Judges 13:1-5-Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years. 2 A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth. 3 The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, “You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. 4 Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean. 5 You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”
As Samson’s story begins, we see that Israel was once again being disciplined by God. He allowed the Philistines to oppress them for 40 years. At the end of that time period, God did as He did so many times in the Old Testament…He raised up a deliverer.
This Nazirite vow was voluntary and yet Samson wasn’t the one making the vow. His parents were. The Nazarite vow had three major components. First, Nazirites weren’t supposed to drink wine. Really, they weren’t even supposed to consume anything with vinegar in it. They couldn’t even enjoy grapes in their purest form. That strict approach represented sobriety, a focused mind that would be dedicated to hearing from God alone.
The second piece of the Nazirite vow was that the person wouldn’t cut their hair for the time they were under the vow. It was a symbol of submission to God. And the third component was that a Nazirite wasn’t to touch any dead bodies. That pledge was symbolically to signify a desire to be separate from anything that could defile a person. So, a Nazarite would live a sober, submissive and separate life.
Well, Samson’s parents believed what the angel of the LORD said about him delivering Israel from the hand of the Philistines and raised him accordingly. They would have taught him about his miraculous conception and how a Divine guest came to them to disclose his destiny. Samson couldn’t deny he was special. There were too many unusual moments in his life for him to believe he was an ordinary child. Besides that, the Holy Spirit worked with Samson from the time he was young. Look at this verse in Judges 13:24-25–24 The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, 25 and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him…
A person knows when they are being stirred by the Spirit of the Lord. It isn’t something you can explain away. It isn’t something you can dismiss. It isn’t something you can pretend isn’t happening. The Holy Spirit was on Samson and would come upon him multiple times to empower him for a special task.
When you get into Judges 14 you begin to see the power of free will and the pull of the world. Even though God was at work in Samson’s life, his flesh, his impulses, were driving him in a self-focused direction. He went down to a place called Timnah and saw a Philistine young lady that he was attracted to, and he went back to told his parents to get her for him as a wife. His parents tried to talk him into marrying one of the Hebrew women instead of an uncircumcised member of the pagan Philistines, but he bullied them into doing as he demanded. He was not only flirting with Israel’s enemy, but he wanted to marry one of them.
As he was walking to Timnah, through a vineyard (not a good place for a Nazirite!) the Spirit of the LORD, came upon him, and he tore the lion to pieces with his hands! He would have known that he had received Divine help to do so.
Sometime later he went back to marry the woman and passed by the lion’s carcass where he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. He approached the dead animal (not a good thing for a Nazirite to do!) and scooped out some of the honey to eat.
As he was preparing for his wedding, he got into a situation because he made a bet that he lost. To pay off the bet, he killed 30 people so that he could get their clothing to pay off his debt. Not a good look, Samson.
Another situation took place that resulted in him losing his wife. His father-in-law kept her from Samson and told Samson he could have her younger sister instead. Well, that didn’t go over well, and Samson decided to get even with his now ex-father-in-law. He tied 300 foxes together by their tails in pairs and then lit a torch between them. They went crazy, running through the Philistine corn fields and destroyed their crops. Remember what was said about Samson before his birth. He would deliver the Israelites from the Philistines. Decimating their crops was certainly a blow to them.
The Philistines retaliated by burning his father-in-law and wife to death. You can imagine how things between Samson and the Philistines just continued to escalate. Judges 15:7-8 7 Samson said to them, “Since you’ve acted like this, I swear that I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.” 8 He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
How could one guy attack and viciously slaughter many? Remember, what was said about him before he was born. He was going to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines. It was happening in episode after episode. Still, I don’t see faith on Samson’s part. I see narcissism, a lust for power and control, and an ego the size of Texas!
Realizing Samson had stirred the Philistines up like a person would stir up a hornet’s nest and fearing the retribution of the Philistines, Samson’s own people turned on him. 3000 of them showed up to the cave where he was hiding out and here’s the conversation that followed: “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.” (In other words, Samson said, “They started it.”)
12 They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
13 “Agreed,” they answered.
They tied him up and led him to the enemy, but he wound up getting free and killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey! Another thousand Philistines died because the Spirit of the LORD came upon him! God had said that Samson would deliver Israel from the Philistines and even though Samson was all about himself, God was making good on His word.
We see a bit of recognition from Samson, an acknowledgement, an awareness that God was the One who had enabled the slaying of the thousand Philistines in verse 18 of chapter 15: 18 Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”
Just note two things with me. He knew his victory came from God. He wasn’t taking credit for God’s work. Remember, the writer of Hebrews thought he was “Hall of Faith-worthy,” so we are looking for evidence of Samson’s faith. I want to suggest two possible faith applications here.
People with an activated faith won’t try to claim the glory for the things God does. Samson confessed that God had done the slaying of the Philistines. Second, he called himself God’s servant. That is somehow, even in the smallest of ways, a recognition by Samson that he was born to accomplish God’s work. People with an activated faith are living for a purpose greater than themselves.
So, God actually opened up a hollow place and water started coming out of it. Samson got his drink, his strength returned, and he was revived. Judges 15:20 says, “Samson led Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines.”
Judges 16 tells us how his story ended. The chapter starts with him visiting a prostitute. It’s in there, people. The people of Gaza were told he was there and decided to kill him, but Samson escaped after using supernatural strength again. Why is God rescuing this guy? Do you ever ask yourself that question? Why are there some people who seem to continue to live outside the lines and yet escape some harsh penalty? Remember, God said that he had chosen Samson to deliver Israel from the Philistines.
Samson must have been a looker because it seems he had no trouble getting the ladies. I’m guessing that long hair was fabulous. Anyway, he fell in love with a woman named Delilah. She sort of seduced Samson into telling her the secret of his strength. After lying to her several times, he told her that if his head was to be shaved, his strength would leave him, and he would become like any other man. That part of his Nazirite vow, he had kept. No razor had touched his head. After Samson drifted off ot sleep, she cut off his hair, and his strength left him. Judges 6:20: 20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
God had always bailed Samson out of trouble. He had always provided a way of escape. Not this time. God was allowing Samson to be put into a situation that would become the catalyst for the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. Samson was going to accomplish God’s purposes for his life whether he intended to or not.
The Philistines gouged out Samson’s eyes. They mocked him in their house of worship, in the place where they paid tribute to their pagan god, Dagon. They were rejoicing that their enemy, that Samson, had been delivered into their hands. They were praising their god for what they perceived to be their victory.
There was someone holding on to Samson, leading him around this temple, and he asked that person to put him where he could feel the pillars that supported the temple. He said he needed to lean against them. Samson was about to exercise faith, real faith. He turned to prayer. People with an activated faith will pray with an expectation that God will hear and answer their prayers.
28 Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more,
Sovereign LORD, God, the One in control of all things, God, the One who works out His purposes in the world in spite of our selfishness, in spite of our stupidity, in spite of our bent to want the wrong things and to do the wrong things, Sovereign LORD, the One who told my parents I was to be a Nazarite, Sovereign LORD, the One who said He would use me to bring down the Philistines, remember me. And he asked God to strengthen him one more time. He actually said in verse 30, “Let me die with the Philistines.”
The text doesn’t say the Spirit of the LORD came on him, but we know that was the case because he pushed with all his might and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. And verse 30 says, “He killed many more when he died than while he lived.” It was when Samson was at his weakest that God demonstrated the magnitude of His strength, and that was after the application of Samson’s faith. Flawed as it was; it was faith in God’s ability to do what God had declared from the beginning of Samson’s life that caused the mighty victory against the Philistines.
People with an activated faith know they are weak and that God has real strength to give.
God dealt with Samson like He deals with all of us. When we break our vows to Him, there is discipline. There are consequences. Sin leads us to rely on self. Sin eventually cuts us off from God’s power and help. In the encounter with Delilah, God’s Spirit left him. But God will never abandon the person who will call to Him in faith. As Samson left this life, he left as a person of faith. To believe that God would give him the strength to bring down the temple and to kill so many of Israel’s enemy all at once, was to believe God for greater help than he had ever experienced.
Samson wasn’t a model judge. He wasn’t a model deliverer. He wasn’t a model son or husband. He wasn’t even a model of a good prayer, but he modeled great faith in his final moments and my friends, that is definitely how we should want our stories to end. May God help us do even better than Samson, and may He give us help to believe that even in our final moments, we will be living out His purposes for our lives.
