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Amazing Facts

Samson

Doug Batchelor

01 Samson: Honey from a Lion

This presentation is brought to you by the Friends of the Amazing Facts Ministry.

If you're a believer, That means you've made a decision you want to go to heaven.

That means that your world view, Jesus is the most important thing to you.

Why in the world would you think about making the most important decision in your life about marrying somebody who does not make Jesus the center of their life.

♪ If I were to ask you, who in the Bible do you think of if I were to talk about the smartest person who has ever lived, Who would that be?

If I was to ask you to tell me in the Bible who is the person that had the greatest patience in suffering, who would that be?

And if I were to say who in the Bible was the physically strongest, who would that be?

Samson is the 1 people think of when they think of who is the physically strongest man who ever lived.

And we're going to be talking in the next couple of presentations about Samson and what we can learn about walking the Christian walk, about our Savior, and what other lessons the Lord might have for us in His word from that.

You'll find the story of Samson in the book of Judges, if you go to the book of Judges chapter 13, Samson is the last of the judges mentioned, now some believe that Samuel is among the judges, but you don't get to Samuel until you get to the book of Samuel.

But in the book of Judges, Samson is the last judge that is mentioned.

Most scholars believe there were approximately 12 judges.

And 4 chapters in the book of Judges are dedicated just to Samson.

And it even was foretold in the book of Genesis when Jacob was blessing his sons, it told us that from the tribe of Dan, which is where Samson came from, it said Dan will judge his people as 1 of the tribes of Israel.

As a matter of fact, the name Dan means judge and the name Daniel means Jehovah is my judge, or Elohim is my judge.

Now if you turn in your Bibles to the book of Judges, we're just going to read it.

And I believe there's things that God wants to say to you today that I know nothing about.

I believe that there's inherent power of the Word of God that as I read through this story, the Lord is going to speak to different people maybe in different ways, because there's power in the Word of God to do that.

Chapter 13 Judges verse 1, Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD.

There are about 7 apostasies mentioned in the book of Judges.

And the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for 40 years.

Now there was a certain man from Zorah of the family of the Danites whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and had no children.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said unto her indeed now you are barren and you've born no children but you will conceive and bear a son.

Now therefore please be careful not to drink wine or any similar strong drink and do not eat anything unclean for behold you will 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 will begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.

You notice how often God raises someone up during times of great adversity.

And you'll see people like Daniel comes at times of great adversity and oppression.

Elijah, time of great adversity and oppression.

Jesus, the Romans were ruling the world, a time of great oppression.

So Samson during this time of national oppression, the people are praying to God, God answers the prayer by raising someone up.

And usually these people that God has raised up during times of oppression to deliver his people are types of Christ.

Flawed though they may be on the human side, you'll see things in there.

A supernatural visitation of the angel that's given.

Something like Ishmael and Isaac and John the Baptist.

Someone said great men are born for times of great oppression.

And now the instruction that the angel gives, have you ever wondered before Was Samson strong because he was just bigger than everyone else and he was real beefy muscles just hard as a rock?

And I've heard theories all over the place.

If you saw Samson, did he look stronger than other people?

Was there something different about him physically?

Well, when Delilah starts to give him a hard time, she says, what is the secret of your strength?

And you would think that if he had great big old Schwarzenegger muscles that the secret of his strength would have been obvious.

But there's something else they didn't understand.

But then again, if there was nothing physical about the strength of Samson, then why did the angel come and go to such great lengths to tell the mother, be very careful in your prenatal care, because God is going to do something extraordinary with this baby, and you need to take care of yourself so what the angel said to the wife of Manoah, not for the wife of Manoah, but every expecting mother and father need to realize their habits and health are reproduced in the children.

They've learned now, you know, DNA is a very interesting science And they've discovered that your DNA is not the same from the time you're born to when you die.

Your DNA changes through your life by your lifestyle, behavior, exposure, your diet.

Your DNA can actually be altered, and so what you're doing affects your DNA that will then be reproduced in your children.

Because we've heard before that sometimes a parent's habits can be inherited.

Some things can actually be inherited tendencies.

So you want to be careful to take care of your health because you may pass it on to the third or fourth generation.

So it says here that he would be a Nazirite.

Turn in your Bible to the book of Numbers chapter 6.

And there's some interesting information here, and I'm not going to read it all, but you need to understand this to understand something about Samson and to understand something about where he kind of meandered a little bit.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, I'm in Numbers 6 verse 1, speak to the children of Israel and say to them when either a man or a woman consecrates an offering to take the vow of a Nazarite to separate himself to the Lord He shall separate himself from wine and similar or strong drink.

He shall drink neither vinegar made from wine or vinegar made from similar drink.

Neither shall he drink any grape juice, meaning fresh, new wine, or eat fresh grapes or raisins.

All the days of his separation, he will eat nothing that is produced from the grapevine.

He was supposed to stay out of the vineyard.

All the days of his vow, the separation, no razor will come upon his head until the days are fulfilled to the Lord.

He shall be holy and he'll let the locks of his hair grow.

All the day that he separates himself to the Lord, he shall not go near a dead body.

He will not make himself unclean for his father or for his mother, for his sister when they die because he is separated to God.

Meaning, even if your family member died, father or mother, you are not to touch their body.

You know, someone dies, you have to care for the body, they did for Jesus.

But you know, biblically, when you touch a dead body, you're unclean until sundown, you're supposed to wash and that's just good sanitation rules.

But if you are Nazirite, it didn't matter if it was your father, your mother, your brother, your sister you are to be fully consecrated to God, and didn't Jesus say he that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me?

And so it was saying that the Nazarite was to be fully consecrated to God, there was to be no risk that his mind was going to be affected by the wrong spirit, he is not supposed to drink wine or strong drink or anything of the sort.

Now with that in mind, we're going to delve into the second part of what happens in the next chapter.

Now Samson's growing up, you know, as he got to be a teenager, and he's an only child as far as we know.

And he maybe made some local friends, and he said, you know, if I just go 4 miles down the hill, even though Philistines oppressed them, they saw him every day, They traded with them.

He probably spoke the language as you'll see.

And through constant exchange and making friends with some of the teenagers of the Philistines he 1 day, his eyes saw a young Philistine girl and he thought, wow, she is really pretty, and look at just sparkle in the personality and what a beautiful girl.

So he went down, he saw a woman in Timna of the daughters of the Philistines.

Now Samson's not that old yet, because you'll read later it says he judges for 20 years, that hasn't happened yet, it comes later, and he's probably in his late teens early 20s when this happens.

Comes to his father and his mother and he says, I've seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines, now therefore get her for me as a wife.

And his father and his mother said to him, Is there no woman among the daughters of your brethren or among my people?" Look, if you can't find 1 among the Israelites or even among the tribe of Dan, that you would go get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines.

There were other tribes around Israel, you had the Edomites, you had the Moabites, you had the Ammonites, they were all related to Lot, they practiced circumcision.

He's basically saying if you're gonna marry outside the faith, at least marry someone that was related to Abraham that believes in Jehovah but you're going to the uncircumcised Philistines and that was, they thought, the worst thing that could happen Samson was strong minded and he was persuasive and his answer was to his mother and father, get her for me, for she pleases me well.

Here he starts to sound like a real muscle head doesn't he?

He couldn't argue with them, except to say, I want what I want.

02 Samson: The Jaw Bone of a Donkey

So you're the Philistines, you're running upon Samson to arrest him, he's bound up with these ropes and as you're running towards him the spirit of the Lord comes on him and he goes pop!

And he's looking around and the Lord provided.

♪ We're in the midst of a series right now dealing with some lessons from the life of Samson.

Last week we talked about part 1, Samson Honey from a Lion.

This week we're in part 2, there will probably be 3 parts.

This week we're talking about the jawbone of a donkey.

It's probably a good idea to give you a little bit of what was going on in the nation of Israel during the times of Samson.

Samson when he was a teenager, he lived during the time of Eli.

When Eli was priest, if you know you read 1 Samuel, There was a lot of compromise, a lot of unfaithfulness the sons of Eli were real scoundrels there was quite a bit of scandal among ministry during that time if you know what I'm saying.

During this time, you read for instance in 1 Samuel chapter 40 the Philistines fought and Israel was defeated and every man fled to his tent and there was a very great slaughter and there fell of Israel 30, 000 foot soldiers.

The battle just a few days earlier, 4, 000 had died.

This is happening, this is the world that Samson was born into.

The Philistines had subjugated the people of Israel.

The Philistines were divided into a confederacy of 5 kingdoms and they called them the lords of the Philistines.

The Philistines also had mastered the making of iron weapons.

You read in the story of David in 1 battle between Saul and Jonathan against the Philistines it says the only people in the kingdom that had iron swords were Saul and his son.

The Philistines were very careful that if the Israelites wanted to sharpen their weapons, they said, you come to us and sharpen them.

If you need to sharpen a farm tool, you come to us.

But we're not letting you have any weapons.

If you have any weapons, you're in big trouble.

And it was a time of great discouragement.

Now people can't fight when they don't have courage.

You know what God told Joshua when they entered the promised land?

They were going to have to fight against some very well-armed enemies.

And God said, you go to Joshua 1, verse 6.

Be strong and of good courage, For this people you shall divide an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers verse 7 only be strong and very courageous But you might observe to do all that the law which Moses my servant commanded you jump over to verse 9 have not I?

Commanded you be strong and of good courage.

Do not be afraid or dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Now if I've got that part, if I know that God is with me, then I don't have to be afraid, do I?

And you can be not only, does he say courageous, courageous?

By the way, Moses repeats these words to Joshua before he dies.

God then tells Joshua in person Joshua was able to accomplish great exploits because he believed God was with him.

And do we have someone that's promised to be with us?

Did Jesus say, I am with you always, even to the end of the world?

Then should Christians be courageous even though we're living in enemy country?

So the story of Samson is really very relevant for us even today.

So you go to Judges chapter 15, it says, now the Philistines went up and encamped in Judah and they deployed themselves against Lehi.

Lehi got its name from what's about to happen but the Bible writer is using the name that everyone knew it by now.

So they encamp in this valley that's known as Lehi and the people of Judah the leaders come out and they send some emissaries to this big army of thousands of Philistines have come and camped against them.

They say, wait, wait, what's the problem?

You know they march up, a bunch of them trembling with a white flag.

And the Philistines tell them, we've come to arrest Samson and to do unto him as he has done to us.

And so instead of the men of Judah going to Samson and saying, look, you got us into this, you get us out, we're going to fight behind you, we've got your back.

They go to Samson and they basically say, don't you know that the Philistines are our masters?

They had resigned themselves to be slaves.

How many of you remember when the children of Israel had a hard time in the wilderness they would frequently say, wasn't it better back in Egypt just being slaves?

Why don't we get another leader and let's all go back and serve the Egyptians.

At least, you know, we'll have more onions there.

They were complaining because, you know, they just had manna every day.

They said, we missed the fish and the onions.

Isn't it amazing how no matter how bad times might be, in looking back, they seem to be the good old days.

So these 3, 000 men of Judah, they come and they approach Samson up in the rock.

They said, we've come down to arrest you that we might deliver you into the hands of the Philistines, his own people.

And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me yourselves.

So they spoke to him saying, no, we'll tie you securely and deliver you into their hand, but we will surely not kill you.

Now isn't that sad that God's people would be the vehicle of turning over their champion instead of...I mean look at what Samson did alone.

What if he had blown the trumpet and the whole army?

What if he had blown the trumpet and all of Israel had rallied behind them?

How much more God wanted to do for them that never happened?

Now you realize as we're talking about Samson and the Philistines, we're talking about Jesus and sin.

We're talking about not your being attacked by a Canaanite nation but you're being attacked by the devil.

Are you content and do you consent to just letting the devil rule over you?

My Bible says greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

You know, the miracles in the Bible, we're getting ready to read a couple of them, seem to come in waves.

There are clusters of miracles and then there's long periods where nothing amazing happens.

And there are different levels of miracles.

You see a great cluster of miracles happening during the time of Moses when they came out of Egypt, through the wilderness and when they entered Egypt.

You see a great cluster of miracles during the time of Elijah and Elisha.

You see a great cluster of miracles happening during the time of Jesus and the apostles.

And Samson sort of stands out as a high point of just miracle after miracle.

I mean they had some amazing victories, but you couldn't always call them miracles.

Samson's power was a supernatural power that was not attributed to spending a lot of time in the gym.

It's that the spirit of the Lord came over him, not that you should quit your gym membership.

And so they tie him up and they hand him over.

Didn't the religious leaders who are called Jews, and you know Jews are not Hebrews you could be an Arab and be a Hebrew technically, because Hebrews descended from Abraham.

03 Samson: Conquered by Compromise

The devil is trying to make a monkey out of every 1 of you.

If he's got you thinking you can continue in a life of sin and everything's going to end well, you're being a fool.

We're continuing a series that we began a couple of weeks ago dealing with the Bible character of Samson.

And today in particular we're going to be talking about Samson who was conquered by compromise.

Samson's story is something of a paradox, because through the story of Samson we see shadows of Jesus.

He was 1 of the judges, a leader, a type of Christ in some respects many failures, but of course David failed and Abraham failed and yet there were things in their life that were clearly types of Christ.

And so you'll see as we conclude I'm going to do my best to bring out a picture of Jesus in all of this.

Go to verse 4, Judges 16 verse 4 "...afterward it happened that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah." Sorek was a little bit downhill, right on the border.

It was a place that was famous for wonderful grapes.

Right on the border of the Philistines and the people of Israel, the tribe of Dan.

And maybe Samson was thinking, well look, you know I sure like so many things about the Philistines.

He spent a lot of time with the Philistines, I mean that's how he ended up marrying 1 of them.

He thought, I'm going to find the halfway ground between the 2.

He was looking for a compromise, and he found a girl that lived in Sork, Delilah, may have been very beautiful says he loved her, but she sold him out.

And so when he falls in love with Delilah, and by the way the name Delilah means consumer.

It means something that is feeble, and she made Samson who was so strong feeble He was consumed through this relationship.

So the lords of the Philistines come down to her.

They said to her, entice him and find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we might overpower him, that we might bind him to afflict him.

And every 1 of us will give you 1100 pieces of silver." Now there were 5 lords of the Philistines.

That we see several other places in the Bible.

They were like governors, it was a joint kingdom and that means 5, 500 if I'm right pieces of silver.

Now a piece of silver would be worth about $20 in today's currency.

The amount of money that they're offering her is approximately $110, 000 just to see if they could find out where the secret was.

By the way, that's 183 times what was offered for Jesus, again it was silver well now if Samson's strength was because his mother ate very carefully and he had good prenatal care and he was born just super strong and he had big muscles then it would have been obvious where his strength was.

But the spirit of the Lord came on him and he had supernatural strength.

There is a spiritual thing happening here.

You remember even the king of the Moabites said 1 time called Balaam, he said look, it's obvious God is with these people, I've got to find the secret to their strength, if you could come and fight fire with fire if you just curse them, it's a spiritual battle and we're going to fight in a spiritual way.

So they said to Lila, there's a secret here, there's something spiritual going on here.

I mean maybe, you know the Bible doesn't say Samson could have been 5'5", shorter than me he could have worn glasses and looked like a computer nerd and the spirit of the Lord would come on him and he'd get his donkey jaw bone and go out, smite hip and thigh and you can't prove me wrong I mean he may not have the classes, but it doesn't say anywhere he was big, do you realize that?

Matter of fact when the spirit of the Lord left him it says he was like everyone else.

So Delilah says to Sam, so please tell me where your great strength lies.

And with what might you be bound and afflicted?

Now right away if you're dating a girl, she starts asking that question, How could you be tied up and tormented?

I'd say, you know, I'm probably dating the wrong girl.

But you know, when you're being governed by your feelings instead of the truth, you make a lot of bad decisions.

And Samson said, well if they bind me with 7 fresh bow strings that had not yet dried, a bow string now bow strings were very strong because it needed to hold a strong bow, it needed to maintain the tension of a strong bow.

They'd find the very strongest fiber, it's like a piano string for us.

They'd find the strongest fiber they could find and when dried it could handle a long arrow and not break.

And he said, get fresh new ones, they're not worn.

And you think, well nobody's gonna break out of that.

Tie me up with that and I'll be as weak as other men.

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Samson

01 Samson: Honey from a Lion

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