Judges 13-16 (Manoah's True Deliverer)

The Shepherd's Church

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All throughout this Christmas series so far, we've been talking about how God brings life out of death.

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How God brings life out of death. And last week we saw that in Rahab's story, which is a beautiful metaphor for the entire

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Christian life. She's rescued from a life of being a pagan. She's spared from the fiery doom that is gonna befall her people in her city.

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And yet she's adopted into God's family. She's given a new identity, a new place, a new home, a new family.

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And she's connected to Christ. We realized a couple weeks ago that Rahab, even though her background is very sinful, like all of us, she was connected to Jesus Christ.

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She was a part of his lineage, just like you and I today are connected to Jesus Christ in our salvation.

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It doesn't just say that we know him, it says that we're in him, which is a beautiful reality that the

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New Testament shares. And all of this is by faith alone in Christ alone. She had faith of who

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God was, and she knew that if she protected these two spies that God was going to deliver her. And that's exactly what happened.

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Her entire life is a picture of the gospel. God takes her out of a dead and hopeless situation and he brings life.

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And that is what God does in all of us as well. All the women that we've looked at in this series, that's been true.

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Think about Jochebed. Jochebed is Moses's mother, and because of faith and who God is, she defies her government.

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She decides that she's not going to let the people kill her baby. They're not gonna throw this child into the river.

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She puts the child into the river, but in opposition to the government, not in obedience. And life comes to the entire nation because of her act of disobedience.

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Life comes to the people of God because of her faith. God brings life out of dead situations.

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That's what we've been learning. You think about Sarah. Sarah originally laughed at the promises of God because she couldn't even believe that those things could come true.

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And then she later laughs because she knows that they're true. She laughs in faith.

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And we know that God brought life out of that situation, a dead womb. She was two steps away from a

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Palestinian nursing home. She's only 90 years old.

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I'm surprised she was even getting around. And yet, God brings life to her barren womb.

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God fills it full of life. And it's not just her son, Isaac. That was a miracle enough.

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Isaac is a child of the promise. He points forward to Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who's gonna bring blessing to the entire world.

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Think about all the life that came out of Sarah's womb. It says in the New Testament, if we believe, we're children of Abraham.

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Think about how many children that woman has in her laughter. All throughout this series, we've seen

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God bringing life out of things that are dead. And it happens all throughout the

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Old Testament, especially when we're talking about a dead womb like Sarah. And I was thinking about it this week.

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There is no more fertile soil than a barren womb when the power of God has been added to it.

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Things that we think are dead, God can use and God can take and he can bring life to.

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Like Sarah, we've already talked about. Think about Rebecca, which is Sarah's daughter -in -law. She's barren as well.

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God brings life to her womb. You think about Rachel, who is now Sarah's granddaughter -in -law.

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God brings life to her womb. In her barrenness, she cries out to God and she says, give me children or I will die.

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And then God opens her womb and gives her children and she becomes a part of God's story and actually being critical and forming this people called

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Israel. You think about Hannah. Hannah is the mother of Samuel. Samuel's the greatest judge of all the judges and she is also barren.

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And she's got this rival wife who's married to Alcana. The Bible doesn't support polygamy, but it does describe when it happens.

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And Hannah cries out and she says, Lord, visit me. Open up my womb, help me.

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And I will give you this child. He'll be yours all the days of his life. And she becomes pregnant. She conceives and she has a son named

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Samuel. And Samuel becomes this great man who is gonna lead God's people as the final judge.

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And you think about Elizabeth in the New Testament. Elizabeth was very old and barren, just like Sarah.

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And yet God opens up her womb and she has the child named John the Baptist who will usher in the

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Christ, who will declare the coming of Jesus. The purpose of these miracle births is not just because God wanted to make sure that barren women could be pregnant, because there's lots of barren women all over the earth.

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God had also a primary purpose in doing this, which was to point forward to his son, to anticipate him, to typify him, to foreshadow him.

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All of these births point forward to Jesus. Everything in the Bible is all about Jesus, from the very first words of Genesis to the very final praises of Revelation.

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The entire Bible is about Jesus Christ. So everything that happens within those two cow -hided, binded pages or the cover, whatever happens in between that cover is about Jesus Christ, every bit of it.

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Today, we're gonna look at what I think is probably the clearest picture of Jesus in all of the

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Old Testament. Clearer than Moses, clearer than David, which is debatable, but I think it's true.

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Every aspect of this man, Samson's life, points forward to Jesus.

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The way that he's born, his childhood, the way that he grows up, and the way that he dies.

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Every aspect of this man's life is the most concentrated typology.

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And what I mean by typology is an Old Testament picture of who Jesus is going to be. It is beautiful and breathtaking, and it hits on so many different levels.

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Now, you may be asking yourself, because we live in a very hyper -feminized culture where strong men are demonized, how can a man like that be a picture of Christ?

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How can a man who, it says in the text that he slept with a prostitute, the Bible describes his sin, how can a man like that be a picture of Jesus?

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And the Bible is not saying that Samson is so righteous. He's not. Samson has faults, he has flaws, and they're pronounced.

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And that is part of the point. Samson is a deliverer who's gonna come and set his people free, but he's not enough.

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He's not big enough, strong enough, righteous enough. So his life points to Jesus because he's not enough.

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And every example in the Old Testament is not enough. So we need Jesus. That's the point.

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When we look at Moses and David and the sacrificial system and all of it, we realize coming out of it that this is not enough and we need

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Jesus. That's what the Old Testament's there for, to point us to Christ. So today we're gonna look at two things.

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We're gonna look at how is Samson a type of Christ? How is Samson pointing to Jesus in every aspect of his life?

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And then we're gonna look at, in closing, how knowing this about Jesus, that he's the true and greater

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Samson, the true deliverer of his people, will set you free. So with that, let's pray.

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And then let's get started. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the life of your

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Old Testament saints, as flawed and as broken as they are. Help us today to see that in every aspect of Samson's life, we see a limited man, a broken man.

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We see a man that cannot save his people, who cannot gain the victory that he wants to gain, who will ultimately die.

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And yet, every aspect of his life points forward to the true and better Samson. Just as we sang earlier, the true and better David, the true and better Moses, the true and better Samson.

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Lord, let us see these things and let us see who Christ is. And when we see who Christ is, Lord, let it cause us to be free.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Let's begin with a little bit of a biographical sketch of who

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Samson is. Samson was born in the darkest era of Israel's history.

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When you read the Old Testament, the book of Judges is the darkest, just, it's awful at times.

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The book ends in such tragedy and depravity. And it says even at the end of it that the people don't know their left hand from their right hand, they don't know up from down, they don't know how to even follow

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God at all. He's a judge, the final judge, in fact, the 12th judge in the book.

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He's the final judge during this period of time. This period is after Moses leads his people to the edge of the

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Promised Land. This is after Joshua takes them into the Promised Land. And this is before the kings,

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Saul and David, begin to reign. So this period is right in between. It's a transitional period where judges would be raised up to reign over the people.

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Now the book of Judges, you can imagine like a broken washing machine. If you wanna imagine an example of what the book is.

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You go down to your basement and you imagine that after about an hour, that your washing machine is finished.

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Like even if you have it on the toughest setting, it's done, it's finished.

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But you get down there and you see that it didn't actually finish. The door is locked and you can't open it and it's went back over into another cycle.

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So you come back in another hour and it's done it again. And you come back in another hour and it's done it again. And you realize that your washing machine is broken and the only thing that you can do to fix it is pull the plug.

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That's the book of Judges. These people get stuck in cyclical sins they can't get out of.

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And eventually God pulls the plug on the entire era and allows them to have what their heart most desires, which is a king.

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The first cycle that they go through is that they serve the Lord. They love God, they worship him and everything is going well in their lives when they do this.

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There's 11 cycles of this in the book of Judges. 11 times they call out to the

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Lord and God blesses them and cares for them. But the second cycle, the spin cycle maybe, is when they turn away from God and they start worshiping idols.

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Where they forget who God is. The third cycle is that the people become enslaved.

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God gives them over to the pagan nations because they're not worshiping him any longer. He removes his hand of protection from them.

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And the third cycle is that they become enslaved and conquered by the pagan nations. The fourth cycle is every single time that happens

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Israel cries out to God and they repent and they say, Lord, help us. And God in the fifth cycle raises up a judge.

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He raises up a man who's going to lead them. And in the case of Baruch and, what's the woman's judge's name?

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I just blanked out on that. Deborah, thank you. In the case of Deborah, he raises up a woman judge in this season.

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But when they cry out to the Lord, God raises up a judge. And then it goes back into another cycle.

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They begin to worship the Lord again. And then they fall into idolatry again. Then they're enslaved again. And on and on and on this cycle goes until God pulls the plug.

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There's 11 cycles of this until we get to the man who's named Samson. And Samson is a very colorful character to say the least.

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He's the kind of guy that myths and legends are told about. A couple examples is he rips a lion apart with his bare hands.

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That's pretty epic. He kills a thousand people with a donkey's jawbone.

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Like, if you're going to be a fly on a camel's back, that's the day that I want to be there. Does he keep the jawbone intact and he goes one -handed or does he tear the jawbone in half and he goes double -handed?

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That's crazy. He killed a thousand people with a jawbone. That's a guy I want to hang out with. Or at least know.

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He ties fox's tails together. This is fascinating. He shoves torches in the knot of their tails and he burns down thousands of acres of enemy territory because they spited him.

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He gets mad one day because they tried to trap him and he tears the gate off of their city wall.

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This is not a small gate. It's not like my little white gate and my picket fence. I mean, this is a massive gate and a stone wall.

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He tears it off the hinges, runs up the mountaintop, holds it up and yells at the city like, hey, here

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I am. He has a very colorful personality,

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Samson does. But the book of Hebrews calls him one of the heroes of the faith. If you look in Hebrews 11 and it shows all of the faithful people from the

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Old Testament, Samson's there. And I think the reason is is because he points so beautifully to Christ.

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One of the things you may not have seen before is how Samson is a picture of Christ and that's what I want us to do for the rest of our time is to see how every facet of his life is a picture of Jesus.

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And it's actually kind of crazy how it all lines up. Like the comparisons between him and Jesus begin at his birth.

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Just like Jesus, his birth was announced by angels. It's a pretty fascinating thing.

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Let's read from Judges 13, one through seven. And let's see this first comparison how his birth was heralded by the angels just like Jesus.

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The text says, now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the

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Lord so that the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.

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There was a certain man of Zorah of the family of the Danites whose name was Manoah and his wife was barren and had born no children.

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The Bible says that someone's barren, you know God's getting ready to work. Then the angel of the

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Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, behold now you are barren and you have born no children but you shall conceive and give birth to a son.

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Now therefore be careful not to drink strong wine or strong drink nor eat anything unclean for behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son.

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Doesn't that sound like the gospel narratives of Jesus's birth? And no razor shall come upon his head for the boy shall be a

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Nazarite unto God from the womb and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.

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Then the woman came and told her husband saying, and a man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome.

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And I did not ask him where he came from nor did he tell me his name. But he said to me, behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son and now you shall not drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing for the boy shall be a

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Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death. Samson's birth was announced by angelic witness where they said, behold, you shall conceive and bear a son.

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This is verse three. Behold now you who are barren, you shall conceive and give birth to a son.

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These are almost direct quotes from what the angel says in Luke chapter 30 where he says to Mary, the angel said to her, do not be afraid for you have found favor with God and you will bear a son.

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Both of these men were announced by angelic witnesses. Only a few people in the Bible can actually claim that sort of reality.

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And what's even more fascinating about it is that both of them were announced to their mothers first and not to their fathers first.

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Both Jesus, the announcement to Jesus was to Mary first and also to the wife of Manoah.

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It says the Lord appeared to the woman. That's verse three. Verse nine says the angel of God came again to the woman the second time and she was sitting in the field but Manoah her husband was not with her.

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It's a strange thing in that time period for such amazing and awesome news to be given to the mother and not the future father.

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But we know in the New Testament that's exactly what happened to Mary. Luke 1 26 through 27 says, now it was the sixth month and the angel

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Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was

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Joseph of the descendants of David and the virgin's name was Mary. So here you have both of them are announced by angelic witnesses and both angels go to the woman first.

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Again, socially, that was not expected at all and it tips our hand to the fact that God is up to something.

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God is going to do something and God delights to send his most important messages to these wonderful women which is a beautiful facet of the

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Bible. We don't follow what culture says. We don't follow even what biblical culture did.

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The Bible describes that women at that time were of less value than men. We don't prescribe that women are less valuable than men.

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We describe the fact that the biblical characters and the biblical societies believe that but look at what

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God does. God goes to the woman. God goes to someone who might have felt downcast and even unworthy to receive such a prominent message and yet God goes to her.

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What does that teach us about us? There's no one too far gone. There's no one too low for God to come and reach down and grab you and save you and rescue you with his glorifying gospel.

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It's only later that the husbands get involved. When they're confused then God has to clear things up for them.

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Both Manoah and Joseph are thoroughly confused, scratching their head if they still have hair left.

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Joseph was probably in his 40s. Manoah is probably in his 60s so who knows but both men get an additional angelic message in order to help clarify their confusion.

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This is what it says to Manoah, verse 11. Then Manoah arose and he followed his wife and when he came to the man, that's the angel of God, he said to him, are you the man who spoke to the woman?

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And he said, I am. That's fascinating. I wish we had time to get into that. This is a pre -incarnate visitation of Christ but I'll let you do some research on that because we have to keep moving.

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Manoah said, now when your words come to pass what shall be the boy's mode of life and his vocation?

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I love what the angel of the Lord says. So the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, let the woman pay attention to all that I said.

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It's almost like he's not talking to Manoah. He's like, let me repeat what I said to your wife. That is fascinating.

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That she would not eat anything that comes from the vine nor drink any wine or strong drink nor eat anything unclean.

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Let her observe all that I have commanded. Samson was a Nazarite which meant that he couldn't take anything from the vine.

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Not wine, not grape juice, not grapes. He couldn't touch anything that was dead and he could not shave his head.

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Those were the three characteristics of what it meant to be a Nazarite. So even his mother couldn't drink grape juice or wine or have anything from the vine while she was pregnant because it would be given to him through the placenta and through the umbilical cord and all of that.

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So he's set apart. The point is he's being set apart as wholly unto the Lord. The same is true for Joseph.

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Joseph is so bewildered that his wife is pregnant and he hasn't laid a hand on her that he's ready to divorce her quietly.

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And to him, the angel had to come just to help him get his wits about him so that he could do what God called him to do.

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It says in Matthew 1, 18 through 20, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows.

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When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the

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Holy Spirit. Imagine trying to sell that story. And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

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But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take

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Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is by the

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Holy Spirit. So you don't even have Joseph involved until later. You don't have

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Manoah involved until later. This is a similarity in their life. Now we've got three similarities that we've built upon just in their birth.

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Another one is that these two boys are called to be deliverers of the nation of Israel or the people of God.

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Now this is not explicit in Samson's birth, but it's explicit by his office. He's a judge.

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He was risen up to deliver the people from their strongholds and from pagan occupation, but it's true in his life.

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All throughout Samson's life, there's a God -giving purpose that ties all of his life together, that he was there to free his people from Philistine slavery and Philistine occupation.

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But this is explicitly stated of Jesus's life in Matthew 121. The angel says to Joseph, she will bear son, you shall call his name

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Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. To Mary, it said in Luke 1, 32 through 33, he will be great and he will be called the son of the most high

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God and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.

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Samson comes and gives a very temporary, a very limited kingdom, a very limited deliverance.

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It lasts for about 20 years. Samson dies and then the whole nation spirals out of control and falls apart at the end of the book of Judges.

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But Jesus brings an eternal kingdom, a forever kind of deliverance because Jesus's kingdom is better.

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That's the whole point we compare these two side by side is that in unlimited way, Samson is pointing to Jesus, but Jesus comes with a better deliverance, a better kingdom, a better freedom.

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Everything about Jesus is better. But both of these children were born to reign.

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Again, Samson had a very temporary role. Jesus has an eternal role. Another similarity is that the angelic activity to their mothers ended after the first announcement.

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You don't see any other angelic activity in the life of their mothers. We have recorded activity of Manoah and his wife.

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We have recorded activity of Mary all throughout the days of her life. She gets one message at the beginning and that's what she holds on to.

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And both of them, that's a similarity. Another similarity in their lives is that almost nothing is said of their childhood.

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Almost nothing. Samson gets one verse. It says this. Then the woman gave birth to a son and named him

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Samson and the child grew up and the Lord blessed him. Skip forward to his adulthood. Jesus gets two verses in Luke and a couple in his teenage years.

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It says in Luke, when they, Mary and Joseph, had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city.

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The child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. Move forward.

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The reason is the focus of their life is not their childhood. We as modern readers, and we have plenty of paper, plenty of ink and plenty of binding, we wanna read the full story and get all of the secondary details and the tertiary details and whatever the fourth level details are.

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We wanna get that and we wanna see what was Jesus doing when he was three? How did he play with his friends?

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Did he rebuke them? Did he cry when he fell down and skinned his knee? Like, I think so, because he's human.

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You know, what was changing Jesus' diapers like? These are questions I ask, I don't know. But the

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Bible doesn't care about those details because that's not the focus and the purpose of Jesus' life.

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Jesus didn't come to be a child. He came to be an adult who would die for the sins of his people. And the same is true for Samson.

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Samson didn't come to stay a child. He came to deliver his people from their slavery to Philistine.

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So we get a very, very quick transition statement to their adulthood. And in their adulthood, the similarities do not end either.

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So we've seen in their childhood and their birth, there's all these similarities. The very first thing that both of them do is that they're both anointed by the

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Spirit on day one of their ministry, which is fascinating. Of Samson, it says, the

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Spirit of Lord began to stir him. This is the very next verse. In Mahanadan, between Zorah and Esketal, which ironically is near the land of Judah, which is nearby where Jesus was when the

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Spirit fell on him. It says that Samson is in this land. There's a river right by that land.

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It's another interesting little parallel. Jesus, when the Spirit falls on him, he's at the Jordan River. It says in Luke 3, 21 through 22, now when all the people were baptized,

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Jesus was also baptized. And while he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven.

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You are my beloved Son, and you I am well pleased. So their birth is the same. It's very similar.

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The very first day of their ministry, they both have the Holy Spirit being poured out on them for their ministry.

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Pretty fascinating parallels between these two men. The first thing that they do in their ministry after Jesus is baptized and after the

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Holy Spirit begins stirring up Samson is they both fight a lion. You're like, I don't remember that in Jesus' life.

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Hold on with me, we'll get there. Chapter 14 of Judges tells us Samson's side of this. Then Samson went down to Timnah with his father and his mother and came as far as the vineyards of Timnah.

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And behold, a young lion came roaring towards him, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, so that he tore him as one tears a young goat, though he had nothing in his hands.

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So the first real thing that Samson does in his career is he's walking down to this city named

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Timnah. A lion attacks him, and he eviscerates this lion with bare hands with nothing.

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I find that absolutely fascinating because this region that he's in is a wilderness region.

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This region that he's in very well could be the region where Jesus goes after his baptism in the wilderness for 40 days, where he's tempted by the devil, who's also known as the roaring lion, who prowls around this earth seeking who he may devour.

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The very first thing that Jesus does in his ministry is for 40 days he is tempted of the devil, and finally at the end of it, he defeats and crushes the devil, which no one before him had ever done.

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Both Samson and Jesus fight this roaring lion. Samson's is a limited lion. Jesus is a more menacing lion that he fights and he defeats and he puts down, but both are doing very similar things.

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Matthew 4, one through three says, Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness, just like Samson was led by the spirit towards this town to be tempted by the devil.

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And after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry and the tempter came.

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And after three back -to -back attacks by the devil that says this in verse 10 and 11, go Satan, that's what

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Jesus says, for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

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Then the devil left him beaten and behold, angels came and ministered to him.

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So we have the pre -birth announcements are the same, the births are the same, his coming into ministry is the same, his first battle is the same, the similarities do not stop there.

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The purpose of Samson's ministry as well as the purpose of Jesus's ministry was to set his people free, but in so doing, both of them take a

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Gentile bride, which I think is fascinating as well. Samson, this is verse one through four of chapter 14.

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Then Samson went down to Temna and saw a woman in Temna, one of the daughters of the Philistines.

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So he came back and he told his father and his mother, I saw a woman in Temna, one of the daughters of the

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Philistines, now therefore get her for me as a wife. Then his father and his mother said to him, is there no woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all of your people that you would go and take a wife from the uncircumcised

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Philistines? But Samson said to his father, get her for me for she looks good to me.

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Samantha knows what he wants. However, his father and his mother did not know that it was from the

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Lord. Isn't that a fascinating line? They were prohibited from marrying foreigners, except here, where this is from the

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Lord. It says in verse 10 and 11, then his father and his mother went down to the woman and Samson made a feast there, a wedding feast, for young men customarily did this.

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And when they saw him, they brought 30 companions to be with him. Now I don't want to press this too far, but Samson is doing physically what

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Jesus came to do spiritually. Samson is marrying a Gentile bride. What is the purpose of Jesus' ministry for when he came?

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From heaven, he came and sought her to be his only bride. That's us. And you can imagine all of the people saying,

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Jesus, can't you find someone from among your people? Can't you find someone here who's worthy? And Jesus says, no, my bride is the

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Gentile bride and she looks good to me. Samson is reenacting what

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Jesus did for his people. And he even throws a wedding feast for his people. Just like Samson throws a wedding feast for his wife, his new bride.

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All throughout the Gospels, we get this foreshadowing element that Jesus is going to put away Israel and put away

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Judah. Matthew 22, you've got this parable of the wedding feast where they're not worthy. Jesus determined that his people were not worthy.

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So he came and he married a Gentile bride. That's you and I. One of the great metaphors of the

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New Testament is that we've been made the bride of Christ. That he didn't leave us in our shame and in our misery and our broken as he made us his bride and he dressed us in white and he cleansed us and he made us whole.

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Samson is reenacting what Jesus did spiritually and what Jesus did better.

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I think it's very interesting. We see that the limited nature of what Samson does and the full and infinite nature of what

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Jesus does. Samson marries this woman. The Philistines get angry at him and eventually they burn her alive in her home.

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Along with her father. Samson could not protect his wife from the flames.

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Jesus Christ will eternally protect his bride from the flames. Do you see the parallels? Breathtaking.

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We see new life coming out of death in both of these men's ministries. We see

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Samson returning to the city and then as he's returning, he looks aside and he sees the corpse of the lion that he slayed and he sees new life buzzing out of the corpse of this lion, this group of bees that don't normally make their nest inside the corpse of a dead animal.

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That's not normal so we know that God is involved here. That God is doing something. And then

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Samson takes the honey and he shares it with his family. Look at what it says in Judges 14, seven through nine. So when he went down and he talked to the woman, she looked good to Samson.

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Again, he knows what he likes. When he returned later to take her, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and behold, a swarm of bees and honey were in the body of the lion.

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So he scraped the honey with his hands and went on eating it as he went. When he came to his father and his mother, he gave some to them and they ate it, but he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey out of the body of the lion.

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What is so fascinating about this is how it points forward to Jesus because both men defeated their lions.

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Samson scrapes this out of the body of the lion. He shares it with the people that he loves. Think about Christ who is the lion of Judah who did go down into the grave and who feeds and nourishes his people with new life from here on out.

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Samson fed the sweetness of honey to his people for a very limited amount of time.

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Jesus feeds us for 2 ,000 years. He's constantly feeding and nourishing his church with the sweetness of the gospel.

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Samson is limited in the fact that he's sharing honey with the ones he loved. Jesus has shared his life and his own body with the ones that he loved and he nourishes us continually with it.

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Again, Samson has a limited ministry whereas Jesus has an infinite ministry.

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Both of these men spoke in parables which I think is a fascinating thing and both of these men spoke in parables to keep other people that they did not want to understand left in confusion.

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Verse 12 and 14 of chapter 14 says, then Samson said to them, that's the Philistines who hated him, who hated that he had just married one of their daughters, let me now propound a riddle to you.

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If you will indeed tell it to me within seven days of the feast and find it out, then I will give you 30 linen wraps and 30 changes of clothes.

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But if you're unable to tell me, then you shall give me 30 linen wraps and 30 changes of clothes.

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And they said to him, propound your riddle that we may hear it. So he said to them, out of the eater comes something to eat and out of the strong comes something sweet.

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Samson, in the way that he's dealing with outsiders is telling them parables and riddles to keep them in confusion.

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This is certainly what Jesus does. But the outsiders in his life are not the pagans.

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They're not the Canaanites. They're not the Philistines. They're the Jews. The people who were so tied into their religion that they hated

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Jesus. So Jesus spoke to them in parables. It says in Mark 4, 10 through 12. As soon as he was alone, his followers along with the 12 began asking him about his parables.

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And he was saying to them, to you have been given the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but those who are outside get everything in parables so that while seeing, they may see and not perceive.

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And while hearing, they may hear and not understand. Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven. Jesus told parables to keep those who would not come into the kingdom confused forever.

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He models in a way the ministry of Samson, but better eternally, whereas Samson's was more temporally.

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Both of these men fight their enemy alone. This is very unusual for an

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Israelite judge. All the other 11 judges did not fight alone.

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They raised armies. They got people together. They went and did war with troops and they did a normal strategic battle.

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Samson is a one -man wrecking ball. Again, we said that he kills 3 ,000 people or no, 1 ,000 people with the jawbone of a donkey.

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He's unbelievable. He killed 30 men to pay up on a bet.

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That's pretty intense. But Jesus fought by himself as well, but a different war, a different battle, a different kind of war.

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Jesus didn't come to enact a physical war when he came to the earth. He landed on the shores of a rebellious planet and he was the first one to cause the insurrection.

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He came to save those people who were broken. He came to deliver them out of the kingdom of Satan and bring them into the kingdom of Christ.

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Jesus is fighting a completely different war, not with swords and weapons like Samson is fighting with, but with the word of God, with the preaching of the kingdom of God.

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And the enemies of God were fueled to hatred against Jesus just like they were against Samson.

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Samson inflamed the Philistines against him so badly in fact that they came and threatened the entire nation of Israel.

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I think this is fascinating. The nation of Israel was a massive group of people and Samson is one guy.

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And instead of going after Samson and getting all the armies together to fight him, they go and fight his people.

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That's pretty fascinating. They're so scared of one guy that they're gonna go fight a nation. Both of them we see not only fought along, but they both were rejected by their own people.

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Judges 15, nine through 12 says this. Then the

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Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi, which is an act of war.

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And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? And they said, we have come up to bind

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Samson in order to do to him as he did to us. And then 3 ,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock at Edom and said to Samson, do you not know that the

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Philistines are rulers over us? What then is it that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them.

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And they said to him, probably like this, we've come down to bind you, please, so that we may give you into the hand of the

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Philistines. Samson submits to it and he lets them bind him.

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But what we see is that his people had turned against him. They said, don't you know that the

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Philistines are our leaders in the same way that the city of Jerusalem looked at Jesus and said, we have no king but Caesar. They forgot who they were and they forgot who

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God is. And in that moment, they were identifying with their victimhood instead of identifying with God's strength.

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And because of that, they turned on Samson and they turned on Jesus and they handed Jesus over to Pontius Pilate in bonds.

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Not only did they reject Jesus and hand him over to the Romans instead of the Philistines, he was also betrayed by his closest friend.

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You think about it. We know that Jesus was betrayed by Judas and it says that it was one of his closest friends.

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But think about Samson, he was betrayed by his own wife. At the very end of his life, this is how

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Samson comes to an end, he's betrayed. Chapter 16 of the book of Judges tells us, after this, it came about that he loved a woman in the valley of Surech whose name was

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Delilah. The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said, entice him and see where his great strength lies and how we may overpower him, that we may bind him and afflict him.

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And then he went, each of them, or then we will each give you 1 ,100 pieces of silver.

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And when she discovered the source of his great strength, it says this, when Delilah saw that he had told her everything that was in his heart, she sent and called the lords of the

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Philistines saying, come up once more, for he has told me all that is in his heart. And the lords of the

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Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. And she made him,

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Samson, sleep on her knees and called for a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his hair.

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And then she began to afflict him and strength left him. She said, the

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Philistines are upon you, Samson, mocking him. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as other times and shake myself free.

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But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains.

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And he was a grinder in the prison. Do you see all the parallels to Christ? He's betrayed by his closest human relationship on earth.

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He's bound by his enemies. He is, the one who betrayed him is rewarded with silver, just like Judas.

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He was beaten and he was tortured just like Jesus. And it says that the

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Lord had departed from him just like on the cross, the Lord turned his face from Christ.

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Samson was beaten and mocked by his accusers. Judges 16, 23 through 25 says, now the

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Lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon. It's in the middle of a feast that Samson is killed.

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Isn't that interesting? The New Testament is the middle of a feast where Jesus is murdered. And rejoice, for they said, our

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God has given Samson, our enemy, into our hands. Just like the Jews said, God has given Jesus over into our hands.

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And when the people saw him, they praised their God and they said, our God has given our enemy into our hands, even the destroyer of our country.

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The Jews said that this Jesus was destroying their country. They accused him of that, if you remember. Who has slain many of us.

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And it happens so that they were in high spirits that they said, call for Samson, that we may amuse ourselves with him.

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So they called for Samson in the prison and they entertained themselves with him and they made him stand between the pillars.

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Think about the mocking that Jesus went through in the final moments of his life. He was bound and he was taken in front of the king of Israel at that time, who was

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Herod, who wanted to see him do parlor tricks and magic. And he mocked Jesus and he ridiculed

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Jesus and he put a fine looking robe on Jesus. And then Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate where the soldiers put a purple robe showing that he was a king and they put a scepter in his hand and they put a crown of thorns shoved down upon his skull and they ridiculed him and they mocked him and they beat him all in the same way of Samson, but even worse, because Samson was a sinner and Samson couldn't stand in for his people.

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This Jesus was innocent and he underwent even worse suffering than Samson underwent. They hurled insults upon him, they jeered at him and they spat in his face.

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Another similarity is that they were totally surrounded by their enemies and their death. The author of Judges says it like this, then

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Samson said to a boy who was holding his hand, let me feel the pillars on which the house rests that I may lean against them.

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Now the house was full of men and women and the lords of the Philistines were there and about 3000 men and women were on the roof looking on while Samson was amusing them.

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Samson was surrounded by people mocking and jeering him at his death, just like Jesus was surrounded at Mount Calvary with people who were mocking and jeering him at his death.

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Both of them cried out to God the moment before they died. It says of Samson, then Samson called out to the

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Lord God and said, oh Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this one time.

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Oh God, that I may be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. Samson cries out for vengeance and God hears him and gives him a final bit of strength.

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Jesus cries out and says, forgive them, they know not what they do. And then he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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And he breathes his last. Both men from every aspect and angle of their life are doing the same kinds of things, even crying out to God in their final hour.

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But by far, the most beautiful picture of their similarity comes in the moment of their death.

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Samson called to the Lord it says, oh Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me at just this time, oh

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God, that I may be once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.

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Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested and he braced himself against them.

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And I can't lift both arms because this one's frozen. But he spreads his arms wide.

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He puts his hands on the pillars. And in a final moment of Samson's life, he pushes the pillars down.

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The house comes falling down. And in that moment, he killed more enemies than he did in the entire, every minute, every moment of his life.

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He did more in his death than he did in his life. Think about Jesus. Jesus had three years of unbelievable ministry, but in his death, it's when he gained the greatest victory.

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It's in his death that he won the battle. Just like Samson who knocked down a house,

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Jesus knocked down the stronghold that was holding the world captive. And the whole thing came falling down so that the whole world could be remade in Jesus's image.

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And just like Samson, who's in a house full of 3 ,000 people. The first thing that happens in the city of Jerusalem is 3 ,000 people get transferred out of Satan's kingdom to life in Christ on Pentecost.

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Samson kills 3 ,000 people. Jesus raises 3 ,000 people. The whole thing is about the limitations of Samson who can't be a perfect deliverer and pointing us forward to Jesus Christ who is the perfect deliverer for us.

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His birth was, both of their births were heralded by angels to their moms. They have special sons. They were both deliverers.

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Miraculous birth, scant details, all of this. All of this lines up, but we have to see that it's all about Jesus.

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Typology is what we're talking about today. And typology is us looking at a lesser figure, a broken figure, a weakened figure, and seeing how it points to Jesus.

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That's what the Old Testament's all about. The sacrificial system shows us that those sacrifices couldn't heal us and we needed a better sacrifice.

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His name is Jesus. The priest in the Old Testament shows us that they can't make us clean.

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They can't intercede between us and God. We need a better priest. The feasts were not enough to nourish us.

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We need a better feast. We need a better circumcision because our flesh didn't get cut off good enough.

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We need a better law called grace that we can follow. We need a better prophet. We need a better king, a better temple, and Passover, and blood, and lamb, and shepherd, and bread.

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We need a better deliverer. We need a better man who's gonna come and set us free.

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Samson was unlimited deliverer. We need the deliverer named Christ who will set us permanently free, who in his death will accomplish more than Samson could have ever dreamed of.

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Are you in bondage today? Now let's apply the text. Are you in bondage today?

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Are you stuck in lust, or sexual sin, or some other kind of sin, and you have no way to see your way out of it?

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If you are, turn to the risen Christ because we don't serve a bondage keeper.

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We serve a bondage breaker. If you're enslaved to your emotions, turn to Christ.

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Submit yourself to Christ and he will heal you. If you're enslaved to your past, and all of your pain, and all of the things that someone else has done to you, and wounded you, and hurt you, and manipulated you, and abused you, turn to Jesus.

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He is a true savior who can empathize with your weakness. In his innocence, he was broken.

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In his innocence, he was beaten. He was bruised so that you could be made whole. Turn to Jesus.

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Your past is not bigger than the risen Christ. If you're captive to the current moment, the current situation, turn to Jesus because he is reigning on the throne.

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The Bible doesn't say that Jesus is hiding behind the throne, wondering how the whole thing shakes out. He's sitting on the throne as a confident king, reigning right now.

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It says in the Bible, Matthew 28, that all authority in heaven and earth has now been given to him. That means that every king, every mayor, every potentuate, every ruler, every dictator, all of them have borrowed authority because it's all

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Jesus's. Every square inch of the cosmos is his. As R .C. Sproul says, there's not a rogue molecule in the entire universe.

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It's all his. And if you're worried about today, don't because you serve the risen king to the

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Christian today. I want us to find our way out of the things that bind us. Like Hebrews says, throw off every weight.

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I want us to find our way out of our chains because you don't need to sit in them. Sometimes we sit in prison cells that the key's stuck in the door.

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We can open it at any time. We can walk out, but we sit in it because we like it. Our affections for Christ need to increase so that our desire to be victims and our desire to be enslaved and our desire to be broken will diminish so that he will become greater as we become less.

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I want us to find our way out of our brokenness today. If you found yourself lost and discouraged and disappointed and broken,

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I pray that you would be like the prodigal son. That under the preaching of God's gospel, that you would see that you've been feasting in a trough made for pigs, that you would turn from those things and you would run back to Jesus.

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And you would experience, just like we see in the parable, that he welcomes you home in open arms and he clothes you with his robes because you're his kid.

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If you're not a Christian here today, the last thing I want to tell you is that you can work and that you can do and that you can do something in order for God to save you.

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You can't, you're too broken. But here's the good news. God begins salvation by awakening you.

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He begins salvation by opening up your eyes. He begins salvation by stirring your affections in your heart.

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So here's the point. If you're sitting here or if you're listening online and you're begrudgingly listening, saying that's not me, well,

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God's not stirring you right now and that's okay. But if you hate your sin, if you're weeping and broken over your sin, if you're ready to throw all of that aside and run to the risen

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Christ, then I want you to know that God's been working in you because those things don't happen to broken and lost people.

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Those things happen to people Christ is working on and stirring and moving in. And it's the same thing for us

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Christians. If Christ is stirring you to lay down your sin, lay it down. If Christ is stirring you to make him

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Lord of your life and Savior, it's because he's doing the work. Run to him and he will save you.

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It says for those who call upon the name of the Lord, they will be saved. And for those of us who have already called upon the name of the

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Lord, we will be free. Because for freedom, Christ has set us free, not for bondage, not to run back to the stinking pools of religion or to the troughs of idolatry.

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He has made us free so that we will be free. What a beautiful picture.

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He's a better deliverer than Samson ever could be. And that freedom today is for you. Let's pray.

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Lord, thank you that every single type and shadow in the Old Testament points to you.

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Lord, thank you that we can see that Samson's work was not enough. His people still fell into idolatry. They still worshiped other gods.

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They still betrayed you and walked away from you. His work was not enough. His work was not enough to fix the fundamental brokenness of humanity, but his work does point to something that is, and that's you.

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You are the true and better Samson who will set your people free. Lord, whatever slavery exists in this room today, whether it's emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, whatever it is,

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Lord, I pray that you would break those chains in the mighty name of Jesus Christ. It's in your name we pray.