[0:00] I forgot that mic, Andrew, so we are going with this one. All right, if you have your Bibles, then please get them out and get them open.
[0:13] And let's go back to the book of Judges, where we were Sunday, a little bit further along. Come to Judges 13. And I'm finished up the book of Judges in my own reading.
[0:26] But along the way, caught a few things and a few thoughts and parked there pretty much all day today. And I want to take a look here.
[0:38] In Judges 13, 14, 15, and 16, you have four chapters of a man named Samson. And you get a pretty good chunk of Judges toward Gideon and toward what he did.
[0:51] And other than that, sometimes you just get barely a verse or two verses or three of a judge. You don't get really much, any information about him. But there's a few that stand out. And there's a few that, you know, have been pretty common Bible stories that everybody learns when you're young.
[1:05] And you, well, not everybody. But if you're in church, you learn these stories about these men. And all the kids think Samson's so great because he's the big, strong man that nobody can bind.
[1:16] And he can just bust everything down and pick up gates and bars and carry them off for miles. And just kill all kinds of Philistines. Can't touch him. And then you get a little older and, oh, Samson, he's not such a good role model after all.
[1:30] You know, he's got this problem. And then you kind of get this other side of Samson that you learn. And then you start, you're not so sure. Am I supposed to consider him a hero? Am I supposed? And you almost don't know what to do with him.
[1:42] And so in Hebrews 11, his name is included in that, what we call the hall of faith. He's one of those men that make the list, the short list.
[1:53] He's alongside, his name's included and written beside many that were great in faith and that did incredible things through the Lord over the years. And tonight I want to take, I'm just going to call this another look at the life of Samson.
[2:07] And what I want to do tonight is point out some things to give maybe a different perspective than what you maybe normally get when you read through.
[2:18] And then you kind of are conditioned to what this guy did and his mistakes and his eyes are plucked out and he takes, you know, suicidal and all of that. And it just ends on such a bad note with him that maybe that skews you from really seeing why he's mentioned.
[2:32] And it's not by accident. And I want to just draw something out here. And when you read through and you see his life and his ministry, maybe tonight you can see it a little bit differently. And the goal here then is to challenge you as Bible readers and as born again Christians to pattern your life after the word of God.
[2:51] And I'll challenge you then to view things in your life from a different perspective maybe than you tend to, maybe than your initial reaction is. And I'll show you what I mean.
[3:03] So we're going to consider his life from probably a little bit different of an angle than you're used to. And it's not going to be so filled with application and applying all these different points to us today that that makes good preaching.
[3:15] But I want to try to cause you to think of this story differently. And then, like I said, challenge you to live your or to view your life and things in your life through another lens maybe.
[3:27] So let's pray and then we'll begin in this life of Samson, another look at the life of Samson. Father, please now bless your word. And please help me only to speak and to present truth that's in this book and not to overstep it or to read too far between lines.
[3:45] I don't want to present something for the sake of enlightening somebody. Let none of that happen tonight. But only allow your words to show us something and to just reveal what you'd have us to understand and know tonight.
[4:00] And may you find ears to hear and hearts to receive your words. We pray that it will do a work and that you'll be glorified. That's what I want to see happen tonight, Lord. You'll be pleased with all of this.
[4:12] And so we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. All right. Samson in chapter 13. We were in this in Sunday school a little bit about this angel. And she recognized him as a man of God.
[4:23] And we read through some of that. So while the angel is giving instructions to Manoah's wife about the son that she's going to conceive and bear, he makes these comments.
[4:33] I'll begin in verse 4. He says, Now therefore beware, I pray thee, talking to the woman, before she's even pregnant, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing.
[4:48] For lo, thou shalt conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come on his head. For the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
[5:02] Now the lady, she goes and tells her husband, and then the angel comes back, and he repeats some of this very stuff later on to the husband down in verse 13 and 14.
[5:13] And the statement stands. Here's one thing I want you to get in the verse number 5. He says this, That the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb. The first thing I want us to know and consider about Samson is that he was a sanctified man.
[5:29] He was a sanctified man. He was a Nazarite to God from the womb. You know what you might think of Samson? Some rebellious, long-haired, hippie kid.
[5:40] Some tough guy that nobody could tell what to do. No. Absolutely not. Samson was a Nazarite. Notice the next word. Unto God.
[5:51] Not a Nazarite of God. Not just some special guy that God placed here, placed there. No, a Nazarite unto God. Get that. There's a difference there.
[6:02] Every time it shows up, it says it like that. In verse number 7, he says he's a Nazarite to God from the womb. Later, when Samson's talking to Delilah and he reveals to her where his strength lies, he says in chapter 16, verse 17, I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother's womb.
[6:19] He's a sanctified man. His separation from the unclean and from those things forbidden, even from his mother's womb, was all to prepare him and to fit him for the Lord's use.
[6:34] He was a sanctified man. He was sanctified unto God. He was, in a sense, he was God's property. Not his parents. His isolation, his devotion, his separation, all of those things.
[6:48] It wasn't his parents' idea. It wasn't his mom and dad's dream for, if we could just have a boy, we're going to make him the most. No. This was all the working of God. He was a sanctified man.
[7:00] He was set apart. God, this is all God's doing. He's separating a man unto himself. You remember the tribe of Levi? What God did with that tribe, that entire tribe.
[7:12] He separated them from the rest of the tribes unto himself for the service of the work of the Lord. They were a sanctified tribe.
[7:22] Completely set apart from all the rest. That's what's going on with Samson. He's a sanctified man. And you know what happened? When God separated him for his service and for his purpose, when God sanctified him to be this Nazarite unto God, you know what happened?
[7:37] His mom obeyed the instructions. His mom didn't touch anything she wasn't supposed to touch. And Samson was brought up, no razor on his head. And no unclean thing.
[7:49] He did, seems like he got into some stuff later on. But his upbringing, his raising was sanctified and set apart and holy unto God. He abstained from these unclean things, from the wine and strong drink.
[8:02] He was a Nazarite. He was different than all the kids in his family or his extended family or all the kids in his town or in the nation. You don't see Nazarites walking around all over your Bible, do you?
[8:15] It's a super rare thing. So he was a sanctified, separated man. We need to see that and believe that. He was different than everybody else.
[8:27] It wasn't some wild, rebellious teenager that nobody could control. An extremely rare thing is going on here. And I want you to realize the significance of that and the importance of that.
[8:39] Look at the end of chapter 13. Look at chapter 13, verse 24. The woman bare a son, called his name Samson. And the child grew, and look what happens.
[8:50] And the Lord blessed him. He's not some rebel. He's not out of control, some carnal fool. The Lord blessed him. A Nazarite unto God from his mother's womb.
[9:02] Verse 25 says the spirit of the Lord began to move him at times. So the spirit of the Lord begins to move him. He's ready now. He's prepared. He's sanctified to be used of God.
[9:14] Reminds me of a verse in 2 Timothy 2. That we're supposed to purge ourselves from these. That we can be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use. That's Samson in Judges 13.
[9:26] His upbringing was right on. They obeyed. They did what they were supposed to do. So he's a sanctified man. Do you follow that from this passage so far?
[9:37] Secondly, he's a selected man. Selected man for something. He's chosen. He's appointed of God for something. In chapter 13 and verse 5 again where we were.
[9:49] Where it says in the middle, Notice the end of the verse. And he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. He's a selected man.
[10:00] The very inception of Samson was a miracle of God. To visit this barren woman. And the purpose wasn't to fulfill her joy and her dream of being a mother one day.
[10:12] No, it was to bring forth a son that would be separated. And that would be appointed of God to do a work against the enemies of Israel. God picked this man.
[10:25] Specially picked him. And miraculously appointed him to do something. He was conceived for a purpose. And the verse says it was he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
[10:37] Begin to deliver Israel. So God brought him into the world with a plan in mind. He was chosen and appointed for a ministry. Now let me contrast this. It says he shall begin to deliver.
[10:51] I never noticed that word till today. Come back to chapter 6. Keep your place. But look at just as one cross reference. We could study the entire book of Judges.
[11:01] But we'll just give one cross reference back to Gideon. When Gideon gets an angel appearing to him.
[11:12] And gets the message of what he's going to be used for. Verse 14. Judges 6.14. The Lord looked upon him and said.
[11:23] Go in this thy might and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have not I sent thee? He's going to save them. It's going to be a finished work. Gideon's going to do the job.
[11:35] What about Samson? Doesn't say that about him. It says he's going to begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. There's no words just chucked into the passage by accident.
[11:47] There's a reason for that. And this is part of the reason we're taking another look at the life of Samson. He was a selected man to begin a deliverance for Israel.
[11:59] Now, I don't have the timing nailed down here. I don't know if anybody can or if it's even possible. Maybe in this book it's somewhere. Looking at the, in my study Bible there's dates.
[12:11] Maybe yours has those dates. I cross referenced a few other sources and a few other study Bibles. And they all differ. They all differ in their dates of exactly when this is with Samson and with certain other places that we're going to mention here.
[12:25] So I can't nail it down to the year. But the timing definitely overlaps something else. I'll give you a few of the verses so that you know we're not just throwing stuff out at you.
[12:38] Look at chapter 13 verse 1. And let's notice this. It says the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord. Just like that cycle we were studying on Sunday.
[12:50] And the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for how long? 40 years. Who? Philistines? 40 years. Now before them, it wasn't the Philistines.
[13:02] And you can backtrack and go forward and backward. Really, just, just backward. You can't go forward. You can go backward and see God used others. The Midianites or the Amalekites.
[13:13] Here it's the Philistines and how long? 40 years. Now there's an end to 40 years, correct? There's an end to when God's done and gives them a full deliverance.
[13:26] But it doesn't come until Samuel. Now look ahead to Samuel, 1 Samuel. And look at chapter number 7. And maybe you can catch some of your dates in your Bible.
[13:40] They may be right. They may be close. I don't know that they're, I don't know. I really have no way of knowing which date is actually accurate to the year for when this took place.
[13:51] But notice what's said about Samuel in 1 Samuel 7 and verse 13. I'll back up to verse 10 to show you that the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel.
[14:08] And the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, discomfited them. They were smitten before Israel. And in verse 13, so the Philistines were subdued and they came no more into the coast of Israel.
[14:20] And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel. And so there's the end of the 40 years of the Philistines. Understand that Samuel's a judge.
[14:32] You see that in verse 15? Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. And then after Samuel was his sons in chapter 8 verse 1, it came to pass when Samuel was old, he made his sons judges. So there's no king yet.
[14:43] This is still the times of the judges. It's just not in the book of judges, but the times of the judges carry on. The timing that we're looking at was Samson. Chapter 13, 14, 15, 16.
[14:56] That's his life story. After 16, you run into some backtracking stories about a man named Micah. And this happened about 300 years before Samson.
[15:10] So Judges closes with about 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, with five chapters that are tacked on, but they're not chronological.
[15:25] They go back several hundred years into the early times of the judges. You can even tell that in some of the reading of it. Some of the cities aren't subdued. Anyway, then the book of Ruth.
[15:37] That's during the times of the judges. That's in chapter 1 verse 1. It came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land. And so Ruth, again, that goes back into the judges early on into the book of Judges.
[15:49] So you could almost, in reading chronologically, you could go through the life of Samson to the end of chapter 16 and then skip ahead to 1 Samuel and start reading with Eli being the priest.
[16:04] And he's in Shiloh. And Hannah coming there. And then the baby Samuel being born. Or giving him the Eli. And his youth being weaned and then raised there with Eli in the temple.
[16:17] And you know who they're battling early in 1 Samuel? The Philistines. And the Philistines take the ark of God in 1 Samuel chapter 4.
[16:28] And take a look at chapter 4 where Eli expires here. This is the last breath he breathes in verse 18. 1 Samuel chapter 4 verse 18.
[16:39] Now I'm not saying that those 40 years are matching the 40 years of the Philistines.
[17:03] Because the Philistines are still going on. But they do overlap in that time. So he drops dead. The Philistines continue to fight against them.
[17:14] Samuel, though, is growing. And the word of the Lord is being revealed to him. And he's taking over. And he starts traveling on a circuit from certain place to certain place, year to year, judging in Israel.
[17:27] And having war with Israel. And finally, by where we read in chapter 7, they get the Philistines subdued. Now going back to Samson.
[17:38] He is a selected man of God to begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. So now that you got a little bit more of a picture of that, this thing goes 40 years, this captivity.
[17:50] But within those 40 years, God begins something with Samson and doesn't end it. And while many want to say, well, you know what? Samson, you're just a big flop. You're a failure.
[18:02] You tried. You were so carnal. You disobeyed. And you never got the job done. I've even preached that. And now I'm looking at it a little bit differently because of that word begin.
[18:13] Realizing that God only said he's going to begin to do something here. And he didn't end it. Samuel ended it years down the road.
[18:24] But he was a selected man for a purpose here. And so in Samuel's day, the Philistines were subdued. Samson's calling was to start something, to begin a rebellion against the Philistines.
[18:38] And it was carried out to its end by Samuel later on. Now, again, the timing isn't perfectly clear to me, but it absolutely overlaps. There's no question that his 20 years of judging Israel, which shows up at the end of somewhere, shows up twice, shows up at the very end of 16, that he judged the end of 15 and the end of 16.
[19:03] It both says that Samson judged Israel 20 years. All right. So the timing, I can't nail down to the date. But the word begin from that angel to his mother.
[19:17] It certainly indicates that God didn't raise him up to execute a complete deliverance like he did and promised and fulfilled in other judges. He's just getting it started.
[19:56] And Samson went down to Timnath. Oh, there he's going down. I know how this makes good preaching material. I know it. He's going down. I've heard this from Samson. I've heard it from others.
[20:07] And I've done it myself. In verse 5, then Samson went down. In verse 7, and he went down. And later on, verse 10, his father went down unto the woman. Everything going to the world is going down.
[20:19] I get it. I get it. It's good preaching material. But I'm not really trying to drive that point home to you tonight. And here's one reason why. Look at verse 19. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down.
[20:32] Okay. I guess I can't preach that one all the way through, can I? But let's go back to 14, verse 1. It's another look at the life of Samson. Samson went down to Timnath and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.
[20:46] And he came up and told his father and his mother and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines. Now, therefore, get her for me to wife. Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren or among all my people that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?
[21:03] And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well. Now, his parents don't agree with what he's doing. They don't like it at all. They despise these uncircumcised Philistines, as they call them.
[21:16] The thought, I'm sure, repulsed them and all of their family to consider that our son is going to go marry one of these uncircumcised Philistine women? What are you talking about?
[21:26] Stay in with God's people. They couldn't understand. They wanted nothing to do with this. Remember, they raised him to be a Nazarite unto God. I mean, what a slap in the face it would appear, it would feel to them.
[21:41] All the devotion, all of the time obeying God's instructions, and then he just goes off and does this. He'll throw it all away to go chase some Philistine woman.
[21:51] But verse number four. Oh, verse number four. But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines.
[22:07] For at that time, the Philistines had dominion over Israel. He was a sent man. What happened to him in verse one was of the Lord. Him going down to Timnath was of the Lord.
[22:18] This was the Lord's doing. He's orchestrating this. He's moving Samson to go to this town of the Philistines for this Philistine girl to catch his eye.
[22:29] She pleaseth me well. I want her for my wife. And he can't be talked out of it. Why? Because God's doing something in his life.
[22:40] And I'm going to answer the questions that come up with this. Don't worry. He's orchestrating something. I believe as a Nazarene to God, his default would be, oh, no.
[22:53] Like Peter said, not so, Lord. Nothing common or unclean. No, I'm not going down there to those Philistines. Why would I ever go anywhere near them? I'm holy.
[23:04] I'm sanctified. I'm separated. But the Lord is doing something. He's sending him. And so off he goes. And in this chapter, chapter 14, he ends up marrying this girl.
[23:19] He ends up partying with the Philistines, with the young men, making a feast in verse number 10. And puts forth this riddle.
[23:31] And I'm trusting you've read this and you know the deal here. And they don't know the riddle. They don't want to pay up their end of the riddle. So they really pressure her, his wife, in verse 15.
[23:43] And Samson is dealing with this. Look at verse 16. Samson's wife wept before him and said, Thou dost but hate me and lovest me not. And in verse 17, she wept before him the seven days while their feast lasted.
[24:01] What kind of honeymoon does that sound like to you? To marry this Philistine woman. To be surrounded by her people and friends. With your, bringing your parents down to a Philistine town.
[24:13] An establishment they don't want anything, any parts of. You're doing all of this. And now this bride of yours is just whining. And in your ear and just putting it on you this whole time.
[24:27] You just married her and now she's just nagging the fire out of you. Laying. She lay sore upon him. In verse 17. Just pressing him so hard.
[24:38] Like, is this what he wanted? Is this what he, but I don't think it bothered him. I don't think it fazed him. Because he told her. And he went forward with the thing.
[24:50] Why didn't it, why? Because he's a sent man. Because God's in the background. Preparing the scene. These Philistines are ticking him off right here.
[25:03] They're ticking him off because, as he says, you're plowing with my heifer. In verse number, what is that? Verse 18. If he had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.
[25:15] And they are just stirring him up inside. So the Spirit of the Lord, in verse 19, comes on him. He went down to Ashkelon and slew 30 men of them. Took their spoil. His anger was kindled over this whole thing.
[25:28] He fulfills his obligation of that riddle that he put forth. And he heads back home in a rage. His anger was kindled.
[25:39] And he went up to his father's house. So now you got Samson just fired up about these Philistines. Ticked off. That's God's work.
[25:50] That's God's will. It was of the Lord. His mom and dad didn't get it. Didn't understand it. Samson comes back. And he settles down. He comes back to see his wife.
[26:02] And he finds out in chapter 15, verses 1 and 2, that her father gave her away to another guy. One of your companions. And you know what Samson does? Goes off.
[26:14] Burns down their fields with 300 foxes. And get something started that's not going to end anytime soon. This is how the Lord's doing it.
[26:25] Now, let me backtrack a little bit to answer your questions here. How can this be of the Lord? How can Samson marry into the uncircumcised Philistines? How can he go down to Timnath?
[26:37] How can he be in the vineyards and touching this young lion and the honey and the lion and all? How can God allow any of that stuff? He's unclean now. He's violated his vows. God can't use him.
[26:48] The spirit of God can't come upon him. He's unclean. He should be separated. He should follow the Levitical law. Right? He should shave his head. He should be unclean seven days.
[26:58] And all of these. Shouldn't he go back through all that? That's how he's raised and trained. Here's the answer. It's not that hard. We'll consider some other places in the Bible. You know what God said to Hosea?
[27:11] He said, Hosea, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms. And Hosea said, what? What? And then he said later on in Hosea three, go love an adulteress.
[27:28] Hosea, you're going to be a sign to my people. You're going to do something that you would not approve of, that the people wouldn't approve of, that my word wouldn't approve of. But I want you to do it for a reason.
[27:40] He told Isaiah, he instructed Isaiah to walk naked and barefoot for three years for a sign and a wonder. How's that? Naked and barefoot.
[27:50] He told Isaiah to loose the loincloth off your, whatever, sackcloth off your loins and your shoes off your feet. Walk naked and barefoot for three years.
[28:01] Is that ethical? Is that kosher? And Ezekiel, he told Ezekiel, make bread and bake it with dung that cometh out of a man.
[28:14] That was what God told him to do. And Ezekiel threw a fib out it and he said, I've never been defiled. I've never done anything like that. And God said, okay, I'll give you a cow's dung for man's dung, but go on and do what I told you to do.
[28:27] So what am I saying? I'm saying God is not violating or contradicting his words in any way when he's sending Samson to do something that we would say, well, that's a contradiction of the scriptures. Because the laws are given to man for man to follow to be in subjection to God.
[28:43] And for different reasons, God is not subject to his laws like that. He's the giver. In other words, he can override his own rules and instruct a man to do something that's outside of it if he has his own purpose and reason.
[28:58] He gave the rules. He can break them or do whatever he wants with them. He's not subject to them. Let's give you an illustration.
[29:09] If this is blowing your mind or you're struggling with it, consider the police. The police violate the speed limit when they're acting in response to an emergency.
[29:22] Or do they not? They're acting outside of the law when they're doing this. The law is posted and they're flying right by it. And they're sworn to protect and to serve and to be subjection to that law, correct?
[29:37] They're not there to violate the law, but there it is. Emergency. Vroom. Down the road they go. Just blowing by everybody. Why is that okay? It's because the law is not given to restrict them in special circumstances like saving a life or pursuing a criminal.
[29:55] That's not why the law exists. So if God desires to judge his people or desires to deliver his people, he can absolutely instruct a man to act in any way that he deems fit, whatever the mind of God comes forth with.
[30:12] He can do that. He's not bound by the law of Moses. And so it is with Samson. Taking another look at Samson tonight.
[30:23] He's a sent man. My, how everybody attacks him. My, how his parents attacked him. My, how everybody wanted to go against him. But yes, he was sent by God to Timnath to take a wife, to get involved with him, to dwell among him, to react to situations that he encountered to begin to deliver Israel.
[30:46] One more thing. Samson was a sent man. He was also a scorned man. And in chapter 15, take a look at chapter 15. This is after he sets their fields on fire.
[30:58] And then they come up and say, who did this? And they figure out who it was. They come up.
[31:09] The Philistines do something that really ticks Samuel off then. They burnt his wife, in verse 6, with fire and her father with fire.
[31:20] And Samson gets fired up about that. And he goes and just starts killing them. In verse number 8, he smote them hip and thigh with great slaughter. Why? Because God is using this thing.
[31:30] He's stirring this thing up. And he's just allowing it to develop. And it's the spirit of God that comes on him. Now, the Philistines react to that.
[31:42] And they come up, verse 9. The Philistines went up and pitched in Judah and spread themselves in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, why are you come up against us? And they answered, to bind Samson, or we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.
[31:54] Then 3,000 men of Judah went to the top of the rock, eat them, and said to Samson, knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? What is this that thou hast done unto us?
[32:04] And he said unto them, as they did unto me, so have I done unto them. And they said unto him, we are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said unto them, swear unto me that ye'll not fall upon me yourselves.
[32:16] And they spake unto him, saying, no. They're saying, no, we're not going to fall upon you. We're not going to kill you. But we will bind thee fast and deliver thee into their hand. But surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords and brought him up from the rock.
[32:29] And if you know the passage, he just breaks loose and he takes a jawbone of an ass that he finds. And he slays a thousand men in verse 16. And just leaving a path everywhere he goes of Philistines.
[32:44] But he's a scorned man. He's a rejected, derided, and disdained man among his own people. We are witnessing this and reading this.
[32:57] God is beginning a deliverance. And the people of God are just oblivious to it. The people of God are against the man that God is raising up to deliver them.
[33:08] And they're rejecting him. They're against what he's doing. They fear that it's going to bring a reproach upon them. They're saying, don't poke the beast, Samson. We don't want any trouble.
[33:20] But aren't you in trouble? Aren't you servants to the Philistines? This is what Samson's for. But they're just blind to it. And when they see him doing things, they go against him.
[33:34] This is what happens when you're not right with God. You lose sight of what God's trying to do for you. You lose sight of it. And you end up, you're content to let sin in the world just rule over you.
[33:48] And dictate your manner of life. Notice in verse 10, it says, The men of Judah said. So they came up and pitched in Judah. Pitching their tents, ready to start a war. And Judah says, what in the world is going on?
[34:00] You know what? The men of Judah are scared. In Genesis 49, Moses gave a prophecy on Judah.
[34:12] And he said, Judah, your hand is going to be in the neck of your enemies. Judah was strong. Judah numbered strong. But here, they're scared to death.
[34:24] Here, they're not owning the prophecy on them. They're not owning the word of God that they have to own, to claim. No, they're scared.
[34:36] They're supposed to have their hand in the Philistines' necks. In verse number 11, these 3,000 men of Judah come after Samson. 3,000 of them. 3,000 men come after Samson to say, we're going to bind you.
[34:50] We're going to take you back. And notice the question they ask him in the middle of verse 11. 15, 11. They say, Don't you know there are rulers?
[35:05] We obey them. We submit to them. Notice at the end, he says, What is this that thou hast done unto us? No, you should have been saying, What have you done for us? Look at what you've done for us.
[35:16] No, don't you know what you've done unto us? We're victims now. This isn't going to end well. Samson's a scorned man. No one is rallying behind him.
[35:29] No one is encouraging him. Knowing is standing up with him. Nobody's taking note that this guy's a Nazarite unto God.
[35:41] Nobody's taking note that this guy has supernatural power. He can just kill anybody that comes up against him. Bring them all up against him.
[35:52] He just slaughter them down, lay them flat. What are they missing? How do they not see this? Why are they ignoring all of this?
[36:03] Who is actually more at fault in this story? I'll present to you the men of Judah that are content to be servants to the Philistines till I have them rule over them.
[36:18] And when Samson's working with God and doing the will of God and sent by God, he's a scorned man. In verse 12 and 13, we read it.
[36:29] They said, we're not going to kill you, but we're going to turn you over to the authorities. That's what we are going to do. Even God's people were against God's ban. They'd rather be enslaved to the ungodly than to be delivered from them.
[36:44] It reminds me of a preacher today that'll stand up and kick against the world and kick against sin and kick against ungodliness only to have the brethren rise up against him and hush him or run him out.
[36:58] We don't want that kind of preaching. Get out of here. It turns out this book and these stories are pretty applicable to the day we live in. So Samson ends up whipping them here by the end of the chapter and he single-handedly sends the Philistines home.
[37:16] And for the next 20 years, they realize there is a judge in Israel that we cannot contend with. There's a man up there and we don't want nothing to do with him.
[37:27] And it calms down for quite a while. He began to deliver Israel. But the men of Judah, I think, put the brakes on it. And who knows what else God would have did there.
[37:40] We're just taking another look at the life of Samson tonight. And I'm not attempting to make the man an angel. And I'm not suggesting he's flawless and that every choice that he made was God's will. And the next thing you know, he's going into a harlot.
[37:54] 20 years later, it looks like, because this thing ends his life. But he judged him 20 years. So it looks like 20 years there, they had a chance to do something. And nobody wanted to go with him.
[38:06] Nobody wanted to step up to the plate. And he judged Israel and that was the end of that. So I know Samson's not a perfect man, but I do know this, that in what we've read, this whole thing that he began with Samson was of the Lord and it was to use him to begin to deliver Israel.
[38:25] And God did accomplish that much through Samson. What appears to be a failure may not be such a failure after all. It could be we're just not seeing it through God's eyes. It could be we're just looking at it a little bit differently.
[38:38] Now to close, and just one thought here, in our own lives, this could be true. It could be true that things may not be the way we perceive them to be either.
[38:49] or the way we've been told this is the way it is. It could be that what we think is best or is right for even our own children like Minoah and his wife may not be what's God's way at all.
[39:03] We may not have divine understanding about the ways of God and what the Lord will do with somebody. What takes place in our nation we may not agree with and understand.
[39:15] What takes place maybe in your own family or in your own life you may feel like how can this be right? And in the end the only thing that is left to do is to trust the Lord to walk with God and trust him.
[39:31] You may not understand how it's going to work out or why it's going this direction but if you walk with him and trust him we'll understand it all by and by.
[39:42] I'd say trust the Lord and allow him to work and allow him to accomplish his will his way. Learn to give everything over to him learn to not lean on your own understanding and let God accomplish his will.
[40:00] So it was another look at the life of Samson through a little different lens I think tonight. I bet you that wasn't the message that you thought of when you heard Samson and he was I'll give you the four points again I have to look back he was a sanctified man he was a selected man a sent man and a scorned man and what could have been maybe wasn't fully accomplished but he certainly did do some he was a pea and he was a saber or a master