Death of Samson - Judges LFA

JUDGES: The Death of Samson

SAMSON - Part 3 - Judges 16

BLANK SLIDE BLANK: Introduce yourself.

SLIDE TITLE: JUDGES. Series

Two weeks ago we looked at the birth of Samson

Last week we we looked at the middle section of his life

This week we are looking at the end of his life

SLIDE: PARENTS: I want you to know that today’s message will contain a section that is very PG-13+. If you have young children with you this may be a week you want to consider sending them to treasure seekers or taking them out of the room at that time. I’ll give you another heads up later on, but I’m pretty sure you’ll catch it when it comes up.

It’s always a bit hard to grasp that in three chapters you can cover the highlights of someones life. But let’s start out today by looking at what the word of God has to say about the end of Samson’s life.

READ PASSAGE

SLIDE: Judges 16:  1 Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her. 2 The Gazites were told, “Samson has come here.” And they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, “Let us wait till the light of the morning; then we will kill him.” 3 But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron.

SLIDE: 4 After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Seduce him, and see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” 6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you.”

SLIDE: 7 Samson said to her, “If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.” 8 Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. 9 Now she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber. And she said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he snapped the bowstrings, as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known.

SLIDE: 10 Then Delilah said to Samson, “Behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound.” 11 And he said to her, “If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.” 12 So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread.

SLIDE: 13 Then Delilah said to Samson, “Until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound.” And he said to her, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man.”

SLIDE: 14 So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web. And she made them tight with the pin and said to him, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom, and the web.

15 And she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies.”

SLIDE: 16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”

SLIDE: 18 When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, “Come up again, for he has told me all his heart.” Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. 19 She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him.

SLIDE: 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. 22 But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

The Death of Samson

SLIDE: 23 Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, and they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.” 24 And when the people saw him, they praised their god. For they said, “Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us.”

SLIDE: 25 And when their hearts were merry, they said, “Call Samson, that he may entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. 26 And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them.” 27 Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women, who looked on while Samson entertained.

SLIDE: 28 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29 And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other.

SLIDE: 30 And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life. 31 Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had judged Israel twenty years.

This story should have been a radically different story. SLIDE: So what went wrong?

SLIDE: We have to remember a few things about Samson

First judged picked before conception Set apart in the womb as a Nazarite to God

Conditions of the vow: No grape products, No dead bodies, No haircuts His life mission was given to his parents before he even came to be His parents obeyed God and raised him the way God told them to He grew, God blessed him, and the Spirit of God stirred him

The Nazarite vow, the will of God for Samson’s life, all the advantages he should have had were there. So how did this story go so terribly wrong? The biggest challenge in raising the next generation is when you have to hand responsibility for their life over to them. (Their successes for failures don’t remove or alter the current generations responsibility to invest them. ) There is always a transition from one generation to the next. And what I want to show you today is what went wrong in Samson’s life.

SLIDE: Samson’s Pitfalls: There are two Greg has already mentioned for us

SLIDE: Bad Choices

The Complacent Choice: living a life that is very comfortable with sin

The Presumptuous Choice: Unquestioned commitment to your own perspective

The Selfish Choice: Unquestioned commitment to his own appetites

In Samson’s story - in Chapters 13, 14,15 & 16, only once does he consult anyone about any decision he ever makes. The only time Scripture tells us he consulted anyone was when he told his parents he wanted to get married back in chapter 14.

SLIDE: Judges 14:2 Then he came up and told his father and mother, “I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.” 3 But his father and mother said to him, “Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.”

“What my eyes want, my eyes get.” And you see a living example in Samson that defines so much of why they Israelites are in the position they are in…. SLIDE: ”And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.” - Judges 13:1

Samson’s eyes are not looking at the right things. His eyes lead him to selfishness and to operating in isolation. You see so much of that in the stories Greg shared last week. When you look at Samson you see the words of Joshua come true:

SLIDE: Joshua 23:11 Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. 12 For if you turn back and cling to the remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, 13 know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given you.

SLIDE: Isolation

Samson always seems to act alone. Outside of consulting his parents about the women he wanted, we don’t see any interactions of counsel or leadership over anyone but himself.

No army or counsel, when he walks through a vineyard, decides to throw a drinking party, kills the lion, eats the honey out of a dead rotting lion carcass, gambles with a riddle, ties the tails of foxes together and lights fields on fire, or decides to live in the cleft of a rock.

He had his chance to lead when 3000 from the tribe of Judah came to him, but instead he grabs the jaw bone of a dead donkey and fights solo again.

This pattern of isolation leads us into Chapter 16. And into the next pitfall for Samson… (Remind parents)

SLIDE: Sex

Get that girl for me

Prostitute

SLIDE: Judges 16:  1 Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her.

The people find out he’s there and try to trap him, but he yanks the gates up and carries them up a hill. Not really sure what that was going to do - but hey, that’s the story.

Samson goes from visiting a prostitute and finds a new woman

Delilah

SLIDE: 4 After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.

Valley of Sorek = Valley of the choice vine

Come on Samson! Why are you flirting with disaster? He’s hanging out in places with grapes & wine - things he’s not supposed to be doing because of his vow. And then picks up a new woman who’s name means: Languish (to wither)

Needless to say - this is not a healthy relationship. The passage tells us that Samson was in love with her. The passage never says Delilah was in love with Samson. It only tells us was in this for money, which could have resulted in fame/power with the rulers who had bribed her to betray Samson.

SLIDE: And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Seduce him, and see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” - Judges 16:5

Her charge was to use seduction to find out the secret of his strength. If you read this chapter through the lens of seduction and look at what Delilah and Samson are doing this becomes a very graphic and disturbing story. After reading it, I am not sure why we tell kids this story.

Three times Delilah tries to find out his secret. The first two of those she ties him up with bowstrings and ropes. SLIDE: Most of the time when I hear about this story, it’s told from the perspective that Samson was asleep and then was woken suddenly and he fights. But it’s not the first two times that talk about him being asleep.

Considering that Delilah was ‘hired’ by the lords of the Philistines to use seduction to get Samson, this story becomes pretty graphic sexually. It was likely she was tying him up in a seductive way and that in front of the men that she had lying in wait to ambush him.

It’s only the third time that he is asleep when Delilah sets him up by trying to weave his hair together.

I’m telling you his because I want you to understand how far outside of normal Samson’s goes. I’m telling you this because this was supposed to be a man who was set apart and holy to the lord because of his nazarite vow, but his story is filled with sexual perversion not holiness unto the Lord. This perversion and his means of trying to fill his sexual desires ultimately leads him to ruin.

SLIDE: Nothing will numb your heart to God faster than sexual sin.

I cannot tell you the number of young men that have heard God call them to be a pastor, that have not kept their guard up in this area and now they no longer want to be pastors. I cannot tell you the number of man hours it takes when ministering elders have to deal with a case of sexual sin in the church. Don’t get me wrong, we will always walk with you as much as we’re able to bring repentance, healing and restoration - but we’ve got to separate ourselves from the culture on this one. I am so sick of hearing about sin issues in the church because we don’t uphold the value and purpose of sex as God ordained it

SLIDE: Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. - 1 Timothy 5:1b-2

Guys, if she’s not your wife, keep your hands off! Ladies, if he’s not your husband, keep your hands off!

- If you aren’t married then you are messing with someone else’s spouse!

ILLUSTRATION: We’re reaching that age in our parenting where puberty for our kids isn’t that far. Boy crushes are going to be a real thing. Let me tell you what I tell my kids: It’s ok if you have a crush on a boy. But remember, you only get to marry one. Save all your kisses that one.

When I teach teenagers about this - I tell them it’s not wrong for you to date, but you don’t need to date. All that will happen if you madly fall in love while in high school is set yourself in a relationship to just fight temptation. You can’t marry them, you’re not old enough. You can’t support them because you don’t have a full time job. Being in love in high school is like having a million dollars you can’t spend.

I have heard tons of stories of regret about sexual promiscuity where people have said “I wished I had waited.” I have never heard someone who waited say “I should have slept around more.”

I’ve heard all the objections to this - what’s the big deal, it’s only sex. Sin is sin - sexual sin is no different than any others.

As far you and God go, lying and sex have the same affect - they separate you from God. But as far you relating to other people - There two sins you can never make right. Murder & sex. If you lie to someone, you can make it right. If you steal something, you can replace it. If you worship a false god, you can destroy that false god and turn to the real God. But you can’t replace a life. And you can’t take back sex. You can forgive, you can heal, but you can never return back to the state you were before the violation. (NOTE: I am not speaking about those who have been un-willingly violated, I am only talking about those who consent here).

SLIDE: Gardening, naming animals, helping, and sex. 4 things that existed for man before the fall.

God gave sex to Adam and Eve, a man and a woman, to enjoy each other and make babies, and have no shame in doing it. That is the role of sex as ordained by God - and it was given to them before the fall. Any other version of sex is sinful. Sex in the right context takes you back before the Fall of man.

In Samson’s case, he doesn’t live that design for sex and it leads him into such toxic relationships. And in the case of Delilah it erodes his heart.

SLIDE: 16 And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. 17 And he told her all his heart, and said to her, “A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”

Delilah = languish (to wither), She wore him down till his soul was “vexed to death”. (Exasperated)

Delilah turned his heart away from God - one of the curses God warned against

** Warning to women - you have an ability to turn the heart of a man.

In this case, Delilah withers Samson and we see the curse God warned the people about come down on Samson:

SLIDE: Deut 7: 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.

(They likely weren’t married, but the principle is the same.) The toxicity of his relationship with Delilah leads us to his next pitfall…

SLIDE: Valued his gift over his character

SLIDE: 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him. 21 And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison.

Samson makes a big presumption about his supernatural strength. He thought everything was just going to be like all the other times.

Up to this point, Samson had already broken 2 parts of 3 parts required by the Nazarite vow:

He had touched dead bodies - Lion, Donkey

He had rank wine - His feast (14:10 - literally a ‘drinking party’)

It’s like he’s thinking “I broke 2 out of 3 already, God still used me. I’ll be all right.” Clearly God is still with me even though I’m doing all these other things. God was there before, he’ll be there again. After all, I’m pretty strong.”

Here’s the rub though - Scripture talks about ‘Gifts of the Spirit’ - in Samson’s case his strength. And it also talks about “Fruit of the Spirit” - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. Samson’s life demonstrates the gift of the Spirit, but not the fruit.

ILLUSTRATION: I have witnessed several times in my life people who have spiritual gifts from God that some how go from receiving the gift to arrogance over their gifts. There are even some that will insist if you don’t have a gift you aren’t really saved.

SLIDE: 1 Cor. 13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Samson lived with a gift from God, but never submitted his character flaws to God. And after 20 years of living this way, his bad character finally catches up with him. Samson continues to experience the gift of the Spirit, until suddenly he doesn’t.

SLIDE: 20 And she said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.

Why did God leave Samson?

Numbers 6 - the end of the vow, shave the head

SLIDE: Numbers 6:13 “And this is the law for the Nazirite, when the time of his separation has been completed: ….18 And the Nazirite shall shave his consecrated head at the entrance of the tent of meeting and shall take the hair from his consecrated head and put it on the fire that is under the sacrifice of the peace offering. 19 And the priest shall take the shoulder of the ram, when it is boiled, and one unleavened loaf out of the basket and one unleavened wafer, and shall put them on the hands of the Nazirite, after he has shaved the hair of his consecration, 20 and the priest shall wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. They are a holy portion for the priest, together with the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed. And after that the Nazirite may drink wine.

Samson had broken the other two parts of his vow, but the last step of a Nazarite vow was to shave the head - which signified the time of separation was over. In letting his head be shaved, and giving away his secret, he in affect says “God, we’re done. I’m choosing this woman over you.”

God’s desire in having judges is that they would lead the people out of oppression and back to Him. God was trying to separate Israel from the surrounding nations of false gods. But when Samson lets his head be shaved, God is put in a very tough spot where He has to keep His word.

SLIDE:

Deuteronomy 29:29 (NLT)

“The Lord our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions.

Samson knew the truth about his vow and he was accountable to keep it. God also said,

SLIDE:

Deuteronomy 29:19 (NLT) “Those who hear the warnings of this curse should not congratulate themselves, thinking, ‘I am safe, even though I am following the desires of my own stubborn heart.’ This would lead to utter ruin!

If God had stayed with Samson in that moment then the Philistines could have concluded that God doesn’t honor his vows. God is also unwilling to be united with false gods, and when Samson chose to let his secret be known, God had to do what He said He would do. God left him and Samson’s spiritual blindness actually led to physical blindness and him being the first judge that is defeated.

The result of these pitfalls: GOD GIVE HIM OVER, BLINDNESS, PRISON, CLOWN

You actually see in Samson a microcosm of what all Israel looked like at that time. Given into oppression, spiritual blind, captive, a laughing stock…..

SLIDE: Pitfall Summary Slide

Choices

Isolation

Sex

Character

SLIDE: So where is God in all this?

God had to keep his word, and he leaves Samson. But that’s not all God’s word says about Samson:

The New Testament tells us (Hebrews 14:32) that Samson is to be regarded as one who lived by faith.

But where do we really see the faith of Samson? At the very end of Chapter 16. The lords of the Philistines throw a party to worship Dagon

…(the god of: grain or fish - big scholarly debate and it’s possible that after Samson the image of Dagon changed. It would rather ironic for him to be the grain god - considering Samson burned the grain fields, then when he is defeated, he grinds grain for the Philistines. ) …

Samson is brought out as the entertainment of a house full of drunk people, about 3000 men and women. And then he prays:

3 SLIDE: 28 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.”

Two of the key words here: ‘Please Remember”. Typically when you run into someone you haven’t seen in a while you will hear people say, “Remember me?”. For you to be in the position of remembering, an absence is required. This is Samson’s plea for mercy. In affect he is saying, “God, it’s been a while. Please call me back to your mind.” It’s finally here that you see Samson operate in faith.

Samson’s request for being avenged over his eyes might be hard for us to grasp too, but remember there is provision in the law of God for ‘eye for an eye’. So considering the Old Testament law it’s not that far off.

But I also think God is up something more than just Samson’s eyes. When you rewind to who God made Samson to be, God’s word tells us this about Samson:

SLIDE: For he will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines….for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’” - Judges 13:5 & 7b

A nazarite till his death. Samson may have given up on his vow with Delilah, but God hasn’t forgot his purpose for Samson. It’s here at the end that Samson is finally in the place to begin to rescue Israel.

The Philistines thought they had beaten him by shaving head, and they didn’t think to keep it shaved. But Samson wasn’t just a Nazarite until he shaved his head and gave up on his vow, he was a Nazarite for life. So as Samson prays, God reinstates his vow. And Samson doesn’t just get avenged for his eyes, but he destroys a false god, and the lords of the Philistines.

He actually does in the end what God told the people to do when they first came into the promise land: SLIDE: Deut 12:2-3

2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.

It’s not until this point, at the end of his life, that we finally see Samson truly operate in faith. Out of this faith, God restores to him the purpose of his Nazarite vow, and Samson finally begins - after 20 years - to rescue the people of Israel from their oppression.

These verses help us understand the end of the story:

SLIDE: 2 Timothy 2:11 The saying is trustworthy, for:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;

12  if we endure, we will also reign with him;

if we deny him, he also will deny us;

13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—

for he cannot deny himself.

So let’s bring this home for this all means for us.

Listen to the SLIDE: lessons from Samson’s Life:

Pay attention to how you make decisions. SLIDE: Operating in Isolation is dangerous SLIDE: Set your eyes on the right things SLIDE:

Fix your eyes on Jesus

SLIDE: Hebrews 12:1-3 NIV - Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

What your eyes view will determine what you are filled with

- Know who & what is leading your heart. SLIDE:

If you are not following the will of god you are under another spirit

Character before Performance Always. Your Character on the inside is more important than what happens on the outside SLIDE:

It’s not too late to respond in faith to God SLIDE:

(Faith is required to become who God desires you to be)

Faith Talks: SLIDE:

Examine your heart for God. Would you say your heart is alive, numb, or mostly dead toward God? Explain your answer to a trusted friend.

In Samson’s life we see many sinful issues: pride, lust, anger, vengeance, complacency, rejection of God’s call. Are any of these causing your heart to drift from God? If so, make this a matter of repentance and process. Ask God to realign your heart so you rely on Him and live from a heart aligned with the will of God for your life.