Sermon Tone Analysis

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.