Scripture Reading: Judges 15
Judges chapter 15. I want to make two qualifications before we actually begin. The first, regarding the use of the word ass. If I use that word, it is in its significance in terms of the King James Bible.
Donkey, obviously, is the meaning there. So, that's the first thing I want to mention. The second is remember that this whole situation is under the control and under the auspices of Deuteronomy 7. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, the children of Israel were given a mandate by the God of Israel to go into the land of Canaan and to dispossess the land.
The way they were to dispossess the land was not through written invitation, it was not through social media, but rather it was through destroying them, killing them, having no social interaction with them, having no political alliances with them, and certainly having no religious talk with them. Rather, the children of Israel were to take take the land as it had been promised to Abraham. And so what we find in the period of the judges is an imperfect conquest on the part of the children of Israel. But nevertheless they are rallying under various deliverers or human judges so that they may deal with the Canaanite threat and they may in fact gain refuge in the land.
Of course Samson is the one that we're focusing on this morning. He was the human deliverer, the God-chosen agent the ordained agent to bring at least partial deliverance from Philistine oppression. So I'll just begin reading in Judges chapter 15 at verse 1. After a while, in the time of wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with a young goat.
And he said, let me go into my wife, into her room. But her father would not permit him to go in. Her father said, I really thought that you thoroughly hated her. Therefore, I gave her to your companion.
Is not her younger sister better than she? Please, take her instead. And Samson said to them, this time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them. Then Samson went and caught 300 foxes, and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
When he had set the torches on fire, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. And the Philistines said, who has done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion. So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire.
Samson said to them, since you would do a thing like this, I will surely take revenge on you, and after that I will cease. So he attacked them hip and thigh with a great slaughter. Then he went down and dwelt in the cleft of the Rock of Edom. Now the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and deployed themselves against Lehi.
And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? So they answered, we have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us. Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the Rock of Edom and said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?
And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them. But they said to him, we have come down to arrest you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves. So they spoke to him saying, no, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand, but we will surely not kill you.
And they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. Then the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand and took it, and killed a thousand men with it.
Then Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have slain a thousand men." And so it was when he had finished speaking that he threw the jawbone from his hand and called that place Ramath-Lehi. Then he became very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised. So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and he drank.
And his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called its name Anhakur, which is in Lehi to this day. And he judged Israel 20 years in the days of the Philistines." Amen.
Opening Prayer
Well, let us pray. Our gracious God and our Holy Father, we come before you now, and we pray that you would forgive us for all of our sins and iniquities, We pray that you would wash us afresh in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you would help us to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, that we would receive with glad hearts the word of the living and true God. We pray for the ministry of your spirit, that he would illumine our minds and our hearts, that he would teach us, that he would guide us, that he would lead us.
That you would help us to take from this passage several lessons concerning your glory and your majesty, and your graciousness and your mercy. We ask our Father that as we consider the scriptures, we would be more and more conformed unto those paths of righteousness, and that we would be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Give us grace in these things, we pray, and we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Well,
Introduction
Samson has gotten the most attention in the book of Judges, in terms of the human deliverers. Remember, in Judges 13 was the call narrative, or the birth of Samson. Chapter 14, as we studied last week, he went down to Timnah, and there he took a wife from among the daughters of the Philistines. And here, in Chapter 15, we still remain in Timnah, and then in Chapter 16, which we'll look at, God willing, in two weeks' time, he goes to Gaza. but he is the servant that the Lord God raised up to begin to deliver his people from oppression.
That's what chapter 13 and verse 5 indicates concerning Samson. So let's just look at this section, this narrative, chapter 15, under three considerations. First, the betrayal by his father-in-law in verses 1 to 8. Secondly, the treachery of his countrymen in verses 9 to 13. and then thirdly, the defeat of his enemies in verses 14 to 20.
Betrayal by His Father-in-Law
Let's note first the betrayal by his father-in-law. When we last left Timna, everything seemed to be quiet. all was settled, all was calm, he had gone, he had killed those 30 men in Ashkelon, he brought those garments back, and he paid off the particular debt that he had given. And then we see in verse 20, in Samson's wife, I'm sorry, in verse 19, his anger was aroused, He went back up to his father's house, and then Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man. Verse 1 of chapter 15 indicates that all does not remain quiet in Timnah.
Samson comes back. Samson wants his wife.
Samson's Return to Timnah
He comes to the house of the Timnite man whose daughter he took in marriage. He has a goat under his arm. Now before we chuckle or grin, this would be akin to a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses. This is how you went a-fetching your woman in this particular day and age.
You wouldn't bring flowers. and chocolate. She'd bring a nice live goat in order to have a meal before you went into her room. We need to notice that Samson doesn't hold grudges, does he? I mean, he is betrayed by this woman into the hands of the Philistines.
She was the heifer that they had plowed with in order to get his riddle, according to chapter 14. But he doesn't hold grudges. He's not opposed to her. He doesn't hate her.
He doesn't despise her. he doesn't disdain her. Rather, he comes a-calling with goat under his arm. And note the response of her father. He assumed that Samson wouldn't be as benevolent.
The father didn't think he would be as gracious and as forgiving. The father of the woman assumed that Samson would have held a grudge and that he would despise her and hate her because of her activities in chapter 14. So the father says, I have given her to another man. I have given her to your best man." He says in verse 2, I really thought that you thoroughly hated her, therefore I gave her to your companion.
Is not her younger sister better than she? Please take her instead. Something we've noticed as we studied the book of Judges on Wednesday night, women don't do well in a pagan culture. Women are not treated with equality and dignity in a pagan culture.
Here he takes the woman that Samson was married to and gives her, doesn't say anything about her consent, gives her to the best man. And then even before he checks with the younger daughter, he says, I have another daughter, I want you to take her so that you'll be happy and you'll be at peace and you won't want to do nasty and mean things to me. Note again the self-control and the restraint of Samson. We have been sold a false bill of goods concerning this man, that he's this big, bumbling man that is governed by his passions, carnality and lusts, And that is precisely not the case.
In two weeks time, when we're in chapter 16, I will argue that when he went to the harlot's house in Gaza, it was similar in nature to the spies who went to Rahab the harlot's house in Joshua 2. No one ever thinks or no one ever believes that those spies in Joshua 2 actually had relations with Rahab the harlot. They went there as an act of strategy. They went there as an act of subterfuge.
They went there on a covert mission to bring destruction to the city of Jericho. Samson does the same thing in Judges 16. Put it out of your mind that this is a man we ought not to imitate. This is a man we ought not to model our lives after.
That this is somehow a man who in spite of all of his evil and wickedness and depravity, the Lord nevertheless used. He was not a perfect man, he was not a blemish-free man, he was not a sinless man, but he was a faithful man, doing the will of the Father who had sent him to begin to deliver Israel from their oppression. So her father responds in this particular manner, and then notice what we find in verse 3. Samson said to them, this time I shall be blameless regarding the Philistines if I harm them.
And this is an acknowledgment of the reality of God's sovereignty. We see behind the scenes, every step of the way, in the book of Judges, that the Lord is in action. The Lord is operating. The Lord is working through these human affairs and human situations to bring about the accomplishment of His perfect plan and His perfect will.
In this particular instance, it is to break the back of Philistine oppression. So
Destruction of Philistine Property
let's look then at the destruction of Philistine property, verses 4 to 6, an amazing passage. The big question comes up, how did he do this? How does he catch 300 foxes and turn them tail to tail, put a torch there, and then send them around the countryside? I don't know.
Imagine he used rope Daniel Bloch makes this comment. He says, how Samson accomplished this, the whole fox thing, or jackals, is a great mystery. But it fits into the picture of a man who kills a lion single-handedly, kills 30 Philistines, breaks brand new ropes that bind him, slays 1,000 Philistines with a jawbone, and brings a house down over thousands of reveling Philistines. This isn't a surprising narrative or account when we take into consideration 13 to 16.
Samson is the man of God, sent by the Spirit of God to do the will of God, and he's able to accomplish that will, probably supernaturally aided by God Himself. And what is intriguing is that we now have the significance of chapter 15 and verse 1. Why does the author tell us, not only after a while, but at the time of wheat harvest? Now we see the ingenuity of Samson, don't we?
How do you really bring it to a people? Economics. How do you really hurt a people? Food.
How do you really bring judgment upon your enemies? Stop the supply of sustenance. We see this in the Gideon narratives. When the Midianites oppressed Israel, what did they do?
They would make these sweeps through the land and they would utterly decimate the agricultural intake of the Israelites. They were basically and essentially starving them for the seven years that they maintained supremacy over Israel. Well, Samson does the very same thing. He hits them economically.
When he sends those 300 foxes on their way, he burns up their produce. He is burning up their livelihood. He is burning up their sustenance. And the text indicates that in verse 5.
When He had set the torches on fire, He let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines, and burned up both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive groves. What a wise way to deal a blow. What a means by which he could bring judgment to bear upon the Philistines. So there's an economic element, but Dagon was the god of the Philistines.
You know what Dagon's specialty was? Remember the heathen, the pagans, the polytheists had a god for everything? You had Baal, who was the storm god. You had Asherah, who was the god of her particular locale or region.
And then you had Dagon. He was the god of grain. So Samson not only deals a blow to them economically, but religiously as well. Dagon's not able to save their grain.
Dagon's not able to save their livelihood. Dagon is not able to confront and to deal with this Israelite threat. And then notice the response of the Philistines in verse 6. The Philistines said, who has done this?
And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion. So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Now, please let that sink in. When we get to Samson and his jawbone of the ass killing a thousand men, we are not to assume that these are innocent, godly persons that just wanted to mind their own business.
They oppressed Israel. They burned down houses of their own people in order to try and flush out Samson. This was the very threat that they had given to this Timnite woman back in chapter 14. Tell us his riddle or we'll burn down your father's house.
Remember, she tells the riddle in an event or in an attempt to evade this particular penalty and here it is meted out upon them anyway. So the Philistines are a brutal people. The Philistines are an oppressing people. The Philistines are not an innocent people, minding their own business in Canaan.
And God, the Lord of Israel, has just said, I want you to get rid of all these people arbitrarily. Know the conquest, the holy war, Israel's mission to take possession of the land of Canaan, One of the reasons for it, obviously not the chief reason, but one of the reasons is because the Canaanites were ungodly. They were unholy. They were unrighteous.
They were wicked. Deuteronomy 9, Leviticus 18. The Lord highlights and underscores this for the children of Israel. And so we need to understand and appreciate that as well.
And so what then does Samson do in verses 7 to 8? He is doing what God purposed for him to do. Just go back for a moment to 13.5. 13.5, I fear that humanism has so affected us and infected us in the church that we read such things and we say, heavens no Samson, you can't do that. That's carnal rage, that's anger, you can't do that.
Did you just hear what Pastor Cam read in 2 Thessalonians 1? What will Jesus do when he comes in the glory of his father with all of his holy angels? He doesn't do a social media blast to call people and tell them, I love you and I have a wonderful plan for your life. He comes and he takes vengeance on them who knew not God and on them who do not obey the gospel.
Prior to that, the Apostle says it is a righteous thing for God to afflict or repay with tribulation those who afflict you. When you see Samson engaged in this activity, this is God the Lord delivering his people from oppression. That is precisely how you are to read the book of Judges, not like a humanist, but as a Christian theist, one who sees the vengeance and the anger and the majesty of God poured out upon the enemies of Yahweh. 13.5, For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son, and no razor shall come upon his head. For the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines." He does that in chapter 14 with these 30 men at Ashkelon and he does that now in 7 and 8 when he goes and he attacks them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.
Literally, he struck them leg upon thigh with a great striking. The NIV's viciously offers a tolerable interpretation. We hear the word vicious and we think only bad. But when a good man strikes viciously, that's a good thing.
If I've come to protect you or defend you, you don't want me to limp-wristedly go into the fray. You want me to assume a posture of viciousness so I can deal with your enemies. He says, Bloch again, says, the NIV's viciously offers a tolerable interpretation of the idiom, leg upon thigh, presumably a wrestling idiom for total victory. That's what's highlighted here.
So you see the progression, you see the steps, you see the betrayal of his father-in-law leads to the destruction of Philistines. Now
Treachery of His Countrymen
note, secondly, in terms of the larger context of the text. Verses 9 to 13, we have the treachery of his countrymen. This part's really difficult. You expect Philistines to do the kinds of things that Philistines do.
You don't expect Israelites to do the kinds of things that Philistines do.
Judah Sides with the Oppressor
Note what goes on in this particular passage. The Philistines come to Judah. Verse 9, the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and deployed themselves against Lehi. And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us?
So they answered, we have come up to arrest Samson, to do to him as he has done to us. So you see what's happening here. Samson has gone to Judahite territory. The Philistines want Samson.
They want to arrest him. They want to bring harm upon Samson. You see the anger that is building? Philistines do not have hero worship with reference to Samson.
In the Philistine post office there are wanted posters for Samson. Samson is public enemy number one. If there was a Philistines most wanted TV show, Samson would be the star. They hate him.
They want to destroy him. They despise him. So what do they do? They chase him down into Judah.
Now note the response of the Judahites. Verse 11, Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the Rock of Etah. Where is the cleft of the Rock of Edom? It is where Samson has holed up.
It is where Samson exists. Notice it's not 3,000 men of the Philistines. It's not the oppressor. It's not the enemy agent.
It's not the ones whom God raised up to be a scourge to His sinning people. But rather it's the Judahites that assemble 3,000 men. I've alluded to this in the past messages on Samson. If I was holed up in my home, you'd probably pick three or four of the biggest guys in the church and say, go get him.
I'm just not that much of a threat. Right? If you sent 3,000 men to pick me up, what does that indicate? It indicates that whoever's holed up is someone to be afraid of.
You don't send three guys to get Samson. You don't send five 90-pound dudes to fetch Samson. You send a military arsenal against this particular man. But that is Judah.
That it's the very tribe that in the beginning of Judges in chapter 1 verses 1 to 20, it's Judah that engages upon the conquest successfully. It is Judah from which our Lord will ultimately come in terms of tribal alignment. We expect more out of Judah, don't we? We expect the royal tribe is to have some royal manhood and resist the Philistines and side with the Deliverer whom God the Lord had raised up.
Judahites and Philistines are both allied now against Yahweh's chosen leader. You see, there's something very bad going on in Judges 15. You say, what does this have to do with us today? I think in many respects the church at times, and I don't want to confess every church and every body's sin, but at times we imbibe the ethic of the Judahites.
We're more afraid of the earthly oppressors than we are of the living and true God. We'll side with the enemies of Jehovah rather than the deliverers that He provides. Look at the narrative, verse 11, Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Edom, and said to Samson, Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? They're chiding Samson.
They're outbraining Samson. They're angry with Samson. They're not happy in this current situation. Not that they are being ruled over by the Philistines, but by the fact that Samson is causing a rift in that.
You see, as long as we do what the humanists tell us, everything is okay. When somebody comes along and says, you ought not to do what the humanists tell you, you ought to do what the Word of the Living God says to you, we say, oh no, we can't do that. We can't upset the apple cart. We can't resign our tax-exempt status.
We can't give up all of the freedoms and the liberties that we have. Does this sound akin to what we might say? We don't want to mess with the status quo. This is what they're saying here.
Davis, with reference to this statement, do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? Davis says sad, sad words. Maybe you've read Judges 15 before and haven't stopped to think about this. Maybe you've read Judges 15 before and absolutely missed this section of the treachery of his own countrymen.
We need to take it to heart. If there are sins that we have an inclination to, it is being overly passive. It is being spineless. It is being wimps.
Church in many respects has been so feminized that we could never imagine praying Psalm 58 against the enemies of God. Certainly, that's a throwback to a far more barbaric time. Do you know that the Psalter ultimately is the prayers of Christ? There's a demarcation between the righteous and the godless in the Psalter.
Things are black and white when you come to righteousness and godlessness in the Psalter. Davis says, concerning this statement, do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? Notice what they go on to say before I read the Davis quote. What is this you have done to us?
They haven't identified with the God of Israel. They haven't identified with Samson, the one whom the God of Israel has raised up to deliver them. They have identified with the Philistines. They have identified with Dagon-worshipping idolaters.
They have identified with the enemies of God Most High. And they're upset with Samson. Do you not know that the Philistines rule over us? What is this you have done to us?
Sad, sad words. Here's Davis.
Acquiescence to Bondage
Here is a people who have acquiesced to bondage, who can no longer imagine anything beyond the status quo, who see deliverance as a threat to peace, who look upon Yahweh's enemies as their rightful lords. Israel is a people who can forsake Yahweh instantly, but who would not think of being faithless to the Philistines. Isn't that the case of the book of Judges? As soon as God's Deliverer dies, what happens to the people?
They revert and they engage in more corruption than they had before that Deliverer. You see what Davis says? They can turn their backs upon the God of Israel at will, at whim, several times throughout the book. And yet, we cannot turn against these Philistines who rule over us.
What is this that you've done to us? Davis says, what a pitiful question. Notice, they expressed their desire to arrest him and deliver him to death. They knew what the Philistines wanted Samson for.
But we didn't know. We didn't have any idea. So why did you send a delegation of 3,000 men Why are you so afraid at what the Philistines are going to think concerning you? Look at what the text tells us.
He said to them, this is Samson's golden rule in action, as they did to me, so I have done to them. But they said to him, we have come down to arrest you that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. Again, note the lack of rage, lust, governance by his passions in this man Samson. If he's able to deal with the entirety of the Philistine nation, these 3,000 spineless Judahites would not have been a problem for him whatsoever.
Talk about self-restraint. Talk about self-control. Talk about a man who manages and governs over his passions. He is the exact opposite of what I think at times people have been told concerning this hero, this champion.
Maybe you haven't heard this. I remember several years ago, I used to work at Northrop Grumman, and I worked in a particular place where I always had a workmate, always had a partner, and there was the blessed opportunity to be able to speak to them concerning the things of God. And I'll never forget this one day, it was a Friday afternoon, I remember it like it was yesterday, or two days ago, because it was Friday two days ago. This man came to work, a man that we had talked many times concerning scripture and doctrine and all things God and sovereignty and all of that.
He came and he had seen some show. It was a documentary on one of the cable channels. I mean, he was loaded for bear. He was like a Samson himself coming at me with the jawbone of the ass.
He comes in and he says, I just watched this thing concerning Samson. What a wretch! And you Christians think he's a hero? Now, I sort of expect that from people outside the church.
But when saying we're going to study Samson, if it rises up in your heart to roll your eyes or to say, what do we have to do with this big brute that likes to kill Philistines like drinking water? There is very practical lesson in this passage for us, which we will conclude with in a few minutes. But suffice it to say right now, talk about a man of governance. Talk about a man of self-possession.
If 3,000 Judahites came to deliver me up to the oppressor, I believe I would have grabbed for that jawbone a lot sooner. And I probably would have employed it against them. Because at that time, they're acting like Philistines. They're acting like Canaanites.
They've no longer got the right to call themselves the covenant community. But not Samson. Samson says to them, swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves. We have come down to arrest you, they say, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.
We're not going to kill you, Samson. We don't want to hurt you. We don't want to mess with you, Samson. We just want to deliver you over to the Philistines who are going to do all manner of evil and wickedness and unspeakable things to you.
But as for us, we're innocent. You see, this is another evidence of their spinelessness. At least man up and say, look, we like the way things are going. You're ruining that.
We're going to deliver you into their hands so that they can take care of business. No. We're just the pious. We're the holy.
This is what I think is more offensive when we engage in this spineless cowardice, is that when we do it under the guise of being holy. Oh no, we can't pray imprecatory psalms against the enemies of God, because then we wouldn't be holy. Are you kidding me? David was a man after God's own heart who says, I want you to break their fangs out of their mouths.
Paul was the apostle of Christ. We might argue one of the chief and most eminent ones, or one of the most useful ones, who says it's just and it's right for God to afflict with affliction those who afflict you, or to pay with tribulation those who trial you. Paul it is, in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, who makes an imprecation such that King David of Israel would have said, Amen! What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 16.22?
If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, send them an email! No? Give him a cake. No.
Lie to him about the absolute universal love of God. No. If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. You see, it's not holy to be spineless and cowardice.
Davis, again, with reference to the Judahite response, oh no Samson, we don't want to kill you. We only want to bind you and give you to the Philistines so they can kill you. The tribe that had formerly waded into battle after battle, chapter 1, 1 to 20, has become a collection of spineless wimps. They regard the Philistines as their rulers and Samson as their enemy.
They don't even want to be always free people. They don't even see that as a possibility. Matthew Henry, in his usual perceptive way, summarizes it in two brief sentences. He says, cowardly, unthankful wretches fond of their fetters and in love with their servitude." You see, at times, brethren, there's something more valuable and more important and more satisfying than the status quo.
Righteousness, godliness, the eradication of those things that we take for granted in our own day and age. Perhaps when the church starts to take seriously the imprecations, when the church actually starts to pray those things back to God Most High, who delights to hear His Word prayed to Him, perhaps then God will indeed crush the oppressors of His people." You say, well, that doesn't sound very Christian. That doesn't sound very holy. Do you realize that there's a city currently in Iraq where 20,000 people are probably going to die?
They're crying. to profess Christ. You see, it is easy for us to say, oh, it's not Christian to speak about righteousness and justice and God smashing the fangs of his enemies. It's easy for us when we're all going to go from here right now. We're going to have a nice meal.
We're going to be able to turn on the water tap. We're going to probably have a nap. We're going to get to come back here tonight. There's not going to be ends painted on our house identifying us as people that either must convert to Islam, leave the city, or die.
Imagine that for an option this afternoon. As I said, most of us are going to go home, have a bowl of soup, and perhaps some sleep. Imagine if your option when you got home was, oh, they've marked my home. I can either A, convert to Islam, I can B, leave the city, or I can C, die.
What would it mean to leave the city for you? It would mean to leave your house. It would mean to leave your livelihood. It would mean to leave all of your possessions.
Well, we shouldn't love that stuff anyway. Yeah, but we do. It's hard. It's difficult.
We've grown accustomed to running water. These are things that we quite enjoy. Imagine having to leave that because of your profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, when we see black and white and righteousness and ungodliness, perhaps we'll start cheering for Samson. instead of being like the Judahites.
He says, swear to me that you will not kill me yourself. So they spoke to him saying, no, but we will tie you securely and deliver you into their hand, but we will surely not kill you. Boy, that's just comforting, isn't it? I'm sure Samson thought, oh, that's great.
Thank you. Thank you, man. I just appreciate your kindness and your benevolence and your love. You see, it's like the author wants us to have this response.
He wants us to see how bad Israel has become. That's one of the purposes of the book. So that when you get to the later prophets, and Israel is being cast out of the land, you don't say, why? What's happened?
You know what's happened. They've become like the Canaanites, that they themselves were supposed to dispossess from the land. Because they took on those characteristics, they've opened themselves up to the curses of the covenant specified in Deuteronomy 28, And that means exile from the land. The land will vomit you out of its mouth.
The land will be done with you. You say again, well this doesn't sound Christian. Jesus threatens the very same thing with reference to the church. He will take the lampstand away from them.
He tells the Laodiceans, because you're neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. In Old Covenant Israel, it was the lamb that vomited out the inhabitants. In New Covenant Israel, it's the Lord Christ who vomits out the inhabitants. When a church is faithless, when a church betrays her trust, when a church does not preach the word, when a church gathers together more in a humanistic way instead of to worship the true and living God, Christ says, I'll spit you right out of my mouth.
So don't say there's no lessons in this passage for us. They betray their utter spiritual degradation. Kyle and Dalich say it this way. Instead of recognizing in Samson a deliverer whom the Lord had raised up for them, and crowding round him that they might smite their oppressors with his help and drive them out of the land, the men of Judah were so degraded that they cast this reproach at Samson." You see, the big crime in Judges 15 is not Samson with his jaw bowed.
The big crime in Judges 15 isn't the Philistines. I mean, they're doing what Philistines do, right? The author wants you to see that the big crime in Judges 15 is that the covenant people have become wimps. Now notice thirdly and finally, the defeat of his enemies, verses 14 to 20.
Verse 14, when he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting against him. It's an interesting turn of phrase, isn't it? It's not like, hey you, that sort of a shout. It's a battle cry.
It's the scream of the warrior. I mean, when you run into battle, not that I have done this, but I suppose that if you were going to do this, you let everything go. You just scream and hope that your sword finds flesh. You scream and you hope that your armor takes the sword instead of your heart.
You run with a viciousness that is necessary for fighting a battle. And this is what the Philistines do with Samson, one man. One man has become such a threat! One man has caused such chaos!
One man, who killing the 30 in Ashkelon, who burning up their standing grain along with their olive groves, this one man who killed a bunch of them, hip and slaughtered, this one man has proven to be a great threat! One remembers Queen Mary of Scotland who said, I fear the prayers of John Knox more than an entire army. Where are those men today? Where is a man who goes to the throne of grace in such a way that the enemies of the Lord are afraid?
Samson is that man. Samson is the figure. Samson is the one whom God raised up. And notice what the Lord does when these Philistines come shouting against Him.
The Spirit Rushes Upon Samson
Then the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him. You see God's plan? You see God's purpose? You see God's government of this entire situation?
It is for this hour. It is for this purpose. It is for this reason, because Samson is the man tasked with beginning to deliver his people from a Philistine oppression. The Spirit of the Lord comes mightily upon him.
The Spirit rushes upon him, literally. Notice that the Philistines cannot withstand God. The Judahites cannot withstand God. It's one of the scary implications of this particular passage.
Say for a moment that you happen to participate or side with the Philistines in your situation. You say, I don't want you to rock the boat. I don't want you to preach that sermon. I don't want you to witness that testimony to someone else.
I don't want you to tell that person what God really thinks. You side with the Philistines for a moment. This much you can be assured of. God always vindicates His elect.
What do you do on the other side of that? The text is pretty silent when the narrative ends. Do the Judahites apologize to Samson? They see him covered in Philistine blood.
They see him victorious over the threat. Possibly it wells up in their hearts to think that he might now come after us. Samson, we really didn't mean it that way. Samson, we really didn't mean to betray you.
Samson, we really weren't as much in love with our comfort and ease as it sounded like, perhaps, you might have interpreted. See, what do you do when you betray the living God and His truth? And when the living God and His truth are vindicated, what do you do? But if you betray a godly Christian brother or a sister who takes a stand in a particular instance or situation, you discourage that.
You tell them, no, I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to think that. I don't want you to cause problems for yourself. You have this fear today, what if we do this and they throw us in jail?
What if they do this and we get thrown in jail? Hasn't God's people prospered in the prisons before? Is this the only day and age where the Christians are so delicate and so sensitive we can't deal with a little hardship and persecution? Has it really become that bad that everything we do is governed by this idea that we don't want to upset the status quo?
What are you going to do when God vindicates His elect and you've sided with His enemies? The Spirit rushes upon him." Notice, "...the ropes that were on his arms became like flax that is burned with fire, and his bonds broke loose from his hands." You see what you're witnessing here? You're witnessing God's man with God's Spirit, empowered for God's battle. Sure that when he broke these ropes, the people were probably thinking, uh-oh, We know this man.
We know what he's capable of. I can't imagine meeting somebody who can catch 300 foxes, pen them up long enough to gather enough, tie them tail to tail, put a torch in them, and then send them out to burn fields. I can't imagine a man who just wanders over to Ashkelon, finds 30 men, and kills them, and takes their underwear and 30 suits from them. So when Samson breaks these bonds, people are starting to fret and wonder and are somewhat curious.
Notice what the text then says. Verse 15, he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey. That's attention to detail. It was a fresh jawbone.
We don't get a dry, brittle one because as soon as it makes impact with the human skull, it breaks. Samson can't have that. God, in His kindness and His provision, made sure there's a fresh jawbone there. It's not brittle, it doesn't break, it's going to withstand Philistines.
And what does Samson do? He reached out his hand and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Again, that's a passage we can read that quickly, but we don't stop to ponder. A thousand men?
Close in combat? I prefer the long sword. I don't want to get that close to my enemies. I'd actually prefer the gun, not even the handgun.
I want the AR-15. Put me in a clock tower and let me deal with my enemies that way. He's close in. He's got the jawbone of an ass.
And he is cutting and killing and cleaving Philistines. He is close enough to hear their groans. He is close enough to see them die. He is close enough to get their blood on him.
He is a warrior filled with the Spirit of Almighty God doing what the Lord raised him up to do. Instead of us in the church today rolling our eyes and saying, oh, how barbaric, say, praise God, from whom all Samson's flow. Moffat captures his little pun. Samson tells riddles, doesn't he?
Samson's a fun-loving man. I gotta tell you, after killing a thousand Philistines, the last thing that I think I would do would be to compose a little pun. That's what he does. I was corrected well by someone a couple of weeks ago.
I mentioned that when Samson was finished with this particular activity, he would have gone home, he would have taken a shower, and then he would have posted his status update on Facebook or Twitter. The man reminded me, no, he would have taken a selfie first with all the blood all over him, and then posted his status update. I just finished God's work. Before he showers, before he selfies, before he does anything, he composes a pun.
Don't you love this man? Don't you want to meet this man? Don't you want to sit with this man, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Moffat captures the rhyme.
With the jawbone of an ass, I have piled them in a mass. With the jawbone of an ass, I have piled them in a mass." A mass of bodies. Philistines. A thousand of them.
And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone from his hand. Matthew Henry said, this is a day when relics weren't treasured. Talk about a relic, something to be idolized. It would be Samson's jawbone.
He just chucks it down on the earth. He doesn't save it. He doesn't take it to the pawn shop. He doesn't go along like so many of us would say, look at my accomplishment.
The job is done. He throws the jawbone down. Now notice. Verse 17, so it was when he had finished speaking that he threw the jawbone from his hand and called the place Ramath-Lehi.
That means jawbone height. That's what it means, jawbone height. Whatever Samson would recall this event, he would think, or he would tell his successors, it was at jawbone height that the Spirit of the Lord came upon me. I found this fresh jawbone and I took it to a thousand men.
Now
Samson's Prayer and God's Provision
notice the acknowledgement of the servant in verses 18 and following. His physical distress, verse 18, then he became very thirsty. That makes sense, doesn't it? Doesn't it?
It's probably a hot summer day. Killing Philistines close in with a jawbone would be thirsty work. The author is leading us by the hand. He's showing us something in this particular instance.
He is showing us not the arrogance of Samson, but the dependence of Samson. Look at what it says in verse 18. Then he became very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord and said, You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant. Again, not an arrogant man, not a proud man, not a man governed by his passions and his lusts.
Not a man just bumbling from event to event to event, but a man filled with the Spirit of the Lord, who knows that consciously he's been filled with the Spirit of the Lord, because men apart from the Spirit of the Lord don't kill a thousand enemies of the Lord with the jawbone of a donkey. He acknowledges the deliverance comes from the hand of God. He doesn't have a status update saying, what did I do? Rather, he says, what did God do?
He underscores and highlights that for us in this acknowledgment of the Lord's victory. Notice he acknowledges his dependence upon Him. He says, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised. We can take that as almost a presumptuous quip, almost as an arrogant statement, but it's not.
God raised him up to begin to deliver his people from Philistine oppression. If he dies of thirst, he will not be able to combat Philistines. He will not be able to decimate the uncircumcised. This is an acknowledgment of God's deliverance.
It is an acknowledgment of Samson's dependence. And obviously, the prayer didn't strike God as presumptuous. It didn't strike God as rude. It didn't strike God is intemperate because God answers the prayer and gives his servant water.
That is precisely what the narrative tells us. Samson is dependent, or rather, David says, here is Samson dependent on Yahweh. Here is the Savior confessing that he needs saved. You see, killing a thousand men by the power of the Spirit still does not satisfy the body's need for water.
The Savior needs saved, and it's water that He has to have. We have repeatedly heard that Samson's power comes from Yahweh's Spirit, but in case these fail to register, we surely cannot miss the picture. Samson is anything but self-sufficient. It's not arrogance.
We don't say, oh, Samson, you need to be nicer to God in prayer. God doesn't say he needed to be nicer. God doesn't disapprove. God doesn't tell him to read A.W.
Pink on prayer or whoever else on prayer. God says, here's your water, Samson. God's going to sustain His servant, killing Philistines, He's going to sustain him, giving him water. Because He wants Samson to carry out this task, and that moves us to chapter 16, when he goes to Gaza, to finish the mission that the Lord God Most High had given to him.
After he drinks water, he calls the place, or he changes the name, to the Spring of the Collar. Therefore he called its name Anhakor, which is in Lehi, to this day, and he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines." Well, let's summarize and conclude with a couple of lessons I've already begun to bring out.
Application
First, let us be reminded of the wickedness of the oppressing enemy. God is sovereign. He raised up the Philistines to oppress the nation of Israel because of Israel's sin. Nevertheless, the Philistines were sinful.
The Philistines were corrupt. The Philistines were wicked. The Philistines deserve the judgment of God Most High. Secondly, and we spent the most time on this one, but let me just try and remind us with reference to the cowardice of the Covenant people.
I'm sure you've all seen, if you're on social media, I'm sure you've all seen, if you haven't been hiding at the Rock of Eton for the last 20 years, there is a statement that Edmund Burke said, I think he was a political philosopher, a British political philosopher who said this, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, right? Yes, we're awake, we're going to go home and have soup and a nap, certainly we can give it five or ten more minutes to learn some lessons that might help us to live in this world. Isn't this the case?
All you need for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. To stand idly by. Or worse yet, to go and collect Samson, and bind him with ropes, and hand him over to the Philistines. You know, one of the big debates today, or one of the things that the church is caving in on, is homosexual marriage.
What's the big deal? God the Lord has spoken. That's what the big deal is. God the Lord has mandated.
That's what the big deal is. We are not to make peace with the Philistines. We are not to walk arm-in-arm with them. We certainly ought not to rail against people within our own camp that are being faithful.
We ought not to try and persuade them to say, you know, you really shouldn't upset things. You shouldn't really focus on this, because after all, who really knows for sure? God has spoken in His Word, and if His Church doesn't know for sure, then who does? Right?
Davis, again, I think very perceptively makes this statement concerning the cowardice of the covenant people. Whether it is the evil and sin within us, or some form of it outside us, God does not negotiate with sin, or God does not call us to negotiate with sin and evil, but to wage war on them. If any of you use McShane's calendar, you were in 1st Samuel 15 yesterday. What happens in 1st Samuel 15?
Saul is supposed to go in and utterly destroy Agag and all his people. But that's not what Saul does. Saul spares Agag. Saul collects the loot, the booty, and the spoil from those people.
Samuel comes to him and says, what is this lowing of the oxen that I hear? What is this bleeding of the sheep that I hear? And Saul says, well, they brought all the best things to us so that we can engage and enjoy these things. Does Samuel say, well, that's a good move on your part, Saul.
Good on you. No. He condemns him for this action. And then we read in the text, again something very indelicate and something very insensitive to us modern readers, that Samuel takes out a sword and he hacks Agag into pieces.
This is how God calls you to deal with your sin. Remember, the mandate of holy war in the Old Covenant is different for them than us. God does not say, go get a sword and go hack Agag to pieces in terms of physical human beings. With reference to your own sin and evil, Davis is right.
God does not call us to negotiate with sin and evil, but to wage war on them, to nurse a holy hatred toward them in all their multicolored forms. We are near hopeless when we begin to adopt Judah's slogan. It has always been this way. How can we expect to change anything? the cowardice of the covenant people.
This is God's world. This is God's truth. This is God's mandate that we be faithful to Him, come whatever may. Thirdly, we need to appreciate, and if I haven't made this obvious, I'm going to make it obvious, we need to appreciate Samson.
Philistines opposed him. Judahites opposed him. If you've ever read any in church history, you'll have come across the phrase or the statement, Athanasius contra Munda. Athanasius against the world.
Well, here we have a Samson against the world. Philistines can't stand him. Judahites are bothered by him. So the Judahites deliver him up to the Philistines so that they can dispatch him.
The deliverer functioned as God called him to. Samson does in the narrative what Samson was supposed to do. Beware of that sort of an approach that I told you my buddy took at Northrop Grumman those several years ago. How can you Christians think that Samson is a hero?
Hebrews 11.32, he was a man of faith. and the Deliverer ascribed this deliverance to God according to verse 18. So we see something of the wickedness of the oppressing enemy, the cowardice of the covenant people, the faithfulness of the nation's Deliverer. Fourthly, we ought to appreciate the graciousness of Israel's God. The graciousness of Israel's God.
This is precisely His plan to save His people from their oppression. Samson's the man of the hour. 13.5 reads like Matthew 1.21. You shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins. God in His grace and in His mercy is operating through this human agent, Samson, to bring the oppressors to elevate His covenant people, to rescue them in their trials and travails and difficulties and distress.
Secondly, we see that grace manifested in the fact that He sustains His servant. I think we can at least pull this particular lesson. If God's going to call you to do something, He's going to equip you to do it. I'm always mindful of that quip in Spurgeon's lectures to my students with reference to what men ought to preach.
He says, if a man can't preach, he ought not to pursue that particular function or office. You say, well, that's a no-brainer. There's guys out there that can't preach that preach. Let me just remind you.
Spurgeon says, if God wants Leviathan to fly, he'll put wings on him. If he wants Samson to deal with Philistines, he will make Samson accordingly. Thirdly. The Lord answered his servant's petition for water and thus sustained his life for further exploits.
And the graciousness of our God perhaps is most conspicuous in this. The Lord delivers his people even when they don't see the need for deliverance. There was no distress in Israel. We saw that in chapter 13.
The typical cycle in the book of Judges is the people sin, God raises up an oppressor, the children of Israel cry out for deliverance, and then the Lord intervenes. Not in the Samson cycle. They sin against God, He raises up the Philistines as the oppressor, But they never cry out. They've made peace with their distress.
They have made peace with their Philistine captors. They have rebelled in their bonds. They have delighted in their fetters. And they have delivered up the very champion that God sent to deliver them from this mess.
And nevertheless, note the relentlessness of God's grace. It ought to bother you, it ought to bug you, it ought to really cause you to have a bit of alarm and concern when somebody says, Oh, that Old Testament Bible is so full of wrath and anger and judgment and fury. I mean, that the pagans say that isn't surprising, but that evangelicals or reforms suggest such things is absolutely mind-blowing. The Old Testament is a revelation of God's graciousness, of His mercy, of His kindness, of His goodness.
In every act of judgment upon the oppressor, that is an act of deliverance for the oppressed. And then the last lesson that we ought to cultivate or we ought to imbibe before we depart from this chapter is this. Samson typifies Jesus. Samson points us to Christ.
Isn't it intriguing? Think with me for just one more moment. Samson is delivered up by his own country to a foreign oppressor. Jesus is delivered up by the nation of Israel.
He is handed over to the foreign oppressor, the Roman government. Now Samson, in his life, in this episode, was able to deal the death blow to a thousand men. Christ, when he is delivered up by the Israelites into the hands of the Romans, and he is ultimately crucified, he delivers far more than a thousand Israelites. Yeah, he delivers more than a thousand.
The Lord Jesus Christ through his death, which the next chapter will typify even as well, the Lord Christ through his death accomplished more of a victory than what Samson accomplished here in Timnah. The Lord Christ is the champion, the holy, harmless, spotless One, the One who never sinned, the One who never broke God's law, the One who never broke His commandments, the One who ultimately was delivered up to be crucified in the place of His people, who died as a sacrifice, who died as a substitute, so that He might satisfy divine justice. Samson and Christ, both delivered up. Samson takes the jawbone of an ass and piles them in a mass.
When Jesus is delivered up, He goes like a sheep to its slaughter. He dies in the place of His people. He goes to the tomb. He rises on the third day.
He ascends on high. He leads captivity captive, and He gives gifts to men. Samson points us to Christ. Let us never, ever speak ill. of a man who will do that for us because we need pointing to Christ always.
Well may God take his word and seal it to our hearts and help us to learn the lessons of Judges 15 and not to be a spineless people but to be a people who look to serve and please our God the way that Samson did.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for your grace, and we thank you for what these passages in the book of Judges teach us concerning you, concerning your people, concerning your deliverance. I pray that you would help us to take these things to heart, help us to pray these lessons in, and help us, God, to be shaped and moved and governed and ruled by the Holy Word of God. We ask that you would go with us now Watch over your people here. We pray that you would save those who are outside of Christ, that you would manifest your grace and mercy and save through a message on Judges 15.
Demonstrate your sovereignty over the hearts of men. Demonstrate your power and ability to save those who by grace come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. And we pray these things in His most blessed name. Amen.