Samson

We have this tendency and weakness that God will be in front of us but something lower than God will stand beside us and will be tempted to begin to follow that lower thing.

We have been looking at the life of Samson because it's usually good to use examples and narratives to really get the point of this essential matter.

This is the one thing that is God's people's issue.

This is the one thing.

Because if you learn everything, Only for your heart to follow after another God, there's no point.

In fact, everything that we are learning is meant to glorify God in our eyes so that our gaze can be fixed on Him and not on other things.

That's why we're looking at the story of Samson.

And today, I want to contrast the life of Samson a little bit with the life of Paul so that we can look more deeply and understand ourselves as people.

"Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?" And, and so there you have the El coming in with the who is like.

"Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?" And then at the very end of that, you know, "Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders." And wonders becomes a term that's identified with the angel of the Lord directly, with Samson's, uh, father.

He, he is, he does wonders.

Or, or in the, interestingly in, in Isaiah, in the prophecy of the Messiah, he will be wonderful.

So we're seeing again in, in only in one of those places, so the, the Jacob wrestling, no, he's not called the angel.

Here in Exodus 15, no, he's not called the angel.

Only in the Judges 13 story with Samson's father is he called the angel.

So again, you're seeing he's a- he appears here, but he's given different, he's given different titles.

[laughs] And yet she did.

He became a Nazarite for life, just like Samson.

The difference is Samson chose it.

How could you proclaim your unborn son a Nazarite? And the answer is, of course Samuel had to agree to it later, I guess at, after he was born, and then eventually in young adulthood, he became Bar Mitzvah.

It was his choice.

And I'm going to end with this text and then make one notable remark because this past week was noteworthy for the entire world of Christianity.

Hebrews 11 says this, and what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell you of Gideon and Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, and Samuel, and the prophets who through faith, they conquered kingdoms.

They enforced justice.

They obtained promises and they stopped the mouths of lions.

You could see that location, and it began to mess his life up.

You could see Samson, back and forth between that border of the Philistine, and it messed his life up.

You can see people that lived in the perfect will of God, and they stayed in the right location.

Right.

The foundations of the prison shook, the doors opened, and their chains came loose.

And in Judges 16, Samson, Samson arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the city gate of Gaza, pulled up the gates, post and all, and carried it away.

Those scriptures became even more significant to me as I began understanding the importance of midnight watch.

Breakthroughs happen at the midnight watch.

I'm starting from verse 32.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms and ministered justice and gained what was promised, who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword, whose weakness was turned to strength and who became powerful in battle and rooted for foreign armies.

Women received back their dead, raised to life again.

There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they may gain an even better resurrection.