If you will, turn with me to
the book of Judges. If you have a bookmark, you may
want to put it there. I'll be coming back to this passage
as my text in Judges chapter 16. I'm not going to read the entire
chapter, but verses 21 through 31. I'll use as my text. Judges chapter 16 verse 21. But the Philistines took him,
that is Samson, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to
Gaza. and bound him with fetters of
brass, and he did grind in the prison house. Howbeit the hair
of his head began to grow again after he was shaven, and the
lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a
great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice For they
said, our God hath delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands. When the people saw him, they
praised their God. And they said, our God hath delivered
into our hands our enemy and the destroyer of our country,
which slew many of us. And it came to pass, when their
hearts were merry, They said, call for Samson that he may make
us sport. And they called for Samson out
of the prison house, and he made them sport. And they set him
between the pillars. And Samson said unto the lad
that held him by the hand, suffer me that I may feel the pillars
whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them. Now
the house was full of men and women, and all the lords of the
Philistines were there. And there were, up on the roof,
about 3,000 men and women that beheld why Samson made sport. Samson called unto the Lord and
said, O Lord God, remember me. I pray thee, and strengthen me,
I pray thee. Only this once, O God, that I
may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two
middle pillars which the house stood and on which it was borne
up, of the one with his right hand and of the other with his
left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And
he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon
the Lord and upon all the people that were therein, so that the
dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he
slew in his life. Then his brethren and all the
house of his father came down and took him and brought him
up and buried him between Zorah and Eshalom, in the burying place
of Manoah his father. And he judged Israel twenty years."
May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his words. I invite you to turn back with
me now to Judges chapter 16. It would do us all well. I have
already done this, and I've done it many times. But it'll do you
good if you go back and read chapters 13, 14, and 15, as well
as the chapter I just read. out with the birth of Samson
and talks about all his victories and so on up until his death. His death marked the era of the
judges. He was the last of the judges
of Israel. After his death came the coming
of a kingdom ruled by a king. By a king. And I want to use Samson this
morning as a type of Christ. That is a picture, a type, a
symbolic with his life. And one of the beauties of Old
Testament typology, I've often preached to you from the types
in the Old Testament, but one of the beauties of Old Testament
typology is while it is never a full revelation of the substance
it portrays, it can suggest one thing in one place and another
thing in another place. What are you talking about? Well,
a good example of this is the harlot. The harlot. A harlot in Hosea is used to
describe the bride of Christ. She's symbolic of the bride of
Christ. In Revelation chapter 17, verses
4 and 5, she's used to picture false religion. She's Babylon the Great, the
mother of all harlots. You see how different those two
things are? And then in Ephesians 5, 5, she
describes the sinner's works, the works of his lustful flesh.
She's used to do that. And likewise, Samson is both
a picture of a sinner saved by grace, and he's a picture of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The same man. So let's look at
this man, Samson, as a picture of a chosen sinner. The scriptures begin by telling
us this. Samson went down to Gaza. They call it Gaza now. In the
Bible it has a straight line above the A, Gaza. He went down to Gaza. The word
Gaza means strong. It seemed like a fitting place
for a man like Samson who had remarkable strength in the Lord
to go down to a place which its name is strong. Seems like a fitting place, but
the Word has a beginning and its root form, from which it
was taken, means fierceness, greediness, and voluntary willfulness. So now, we're not talking about
a godly strength, we're talking about a stronghold. And this
stronghold is a sinful stronghold. Geza symbolizes a stronghold
of sin, kind of like our modern-day Las Vegas or New Orleans during
Mardi Gras. A place where sin is exploited,
practiced, and promoted. That was Geza. He didn't go there
to worship. He went down to Geza. He didn't
go down there to worship. He didn't go down there to be
enlightened by the Lord. He didn't go down to Gaza to
rest. He didn't go to Gaza to rescue
sinners. He went there to satisfy the
lusts of a sinful nature. Listen to this, Judges 16.1,
the very first verse of our text. Then went Samson to Gaza, and
saw there a harlot, and went in unto her. The Holy Ghost records things
like this to show us that no matter how many victories you
experience, we experience victories, believers do, every day. But
no matter how many victories you experience, no matter how
many blessings you receive, we are subject at any moment to
fall into some enticement of the flesh. See this man David. I just preached
on him. A man after God's own heart.
He come out there and all Israel sitting there on that hillside
and can't go down because there's a big giant down there in the
valley. These are people of God. This is the army of God. And
they're sitting there stumped by this big loudmouthed giant
down there. And David comes along and he's
a pretty boy. He doesn't look like a soldier.
He's real fair-complected. He's a ladies' man. Kind of a
sissy boy. And he come down there and he
looked at him and he said, Who is this uncircumcised Philistine
that he should defy the armies of the living God? You think
that didn't make Israel angry at him? And Saul took him kind of under
his wing and he said, here, you go on down there and face that
giant. Well, he said, I'll go. But he couldn't wear the armor.
Went down there with a shepherd's staff in his hand and slain.
And slayed that big giant in the name of the Lord. This was a man, boy, I tell you,
he was a man of God. He wrote the Psalms. My soul, you read through the
Psalms how they bless your heart. This is a man after God's own
heart. But now see him on the rooftop.
He didn't go up there to get a breath of fresh air. He went
up there to look. And what'd he see? He saw another
man's wife bathing down on the rooftop. He didn't turn his back,
continued to look. Went on to commit adultery with
her. plotted and planned the death of her husband, myself. Anytime, I don't care
how old you are, I don't care how many victories you have,
I don't care how much you preached. Anytime you're subject to an
enticement of this flesh, and it'll cause you more pain than
you know what to do with. Guard against it. Guard against
it. Paul said, when I would do good. He said, this is a hard fast
rule. Don't ever forget this. When
you would do good, evil is present in you. Not around you, right
in here. The story may vary in a hundred
different ways, yet it's always the same. God's people are sinners
saved by grace. Now please understand what I'm
saying. I'm not giving you an excuse for your sins. There are
no excuses for sins. Sins on your head. No excuse. No excuse. You have the plain
teaching of the Scriptures. You have the Gospel preached
to you every week. There's reminders, examples.
We have the entire Old Testament and all of the New Testament. There's no excuse for our sins.
I'm not giving you an excuse for your sin. And I'm not encouraging
you to sin. Quite the opposite. I'm trying
to point out the wickedness of it and the danger of it. But what I am doing, I'm simply
trying to tell you the truth about sin. The best of God's
saints are sinners at best. At best. And there's never a
time in your life when you don't need an advocate, a holy intercessor
in glory. Under the typical priesthood
and the ceremonial law, there were rivers of blood shed continually. Why? Because they continually
sinned. That's why. And it was shed for
two reasons. First of all, Hebrews 10 1, because
it could not make the comers there into Perth. They were sinners
when they came, they were sinners when they left. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. And secondly, because it could
not take away sins, Hebrews 10 4. The blood of bulls and goats
could never take away sins. Now listen to the Apostle Paul.
This is an aged minister of the Gospel. This is a man who's seen
many things, won many victories. He wrote more books in the New
Testament than anybody else by far. Half the New Testament written
by Paul the Apostle. And he was aging when he wrote
this. He wasn't a young man. He was an old man. He was in
prison. And listen to what he says. Oh, wretched man that I
am. Now, I've heard many people talk
about, oh, wretched man that I used to be. I heard that in
religion all my life. I used to be this. I used to
be that. Here's the news. You still are. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this man? It is, as one man said, a fantasy
to think we have a handle on the flesh because of our long
experience of grace. You don't have a handle on the
flesh. A true growth in grace is a knowledge of Christ and
an understanding that we are powerless to overcome ourselves. Now you think about what I just
said. Have I grown in grace? I have if I have an understanding
that I'm powerless to overcome myself. And the favor that God shows
unto us is always unmerited favor. Always. Do good and the Lord will bless you. There's none good, throw
that out the window. But the Lord blesses a man, it's
unmerited blessing. Conviction of sin is coming to
the end of ourselves, one man said. Seeing within nothing but
a black hole, a bottomless abyss. Seeing ourselves sinning against
even the love of God, the purpose of God, and the light
of God. One man called Samson the sinner
saint. And that describes every true
believer. He's a sinner saint. And that's
the picture our Lord gives us of this man of God. And there's
another lesson here. He went down to Gaza. He saw
a harlot and he went in unto her. The fact that Samson went
in to a whore suggests to us the seducing spirit and brawl
of false religion. That's how he pictures it. Read
it in the book of Proverbs. She stands on the corner. She
has the attire of a harlot. She's not saying, stay out. She's saying, come in. Come in. Oh, listen to this. This is a
quote from Proverbs. Reproofs of instruction are the
way of life to keep thee from the evil woman. Is he talking about a physical
whore? Well perhaps, he's talking to his children, but what he's
talking about here in the scripture is false religion. reproofs are a way of life to
keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue
of the strange woman. Lust not after her beauty in
thine heart, neither let her take hold of thee with her eyelids."
What's he talking about? That's what he's talking about. She smiles and bats her eyes. You look into them eyes like
two big pools of water. He said, don't do it. Don't do
it. Lest not after her beauty in
thine heart, neither let her be with thee, neither let her
take thee with her eyelids, and be worn. The adulteress will
hunt for the precious life. That's why she's out there. Religion
is a stronghold of sin. In religion you can practice
sin and be commended for it. In religion, you can practice
spiritual fornication and find spiritual satisfaction in it.
And the Gazites are representative of the false church. She's always
there to offer what is not hers to give and not yours to have. She's always there. But then
secondly, I want us to see Samson as a type of Christ. He's the
type of a chosen sinner. God, when He talks about His
election of grace, He sees all men of the same lump. Isn't that
what it says over in Romans 9? Of the same lump. He formed one
vessel unto honor and another to dishonor. It's the same lump.
He lumps us all into one bowl. We're all sinners. Well, why
did he choose this one and not that one? Sovereign grace. Sovereign grace. Because he would. He's a type of the chosen sinner. But secondly, I want us to see
Samson as a type of Christ. When I read in Hosea of a prophet
being commanded of God to be married by his prophet? Go marry a harlot, or David and
Bathsheba, or any one of many such examples throughout the
Scriptures. What are you trying to say? Here's what I'm trying
to say. I'm lost in the wonder of the
grace of God. Aren't you? Aren't you lost in the wonder
that God chose you and opened your heart, opened your mind,
turned you around? Don't you sit up late at night
sometimes and just wonder, why? Why me? Oh, I tell you, I get lost in
the wonder of God's saving grace. And that's what I see here in
Samson. I get lost in it. I see this
man and he's doing everything that we're commanded not to do,
he's doing. And yet, God uses him, saves
him, and glorifies himself in him. And that's the story of
every saved man. Oh. I get lost in the wonder of the
grace of God. The God of glory chose for the
bride of his son a whorish woman. God commended his love toward
us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Is there a wonder greater than
this? Is there anything that could challenge the mind and
heart of a believer more than the fact of God's love for a
chosen sinner? I call it a gospel wonder. The
Lord God of heaven and earth, seeing man in his depravity and
sin and his fall and his cursed condition, rebelling in his sin
and ignorance, worshiping who knows what, selecting out of
this ungodly population of people. And he set his love on them,
will you? And his love ain't moving one iota. Why? Because he secured that
love in his son. That's why. Scripture said he
loved us and gave himself for us. here in His love, not that
we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation
for our sin. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God that's in Christ Jesus our Lord. It's secured
in Him. He chose us in Him before the
foundation of the world that we might be holy without blame
before Him being loved. That love is secured in Christ.
And the love of God is the wellspring of all His blessings, and grace
is how it comes to us. Unmerited favor, undeserved blessings,
to the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made
us accepted in the beloved. Our Lord said, I'll have mercy
and not sacrifice. Now you bunch of proud legalists,
you go learn what that means. And then we'll talk some more.
I'll have mercy and not sacrifice. I've not come to call the righteous,
but sinners to repentance. You marvel that a Nazarite, a
judge of Israel, a consecrated man, that's what a Nazarite is,
could love a whorish woman? I looked at that scripture and
I thought, oh my. But then I think, how much more
marvel is it that Christ should love a whorish woman? But he
does. He does. Well, how is a sanction a picture
of Christ? Well, he's a picture of Christ
in his birth. His mother was barren. She couldn't have children. Couldn't have children. Angel
of God came to her and said, you're going to have a son. You're
going to have a son. His life began by divine appointment. And as Christ was foretold, so
Samson was foretold of God. God sent a messenger to a barren
woman, telling her that she'd be the mother of Samson. And
he's going to be a Nazarite. Fully, fully consecrated to the
Lord. One fully dedicated to the Lord. And then thirdly, he's a picture
or type of Christ in that he was moved by the Spirit of God
in everything that he did. Everything he did. You see, people
always, when Hollywood depicts this, they always make Samson's
hair his strength. His hair was not his strength.
Every time Samson did something, it said, and the Spirit of God
moved him. That's where the strength came
from. The hair was a symbol of his being a Nazarite, of his
consecration. That's what the hair was all
about. The strength came from God. There's nothing strong about
us. We've got long hair or no hair.
It doesn't make any difference. Strength comes from God. And
you can read about it. It's always the Spirit of God.
Judges 13, 25. And the Spirit of the Lord began
to move him at times. Chapter 14, verse 6. And the
Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. Chapter 14, verse 19. Chapter 15, verse 14. And on
and on it goes. Every time Samson did something,
it says the Spirit of God moved. And our Lord, what about our
Lord? In Acts 2.22 it says he was a
man approved of God, now listen, by miracles and wonders and signs
which God did by him. As you yourselves also know.
He received the Spirit of God without measure. And God worked
in him. The Spirit of God was manifested
in the things that he said, the things that he did, and those
things were to prove that he was the Christ of God. And then Sanchon's a picture
of Christ in the utter hatred of his enemies. They hated him. Sanchon brought out the unbelievers'
point of rebellion, God's sovereignty and omnipotence. Now let me tell you something
maybe you've never thought about. God is spirit. Can't see him. Can't see God. No man's ever
seen God. Jesus Christ is the image of
the invisible God. Anything we know about God, we
learn from Christ. This is God manifest in the flesh. They hated God. They didn't hate
their God, not even the concept of God, but God as He was manifest
in Samson. They hated Him. They hated Him. So here's the question. How do
you get rid of a God you can't see? How do you get rid of a
God that you can't resist? He just does what He will. We
got Him this time, boys. We got him this time. We got
thousands. He's standing out there by himself. He ain't even
got a weapon. We got him now. He reached down
there in an old dead carcass and picked up the jawbone of
an ass and whooped everyone up. Thousands, a thousand men laid
dead from the jawbone of an ass. You won't say that came from
a man. No sir, that came from God. God
manifest him. self in his strength and sanctity.
And he did so in Christ. Oh, you remember how Pilate had
his wife on one side telling him, don't have anything to do
with this man. I had a dream and the people over here propped
him to do this and do that and the Jews and all this intermixing
of politics. And I can't even imagine the
kind of stress that Pilate was going through. And finally, he
went down to talk to the Lord and the Lord didn't even answer
him. He said, Don't you know I have the power to release you
or the power to crucify you? Our Lord said, you ain't got
any power at all, except it was given to you by my Father. You
don't have any power. God manifested himself in his
son. They hated Samson because he
represented what they despised, the sovereign God who does what
he will to whom he will, when he will, how he will. And you
got no say in the matter. So you better find out how God's
pleased to save sinners and not how you think God ought to save
sinners. Nobody hated Christ because of
his deeds. They loved him as a miracle worker.
Everybody come out to take part in that. They loved him as a
healer and as a feeder of the hungry. They hated him because
of what he said. They hated him because he, being
a man, made himself God. He said, I came to do the will
of my Father. Boy, don't you know that greater
deal? He's saying he's the Son of God. God manifests in the flesh. He
was a type of Christ in that what he did was irresistible
and effectual, nothing that they You remember he went down to
Gaze, he laid with that whore, and he was in there in the room.
Well, these proud rebels, they don't think clear. They didn't
just want to kill Samson. If they wanted to kill him, all
they had to do was go in there while he's laying in there with
that woman and kill him. But they didn't want to do that.
They wanted him publicly shamed. They wanted this to be a big
deal, and they wanted to get the glory from it. So they waited
for daylight. But Samson got up in the middle
of the night and had the gates shut so he couldn't go out. You
remember I preached on that before, those huge, monstrous gates out
of brass. Samson just went out there and
picked the gates up, threw them up on his back, carried them
all the way to Hebron, laid them down on the mountain. Irresistible. Irresistible. What Samson did, he did as a
representative of God, and no man of himself could do what
that man did. When our Lord was working around
among the people, they said, he raised Lazarus from the dead
and everybody saw it, and they saw it. And they went back and
had a council meeting and said, if we let this guy go, Romans
are going to take away our authority. I ain't going to take away our
thought. We ain't going to have an income. Our Lord told them, my father
worketh hitherto and I work. Now you know the father was working
because the son was and the father was working through him. And he's a type of Christ in
that his death was his crowning glory. Whenever you think about
Samson, how you picture him? I picture him between them pillars,
don't you? Bringing that temple down. That was his crowning glory,
was his death. Now he did a lot of things. He
slayed a lot of people while he lived, but he slew more
in his death than he did Lee Steen had no grand design
in the death of Saxon. His death was to expose him as
their enemy. They're going to make sport of
him, going to laugh at him, poke fun at him. His death was to
humiliate him and expose him and the weakness
of his office in Israel. Actually, his death was to manifest
their right to do what they wanted to do. Free will. Huh? What's all this fighting
and battles and this nation and that and that? What's that all?
Free will. They want to rule. Nobody said
they could rule, they just wanted to. Somebody said, let's go across
this nation, we'll just take it. Free will. Religion has turned free will
into a religion that they say is of God. It's totally contrary
to God. Their shameful use and enslavement
of Samson is a picture of Christ being made sin. And men cry for
an explanation when you start talking about Christ being made
sin. You need to explain that. No, I don't. Scripture don't
explain it. I'm not going to explain it.
I can't go any further than Scripture. They cry for an explanation of
Christ being made sin. The fact of the matter is that
no man can fully comprehend God's holiness, nor can he comprehend
the depth of his sins. So how are you going to explain
Christ being made sin? You can't do it. I'll tell you
what you do is you stand back in awe of it. That's what you
do. And you bow your head because
you understand the necessity of it. Explain this. Explain now. I
get so tired of hearing that. I'll tell you something else.
I see the wrath of God poured out against it. Where did He
pour it out? On His Son. Why? He was made sin. You read Proverbs carefully,
you find out God can't punish an innocent man. And he can't
justify a guilty one. I see the wrath of God poured
out on Christ. I see the results of it. God
become just and justifier. But as far as seeing the height
and depth and the scope of it, fully comprehend it, I can't
do it. And because I can't do it, I
can't explain it. His death was not a loss. It
was great gain. The Philistines were the strongest,
mightiest enemies of Israel. And the death of Samson broke
it. It broke the Philistines. The
death of Samson broke the power and the reign of Israel's most
fierce enemy, the Philistines. And by his death, the temple
of their god, Dagon, was brought to the ground. Satan is at the
head of false religion. He's the prince of the power
of the air. His kingdom is a religious kingdom, as called in scripture,
anti-Christ. Contrary to Christ. Christ deniers,
Christ haters, Christ despises. They worship the God of their
imaginations. He's their concept, their idea,
and has their approval and their control. They gather in their God's temples
to make life and sport of God's emissary. The temple in Israel
had become, in the days of Christ, a den of thieves. It was built
to be a house of prayer, but they made it a den of thieves.
That's Christ's own words. And Samson, in his death, brought
down the idolaters' temple, didn't he? Brought it down. Old Dagon
fell on his face. He left it and all who were gathered
there in total ruin. Is that not what the gospel does?
If you go down to Dagon's Temple, any one of organized religions
around here, you go down to their temple, you're going down to
where the curse of God is. That's where you're going. It's
not a step up, it's a step down. And all that were gathered in
that temple, what happened? They were all killed. They were
all killed. The house fell upon the lords,
verse 30 of our text. Fell upon the lords, the high
officials, the ones doing the plotting and the planning. The
house fell on them, and there were many, and upon all the people
that were therein. And so the dead which he slew
in his death were more than they which he slew in his life. The
death of Christ declares judgment satisfied, and also that the
prince of this world is judged. In John 12, 31, our Lord said,
Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out. The death of Samson as a type
of Christ is a proclamation of the success of Christ's death
on the cross. The dead which he slew at his
death were more than he slew in his life. And if I apply these
things to Christ, what do I see? I see that when he died, he slew
death itself. Death hath no more dominion over
you. Isn't that what he said? O death,
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and death
is the judgment of God for sin, is it not? O my soul, and then, secondly,
when Christ died, all His elect died, we died with Him. His death was the death of a
substitute. And then thirdly, the more slain
in his death is all-inclusive in the death of Christ. The death
of Christ sealed the doom of all of his enemies. Everybody
died. The elect died. They died. Everybody
died. One man said on Calvary, every
man who ever lived was slain. Think about it. As it was in
Egypt, so on the cross. Everybody died. Everybody died. Israel died in substitute. His
blood was above the doorpost. Either His blood was a propitiation
for your sins or His blood was upon you and upon your children.
Isn't that what they said over there in Matthew 27, 25? They said, his blood be upon
us, and Pilate washed his hands. He said, I don't want no part
of this. Soap didn't wash it off, though.
But here's what they said when he said that. His blood be upon
us and upon our children. And it has been, and it is. Oh, my son, Samson, what a type
of Christ he is. Victorious.