If you'd open your Bibles to the 15th chapter of the book of Judges. And we will be working our way through the text as we work our way through the chapter. So before we begin, let's bow and look to the Lord. Our Father, there is no question that this book of Judges is a book of grace. in those you choose to use, and it does give us hope, because we realize, God, that you can use us. In spite of some of the frailties and sins and imperfections, in spite of some of the flaws, you are a gracious God who desires to demonstrate His grace to us and use us. And we pray that this book will help us realize that and also set our sights on the course where we can be used at the ultimate level. And for that, we will thank you in Jesus' name, amen. There is a story of a Sunday school teacher who was teaching some boys in a Sunday school class, and the teacher held up a watch, and he said, what is this for? And the students said, well, that watch is to tell time. The teacher said, suppose it does not tell time, what good is it? And the boys said, it is good for nothing. Then the teacher held up a pencil, and he said, what is this pencil for? And the boy said, well, that pencil's to write with. And the teacher said, suppose the pencil doesn't write. What is it good for then? And the boy said, it is good for nothing. Then the teacher held up a knife, and he said, what is this knife for? And he said, it's to cut things. The teacher said, suppose the knife doesn't cut things. It's so dull it cannot cut. What's it good for? The boy said, it is good for nothing. Then the teacher said, ìWhat is the chief purpose of a human being?î And the boy said, ìWell, the chief purpose of a human being is to glorify God.î The teacher said, ìSuppose the person does not glorify God, what is it good for?î And the boy said, ìIt is good for nothing.î The goal of every human being ought to be to glorify God, but suppose a believer doesnít Does that really mean the person is totally useless, good for nothing? It is certainly true that Jesus made that very point when he said, you're supposed to be the salt of the earth, and if you aren't the salt of the earth, you aren't good for much of anything. Years ago, when I worked for Bob Kriegel at Kriegel Publishing, I would have to travel and make some book presentations to various publishers and various publisher conferences. And I became good friends with some of the other reps from the other companies. And I really liked the guy from Baker Books. He had a good sense of humor. He was a fine Christian. But he would often begin his presentation by saying something like this, God has saved me so that you can look at me and say, now, there's a bad example about a Christian ought to be. He said, we need some examples like that so you can look at me and recognize the good ones. Now the truth is he was a good example of what a Christian ought to be, but his humor brings out a point. God can and does use even bad examples for his glory. No matter what you think about Samson's personal life, the fact is, this guy does show up in the faith hero chapter of Hebrews 11 verse 32 among a list of some very powerful people of God. He shows up in a list that names David. David was a man after God's own heart. He shows up in a list that names Samuel. who was the first prophet who did some amazing things for God. We've already seen the great accomplishments of Gideon and Barak and Jephthah. He shows up in that context. Now it's true that Samson had some real problems with lust and sex. He was unstable emotionally. But make no mistake about this point, Samson loved God, Samson trusted God, and Samson did amazing things for God. When we get to heaven, if you decide you're going to get up the nerve to go question Samson on that, be sure and let me know. I'd like to watch you do that. I'd like to see somebody go up to Samson and start questioning him on his prowess for the Lord. He was an amazing man of God. It's true. He didn't become everything that he could have become, but the fact of the matter is God did use him probably far more than he'll use most of us. What we see when we go down through this verses is that God continues to sovereignly use Samson to destroy more Philistines through a series of negative situations and circumstances that came into his life. Now you recall last time we saw that Samson married a Philistine woman against the godly wishes of his godly parents, but God said His parents didn't understand that my sovereign hand was in this because I intended to use that lousy decision that Samson made to destroy the Philistines. What happens now in chapter 15 is actually a sequel to chapter 14. There are three negative circumstances that hit Samson in this particular chapter, and God will actually use him in the midst of these negative circumstances to accomplish his purposes. And there's a good lesson for you and I to learn right there. When you find yourself in a negative situation, or you find yourself in negative circumstances, when it appears as though your entire world is caving in, It's at those moments where we need to specifically look for ways in which we can glorify God. It's in that very context where we can begin to look for ways in which God can use us. Because God's the one who controls the circumstances. And He may actually be permitting those circumstances to come into our life to put us in a good position where we can end up glorifying Him. Now the first negative circumstance that hits Samson is God sovereignly uses him to slaughter Philistines at Timnah through the negative circumstance of him losing his wife. I want you to notice, if you will, chapter 15 verse 1. In the time of wheat harvest, Samson visited his wife with a young goat and said, I will go into my wife in her room, but her father did not let him enter. Her father said, I really thought that you hated her intensely, so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister more beautiful than she? Please let her be yours instead. Samson then said to them, this time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm. Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches and turned the fox's tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between two tails. When he had set fire to the torches, he released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning up both the shacks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves. Then the Philistines said, Who did this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion. So the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. Samson said to them, since you act like this, I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit. He struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter, and he went down and lived in the cleft of the rock of Etam. Now, according to verse 1, there had been some time that had passed. In fact, it was the time of the wheat harvest. So Samson, you recall, was so fed up with that wife that he had married that he went home. And some time had passed, and now he decided he was going to go visit his wife. It was the time of the wheat harvest, which, according to Dr. Leon Wood, was probably somewhere near the time of the end of June or July. This point that he's going at the time of the wheat harvest is critical to the story. You and I who live in the Midwest understand that when you are getting near the end of June and July, you're getting into a dry time of year, typically, and Samson's going to use that dryness to his advantage. As we saw last time, Samson's wife was a beautiful woman. He still legally married to her. So he apparently had his emotions calmed down and he decided that he was going to go claim his wife. He took a young goat with him as a peace offering to give to her. He headed to Timna. What woman wouldn't want to receive a pet goat? We know when it came to Samson, he had a little trouble in his mind. They didn't fire on all cylinders. When he was relating to a woman last week, he called her a heifer, and now he takes her a goat. Everybody knows you can meld a woman's heart if you bring her a goat. Actually, in this culture, this was like giving her a puppy or some flowers or candy. Actually, it's more valuable than that, because with a goat, you could get some milk. You could also get some meat, and ultimately, you could get some skin. When he got to Timnah, his father-in-law would not let Samson go in to be with his wife, because according to verse 2, he had given her to another man. The father-in-law said, well, I thought you hated my daughter, so I gave her to another guy. And then the dad says something that is really demeaning to his daughter, which tells you what the Philistines really were all about. He says, take a look at her younger sister, because she's a whole lot better looking than the one you picked. Why don't you take her for your wife and just let the other one go? Well, Samson said, I don't want her sister. I wanted the one that I chose. And I'm not interested in her sister. It was his wife who looked good to him and not her sister. Well, Samson responded in verse 3, and he says, don't blame me for what I'm going to do. Samson did not want a marital substitute and the reason for all of this mess is the secret, silent, sovereign hand of God because the Philistines are about to go down. You'll recall those Philistines had put pressure on Samson's wife to reveal the riddle that he had posed to the Philistines, and they put pressure on her until she finally blabbed. So the real cause of the trouble is those 30 Philistines, and Samson said, okay, they've cost me my wife, I will cost them their life. And according to verse 4, He caught 300 foxes and tied their tails together and tied a torch between their tails, lit the torch, and let them go in pairs. And they started running all over into the Philistine crop fields. They set those fields on fire. Now the word for fox, shualim, is a word that can be translated fox or jackal. The fox is the smallest member of the dog family. It is known to be an agile predator. It's legendary as being a very sly and crafty type of animal. And a pair of foxes typically would roam in a range, and they still do in Michigan, roam in a range of one to three miles. So if you're going to capture 300 foxes, that's an amazing accomplishment because it would mean that Samson would have to travel at least 150 miles just to catch these animals. Furthermore, by harvest time, foxes pretty much have become individual hunters and scavengers, so they're no longer traveling in pairs. So if you're going to capture 300 individual foxes, you'd have to be a skilled trapper, which Samson was. He apparently didn't catch all of these foxes on one day. He may have released them on the same day, but he took a lot of time in gathering these foxes up. Now it was harvest time. And harvest time in a farming culture is a critical time. So if you burn the fields, you're costing the Philistines their livelihood, and you're costing the Philistines their food. And of course, they shouldn't be farming in this land at all, because this is Israel's land in the first place. They should have been routed from this land, but because Israel wasn't obeying God, they were in the land, they were dominating the land, and that is exactly why God is going to use Samson to do what he's about to do. Now, Samson's an outdoors type of guy. He's a good trapper, a good hunter. Plus, you have the hand of God on him. And this is no small feat to capture 300 foxes. I doubt seriously this type of tactic has been duplicated anywhere in the history of the world. He captured 300 foxes. He tied two tails together, making 150 pairs. He put a torch in between those tails. He lit the torch and he turned them loose. By the way, that raises an interesting question. Why don't you just go set the fields on fire yourself? Seems to me it'd be a lot easier if you just took some fire and lit the fields yourself and just snuck out of the area. It would be a lot less hassle. It'd take you a lot less time. Apparently, Samson wanted to send a humiliating message to these Philistines. It could be a stealth tactic because these Philistines would see these animals just running through the fields, setting the fields on fire. They had no idea what human would have been behind it. Now, I've seen some foxes on my way home from church. They're typically crossing the road very quickly, getting into crop areas. What you basically get of a fox is a quick glimpse. And they don't hang around long. They're there and then they're gone. And the reason why he would have tied those tails together is because foxes tend to den up in the ground. And if you don't tie their tails together, they'd have made a beeline for their dens. They'd have gone right into the ground. But if you tie their tails together, you have two of them, and they're zigzagging all around. They can't run into their holes where they normally live. They run in different directions. And according to verse five, when they let those foxes go, they ran into every type of Philistine agricultural field that they had. They ran into corn fields and grain fields and vineyards and orchards. Every place was burning. As Herbert Wolf said, the fire spread with incredible speed. Samson burned up the Philistine harvest. That's an interesting point because according to the law of God, if you burned up somebody's crops, you were required to make some sort of restitution. But that was only operative if Israel was in the land and Israel was owning the land and you were doing this against your brother. But this land was being dominated by enemies. And Samson actually is being used by God to burn them out. And according to verse 6, the Philistines wanted to know, well, who did this? And they were told it was Samson who did it. They were told why he did it. Now the Philistines didn't want to go up against Samson, so they went to Timnah and they burned Samson's wife and her father. That's so ironic, isn't it? Because the Philistines threatened this woman that if she didn't tell them the riddle, They would burn her and her father's house. But actually, the reason why she ends up getting burned is because she betrayed Samson and did tell him the riddle. But that tells you the way the godless people of the world operate. They're not people of their word. You can't depend on them. You can't count on them. You can't trust them. And that's just the way it was with these Philistines. Well, according to verses 7 to 8, when Samson learned of that, he decided, I'm going to take revenge on them, and he literally killed the Philistines, and the text says that he struck them, verse 8, ruthlessly, with great slaughter. Now, I want to point out that adverb, ruthlessly. Because that is an interesting picture of what he must have done. Actually, the King James version gets this probably closer to what the Hebrew actually says on this particular verse. Because the King James translates this that he tore them hip and thigh. And ruthlessly is a word that means literally leg on thigh. And what I understand that to mean is Samson took his bare hands like he did with that young lion that attacked him when he just ripped that lion to shreds with his bare hands. He took his bare hands and he literally tore these Philistines apart with his bare hands and it's very possible, in light of the Hebrew used here, that he took their body parts and stacked them on top of each other. This is not the normal strength of a normal man. This was the hand of God. And after Samson did this, The text says in verse 8, he moved and lived to the cleft of the rock of Etam. The location is uncertain. Andrew Fawcett, the scholar of the 1800s, said there is a rock area there. It's 250 feet long, about 7 to 8 feet high, 18 feet wide. He speculated that's probably the spot where Samson was hiding out. He didn't move there because he's scared. I'll guarantee you that. He moved there because this would give him a good vantage point to see what's going on as he figured out his next move. This was an area that was somewhat hidden, but it was also somewhat elevated, where he could have a good visual overlook of the incoming Philistines. This guy who could kill a lion with his bare hands, this guy who can trap 300 foxes, light fires, and set them free, tie tails together, is a guy used to the outdoors. This is a survival kind of guy. He knows how to live in the outdoors. And this was a single-handed slaughter because God's hand is on him. And really, when you think about it, this is even more than just revenge, because if he would have wanted just revenge, he could have taken his wife. And he could have just destroyed those 30 guys and destroyed the people that were involved in the process. But he's on a mission. This mission is actually being orchestrated by the sovereign God to destroy the enemies of God. Now, who would ever think Who would ever think that God would be working in a marriage that falls apart? Who would ever think that God would be working in raging fires that burn thousands of acres? Who would ever think that God could be working in circumstances in which your wife is killed? That is exactly the circumstance in which God was using to accomplish his purposes. I know a story of a man whose wife got cancer. She was a believer in Jesus Christ. Her husband was not. Her husband was a self-made successful businessman. When his wife got cancer, he took her to the best doctors. They went through every bit of insurance money he had. She still needed more help, so he sold his business. He went through all of that money. He then ended up selling his house and all his property, and he went through that money, and then his wife died. It was at that moment that he came to faith in Jesus Christ. Who would ever think that God could work out his plan in a disease like cancer that ultimately leaves a mate dead? That's the kind of sovereignty God has. That's the kind of sovereignty that was at work right here with Samson. Which brings us to the second negative circumstance. God sovereignly uses Samson to kill a thousand Philistines at Lehi through the negative circumstance of Samson losing national support and personal freedom. Notice what happens in verse 9. Then the Philistines went up and camped in Judah and spread out in Lehi. The men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? And they said, we've come up to bind Samson in order to do to him as he did to us. Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam and said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you've done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I've done to them. They said to him, we have come down to bind you so that we may give you into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me. So they said to him, no, but we will bind you fast and give you into their hands, and yet surely we will not kill you. Then they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him, and the spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily. so that the ropes that were on his arms were as flax that is burned with fire and his bonds dropped from his hands. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, so he reached out and took it and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, with a jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with a jawbone of a donkey I've killed a thousand men. When he had finished speaking, he threw the jawbone from his hand and he named the place Ramath Lehi. Now Samson was from the tribe of Dan, but he's hunkered down in the land of Judah. And when the Philistines saw those body parts and their fields burned out, they form a posse of a thousand highly trained military men and their goal is, we need to track him down and we need to destroy him. Their sole goal is to put a stop to Samson. It's interesting that the word Lehi, by the way, means jawbone. The men of Judah were quick to see these 1,000 Philistines moving into their territory, and so they go out and say, well, why are you guys come up against us? They have 1,000 men. They're out hunting down Samson. And the men of Judah thought that the Philistines had come to fight them, but the Philistines said, we're not interested in you. We haven't come to fight you. We've come to track down Samson. We want to arrest him because of what he did to us. He slaughtered a bunch of our people. He stacked up body parts for everybody to see. He's burned out our fields. And so we want to bind him and we want to burn him. We want to do to him what he did to us. Now what is so odd about verse 11 is that we get a number of the men of Judah who are in these negotiation talks. You have 3,000 men of Judah, which means they outnumber the Philistines here 3 to 1. There's 1,000 Philistines here and there's 3,000 of them. They outnumber the Philistines 3 to 1. But they did not gather to fight the Philistines. They gathered together to track down one of their own. This shows you how distorted Israel had become. They didn't want any conflict. They wanted peace with the enemy. They should have been encouraged and strengthened by what Samson had done. They should have looked at his example and said, now there's a guy who's on the front lines for God. Let's get behind him, and let's support him, and let's go. But they went to Samson like a bunch of cowardly wimps, and they said, look, the Philistines are bad. Don't you know they control us? Don't you know they rule over us? Why did you do this to us?" Instead of them commending Samson for his accomplishments, they're blaming them for their uneasiness and their cowardliness. The Philistines weren't even supposed to be in this land at all. But do you see this? The men of Judah have become so worldly that they're actually rallying around the enemies of God rather than a true spirit empowered man of God. So they go to Samson and they say to him, why did you do this to us? What Samson was doing was what Israel was supposed to be doing. Samson was taking care of the enemies and he was getting them out of the land That's what the nation Israel should have been doing. He was being empowered by God to get a job done for God They should have been with him and behind him, but they're against him and there's something else to observe about verse 11 Samson said I did this to them because they did it to me. They started it. They started this I finished it and and what's interesting is he did kill the philistines in some respects out of some type of revenge because initially sampson is not a real man of prayer he only prays a couple of times as we have it recorded in his entire life you'll see one of them tonight one of them lord willing next sunday night he only prays a couple of times so he did this out of revenge but the amazing thing of the sovereignty of god is he can use things we do when our motives are completely wrong for his purposes He could actually use Samson's wrong motives for killing Philistines to get the job done of killing Philistines, even though Samson doesn't know he's being used by the Lord. Now, ladies and gentlemen, there is not a true believer in this sanctuary tonight that hasn't seen this. We've seen it. There are those people who don't do a thing, they don't lift a finger to try to help in rallying the people of God. There are people who will rally around the deadbeats more than those that are on the front lines of battle. It just amazes me sometimes that people that are doing nothing for God, people rally around them rather than the one or the few that are really on the front lines doing things for God. Judah should have been rallying around Samson, not the Philistines. Now there are three observations I want to make before we move on in the story. First of all, Judah was so at home with the Philistines, she didn't even recognize we have a true man of God here. She didn't get it. I find that interesting. You know, there are many people who go to church, they're believers, but they're so at home in the world that they don't even recognize the importance anymore of carefully studying the Bible. There are people who go to churches, they don't understand anymore or recognize the truth of understanding the inspired scriptures. They just as soon hear a rock band. That's the way they think. They're so at home in the world, just like Judah. Secondly, Judah was so neutered in her spirituality, she's ignored by the Philistines. Philistines don't pay any attention to Judah. Judah's no threat to the Philistines, but there's one guy who's a threat to the Philistines, and I think that's the way it is today in most churches. Most churches are no threat to this world. Most churches are totally being ignored by this world, and the world gets along with them just fine. But when you take a church or you take a people that starts firing truth, and they're on the front lines of communicating the truth of God's Word, they won't be ignored by the world. They'll become a real sore spot to the world. They'll be hated and hounded. Which brings us to the third observation. Judah was doing the Philistines' work for them. They were out tracking down Samson for the Philistines. In other words, God's own people were doing Satan's will. Look at how corrupt Judah had become. They've lost their self-respect. They've lost their sense of integrity. They've lost their courage. They don't have any willingness to even stand up and defend their country. They've lost their honor. They don't have any hope. That's how at home they had become. In that deranged Philistine world, they were pathetic. Ladies and gentlemen, you and I need to realize we've not been called to have peace with this world. We've been called to have peace with God. The scriptures over and over again teach us that we are at war with this world and it's time that some of God's people wake up to that reality. The Bible nowhere teaches peace at any cost with a lost godless world. The Bible nowhere in the Old or New Testament never says don't make any waves. Just be some passive person that never takes a stand for anything. We're in war here. We're in war. And the more I listen to the news, and the more I read the paper, and the more I see what's going on, I realize we are more and more in a vicious, evil, ugly war, and it's getting ferocious. Judah lost sight of that, and so have many today who go to church. now in verses twelve to thirteen it says a lot about samson because he could have beat up the israelites had he wanted to or he certainly could have run away from the israelites he could have escaped and they'd have never been able to find him he could have attacked them and won but instead he says I'll let you bind me if you promise you're not going to kill me and they agreed to that and he said I'll let you tie me up and they tie him up and they take him and drop him right straight in the middle of one thousand philistines Of course, Samson's looking over this situation. He's thinking, all right, this is another great opportunity for me to take out more Philistines. So he let them bind him with new ropes. which everybody thinks would be more secure than old ropes. Old ropes are brittle. I just had an old lasso that I used to use on my horse, and I was just monkeying with it, and it just broke. It was an old lasso, and it was brittle rope. So new ropes have more strength to them, and so they thought if they tie them with new ropes, that'd be a strong thing to do. And according to verses 14 and 15, they bound Samson with ropes, they brought him to the Philistines, and the Philistines were so happy when they see him coming into their midst tied up that they shout for joy. That's what the text says. They actually shouted for joy when they saw him coming. You have 3,000 men of Judah. Bringing Samson to 1,000 of the Philistines, and you have one Samson. And when Samson shows up in this story, he's tied up with ropes. And by the way, this is something interesting. You'll certainly see, Lord willing, next Sunday night. I don't think there's anything about Samson that looked like he was a strong athlete. I think Hollywood gets that wrong. Hollywood uses guys of major physique with huge, ballsy muscles, big, strong, tough guys to make Samson look to be that. I don't think he looked like that at all. I'll show you why. Go over to chapter 16 and look at verse 5. And you'll see this next time we're together. In chapter 16 and verse 5, the lords of the Philistines came to her, this is Delilah, and said to her, entice him and see where his great strength lies. There was nothing about his look where they could tell his strength was coming from. They couldn't tell it was coming from his biceps or triceps. They couldn't tell anything about him that, boy, he looks like he could be getting his strength from that area. He probably just looked like an average guy. So they're bringing this one tied-up guy into the middle of a thousand Philistines. He's surrounded by 3,000 Philistines. And they shouted for joy. And when they shouted for joy, the Spirit of God came on Samson, and Samson was going to do a vicious work. empowered by God. That Spirit of God came on Samson. You can't accuse him of being a coward. This guy's a brave man, I'll tell you. You tell us tonight who of us has this kind of bravery. Take me in there, up against the thousand. Of course, there's no doubt he had the Spirit of God on him. He knew he had a unique power. He knew that from a young man, that God's hand was on him. And when the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson, he snapped those ropes like they were made of paper. And he looks down on the ground, the only thing he sees is a fresh jawbone of a donkey, which would mean it was moist, it was not brittle, it wasn't going to break, it probably still had some teeth in it. You put that kind of weapon in the hands of Samson and you've got a ferocious weapon in his hand. He started whirling and swinging and slashing, and when it was all over you have a thousand Philistines dead. And probably if there were any more there, they're running away. Now the odds that Samson was up against was 1,000 to 1. Those are more odds than Gideon faced when he was up against 400 to 1. And when you think about that, those are impossible odds. Furthermore, the weapon that he has is not a sword. He'd have liked to had one, I'm sure. It's a jawbone of a donkey. But you know the tragedy of this is as Samson fought, not one Jew lifted a finger to help him. Not one person from the tribe of Judah said, let's go. We've got to help our brother. He's in trouble. He's in a war. We need to be there with him. What they did is they all stood around and watched him fight. They should have been ashamed of themselves. They're totally passive. They're totally inactive. Samson's doing all the fighting. I think there isn't a church that can't relate to that. There are some people that they get on the front lines for God. I mean, they're in the action. They're out there defending things. They're out there standing up for things. And there are other people who are as dead as doorposts. They just sit around and watch. They never bother to help in the warfare. They just hope you win it. Or in this case, they probably hope he didn't win it. They're just living their own little world and they're not doing much. They don't take a stand. They don't defend the word. They listen to the enemy talk. Samson kept fighting and they're just sitting there doing nothing. Just imagine for a moment tonight if everybody in this church went out into this world and started saying, you need to be at Texas Corners Bible. I'm not going to back down from that. Just imagine if everybody in the world, and I know there are some of you that do that. There's some of you that have a good track record of doing that. You're out there hawking that. You need to be there because that's where the Word of God is faithfully and accurately taught. You need to be under the scriptures. Just imagine if everybody got out and started saying that. You need to be there because the Word of God comes to life there, because it's accurately handled. Unfortunately, there are those who will just sit around and watch others wage a war and they won't lift a finger to help. Just like Judah, they'll watch Samson fight, they'll watch the faithful people fight, and they'll just watch and they won't lift a finger. So Samson. all by himself, empowered by God, he dropped 1,000 Philistines. Of course he liked riddles, so he made up one. In verse 16, he said, Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey, I've killed 1,000 men. It's interesting that in Hebrew, the word for donkey is hamor, and the word for heap is homer. Samson said I've heaped up dead bodies with a jawbone of a donkey and he names the place Ramath Lahai which means Jawbone Hill he gave this place a name. This is Jawbone Hill where I dropped a thousand Philistines Which brings us to the last negative circumstance if that's not enough He has his own personal needs notice verse 18 then he became very thirsty and he called to the Lord and said I You have given this great deliverance by the hand of your servant. And now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised. But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi, so that water came out of it. When he drank, his strength returned and he revived. Therefore he named it En-Hakor, which is in Lehi to this day. So he judged Israel 20 years in the days of the Philistines. At the end of this fight, Samson was emotionally and physically drained. And you know, ladies and gentlemen, those who never go to war for God, they don't understand how fatiguing it is. They don't relate. When you are out on the front lines of facing spiritual forces of evil that you can't physically fight, you're in a draining battle. And people who never are on the front lines have no clue what a drain it is. And Samson had gone to war physically for God. He needed a drink. And that's true with people who've ever gone on the front lines for the Lord. Eliezer was completely weary after he won a victory against the Philistines. Elijah was completely drained after he had killed the false prophets of Baal. When you go for war for God, it drains you. You're tired. You're shot. And Samson was very thirsty. And what's interesting is you don't see any of those guys from Judah saying, Samson, let us help you. Let us get you whatever you need. Just tell us what you need. We'll supply it for you. We'll get you your water. You don't have to worry about that. Samson couldn't find one person from Judah who's even willing to help him. So he called out to God. And when he prayed to God, and there are only two times really you find him praying. Here tonight we'll find him praying, Lord willing, next Sunday just before he dies. He needed help and he prayed. And the prayer is intriguing because it does show us that Samson realized, I know where this victory's come from. I don't have this strength in and of myself. This has been given to me from the Lord. And when he called out to the Lord and he said, Lord, I just need a drink. The text says that God opened up a hollow place in Lehi, so water came out, just for Samson. And that word hollow place refers to a deep bowl type of place. Samson named it En Hakor, which means collar spring. This is the place where I called out to God, and this is the place where God answered my prayer, and he produced fresh spring water for me to drink. When you read verse 20, we learn that this one victory, was a critical victory that would put Samson as a good judge for 20 years. So this takes place over a period of time. That point you'll see repeated again next week. Now when you study the life of Samson or you read books about Samson, he's often criticized as being a very emotional kind of guy, but I want you to think about this. This man lost his wife. This man lost the support of the nation Israel. This man lost his freedom. He was actually taken into bondage by people who should have been his allies. In all of that stuff that was happening to him, in all of that negative stuff, he never lost his focus on God. You don't find him sitting around moping. You don't find him sitting around whining or even questioning God. What you find him doing is looking for opportunities to get the job done for the Lord. Samson's life is going to end in tragedy. But along the way in that life, this man demonstrated faith like few have ever demonstrated. Most of us, if we were abandoned by everyone who should stand around us, would cave in and throw in the towel. But not him. He kept his focus on doing the will of God. And God gave him great victories, and God gave him grace opportunities. It's true, he could have turned to the Lord at a greater level. Next week he has serious issues in life that he's going to ultimately pay a price for. But don't kid yourself, this man was greatly used by God. And perhaps you're here tonight and you can relate to old Samson. You feel all alone, you feel as if you've been abandoned by those who should be on your side. Perhaps you're here tonight, you've made some lousy choices in life, terrible choices that you know go against the word of God. You turn to the Lord and he'll do great things with you like he did with him. May we pray. If you're here tonight and you've never trusted Christ as Savior, right now you can do that right where you sit. Just acknowledge to God you're a sinner and you're believing in Christ to save you. Our Father, we oftentimes, when we think of Samson, we tend to be critical, at least that has been the historical past of the way that sometimes we thought But we are thankful for this man. The fact is, he did amazing things by the power of your hand, and he did a big work for God. I pray, Lord, that we will be people who will be like him in the positive aspects of his life. I pray we'll be good warriors. I pray we'll be frontline defenders of truth. I pray that we will not become so accustomed to this world that we find more fellowship with the world than we do you. I pray that you would just continue to help us develop in grace as we go through these precious inspired books. Help us to keep our sights fixed on what's important, the eternity with Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray, amen.