The transcript of A Sermon on Judges 14:1-15:20 has been lightly edited.
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If you have your Bibles, please take them now and turn with me to Judges 14. Last week we talked about Samson’s birth narrative, how the angel of the Lord came to Manoah’s wife, explained how they were to raise this son who would be gifted to them, and that he would begin the restoration of Israel, he would begin the defeat of the Philistines. And today we are going to consider a large chunk of Samson’s life.
We are going to consider chapters 14 and 15. And I’m only going to read the first four verses of chapter 14 because that’s where we will spend most of our time, but we will get the sense of the rest of this as we go through. So please follow along and read with me as we begin reading in Judges 14, verses 1-4.
“Samson went down to Timna, and at Timna he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timna. Now get her for me as my wife. But his father and mother said to him, Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all our people that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? But Samson said to his father, Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes. His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time, the Philistines ruled over Israel.”
Let’s pray. Our Father, as we approach this Word today, we do approach a difficult doctrine, a difficult topic. And sometimes it’s hard for us in our culture, in our context, to think about or to talk about sin and how You use sin for Your good.
But Lord, as we consider these glorious truths, Lord, we know that You will change us through what You proclaim today through me. And so I ask, Lord, that Your Spirit would be with me to give me the words that will most honor and glorify You. And I pray that Your Spirit will be with Your people to convict of sin and to chase them into the arms of their loving Savior, where they have and will find forgiveness.
We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
Daniel Block says this about Samson. He says,
“On the one hand, he is born and buried as a hero. But on the other hand, he is a bandit, a trickster, and one who frivolously fritters away his extraordinary calling and gifts.”
What do we do with a judge, a person who has such a glorious announcement of birth, and then has such an inglorious life? Well, we are called to look at it and to dig deeply into his life and to learn the lessons that God has for us in this life. To see where we do what is right in our eyes when God has given us new eyes.
To see where we pursue our own desires when God has given us new desires. And to see how God is good and uses for good even our sinful acts. And yet, that truth that God uses our sinful acts for good does not excuse our sin.
And so as we look at the life of Samson, as we specifically drill down into verses 1-4 of chapter 14, my hope is that we will see that God gets so much more glory when His will is accomplished through our righteous deeds rather than our sinful ones.
AN ALMOST MARRIAGE & JAWBONE HILL
Well, first, I want us to understand the flow of chapters 14 and 15. And so, we’re going to look at very briefly a summary of everything that happens. We’re going to look at it in the context of Samson’s almost marriage and then Jawbone Hill.
So as we read, Samson has been going back and forth across the border between Dan’s territory and Philistia. And as he was in the city of Timnah, which was probably there near the border, he saw a woman that he really liked. She was pretty.
And he goes to Mom and Dad and he says, hey, Mom and Dad, why don’t you go get me this woman for a wife? And Mom and Dad do what they say. What they’re supposed to do. They say to him, look, this is not how we raised you. We raised you to be holy. We raised you as a Nazarite set apart unto God for the work of rescuing the people of Israel. And this is a bad call. This is a bad decision. You should find somebody from within the people of Israel. That’s what God has called us to do. We are not to marry outside of the people of Israel.
And what is Samson’s response? He said, get her for me anyway, because I like the way she looks.
And so, Mom and Dad do that. They go to Timnah and they begin to make arrangements for Samson’s marriage and on the way, somehow they get separated from Samson and Samson is attacked by a lion. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he rips the lion to pieces.
He defeats the lion and he sticks the lion probably in a cave somewhere. And then he goes on. We’re told that he goes to the vineyards of Timnah.
And when we talk about the vineyards of Timnah, that’s code word for he probably stopped at the bar on his way to get a few drinks. Kind of loosen things up before he got to the party. Violating his Nazarite vow, which was told that he was not to even touch anything that had to do with the vine, much less drink alcohol or strong liquor.
He goes back home and on his way back a little bit later, he finds the lion carcass again, except this time it is full of honeybees and honey. And he shoos the bees away, and he grabs some of the honeycomb and he eats some of it himself. Once again, violating his Nazarite vow where he is not to touch anything that is dead. But he takes it one step further because when he does meet up with Mom and Dad again, he hands them some of the honey, thereby defiling them as well.
And this feast begins and it’s a seven-day feast. And this feast is full of partying and drinking and carousing and everything pagan that you could think would be part of a feast.
Once again, Samson violating his vows. Not being holy as God had called him to be holy and in the middle of the feast, as these 30 men have been brought as companions for him, he gives them a riddle.
“Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.”
It’s a little bit better than Bilbo’s riddle to Gollum when they were in the cave and he stuck his hand in his pocket and he says, “What do I have in my pocket?” But it’s the same basic thing. Samson is the only one who should know the answer to this riddle.
And yet there is a very expensive price to be paid for whoever can solve the riddle. And so they send Samson’s wife four days into the feast. He’s given them seven days to solve it.
On the fourth day, they send Samson’s wife in with threats of death and violence to her family and say, tell your husband to give us the answer. And he tells her, I would rather protect my parents because I haven’t even told them yet than tell you this. But after several days of her weeping, of her-forgive me-nagging him, he finally caves and tells what the answer to the riddle is.
And at the last possible moment, the men of the city come to him and give him the answer to the riddle and he realizes that he’s been had. And so to fulfill the prize for them, which is 30 linen garments, which would be like going to a high-end men’s store and buying the most expensive suit off the rack, having it tailored and delivered a week later. He goes up to Ashkelon and he murders 30 men.
As the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him and he brings the 30 linen garments to pay off the debt, likely smeared and dirty with the remnants of the 30 men that he murdered.
Samson goes back home with Mom and Dad, not knowing that his wife had been given to probably what we would consider the best man. After some days, this is Samson’s almost-wedding part two.
He goes back at the time of the wheat harvest and he goes to the father of the woman and he says, I’m here for my wife. And he said, well, I thought you hate her. You called her a cow. You left. He said, I thought you hate her, so I gave her to one of your friends. But, since you thought she was attractive, what about her younger sister who’s even prettier than she was?
And Samson gets mad and he goes and he catches 30 foxes, or the word translated foxes could also be translated jackals, which would make more sense in the context. They were more common during that time, the jackals were. They traveled in packs, so it would be easier for him to catch 300 of them. He ties their tails together.
He puts torches between their tails and he lets them loose in the hay fields. And we’re told that the entire harvest goes up in flames. And of course, the Philistines are upset, because whether it was the grain still standing in the field, the stacked grain, or the olive orchards, their next year has been destroyed.
And so they ask who has done this. Samson has done this. And the judgment that the Timnite woman was hoping to avoid by tricking Samson into giving her the answer to the riddle is brought upon her as the Philistines destroy and burn them.
And once again, the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Samson and He avenges His fiance and His future father-in-law.
Well, after that, Samson escapes to the land of Judah. He hides himself in a mountain pass and the Philistines come in full force to Judah to find Samson. And of course, the people of Judah are like, what are you doing here? We’ve kept all the bargains. We’ve kept all the deals. We’ve behaved.
And the Philistines said, we want Samson. And so the men of Judah go to Samson showing their complacency with the Philistine oppression. And they ask Samson to turn himself in and he agrees.
They tie him up, escort him with 3,000 men to the Philistines, and the Philistines thought they had won the day. And the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Samson. The bonds melt off of his arms. He doesn’t even break them. It says that they melt like they had caught on fire and just fall off of his hand. And he finds the jawbone of a dead donkey.
And with it, he kills 1,000 men. And so the hill of Lehi is named Jawbone Hill. And we see God working through all of this.
God is leading Samson. Even through his sinful actions, God has brought Samson to places where he will begin the rescue of the people of Israel. But we also see through this that Samson really doesn’t care much for the holiness that he was taught as a child by his parents.
The Scripture does not tell us how well the parents taught him, but the Scripture does tell us that all of these areas where Samson broke his Nazarite vow without any care or without any conscience.
RIGHT IN MY EYES
I want us to go back now that we’ve seen the summary of what has happened here. I want us to go back to v. 3. We’re going to cover and look at v. 3 and 4 well, not real quick, but quick enough.
And I want us to see the motivation for Samson here in v. 3 and just see some of the implications for the motivation. Once again, mom and dad have come to Samson and said you really should take a Jewish wife rather than a Philistine wife because God has commanded us to not intermarry with the idolatrous nations around us. And Samson’s response at the end of v. 3 is this,
“…get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.”
And that’s the key phrase there. “She is right in my eyes.” If we were to turn a couple pages to chapter 17, or even on to chapter 21, we would hear this about the nation of Israel.
In v. 6 of chapter 17, we read,
“In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
That phrase in 17:6, which is repeated again in 21:5, is the same phrase that Samson uses in chapter 14. She is right in my eyes.
Exodus 20 begins with, “I am the Lord your God who has given you everything. I have rescued you from slavery in Israel. I have sustained you all the way here to Mount Sinai. I have given you water in the desert. I have given you food. When you were starving, I have done everything to set you apart as My people. Now be holy as I am holy.”
And yet, since they got actually for the 40 years in the wilderness, the first generation did what was right in their eyes, and they were punished for it. The second generation starts well, and yet lives their entire life saying, “I want this because it is right in my eyes.”
In 1 John 2, John talks about love of the world and avoiding it. In 1 John 2;15-17, he says,
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
What is right in our own eyes looks like the desires of the flesh. Idolizing our passions, our wants, and our desires. Saying that food or sex or pleasure is more important to me than the glory of God.
God has given us those things, and He calls us to use them according to His glory, according to His will, and to pursue God’s glory above all things, and yet we as people deciding what is right in our own eyes pursue the desires of the flesh.
He says the desires of the eyes. In pursuing what is right in our eyes, we idolize beauty and attractiveness. Samson was not the first one to say, I want that woman. I want that thing. I want that sinful act because it looks attractive. Eve, after speaking with the serpent, turned her eyes upon the tree, and the Scripture tells us, since it looked good, she took it and ate.
God gave us beauty, and that beauty is to point us to His glory and to His majesty and to His will, and yet when we do what is right in our own eyes, we idolize and destroy beauty.
And it says the pride of life is the third aspect of loving the world. Look down in your footnote there. It could also be pride in possessions. When we begin to idolize the things that we have, whether it’s furniture or electronics or bank accounts or success, when we begin to put those things and the pursuit of those things above the pursuit of the glory of God and the holiness to which He has called us, we are living according to what is right in our own eyes. And here’s the heartbreaking thing, brothers and sisters.
Jesus hung on that cross so that you and I might have new eyes. Not eyes that only see what is right to us, but eyes that are attuned to what is right and what is holy to Him. And when you pursue those things that are right in our own eyes, it is as if we are scooping out those new Spirit-enlivened eyes and trying to stick the spiritually blind eyes back in because we want what we want and not what Christ wants.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus has done what is necessary not only for you and I to be reconciled to God, but for you and I to be able to see beyond what we want and to have eyes that follow and that want Him and His holiness. All of Israel’s history in the book of Judges is defined by Israel doing what was right in their eyes. Have you ever considered where that leads? That leads to rape.
In chapters 17-21, we will see that them doing what was right in their own eyes leads to rape. It leads to murder. It leads to the almost destruction of an entire tribe of Israel. And it reminds us that we need a Savior.
GOD’S GLORIOUS USE OF SIN
Next, I want us to see the next verse. Verse 4,
“His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for He was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines. At that time, the Philistines ruled over Israel.”
You know, the Scriptures teach God’s sovereignty over sin, God’s usage of sin, and yet also human responsibility for sin. How can God take sinful acts of human beings and use them for His good and for His will? Well, it’s because He’s God. And He’s sovereign over all things.
We see this in Genesis 50. Joseph’s brothers realize that Jacob has died. And they realize that maybe, just maybe, Joseph wants revenge for what they did to him earlier in the book. They threatened to kill him. They sold him into slavery. Everything that went wrong in Joseph’s life, he could literally lay at the feet of his brothers.
And so fearing vengeance from Joseph since he was the second most powerful man in Egypt, they go to Joseph and they say, “Hey, by the way, Dad wanted us to tell you just to let it all go. Don’t be mean to us. Honor Dad by being nice to us.”
And what’s Joseph’s response? He says, what you meant for evil, God meant for good for the salvation of many.
And Peter picks up that theme in Acts 2, beginning in verse 22. He says,
“Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst as you yourselves know. This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
Those religious leaders that put a sham trial against Jesus. Those religious leaders who turned Jesus over to Pilate and manipulated the crowd and manipulated Pilate to get him to crucify Jesus.
Were they responsible for their sin? Yes. But what happened because of their sin? The salvation of many. Jesus was turned over to death so that you and I might have salvation.
And we see, if we were to continue reading later on in the book of Acts, Bruce pointed it out today in Sunday school. Later on in the book of Acts, it is said that many of the religious leaders became Christians. Had faith and believed.
And it doesn’t say this for sure, but I like to think that some of the men that Peter addressed, men who stood in that trial and did not speak up, men who shouted, crucify Him, found their hope, found their salvation in Christ and in Christ alone.
Brothers and sisters, yes, God is sovereign over the sinful acts of men and He is and will bring His glory even through those sinful acts.
CONCLUSION
And so in the life of Samson, we see a man who is living according to what is right in his own eyes rather than what God wants him to be, which is holy. And we see God using those acts for His glory anyway.
Just a couple things to wrap this up. Some of you are the victim of other people’s sinful acts. I want you to know, and it may be too early for you, I understand that. You may be angry at God. You may be wondering why. You may get angry with me for saying this. But that’s okay. Just tuck it away for a later day.
God will work His glory through those sinful acts. It doesn’t mean we don’t hold those men or women to account for those sinful acts, but it does mean that your suffering, your hardship is not the end.
But the other thing we need to make sure of is that we are not walking according to what is right in our own eyes.
Many times when I say I knew a man at one point in the past, and then I give some sinful act that that man did, I’m just a little secret here. I’m typically talking about myself. And I’m not proud of this.
But I have made choices in the past long before I met Michelle, long before I was a Christian, but I thought I was. Choices that were right in my own eyes, but I thought in the back of my mind, I bet you God’s going to use this for an evangelistic purpose. You know what God calls that? Idolatry.
Because I cared more about what I wanted rather than what God wanted. And I don’t know. God could have used those things for evangelistic purposes, but I don’t know.
I ran away from them. I was shamed by them. And thankfully, a few years later, I found the truth that salvation comes not through what I do, but through Christ and Christ alone.
And so, brothers and sisters, watch out for doing what is right in your own eyes. Watch out for the statements in your life where you say, “I know God wants this, but…” Watch out for those because those are dangerous and can lead to a life of hardship and a life of disappointment and a life of God’s just displeasure.
Let’s pray. Father, we praise Your holy name. We praise You because You use sinful acts for Your glory. And yet, Lord, we also ask that You would keep us from pursuing what is right in our own eyes so that You will get the greater glory through our righteousness and holiness. I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
BENEDICTION
Our walk with God does not end in this room every week. We walk with God through every moment of our life.
And as we walk from this place and as we walk toward holiness, God sends us with this blessing:
“The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His loving countenance upon you and give you peace.”
He who testifies to these things says, Yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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