#264 Samson and Delilah

This is East from West, discovering God's amazing grace through the teaching of His Word. Monday through Wednesday is our

New Testament study, Thursday is an Old Testament book, and Friday is our Q &A. We continue our

Old Testament study today with Pastor Gate. Thank you Becky, and greetings everyone. One turn in your Bible, if you will, to Judges chapter 15, and we are going to continue today the story of Samson and Delilah.

Well, we'll continue the story of Samson, Samson and Delilah comes into the story today.

Samson's story is chronicled in Judges chapters 13 through 16, and we looked at the first half of this story last week.

The angel of the Lord appeared to Samson's parents and said they were going to have a son and he was going to be a deliverer for Israel.

He was to be under a Nazarite vow from birth, meaning that no razor would ever touch his head.

You think about the long seven braids of hair that Samson had, his baby hair was still at the end of those braids.

He was also not to touch any unclean things, so nothing dead in other words. We've already seen him break that aspect of the vow last week when he scooped the honey out of the lion's carcass, and he also was not supposed to drink any strong drink.

By the time that Samson dies, he will have broken all ten commandments and every aspect of the

Nazarite vow. So he and his parents were walking along and there was this lion that came out and Samson manhandled the lion.

And then he was walking by the lion again a little bit later and some bees had made a honeycomb inside the lion and so he scooped the honey out for himself and of course broke that aspect of the

Nazarite vow by touching something that was unclean. He married this Philistine woman since Samson was supposed to deliver

Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. Part of his strategy apparently involved marrying this

Philistine woman. And then during the time of the wedding feast, he presented this riddle to the

Philistines. If they could solve it before the wedding feast was over, then he had this big prize that he was going to get for them. But they couldn't come up with the answer.

So they got Samson's wife to get the answer out of him. And then they came up with the answer to the riddle.

Well, Samson was pretty upset that his wife had betrayed him. And so the the spirit of the

Lord rushed upon Samson and he destroyed 30 of those men.

It's like every time that Samson fights somebody, the battle gets all the more intense. He fought a lion, then he destroyed 30 men.

And we're going to see that even increase even more. How Samson comes up against the Philistines as we go on here.

So that was that was where we got in the story last week. That was chapters 13 and 14. We'll be looking at chapters 15 and 16 today.

So starting in chapter 15, after some days at the time of the weed harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat.

And he said, I will go into my wife in the chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said,

I really thought that you utterly hated her. So I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she please take her instead.

We actually read this at the end of the story last week. Samson's wife was given to his companion who had been his best man, which is the last verse in Judges chapter 14.

So here in verse three, Samson said to them, this time I shall be innocent in regard to the

Philistines when I do them harm. So previously, when he killed 30 of the Philistines, he kind of held back a little bit because he was married to a

Philistine woman. But now, since that woman was no longer his and had been given to his best man, he wasn't going to hold back.

It was basically what he was saying here. So that in verse four, Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches and he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails.

And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the

Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well as the olive orchards.

Then the Philistines said, who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son in law of the Temnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion.

And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, if this is what you do,

I swear I will be avenged on you. And after that, I will quit. And he struck them hip and thigh with a great blow.

And he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of Eton, struck them hip and thigh with a great blow.

We don't really know what the meaning of that is exactly, but it basically just means that he gave him a really serious beating.

No one could stop Samson. He was a modern Superman. But understand, though, he would have been a big guy.

He would have been a big, imposing guy because we'll see that he was very recognizable. So there were obviously some things about him that stood out from other people.

His Nazirite vow, for example, he had those seven braids of hair and he was a big dude looking at him.

People knew that they couldn't beat him up, but his strength didn't come from his physical ability.

Any time that Samson defeats an enemy that comes against him, it says that the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him.

We saw that when he fought with the lion, when he beat up those 30 guys at the end of chapter 14, when he is fought with the

Philistines again here, the spirit of the Lord rushes upon Samson and that's what gives him his strength.

So even though he would have been a big, imposing dude, it's not like we're expecting to see some other

Samson come about again today. Can anybody ever be born that was as strong as Samson was? Maybe if I don't cut my hair, then

I will have the strength that Samson has. Well, it's the spirit of God that gave Samson his strength.

But Samson's going to get rather arrogant about it. I mean, he's going to think that his strength is from himself and and will be pretty stuck up and even make some demands of God, as we will see when we go on here.

Verse nine, then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi and the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us?

They said, we have come up to bind Samson to do him as he did to us. Then 3000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the

Rock of Edom and said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us?

What then is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them.

And they said to him, we have come down to bind you that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines.

And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves. And they said to him, no, we will only bind you and give you into their hands.

We will surely not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

Now, this is all kind of a plot on Samson's part. He means to beat up some more Philistines by this.

But notice that 3000 men of Judah came to Samson to question him about what it was that had happened.

And those 3000 men were going to bring Samson back to the Philistines. So they themselves had a fear of Samson, enough so that it took 3000 of them to muster up some courage to confront

Samson. Now, there should be Israelites that are partnering with Samson in fighting against the

Philistines. That's what should be happening. But that's not what that's not what's going on in the story.

Samson is single handedly taking on the Philistines. He's supposed to be leading Israel.

That's a failure on his part, not being a leader, but it's also a failure on the part of Israel by not stepping up and doing the work that God commissioned them to do when he sent them into the promised land.

God told the Israelites that they were supposed to do the work if they believed

God, if they had faith in God, that he was going to deliver their enemies to them into their hands.

Then they were to continue to drive out all of the pagans, the Canaanites, those who had been worshiping false gods, sacrificing children to these false gods.

God was using Israel to wipe them out. This was their punishment for centuries of worshiping false gods.

This was part of what Israel was supposed to do. It was their responsibility. And even when a judge had been given to Israel to deliver them from the hands of their enemies,

Israel would still rise up an army that would be led by that judge to destroy their enemies.

You think of of Deborah and Barak and Barak had ten thousand men along with him.

And then when they defeated their enemies, the song of Deborah and Barak and judges chapter five, they even sing about the tribes of Israel that did not help them.

You get to the story of Gideon and Gideon only has 300 men. Now, of course, they whittled down that army to those 300 men.

But progressively, as things go here, those armies start getting smaller and smaller.

The help of Israel that is supposed to follow under the leadership of this judge becomes less and less and even less genuine.

Those that do end up rising up with the judge and and following their direction. So eventually we get to this story with Samson and Israel's not involved at all.

It's just Samson. Israel has cried out to God and asked for deliverance from the hands of the

Philistines. And God has heard their cry and given them Samson, who would deliver them. But you can see the disingenuousness then in Israel on Israel's part, because they're just crying out, just expecting

God to be a vending machine and give them what it is that they're asking for while they themselves are not doing any of the work.

They're doing nothing to show that their faith is genuine. And this goes this goes a little bit with James that we've been studying, although we've not gotten to this section yet.

In James chapter two, he says, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body.

What good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Now, James here is not saying that a person is saved by their works, but rather if they are truly saved by grace through faith, then there will be an evidence of that saving faith in a person's life.

Their actions will show that they are a follower of Christ and obey his commands.

If a person merely says that they believe, but there's no work that shows evidence of that belief, then they really don't believe.

As I've talked about before, regarding justification and sanctification, justification is the event.

Sanctification is the process. They're really the same thing. Sanctification is merely justification in action.

If a person has been justified in Christ by the sacrifice of Christ, our sins have been washed clean and we stand innocent before God.

If we have been justified in Christ, then we will be sanctified. God will continue to grow us in holiness and righteousness as we progress in our

Christian faith. If a person is not being sanctified, then they have never been justified.

So if God has justified you, he will sanctify you. If he is not sanctifying you, then he has never justified you.

And so there will be evidence of saving faith in a person's life by the works that they do.

That is the evidence that they have been transformed in Christ. Jesus said to his disciples, you will show me that you love me when you obey my command.

So the works give evidence of saving faith. I remember a situation that happened with my dad.

Oh, this was had to be at least 10 years ago. Now he was working at Christian radio station.

I was working at that same station along with him. As a matter of fact, we had this huge ice storm that came in a thousand foot tower that the signal of the radio station was transmitted out from.

And the weight of the ice on that tower caused the top 300 feet of the tower to collapse. And we were off the air.

I mean, you don't have a radio tower. You're not on the air. And so I think it was like two or three weeks or something that we were off.

And during that period of time, you know, it's crunch time. My dad has to go through numbers. He has to go through estimates.

He has to talk to contractors, to the insurance company, on and on it goes, all the different things that he had to do.

His desk was full of papers, full of stuff that he had to go through. It was a very stressful time.

But of course, it taught my dad to rely upon the Lord. He was he was constantly seeking after God for his strength, even through that period.

But it was nonetheless was still very stressful on him, you know, not being on the air.

How in the world do you appeal to listeners to give money to help with some of the repair costs that we had to do because we had no signal through which that we could ask anybody to donate to the radio station.

I remember there was an individual. I can't remember if this was a staff member or somebody that was on the board of directors, but they came into the into my dad's office once and they said,

Don, you're working yourself too hard. You're getting really stressed out. You're going to fall apart here if you don't take a break.

I think you just need to sit back and relax and just have faith that God is going to work this out. And my dad, very annoyed, looked at this individual and said, is the kind of faith you're talking about going to read through all of these contracts on my desk?

Is the kind of faith you're talking about going to make the phone calls that I need to make? Is the kind of faith that you're talking about going to crunch all of these budget numbers that I need to go through?

And the point that my dad was making was I have faith in God to know that he is going to deliver us out of this situation.

But I need to do the work that is on my part that I'm responsible to do because God has put me in this position to do this work.

And if I did not believe that God was going to deliver us, I wouldn't be doing this work. And so that's what it was that he was trying to communicate to this particular individual.

My dad's faith was evidenced in the work that he did. And he was not thinking that I have to do all of this or it's not going to get done.

But rather, it was the strength that God had given to him to be able to do that work that saw the task through to the end.

There's a lot more to that story. But I give you that much to give you an example of the work that we do, showing the evidence of the faith that we have.

And this is the kind of evidence that Israel did not possess. So here, as Israel is delivering

Samson into the hands of the Philistines, verse 14 of chapter 15 here, when he came to Lehi, the

Philistines came shouting to meet him. They're they're they're thinking, hey, victorious. Samson's been captured.

Then the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him once again, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that had caught fire and his bonds melted off his hands.

And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey and he put out his hand and took it. And with it, he struck a thousand men.

And Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey,

I have struck down a thousand men. As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand.

And that place was called Ramath Lehi. And he was very thirsty. And he called upon the

Lord and he said, you have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant. And shall

I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi and water came out from it.

And when he drank, the spirit returned and he his spirit returned and he revived.

Therefore, the name of it was called in Hakor, that is, at Lehi to this day.

And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines for 20 years. So you see kind of Samson's arrogance here.

Even he doesn't really have faith in God to deliver him. He makes some demands of God. You're going to leave me out here to waste away after I've been doing this work for you.

Come on now. And then God didn't strike him down in his place because God is a merciful

God and gave him water. But Samson's hubris is going to catch up with him here as we go to chapter 16.

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 and then we will kill him. But Samson lay till midnight and at midnight he arose 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 the front in front of Hebron, huge, huge gates that Samson's carrying here.

After this, he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorok whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the

Philistines came up to her and said to her, seduce him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we may overpower him and may bind him and humble him.

And we will give we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver. So Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound that one could subdue you.

And Samson said to her, if they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.

Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried and she bound him with them.

Now, she had she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber. And she said to him, the Philistines are upon you,

Samson. But he snapped the bowstrings as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.

Then Delilah said to Samson, behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound.

And he said to her, if they bind me with new ropes that have never been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.

So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, the Philistines are upon you,

Samson. And the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the ropes like a thread. And Delilah said to Samson, until now, you have mocked me and told me lies.

Tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, if you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then

I shall become weak and be like any other man. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web.

And she made them tight with the pin and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom and the web.

And she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times and you have not told me where your great strength lies.

And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death.

It's a weak dude, OK, strong and strength, but emotionally just not there.

And he just can't seem to get a clue that Delilah was trying to con him either. Verse 17.

And he told her all of his heart. And he said to her, a razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a

Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me and I shall become weak like any other man.

When Delilah saw that he had told her all of his heart, she went and called the lords of the

Philistines, saying, come up again, for he has told me all of 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.

Then she began to torment him and his strength left him. Now, before I keep going here, this guy's a heavy sleeper, just wanted to kind of add that point here, all the things that she's done to him while he's sleeping and he slept through all of that.

What a really heavy sleeper. But of course, he probably had some assistance, wink, wink, some strong drink that probably put him in that particular state.

So continuing on here, as Samson has totally been fooled by this woman, he could not get a clue that she's always trying to do something that would bind him to make him susceptible to the

Philistines. And he always was able to overcome it every time, but did not seem to figure out that Delilah is in is in cahoots with the

Philistines here. So in verse 20, she said the Philistines are upon you, Samson. We go through this routine again.

And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.

But I have to tell you, there are probably fewer verses in the Bible that terrify me as much as this one and the sentence that comes after that.

So let me let me read this again. Verse 20. She said the Philistines are upon you,

Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.

But he did not know that the Lord had left him. So in every other occasion that Samson fought against the

Philistines, God was with him. It was the strength of the spirit of God that rushed upon Samson, and he was always able to overthrow his enemies.

But on this occasion here, the strength of God was no longer with him.

He did not know that God wasn't with him. And the

Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles.

And he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

John MacArthur has talked about the different wraths of God, that there is like the

Book of Revelation sort of wrath where God just rains down judgment on a particular people. But there's a kind of wrath that we don't often talk about, and that's the wrath of abandonment.

When God will turn a person over to their sinful desires and his hand of restraint is no longer upon that person because they've been chasing after sin, rejecting

God, continuing to chase after sin, and he turns them over to their own depravity.

And that's what happens with Samson here is that Samson had just continued to disobey God. He continued to break commands and laws.

And finally, God released himself from Samson and let him be turned over to the hands of his enemies to learn a lesson.

Samson's strength did not come from himself. It wasn't even in his hair, but it was in the spirit of God that was upon him.

And here on this occasion, Samson had finally broken every law and every vow to the point that God was no longer going to give

Samson the assistance that he had been giving him all the way up to this point. He left

Samson and then Samson was destroyed by his enemies.

His eyes gouged out. He was placed at the mill. You know, this is another thing that speaks of the physical strength that Samson did actually have, because this is a job that donkeys do to grind grain at the mill.

And here Samson is the one who is doing it by his own strength. So he still had some physical strength.

He just didn't have the strength that God was giving him to be able to defeat his enemies. So his hair begins to grow back.

And it is because no razor touches his head once again. And he kind of gets restored to the

Nazirite vow because of the mercy that God has upon him. And so some strength gradually begins to come back to Samson.

So in verse 23, 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.

When the reality was that it was the judgment of the Lord God upon Samson that had allowed him to be turned over into his enemies hands.

And when the people saw him, they praised their God, for they said, Our God has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country who has killed many of us.

Thousands, thousands of Philistines had been killed by Samson, not to mention the great cost that had been upon the

Philistines because Samson had destroyed their crops. 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.

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.

The lords of the Philistines were there. And on the roof, there were about three thousand men and women who looked on while Samson entertained.

Then Samson called to the Lord and he said, Oh, Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, oh

God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. A little bit different address here that Samson makes before God, as opposed to the one that he said before.

Let's look at that other prayer that Samson had in in chapter 15, where Samson said chapter 15, verse 18.

And he was very thirsty and he called upon the Lord and said, You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant.

And shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? This this great salvation has been granted to your people by me, by my hands.

That's what Samson was saying here. But then look at how his prayer changes before God in chapter 16, when he says to the

Lord, Oh, Lord God, addressing him by a very proper title now with great reverence and fear.

Please remember me and strengthen me only this once, oh God, that I may be avenged on the

Philistines for my two eyes. This please remember me. This was a prayer of repentance.

Please look upon your servant with favor once again. I have sinned against my God. Now give me strength just this once that I may do what it is that you have commissioned me to do in obedience, destroy the

Philistines. In verse 29, Samson grasped the two middle 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 of his strength and the house fell upon the

Lord's and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life.

Then his brothers and all of his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtael in the tomb of Manoah, his father.

He had judged Israel for 20 years. And that is the end of the story of Samson, because we see at the end of his life that he was repentant before the

Lord. We have him listed as one of the heroes of the faith in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11.

You got this guy and my goodness, how arrogant this guy was, easily the worst of the judges that ruled

Israel in his attitude toward God. And yet God showed mercy upon him and he was humbled at the very end of his life to give all the glory to God instead of himself.

And it was because of his change of heart that he is listed among the heroes of the faith in Hebrews chapter 11 instead of a man that would have been under the wrath of God because he would not submit to God.

Let us learn from Samson's mistakes and not let it have to come to a point where we've been captured by our enemies and our and our eyes have been gouged out.

And then we become the entertainment of those who hate us. Let it not ever come to that point.

But if we do not obey God and we continue to pursue our sin, then God can do just to us as he did to Samson, turning us over to our own depravity and we will be humbled in a great way.

And so let us seek after the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength as we have been commanded to do by Christ Jesus, our

Lord. Thank you, God, for the faithfulness that you have shown to us, though we were faithless, though we were not seeking after God, though all of our deeds were as filthy rags before you.

Yet you showed us mercy and grace and love. And at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, died for us as sinners, as rebels against God, as enemies of God.

And yet you showed us mercy by giving us your son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins.

You brought us from death to life. You brought us from darkness into your marvelous light.

You did this, God. And so we give you all the glory. In the name of Jesus, our

Savior, we pray. Amen. This has been East from West with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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