Alrighty. Judges chapter 16. Been working our way through the book for the past year and a half, two years or so. Come now to the story of Samson and Delilah. Kind of hinted at this last time we spoke. We're going to get more in depth with it today, hopefully. Alright, let's read together and then we'll pray. It says in verse 5, And the lords of the Philistines came up to her, that is Delilah, remember verse four there, and said that Samson had loved a woman, and Sorok, whose name was Delilah, so that's who it's speaking of here. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, seduce him, and see where his great strength lies. By what means, we may overpower him, that we may bind him to humble him, and we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. So Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound that one could subdue you. Samson said to her, if they bind me with seven fresh bow strings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bow strings that had not been dried. She bound him with them. Now she had men lying in ambush in the inner chamber, and she said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he snapped the bow strings as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. Then Delilah said to Samson, behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, if they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them, and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And the men lying in ambush were in the inner chamber, but he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread. Then Delilah said to Samson, until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, if you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and moved them into a web And she made them tie it with the pin and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom, the web. And she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times. And you have not told me where your great strength lies. And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart and said to her, a razor's never come upon my head, for I'm a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaven, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man. When Delilah saw that he had told all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines, saying, come up again, for he has told me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought her the money in their hands. She made him sleep on her knees, and she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him and his strength left him. And she said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as the other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he grounded at the mill in the prison. but the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. This is the reading of God's word. Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you that you have not left us in darkness, but you have spoken to us. I thank you that we can read these histories, we can read these stories, and we can read that you're unfolding plan through history, and we can see that you loved us, we can see that you set a plan in motion to redeem us, and we can be called your people Give me strength now for I'm your servant. Apart from you helping me, just as Samson and all of us, apart from your hand upon us, we are weak and we can do nothing. So give strength now. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. Amen. So, for those of you that wasn't here last time, we spoke last time of a story of Samson at Gaza, at this place, at this coastal city here, and he goes into the prostitute, if you remember, and then he, while he's asleep, the men gather around him and they plan to seize him as they are planning in our story today. Remember, this had been a cycle that was going back and forth from the time that Samson had married the Philistine woman and give the riddle to the men. They had enticed her, we'll see comparisons with that today, and they had killed her, they had burned her to death, her and her father. And so because of this, there's been this backlash back and forth between Samson and the Philistines. And so they had laid in wait for him, but Samson had got up before they were ready, they were waiting till morning, and he had got up at midnight, and he had then ripped the gates of the city out of the ground and carried them on his back 40 miles uphill. A great task that we had seen. And we had spoke last time about how this great story, this great feat of the city of Gaza that tried to bind him, that tried to contain him, couldn't because indeed the Lord was with him and so he simply destroyed the gates and put them to shame but something of a paradox is that that story was set in between two more stories and that was of Samson's infidelity that was of Samson with the prostitute and then his love for Delilah this foreign woman and it's today that we're going to go into further depth last time we had just read it we had just mentioned it there in verse 4 I believe And we're going to go in more depth of Delilah and the things that happens to him. So let's work our way through our text together here in chapter 16. Let's look at four and five again together. This is what we had read last time. After this, he loved a woman in the Valley of Sork whose name was Delilah. That was after he pulled the gates up from the ground and carried them those 40 miles. And the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, seduce him and see where his great strength lies. And by what means we may overpower him that we may bind him to humble him. And we will each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. We see a picture here of something that we have seen before. And I alluded to that when we first started. When Samson had married his wife, that woman that was a Philistine, that he went to his father and mother and asked for, remember? And his father and mother had urged him not to because that was forbidden, God had forbidden that for the children of Israel. And Samson himself was to be a Nazarite to God, set apart. Remember, he took that Nazarite vow that we find in Numbers chapter six. We looked at that together and we'll look at it again today. So they had warned him not to do this and he had done it anyway. And because of this, all these things had come upon him. And what had come upon him is the Philistines had come to her, them being some of her family, and told her to find out what the meaning of the riddle was. We find that in chapter 14 there, chapter 14 and 15. It says, and on the fourth day, they said to Samson's wife, that is the man he told the riddle to, entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire. And then they asked the question of if she invited them there to impoverish them, which means for her husband to simply get the changes of clothes, their goods. And so we see this same story repeating. And we have seen this before in Samson's life. You remember we spoke about it before that Samson we can see is this top and this shadow of an antitype really of Christ. But not only that, that we can see in Samson himself as a judge, a picture of Israel entirely. And we spoke of that last time, and what that is, is Israel was called to be a holy people. They were called to be set apart. Set apart to God. Remember Deuteronomy chapter 7. This is something Samson was disobeying and something that has been the backdrop to our time in the book of Judges. Deuteronomy chapter 7. This was God's commandment to the children of Israel. when they went in to possess the land. We have read this numerous times and we'll read it numerous times again because this is the reason that we find the turmoil that we do in the book of Judges. Remember that cycle we've talked about time and time again. The people go into idolatry, they cry out to God after years of slavery. When they go into idolatry, God hands them into the hands of their enemies because of that idolatry. They cry out to God. God raises one up to deliver them, but when that one dies, they go back into idolatry, if not worse, idolatry. And so that's the retail, that's the parallels that we've seen in the book, this reoccurring theme of the idolatry of the children of Israel. And that's what we see in Samson's life. He's the perfect picture of it. Although he was meant to be set apart, he is actually quite common. just like the children of Israel. People that were meant to be set apart but are actually quite common. So there in Deuteronomy chapter 7, it says, when the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering, take possession of it, and clears away the many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hibbites, the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, and the Lord God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, you must devote them to complete destruction, You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus you shall deal with them. You shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars. chop down their ashram, and burn their carved images with fire. And this is the whole purpose in verse six we find here. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The word holy, to be set apart. You are a people set apart to God. This is what God called them to be, a people that was set apart. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. And we see this picture here now with Samson. Although they are called to be separate, although they are called to be holy, quite common they are. Quite common the nation was and quite common Samson was. Even with all his great feats, we still see that he is just a sinful man and he cannot redeem his people. The whole question we had asked before, remember it's really the whole question of the Bible, is these men who come up that are great, like Moses and Samson and David and all these, are pointing forward to something greater. they're pointing forward to Christ. The whole gist of the Bible is when man falls in the garden, and then God makes a promise that he will not leave them in that state. Remember, he says that the head crusher will come. The one will come from the woman's seat, and he will crush the head of the serpent, although his heel will be bruised. And that was our question for all these men. All the judges that we've seen in the book and all the men we've seen in the book up until Matthew gives his account of the gospel is this question. Is this the one to come? Is this the one to come and finally put sin and death to death? Right? That's the question, the big picture of the Bible. We're always looking forward to, is this the one? Is this the one? And we see that, of course, fulfilled in Christ, right? Being New Testament Christians, we can look back upon that and see that Christ fulfilled these things. But that was our question with Samson. Is he the one? And in his life, unfortunately, just like we've seen with all other men, and just like we see with ourselves, we see sin and depravity. We see that the mark of Adam is upon this man, just like the rest. He cannot save himself, therefore he definitely cannot save others. That's what we've seen in the book, so just bringing us up to date with that. So what we're going to see here in our text is this final end of Samson we're getting into now, and God's judgment upon him for not listening to Deuteronomy chapter seven. God had judged the people over and over and over again, and God is a just judge. And so now, because of Samson's infidelity, because of his practicing with these women, these foreign women, God's judgment will now be upon him. And that's the form it's gonna take, the form of this woman, Delilah, to take down this great warrior. Sampson. So back in our text, five through nine, we'll continue working through it together. 16, five through nine. It says, lords of Philistines came up to her and said to her, remember that was, we read that before, we're just, we're getting into it, we was recapping before. See where his great strength lies and what by, what means we may overpower him. We may bind him to humble him, and we each give you 1,100 pieces of silver. Something that was a good lot at the time, and there was most likely lots of these lords. And so they're each giving her these big amounts of money. And so we definitely see where her devotion lies. It does not lie with Samson. It lies in profit. It lies in what she can gain. And that was the warning, right? Don't don't be intermarried with these women. Don't be joined to these women because well, they don't love me Their God is not the true God. It's something else They'll carry you off for other gods whether it be mammon Whether it be that is money or whether it be just the false idols that they serve the ashram and bail and all these other gods that was the warning that God had given so verse 6 there so a lot of such Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and how I you might be bound that one could subdue you. Samson said to her, if they bind me with seven fresh bowstrings that have not been dried, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. Then the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bowstrings that had not been dried, and she bound him with them. Now she had men lying in ambush in the inner chamber, and she said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. but he snapped the bow strings as a thread of flax snaps when it touches the fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. So just as his wife Delilah had deceived him, we've seen that comparison before here. His mistress here, Delilah, tricks him as well. She asks him where his strength lies and Samson tells her that it lies within seven fresh bow strings, right? Most likely because at the time, the number seven was seen as a mystical number. It's seen as the number of completion. And so here he's giving her something that sounds right, right? Like he had strength that these people didn't understand where it come from. These pagan people didn't understand how Samson could do the things he did. And so he tells them in this mystical way, well, if you crack the code, this is what you do. You grab seven fresh bow strings, not been dried, and you bind me with them. So that probably sounded very appealing to them, right? That sounds like something that would crack this magical code that they're trying to crack. And so this, of course, is what she does. She tells the men what he said and they come to her with the seven fresh bow strings. But Samson, after he is bound and warned by Delilah that the men are coming for him, snaps them with ease as that weak little rope, as that flax snaps when it hits fire. If you've ever seen rope in fire, it snaps very easily. And this is the way that they seem to melt off of Samson. His strength was much more than these bow strings that he had been bound with. So that is the first thing he tells her. We're going to go through multiple things here. So 10 through 12. Then Delilah said to Samson, behold, you have mocked me and told me lies. Please tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, if they bind me with new ropes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new ropes and bound him with them and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. and the men lying in ambush were in the inner chamber, but he snapped the ropes off his arms like a thread." So he tells her here that if he's bound with new ropes, the bow strings didn't work, so he has to keep coming up with different things, different lies to tell her. The whole purpose of these is, there's countless of them here, we're gonna see. She asks him, he tells her something wrong, until it gets to what he truly gets to, which is his hair, the last symbol of his covenant with God. The whole purpose being is Samson should have not been in this place to begin with. Right. He should have had a wife, not a mistress, that would not put him in this situation. And if he had picked one of the daughters of Israel, he wouldn't have to deal with this. All the other judges that we've seen spent their time occupied in war. Samson has spent most of his time occupied with women. That was his flaw. That was the sin that he could not overcome. That's why we know he's not the one to come, the reason he couldn't. save anybody because he couldn't save himself from these women. This was his weakness. It looked like he would learn not to do that after the first wife treatment. You'd think, and her the second time doing it, I'd say something's up here. But he's blind to it or something. The whole point, it's a very good point. The whole point of the book of Judges and what we have seen is we've become exhausted. Like we're 16 chapters in, we've seen the same thing over and over. We've become exhausted with the children of Israel. And that's the purpose of the book. The purpose of the book is for us to read this history and say how, how time after time after time after time could you turn back to your sin after God had done all these things for you? And if we're not careful, we've spoken this many times and we need to speak of it again, we indeed as a church can be the exact same way. God can be gracious to us time and time and time again, and we can still see people going back to their sin. We can still see people leaving the faith, being the dog that goes back to its vomit. And that's why we read this. That's why we read these histories, so we do not repeat them. And we do not need to think of ourselves as anything higher, right? Samson had no strength without God, and I can tell you that you have no strength without God. And the moment that you think you're something that you're not, that you're very strong, trust me, you'll be proven weak. You will definitely be proven weak. That goes for me as well. That is all of us. That's what we've seen in the book of Judges. That's why it was given to us. God is giving us this history, showing us, don't be this way. Be different. Yeah. As the church, we are called to be separate. We are called to be holy. We are not to be like Israel was, right? We are not to play with sin. We are to cast sin aside. We are to be putting sin to death. John Owen, a great theologian, he said, be killing sin or it will be killing you. Be killing sin or it will be killing you. And that's what we've seen in the book of Judges. The Israelites' failure to kill sin in their lives. And that come in the form of these pagan people. And we as well have to be killing sin in our lives and pushing these things away. Pushing these things away and clinging to Christ. And apart from doing that, we will fail as well. We don't want to repeat these things. That's why it's stressed over and over and over again. And that's why Samson is such a good type to see a visual, right? He is their leader, and he is the exact same way as them. As the king goes, so do the people. And so he leads the people in the same way they've been led before, even with all his strength. Samson cannot see it. The people cannot see it. They simply love their sin, even though God is gracious to them. So this is what he tells her here. He tells her that the new ropes will indeed bind him. They obviously didn't understand that this had already happened to him. Remember, we seen this same phraseology in chapter 15. If you remember when Samson had went away and hid in that cave, in that cleft of the rock, they had come to the people and said, we want Samson. and his own people went and got him and bound him with new ropes. We find that in 1513. He had said, don't put your hand against me, right? And they had said in 13, no, we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you. So they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. And he had busted free of them, just like he busts free of them in our text today in 10 through 12. So obviously they didn't know about that story. That's probably why Samson told her that. as he knew in fact new ropes could do nothing to him with his strength. And so verse 13 through 14 together. Then Delilah said to Samson, until now you have mocked me and told me lies. Tell me how you might be bound. And he said to her, if you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So while he slept, Delilah took the seven locks of his head and wove them into the web. She made them tight with the pen and said to him, the Philistines are calling you, Samson. But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pen, the loom and the web. So he breaks free yet again. Here we see that she asked him again, this time crying to him. invoking things that he does not love her and things of that nature. And so he gives her another goal here. He says to put the seven locks of his head into a web, fasten them together, and put them down into the ground with a pin. So of course she does so. She really wants this payout. She wants this money for Samson's life, for Samson to be enslaved by these men. And that's something the men wanted to do. If you noticed our Samson had done so much to them. They did not just simply say this time, Hey, I want to, we want to kill him. Right? I said, we want us to do him. We want to torture him. And that's exactly what they do. That's what we'll see in our texts. They're not just out for the death of Samson. They're out for the torment of Samson now. So that's what she does. She fastens his hair together in this way of she weaves them together as it was, and then puts them into the ground with a pin. The Hebrew here, we've seen this phrase before. It's not so clear in English, the way they translate it, but we've seen this Hebrew phrase before. That phrase, made tight with a pin, we've seen in this book. It's literal is, drove the peg. Drove the peg. That's the literal Hebrew there. Fastened it tight with a pin, the literal is drove the peg. This would have been a tent peg. Right? We've seen this play out before. It was early on in chapter four. You remember who it was with? Yeah. We're making a comparison here. Who was it with in chapter four? The one that killed the king with the tent peg. Yup. Killed Sisera. Sisera. Remember how Sisera died? We're having a comparison here in the Hebrew. We're comparing two people. We're comparing Samson and Sisera. Right? That general, that king who had 900 chariots of iron that just abused the children of of Israel in chapter four and 18 there. Remember this story? And Jael came out to meet Sisera. Remember he had fled. The children of Israel come upon him and he had left his chariot of iron, not trusting in that technological advantage anymore because the hand of the Lord was upon the children of Israel. And he fled into the tents and let all his men be destroyed, right? Showing his cowardice, right? So he had fled and this is where he flees to Jael. And Jael came out to meet Sisera. Ciceron said to him, turn aside my lord, turn aside to me and do not be afraid. So he turned aside to her and to the tent and she covered him with a rug. And he said to her, please give me a little water to drink for I'm thirsty. So she opened a skin of milk and gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her, stand at the opening of the tent and if any man comes and asks you, is anyone here, say no. But Jael, the wife of Haber, took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness, and so he died, right? And so what we're having here is the author of Hebrews, inspired by the Holy Spirit, giving us a comparison here, is that Sisera fought himself something. Why? Because he had 900 chariots of iron. He thought he was something great, and he was proven by God as nothing great at all because he was simply killed with a tent peg on the hands of a tent dwelling woman. Something that would have been a mockery. And so we're having the same comparison here with Samson. You see, both these men were subdued by women, though both were said to be incredibly strong. Both were said to be incredibly great. Cicero with his 900 chariots of iron and Samson with his strength. And what we're being showed here is that both these men were nothing. Both these men, in all their might, even Samson, who was called from the womb by God, by himself, apart from God, is nothing. He is just like Sisera, who was struck down by this woman. And his demise is also by the hands of this woman. The lava. And so that's the comparison we are seeing here. Unfortunately, we had wanted one to come up and save the children of Israel, to help the children of Israel, but Samson resembled more of Sisera, that pagan king, than he did anything of a holy ruler. That's the comparison we're seeing in our text today. So let's continue. 15 through 17. Back in chapter 16. 15 through 17. And she said to him, how can you say I love you when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times and have not told me where your great strength lies. And she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart and said to her, all his heart, hang on, I lost my place here, 17. And he told her all his heart and said to her, razor has never come upon my head, for I've been a Nazareth to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me and I should become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah here again is mad at Samson for these three times he has tricked her and lied to her. And she invokes the same thing that his wife invoked. You do not love me because you don't tell me where your strength. lies. So we are told that she does this to him for many days until Samson is vexed to death. That is, he is wore to fatigue. Right? He is fatigued with the way she is treating him until the point of death, it says there. And so she did this for a long time. So Samson tells her that it is his hair. His hair is where his strength lies. It has never been cut. because he is a Nazirite to God. This seems, this is where Samson points to, right? It's my hair, right? But this seems to be the only thing that we've seen Samson actually keep. Of his vial, this seems to be the only thing that Samson has kept. Remember Numbers chapter 6. Numbers chapter six is where we had found this Nazarite vow being invoked to the children of Israel. The Lord speaking to Moses here in chapter six says, and the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazarite to separate himself to the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. No vinegar made from wine or strong drink, and shall not drink any juice of grapes, or eat grapes fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds of the skins. All the days of his vow of separation no rager shall touch his head until the time is complete for which he separates himself to the Lord. He shall be holy. He shall let the locks of his head grow long. All the days that he separates himself to the Lord, he shall not go near a dead body, not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister, if they die. Shall he make himself unclean? Because his separation is to God on his head. All the days of his separation, he is holy to the Lord. This is what Samson was called to do with the other laws of Moses. It's the other laws of Moses and these statutes. You separate yourself to God for a certain task. Samson was separated to God, remember, because he would begin to subdue, to stop the Philistines. That's what his mother was told, remember, the angel of the Lord had come to her. said he will begin to stop the Philistines and so Seemingly here. This is the only thing through our time with Samson that he's actually kept. He actually has never cut his hair right and this Is what he tells her that my hair is my strength and so of course Delilah runs with this look in 18 to 20 back in our text and 18th was ruined. When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she said and called the Lords of the Philistines saying, come up again for he has told me all his heart. Then the Lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands. So she's getting her payment for her deed here. She made him sleep on her knees and she caught a man and had him shave off his seven locks of his head. She began to torment him and his strength left him. And she said, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as the other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had indeed left him. So Delilah is able to do what she set out to do for oppressing Samson all these days. She's able to find out how to make him weak and she acts upon it. She cuts his hair, has a man come in and cut his hair while Samson lies on her lap. And then we were told that she torments him She torments him. The text is not clear what this means. The Hebrew word here means to be occupied with, to be occupied with. So either she was indeed torturing him or she was just making sure that all his hair was shaved. So either way, this is what she's doing. She's actually making sure that her money is good, making sure that she will get her payment in due time or that she can keep her payment. And so we're told that his strength leaves him. He's gonna go out like all the other times. We'll read verse 20 again together. And his strength had left him for that reason. Look in verse 20. And she said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. He awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out as the other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that his hair had left him. Right? That's not what it says. Samson didn't know that his head was shaking. That's not what it says. He did not know that the Lord had left him. And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison, but the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. So the Philistines come for Samson and he thinks this time that he would have shaked them off as he has before, but he's not able to because of his hair and part. What was it really? Because of the Lord, the Lord had, left him. See, the whole question had been, where does your strength lie? This whole time, Delilah had been seeking for that answer. Where does your strength lie, Samson? And Samson finally comes out and tells her my hair. And when they cut the hair, indeed, he loses his strength. But it was not because Samson had magic hair. No. It was because that was the last thing, God being gracious, had stayed with him up until the last thing that tied him to Numbers chapter 6. Right. The last thing that tied him to Numbers chapter 6 was his hair. That's the last thing that you could distinguish about him and say he's a Nazirite. All the others he had failed. And so when his hair is cut, he is not set apart at all. There's nothing that distinguishes him. And so God indeed leaves him. He turns away from God and God leaves him. But this is the question. And that Samson had been so far gone that that was his answer. His answer was not well. Yahweh, the Lord is with me and he is my strength. His answer was my hair, you see? And we as men in the same way have the tendency, see something very, a good comparison here of how men are. We have the tendency to take gifts from God and turn them into gods themselves. That's true. We take gifts from God and we turn them into gods themselves. You see, Samson didn't point to God for his strength, he pointed to his hair. That was just a symbol of his strength. God was his strength. You see, God was with him. But in the same way, we can see this in men. The children of Israel, when they're brought out of Egypt, God gives them, you remember, all that gold from the Egyptians. All this great gift. What did they do with it? They melt it down and give it to Aaron and he makes them a calf. They take this good gift from God and they turn it into an idol. We can see the same thing. What do we see that today? We can see the same thing in the word of faith movement. Can we not? What do they do? They take faith, which is a gift from God, right? Ephesians chapter two, faith is a gift from God, something God gives to the believer, and they elevate it over God. And so that you get more faith to get more stuff. You have more faith to have more faith. They look at faith in a way to access things and not to access Christ. They look at faith as what it can get them, as what can be gained by them, and not to glorify God, right? That's exactly right. It's true. I know many people like this. It is truly sad. It is. Faith in that way becomes their idol. Because they think if they just had a little more, they could get all that their hearts desire. When all that their hearts desire is in fact wicked. Yeah. You see? We all want stronger faith, right? I want stronger faith. Everyone here says we want stronger faith. But it is that we may be more faithful to Christ. It is that we may be more faithful in the proclamation of the gospel that glorifies God, that brings the sinner to repentance, that redeems him, an act of God, God and His sovereignty. That is our goal of having stronger faith. It is not so that you can accumulate for yourself all this stuff, so that you can accumulate for yourself all these things, whether it be health or wealth or any of these things that is promised by these false teachers. The whole point of this is not to get more stuff. So be careful. Be careful. That's what we've seen through the whole book. At least you just ride Simpson off, right? As not understanding and you yourself fall into the same trap when you take a gift from God and you turn it into an idol. You turn it into something that your hope lies instead of something given by the hope giver. You see? Very easy for us to do, something that struck me myself as I read the text, that's where Samson points. Let it never be a view that when someone asks you where your strength lies, you point to your own efforts. Right? You point to your own strength, whether it be 900 chariots of iron or whether it be the covenant symbol on your head. Don't let it be so. I noticed there, can I say this real quick? Go ahead. He said at one time what was good in his eyes. Right. And they plucked his eyes out. Absolutely. So the very thing that had ruled him was just lust or whatever with these women. Absolutely. And were actually gouged out. Right. And taken from him. Right. That's a good comparison there. We'll say that later, but that's good. All right. Let's continue here for the sake of time. We'll wrap up here. We're told here, we'll just go ahead and go on. We're told here, just as Dad had said, that the Philistines seized him because his strength had left him, because the Lord had left him. The Lord was his strength. And they then take him and gouge out his eyes. Very good comparison that Dad just made. The very thing that ruled his life. The very thing that he judged everything on. The whole gist of the book of Judges is what? That last verse. There was no king in Israel at this time. and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. You see? And so we have this anarchy, if you will, in the people of Israel who were called to be set apart and holy. That was a very good observation is what we see there with Samson. And so he is taken, his eyes are plucked out and he is taken to Gaza. The same place where before he had ripped up the gates of the city. And so we see that now that the Lord has left him, this place that could not hold him before, this place that he had power over before, he goes back to. And he is the same. Samson has not changed. But the fact of the matter is that the Lord is not there. And so Samson is able to be subdued in the very place that he once walked out of with no problem, carrying their gates 40 miles uphill, is now his master's, is now his undoing. You see, because he turned from the Lord. He turned from what God had told him. We see that his eyes are gouged out. Something's very gruesome. We've seen this recapitulation, too, in the Book of Judges, these gruesome tasks, just like J.L. and the tent peg, just like Ehud running the king through and his bowels falling out. We've seen these gruesome acts over and over in the book because of this anarchy. And what we are seeing there is the darkness of depravity. The darkness of depravity is showing us how bad it really is. There's a whole lot of darkness in the Book of Judges. The judges are corrupt, the people are corrupt, and the nations are indeed corrupt around them that influence them. And so that's what we see here. We see this darkness, and Samson has failed. Samson has truly failed his task. He had sinned before. We thought maybe, from a human perspective, that there could be some redemption here, but there is simply none, seemingly. Yeah, go ahead. I was thinking, like, Samson is more depraved than even, I think, we're touching on here. Like, his hair was a symbol, but I don't think he even believed that. Like, he didn't believe that that's where his strength lay. He had to have believed that that was in himself. Otherwise, he wouldn't have kept up this little game that he was playing. Because, you know, he didn't realize the Lord had departed him. That's what the scripture said. So even though he knew his hair were shaved, he still thought that strength was in him. He still went out to fight. Sure. So I just think that that's like, he didn't even believe in the covenant. Why he kept his hair, who knows? But it wasn't because he was still trying to keep that covenant. It was just a part of, I don't know, his personality or persona or something. If that makes sense. Perhaps. Yeah. I'll say what you're getting at. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting assessment. Um, it's unspoken. I really, you know what I'm saying? I get what you're saying there, but, uh, could be that he didn't know his hair was cut. Could be he knew his hair was cut and thought, well, this strength lies in me anyway. But that's, that's a good assessment. What you're saying there. Um, uh, where are we at here? Yeah, okay. So this darkness is on the face of the people we're seeing here from all these things that were, these gruesome tasks that we see with the children of Israel, this anarchy. And we know that not to look to Samson, not to look to these other people, and we'll wrap up here for the sake of time, but to look to Christ. Right. To look to Christ and all that he is. Just like John says in 1 John, we'll read this and then we'll go ahead and close. But in 1 John, John is running to the church, and he's pushing back against the Gnostics, right, that said that, you know, hey, Jesus had a physical body, that all things physical are bad, all things spiritual are good, therefore Jesus was bad, so he had some form of darkness in him. Because John's saying he had a physical body, right? He says the things we've seen, the things we've touched, the things we've heard, and John says, no, no, no, that's not the case. See, although Jesus was a man, which he was, No darkness was in him. So we'll read that together. It says in verse five, this is the message that we have heard from him. So they heard it and proclaimed to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And so although we see this darkness in the book of Judges, although we see this darkness in Samson, there was one who came in whom no darkness was found whatsoever. And he is our hope. He is our redemption. Pray with me to that end. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have spoken to us. Please give us strength that we would not repeat these things we find in the history of Israel, that we as the church would truly be separate, that we would be set apart, holy to God. And we know that we cannot do this apart from you, for we are weak. We know that you are our strength, Lord. Help us now. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.