
They use trade and intermarriage.
01:57-01:59
Now, please hear me.
01:59-02:04
When I say intermarriage, I'm not talking about interracial marriage, okay?
02:05-02:07
The Bible says nothing about that.
02:07-02:09
There's one race, there's a human race.
02:09-02:12
We're not talking about interracial marriage.
02:12-02:15
We're talking about interfaith marriage.
02:15-02:26
We're talking about when God's people join themselves to someone who doesn't know the Lord or worship the Lord or even worse, worships another god.
02:27-02:36
That's what we're talking about, but that's typically how the Philistines conquered, was they would assimilate the enemy into their culture.
02:37-02:45
As Alexa told us on the video, at every other point in Judges, the enemy conquered and Israel cried out.
02:46-02:47
But not this time.
02:47-02:48
You notice that?
02:48-02:50
There was no asking for help.
02:50-02:56
There was no "Please Lord, deliver us!" Because this was a time of affluence.
02:57-03:00
Therefore, it was a time of apathy.
03:01-03:08
And though the Philistines were in charge and dominating for 40 years, I mean, don't miss that little fact, okay?
03:09-03:18
40 years they were being dominated by another nation, it just didn't seem that bad to Israel.
03:18-03:26
And that's why we're going to see over these next few weeks, this is extremely significant, that when Samson fought, he had no allies.
03:26-03:32
Almost every other judge we've seen has led a Jewish military, but not Samson.
03:32-03:35
When Samson fought, Samson fought alone.
03:36-03:42
And that's why the Lord gave Samson something that the other judges didn't get.
03:43-03:44
What's Samson known for?
03:44-03:46
His strength, right?
03:46-03:51
Samson had like a real life superpower, okay?
03:51-03:53
And none of the other judges got that. Why?
03:53-03:57
Because God gave them armies and people beside them.
03:58-04:00
Samson had to go into every battle by himself.
04:00-04:01
But the Lord gave him the strength.
04:02-04:05
Samson wasn't this national liberator, he was an individualist.
04:05-04:11
And you're going to see as we go through this series, all of Samson's battles were personal.
04:12-04:13
Okay, pick up in verse 2.
04:14-04:24
It says, "There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had no children.
04:24-04:34
And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, 'Behold, you are barren and have not born children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.
04:35-04:41
Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean.
04:41-04:46
"For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, no razor shall come upon his head.
04:46-04:50
For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb.
04:51-05:01
And he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines." Circle the word "begin" in your Bible. Do you notice that?
05:03-05:07
Samson's going to start something, he's not going to finish it, but he's going to start something.
05:07-05:09
Why won't he finish it? Because Israel didn't care.
05:10-05:11
Okay? Israel didn't care.
05:12-05:25
So God in His grace said, "Even though you don't care, I'm still going to help you, though you don't recognize you even need help." But in these verses here we see a godly couple, which is very refreshing in the book of Judges.
05:26-05:27
They didn't have children.
05:27-05:31
And if you know your Bibles, you know that the Lord seems to work that way a lot, doesn't He?
05:31-05:35
When He wants to do something big, He starts with a woman who can't have children.
05:36-05:46
But it says, "The angel of the Lord." And in your Bibles, when it says "the angel of the Lord," that's typically a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ.
05:46-05:56
And this is hugely significant because, you know, in all of history, Jesus Christ has only showed up twice to announce a birth.
05:56-05:58
And one of them was Samson. Do you know the other one?
05:59-06:00
Shout it out, bonus points.
06:01-06:13
Isaac, right. He was the only other one that Jesus personally showed up to say, "You're having a baby." So that tells us this child is going to be extremely significant.
06:13-06:14
And you can read the rest of the chapter.
06:15-06:16
But here's the overview.
06:16-06:22
"Menoah prayed for the angel to return, for Jesus to return, and he did.
06:22-06:30
And he re-emphasized what he told Menoah's wife." You'll find that "Menoah prepared a burnt offering, and the angel went up into flames.
06:30-06:34
Mrs. Menoah had the baby, and they named him Samson.
06:34-06:38
and he grew up with God's blessing in hand upon him.
06:38-06:41
And that's how the story of Samson begins.
06:42-06:45
Here's the question we're going to look at this morning.
06:46-06:50
Why do we get so much information about Samson's birth?
06:50-06:58
These are kind of the questions when I'm reading the Bible I have to ask myself, because some judges like, remember Shamgar, we didn't talk a lot about him, he's only got one verse.
06:59-07:01
His whole life is like in one verse in the Bible.
07:02-07:07
And then we get to Samson, and we get this whole chapter about how he was born.
07:07-07:08
Like, why?
07:09-07:09
Why?
07:10-07:16
We didn't get this kind of on-gram for the other judges, so why is there so much about Samson's birth?
07:17-07:18
And here's the answer.
07:18-07:22
This chapter is setting the table, explaining why Samson was so different.
07:23-07:42
And if you're planning on joining us for these next several messages, you have to understand this because otherwise Samson's story is not going to make any sense unless you understand this one fact. Look at verse 5 again. It says, "For behold you shall conceive and bear a son, no razor shall come upon his head." Look at this phrase.
07:42-08:26
This is it. "For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb." Samson was called in a very special and very specific way to be separate. In the midst of Israel abandoning God and not really caring about the consequences, God raised up Samson, whose number one characteristic was not his hair, and his number one characteristic wasn't even really his power, his number one characteristic was he was called to be completely separate in a culture where everybody has integrated and intermarried and assimilated with the Philistines.
08:27-08:29
He was called to be a Nazirite.
08:29-08:33
That comes from the Hebrew word "nazir" which means to set apart.
08:33-08:37
It was somebody who was dedicated to God in a very special way.
08:38-08:43
Now we're not going to turn there, but you can check this out later. I'm going to give you the CliffsNotes version for time today.
08:44-08:45
Numbers chapter 6.
08:45-08:51
I want to tell you four things about the Nazirite vow. This comes from the Old Testament law, Numbers chapter 6.
08:51-08:52
Write that down.
08:52-08:53
Here's four things about the vow.
08:54-08:56
The Nazarite vow, number one, was voluntary.
08:58-09:03
An Israelite could choose to put himself under a Nazarite vow.
09:04-09:06
To say, "I'm making this choice.
09:07-09:12
I'm going to set aside a season of my life for this vow." And that leads us to number two, it was purposeful.
09:12-09:14
It was voluntary and it was purposeful.
09:14-09:16
Like what's the purpose of this?
09:16-09:20
You're cutting yourself off from other things and being separated to God.
09:20-09:22
We're going to talk about that more in a second.
09:22-09:32
voluntary is purposeful, number two. Number three, it was symbolic. When you took a Nazirite vow, there are some things that went with that. Like what kinds of things?
09:32-09:43
Well, no fruit of the vine, all right? No wine. Like why is that? Well, wine was associated with luxury, okay? And the Nazirite vow was a call to a simple life.
09:43-09:59
We're abandoning all the luxurious things for this season of my life. Also, part of the Nazarite vow was you were not allowed to cut your hair. That was the external symbol. It was in vogue even before... What do you call that, Matt? The quarantine fro?
10:02-10:19
So it was in vogue even before that. You weren't supposed to cut your hair. That was the external symbol under a vow to God. And another part of it was you were not allowed to have contact with a dead body. Why? Well, when you were in contact with a dead body, that disqualified you from going to the tabernacle.
10:20-10:24
It was a picture of constantly being in fellowship with the Lord.
10:24-10:26
So we avoid dead things.
10:27-10:29
So the Nazarene vow was voluntary, number one.
10:29-10:30
Number two was purposeful.
10:30-10:32
Number three was symbolic.
10:32-10:33
And number four, it was temporary.
10:34-10:36
It was, "I'm going to do this for a season.
10:36-10:48
I'm dedicating this season of my life unto the Lord." But all that said, for Samson, it was a little bit different because this wasn't, for him, a personal voluntary commitment.
10:48-10:50
For Samson it was a divine command.
10:50-10:55
Samson was told even before he was born, "This is who you are, pal, for your entire life.
10:56-11:01
You are dedicated wholly unto the Lord in a special way for a certain season of your life.
11:01-11:03
You're going to be like that for your entire life.
11:03-11:06
You're a lifelong Nazarite." You understand?
11:07-11:13
It's really important to understand his life story because if you don't understand that, the rest of the story doesn't really make much sense.
11:14-11:21
Samson was called to be separate, distinct from Israel giving in to the pagan, worldly ways of the Philistines.
11:22-11:25
But here's the problem, and you're going to see this as we go through his story.
11:26-11:36
There was a huge disconnect between Samson's call to be separate and the way that he lived his life.
11:37-11:39
He just didn't get it.
11:40-11:43
had a lust for pagan women.
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And he ended up literally falling in love with the very thing that he was supposed to be separated from.
11:52-12:05
We have to understand this, church, because this issue isn't just for this in the Old Testament, because falling in love with the world is a danger that all of God's people face in all time.
12:06-12:07
That's why we get this warning.
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Look at 1 John 2.15.
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This is New Testament, Christian's church.
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This is what the Lord says to us.
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Samson didn't get it.
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Do you get it?
12:17-12:18
Do I get it?
12:18-12:22
Do not love the world or the things in the world.
12:23-12:27
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
12:28-12:29
That's a tough verse to swallow.
12:29-12:30
True or false?
12:31-12:37
Now, understand, when it says don't love the world, it's not saying you can't love your life.
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It's not saying that.
12:39-12:44
I'm happy, I've got a nice family, I enjoy my work, I enjoy life.
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Is this saying I'm wrong?
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No, it's not saying that.
12:46-12:50
And it's not saying that you shouldn't love unsaved people.
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We're going to talk about that more in a minute.
12:53-12:56
This is talking about being attached to worldly things.
12:57-13:04
It's allowing the things of the world to take priority in your life over your relationship with your Creator.
13:04-13:06
That's what this is talking about.
13:06-13:10
the world's stuff more than you love the Creator.
13:11-13:14
And worldliness, worldliness is a killer.
13:14-13:17
It will stop spiritual vitality if you have any.
13:18-13:19
It will ruin your testimony.
13:20-13:21
It will stifle your ministry.
13:22-13:24
And it will bring bondage.
13:24-13:26
Worldliness is so destructive.
13:27-13:38
That's why we have to spend a whole message leading up to Samson's life trying to understand this not just for understanding his story, but to understand how it makes sense for our story, right?
13:39-13:42
2 Timothy 4.10, Paul wrote this from prison.
13:43-13:46
You know, remember Paul, we spent how many years in Acts?
13:46-13:59
Like three years in the book of Acts and studying the life of Paul and all the work that he did and all that he did for so many people and all the church planning and ministry and now he's in prison and he writes this to Timothy.
14:00-14:09
He says, "For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica." That's a heartbreaking verse.
14:10-14:15
You would think that Demas would see Paul's predicament and be like, "Man, he's been there for so many people.
14:15-14:23
I'm going to be there for him." But Paul says, "He ditched me, man." Like why did he do that, Paul?
14:23-14:24
He tells you why.
14:25-14:26
He says, "He loved the world too much.
14:27-14:33
He was more concerned about the stuff of the world than the stuff of God, and he left me.
14:34-14:36
Church, I've got to tell you, this doesn't happen overnight.
14:38-14:47
Demas wasn't like, "I'm fired for the Lord," and then went to bed one night and woke up the next morning and was like, "I am so done with this Jesus stuff.
14:48-14:50
Paul, you're on your own, kid.
14:50-14:53
I am out of here." It doesn't happen that way.
14:53-14:55
It's gradual and it's subtle.
14:56-15:00
And if we're honest, every single one of us in here knows a demon.
15:00-15:02
Don't shout out names, okay?
15:02-15:06
They'll be like, "Yeah, I know a demon, his name was Gary!" Don't do that.
15:07-15:09
But the truth is, we all know one.
15:10-15:12
We all know the guy that's been on fire for the Lord.
15:13-15:15
But you're like, "Man, inspiring.
15:15-15:24
He really loves the Lord, and he is sold out for Jesus Christ!" And then the next thing you know, you're like, "Hey, has anybody seen him in a while?
15:24-15:26
He's totally MIA." all of a sudden.
15:27-15:30
And you can't see how it happens because it's internal.
15:31-15:33
And church, this can happen to us.
15:33-15:36
It happens when sin no longer grieves us.
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It happens when our passion for Jesus Christ cools.
15:40-15:45
It happens when serving is a duty, not a delight.
15:45-15:47
And it's reality.
15:48-15:50
It's a hard reality to face.
15:50-15:57
But there's another demon sitting right here right now, watching online right now, there's another Demas.
15:57-16:06
Somebody today, you feel like, "Jesus, I will follow you to the end!" And then next week, next month, like whatever happened to so-and-so?
16:07-16:09
He was in love with the world too much.
16:09-16:12
And no one can serve two masters, right?
16:12-16:18
And when it came down to loving the world or loving Jesus, Jesus lost in his life.
16:18-16:19
You and I are called to be separate.
16:20-16:27
You and I are called to not love the world like Samson, we just, so often church, we just don't get it.
16:28-16:34
What I want us to look at today is how are we to live in the world but we're to be separated from the world at the same time?
16:34-16:39
How are we to be involved with the world but not love the world?
16:39-16:40
How do we do that, right?
16:41-16:44
Because we're here, and there's a lot of great stuff here.
16:44-16:53
So how do we live here for Jesus but not fall in love and end up like a Demas, or end up like a Samson?
16:53-16:56
Well, for some people the answer is separation, right?
16:57-17:04
They say, "Well, I avoid worldliness by avoiding sinners." And there's shame for people like that.
17:04-17:07
We call them the Amish, right?
17:07-17:13
I'm not slamming the Amish, but that's like Christianity is more of a cultural thing than a faith thing.
17:13-17:18
And we've just sort of detached ourselves from the rest of the world.
17:19-17:26
But on the other hand, isolationism, that's not the answer, because Jesus, didn't he call us to be salt and light?
17:26-17:32
And if you're going to be salt and light, you have to be present around sinners who need the salt and the light.
17:32-17:43
You see, the danger with that is we go to the other extreme and we just sort of assimilate and we blend in and we embrace the values and the lifestyles of the world and suddenly there's no distinction.
17:43-18:51
Like, "All right, Jeff, so you're saying I shouldn't become a hermit and withdraw from the world, but I can't be a chameleon and blend in with the world, so what does it mean to be separated from the world? What does that mean?" And volumes have been written about this subject, and it's an audacious thing to think that I can even barely scratch the surface in one message. I feel like if somebody said, "Hey, describe your wife to me in three words or less," I'd be like, "I can't do that!" And we're going to take a swing at this, alright? Simply today, three truths about separation. How do we live in the world but not of the world? Three truths about separation. You can turn in your Bibles to Romans 12. We're going to have it on the screen here for you. But this is what the Bible says, church, Christian, about our proper attitude in the world, not of the world, not falling in love with the world. Here's what Paul says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
18:52-19:08
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
19:09-19:11
Three truths about separation.
19:13-19:20
Number one, get this down first, separation is not about focusing on external things.
19:21-19:26
Separation is not about focusing on external things.
19:26-19:42
'Cause right now, as soon as we talk about separation and avoiding worldliness, somebody here, somebody watching online is thinking, oh, Jeff's gonna start condemning and giving us the list of things we should not watch on TV or things that we should do and not do, or music we should listen to.
19:43-19:45
Separation is not about focusing on external things.
19:46-20:00
Samson, you see, he knew the code, but he didn't understand the concept, because in position he was dedicated to the will of God, but in his heart he was not dedicated to the God of the will.
20:01-20:06
And some Christians understand separation the way that Samson did.
20:06-20:09
Like, it's about trying to keep the rules.
20:09-20:10
Remember that old poem?
20:11-20:12
Here's an age test.
20:13-20:14
How many show hands remember this poem?
20:15-20:20
I don't drink, smoke, or chew, or run with the women who do.
20:20-20:21
How many remember that?
20:22-20:22
OK.
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Shout out to the old people here.
20:25-20:27
But for some people, that is Christianity.
20:28-20:30
I keep the list of rules.
20:30-20:31
I don't do this.
20:31-20:34
And you're like, well, where'd you get those rules from?
20:34-20:37
Well, Romans 12 says, "Don't be conformed.
20:37-20:40
Do not be conformed." That's my way of not being worldly.
20:41-20:52
And when that's the case, church, when you look at the Christian walk like that, you are treating this whole subject on the most shallow level possible.
20:53-20:57
And the reality is you become just like the Pharisees when you do that.
20:57-20:59
Because you know, the Pharisees, they kept the rules.
21:00-21:01
We've talked about these before.
21:01-21:06
You know, the Pharisees, they had hundreds of rules You had to keep these rules in order to be holy.
21:07-21:10
They had rules like, well, you had to keep the Sabbath, right?
21:10-21:11
Because that's one of the commandments.
21:11-21:13
So they had these rules to help them keep the Sabbath.
21:13-21:16
One of them was, you don't spit on the Sabbath.
21:16-21:18
You know why you don't spit on the Sabbath?
21:18-21:25
Because if your loogie hits dirt, that's considered plowing, and you just worked and you violated the Sabbath.
21:25-21:28
That was one of the rules. Don't spit on the Sabbath.
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Another rule, don't look into a mirror on the Sabbath.
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You know why you don't look into a mirror on the Sabbath?
21:33-21:38
Because if you look into a mirror, you might see a gray hair, and you might be tempted to pluck it.
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If you pluck the gray hair, that's work.
21:40-21:45
Therefore, you don't pluck by not looking, by not using a mirror, don't look into a mirror on the Sabbath.
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That was one of their rules.
21:47-21:54
Another rule was, if a bug landed on you, you couldn't swat it, because that's considered work.
21:54-22:00
What you had to do was take it off and you had to pull its legs off or something, which to me seems like a lot more work.
22:00-22:03
you weren't allowed to just swat it because that was work.
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Ridiculous, isn't it?
22:05-22:08
Here's the thing, church, don't miss this.
22:08-22:31
When externals are the focus, when you evaluate your holiness by the rules and the externals, you're substituting cheap morality for the genuine, and it obscures the deeper issues of righteousness, 'cause anyone, anyone can avoid dancing or movies or whiskey or whatever's on your list of rules.
22:32-22:33
Anybody can avoid that stuff.
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But can you control your tongue?
22:35-22:36
Can you act with integrity?
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Can you love your enemies?
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Can you walk in the fruit of the Holy Spirit?
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Those are the deeper issues.
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And I'm not saying, "Hey, anything goes." Somebody's gonna leave here saying, "Pastor Jeff says I can do whatever the heck I wanna do." That's not what I'm saying.
22:52-22:56
I'm saying we're making our focus on the wrong things.
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You've got to go after the deeper things.
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Let me illustrate it this way.
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Where I went to Bible college at the time-- I don't know what the rules are now.
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It's been a couple years since I've graduated.
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But men had to have short hair.
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Couldn't cover the ears, couldn't cover the collar.
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Women had to wear dresses.
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And you weren't allowed to watch R-rated movies.
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Those are the rules.
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But what we actually had happening at school, we had kids sneaking off of campus to have sex, we had people embezzling from the companies they worked for, and we had closet homosexuals coming out everywhere all the time.
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And I look at the list of rules that they had you keep, and I look at the behavior that was actually happening, and I had to ask myself, "Does this represent Jesus Christ?" Like, he's sneaking off having sex, but at least his hair doesn't cover his collar.
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Like, really? Really?
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But you see, you're not called to the rules.
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Romans 12 tells us what you're called. You're called to be a living sacrifice.
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And I encourage you every morning before you get out of bed, I encourage you to just lay in bed for a second, after you hit the snooze button five times, but I encourage you to lay in bed for a second. I want you to pray this prayer.
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I want you to say, "God, this bed is an altar, and I am a sacrifice.
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and I'm getting up to face my day as a living sacrifice.
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Because that's what God's called you to.
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Bottom line, church, what Samson and most Christians miss is this.
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If you don't hear anything else I say, you can't miss this.
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It's not about what you're separated from.
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It's about who you are separated to.
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And you've got to change your focus.
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When you think it's about what I'm separated from, that's where the rules come.
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You change your focus to say, "No, no, no, no. I'm separated too." Because it's a heart issue. It's a heart issue.
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Separation is not about focusing on external things.
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Number two, separation is a reality and a process.
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Separation is a reality and a process.
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Separation, there's other words we can use to describe it.
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Sanctification, holiness.
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It's living out the identity that God's already pronounced in you.
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Did you know that?
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If you're a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, if you have received Him, then you are not a sinner according to God's Word.
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The Bible calls you a saint.
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And I know that word was sort of hijacked by another religion to say it's a special kind of person that gets...
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No, no, no, no.
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Biblically, a saint is somebody who believes in Jesus Christ because God has pronounced you perfect.
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That's the reality.
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the Bible college term is positional holiness, meaning that when you believe in Jesus Christ, God has pronounced you holy. So it is a reality, but it's also a process. You're like, well, what does the process look like? Well, back to Romans chapter 12, the process looks like this. It's renewing your mind. It's renewing your mind. Like, well, how does that work?
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Well, in the Old Testament, we see that people received the Holy Spirit, but in the Old Testament The Holy Spirit only came upon a person for a particular season to accomplish a purpose, and then the Holy Spirit would depart.
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But under the new covenant, because of Jesus Christ, God's Spirit permanently indwells everyone who believes in Jesus.
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"Well, what's your point?" My point is this.
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You're an experienced believer, your experience with the Holy Spirit is richer, fuller, and deeper than anything Samson would have experienced.
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You know, we can look at the life of Samson and be like, "Man, that must have been awesome when the Holy Spirit came upon him and he was like ripping phone books in half or whatever with his super strength." You know what?
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If you would interview Samson today, do you know what he would say?
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He'd be like, "Man, it must have been awesome to be like one of them New Testament believers that had God's Holy Spirit living in them all the time, constantly changing them and growing them and transforming their hearts.
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would be envious of you because of what the Holy Spirit's doing in this season.
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He gives us, Jesus gives us his Spirit and his Word to live distinctly from the world.
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Again, that's renewing your mind.
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It's education in the things of God.
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It's thinking like Jesus.
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It's valuing what Jesus values, and that can't happen without the Word of God.
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How do we use the Word to be keeping us from becoming worldly?
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We crowd out the world by filling our affections with the cross.
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That's how the process happens.
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Crowd out the world by filling your heart with affections of the cross of Jesus Christ.
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I think of it in terms of food, right?
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When you're on a diet, when you're constantly eating junk, and this is something I have a lot of experience in, when you're constantly eating junk food, you find that you crave more. True or false? And you have little or no appetite for healthy food. You just want more garbage, more junk, more sugar, more processed whatever, and you just you can't get enough. But when you are committed to eating healthy, you will find that your appetites do change. That you no longer have that strong craving for junk food, right? Can anybody testify to this? And that's how it is with spiritual appetites. When you're focusing on the good and you're filling your heart and your mind with the things of God, you're going to see that your appetite for worldly things will be waning and you've successfully crowded it out. That's how it works. Stuff yourself full of the good things that God gives. You've got no appetite for the garbage the world offers. I think that's why Paul wrote what he wrote in Galatians 6.14 when And he said, "Far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." Paul says, "The world's dead to me, and I'm dead to the world." Why, Paul?
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"Because I am so consumed by the cross of Jesus Christ and everything that means." The separation, it's not about focusing on the external.
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Separation is a reality and it's a process.
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And you're like, "Well, can you show us what it looks like, Jeff?
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Would you please show us what it looks like before we leave here?" Number three, separation was modeled perfectly by Jesus Christ.
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John 17, Jesus said, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
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They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
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Sanctify them in the truth, your word is true." So to be separated from the world is to be related to the world Jesus was related to the world. There's your answer. Jesus spent time with sinners.
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Step beyond that, Jesus actually sought out sinners, but at the same time, He was separated from their activities. Jesus never compromised. Jesus never accepted their values, but He forever stands as a witness and a model to show us, Church, how we live in the world for God's glory without becoming like the world.
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The Christians, the world needs you now more than ever.
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When sin has run its course, and we start to see people realize that their thing ain't working, they're going to turn to you.
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And it's not because you're just like them, because then what would you have to offer?
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The world's going to turn to you because in Jesus Christ, you are distinct, separated from the world.
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And therefore, we have something to offer the world.
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You bow your heads in prayer with me, please.
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Our Father in heaven, I ask for your wisdom, because Father, I believe we're a lot more like Samson than we care to admit sometimes.
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Father, show us what it means to be a living sacrifice.
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Father, show us what it looks like to be constantly renewing our minds.
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Father, show us how to crowd out worldliness by filling our hearts with affections for the cross.
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More so, Father, it's affections for the one who hung on that cross.
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It's affections for the one who rose from the dead to give us eternal life.
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Father, right now it's just so easy for us to go with what everybody else is doing, to blend in with the world.
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By your word, Father, and by the power of your Spirit, inform us into the image of your Son.
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So we may be in the world, but not of the world.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 13
What was your big “take-away” from this passage / message?
In thinking of “separation from the world”, do you tend to be more of a hermit or a chameleon? Why?
How can you recognize when “worldliness” creeps into your life, that you are “drifting away” in your walk with Christ?
You can “crowd out” worldliness by filling your affections with the cross of Christ. Specifically, how can you actively do that?
Romans 12:1-2 tells us to “renew our minds”. Explain what this means, and how you renew your mind.
Breakout
Pray for one another. How can we, as individuals and a church, strive to be in the world but separate from the world?