After some days, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit
his wife with a young goat. And he said, “I will go in to my wife in the
chamber.” But her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said, “I
really thought you had utterly hated her, so gave her to your companion. Is not
her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”
And Samson said to them, “This time I shall be innocent in regard to
the Philistines, when I do them harm.”
Judges 15:1-3
Samson isn’t the kind of guy you want to upset. You want to
make sure he is always happy. You want to make sure he never ever loses his temper. Because Samson’s
a lot like the Marvel cartoon character, the Hulk. “When Samson angry... Samson
smash!”
And that’s the reaction of his father-in-law in the
beginning of the story here in Chapter 15. Samson visits his wife with a gift –
a young goat (maybe she might have appreciated some chocolates instead, but a
young goat was a thing of value) – and this picks up from the events of his
wedding day back in Chapter 14. There in verse 19, Samson in “hot anger” went
back to his father’s house, but not before killing thirty men to steal their
clothes in order to repay a bet he had lost on his wedding day.
But now Samson is back. The goat’s probably his way of
saying, “Sorry for leaving you at the altar, honey... oh, and for killing all those
cousins of yours on the way home. No hard feelings.” What Samson doesn’t know,
of course, is that his wife has been given to another man (his “best man”
according to 14:20) by his father-in-law.
The reason for this? Verse 2: “I really thought you utterly hated her.” After all, Samson
was the one who walked out on his wife – on his wedding day of all days. The
marriage was not even consummated (hence verse 1, “I will go in to my wife in
the chamber” – that’s what he had come to take care of). So, Daddy thought,
Samson must not have wanted her at all and gave her away. It all sounds
rational. It all sounds reasonable, even. After all, Dad managed to save his daughter
from dying an old maid. But then look at what Dad says next, “Is not her
younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead.”
You see, these two daughters were to their father as that
goat was to Samson. They were just things of value. “Take this daughter
instead,” Dad said to Samson in an attempt to placate him, to appease his
psychotic murdering son-in-law who could easily tear him limb from limb. Samson
brought a goat; Dad brought out his younger daughter. Same thing.
But it didn’t work. Verse 3: And Samson said to them, “This
time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines, when I do them harm.” Meaning:
“Now, I’m really mad.”
But also, what Samson meant was, “Now, I’m right to get mad.”
So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned
them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had
set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the
Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain, as well
as the olive orchards.
Judges 15:4-5
How he did this, I have no idea. Samson rounded up 300
foxes, tied them up in pairs by their tails, somehow attaching a flaming torch
between each pair. Presumably the foxes would then try to run off in opposite
directions but end up zig-zagging through the fields setting fire to the grain
in the process. It was mad and yet it was also quite brilliant. Samson
single-handedly destabilised an entire nation’s economy. He destroyed all their
food supplies (both the “stacked grain” as well as the “standing grain”). He
even targeted their olive orchards, which, for an agrarian society, was at the
very heart of their wealth. There was method in his madness.
Samson wanted revenge and he knew where to hit where it
hurt.
Then the Philistines said, “Who has done this?” And they said, “Samson,
the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to
his companion.” And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with
fire.
Judges 15:6
Last week we saw how Samson’s wife was forced into the
impossible situation of either betraying her husband or risk being burned with
her father’s household. “Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is,”
they said to her in 14:15, “lest we burn you and your father’s house with
fire.” She did what they told her to and yet here we read that they burn her
anyways. Notice that it wasn’t just Dad’s fault for making Samson mad. “The
Philistines came up and burned her
and her father with fire.”
For Samson, it was yet another reason to get mad.
And Samson said to them, “If this is what you do, I swear I will be
avenged on you and after that I will quit.” And he struck them hip and thigh
with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the rock of
Etam.
Judges 15:7-8
Samson was not out for justice. He wanted vengeance. He
says, “I will be avenged.” You have
done this – not to my wife; not to her family – you have done this to me. What followed was more violence
and more death.
At the heart of all this is a guy who simply does whatever
he wants. Worryingly still, he gets away with it. When kids throw a tantrum,
they might hold their breath or start chucking food on the walls, but there’s a
limit to the destruction they can cause. The adults know that, and more
importantly, the kids themselves learn that over time. But this guy doesn’t. He
does whatever feels right. In Chapter 14, he sees a Philistine girl he likes
and that’s reason enough to take her as his wife – irrespective of his parents’
wishes, irrespective of God’s wishes. That’s what his father-in-law was getting
at when he pushed his younger daughter in front of Samson, “See, see... isn’t
she more beautiful in your eyes?” The people around Samson know him well
enough. They know that he is one huge walking appetite that constantly needs filling
up. There is no right or wrong for Samson. Everything is about what Samson
wants and what Samson needs. That’s his justification – for anger, for rage,
even for murder.
And yet what we are going to see next is God using Samson’s
appetite and sinfulness for God’s sovereign purpose. What we are going to see
is God’s will fulfilled not in spite of Samson anger, but through his selfish anger
– to reveal God’s plan and to bring about God’s salvation.
But first, in order to do that, God is going to use Samson
to spark a war!
Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on
Lehi. And the men of Judah said, “Why have you come up against us?” They said,
“We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us.” Then 3,000 men
of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do
you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that
you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done
to them.”
Judges 15:9-11
Samson’s really done it now. What started out as a bar-room
brawl has now escalated into a full-fledged war between two nations. The
Philistines deploy their tanks and military forces to the borders of Judah in
an attempt to find and capture Rambo, and understandably, the people of Judah
are freaked out to wake up the next morning only to find a battalion of tanks parked up their front driveway! “Why
have you come up against us?” they ask. The answer? One single man is
responsible: Samson did this to us and we have come to repay the favour.
The people of Judah are shaking in their boots. So what they
did next was motivated purely by fear – they were fearful of war. They were
fearful of destruction by a superior force. And yet, what we also see is that
the men of Judah were immensely fearful of Samson. They gather 3000 men, not to
face the enemy, but to betray a fellow countryman. There at Samson’s hideout,
the rock of Etam, 3000 men stood surrounded one man, Samson, just to bring him
in and turn him over to the enemy.
If you look back to the very beginning of Judges Chapter 1,
there we see Judah leading the charge into enemy territory. Judah was the
strongest and bravest of all of the clans of Israel, defeating an army of
10,000 men in Bezek (Judges 1:4). And if you look ahead to verse 16, we find
out the number of Philistine soldiers encamped at the border of Judah – one
thousand men. That is, here are 3,000 men of Judah fearful of an army one-third
its size; here is Judah, 3,000 men strong but fearful of one man, Samson. In
the book of Judges, the tribe of Judah start out bold and courageous. They end
up fearful and cowardly.
They say to Samson – almost matter-of-factly – “Don’t know
the Philistines are rulers over us?” Here is a generation that has accepted
defeat. Here is a generation which has chosen not to fight. They have given up
and given in to another power – not God, but man. The Philistines are rulers
over us – that’s a pretty damning statement. The Philistines are in charge now,
not us. And definitely, not God. In their minds, it’s Samson who needs to get
with the program.
For the past few months at Rock Fellowship we have been
journeying through the book of Judges and what we have encountered again and
again are cycles of our sin and God’s salvation. Each generation of God’s
people go through cycles of (1) rebellion against God through idolatry and sin;
they face (2) judgement from God who hands them over to their enemies; they
then (3)cry out to God for help in repentance; (4) God answers by sending a
judge to save them; (5) there is momentary peace in the land; (6) the judge
dies and the people soon forget God’s help and fall back into sin.
Look how this generation of Israelites began back in Judges
Chapter 13.
And the people of Israel 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
It is the beginning of a new cycle. Israel did evil before
God. God punished Israel by giving them over to their enemies. But then? Nothing.
No cry for help. No repentance before God. God does, however, raise up Samson as
a judge – from birth, I might add – but this is not in response to any form of
repentance or call for help. And two chapters later, here in Chapter 15, we
find out why.
“Don’t you know the Philistines are rulers over us?”
The Israelites had given up. God was no longer in charge
over their lives; the Philistines were. It was a pitiful situation. The fear of
man had led a whole generation of believers to compromise their faith in God.
The fear of man had led these Israelites to betray one of their own brothers.
Even Samson could see this. He had to ask them for an assurance that they would
not kill him themselves. For the first time in the story, we see a hint of fear
in the mighty Samson, or should I say, shame.
He is fearful of their betrayal and ashamed
of their cowardice.
And they said to him, “We have come down to bind you, that we may give
you into the hands of the Philistines.” And Samson said to them, “Swear to me
that you will not attack me yourselves.” They said to him, “No; we will only
bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you.” So they
bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.
Judges 15:12-13
“We will surely not kill you,” they say to Samson. All they
would do was hand him over to be killed. All they would do was tie him up,
escort him outside of their border and surrender him into the hands of the
enemy. That’s all they would do. They were rationalising their sin: “We aren’t
going to hurt you.” They were justifying their sin, “There is nothing else we
can do. The Philistines are in charge.”
But the truth is: God is the one who is in charge. And God
would do something about the situation.
When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then
the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms
became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he
found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with
it he struck 1,000 men. And Samson said,
“With the jawbone of a donkey,
heaps upon heaps,
with the jawbone of a donkey
have I struck down a thousand men.”
As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of
his hand. And that place was called Ramath-lehi.
Judges 15:14-17
Samson takes down the entire Philistine army –
single-handedly! It’s like the opening scene of one of those Hollywood movie
trailers where the deep-voiced commentator goes (ala James Earl-Jones), “One
man... against impossible odds! One man against an army, armed with nothing
else.... but a jawbone!”
Now, in case we miss the turning point of the story, don’t
forget that just moments earlier, Samson was fearful of his own people’s
betrayal. Moments earlier, Samson was bound “with two new ropes” and escorted
to the border by 3,000 Israelite soldiers.
And as he approached the Philistine forces , they celebrated
their victory over Samson! “The Philistines came shouting to meet him” (Judges
15:14). “We have won!” they thought.
But then we read, “The Spirit of the LORD rushed upon
(Samson)”. God empowered Samson with super-human strength. And in case we
missed how extraordinary God’s intervention was, it even tells us that his
hand-cuffs turned to jelly: “The ropes that were on his arms became as flax
that has caught fire.” God unmistakeably did this. God turned the tables on the
Philistines.
You might even say: God caused this war.
Not Samson. Yes,
his selfishness and thirst for vengeance led him from one conflict to another.
But God chose this guy to be the judge. God empowered him with his Spirit. God
made the ropes on his hands fall apart. Samson was God’s means to God’s end.
Not the Philistines.
Yes, they had overpowered this generation of Israelites. But right from the
beginning of Judges 13, it reads, “The LORD gave them into the hands of the
Philistines”. God empowered the Philistines, too, enabling them to rule over Israel.
And certainly not the
Israelites. They shrank away from the fight. They had given up the fight,
even though God had commanded them to subdue the land. But God steps in, raises
a judge and trouble-maker who is Samson – a man who, certainly loves to fight –
and starts a war between the two nations.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Samson is far from perfect. In
fact, Samson is downright selfish, impetuous, proud and sinful. But that does
not mean that God is unable to use Samson for his purposes to save.
To save? Yes, to save.
In fact, that’s the word Samson uses in the very next verse. He calls it a
“great salvation”.
And he was very thirsty, and he called upon the LORD and said, “You
have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now
die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” And God split open
the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he
drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore, the name of it was
called En-hakkore; it is in Lehi to this day.
Judges 15:18-19
Salvation means rescue.
Rescue from harm. Rescue from evil. Rescue from death. That’s what it means to be saved. Salvation
means rescue.
But here the bible is giving us a bigger picture of what it
means to be saved. It is the defeat
of evil. It is the defeat of God’s
enemies. It is the defeat of death. The
picture the bible paints of salvation here in this episode of Samson’s life is
that of war and conflict.
The “great salvation” by the hand of Samson was a great act
of violence. He killed 1,000 men and pilled their bodies in a mound so high, he
could even sing, “Heaps upon heaps... have I struck down a thousand men.” It
was a brutal, bloody, gory scene of death. But in that we see a picture of the
great salvation God had given Samson – the death of this army. Samson marks his
victory by naming the hill, Ramath-lehi, which means Jawbone Hill (We’ll look
at the significance of that in just a few moments).
But also, we see God’s great salvation in a second scene
right after – in the giving of the water to quench Samson’s thirst. “And God
split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it.”
Samson names that place too, En-hakkore – “The spring of him who called”. That
too, was God’s salvation come to Samson, but this time it was a scene of God’s
great patience and generosity with Samson.
Samson is still Samson. He is doing what is right in his own
eyes – he isn’t thinking, “How can I do God’s will and help my people turn back
to God?” Absolutely not! He is taking revenge on his enemies and boasting about
his own strength. “With the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand
men.” I did this. Me.
Also, don’t miss the significance of the jawbone. The
narrator takes great pains to describe how “he found a fresh jawbone... and put
out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men.” The fact that it
was fresh meant that it was probably still bloody and was part of a corpse. And
Samson’s parents had been instructed since his birth to make sure that he kept
his vows as a Nazirite, one of which involved never-ever touching a dead corpse
(well, actually this was a blanket prohibition for all Israelites). Samson goes
out of his way to defy God’s word. Yet the amazing thing is he ends up doing
God’s will.
Even when calls out to God in thirst, it looks like a
ridiculous situation doesn’t it? “God, you have saved me, but now are you going
to let me die?” We might be tempted to give him two tight slaps to wake him up
from his stupidity. What does God do? God miraculously splits a rock to open a
fresh spring of water. What does Samson do? He boasts! He names that place “The
Spring of the One who Called”. Not “The Spring of the One who Answered”. No,
it’s Samson who rang the right number, who got God to answer on the phone, and
who was responsible for this miraculous spring of water. This was Samson’s
spring.
Samson is still Samson. But
God is still God.
He is the God who saves his people even when they reject
him. He is the God who hears his people when they cry out to him. He is the God
who is patient, gracious and loving towards men and women who are sinful,
rebellious and ungrateful. God is still God.
We forget that often and easily. When circumstances change.
When we change. We forget that God is unchanging in his holiness, his power and
his love. God is always holy. God is always in charge. And God is always
gracious and loving even when we are not.
And what the bible does is remind us again and again that
God is God.
1.
God is
our ruler
Not the Philistines. Not your overbearing boss at work. Not even if you live in
a country run by dictators and corrupt politicians who oppress you because of
the colour of your skin or the God whom you worship. God rules over all
kingdoms, all parliaments, all presidents. He establishes all governments to
ensure justice and peace. They may fail in this regard, and leave them in power
long enough, they will fail. But God is always in charge.
The truth of this hits home when you consider nations with rulers and
governments who do not acknowledge God’s sovereignty. Romans 13:1 says, “There
is no authority except from God.” That includes the United States. That
includes North Korea.
In such situations we remember Jesus who said to Pilate, “You would have no
authority over me at all unless it had
been given you from above.” (John 19:11) God had given Pilate, the Roman
governor, the authority to execute Jesus on the cross. Even through the events
of the murder of his Son, God was sovereign. God was in charge.
And like the Israelites in Samson’s day, so the Israelites at Jesus’ trial,
denied that God was in charge over their lives. What did they cry out before
Pilate when he taunted them, “Shall I crucify your King?” (John 19:15)
“We have no king but Caesar.”
With that last damning statement, they crucified Jesus. They had rejected him
as the Christ. They had rejected God as the King. Yet in doing so, Pilate and
the chief priests and the people of Jerusalem and the Roman guards and the
executioners and the friends who abandoned Jesus and even Judas who betrayed
Jesus, were all doing the will of God. God was sovereign over the cross. Jesus
was crowned through his crucifixion.
The cross reveals the ultimate rejection of God as King. The cross displays the
ultimate sovereignty of Jesus as the Christ.
2. God will defeat all his enemies
The salvation of God’s people means the defeat of God’s enemies. That
was what happened in the Exodus – the Red Sea which gave safe passage to Israel
was the same waters that swallowed up the entire Egyptian army. That was what
happened here in Judges: one moment the Philistines are rejoicing over their
captive, Samson; in another, Samson is standing over a mountain piled with their
bodies.
And the bible tells us the certainty of this final judgement comes to us through
the cross of Jesus Christ.
“He had fixed a day on which he will
judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he
has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
(Acts 17:31)
The cross is God’s announcement, not simply that Judgement will come, but that
Judgement has already come. God has fixed
the day. God has appointed Jesus, the man. We know this how? Because God has
raised Jesus from the dead.
3. God will save his people
The last verse of Judges 15 reads, “And he (meaning, Samson) judged
Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.” (Judges 15:20)
Samson is the anti-hero. No one voted for him. No one asked for his help. Yet
God chooses Samson from birth to be saviour and judge over a people who do need
help; who do need a saviour, whether they are willing to admit or not. In the
face of man’s rejection and sinfulness, God is still gracious to save.
“The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance,” the apostle Paul begins
in 1 Timothy 1:15, as he summarises the message of the gospel, “that Christ
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” And then he adds, “of whom I am the
foremost.”
Who did Jesus come to save? Sinners. Who are you if you call yourself a
Christian? A sinner.
Jesus did not come to save good people, moral people, righteous people –
because there are none. He came to die for and to take the sin of rebellious
people. Bad people. And if you are a Christian, that’s you. That’s me.
God is gracious. I am sinful. And Jesus came for me. That’s how the gospel
works.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of
his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved –
and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus.
(Ephesians 2:4-6)
As tempting as it is to stop here, I think this passage from
Judges 15 requires us to think more about how God works in response to our fear
of man and our inaction over sin. In particular, many may read these verses and
be troubled by a blood-thirsty character like Samson and how God actually uses
him to stir up trouble at a time of relative peace. And yet as uncomfortable
and perhaps, as embarrassed, as we may be as Christians, with such descriptions
of violence and war today, we forget that this is the context of the book of
Judges. Indeed, it is the very language of the bible.
Each generation of believers in Judges finds new reasons to
shrink back from the mandate given by God to subdue the Promised Land. Each
generation shrinks back from the battle. And in each and every generation, God
raises an Othniel “who went out to war” (Judges 3:10), an Ehud who assassinates
the Moabite king (Judges 3:12-30), a Deborah who has to kick general Barak in
the backside to get him to launch an attack on the Canaanites (Judges 4-5), the
timid pimple-faced Facebook-addicted hacker, Gideon, whom God calls a “mighty
warrior” (Judges 6:12) and ends up taking down over 120,000 men in battle
(Judges 8:10), and now a Samson, the superhero with a short fuse. With each
judge in each generation, God is leading his people back into, and not away
from, the war.
Some dismiss such language as archaic. It’s just the Old
Testament, they say, when God was angry and men were uncivilised. They say that
Jesus came to preach peace, love, joy, happiness – not war, destruction, death.
And yet this is the same Jesus who says to his disciples, “Do not think I have
come to bring peace on the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
(Matthew 10:34) Or at Christmas-time when we read that the angels proclaim
Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” we miss the verse before
describing them as a “multitude of heavenly host”, which could be just as
accurately translated as a multitude of “armies” – a reference to the common expression
found in the Old Testament of God as the “Lord of hosts”, which simply means
the God of armies. These are God’s angelic military forces announcing the
coming of the Commander-in-Chief, the birth of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps the most striking image of war and conflict is found
in the pages of the last book of the bible. Revelation 12:7 reads, “Now war
arose in heaven,” followed by a great struggle between God’s angels and the
devil, pictured as a red dragon in opposition to God, and especially towards
Jesus. Almost immediately, however, we find out that the dragon and his minions
are defeated (Revelation 12:8), and Satan is thrown out of heaven. “Therefore,
rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them!” There is victory in heaven. Not
so, on the earth. “But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down
to you in great wrath, because he knows his time is short!”
The devil is defeated. But precisely because he knows this,
it tells us that he goes off to “make war... on those who keep the commandments
of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.” (Revelation 12:17)
It is saying this: If you are in Jesus; if you hold to the
message of cross – the devil has you in his sights. What do you do? Verse 11 says
you overcome the devil with the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross.
And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of
their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
Revelation 12:11
The Christian life is a battle. Against the devil. Against
the world. Against sin. And the only weapon we have at our disposal is the only
weapon we need. It is the gospel. Jesus Christ has conquered the devil. Jesus
Christ is the true king of heaven and earth. And Jesus Christ has taken my sin,
given me new life and lives in me through his spirit. The gospel is the good
news that Jesus Christ is the victorious saviour over the devil, death and sin
through his work on the cross on my behalf.
And until he returns on that final day of judgement and
salvation, Jesus Christ enables me to stand by grace, through faith, on this
gospel of peace.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on
the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of
the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the
rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present
darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore
take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil
day, and having done all, to stand firm.
Ephesians 6:10-13
Our call to war to love the captive soul
But to rage against the captor
And with the sword that makes the wounded whole
We will fight with faith and valour
When faced with trials on every side
We know the outcome is secure
And Christ will have the prize for which He died
An inheritance of nations
(“O Church Arise”, by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend)
