Do You Love Me Series

Do You Love Me Part II

Judges 16:4-22 Ephesains 4:20-5:2

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and the big thing at school will be who gave you a Valentine Day Card. Many romances will be started tomorrow over by Wednesday. I still remember back in seventh grade buying the biggest heart of candy I could find this girl who sent it through the grapevine that she liked me about two days before Valentine’s Day.

She joyfully accepted my candy at school on Valentine’s Day on that Friday. By the following Monday, I had received notice through the grapevine, that she and her old boyfriend was back together again. All I had was a broken heart and the loss of my money. Looking back and seeing what happened to some other people who played the fool, I came out pretty good.

Last week we asked the question, "Do You Love Me" and what did it really mean. In our Scripture reading this morning, we found that even mature people with God’s anointing upon them can be blindsided by love. Samson was one of the strongest men to have ever lived, but that did not keep him from playing the fool. When he met Delilah, his heart started racing, his eyes bulged, he felt himself floating on air, and he knew he had found the perfect woman.

Was she ever good looking. All it took for him was just one look. Now Samson had a history of using women for his own pleasure and then leaving them behind in his past. But when he saw Delilah, he had a reaction inside like nothing else. With Delilah, he fell in love.

The only problem is, Delilah did not fall in love with him. She pretended to love him and even moved in with him. They never did get marry. But Samson didn’t know she was only in it for the money. Not his money, but money people were paying her to find out how they could destroy him.

Samson was asking Delilah "do you love me" . But what Samson was really asking "Baby are you going to be by my side for the rest of my life.". Delilah was asking Samson "do you love me". But she was really asking "Fool , will you give me what I want so I can get out of this relationship." Samson’s first impression of Delilah caused him to see a woman that did not exist.

Friends, you can have the best of motives going into a relationship, but that does not mean that somebody is not out to use you for what they can get. Samson was the first to have a fatal attraction in Scripture. Three times he discovered a plot of his girlfriend attempting to have him assassinated. He overlooked all three of them as mere coincidence. After all she had told him, she loved him.

But on the fourth attempt Delilah was successful. Samson’s enemies seized him, and ripped his eyes out of the socket. They turned him into a slave and Delilah walked away with enough money to live on for quite a while. Paid by the very men, who ripped out his eyes. Love can be a costly adventure and a painful one as well.

Last week we looked at three kinds of love. There was eros, the romantic type, phileo the friendship type, and agape, the I want the best for you type. Our ultimate goal in love in our relationships to one another should be agape. We get so caught up in the wrong thing when it comes to love that we sort of set ourselves up for disaster.

For some of us, the most important thing about choosing a friend or someone to date is what does the person look like. But looks are no indicator of what qualities a person may possess. Sure they may make a profound first impression, but we do not live with first impressions. We live with a person’s true qualities.

If a person happens to look appealing to you, that’s simply icing on the cake, but it’s not the cake. When you choose to love a person, the person always becomes better looking with time, because you discover the qualities that really matter. You don’t have anybody that you really love that you think is ugly. Because you see something that others fail to see.

The word of God tells us, that Jesus was not a tall dark handsome good looking person. It says in Isaiah 53:2 "He had not beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." In other words, most of us if not all of us, looked better on than outside than Jesus did. But so what, that’s not where it counts in relationships.