Samson: Dealing with Fatal Flaws
I love what happens when children retell Bible stories. Here are a few of my favorites:
The first three books of the Bible are Genesis, Exodus, and Laxatives.
Noah’s wife was called Joan of Ark.
Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day, but a ball of fire by night.
Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol.
David fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people, who lived in biblical times.
Solomon, one of David’s sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles and he pulled down the pillows of the temple.
In our series called, “Keeping the Story Alive,” we’ve looked at Hanna, Gideon, and Ruth. Today, we’re going to focus on Samson as we seek to deal with our own fatal flaws. I’d like to mention up front that much of what I’ve learned from Samson’s life I picked up from a sterling sermon series preached by my friend Ray Pritchard over 12 years ago. Some of what I will say today reflects his treatment of Samson who is truly “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
We won’t have the time this morning to hit all the highlights, or lowlights, of his life, but I do want to touch on some significant details in Judges 13-16. Samson’s feats are legendary but it’s his flaws that prove to be fatal. His two greatest weaknesses were revenge and romance. In fact, his weakness for women often led him on the road to revenge. He was extremely gifted, but certainly not godly. He was strong on the outside, but had no control on the inside.
Sometimes we read the stories of Hannah or Gideon or Ruth and we think, “I could never be like them.” Not so with Samson. He’s a lot like us. Most of us know what it means to be tempted. All of us struggle at times with the desire for revenge. We’ve been there, we understand, and when we see Samson struggling and falling, we have an idea of what he’s going through. The truth of the matter is that there’s a little bit of Samson in all of us, and a whole lot of Samson in most of us. One of the things we learn from Samson’s life is that sin will always take us further than we want to go.
The Fatal Flaw
I want to begin with some important information from chapter 13. Look at verse 1: “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.” The Finkelsteins were a very warlike people who traced their origin back to the land of Egypt and had remained an enemy of Israel for years.
Its interesting that this is the one place in the Book of Judges where we do not read about the people crying out to God to deliver them from their oppression. The gameplan of the Philistines was simple. They conquered their enemies by assimilating them through intermarriage and watched with glee as the religion of God’s people began to disappear as it blended into the culture around them. Does this sound familiar? The church is in danger of losing its impact as we’ve become so assimilated into the society around us.
For this reason, God had to break through. He appears to a man and his wife and tells them that they are going to have a son who is to deliver Israel from the Philistines. From the very beginning, even while he was in his mother’s womb, he was to be “set apart” for the Lord’s work. Verse 5 tells us that he was to be a Nazirite.
Numbers 6 describes three commitments a Nazirite must keep during the period of his vow:
Avoid any contact with grapes or the drinking of wine.
Never touch a dead body of any kind.
Let your hair grow and never get it cut.
Before we leave chapter 13, I want you to observe a key phrase in verse 5. Samson “…will begin the deliverance of Israel…” As we go through the story we’ll discover that in reality he never did any delivering, because he never delivered himself. Since he never dealt with his fatal flaws, he only “began” to deliver Israel. Notice also in verse 25 that “the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him…” He was set apart and he was stirred by the Spirit of God. Samson had everything he needed to accomplish his task. He was both energized and equipped. Compared to other Biblical heroes, he had more then anyone else. And yet, he let it all slip away.
Sliding Into Sin
Chapter 14 shows us seven stupid steps that Samson took.
1. He Went to The Wrong Place. Look at verse 1: “Samson went down to Timnah.” The writer is telling us two things in that little phrase. First, he is telling us something about geography. Timnah was in Philistine territory, about four miles down a ridge from Samson’s village of Zorah. But this also tells us about the decline in Samson’s spiritual life. In his first public act, he leaves the land of Israel for the land of the Philistines. To put it bluntly, Samson left God’s people and headed south spiritually.
2. He Was Looking For The Wrong Thing. Notice the rest of verse 1: “Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman.” When he returned home, he told his parents in verse 2, “I have seen a Philistine woman.” After his parents try to warn him about scoping out Philistine foxes, Samson boldly declares, “Go get her for me. She’s the right one for me.” That phrase in verse 3 literally reads, “She is right in my eyes.”
The Bible is telling us something crucial about Samson. He is a man motivated purely by physical appearance. He saw this young woman, she looked good, and now he wants her for his wife. Samson was looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
3. He Rejected Godly Counsel. The downward spiral continues but now takes a threatening turn. So far, Samson has made some mistakes but they are not fatal. That is about to change. By blowing off his parents, Samson is also rejecting what God said in Exodus 34:16 and Deuteronomy 7 about not marrying someone from the surrounding pagan nations. The reason is clear—if you marry an unbeliever, he (or she) will turn you away from God.
4. He Continued A Wrong Relationship. Notice what verse 7 says: “Then he went down to the woman, and he liked her.” Evidently he had not met her before now. But that doesn’t matter because Samson is hormone-driven, not Holy Spirit-driven. This is the Old Testament version of “Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name?”
5. He Compromised His Commitment. While Samson is traveling with his parents to make the wedding arrangements, he goes into a vineyard (which was forbidden by his vows) and there encounters a young lion. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he tears the lion apart with his bare hands. Verse 6 notes that “he told neither his father or his mother what he had done.”
You would think a son would be glad to tell of a mighty deed like that. He doesn’t tell them because killing the lion meant touching its corpse after it was dead. That is a violation of the spirit of the Nazirite vow. Samson has now become ceremonially unclean and defiled before God.
Look at verse 9. This time Samson is traveling alone and stops by the vineyard to revisit the scene of his great exploit. He finds that bees have built a honeycomb inside the dried-out carcass of the lion. He scoops out some honey and eats it as he walks along. Once again, he comes in contact with a dead body. That’s not all. According to verse 10 Samson made a feast “as was customary for bridegrooms.” This was like a wild bachelor bash. The Hebrew word used here means, “a drinking bash.” A Nazirite is to avoid alcohol and here Samson is throwing a toga party.
Friends, Samson is a picture of a believer who is beginning to bail on his commitment. If you simply look at his long hair he appears to be dedicated to God, but his lifestyle tells another story. On the outside he looks like a man of God, but on the inside he’s a man controlled by his lusts.
6. He Ignored His Weaknesses. Now the time has come for the wedding. We pick up the story in verse 11 on day one of the seven-day wedding feast. Samson begins by offering a riddle to the 30 Philistine groomsmen. It was a kind of friendly battle of wits very common in those days. The riddle involved the honey that Samson took from the carcass of the lion. The riddle (which happens to be an excellent example of Hebrew poetry) went this way in verse 14: “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.” Samson walked with a swagger and offered a wager along with the riddle. If they solved the riddle in 7 days, Samson would give them some new clothes.
By the fourth day the groomsmen were getting nervous so they approached Samson’s bride and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse in verse 15: “Coax your husband into explaining the riddle for us, or we will burn you and your father’s household to death.” These are not nice people. You wouldn’t want these guys in your wedding party.
“Coax” means, “to seduce a simple-minded person.” The Philistines would say the same thing to Delilah some 20 years later. Samson could be seduced because he was all hormones and no brain. Here’s the sad part: Samson’s weakness was apparent to everyone but him. He never saw his weakness, refused to admit he had one and consequently never came to grips with it. In the end it would prove his undoing. He eventually reveals the riddle’s answer on the seventh night.
Remember this: It’s our refusal to deal with our weaknesses that most often gets us in trouble. Many of us are just like Samson—we’ll do anything to avoid dealing with the real issues in our lives. It’s easier and less painful (we think) to pretend that everything’s okay, even when deep inside we know it isn’t.
7. He’d rather take revenge than repent. The groomsmen know the secret of the riddle and they come to Samson at the last moment with the answer. Since Samson has lost the bet, he has to find some Armani suits. Verse 19 gives us his solution: In order to pay off his debt, Samson filleted 30 Philistines. He had to touch their dead bodies in order to get the clothes off—another clear violation of the Nazirite vow.
But it doesn’t matter now. Samson is angry because he has been publicly humiliated. His feelings of romance are now replaced with rage and revenge. Samson leaves his bride standing at the altar and chapter 14 ends with her father (who is understandably embarrassed) giving her in marriage to the best man. This sounds like something you’d see on the Jerry Springer show!
The Road to Revenge
When we come to chapter 15, we see that Samson decides that he wants his wife back. A few months have passed and Samson takes a young goat as a gift for his bride. While we might bring chocolate or flowers, Samson gift-wraps a goat. That’s sure to win her heart. When he arrives, her father won’t let him see her because she’s now married to someone else. Samson is torqued and says in verse 3: “This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines. I will really harm them.”
Samson then caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail-to-tail in pairs. This is harder than it looks. You probably shouldn’t try this at home. Once he had the tails tied together, he fastened a torch to them and let them loose in the fields of the Philistines. This basically is on the level of a college fraternity prank. The foxes are scared to death and go ballistic.
Verse 5 says they burned up the shocks (that’s the wheat that had already been cut), the standing grain, the vineyards and the olive groves. The Philistines only had three cash crops wheat, olives, and grapes. Samson single-handedly destroys the economic base of the entire nation with the flaming foxes. But Samson is not finished yet. After they torch his bride and her family, he said to them in verse 7, “Since you acted like this, I won’t stop until I get my revenge on you.”
Do you see the cycle of revenge? The Philistines do something and then Samson does something. And then they respond and Samson ratchets up his response. And they do something again and Samson goes commando. Each time it gets more serious, and bloodier. When you try to seek revenge for wrongs done to you, you set in motion an unending cycle of violence. The only way to get off the treadmill of terror is to not seek revenge but instead to offer forgiveness.
Verse 8 says, “He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many of them.” Later, his own people turn him over to the Philistines and then verse 15 tells us that he found “a fresh jawbone of a donkey . . .” and with it he killed one thousand men.
Because he was very thirsty, and was out of Gatorade, he cried out to the Lord in verse 18, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” This is the greatest prayer Samson ever prayed. He’s saying, “Lord I know that this victory did not come by my power.” It’s the one time where he really acknowledged God’s presence in his life.
Samson’s great prayer comes after his greatest victory. His prayer is immediately answered and it reveals to us that Samson’s spirituality was present, though it was often eclipsed by his emotions. Chapter 15 concludes on a high note: “Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.” If Samson’s story ended here, it would be a tale of triumph. He had learned that God was adequate to meet any need he had and so he ruled Israel and led them in prosperity and peace for two decades. He thought his fatal flaws of romance and revenge were dealt with. But his lust had not boogied; it had just been buried.
Samson’s Destruction
Chapter 16 opens with an ominous sign: “One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her.” Twenty years of victory…and in one night he fell. Samson’s mid-life crisis reminds us that the proclivity to sin never dies of old age and our weaknesses never go away. Samson never really dealt with the problems that plagued him at the beginning.
This is really a stupid move. There’s no chance that Samson can just arrive in this city and not be noticed. The Philistines hate him. They had a contract out on him. And now, he’s in their capital city. It’s almost as if he doesn’t care if he gets caught. Like some men in mid-life, he’s doing something that makes no sense at all. He’s where he should not be and he’s with someone he should not be with. And he doesn’t seem to care.
The word got out that Samson was in the city. The Philistines surround the house, thinking that he’ll come out in the morning and they can capture him. But Samson got up in the middle of the night and left. On his way out of town, verse 3 tells us that he ripped out the doors of the city gate, together with the two posts, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. Scholars tell us that this door would have weighed about 700 pounds!
By carrying off the doors of the city gate, Samson was humiliating the Philistines once again. Nearly all the ancient cities were surrounded by a thick wall, which meant the gate was the main entrance. The gate symbolized the safety and security of the city. And for Samson to take the city gate and to put it on his shoulders and to carry it away was his way of saying, “See, not only can you not catch me, I’m going to destroy the symbol of your security.” He carried the doors and put them on top of the hill, which faces Hebron in the land of Judah. That was where the people of God were. He put them up there as if to say, “I can do anything I want.”
But, Samson was really starting to slide south now. His problems of lust and revenge never really went away. And now, he’s feeling arrogant and invincible. This is a recipe for trouble. He has enraged the Philistines by ripping off their city gate and he’s inflamed his old passion for illicit sex.
Let’s look briefly at four mistakes that came from Samson’s destructive dalliance with Delilah.
1. He got involved with another wrong relationship. In verse 4 we read that Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah. This is the third woman he got in trouble with. He was infatuated with the woman of Timnah. He was filled with lust for the harlot in Gaza. And now, with Delilah, we read that he loves her. But all three times, it was with Philistine women.
2. He toyed with temptation. The Philistine rulers, who know all about Samson’s fatal flaw, come up with a plan. Verse 5 tells us that 5 of these governors each offer Delilah eleven hundred shekels of silver if she is able to “lure him into showing the secret of his strength.” In those days, the average person earned ten shekels of silver a year. Delilah was about to become a multi-millionaire. The choice between Samson and silver was already made in her heart. In today’s currency, this was an offer of $15 million more than Dana Conger got for marrying a millionaire on TV!
Samson’s final romance ends in disaster. Delilah’s name means “weakness” or “brought low.” She sure brought Samson down. She was the first woman that Samson gave his heart to and he was like putty in her hands. The combination of characters is lethal. Samson’s fatal attraction was based on sex. Delilah’s motivation was for money. The Philistines were after power. This trifecta of money, sex, and power has brought many good people to their destruction.
Delilah agrees to trick him into revealing the secret to his strength. Samson toys with her three times, but each time he gets closer to telling her the truth. First he told her that if they bound him with fresh bowstrings he would be helpless. Then he said that if he were tied up with new ropes he would become weak. Finally he said that if the seven locks of his hair were woven into a web he would be helpless. Samson is feeling so self-confident and so cocky. He thinks he’s invincible. Now he’s letting her touch his hair. She doesn’t know the secret yet, but he is letting her get closer and closer and closer. He’s toying with temptation.
3. He reveals his secret in order to save face. Finally she said to him in verse 15, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me?’” After playing the “If you really loved me, you’d tell me” card, verse 16 tells us that she resorted to a war of words: “With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.”
Samson then told her everything. Samson, you fool. You weren’t tricked. You weren’t deceived. Like Adam, you knew exactly what you were doing. The rulers of the Philistines come with the silver shekels in their hands, and she puts him to sleep on her lap. He doesn’t have a clue what is about to happen.
4. He didn’t realize what he had done until it was too late. As soon as he’s sound asleep, she calls a man to hack off his hair. Verse 19 says it plainly: “His strength left him.” The last phrase of verse 20 is one of the saddest statements in the whole Old Testament: “But he did not know that the Lord had left him.”
He didn’t realize what had happened. Too many Christians drift away from God through stupidity and folly, and they don’t realize what they’ve done until they’ve done it. They don’t appreciate what they had until it’s gone. Sin will always take you further than you want to go.
What happens next is ugly. The Philistines have been waiting for 20 years to get their revenge. Look at verse 21: “Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding in the prison.”
Notice the four things that happened to Samson. First there is mutilation. They gouged out his eyes. His wandering eyes had caused his heart to wander and now he’s blind. Next, there is deportation. They took him down to Gaza. That had to hurt that’s where he visited the prostitute. Then there is incarceration. He was bound with bronze shackles. Finally, there is humiliation. They set him to grinding in the prison, which was the work of slaves and animals.
Let me say this strongly. If we don’t recognize and deal with our fatal flaws, we’ll end up just like Samson blinding, binding, and grinding. Blinding will take place as we lose our moral compass and vision. Binding will result as we lose our freedom and liberty. And we’ll spend the rest of our lives grinding out a purposeless existence.
Action Steps
Let me wrap this up by concluding with 5 action steps that will help us get off the road to ruin and head down the road to recovery.
1. Acknowledge your fatal flaws. What’s your spiritual soft spot? What area of your life has the most potential to ruin you? Is it lust? Coveting? Revenge? An unforgiving spirit? Anger? Lying? Psalm 38:18: “I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.”
2. Admit you need help. Until you admit that you are vulnerable, you will never experience victory. Psalm 34:17: “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; He delivers them from all their troubles.” That’s one of the reasons Alcoholics Anonymous is so effective. The entire program is built on the principle of people admitting that they have a problem. Some of you may think you no longer have a problem simply because you’ve swept it under the rug. Unless you admit your need for help, your flaws will just come back to haunt you again and again. Samson is Exhibit A of that truth.
3. Avoid temptation. Don’t put yourself in situations where you know you’re vulnerable. If you have a problem with drinking, don’t go to bars. If you have a wandering eye, don’t flirt with anyone. Get an Internet filter so that you can stay away from sites that bring you down. Genesis 4:7: “…Sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
4. Ask for help. It’s not enough to just acknowledge your problem, to admit you need help, and to avoid temptation. You also need to ask for help. He who thinks he needs nothing or no one needs more than he can imagine. First of all, ask for God’s assistance. Samson did this in Judges 16:28 when he prayed and said, “O Sovereign Lord, remember me. O God, please strengthen me once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” God honored this request by using Samson to wipe out thousands of Philistines in his death.
Second, ask for the help of others. Sadly, when you look at Samson’s life, everything he did, he did by himself. He never mustered the troops. He never partnered with a buddy. Don’t make the same mistake. Find a trusted friend and open up. Ask someone to hold you accountable. If you need some specific help, find a Christian counselor.
5. Assimilate God’s truth into your life. Be with God’s people. Read God’s Word and put it into practice. Psalm 119:11: “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” It’s absolutely imperative that we stay connected with God and with others. Left to ourselves, it’s just a short walk to becoming a Samson. Cultivate your relationship with Christ and commit yourself to do whatever it takes to grow. Join a small group. Maybe you need to be baptized if you’re a believer and have never done so. Attend an adult IMPACT class on Sunday mornings. Go to the women’s Bible Study when it begins again in the fall.
Let me ask you a question, “How far can a person go before God will not deal with him any more?” What if you get drunk? Is that too far? What if you steal money? Is that too far? What if you kill somebody? Is that too far? What if you cheat? What if you commit adultery? Is that too far? What if you have an abortion? Is that too far? How far can you go before God will say, “That’s it. I’m done with you.”
Listen carefully. Nobody knows the answer to that question because nobody has ever gone far enough to find out. Corrie Ten Boom, after surviving Nazi prison camps, has been asked how she could keep on going when thing were so tough. I love her answer: “There is no pit so deep that the love of God is not deeper still.” No matter how far you run away from God, you can never go so far that God can’t find you.
I’m sure during the drudgery of grinding Samson realized what he had done. He knew that a death had to take place. And this is true for us as well. The only way out is to go back to that area of our life where we are resisting the Lordship of Jesus Christ and die, right there. Romans 6:11: “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” We need to look our fatal flaws squarely in the face and count ourselves as dead to them because of what Jesus did for us.
Notice how the story ends in verse 30: “Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it. Thus he killed many more when he died than while he lived.” You will find that to be true in your life if you are willing to go back to the place of disobedience and face it. Reckon yourself to be dead to sin and alive to God. God will then rout the Philistines in your life.
The Hero Of The Story
Do you want to know the moral to this story? It really has nothing to do with Samson and everything to do with God. This passage is a living lesson in the grace of God. How a man who was beaten and blinded, humiliated by his own repeated stupidity, reached the bottom, turned around and discovered that God was waiting for him all the time. There’s nothing heroic about Samson. All he did was turn around and find God. God is the hero.
Some of us really need to hear this. Maybe you’ve gone pretty far down the road of romance or revenge and you’re grinding under a load of guilt. Listen carefully. Restoration of a relationship with God does not depend upon your performance. How can I say that? Because Samson didn’t perform. He came back to God before he pushed those pillars down. He came back to God while he was still shackled. He came back to God while he was still blind. He turned back to God and God took him.
Children retell Bible stories and sometimes don’t get them quite right. Friend, keep God’s story alive in your life by getting right with Him. Are you ready to turn back to Him…before it’s too late?
