Chapter 1: What is the context of Israel's spiritual decline leading to Samson's rise?
The judges have become progressively weaker, and the judges themselves have become progressively more sinful, and the fruitfulness of their deliverance has become shorter term. And so we can almost anticipate what's going to happen with this next judge who's about to come.
progressively weaker, progressively more sinful. That's the pattern of the judges, and it makes for a compelling narrative. Maybe that's why many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Samson, who was the last judge. This is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and today we'll see the need for Samson.
These past few weeks, you've heard messages from W. Robert Godfrey's series, The Life of Samson. Over 10 messages, Dr. Godfrey highlights vital theological lessons from Samson's life and explores what this judge tells us about Christian living.
As this is the final message you'll be hearing from the series, be sure to request the entire study when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. But don't delay, as this offer won't be repeated next Saturday. So who was Samson? And specifically, who were his parents? Here's Dr. Godfrey.
Well, we're returning to Samson. We've looked a little bit at the riddle of Samson when we started and then a little in the last lecture on the need for judges. And now we're going to turn to the need for Samson himself as it's presented to us, beginning at Judges 13, verse 1, the Samson story. takes up four chapters in the book, chapters 13 through 16.
Of course, we know these chapters are all added later, but still they're helpful for us today to find out where we are and orient ourselves. And there we find the book of Judges declaring in verse one, and the people of Israel again, and that certainly is the case, it's again. This is the fourth or fifth or sixth time this is said in the book of Judges.
And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now, that's a perfectly good translation, but in light of what's going to happen in this story and happens in other stories in the book of Judges, we might have left it just a little more literally because literally what it says is, and the people of Israel again did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord.
Now, that's important because eyes are very important in this story. It's going to very much revolve around what Samson sees and what Samson does in relation to what he sees and how at the end Samson loses his sight. So the theme of sight is introduced here by the author right at the beginning.
It's not only going to be a story about Samson's eyes, it's also going to be a story about the Lord's eyes. And this is set down right at the beginning. Again, the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now you notice there's no great detail given here about what that evil was.
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Chapter 2: Who were Samson's parents and what is their significance?
They'll be exiled after centuries of kingship, but already it's all being anticipated here. They're enslaved in their own country. Forty years. Think how long that is. And here is the tragedy that is besetting Israel. What's the solution? Well, the solution has to be that God will raise up a judge again. And God has been doing that. But the judges have become progressively weaker.
And the judges themselves have become progressively more sinful. And the fruitfulness of their deliverance has become shorter term. And so we can almost anticipate what's going to happen with this next judge who's about to come. But that's the background now for the need for Samson, for Samson to arise. And now we get to the Samson story.
But of course, as we look, we discover we don't get Samson. 25% of the Samson story is about his parents before he's born. So again, we're a little bit surprised by how this story is told.
Chapter 3: What does the story of Samson reveal about Israel's need for a judge?
I think most of the time in Sunday school when we talk about Samson, we don't spend a lot of time on his parents. But 25% of the story is given to the story of his parents before his birth. And so clearly, the Lord intends that this be a preparation for us to really think about Samson and the context in which he's born, the task that the Lord is giving to him.
And as we're going to study and as we're going to see, this story is very interesting. intricately told, very carefully thought through. And I think one way of thinking about the whole Samson story is a story in four acts. It's almost a play, a story in four acts. Act one is the parents of Samson and the preparation for his birth as we find it in Judges chapter 13.
And then Act 2, which is his marriage to the Philistine woman and the disastrous consequences of that, which really take up chapter 14 and 15. And then Act 3, which I think is Judges 16, verses 1 through 3. I think Act 3 is just three verses. I'll explain that as we go along. And then the fourth act, maybe the most famous, Samson and Delilah, chapter 16, verse 4 to the end.
So here we have four acts. We could also say maybe four snapshots. We've seen snapshots all through the book of Judges. Four snapshots, four acts out of his life. Judges Israel were told for 20 years, which is a relatively long time. And yet, these snapshots we have, these acts of his life, are really very short.
The few days around his marriage to the Philistine woman and the tragic consequences of that, maybe another week or two. The one day of Act 3, those three verses. the beginning of chapter 16, and then the Samson and Delilah story, which is maybe another few weeks. So out of 20 years, we really only have the story of a few weeks in his life.
But obviously, these are the things that the Lord wants us to know. These are the highlights. These are the spiritually key factors in the life of Samson. And it's intriguing that each of these four acts in the life of Samson revolves around a woman. Now, this is part of the key to Samson. Women are important in the life of Samson, more important maybe than they ought to be.
But each of these four acts revolves around a woman. Act one is about his mother, a pious woman, we'll see. Act two is about his Philistine wife. Act three is about a Philistine prostitute. And act four revolves around Delilah.
So women are very important in the life of Samson, and part of what's being said, as is being said in the whole book of Judges, women are very important in the history of redemption for good, as is the case with his mother, or for evil. as is the case particularly with Delilah, but with the other two Philistine women as well. So this is a very intricately told story.
It's very thoughtfully put together, and its intentionality is going to help us see what is the message the Lord wanted to have for his people through this. So let's begin Act 1. There are several scenes in this act. if we want to continue the theatrical image here.
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Chapter 4: How does the theme of sight play a role in Samson's story?
And so here, clearly, the parents of Samson are being presented to us as participating in the... kind of judgment and chastisement of the Lord upon his people. And you get a sense, I think, that they are very fatalistic about this. They're resigned. They've given up. Samson's mother, it seems to me, stands in marked contrast with Hannah.
You know, when Hannah was not able to have children, what do we read? She pled with the Lord. She prayed. She begged the Lord. She offered vows before the Lord. She... You know, she just was engaged in the Lord coming to her need. This woman seems not engaged in that at all. Neither she nor Manoah seem to be praying about this situation.
And there's this sense throughout the Samson story that sort of the life has gone out of Israel. The hope has gone out of Israel. It's almost after 40 years they're not even looking for the Lord to act anymore. They're resigned to their fate. And so we are introduced to a family in Israel that expresses the character of Israel in these days as pretty hopeless, pretty cast down, pretty despondent.
And then, as so often happens in the Bible, in our worst moments, in our worst moments, The Lord intervenes. The Lord acts. The Lord surprises us. And that's what we have in verse 3. And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman. Now, you know the Hebrew word for angel. Angel is actually a Greek word. And both the Hebrew word and the Greek word mean the messenger of the Lord.
Angels are always messengers of the Lord. They bear a word from the Lord. That's why they come. That's their function. And, of course, we also know that among angels there's a special angel that most scholars believe, most conservative scholars anyway, believe is a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ.
This is the eternal second person of the Trinity who takes on a form that can be seen to communicate the message of God to people in the Old Covenant. So here comes the angel of the Lord who appeared to the woman and says to her, Behold, you are barren and have not born children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. You shall conceive and bear a son. That sounds vaguely familiar, doesn't it?
Here is the promise, a proto-messianic promise. You're going to bear a son. And it's interesting as we read along here that Samson's mother initially seems to think that this appearance to her is a man. She thinks he's a prophet. So he clearly doesn't have wings. This is not an angel that looks obviously angelic. No sign on his chest that says angel.
And that's sort of intriguing, too, that we find that a number of times in the Old Testament, that angels appear, but they appear in the form of a man called and are initially appraised as being a human being. But a little further in the text, we're told that the appearance was awesome, although literally in Hebrew it sort of was very scary.
And that too, it regularly accompanies the appearances of angels in the Bible, doesn't it? What are the first words that angels frequently speak? Fear not, because they're very scary, whether they just look like very impressive human beings or whether they're actually perceived to be angels from their first appearance. But this angel appears with a promise.
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