W. Robert Godfrey

And that's why we're going to take some time to go rather deliberately and carefully through the story of Samson, because I think it's only in that way that we get the full message of what the Bible is saying to us, what God is saying to us through the story of Samson in the context of the book of Judges as a whole, and indeed in the context of Israel's history as a whole in the Old Testament.

Now, the Samson story has inspired a lot of people.

The great Puritan poet John Milton wrote an epic poem on Samson called Samson Agonistes.

And in that poem, Milton has a great line about Samson.

He says, Samson is a mirror of our fickle state.

Fickle is one of my favorite words.

That is, he's a mirror of how unreliable we are.

And that got me thinking too, yeah, what does Samson as a mirror show us about ourselves?

What kind of warnings from the Word of God come to us as we look at Samson as a mirror of ourselves?

And so we're going to sort of take that phrase of Milton, that Samson is a mirror, and run with it.

Another way of looking at Samson is Samson is something of a riddle.

Why is it at the end of the day he can be held up as an example of faith?

John Updike, a great American novelist, referred to Samson as one of those enigmatic brutes of the Old Testament.

And he is an enigma in some ways.

He's a mystery.

What are we to make of him?

And unless we can at least a little bit solve the riddle, and that's an appropriate way of talking about Samson because he loved riddles, unless we can gain some insight into the enigma, into the hidden message, the secret of Samson, we won't know the right application.

of what God is really saying to us in this story.

So we're going to try to look at this story very carefully, very considerately, and we're going to, I hope, find the right warnings for us about spiritual failures to avoid.

We're certainly going to see how this story points us to Christ.