W. Robert Godfrey

Israel is God's son.

Israel is God's firstborn.

He's concerned about that people as his child.

And then he goes on intriguingly, verse 17, but let your right hand be on the man of your right hand, the son of man whom you have made strong for yourself.

So the Son, Israel the Son, is only going to be saved when God raises up the Son of Man, the man of his right hand, the man who will be strong.

This is the pattern.

God raises up strong men throughout the Old Testament, but none of them strong enough.

It's only Jesus as he comes who is strong enough to bind the strong man who's been the ruler of this world.

And so the Psalter is showing us this pattern, this hope, this direction, and who is the strong man that we're going to look at?

Who is the strong man that God is raising up here at the end of the list of judges in the book of Judges?

It's Samson.

Samson we usually think of in the first place as what?

As a strong man.

This is the pattern of spiritual decline that we're going to see here in the book of Judges.

And all of this, you see, is very intentional.

But if you don't see the big picture, you might not notice that.

And you might say, well, why is this crazy Samson in this story?

He does one bad thing after another.

Yeah, it's showing the spiritual decline of Israel.

We're beginning a study today on Samson in the book of Judges.