The Book of Judges: Hearts of Iron, Feet of Clay
Samson: The Incredible Hulk
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Introduction: Is there anyone here today who has not desired to be uniquely outstanding in some way? Have you ever dreamed about being the most beautiful woman in the world? Or the richest businessman? Or the most powerful politician? Or the best baseball player? Or the most brilliant scholar? Or the finest musician? Maybe your dreams aren’t quite so grandiose—you would just like to get the highest grade in your class on a test once, or be named salesperson of the month, or be told by your boss that you’re the best secretary he’s ever had.
What is it like to be a uniquely outstanding person? Samson knew. He was the strongest man on earth, and probably the strongest man who ever lived. He got a lot of attention. He had things pretty much going his way. But friends, unique gifts can be a curse as often as a blessing. How many women of world‑class beauty have built solid homes and reared a godly family? How many world‑class musicians are sane and successful at living life? How many world‑class athletes are at peace with themselves, with their families, and with God? The answer in each case is, “A few, but not many.” Samson may have been the strongest man, but there aren’t many who would pattern their lives after his example.
There are one of two things that can be said about each of us when we die: “He did the best he could with what he had.” Or “Oh, what he or she might have been!” I don’t know about you, but there’s no doubt what I want people to say about me. I don’t think anyone will say, “He was the greatest preacher or the best pastor or the finest administrator.” But I hope some will say, “He did the best with what he had.” Unfortunately, for Samson the response would more likely be, “Oh, what he might have been!” In fact, in many ways his life was a paradigm of unrealized potential, and commentators have taken him to task for his selfishness, his lack of self‑discipline, his rebelliousness, and his sensuality.
Still, I think it is crucial for us to note that the author of the book of Hebrews lists Samson as one of the great men of faith in the O.T. That forces us to read the account of his life in the book of Judges with an eye to discovering not only the mistakes he made, but also the faith he exhibited. I want to share Samson’s life in terms of four phrases: called to holiness, prone to carelessness, shelved for rebelliousness, restored to usefulness. Since it’s impossible to do justice to the truths taught in four chapters in one message, I’ve decided to preach just the first two points this morning and return to Samson next Sunday.
“Called to holiness, prone to carelessness” is a slogan that might characterize many Christians’ lives. Perhaps you see yourself in that description—enough so that you will listen with extra care to what God has to say about Samson, the incredible hulk. By the way, I saw the TV show, “The Incredible Hulk” for the first time just a few weeks ago. I guess it’s an old show doing reruns, but I don’t recall ever having seen it before. This rather average‑looking actor named Bill Bixby was in a pool‑hall with a motorcyclist friend of his when they encountered a group of toughs just looking for a fight. He and his friend tried to avoid trouble, but they were jumped, and Bixby was thrown over the bar and out of sight. The next thing you saw was a green monster of a man—he looked like Dave Donohoo from the neck down, except for the color—who came roaring out from behind the bar and began to throw guys around like they were rag dolls. I rather suspect the look on their faces was similar to that on the faces of many Philistines who encountered Samson in Israel in the 11th century B.C.
The opening verse of chapter 13 tells us, “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.” This is the seventh cycle of sin, slavery, supplication, and salvation in the book of Judges. The enemy this time is the Philistines, a people who had been forced out of their homeland in Greece and the Aegean Sea and had settled in five cities in the area of the Gaza strip today. They were a formidable enemy because they had learned to smelt iron, giving them military and economic dominance over Israel.
In the face of this national oppression, God raised up Samson, who was …
Called to holiness
There’s a sense, of course, in which we are all called to holiness, but not in the unique way that Samson was.
A unique birth. He is one of only a handful of biblical characters whose birth was announced prior to conception. Others include Isaac, Samuel, John the Baptist, and Jesus. His parents were members of the tribe of Dan who suffered from the heartbreaking pain of childlessness, but the angel of the Lord announced a miracle: “You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son.” The following verses indicate that Samson’s parents were godly people who honored the Lord and undoubtedly did their best to rear him in a godly manner.
A unique lifestyle. The angel told Manoah and his wife that their son was to be a Nazirite from birth. Now don’t confuse a Nazirite with a Nazarene. A Nazarene (with an “a” in the middle) was someone from Nazareth, like Jesus. But the term Nazirite (with an “i” in the middle) comes from the Hebrew word which means “to separate” or “set apart,” and it signifies someone who is set apart or dedicated to God. Typically, a Nazirite vow was taken voluntarily for a short period of time, but Samson’s vow was not voluntary but commanded; it was not to be temporary but rather for life.
Four rules were established for a Nazirite in Numbers 6: (1) He must abstain from all alcohol and any fruit of the vine; (2) He must not cut his hair; (3) He must not go near a dead body; and (4), “All the days of his separation he is holy unto the Lord.” The fourth item was the most important—being set apart as holy to the Lord. The first three were viewed as prerequisites for the fourth.
Now think for a moment why God might have established these specific requirements. Alcohol has the potential of dulling one’s mind, and that is incompatible with total dedication of one’s body, mind, and spirit to the Lord. The refusal to cut one’s hair, on the other hand, seems to have a purely symbolic purpose; it was the visible, public sign that one had taken a Nazirite vow. Long hair on a man has almost always been a sign of individualism. In the 60’s and early 70’s it generally signified rebellion against the establishment. In OT times it signified isolation from the world and separation to God.
The avoidance of contact with a dead body was also a symbolic matter. Since contact with death made someone ritually unclean and therefore unfit for tabernacle worship, a vow to avoid dead bodies demonstrated a commitment to stay in constant fellowship with God.
A unique enablement. I wish I knew what Samson looked like. I rather suspect he would make Arnold Swarzenegger look like Barney Fife. But I’m not certain, for I find something interesting in these chapters on Samson’s life. Four times we are told that the Spirit of the Lord came upon him. The first time is found in 13:25, where it may refer to his coming of age. I suspect this was the time when Samson became aware of his mission in life and first experienced the supernatural power that God would give him. The other three times we are told the Spirit of the Lord came upon him are just prior to some of his greatest feats of strength—when he killed a lion with his bare hands, when he killed 30 Philistines to settle a wager, and when he killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. And since his final great feat of strength in causing the temple of Dagon to fall was accomplished immediately following a prayer to God for one last demonstration of strength, I would assume that there, too, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him uniquely, though it is not specifically stated.
What I am suggesting is that it is possible that Samson was a normal child as he was growing up, perhaps even rather normal in appearance, but he was given supernatural strength so that he could do unbelievable things when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him.
So far, we have seen Samson’s unique birth, unique life‑style, and unique enablement. Fourthly, he had …
A unique mission. Insufficient attention has generally been given to the mission assigned Samson by God and the degree to which he fulfilled that mission. You will note that the angel, in speaking of Samson’s birth in 13:5, said of his assignment, “He will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” God did not give Samson the task of delivering Israel but rather beginning to deliver Israel. He was to keep the Philistines off‑balance and pre‑occupied so that Israel would have some relief until such time that they would truly repent. And he accomplished that.
Frankly I see Samson as a man of unusual faith for his day. Again and again, he inflicted major embarrassment upon the Philistines, but each time he had to do it by himself. There’s no record indicating that even one other Israelite lifted a finger to help him; in fact, his fellow‑countrymen did much to stand in his way. Remember when Samson avenged himself on the Philistines for burning his wife and her father to death? He attacked them viciously and slaughtered many, with the result that the Philistines came in force to Judah and demanded that the Israelites turn Samson over to them. They were glad to do so, for they preferred to appease the enemy rather than risk retribution. It seems the Israelites had lost all hope of deliverance and had resigned themselves to servitude.
By the way, I think a lot of Christians have reached that same point. They have been so defeated by the world, the flesh and the devil that they have lost nearly all hope of ever living a victorious life. So instead of resisting, they have chosen to collaborate with the enemy. They have found that Satan doesn’t seem to bother them so much when they’re doing that. Unfortunately, that is a very short‑sighted philosophy.
At any rate, the Israelites find Samson at the cave in the rock at Etam and scold him: “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.” I wouldn’t call that an especially spiritual response, but I do admire Samson’s attitude toward his traitorous compatriots. He might have turned on them for their willingness to surrender him to the enemy, but instead he only asks that they not kill him themselves, to which they agree. But as you will recall, when they hand him over to the Philistines, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he breaks the ropes, picks up the jawbone of an ass, and singlehandedly kills 1,000 Philistines. Never in the annals of military history has there been anything to compare with that feat.
When it is over, Samson seems on the verge of dying of thirst. But he prays to God, giving God the credit for his victory and asking Him to spare his life by providing water. And God performs the same miracle He did several centuries earlier for Moses—He provides water out of a rock. There’s no denying that Samson stood out among his contemporaries, not only as a man of strength, but also as a man of faith.
Samson was a man called to holiness. He had a unique birth, a unique life‑style, a unique enablement, and a unique mission. He was also a man of faith. If we could stop the story of Samson right there, it would be essentially a very positive story. But we can’t. For he was not only called to holiness; he was also prone to carelessness.
Prone to carelessness
This is evidenced in at least four ways.
He misunderstood separation. The doctrine of separation is one which has been greatly misunderstood by Christians down through the centuries. Everyone understands that a believer is to be separated from sin, but the degree and manner of that separation is where the controversy arises. Samson is like so many Christians today in that he seemed to understand separation purely in negative terms. He vowed not to drink wine, not to cut his hair and not to go near dead bodies. He knew the rules, but he seemed not to understand the rationale for the rules. The point of the Nazirite vow was not just separation from sin, it was separation unto God. But if a certain behavior wasn’t in the Nazarite rulebook, Samson considered it fair game, and he lacked the whole‑hearted devotion to God that the rules were designed to lead him to.
You see, biblical separation is very different from legalism or asceticism. Jesus prayed to His Father in John 17:15‑17, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one…. Set them apart by the truth; your word is truth.” We are not to leave the world but to live in the world for God. Of course, being separated to God will entail some negatives. For example, one cannot be filled with wine and the Holy Spirit at the same time. One cannot be united with a prostitute and enjoy union with Christ at the same time. But the focus of separation should always be on the goal of living godly, not just on abstaining from ungodliness.
He rejected authority. The first time we hear from Samson himself is in chapter 14, when he comes to his parents and says, “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.” The village of Timnah was probably less than ten miles from Samson’s home, so it’s not surprising that he would become acquainted with some of the Philistine girls. He was aware, however, that God forbade the Jewish people from intermarrying with the pagans around them. His parents rightly objected, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?” To which Samson responded, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.”
I must pause here a moment and speak to our young people, for I believe this very instance of rejecting the authority of his parents was the beginning of Samson’s downfall. I would be the first to admit that parents are not always right, but they should always be listened to. I would not go as far as some to the point of saying that a person should never marry without parental approval, for there are times when parents are unreasonable and even ungodly, but even in such rare cases great caution should be exercised before violating the parents’ wishes. That goes for other momentous decisions as well.
The case of Samson was far more clearcut. His parents objected to his marriage on biblical grounds, but Samson rejected their authority anyway. He preferred to live by another principle: if I want to do it, I’m going to do it.
He refused to practice self‑discipline. In that same incident when Samson demands the Philistine girl from Timnah, we see his fatal flaw—he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) control his own desires, particularly in the arena of sexual appetites. This shows up again in chapter 16 when he visits a prostitute in Gaza. And once again his incredible susceptibility to seductive women is revealed in his liaison with Delilah. Chuck Swindoll calls Samson a “he‑man with a she‑weakness,” and that pretty well sums him up.
But I’m going to do something a bit unusual. Instead of blasting Samson for his wanton lust, I’m going to express some sympathy for the guy. Muscle‑bound men have a strong sexual appeal to certain women. Combine that with the fact that Samson had the physical power to take virtually anything he wanted, plus the fact that he lived in a day and time when virtually everyone was doing what was right in his own eyes, as Judges 21:25 says, and you have a recipe for disaster. To stay pure under such circumstances would take a virtual supernatural enablement. But interestingly, that’s exactly what he had; the Spirit of the Lord was with him, leaving him without excuse.
Now here’s my point. Few of us are tempted in the same manner and about the same things as Samson. But each of us is tempted about other things in other ways. Satan knows our weakness just as he knew Samson’s, and he’s willing to exploit it to the nth degree. Your weakness may be in greed or gossip or lying or homosexuality or idolatry, but whatever it is, it’s just as hard for you to deal with that as it was for Samson to deal with lust for women. In fact, it’s impossible. It would take a supernatural enablement for you not to yield to temptation in that area of your life.
But you know something? You also have that enablement, if you are a child of God. 1 Cor. 10:13 states, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” When it says that your temptation is common to man, it doesn’t mean that every person shares your temptation; rather it means that yours is no more difficult, but also no easier, than anyone else’s to resist.
The term “self‑discipline” is probably a misnomer for the believer. What we really need is Spirit‑discipline, not self-discipline. If we try to discipline ourselves by our own efforts, we’ll end up like Samson—shipwrecked morally and spiritually. But if we accept the filling and power of the Holy Spirit, we can enjoy victory over the temptations that plague us.
He squandered enormous potential. This I think is the great tragedy of Samson’s life. When one looks at what he accomplished, it was very significant compared to what anyone else in his day was doing to protect Israel from the ravages of the Philistines. But when one compares what he accomplished to what he could have accomplished, that’s where the tragedy appears.
Several years ago there was a news story about 300 whales found marooned on a beach. Scientists could only explain the mystery by speculating that the whales had been chasing sardines and became trapped in shallow water when the tide went out. For most of his life, Samson was like a whale chasing sardines—a great power pursuing small goals. He was finally beached by a sardine named Delilah.
Now there are two more major aspects of Samson’s life which we will look at next Sunday, Lord willing. He was shelved for rebelliousness and finally restored to usefulness. But before we finish this morning, I want to suggest several applications.
Points to ponder:
1. Godly parents are not always to blame for rebellious children. There is no question that parents are responsible for much of the behavior of their children. It’s also true that we do not know enough about the home of Manoah and his wife to make a firm judgment on the quality of their child‑rearing. But the impression is left in the text that Samson’s parents were godly and were not at fault for his mistakes.
I think some grieving parents need to hear that. Children, particularly older adolescents, are responsible for their own choices and their own life‑styles. There are some general promises in the Scripture about the expected results of sound discipline and godly training, but I don’t think there are any guarantees. There cannot be, for the very doctrine of individual salvation requires that each person make a personal decision for or against Christ. Sometimes all a parent can do is pray. (That’s not quite as desperate a situation as it may sound, for prayer is a powerful weapon for righteousness).
2. What God permits is not necessarily what he approves. There’s an interesting parenthetical thought in verse 4 of chapter 14. Did you catch it? Just after Samson rejects his parents’ authority and demands that they get the Philistine girl for him, it says, “His parents did not know that this was from the Lord, who was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines.” We must be careful here, for it sounds like God wanted him to marry a Philistine. But that can’t be the case since God had previously forbidden such intermarriage. Rather I think it means that God sometimes uses our mistakes and even our sin to accomplish His good purposes, one of which was to put the Philistines in their place. We are accountable for our sins and cannot excuse them, but in the providence of God, His purposes triumph.
3. Vengeance rarely, if ever, solves the problem of evil. While God used Samson’s exploits to keep the Philistines from overrunning Israel, the fact is that Samson did not always act from patriotic motives. Most of his battles were initiated as personal acts of vengeance. Remember the phrase of 15:11: “I merely did to them what they did to me.” Think about that for a moment. If we did not already know from the Sermon on the Mount and other NT teaching that this philosophy of life is unacceptable to God, we could still learn something about its tragic results from examining what vengeance accomplished for Samson. Every act of vengeance—other than the final one in which Samson sacrificed his own life—resulted only in more violence.
When the Philistines couldn’t solve his riddle, they cheated. Because they cheated, he killed 30 of them to pay his debt. Because he killed 30 of them, they burned his wife. Because they burned his wife, he killed more. Because he killed many more, they coerced the Israelites into turning him over to them. Because they kidnapped him, he killed 1000 of them. Does all that remind you of anything? We live in a world where vengeance is the primary weapon of the weak, and when the strong respond in kind the result is usually just more vengeance. Many Americans have called this past week for vengeance against the terrorists in Lebanon for the murder of Colonel Higgins. Yitshak Shamir said in effect, “We merely did to them what they did to us!” But Israel’s seizing of a hostage hasn’t stopped the cycle and it never will. Those with the least to lose will always take one more step of vengeance. Acting like a Philistine is not the best way to get victory over the Philistines.
4. Great success in one area of life doesn’t necessarily transfer to other areas. In fact, it may actually make us more vulnerable in other areas.
Conclusion: Are you called to holiness but prone to carelessness? Is there any chance people will say of you, “He did the best he could with what he had?” Or will they say, “Oh, what he or she might have been!” By God’s grace and your willingness, it can be the former. But it will never happen if you haven’t acknowledged your sin to God, repented of it, and accepted His remedy—the gift of eternal life through Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
DATE: August 6, 1989
Tags:
Nazirite
Holiness
Carelessness
Authority
Self-discipline
Vengeance