BaptistWay Press Adult Online Bible Commentary By Dr. Duane Brooks Pastor, Tallowood Baptist Church Houston, Texas Studies in Guidance for the Seasons of Life Lesson Two Samson: Realizing You re Not Indestructible Focal Text Judges 16:4-30 Background Judges 13-16 Main Idea Although God had blessed Samson, he wasted his potential when he assumed that his physical powers made him exempt from the consequences of wrong choices. Question to Explore When in life do people start realizing they are not indestructible? Quick Read Samson gave up the true secret of his strength, and the consequences were horrific. Even so, all was not lost. When he returned to God, God still used him. Commentary In the motion picture Unbreakable, director M. Night Shyamalan tells the story of a night watchman in Philadelphia who inadvertently discovers he is a superhero. He is the only survivor of a train crash. Later he realizes he had never really been sick. He lifts all the weights in his house and asks for more. Most of us read the historic legends about characters like Atlas and Hercules when we were young. To this day our books, motion pictures, and sports entertainment shows reveal that we are fascinated by strength and fixated on heroes and heroines. In the Old Page 1 of 9 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations in Adult Online Bible Commentary are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Testament we encounter a young man who was virtually indestructible. In fact the only one who could defeat Samson was Samson. Unfortunately, his lack of self-control prevented him from ever realizing his magnificent potential. We must never confuse fame with success. Someone has said, Madonna is one (famous) and Mother Theresa is the other (successful). In the Book of Judges we meet Samson, a young man who was renowned for his strength. But was he ultimately successful? Background The Book of Judges describes a cyclical period in the history of Israel when the culture devolved into chaos. It was an unusual time when everyone did as he saw fit (Judges 21:25). As the people sinned, God would execute judgment by allowing their neighboring enemies to oppress them. These enemies had not been uprooted from the land during the time of Joshua. But when the Israelites repented from their sin, God raised up a series of leaders known as judges to deliver them from their captors (2:16). In this book, we discover some of the most illustrious personalities of the Bible including Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson. These leaders of Israel during the period of the Judges were great men and women but nearly every one of them had some flaw. Deborah may be the exception, but Gideon allowed idolatry. Jephthah made a rash vow and sacrificed his daughter. Samson struggled in his relationships with women. Because of his extraordinary gifting, Samson felt he was invincible and indestructible. Though he was given great potential by God, he flouted the rules God had set for his life and as a result squandered his potential. Because of Samson s choices, he will be remembered as famous, but not as successful as God wanted him to be. Students of the Bible must discern whether Samson s life-story is a tale of victory or tragedy. When we look at our own families and churches, we likewise see enormous potential. But not one of us is guaranteed success. In the hands of God, each person possesses great potential: to live life abundantly as a child of God, to serve him, and to lead others to him. We decide whether or not we realize and maximize our potential to be all we can be for God. Without question, the measure of whether we become successful for God relates directly to the decisions we make. Samson Was Born in a Difficult Time with Great Potential (Judges 13-15) In their repetitive pattern of sin, the Israelites once again did evil and the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years. The people must have been in despair. But even though the Israelites had forgotten God, God had not forgotten his people. Samson was born with great potential. Notice the evidence. First, God gave Samson a miraculous birth. Not only was he born to a woman who had been unable to conceive, but his birth was foretold by an angelic announcement (13:2-5). Who else had such a miraculous birth? Other biblical characters whose births were announced in this Page 2 of 9
way were Isaac, John the Baptist, and Jesus. By any measure Samson found himself in select company. Every time we hold a baby we remember that every birth is a miracle. With the psalmist we confess that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14). Again the writer acknowledges being formed by God in the womb (139:13). In the New Testament we see that God creates all children with the potential to become children of God by placing their faith in Jesus (Rom.10:13). God also entrusted Samson to godly parents (Judges 13:6-12). Not only does his mother recognize the messenger as a man of God and an angel of God (very awesome) but Samson s father Manoah prayed and asked the Lord to teach them how to bring up the boy. Interestingly, the angel returned to Samson s mother. She ran and found her husband and they came back to the angel and asked for the specific rules for the boy s life. The angel told them to keep the boy away from fermented drink and from touching the dead. Further, he was never to cut his hair. Many parents tremble at the realization of responsibility which begins the moment their child is born. We pray for our children before they are born. We pray for them as they grow. As long as Christian parents live we continue to pray for our children. When Samson asked to marry a young woman from Timnah in Philistia, his parents wondered aloud why he had not chosen an Israelite (14:1-4). In his Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor says the imaginary community of Lake Wobegone is a place where all of the kids are above average. Is your town like that? What if God gave you a child with extraordinary gifts? Perhaps you have remarkable talents. Early in Samson s story we learn that God invested unusual physical strength in Samson. He would manifest this strength on a number of occasions, once ripping apart a young lion bare-handed (14:5-6). On another occasion Samson caught 300 foxes and tied their tails together (15:3-4). Using the jawbone of a donkey he defeated 1000 enemies (15:15). Still later, Samson carried the gate of a city on his shoulders to the top of a hill (16:3). The Hoekstra family of Michigan adopted a little boy and named him Liam. When he was 5 months old he performed the gymnastic feat called an iron cross. He did pull ups by the age of 8 months. He has a myostatin deficiency which gives him 50% more muscle mass than average children. Our culture is so impressed and often obsessed with physical strength. When I think of Samson, I think of Benton Reed, a member of our church in Cedar Park, TX. At 6 6 and 300 lbs, Benton once played football for the New England Patriots. One Page 3 of 9
night some kids were vandalizing Benton s neighborhood. Without knowing whose property they were destroying, they stopped in his yard and started tearing up some things. About that time, Benton saw them out the window. Imagine their surprise and fear when they looked up and saw Benton coming toward them. They could see he was big but they thought they could outrun him. They were wrong: not only is Benton big, he is fast! He collared them, made them clean up the mess, and then invited them to the Sunday School class he taught in our youth department. The following Sunday they came to church at his request. God gave Samson (and Benton) enormous potential by making him very strong physically. Overall though, the greatest measure of Samson s potential lay in his spiritual strength. At a young age the Spirit of the Lord began to stir in his life (13:25). God, who promised Samson s parents he would work in Samson s life, kept his word. When did the Spirit of God begin to stir in your life? As a middle school student in Germany, I remember the day when God started dealing with me as I read a Bible my aunt had sent me for Christmas. It was the turning point of my life and the beginning of my calling to ministry. What if the single greatest thing that could happen to any of us would be for the Spirit of God to begin to stir in our lives? Because God moves on our lives we have potential - no matter our heritage or our history. Because we are potential children of God we have unlimited potential! Samson Squandered His Potential (Judges 14-16) When the angel came to Samson s parents he explained that Samson would be a Nazirite from the womb. Nazirites are first mentioned in Numbers 6:1-21. There we discover that God s people could make a voluntary vow to abstain from grapes and wine, cutting one s hair, and ritual defilement by coming into contact with dead animals. Samson did not choose to be a Nazirite. God chose Samson before his birth to be set apart for his service and required Samson s parents to raise him as a Nazarite. What did Samson think of these rules? Not too much. He systematically broke the very rules which God had given for him. Samson went to the wrong places. He frequented Timnah (Judges 14:1) and the Valley of Sorek (16:4). Christians have freedom in Christ, but we must also exercise discernment. The wonderful Baptist comedian Grady Nutt used to joke, I told my Doctor that I broke my arm in three places. When his counterpart asked, What did the doctor say? Nutt answered in his inimitable way, Stay out of those places. There are some places that believers have no business being! A pastor friend of mine was shocked when he heard that a friend of his named Bill had died. He wasn t shocked that Bill died, because eventually we all go through the valley of Page 4 of 9
the shadow of death. Nor was it the way he died that was so shocking. He died of a heart attack, a common cause of death in our country today. The shocking thing was where he died. He died in what we would call an adult video store. An active member of the church, a married man, a Christian, had a heart attack and died in a place that sold pornography. As people discussed this event, the main question was, What was a person like Bill doing in a place like that?! When we read Samson s story, we feel the same way. Someone has said our Internet trail will tell a great deal about our hearts. What does our use of the Internet say about our relationship with God? Are we going places where we shouldn t go? Samson also spent time with the wrong people. He was called to deliver his people from the Philistines and yet he chose to intermarry outside his faith and to visit and consort with a number of Philistine women (16:1,4). As young adults, we set patterns in relationships which may draw us closer to God or pull us further away from him. This is not to say that believers are to shield themselves from unbelievers all together. But those who find their primary friendships and fellowship with unbelievers run the risk of desensitization to sinful behavior. We remind our students to constantly ask themselves, "Does this person lift me up or pull me down?" We need to make friends with the lost, but we don't need to get lost with them. We don t know if Samson drank fermented beverages, but we do know he broke the other two rules prescribed by the angel to his parents. After he killed a lion, he returned to it and took honey out of its carcass (14:8). Later he used the fresh jawbone of a donkey to kill many Philistines (15:15). These transgressions of God s plan were not his demise, however. The writer of Judges masterfully depicts the seduction which resulted in Samson s destruction. It stands as a warning sign to all who would take sin lightly. Samson s Seduction (Judges 16:4-21) Samson went down to Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute. He played into his enemies hands as they lay in wait for him. Shrewdly, he outwitted them by leaving in the middle of the night. To demonstrate his strength, he carried the city gate to the top of a hill. Having escaped danger, he returned to Philistia and fell in love with Delilah in the Valley of Sorek. She joined in a sinister covenant with the rulers of the Philistines. Unfortunately, Samson s sin had made him predictable and vulnerable to their desire to destroy him. Like Judas Iscariot in the New Testament, she sold Samson out for 5500 shekels of silver, a large sum of money (16:5). Delilah repeatedly asked Samson the secret of his strength. He almost gave his secret away by saying if you tie me up in the right way I will lose my strength. Now we see that Samson was strong but not wise. He knew she wanted to know his secret and he embraced the idea of verbally jousting with her. Perhaps he was testing her. Certainly he Page 5 of 9
lied to her. But with each request and ridiculous answer, we sense that he was getting close to divulging his secret. Perhaps by this point he felt indestructible. Many times we feel bullet proof and invincible in our youth. We wrongly imagine that nothing bad can ever happen to us. Delilah tried to subdue him using seven fresh thongs or sinews. This too may have been a Nazarite violation of contact with the deceased because thongs were sometimes drawn from cadavers. With his enemies in the room, she tied him up and then called him to say the Philistines were upon him. But he snapped the thongs like fire burns through a rope. Delilah then expressed her petulant disappointment with his deception. But why was he not disappointed in hers? She bemoans the fact that he is making a fool of her when actually she is making one of him. Astonishingly he continues to play the game. Once again she asks his secret and he offers that new ropes can disarm him. When she tries the ropes they fail to restrain him and she whines again. Like a fly going willingly into a spider web, he offered a third response: If you weave the seven braids of my head into the fabric on the loom (16:13). He drew ever closer to destruction by connecting his strength to his hair. While he had not told her the truth, we sense that he was getting ever closer to giving away his secret. This is the deceptiveness of sin. Like a lamb to slaughter, he never questioned her efforts to restrain him. How can you say you love me? she asked disingenuously. You have made a fool of me (16:15). Though Samson deceived her three times, Delilah did not give up until he gave in. So he told her everything (16:17). She had succeeded in making a fool of him. Samson s Destruction (Judges 16:21-31) After she shaved his hair while he slept, he lost his strength. He awakened still imagining himself invincible, but soon discovered the Lord had left him (16:20). In truth, long before the Lord left Samson, Samson left the Lord. His indefensible spiritual choices had left him indefensible against his enemies. Technically, Samson never cut his hair, but he had a friendship with a woman who did. Samson played with fire until he was burned! Eventually we all face the consequences of our poor choices. Samson s captors seized him, blinded him, bound him with shackles, and put him to work in the prison (16:21). In Harlem they still talk about the 1970 Rucker Basketball League championship game. On one side was a team called the Westsiders which included the famous Doctor J, Julius Erving. On the other side was the Millbank team. A six foot-four inch player named Joe Hammond strolled into the game in the second half and was inserted into the Millbank lineup. He was guarded by Doctor J., but it was no match. Hammond scored 50 points to Erving s 39, and won the most-valuable player award. They called Hammond the Destroyer. In 1971, the L. A. Lakers drafted him, but he was making more money on the streets. Hammond had $200,000 stored away. He later became a drug addict and Page 6 of 9
never played a minute of professional basketball. In May 1991, he was seen selling address books and greeting cards on the streets of Harlem. Hawking his goods, he invited a passerby, Please buy some. I'm trying to get money to eat! In a moment of recognition someone asked, Are you Joe Hammond, the Destroyer? Reportedly Hammond answered, Yes, I am. Now you tell me, am I the stuff legends are made of today? The only thing the Destroyer destroyed was his own life! God was not yet finished with Samson. His hair began to grow again (16:22) When the Philistines gathered to gloat over their victory, they praised their god Dagon for giving them victory (16:24). Samson prayed for strength once more to exact revenge on his enemies. Pressing on two of the pillars in the building, he brought down the roof on himself and 3,000 Philistines (16:28-30). Still, Samson died without fulfilling his enormous potential. It is easy to misunderstand the story. Some say Samson was a hero. Without question, he killed many Philistines in his dying act. But if a modern coroner had written a report of the cause of Samson s death, it would have simply read, "Suicide". We weep as a nation over the startling statistics regarding our soldiers and suicide. More of our military troops have died from suicide than from recent military actions against our enemies. On a handful of occasions in my thirty-two years as a pastor I have ministered to families in the aftermath of suicide. It always leaves us stunned and speechless. Just this week our congregation walked through the dark valley of the shadow of death with a family whose young son took his own life. Hundreds of students flooded our auditorium searching for answers. Problems (though painful) are temporary, but suicide is permanent. Guilt mixes with grief in a toxic cocktail. We grieve with the families and the painful legacy it leaves to them. We wonder how we might have helped. We feel utterly powerless. In Samson s case, do you ever wonder, What might he have become if he had lived? John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, It might have been. 1 The good news for us is that our life stories are still ahead of us! What will we become for God? One thing we know for sure, our choices have eternal consequences. What if we choose to become the people God intended for us to be? What if we refuse to flirt with sin? Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, Now, with God s help, I shall become myself! 2 The Apostle Paul said it even better, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17). Today is our day of opportunity. We dare not miss it! Conclusion We can reach our potential for God! As a young pastor and college sophomore I helped a friend who was preparing to teach Vacation Bible School at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, TX. She had prepared a quote for the children to put on a plaque. I have never Page 7 of 9
forgotten the words. They have shaped my view of life and ministry. I read on the example plaque: I am only one, But I am one. I can't do everything, But I can do something. What I can do, by the grace of God, I will do! How about you? Meet the Writer: Dr. Duane Brooks Dr. Duane Brooks has been the pastor at Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, TX since 1998. He has served as pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, Cedar Park, Texas (1993-1998), Williams Creek Baptist Church in Mart, Texas (1985-1992), Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, Rosebud Texas (1981-1985), Pastoral Intern in Waco Baptist Association (1984), and Calvary Baptist Church, Waco, Texas (1980-1981). Through the years, Dr. Brooks has led revival services and January Bible Conferences in Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, Mississippi, and Texas as well as Germany, Brazil, Hungary, Switzerland, Mexico and Israel. He has most recently preached at Paisano, a cowboy camp meeting in West Texas, as well as in Brazil and Zambia. He has been a member of the Texas Baptist Executive Board and the Human Welfare Board of the BGCT. In 1999, Dr. Brooks served on the search committee for the Executive Director of the BGCT and has served as Chairman of the search committee for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Director of Texas. Dr. Brooks is currently Adjunct Professor at Houston Baptist University and is serving on the Board of Regents at Baylor University. In 2010, he wrote a doctrinal study book called This Magnificent Salvation published by BaptistWay Press. He continues to write online devotional studies which have included studies in Psalms, John, Hebrews, the Sermon on the Mount and Philippians. He and his wife, Melanie, have two sons, Graham and Chase, and a daughter, Casey. Doctor of Philosophy, Baylor University Master of Divinity, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Bachelor of Arts, History, Baylor University, Cum Laude Ordained to Ministry, 1981 Licensed to Ministry, 1980 Page 8 of 9
BaptistWay Press See www.baptistwaypress.org for additional study materials on Guidance for the Seasons of Life and more than forty-six other Bible studies by BaptistWay Press, or call 1-866-249-1799 (M-Fri 8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m. central time). A recent book by Dr. Brooks, This Magnificent Salvation: What Salvation Means in a World Like This, is also available from BAPTISTWAY PRESS. The price is only $7.95 each plus shipping and any applicable taxes. See www.baptistwaypress.org for a free Teaching Guide and PowerPoint presentation for This Magnificent Salvation: What Salvation Means in a World Like This. 1 Whittier, John Greenleaf. "Maud Miller" 1894. 336. 2 As quoted in Ortberg, John. The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002. 11. Page 9 of 9