S5: Day 74: Judges 13–15

Hey, this is Shelby and CJ and we are working through the book of Judges.

When chapters 13 through 15, we get to our final judge here, which is Samson, a name

that people are probably familiar with, right, CJ?

Yeah, I would imagine Samson is one of the most popular guys from the Bible in terms

of pop culture, right?

Yeah, so Samson, these are some really fun chapters.

And one thing to think about as we go through is we talked at the end of last episode

about how God can turn lemonade from lemons.

And that's sort of what we see with Samson.

Again, he can take mixed motives and immoral deeds and immoral character and somehow still

see his plan come to fruition and that's what we're going to see with Samson.

Great.

All right.

Well, let's jump into chapter 13.

Great.

So we start with our first es, Israel Sins, and they become oppressed by the Philistines.

And then immediately after that, we hear about a daynight couple who can't have a child.

And the angel of the Lord comes and says, you will have a child.

He's going to be a special man and I'm going to raise him up and he's going to end up

saving Israel from oppression.

And he says that this man is to steer clear of strong drink, unclean things and he's going

to let his hair grow out.

And this is a Nazarete vow just without the word.

In fact, it might actually say Nazarete, I don't exactly recall, but maybe you remember

from numbers when we went through and we talked about the Nazarete vow and it's a special

time where someone is set apart for the Lord, okay?

And that's what Samson is supposed to be.

So he's born and the spirit of the Lord stirs within him again showing that God has sort

of commissioned this immoral man to secure victory for his people.

And this again is going to remind us of Jetha and we'll see how he reminds us of Jetha

as we continue.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm excited to, I didn't pick that up.

So I'm excited to hear it.

What to say?

Let's go on to chapter 14 then.

Okay.

So now he goes down to Timna, which is on the border of Dan and Israelite region and

Philistines where the Philistines are and he sees a Philistine woman and he says, I want

that woman as my wife.

And his parents, I think just want him to marry a nice Israelite woman and just be done

with it.

But he insists and it says that Samson's desire to marry this Philistine woman is from

the Lord because he was seeking an occasion to destroy the Philistines.

So again, even maybe Samson's misdeed or error in judgment is going to be used by God

to save Israel.

So then further on, Samson's wandering about, he destroys a lion.

We probably all remember this story of her, this story in Sunday School maybe and then

he comes back a bit later and a beehive had been created inside of this lion.

And this seems just sort of like a random detail.

But as he goes and he has the marriage feast with his wife, he puts a riddle to some Philistines

who are at the marriage feast as well because remember his wife is a Philistine.

And he says this riddle and the answer is the beehive in the lion, the situation that

only he should know, right?

So he only knows the answer.

But the Philistines get the Philistine wife to get the answer out of Samson and Samson

loses his mind and he freaks out because he realizes what has happened and the spirit

of the Lord rushes upon him and he goes berserk and he kills 30 men.

So he begins to deliver Israel from the Philistines in this moment.

Yeah, such a crazy story to fall, not like any wedding feast I've ever been a part of

at all.

Praise the Lord.

Yeah, exactly.

Let's keep following his story through chapter 15.

Yeah.

So then Samson sort of runs away and he's out in the wilderness.

He's a wild man, right?

And he decides he wants to return and visit his betroth, the woman that he's trying to

marry, this Philistine woman.

But he realizes that she's been given to someone else because he left.

So as retaliation, he ties foxes or jackals tails together and burns down all the Philistines

grain.

He lights him on fire and they run wild and they burn down all the grain.

Then the Philistines kill Samson's supposed father-in-law or would-be father-in-law and

his betrothed because they see that they've brought all this evil upon them.

So Samson flees and he kills a bunch more Philistines and then men from the tribe of Judah

are starting to get uneasy and they say they try to go get Samson and say, Samson, just

let us hand you over to these guys because we don't want any more trouble with the Philistines.

So the Israelites start to be a little cowardly and he goes willingly.

But the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him again and he slaughters a thousand Philistines

with the jawbone of a donkey which again sort of shows how savagin berserk he is.

But again, even this strange violence is somehow working together to save Israel.

So yeah, it's a crazy moment.

So what exactly are we supposed to take away from these chapters?

Right.

So this is a really easy chapter to sort of say facetiously where on earth could Jesus

be in these chapters, right?

It's just like blood and guts and people killing people.

But I think Samson is actually a type of Christ, meaning we see a little glimpse of Christ

in him.

Jesus receives the Spirit to finish what Samson started and not in the sense that Jesus

is going around killing people with the jawbone of a donkey.

But Jesus came to vanquish evil and to destroy evil.

And that is what Samson was doing even though in a misguided way.

And Jesus does that in the proper way, in a humble way, in a non-violent way.

And I think that's where we see Jesus in these chapters.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great point to draw out because it can be difficult to just say like, what are

these chapters mean?

Like, how do I see Christ in this?

How do I apply this?

I think my takeaway from these chapters, you know, you kind of see this chaos surrounding

Samson, but I can pull through this thread of God, like you said, working through unlikely

people to save his people.

And, you know, that is something that I have to practice in my own life as well.

Sometimes there's chaos all around and I have to look for how is God working in and through

this to accomplish His purposes.

And so even doing that in Samson's story here kind of trains your eye and your heart

to do that in your own life as well.

So all right, we're going to keep going in the book of Judges.

Thanks for breaking down these chapters, CJ, we're going to talk through more tomorrow.

Awesome.