Clough Judges Lesson 15

Judges 16

In 1 Samuel 4:1 we have some of the background for the passage in Judges which we are studying, and the life of Samson. “The word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out to battle against the Philistines and pitched against Eben-ezer: and the Philistines pitched at Aphek. [2] And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel, and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines; and they slew of the army in the field about four thousand men.” With this we have the beginning chapter to Samson’s career because the book of 1 Samuel and the book of Judges overlap chronologically. At the battle of Aphek Israel lost the Ark and it was one of those areas where Philistine influence began to dominate the nation more and more and more.

And from this point, the battle of Aphek, on down to another battle that is described in 1 Samuel 7:9, where we have the second battle, the battle of Mizpah, and this battle, many, many years later was the final battle that ended, or at least broke the back of the Philistine domination of the nation. [And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD. And Samuel cried out to the LORD for Israel; and the LORD heard him. [10] And as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomforted them, and they were smitten before Israel. [11] And the men of Israel went out of Mizpah, and pursued the Philistines, and smote them.” And here we have an exact reversal of the battle of Aphek.

What was the difference from defeat to victory? It was the result largely of the ministry of Samuel; Samuel was faithful to teach the Word of God and he taught it over and over and over and over to his generation. And as a result of Samuel’s faithful ministry to the Word we have God giving that nation a victory. Why? Because they earned it? No, but because they responded to the Word of God and so we have history reversed from this disaster at Aphek to the victory at Mizpah. But all during this time of the Philistine domination we have Samson also working in the south, whereas Samuel worked more in the highlands.

So turn back to the last chapter of the Samson episode, Judges 16. In our study of Samson we have seen how Samson was used by God in spite of his carnality; in spite of the fact that Samson was in continual, almost, rebellion against God and His will for his life, God still used Samson. Why? Not to Samson’s credit but because God’s plan must go on. God said he would do certain things and He meant it. Those certain things were specified in the Abrahamic Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant is the ground of security for the nation Israel; it is the eternal security document for the nation Israel and it means that though Israel may fail many times in history, largely though the Law and so on, even though Israel failed from the Law and the Mosaic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant is the salvation because God has promised that the seed of Abraham will survive in history as a nation, and not only will they survive as a nation but that seed of Abraham will go on to act as a blessing, the channel of blessings to all the world, which means that they must remain religiously pure to some degree. This means that any Philistine infiltration, such as is occurring in during the Samson period and the Samuel period, this infiltration must be stopped.

And so during the time of the ministry of these two men, Samson and Samuel, and by the way, also Jephthah, whom we studied earlier, during the ministry of these men God had basically two methods of dealing with the nation. The first method was through Samson. Samson’s job was to provoke a conflict. Why was Samson necessary to provoke a conflict? Because the particular kind of satanic attack that occurred in Israel in this era was made up of ecumenical religion. There were two policies that the Philistines were known for in the ancient world. One was their ecumenical nature. For example, you can see it at the battle of Aphek. They get the Ark and what do they do with the Ark; they take it into the pantheon, to the temple. Not only do they have Dagon but now they have the Ark of Jehovah and they experience no logical problems whatever in having two or three gods together, the more the merrier. So they brought them all together.

You find the same thing and you’ll see it again here when they bring Samson into the temple of Dagon. So their religion, founded on the pagan god Dagon, was a religion that was basically absorptive and ecumenical, it absorbed anything and everything that came along. And therefore you see, the Philistines were a new kind of oppression against the nation Israel. Before the oppressors of the nation Israel had always been military powers; the issues had been clear, it was physical persecution. But the Philistines, though they had a military, basically did it in a very smooth way of teaching ecumenical religion under the name, probably, of breaking down prejudice, you can’t be so prejudice as to think one and only one religion is right, that’s prejudice so have an open mind. So you can just imagine the Philistine evangelist, going throughout the land, breaking down prejudice and breaking down all the structure of the Word of God that had been given by Moses, Joshua and the first generation after the conquest.

So you have this ecumenical attitude and along with the ecumenical attitude of the Philistines came the second policy that we see today always operating with ecumenical spirit and that is disarmament. They had totally disarmed the nation. This is why you have Samson fighting with the weapons he had; this is why you had the judges fighting with the weapons they had; this is why you have David who, when he tries to fight with them later on after they’ve been beaten back and then they come back again, David has weapons problems. Why? Because they have emphasized disarmament.

Now have any of you ever thought of the connection between ecumenical religion and disarmament. What is war for? We’ve studied Romans 13 in the morning, you heard one of the most famous speeches of General MacArthur, what does all of this mean as far as ecumenical religion. Well, in order to fight a war you have to have just cause. In other words you have to have a high definition of issues; you have to have black and white; you have to have something worth fighting for. You have to have a conflict and so therefore the attitude of warlike environment is antithetical to that of ecumenical religion. Ecumenicalism expresses peace in the realm of the spiritual. Disarmament expresses peace in the realm of the physical. But both are pseudo peace; both are peace that is worked on false premises, and so this is why even today where you find ecumenical religion you find people with the attitude, well, there’s nothing worth fighting for so why have weapons and why not dismantle our army. Earlier you heard the voice of Winston Churchill and Edward R. Murrow pointed out how Winston Churchill sat in the House of Commons year after year after year telling the English that they had to get their military. We know from the career of General MacArthur that he did the same thing, all the time that MacArthur was Chief of Staff under FDR in the early 30s he warned them that we cannot cut our soldiers. He said we must mechanize. Thank God we had MacArthur in the 1930s; MacArthur was the one responsible for mechanizing much of the modern day what are called they cavalry, they got rid of the horses and replaced them with tanks, and MacArthur was responsible for a lot of improvements in this area, but he had a battle every inch of the way. And he made several remarks that are absolutely choice. He made some very choice remarks against clergymen who in his day, in the 30s, were always against the military, the clergy who were always for disarmament. There’s a reason for that; the reason men like this are for disarming is simply because they can’t see any issue worth fighting for, and it comes out of the muddled thinking of ecumenicalism. These two issues are not divorced; they are two sides to the same coin.

Now in Samson’s day they faced this Philistine pressure and the Philistine pressure caused a strange reaction on the part of the nation Israel. In every other situation that we have examined in the book of Judges what has happened? In every case the nation Israel, sometime would react to the physical persecution and finally they would cry out to God for deliverance. And then God would deliver and the whole form of this book is written over and over again, Israel apostacized, point one of the apostasy cycle; the second step in the apostasy cycle is that God chastens; and the third step is that they come to themselves, plead for God’s deliverance and receive it. That’s the cycles. But the Samson cycle in this chapter, Judges 16, the end of a unit, chapters 13-16, and this forms the real end of the book of Samuel. In ensuing weeks we will take up the successive chapters but Judges 17-19 are footnotes. This is the real end of the book of Judges. And you can see how the cycles that start off bad deteriorate to the point where they are worse and then absolutely worse; to use a phrase my boy has, they’re bad, badder and baddest.

And so they go on down to the point that at the end where in this Samson cycle the third step never occurs. You have Israel apostacize, you have God chasten, but the third step is dropped from this last part and the argument of the book of Judges is that the nation has deteriorated and this is why Samson has to have his troublemaking ministry and God picked a good man for the job. Samson couldn’t stay out of trouble, both in his personal life and in his national life as a citizen of the nation. But that basically was Samson’s calling, he was called to agitate; he was called to irritate, he was called to make the Israelites wake up and throw off ecumenical religion.

Now this is always the most subtle form of persecution Satan can wage against the church of Jesus Christ because always when you try to stand up for the Word you automatically get placed as an apostle of discord; you automatically get labeled as a troublemaker, because why bother, why make an issue when everything is so comfortable? When everybody else isn’t doing this what’s the matter with you standing up like you do, like a sore thumb. What is this business of insisting absolutely upon the Word? So Samson then has to provoke and provoke and provoke and this he does and we have seen how effectively he has irritated both the Philistines and his own countrymen.

You remember in chapters 14-15 how Samson at one point was under the threat of arrest by the P Philistines, the Philistines chased him up into the tribe of Judah and what did the tribe of Judah do? They come down and they say hey, Samson, you know you’re an awful troublemaker, let’s tie you up and hand you back to the Philistines. So we have this odd situation where his own countrymen, three thousand of them, a very great tribute to the strength of Samson, three thousand of them walk down, tie him up and hand him over to the Philistines, and then not even helping when he fights alone single-handedly one thousand Philistine soldiers; they stand around. So this is the paralysis that has hit the nation at this point, a tremendous paralysis and Samson’s job is to break it.

Now we’ve seen his main ministry; we finished that main ministry last time because it ended in Judges 15:20, “And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.” That’s the signal by the writer of this book that’s the main end of the story. Now Judges 16 is a note on how Samson died. That’s basically the whole motive here to show this and to show that Samson in his own deterioration mirrored the nation.

In Judges 16:1, “Then went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her.” Now this particular area, it’s very interesting if you take a map and you have the Philistine pentapolis, there are five cities down in the southwest corner. The southernmost one is Gaza from which we have the Gaza strip today, still named for the same city, still standing. And it’s that city that Samson goes to in verse 1. And obviously this goes along with his entire character, you’ve already seen him in trouble with one girl, this is girl number two and before we get through he’ll be on number three. And he just has a propensity in this area; everyone has an area of weakness and Samson’s is quite obvious. But nevertheless, he goes into her.

Judges 16:2, the Gazites recognize, they have their intelligence and they see somebody is visiting the red light district tonight, so let’s close in. “And it was told the Gazites, saying, Samson is come hither. And they compassed him in, and laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, In the morning, when it is day, we shall kill him.” Now we never find out in this narrative, between verses 2-3 something happens, and if you read commentators they can’t imagine what happened between verses 2 and 3. Well what is it that happened? We read of a guard, a group of men in verse 2 who were in the gate, or at the gate and these gates were tremendous gates. First of all they had to be fireproof because enemies would burn their way through the city wall and these gates are obviously made of metal and they had great posts that stuck deep in the ground and they swung open, sort of like a medieval castle, except they were made more of metal and bronze and so on. And they were very heavy and very strong gates. And these men evidently were very confident and either they were all sacked out when Samson did this or he plastered them and we don’t hear about it. But something happened to them.

Judges 16:3, “And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.” The tradition of the city of Gaza says that he walked about a half hours walk east of that city to a hill called El mon tar, this is on the road to Hebron. And he just not only took the gate off the hinges but evidently the hinges were real strong so he didn’t bother with that, he just pulled the post up with it. And he thought this was a very playful act and just walked off with them, a nice joke to pull on them. So he took off with the gates, and so verses 1-3 is just a note to show this guy is kind of a playboy type, troublemaker, and just to give you a snapshot of his life.

Now in Judges 16:4 his final end, “And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.” Here’s number three. And he fares just as well with her. Notice the pattern; every time he’s in love with a girl it’s always on the wrong side of the fence. Every one of these girls is not a Jewish girl; every one of them is a Philistine, every one of them has been forbidden by God’s Law. The only way a Jewish man could marry a non-Jewish girl in the Old Testament was if that non-Jewish girl or Gentile had believed in Christ under the Old Testament economy. Example: the book of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess, she was not a Jewish woman, but nevertheless fully acceptable because she was a believer, her famous declaration of faith: where you go I will go because your God is my God, etc. So Ruth was a believer and so this is why the argument of the book of Ruth is that if Gentiles would believe they would be accepted in the nation, but none of these girls had any interest in spiritual things and frankly Samson wasn’t too interested in spiritual things either when he dropped in.

So we have this whole situation where Samson, looking around for his right woman and he can’t find her, and this shows an instability of Samson’s character and we’re going to see more of this; we’ve already seen a lot of it so far in our studies of Samson, this is just one of the features of this man. He has a very unstable character; he will not and has not, evidently, learned to trust God for his needs. He’s the kind of person that has to panic, oh what am I going to do, here I am single, and I don’t have a partner and all the rest of it. So you can see every time he failed to trust God to provide for his needs, trouble. The first time he was in trouble he wound up in getting the girl and her father burned to death. The second trouble is the gate story here that we’ve just seen.

And now the third trouble he’s going to get into will be the final one, he’ll be killed. So this is the motto of the story every time and it’s a picture of every believer who always tries some human gimmick to satisfy their needs. What God provides is not enough, I am too impatient to wait for God, I don’t care what God has provided and so I’m going to take it. Of course we take it and along with it comes the Trojan horse—trouble. And so every time Samson tries to take it he gets clobbered. That should be a sufficient lesson for every believer; any time you trust other than God for your needs and you have needs and it’s not wrong to admit you have needs, there’s nothing wrong with a single person admitting they have the need of a right man or right woman, there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s a legitimate need. But where the illegitimate factor comes in is when you begin to say well, I am going to find it by myself, by my own human gimmicks, I’ll check this one out and check that one out, etc. all the gimmicks, never relying on God to work the details out.

Now in verse 4-5 we have a very interesting historical notice. By the way, this is another story for you girls, every time you see one of these guys that likes to put on the make just remember, you will be in the same position these girls were, love ‘em and leave ‘em, that’s the slogan and that was the name of Samson’s game.

So in Judges 16:5, “And the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and said unto her,” now that shows you very critical because there is a pentapolis here, the “lords of the Philistines” are the governors of the five cities. These “lords of the Philistines” are the highest officials sin the land. The very fact that they come up to Deliah shows something; it shows that by this point in the goings on Samson has become a full-fledged national threat to the nation of Philistia. By this time his reputation is so great and he has caused so much trouble and suffering on the part of the Philistines that they are determined they are going to nail him somehow. So in verse 5 they give a bribe, they say, “Entice him, and see wherein his great strength lies, and by what means we may prevail against him, that we may bind him to afflict him; and we will give thee every one of us eleven hundred pieces of silver.” In present American currency, the last time I looked, this was $3,000, tomorrow it will be more of course because our dollars are getting worse. But at this point it’s $3,000 and so they offer this girl a $3,000 bribe to take care of Samson and so she begins her tactics.

One of the great commentators on this passage in history was Ambrose, he was a great church father of the 4^th century, and he once said this about this chapter. He said: Samson, when strong and brave, strangled a lion, but he could not strangle his own love. He burst the fetters of his foes but not the cords of his own lust. He burned up the crops of others and lost the fruit of his own virtue when burned with a flame kindled by a single woman.” A very good mirror of Samson’s character. As he goes on Delilah tries to entice him by offering sex, and this is Samson’s hang up. Every believer has an area of weakness, sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s sex, sometimes it’s something else; Samson’s was sex. This was his big thing and so evidently the Philistines said now look Delilah, you’re an experienced lady in this area so how about we paying you off and you perform with this character, so Delilah starts in and Samson plays with her in verse 7, he offers riddles; remember Samson loved riddles, he offered riddles to the first woman, maybe that was the secret to why he was so attractive or something but he used to approach girls with riddles.

Judges 16:6, “And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou might be bound to afflict thee. [7] And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green withs” what he’s talking about there is new rope, “that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man. [8] Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green withs which had not been dried, and she bound him with them.”

In verse 9 he broke out and so on, [9, “Now there were men lying in wait, abiding with her in the chamber. And she said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he broke the withs, as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire. So his strength was not known. [10] And Delilah said unto Samson, Behold, thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou might be bound. [11] And he said unto her, If they bind me fast with new ropes that never were occupied, then shall I be weak, and be as another man. [12] Delilah therefore took new ropes, and bound him therewith, and said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And there were those lying in wait abiding in the chamber. And he broke them from off his arms like a thread. [13] And Delilah said unto Samson, Hitherto thou hast mocked me, and told me lies: tell me wherewith thou might be bound. And he said unto her, If thou weavest the seven locks of my head with the web. [14] And she fastened it with the pin, and said unto him, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awaked out of his sleep, and went away with the pin of the beam, and with the web. [15] And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love thee, when thine heart is not with me? Thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lieth.

These trials go on until down to verse 16 where you have this statement made, “And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words,” men notice, “and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death,” we’re coming up to Proverbs in the morning service and there are many hilarious proverbs in the Word of God, and one of them is that a woman who nags is lie a dripping faucet, just water drip, drip, drip, drip, and here you can see one of those great times in Scripture where the female puts on the clamps and she does it through her constant nag, nag, nag, nag. And this was the thing with Delilah here; she puts the heat on him. Of course, whose fault is it basically, it’s not hers, in the long run it’s Samson, he wants it and so he’s going to get it. He wants sex and so she says okay, you want sex I want something in exchange, and this is going to be it, and so we have this thing on.

Then in verse 17 he finally admits to her, but I want you to notice that when he admits the secret of his strength he makes a very interesting statement. Judges 16:17, “That he told her all his heart, and said unto her, There hath not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazirite unto God from my mother’s womb,” now that’s a big fat lie, his mother consecrated him but a part of a Nazirite vow was, number one, that you stay away from dead bodies, so what did Samson do, he’s around a dead lion and he doesn’t tell his parents about it, remember he takes the honey out of the dead lion and he walks up to his parents and never tells them’ it carefully says his parents knew not whence cometh the honey. Now why? Again he violated the Nazirite oath. The second point of the Nazirite oath is that he could have no wine. Now could you imagine Samson abstaining, just from what we have seen? You can just imagine that he was a tea-totaler, dropped in for tea with Delilah. Can’t you just see that? No! Samson obviously played around in the area of wine also. And now he is going to blow the third part of the Nazirite vow, and that is hair cuts, no hair cuts. And now he has the gall to say to this girl, “I have been a Nazirite unto God from my mother’s womb,” and of course he has a very exalted opinion of himself and we’re going to see later on a most fantastic way God answers prayer, but He answers prayer not because of who and what Samson is, but who and what He is.

Judges 16:17b, and he says, “if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.” Now you want to understand in verse 17 and following, not what the critics always use in this passage. They always say see, ha-ha, here in the Old Testament we have an illustration of magic, and these people were so naïve to believe that if you let your hair grow you get strong. That is not the point. It never says this in the book of Judges, this is something you get in some religious course but it isn’t something that’s in the text. The issue is, in verse 17 we have the breaking of the Nazirite vow and this breaking of the vow is a braking of a vow to God. The strength doesn’t come from his hair, God is giving him the strength, and God gives him the strength because of his vow, and if you break the vow then you break the strength. Delilah did all this, and finally the Philistines capture him in verse 21.

[Judges 16:18, “And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath showed me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand. [19] And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him. [20] And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him.]

Judges 16:21, obviously from the language used in this whole passage it was sex all the way as far as Delilah’s tactics were concerned. Finally, “But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes,” now if you study archeology the Assyrians had a good way of doing this, they had a sharp knife and they’d tie the prisoner’s arms behind their back and bleep-bleep and that was the eyes and that’s how they took care of people; that way they didn’t have to worry about a jail too much, so after this you had essentially a captive audience because it couldn’t go anywhere, couldn’t do anything, and this was how the ancient world handled the problem of prisoners of war. So here they tried the same thing with Samson, but notice what they do; and starting from here on to the end of the chapter we have a magnificent illustration of why God answers prayers when we ourselves do not deserve the answer to the prayer.

You might have read this in Sunday School and you have this story of how the Philistines bring poor Samson in, already blind, and you have all this great pity for Samson and the poor man, he’s down on the mill there grinding grain and now the Philistines are going to make fun of him and God feels so sorry for Samson that He answers his prayer when says God, give me one other opportunity to avenge my eyes. And he pulls the temple down on them, and the whole story is usually pitched from the standpoint that God feels sorry for Samson, poor Samson. Now the point is that God doesn’t feel sorry for Samson and God does not answer his prayer because of who and what Samson is. […put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house. [22] Howbeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven. “]

Beginning at Judges 16:23 you have the reason why God answers prayer of Samson and it’s not because of who and what Samson is. “Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice,” and in the Ancient East after a military victory it was customary for a nation to have a thanksgiving day, a thanksgiving celebration to the national god and this is what is proclaimed. Remember, “the lords” in verse 23 are the same lords that came to Delilah, they’re the head of the Philistine pentapolis, they are the high government officials, they are proclaiming a national feast to Dagon and so beginning at verse 23 we have Samson, even though on negative volition, even though he has dropped the ball all over the field, even though he has so fouled up his life that it seems from human viewpoint to be completely unredeemable, at this point God is going to do a marvelous thing with Samson, but He is going to do it because the battle is His, and not Samson’s. And beginning at verse 23 the Philistines themselves create the issue, not Samson. So don’t get your eyes on Samson, the issue right here in verse 23-24.

The last part of verse 23, here is what they begin to proclaim, “for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand.” In other words, it is a proclamation of faith in an apostate religion. Ant his is what infuriates God and it is this reason why God will answer Samson’s prayer, not any other reason. And this has an analogy in our lives as believers. You can pray all sorts of prayers and oftentimes you will get in a jam and say oh God, help me, or something else and oftentimes prayers are answered. But just remember, the reason why God answers prayer is because the promise He makes to you at the time you trusted in Christ. What was the promise that He made? That I will predestinate you to be conformed to the image of My Son. God has promised, just as the Abrahamic Covenant promised to the nation Israel, that promise is why He answers prayer in our life, not whether we deserve it but because His promises must not fail, cannot fail and never will fail. God’s plan will go on forever. And so since His plan will not fail in verse 23-24 when we have a situation develop where it looks like Satan, because we know these ancient religions were demonically caused, when they begin to praise Satan, actually, in verse 23-24, you have immediately the rise of holy war. At this point God, as it were, swings into action because in verse 24…

Judges 16:24, “And when the people saw him,” Samson, led into the temple area, the court area, “they praised their god,” notice this, this is something I’ve never seen brought out in the Samson story, this is why the prayer is answered, they began to praise “their god: for they said, Our god hath delivered into our hands our enemy, and the destroyer of our country, which slew many of us.” That last testimony in verse 24 shows you the tremendous effect Samson had in his lifetime. We know he killed up to this point at least 1,030 Philistines, plus an undetermined number. So he killed single-handedly 1,030 plus X, at least and probably Samson killed a lot more in his lifetime but this last phrase teaches us that Samson had a whale of an impact in his day.

But Judges 16:25, “And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry,” by the way, does this remind you of some other point in the Bible when a similar thing occurs? The feast of Belshazzar, when again you have the same apostate climax, when a national king begins to proclaim and he begins to drag out God’s vessels and he begins to create this apostate praise and he desecrates God’s Word, God will never tolerate His Word to be desecrated. And you are about to see what happens when people do; we have another instance in the book of Acts, when the Gentile king, Agrippa, gets up and he makes some blasphemous statement and immediately God kills him. God will not tolerate His Word to be blasphemed like this, and in verse 25, “when their hearts were merry,” the party is well on now, “that they said, Call for Samson, that he may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars.”

Judges 16:26, “And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house stands, that I may lean upon them.” Now fortunately modern archeology tells us a little bit about these Philistine temples and here’s the situation. From the side here we have a temple, and you have a courtyard out in the front, and it was this courtyard where they were having Samson perform. They said let Samson do some tricks for us. And it says three thousand people were standing on the roof of this thing, wanting to get a good seat. And the rulers of the pentapolis evidently were sitting here looking out on this court. You have some people out here watching but most of them were up on the temple where they could get a good view, and these pillars were pieces of wood; they were actually tall timbers and in that kind of architecture they had kind of a socket structure in the stone. This is how they built it; this pillar is wood, and they’ve got three thousand people on the roof, and Samson says oh, now I see a little opportunity I have here for some more trouble. He can’t literally see but he can hear where these people are and so that’s why in verse 27 there’s this little notice. When you read the Old Testament beware of these little notices. There’s a high economy of words in the Old Testament and when you have these little notices slipped into the text they are there for a reason.

Judges 16:27, “Now the house was full of men and women; and all the lords of the Philistines were there; and there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women, that beheld while Samson made sport. [28] And Samson called unto the LORD, and said, O Lord God,” now watch this prayer because nothing Samson says in this prayer merits God’s answer, not one thing that he says here, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” Don’t you see this falls so short of the ministry of a judge in Israel? A judge was to be concerned with God’s causes, not his own personal life, but Samson, even at the end of his life could only see about a half inch beyond the end of his nose, and he was not hacked at the whole issue of the Philistine religion, he had stood there and had heart the praises to Dagon, he had heard the whole “thank Dagon, thank god, thank Dagon,” he had heard apostasy in his hear for hours and hours while they were making sport with him. This didn’t bother Samson a bit; he was only concerned to get ‘em because of his eyes.

Now this prayer shows you that at this point he is completely out of it spiritually; this prayer doesn’t merit two seconds attention by God because it’s not to the issue; the issue is right that moment he could have prayed Oh God, may You damn this religion, and give me an opportunity to crush it. Now God gives him an opportunity to crush it and God is going to answer his prayer in the way he should have prayed. He should have prayed: may you judge this entire religious ceremony. Instead he makes the silly request of verse 28, “I pray thee, that my eyes might be avenged.” It’s completely beside the point.

Judges 16:29, “And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. [30] And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein.” And then there’s a remark at the end of verse 30, “So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.” So since we know three thousand people were there and we know he killed 1,030 plus X number of people in his life, he had a high percent of kill ratio in this little operation. One man just collapsed the whole temple. You would think the Philistines would learn, they had the temple collapse here, they brought the Ark of Yahweh in, the Ark of Jehovah, and their idol for Dagon fell flat on his face and they walked in in the morning and here was Dagon looking at the floor, so they should have learned twice that you don’t play games with the God of Israel. But they didn’t.

And then you find the same kind of notice at the end of Judges 16:31, “[Then his brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the burying place of Manoah his father.] And he judged Israel twenty years.” In other words, this is the end, a very, very sad, sad end to this whole thing.

But I want to conclude tonight by giving seven points on faith, and we’ll review these and review these until you can repeat them backwards in Chinese. This has to do with faith and its technique in the Christian life.

The first point is that the only sufficient object for faith, for finite personal man, is the infinite personal God. Now this faith technique is what Samson should have had. The failure to use this faith technique made Samson a very unstable person and if you don’t have this kind of faith and if you don’t operate by faith as a believer your life will be just like Samson’s, a mess because you’ll always be looking for something, you’ll blame God because God doesn’t give you this and God doesn’t give you that, etc. And failure to exercise faith will always lead to self-induced misery. But the only sufficient object for faith of finite personal man is the infinite personal God. This can be demonstrated by a historical fact. Do you realize that faith never develops in any other nation in history except Israel? That is a fact. No other religion of the world has the faith of Israel in the sense that Israel turned and trusted God for the flow of history. That can be verified by any historical study. No other religion of the world has faith. Why then? A very simple principle and that leads to the second point of the faith technique.

Therefore, second point, if faith is to exist, God must speak to man. Romans 10:17 is the principle, though it’s expanded elsewhere, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.” That explains the missing element in Israel’s history and why it is that every other nation could not develop faith, only Israel could. Why? Only Israel had a God who spoke to them, and when God spoke then you have faith. It’s just a historic fact, you don’t have faith any other way and you can discuss it philosophically and you can invent all your definitions but I’ll tell you something, history tells me that faith only came to Israel and that forces me, if I’m going to be intellectually honest to ask myself, what was it in Israel that the other nations didn’t have. There’s only one thing; they had sin natures like everyone else, therefore the only difference between Israel and other nations was the Word of God. Only Israel had a God who spoke to them. So the second point is if faith is to exist, God must reveal Himself to man.

The third point is that man must become convinced that it really is God who is speaking. And how does he do this? He checks God’s words against God’s works. He checks God’s words or promises against God’s works or performance. This is how you come to the conclusion that it is God who is doing the speaking. Illustration of this: Romans 4:20-21 where “Abraham, being fully persuaded that what He had promised, God was able to perform. How had Abraham become convinced of this? By comparing the words of God against His works. So the third thing is before you can use the faith technique is you must be first convinced that this Bible is the Word of God. Now that seems stupid to say in a fundamental church, but I know some of our people who I can tell by the way they act and their attitude toward the Word of God, they do not believe that this book is the Word of God. They’ll formally agree with you, but what I mean is that if you really seriously believe that in this book you have the words of the God of the universe and you are convinced of this, your attitude can never be one of flippancy and indifference like so many toward the Word of God and its study. And yet we have people running around from this group to that group looking for spiritual hotshots or something to make up for some lack in their life when this is the lack; the lack is the lack of the Word of God. So the third thing is that you must become convinced and you can only do this when you compare God’s words to His works.

The fourth point is that faith is the assurance of God’s plan in my life which allows me to submit to it rationally this moment. That’s Hebrew 11, the whole chapter. Please underline the word “rationally.” Faith in the New Testament is never a leap, it’s always with evidences.

The fifth point, faith has two sides, doing and resting. Always it has two sides, doing and resting. Now in experience what usually happens is this; we may have trials to our faith. Let’s isolate three areas in your life where you’ve had a trial and you’ve had to believe God for something. You’ve had to trust Him for something. Let’s diagram those three trials in your life. Let’s diagram the doing and the resting. In one trial you may have had to do this much, and you may have had to rest this much. In a second trial you may have to do this much and rest this much; in a third trial you may have done absolutely the minimum and rest completely.

Let me give you an illustration of trial number three: the virgin Mary, Luke 1:38, the Holy Spirit comes to the virgin Mary and tells her, Behold, you have been chosen by God to do such and such. And the virgin Mary can do nothing; she can’t bring a male baby about, what does she do? She completely rests, but she does one thing, positive volition. She says “let it be according to Your Word.” So I want you to see that faith always has a doing, but understand I’m not teaching faith is works here. What I say is that faith demands a sense of the volition, it demands a positive aspect. I’m putting this in here because I want to protect you against this pacifist demonism that’s going around where you just kind of yield yourself like a wet towel to God. Some people distort this to mean total passivity, anything that comes is God’s will, tune out all thought, tune out all application to the Word, turn out all volition. So this is why I say that you have to see that faith has two sides, doing and resting. Mary, in her case, doing just involved one thing, Yes Father, let it be done according to Your Word. She expresses positive volition, and she rests all the way.

But not all trials of faith are like this and you must recognize this. Oftentimes, for example right man, right woman, oftentimes walking by faith involves doing, it involves engaging in what we would say is the normal cause and effect, but behind that “normal” and we’ll put normal in quotes, behind that “normal” behavior pattern is the work of God in bringing it about. Let me give you another illustration; suppose you’re looking for a job. If you had this kind of interpretation you’d say well, I don’t have to look for a job, God’s going to drop a job in my lap. So after five years on welfare you decide that doesn’t work, and you decide that perhaps what you have to do is put out some resumes and make some openings. The point is to be careful at this point; it’s very easy when you start to do to get your eyes on the doing and not on the resting, but if you can just see this as the fact that this doing never reaches here, think of this as a bar graph, the result of your action is always finally the rest of God. It’s always finally God that finishes it. No matter how much you may do, you may send out resumes, you may do this, you may do that, and that all may be very legitimate but if you’re walking by faith you’ll always realize that the doing never totally encompasses the whole. So the fifth point is that faith has two sides, doing and resting, but always such that rest in God makes the final credit for the whole thing. God will not share His glory with anyone else.

The sixth point; faith grows with a greater firsthand knowledge of God and His plan for me, Proverbs 3:5-6. Faith grows with a greater firsthand knowledge of God, firsthand knowledge of God; please underline firsthand, firsthand knowledge. This means that in your personal life as you walk with the Lord, the more you know about Him and the more you know about His plans the more you can believe, and this point should end forever this thing you get in the devotionals, oh you’ve got to believe, you’ve to believe, you’ve got to believe and you work up this thing where you think you believe and that’s all hypnotism; it’s all gimmicks. So the sixth point is that faith grows with knowledge of God and His plan for me.

Finally point seven, faith is limited by the conscience, Romans 14:23. If your conscience is giving you a hard time you can’t believe, that’s the verdict of Romans 14:23. And this is what’s wrong with modern philosophy and modern theology, they completely ignore the role of the human conscience; they always talk about rationality, they talk about this and that, but never do they bring in conscience. And yet when you study the text of the New Testament the one organ that is involved in the human being that is more sighted for faith than any other is the conscience.