Cited in sermons
Edmund Burke
3 sermons · All people cited
The Victory of Samson at Jawbone Height
Judges 15 recounts Samson's victory over the Philistines at Jawbone Height, but the chapter's deepest scandal is not the enemy outside — it is the cowardice of the covenant tribe of Judah, who bind their own deliverer and surrender him to those he was sent to destroy. This sermon traces three movements in the text: the betrayal by Samson's father-in-law, the treachery of Judah's three thousand men, and the Spirit-empowered defeat of a thousand Philistines with a fresh jawbone. Throughout, Samson emerges as a type of Christ — delivered by his own people into enemy hands, yet vindicated by God — and the lesson pressed upon the hearer is that God's grace delivers a people who neither cry out for deliverance nor deserve it.
Samson's Victory at Jawbone Height
Judges 15 narrates Samson's campaign against the Philistines — the burning of their grain fields, his arrest by three thousand men of his own tribe of Judah, and his Spirit-empowered slaughter of a thousand Philistines with a fresh jawbone at Lehi. The sermon works through the chapter under four considerations: the wickedness of the oppressing enemy, the cowardice of the covenant people (who acquiesce to bondage and hand their own deliverer over to his enemies), the faithfulness of the nation's deliverer, and the graciousness of Israel's God who sustains and vindicates his servant even when his people never cry out for rescue. Samson is presented not as a bumbling brute governed by passions but as a man of faith, filled with the Spirit, whose deliverance-unto-death typifies the greater Champion who would be handed over by his own nation to a foreign power and accomplish a far greater victory.
Judges 15
Judges 15 presents Samson not as a reckless brute but as a Spirit-empowered deliverer whose actions are consistently vindicated by God against a barbaric, idolatrous Philistine oppressor. The deepest problem in the chapter is not Samson's violence but the tribe of Judah's cowardice — a people so assimilated to Philistine culture that they arrest and bind their own deliverer to hand him over for execution. Against this backdrop of betrayal and spiritual degradation, the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon Samson, breaks his bonds, and brings decisive victory, culminating in Samson's humble, prayerful acknowledgment that every deliverance belongs to Yahweh alone. The church today must resist the same temptation Judah succumbed to: negotiating with sin, accommodating the surrounding culture, and betraying the very means God has ordained for his people's deliverance.