All Brawn and No Brains Judges 16:1-31 November 6, 2016 Introduction: We have a saying in the English language that is the title of this morning message that I assume the majority of you are familiar with: all brawn and no brains. It s a saying applied to those who have great physical strength but aren t the sharpest crayon in the box when it comes to thinking. When I was in high school, I would make derogatory statements toward the football players, calling them big dumb jocks. Sure, they could throw and catch a football well enough, but were dumb as bricks when it came to academic subjects like math and science. Now that s not true for all athletes, but from my own experience it applied to at least some! I have encountered my share of physically strong but mentally dim-witted people throughout my schooling. When it comes to describing someone as all brawn and no brains, I would say Samson is the poster-child for this saying. Reading his story, you are torn between jaw-dropping amazement as his incredible feats of strength and slapping your palm to your forehead and shaking it in disbelief as you think, Are you serious? He didn t just do that, did he? Can he really be that dumb? Yes. Yes, he can my friends. This morning we come to the second sermon on Samson which is the most famous story about him: the story of Samson and Delilah and his eventual death. I dare guess most of you know the story, but my concern is perhaps it was taught to you in a way turns Samson into some kind of hero. He was a judge called by God after all and did kill a few thousand of Israel s enemies, the Philistines, so that makes him a good guy right? No, I m afraid not. As I mentioned in last week s sermon, Samson was used by God but only in spite of his behavior, not because of it. In fact, there really is little good to say about Samson in terms of any kind of godly example to follow after. Rather, he s far more of a cautionary tale, an illustrative warning of what it looks like to utterly waste God s calling on your life. So this morning, I want us to think about Samson s life through the lens of wasting God s calling on your life. This applies to anyone, not just those of us who have a special calling to the pastorate or the mission field. If you ve been saved, then God has called you bear the fruit of good works, to reflect the image of God in you, to share Christ with others in word and deed, to name just a few. God has called us to a life that reflects his glory, but as Jesus parable of the talents reminds us, not everyone uses what is given them to their full potential. Some double it, others increase it ten-fold, and others sadly bury it in the ground and have nothing to show for it. So then, this morning I want to use our passage to help us recognize through Samson s example four ways you could potentially waste God s calling on your life. To that end, please open your Bible with me to Judges 16, if you haven t done so already. As always I encourage you to not merely listen but to follow along in your Bibles as we work though the passage. If you didn t bring one with you, I d invite you to use one of our pew Bibles, wherein you can find today s passage on pg. 215. 1
Our initial point concerns the first way Samson illustrates for us how one can waste God s calling on life is by 1. Engaging in sexual immorality Let s begin by reading just v. 1-3 of Judges 16. Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her. The Gazites were told, Samson has come here. And they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, Let us wait till the light of the morning; then we will kill him. But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron. Now it s easy to want to focus on Samson s amazing feat of strength here. After all, pulling up the post and doors of the city gates and then carrying them on his shoulders uphill for miles can only be attributed to super-human strength. But as amazing as that is, that s not really what s shocking about this passage. The shock really is to be found in v. 1. Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went in to her. Samson s sexual immorality is presented simply as matter-of-fact when, for Israel s appointed leader, it should have been shocking. At least previously in chapter 14 he wanted to marry the Philistine woman; now this new woman is nothing more than a business transaction. Pay some money and spend the night. Furthermore, he travels all the way down to Gaza, deep in the heart of Philistine territory to find this prostitute. This was not where Samson should have been; he should have been in Israel, not traveling deep into enemy territory for some nocturnal thrills. Beside the immorality of his actions, Samson put himself in a position where he could have easily been captured and almost was! This was not a smart move on his part by anyone s reckoning, especially and most importantly, God s reckoning. This visit to a prostitute is just one example of Samson s wasting his calling by engaging in sexual immorality. This prostitute, Delilah, and the Philistine woman he married back in chapter 14 show how Samson s life was driven by lust. He shouldn t have been involved with any of them but Samson did what was right in his own eyes. He let his lust for women override his love for God and so the great judge he should have been due to God s calling on his life never materialized. My friends, sexual sin, if let unchecked and unrepented of, will eventually destroy you. If you want to utterly ruin your reputation as a Christian, engage in on-going sexual sin. Cheat on your spouse until that accidentally undeleted text is discovered. Go to those web sites that promise you cheap thrills but undermine and ruin your relationships with the opposite sex. Visit those strip clubs or adult bookstores and hope you never run into that co-worker there you ve been trying to witness to. Send those risqué photos of yourself on Snapchat until they are seen by the wrong eyes. You may be able to hide it for a while, but far too often people get careless with their sin and then what you once tried to hide becomes public knowledge. 2
This point isn t too hard for me to illustrate with examples: this is like shooting fish in a bucket. When you think of Anthony Weiner, what comes to mind? Former pastor Ted Haggard? Or perhaps Jered, the once ubiquitous face of Subway who I guarantee will never again be promoting any product? It would be too easy to go on, but you get my point. As far as trusting any of them again, it s game over. Their sexual sins have utterly ruined their reputations beyond any hope of repair. And so it is for us should we refuse to get a handle on our sexual sins. Samson didn t and it destroyed him. It has ruined the lives and ministries of countless people. You are not the exception. Choose to grow comfortable with sexual sin and it will eventually find you out and can bring about the end of any kind of witness for Christ and the gospel in your life. Samson almost paid the piper for his little escapade with the prostitute, but ultimately it was Samson s next and final woman in his life who did him in. So our second point regarding how to waste God s calling on your life is by 2. Giving your heart to the enemies of God Look back in your Bible now and follow along as I read v. 4-22. After this he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, Seduce him, and see where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. So Delilah said to Samson, Please tell me where your great strength lies, and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you. Samson said to her, If they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. Now she had men lying in ambush in an inner chamber. And she said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson! But he snapped the bowstrings, as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. Then Delilah said to Samson, Behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, If they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson! And the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread. Then Delilah said to Samson, Until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web. And she made them tight with the pin and said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson! But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom, and the web. 3
And she said to him, How can you say, I love you, when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day, and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart, and said to her, A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man. When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up again, for he has told me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. She made him sleep on her knees. And she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him, and his strength left him. And she said, The Philistines are upon you, Samson! And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the LORD had left him. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Unlike the woman he married in chapter 14 and the prostitute mention before, Delilah is the only woman the text tells us Samson loved. Later on the in story Samson tells her all his heart. This is a woman whom Samson has a deep emotional attachment to. He may have been driven by nothing more than unbridled lust previously, but now it seems Samson has found someone who has captivated his heart and in what is a love is blind moment, he foolishly refuses to see that she s merely using him to gain for herself a royal bounty for betraying the secret of his strength. Samson has made an extremely foolish choice. He s given his heart over to Israel s enemies. He s become blind to what she and those pulling her strings intend to do. He has allowed his heart to be captivated by the enemy and as a result he naively falls right into the trap the Philistines have set for him. Beware of giving your heart to the enemies of God. What I mean by that is what the apostle John meant when it warns us not to love the world or the things of the world. Or as Jesus said, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Whatever most captivates your heart is in essence your functional god. Now that may be, as it was here in Samson s case, a romantic interest. Set your heart on an unbeliever, get engaged, get married, and chances are your unbelieving spouse will have a far more detrimental effect upon your walk with God than you will have a positive influence on hers. So let me say it again to all our teens and single adults: do not marry an unbeliever. I don t care how pretty she is or how lonely you are. Do not do it. Period. It will in the long run not be good for your spiritual growth or that of your children. But the application here can extend far beyond relationships. We can set our hearts on all kinds of worldly things. It can be money and all the things it can buy. It can be success at our job, climbing the career ladder at all costs. It can be the acquisition and 4
preservation of power, having control over others at home or at your work. It can be our reputations, so concerned with how others view us that we strive for acceptance and approval every chance we get. If God has called you to love and serve him above all else, then you derail God s calling when you love and serve the things of the world over and above him. Delilah is just the last straw in Samson s life of pursuing what he wanted instead of what God had for him, and as a result his role as a judge of Israel came to an untimely and tragic end. When we chose to give our hearts over to the love of the world, we will undermine and eventually waste God s calling on our lives. But the section we just read includes another example of how one can bring to waste and ruin God s calling on your life, so our next point concerns 3. Toying with temptation The most glaring problem in this passage is Samson foolishly toying with temptation. While I think referring to Samson as all brawn and no brains is an apt description of him, nevertheless I can t possibly imagine he can t figure out what Delilah is up to when she repeatedly asks him to tell her the secret of his strength. Samson may be dumb as an ox but even oxen can learn not to fall into the trap twice! So it seems to me Samson is merely playing the game, as it were. He knows what she s after as if it wasn t clear as day after day she kept doing to him the very thing to him that he claimed would rob him of his strength but he kept going anyway. He kept entertaining her by coyly making up new and creative ways to deceive her. In short, Samson is toying with temptation. Instead of fleeing the situation, he thinks he can play with fire and not get burned. And eventually he gets too close to the flame. His first two responses were far from the truth, but the third time, his answer hits much closer to home. He mentions his hair, and while weaving it into a loom wasn t the key, it was skirting close to the truth. Samson was flirting with temptation as close as he could get. And as often is the case when you keep moving closer and closer to giving into temptation, eventually you do. In Samson s case, fourth time s the charm as he finally tells Delilah of his Nazirite vow and thus spills the beans. What a warning for us: don t toy with temptation. Scripture tells us to flee temptation, not flirt with it. You might think you can play games and get near the fire without being burned, but the reality is you are not as strong as you think you are. Every affair starts innocently enough: a longing glance, a timely smile, a little flirting. They seem innocent enough: no big deal right? But left unchecked, they lead to disaster. Or perhaps those first few times you look at porn, you feel guilty and terrible about it. But then you keep retuning to those sites. Pretty soon you don t feel so guilty. You find yourself there more often, looking for more and more extreme images to keep you stimulated. Then you eventually want to do more than watch and you start looking for secretly act out what you ve been filling your minds with for years. It s the slow and steady descent that before you know it takes you to a place you never thought it would when you first began. As C. S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters, Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. 5
Samson s toying with temptation is what finally did him in. If he would have left as soon as he realized with Delilah was up to, he would have lived. But as a result, he s captured and imprisoned by the Philistines. He played with fire and sure enough, he got burned. Now instead of leading the people of Israel out from the oppression of the Philistines, Samson personally became the focused object of their oppression. So we are to be warned. A sure-fire way to waste God s calling on your life to serve him and reflect his glory is to flirt with sin. Don t run from it: see how close you can get, how far you can go. Keep doing that and one day you may find yourself so close to the edge that you can t pull yourself back, too close to the fire that you can t remove your hand from the heat in time. Samson s example is a cautionary tale we would all be wise to take heed and learn from. But there s one more way I see that one can waste God s calling on your life that s illustrated by Samson s example and that is by doing this 4. Assuming God s gifts are yours by right Look back in your Bibles at v. 20 once again. After cutting off Samson s hair, Delilah says this in v. 20. The Philistines are upon you, Samson! And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as at other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the LORD had left him. That is one of the most tragic verses in the entire Bible. Samson had come to assume that his strength was his own. He saw no connection to the fact that his giftedness was part of God s blessing conferred upon him through his Nazirite vow. He had already violated every other part of the vow and yet his strength still remained. So Samson reasoned that even if he violated this final part of the vow to let no razor touch his head no problem! He figured it didn t matter what he did, he could use his strength to get out of any situation. But Samson had assumed too much. With the final breaking of his Nazirite vow, the Lord had left him. He was powerless. He had trusted in himself for so long that he assumed it was he, the mighty Samson, who was lord and master of his own fate. But how wrong he was! He presumed upon the grace of God and when God left him to his own strength, it utterly failed him. Never assume the gifts and talents and blessings you enjoy are yours by right. Your life could look drastically different than it does right now. You could have been born into extreme poverty. You could have been born with a severe disease that cripples you mentally or physically. Your health could be taken from you in an instant. I look at my own life as a stream of grace. I don t deserve any of this. God didn t owe me the wonderful wife I have. He didn t need to bless me with three beautiful daughters. My ability to think and write and speak are not guaranteed to me; tomorrow they could be taken away from me by disease or by an automobile accident. It s easy to take what we have for granted, to assume that our achievements in life be it our families or our positions at our jobs or the wealth we ve acquired belong to us by right. But they don t. God has granted all good things to us as a gift. 6
So if nothing else, be thankful. I m thankful to God that today he has given to me the health stand before you and preach his Word, that he gave me the skills to write and to speak and such a way that you re willing to still employ me as your pastor. Those are not mine by right and so I thank God for the gifts, talents, and skills he has graciously blessed me with. And so should you. We dare not arrogantly think God owes us these blessing nor presume upon them. Samson thought so and found that unexpectedly they were taken from him, resulting in his doom. But that then brings us almost to the end of Samson s story because now we ve come near to the end of Samson s life. I ve highlighted for us four cautionary examples of how one can waste God s calling on your life, but now as we wrap this up, I want to make just two more brief points concerning the end results of a wasted life. Let s say you heed not the warning of Samson s life and instead you choose to engage in sexual immorality, you love the world more than God, you repeatedly toy with temptation and assume your life is yours to live instead of seeing it as a gift from God. What is the end result for such a person? For that, let s look at the end result of Samson s life. End Results Look back in your Bibles one last time at v. 23-31. Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to rejoice, and they said, Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their god. For they said, Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us. And when their hearts were merry, they said, Call Samson, that he may entertain us. So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them. Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women, who looked on while Samson entertained. Then Samson called to the LORD and said, O Lord GOD, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life. Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. He had judged Israel twenty years. Samson finds himself imprisoned, doing hard labor, with his eyes gouged out under the Philistines. It s hardly the kind of ending Samson should have had, but now at the end of his life, he is drinking down the bitter dregs of his sinful choices. One might hope Samson had learned some lessons through all this, but by the nature of his final prayer, it doesn t 7
look like it. After being brought out of prison to entertain the Philistines, Samson asks God to give him the strength to push down the pillars he was leaning against. But did you catch the reason why he prayed? It wasn t for God s glory. He asks for one final gift of strength so that I might be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. Samson is motivated by revenge. He s not concerned about God s reputation or the nation of Israel s plight: this is all about him. Even at the very end of his life, Samson is only concerned about Samson. His prayer is nothing more than a selfish request to get vengeance on those who hurt him. Remarkably, God grants his request and over 3000 Philistines die as a result. In fact, the text makes an interesting comment at the end of v. 30. It says, So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed during his life. So in light of that, let me make two final points regarding the end results of Samson s sinful and self-centered life that squandered God s calling upon him. The first is this: Your death might be better than your life. The best thing Samson ever did was to die because in his death he took 3000 of Philistine s enemies with him, and given the location and the nature of the celebration, he probably killed many Philistine leaders. His death was indeed the beginning of Israel s liberation from their enemies. But of course it should have been during his life that this happened. If he had lived up to what God had called him to, he could have seen far greater victories without the loss of his life in the process. But now, it was his death that resulted in something far better for the nation of Israel than did anything in his wasted life. So he s the thing: if you waste your life in self-centered living, in sexually immorality, in giving into temptation repeatedly, by being a thankless, arrogant brute, your funeral won t be a time of sorrow; it will be a celebration that you re finally gone. Have you ever gone to a funeral where those attending are glad the guy is finally dead because he was such a jerk? Or the woman was so mean-spirited, so intolerable, so unkind that those who knew her and worked with her are breathing a sigh of relief now that they don t have to deal with her any longer? Let me assure you, those funerals exist. Not every family member is sad to see their father or daughter die. Some times their response is, This world is better without you. Goodbye and good riddance. Live your life like Samson did and you may find you death is regarded by people to be a far better thing than your life. That s the sad end of those who reject God s calling to live for him and decided to live only for themselves instead. By the time they get to the end of their life, those whom they ve affected are only too relieved to see them buried. But the second and final point I need to make regarding the end of Samson s life is that Nevertheless, God still accomplishes his will through sinful people. God still used Samson to begin the deliverance of Israel, in spite of Samson s sin. I don t believe God answered Samson s prayer for revenge: God did it for his own glory, so that the false god of Dagon couldn t be lifted up as a god more powerful than Yahweh. God did it to help deliver his people by inflicting a fatal blow to the Philistine leaders assembled at this great feast. Even though Samson was a morally reprehensible man who was motivated by little more than lust and self-centeredness, God was greater than his sin. God was still able to accomplish his will even if Samson had no desire to follow it himself. 8
Conclusion So as we close, let it be abundantly clear than Samson is no role-model to follow. He s no hero. His actions are consistently self-centered as he takes absolutely no regard for God or God s calling on his life. Samson s life is a wasted life, pure and simple. Samson is useful to us only as a cautionary tale, a warning for us not to waste the call God has given us, to not be foolish to live only for ourselves, to satisfy our desires. So Grace Fellowship, learn from this. Make your calling and election sure by putting off sinful desires and living in the power of the Holy Spirit, given to you through faith in Christ. God has far more for us than merely living to fulfill our lusts and other self-centered desires. He has called us to love Christ, to bear the fruits of the Spirit, and to make the most of every opportunity given to us to serve him and our neighbor. God s has given us a life to be used for his glory; let s not waste what he has given us. Let s pray. This sermon was addressed originally to the people at Grace Fellowship of Waterloo, IA by Pastor Rob Borkowitz. Copyright 2016. 9