As I stated above, I could have easily subtitled this message, "
The Consequences of Pride and Compromise." Sadly, the life of Samson has many parallels for us who serve in law enforcement (including my own life) and the military and I share this as a form of "backup" to both warn and give
hope to those who are following a similar path.
Perhaps no one in human history had more potential than Samson: a real-life, God-powered "superman" whom God intended to use in a mighty way to free His people from the bondage of their wicked oppressors. Sadly,
Judges 16 reveals Samson as a "Lone Ranger" sinner who wasted His potential in much the same way many (cops in particular) waste their potential today.
Let's break down Chapter 16 inductively:
This chapter finds the "hero" of Hebrews 11:32-40 once again succumbing to lust, compromise and pride. The passage opens with Samson going back into the Philistine (wicked, idol-worshiping enemies of God's people) camp in Gaza where he "saw a harlot..." First, Samson had no business going to Gaza unless it was on a mission from God to take out the enemy. Second, Samson once again allows his eyes (stay tuned for more about his eyes) to lustfully gaze upon a Philistine women he had no business paying any attention to. The application here for us today is that we get in trouble when we don't avert our eyes from things that will ultimately lead us to trouble (including but not limited to pornography). In Samson's case, that gaze led to further temptation as he "went in to her" (had sex with her). The rest of verse 3 reveals another example of Samson pridefully using his God-given power to toy with the enemy -- he ripped out the city gates and their posts (likely weighing well over a ton) and then carried them up to the top of a mountain some forty miles away! Imagine what Samson could have accomplished if he as God's sheepdog had instead taken the fight to the wolves as God intended.
In verses 4 and 5, Samson once again falls into temptation by allowing himself to "love" (the Hebrew word for love here has the same meaning as the Greek word "Eros" from which we get "erotic" or sexual love) with a woman he had no business being with (not a believer) in a place he had no business being in: the valley of Sorek -- meaning "the valley of the vine." As a Nazarite, Samson was forbidden from being around anything that had to do with grapes and, as we will see, that temptation (wine) comes back to bite him as well. The meaning of Delilah's name is also quite interesting here: "feeble; to weaken."
In verses 4-15, we find Delilah progressively weakening Samson's will with alcohol, sex and nagging (things that got him in trouble previously and which vex men to this day). To make matters worse, Samson was fully aware of what Delilah was doing as he pridefully toyed with his enemies and allowed her to get closer and closer to the mark.
Finally, verse 16 finds Samson foolishly giving in to Delilah's constant nagging: And it came to pass, when she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him, so that his soul was vexed to death, that he told her all his heart. What happens next is legend: Delilah very likely got Samson passed out drunk so that his hair could be shaved at which point the Lord took his supernatural strength from him. It is important to note here that Samson's hair had NOTHING to do with his strength. Rather, it was the Lord who was the source of Samson's power just as He is for all of us (II Samuel 22:33 -- The Lord is my strength and power; Psalm 18:2, 28:7 and many more).
Romans 1:24-32 (New Living Translation) clearly reveals that there is a consequence to our sin. Especially for believers, a loving Father will surely discipline those He loves in order to get our attention and teach us important lessons (often in fearful but necessary ways): So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. 30 They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God's justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.
In his book, Samson of a Man: Saved Soul, Wasted Life, author Kevin McDowell writes, "God loves His children too much to let them continue in sin. If a believer will not willingly fall on the stone and be broken then God will grind him or her to powder. God is gracious, merciful and patient. He's not vengeful toward His children. Yet He disciplines those He loves." Amen!
In this same vein, look again at verse 20: But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. In his commentary on this verse, David Guzik wrote, "This is a tragic example of wasted potential and rejection of God's warnings. Samson thought he could 'get away' with sin and escape its consequences. He presumed on God's mercy and continued on in his sin, making things far worse. Samson's strength was not in his hair, it was in his relationship with God. He worked against that relationship to the point where God finally departed from him, in the sense that He no longer blessed Samson with supernatural strength." Again, God seeks to have a relationship with us -- not "ritual" or "religion."
While this is open to some debate, the context here strongly indicates that Samson was very likely saved yet lived a backslidden, wicked, carnal and ultimately wasted life. God had to literally break Samson in order to get his attention and ultimately accomplish His purpose through him: He took Samson's strength and sight (remember how Samson's eyes got him in so much trouble), and allowed him to be fettered (placed in restraints -- akin to handcuffs today) and sentenced to hard labor in a hellish Philistine prison. That said, and like most criminals today, the evil Philistines were not very smart: they never bothered to keep Samson shaved and let him "work out" (grinding grain). On this, Spurgeon wrote, "I wonder that they did not send in the barber every morning, to make sure that not a hair grew upon his scalp or chin. But wicked men are not in all matters wise men: indeed, they so conspicuously fail in one point or another that Scripture calls them fools."
Utterly broken, Samson finally cries out to the Lord in prayer in verse 28 but continues to do so in a selfish and prideful manner in order to gain revenge on his enemies and end his miserable existence ("police" suicide) in the process (v. 30).
While God ultimately accomplished His purpose (wiping out thousands of what was ostensibly the entire Philistine leadership -- see verse 27), Samson could have accomplished so much more had he been living in wholehearted obedience to God's call on his life. Likewise, God can accomplish amazing things today with men and women who will surrender wholly to Him.
As I stated previously, Samson also shows the danger of being a "Lone Ranger" (he didn't even have a "Tonto" in his life). Everything Samson did he did alone without any accountability or discipleship (another reason that it is so important for Christians -- and Christian cops in particular -- to be in mutually accountable iron sharpens iron fellowship and discipleship with other believers) or even time with the Lord.
Disobedience, defeat, disgrace, and destruction are part of Samson's legacy of wasted potential. Like many of us today (especially those in positions of power and authority), he was bold before men, but weak before women. He had the Spirit of God upon him, but lived for the appetites of the flesh. He was called upon to defeat the enemies of God in battle, but instead wasted time fraternizing with the enemy. He fought the Lord's battles by day, and broke the Lord's commandments by night. Does that not sound like many of us in law enforcement: hanging out in bars on our days off (what I call "drinking out of the our own toilet"), infidelity and sex outside of Biblical marriage, pornography, being RODs ("retired on duty") and a plethora of other issues that all too often end up as front page news?
God uses Samson to teach us some incredibly important life-lessons of how NOT to act while at the same time revealing that it's never too late to start over, no matter how badly we may have failed in the past. So long as we have breath (but ONLY that long), we have an opportunity to turn (repent) from a life of pride and compromise and put our complete trust in "the God of second chances." Those who know my own testimony understand that Samson and I lived some pretty parallel lives and it is only by repenting and yielding to God's grace and mercy after He broke me that I'm alive today to tell this story. While I wasted much of my potential (and could have accomplished so much more), God has poured out His grace on me by using me in mighty ways for His purpose today just as He is waiting to do the same for you.
