Samson—The Foolish Man - Judges 16

                            

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Samson keeps getting drawn to the Philistines; he finds it hard to stay away from them. In Samson's story, we need to remember he’s a Nazirite, a man dedicated to God, set apart as God’s man. However, Samson’s filled with strong desire for Philistine women and makes his way to Gaza, the capital city of the Philistines and spends the night with a prostitute.

Someone sees Samson come into the city and visit the prostitute and tells the leaders of the city that Samson’s there. Samson, instead of staying all night, knowing he’s a persona non grata with the Philistines, gets up in the middle of the night and leaves. Samson mocks the Philistines by taking their massive city gates to the top of a hillside outside the city and plants them in the ground there. Samson seems untouchable; able to do what he wants, when he wants. Then he meets a girl and falls in love.

Samson loves another Philistine woman. The Philistine leaders know of her as they come to see her when news gets out that Samson is seeing her. The Philistine rulers offer her big money to betray Samson, each of them offering her eleven hundred shekels of silver if she agrees to find out and tell them the secret of Samson’s great strength. Delilah’s seduced by their offer and tries to seduce Samson’s secret out of him. Once again Samson has a secret and it seems he hasn’t learned his lesson about the strength of a woman’s pleading. A game begins between Samson and Delilah. You have to wonder why Samson plays along. Delilah asks Samson, “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.” Why would Delilah need to know how Samson can be tied up and subdued, why doesn’t Samson ask himself these questions?

Archaeologists, studying ancient Philistine cities have found iron tools and weapons. Israel had no such technology; they were still very backward in many ways, like country cousins. Philistine cities give evidence of careful town planning. The olive industry of Ekron included about 200 olive oil installations. Engineers estimate that the city's production may have been more than 1,000 tons, 30 percent of Israel's present-day production. Even simple things like household pottery was designed to look good, often painted with red and black geometric designs on white backgrounds. Certainly, the sophisticated Philistines represented the latest in technology and culture. Samson’s a leader in Israel and wants to be recognized by the people who were socially and culturally ahead of them.

But Samson forgets God. He embraces the Philistine culture, much of it good, but he leaves God behind. Samson enters into Delilah’s game, “If anyone ties me up with seven fresh thongs that have not yet been dried, I’ll become as weak as any other man.” Seven’s a magical number and the idea of un-dried leather thongs which bind Samson even tighter as they dried sounds right. Delilah takes seven thongs and ties Samson up and then calls out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” Samson gets up and the thongs do nothing to hold him, but Delilah tries again.

Samson plays a dangerous game here, telling Delilah that new ropes will hold him. There’s an echo back to when ropes failed to hold him when the men of Judah handed Samson over to the Philistines. Delilah ties Samson up, calls out, Samson flexes and the ropes break like string. Delilah doesn’t give up and Samson comes close to revealing the secret of his strength, telling her that if she weaves his hair, the sign of his relationship with God, into a loom, this will make him weak. Samson’s becoming a slave to the game, it’s becoming an addiction to see how far he can go.  

Finally, Samson can’t take the nagging anymore and tells her the significance of his hair and how he’s set apart to God. Samson belongs to God and now the Philistines know exactly who he is. Delilah convinces the rulers of the Philistines to come one last time and get rid of this barbarian threat once and for all. Delilah lulls Samson to sleep; there’s a play on words here, Delilah sounds like the word for “the night” and now Samson lies in “the night’s bed” and while he’s sleeping, she arranges for his hair to be cut off and the Lord withdraws his strength from Samson the dedicated one.

Samson has now completely broken all his Nazirite vows. He discovers there’s a price to pay for failing to remain pure: the loss of his relationship with God. This time when Delilah calls out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you,” Samson’s taken prisoner. Samson is weak because of his addiction to Philistine women and the adrenaline rush of fighting the Philistines. As Charles Spurgeon writes, “The secret of his strength lay in his locks. Not that his hair made him strong; but that his hair was the symbol of his consecration, and was the pledge of God's favour to him. While his hair was untouched he was a consecrated man; as soon as that was cut away, he was no longer perfectly consecrated, and then his strength departed from him. His hair is cut away; the locks that covered him once are taken from him, and there he stands a shaveling, weak as other men.”

Reverend Timothy Keller writes about Samson, “sin and grace function on two completely opposed bases. In grace, God takes even our weaknesses and failures and uses them for us, but in sin, we take even his gifts and strengths and use them against him. Our sinful hearts will find ways to use even God’s blessings to ruin our lives.” Samson is dedicated to God from birth, set apart by God to begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines. The Spirit of the Lord has come on Samson multiple times in order to confront the Philistines and yet Samson’s shown little desire to follow God in his life; his heart’s filled with passion for foreign women and rage against the Philistines; driving his choices. Samson’s unable to resist his passions; addicted to lust and rage. I’ll admit, as I’ve reflected on Samson’s story over the past few weeks, I’ve begun to feel sorry for him, he became such a slave to his passions and they lead him into such brokenness!

Addiction’s hard, it drives us to the very things that are hurting us the most. We find ourselves in situations where the things we first turned to in order to help us cope with life begin to wrap their chains around us, slowly making us slaves, but slowly so we don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Having a family member who struggles with addiction, having walked with many who have wrestled with addiction, it’s hard. Every story is different yet everyone who struggles with addiction wanted to become addicted; it snuck up on them. There are huge similarities with sin; no one wants to sin when they’re a follower of Jesus, yet sin slowly and often without notice, wraps our hearts and minds with chains that are hard to break.

My brother tells me that ‘just saying no’ doesn’t work unless you’re connected to Jesus and surrounded by a group of people who compassionately care and challenge you to stay connected to Jesus and walk with you through the hard times when you fall, because falling will happen. But knowing that Jesus doesn’t give up on us and won’t abandon us is a huge source of hope and strength felt through the presence of caring believing people around us. Through the cross, Jesus offers forgiveness and healing. As the catechism says, “Jesus is our only High Priest, who by the one sacrifice of his body has redeemed us, and who continually intercedes for us before the Father; and our eternal King, who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who defends and preserves us in the redemption obtained for us.” This is hope and source of strength we can hang onto, something that is repeated over and over again through the stories of Israel’s judges: God remains faithful to his people even when they’re not faithful in return.

Samson’s a loner which makes his addictive behaviour that much more dangerous, we’re not created to walk alone; we’re created in God’s image, to be in community as God is a community; three in one. Yet in Samson’s death, we see that he’s not alone. Surrounded by thousands of mocking Philistines, Samson turns to God and asks for strength one last time. He’s looking for revenge, but as we’ve seen in his story earlier on, God works in and through broken people, and gives Samson the strength to collapse the temple of Dagon, killing thousands to Philistine leaders, showing Samson’s God is the most powerful God. When we get to the book of Ruth, we discover the Philistines are no longer in control, Samson’s self sacrifice leads to Israel’s deliverance from the Philistines, as Jesus’ sacrifice leads to our deliverance from sin.

Through the cross, Jesus defeats sin and death so that we can have eternal life and hope, even in the darkest of times, and have the strength to walk with those who are walking through their own times of darkness because we know the Spirit is with us always. Jesus came to show us how to be God’s people in the world, but to bring healing and hope into our brokenness.

Telling Our Children God’s Story - Psalm 78

             

Baptisms are so special, a beautiful sign and seal of God’s grace, a symbol of belonging and acceptance. Baptism is a reminder of what Jesus accomplishes on the cross, a going down into death and rising up into new life, a sign that Alaric is part of our church family and that Jesus has gone to the cross for him even before he can choose Jesus. Adam and Heather chose Psalm 78 as their passage for today because it emphasizes the importance of telling the stories of God, the stories of faith to our children, a reminder to parents to lead their children into a relationship with Jesus, teaching them trust and faith in Jesus as they hear and learn the story of salvation.

Psalm 78 is written by Asaph, called a prophet by the Jews. In this psalm, Asaph tells us to tell the stories of God and the history of God’s people with God so that they may be faithful to the Lord. Asaph does a deep dive into Israel’s history, remembering the stories of God’s power and deliverance of his people, the slide of Israel time after time into unfaithfulness to God, and then God’s faithfulness, mercy, justice, and forgiveness, all leading to the gift of a faithful king in David, servant to the Lord, pointing to the hope of God’s people, a hope fully realized in the coming of Jesus.

Listening to the stories of faith reminds us of who we are and why we can trust in God. The stories also remind us of who we are not supposed to be, stubborn and rebellious, instead we are called to be loyal to God who is always loyal and faithful to us, an echo back to our series on the Judges of Israel. Dr. Cullen Story talks about how remembrance in terms of Psalm 78 means geographical and historical anchors such as Egypt, the fields of Zoan, the sea, the desert, Shiloh, and Jerusalem. Remembrance means persons as well, Jacob, Judah, Joseph, and David.

Asaph tells the stories of the Exodus when God freed his people from slavery to the Egyptians, even dividing the waters of the Red Sea so Israel could escape from their slave masters on dry ground, and then drowning the Egyptians by allowing the waters to return to their place once Israel was safe. In verse 42, Asaph laments that Israel doesn’t remember the Lord’s power and the amazing signs he did in leading them to freedom. He lists the 10 plagues in Egypt that God sent to show Egypt and Israel who the true God is. In the 10 plagues, God defeats 10 of the main Egyptian gods, culminating in the plague of death, showing that even Pharaoh is weak and unable to protect his people from Israel’s God. There’s no God like Israel’s God!

Asaph tells the stories of the wilderness, the stories of how God provided for his people. They asked for water, he gave them water. They asked for food and he gave them manna, bread from heaven. They asked for meat, he provided them with quail. Asaph writes, “They ate till they were gorged—he had given them what they craved.” For 40 years God provided for his people and still they whined and complained, even mourning at times that they had left slavery in Egypt because there they could eat melons. Not all of the stories of our relationships with God are happy stories because our hearts are full of sin. Like Israel, we often end up chasing God’s blessings and loving them more than God, looking to what we don’t have rather than what we do. Is it any wonder then that in the stories of God and his people that there are times that God acted out of anger, allowing them to experience the consequences of their ungratefulness, at times even death? And still, “in spite of all this, they kept on sinning; in spite of his wonders, they did not believe. So he ended their days in futility and their years in terror.”

God is a God of justice, sin and rebellion have consequences, but we discover in the stories of God and his people that God is also a merciful God, a God of grace. Verses 34–39, “Whenever God slew them, they would seek him; they eagerly turned to him again. They remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer. But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues; their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant. Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return.” God remembers their weaknesses, and ours, and this stirs God’s mercy and forgiveness. This is part of the trademark of the Christian faith; God remains faithful to his covenants with his people even though we’re unfaithful over and over again. As Paul reminds us of this great hope in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Psalm 78 reminds us of a covenant of forgiveness and new beginnings; a covenant that calls God's people to faith and obedience. 

God brings Israel into the Promised Land. You would think that with everything God has done for his people that they would be the most faithful people ever, but history tells us differently, instead they keep testing God, testing his patience and faithfulness to them. We’ve just finished journeying through the judges in Israel where we saw how the people loved other gods, how they were disloyal and faithless towards God time after time, and unreliable in leading the nations to a greater knowledge of God. Yet God raised up judges to lead them out of slavery to the nations and their gods over and over again.

Asaph doesn’t hide the hard stories of his people, showing how they keep walking away from God, but showing just how merciful and loving God is to his people. Because God loves his people, he doesn’t ignore their sin; he punishes them in order to draw them back to himself and lead them into becoming the people he’s calling them to be. God turns his back on Israel at times, but he doesn’t abandon them, instead withdrawing his blessings from them when they chase after other gods. Like a parent who loves their child but hates something they’ve done, they punish their child so their child is reminded of the person their parents expect them to be.

The psalms are Hebrew poetry, using metaphors, similes, and hyperbole, meaning that the psalmist often uses extreme language and images to describe what they’re writing about. Here Asaph uses hyperbole to show us the hurt and pain our faithlessness causes God, “When God heard them, he was furious; he rejected Israel completely. He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent he had set up among humans. He sent the ark of his might into captivity, his splendor into the hands of the enemy. He gave his people over to the sword; he was furious with his inheritance. Fire consumed their young men, and their young women had no wedding songs; their priests were put to the sword, and their widows could not weep.” In his faithfulness, God does not break his covenant with Israel, he does not abandon them, but he does allow them to know his anger and disappointment with them.

God doesn’t stay angry forever, Asaph describes God as waking up as from a sleep, beating back the enemies, choosing the tribe of Judah, building his sanctuary like the heights, and choosing David his servant to be the shepherd of God’s people. This is where knowing the stories of God helps. We know Judah is one of the sons of Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, and God chooses Judah as the line through which the promised Messiah is going to come, even though he’s not the oldest son. God raises up a shepherd, faithful David, to lead his people as their king, pointing us to the Good Shepherd Jesus who comes and saves us from our sin by remaining faithful to God, taking on our sin and taking it to the cross where it’s washed away through Jesus’ faithful sacrifice and obedience to God.

We get a glimpse here of what the doctrine of unconditional election looks like, the doctrine where we confess that God chooses his children, not based on how good or special they are, but because he chooses. This is a doctrine of comfort and hope because it’s all about pure grace. We don’t know who God has chosen, so we offer the good news of Jesus to everyone, inviting them all to follow Jesus with us, generously sowing the seeds of the good news wherever the Spirit leads us, especially in our children. These seeds are planted through telling the stories of who God is and his faithfulness to his people, what Jesus has done, and how Jesus offers us his Spirit to guide us and remind us of who he is, shaping our life stories into stories of redemption, renewal, and hope.

Samson—The Angry Warrior - Judges 15

                         

Two weeks ago, we looked at Samson’s wedding and the riddle about the lion he had killed which he had given his companions. They had turned his riddle back on him, “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?” Today we’d say the answer to their riddle is love, and there’s a feeling in the story that Samson does love his Philistine wife. Samson, after his anger has cooled down, goes back to his father-in –law’s house to claim his wife. Imagine Samson’s surprise to find out his wife is now married to another man, to one of his companions at his wedding! Samson’s father-in-law then makes things worse by offering his younger daughter as a replacement wife for her sister. God, through Samson, now takes the next step in confronting the Philistines and delivering his people from the influence and power of foreign gods.

Samson reacts in anger. “This time I have a right to get even with the Philistines;” admitting here that his killing thirty men before probably wasn’t right, but now he feels justified “to get even with the Philistines.” Samson wants revenge and decides to harm the Philistines by destroying their fields and harvests. This will hurt them all winter long. He catches three hundred foxes, ties them together in pairs, and ties flaming torches to their tails, terrifying them, and setting them loose in the fields, vineyards and olive groves, creating chaos and huge losses to the Philistines. This has religious overtones because the main god of the Philistines is Dagon, the god of the harvest and prosperity, and now an Israelite defies Dagon. The battle between Israel’s God and Philistine’s gods is on.

Samson’s difficult to punish, but his father-in-law and Samson’s wife are easy targets for the Philistine’s vengeance.  Since Samson had burned their fields and vineyards, they burn Samson’s in-laws, including his wife. Samson reacts viciously, attacking and slaughtered many of them. The Philistines can’t ignore Samson anymore, so God’s plan to confront the Philistines now begins in earnest. The Philistines gather 3,000 men and march into Judah where Samson has gone to take Samson captive and punish him.

Israel has given up and accepted their bondage to the Philistines. The men of Judah grovel before the Philistines, “Why have you come to fight us?” The answer likely doesn’t make the Israelites feel any better, “We want Samson so we can do to him what he’s done to us.” The men from Judah swallow their fear; gather the remnants of their courage and three thousand of them go to Samson. They go to the Nazirite, the man dedicated to God, to rebuke him for stirring up their masters and not respecting them. The Israelites who are bound in slavery bind Samson to hand him over to those who have control over their slave chains. God’s presence and hope seems to be pretty well gone in Israel.

It’s sad that Samson even has to ask his fellow Israelites not to kill him, but just to bind him. While they bind Samson in ropes, they don’t even realise that they’re bound in even stronger chains of slavery, hopelessness, and idolatry. They take Samson, bound in new ropes, to the Philistines. The Philistines come shouting, intimidating the men of Judah, but Samson isn’t intimidated and the Spirit of the Lord comes on him as the Spirit did when the lion attacked him. The ropes, while strong, when compared to the strength of Samson because of God, become as feeble as charred flax and fall from his body as if they aren’t even there. Samson stands before the Philistines as God’s man as God’s Spirit gives him the strength to show the Philistines that Israel belongs to God and their gods are nothing compared to Yahweh.

With nothing more that the jawbone of an ass which Samson picks up from the ground, again breaking his Nazirite vows, he strikes down one thousand Philistines. The Lord shows his power and his protection of his people through Samson. Israel may be hurt and enslaved, yet God doesn’t sit back and do nothing, he shows his people that his faithfulness to his covenant with them remains, even though they’re unfaithful to him.

Samson boasts after his victory over the Philistines, “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys out of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.” It’s all about Samson, no mention of God anywhere. Samson’s a picture of Israel. Time and again, Israel is seduced by the gods of the nations around them, and time and again, Yahweh shows Israel that he’s the God of gods, King of Kings, and Lord of lords. After the battle, Samson cries out for water, and God provides water and refreshes him, even as his cry to the Lord sounds much like Israel’s complaining attitude in the wilderness, coupled with a sense of entitlement.

What’s struck me in reading through Samson’s story is how often the Spirit of the Lord comes on him and God gives him what he needs to defeat the Philistines in the moment. We see Samson as a powerful hero, someone we dream of becoming, at least if you’re a boy. Some of us might see Samson as a broken hero, yet in Samson’s stories, we when we look closely at Samson, we see a sinner that God remains faithful to, a reminder of how God remains faithful to us in our own sin. We’re able to see other people’s sins much more clearly than our own; the problem is that we see some people’s sins as more acceptable than others because we admire them. Because we want to see Samson as a hero, we accept his sins while rejecting other peoples’ sins because we see their sins as being much worst for many reasons.

Al Wolters, one of my professors at Redeemer, wrote a book called Creation Regained where he lays out how sin taints every aspect and part of our lives and souls, making us all equally distasteful to God. When we look at someone else’s sin and fail to see how we are equal to them as sinners, often, subconsciously, we’re using their sin to make ourselves feel better about our own sin, justifying that we’re not as bad as they are. We fail to realize that even the best and most godly areas of our lives are still infected by sin; sin has a deeper hold in some parts of our lives than others, but it has a hold in every part. This is why Jesus comes and takes all our sin to the cross.

This is why we’re given the Holy Spirit, to guide, encourage, and even push us into becoming more Christlike as we work with the Spirit to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. What does that look like? Paul writes in Galatians 5, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

 The gift of the Spirit is for the common good, in Samson’s case, the gift of the Spirit is to lead Israel into freedom, but we never see evidence that Israel finds freedom from the Philistines under Samson. It’s in the book of Ruth, set near the end of the judges, that we see that they’re free again. When Jesus appears among his disciples after his death on the cross for our sin and his resurrection from the grave, John tells us, “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” Here the disciples are given the gift of the Spirit to equip them for the work of establishing the church and sharing the good news of Jesus. In order to do this, we also need to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our own lives because our lives are part of the gospel story, a testimony to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.

The Lord remains faithful to his commitment to Samson and Israel all while Samson and Israel consistently reject the Lord. The question that kept popping up to me is, “If the Spirit of the Lord is coming on Samson so often, shouldn’t we see some evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in his life?” Jesus told his disciples that he’s going to send them the “spirit of truth, who will guide us into all truth”. The Spirit guides us, but we’re called to follow the Spirit’s leading, to listen and obey. It takes trust in God, a trust that Israel had lost because they’ve become so much like the nations around them. A friend, Peter, on his deathbed told me how thankful he was that Jesus had given him his Spirit to help him become more like Jesus, it gave him peace through the most difficult times. I had mentioned to him once that Jesus accepts us for who we are, but loves us too much to want us to stay who we are, which is why we’re given the Holy Spirit. Peter recognized just how amazing the gift of the Holy Spirit is, I pray you do too!