Truth That Changes Lives

JP Jones: Samson, from a human perspective, was the strongest man who ever lived, and there's nobody even close to him. But his strength wasn't enough to give him victory in his personal battles.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining us on Truth That Changes Lives. Pastor JP Jones is the senior pastor of Crossline Community Church in Laguna Hills, California, and a professor in Biblical studies at Biola University. Today on Truth That Changes Lives, Pastor JP will be giving us a message from a series entitled Heroes. Let's listen as JP gives us part one of Samson.

JP Jones: If you have your Bibles, would you open to the book of Judges in the Hebrew scriptures? The book of Judges. It's probably that part in your Bible where all the pages are stuck together because you haven't been there maybe ever before. Judges chapter 13. Chapters 13, 14, and 15 is the story of Samson. In an odd way, the story of Samson reminds me of one of my favorite Westerns. I've probably seen it 15 times. It stars Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef. It's called *The Good, the Bad and the Ugly*.

In this Western, made in the '60s—one of the spaghetti Westerns, Italian Westerns that Clint Eastwood starred in—it takes place in the Civil War, and it's the story of these three desperados and their lives, how they intertwine with one another. By relative standards, one of them is the good—that's Clint Eastwood; he's also known as Blondie. There's the bad—that's Lee Van Cleef; he's also known as Angel Eyes. And then there's the ugly—that's Eli Wallach, who is Tuco. These guys have a drama that unfolds, and true to their names, one's good, one's bad, one's ugly.

That took three characters in that movie. In the story of Samson, we've got the good, the bad, and the ugly in one guy. One guy. The story of Samson is the story of one guy who at times is good, at other times he's bad, and at other times he's ugly. Here is what I want us to say, if you were to say, "Bottom line it for me, JP. What's the big picture?" Here's the big picture. If God could use Samson, he could use you.

If God could use Samson, he could use me. Nobody is outside the grace of God. Nobody is outside the scope of God's choice to be someone who can be in a relationship with him, to be someone who can be used by him to accomplish his kingdom purposes. I realize I'm looking out now to an audience near 500 people here this morning, and among us, some of us really don't believe that God could use us.

Some of us think maybe we've failed God so badly there's no redemption. Some of us maybe feel like the struggles that I have are so defining of who I am, I just don't know if God still has a plan for my life. All of those fears and questions are lies. They're lies. The truth is God can use anybody, and God can redeem anyone's life, and God can forgive any sin, and God can restore any person.

If God could use Samson, he could use us. So let's take a look at the life of Samson, see how he's a hero because his life has been put down for us in scripture, and it serves to help us understand what God can do in a person's life. I told you that this story is in Judges chapters 13, 14, and 15. The book of Judges is a transitional book that goes from the time of Joshua, when they conquered the land, and they took it over and they possessed their possession, to the time when God brought a king in Israel.

Unfortunately, everything that God said could happen did happen for Israel. Because he said, "You could forget all these miracles that I have done for you. You could forget this law that I've given to you. You could, rather than choose life, choose death." And guess what? What could happen did happen. They replaced worship of the one true God for worshipping the gods of all the people that lived in the Promised Land. They became idol worshippers. So the book of Judges is a cycle of apostasy—which is a word that means falling away from God—and repentance.

They went through these periods of worshipping false gods and adopting a value system of the world and then suffering the consequences of that, and then God raising up a judge, someone who would lead the people of Israel, give them physical, spiritual deliverance, and then the people repenting and coming back to worshipping the true God, and then cycling away in apostasy, and then God raising up a judge and then repentance coming back. Well, Samuel is the last of the judges of Israel during that period, and then after him comes a king. In the midst of that timeframe of the judges, different judges are highlighted, and their story is written down for us. Samson was one of those judges. He was one of the people that God used to bring some deliverance to the nation of Israel from their enemies and restore them back to looking to the one true God.

In Judges chapter 13, verses one to five, we see that Samson was ordained by God to judge Israel against the Philistines. This is what it says: "Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. So the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. A certain man of Zorah named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, he had a wife who was sterile and remained childless. The angel of the Lord appeared to her and said, 'You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son. Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor will be used on his head because the boy is to be a Nazarite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.' And the woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed him, and the spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol."

Here's the account of Samson's birth. It was a miraculous birth. Samson's mother was infertile. But God had a plan to raise up a deliverer, and so what physically was impossible, God spiritually made possible. God spoke to this woman and later on to her husband and said, "I'm going to give you a child, and he's going to be a deliverer. And he's to be set apart from birth as consecrated to me." This was demonstrated in the Nazarite vow. A Nazarite vow in the history of Israel was where a person made a commitment to be totally dedicated to the Lord, and they acted upon that commitment by not drinking any wine, abstaining from certain rituals and experiences, and not cutting their hair.

The custom, despite what modern pictures give us of the Old Testament world, was that men cut their hair short. So for a man to have long hair was considered to be a disgrace unless he was taking a vow to the Lord. A New Testament example of someone who followed a Nazarite vow was John the Baptist. So Samson from birth was set apart as someone consecrated to God, and there was a supernatural call upon his life. He fit into the plan that God had to deliver Israel from their enemies—their historic enemies, the Philistines.

Second observation in the story of Samson is this: God gave Samson supernatural strength to defeat his enemies. Samson wasn't just a tough guy. He didn't just have a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He was supernaturally empowered by God with superhuman strength that he used to judge Israel. In Judges 14, 15, and 16, it says: "Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. And as they approached the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. And the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power, so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he had done."

Here's the scene. He's walking out in the wilderness, and a lion comes out to attack him, and he just grabs him and just rips him physically apart. That was the kind of strength that Samson had. This strength is demonstrated in other passages. In Judges 14:19, it says: "Then the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. He went down to Ashkelon, struck down 30 of their men, stripped them of their belongings." Now this is kind of a funny story when you read it. I encourage you to read the whole story of Samson. What happens is Samson marries this girl who he shouldn't have married in the first place, and the Philistines were making fun of Samson.

He gave them a riddle that they couldn't figure out. But they pressured his wife and threatened her that if she didn't get the answer to the riddle, that they were going to kill her and her family. So she starts putting the pressure on Samson, and finally Samson says, "You're driving me crazy with all your nagging. I'll tell you the riddle." So he finally tells her the riddle, and then she tells the guys, and the guys answer the riddle for Samson. Now Samson looks like the fool in front of everybody at the party because he said, "Here's a riddle you can't figure out."

He gets ticked off, and the payment was he had to provide 30 changes of clothes. So rather than going out to Nordstroms and buying 30 pairs of clothes, he goes down to a Philistine city, kills 30 guys, and strips them naked of their clothes and comes back and gives them the clothes to the guys who answered the riddle at the party. That was the kind of strength that he had. He just went down and just whooped on 30 guys and then stripped them of their clothes.

Judges chapter 15 says this: "As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting, and the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like a charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands." He had been tied up and was being brought to the Philistines. And when the Philistines came upon him, he just broke through the ropes. Now there were thousands of Philistine soldiers before him. He breaks through the ropes.

It says in verse 15, "Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey..." So there's a carcass of a donkey there. He grabs the head, yanks off the jawbone of the donkey. He grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. I want you to try to picture this. Here are a thousand soldiers. One of the things that separated the Philistines from the Israelites at this time is they had iron implements, and they didn't allow any of the Israelites to have any iron weapons. So here they are with shields and spears and swords. Samson has the jawbone of a donkey, and he just waylays into them and kills a thousand men.

He said, "With a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone, I have killed a thousand men." And when he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone, and that place was called Ramath Lehi, which Ramath is the word for Jawbone Hill. So Jawbone Hill over in Israel, you can go check it out.

Judges chapter 16. Samson goes down to a city in Gaza. It says the people of Gaza were told that Samson is here, so they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the city gate. A fortified city meant that it had walls and it had big gates, and the gates were made of wood and iron. It provided protection. So all these soldiers are waiting outside for Samson because they know that he's inside the city.

They made no move during the night, saying, "At dawn we'll kill him." Verse three, "But Samson lay there until the middle of the night, and then he got up and he took hold of the doors of the city gate, and together with the two posts, he tore them loose." Here's this huge wooden gate on a walled city. He tears open the gate and the posts that hold it together. He rips it off its hinges, lifts it over his head.

Then he got up, he took hold of the doors of the city gate together with the two posts. He tore them loose, bar and all. He lifted them to his shoulders and he carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. Now Hebron is many, many miles away from Gaza. So here's the picture. All these soldiers are outside the city. They're waiting to take on Samson. Samson finds out they're there. He gets up in the middle of the night, grabs the gate of the city with its pillars and iron bars, rips it loose, carries it.

All the soldiers were standing there. But you can picture these soldiers going, "Dude, this guy just ripped the gates off the city walls. He's carrying it. I ain't going near him." And they just stood there, and he walked all the way to Hebron carrying these gates. Samson from a human perspective was the strongest man who ever lived, and there's nobody even close to him. But his strength wasn't enough to give him victory in his personal battles.

Because here's a third thing about Samson's life. Samson was tempted and defeated by lust. Samson was tempted and defeated by lust. Judges 14:1-3 says: "Samson went down to Timnah, and he saw there a young Philistine woman. And when he returned, he said to his father and mother, 'I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife.' His father and mother replied, 'Isn't there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all your people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?' But Samson said to his father, 'Get her for me. She's the right one for me.'"

Consumed with his own passions and his own desires, it didn't matter what his Nazarite vow said. It didn't matter what the desires and expectations of his parents were. It didn't matter what was right for him. He saw her, he wanted her, he said, "Get her." And Judges 16, what sets the context for Samson ripping off the gates of the city walls and marching all the way to Hebron—what occasioned him to be in the city in the first place—it says in Judges 16:1, "One day Samson went to Gaza, where he saw a prostitute. So he went in to spend the night with her."

Here's the judge of Israel. The man that the spirit of the Lord has come upon. The man who sees a Philistine woman and wants her, so he marries her. The man who sees a prostitute and desires her, so he goes in to lay with her. And then his ultimate downfall. Judges 16 says, "Sometime later he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, 'See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you 1,100 shekels of silver.' So Delilah said to Samson, 'Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.' Samson answered, 'If anyone ties me up with seven fresh thongs that have not been dried, I'll become as weak as any other man.'"

Then the rulers of the Philistines brought her seven fresh thongs that had been dried. She tied him up with them. With men hidden in the room, she called him, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you." But he snapped the thongs as easily as a piece of string snaps when it comes close to a flame. So the secret of his strength was not discovered. You would think at this point in time, Samson would go, "She asked me the secret of my strength. I told her a story. She did what I told her, and then all of a sudden the Philistines were there. I don't think she's someone I can trust."

But he wasn't thinking. He was just being driven by his lusts. Verse 10: "Then Delilah said to Samson, 'You've made a fool of me. You lied to me.' Think about it. She tricked him, called the Philistines in to kill him. But she says, 'You fooled me. You've lied to me.' He said, 'If anyone ties me securely with new ropes that have never been used, I'll become as weak as any other man.' So Delilah took new ropes and tied him with them. Then when the men hidden in the room, she called him, 'Samson, the Philistines are upon you.' But he snapped the ropes off his arms as if they were threads."

Delilah then said to Samson, "Until now you have been making a fool of me. You've been lying to me. Tell me how can you be tied?" He replied, "If you weave the seven braids of my hair into fabric on the loom and tighten it with a pin, I'll become as weak as any other man." So while he was sleeping, Delilah took the seven braids of his hair, wove them into the fabric and tightened it with the pin. Now you've got to picture what's going on. He's obviously falling asleep on her lap. And he said, "You weave my hair," because he had all these long braids of hair.

Go back to the ancient Near Eastern custom of how they did this. There was a big loom. This was a big wooden contraption with all this thread in it. It was sitting right there. She takes his hair and weaves it into it. So now his hair is connected to this loom. If you've been tracking what's going on in the past, you can figure out what's going to happen here again. So she does this and in verse 14, again she called him, "Samson, the Philistines are upon you." He awoke from his sleep, pulled up the pin and the loom with the fabric. So he must have went "Whoom!" and the whole thing just jerked up in the air, and then he went and attacked the Philistines with his hair still connected to a weaving loom.

And then Delilah says, verse 15, "How can you say 'I love you' when you won't confide in me?" I'm going to change—I said that the title of this story is The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I'm going to change it, and it's going to be called How Women Can Make Men Crazy. That's what the story of Samson is really all about.

Guest (Male): What a great message for all of us today. Pastor JP provides us with great insight. That is why we'd like to make it available to you on CD. Just get in touch and mention today's date. We'll send it your way for just $5. Or if you'd like to support this ministry, you can write us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653, or give us a call at 949-916-0250. That's 949-916-0250.

For your gift of $25 or more, we will send you a signed copy of JP's new book, *Facing Goliath*. Please join us every Sunday at 9:00 or 11:00 AM at Crossline Church in Laguna Hills. The address is 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or check us out on the web at crosslinechurch.com. We're going to get to the address and phone number again in a moment, but before we do that, Pastor JP, do you have any insight from today's message?

JP Jones: Thanks, Greg. In our discussion about heroes, we're looking today at Samson. The story is found in Judges 13, 14, and 15. Samson was a man of strong passion. He was a man who had tremendous potential and experienced what I would call the good, the bad, and the ugly of life. We see in this story how Samson was a man set apart from his birth to be a follower of God. He was a man who was used mightly for God's purposes. He was a man who judged Israel and fought against the enemies of God, the Philistines.

But he was also a man with great vulnerability. He was a man with a propensity for lust, and he gave in to deception and to the lusts of his flesh over and over and over again. And yet he's a man who experienced the grace of God and at the end of his life had one more opportunity to redeem his name and redeem the name of the Lord. God looks at us and he sees us for who we really are. There are no hidden parts of our lives before God. God sees everything. He sees the good, the bad, and the ugly. And God saves us in spite of ourselves.

The grace of God is more powerful than any of our sin. Romans chapter five says that where sin did abound, grace did much more abound, so that sin, as it reigned in death, even so, grace might reign through Jesus Christ to righteousness in him. You see, God's grace is greater than your sin. It does not matter what your secrets may be. It does not matter what your past may be. The grace of Jesus Christ is greater than that, and God can save you, and God can use you for his kingdom purposes.

But it's possible, even as a believer and even as a follower of Jesus Christ, for you to have secrets in your life, for you to have hidden parts of your life, for you to have ups and downs in your Christian experience. And like Samson, even though you've experienced God's goodness and power and grace, you can have a part of your life that is weak and is vulnerable and compromises itself. That's not God's intention. That is not God's best. That is not God's desire. But it's a possibility.

And even if that is true, the grace of God is greater than that. Even if that's true, the grace of God can bring redemption to our lives. Samson is a person whose life exhibits the redeeming power of God. Would you like to experience that redeeming power of God? Maybe you've never experienced it before. Maybe what you need to hear is this message that God can take your life and do something great with it. God can take your failures and turn them around.

God can do something that you couldn't do on your own. God could change you to become a hero and a world changer and a champion for his cause. That's the message of the Bible. That's the message of the gospel. That's the message of the story of Samson. Maybe you're a person who has made a commitment to God. Maybe early in your life, you became a follower of Jesus Christ. But somewhere along the way, you've compromised what you believe to be true.

Somewhere along the way, you've allowed secrets to develop in your life and you've developed hidden parts of your life that have separated you from God. It doesn't have to continue that way. You can be a person who experiences the redeeming love and power of Christ. If you want to give your life fully to God, to his kingdom, and be a hero, open up your heart to the transforming grace of Jesus. Ask Jesus to change your life and make you his person. If that's what you desire, would you ask that right now?

Lord Jesus, I confess that I'm a sinner, and I confess that I have hidden parts of my life. I confess that there's parts of my life that are out of control. I need you to change me. Would you make me a hero for God? Would you use my life? Would you forgive me, and would you be the Lord of my life? I ask for that in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): We want to help you in your relationship with Christ. Please get in touch with us at Truth That Changes Lives, 23331 Moulton Parkway, Laguna Hills, California 92653. Or call us at 949-916-0250. On the internet, you will find us at crosslinechurch.com. We hope to see you at one of our services every Sunday at our new campus in Laguna Hills. For more information and directions, please go to crosslinechurch.com. Please join us next time on Truth That Changes Lives.