Daily Reading: Judges 14–17
Text: Judges 16:20 – “And he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.”
Click here to listen to Alexander Scourby reading the King James Bible
Samson is one of the clearest pictures in the Book of Judges of a man with great privilege and very little self-government. Before he ever chased a woman, snapped a cord, or made a fool of himself in Delilah’s lap, he was a child announced by the angel of the LORD, marked out from the womb, blessed by God, and moved by the Spirit of God. Judges 13 says, “the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb,” that “he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines,” that “the Lord blessed him,” and that “the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times.”
So Samson did not start out as a nobody. He started out with divine calling, divine separation, divine power, and divine purpose. That is what makes the rest of the story so tragic. A lost pagan acts like a lost pagan because he is a lost pagan; Samson acts like a fool with a calling on his life and power on his head.
The problem with Samson is not that God failed him. The problem is that Samson would not mortify the flesh. In Judges 14, when he saw a Philistine woman, he said, “Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.” Later he went in unto an harlot at Gaza, and after that “he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.” That is a man led by his eyes, his appetite, and his passions.
And then comes Delilah, one of the funniest and dumbest scenes in the Bible if it were not so deadly. She practically walks in wearing a sandwich board that says, “I am here to ruin you for money,” because the lords of the Philistines tell her to “entice him,” find out his strength, bind him, and “afflict him,” and they put silver on the table to do it. Then she asks him straight out, “Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy great strength lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee.” Brother, that is not exactly subtle romance. That is not candlelight and violin music; that is a bounty hunter in a dress with cash jingling in her purse.
But Samson keeps playing with it because the flesh is stupid. She asks how to bind him, he tells her something, she tries it, hollers, “The Philistines be upon thee, Samson,” and he breaks free. Then she does it again. And again. At that point a man with a teaspoon of sense would have figured out that the woman asking how to tie him up might just possibly be planning to tie him up. But lust makes a man dumber than a box of hammers, and Samson keeps coming back for another round of Delilah’s interrogation service.
Finally, “she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death,” and he “told her all his heart.” That is what the flesh does. It wears a man down, talks him out of his consecration, and talks him into surrendering the very thing God gave him to mark him out. He traded separation for satisfaction and holiness for a haircut.
Then the awful line falls: “he wist not that the Lord was departed from him.” Samson still thought he could get up, shake himself, and do business as usual. That is the danger of carnality. A man can play with sin so long that he loses the presence and power of God and still thinks he is ready for one more sermon, one more song, one more round, one more victory.
The Philistines put out his eyes, bind him with fetters of brass, and make him grind in the prison house. That is where the flesh always takes a man: blind, bound, and grinding. First sin entertains, then it enslaves. First it pats you on the back, then it puts chains on your feet.
But down there in the dark, Samson finally gets to a place where the flesh is being mortified whether he likes it or not. The eyes that got him in trouble are gone. The freedom the flesh demanded is gone. The swagger is gone. The games are over. In the end he calls on the Lord and asks for strength one more time, and God lets him kill more at his death than he slew in his life. Judges says, “the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life,” and yet it also closes by saying, “he judged Israel twenty years.”
That is a sobering epitaph. He had a twenty-year ministry, but so much of it was governed by impulse, revenge, appetite, and lust. God used him, yes. God sent him, yes. God empowered him, yes. But Samson never seems to get mastery over Samson until the flesh is finally crushed under judgment and suffering.
For New Testament truth in this dispensation, the lesson is plain: the believer is commanded to mortify the flesh before the flesh wrecks him. We are told, “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” and “make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” and “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Samson is an Old Testament judge, but he is a standing warning to every New Testament Christian that gifts are not character, power is not purity, and calling is not the same thing as consecration.
A man may be gifted and still be governed by the flesh. He may be used and still be unbroken. He may have strength enough to move gates and still not have enough sense to get away from Delilah. If you do not mortify the flesh, the flesh will eventually mortify your testimony.
Tomorrow’s Reading: Judges 18–19
Continue reading because tomorrow’s reading from JUDGES 18–19 will show a nation sinking even lower, with religious corruption in Judges 18 and moral filth in Judges 19, proving again that when every man does that which is right in his own eyes, things do not get better—they get devilish.
Until tomorrow, Stay in the Book. 📖
Brother Tony
