Gooding, David: 4 - Samson

Tonight we are to study the life and work of Samson, and therefore shall we read three small background passages, the first of them to be found in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter seventeen. And in Genesis chapter seventeen we have the record of the covenant of circumcision that God made with Abraham. Let us read the introductory verses. When Abraham was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abraham and said unto him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be thou perfect, and I will make my covenant between me and thee and will multiply thee exceedingly. And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, as for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be the father of a multitude of nations. Neither shall thy name anymore be called Abram, but thy name shall be called Abraham. For the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And then a passage from the prophet Jeremiah. The prophet Jeremiah, and chapter uh nine. Jeremiah chapter nine and verse twenty three. Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will punish all them which are circumcised in their uncircumcision. Egypt and Judah and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that have the corners of their hair pulled, that dwell in the wilderness. For all the nations are uncircumcised, meaning literally so, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart. Shows us that even the Old Testament itself was aware of the distinction between the physical and external rite of circumcision and the moral and spiritual truths that it taught by its symbolism. And finally, a comment from the New Testament, Hebrews chapter eleven and verse thirty two. And what more shall I say? For the time will fail me. And those of you who have been here before know how prophetic that word is liable to turn out. For the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets. Verse thirty eight: Of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth. These all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. God grant us good understanding of his word. Tonight we come to study briefly the life and work of that great man of faith, Samson. And therefore it is that our study tonight will set us an exercise, and a very rigorous exercise, in humility, in charity and mercy, in discernment, and then in the enjoyment of the grace of God. For as we come to study Samson, his faults are so evident, and in some sense so unrelievedly disastrous, that as we think of them, it were possible that we should forget our own frailty and forget to be humble, and subconsciously imagine that we are superior to him, and fail to consider ourselves also, lest we too be tempted. Fail to consider seriously the injunction of the inspired apostle, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed, lest he fall. We shall need special grace of God as we consider another man's faults, ourselves to be humble and consider our own frailty. It will be an exercise that calls likewise upon our mercy and our charity. The man's faults are so evident and clear that if we are not careful, we shall become obsessed with his faults and therefore come to harsh, censorious judgments over the things that were good in the man's life and fail to see the good, even misinterpret what was good, because we are so influenced in our judgment by his obvious fault. So frequently do we treat one another. Let a good man fail and fall. We tend to think more of his failure and his fall than we do of his past good achievements. For all that, that we shall need humility and charity, we shall desperately need discernment of God. For here was a man who experienced the supernatural power of God's Holy Spirit, perhaps more than any other man of whom we read in Old Testament days. His life reads in some part like a marvelous exhibition of sheer naked supernatural power of the Spirit of God. Lest we should get carried away too far from that, we shall need discern- discernment to see. It is possible for a man or a woman for ourselves to know the supernatural power of the Spirit of God, to be able to claim gifts of God's Holy Spirit and mistake spirituality for morality. Forget the lesson of the New Testament taught us by our brethren and sisters in the church at Corinth. They came behind none in the wealth of spiritual gift that God had given them, alas, they came behind very few in the immorality to which they became ensnared in spite of, I nearly said because of, their spiritual gift. Therefore, we shall need the grace of discernment, that while we applaud all that was good achieved by Samson, to observe that in him, disobedience to God's word, tolerated as long as God could possibly tolerate it, at last had its inevitable effect, for continuance in disobedience leads finally to spiritual disaster. And here we shall find a potent lesson. The fact that God uses me in spite of my disobedience should be a thing that humbles me in the dust and leads me to say, by God's grace, I will improve upon this and go against my disobedience and learn in future to be more humble and loyal and obedient to the Lord and to his word. Never, never, never ought it to lead us to argue in this way. I know this isn't perhaps the scriptural thing to do, but look, God has blessed me. Therefore, what does it matter in the end whether I obey Holy Scripture or not? The fact that God has blessed me and used me sanctions my disobedience. Or if we thus abuse the grace of God, in God's grace is permission for substandard behavior. Inevitably, we shall pay the eventual penalty. Sowing to the flesh shall of the flesh reap. And if we shall need humility and charity and discernment, oh, what a lovely lesson nonetheless it will be in the grace of God. What a marvel, I say to myself, as I read this ancient story of Samson and watch how God used such an imperfect man. What a marvel that God uses any one of us. Has it not amazed you, my brother, that even at the peak of your spirituality, that God would use you then, imperfect as you are, and falling short of his holy standards? How comes it that the great God of heaven has allowed us to do what angels would love to do, put into our hands, weak and failing as we are, the indescribable privilege of working for the Lord, of being used by his spirit in the battles of the Lord. Oh, for the grace of God that he uses us in spite of our infirmity. What is even more magnificent is this, that when Samson fell and lost his sight and lost his freedom, became a slave in the prison house of Dagon, even then was God merciful, and his hair grew again. God allowed him to reap some kind of victory, even out of the very jaws of disaster. Oh, courage, my brother, my, my sister, if you have felt that you have not always run well, that you began well and then you have failed. God is merciful yet. It's possible for our hair, so to speak, to grow again, within the limits that our own failures have placed on God himself, for God to grant us reviving and a victory of sorts, even at the end. A lovely book, then, on the salvation of God. And if perchance tonight I fail in these objectives, and I say wrong things about Samson, of this I am sure, that if he knows about it now, or comes one of these days to hear what I have said about him in public, he'll hold no grudge against me. We shall love each other in heaven. Methinks the man will be glad of heart to know that if he failed, and the shame is his, yet God in his mercy used not only his failures, his victories, but his failures as well to educate and help the likes of us. Oh, what a God we have. No license for careless living, but a God that will take my very mistakes and use them to preserve some of my brethren and sisters. But so that we might be careful and use all that we may use for the understanding of this man Samson, and to help us arrive at a true and just judgment of his life. Let us spend a few moments more tonight looking at the context of the whole of this book. On our first occasion, we observed that in chapter three of Judges, God explains the pattern of the history that we shall read in this book. It was simply this, that from time to time, Israel sinned against the Lord, and he delivered them into the hands of their enemy. When the enemy's oppression had proved rigorous and painful, then Israel would be brought to repentance and cry to the Lord, and in his mercy he would raise them up a savior and a deliverer, who would deliver them from the enemy and set them free once more. Then, alas, says the historian, the circle repeated itself. After some years of prosperity, once more growing foolish, they disobeyed the Lord and did evil in his sight again, and again the Lord had to deliver them into the hand of their enemies. Only there is this difference. The cycle is not only repeated, but says the Holy Spirit of God, you will observe that each time it gets worse. For delivered from the first bondage, then we read they did even worse in the sight of the Lord. It's not just repetition, but it's a gradual getting worse. Watch with me, if you will, how the historian then arranges the material in his book so as to make this point at large. Here I summarize for you the early chapters of the book and the latest chapters of the book. And generally people find the last chapters of the book of Judges to be exceedingly difficult story. But let us look how the writer has helped us to try and understand these things. The first chapter, chapter one to chapter two verse five, is a story of the doings of the all-tribal assembly in Israel. By the all-tribal assembly, we mean that the, there were times when matters had to be decided that could not be decided by individual tribes working alone, and therefore all the tribes had to meet, or at least their delegates, and take decisions before the Lord that would affect the whole nation. We call that institution the All-Tribal Assembly. Here it is, of course, meeting before the Lord here in Judges chapter one following to determine a very important matter, in one sense a very happy matter. The first phase of the conquest was over, and now Israel were going into the second phase of the conquest. What could be happier and more delightful? Now the final battle for each man to secure his inheritance that God has given him and enjoy the butter and the honey, the milk and the wine and the fig. The question that the all-tribal assembly brought before God was this: Who shall go up first for us and fight the enemy and lead Israel into the enjoyment of their inheritance. And God replied, Judah shall go up first. And Judah went up and made a magnificent stop. The story of the all-tribal assembly, waiting upon God then, to be told the order of the conquest of the land, how to defeat the enemy, and so enter into the inheritance. That is delightful. The last stories in the book bring us once more back to that all-tribal assembly. They're meeting once more before the Lord. They're asking the same question, who shall go up first for us? You will at once perceive that the key and the mood is different. No longer a question of going up to defeat the enemy. It's going up with the armies of Israel to discipline a sinful tribe, Benjamin, that by its ghastly immoral behavior has brought such a blot on the name of the people of God that it must be disciplined. Ah, that's not so happy, is it? Better a meeting of the church elders, you know, to discuss the next gospel campaign. Better a meeting of the church elders to discuss the teaching of Holy Writ for the incoming year. The sad necessity that occurs sometimes, a meeting of the elders to ponder what steps of discipline must be taken upon an erring brother. But these things happen. Alas, this all-tribal assembly, in trying to discipline the sinful tribe of Benjamin, made a complete disaster of it, starting with a bad thing, they made it ten times worse. The very sacred things that they were meant to preserve, the sanctity of sex, the sanctity of oaths, the sanctity of, of safe travel and hospitality. The all-tribal assembly, in the course of their trying to discipline Jude, uh, Benjamin, themselves befouled the very sanctities they were meant to preserve. The historian is calling upon us to observe how that one very big institution in Israel failed, and thus eventually made it necessary for Israel to go over to rule by kings instead of the theocracy which at the time they enjoyed. Look at the other two blocks of material that begin and end the book. In, uh, chapter two verse uh six to chapter three verse six we have the melancholy story of Israel's recurrent idolatry. We have already made reference to it. That from time to time, when they were prosperous, they forgot the Lord and went after the gods of the heathen nations around them and fell into idolatry. In the mercy of God, says chapter two and three, then they repented, and God listened to them, and they cried to him, and he restored them by raising up a savior. Mercifully, in the early days, it was only a time to time thing. It's a thing that happened and from which they recovered. When you come to the end, towards the end of the book, in chapter seventeen: one to eighteen: thirty one, you read a very sorry story indeed. Now the idolatry is not recurrent, it's institutionalized, built into the very fabric of the nation. And if you please, taken up and institutionalized by no less a person than a Levite, who was Moses' own grandson. Just you imagine the story. Moses' grandson. And now he takes up office as the priest of the tribe of Dan, a worship centered around a silly little old silver image. Open idolatry, and institutionalized. Then we're told how Dan went north to conquer some of these Canaanites and came across a city called Laish, and in the name of God, I suppose, went and conquered those heathen Canaanites, took the town, dwelt there, and established idolatry, if you please. Things have come to a sorry pass, haven't they? When the very Israel that was sent into the land to destroy idolatry is now destroying the Canaanites and putting in their own idolatry. Sometimes I find myself wishing that, uh, the only missionaries that had ever gone forth to the heathen had taken the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Alas for those who, going to hedonism, took a form of idolatry with them and implanted it there. But you will see by this, and that is all the point really I want to make, that but between the beginning of the book and the end of the book, things have seriously deteriorated. And therefore, now I call your attention once more to that list of major judges that I put before you on the first occasion. There they are, Othniel, Ehud, Deborah with Barak in jail, Gideon, Abimelech, Jephthah, and Samson. And we notice there, amongst many things, how after Gideon, things deteriorate. I suppose in some part the rot set in with Gideon, because in his story we are told first how he stood against idolatry and cast down the old idolatrous image and fought the enemy, and all seemed well. But having fought the enemy, he fell out with his brethren, and he then started fighting his brethren, the Israelites, and ended up by lapsing into idolatry. We notice this other story here, that under Deborah, Barak, and Jael, a woman killed the enemy commander through his skull, and that was, as we saw last week, a notable victory. Here in the story of Abimelech, another woman kills the commander through his skull as she puts a millstone right on top of his cranium and smashes it in. That put a merciful end to all his nonsense. But the sorry thing over which you should nearly weep is this, that the enemy wasn't a Canaanite. The enemy was one of the princes of Israel himself, who had made such a nuisance of himself among the people of God, and so brought them into bondage. This woman couldn't stick it anymore. Put the millstone over the wall and crushed his skull. A victory indeed, but what a sorry victory. And the people of God had to be delivered from one of their own elders, from one of their own princes. And then we noticed on our first occasion how it is with, how it was with Ehud. Ehud fought against the Moabites, Ammon and Amalek, and is marked by his so-called diplomacy. He brought a message to the enemy. And then when he had assassinated the king, he went down to the fjords of Jordan. And as the enemy came to the fjords of Jordan to make their escape, Ehud and his warriors dispatched them, so Moab was subdued. Later on, we read in the book of a certain Jephthah. He was a man of faith, says the epistle to the Hebrews. He likewise fought the Ammonites. He likewise was marked by diplomacy and sent several messengers to the enemy. At last, when he had defeated the enemy, he too fell out with his brethren, and he took the fords of Jordan. And when his national brethren came to the ford, then he set them a test, for they were of a slightly different tribe. Said he, say Shibboleth. Now the poor men, they wanted to say it, alas. They meant the same thing, only they couldn't quite phrase it in the same way, and their lips wouldn't form the correct pronunciation. And instead of saying Shibboleth, they said Sibylith. The fact that they meant the same thing, the fact that they were brothers in the same nation, counted nothing with Jephthah. They couldn't say things exactly his way. He slit their throats. What's a sorry business, isn't it? A good thing when the people of God gain victory at the fjords of Jordan over their enemies. A sorry thing when the people of God fall out, though they mean the same thing, cut each other to pieces and then count it a victory? If then you perceive how the historian is deliberately arranging his material to get across to us that in the second part of that book the nation is going downhill. Even in the middle of its apparent revivals and victories, you will then perceive the more easily the point that the Holy Spirit of God is making when he contrasts Samson, the last deliverer, with Othniel, the first deliverer. The secret of Othniel's success, we are told, was his wife. He did battle for the Lord and delivered the people of God. The reason that they had come into difficulty at that time was simply this, says the Holy Spirit, they had taken the wives of the nations that were around them. Disobeying God's holy word, they had intermarried with the heathen, with the unconverted. Reaped the inevitable consequence when, as we call them, converted men will marry unconverted women, or converted women will marry unconverted men. Othniel was raised up of God to deliver the people of God from the bondage that was caused by this serious fault that they, the people had gone and married heathen wives. With that, we come to Samson. Great man of God. The Bible calls him a man of faith, let me say nothing else. A man endued with the Spirit of God, who certainly won many spectacular battles for the Lord. But the man's whole career vitiated from the start. Because he insisted on marrying heathen women. So that now we perceive that the very judge himself is now guilty of the sins which in earlier days the people had to be judged for. But now he insists on doing it and won't allow that there's anything wrong in doing it. God blesses him in spite of it. The result is inevitable. If Othniel's wife pressed him and urged him to ask for additional inheritance from her father Caleb, and thus was the secret of Othniel's success. Samson's wives urged him. They were the secret of his downfall. And therefore we shall have to try, as I say, to come to some balanced assessment of Samson. A great deliverer, a man of faith, and God used him. Let us credit him with everything possibly, possible good we can. Then let us face the sad fact emphasized by the inspired historians. And in spite of all that, the man was disobedient right from the very start. And in many particulars, and came inevitably to disaster. When he was born, the Philistines ruled over Israel. God raised him up as a deliverer. He won many victories. When he died, Israel was still being ruled by the Philistines. So far from having delivered Israel from captivity and bondage to Philistines, he ended life himself in a Philistine prison. We should therefore turn, shouldn't we, first of all, as we have done in these weeks, to consider together who these Philistines were and what they stood for. We have been looking at the different enemies in this book and finding that, like modern nations, they had certain national characteristics, and that those special characteristics give us a clue to what they stood for, and therefore help us to see certain principles that are hostile to the people of God. Now, we noticed last week that the Philistines are called the uncircumcised Philistines. And we remarked even then that that is a, a little surprising because many, many nations outside Israel were uncircumcised. And yet it is when God's spirit comes to talk about Philistines that he constantly uses the adjective and says the uncircumcised Philistines. Just like all men are sinners, but then when God comes to talk of the Amalekites, then God will say the sinners, the Amalekites. Philistines then, and this we start with, they were uncircumcised. Now it is a very interesting thing that the Philistines, they are part of the old sea peoples, and they came across and colonized the coastlands of the land of Canaan. They, in fact, so made their mark on Canaan that they gave their name to the land. Palestine means the land of the Philistines. An interesting thing, because as far as many Gentile nations of further countries knew, Palestine was inhabited by Philistines. They were the kind of people that lived there. Philistines gave their name to the land. And yet, and yet, what a difference there was between them and Israel. They were uncircumcised. That brings us to the first characteristic. For we read in Genesis seventeen of the institution in Israel of the custom of circumcision. It stood for this, that Israel were in special covenant relationship with God. They came of Abraham, the great father of the faithful, who knew what it was to be justified by faith and living in covenant relationship with God. In our modern terminology, it stands for those who are regenerate. We too have a covenant, not the old covenant of the law, nor yet the old covenant of circumcision. Our blessed Lord has made with his people of this age a new covenant, and we have celebrated it today, surely, as we have met together to take bread and the cup of the new covenant, and stood to that covenant, and once again declared and showed forth the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord, as we took the cup of the covenant and proclaimed that all our hope of salvation is in Jesus Christ, who gave his body and gave his blood and brought us into relationship with God. Regenerate men and women in whom the Spirit of God has begun to write the laws of gods on their mind and on their hearts. Abram standing in covenant relationship with God under the terms of the old covenant. The Philistines in the land, giving their name to the land, but not members of the covenant. The historians tell us that they didn't proceed by open battles, but using their superior might and civilization, little by little, they interpenetrated the people of God and eventually came to dominate the people of God. When we think of such things, then we remember our own sorry history as Christendom, surely. We should have a Christendom, shouldn't we, in which every man and woman is a member of the covenant, knows what the cleansing power of the blood of Christ is. Knows the power of the regenerating Holy Spirit. Has been born again. Alas, how soon in the story of the years of Christendom, we had unregenerate people interpenetrating the people of God. Till on times you get a Christendom, and with all charity of heart you have to wonder, well, they, they call themselves Christians. Are they born again? Are they regenerate? Do they personally know the terms and reality of the New Covenant. We read from Jeremiah, where God protests against Judah, saying that one day he will have to chastise Judah, because whereas Judah are physically circumcised, in heart they are uncircumcised. It affected their whole attitude to God. Said God, let not the rich man boast in his riches, and let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, and let not the strong man boast in his strength. He who boasts, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord, not in man, but in God. Now watch your Philistines. They were uncircumcised. Of course, they didn't know the true God. But what else marks them? Why, in subsequent history, it was Philistines, you may remember, that produced Goliath of Gath. Oh, watch him come striding onto the stage of history. Wow! He's the biggest man that Philistio could produce. And that's how the battle is going to be settled. Oh, look at the man's brain, if you will. What a colossal great brain. It wants a dustbin nearly as a helmet to accommodate the brains in that vast skull. Oh, what a man he is. And then look at the brawn of him. Oh, what a specimen of manhood. Just look at his arms. His spear would reach from here to the door. He wouldn't get anywhere near him, and his shield, a colossal great affair. He comes striding onto the field of battle, defying the living God. Defy the armies of Israel this day, he says, confident in himself as man, the biggest man in all the Old Testament. I, well might we read Jeremiah nine again. Let not the strong man boast in his strength, or the wise man in his wisdom. For what is man that thou art mindful of him? Him that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. And here comes little pea shooter David with his five little stones in his sling. And when Goliath sees him, Goliath is mightily upset, and his moustache goes up and down. He feels it an insult. Fancy bringing a little youth like that to fight with me. It's like putting your preacher tonight in the, in the ring with Cassius Clay when he was at his height. Cassius would be mortally offended that anyone should match me with him. Give me a man, he said, I want a big man. David comes to him saying, I come to you without any sword in my hand. Goliath, I'll have you know it's not going to be a contest between who has the best weapons. I come to you in the name of the living God. It's a question of God versus man, man versus. And in the Philistine, you see a man that's got too big for his shoes. Man grown big. No faith whatsoever in Almighty God. So they decided there was nothing in this supernatural power of God. When they came next morning, however, Dagon, their god, was fallen down off his pedestal. And being wise Philistines, they pondered the situation. You know, gods oughtn't to do, one's god oughtn't to do that kind of thing. Does he really? Fallen over, look. Oh. What do we do about that? So, putting their brains and muscles together, they heaved him up, put him back on his pedestal, whomp. And then got down and worshipped him. You just imagine it. Ha. He came back the next day. This was worse. He'd fallen over, and his head was off and his hands were off. What's a god good of a god that loses his head and loses his hands, I wonder? Brains and brawn, both of them gone. They contemplated that even more severely, and in cabinet came to the decision that they must use their hands and their brains. They put the hands back on their god, and they put his head back, put him back on his perch, and fell down and worshipped him. And you grin at that. I don't know whether you ought to grin. What a fool man is when he goes so big... that he knows nothing of the living God and of the supernatural power of God. He might even have a religion, but what it amounts to is the worship of his own brain and his own brawn, man. His own confidence in man. All hear what true circumcision means. Let not the strong man boast in his strength, or the wise man in his wisdom, or the rich man in his wealth. He that glorieth, let him glorious in thi- let him glory in this, that he knows me, says God. This then was the enemy. How should Samson be prepared to meet him and deal with him? It is a lovely story. The preparations were done mostly in his parents. In all our reading of Samson's story, we should not forget his mother in particular, brilliant woman of faith, with a tremendous experience of the reality of God. Behind many a public figure, there's a mother and a father, unseen in public may be, whose prayers, whose experience of God were the real preparation for the ministry of their son or daughter. How many of us sometimes forget the secret of our strength? Imagine our gifts depend simply upon us, when we owe more than we think to the preparation of our forebears and elders. The story is told then of the experience of Manoah's parents, and the mother in particular. Let me therefore put a little summary of the stories here upon the screen. There came a man to Manoah's wife. She was barren, she had no child. But the man communicated to her that God was going by his supernatural power to give her a child, as he had done to Sarah, Abram's wife, and was yet to do to Hannah, wife of Elkanah. She went and told her husband, and eventually the man came again. And the husband coming with the wife, they began to talk to the man. How shall we order the child? He said, it'll have to be a Nazarite from his birth. Tell me at last, said the man, Manoah, fascinated by this man and not knowing who he was. Tell me your name, he said, so that when it all comes to pass, we may honor you. Why do you ask my name, said the man? For he was, in fact, no ordinary man. This was the angel of the Lord. This was a pre-incarnate appearance of what we call the Son of God. Why will you ask my name, said he to Manoah, seeing it is wonderful, seeing it is incomprehensible? Then, to demonstrate what he meant, he allowed them to bring their sacrifice, and as the sacrifice was on the altar, he put his rod, and the flames came, and presently this incomprehensible man did incomprehensibly, for he rose up in the smoke and flame of the sacrifice and ascended into the very presence of God. Noah and his wife fell to the ground, startled, said they, we have seen God. Noah thought it would mean his me- immediate death. His wife, with more sense and faith, saw it meant acceptance with God. Ah. If we're going to overcome this false thing that is man grown big and independent of God, what should cure it? Oh, friend, a sight of the reality of God himself. A sight of that supreme and incomprehensible man, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Son of God. Let me encourage you just for a while now to sit back and think of him. Have you not seen him? All the wonder of being allowed to come to know that incomprehensible person. It's written, said Jesus Christ, Simon, who do you say I am? Said Simon, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, replied our Lord. Flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. Blessed are your eyes that they see. God has hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. You've seen him, my brother? His name is wonderful. His name is wonderful. All the great mystery of it, thank God it surpasses human understanding. How shall we tell the story of God, the transcendent Lord, the eternal Word, become flesh? And you've not merely read about it in the page of Holy Scripture, but you have seen him, not with some vision, but with that eye of faith, illumined by God's Holy Spirit, to see and understand, and you've seen it, God made manifest, and the wonder of the story that he came to the altar for your sake, and when the whole world was lost in its sin, he offered himself on that altar, all the incomprehensible story of it. And for your sake, he died and ascended, and God has accepted him for you. And looking on him, you now know what he meant when he said to Philip, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father. No, my brother, you're not going to die. You shall live, you shall live eternally. You have seen the Lord. I have come down from heaven, said he, and it's recorded in John six, that everyone to do my Father's will, and my Father's will is this, that everyone that seeth the Son and believeth on him would have everlasting life. And you sit there in humble old Apsley Street, so-called Gospel Hall. Aye, my brother, my sister, your spirit is in touch with the living God. You have seen him and know yourself accepted in the beloved and in touch with the risen Son of God. What a marvelous preparation for old Samson. I mean, young Samson. To come of a family like that, and with a tradition like that behind him. Do you not think that his mother would, as his infant mind was able to bear it, tell him about it? And not merely say, Samson, you're going to be the biggest man around here for miles, the preacher of the century. To have said, Samson, oh, God has shown himself. Let me tell you about that marvelous man that came from heaven, went back to God, and we are in touch with him. How shall we know his power? Samson now is required to live the life of a Nazarite, which in short is this absolute and complete and utter dedication to God. Among the requirements of the Nazarites was this, that the man should wear long hair. I don't know how he felt. I know in more recent years it's become a, a style in some parts of the world, and gentlemen are not necessarily ashamed of it. But in those ancient days? Must have looked a little incongruous, don't you think? Man going around the street, long hair. But that is the secret of his power. As far as we can judge, he had no great physical strength, no massive head like Goliath of Gath. Just an ordinary fellow. Wearing long hair like a woman. Thus he bespoke his dependence on that glorified man in heaven. And his utter devotion and concentration to him. So he began. Wiser brains than mine would be ne- needed to try and make sense of what he did. Three times in the opening chapters, or four, is it told us that the Spirit of God came upon him. Let me say nothing, therefore, to its discredit. It were actions empowered by the Spirit of God. He went to seek a Philistine wife. Tut, tut, said his mother. You shouldn't do that, Sammy. Is she saved, Sammy? No, no, mother, she's not saved, but you can't be narrow-minded. Oh, but the Bible says. She knew not it was of the Lord, says Holy Scripture. There you are, you say, then those old regulations by Moses, they don't count for anything. That was a past generation. Oh, don't you be so sure. It was of the Lord. Yes, when Samson went and sought the Philistine wife, God used it in his great sovereignty to cause an occasion against the Philistines and slaughter some of them. But you see where that kind of pathway ended, don't you? Marrying these foreign women that the Bible said he wasn't to do. They brought him to disaster. This girl betrayed his riddle. This woman betrayed his secret. And between them, they brought him to disaster. The riddle was about the work he had done in slaughtering the lion. This secret was the secret of his strength. Both were betrayed. Let's be as sympathetic as we can. He went out, he was going after this lady, and out came a lion. I think if I had been Samson, I'd have said, yes, well, that's as far as I go here. There's lions around here. I don't think I'm on the right track. Ah, seeing a roaring lion running around, seeking whom he may devour, I sort of think, yes, perhaps that's a warning sent by the Lord. I'm in en- enemy territory. I better go back. Not Samson. You see, he was so confident in his spiritual power, God bless him. And the Spirit of God came on him, so he's a bit better man than I. He got hold of the old lion and he slit it in two. What a marvelous victory over the lion. And then he gets full marks, ten out of ten in my book. He didn't tell anybody. Good for him. Being a young man, I don't know how, how he resisted the temptation. And coming back the next day, he found some honey in the carcass and ate it. Not so sure myself he ought to have done that, for he meant to be a Nazarite, and Nazarites weren't supposed to touch dead bodies, but the scholars tell me that they weren't to touch dead human bodies, and touching dead animal bodies was all right. Wow, you need to be an expert to make that kind of distinction, don't you? Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. And he took the honey and enjoyed it. It's always very tasteful, isn't it, when you have got a victory over the roaring lion, his satanic majesty. I write unto you, young men, because you're strong and have overcome the evil one. How sweet the victory is. So he went down for the wedding ceremonies and the kind of prolonged honeymoon that those people had in those days. What happened now, I cannot make sense of myself. He set them a riddle. I know at those ancient times, a riddle was a kind of a game. Old Solomon played it. If you went to dinner with Solomon, you would find a lot of university professors and others there, and Solomon delighted in pulling their legs, I shouldn't imagine, by showing how superior was his wisdom. He set them a riddle, and that was okay if you were playing with Solomon. But other times there was a forfeit, and if you couldn't solve the riddle, you had to pay the forfeit. And so Samson is there. He sets them a riddle. Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. Poor old Philistines, they couldn't work that one out. No. You'll see, brains didn't extend all that far all the time. How should they know anyway? Would you have known it? Do you know anything about the old lion, or what it meant, or how he'd done it? Why didn't he preach them John three sixteen and make it clear and plain? You say it wasn't written then. Oh. Why didn't he talk to them in plain Philistine or Canaanite and, and tell them about the reality of God instead of telling them riddles that they couldn't possibly understand? What was he trying to do? I I hope. hope he wasn't trying to show how clever he was, how superior his wisdom to theirs. And that's temptation, isn't it, for those that have spiritual gifts. Presently, instead of giving the glory to God, we start talking about our victories, and little by little the pendulum has gone to the other side, and it's a glorification of me. Look what I know, how wise I am. But he loved a Philistine girl. At heart, she wasn't in sympathy with him, nor the Spirit of God. At heart, she was in sympathy with the Philistines. Said, you don't love me, Samson. Do you know? She cried every day. I don't know how she managed it. Every day of her honeymoon, she managed to cry. You don't really love me, Sammy. And so he told her the answer to the riddle, and she told the Philistines, they said, no, nothing in that, Samson, nothing in it. As I read it, the words that come to my mind, I don't know about you, are the words of our blessed Lord Jesus. Don't you cast your pearls before swine or give your holy things to the dogs, lest they turn round and rend you. Would you expect unregenerate men to see anything in the accomplishments of the Spirit of God? Citizens decided there was nothing in it. Thank you, see through that. And the Holy Spirit of God was obliged to come on Samson, and he got his revenge on them and demonstrated, yes, there was some reality in this supernatural power of God's Holy Spirit. He was so dig- disgusted, he went off and left his wife, and then came back again some months later and sought this good woman, only to find she was refused him. And then in high indignation he sought revenge. Who for? I fear it was for himself. What would you have done if you were God at that point? You say the poor old man's motives are all mixed up horribly, and God in his mercy uses him still to demonstrate to the Philistines that yes, yes, but there is a reality. Basically, to Samson, there is a reality. The spirit of God is real. Well, he collected a lot of jackals or foxes and tied their tails together and put smoking firebrands and let them loose in the corn. Oof, they sparkled like one o. Ho ho, you should have seen the fireworks. I think, uh, a lot of people stood in wonder, open-mouthed. And I say to myself, well, and what did it affect in the end? Yeah, there were some Philistines slain. But when all the fireworks were over, what had it done? You say it had shown there was a difference between the Philistine and his confidence in man and his unregenerate religion. It had shown a difference between that. There was a reality in the question of the covenant of God and the Holy Spirit of God. Yes, it showed that. Alas, when Samson stood for that, his own brethren from Judah came up, they said, half a minute, uh, Samson, you know, know, don't you? Don't you know that the Philistines are our rulers? What are you doing fighting against the Philistines? You stop this business. I say, now where have Israel got to? Israel themselves pleading to stop all manifestations of the Spirit of God, and you submit to Philistine rule and accept a religion that professes godliness, but denies the power thereof. All right, said Samson, I won't fight against you because you're my brothers. Only I'll allow you to bind me up, hand me over to the Philistines, and say we Israelites no longer believe in the supernatural and in the exploits of God's Holy Spirit and of the reality of relationship with a man in glory. So they bound him and handed him over, and of course the Spirit of God came upon him. He broke the bonds, and once more God demonstrated through Samson feeble servant though he was, the reality of a supernatural God. So sure, he did something useful. But it would seem that his very success betrayed him. If in spite of his going after that woman in Timna, God had used him and turned even his mistake to the glory of God, in some sense. Now, alas, look what happens. He goes after two other women. We'll not read of the Spirit of God anymore now. They went to the harlot of Gaza. Oh, it was a trap. He was in the trap, and he used his great strength to get out of the trap once more and carried the very gates of the city up to the top of the mountain. You say, what an exhibition of the Spirit of God. It wasn't. Bible doesn't mention the Spirit of God. You'll see we are to distinguish, aren't we? The New Testament would have us distinguish between a spiritual gift that God has given me, and I still possess it. That on the one hand, and being used by the Holy Spirit of God on another. I may have a gift as a teacher, and on occasions, how could you possibly explain it? God Almighty has used even his humble servant. Ah, but there have been other times when, in my folly, I have used my gift, but it wasn't the Holy Spirit behind it. If I speak in a tongue, says Scripture, does that always mean that the Holy Spirit is using me at that moment? It certainly doesn't. If I speak in a tongue, my spirit payeth. Not necessarily the Holy Spirit. We must learn to distinguish between the gifts that God has given us, that are without repentance, and what it means, on the other hand, for God to use those gifts. Samson used his mighty strength to get out of Gaza. The Bible does not say it was the Holy Spirit that got him out. Encouraged by that, alas, he repeated his mistake. This time the trap closed on him. She found out not merely the secret of what he had done for the Lord. She found out his secret, where lay his power. It lay in his hair, in his Nazariteship, in his devotion to God, and she robbed it of him. And deliberately disobeyed the Lord. It was disaster. And they put him in prison, and they put his eyes out. What a sad thing to come to. His godly parents had had the eyes of their hearts illumined. They had seen God. Here is Samson, his eyes out, blind, and imprisoned. And the unregenerate Philistine said, there you are, we've proved it. There's nothing in this supernatural religion whatsoever. Our God Dagon has one. Oh, my brethren, as I think of these things, I say to myself, pray not for gift. Pray rather that you may be strengthened by God's spirit in the inner man, that God would give you a spirit of revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you might see the glories of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Oh God, save me from spectacular gift that loses sight of the blessed Son of God. Pray, my brethren, that God would illumine our hearts to see the Lord, remain in obedience to him. In God's mercy, Samson's hair grew again, and he achieved his final victory. Scripture comments, he killed more in his death than he did in his life. Perhaps he learned the secret at last. If he couldn't learn it the easy way, that the only safe way of using spiritual power is to let all the praise and the glory and all else go to God, in humble obedience upon God, to die to myself and live for the Savior. If he couldn't learn it the easy way and allowed himself to be betrayed by his spectacular powers into using it for his own glorification and became careless in his obedience, then at last God, under his kindly discipline, taught him the lesson, the way to victory is to be prepared to die to self. Let me learn the lesson, and victory shall be mine at last. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, we ask thy grace. We have tried together to understand this complicated personality, thine ancient servant Samson. Forgive us, we beseech thee, for any wrong judgment we have come to, any hard words we have said about him. We thank thee for him and for the record of his faith, and we thank thee for thy mercy to his parents and the lessons thou taught them, and we thank thee for the way thou wast able to use Samson, for it encourages us ourselves. Only let us learn wisely, we do beseech thee, the lessons thou would teach us. Reveal to us the Lord Jesus the more, we beseech thee. Put into our hearts increasing lack of trust in our own abilities, we pray, and make us ever more dedicated to and dependent on the risen Savior. And help us to do all that we do by thy spirit and for the glory of the Lord Jesus. Thou must make us true witnesses for him and our risen Lord, amidst a world in which there is so much dead, unregenerate religion. Hear us then and dismiss us now with thine evening blessing, we beseech thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.