Introduction
You know,
when I was a kid around 4 or 5 years old, my favorite superhero was the
Hulk. I was the third in my family, so when I was 4
or 5 years old, my sister was 4 years older than me and my brother was 8
years older than me. So I think the Hulk
was the perfect – I didn't think about it at the time. Now looking back and reflecting on it, I realize
I was the weakest in the family, right.
I mean I couldn't do anything and they were smarter than me, older than
me, bigger than me, stronger than me.
They could pretty much make me do whatever they wanted, and plus I had a
terrible temper at the age of 4 or 5, and they were controlling of me and i couldn't do anything about it and it just frustrated me to no end. To be able to just get angry and turn green
and to have muscles pop out of your body, your eyes turn red, and to scrunch
your muscles and have your clothing burst off of you, that would be awesome! I would've loved to do that when my
brother was sitting on top of my chest and tickling me. It
would've been awesome.
In the Bible, there is actually a famous character,
a hero of the scripture, who was a real life strongman. His name was Samson. His full story runs for three chapters, from
Judges Chapter 13 all the way through 16, and he was an amazing,
interesting person. He was so
strong that one day he was on his way to a party and a lion jumped out of the
bushes and attacked him, and he wrestled the lion to the ground with his bare
hands and grabbed it by the jaws, and ripped its jaws open and killed the
lion. That's how strong he was. Now another time, some Philistines in a
village made him very angry and in order to get revenge, he went out and he
captured 300 foxes, and he tied their tails together and tied torches to their
tails, and lit the torches on fire and sent the foxes running through his
enemies' farm and destroyed their fields, caught everything on fire. Now I don't even know how you do that. I don't even know how you catch 300 foxes to
start with, let alone tie their tails together.
That's a fascinating story. Of
course, the people that owned those farms were very angry. So they came to his village and with an army of 3,000 soldiers and said, "You
give us Samson or we're going to destroy you!" And so, what do you think the
leaders of the village did? Well, they
took Samson and they tied his hands behind his back, and they sent him on out
there to face the soldiers. As soon as
Samson saw the army, he ripped off the ropes binding his hands. He
didn't have any weapons so he looked down on the ground and there was the
skeleton of a dead donkey. Samson reached down and grabbed the jawbone and
he killed a thousand of the soldiers that were coming to deal with him. The rest of them ran off. So that's an amazing feat! I don't know how in the world you do that.
One time,
Samson snuck into one of the Philistine cities and he visited with a lady for the
evening. Some soldiers came to her house and planned to ambush Samson when he came out in the morning, but Samson knew they were out there. So in the middle of the night about midnight,
he snuck out a back window and he went to go leave the city. Well, the problem was, it was a walled city
and at night, they closed the gates so you couldn't get in or out. So Samson got
to the gates and saw they were locked and closed, and so what did he do. He's the strongest man in the world. He just walked up to the gates and he ripped
them off of their foundations, and he carried them up a hill and threw
the gates down and he went on home.
This is an amazing man filled with God's strength.
Now Samson
wasn't strong for no reason at all. God
had a purpose for giving him his strength and Samson was born in a very difficult time in Israel's history. It was in
the period of the Judges. Judges 17:6 tells us how it was. It says, "It says in those days,
Israel had no king. All the people did
whatever seemed right in their own eyes."
Now Israel didn't have a king.
They didn't have a monarch. They
didn't have a king and queen to start with.
The reason was because they didn't need one. God was their king. God was directly their king. So God had given them the law and God had delivered them from Egypt and slavery, and he said you don't need a
king. I'll be your king and you just
follow, and you ask Me what to do. What
better king could you possibly have than God?
I mean He's not the kind that's going to let power go to his head. He's not going to use you or abuse you, or
anything. He's going to be a good king. But it says they had no king. And I never
thought about this,before studied for this message.
They had no king. Not only did
they not have an earthly king, but they didn't treat God as
their king either. You know, God was their
king, but they didn't listen to him. Now
if the king tells you to do something, you better do it, right, because there's
going to be consequences if you don't.
So these people didn't do what the king did. What did they do? It says they did whatever seems right in their own eyes. They did whatever they wanted
to, regardless of what their king, God, said.
They had no king. They had no
earthly king and they weren't allowing God to be their king. So they were in a real mess and that sets the
stage for the story of Samson. This is
when Samson was born. The part of the story I want to read today is in Judges Chapter 13 in Verses 1-5.
Judges 13:1-5
1Again the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord
handed them over to the Philistines, who oppressed them for forty years.
2 In those days a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan lived in
the town of Zorah. His wife was unable to become pregnant, and they had no
children. 3 The angel of the Lord
appeared to Manoah’s wife and said, “Even though you have been unable to have
children, you will soon become pregnant and give birth to a son. 4 So
be careful; you must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink nor eat any
forbidden food. 5 You will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and his hair must never be cut. For he will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite
from birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.”
The Nazirite Vow
Now notice this baby (who was to Samson) would be a Nazarite
from birth. What is that? In Numbers Chapter 6, we read what a
Nazarite is. The Nazarites were a very
special, holy order among the people of Israel.
Normally, a person would say I'm going to dedicate maybe the next year
of my life to God. I want to be a
Nazarite and so I'm going to do nothing in the next year but serve the Lord and
do everything for him. However, some people, and Samson was one of them, would decide
to be a Nazarite for their entire life. Here we have this baby that's about
to be born and God says this child is going to be super special. He's going to be a Nazarite his entire
life. Now Nazarites had certain rules they had to follow that showed everyone they were holy, that they
were specially set apart by God.
Number 6 tells us the regulations.
First of all, they were not allowed to have anything that was produced
by the grapevine. It wasn't just wine,
it was anything. They couldn't have any
wine. They couldn't have vinegar, because
vinegar also comes from the grapevine, couldn't have any grape juice, (no Welch's
for Samson). They couldn't eat grapes,
couldn't have any raisins, nothing at all coming from the grapevine. And
because Samson was so special, not even his mother was allowed to have any of
those things while she was pregnant with Samson. So none of those elements, molecules,
chemicals, whatever went into his body even in his prenatal form. Nazarites were not allowed to have anything at all that was intoxicating. And of course,
this is the one that you know about Samson if you've heard the stories before: a Nazarite was not
allowed to cut their hair for the entire time of their vow. So if you were a Nazarite for 1 year,
you weren't allowed to cut your hair for a year. Here's the thing, you couldn't even brush your hair as a Nazarite because if you brush your hair, it
pulls out some of your hair, right. Now Samson was to be a Nazarite for his entire life. So from the time he was born, he never cut
his hair and I assume never brushed his hair. (Some people think Samson kind of looked like one of those Rastafaris
from Jamaica with the dreadlocks because what happens to your hair you don't ever
brush it, it gets matted up and turns into dreadlocks. And that makes sense
because if you read it says he had seven locks of hair. How in world do you have seven locks of
hair? Well, I guess if they've all matted together into dreadlocks maybe you'd have seven of them, and seven is the perfect number.) And the Nazarite was not allowed to go near
any dead body, was not allowed to go to a funeral. Even if their mother or their father, or
their grandparents died, brother, sister, they weren't allowed to go to the
funeral because they couldn't be around a dead body.
Nazarites made a promise, a special vow that
they were set apart for God. Samson was set apart to be that way
his entire life. So you would think Samson would be a particularly holy person, wouldn't you? He would be like a
monk, right? Well, that was what he was
supposed to be. This is the
key that you don't need to miss: Samson is a symbol for what Israel is
supposed to be. You know, Israel, the
whole nation was supposed to be a holy, royal priesthood. That's why they had all these funny laws in
the Old Testament about what they could eat, and what they couldn't eat, and
how they were supposed to live, and all their festivals, because God was trying
to make this whole nation to live in such a way that they were strange. He wanted all the people around them to look at them and say, "That's a peculiar people. There's something different about them." Israel was supposed to be God's holy people. Their whole purpose was to be to point toward
the holiness of God. They were set apart as a royal, holy priesthood for
God, and that's what Samson was his whole life.
He was a symbol for the whole nation of Israel. And here's the
most important point today: if you believe in Jesus Christ,
if you dedicated your life to follow him your whole life, we are supposed to be a holy
people. We are supposed to be a royal
priesthood and our whole purpose in life is the point people toward our holy God. Now we do that maybe a little bit different
than they did in the Old Testament (and please don't start thinking you've got to not cut your hair!). But how do you live your life? The various ways you live should point people to God.
Samson’s Tragic Shortcomings
Now Samson, you would think, was a very holy person.
However, he had some tragic shortcomings. If you read those chapters, you will see a
man that doesn't look very much like a holy person.
Let me tell you some of his shortfalls.
First of all, he was incredibly spoiled and incredibly rude to his
parents. If you read the way he talked
to his parents, if I ever said that to my mom, she would've slapped me until my
head turned around backwards! Samson was disrespectful to his parents.
He was also a gambler. You know, the
story where Samson killed the lion? He
killed the lion and he went to the party. A week later, he came back to
the another party and as he's on the way, he says "I'm going to pull off and see the dead lion. now remember, a Nazarite wasn't' supposed to be around any dead bodies, but he says "I'm going to go see
this carcass of this lion that I killed". Inside the
carcass, he finds honey bees. They made a nest inside this lion carcass. so here's this holy man who's not supposed to touch any dead bodies, not even go
to his parents' funeral, and he decides to eat some of the honey out of the dead
carcass! Gross! he goes to the party and he comes up with
this strange riddle about what he's done. He tells the men at the party like says, "I bet you you can't answer my riddle." So he's gambling. He says, "If you can't answer my riddle, you
have to give me 30 new sets of clothes. If you figure it out, then I'll give you 30
sets of clothes." Well, the men go to Samson's fiancée and she tells them the answer to the riddle. She betrays Samson and he ends up losing the bet.
So he's lost now in his whole gamble.
Now most people would say all right, I learned a lesson. I'll never do that again! But instead, what
does Samson do? Well, he's short tempered and violent so he goes out and
he says fine. He goes to another
Philistine village and he kills all the people in the village and he takes
their clothes and gives them to cover his bet!. So not only is he a gambler and rude to his
parents, he's also violent, he's short tempered, he's a murderer and a
thief. That's your holy man for you.
Another time, Samson spent the night with a prostitute.
That doesn't sound very holy.
Samson had a terrible weakness for women--pagan women. Although Samson was born into the world to
deliver the Israelites from their Philistines oppressors, Samson always seemed
to fall for Philistine women. , He never chose women with good character who loved God. If he didn't
choose women of good character, he must've had something else in mind. His first wife was a pagan Philistine woman. We already heard she betrayed him and cost him an expensive bet. Their marriage only
lasted a few days and then she married someone else. Then he fell in
love with another pagan woman, one they made a movie about, "Samson and Delilah." Another pagan
Philistine woman who didn't believe in the Lord God of Israel. She wasn't a
woman of very good character either. She betrayed Samson for money.
You know and if you read the
story of Samson and Delilah (it's in the 16th chapter of Judges), You think: "Samson, you're just not very smart!" Delilah comes to samson and she
says, "Tell me what's the secret of your strength. How could people subdue you?" Well, that ought to be a red flag right
there, but he's so dumb! He tells lies
to her and I think he said something like, "If you tie me up with a bowstring
that had never been used before, then I won't be able to break it." She
ties him up with these bowstrings and the Philistines come in and Samson breaks loose. You would think he learned
his lesson and put her aside, but he doesn't. He keeps her and she keeps nagging him to tell her how to subdue him. That would be your clue this is not the woman
for you, but Samson's a fool. He just keeps
right on going. How many times do you think she tricked him? Four times she tricks him and finally on the
fourth time, he actually told the truth and said, "If you cut my hair, I'll be as
weak as any man." So she cuts Samson's hair and the Philistines capture him. Fools repeat the same mistake over and over. Samson was a fool. He was captured and the
Philistines. They gouge his
eyes out and they make him a slave. They chain him to a gristmill and make him grind the grain in the dungeon. So the strongest man in the world ends his life chained to a
gristmill, milling out grain for the pagan prison.
Now I told
you that Samson was a symbol for the holy people of Israel. They followed the same pattern throughout
their entire history. They never seemed
to really fulfill the holy calling God had given them. Samson is also a
symbol for Christians because Christians are called to be holy. We're called to be set apart and special for
God. We're called to be a royal
priesthood.
Our Connection
The Apostle Peter in 1st
Peter 29 says it this way. For you are a
chosen people. You are royal priests,
a holy nation, God's very own possession.
He's talking about those who believe in Jesus Christ; we're
incredibly strong. We are the strongest force the
world has ever known. Of course, we are
powerful because we have great influence as we are united in our beliefs and in
our desire to reach out and change the world.
When we work together, nothing can stop us.
The Christians in the New Testament were a
tiny minority in a world that was completely turned against God, a world that
was so turned against God, they crucified the son of God. The earliest Christians were a tiny
minority and it seemed like everybody wanted to kill them, and yet they were so
powerful they were able to change the whole world. The Roman Empire that crucified Jesus converted to Christianity within
300 years. That's amazing! That's more amazing than anything Samson did and we are part of that royal priesthood.
We have faith and power and influence in our society. Unfortunately, we are oftens like Samson. We waste our power.
We don't use our power for good.
We get distracted. We lose our focus. We live our lives chasing after our own
dreams and our own indulgences. We use our influence and our power and the
freedom that God gave us for our selfish pursuits. We need to
remember. We need to learn the lesson of Samson and not waste our power, not to waste our God given opportunity. We need to speak up, not be silent, to share
about our loving savior, to encourage our community, to live up to the
principles of God. We need to speak up
and be united in our voice, but at the same time, we also have to be careful
how we speak because so often those Christians who are not silent speak
in a voice that is judgmental and is mean and pushes people away. So when we speak, we have to be
careful that we speak the truth uncompromisingly, but we speak it in love. We are Samson, but let us decide to be a better Samson than the
one we see in Judges.
So as I
close, I want to invite you to see the power of God. You don't have have long hair. You don't
have to follow all those rules of a Nazarite. God set us free from
all of that, but He set us free so that we could be holy. He set us free so that we could make
disciples of Jesus Christ and continue to change the world as Jesus started 2,000 years
ago. So I invite you today to be filled
with the Holy Spirit of God--the same Spirit that made Samson the strongest man
who ever lived and makes you incredibly strong to live your life today. Perhaps you have never decided to follow
Jesus Christ. You never decided to let
him be your Lord and savior. I invite
you today to pray and ask him to be your Savior. Perhaps today, you have been a Christian for
some time, but you have not been empowered. You never felt the power. If you have felt the power, you use it for
something less than holy. So today, I
invite you to receive the power of the Holy Spirit and to use it for God's
purposes. Use your Christian power
wisely. We are Samson! Amen.
