Samson - Saint and Sinner
(Part 1 - The Making of a Judge in Israel)
Chapter 12

"As Samson approached Lehi, the Philistines came towards him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. Finding a fresh jaw-bone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men."
Judges 15:14,15.

WE turn now to Judges chapter 15 and verses twelve to seventeen. We are looking particularly at verse 14, but first let us remind ourselves again of the story. Samson had a desire to see his wife. That is from the beginning of Judges chapter 15. We have come to the conclusion in our study thus far that it would have been much better if he had left her alone. He finds his wife given to another man, and in anger he destroys the fields of the Philistines by fire. He has done this in his own strength, and without waiting upon God for guidance. He then finds himself in trouble. Samson found that, because he had not acted under God's will, that things continued to go against him. Now not only are the Philistines after his blood, but the people of Israel whom he is seeking to help turn against him.

It is not always good to hit back in retaliation when we are treated badly. In verse 12 we read, 'They said to him, "We've come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines." Samson said, "Swear to me that you won't kill me yourselves." "Agreed," they answered, "We will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you." So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.' Samson is in a terrible situation. Things had gone terribly wrong, and it was all because he had been wilful. Then we read on in verse 14, 'As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came towards him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. Finding a fresh jaw-bone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. The Samson said, "With a donkey's jaw-bone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jaw-bone I have killed a thousand men." When he had finished speaking, he threw away the jaw-bone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi.'

In Romans 5:20 the Apostle Paul say, "But where sin increased, grace increased all the more." This expresses very well just what happens here in God's reaction to the sin and folly of Samson.

What we need to remember, and fix in our minds as Christians, is that God acts towards us in grace. We must never let Satan destroy the conviction and reality and assurance of it. Grace is God's unmerited favour towards us. He treats us with grace all the time. There is no time in which we can come to God and say, "Lord, we deserve your favour." Thus God in his goodness and mercy acts towards us in loving grace and unmerited favour, and that is always the way he acts towards us and treats us.

We must fix this fact in our minds. We must fix it in our hearts. When we look at the Lord we see his holiness and we see our sin. But also we see his grace towards us which cancels our sin, and welcomes us with open arms. The truth is expressed in the parable of the Prodigal son. There he was returning to his father. He had no merit whatsoever, but his father, who represents the love of God, welcomes him back without any question of condemnation. He embraces him, kisses him, owns him by putting a ring on his finger, brings him back and gives him a banquet. This is the way God acts towards penitent sinners.

It is because of this wonderful truth that we can be sure about his blessing and his purpose in our lives. Whatever we have done and whatever our failures and sins, God does not change his mind towards us, because he has planned and motivated everything he does for us in grace, and not because of our merit and deserving.

Let this truth be impressed upon us. We know it, but how often do we, in our experience and in the way we act, suggest that we think that God is going to turn against us and change his mind about us, and throw us to one side. God's grace is illustrated here in the life of Samson. God purposed to deliver Israel through the means of Samson as his servant, as the judge and ruler he would send. God did not change his purpose when his servant acted wrongly.

We have seen the grace of God in as far as the Israelites were not worthy to be released from these afflictions that they were under. God had allowed them to be afflicted because of their sin. He had withdrawn his protective hand, and the Philistines had control over them. When we commenced this study of Samson's life we saw that, unlike in the time of Gideon, the people in Samson's period did not even show any repentance. They did not cry to God, but God was still gracious to them and gave them a judge to deliver them.

Samson himself was far from a perfect servant of God. We have seen this in his life. We have seen it in this chapter of Judges where he does things in his own strength, and in his own wisdom, and in his own pride. From the beginning of Judges 15 Samson appears to have done everything without considering the will of God, or what God wanted him to do. But God deals with him in grace. He has purposed grace to Israel through Samson, and because it is unmerited favour it is not withdrawn because of the failure of Samson or the failure of the Israelites themselves. This is what is in this story. This what we can take away for the comfort of our hearts and our lives, not only at this time but for all time.

Now how is this great and blessed truth revealed. It is expressed in several points all of which are linked together. They may seem repetitive, but if they are repetitive, every good preacher repeats himself three of four times, because we are all so slow to learn and slow to remember. By repeating a truth five times in a different sort of way it is impressed more firmly upon our hearts and minds.

First of all then, even though Samson had acted wilfully and had not consulted God in what he had done, and in his retaliation against the Philistines, God came to give him victory at the moment of his need.

When he had found the problem with his wife, he did not sit down and say, "Lord, what am I to do?". He just acted emotively, and did what he thought he would do. He said to himself, "They have treated me badly, so I am going to take a swipe at them." Just an ordinary human reaction, but even though he did this, God's blessing upon Samson and God's purpose to use Samson are not withdrawn.

At the height of the calamity which followed his wilful acts, God stepped in to save the situation. There was Samson. He had come to the end of his ability. He found everyone against him. He was totally alone. There before him appeared the end of his ministry. But God had not given him up. God did not change his plans. God had taken everything into account. He knew all about Samson's folly before it happened. God stepped in at the time he meant to step in, and he poured out his Spirit upon Samson.

Now Samson didn't deserve to continue to be God's servant. Samson did not deserve God's Spirit poured out upon him, yet God did not forsake him. God still owned him as his servant, and God poured out his Spirit upon him to perform, at the right time, what God purposed for the deliverance of his people.

Notice that this is a victory act. God worked a mighty victory in Israel after the failure of Samson. This is revealed at the end of the chapter, and I hope you notice it. It is just two lines in your Bibles, and it is easy to miss what is being said as we then go on into Judges 16 where Samson behaves badly again. These lines tell us that Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines. This was a victory act of God at this time, and it came when Samson had failed. It was simply an act of grace from God. From that time on, because of this act of God pouring out his Spirit and the way the Philistines were subdued, Samson was able to rule and judge in Israel, and there was peace from the Philistines given by God for twenty whole years.

Twenty years may not seem such a long time, but for those of us who are getting older, twenty years is quite a long time. It represents a quarter or more of a life time. This was a period of peace and of God's blessing. God in grace brought a mighty victory. Israel enjoyed quietness and prosperity under Samson because of this act that God enabled Samson to do. But notice it comes at the point when Samson's folly had come to a head.

This is the grace of God which flows through all God's relationships with his people. God does not withdraw his blessings or his plans for us when we sin. He does not change his mind about saving us. When he saves us, his plans for us are sure and are not altered. He keep us to the end, because his blessings are founded on grace and unmerited favour and not on our deservings. This principle can still be perceived in the judgements we read about in Jeremiah, when Israel was carried off into Babylon. Even when God brought this judgement, his grace is still perceived in that he had plans in the future of bringing his people back to Jerusalem, and his purposes to provide the Saviour, Jesus Christ, through them was never altered.

Secondly, God acted at this time of greatest human failure. How profound is the wisdom of God. God acts now so that all the glory and power would be seen to be his. Samson acted in his strength and wisdom. Like him we go off so often in the same way. Samson in his strength and wisdom had brought disaster upon himself and Israel to such an extent that he had lost everything. The whole of his life and the whole of his ministry had come crashing to the ground. He had nothing by which he could turn the situation around. He was hopeless and lost. It was at that point that God stepped in with power to give him victory.

Thus all the decisive victory was seen to be of God, and not of Samson. Samson does not learn the lesson very well, because when we come to verse 16, (and this is so like us,) Samson said, "With a donkey's jaw-bone, 'I' have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jaw-bone 'I' have killed a thousand men." Samson was still proud giving himself glory which was due to God alone. We shall see in the next chapter how God had to humble him again.

This is how it was, and isn't this true in our own lives and in the ministry of the church. We know it to our shame. Frequently we come to the end of our resources. God has made us see the failure of all our efforts and the weakness of everything we do, and we are humbled. We are renewed in God's strength and seek to minister again in the grace he gives us. Then things go well again, and we find ourselves speaking as if the blessing has been achieved by our own ability, as if the church by its wisdom achieves what God has brought about. Yet it is in fact, not anything of our strength, but God's.

It is God's wisdom that he allows us to fall. God allowed Samson to fall and be brought completely low so that he would understand God's grace more, understand his own weakness more, trust in God more, and give glory to God alone. That is what we must learn also.

Thirdly, God's gracious purposes are not thwarted or upset by our human failure and sin. This is such an enormous comfort. I don't know whether Samson reflected on his actions. We are not precisely told that he did. Perhaps we do not reflect on God's dealing with us as we ought, and reflect on the way he picks us up when we go wrong, but let us reflect now. It is a wonderful thing to see that in the purposes of God for Israel through Samson, God's plans were not obstructed or upset by the failure of Samson.

Samson appeared by his actions to bring himself to the point of complete defeat, but it was actually the moment of God's triumph. God knew, before even the foundation of the world, that Samson would behave like this. God is not taken by surprise by our failures and sins. In grace, therefore, God has planned our future and the future of his church, and planned what he is going to do in Christ from now until eternity, and from the beginning of time until the present.

God has planned it and his plans are not upset by our folly. Because he comes in grace he has taken into consideration the folly he knew his people would commit. It is through Jesus that he has atoned for all our sin. He does not have to come and say, because you have sinned you must be punished, because Jesus has already taken that punishment, and so God can act in unmerited forgiveness and blessing towards us.

This does not mean that God's people can live as they like. It is the very heart of our experience, if we are true Christians, that when we do stumble and fall we feel that we have hurt the God who has loved us so much and redeemed us at so great a cost. We find within us what the Apostle Paul speaks of in Romans chapter 7 that with his spirit he hates sin and loves the law of God, and so we can't just live as our flesh would want to live. I put it to you that if this is not your experience you have not got true Christianity. We do not find in our experience that because God's plans are not upset by our sins, and grace carries out the plans in spite of our sins, that this is a reason for licence and carelessness how we live before God.

It is a wonderful assurance, that in our lives and in the life of the Church, God's plan of salvation is sure, and with all our failings and stumblings, God's purposes of grace will be carried out.

Fourthly, when God's purposes of grace mature for us, nothing can overcome them. God's purposes in Israel had matured at this time of Samson's failure. God just sent his Spirit, and defeat was changed into victory. If we are going through in the church, whether our own church or any other church, a period of dryness or defeat, let us not be cast down. God is still teaching us things. God's purposes are still sure. At the time God, in his gracious purposes, has planned to work, nothing is able to prevent him so working. It does not matter whether we are weak and helpless. It does not matter if we have not got workers for this or that. It does not matter if we have no got all the expertises of other churches which seem to bring so much success in their cases. God still pours out his Spirit, and it is the Spirit of God which produces the victory. In the situation Samson found himself, he could not have been more weak and helpless, yet God gave him victory.

Let us be comforted in this fact. God's power cannot fail. When he decides to work, and reveal and work his grace towards us, his power is sufficient however impotent we may be. At this point when God wished to raise Samson up and make him a judge for twenty years in peace and quietness, he poured out his Spirit and Samson was able to work a defeat upon the Philistines which had such an effect upon them that they never dared for twenty years to stand against Samson, or afflict and persecute the Israelites.

God, at this point of Israel's history, we are told, only started the deliverance. The Philistines were still there. God did not take them away. That is the way God works sometimes, and that is the way he worked then, but at the time of weakness it didn't matter that Samson and Israel were weak, when God's purposes of grace mature they can not fail.

Lastly, when God's purposes mature, none can withstand his power and his judgement. God is sovereign. God is overall, and if we are like the Philistines outside the protection of his grace, then we need to fear, as the world needs to fear God. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. When we begin to fear God we turn to God for his grace, and cry for mercy. When we are under the protection of his grace we are in a place of safety, because God's just judgement has already fallen on the Saviour.

God is sovereign and we can only be safe from his just judgement when we are hiding under his grace. If we are not under his grace through Jesus, we are not safe because our sins cry out to God against us. There is reality in the judgement of God. Whatever you make of this slaughter of the Philistines, it was in reality an act of God's judgement upon the Philistines. Samson was acting under the power of God. Today people outside the church will think, if they read this passage, what an awful person Samson was to bring about so much human death, forgetting he was just one man against an whole army, and that he was only defending himself, seeking to escape. If you tell them that it was God who was acting through Samson, and providing the power for Samson, then they say what a dreadful God. However they don't look clearly into the story that here God was stepping in to deliver his servant and his people from a great unjust oppression, and at the same time judging the oppressor.

They do not take on board that these Philistines were oppressing Israel and dealing with them cruelly and without justice. It is in this context that God brings judgement. The Philistines were judged at this time through the power and authority given to Samson by God's Spirit. It brings us to the reality that God's judgement is over the world. God's judgements are expressed in the world from time to time. Although the world cries in pain, God's judgements are just.

We all feel the pain as much as anyone does. In the end when Christ comes again there will be the great judgement day. We need to be those, who on that judgement day are secure in that Grace of God poured out in Christ by God, just as Samson was at this time. Then we need not fear the judgement of God, for the judgement of God upon our sin has been exhausted in Jesus. On the cross God poured out his wrath against our sin, and it was there that our Saviour was sent to hell, separated from his Father in those dark hours, where he cried in his eternal suffering, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me". Because he was judged, we under his grace need not fear judgement.

This is why we preach the Gospel that others may know the grace of God in Jesus Christ, so that with Samson and all God's people, others may be found under grace, with God dealing with them in grace. That they may know there sins have been blotted out, and their judgement to have been visited upon Jesus, so that they are free. In this way, and this way alone, they and all who believe receive all those blessings which this grace of God in Christ brings, which we have seen in this action of God in Samson's life. God works in our lives in grace. He will never forsake us or throw us to one side when we go wrong. His plans for our salvation are sure because his grace is sure.

So when we read this deliverance that God brought Samson and Israel in this passage, let us be encouraged by God's unmerited favour towards us, this purpose of grace towards us, that having purposed to save us, and having made us his own by the grace that is in Jesus Christ, he will never forsake us, and in his gracious purpose will bring us to his glory. This purpose will not be withdrawn because of our failure and sins.

Let us also be sure that God by his power can perform this for us. It is all here in this incident in Samson's life. At the moment of Samson's defeat the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson in power and worked his victory of salvation and deliverance in and for Samson because of God's grace.