Samson, Part One: The Eyes Have It Series

Samson, Part One: “The Eyes Have It”

Judges 13

Good morning! Please open your Bibles to Judges 13.

As we move through the book of Judges… we come now to one of the most interesting stories in the Bible… maybe one of the most well-known—Samson. When I say, “Samson,” what do you think of? [hair, strength, Delilah…]

Yeah. Nearly everyone, when they think of Samson, have a picture in their mind of someone like Jason Mamoa. Or maybe Maui from Moana. Who’s basically The Rock, but with hair.

But before we get into anything about Samson’s life, I want to push back on this a little. If you know anything about the details of the story, you know that Delilah (under pressure from the Philistines) was obsessed with learning “the secret” of Samson’s great strength. So think about it: if he already looked like Aquaman, it wouldn’t have been much of a secret. So maybe instead of picturing Jason Mamoa, maybe we should think about some skinny long haired rock and roll dude, like Tom Petty, or Edgar Winter Its true: If this guy killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey (Judges 15:15, we’d be, like, “Well, yeah. He’s Aquaman.” But if this guy does it, then we’re gonna realize it had nothing to do with him.

And that’s the whole point of the book of Judges. That the deliverance is never about the human deliverer. It wasn’t about Ehud, our southpaw Savior. It wasn’t about Jael and her tent peg, or Gideon with his 300 trumpet players. Its always, only about God working through flawed people for divine purposes.

Samson’s story comes toward the end of the book of Judges. In fact, he’s the last Judge specifically talked about. And we get a lot more material on him than we do the other Judges—3 whole chapters worth! God is going to give us the picture of how he saves his people… By this point in Judges, we’ve seen the basic cycle play out at least six times:

[TRANS EACH ONE]

• Stability: They follow God;

• Wickedness: Their heart is drawn away to worship other gods…

• Oppression: God punishes them by allowing those gods to enslave them…

• REPENTANCE: They suffer and repent and cry out to God…

• DELIVERANCE: God raises up a judge to save them…

• STABILITY: They go along ok for a while until they forget what they’ve learned and the cycle starts over…

So this is the last trip around on this hamster wheel. At first we hoped they would ‘snap out’ of this sinful cycle, but now we’ve seen this again and again and again and we’re ready to throw our hands up in despair and give up on Israel, when suddenly the narrative structure of Judges changes and we get this really in-depth story… loaded with symbolism.

Here we go:

13 And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, so the LORD gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.

40 = number of judgment and completion. This is ultimate judgment on sin.

The Philistines were bad people. We use the word ‘philistine’ today to mean someone uncultured, but the real Philistines were actually very sophisticated. . Their weaponry, architecture, and culture were far beyond any other civilization at the time. They were the first ones to work with iron and make iron weapons. They were the first ones to employ battle formations in war. But they were unspeakably cruel: When they capture a town, they would mutilate the captives while they while they were living, and then impale them.

Now, we’ve already seen this phrase “did evil in the sight of the Lord” or “in the eyes of the Lord” (NIV), six times in Judges. It’s how the SWORDS cycle is introduced. But as we go through the rest of Judges, I want you to pay attention to how often something is said about eyes or sight.

When Samson sees a hot looking Philistine girl, he tells his dad, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.” (14:3). It says it again, in 14:7 that she was right in Samson’s eyes. Then when the Philistines do capture Samson, what do they do? They gouge out his eyes (16:21). When Samson prays to God to be with him one last time, it isn’t so that God will be glorified. It’s so Samson can be avenged “for his two eyes.” (16:28)

And after Samson’s death, you get the statement that really sums up all of Judges: 6 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

What’s the point of all this? Well, again, the book of Judges in general, and the story of Samson in particular is intended to answer a fundamental question for our lives and for our culture. And the question is,