Samson - Saint and Sinner
(Part 1 - The Making of a Judge in Israel)
Chapter 13

IN this chapter we are going to look at verses 18 and 19 of Judges chapter 15. As we look at these two verses there is just one word that is the key to the spiritual understanding in them. It is a very insignificant word in and of itself, but in the context it is the controlling word in the whole happening. It is the word at the beginning of verse 19 - the word 'Then'.

I wonder whether you see that it marks the turning point in Samson's experience. Before it he was bereft of blessing, because he was very thirsty. In that one sentence in Judges 15 and verse 18 we see a man who has come to the end of his resources. 'He cried to the Lord, "You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?"' He was ready to drop. 'Then!' - at that moment God did something for Samson. Refreshed him with his blessing and reviving him.

So at this point where we read the word 'Then' we have the place of blessing. This is the place Samson had to come to in his experience, his attitude to God, before the blessing of God was received. So this word 'Then' marks the place of blessing. That is our theme in this chapter.

This, I believe, is a universal principle in the spiritual realm. This attitude of mind and heart that Samson was brought to at this time is always the place where God's blessing is experienced. We must live at this place. We must stay at this place. It must be the consciousness of our daily living. Then, at that point, God pours out his blessing. It is this fact that I would ask you to consider in this study.

We saw in the last chapter Samson's total dependence on God's grace, but at that time, although Samson had, by his own wilfulness, come to a point of complete devastation, yet still he attributed strength and victory to himself. Before God gave the victory he was completely in the power of his own people and the Philistines. He was bound and he was being led to the Philistines. There was total defeat, and he was at the place where, as far as he was concerned, he had come virtually to the end of his life, because the Philistines would not have kept him alive. At that point, a massive victory was given to Samson by God's grace, but still Samson at the culmination of the victory was speaking as if he, by his strength, had defeated the Philistines.

At that point of total helplessness it was God who stepped in. It wasn't Samson who actually prayed or looked to God for his blessing. God's stepped in sovereignly with his grace and gave Samson a massive victory. It was a victory of miraculous proportions. Stop a moment and dwell on that victory. It was entirely beyond human ability. We did not, in any particular way, dwell on it in the previous study. It is worth us pausing now to notice the complete and utter victory that it was.

There was Samson alone. Now can we assess the number of the Philistines? If there were three thousand men of Judah as we are told in verse 11, then a good guess is that the number of the Philistines, who had come up to take Samson, was larger, say six thousand. I doubt whether the Israelites would have been intimidated if the Philistines were very much less than this. The Philistines must have come up with strength. At the point of victory, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, and we are told that, with a very simple weapon. (I can't see how it was a very effective weapon in normal circumstance - the Jaw bone of a ass), Samson struck down a thousand men and killed them. I would guess that, under normal circumstances, a blow from such a weapon would be rather painful, but I doubt whether it would have done any lethal damage, yet here Samson killed men with it.

Now imagine the situation. There was Samson on his own. Everyone was against him. He could have dashed in with rage and fury, and he might have caught them initially by surprise as he broke the ropes that bound him, and caught the Philistines unprepared, but how many men, do you think, he could kill of the Philistines before they swept upon him. Three, four, perhaps ten at the very outside, but he in fact killed a thousand. Notice also the impregnability of Samson under the power of God. The Philistines then, even though they were a great deal more numerous than him, still went away in fear because they saw the power of God in Samson's strength. They could not fight against God. They realised that they were not fighting against Samson, but some superior supernatural force.

Then think of the time it must have taken for Samson to have killed a thousand people. If they had all lined themselves up and allowed Samson to kill them without resisting, how long would it take Samson to kill them one by one; how long do you think it would have taken Samson to kill a thousand men in such ideal conditions? Three hours, four hours or five hours? It would still have been an enormous task, and probably physically impossible for one man to do single handed. But Samson did it even with the Philistines attacking him, and he remained so strong at the end of it, that he could stand, and say in triumph, "With a donkey's jaw-bone I have made donkeys of them, etc." He may have even jumped about in ecstasy as he said the words because of the experience he had had.

It was a tremendous demonstration of power. It was a victory which plainly only God could have enabled Samson to do. Yet at the end of the battle, even though it was God's power there and it was God teaching him this fact, Samson still did not wholly acknowledge the truth. The Philistines obviously got the message because they were subdued for twenty years after. But Samson hadn't got the message even though it was so plain that it was God who had defeated the enemy. Instead he said, "I have made donkeys of them .... I have killed a thousand men". "I" in his mind was before God. Still he hadn't learned the lesson that all his power and ability was from God.

Then his experience changed. God who had empowered him in the battle, in a moment when Samson was praising himself, returned him to his ordinary strength, and left him in the state which he would have been in, and the condition he would have been in, if he had gone through such an experience on his own. The exhaustion, the thirst, the aching bones, the tired muscles being ready to drop with fatigue. He was left on his own by God stripped of supernatural power.

God's power which had been poured out upon him returned to God. The Spirit of God withdrew, and Samson was reminded of his weakness and fallibility. In our text we have the change from Samson's words of verse 16 to a different Samson in verse 18, because he was thirsty and weary and ready to drop. We read, "Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the Lord.", whereas a moment before he was praising himself. A great and significant change of attitude and heart.

You see God was working in his heart and changing him. God taught him three things. Firstly, from saying "I", "I", "I", we find him putting his whole trust and confidence in God. He cried to the Lord. He hadn't cried to God before. He had gone to the Philistines bound, but he had not cried to the Lord at that time. It was the Spirit of the Lord who had come sovereignly upon him in grace. God had given him the victory because God purposed to do so, but Samson had not prayed to God for it. Now in his extremity Samson, turned from himself, prayed, and his whole trust and confidence was now turned to God. But God made him confess to things.

Secondly, he was made to see the truth concerning himself. The truth that he did not do it, but that God gave him the victory. Samson was forced to acknowledge the fact that on his own he was helpless. He confesses, "You have given your servant this great victory." First of all he acknowledges that the victory came from God. Now he has to confess his own total weakness without God. He had not really acknowledged it before. He had known it in his mind. With his reason he must have understood that he could not have got the victory himself, but it had not sunk in, but now it was made to sink in.

God withdrew his power from Samson to force Samson to face facts and to see that this marvellous thing that has been done was not himself. Samson had to face that in himself he was weak, but God was strong, and that his strength must be from God. This was very important, as we shall see for the ministry that he had to do as Judge in Israel. He had to learn this lesson, so he learnt it this very strong and powerful way. By this traumatic experience God taught him the truth to turn away from trust in himself.

Thirdly, God made him confess the truth that the victory came from God. "You have given your servant this great victory" are now his words, whereas before he felt his weakness he was saying that he had killed the thousand Philistines. Samson now saw himself as only the servant. Samson goes on, "Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised." He learnt his own weakness in a way he had not learnt it before.

There he was so strong with the Spirit of God. He had been strong before as the Spirit had been given him. Things had just happened, and he had gone along and found everything so easy, but now he was left absolutely at his extremity. He knew at this point that if the Philistines came back, he would have no power against them. He knew that if God did not keep the fear of Samson in the Philistines, that they would come back. He was learning that in himself he was weak. He knew at last that he would fall into the hands of the Philistines and be lost but for the power and keeping of God and the strength of God. He learnt that God alone gave him the victory.

He was taught in this awful experience of weakness that he could not judge Israel unless he received strength from the Lord, and when he was depending on the Lord all the time. This was the Place of Blessing for him. It is always the place of blessing. The place of blessing is the condition of heart and mind where we understand we are weak and powerless, and are conscious of it every moment of every day.

Now I do not know how we continue to have that in our hearts and in our lives, but we must do so. It is very difficult to keep in this place, and be humble. This is what God is constantly teaching us, by word and experience, and mainly by experience, because we hear the word and hear preaching, and affirm it, but it is only by the experience such as Samson had when he came to fall in exhaustion, and total loss, that we learn the lesson effectively.

Yet Samson learnt it in the context of victory. There was a great victory, and here was great weakness, almost side by side. That was the experience. First the great victory, and then in contrast the great human weakness, and so, in this vivid contrast, Samson learnt from his experience. This is why we have experiences in our lives, but they must be interpreted by God's Word. If we do not interpret our experiences by God's Word then we shall get the wrong message.

We must be understanding our experiences by God's Word. By that I mean, and this is very important, we must not interpret God's Word by experience, but let the Word of God, as we read it and as it is expounded to us by God's Spirit, show us the meaning and purpose of our experiences. This distinction is vital, because today we see very frequently people starting form their experiences, and then molding the Word of God by their experiences. Experiences are there because we do not learn unless we feel, but the way we interpret things that happen to us must be by the Word of God and the Spirit interpreting the Word of God to us, or we shall not learn what God is saying in our experiences correctly.

Then comes the moment of gracious blessing. At this moment of devastation and total helplessness, God opened up the hollow place in Lehi and the water gushed out of it. As Samson came to this place of self humbling, God steps in. God does a blessed, mighty, supernatural act again. Not the great spectacular act of the victory before the Philistines. It was not a public thing. It was totally private for Samson alone, but it was just as mighty and supernatural as any before. God opens this rock. Water supernaturally flows out, and he is refreshed, revived and strengthened as he drinks at the refreshing well which God has provided.

Now this was a physical thing, but I believe God did a miracle here, rather than to provide water in a more normal way, because the spiritual counterpart is totally miraculous and of God. There is a spiritual counterpart here which I believe we can justifiably draw out of this passage. You see, when God's people are at this place of self-humbling, and God has brought us to that place, then, then, God opens heaven, and pours out his Spirit to refresh, revive and strengthen the humble soul. It is the humble soul God is prepared to work through, to use, and to bless. With any other he will not work, and will not use, and will not bless.

Blessing in a church comes when each member is ready to take the lowest room, and has, as Paul says should be the mark of the Christian, no confidence in the flesh.

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart you will not despise." learns King David in Psalm 51. Also we are told that God comes to revive and to refresh the humble.