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[0:00] Well, we've been working through the book of Judges as a redemptive historical series looking! at the promise of Christ or the shadow of Christ. A quick review of some things which we have looked at is Israel having settled in the promised land, Israel turning from God, forsaking God and forgetting God and worshiping false idols.

[0:25] We see this cycle occurring where the people of Israel sin and do what is evil in the sight of the Lord and the Lord raises up oppression and under oppression the people will cry out for salvation and the Lord will raise up a deliverer to deliver his people.

[0:43] Now, we saw Othniel and King Cushon Rishathayim and Othniel whose name means the Lion of God who is from the tribe of Judah.

[0:54] The Lion of Judah defeats this king whose name means double evil. So the Lion of Judah defeats the double evil king and brings deliverance of oppression to the people.

[1:12] And in the next cycle we have Ehud and Eglon and Ehud is the left-handed assassin who had a secret message, a message from God for the enemy which was a decisive blow to the enemy and it brought liberation from oppression.

[1:31] The next cycle we have Shamgar whose name means sword and Shamgar used an ox goad and a goad functions to prick a beast of burden to persuade it in the way in which it ought to go and Shamgar delivered God's people.

[1:50] Next we see Deborah who functions as a mother to Israel through whom God revealed that the enemy would be delivered over to the hand of Barak.

[2:01] Barak delivers Israel but the glory didn't go to Barak, instead it went to a woman, namely Jael who is most blessed among women. And it is through Jael that we find Sisera's head, his skull was crushed in a bloody spike.

[2:18] Then next we had Gideon and the 300 and through this we saw that God's power is shown in human weakness and the sword of the Lord and Gideon with the trumpet blast and the jars of clay which were broken through which light was able to shine.

[2:38] And then we had Jephthah, Jephthah who was rejected by his own, he saved his people from oppression and he suffered bitter sorrow.

[2:50] And now we find ourselves in another cycle, another judge's cycle. We are going to work through chapters 13 to 15 so it's going to be a fast pace.

[3:01] We will read together chapter 13 but we'll make references along the way to chapters 14 and 15. So we will read all of chapter 13.

[3:16] Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years.

[3:27] Now there was a certain man from Zorah and the family of the Danites whose name was Manoah and his wife was barren and had no children.

[3:40] And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, Indeed, now you are barren and have born no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.

[3:50] Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink and not to eat anything unclean. For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son and no razor shall come upon his head.

[4:04] For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. So the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came to me and his countenance was like the countenance of the angel of God.

[4:22] Very awesome. But I did not ask him where he was from and he did not tell me his name. And he said to me, Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son.

[4:33] Now drink no wine or similar drink nor say anything, nor eat anything unclean for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death. Then Manoah prayed to the Lord and said, Oh, my Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born.

[4:55] And God listened to the voice of Manoah. And the angel of God came to the woman again as she was sitting in the field. But Manoah, her husband, was not there, not with her.

[5:07] Then the woman ran in haste and told her husband and said to him, Look, the man who came to me the other day has just now appeared to me. So Manoah arose and followed his wife.

[5:21] When he came to the man, he said to him, Are you the man who spoke to this woman? And he said, I am. Manoah said, Now let your words come to pass.

[5:31] What will be the boy's rule of life and his work? So the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Of all that I said to the woman, let her be careful. She may not eat anything that comes from the vine, nor may she drink wine or similar drink, nor eat anything unclean.

[5:51] All that I commanded her, let her observe. Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, Please let us detain you, and we will prepare a young goat for you. And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, Though you detain me, I will not eat your food.

[6:06] But if you offer a burnt offering, you must offer it to the Lord. For Manoah did not know he was the angel of the Lord. Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, What is your name, that when your words come to pass, we may honor you?

[6:22] And the angel of the Lord said to him, Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful? So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering and offered it upon the rock to the Lord.

[6:35] And he did a wondrous thing while Manoah and his wife looked on. It happened, as the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar.

[6:46] When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground. When the angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and his wife, then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord.

[6:59] And Manoah said to his wife, We will surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said to him, If the Lord had desired to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would he have shown us all these things, nor would he have told us such things as these at this time.

[7:20] So the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move upon him at Mahana, Dan, between Zorah and Eshtel.

[7:37] Amen. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for that which it reveals to us. We thank you that all of Scripture testifies of Christ and Christ's kingdom. We pray that you would illuminate your word to us and lead us into all truth, that we may know that which is spiritually discerned.

[7:54] I pray that you would attend the preaching of your word this morning, make it effectual to its hearers. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, as I started to read in chapter 13, I began by saying again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.

[8:12] And you might have thought, hold on, stop. You've already read this passage. You've already preached the sermon. But this is a different passage, and this is a different sermon.

[8:23] It is yet again, the children of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now, in chapter 13, in this text that we will be examining this morning, what's going on here is that a child is born who will deliver God's people in the midst of brokenness and silence.

[8:43] So again, a child is born who will deliver God's people in the midst of brokenness and silence. So we will take a look at the canonization and broken silence.

[8:55] Secondly, of God's agent and spirit empowerment. And third, God's deliverance, namely, the jawbone victory.

[9:06] So the canonization, God's agent, and God's deliverance. So first of all, canonization and broken silence. Sometimes, brokenness is shown by silence.

[9:21] Sometimes, we get accustomed to hearing things, and we hear it so often that we don't really hear it anymore. Though it makes a sound, we just don't register the sound that it makes.

[9:32] For example, a furnace. In our house, we have natural gas and furnace. And it comes on so often and goes off so often that we just become accustomed to hearing it.

[9:43] Sometimes, you hear it, but many times, you don't actually hear it kick on. You don't actually hear it running because you just become so accustomed to it. So, you don't really hear it.

[9:55] And about a year ago, our furnace quit. And when you become accustomed to not hearing something, then you don't hear the fact that you don't hear something to begin with, if you follow me.

[10:09] There's no alarms that went off. There's no squeaky bearing. There's no clunking sound. There was just silence. And brokenness sometimes is shown in silence.

[10:25] Sometimes, it's when there's something missing that you know something is wrong. With the furnace kicking out, or quitting, there's no alarms that went off.

[10:37] There's no sound that alerted us that it was broken. There was just silence. And then, the house got cold. Sometimes, it's in silence. And it's amidst silence that there's something missing, that you know something is wrong.

[10:53] And there are a number of things in the beginning of chapter 13 that by silence tells us that something is wrong. Now, if you recall the cycle of what occurs throughout the judges, is that there is, the people of Israel do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.

[11:13] And the Lord raises up the oppression. And under the oppression, the people cry out for salvation. You'll notice something is missing. Look at verse 1.

[11:25] Again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years. Now, there was a certain man from Zorah of the family of the Danites.

[11:37] Something is missing in the narrative. Something that was there previously, but is missing in this cycle. That is, there is no cry to the Lord for salvation.

[11:48] That's what's missing, first of all, in verse 13. They have coexisted with the Philistines so much that they've been accustomed to it as the new norm that they no longer seek the Lord.

[12:02] Even in their oppression, they don't cry out to the Lord for salvation. They no longer desire for the Lord to save them. And by this, we can see that God's saving of his people is entirely by grace.

[12:19] They do not even cry out to the Lord for salvation. There's something else that's missing. Is that we see in other accounts that when a deliverer rises up, there are troops upon a rally cry that offer support.

[12:33] In this account, there is no rallying of Israelite troops to battle. There's no marshalling of troops. There's no battle cry. There's no support from Israel. There's no cry to the Lord for salvation.

[12:47] They don't even desire the Lord's salvation. And there's no support. There's no troops to offer support. Something else is missing in our narrative and in our text as we read on.

[12:59] And it's a different kind of brokenness. It's a very different kind of brokenness and it's something that is a different kind of silence. And it brings much sadness and pain and sorrow and that's barrenness.

[13:15] And in these Old Testament times, barrenness not only was painful and not only painful and sadness, but it was also, it brought much shame.

[13:28] Shame and grief. We know that there is a silent pain in the absence of a child. When a couple desires to have children and thinking about having children and maybe even planning out how many children they want to have and creating a list, a stock name of, a stock list of the names in which they might name their children.

[13:51] Preparing the house, even painting a nursery in hopes of having children. Thinking how many children, how many years they might have, childbearing years, of how many children they might have. But year after year, there's only silence.

[14:07] With barrenness, each passing year, there's just silence. There's something that's missing. Or the excitement of conception, of having those plans, of having children, and the excitement of conceiving and knowing that there's going to be a child, but that excitement being replaced with the pain of a miscarriage and never actually getting to meet the child.

[14:33] Or going full term and meeting your child, but never actually getting to know your child because of infant mortality. Or having a child, meeting your child, knowing your child, but the unexpected pain of outliving your own child.

[14:49] Something is supposed to be there, but it's missing. A child is supposed to be there, but it's just not there. And there is a silent, gnawing pain in the absence of a child.

[15:02] There's much pain in all of these accounts and each person's pain is their own. But Mrs. Manoa's pain is not described in our text.

[15:15] There's merely just silence. Just that she is barren. There's not even the sound of a single set of footsteps pitter-pattering across the floor.

[15:27] A child is supposed to be there, but there's just nothing there. There's the silent, gnawing pain of the absence of a child. Now Israel, as you know, has been paganized in their view of children.

[15:43] I think that inconsiderate would be an understatement of their treatment and their view of women. Complete disregard and a lack of compassion was the way in which they treated their women, but not so with God.

[15:57] God was not canaanized. God is not paganized. God does not change. And God demonstrated compassion for this silently suffering woman.

[16:10] Now I call her Mrs. Manoa. Her name is not given, but his name is Manoa, so I will call her Mrs. Manoa. But if you also are suffering in silent pain, know this, that God is in the business of turning pain and sorrow into joy.

[16:28] God is in the business of bringing hope out of brokenness and silence. Now if we were to fast forward from where we are at in Judges, fast forward past the Divinic Monarchy, fast forward to the divided kingdom, fast forward to the exile, fast forward even more to their return from exile, and in your Bible you find the end of the Old Testament, it's merely a turn of the page to the New Testament, but as a timeline goes, there's 400 years between the last revelation of the Old Testament and the turn of the New Testament.

[17:08] There's 400 years of silence. After Israel's return from exile, there was 400 years of silence which was broken with the message of hope.

[17:20] And that message of hope was a child, one who is wonderful. The true deliverer, the skull-crushing seed of the woman has come.

[17:33] Now, Mrs. Manoah was barren and Mrs. Manoah's womb was emblematic of the spiritual state of Israel. The spiritual state of Israel said Israel was spiritually dead, barren, and broken.

[17:48] Remember, they did not even cry out to the Lord for salvation. Israel was spiritually barren. And God showed his grace by bringing life out of dead barrenness.

[18:02] And he did so through a child. And her child will deliver the people and fulfill his mission even at the cost of his own life. Okay, I'll say that again.

[18:14] This child will deliver the people and fulfill his mission even at the cost of his own life. Which brings us to our second point. It's that the silence is broken with the announcement of the birth of a child.

[18:29] So our second point is God's agent. God's agent and spirit empowerment. Now, there are a number of women who are described in the Bible as being without children, being barren.

[18:43] we have Sarah and Sarah was the wife of Abraham and Sarah was barren and God gave her a child.

[18:53] God gave her a son, Isaac. And we also have Rebecca who was the wife of Isaac and Rebecca also was barren and God gave her a son. God gave her two sons.

[19:04] God gave her Jacob and Esau. And then we have Rachel who is the wife of Rachel who is the wife of Jacob. She was barren and God gave her Joseph and Benjamin.

[19:16] And then we also have Ruth. And while it doesn't explicitly say that Ruth was barren, Ruth was widowed without having any children. But Ruth remarried and married Boaz her redeemer and God gave them Obed.

[19:34] And there's also Hannah, Hannah the wife of Elkanah who was barren and God gave her Samuel, the prophet Samuel. There's also the Shudamite woman in 2 Kings 4.

[19:47] And then the New Testament we also have Elizabeth. Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah. She was barren and God gave her John the Baptist.

[19:59] And then we have Mrs. Manoa. Mrs. Manoa in Judges chapter 13. So, Mrs. Manoa is described as being barren and the angel of the Lord appeared to her and announced to her that she would conceive and have a child.

[20:19] And we notice, if you notice in 13 chapter 18 throughout this discourse that occurs and Mr. Manoa asked the angel of the Lord what his name is.

[20:34] And he responds by saying, why do you ask my name seeing it is wonderful? So this tells us a little something about this person who has appeared, the angel of the Lord who has appeared to Mrs.

[20:49] Manoa and to Manoa to announce that they will have a child. where it is very unlikely and unexpected that a child will be conceived and is announced that a child will be born.

[21:04] Now this should trigger in your mind Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 where it also announces it also prophesies of a child to come a child to be born.

[21:15] It says this for unto us a child is born unto us a son is given and the government will be upon his shoulder and his name will be called wonderful.

[21:28] His name shall be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. So back to Mr. and Mrs. Manoa when they realized that what they had experienced was a theophany of the pre-incarnate son of God what was their response?

[21:48] What was their reaction? What happened? What did they do? Were they complacent? Were they flippant about it? Pay attention to what it says. It says that they fell on their faces to the ground.

[22:01] So I ask the question what is your posture towards the mighty God? It should never be flippant. And while we certainly experience many subjective emotions we should not depend on our subjective emotions for our reverence for God but rather the objective truth of who he is.

[22:21] Now the third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word, and works. And we see in scripture whenever people are confronted with the reality of God they're confronted with the reality of their sinfulness and they're confronted with the holiness of God and they worship, they fall on their faces.

[22:45] The response is much wonder, much reverence, much awe. now there are, there's a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation which might sound good at first but it's actually quite quite heretical and there's a number of organizations that are under this umbrella which are quite popular such as Bethel or Hillsong and they use music, very talented at music and they use music to attract the problem is they're very problematic and quite heretical and their teaching is quite heretical.

[23:29] Anyways, they use their music to manipulate emotions and then there's subsequently heretical teaching and while they may sing popular hymns as well or sing songs about Jesus their view of Jesus is certainly very different than the biblical view of Jesus.

[23:48] Anyways, all that to say there's a prominent woman in Bethel. I remember years ago I was looking something up and there's a video of her and she claimed falsely of course, she claimed that she was taken up in a vision before God and her reaction to this was she wondered if the angels texted each other or if they flatulated.

[24:13] this is a very flippant and unreverent view of God. In reality, if we were confronted with the reality of God, we like everyone else in scripture would be confronted with our sinfulness and with the holiness of God and as Mr. and Mrs. Manoa did, they fell flat on their faces on the ground.

[24:36] We are to be filled with wonder at God and this is not to be done by manipulating emotions but on the intellectual understanding of who God is and of his wondrous works.

[24:47] So, being confronted with a glimpse of the reality of a holy God, it demands wonder, it demands awe, for he is wonderful, that is, he is awesome.

[25:00] His presence demands awe-inspiring! wonder and reverential fear. The pre-incarnate son coming to Mrs. Manoa it foreshadows the incarnate son coming to the manger.

[25:16] But for now, let's look at Samson. Samson is God's agent of deliverance. More specifically, Samson's spirit empowerment.

[25:28] In 1324-25, take a look there, we'll read it. 24-25, and the woman bore a son and called his name Samson, and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to move upon him.

[25:44] Then flip over also to 14-6, it says, and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. Now look over at 14-19, then the spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily.

[26:04] Now look at 15-14, Samson, when he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him.

[26:16] Over and over and over again, we see the spirit empowerment of God mightily working through Samson. Not only that, but in Hebrews 11, verse 32, in what's referred to as the Hall of Fame, who do we see listed amongst there for their faith?

[26:32] Samson. Samson was faithful and Samson was spirit empowered and multiple times throughout the narrative of Samson, it talks about how the spirit worked mightily through him and came upon him.

[26:45] Samson was a man. Samson had his flaws, but they did not overrule God's sovereignty. And what we see is God's sovereignty working mightily through a man.

[26:56] So what about Samson? Now as we work over into 14, we'll look at a couple of things in chapter 14, but you'll notice the part of the narrative about the Timnite woman.

[27:08] Now Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. Remember, the Philistines are the enemy. They are the oppressive enemy.

[27:20] So he went up and told his father and mother, saying, I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. Now therefore, get her for me as a wife. Now if you recall, the Israelites when they settled in the land of Canaan, the promised land, they were not to take wives to themselves who were pagan.

[27:37] So here we see what he says, he says, she pleases me well. That's his report on this Timnite woman, is that he pleases her well.

[27:48] Another way to put it is he's saying it does him good to see her. Or another interpretation might say that she is right in my eyes.

[28:00] And at the time of the judges there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. What was right in Samson's eyes was a woman who was a Philistine, a daughter of the enemy.

[28:13] So Samson does what is right in his own eyes, that is fraternizing with the enemy. And this does not come without consequences. Now, in a part of the narrative, we see that Samson kills a lion and then returning to the lion, he finds honey in the carcass and he eats of it.

[28:34] And then Samson comes up with this riddle. This riddle is a dark saying, a dark saying in the sense that it's cryptic or it's hidden or it's secret and only he knows, only he knows the meaning behind this riddle.

[28:49] So the answer cannot be known apart from further revelation. The answer to the riddle cannot be known apart from further revelation from Samson. Now, Samson's new wife, the Timnite woman, her loyalty is to her people, which is the Philistines, which is the enemy.

[29:10] And they want to know the answer, so they go through her and the text says that she presses him hard. Now, we can only imagine what occurred as she pressed him hard, but we can believe that she was a nagging wife or a dripping tap to him, and eventually he gives in, he caves, and he tells her the answer to his riddle.

[29:33] And she returns the answer to her people, and then they know the answer. And if you've read this before, you recall what Samson's response is. Look at verse 18.

[29:45] It says, So the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey and what is stronger than a lion?

[29:56] And he said to them, If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle. I don't recommend this term of affection in our culture today.

[30:12] Nonetheless, looking at the text, his response to the Samson's is that they plowed with his heifer. In other words, what he's saying is they cheated. They cheated in order to solve his riddle by going through his wife.

[30:28] So as a result, what happens next is that Samson then kills 300 Philistines, 300 of the enemy. He kills 300 of the enemy, the oppressive enemy, to honor the riddle agreements to provide linen garments.

[30:42] Now, linen garments would have been a costly thing at that time. So, according to the agreement, he had to provide 30 linen garments. To do so, he killed 30 of the Philistines, who was his enemy, to hand over to them these 30 linen garments.

[30:57] And what occurs next in the narrative is that he is absent, and in his absence, his father-in-law, the Timnite woman, her father, Samson's father-in-law, gives his wife away to his best man in his absence.

[31:16] So, what do you think happens next when Samson returns to his wife? That brings us to our next point, that God's grace is demonstrated toward a broken people as he begins to save them through a spirit-empowered savior.

[31:33] So, our third point is God's deliverance and jawbone victory. So, we're now getting a very fast pace. We're now into chapter 15, not looking at all the details, but working through it quickly.

[31:48] In chapter 13, what we see happening next is that Samson comes to see his new wife. He doesn't know what we already know, but he comes to see his new wife, also known as his heifer, and he brings her a goat to get the romance going.

[32:06] 15, verse 1, after a while, in the time of wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with a young goat, and he said, let me go into my wife, into her room, but her father would not permit him to go in.

[32:20] Her father said, I really thought that you thoroughly hated her, therefore I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister better than she?

[32:31] Please take her instead. So, Samson finds out, that she was given away, and this didn't go over very well with Samson. So, he captures 300 foxes, he ties them tail to tail, he ties a torch to the tails, and he burns down their grain fields, their vineyards, and their olive groves.

[32:56] So, as a result, the Philistines, remembering this is the oppressive enemy, the Philistines then burn Samson's wife and his father-in-law. the Philistines burn the Timnite woman, who is a Philistine, and her father.

[33:12] Then, Samson, in return, as a result, he attacks them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. The narrative tells us that it is a great slaughter, a great slaughter of the oppressive enemy against the Israelites.

[33:26] Samson. And then, the Philistines, in return, come to arrest Samson. They want to deal with Samson.

[33:38] So, what they do is they go to Judah. Look at 15, verse 11. Then, three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines rule over us?

[33:56] What is this you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them. But they said to him, we have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.

[34:11] Then Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves. So they spoke to him, saying, no, we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand, but we will surely not kill you.

[34:25] And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. There's something very tragic that's occurring here in this text. If you remember Judah, the people of Judah, what's the last thing, not the last thing, but what's something that we have read about them in the book of Judges.

[34:45] Before we address that, what's going on here is that the people of Judah, Samson's own people, Israelites, 3,000 of them come to hand him over to the enemy.

[34:57] You probably heard the saying when somebody tries to confront somebody and their response is, yeah, you in what army? Well, in this case, when Judah came to arrest Samson, it was an army of 300.

[35:08] 300. This goes to show you Samson. It shows you something about Samson when the narrative tells us that he was spirit empowered, that the spirit of God worked mightily through him, that when they came to arrest him, there was 3,000 of them that came to him.

[35:26] Remember, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. And to make matters worse, what was right in their own eyes, what was right in the eyes of the people of Judah, was to be ruled not by God, but by the Philistines.

[35:44] Remember in verse 11, it says, do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? This is devastating.

[35:55] Samson, who was God's agent of deliverance to deliver God's people, is doing God's will, and is a hero in a time of war, when they are being oppressed by an evil enemy, and this is what happens.

[36:09] Now, what's even more tragic about this is what we know about the people of Judah. If you remember in Judges chapter 1, what did it say about Judah during the conquest? It spoke about how faithful the children of Judah was.

[36:23] Judah was the most faithful, which is what makes this so devastating. that the most faithful people of Israel has now compromised with the enemy, and they've done so for a presumed, or a so-called, or a pretentious peace, or unity.

[36:45] And they do so where God calls there to be a separation. This is tragic. Those who were most faithful have now compromised for the sake of what they think will be peace and unity, where God calls there to be separation.

[37:00] And this, I think, is quite emblematic of the current day Evangelibeli churches, who will gladly hand over God's word or the gospel for the sake of a pretentious peace and unity with the world.

[37:19] So, back to our narrative. Samson, we see he goes willingly and he goes bound with rope. rope, but the rope or the bonds had no power over Samson.

[37:33] What we see happens next is that the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. Let's read 15, 14 again. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him.

[37:46] Then the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire and his bonds broke loose from his hands.

[37:58] He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey, I have slain a thousand men.

[38:15] And so it was when he had finished speaking that he threw the jawbone from his hand and called that place, Rameth Lehi. And he became very thirsty. So he cried out to the Lord and said, you have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?

[38:35] So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi and water came out and he drank and his spirit returned and he revived. Therefore he called its name Enhachor which is in Lehi to this day.

[38:50] And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines. So the spirit of the Lord came mightly upon Samson, God's agent of deliverance.

[39:00] He killed a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey and then he judged Israel twenty years. And then what happened? And they lived happily ever after?

[39:12] And then this concludes the final canonization cycle? No, neither of those things. The account continues. We are going to divide the account of Samson into two parts.

[39:25] Today will just be part one of course and then next week will be part two. But for now, some conclusions about this account of Samson.

[39:38] God is in the business of turning pain and sorrow into joy. God is in the business of bringing hope out of brokenness and silence.

[39:50] If you remember 400 years after the Israelites returned from exile, that silence, that 400 years of silence was broken with a message of hope. And that message of hope was a child.

[40:04] One who is wonderful, the true deliverer, the skull crushing seed of the woman has come. Matthew 1.21 says, Mrs.

[40:25] Manoa's womb, if you remember, is emblematic of the spiritual state of Israel, that is spiritually dead and barren. But God showed his grace by bringing life out of dead barrenness, and he did so through a child.

[40:41] Mrs. Manoa's child delivered the people and fulfilled his mission at the cost of his own life. Now in the New Testament, in which we read of Matthew 1.21, he will save his people from his sin, we have the word incarnate.

[40:59] And that through a very unlikely and unexpected birth, through a virgin, a child is born who will save his people from their sins.

[41:11] And he fulfilled his mission at the cost of his life. We refer to the humiliation and exaltation of Christ, Christ's humiliation, and that the word, being eternally God equal with the Father, assumed our nature and took to himself a body, that is, the divine nature united to human nature in the one person of Jesus Christ.

[41:38] Christ. He was born of the Virgin Mary, he was born in low condition, he was made under the law and underwent the miseries of this life.

[41:49] He suffered and he died, though he was without sin, he was made sin, that he would pay for the punishment of sin for his people and deliver his people from their sins.

[42:03] He did not remain dead, he did not remain buried, he was raised from the dead, he ascended on high, he was exalted, was seated with all authority, where he reigns as king.

[42:16] Being the son of David, the promised son of David, who would sit on the throne forever, he reigns forever as king. We also refer to the active obedience and passive obedience of Christ.

[42:29] And when we consider how he fulfilled his mission at the cost of his own life, we see the active obedience of Christ and his perfecting righteousness, the problem where we cannot earn a righteousness that will put us in a right favor before God.

[42:48] Christ perfected righteousness, which is accredited to the account of those who are united to him. And the passive obedience of Christ is the suffering and dying to pay the penalty for our sins, that our sins are paid in full, so we have full forgiveness of sins and Christ's perfect righteousness accredited to our account that we are reconciled to a holy and just God.

[43:11] Which leaves remaining one further question. Are you, like Israel was, being ruled by the world and trying to bind the Lord's deliverer?

[43:23] Salvation is only in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that salvation comes through faith, by receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, by resting on him alone for salvation. If you have not received the Lord, if you have not put your faith and trust in Christ alone for salvation, then don't let another day pass by.

[43:43] Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Let's pray. Our great God, we thank you for your work of salvation. We thank you for the word incarnate, that a child is born who did deliver his people from their sins, that all who are united to Christ have a full heart and a full forgiveness of our sins and delivered from the oppression, from the dominion, from the power of sin.

[44:07] We thank you for Christ's exaltation and that our hope is a living hope, because Christ ever lives and reigns and intercedes for us.

[44:18] I pray, Lord, that you would cause these truths to indeed sink in deeply in all the hearers this morning, that you would make your word effectual, and that throughout this week we would contemplate your word, that we would contemplate your excellencies, your promises, and your wondrous works.

[44:33]  Pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.