Judges: Ordinary People in the Hands of an Extraordinary God (Samson)
Scott Bayles, pastor
Blooming Grove Christian Church: 7/20/2014
Charlie Brown scuttled onto the pitcher’s mound as Lucy took her position behind home plate, ready to warm up before the game. “Are you ready, Charlie Brown? “ Lucy asked. “I’m ready,” Charlie answer. With that Lucy arched the ball across the field. Charlie Brown jumped up and stretched his mitt high into the air, only to get conked in the forehead and knocked flat on his back. Lucy calls out, “Charlie Brown, you’re the worst player in the history of baseball!” Charlie responds, “You can’t possibly know that. You shouldn’t say things you can’t prove.” So Lucy reevaluates her statement, and then calls out, “In all probability, Charlie Brown, you are the worst player in the history of baseball.” Charlie Brown stands up, dusts himself off and says, “I can accept that.”
Nobody’s perfect, are they? We’re all full of faults, flaws and failures.
The Bible is full of ordinary, imperfect people. Story after story is marked by scandal, stumble, and intrigue. Noah drank 'til he passed out. Abraham lied about his marriage and slept with the maid. Sarah laughed at God’s promises. Jacob was a con-man. Leah was ugly. Moses was a murderer. Miriam was a gossip. The list goes on and on. Each one of them had flaws of Biblical proportion. Yet, their faults and foibles are evidence of God’s willingness to use imperfect people. No one demonstrates this better…
If you ever need a reminder of God’s tolerance and love, you’ll find it in these people. If you ever wonder how in the world God could use you to change the world, look at these people—ordinary people in the hands of an extraordinary God. As we leaf through the pages of the book of Judges, we meet someone who is one of the most flawed, imperfect people in all of Scripture. His name is Samson.
When I was a kid attending Sunday School, Samson was my favorite hero of the Bible. God chose Samson from birth to become a hero to his people; a champion who would push back against the oppressive onslaught of their enemies. God infused Samson with superhuman strength, stamina, and invulnerability. Samson had all the makings of a real-life superhero. Sadly, Samson comes off more like a supervillain than a superhero. Unlike fictional superheroes such as Superman, Batman, or Spider-man, Samson never quit learned that with great power comes great responsibility.
In Sunday School lessons, we often gloss over the fact that Samson is a reckless, irresponsible, inebriated jerk who disappoints and endangers the Israelites he is supposed to be protecting. The truth is—Samson had more vices than virtues. He was about as imperfect as they come. Yet, God still used Samson to restore the faith and freedom of his people. If God can find a place for Samson, He just might have a place for us too.
Since the book of Judges devotes more paragraphs and pages to Samson’s story than any other, I won’t be able to cover the whole thing from start to finish; rather I’ll just hit some of the highlights that help round out Samson’s personality. First, Samson experiences frequent fits of rage.
• SAMSON’S RAGE
Scripture first exposes Samson’s rage at his bachelor party. As was the custom back then, Samson threw a week-long party to celebrate his upcoming nuptials and among the guests were thirty Philistine men. Samson loved messing with the Philistines so he proposed a wager: “Let me tell you a riddle. If you solve my riddle during these seven days of the celebration, I will give you thirty fine linen robes and thirty sets of festive clothing. But if you can’t solve it, then you must give me thirty fine linen robes and thirty sets of festive clothing” (Judges 14:12-13 NLT). Well, Samson tells them the riddle and several days go by. As the Philistines grow more and more puzzled by his challenge, they decide to threaten his blushing bride and convince her to tell them the answer. She coaxes it out of her trusting fiancée and reports back to the Philistines. So, before sunset on the last day of the feast, they find Samson and give him the answer to his little brainteaser. Immediately Samson knew that his wife had betrayed him, so he storms out of the celebration fuming with rage. And, the Bible says, “He went down to the town of Ashkelon, killed thirty men, took their belongings, and gave their clothing to the men who had solved his riddle. But Samson was furious about what had happened, and he went back home to live with his father and mother.” (Judges 14:19 NLT).
Since Samson left his bride-to-be standing at the altar, she decides to marry the best man. Several months later, Samson traveled back to Timnah to talk to his ex. When he finds out that she’s already married he again sets out to wreak havoc on the Philistines. “So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and then tied a torch to the tails of each pair of foxes. After he lit the torches, he let the foxes loose in the grainfields of the Philistines so that he burned up their standing grain, the piles of grain, their vineyards, and their olive trees” (Judges 15:4-5 NCV). Later the Bible says, “So he attacked the Philistines with great fury and killed many of them” (Judges 15:8 NLT).
Samson reminds me of Bill Bixby’s famous line from The Incredible Hulk television series: “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” Samson’s inability to keep his anger in check made him a menace to everyone around him.
Do you have trouble keeping your temper in check? How many times have you said something in anger that you wished you could take back the moment the words left your lips? The Bible says, “Short-tempered people do foolish things” (Proverbs 14:17 NLT). Isn’t that the truth? Or, as Will Rogers put it, “Whenever you fly into a rage, you seldom make a safe landing.”
So how do we handle our anger? The Bible says, “People with quick tempers cause trouble, but those who control their tempers stop a quarrel” (Proverbs 15:18 NCV). And again, “Foolish people lose their tempers, but wise people control theirs” (Proverbs 29:11 NCV). Control is the key. The Bible says, “The fruit of the Spirit is… self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). When you feel yourself starting to lose your temper, you can quickly go to God in prayer and ask him to fill your heart with his Spirit. The very act of breathing a prayer is often enough to extinguish a sudden flare-up of anger.
If Samson had learned to control his temper, he could have channeled his anger into accomplishing great good. Instead, it just caused trouble. Unfortunately, rage wasn’t Samson’s only flaw. Furthermore, Samson indulged in multiple forbidden romances.
• SAMSON’S ROMANCES
I already mentioned that Samson was engaged to be married. Judges 14 gives us some background on that relationship:
One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye. When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.” His father and mother objected. “Isn’t there even one woman in our tribe or among all the Israelites you could marry?” they asked. “Why must you go to the pagan Philistines to find a wife?” But Samson told his father, “Get her for me! She looks good to me.” (Judges 14:1-3 NLT).
Let’s ignore the arrogant pigheadedness of this story for the moment and let me point out that God commanded the Israelites not to marry Canaanite women, which included the Philistines. This isn’t because God was prejudiced but because God knew that the Canaanites worship all sort of false gods and participated in horribly immoral pagan practices including child-sacrifices. Despite his parents’ objections, Samson didn’t care. He completely disregarded God’s command because the girl “looked good to him.” We already saw how that marriage worked out.
Later, Samson meets another good looking girl named Delilah. The Bible says, “Some time later Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek” (Judges 16:4 NLT). I think the word love here is being used rather loosely. Although the Bible never comes right out and says it, most scholars agree that Delilah was probably a temple prostitute (after all, she wouldn’t be the first prostitute Samson visited).
Samson’s lust for Delilah kept him coming back to the Philistine city of Sorek to spend the night with her. Soon, five Philistine kings—the heads of the entire Philistine nation—approached Delilah and offered her eleven hundred pieces of silver if she discovers the secret of Samson’s strength. In other words, they wanted to know what his Kryptonite was. Delilah was happy to oblige.
She nagged him every day—“How can you tell me, ‘I love you,’ when you don’t share your secrets with me?” (Judges 16:15 NLT), she whined—until Samson couldn’t stand it any longer. Finally, he confessed “My hair has never been cut for I was dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else” (vs. 17 NLT). If you’re familiar with the story, you know that night, as Samson slept, Delilah held him in her lap while the Philistines quietly shaved his head, stealing his strength.
Now, the Philistines didn’t want to kill Samson; rather, they wanted to capture him, humiliate him, make a spectacle and symbol out of him. Without his mighty strength, the Philistines easily subdued him, tied him up and gouged out his eyes. They bound him with bronze chains and put him to work grinding grain in the prison, only allowing him out when they needed some evening entertainment.
Lust was Samson’s downfall. For all his physical might, he lacked the moral strength to make good choices. But let me assure you, Samson isn’t the only man to struggle with sexual temptation and make stupid decisions.
Every man and every marriage face this challenge. From the television to the internet, print media to billboards, men are constantly bombarded with an assault of sensual images. According to the National Opinion Research Center 1 in 5 men (and 1 in 10 women) admit to cheating on their spouse sometime during their marriage. One in eight online searches (12.5 %) is for pornography and, in fact, a recent survey showed that 24% of smartphone owners admit to having downloaded pornographic material on their phone. And Christians are not immune to this. Another study showed that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women say they are addicted to pornography. That’s a lot of Christians sitting in church every week facing the same struggles and making the same choices as Samson.
Visiting prostitutes, pornographic websites or promiscuous women probably won’t result in getting your hair chopped off or your eyes gouged out, but sexual sin and stupidity can and will destroy men, marriages, and ministries. Christian men ought to follow the example of Job, who said, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman” (Job 31:1 NIV). What’s that mean? It means he made a promise to himself and God not look at another woman sexually. Job knew that it all starts with the eyes. I would challenge each of you men to make that same covenant. Let’s be men of integrity and men of purity.
Lustful foolishness destroyed Samson. Don’t let it destroy you too. Finally, and thankfully, there is one more chapter in Samson’s saga, which is Samson’s repentance.
• SAMSON’S REPENTANCE
Alone in his dirty cell and humbled for the first time, Samson has lots of time to think—to reflect on his life and his relationship with God. In the darkness of his prison, a ray of hope breaks through. The Bible says, “But before long, his hair began to grow back” (Judges 16:22 NLT).
Have you ever wondered why the Philistines allowed Samson’s hair go grow back? Was it because they blinded his eyes? I don’t think so. Even a blind Hulk can still smash. Why then did they allow his hair to grown back? I think it’s because the Philistines did not know a forgiving God. If one of the champions of their pagan god, Dagon, had betrayed Dagon the way Samson betrayed the Lord, there wouldn’t be any second chances. “Let his hair grown back” they must have thought, “gods don’t forgive they only punish and destroy.” It probably never crossed their minds that the one true God loves to use imperfect people.
Samson didn’t deserve a second chance—he’d already had dozens of chances. But in spite of his continual sin and failure, the Spirit of God was with Samson in that prison passing out high callings, second chances and moral compasses even to a wretch like Samson.
One day the Philistine tyrants declared a great festival to celebrate the capture of Samson. The people made sacrifices to their god, Dagon, and gave him credit for Samson’s incarceration. They called for Samson to be brought out for their entertainment. The Philistine temple was filled to capacity, brimming with more than three thousand pagan men and women who all shouted and jeered when Samson came out on stage. Under the roar of the crowd, Samson whispered a simple prayer of faith. “Sovereign LORD, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time” (Judges 16: 28 NLT).
With that said, Samson asked one of his fellow servants to position him between the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Cloaked in darkness, yet able to feel the grainy sandstone pillars with the palms of his hands, he braced himself between them and then, as if still a part of his prayer, Samson sighed, “Let me die with the Philistines” (vs. 30). God not only heard his prayer, but granted his request. As Samson pressed with all his might against the supporting pillars, the whole place began to crack and pop until finally the roof caved in, crushing everyone inside and utterly destroying Israel’s enemy.
As far as I can tell, this was Samson’s first and only act of faith. But that was enough. In the eleventh hour, Samson made the decision that it is better to die for God, than to live for himself. So he sacrificed himself to save his people. It was just one prayer and one act of faith after a lifetime of gluttony, gambling and gross immorality—but that’s all it took.
Conclusion:
The lesson we learn from this misguided muscle man, is not just that God uses imperfect people, but that it’s never too late to make the right decision. We’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all made some bad choices in life. Have you ever wished there was some way you could make up for all those bad decisions? That you could make just one good choice that fixes a lifetime of failure and faithlessness? The good news that Samson reminds us of is—you can! One decision, one prayer, one act of faith in Jesus Christ can override every sinful, sorry, or self-centered decision you’ve ever made. You don’t have to have super-strength to be used by God; you just have to be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power!
Invitation:
Maybe you’ve lived a selfish, sinful life just like Samson. It’s not too late to turn things around. God is calling you to do just Samson did—die to yourself and let Christ live in you. If you’re standing between the pillars, ready to make that decision today, let’s talk while we stand and sing together.
