Clough Manhood Series Lesson 25

Barak and Samson: Two Negative Examples – Judges 4-5; 13-16

We have studied through the Bible, partly, watching for various principles that apply to the Christian man. We have done this because there’s such a lack of this sort of information, even in so-called Christian bookstores. You can find twenty books on what it means to be a Christian woman, or the Christian woman’s problems, but try to find something that guides a Christian man and you’ll look long and hard because there’s very little on it. And so this is our attempt to try to fill in the gap and look at what the Scriptures have to say in this area. So today we’re going to specialize in two men who were failures so we can watch how not to do things. We can always learn from both the good examples and the bad ones.

But before we go on to these two failures, we want to go back and look at some of the details that we’ve studied so far and summarize the kind of mistakes men often make, and therefore these are the kind of things that every Christian man has to be alert to watch for in his life. Now one theme that has occurred again and again all the way from Genesis, all the way up to where we are now, the book of Judges, has been that the great… some great, great failures were done, when men listened to their wives when their wives were promulgating human viewpoint. Now we qualified that because some men react to this and they begin to say okay, Adam was faked out by listening to Eve and so that disqualifies the woman for the rest of history of ever giving her husband a piece of advice. Now that’s foolish.

The Bible says that the woman is the helpmate for the man and she is to give him counsel. And this is why there are some very wonderful examples in the Scriptures of women giving tremendous counsel to men at critical times. One thinks, for example, of Abigail and others who helped David; they were there just at the right time with just the right advice. They cooled their men down, they knew how to talk to them, they knew how not to nag, they knew how to communicate, they knew how to stop and turn their men around and the men responded. And so it’s wrong to go to the extreme of saying that one ought not to listen.

But nevertheless, we do have to say that of all the stories we’ve seen, we’ve seen this principle operate time and time again, and there’s a reason for this. It comes out of the pages of the New Testament, a text that’s very much hated by some of the ERA people, and the text says that women keep silent in the church. Now the keeping silent of women in the church refers primarily to the fact that men have the responsibility to lead, and when men do not lead, and the women have to lead by virtue of just no one else is doing it, we become vulnerable; vulnerable to delusion, and this is exactly Paul’s point and he says this a number of times in the New Testament. It’s not casting women down, it’s not saying that women are less than men; it’s simply saying that that isn’t their role and the role of the man is the role of spiritual decision.

We’ve seen at least three examples of this principle of men failing when they listen to the human viewpoint of their wife. We find, of course, the classic, Adam; Adam listens to his wife sell Satan’s tactic to him and he buys it, and when God comes back to him He doesn’t accept Adam’s excuse, well, You gave me Eve and so I just listened to her. God doesn’t buy that, which means, therefore, that he holds the man responsible for accepting bad advice from his wife. The man can never use this as an excuse to God; well, You gave me this woman and I listened to her, she’s supposed to be my helpmate and now look where I am, it’s her fault. There can’t be any transfer of responsibility. God always comes back to the man, and He doesn’t go to the woman.

We saw this with Abraham; Sarah had her little scheme for devising progeny; the scheme in history led to the creation of the Arabs and obviously even today the Jews face, every time they see an Arab they should say to themselves, well, that’s what happens when Abraham listened to Sarah. Sarah had her cute little scheme for handling and fulfilling the promise of God, and Abraham was the fool that bought his wife’s cute little scheme, and Abraham, of course, was the one who paid a very severe price for listening to his wife’s cute little scheme.

And then the third time that we can point to in our series so far where men failed at this point of listening to human viewpoint from their wife was when Moses was met by God on the way to Egypt, and God came to him and said how come you haven’t circumcised your son, and if you don’t circumcise in the next hour or so I’m going to kill you, and it was obvious from the text what happened; it was obvious that Moses had listened to Zipporah; Zipporah didn’t like the rite of circumcision, and even after she did it she flung the rock down and said here, take it for you are a bloody husband to me. What she was doing was doing despite to the covenant of God Himself; God told Moses to circumcise; it wasn’t Moses’ covenant, it wasn’t a Jewish rite, it was God’s rite. And if she was going to submit to God’s law she ought to be glad to do it instead of giving him static. And so Zipporah gave Moses static and Moses let her have her ground, and God did not accept that; God insisted, Moses, you are responsible.

So we can summarize this first principle that we’ve seen operate time and time again is that from God’s point of view God wants men to make the decision. Now just a side note; the women who find themselves in positions where the man is not making the key spiritual decisions, one of your best tactics to follow is refuse to make the decision; if necessary, let the whole operation crumble to the ground but force him to make the decision. Don’t castrate your husband by taking away his spiritual responsibility, and that’s what many women do; the Christian woods are full of them; churches are especially full of women who have run their husbands and now try to run the church. So that principle is one that is a common failing in Christian circles and in fact even before Christian circles, in the time of Israel, men who accept human viewpoint from their wives.

A second principle of failure that men are prone to and again this is not picking on the men and say that we are necessarily spiritually weaker than the women at all; it’s simply to say there are preferred sin patterns, and just as women have a tendency scripturally to be deceived, men have these tendencies. And the second tendency is to go into an autonomous kingdom building program, particularly aggressive men are prone to this mistake. This is not shirking leadership so much as the first one, but this is shirking guidance in leadership.

A good example of this that we have covered is Cain; Cain sought freedom and independence and security apart from God; Cain said I will build the first city, and he did, urban culture was begun in history by apostates. Cain built the first urban culture in history that side of the flood, and this side of the flood the first person and founder of urban culture was Nimrod. Both Nimrod and Cain were apostates in God’s sight. So there is something that always has historically attracted men to the city, has attracted men to that kind of high organization, and it’s always been, not necessarily all organization is bad, but men who particularly are aggressive men, men who are not lazy, men who want to get on, men who want to produce, become vulnerable in creating their own empire, forgetting that they subdue the earth but subdue it under God’s laws, not their own laws. Cain, then, became an example of this; Cain said I will run my own city.

A second example we studied of this error among men is Lamech, a man who came three or four generations after Cain, and by Lamech’s time the results of autonomous kingdom building were clear. They have always been this and they always will be this until sin is done away with. The two chief results we observe in Genesis 4 from this kind of autonomous kingdom building is extreme violence and multiple sex. Those are the two patterns that inevitably follow from autonomous kingdom building. We find Joseph an example of this, at that one place when he was in Pharaoh’s prison he tried to arrange his own escape; he tried to make a deal with the men who were escaping: don’t forget me, he says, and the men did precisely that, and he stayed year after year after year in jail until God got him out of jail.

You find even Moses, in the early point of his career, trying the same thing, beating up and killing an Egyptian and therefore trying to, in fact, start a guerilla war to free the Jews. That wasn’t God’s method. God had a way He would free the Jews but it wasn’t going to be by a Moses’ led guerilla war, for which Moses then in eternity could claim credit. God always works his plan out so we have to rely upon His grace to do it. And any time we men think of was of devising things that seem very autonomous and very free of the grace of God we are on extremely dangerous grounds. So the second kind of mistake we often make is particularly the mistake of hard working men; lazy men, of course, aren’t tempted this way because they’re not interested in building anything.

The third kind of mistake that we have observed is, and it’s a very, very human type of mistake, and that is simply slacking off, particularly after a big advance has been made. This is shirking the principle of alertness and sobriety that the New Testament commands. You cannot live in enemy territory and not expect an attempted penetration of your perimeter. This is always… always the principle of any military operation in hostile territory: you must protect your perimeter; you cannot relax your guard for a moment. Think, for example, of the great soldiers in the Rhodesian army who are on outposts and patrols in the eastern part of Rhodesia tonight; many of them, by the way, listening to the Word of God, watching for ambushes, watching for terrorist’s attacks upon the Rhodesian villages. These are the kind of men that must maintain vigilance and indeed they are men who are maintaining vigilance; the Rhodesian army is one of the best armies in the world at the present hour.

Temporarily, then, slacking off. We saw this illustrated by Noah, having survived the flood he became drunk and almost dissipated his family. Joshua, having conquered Jericho, never consults the Lord in the attack on Ai, and messes up, and men die because Joshua is not alert. This is always the temptation and the kind of men exposed particularly to this are the kind of men who are in leadership positions, who just slack off, rest, just relax for a minute, and something lets go.

Tonight we’re going to watch these principles and others operate in the lives of two men; two men selected from the book of Judges; Judges 4 is the first story. Remember the book of Judges is, like 1 and 2 Samuel, heroic literature. It’s kind of rough language in places; it is written because this is the way the real world is. Those of you who would like to participate between the two morning services in the C. S. Lewis reading program, I’m preparing a mimeographed sheet for the parents so you can read to your children the Narnia Chronicles, and in preparing the sheet I was reminded once again that C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles have been criticized because they say there’s too much violence in them for children’s books. There are wars in them, people get beheaded, the evil people get slaughtered, they get killed, they get removed and the good people win; we can’t have that kind of violence because today the cry against violence is a satanic cry against violence, that all violence is bad. But not so, the Bible vindicates just violence; the only kind of violence that is bad is unjust violence.

Well, C. S. Lewis’ answer to his critics was simply this, and this is the justification not only for C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, but it’s the justification for passages like this in Judges, it’s the justification for 1 Samuel, it’s the justification of 2 Samuel, and all of the war passages in the Bible. The justification is extremely simple. Lewis said to these people, he said your children are going to face a world with wars in it. Now are you going to prepare them for it or not; are you going to show your children from early age what it means to destroy the enemy or are you going to let them become doormats for the world, spineless people who will not fight for any value on the face of the earth because their own life is more sacred than anything else. Well, that was Lewis’ justification; we agree with it and the Barak in Judges 4 incident is an illustration of the kind of just violence that God commands.

Let’s look at Barak; Barak could have been the third great judge in the book of Judges. Remember, during this period of history it was the dark ages of Israel. During these dark ages, running from approximately 1300 on down to 1,000 BC, for 300 years the land was dominated by enemy powers; there was no military freedom. In fact, it’s interesting, in the light of recent talks, it was interesting that their enemies disarmed them, they made agreements not to produce swords and spears and so therefore the people had no way to attain freedom. Every time they sinned God let the enemy win until the people confessed their sin and then God raised up a judge. We saw last Sunday night the judge, Ehud, who gave a message from God to the tyrant; he gave the tyrant his present: this as a dagger through his intestines. This is the answer the Bible gives to the evil tyrants of the world; give them their present, it’s a message from God.

Now in Judges 4 we have Barak in a similar situation. Judges 4:1, “And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, when Ehud was dead. [2] And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor, the captain of whose host was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth of the nations.” This is a situation in the northern part of Israel. Remember, the different judges did not all rule at the same time; this is mistake critics often make of the Bible. Many of these men ruled at the same time; Hazor, you can see Hazor, by the way today, drive just north of the Sea of Galilee, it’s all been excavated up here, this whole area, including Mount Tabor, had come under the domination of the group of Canaanites led by Sisera, who was sort of a coalition. This coalition oppressed them, and so in verse 3 you find the classic response to apostasy and chastening, after God disciplines believers then the believers confess.

Judges 4:3, “And so the children of Israel cried unto the LORD; for he had nine hundred chariots of iron; and twenty years he greatly oppressed the children of Israel.” This is military tyranny, loss of freedom. We only need ask the Hungarians, and the Czechoslovaks what it means to have the tanks roll down the streets and take away your freedom while the people whom you trust in to deliver you don’t do anything. And so these people here were trampled down by what would amount to the armored division of that day, the tremendous chariot forces that the Canaanites had. In the midst of this there was a prophetess; [4] “And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, judged Israel at that time.”

That doesn’t mean here that Deborah has the full authority of the male judges; she’s going to get that authority by the time the story is over, but at this point the Bible characterizes here as a prophetess; she’s subordinate to her husband, and she carries out her mission, which is basically a channel for the Word of God. Revelation comes to this woman and she preaches and teaches it to the people. Now the fact that God had to choose a woman at this point in history as a prophetess, rather than a male prophet, might suggest something about the conditions, and as we read further, surely that is the situation.

Judges 4:5, “And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel in Mount Ephraim; and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.” Now this is an abnormal situation. I don’t think, I the Old Testament there is any more than two situations like this. There’s this one in Judges 4 and there’s the one we studied in Numbers with the women who had no husbands that got control of their land, and they were given inheritance. And from those two passages we deduce the principle that although it is not God’s will that women be in these roles, women are fully capable of handling the situation if and when it’s necessary; when there’s no man then God uses women.

Verse 6, “So she sent and she called Barak,” I don’t know whether Deborah looked like Golda Meir or not but she was the mother of Israel at that time. And she sent for her general, General Barak, “the son of Abinoam, out of Kedesh-naphtali, and said unto him, Has not Jehovah God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward Mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun?” The significance of this is that Deborah has her base of operation down here near Jericho. The man, Barak, operates up in this area; these tribes are Galilean tribes. Today the modern Israeli army has preserved this by designating the armored corps that operates in this whole area as the Barak Brigade; in fact, it was the Barak Brigade that operated at Entebbe. So we have this continuity, this memory in history of this great time when Barak was leading the forces. She gives directions, and when she asks the question in verse 6, “Has not Jehovah, God of Israel commanded,” that’s not really a question; that’s a way of saying surely He has, now do something. And she is saying this as the authentic spokesman of God. So she is claiming divine guidance. More than that, she’s claiming infallible revelation.

Now comes the crisis for Barak; notice in verse 7, she goes on to describe what will happen; this is all promissory, from the omniscient sovereign God it is. “I will draw unto thee, to the river Kishon,” the river Kishon flows through the plain of Esdraelon here, down here is the valley of Jezreel, it still flows, it’s just a little brook now but at this time it was a river. “… Sisera, the captain of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand.” So not only does the general receive an order to go out and get them, but he even receives his tactics; he doesn’t even have to decide the military science question; the tactics are given him, it’s a setup. Apparently the Lord is in some way going to miraculously interfere in the process of history and cause the leaders in the other army be blinded.

Judges 4:8, “And Barak said unto her, If you will go with me, then I will go; but if you will not go with me, then I will not go.” A great example of a male leader!!!! And so therefore the Scriptures go on because this is a heroic piece of the Bible and has a humor to it. And a lot of Christians just aren’t relaxed enough to laugh. That’s one thing about Jewish people, they enjoy God as well as worship Him and we Christians have to understand that when you read things like Judges you’ve got to see God’s sense of humor in it, and so what God did, He is going to laugh at this man, because to God it’s laughable that a man is going to take the hand of a woman for protection. This is laughable to God. And so God is going to play a joke upon this man and his military career.

Judges 4:9, “And she said, I will surely go with you:” and by the way, remember as a prophetess now, she makes a prophecy, “I will surely go with you: however, the journey that you take shall not be for your honor; for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh.” You wonder, as Barak rolled down the road with Deborah how he would apply that prophecy; do you suppose Barak would probably tell himself, do you suppose that God means that the enemy is going to delivered into Deborah’s hands; maybe she’s arrogant a little bit, but we’ll find out. The prophecy will come true and the humor in verse 9 cannot be appreciated from our 20^th century perspective unless some of you have read Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you’ve had a sampling of what heroic literature is right, but if you read that, those stories, the Greek versions of these really, basically, if you read those stories you’ll quickly see that it is the most low form of destiny for a man to ever be rescued by a woman. Now granted, there’s a lot of male egoism in all this, but the point remains that in that time, in that place, this was just insulting, for a man to have to rely, in the military area, where he was the leader, upon a woman. So what she has just prophesied in verse 9 is that your military career is going to be distinguished; you’re going to get a little ribbon that’s going to read “Deborah saved me.” And you’re going to have to carry that ribbon around for the rest of your career; how are you going to like that, Barak, General Barak? You see, it’s God’s humor, He’s going to rub it in. And so the rest of the story is how God rubbed it in.

Judges 4:10, “And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him.” Notice how the text just keeps digging; see, the Holy Spirit has a sense of humor. If you don’t think of God as having a sense of humor you miss the totality of God. We have humor, why doesn’t God have humor? Verse 12, “And they showed Sisera that Barak, the son of Abinoam, was gone up to Mount Tabor. [13] And Sisera gathered together all his chariots,” and the attack forms, remember when I exegeted in detail this passage I showed you the tactics, how they came around Mount Tabor, they came toward the river Kishon. Verse 15, it doesn’t tell us how, it’s the word panic, “And the LORD panicked Sisera and his chariots, and all his host with the edge of the sword before Barak, so that Sisera alighted form his chariot, and fled away on his feet. [16] But Barak pursued after the chariots, and after the host, unto Harosheth of the nations: and all the army of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword, [and there was not a man left],” there was just total massive ambush and annihilation.

Judges 4:17, “However, Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite; for there was peace between Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the house of Heber, the Kenite. [18] And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and she said to him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle. [19] And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty. And so she opened a skin of milk, and she gave him drink, and covered him.” This was warm milk; that woman was very clever, she is drugging him. [20] “Again he said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man does come and inquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here? That thou shalt say, No. [21] Then Jael, Heber’s wife, took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smashed the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground; for he was fast asleep and weary. And so he died. [22] And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him, Come, and I will show thee the man whom thou seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples.”

And so the prophecy of Deborah came to fulfillment not quite the way he might have thought but a woman did. Now if you want to get a little blood and gore out of this, the kind of tent post she was using was wood; it wasn’t metal so it didn’t go in easy. I don’t know what kind of muscles this woman had but apparently she was used to hammering tent poles in hard ground; the ground in Palestine is very, very rocky and she, I don’t know how big her biceps and triceps were but she let him have it right across the head with a wooden tent peg and a hammer, and the Bible says that she apparently split his skull with this thing, and pinned him down on the ground with it. So needless to say, with a tent peg through your brain there you do have a cause of mental illness.

All right, now in Judges 5 we have the hymn, the hymn of victory that is sung. The significance of all this is that its ridiculing; the hymn is glorifying God and what He’s done to deliver the nation but there’s an almost detectable theme of ha-ha Barak, you let a woman run your life, you let a woman deliver you when you should have been saving the woman. It’s not the case here where Barak, in all of his male pride, should be the leaders. It’s rather the case that if anybody was to protect anybody, Barak should have protected Deborah. Instead the roles were reversed. And now we come to a victory hymn. This was originally sung to music; it has certain parts in it. When you hear some of these hymns from the Scriptures, for example, like Handel’s Israel in Egypt which is Exodus 15, when you hear these you’ll see that the lyrics are remarkably different from the kind of lyrics that we’re often used to hearing in our sweet little hymn books.

Judges 5:1, “Then sang Deborah and Barak … on that day, saying,” and this is a proclamation to praise in verses 2-8, I won’t go into the details of the song but just show the basic sections of it. You can imagine this being sung in a heroic type setting, where this would be equivalent to our national anthem; that’s the kind of thing. Our national anthem, incidentally, is a good example of this. Our national anthem doesn’t look back to deliverance in general; if you listen to the lyrics of The Star Spangled Banner they’re talking about the War of 1812 and a particular point in a particular time, and if you’ll read through… they never sing this, of course at the football games they want to get started the game, but if they’d ever go through into the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th stanzas, it gets pretty bloody. Think of the line that goes we have washed their foul footsteps, or the blood has washed their foul footsteps from the land; this isn’t quite what you’re used to singing, but this is what people in the past always found; not because they relished blood and guts, but because they relished justice and they knew that in an evil world it took that kind of determination to get justice and keep freedom; so Judges 5.

[2] “Praise ye the LORD for the avenging of Israel, when the people willingly offered themselves,” finally they did willingly offer themselves. [3] “Hear, O ye kings; give ear, O ye princes; I, even I, will sing unto the LORD, I will sing praise to Jehovah, God of Israel.” And then in verse 4 they connect Jehovah’s victory with the victory of Sinai, and it goes on and describes some of the details. [5] “The mountains melted from before the LORD…. [6] And the days of Shamgar, the son of Anath, in the days of Jael,” now you see the ridicule? Do you see the ridicule in the hymn, “the days of Shamgar,” Shamgar was a man, Shamgar was a male deliverer, he delivered his people. But then the text adds, “in the days of Jael,” which points out that Jael has now received the honor and glory of a male because she did it when there was no other man around that would do it; “in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through byways. [7] … until I, Deborah, arose, arose a mother in Israel.” The wrath of a woman who seeks justice and righteousness. It’s very strong. [9] “My heat is toward the governors of Israel, who offered themselves willingly among the people. Bless ye the LORD.” And she congratulates those who delivered.

But then in Judges 5:19-20, toward the end, she describes the various… we won’t have time to go through the details but just notice the flow. She describes the battle; she describes the supernaturalness, verse 20, “They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera. [21] The river of Kishon swept them away that ancient river, the river Kishon. O my soul, thou has trodden down strength.” That shows proof that there was some sort of physical catastrophe that operated that day. Some scholars have thought it was a great flood that suddenly flooded out and made the area muddy, and of course, this wiped out his chariot force, but something like that happened. And [22] “Then with the horsehoofs broken by the means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones,” by the way, you notice in verse 23 she curses Meroz, [23] “[Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the LORD,] Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they didn’t come to help.” This is the mother; the cause of this hymn is the mother of Israel, she’s a woman, she wants justice and she can’t get men to help her. Barak comes along, some of the tribes but even some of the tribes won’t follow her and Barak, and so she curses them. [24] “Blessed among women shall be Jael, the wife of Heber, the Kenite, blessed shall she be above the women in the tent.” That is as significant in ancient Israel as the Magnificat is to the virgin Mary in the New Testament. That’s as powerful a blessing. Jael was held up as the female hero. Why? Because she slashed a man’s skull with a tent peg. Now think of the mentality that creates this kind of thing.

Judges 5:25, “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.” This is a curd that the people developed then, they didn’t have milk because they didn’t have refrigerators, and so they had a bacteria, somewhat like our yogurt. In fact, I found out there’s a place still that sells this particular strain of bacteria; it’s not really yogurt, I forget what it’s called but it has a name today and that’s the kind of thing that they… the only way they could keep the milk, kind of equivalent to yogurt or cottage cheese. [26] “She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera,” now the song adds what she did, [“she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples,”] after she smashed his head she cut if off, she wanted to make sure she did a good job. Apparently when General Barak walked in the tent she had not only smashed his skull but she hid it one place, cut off the body moved the body over one place and there it was. And it stuck, like you would serve a chicken or something, a turkey for dinner, there it was in the middle of her tent.

Judges 5:27, “And at her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed,” that is sarcasm. Throughout this hymn there’s a sarcasm to it, the man bows to the woman. The non-dignity, as it were, Barak has to have a woman save him, and Sisera, the big Canaanite general loses his life at the hands of a woman. In verse 28, “The mother of Sisera looked out through a window, and she cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariot? [29] Her wise ladies answered her, and she returned answer to herself,” and this is the court around Sisera. Now the language here is a little rough so pardon what happens. [30] “Have they not sped? Have they not divided the spoil: to every man a damsel or two;” the word “damsel” there is the word for female genitals and it’s talking about you know what after war. “…to Sisera, a spoil of dyed garments, a spoil of dyed garments of needlework on both sides,” this is simply you take your women and you take their clothing, and this is what was just common in the ancient world and it’s sung about; this is heroic literature, it reflects the time. Women who are pacifists, take notice; you will always be the victims of any war when your country loses it. You will suffer more than them men. That’s always been the case and always will, and woe to the women who knock a strong military defense. You pay the price. Judges 5:31, “So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD; but let them who love him be as the sun when he goes forth his might. [And the land had rest for forty years].”

And so it was that Barak, the man, failed; he failed because he failed to trust God’s promises, and a woman assumed the vacuum. Let’s look at the principle applied today in Christian work. Wherever we go we find women assuming leadership positions. Women outnumber men on the mission field today three to one. Why is that? Three to one! We have some women in some missions that are out alone translating the Word of God for Indian tribes. There’s not a man around because you can’t find them; but the women go out and the women are used by God to communicate the Word. And then we have the textbook controversy, and who has been in the forefront of the textbook controversy for creationism, in California, but Mrs. [?], and who has been in the forefront in Texas but Mrs. [?]. Why is it always a woman that’s in charge of these things? Where are the men? Why aren’t the men concerned with what their children are learning in school. But no, it’s always the women. When we have the controversy regarding the Texas District Audio Visual thing, we have at least our Senator put forth a bill to bring organization to the thing, but who got hands to do it but [?] mother down in Austin; again always a woman that does it; where are the men? And so it is wherever you go. In fact, [?] was telling me the other day even the manhood tapes are being ordered by women. Interesting, I don’t know what they do with them but it has nothing to do with women.

Judges 13-16, the second man, Samson. After all, we couldn’t leave the book of Judges without Samson. So Samson is our second illustration of a man who failed. Again, think of Samson in a heroic context. This time we have a little different kind of a man than Barak. Barak was an overly cautious man; Barak was the kind of man that just never could make up his mind what he was trying to do. He never got straight, apparently, with the Word of God, and therefore he never could make a decision. And I honestly think this is what happens to many men. It’s not that men lack courage; most men have courage; it’s just that they have a moral spiritual confusion; they don’t know where to go, what to do, what to say, what the issue is, because no man likes to appear as some idiot, especially a babbling one in front of a group where the argument can be reversed against him. My thesis has always been that’s the problem why we don’t have more evangelism; it’s not because we don’t know how to witness. The reason we don’t have more men witnessing is because they’re afraid to. It’s very simple, they are afraid to witness because they don’t have confidence in the Word. And they don’t have confidence in the Word because they don’t know what the Word says. But always remind yourself; twelve men started the ball rolling; that’s all they had, just twelve men; if they can do it, we can do it. It’s just a matter of training. So exhortation for some of the men who will be in our seminar this summer.

Judges 13-16, the second man, Samson, differs from Barak; here we have a guy who is an overgrown baby. Samson would be equivalent to a goon; Samson was God’s professional troublemaker. If you ever have inclinations to represent Samson, if you happen to have literary tastes in creativity or you have cinematographic things and you’d like to do something on Samson, always picture him as a hell-raiser. That’s what he was. Now the book of Judges is like Acts, a book that’s concentrating on the sovereign plan of God for the nation and incidentally, we’ll comment from time to time on what goes down here in the details. Samson, in all of his messing around, does accomplish something? What does Samson accomplish? This is what we want to stress tonight as we rapidly survey the story of Samson. We’re looking at the man because this is a manhood course and we want to see what does Samson do that’s wrong, how can we profit from his mistakes, but we also want to see that God used him anyway, in spite of all his shortcomings he did accomplish the will of God.

We begin in Joshua 13:1, summarizing the situation in the nation. “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. [2] And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bore not. [3] And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold, now thou art barren, and bears not; but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.” Do you notice a strange repetitive thing that happens again and again in the Scriptures? What do you think this adumbrates? It’s an adumbration of Christ, isn’t it? When God undertakes the initiative for salvation where does He start? He usually starts with a woman because it’s the woman that brings light into the world; this is why in communion we always have a woman from the congregation, before we can even do anything in the communion a woman must step forward and light the candles. Why? Because it puts woman in her place; she was the one who sinned first but she is the one through whom comes salvation. And the woman must be honored, she is the vehicle of salvation. And so it’s Samson’s mother that begins the story, not Samson; and what God does through the woman. Notice the angel does not appear to her husband; the angel appears to the woman.

Judges 13:4, “Now, therefore, beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing. [5] For lo, ye shall conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite unto God from the womb. And he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” Samson began a job that was not finished. Here we’re in Judges, the book of Judges goes into 1 Samuel, and actually the acts of Judges wasn’t finished until David. Samuel had something in here, Saul messed around a little bit, but basically Samson started the deliverance; it was escalated through Samuel and then finally with David in Jesse. So the announcement is made; you’ll notice women, particularly those of you bearing children, in verse 4 do you notice the angel gives her instructions, prenatal instructions how to bear this child. Apparently diet does matter, and she has to take care of her body while she’s carrying her boy, because God is particularly interested in what her boy is going to do and so He gives mother the instructions, taking care of herself. [6] “And the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came to me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very awesome; and I asked not from where he was, neither told me his name,” and the text goes on, finally the husband meets the angel.

Skipping down to Judges 13:19, the husband finally is there at the time that the angel shows up, he “takes a kid with a meal offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD’ and the angel did wondrously,” that means miraculously, “and Manoah and his wife looked on. [20] And it came to pass, then the flame went up,” the idea here was that Manoah wanted to offer a gift to this…well, he didn’t know really what it was at all, and he offered a gift to the angel, and as he did so, and he put this cake is what it is, it’s a meal offering, he put this cake down on the rock, and he stood back and the angel touched this thing and it shot up into fire and the angel just kind of absorbed into the fire and disappeared. Which, by the way, shows you how often in the Scriptures angels appear as inanimate phenomenon. Now there’s a little stroke of humor at the end of this story that I want to show you because it shows you it may be, possibly, Samson got some of his foolishness from his father, I don’t know, but his father does kind of act foolishly here.

Judges 13:22, “And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God.” Now his wife was a very practical individual, so she said, [23] “…If the LORD were pleased to kill us, He would have received a burnt offering and a meal offering at our hands, neither would He have shown us all these things nor, as at this time, and have told us things like these.” So it seems like she was the one that could reason things through. So she got her husband settled down, and along came Samson.

And Samson was the playboy of the ancient world, so obviously in Judges 14 it starts out where you guess things would start out in that kind of a thing. “And Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman in Timnah, of the daughters of the Philistines. [2] And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnah,” and I want her. Now, of course this is not asking permission, like in the ancient world it was the custom. It was also told the parents, this guy is a Nazirite, he’s supposed to be separated from the Canaanites, so where does he pick his girlfriend? Out from the Canaanites. [3] “Then his father and his mother said, Is there no woman among the daughters of thy brethren, [or among all my people],” you know, can’t you date in better circles, “that you have to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me, for she pleases me.” Now you get right here, at the beginning of the story, the guy’s a spoiled brat; he’s apparently had his way from the time he was a little kid. He was raised, apparently according to the idea that if Johnnie spits in your face you just kind of wipe it off and say well, I see you have a little problem today, Johnnie, instead of whacking his behind. That isn’t done, you might warp his personality! So Samson’s personality was preserved and you’ll see what happened; he became a mature adult brat.

Judges 13:4, “But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the LORD, that he sought an occasion against the Philistines;” now you have to be careful about verse 4, people use that to justify verse 3 but I’ve warned you, the book of Judges is looking at God’s sovereignty in spite of sin, and Samson’s role in history was to do one thing; just one thing. He wasn’t to reform Israel, he wasn’t to teach Israel the Word of God, he was to do one thing. And here’s what happened, and this is why he had to do it. There’s a word, several words we use in the English language to denote this; we have a word used religiously, ecumenism, and ecumenism means the mixing of all religious creeds together into one happy little pot. You know, all roads to Rome and all roads lead to heaven, Jesus died on one of them but that’s all right, all roads lead to heaven, that kind of thing. We also call it eclecticism, that’s another word that we use.

All right, what had happened in that day was eclecticism had developed between the Canaanites and the Yahwehists, that is, between human good, man-made religions and God’s revealed religion, and mingled together, sort of like the National Council of Churches today, just all mingled, slopped together, with a Christian vocabulary and everything that comes out is automatically biblical. That’s not true; massive departures occur from the faith, but you mix it together and it doesn’t look that way. Well, the problem was that you can never have a religious revival when people are confused and can’t see issues. And you will trace this down through history; before a revival has occurred in every case where you’ve had ecumenism, in every case there has always had to be somebody who was the tiger who polarized people into the black and white issues.

Samson was a case here, he prepared the way for Samuel and David to do their job. There had to be some goon that came along and started a fight, because if you start a fight you get people polarized, and when you get people polarized you’ve got an issue. Now hopefully it’s God’s issue, but often times it takes a fighter to start it. That’s why today the word “fundamentalist” has such a connotation in some people’s mind; why, those are those nasty old people in the 1920s that broke up our denomination. No they didn’t, the denominations had sucked up liberalism and all the fundamentalists were saying we won’t; I’m not going to believe that; we’ll fire you if you teach that; well, you can’t do that in our denomination; we’re going to. And so the fundamentalists got the reputation, and a few of them got off beat and so on, but the fundamentalists originally were fighters; they had to beat people; you mustn’t laugh at these men; it always takes somebody, like a Luther, to get out there and exhort the rocks; it takes somebody to start the fight. People will call him a bigot, people will call him somebody else, but how else do you get issues polarized. So Samson was going that and that’s what this verse is talking about. [4] The Lord “sought an occasion against the Philistines;” what he was trying to do was stir up something.

I never read this story but I don’t think of that famous line in the movie, Patton, when after World War II had finished, remember, Eisenhower, Bradley and the others were concerned that Patton do his own thing with the Russians, and he got on the phone in that scene and said if you give me six weeks I’ll have a war started with these people. Well, that’s the kind of thing Samson… that’s exactly what’s happening here. Samson wants to get a war started, so watch what happens.

Judges 14:5, “Then Samson went down, and his father and his mother, to Timnah, and came to the vineyards of Timnah; and, behold, a young lion roared against him. [6] And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and he tore him as he would have torn a kid, and he had nothing in his hand, but” he didn’t tell his father and his mother. Do you know why? Because the oath of a Nazirite was you couldn’t touch a dead body and so you see again the pattern of behavior; he didn’t care about the Nazirite oath, he’s a strong guy, this lion messed around so he took care of people that mess around, he ripped the thing in half. By the way, I think this became the prototype of the story that reappears in The Iliad and The Odyssey of Hercules; Hercules supposedly does the same thing, and I think what’s happening there is the Greek authors are just borrowing off the biblical tradition.

So Samson literally tears a lion, Judges 14:7, “He went down, and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well. [8] And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion; and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion. [9] So he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them to his father and mother, and they did eat; but he told them not that he took the honey out of the carcass of the lion.” And again he defiled himself and his Naziritic oath, but he didn’t tell his parents. See the dishonesty in the relationship that develops. Samson’s a little brat that’s going to have his own way; he doesn’t communicate with his parents, he doesn’t tell them where he is, what he’s doing or anything, just total communication breakdown here.

Verse 10, “And so his father went down to the woman,” and I imagine his parents are quite sad that this marriage took place; it was a very sad day for the parents, knowing that their son was the result of a supernatural work and then to watch this boy go down the drain spiritually, marrying into the very enemies that God has caused. But God will not be thwarted, though man will try it. So “Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do.” Sort of like the bachelor’s night before the wedding here. [11] And it came to pass, when they saw him, that they brought thirty companions to be with him.” The implication there is that they didn’t quite trust Samson and so they brought little body guards, in case he got rough, you know, with a little liquor flowing and a bachelors things can get tough and so they brought in their own squad to take care of the situation.

And while they had their party, [12] “Samson said unto them, I will not put forth a riddle unto you; if you can certainly declare it to me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments, [and thirty changes of raiment].” Now this isn’t some small order, this is like going down to an expensive name store and buying thirty suits, so this is a healthy little chunk he’s talking about. [13] “And if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty suits [ and thirty change of garments. And they said unto him,] Put forth thy riddle, that we may hear it. [14] And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle. [15] And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson’s wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father’s house with fire: [have ye called us to take that we have? is it not so?]” Now watch what happens here; Samson doesn’t protect his wife. Not only does he not protect his wife but he turns back and allows her to manipulate him.

[16] “And Samson’s wife wept before him,” see, age old tactic; every woman knows how to turn it on when she wants to manipulate, [sniffles] you don’t love me, see, same tactic, “Thou dost but hate me, and you don’t love me,” you read these texts, guys, and you learn a lot of deals; “ thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto her, Behold, I have not told it my father nor my mother, and shall I tell it thee? [17] And she wept before him the seven days, [while their feast lasted: and it came to pass on the seventh day, that he told her, because she lay sore upon him: and she told the riddle to the children of her people]’” now she keeps on the pressure, see, she wants her way. You can imagine, every morning she tells Samson, you don’t love me any more, we just got married and you don’t love me any more, not until you tell me; just sheer manipulation. [18] And the men of the city said unto him on the seventh day before the sun went down, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion? And he said unto them, If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle.” They didn’t find it. So, [19]”the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon, and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle,.” They did find the riddle but he goes down, he doesn’t have the money to buy the thirty suits, so he goes rips them off somebody, “And his anger was kindled, and he went up to his father’s house. And the conclusion of that relationship with a woman is that he takes off and leaves her. [20, “But Samson’s wife was given to his companion, whom he had used as his friend.” So this starts out a real good marriage situation.

Now in Judges 15:1 we find more of Samson and the story. You just have to just follow this along; nothing theologically profound but just watch the behavior pattern of this guy. “ But it came to pass within a while after, in the time of wheat harvest, that Samson visited his wife with a kid;” he brought down some beef for her, thought she might need it for her refrigerator, “ and he said, I will go in to my wife into the chamber.” He hadn’t had sex for a while and he decided it was about that time, “But her father would not allow him to go in.” You haven’t been around here, so stop bothering her. [2] “And her father said, I verily thought you had utterly hated her; therefore I gave her to thy companion,” take her younger sister, [“is not her younger sister fairer than she? take her, I pray thee, instead of her.”]

[3] “And Samson said concerning them, Now shall I be more blameless than the Philistines, though I do them a displeasure.” So Samson, baby though he is, goes into another tantrum. But God sovereignly is working this out because He wants a fight. So [4] “Samson went and caught three hundred foxes,” actually these are kind of a field fox, not what we think of as a fox, “and took torches, and turned tail to tail, and put a torch in the midst between two tails. [5] And when he had set the brands on fire, he let them go into [the standing corn of the Philistines, and burnt up both the shocks, and also the standing corn, with the vineyards and olives]” just at harvest. Now you can imagine what destruction this guy caused. Here these poor Canaanites, all summer they’ve been growing this stuff and they get it to harvest and all of a sudden somebody fireworks the whole thing. You can imagine how these dogs, when they get a hot tail… so they go tearing through the fields, and so obviously there’s only one candidate in the hundred miles that we know had something to do with this.

[6] “Then the Philistines said, Who hath done this? And they answered, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, [because he had taken his wife, and given her to his companion]. And the Philistines came up, and burnt her and her father with fire.” So now Samson says, [7] “And Samson said unto them, Though ye have done this, yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.” See it escalating; here’s how God escalates. [8] And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter,” that episode, “hip and thigh” means hand to hand combat; something like what we call karate today. He just went in there bare hands and all. “… and he went down and dwelt in the top of the rock Etam.”

Now watch what happens, look at the mental attitude of the people. This always happens when you get something like this; America is loaded with people like verses 9, 10 and 11. “Then the Philistines went up, and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. [10] And the men of Judah said, Why are ye come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson are we come up, to do to him as he hath done to us.” So [11] “Then three thousand men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us?” See the slavery mentality, we can’t have our freedom, we might offend our enemies, we’ve got to have treaties with our enemies, lest we offend them. “… what is this that you hast done unto us? And he said unto them, As they did unto me, I did unto them.
[12] And they said unto him, We are come down to bind you, that we may deliver you into the hand of the Philistines.” Now Samson is real nice about this, he could have clobbered them but he said okay, you’re my brothers, so just “Swear unto me, that ye will not fall upon me yourselves. [13] And they spoke unto him, saying, No; [but we will bind thee fast, and deliver thee into their hand: but surely we will not kill thee. And they bound him with two new cords, and brought him up from the rock]” they binded him, they brought him down, [14], “And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that were” broken.

Judges 14:15, “And he found a new jawbone of an ass,” the Hebrew here indicates a new bone, it’s not a fragile one, apparently this is a freshly slaughtered animal, possibly a sacrifice, “and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.” So again, these figures are real; can you imagine, just imagine a thousand people. Just look around, we have probably 150 people in this auditorium; that means that he went through ten congregations like this and killed everybody. This is the kind of goon that this guy was. [16, “And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.”]

[17] “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and [called that place Ramath-lehi],” he memorialized the place. [18, “And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? [19] But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water out; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof En-hakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day. [20] And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.”]

The next episode begins in chapter 16, he” goes down to Gaza, and saw a whore and went in unto her.” Of course, this is right smack in the middle of Canaanite territory, but like always, it seemed like the girls were better in the non-Christian camp than they were in the Christian camp, so we’ll go over there and do our dating. And in other cases it proceeded beyond the dating stage. [2] “And it was told the Gazites, saying, Samson is here.” Now Samson was a little bit of a showoff too, he was probably very muscular and like to show everybody, wore a tight t-shirt all places, and wanted to put on a show everywhere he went, and he decided this was time for some publicity. “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. [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]” now these things only weigh about 600-700 pounds, they were cast iron, and he decided, I’ll show these guys, he took them off the hinges; how you doing guys, and walked out. Good publicity for Samson.

The next episode, Judges 16:4, “And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah,” see, he got around to all the chicks. [5] “And the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and said unto her, 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.” Now watch this, here’s the strong man who’s delivering, and watch the role of the woman. He is undermined. And of course, you know the story of Delilah; the lords of the Philistines worked out a deal, [6] And Delilah said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, [wherein thy great strength lies, and wherewith thou might be bound to afflict thee.]” See, he’d gone through this once with the woman from Timnah, and she tried the tear route on him, now I don’t know what else she tried but Delilah tried a few other things besides tears.

Judges 16:7, “And Samson said unto her, If they bind me with seven green cords that were never dried, then shall I be weak, and be as another man.” And you know they went in and nothing happened. [8, “Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven green cords which had not been dried, and she bound him with them. [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 brake the cord, as a thread of tow is broken when it touches the fire. So his strength was not known.

In verse 10, “And Delilah said unto Samson, Behold, you hast mocked me, and told me lies: [now tell me, I pray thee, wherewith thou might be bound.] Verse 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.” Again, nothing happened. [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 brake them from off his arms like a thread.”] Verse 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 uou weave 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.”]

Finally, in verse 15 she really pours it on; this is double duty, more than Timnah. “And she said unto him, How canst thou say, I love you, when thine heart is not with me? thou hast mocked me these three times, and hast not told me wherein thy great strength lies.” See the manipulation. [16] And it came to pass,” she urged him daily, the same episode, Samson’s weakness, “when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death,” see, he couldn’t take the kind of slow drip treatment that these women were feeding him. And so, [17] “he told her all his heart,” he revealed the Nazirite oath, “and said unto her. There hath not come a razor upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother’s womb: if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man.”]

Verse 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.”] Verse 19, “And she made him sleep upon her knees;” that’s a euphemism for sexual intercourse, this is what she used with him besides tears, “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.” And so the story concludes in verses 23-31 with the famous temple scene. We’re going through this detail; though it may seem too much for you, you want to get exposed to the story because if you don’t get exposed to the details of the story you’re going to lose what the Holy Spirit is doing here in the text.

Judges 16:23, “Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice]” so the pictures is in the absolute antithesis of Jehovahism or Yahwehism. Instead of the scene occurring in the temple of Jehovah, we’ve got it finally winding up in the temple of Dagon, “for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand [24] And when the people saw him, they praised 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. So verse 24 calls forth the spiritual struggle; it’s like today he winds up in a witches covenant of praising Satan. So they obviously bring about a spiritual issue.

[25] “And it came to pass, when their hearts were merry, 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.]” They bring Samson on, he holds the pillars of the house, and in verse 27, …there were three thousand men and women who beheld while Samson made sport. [28] And Samson called unto the LORD,” and the thing to watch in verse 28, after all this story business now, is look what has happened to Samson’s zeal for God; it’s just completely washed out; notice the reason for his petition, “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.” You see, the man has degenerated to the point where it becomes personal vengeance. Now it’s not the sacred holy war of Jehovah; it’s no longer the initial cause of the Nazirite oath; now it becomes mere vengeance, but nevertheless, Romans 8:28, “all things do work together for good,” and God’s sovereignty is operating, God wants them destroyed. [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. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life. [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.”]

Judges 16:29, So “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,]” and he destroys them. And so we have the prophetic end to a great man who in the final hours of his life to serve God can only serve God one way, and that is negatively; he can only serve God as he finally breathes out his last breath, by destroying everything around him, a pathetic case of a man who could have been a great judge, limited as a dumb blind man in shackles who can only destroy.

What are some applications of this particular failure. I said there were some of Barak’s failures, you can look around in evangelicalism and see women taking over the helm of leadership; what about Samson; how can we avoid making this mistake. It seems like Samson’s mistake began in the home as a young boy. Those of you with sons, you don’t do your sons any favor by letting them turn into brats through lack of instruction. I have seen people who have been instructed in the Word of God whose kids are absolutely atrocious, no discipline whatsoever. Now all kids are going to have their time, but we have seen, not so much in this church, but I have noticed it in Christian circles, people who have known the Word ought to do better and they let their kids… you don’t even want to have them over, unless you lock up your furniture some place, or move it all into one room so you can kind of pad that room and hope that the minimum amount of construction will be confined to at least that room. But there are people with children like this, who don’t control them. And the tragedy, you see, is that you’re teaching your sons to be Samson’s when they grow up. Samson wanted whatever he wanted when he wanted. I want the woman of Timnah; his parents couldn’t reason with him because like all brats, he was used to having his own way, and he was going to get his own way. In the end, that’s what happened; he dies.

Most brats die; they’re killed off, this is just the way it works. My mother was here recently and she was telling me some of the clowns I went to school with, and there was one character there that was just the high school brat, that was all; if there was any kind of a thing going on he’d do something and get in trouble all the time. Well, he wound up selling dope and he undersold to somebody and they shot him dead in an alley—the wrong crowd! And that’s where they wind up. When I first became pastor of this church we had a situation where some kid was going on in the brat stage; his father happened to have stature in the town, and whenever his kid got in trouble the old man got him off, and so he gradually learned that he didn’t have to obey the laws of the city of Lubbock, no sweat, dad will get me off. Today that boy is dead; he’s dead because he got in a situation where he didn’t exercise a little prudence and he got bumped off. So you see, brats get bumped off; it’s just a natural corrective that God has in society. Don’t raise bratty sons.

The summary, then, so far in our manhood series is a note for women; I hope by now most of you women will have seen the tremendous effect you can have on men. God has designed you that way but God has designed you women, not to have the dangerous effect of a Delilah and the woman of Timnah; He has designed you to have the effect of an Abigail on your man; you are to build him up. Christian women often get very, very discouraged; they see their husband not, they think, growing as spiritually as they want him to and he’s not got his halo on straight and that kind of thing and they can invent 400 other things because you know men, women will never criticize without exaggerating. This is axiomatic with the female. So they will criticize and find out 800 things that are wrong and they their husband is spiritually out of it and all the rest. The implication is that they’re totally powerless to affect their husband spiritually. Now that’s strange, isn’t it? Doesn’t that imply it’s a strange that a woman filled with the Holy Spirit, with all the advantage of the Word of God, has less effect than a Delilah? That she can’t be as effective righteously as Delilah can be unrighteously? That can’t be… that can’t be! That’s a misreading of the female position.

So women, you should be encouraged. These stories are kind of bad news in the sense that they show men being brought down by women, and if you stop and think of it, all the great… there are four or five great men in the Scriptures in the Old Testament, all brought down by women: Adam, Samson, David and Solomon. You might say those are rather four outstanding men, and look at the effect that women had upon them. So women, don’t ever underestimate your affect; you are a very potent sweet individual, it’s just who is going to guide you in your effect; is it going to be positive or is it going to be negative.

Now for the men, after going through these failures I know the mentality that creeps in, and the mentality is well, yeah, I’ve failed here and I’ve failed there and you know, I get so discouraged because of this failure, that failure, that failure, that failure, that failure, I’ll never make it. Now that’s exactly what we want to avoid. Any man can change at any certain time. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgives us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” it does not matter… it does not matter how many mistakes you have made in the past, it does not matter what particular sins you may have committed in thought, word or deed, that’s behind the board, and you can ruin your life by sitting now and crying about past mistakes. That is not the Scriptural method; don’t live in the past. Christ has removed the past; press forward to the future. You’ve got tomorrow, you’ve got the rest of tonight, you’ve got something ahead of you. Use it! Just keep on plowing, be determined that you are going to follow what the Word says. All right, you gross out here, you sin there, so what? You don’t stay in one place and cry about it; you keep going forward. “If we confess our sins,” getting in fellowship with the Lord and moving on.

We can point out that after coming in fellowship with God as a believer, look at some lessons from these incidents. Alertness; don’t be like Joshua did, easing off after the great victory—spiritual alertness. Satan is always watching. The lesson we learn from Samson—self-control. After all, one of the first things you learn in life is to control your bowels; that’s the elementary subduing the earth that every baby learns. Now that’s the first thing; now subduing the earth is just a series of concentric circles developing out from that. When you see men like Samson, you see a man who stalled out somewhere; he never learned to control himself. Self-control!

How to avoid kingdom building—be open to God’s detail in planning. We all want plans but one healthy corrective I’ve found personally to this is after you make your plan and you’ve got it all mapped out, do a mental exercise and say to yourself, if God appeared to day in this room and called me to do some ridiculous thing, just take something that’s totally away from your plan, way out, completely different direction, and ask yourself, how would I modify my life to move, instead of this direction, over in this direction. Now God may never, never do that to you. But just go through a mental exercise and it will keep you kind of hanging lose in the sense that you won’t fix yourself down in concrete to your own plan.

Another point, it’s our duty, much as though in times of tiredness and fatigue we don’t want to do this, it’s our job to take spiritual leadership. We see this in Barak; Barak didn’t, and Barak is a loser. Moses didn’t and Moses almost was killed. These are hard lessons and it is not easy for any Christian man to constantly have to bear the weight of the responsibility of spiritual decision after spiritual decision after spiritual decisions. This is a very weighty thing and it fatigues you after a while. But women have their fatigue, they stay home with the kids all day and that’s their fatigue. So if we’re going to cop out and say well, I’m tired of this, then the women are also justified in coping out on their side of the fence.

And thirdly, when deliverers are needed, let’s be men about it and be the deliverers. When there is evil being done let’s not be afraid to stand up and say that it’s evil. God got us our job, God can keep our job, but if there’s evil we ought to speak out and not be afraid of our job, and stop having to let Mrs. [?] run the show in Texas, for example, with the textbooks, and Mrs. [?] in California. This ought not to be, gentlemen; we have a job as spiritual leaders in the church ad we ought to carry out that job.