The Riddle of Samson

The Book of Judges demonstrates how God rescued the Israelites from their rebellion. Even one of their famous judges was rebellious. This is the pattern of spiritual decline that we're going to see here in the Book of Judges. And all of this you see is very intentional. But if you don't see the big picture, you might not notice that. And you might say, well, why is this crazy Samson in this story? He does one bad thing after another. Yeah, it's showing the spiritual decline of Israel. God used a series of judges to free Israel from the oppressive nations that surrounded them. Israel rebelled, a nation would conquer, and a judge would rise up to save them. Welcome to the Saturday edition of renewing your mind. As we begin a weekend study on the highlights, we might say the low lights of a judge named Samson. Unwise, deceptive, worldly, and full of lust. Samson didn't model the traits of a godly man. Yet he was used for God's purposes. And over the coming Saturdays, Ligonier's chairman, W. Robert Godfrey, will help us to make sense of these contrasts. And we'll learn that this is far more than a fascinating children's bedtime story about a man with long hair and supernatural strength. If you'd like to own the complete series, it is available for you right now when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org in support of this daily outreach. In addition to the DVD, we'll add the series and study guide to your learning library in the free Ligonier app. Well, let's begin with a message titled The Riddle of Samson. We're beginning a study today on Samson in the Book of Judges. And I think many of us come to thinking about Samson as a story. We think we know. We might think we know it because there have been a lot of cultural adaptations of the Samson story, as well as the story in the Bible itself. Probably some of us in Sunday school studied the Samson story. And we remember how strong Samson was. We remember Samson and the lion. We remember Samson and the jawbone of the ass. We remember Samson and Delilah. And yet I think we'll find as we get into the Samson story. And particularly as we look at it in the context of the Book of Judges, that there's a lot about Samson we've missed. And that there's a lot of prophet, spiritual prophet to the Samson story as we really dig into it. And that's what I hope we'll do together. My own interest in Samson started a couple of years ago when I went to the opera in San Diego and they were performing Samson's Samson and Delilah. And as we were sitting waiting for the opera to begin, we had the opera program. And there were opera notes. And the San Diego opera receives a lot of its support from Jewish donors. And the director of the opera had very, I thought cleverly, asked the leading rabbi of the city to write some notes. To give opera goers a kind of Jewish look at Samson in the Old Testament. And so I read that article and found it fascinating because the basic approach of the rabbi was to say, the story of Samson is never read in the synagogue. Neither in the regular Sabbath services nor in the special high holiday services. And the reason for that is Samson is not regarded as a righteous man. And his story is not inspiring. And the rabbi did not put it this way. He was much more elegant. But basically he said, Samson was a bum. And we don't read his story in official services because it is not a story to inspire righteous living. And it really struck me very forcefully. This very negative look at Samson. And as we get into the details of his life, we'll begin to understand why the rabbi thought that way. There is a lot that is not to be emulated in the life of Samson. But I couldn't help but think how different the rabbis appraisal was from the appraisal of the book of Hebrews. Where Samson is listed as one of the examples of faith. And it got me thinking because I thought, here again, we are seeing a real contrast between rabbinical religion and apostolic religion. The rabbis have one evaluation of Samson because of their approach to religion which is based on achieved righteousness that we gain as individuals by the way we live. And apostolic religion which is all about the work of Christ and the gift of grace that reconciles sinners to God. And that drew me then into the Samson story. I wanted to think more particularly about how the apostles were reading the Samson story and contrast to the way in which the rabbis had been reading the Samson story. And the more I got into the story, the more exciting I found it to be. And the more complex it was in the way it was written and laid down for us in the scripture. I think sometimes, probably most of the time, most of us, when we're reading Old Testament history, we read through it for the facts and dates sort of. And we miss the literary structure which is often very related to the real meaning of the story. And that's why we're going to take some time to go rather deliberately and carefully through the story of Samson. Because I think it's only in that way that we get the full message of what the Bible is saying to us, what God is saying to us through the story of Samson in the context of the book. Of the book of judges as a whole and indeed in the context of Israel's history as a whole in the Old Testament. Now the Samson story has inspired a lot of people of the great Puritan poet John Milton wrote an epic poem on Samson called Samson agonisties. And in that poem, Milton has a great line about Samson. He says, Samson is a mirror of our fickle state. Fickles one of my favorite words. That is he's a mirror of how unreliable we are. And that got me thinking too. Yeah, what does Samson as a mirror show us about ourselves? What kind of warnings from the word of God come to us as we look at Samson as a mirror of ourselves. And so we're going to sort of take that phrase of Milton that Samson is a mirror and run with it. Another way of looking at Samson is Samson is something of a riddle. Why is it at the end of the day he can be held up as a example of faith. John Uptike, a great American novelist, referred to Samson as one of those enigmatic broods of the Old Testament. And he is an enigma in some ways. He's a mystery. What are we to make of him? And unless we can at least a little bit solve the riddle, and that's an appropriate way of talking about Samson because he loved riddles. And unless we can gain some insight into the enigma, into the hidden message, the secret of Samson, we won't know the right application of what God is really saying to us in this story. So we're going to try to look at this story very carefully, very considerably. And we're going to hope find the right warnings for us about spiritual failures to avoid. We're certainly going to see how this story points us to Christ. So one of the things I think the Old Testament over and over and over again says to the people of God is, you need a prophet, but you need a perfect prophet. You need a priest, but you need a perfect priest. You need a king, but you need a perfect king. The Old Testament is all about prophets who are pretty good and some kings who are pretty good and some priests who are pretty good, but none of them were perfect. But all of them pointed to that perfect prophet, priest and king who was to come. And the book of judges says, you need a judge, but you really need a perfect judge. And there aren't any perfect judges. For your encouragement, the closest to a perfect judge in the book of judges is Deborah. Now, all of you women should read the book of judges, because I think there are more women of importance in the book of judges than any other book of the Bible. And numbers of them are really very positive. There are a few negative ones. We tend to remember Delilah. She's not a role model. We'll come back to her. But it intrigued me as I got into studying the book of judges that there are fascinating women who are largely neglected, like AXA. You know, I've never met an AXA. It may not be the most Malif Lewis name to give a daughter, but she's a really fine role model of service to the Lord, the wife of Othneil, the daughter of Caleb. And then there's Deborah who really is terrific. And of course, when I was in high school, I always wanted to hear over and over again the story of Jail and her nail. So there are these remarkable women, positive and negative. And the whole book is just a book full of fascinating figures and fascinating stories. But as we'll see as we go along, we have to understand what's happening in the book as a whole to really appreciate the message and the meaning of each part of the book. And that's why I hope as we'll go along, this will be an adventure not only in figuring out the story of Samson and looking at the character of the book of judges, but I hope it'll really be an encouragement for us as to how we ought to do Bible study. Because it distresses me the way in which many Protestants have moved away from a genuinely Protestant way of reading the Bible. And what I mean by that is we turn the Bible into a kind of magic book. You know, you just open it up and you find a verse and you apply it to yourself and that gives you meaning and hope. Now that's not altogether wrong. When I was a college kid, I had an opportunity to study in Germany for a while and Pius Protestant Germans would begin every year with a little box. And in it were little rolled up pieces of paper and every piece of paper had a Bible verse on it. And you had a little stick and every day of the year you could stick your stick in the box and pull out your Bible verse and you open it. That was your verse for the day. Now that's not a terrible thing to have a verse for the day. It always felt a little like a fortune cookie, but anyway, it's not a terrible thing to have a verse for the day. But if you think there's something kind of magic about that, that this verse taken out of context will tell you what you need to know about your day, you may well get into trouble. You all know the example that people like me always use of that. You open the Bible at random and you point to a verse and it says Judas went out and hanged himself. And you find that not a helpful verse so you close your Bible back up and you open it up and you find a verse and it says go that one, do likewise. So that is not a way to read the Bible. And so I hope this will be sort of an adventure for us to get into the Bible and think about our need to read the Bible as a book. Now that may be so self evident that we hardly need to see it, but when you read any other book, you try to figure out what the author's after you look at the way he puts it together. You watch the way this story unfolds. You don't try to lift one sentence out of the book and make something of it disconnected from everything else in the book. And we need to get back to reading the Bible a little more that way. And so I hope this will encourage us to read the Bible and to grow in our understanding and appreciation of the Bible and particularly then learn the lessons that God would have for us from the life of Samson. And what we're going to see, I think, is very often to get the real message of the Bible, we have to keep both the big picture of the Bible and the specifics of the context we're looking at, the text we're looking at in our minds together. If we let the text at hand get disconnected from the big picture, we may not see what this text is really after. But if we just look at the big picture, then the text at hand becomes kind of bland and sounds like every other text. So we want the text to have its unique message, but we're really going to understand that only when we look at the whole big picture and see the message as a whole. So what is the context? What is the context we're going to be looking at? Well, Samson was a judge. That's the first thing we need to bear in mind. The clue is that he's in the Book of Judges. That's sort of the giveaway. Titles are important. So Samson is a judge. And when we look carefully at the Book of Judges, not all scholars have agreed about this, but I'm convinced, and you know, I'm always right, I'm convinced there are 12 judges in the Book of Judges. And I think this is very intentional on the author's part, because 12 is an important number in the Old Testament, and it relates to the tribes of Israel. It talks to the composition of God's people. It talks about how God is relating to His people. So I think in a certain sense, the Book of Judges is saying, this is my dealing with my people as a whole in this time period through these 12 judges. But then when we look carefully, we discovered that of the 12 judges, we are only told very much about six of them. We might almost be tempted to say the other six are fillers. Now we should never say that about anything in the Bible. Nothing is just a filler. But we're really only told a verse or two about six of the judges. So the first judge is Ophneal, the son-in-law of Caleb. We have a fair bit of information about Ophneal, and then we have A-Hood, who's always all children's favorite judge, because he buries the sword in the flesh of the king, who is so fat that the sword disappears. So we know something about Ophneal and then we have A-Hood, and then we have one of the minor judges, Shamgar. We know very little about Shamgar. And then we move to Debra. And Debra is a judge about whom we know a great deal. And years and years ago, I first got to thinking about the Book of Judges in reading Hebrews, because in the Book of Hebrews, Barak is commended. And Debra is not mentioned. Now is this male chauvinism, leaving the women out? Why is Barak mentioned and not Debra? Well, I think the answer is that on that list, which includes Barak and Jeff and Samson, they're all losers. They're all sinners. Very obviously sinners, saved by grace. Debra is not so obviously a sinner. We know she is a sinner, because we have good theology. We know the big picture. But she's presented very positively in the Book of Judges. And I think Hebrews' point is God saves the weak. God saves the needy. Debra is not a good example of that. It's true of Debra, but she's not a good example of it. So we have Debra. And I would argue that Barak is not a judge. He's a prominent figure in the Book, but he's not a judge. He's in a supporting role. Debra is the leader. And Debra is raised up as a mother in Israel, because the fathers in Israel have failed. And God is testifying to his saving purpose through her. And then after Debra, Gideon, who's sort of at the center of the book, and Gideon is a very interesting judge. We probably think we know a lot about Gideon too, but Gideon starts out really well and then fades. And Gideon is a sort of transition point in the Book of Judges then. We have the very positive judges, Othnil, Ehood, and Debra. And now we have Gideon who starts out well, but slips late in his life. That should be a warning to all of us. It doesn't get easier to be a Christian as you get older. We think we ought to be able to coast a little bit when we get older. Not true. You got to stay at it. And Gideon is that transition point. Then after Gideon, we have a lot of talk about his son, Abimolek. But I don't think Abimolek is a judge either. He's a kind of anti-judge, contrasted with the true judges of Israel. Abimolek, you remember, has a Hebrew name, means my father is King. Now, Abimolek presumably didn't name himself. Maybe this was Gideon's pride. But Abimolek certainly lived as if his father had been King, and he was now. And what God was saying is, you're not King, and you're a danger to your people. So Gideon is a very important judge, and then we have Tolla and Jair, not important. You can write them down if you want, but they're not important. And then we come to Jeff though. Now we can spend a lot of time and have a lot of interesting discussion of Jeff though. There's the only person in the Old Testament that I can think of at least among the people of God who offered a human sacrifice. And this has mystified many people. I can explain it to you, but I don't know if I have time. So we have Jeff as a major judge, and then we have Ibsan, Elon, and Abdon, three minor judges, and then Samson, the last. So Samson is the culminating judge, the last judge of the 12th, and his story is the longest story of a judge in the book of judges. Only slightly longer than Gideon's, but a little longer. And so we can really say that Gideon and Samson are the two most prominent judges, the ones most important in the telling of the story in a certain sense. And so Samson is the 12th of the judges, the last of the judges in the book. Now we know Samuel is a judge. So the book of judges we know is not exhaustive about the judges. They don't necessarily mention every judge that ever was one way of looking at the book of judges is as a series of snapshots. This is not a comprehensive history of Israel during the period between Joshua and Saul. That's roughly the period it's looking at, but it's not comprehensive. It's not telling us the whole history. It's a series of family snapshots from around Israel. Because each of the judges is largely regional. They're not ruling the whole country. They're leading a section of the country usually. So if you want a history of Israel in every detail, judges is not the book for you. And that immediately alerts us to the fact it's obviously not what God intended. God is not giving us an encyclopedia full of interesting tidbits, which is the way you eventually ruin people's interest in history, endless tidbits that have no meaning or connection. Rather, he's offering us a series of snapshots to show the decline of Israel spiritually. And that decline, that picture of decline, you know, be like us getting snapshots out of our family album. And I could give you a snapshot of me when I was two and I was really adorable. My mother tells me that. So, and then I could have a snapshot when I was, you know, a teenager, not looking so good. And then, you know, when I was 30, better, and then, you know, 70, you know, who is that old guy? And so, that's a little bit of what we're seeing here. The spiritual decline, the spiritual suffering, the growing suffering of Israel. And that's part of what the minor judges show us. Because when we look at the little we are told about the minor judges, what we discover is they're ruling a shorter and shorter period. So, the faithful judges rule 40 years. And they get shorter and shorter. The last three minor judges each are ruling less than 10 years. You see, this is decline. They're not experiencing the blessing of the Lord. They're not experiencing the longevity with which God had blessed the judges earlier. And then we also see their families are shrinking. There's another sign of the Lord's judgment. They're having fewer and fewer children. Children were assigned to the blessing of the Lord in the old covenant. And that's shrinking away. And this does help us understand Jeff the, you see, Gideon had many children. Jeff the had one daughter, any killed her. That's spiritual decline. You see, Ann Samson had no children and killed himself. So, this is the pattern of spiritual decline that we're going to see here in the book of judges. And all of this you see is very intentional. But if you don't see the big picture, you might not notice that. And you might say, well, why is this crazy Samson in this story? He does one bad thing after another. Yeah, it's showing the spiritual decline of Israel because for most of the book, the judges are better than the people and God established the office of judge to save the people deliver the people. But by the time we get to Samson, his life is spiritually indistinguishable from the life of the people. He is Israel. He's not really the savior of Israel. He is Israel revealing in his life, in his weakness, in his failure, all of the weaknesses and growing spiritual failures of Israel. Now, you may be thoroughly depressed. Do we really need a mirror like that? And I'm going to try to argue as we go along, yeah, we do need a mirror like that. Because we need to see ourselves as we really are, not to seek the Lord's blessing, the Lord's strength, the Lord's deliverance. Samson is a puzzling character, isn't he? Is he an example of faith or disobedience? Thanks for being with us today on renewing your mind. I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Today, teenagers have gathered in North Florida for a student conference titled Always Ready. I'd like to ask you to please take a moment to pray for these young people that the teaching they hear today from me, Eric Bancroft and Stephen Nichols would help them to stand firm and to defend their faith. And if you'd like to join us for future events, whether always ready, renewing your mind live, our national conference or other events, you can find them listed at ligandier.org slash events. Well, our feature teacher today is W. Robert Godfrey. And this message is from his series The Life of Samson. As I'm sure you can tell already, there is much more here than what you might have learned in Sunday School. So consider using this for an upcoming Bible study or for an adult Sunday School class. It's a 10 message series and we'll send you all 10 on DVD and we'll unlock the messages and study guide in the ligandier app. When you give a donation and support of renewing your mind and the global outreach of ligandier ministries, which includes events like the Always Ready student event I mentioned earlier. You can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. We'll be using the link in the podcast show notes. Today's resource bundle is our way of saying thank you. So give your gift before this offer ends at midnight at renewingyourmind.org. Well, next Saturday, Dr. Godfrey will remind us that Israel actually needed Samson despite his moral and spiritual weakness. So hope you can join us then. Next Saturday, here on renewing your mind.