Scripture: Judges 16: 23-32
Sermon: 3 Questions on Samson
Topics: Samson, vengeance, free-will, providence
Preached: November 6, 2011
Rev. Mike Abma
3 Questions about Samson from a Church School Class:
1. If we are supposed to leave vengeance to the Lord, why does God allow Sampson to get revenge on his enemies for his blindness by giving him back his super strength?
2. Did God orchestrate things by getting all the Philistines into the space where the destruction took place? Does he still “orchestrate” things? What about free will?
3. If Samson disobeyed and let his hair be cut causing God to take away his gift of strength, does God also take gifts away from us (or turn his face from us) when we disobey?
So the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes. They brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles; and he ground at the mill in the prison. 22But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
Samson’s Death
23 Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to their god Dagon, and to rejoice; for they said, ‘Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand.’ 24When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, ‘Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the ravager of our country, who has killed many of us.’ 25And when their hearts were merry, they said, ‘Call Samson, and let him entertain us.’ So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them. They made him stand between the pillars; 26and Samson said to the attendant who held him by the hand, ‘Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, so that I may lean against them.’ 27Now the house was full of men and women; all the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about three thousand men and women, who looked on while Samson performed.
28 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, ‘Lord God, remember me and strengthen me only this once, O God, so that with this one act of revenge I may pay back the Philistines for my two eyes.’ *29And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other. 30Then Samson said, ‘Let me die with the Philistines.’ He strained with all his might; and the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life. 31Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel for twenty years.
THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD
Thanks be to God
Preamble: This sermon is a little different. I visited the 7th grade church school class and asked them for a Bible passage that they had always found interesting. They said the Samson story. We then decided that the sermon should be based on their questions about the Samson story.
So each of the 7th grade students will ask their question:
QUESTION ONE VENGEANCE
1. If we are supposed to leave vengeance to the Lord, why does God allow Samson to get revenge on his enemies for his blindness by giving him back his super strength?
Preamble: You know, when we decided to do this, I thought I would be getting some nice soft-balls lobbed my way. Questions like, “Did Samson’s hair have magical powers?”
So, congratulations to your class for delivering questions that are pretty thoughtful.
Like your first question —
a tough one, really because it gets at a topic that is bigger than this story.
If God is a God of justice, why does he allow what looks like vengeance?
If God is a God of love, why does he allow for so much violence?
The Old Testament has lots of violence in it.
The book just before the book of Judges is the book of Joshua.
Israel crossing the Jordan River and they take the land by force.
Then, for the whole book of Judges,
different people, different nations,
are trying to take the land back from the Israelites by force.
The first judge is Othniel, the strongest judge from the strongest tribe, Judah.
Then there are ten more judges,
each one is a bit weaker and a bit more flawed than the one before.
As the judges get weaker, the nations around Israel are getting stronger.
They occupy and oppress Israel for a longer and longer time.
Finally we get to Samson.
He is the 12th judge.
In a way, he is the weakest, most flawed judge of them all.
And he is also from the weakest most flawed tribe, the tribe of Dan.
Samson lives when Israel is facing its most powerful rival,
the Philistines.
Up to this time, Israel had never been occupied or oppressed by anyone for more than 20 years.
The Philistines oppress Israel for 40 years.
So that is the context:
Israel was drifting farther and farther away from God;
and this is reflected in the Judge that leads them — Samson,
who is a disappointment on so many levels.
We know Jesus.
We know that living a life of forgiveness is the only way to absorb evil.
We know that we cannot overcome evil with evil but only with goodness.
In the Old Testament, living that type of forgiveness was not fully known.
In the law, the Torah, there were commands to try contain evil.
So if someone did something hurtful to you, you could only respond in a proportionate way:
An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; a punch for a punch.
But the world all around Israel didn’t live that way. The lived by the law of vengeance.
If someone hits you, you crush them and the rest of their family too.
That is how Samson actually lives.
He is a vengeful guy.
Whenever he is insulted or offended, he goes on the war-path.
Vengeance never limits evil – vengeance only multiplies evil.
So here we are at the end of the Samson story.
Samson has been a very flawed judge.
But the essence of this story is
Not about revenge;
Not about violence;
Not even about Samson.
It is about God and his people.
This story is about God’s driving desire to win his people back.
It is about God’s relentless effort to restore his people, and to give them his peace.
And it is about God
using someone as disappointing,
and crooked
and violent
and vengeful
and dumb
as Samson to do it.
I know this is not a full answer.
But hopefully after the 3rd question it will be a bit fuller.
QUESTION TWO . Did God orchestrate things by getting all the Philistines into the space where the destruction took place? Does he still “orchestrate” things? What about free will?
Another heavy-weight question.
Did God orchestrate things…?
The question puts us in the realm of providence.
So let me say a few things about God’s providence in general,
and then let me say a few things about God’s providence in this passage more specifically.
First, some general words about providence.
What does providence mean?
First, by providence we mean that God is in charge of this world.
Things do not happen by chance.
He governs things, he oversees things, in a way, he even “orchestrates” things
so that nothing happens without his orderly arrangement.
That is how powerful God is.
Not a hair can fall from our heads
apart from the will of our heavenly Father.
But wait, what about all the BAD stuff that happens?
Well, here come the on-the-other-hand part of providence.
On the one hand, God is so powerful nothing can happen apart from his will.
On the other hand, God is so holy, so good, so pure, that God is never the author of sin. We still make choices, and sometimes these are sinful choices.
That is our fault. Not God’s.
But there is a third thing to say — God is Love.
And God loves his people so much
that he takes the good and the bad
and he bends them in such a way that they work together for our salvation.
How does he do that?
That is a great mystery?
That, according to the Belgic Confession, is beyond our human understanding.
But we see glimpses of that bending,
that providential bending throughout the Bible,
like in this story of Samson.
By the time we get to the end of the Samson story,
things are looking pretty bad — for Samson and for Israel.
Samson and Israel look like the losers and the Philistines look like the winners.
Is it any surprise that the Philistines look like winners:
The Philistines were rich, Israel was poor.
The Philistines were powerful with their iron chariots and weapons,
and Israel had sticks and spears.
The Philistines were traders; the Israelites were mainly farmers.
The Philistines had this great huge Temple to Dagon that could hold thousands;
and the Israelites had this little cloth tent/tabernacle at Shiloh.
And Samson, well Samson had made all the wrong choices.
He had chased all the wrong women.
He had lived the wrong kind of life.
And here he is, at the end, bound and blind.
Samson the loser. The Philistines the winners.
Up to this point in the story, Samson had never asked for God’s help.
Not once.
Now finally, blind and bound, he prays.
He calls on the name of the Lord.
And in verse 28, the three main Old Testament names for God are used:
Adonai.
Elohim
Yahweh.
Samson calls on the name of the Lord, his God, his Savior.
Can I say something about the language of this story?
The Philistines are mocking Samson, saying “Entertain us…entertain us.”
Well in the Hebrew language the word for entertain and the word for crush are almost exactly alike. There is only one little dot – like the dot over an “i” that makes the difference.
It seems like God bends the spelling of that word,
the way he bends those temple pillars,
so that instead of entertaining them, he crushes them.
And that seems to be God’s way of doing things again and again in the Bible.
As Hannah says in her song, and later Mary says in her song too:
The proud are brought low and the humble are raised high.
The powerful are crushed and the weak are exalted.
That is God’s way of bending things,
using the weak to shame the strong
and the foolish to shame the wise.
Question Three: If Samson disobeyed and let his hair be cut causing God to take away his gift of strength, does God also take gifts away from us (or turn his face from us) when we disobey?
Let me first say something about Samson not letting his hair be cut – the story that has inspired hippies throughout the ages to have that shaggy look.
It was not only about the hair.
Remember why Samson has long hair in the first place.
Samson was born to be a Nazirite.
What was a Nazirite?
A Nazirite took a vow to be devoted to the Lord, set apart, holy.
To show that holiness,
Nazarites
1) drank no wine or fruit of the vine
2) never touched a dead body
3) never cut their hair.
When Samson was married, he threw a big drinking party. Strike One.
After he killed that lion, he visited its carcass, saw some honey, and scooped the honey out of the carcass. Strike Two.
When Delilah betrayed him and the Philistines cut his hair that was strike three.
And this is being charitable.
I’m not even mentioning the 3 women in his life were all Philistine women.
The point is, in so many ways Samson represented Israel:
chosen to be set apart, holy.
having so much potential.
And yet, time after time, being willfully disobedient,
chasing after the wrong things.
We like to focus on Samson’s hair,
and his super strength,
but really, it is the fact that he was chosen by God, and set apart by God
that was his real gift.
It was a gift he kept forgetting again and again and again.
It was a gift he took for granted.
just like the Israel as a nation kept forgetting and took for granted.
You know, the Psalms write about some of our deepest fears.
One great fear is being overwhelmed by enemies.
But an even deeper fear is being abandoned by God.
Nothing was worse than being abandoned by God.
So here we are, at the end of this Samson story.
Samson has been overwhelmed by his enemies.
But has he been abandoned by God?
There is Samson, with his outstretched arms
asking to be remembered one last time.
It reminds me of that other prisoner with outstretched arms
praying his last prayer.
I’m thinking of the thief on the cross beside Jesus.
The thief knew he sinned.
He knew he deserved to die.
And yet he asks to be remembered:
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
Jesus, remember me.
And there we also so often hang
between the loftiness of our calling
and the reality of our failures.
We hang there,
asking not to be forgotten, but to be remembered.
And he does.
Jesus remembers us.
Even when we have been unfaithful,
he is faithful.
That is the riddle of his way with us:
for what is sweeter than his grace
what is stronger than his love?
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