The Stewardship of God’s Gifts

Judges 13-16, selected verses

We turn this morning to Samson, one of the Judges of Israel. Judges were often military leaders and served the role of a sort of governor of the people. When Moses led Israel out of slavery in Egypt, they didn’t know how to function as a society. They had been slaves, all their lives, their parents, their grandparents– for nine generations – had been slaves. They had always been told what to do. So, God provided them with 10 rules for society – we call them the 10 Commandments. After 40 years of practicing in the wilderness and learning to depend on each other and be dependable for each other, they came to Mt. Nebo, where they could see over into the promised land. When you stand on the top of Mt. Nebo, you can see the distinct difference between the desert all around and this lush, green spot that is the promised land. People already lived there – Canaanites, and a group of people who had been known as Sea Peoples, tribes who had traveled along the coast and by sea from the Aegean Sea near Greece. They had tried to make their way into Egypt and been held back. So, these Sea Peoples, known as Philistines, settled along the Southeastern coast of the promised land on the Mediterranean Sea around the city of Gaza. The modern word for Philistine is Palestine, and the land where they settled is now known as the Gaza strip. The Philistines settled in the Promised land about 500 years before the Israelites looked over from Mt. Nebo.

Before they crossed into the Promised Land, Moses turned over leadership to Joshua, the first judge that God raises up over Israel. And they keep asking for a king, but God chooses judges for them instead…people to act as governors of the people and not rulers over the people. Things deteriorate with every judge in the book of Judges, and Samson is the last one.

When I was growing up in Sunday school, this is what I knew about Samson: I knew that he had hair that hadn’t been cut and he was really strong, I knew that there was a riddle about killing a lion and then eating honey out of it, and I knew that he pushed the pillars of the temple apart and it collapsed. I thought he was a hero. Today we’ll take another look.

Listen now for the Word of the Lord:

Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was childless, unable to give birth. The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, “You are barren and childless, but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean. You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. He will take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”

The woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the LORD blessed him.

This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

The Israelites turned away from God, so God let the Philistines rule over them for 40 years…but now it is time for them to be freed. We recognize here the pattern for an anointed servant of God to be born. There is a barren woman, she is visited by an angel and told she will have a child. She does and dedicates him to the Lord. Who else’s birth is similar? Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s son; Samuel, Elkanah and Hannah’s son; John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth’s son; and Jesus, Mary’s son.

The word “dedicated” in Hebrew is nazir, a person who has been dedicated is a Nazirite. Most Hebrew people made a vow of this type for a season. Samson’s mother dedicates herself throughout her pregnancy and him throughout his life to God. The vow is to follow the laws of God, to abstain from alcohol, and not to cut your hair. At the beginning of Chapter 14, Samson has come of age.

And he goes down to Timnah and sees a young Philistine woman. He goes back and says to his mom and dad, “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.

The day they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, Moses gave them final instructions. “Above all,” he said, “don’t intermarry with the people already living in the land! Don’t marry your daughters to any of their sons, and don’t marry your sons to any of their daughters. This would cause your enemies to turn your children away from Me to worship other gods.”

They try to persuade him to choose a wife from their own people, but he says, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.” So, they go to Timnah to get her, and as they are approaching in the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. The Spirit of the LORD came powerfully on Samson and he easily tears the lion apart, but he did not tell his parents. They talk to her family, make plans, and return home.

He comes back to marry her, and when he passes the dead lion, bees have made a hive there. He scoops out the honey with his hands eats it. When he rejoins his parents, he gives them some, and they eat it, too. But he doesn’t tell them where it came from. According to Levitical law, a person who has touched a dead animal is unclean until he goes to the priest and offers the proper sacrifice.

When they get there, Samson holds a feast, the Hebrew literally says a drinking feast, as was customary for young men. And the Philistines chose thirty men to be his companions.

Pause a minute in the story – the vow is broken: marrying a Philistine, touching a corpse…not to mention eating out of it…and now a drinking feast.

During the meal, Sampson offers fine garments for the person who can answer his riddle about honey and a lion which in Hebrew is inappropriately lewd. His wife begs him for the answer and then gives it to his Philistine companions. When they solve it, he rages and goes back to home, back to his father’s house. And her dad gives her to one of the Philistine companions from the feast. Seasons pass, and Samson cools down and returns.

He tells her father, “I’m going to my wife’s room.” But her father would not let him go in. “I was so sure you hated her,” he said, “that I gave her to your companion. Isn’t her younger sister more attractive? Take her instead.”

Again, he rages. He goes out and catches 300 foxes and pair by pair ties their tales together with a torch in the knot. He releases the foxes with lit torches in the fields of the Philistines and burns up their grain, their vineyards, and their olive groves. In response, the Philistines burn his Timnite wife and her father to death. Samson swears revenge and attacks, slaying many.

Then he goes and hides in a cave. 3,000 Israelites go to the cave and ask him, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.” They take him captive to hand him over to the Philistines, but as they approached, the Philistines came toward them to attack and he raged again. This time he picks up the fresh jawbone of a donkey and uses it as a weapon, again touching a corpse, and he kills 1,000 men and sings a little limerick about it. Afterward, he was thirsty and prayed to God and a spring came forth with renewing, refreshing water, and he regained his strength.

The Philistines watched and waited for an opportunity to kill him.

Until one day, he went to a Philistine woman of ill-repute, these women often lived in the city wall near the city gate, and the Philistines surrounded the place and slept at the gate in wait to attack at dawn. Samson got up in the middle of the night, when the city gates were locked, so to get out he picked up the gate and the posts and tore them loose, the bar across them and all and carried them to the top of the hill that faced the city.

Why would he do that? To “possess the gate of your enemy” was a description of a military victory. But, even though he is chosen by God to free Israel from the rule of the Philistines, again Samson doesn’t try to rally troops with his symbol of victory.

Eventually, Samson falls in love with another Philistine woman named Delilah.

The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “See if you can lure him into showing you the secret of his great strength and how we can overpower him so we may tie him up and subdue him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred shekels of silver.”

So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me the secret of your great strength and how you can be tied up and subdued.” He gave her the wrong answer. She told the Philistines. They tried it. He escaped. She complained that he made a fool of her. So, again, he gave her the wrong answer. She told the Philistines. They tried it. He escaped. She complained that he made a fool of her. A third time, gave her the wrong answer. She told the Philistines. They tried it. He escaped.

Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” She nagged and nagged until he told her everything.

“My mother dedicated me to God before I was born. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”

Delilah sends word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So they come and pay her. When he’s asleep, they shave his head. And his strength leaves him. Then she calls, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”

He wakes up and thinks he’ll just go out and shake himself free again. But he did not know that the LORD had left him.

Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him to grinding grain in the prison.

When Samson’s hair is shaved, it’s the final straw, the final connection to the Nazarite vow is broken, and his strength leaves him. It’s not about his hair, that is just a symbol that he is dedicated to God’s purposes. And he isn’t, and God leaves him. And he is brought so low that he is doing the work of an animal, or a slave, or a woman, grinding grain.

Listen now to the conclusion of the story from Judges 16:

But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.

Now the rulers of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god and to celebrate, saying, “Our god has delivered Samson, our enemy, into our hands.”

While they were in high spirits, they shouted, “Bring out Samson to entertain us.” So they called Samson out of the prison, and he performed for them.

When they stood him among the pillars, Samson said to the servant who held his hand, “Put me where I can feel the pillars that support the temple, so that I may lean against them.” Now the temple was crowded with men and women; all the rulers of the Philistines were there, and on the roof were about three thousand men and women watching Samson perform. Then Samson prayed to the LORD, “Sovereign LORD, remember me. Please, God, strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” Then he pushed with all his might, and down came the temple on the rulers and all the people in it.

The hair on his head begins to grow again. This is a symbol that he begins to let God into his life again. The Philistines take him to their pagan god, Dagon’s temple and make him dance and they are going to sacrifice him to celebrate that Dagon has won victory over the Israelites’ God. Samson prays, and God gives him the strength to dislodge the two wooden beams that were the center supports of the temple.

So, God’s purpose to free the Israelites from the Philistines was not achieved by Samson as God envisioned. But, it was begun.

Before his death, Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

So, what do we learn from Samson? Four things:

1. God doesn’t force us to use our gifts, but we have them because God sees how they can be part of God’s will being accomplished.

2. We learn that God is faithful even when we are faithless.

3. We learn that faith often grows when we are weakest.

4. And grace. We learn that we can ignore God and break God’s law, and yet, when we cry out, God responds. And God will take the flawed, disobedient lives of people and work through them, even despite them, to make them heroes of the faith, to bring about God’s beloved community, the Kingdom of God. Thanks be to God, for God’s amazing grace. Amen.