Scripture: Judges 13
Sermon: Birth Announcements
Topics: Samson,
Preached; December 6, 2009
Rev. Mike Abma
The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.
2 There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. His wife was barren, having borne no children. 3And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, ‘Although you are barren, having borne no children, you shall conceive and bear a son. 4Now be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, or to eat anything unclean, 5for you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor is to come on his head, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth. It is he who shall begin to deliver Israel from the hand of the Philistines.’ 6Then the woman came and told her husband, ‘A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like that of an angel of God, most awe-inspiring; I did not ask him where he came from, and he did not tell me his name; 7but he said to me, “You shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the boy shall be a nazirite to God from birth to the day of his death.” ’
8 Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, ‘O Lord, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.’ 9God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. 10So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, ‘The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.’ 11Manoah got up and followed his wife, and came to the man and said to him, ‘Are you the man who spoke to this woman?’ And he said, ‘I am.’ 12Then Manoah said, ‘Now when your words come true, what is to be the boy’s rule of life; what is he to do?’ 13The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, ‘Let the woman give heed to all that I said to her. 14She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine. She is not to drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. She is to observe everything that I commanded her.’
15 Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, ‘Allow us to detain you, and prepare a kid for you.’ 16The angel of the Lord said to Manoah, ‘If you detain me, I will not eat your food; but if you want to prepare a burnt-offering, then offer it to the Lord.’ (For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord.) 17Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, ‘What is your name, so that we may honour you when your words come true?’ 18But the angel of the Lord said to him, ‘Why do you ask my name? It is too wonderful.’
19 So Manoah took the kid with the grain-offering, and offered it on the rock to the Lord, to him who works wonders. 20When the flame went up towards heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of the altar while Manoah and his wife looked on; and they fell on their faces to the ground. 21The angel of the Lord did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord. 22And Manoah said to his wife, ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God.’ 23But his wife said to him, ‘If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt-offering and a grain-offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.’
24 The woman bore a son, and named him Samson. The boy grew, and the Lord blessed him. 25The spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
The Book of Judges is a pretty dark book.
By the time we get to Samson, the last judge, things are pretty bleak.
Israel is facing its most fierce some adversary – the Philistines.
They have been oppressed by the Philistines for 40 years – twice as long as any other enemy has ever oppressed Israel.
In fact, they have been oppressed for so long, Israel doesn’t even cry out for help.
With almost every other judge, Israel cries to God, and pleads to be rescued.
But now, they seem resigned to it.
Judges 13 is a surprise because God decides to show up anyway.
He comes unannounced, unasked for, with a rescue plan of his own.
He decides to come to a barren couple from a nothing tribe in a nothing town.
God comes to Manoah and his wife, who are from the tribe of Dan.
Does anything good ever come out of the tribe of Dan?
Dan was the smallest tribe.
They were losers – in Judges chapter 1, when it describes how the different tribes battled with Canaanites, the tribe of Dan was the only one that lost.
In fact, we aren’t exactly sure what happened to this tribe.
At first, they seemed to settle right on the border of the Philistines,
tucked between Ephraim to the north
Judah to the south,
and Benjamin to the east.
But the Philistines proved too much for them.
Most of the Danites packed up and moved northeast of the Sea of Galilee.
Manoah and his wife may have been some of the last Danites to be living in this area. Even their hometown, Zorah, was no longer a Danite town – it was a Judean town.
Well, an angel of the Lord shows up to this completely unlikely couple,
and gives them the message that, although they had no children,
they would soon conceive,
and bear a son,
and that he would be set apart for the Lord to deliver Israel from the Philistines.
MANOAH and his WIFE
When I was in Seminary, I had a good friend, Kyu Sam Han. He was from Korea. We played a lot of table tennis – ping pong. One of the things Kyu Sam really did not like about North American culture was how disrespectful it seemed to be towards men. He said that whenever he turned on the television, there were men looking foolish and silly.
I think he had a point.
Just think of one of the longest running shows on television, The Simpsons. For over 20 years, Homer Simpson has been your Joe-Average- North-American Man: an under-achieving doofus,
an irresponsible buffoon.
Funny, but not exactly exemplary.
If anything, his wife, Marge, is the more responsible one.
It isn’t only Homer Simpson, of course.
Think of another comedy, like the sit-com Everybody Loves Raymond.
Again, an all-American family– Ray and Deb Barone, and their children.
Again, Ray is the rather irresponsible wise-cracking cynic.
His wife Deb is generally the more responsible one.
I think Kyu Sam would hate these shows.
He thought men should have heroic roles,
that showed how respectable and how respected they were.
But I wonder what he would think about Judges 13.
Reading Judges 13 carefully, you can’t help but notice that Mrs. Manoah ends up looking quite a bit better than Mr. Manoah.
Did you notice how the angel always appeared to Mrs. Manoah first?
And Mr. Manoah is the more anxious one.
He is the one always wanting confirmation, verification, clarification?
The name “Manoah” name means “rest” in Hebrew.
But Manoah is not a restful person – he is really a pretty restless guy.
I guess I see a bit of myself in Manoah.
I’m also someone who likes confirmation, verification, clarification.
Say Shirlene, my wife, tells me that it is 30 degrees outside — just below freezing.
There is something inside of me that still goes to the window to check the thermometer myself. I don’t know why I do this – it is a terrible habit. But it seems to be some kind of a chronic need for verification. It is like I can hardly believe something until I have seen it or heard it myself.
I think I’m a bit like Manoah in this.
When the angel appears to Mrs. Manoah, her reaction is excitement, even joy.
She can’t wait to tell her husband.
She tells him she has just met the most amazing person,
so amazing he looked like an angel of God.
She has a smile on her face.
But when Manoah hears, what is his first reaction?
It is more like panic – like he has bit into a sour apple.
The first thing Manoah does is plead to God –
please bring that messenger back.
I need more information.
I need more details.
The angel of the Lord does make a return visit — more for Manoah’s sake than anyone else’s.
But again, the angel appears to Mrs. Manoah first.
This time Mrs. Manoah has the presence of mind to get her husband.
She knows her husband well enough to know that he wasn’t impressed
the first time around when she never got the messenger’s name
or his address
or anything else.
So this time, Mrs. Manoah drags her husband with her so he can
hear the instructions himself,
straight from the angel’s mouth, so to speak.
The thing is, the angel tells Manoah nothing new.
The angel’s words are almost word-for-word exactly what Mrs. Manoah had already told her husband earlier. But he simply had to hear it for himself.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between Manoah and his wife in this passage.
Why is Mrs. Manoah seemingly better able to handle the angel’s message than her husband?
Why is she aglow with awe and wonder,
where he is wringing his hands in worry and panic?
Is it a different brain at work?
Is it that Manoah was more left-brained and Mrs. Manoah more right-brained?
Is it that Mrs. Manoah’s more right-brained female approach
was more intuitive, more trusting,
more able to absorb the whole message without sweating the details?
And is it that Mr. Manoah’s more left-brained male approach,
made him a planner, problem-solver, details person
and also someone who hated hearing the words, “Surprise me.”
Was he someone off the charts in the J category of Myer-Briggs.
I do not know why?
But they react differently.
THE END OF THE STORY
The end of the story is my favorite part.
It brings to the surface all the differences between Mr. and Mrs. Manoah.
First we have Mr. Manoah trying to get a little chummy with this angel of God:
“Would you stay for supper? My wife makes a great goat-goulash.”
“By the way, what is your name, I never quite got it the first time?”
But this messenger from God doesn’t seem interested in
eating, or engaging in small talk, or divulging his name.
When they finally decide on a project they could both agree on —
making an offering to the Lord-
wouldn’t you know it,
this angel evaporates and ascends into the smoke and the flames.
The different reactions of Mr. and Mrs. Manoah are, well, classic.
Sure, they both fall on their faces to the ground.
But Mr. Manoah, true to who he was, panics.
He cries out, “We’re going to die! We’re going to die!
“We’ve seen God – We’re going to die!”
But it is Mrs. Manoah, the calmer, steadier one,
who keeps her head on her shoulders.
“That can’t be” she says.
If God meant to kill us,
He would not have accepted our offering.
If God meant to kill us,
He would not have shown us his angel.
If God meant to kill us,
He would not have announced to us that we would have a son.
It is Mrs. Manoah who is calm under pressure.
It is Mrs. Manoah who shows grace under fire.
She is anchored in the promises of God.
She is sure she and her husband will not die.
In the same fashion, Israel, though oppressed by the Philistines,
would not be blotted out.
For the Lord would remain faithful to his promises —
promises deeper than any present trouble;
promises more solid than whatever threatens us.
CONCLUSION
We may not be surrounded by Philistines,
or oppressed by an enemy occupier.
But these are dark days.
Many are unemployed or under-employed.
For the young, the future looks bleak.
For the old, the future looks barren.
Hope is in short supply.
When I write a sermon on a bit of an unusual text, I sometimes check to see if anyone has dared write on sermon on the same passage.
I couldn’t find any full sermon texts.
But I did read about a sermon preached on this text
in London England in the late summer of 1940.
The whole country was holding its breath.
Everyone was jittery, and panicky.
The German Luftwaffe was about to begin bombing their city,
and they were convinced they were about to die!
That is when a young pastor by the name of D. Martin Lloyd Jones
stood up in Westminster Chapel
and preached on this text in Judges 13.
He called on people to look to Mrs. Manoah,
to calm down,
and to trust the promises of God ….
trust the promises of God
given in Jesus Christ his Son.
For if God meant to destroy us,
He would not have made such deep promises.
If God meant to desert us,
He would not have brought us safe thus far.
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