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Now, open your Bible and let's join Pastor Skip Heitzig for today's teaching.

Skip Heitzig: Samson was an elephant in strength, but a babe in weakness. You know the Sunday school stories. You know he could rip lions in half. You know he could take 300 foxes, tie their tails together, light it on fire, and burn the fields of the Philistines. You know that he could take the jawbone of a donkey and and kill the enemy. In fact, in this story, he even runs 38 miles with doors on his back. You know, some guys go to the gym and work out with weights. He worked out with doors. Incredibly strong. At the end of his life, he brings the house down, literally.

He stands in the temple of Dagon between two pillars, pushes them aside, God answers his final prayer, destroys himself and his enemies in that temple. Now, it would be great to have Samson as your big brother. I had a big brother who was 6 ft 8. 6 ft 8. I loved when he was around. I loved when I got bullied. I go, Bob. Be great to have Samson to do that. He He'd be a great big brother. He was a horrible spiritual leader. In fact, you read the story, it seems like he has no spiritual values at all.

In chapter 13, verse 1, again, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. Now, that's the longest period of their oppression in the book of Judges. In the 350 years, this 40 year length is the longest period. And it's because of the Philistines. Let me tell you a little bit about about the Philistines. The Philistines originated in the area of Greece and the Aegean Sea, the islands around the Aegean Sea. They had been forced out of their homeland.

And in 1200 BC, they sailed from that area, went to Egypt, and attacked the Egyptians and won. Egypt Egypt was a superpower. Philistines beat the Egyptians, then started moving up the coast from Egypt into the land of Israel and settled along the coastlands of ancient Israel in five principal cities mentioned frequently in your Old Testament. They are a Gaza, still a city today in the territories called the Gaza Strip. Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron. Those are the five Philistine cities. Typically, on a tour of Israel will take a half day and we'll go down to the Philistine country into the valley of Elah where David slew Goliath and see where Samson was born in that area called the Philistine country.

The Philistines, once they settled in the land, they had an advantage over Israel because they were advanced in metallurgy. They had a lot of metalsmiths, blacksmiths. They knew how to mine iron and smelt it and form weapons. And so they had that advantage over Israel. So as the Philistines are oppressing, God gets hold of the parents of Samson. Verse 5, we'll jump to the story. For behold, you shall conceive, God says to them, and bear a son, and no razor shall come upon his head. For the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb.

And he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines. So God God had great plans for him. The And And the plans God made for him was to be a man of God. But he becomes a man of the flesh. He really wants nothing to do with God ruling over his life. Very strong, but very weak morally. Now, he's to take a vow of a Nazirite. It's unusual because God says he's going to be a Nazirite from his birth. A Nazirite vow is usually for a certain period of time, had a beginning, had an ending.

You don't cut your hair. You cut it at the end of the vow and you burn it. You don't touch wine. You don't touch any of the dead to be defiled. There are certain restrictions for a Nazirite. He was to be a lifelong Nazirite along the lines of later on John the Baptist in the New Testament. That's how he is set up. Go down to verse 24. So the woman, that is Samson's mom, bore a son and called him Shimshon. Now, I didn't say it right. It's It's Samson in English, but in Hebrew, Shimshon, which is a word that means of the sun or sunny boy.

So sunny boy's name probably comes from the sun worship, Baal worship, so that his parents were already influenced by the paganism of the Philistines that were around them. He is called sunny boy or of the son, Samson, Shimshon. Says the child grew and the Lord blessed him. And the spirit of the Lord, watch this, the spirit of the Lord began to move upon him at Mahane Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol. Spirit of the Lord began to move upon Samson. This is the secret of Samson's strength. It's not his hair. It 's not his arms. It's the spirit of God moving upon him.

Jesus in the New Testament will say, without me, you can do how much? Nothing. So the strength of this man was not his hair, was not his arms, was not the fact that he worked out with doors and ran 38 miles, got really in shape. It was the spirit of God that was on him. That's the secret of this man's strength. Now, I want to stop right here and make a note of this. At key times in Israel's history, both with judges and with kings, the spirit of God will come upon a person to empower that person to accomplish God's work, and in this case, to accomplish deliverance.

The fact that God uses him does not mean that God endorses him. You need to know that cuz you go, well, this guy's wicked. It says the spirit of God came upon him. He's not in him. He does come upon him for a specific season to accomplish a specific task. The fact that God uses a person doesn't mean that God endorses a person. Now, you should know that from your reading of the Bible. God raises up a guy by the name of King Cyrus, a Persian, a pagan, hates Israel, oppresses Israel at first, helps them later.

But he 's called the servant of God. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, hated the Jews, burned their temple, took them captive. But it says God used him. And he was a servant of the Lord. A Caesar, in the New Testament, God uses Caesar to make all the world get registered, which is why Joseph and Mary leave Nazareth to go to Bethlehem so that Jesus can be born in Bethlehem. So all the kings of the world can be used by God at specific times. And the fact that God uses them does not mean that God endorses them.

So that's a very very important concept to get. Now, God wants to save his people. And God wants to rule over his people. The truth is, this is all he's got to work with. These knuckleheads called judges, so flawed, so imperfect. That's how bad Israel had become. That's really the point. God really wants to do a work, but all he's got to work with is numbskulls like this. So he does. Well, here's the story. Shimshon, Sammy boy, sees two girls, two Philistine girls. One is unnamed, the other is named. You know her name. It's Samson and Delilah.

Well, when he meets them, it is it's lusted for sight. He just says, she's so beautiful, I have to have her. And he has both of them. He is a man that has potential, but he is weak. Why? He didn't have the power inside to counteract the pressure outside. He didn't have the power inside to counteract the pressure outside. In the 1960s, there was a submarine that America had called the Thresher submarine. It was going through its paces up by Cape Cod in the Atlantic Ocean. And when it was doing its depth test, very thick skinned hull.

But it went down to a depth and it never came up. The hull imploded. Even though it was stout, it it was built well. It seemed like it could withstand the pressure, but the water pressure on the outside was too much that it just crumpled that submarine. And all the crew died in that horrible disaster. What's odd is that the same depth where the submarine crumpled, there's little fish that swim around with very thin skin. Almost Well, it is. It's translucent. It's almost like you can see through it. But they're just sort of swimming by the submarine like, see ya.

No problem. This is easy. They're not imploding. You know why? The pressure on the inside equals the pressure on the outside. And they can manage. We have a power, God promises us, a person, the holy spirit of God, that is equal and stronger stronger than the pressure on the outside. Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. You have a power on the inside that can withstand the pressure on the outside. Samson didn't live that way. So this whole section is simply to show how bad things had gotten in Israel.

And this is only with the leaders. The last section, chapter 17 through 21, shows Israel as a whole and how depraved not just the leaders, the judges were, even though God used them, he didn't endorse them, but just how corrupt and how bad the nation had gotten, how depraved uh the whole bunch of them had become. And we have two tragic stories that sound and read like soap operas really.

Guest (Male): This is Connect with Skip Heitzig. Your generosity helps share clear Bible teaching with people who need the truth and hope of God's word. And as Christmas approaches, we'd love to thank you with two meaningful resources designed to encourage faith in you and the people you love. The Daily God Journal by Pastor Skip will guide you through scripture and prayer every day for an entire year. And Nate Heitzig's Christmas Under the Tree tells the story of Jesus from the cradle to the cross in a way your whole family can experience together. Keep these resources or give them as meaningful Christmas gifts while your generosity helps connect more people to God's word.

Receive both when you give $50 or more to share biblical truth with more people around the world. Request your copies at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. Now, here's more from Pastor Skip.

Skip Heitzig: Now, the last section, chapter 17 through 21, is punctuated by a sentence that is mentioned four times. Four times in in these chapters, this sentence is mentioned. In chapter 17, chapter 18, chapter 19, chapter 21, this phrase. And there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So the author, the narrator, begins the book by telling the successes, moves to telling the whole story of the book of Judges in a nutshell with the sin cycle. Then he goes through the judges that the God used them, but they were pretty corrupt.

Now, he ends the book by showing us two horrible soap opera stories. Chapter 17 and 18 is the story of a guy by the name of Micah, not Micah the prophet, a different Micah. Micah in this story builds a private temple to an idol, private temple, private worship, even found a corrupt Levite to become his own private priest. That private priesthood and private temple is plundered by a private army from the tribe of Dan. 600 men from the tribe of Dan. They uh plunder the temple. They take the idol with them. They go north. These Danites go north to a little peaceful town called Laish.

And as you read the story, they plunder the city, they burn it to the ground, and they murder all the inhabitants in Laish. That's how bad it's gotten. When Israel rejects Yahweh as its God, might makes right. They just start killing and plundering and murdering. They're bullying people in the territory. Verse uh chapter 18, verse 27, they took the things Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him and went to Laish to a people quiet and secure. This is up north by Mount Hermon, beautiful area, and struck them with the edge of the sword and burned the city with fire.

There was no deliverer because it was far from Sidon. They had no ties with anyone. It was in the valley that belongs to Beth Rehob. And so they built the city and dwelt there. And they called the name of the city Dan after the name of their father. Now, again, when you go on a tour to Israel with us, we will take you to this town called Laish, which is now called Tel, which is a little archaeological hill, Tel Dan or the city of Dan. The remains are still there. In fact, the very ancient Canaanite gate through which we believe Abraham entered into this city, mentioned in Genesis, is still intact.

So we invite you to come and see it. Now, the final story and we'll close. The final story is the worst. They save the worst for last. This final story is the most disturbing story in the book. It's a story about sexual abuse and violence that leads to Israel's first civil war. Now, this is the whole point. The whole point is here is a nation that said, we're going to serve the Lord, Josh. We're going to do it with you and your house. And they failed. They got an F on the test. They turned away from the God who loves them, the God who wants delivered them from Egypt.

Now has to be delivered. They have to be delivered from themselves. They become so corrupt. Chapter 19, I'll sum it up, is about a hillbilly Levite who takes a concubine. By the way, Levites aren't supposed to have one, so that gives you insight into his morality. The concubine belongs to him in those days. She leaves the corrupt Levite, has an affair with another man, leaves the other man, goes back home to her father's house. The Levite finds her, fetches her, takes her back home, but on the way as they're going toward Jerusalem, they stop at a town called Gibeah cuz they need to stay the night.

Nobody will let them in. One guy lets them in. As they are inside the house of the host, the men of the city gather around the house demanding that the man come out that they can have relations with him. It's very much to another chapter 19 in the Bible, Genesis chapter 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. So they say, bring out the man. Instead, the host, to satisfy the sexual appetite of these men, gives his daughter to them and the Levite's concubine. They abuse these women all night till they're dead. So the Levite has a concubine.

Concubine has an affair. The host gives the girls to the perverted strangers in the city. See how depraved this story is. Chapter 19, verse 27. Now, if you think that was bad, sorry, but I'm going to read this part. When her master arose in the morning and opened the door, this is the Levite, the doors of the house, and went out to go his way, there was his concubine fallen at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. She's dead. She has been abused all night. And he said to her, get up and let's be going.

But there was no answer. So the man lifted her on the donkey. The man got up and went to his place. When he entered his house, he took a knife, laid hold of his concubine, divided her into 12 pieces limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. So he dismembered his dead concubine's body in 12 care packages to the tribes of Israel to shock them and to summons them into a fight against the tribe of Benjamin who perpetrated the crime. Chapter 20 shows the attack of the nation of Israel against the tribe of Benjamin.

They lost the first few attempts. In this civil war, the Israelite lost 22,000 men. That's the first day. Benjamin lost 26,100 men. And they almost the children of Israel almost totally annihilated the entire tribe of Benjamin. There were only 600 men left after the civil war ended. 600 men left. And that had to be remedied so we could grow the tribe back up. Chapter 21, verse 24. We come to the end of the book. So the children of Israel departed from there at that time. Every man to his tribe and family. Says after the civil war, they went out from there.

Every man to his inheritance. In those days, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That verse sums up the book. It does in one verse what that chapter chapter 2 did in a whole chapter, giving you the foresight phases of the sin cycle. This sums it up. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. But this verse sets up the stage for the next book. The next book is what? Ruth. Ruth tells the ancestry of King David. So everyone doing what's right in his own eyes sets up for the ancestry of David and the yearning of the people in the next book after that 1 Samuel for a king.

So it ends setting it up for a new beginning. Let me give you three takeaway lessons. Number one, God often uses the most unlikely people to accomplish his work. I hope you say, oh good. Because the book of Judges proves in very graphic ways the truth that Paul will articulate in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians 1. God has chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise. I am confounded at the book of Judges. It's a confounding narrative. He did what? They did what? I'm confounded. The Lord reserves the right to use the worst people to accomplish his ends.

Number two, God is holy. And because God is holy, he cannot stand the presence of sin. That's why every time they turned away, God judged them till they cried out. God's soft heart of love rescued them. And they did it all over again. But God is holy and judges sin. Third lesson. Now, I'm going to ask you at this third lesson since we're almost done, and I'm going to even take a seat. As we close the book, I'm going to give you something that is I'm going to wax a little philosophical for a moment. Can I?

Abandoning absolutism leads to moral relativism. You know what absolutism is? You and I are absolutists. We believe in an absolute morality expressed in God's holy word. God hasn't changed from that. There's only one way to heaven. There's right, there's wrong, there's truth, there's error. We believe that. That's absolutism. If you don't believe that, if you push that away, then you become a moral relativist. Well, your truth isn't my truth, and everybody has their own truth and their own way of doing things, their own way of thinking. Hey, that's the last verse of the book. Every man did what was right in his own eyes.

So abandoning absolutism leads to moral relativism which leads to moral anarchy. It leads to moral anarchy. Think of the 200 years the nation survived and the steps that they took, what I read at the beginning. Nietzsche said God was dead, right? But he said this, if God is dead, then everything is permitted. If God is dead, then do anything you want cuz you're never going to face the bar of judgment. There is no God. You can do anything you want, have any pleasure you want as long as you want. If God is dead, everything is permitted.

So abandoning absolutism leads to moral relativism which leads to moral anarchy. You do whatever you want. We know better. There may not be a king in Israel, but there was a God in Israel. And God was watching and God is going to send a deliverer. Saul will be the first king. He'll blow it. David will be the man after God's own heart. But in David is the greater promise of the greater son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ. And every time they long for a king, they're longing for Jesus the Messiah to come and deliver from sin and punishment and abandonment.

So it sets it up for the hope of the gospel. That's the book of Judges.

Guest (Male): We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give $50 or more this month, we'll thank you with the Daily God Journal by Pastor Skip and Christmas Under the Tree by Nate Heitzig. Keep them for yourself or share them as meaningful Christmas gifts that encourage faith and point the people you love toward God. And your generosity helps connect with Skip continue sharing clear Bible teaching with people searching for truth and hope. Request both resources today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. See you next time.

Guest (Male): Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.

Guest (Male): What is God doing in Israel today and how does it connect to biblical prophecy? Discover the answer at the 2027 Epicenter Summit in Jerusalem. Hear renowned Christian leaders including Joel Rosenberg, Greg Laurie, and Graham Lots, Jack Graham, Mike Huckabee, and Skip Heitzig. See the Bible come alive with Skip and Lenya Heitzig's tour of Israel April 5 through 16, 2027. Explore Jerusalem, Galilee, the Jordan River, and more. Visit Israel, deepen your faith, experience scripture like never before. Learn more at connectwithskip.com/israel.