Our help is in the Name of the Lord who created heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Psalm of praise 18: 1,2.
Creed of Nicea
Law
Psalm 86:3.
Prayer.
Psalm 103:2
Scripture
reading: Judges 15
Text:
Judges 15: 16 – 20
16
Then Samson
said: "With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone
of a donkey I have slain a thousand men!"
17
And so it was, when he had finished speaking, that he threw the jawbone
from his hand, and called that place Ramath Lehi.
18
¶ Then he became very thirsty; so he cried out to
the LORD and said, "You have given this great deliverance by the hand
of Your servant; and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hand
of the uncircumcised?"
19
So God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, and water came out, and
he drank; and his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore he called
its name En Hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day.
20
And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
(Judges 15: 16-20 New King James 82)
When
you do not know where you are going, it is impossible to get lost!
Sometimes we over-estimate ourselves. This happens when we blow our own
trumpet. Until the Lord delivers us unto ourselves and our own
strength. At this stage the situation can change drastically.
- Then the image of our own
strength is broken.
- Then the place of
self-glorification is overtaken by mortal fear and shame.
In the chosen passage we have read about a very exceptional man; Samson.
- It is conspicuous that his
birth was announced in advance.
- This happens five times in
the Bible, namely before the birth of Isaac, Samson, the son of the
Shunammite woman, John the Baptist and Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Therefore Samson
was seen by God as very special. It is even more
exceptional when we start realizing that the five men mentioned were
all individuals who were to take a central place in the history of
Salvation.
Samson judged the people of Israel as individual.
- Even the wars that Israel
fought at this time against the Philistines were one-man wars.
- Every time Samson stood
alone against the Philistines. The people were always like
décor figures in the background.
- Even when they
were mentioned, the people were shown in their weakness – not
in their belief or in their strength.
- This fact is relevant in
the passage we have read together.
- The people governed by
Samson, delivered him unto the enemy.
In this event Samson is a type of the
Lord Jesus Christ who was also
delivered by his people to the heathens. After their deliverance Jesus
and Samson both had to fight death alone and both had to
defeat the forces against them on their own.
The background of the passage we have read is this:
- During harvest time Samson
caught three hundred foxes, turned the foxes tail to tail and bound a
torch between each pair of tails.
- He set each of the torches
on fire and let the foxes loose in the standing grain fields of the
Philistines.
- Unnecessary to say: the
grain fields were burnt down and were destroyed.
Samson then moved back to the rock of Etam. The rock was on the
boundary of the land of the Philistines.
The
Philistines then deployed a strong army and encamped in the land of
Judah. They wanted to get to Samson. The people of Judah were
terrified. (Verse 11).
Yet they could have defeated the Philistines that day forever only if
they had real faith – and the practical application there-of.
- Under the leadership of
Samson they could have positioned themselves well and could have
destroyed the whole army of the Philistines.
- Indeed in their weakness and
fear they gathered an army, but not to defy the Philistines.
- They sent three thousand
men to capture Samson.
- The only possibility for
their redemption was delivered to the enemy.
Samson himself was not afraid of them. He negotiated with them.
- They just had to promise
that they would not take sides with the Philistines.
- They had to promise not to
attack him together with the Philistines.
Then came the moment in which the
Almighty God prophesied through the
actions of Samson the way His Son was going to vanquish the powers of
hell. He will defeat the powers that are not only against
Himself, but also against His people –
His congregation.
- Samson was bound with two
new ropes.
- He was delivered to the
enemy.
- Then the Spirit of God came
mightily upon him and things started to happen!
Just place yourself back into the scene that moment:
- There was the army of the
Philistines. An army in full strength. Everyone armed to the teeth.
- What did the Lord think of
so many strong and dangerous men? Nothing.
- For God one person is
enough. The Lord does not count people as we do. He determines his
resolution by virtue of faith in and love for and obedience to Him.
- The Lord did not even
consider the heavy weaponry of the Philistines. Only one person was
needed to go into battle in His service. Samson’s weapons
were considerably plainer than that of the Philistines.
Recently a donkey died there.
- The Lord determined that the
fresh jawbone of a donkey was an appropriate weapon to destroy the
“modern and sophisticated” army of His enemy.
- The Lord does not depend on
science and technology to fulfill His council. His omnipotence makes
the impossible possible where human hope diminishes and disappears.
The Lord uses a person to fulfill His council and in this he does not
ignore his human nature. Thus Samson became thirsty after his fierce
battle.
People are always imperfect – even the best among us. Thus it
happened that Samson did not see himself in his victory as dependent on
the LORD. In arrogance he sang a song about his victory and the way in
which he had killed so many Philistines.
There was no word of acknowledgment of the grace that God gave him to
do this in his song!
We can see ourselves in this man:
- Very full of self importance
- With little comprehension
for our own limitations
- To a great extent without
insight and comprehension of the immediate mercy of God
- With an enormous lack of
gratitude and worship for everything that the Lord gives us.
Take a look at the image that Samson portrayed: It is one of a person
who believes that only he himself in his own strength can trample
everything and everyone who opposes him.
Naturally the Lord cannot abide such a situation with contentedness.
- Therefore Samson was
delivered unto himself.
- If he was so powerful in
himself, he should overcome his bodily needs by himself. He became very
thirsty.
- He was very near to death
from thirst.
- Now he knew how to pray to
the Lord: “You have given this
great deliverance by the hand
of your servant”!
- Then he pleaded for
survival.
- Of course it is the mercy
that we receive from God that we may have repentance. We receive great
mercy when the Holy Spirit moves us to the point where we can rectify
our mistakes! Therefore Samson’s prayer and his song of
victory are vastly different in respect of persuasion and content.
- At first he sang of his own
power display– arrogant and self-reliant.
- Then he prayed and pleaded
for water to survive – dependent and in mortal fear.
This event does not only describe Samson and his history. It describes
to us the relationship between the Lord Jesus Christ and the people for
whom He died on the cross and for whom he brought about reconciliation.
- On the one hand Samson
portrayed the Lord Jesus in His victory over the devil and his realm:
Therein that he had to fight alone and won like Jesus did.
- Everything he did thereafter
did not represent the Lord Jesus anymore. Therein he represented us: as
human being he failed miserably in order to be saved.
The people, for whom Samson fought,
were also like us, bewildered and
confused in their faith and more on the wrong side of the line of
demarcation than on the right side. They established exactly by their
lack of judgment the circumstances and the ground where the
death-struggle and the victory should take place. They handed over
their leader to the unbelieving enemy.
At the same time The Lord reveals in this event his immeasurable
omnipotence:
- There is no power, or
combination of powers, strong enough to oppose the redemption work of
God.
- Just like Samson who
literally ridiculed the Philistines with everything that happened there
physically – the powers of hell and everything related to it
were humiliated and defeated through Jesus Christ’s victory.
We have now reached the end of a year and may soon enter a new year.
- The year which lies ahead of
us will undoubtedly have its own miseries.
- But none of these negative
things likely to happen can have any hold on us. Jesus had already
defeated and broken the devil and his work.
Therefore it also concerns our attitude. In this Samson, the thirsty
man, is our representative. We leave the old year and enter the new
year with a disposition of absolute dependence on the Lord.
- May we be free from all
forms of self-exaltation or arrogance.
- May we be very grateful to
the Lord for all the beautiful things with which He blesses us from day
to day.
- May He use us in our
humbleness to make His kingdom come.
- May the Lord give
us the strength to live our lives so straightforward that we do not
need to trace back on our footsteps, beg for foregiveness and confess
the truth at last.
- May it be to us a year of
hope.
- We can always hope for
redemption, because the Lord answered Samson’s prayer
immediately after he begged for water – although he was
singing about his own greatness and heroism only moments before!
- In the same way God is
also prepared to forgive us and to bless us!
The real believer, who knows where he is going and where he comes from,
does not wander aimlessly through all the events of his life.
- He is set in his direction
as a conqueror in Jesus Christ – He handles every opportunity
to establish the honour of the Lord.
- He knows that the Lord makes
the impossible possible when it is all about the wellbeing of those He
loves.
- With the history of Samson
we learned that the Lord does not depend on science and technology to
fulfill His council. His omnipotence makes the impossible possible even
when all hope of human beings tarnish.
The real believer never boasts in himself. He lives in the greatness of
Jesus Christ, and knows that as conqueror he must and can handle life
in the redemption of Jesus.
Amen.
Closing prayer.
Closing hymn: Scripture rhyme 5-4:1-6
The LORD shall bless you and keep you;
The LORD shall let His countenance shine on you and shall be merciful;
The LORD shall raise His countenance upon you and shall give you peace.
Amen.
Dr.
M.J. du Plessis
Reformed
Church Bellville
Date:
2 January 2005 (morning).