watch out for those delilah's

Judges 16

Samson went to Gaza and saw a prostitute. He went to her. The news got around: “Samson’s here.” They gathered around in hiding, waiting all night for him at the city gate, quiet as mice, thinking, “At sunrise we’ll kill him.^"  Samson was in bed with the woman until midnight. Then he got up, seized the doors of the city gate and the two gateposts, bolts and all, hefted them on his shoulder, and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron.

Some time later he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek (Grapes). Her name was Delilah. The Philistine tyrants approached her and said, “Seduce him. Discover what’s behind his great strength and how we can tie him up and humble him. Each man’s company will give you a hundred shekels of silver.”  So Delilah said to Samson, “Tell me, dear, the secret of your great strength, and how you can be tied up and humbled.”  Samson told her, “If they were to tie me up with seven bowstrings—the kind made from fresh animal tendons, not dried out—then I would become weak, just like anyone else.”

The Philistine tyrants brought her seven bowstrings, not dried out, and she tied him up with them. The men were waiting in ambush in her room. Then she said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He snapped the cords as though they were mere threads. The secret of his strength was still a secret.

Delilah said, “Come now, Samson—you’re playing with me, making up stories. Be serious; tell me how you can be tied up.”  He told her, “If you were to tie me up tight with new ropes, ropes never used for work, then I would be helpless, just like anybody else.”  So Delilah got some new ropes and tied him up. She said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” The men were hidden in the next room. He snapped the ropes from his arms like threads.  

Delilah said to Samson, “You’re still playing games with me, teasing me with lies. Tell me how you can be tied up.”  He said to her, “If you wove the seven braids of my hair into the fabric on the loom and drew it tight, then I would be as helpless as any other mortal.”  When she had him fast asleep, Delilah took the seven braids of his hair and wove them into the fabric on the loom and drew it tight. Then she said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He woke from his sleep and ripped loose from both the loom and fabric!   She said, “How can you say ‘I love you’ when you won’t even trust me? Three times now you’ve toyed with me, like a cat with a mouse, refusing to tell me the secret of your great strength.”  

She kept at it day after day, nagging and tormenting him. Finally, he was fed up, he couldn’t take another minute of it. He spilled it.  He told her, “A razor has never touched my head. I’ve been God’s Nazirite from conception. If I were shaved, my strength would leave me; I would be as helpless as any other mortal.”  When Delilah realized that he had told her his secret, she sent for the Philistine tyrants, telling them, “Come quickly—this time he’s told me the truth.” They came, bringing the bribe money.

When she got him to sleep, his head on her lap, she motioned to a man to cut off the seven braids of his hair. Immediately he began to grow weak. His strength drained from him.  Then she said, “The Philistines are on you, Samson!” He woke up, thinking, “I’ll go out, like always, and shake free.” He didn’t realize that God had abandoned him.  The Philistines grabbed him, gouged out his eyes, and took him down to Gaza. They shackled him in irons and put him to the work of grinding in the prison. But his hair, though cut off, began to grow again.

Delilah only came into Samson's life at the near end, but caused the most devestation to him yet.  She manipulated and deceived him into betraying his trust and faithfulness to God.  Though his physical strength awarded him great victories, his lack of self control brought his greatest defeat.  He could strangle a lion, kill hundreds with his bare hands, and nearly lift the world on his shoulders, but his burning lust for temporary satisfaction is what unraveled him.

In pursuing, beginning, and continuing relationships, how can we keep our desire for love and lust from deceiving us?  Decide early on what kind of person you will love before you give into passion.  Character and commitment to Jesus must be the greatest of all other traits.  Be patient in the pursuit.  When you watch and wait, you will begin to see what lies beneath the fluff and what you are really getting. It's worth it to know early on, very early on.  Catch the little foxes before they destroy you.  Remember what Samson did with the foxes on fire?

"Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom."  Song of Solomon 2:15

Delilah nagged Samson until he gave in.  What a sad excuse for him to disobey the Lord.  Don't ever let anyone talk you into turning your heart away from what God has for you.  Four times she manipulated him, and four times he chose lust for her, over love from God.  What a fool!  But, how many times do we (did I) allow ourselves (myself) to give into flattery and temptations over what we know (I knew) is true and holy? 

Heart check.  Been there, done that.  Never go back.

So then, Samson went from a mighty warrior, to a lowly slave.  Blinded.  Grinding grain.  No strength.  No dignity.  Alone.  

Then the Lord's redemptive grace arrives.  His ending is beautiful and I am still walking through it.

Just like with me.  I lived in a cycle much like Samson for many years.  It was ugly, lonely, and very painful.  

BUT - Jesus set me free, healed my heart, restored my mind/soul/spirit, and didn't end my story there.  Thank you Jesus!

"Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
    or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
    He doesn’t care what happens to me”?
Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening?
God doesn’t come and go. God lasts.
    He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.
He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath.
    And he knows everything, inside and out.
He energizes those who get tired,
    gives fresh strength to dropouts.
For even young people tire and drop out,
    young folk in their prime stumble and fall.
But those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
    They spread their wings and soar like eagles,
They run and don’t get tired,
    they walk and don’t lag behind."

Isaiah 40:27-31

 

 

the scandal continues.....and grace abounds

Judges 15

Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a present to his wife. He said, “I’m going into my wife’s room to sleep with her,” but her father wouldn’t let him in.  “I truly thought you must hate her,” her father explained, “so I gave her in marriage to your best man. But look, her younger sister is even more beautiful than she is. Marry her instead.”

Samson said, “This time I cannot be blamed for everything I am going to do to you Philistines.”  Then he went out and caught 300 foxes. He tied their tails together in pairs, and he fastened a torch to each pair of tails.   Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the grain fields of the Philistines. He burned all their grain to the ground, including the sheaves and the uncut grain. He also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves.

 “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.  “Samson,” was the reply, “because his father-in-law from Timnah gave Samson’s wife to be married to his best man.” So the Philistines went and got the woman and her father and burned them to death.

 “Because you did this,” Samson vowed, “I won’t rest until I take my revenge on you!”  So he attacked the Philistines with great fury and killed many of them. Then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Etam.  The Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Judah and spreading out near the town of Lehi.  The men of Judah asked the Philistines, “Why are you attacking us?”  The Philistines replied, “We’ve come to capture Samson. We’ve come to pay him back for what he did to us.”

 So 3,000 men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam. They said to Samson, “Don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? What are you doing to us?”  But Samson replied, “I only did to them what they did to me.”But the men of Judah told him, “We have come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”   “All right,” Samson said. “But promise that you won’t kill me yourselves.”  “We will only tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines,” they replied. “We won’t kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock.

As Samson arrived at Lehi, the Philistines came shouting in triumph. But the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon Samson, and he snapped the ropes on his arms as if they were burnt strands of flax, and they fell from his wrists.  Then he found the jawbone of a recently killed donkey. He picked it up and killed 1,000 Philistines with it.  Then Samson said,“With the jawbone of a donkey, I’ve piled them in heaps! With the jawbone of a donkey, I’ve killed a thousand men!”  When he finished his boasting, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was named Jawbone Hill.

Samson was now very thirsty, and he cried out to the Lord, “You have accomplished this great victory by the strength of your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of these pagans?”  So God caused water to gush out of a hollow in the ground at Lehi, and Samson was revived as he drank. Then he named that place “The Spring of the One Who Cried Out,” and it is still in Lehi to this day.  Samson judged Israel for twenty years during the period when the Philistines dominated the land.

Revenge is an ugly monster.  It can circulate from one act of destruction, to another, to another, to another, and so on. The cycle can only be stopped by the act of forgiveness. 

Pride can cause us to take credit for something we have no right to.  If our stories all start and finish with, "I...", we have a problem.

Entitlement is a gross spirit.  It's OK to ask for things we need help with, but when we think that God "owes" us something, yuck.  

Samson was still stuck in this place of revenge, pride, and entitlement.  Yet, God still gave him strength, victory, and appointed him as a judge.  It doesn't really make sense, but that's how God loves.  When we don't understand how people that are living in sin, can be placed in a position of leadership or have power or favor, we just have to trust that what God sees is greater than what we see.

Remember, Samson wasn't created and chosen by God to live this way.  It was his own sinful nature that led to his current choice of lifestyle.  How many times have we been right where he was?  Ouch.

We have to look past what only our earthly eyes see.  We have to look at people through the eyes of Jesus.  If we are a "Christian", then we have the eyes of Christ, the ears of Christ, the mind of Christ, and the heart of Christ; therefore, when we encounter Samson's in our world (hmmmm - like our neighbors, ISIS members, the POTUS, ourselves?) we are required to see them like Jesus does.  

I have so many more thoughts to share on this, but don't want it to be about "I", so this is the best thing to do, share straight from the heart of God, because that is the only place that holds pure love:

What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we’re called children of God! That’s who we really are. But that’s also why the world doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he’s up to.

But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus’ life as a model for our own.


All who indulge in a sinful life are dangerously lawless, for sin is a major disruption of God’s order. Surely you know that Christ showed up in order to get rid of sin. There is no sin in him, and sin is not part of his program. No one who lives deeply in Christ makes a practice of sin. None of those who do practice sin have taken a good look at Christ. They’ve got him all backward.

So, my dear children, don’t let anyone divert you from the truth. It’s the person who acts right who is right, just as we see it lived out in our righteous Messiah. Those who make a practice of sin are straight from the Devil, the pioneer in the practice of sin. The Son of God entered the scene to abolish the Devil’s ways.


People conceived and brought into life by God don’t make a practice of sin. How could they? God’s seed is deep within them, making them who they are. It’s not in the nature of the God-begotten to practice and parade sin. Here’s how you tell the difference between God’s children and the Devil’s children: The one who won’t practice righteous ways isn’t from God, nor is the one who won’t love brother or sister. A simple test.

For this is the original message we heard: We should love each other.

We must not be like Cain, who joined the Evil One and then killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because he was deep in the practice of evil, while the acts of his brother were righteous. So don’t be surprised, friends, when the world hates you. This has been going on a long time.

The way we know we’ve been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn’t love is as good as dead. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know very well that eternal life and murder don’t go together.


This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.

When We Practice Real Love

My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

1 John 3

that scandal

Judges 14

One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye.  When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.”  His father and mother objected. “Isn’t there even one woman in our tribe or among all the Israelites you could marry?” they asked. “Why must you go to the pagan Philistines to find a wife?  But Samson told his father, “Get her for me! She looks good to me.”  His father and mother didn’t realize the Lord was at work in this, creating an opportunity to work against the Philistines, who ruled over Israel at that time.

As Samson and his parents were going down to Timnah, a young lion suddenly attacked Samson near the vineyards of Timnah.  At that moment the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him, and he ripped the lion’s jaws apart with his bare hands. He did it as easily as if it were a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother about it.  When Samson arrived in Timnah, he talked with the woman and was very pleased with her.

Later, when he returned to Timnah for the wedding, he turned off the path to look at the carcass of the lion. And he found that a swarm of bees had made some honey in the carcass.  He scooped some of the honey into his hands and ate it along the way. He also gave some to his father and mother, and they ate it. But he didn’t tell them he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.

As his father was making final arrangements for the marriage, Samson threw a party at Timnah, as was the custom for elite young men.  When the bride’s parents saw him, they selected thirty young men from the town to be his companions.  Samson said to them, “Let me tell you a riddle. If you solve my riddle during these seven days of the celebration, I will give you thirty fine linen robes and thirty sets of festive clothing.  But if you can’t solve it, then you must give me thirty fine linen robes and thirty sets of festive clothing.”  “All right,” they agreed, “let’s hear your riddle.”

So he said:

“Out of the one who eats came something to eat;
    out of the strong came something sweet.”

Three days later they were still trying to figure it out.  On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband to explain the riddle for us, or we will burn down your father’s house with you in it. Did you invite us to this party just to make us poor?”

So Samson’s wife came to him in tears and said, “You don’t love me; you hate me! You have given my people a riddle, but you haven’t told me the answer."  “I haven’t even given the answer to my father or mother,” he replied. “Why should I tell you?”  So she cried whenever she was with him and kept it up for the rest of the celebration. At last, on the seventh day he told her the answer because she was tormenting him with her nagging. Then she explained the riddle to the young men.

So before sunset of the seventh day, the men of the town came to Samson with their answer:

“What is sweeter than honey?
    What is stronger than a lion?”

Samson replied, “If you hadn’t plowed with my heifer, you wouldn’t have solved my riddle!”

Then the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to the town of Ashkelon, killed thirty men, took their belongings, and gave their clothing to the men who had solved his riddle. But Samson was furious about what had happened, and he went back home to live with his father and mother.  So his wife was given in marriage to the man who had been Samson’s best man at the wedding.

I think this is the most scandalous chapter in the whole Bible.  

Samson was born with a name that meant "bright sun" and was set apart by God to do great things.  But, in his selfish and sinful nature, he chose his own desires over that which God created him to fulfill.  

He lusted after a woman he should have never even looked at, and that lust turned into greed, turned into manipulation over his parents, turned into other temptations he fell for, turned into destruction, turned into lies, turned into deceit, turned into murder, turned into complete loss of everything he started with.  He used the gifts God gave him for selfish purposes, gross.

It was that very first choice he made that led to all of the destruction that came after.  If that choice would have honored God, then so many other lives around him would have not suffered too.  When we make choices, they don't just affect ourselves, but countless others that we can't even see at the time (like the 30 men he killed), bet you they didn't see that coming.  

I don't like to think about all the bad choices I made in my past, but I do love to talk about how Jesus redeemed all of them and made my whole heart, mind, soul, and body a new creation.  

Samson's story is not over after this, there is so much that God did after that one bad decision......stay tuned for it.

I rode around downtown Jackson yesterday looking for my friend Jonathon.  He made a bad choice just like Samson did, and is seeing the ripple effect of that play out in his life, as are we that love him.  After riding around for a while, I spotted him standing in the parking lot of our corner store.  I whipped in, didn't even turn my car off, and ran up to him.  After I told him I was so glad I found him, I gave him a good hand on my hips, finger shaking in the air, hard truth talking too.  He just kept saying, "I got you" and I wanted to shake him and make him really GET it!  But Jesus always reminds me, that's not my job, that's His.  

Over the last week, Jonathon has been loved on by many people, reminded of the truth that God created him to be more than what he was choosing, and that the last year has not been wasted and it was not to late - that nasty lie the enemy wants us to believe.  

Before yesterday was over, he had gotten a hot shower, a safe and clean place to sleep, and another chance to see Jesus redeem him.  That bad choice he made hurt a lot of people, but he has turned it into a beautiful choice now, and we get to see what restoration looks like, again.

Samson's scandal, Jonathon's scandal, my scandal.........nothing different about them, because Jesus came to set all of us free, so they are both the same as me.