Turn with me please to Judges
chapter 14. Judges, the book of Judges chapter
14. I was speaking to someone the
other day and I said that we were having Samson at church
on Sunday morning. And they said, oh, is he a preacher? And I thought, yes, yes, Samson's
going to preach to us this morning. So we're going to turn to Judges
chapter 14 and read about Samson. You remember that we did speak
a little bit last week about his birth, and we were told right
at the end of chapter 13 that the woman, that's Manoah's wife,
bear a son and called his name Samson. And that name probably
derives from a word meaning the rising sun or the sun shining
in power. And the child grew and the Lord
blessed him. So Samson was under the blessing
of the Lord from his birth. He is one of those that we call
a child of promise in the Scriptures. And the Spirit of the Lord, verse
25, began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah
and Eshtol. Chapter 14 and verse 1. And Samson
went down to Timnath and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughter
of the Philistines. And he came up and told his father
and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the
daughters of the Philistines, now therefore get her for me
to wife. Then said his father and his
mother, then his father and his mother said unto him, is there
never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren or among all
my people that thou should, that thou goest to take a wife of
the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said unto his father,
Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well. But his father and his
mother knew not that it was of the Lord that he sought an occasion
against the Philistines, for at that time the Philistines
had dominion over Israel. Then went Samson down, and his
father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of
Timnath. And behold, a young lion roared
against him. The Spirit of the Lord came mightily
upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and
he had nothing in his hand. But he told not his father or
his mother what he had done. And he went down and talked with
the woman, and she pleased Samson well. and after a time he returned
to take her and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion
and behold there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass
of the lion and he took thereof in his hands and went on eating
and came to his father and mother and he gave them and they did
eat but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of
the carcass of the lion So his father went down unto the woman,
and Samson made there a feast, for so used the young men to
do. And it came to pass, when they
saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him. And Samson said unto them, I
will now put forth a riddle unto you. If ye can certainly declare
it me within the seven days of the feast and find it out, then
I will give you 30 sheets and 30 change of garments. But if
ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me 30 sheets and
30 change of garments. And they said unto him, put forth
thy riddle, that we may hear it. And he said unto them, out
of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth
sweetness. And they could not in three days
expound the riddle. And it came to pass on the seventh
day that they said unto Samson's wife, Entice thy husband that
he may declare unto us the riddle, Lest we burn thee and thy father's
house with fire. Have ye called us to take that
we have? Is it not so? And Samson's wife
wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest
me not. Thou hast put forth a riddle
unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And
he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my father nor my
mother, and shall I tell it thee? And she wept before him the seven
days, while their the seven days while their feast lasted. And
it came to pass on the seventh day that he told her, because
she lay sore upon him. And she told the riddle to the
children of her people. And the men of the city said
unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, what is sweeter
than honey? And what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, If ye
had not ploughed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle. And the Spirit of the Lord came
upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men
of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto
them, which expounded the riddle. And his anger was kindled, and
he went up to his father's house. But Samson's wife was given to
his companion, whom he had used as his friend. Amen. May God bless to us this reading
from the word of God. A lady wrote in the week. someone who had listened to the
sermon last week and said how much she appreciated hearing
about the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. She had been
taught in previous years and in previous churches that the
Old Testament was for Jews and not for the church. Well, that's
completely wrong. And if those who taught such
ideas actually read the New Testament as they espoused to do, they
would surely hear and read Luke saying that the Lord Jesus Christ
himself, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, expounded
unto them The Scriptures, that's the Old Testament Scriptures. That's what they had at the time
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He expounded to them the Scriptures,
the things concerning himself. In all the Scriptures, the things
concerning himself. That's all the Old Testament
Scriptures. And we read in this Bible of
ours from Genesis to Revelation about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Indeed, when we go anywhere in the Bible, the Lord's people
should be looking for the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't just stumble
upon him accidentally or get a little bit of illumination
and say, yeah, you know what? In my imagination I could see
where that might apply to the Lord or this might apply. It's
designed that way. It's purposefully set out. The
things that were done in the lives of these men and women
in days gone by that are recorded by God the Holy Spirit are purposefully
recorded in order to show us something about the Lord Jesus
Christ. So we come to the scriptures
with that design, with that purpose. We consider the Bible to be a
continuous revelation of God to his church and people. From
Genesis to Revelation, And the book of Malachi doesn't finish
off the Old Testament and make it redundant so that the New
Testament takes its place, but it runs smoothly into it as a
continuation of the revelation of God. Indeed, we find that
the Old Testament declares prophetically about the coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ as that great Saviour and Deliverer. And the New Testament
picks up that message and shows us that the Saviour and Deliverer
has come. So in the book of Malachi, which
ends the Old Testament, we discover there, almost in the very last
passage, a prophecy concerning the messenger of the covenant.
And then we come into Matthew, we turn over the page and we
come into Matthew, and then Luke, and we discover that that messenger
of the covenant is identified for us. He's actually present
with us. And it's John the Baptist. is
there to speak about the imminent arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ
to prepare the way for the Son of God to come. And so we see
that this message is a continuous revelation and when we come to
the Old Testament we feel perfectly free, indeed obligated, to trace
in the life of mighty Samson, a famous judge and deliverer
in Israel, those same qualities, those same incidents, those same
experiences in the life and person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
we might see from the things that Samson did something new,
something fresh, something meaningful in the life and testimony of
our Saviour Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
mighty deliverer. Indeed, the almighty deliverer. For Samson was just a shadow
of something more important that was to come. We use the word
type. You'll sometimes hear me saying
that. It's a type. That means it's a picture. It's, as it were, a metaphor,
an analogy. A story which reveals, not to
say that it's not a historically factual incident, but it's a
type that reveals something about the Lord Jesus. And the Lord
Jesus is the anti-type of the Old Testament story. So this
is a pattern that we feel justified to pursue when we are thinking
about the Lord Jesus. And we discovered that Samson
was a man of faith. Samson was a faithful believer
in God. Now, faith is a gift from God,
and if we have faith, it's because God gives us faith. And Samson
was a possessor of faith. Do you remember last week we
spoke about the fact that Manoah was a man of faith, and Manoah's
wife seemed to be a lady of faith? And here is Samson, their son,
and he is a man of faith. Indeed. He's a believer in God
and a believer in what God says. That means he's a believer in
the Lord Jesus Christ also because God had told the Old Testament
believers that their own deliverer was yet to come and be revealed. Do you know what the book of
Hebrews tells us about Samson? And this is something that we
need to remember because we're going to read some pretty stark
things about this man. Perhaps over the next couple
of weeks you'll be surprised. Maybe you'll run ahead and read
a few chapters on and see what it is that we're coming to. But
I plan to speak about Samson for a couple of weeks now. And
you may be surprised at some of the stark things that happen
in this man's life. But I want to tell you something
right now that you need to remember in all of the things that we're
going to say about him. You know what the Bible says
about Samson? The Bible says that Samson was a man of whom
this world was not worthy. Samson was a man of whom this
world was not worthy. So we will remember that about
the character of this individual. And if there are things happen
that we say, whoa, didn't expect that, we will remember that Samson
was a man of whom this world was not worthy. In Hebrews 11,
verse 33, we read, who through faith, this is speaking of Samson,
who through faith subdued kingdoms. wrought, worked righteousness,
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched violence
of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness was
made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies
of the aliens. Samson, he's a hero. He's a man of God, he's a man
of faith, he's a man of whom this world is not worthy. And
yet we will see things in his character and in his personality,
which we will be surprised at and may even consider to be flaws
in his person. And this brings me to my first
principle point here with respect to Samson. We're told that he was a chosen
vessel of God. He was a child of promise. He was a Nazirite from the womb. Now you can call it any way you
like. This man was foreordained by
God's will to a life of holiness sanctification and dedication. Now religious people, church
people, they like to talk about man's free will. They like to
talk about the individual's choice to believe, that it's up to the
individual whether to believe in God, it's up to the individual
to choose whether they want to have salvation or not, it is
up to the individual to choose whether they want to be converted
or not, and it's up to the individual to choose whether they're going
to heaven or not. And there are many churches today
that speak about man's free will with this emphasis, centralising
man in the picture and then making an offer of salvation to them
and saying, now it's here, the Lord Jesus Christ, God himself
has done everything that he can do. And the question is now,
will you accept it? Well, that's not Samson's experience. That's not the experience of
many people in the Word of God. Indeed, that's not the experience
that we should be directed to expect based on the doctrine
of the Word of God. The Word of God tells us that
God is all-powerful. God doesn't do what he can and
then hope that somebody's going to respond positively. That's
not God. That makes the somebody God,
because the somebody has the control over what's going to
happen to God. God is in control. God is almighty. God is all-powerful. And here
we are told that God set aside this man, purposefully called
him from his mother's womb. and dedicated himself to the
service of God and to a holiness and to a righteousness and to
a sanctification which was given to him by God as an act of God's
grace and mercy. And Samson knew that and he believed
it to be the case and he was therefore a man of faith as Hebrews
testifies. He was a chosen vessel. So we
ask the question, did Samson have free will? Or did God's
purpose supersede the will of the individual? Samson was a
man that was chosen of God and he was dedicated to the purpose
which God had brought him into the world to fulfil. He was to
begin the deliverance of the people of Israel out from underneath
the dominion and domination of the Philistines. a heathen and
an idolatrous people who took advantage of the Israelites and
who suppressed them at every opportunity. Samson would be
endowed with divine power and authority. He was a judge in
Israel in order to accomplish the task which God had ordained
that he would fulfil. And that's not based on Samson's
free will, but it's based on God's divine decree. It's based on electing grace
where God decided the way of that man's life and God ordained
how it would begin, how it would proceed, and how it would come
to its conclusion. We're told that he was separated
from the womb, set apart sanctified, holy, dedicated to the service
of God. And the second thing I want to
point out is this, that this special role that Samson had
was titled a Nazirite. Samson was a Nazirite. Now, the Nazirite vow was taken
by men. And I'm just going to turn you
in the scriptures to Numbers chapter six. So if you'll go
back a couple of books in your scriptures to Numbers chapter
six, I want to read you there some of the references to this
vow that was to be taken. this Nazirite vow. So Numbers
chapter six. And we'll just read from verse
one. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,
When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow of
vow of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord, he
shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink
no vinegar of wine or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall
he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried. All the days of his separation
shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the
kernels even to the husk. All the days of the vow of his
separation, there shall no razor come upon his head, until the
days he be fulfilled, in the which he separateth himself unto
the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair
of his head grow. That'll suffice. There is a little
bit more information about how an offering is to be made as
part of that vow. But that shows us a little bit
about the fact that there was an established Nazirite vow that
Moses had spoken to the children of Israel about during the time
of Moses' life. And this vow was not something
that Samson had entered into purposefully during his life. It was something that his mother
was told, that he would be a Nazirite from birth. And so he'd never
had any alcohol, he'd never had any razor or his hair cut, and
this was part of his dedication to the Lord. But what we should realise when
we encounter this phrase, the Nazirite, in scripture, and we
see that it comes up a number of times here in Samson's life,
and sometimes it's spoken of without being named, for example,
in the life of Samuel, and other times it is spoken about by the
prophets. In all of the occasions where
the vow or the title Nazirite is used, Again, it's pointing
us to the Lord Jesus. It's always pointing us to Christ
because the Lord Jesus Christ was the true Nazarite. Have you ever wondered why the
Lord Jesus Christ is not called Jesus of Bethlehem? I bet you hadn't. Why is he not
called Jesus of Bethlehem? That's where he was born. Everybody
knew that. Why was he called Jesus of Nazareth?
It's a different town completely. Because this Nazarite or Nazarene,
this town, the word means branch. This is a reference to the fact
that the Lord Jesus Christ was to be the fulfiller of this Nazirite
vow. He was the only one. that could
fulfil all the obligations, all the meaning, all the significance
of the Nazirite vow to be holy, to be dedicated, to be set apart
for the purposes of God as the deliverer of his people. And
this Nazarite reference that is given here to Samson is to
point us to the Lord Jesus. In Matthew 2, verse 23, we read
about the time when Mary and Joseph were returning from Egypt,
where they had gone to at the time of what is sometimes spoken
of as the slaughter of the innocents, when all the children were slain
by Herod. The angel had warned Joseph to
go to Egypt, and that's where he had spent some time. A couple
of years later, he went back into Israel, And we're told in
Matthew chapter 2 verse 23, and he came and dwelt in a city called
Nazareth. So he brought the infant and
the infant's mother, Mary, that it might be fulfilled, which
was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene or
a Nazirite. And so that's why the Lord Jesus
Christ is called Jesus of Nazareth. And everybody called him that.
The devil called him Jesus of Nazareth. Satan called him Jesus
of Nazareth. The Jews, the scribes and the
Pharisees and the Sadducees, they called him Jesus of Nazareth.
His own disciples called him Jesus of Nazareth. Pilate took
a sign and put it above his cross, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of
the Jews. The Lord Jesus Christ called
himself Jesus of Nazareth. Why this emphasis on Nazareth? because he was a Nazirite, because
he was the branch, because he was the one that was going to
fulfil all of the Old Testament prophecies with respect to the
salvation and deliverance of his people. And that's exactly
what he did on the cross when he died. Samson. And the God-man, Jesus
Christ, were both set apart for their specific and distinctive
purposes, the conquest of the enemies of the people of God
and their deliverance and liberty out of the chains of their imprisonment. And here's another point. I think
this is the third one. And perhaps this is a word of
comfort to mums and dads, especially those of us with children that
have no concern for the gospel or who don't appear to have any
concern for the things of God. Samson, Samson, he went and got
a Philistine bride. Can you imagine the conversations
that went on between Manoa and his wife when their son came
back and said to them, I've seen a girl. Oh? Whose daughter is
she? Oh, she's one of those girls
from down in Timnath. What? A Philistine? Yes. I want you to go and get her
for me. I want you to go and negotiate the engagement. I want
to marry her. But Samson, you're to be the
deliverer of Israel. You've to be the one that delivers
Israel from the Philistines. You're not supposed to go and
marry one of them. You're not supposed to join together
with them. You're supposed to be fighting
them. It must have been a real puzzle, it must have been a real
quandary, an enigma to his mother and his father. They knew, they
had seen the angel, they had heard the words of God, they
had seen the angel doing wondrously and knew that Samson was dedicated
as a Nazarite to this great purpose. And here he is, their boy, and
he's contradicting every expectation that they had. An idolatrous girl from an idolatrous
family. And you want us to go and negotiate
your wedding. I don't know how Manoah and his
wife reconciled that. I can imagine Manoah saying to
his wife, no good will come of this. This is of the devil. This isn't going to work. And I think there's two interesting
comments that we're given here in the context of this thing.
And the first one is that in the last verse of the previous chapter,
chapter 13 of Judges, we're told that the spirit of the Lord began
to move Samson. at times in the camp of Dan. Samson was obviously under some
impression of the Spirit of God. Something was in his life that
he was aware of. It's a strange phrase, began
to move him. It wasn't that there was necessarily
a word, it wasn't that there was necessarily a revelation,
but there was something deep down, there was an urge here,
there was a movement of the Spirit in the life of Samson. And the
second comment is this in verse four, of chapter 14 where it
says, but his father and his mother knew not that it was of
the Lord. It was of the Lord that he married
this heathen girl. Now let's just pause because
I said that that might be of some interest to mums and dads.
Let's just be careful, even when we see our children doing things
and going in directions that we can't understand and we can't,
let us always remember that these things are of the Lord. The Lord
knows, the Lord has his purpose, the Lord has his plan, and the
Lord does right. Shall not the God of all the
earth do right? And whatever it is, I think I
think this boy probably broke his mother's heart at times. But I wish I could get my head
around that little phrase, it is of the Lord. It's a phrase
that I should use regularly and frequently. When things happen
in my life which seem to be going in a direction which doesn't
suit me or causes me anxiety, it's of the Lord. It's of the
Lord. His mum and dad didn't know it
was of the Lord. From a motherly perspective,
Samson's life, his whole life, was challenging. Indeed, we might
say that it was sad. There are three individuals in
Scripture, apart from the Lord himself, that are given the title
Nazirite. Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist. And none of them gave their mothers
any real cause for happiness in the days of their life. Whether
it was separation, whether it was an earthly death, whether
it was the opposition from their peers, And Mary herself had great bitterness
when we think about the real Nazarite, the Lord Jesus Christ. Our children may well bring bitterness
into our lives, but it is of the Lord. Here's a fourth point. Samson
kills a lion, verse five. I think there's something nice,
there's a propriety about the way in which Samson and his parents
move to and fro between their own home and this Timnath in
order to negotiate the wedding. It's not just that he simply
goes and takes her, there's a period, it may indeed have been quite
an extended period, several months, maybe a year, between the first
going down to negotiate the terms of the marriage and the time
of the consummation and the wedding feast. And on the way down, on
the first occasion, we read in the narrative that there was
a young lion. It's not a cub, it's not a baby,
it's a young lion, and therefore the sense of that is that it's
a strong lion and it was voracious, it was aggressive, it blocked
his way. And Samson, clearly not at that
moment with his parents, slew the lion with his bare hands.
He was attacked by a lion and without any weapon at his disposal, by his own strength, he slew
that lion. And we're told that it was the
Spirit of the Lord that came upon him. And this is perhaps
indicative of the way in which the Spirit of the Lord was going
to come upon him at different times in his life. You remember,
we spoke a little bit ago to some of the younger people and
we talked about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Now that was a different kind of coming. That was the coming
of the Holy Spirit to indwell the people of God and to make
his temple, the lives of the people of God. Prior to that
coming, prior to that revelation of the Holy Spirit in each individual
who was saved, there was, in the Old Testament, a periodic
coming of the Holy Spirit upon individuals to empower, to embolden,
to enable, and to commission them for a particular task. And
this is one of these examples. And here we see Samson having
the Spirit of the Lord come upon him. credited, the spirit being
credited with empowering him and him slaying this lion. Perhaps
there's a picture to himself about some of the tasks that
he would be called to do. One of the interesting things
in scripture is that Satan himself is called a roaring lion, just
like this roaring lion that stood in the path before Samson. And there again we find Samson
being a type of the Lord Jesus Christ because Samson was enabled
to slay the lion as a picture of what the Lord Jesus Christ
would do for his people. That's the type and the anti-type. That's the picture and this is
the reality. The Lord Jesus Christ has put
down the devil. And indeed, the Lord Jesus Christ
may be said to slay Satan every time the gospel is preached and
someone is plucked from the captivity of Satan and brought into the
liberty of the children of God. And so we see this picture and
the reality being set before us. Here's a fifth point. There's
a marriage celebration that is made, and at that celebration,
which lasts for seven days, I hope you're not too confused about
the repetition of seven in the passage that we read. It seems
as if a lot of things happen on the seventh day, and yet there
seems to be days between what it is that's happening. One of
the explanations of that is that it may be that on the third day
was actually a Sabbath day, and that's why it's called the seventh
day. It wasn't the seventh day of the feast, it was the seventh
day of the week. And then again, you can find
that there's a reference to the fact that his wife wept to him
for seven days, or it was for the remainder of the seven days. So in verse 17, for example,
she wept before him the seven days, while their feast lasted. So it was the days that remained
of the seven before. Or she might have started crying
on day one. I don't know. But it's possible that as soon
as she realized that she didn't know the answer, she felt, what?
He's treating me like he's treating these other girls. He's treating
me like everyone else. I deserve to know more than this.
Either of those two possibilities might be read. but there's a
marriage celebration and Samson poses a riddle to the guests. He gleaned his riddle from the
experience that he had. because he returned to the carcass
of the lion that he had slain. And there he discovered a swarm
of bees had taken up residence in the carcass, maybe if it had
been a long period of time, in the ribcage of this lion. And he concocted this riddle. Out of the eater came forth meat,
and out of the strong came forth sweetness. The bees had made
honey in the carcass of this dead lion, and he took of that
honey and he consumed it and he'd given some to his parents
also. And there we see that the source
of his riddle was thereby gotten. So we have this picture of this
riddle. Out of the eater came forth meat,
out of the strong came forth sweetness. And by threat and by fear, the
Philistines got the answer to that riddle. They got the answer
by threatening his new wife and her father. and by saying that
if they didn't come up with the answer before it was going to
cost them the garments, the change of clothing, the sheet. It is
probably a linen sheet that men would wrap around like we would
have pyjamas. It was probably a linen sheet for sleeping in. And therefore he was giving them
a covering by night and a covering by day in this riddle that he
posed. And here we have these men thinking
to themselves, this guy is going to cost us all a change of clothing
here. and they weren't happy about
it. And perhaps they were a little put out as well that all of them
combined couldn't answer his riddle. But even in their assumed cleverness,
they exposed their real ignorance. They came up with an answer,
didn't they? They came up with the answer
that answered the riddle. They said, What is stronger than
a lion? And what is sweeter than honey? So in verse 18, the men of the
city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down,
what is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?
And he said unto them, If he had not ploughed with my heifer,
he had not found out my riddle. So the fact that they had interrogated
his wife is the reference there in Samson's comment. But you
see, even in their cleverness, they didn't have the right answer.
Yeah, they had the answer to the riddle. What is stronger
than a lion? Let me tell you what is stronger
than a lion. Samson was stronger than a lion, because he killed
it. And let me tell you what is sweeter than honey. Psalm
119, verse 20. How sweet are thy words unto
my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. What is sweeter
than honey? The gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ, the words of God to his people is sweeter than honey.
What is stronger than a lion? The deliverer that was sent for
the deliverance of the people of God is stronger than a lion. So yeah, they got the answer
to the riddle, but they had failed to grasp the real meaning behind
these things. There is an innocence in the
character of Samson. I discern, as I'm reading this,
even we might say a simplicity in the man. These double-crossing,
treacherous Philistines thought that they had got the better
of him. And maybe Samson was a little bit naive in thinking
that he could move into this company of people and find them
to be receptive to him in some way. And I think the Lord's people
often feel like that. How are we going to survive in
the midst of this world's wickedness? We'll be eaten alive by these
Philistines all around about us. but Christ is stronger than
the lion's mouths. And the gospel is sweeter to
the believer's taste. stronger than a ravenous lion,
sweeter than the honeycomb. There is strength and there is
sweetness for the believer in Christ, in the person of our
Saviour Jesus Christ. He is the deliverer and feeder
of our souls. And the sixth point, I don't
usually do six points in my sermon, but my sixth point is this. The Spirit of the Lord came upon
Samson. Verse 19. And the Spirit of the
Lord came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty
men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto
them which expounded the riddle. The Spirit of the Lord stirred
up Samson's heart. They would have their prize.
Samson had promised them a change of clothing. He didn't tell them
where he was going to get it. Ashkelon was a powerful city
of the Philistines. It was probably around 25 miles
from Timnath, the village where he had married this girl. And there in Ashkelon, he slew
30 men. The Philistines to use a more
recent phrase, had awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible
resolve. And this act that Samson fulfilled,
and it's interesting and I just want to point this out, it was
actually contrary to the Nazirite vows. A Nazirite couldn't touch
a dead body. He'd already touched the carcass
of the lion, and now he's stripped these 30 dead Philistines of
their garments. And this shows us that the holiness
and the sanctification wasn't in the doing of the individual,
it was in the viewing of God. God regarded Samson as holy in
Christ, regardless of those things which he did in his body. This, I think, reveals to us
what we often see in the Word of God and perhaps what we see
in our own lives as well sometimes, that God blends together a series
of ordinary events with some extraordinary manifestation of
his own power. God could have done anything
he liked to rid Israel of the domination of these wicked Philistines. He could have sent a tsunami
and washed out all their cities. He could have made an earthquake
to consume them and destroy them. He could have sent plagues upon
them. Anything was at the disposal of God, but he didn't do that. He set up an individual called
Samson and he caused that man to be offended in the very depths
of his being at the treatment that he was given in order that
he might begin that plan of deliverance. God uses ordinary things in an
extraordinary way to accomplish his purposes in the lives of
men and women. a judge had arisen in Israel. And now fear would stalk those
who dominated the Lord's people. The news of Samson's aggressiveness
would pass from village to village and from city to city. And death
would cast its shadow upon these wolves that hitherto had terrorised
the sheep. This world has no idea how deeply
the Lord loves his people, loves his church. The world has no
idea how jealously God guards and preserves his people in this
world. The men of Timnath and Ashkelon,
they heard from Samson that day. And soon the whole Palestinian
nation would know that there was a judge in Israel. Be not
deceived. God is not mocked. He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today.