I'm Brian. I've been here since 2012. I'm Ray. I've been here about a year now. I'm Christian. Today's our first day at this church. We met Ray and them at downtown Fayetteville yesterday. Wanted to come. We were talking about finding a new church to go to and meet my wife. And they said, come on down. Yeah, welcome. My name's Marissa. They already said it. It's our first day, and we met them downtown, so. Christian, what's your last name? Harold. What was your wife's name again? I'm sorry. My last name is Millard. I kept my family name. What's your first name? Marissa. Marissa, okay. That's pretty hardcore coming to a Sunday school on the first day you've been to the church. I'm Sarah and I've been here since 2016. I'm Mike and I've been here since 2014. I'm Sonia and we've been here since the end of 2010. And I'm David. I'm Kathy. Richard, 18 months. The Bundys, we'll talk about that later. We love the pastorships right here. My name's David. I've been here for about 16 months, I believe. Eric Gonzalez. Been here about 16 months. Byron. Finishing first month today, actually. Anniversary. Well, in order to celebrate the anniversary, we'll have a next class. All right, so we're going to be in Judges 15. We're going to attempt to cover the whole chapter. And can I get a volunteer to read the entire chapter? There we go. I'm reading out of the CSD. Later on during the week harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and visited his wife. I want to go to my wife in her room, he said. But her father would not let him in. I was sure you hated her, her father said. So I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Isn't her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead? Samson said to him, this time I will be blameless when I arm the Philistines. So he went out and caught 300 foxes. took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails. Then he ignited the torches and released the foxes into the standing ground of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and olive gardens. Then the Philistines asked, who did this? They were told it was Samson. the Ten Knights' son-in-law because he took Samson's wife and gave her to his companions. So the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death. Then Samson told them, because you did this, I swear that I won't rest until I have taken vengeance on you. He tore them limb from limb and then went down and stayed in the cave at the Rock of Edom. The Philistines went up. camped in Judah and raided Lehi. So the men of Judah said, why have you attacked us? They replied, we have come to tie Samson up and pay him back for what he did to us. Then 3,000 men of Judah went to the cave at the Rock of Enoch, and they asked Samson, don't you realize that the Philistines rule us? What have you done to us? I have done to them what they did to me, he answered. They said to him, we've come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines. Then Samson told them, swear to me that you yourselves won't kill me. No, they said, we won't kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them. So they led him up with two new ropes, tied him up with two new ropes, and led him away from the rock. When he came to Lehi, The Philistines came to meet him shouting. The spirit of the Lord came powerfully on him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off. He found a flesh bone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed 1,000 men with it. Then Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey I have piled them in heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have killed 1,000 men. When he finished speaking, He threw away the jawbone and named that place Jawbone Hill. He became very thirsty and called out to the Lord. You have accomplished this great victory through your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived. That is why he named it Hachor Spring, which is still in Levi today. And he judged Israel 20 years in the days of the Philistines. Okay, so in order to gain some context for people just joining us in this narrative in Judges. So we started in Judges chapter one, and now we're all the way to chapter 15. But can someone give us some context specifically on Samson and how we even got here. He married a Philistine woman that he should not have. And in the process of that wedding ceremony, he threw a riddle before his companions, insert air quotes, who ended up turning on him and threatening his wife. Yeah, and I would even say, for the greater book of Judges, this is probably one of the stranger books in the Bible. We haven't even got to the stranger part yet. And so we've kind of seen this pattern. What is the common refrain of Judges? If you had a tagline or a slogan, what would it be? and does what is right in his own, does what is right in his own eyes. Right, and we've seen this over and over and over again. And of course we'll continue to see that through the history of Israel. But it starts out kind of bad, right? Moses and then Joshua, you know, they're these great leaders who lead them into the promised land, well Joshua specifically, and then all of a sudden it just kind of starts to devolve into say, tribal areas, having their own local leaders, and it starts to spiral, what you could say, it's kind of like this cyclical pattern of, you know, things were bad. They're disobedient, then the Lord delivers them, and then the next generation does even worse, right? And so, not only are they going back and forth between good and evil, But it seems as though they're spiraling into deeper and deeper evil. And before we even got to Samson, here we have this really strange vow by Jephthah, who he ends up offering his daughter up as a sacrifice to God, to Yahweh. And that was clearly forbidden. And it's just like this really strange juxtaposition between keeping my vows which is a good thing, but then in order to keep my vows, I'm going to do something that is an abomination to the Lord. And he had a way out. And he had a way out through the law. If he would have known. Right. So if he had read the law and known the law, then there was a provision within the law of making foolish vows. And then we come to the birth of Samson, where he is promised as a Nazirite. Can someone just remind us briefly what is a Nazirite and why did people make these vows? So the way that I understood it was it would be a temporary period of dedication unto the Lord Yahweh. Now, what exactly that entailed, I cannot recollect right now, but it would be a temporary period of dedication to some type of service, whether it was in the temple or not, I don't know that for a fact, but is that, am I going in the right direction? There were three specific things that Nazarites were forbidden to do. No fruit of the vine. No fruit of the vine, so that's not, and I know a lot of people when they hear that, they think, oh, he doesn't drink wine, right? Well, actually, he wasn't even supposed to eat raisins or grapes or anything of the vine. So olives, too? Anyway, I got you. I got you. I think that, no, it wouldn't have been categorized as. I understand that grows on a vine, but it's a euphemism, if you will, for grape product. Hair. To not cut the hair. Not cut the hair. OK. No touching of dead bodies, right? Yeah. And so we've seen that Samson was dedicated as a Nazarite. It wasn't his own choice. He was dedicated from birth because his mother was barren. Then she is visited by the angel of Yahweh. And he promises that she will bear a son. Before he is born, he is sworn as his Nazareth. Now, as we progress through his life, what are some things that he has done up until this point that were clearly contradictions to what he ought to have done? So pastor Brian talked about this marriage to a or yes this marriage to Someone who is outside of the people of Israel, which was clearly commanded against What else? He touched the deadline He's dealing with carcasses again with the jawbone of the donkey. It's so poetic what happened in chapter 15. What was feared in chapter 14 comes to fruition in chapter 15. All because of these corrupt decision-making processes they have. Right. Yeah, what is quite ironic is the fact that I think oftentimes people say, and we'll probably get into this more later, but they say that his might or his power or his strength was in his hair, and that's why when Delilah cuts his hair off, he's overcome and he doesn't have any strength anymore. But in fact, we're seeing this pattern as we're reading through Samson's life He is singularly breaking every vow that the Nazirite makes. He is touching dead bodies, he would drink fruit of the vine, and then finally when he gets his hair cut off, that's when the spirit of the Lord departs from him. But in our story today, What are some observations from, specifically, the text in chapter 15 that we see that kind of stick out to us? How long? He waited, I would presume, a ridiculously long period of time before going back to the woman he married. Right. Long enough that dad's like, oh, he's not coming back. And so far, he was like. What did I do with my daughter that I just married off? Right. I mean, he even makes this statement, I thought that you hated her. Yeah. That's how long he was. You called her a heifer. He's making a biblical reference to the prior chapter where he says, you plowed with my heifer. Yeah. I thought Samson had to be as PG as I can be, issues with being very interested in women. Yes. And then here you get verse one, and you're like, Samson? Yeah, it's kind of just a weird observation. I don't get that at all. I guess I would sympathize with the dad's response. Where have you been? I've been looking for you, but I don't know. I actually read the NLT, and you threw out there the reasoning behind having the best man, and again, I read the forbidden NLT, just kind of being facetious here, and it actually says best man. The father gave his newlywed daughter, not to Samson, but to Samson's best man, which was probably Philistine, which really wasn't his best man, but anyway, maybe it was. I'd just say the cycle of violence. I mean, it seems that Samson is very violent. And all these people he's killed. And then the thing with the fox's tails, I guess that was to burden the crops. And so they didn't have anything to, you know, any harvest or anything like that. But then there's 300 foxes. How long did it take to catch those? I've got nothing better to do. I'm going to go catch 300 foxes. Over and over again, I think to myself, reality is stranger than fiction. What is so unique, because that's the whole theme we see in the theme of Judges anyway, is that God is delivering Israel through such a tarnished character. Right, right. I thought of that just today actually. I didn't really think this through too much, but bear with me here. I just thought of disqualification. I'm not trying to be prude or anything here, but sometimes there's actions you take in life that disqualify you from certain things. And according to the Jewish law, as soon as he touched a dead body, he was supposed to separate himself from all the Israeli culture and go through a cleansing process. Yeah, so it's kind of like, but obviously he's not, he's doing something other than What do you want to call it? Yeah, I'm just going to leave it right there. Anyway, just a different option. This is clearly an exceptional moment in the recording of judges and the like. It's just an exceptional moment. Maybe it was just me, but did anybody find it odd that he says, this time I shall be innocent in regard to the village I was kind of wondering if maybe the original language was like, just could also be translated as like, at this time. Richard, what's your Amplified have? I've got it wide open right here, Pastor Brian. Now what verse was that? What verse was that? Oh, it was in the beginning. This is verse three. Yeah. Nothing more. Samson said to them, this time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm. So nothing added to the language. NET says I am justified in doing that. I'd ask Laura to actually talk about that. Yeah. So we know specifically, because it was told to us by the angel of Galilee, that Samson was chosen as an instrument to judge the Philistines and to provide salvation to his people. And yet, it seems as though time and time again, These deliverances come through broken vessels who do what is right in their own eyes. And still, nonetheless, even though Samson continues to volitionally do what he thinks is right in his own eyes, God is using that to judge a people. Well, could he be referring to the fact that he married a Philistine woman His parents didn't want him to do it, it wasn't what he should have done. Could he be referring to that as the injustice that he did before? I think it's unclear. It's unclear. And it almost does seem like Samson's eager to, now he could be prompted by the Spirit of the Lord, he's eager to set himself against the Philistines. And he probably should be. I mean, you would probably, I would probably be. I mean, can you, I mean, just, could you imagine a Russian force kind of constantly telling you what you gotta do with your wife's children property and the like? No, I'm not gonna like that. Anyway, just kind of a weird analogy there, but you weren't forced to. It's interesting, Jordan. I went looking at the Blue Letter Bible for the background of the phrase this time. And it can be translated as like an occurrence, like just a marker of tracking, like one, two, three, like again, again. It's primarily translated as the idea of a strike of a hammer or a foot treading. So it's kind of almost like a two-for-one deal. It's like, I'm going to walk all over you, and I'm going to be blameless in doing it. So he feels like what they've done to him justifies what he's doing to them. Yeah. You see that attitude with both Samson and the Philistines. We're just paying them back for what they've done to us. Philistines are saying, I'm just paying back Samson what he's done to us. I'm just paying the Philistines back for what they did to me. It's kind of scary because that's how the world is now. Like an eye for an eye. They did this to me, so I'm doing this to them. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. Another observation that I saw when I was reading the text, did anybody else find it odd as well that the thing which his wife was worried about, namely her and her father being burned by the Philistines because they couldn't figure out this riddle, actually ends up happening anyways. In the very next chapter, she and her father are burned because Samson ties 300 foxes together and sets fire to their fields to the fields even though she did exactly what they asked Her to do and then she's still burned, which is interesting to consider like how the Philistines think We would rather kill some of our own Then lose this crop and so because we lost this crop and it's your fault. We're not killing you rather than attacking the Israelites. They get there, but verse nine, they said that they're coming up and they're making a raid and they're gonna lay siege on this region. But why did they, the first thought is let's kill some of our own people rather than take off after those Israelites and go kill some of them. Is that the judge, jury, executioner, mob rule? I'm gonna mob y'all and murder y'all, whether you like it or not. So kind of moving towards maybe laterally, not just observations in the text, but do we see any connections between this story and then other instances within the Bible, other people's lives? Do we see what maybe you could call a recapitulation or a reliving of something that we might have seen in the past or may see in the future? What about when, I mean, all the violence, what happened with Gideon? You know, what he did, 300 men and all that. We're talking about 300 foxes here. Do you have one of mine, Jordan? I had a couple. It kind of stood out to me right here when he says, after he's striking down a thousand men with his jawbone, he says, he was very thirsty, in verse 18, and he called upon the Lord and said, you have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst? and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? Oh, you went to that part. Well, OK, so that's Exodus. Yes. The people of the wilderness. Absolutely. I was trying to think. I'm like, the retribution being a little extra? Yeah, no, it's just, I don't know. It seemed to ring in my ears, so to speak, when I read that. It sounded almost verbatim the same thing that his father said before him. Exodus 14 the people were standing at the Red Sea They're looking out. They see Pharaoh coming after them and they say to Moses Even after the salvation that the Lord has already provided and taking the people out of Egypt now they are they literally accuse the Lord of wanting to do evil to them by saying, is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have brought us into the wilderness to die? And you ask yourself, I mean me, just as a bystander, not actually being in the moment, I'm thinking to myself, how could you even say that? He has already performed 10 plagues, and judge the Egyptians, and now you're literally bringing a charge against God's own character, saying that he meant this for evil towards us. It's because we sometimes say it in our culture, in the sense of, I slept with them. Right. Like, once it's on a different day, we kind of compartmentalize, well, that was yesterday. No, it's not the same time period. And from our perspective, when we look back on it and we read, yeah, we read it all in three minutes. But for Samson, how long did it actually take him to slaughter 1,000 men with a job on him, a donkey, and then for all of this to take place? And catch 300 fox. That'd take a really long time. It's been on the menu. I was going to say, they're not all on one spot. They don't usually travel in herds. No. I expect them to perform differently than we would, but it's like, okay, yeah, God was faithful yesterday, but now, today's a new day, and I have the same amount of struggle, if not more. So when we, as individuals, have to process, we're like, yeah, God's been faithful. But that's a perspective thing. It's not just that I can turn around, look behind me, and be like, oh, yeah, I made it through that traffic circle, and then I get to another one. We're not paying attention to what's behind us because we're looking forward. Right. So how do believers of the New Covenant in today's age act similarly? I'd say a lot of people, I think, get overwhelmed. And then there's just so many struggles. nowadays like you see a lot of bad stuff and a lot of bad stuff happens to good people because there's a lot of bad um that people kind of feel like you know god's not there anymore and they do like blame him for all of the bad stuff and why instead of looking at the good or what it's just like you know i think finding a quarter on the ground is a blessing or A washer and dryer working is a blessing because there's some people, you don't think about the bad that you've gotten out of more than they're focused right now. So why isn't anything good happening for me right now? They don't look at the little things. So those people getting out of Egypt, that was a good thing, but because of all the new struggles that they're going to face, trying to relocate, and trying to get food and water and shelter, they weren't thinking about the fact that they just got out of a very terrible place. And I think people do that now. Sorry, that isn't what you were looking for, but I think it's reasonable. Why $300? Why the 300? Well, I mean, if you think about Gideon, he had 300 soldiers, right? Are these 300 foxes supposed to symbolize Samson's Army. They certainly assisted. We talked about how many times did numbers mean something, right? So we had 40, 400. Wait until you get to the Danites in there, 600, and now we've got our 300 plus our 300. Yeah. Let me ask it in a different way. How many times does God have to be faithful before we walk in faith? That we truly believe the promise of Romans 8, 28, that everything happens for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose. How many times does He have to be faithful before we believe that? 300? I think it's probably more than that. 70 times 7. In my opinion, it's like having, it's like how kids are. Like, a lot of times, your parents are like, hey, don't do that, you're gonna get hurt. Hey, don't do that, you're gonna get hurt. Don't do that, you're gonna get hurt. And it just keeps going and going. And I think that's how I feel about God a lot of times. Like, I think about that. I'm like, you know, he probably is like, the most irritated parent in the entire universe. Because he has all of us to deal with, and he's like, stop doing that. Hey, I can help you. Come here. No, stop, stop. And we're just like, keep doing our own thing. And he's like, no. You know? Forever. I think some of it is personality. Some people have an easier time having faith. whether it's because they're more submitted to the Lord or whatever it is. But I think one of the things about having greater faith is that it takes those hard times. It takes those hard times for us to see that He is faithful. And we don't like those hard times. We want to learn the easy way. And we can't. And I've often told people, you know, the things that have happened in my life that were the hardest things made the biggest impact. I don't want to relive them, but I don't want to trade what I learned. And so some of it is experience. But we also have to have our eyes open and willing to see his faithfulness. Because sometimes we just get grumpy. And we don't want to see it. And it's, you know, we're our own worst enemy at that point. Yeah, that reminds me of Abraham sacrificing Isaac up. Was that for God's benefit or was that for Abraham's? Right? He makes a promise to us. Continually over and over again. He says behold. I have refined you but not as silver I have refined you in the furnace of affliction And and that is not to God's benefit but to ours and even in James Chapter one. It says count it all joy my brothers when you meet trials of various kinds. I Don't know about you, but I have a hard time doing that And then he says, why? He says, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. But how in the world would you ever be tested if you had no hardship? What are we supposed to do with this kind of concluding idea that the Spirit of the Lord rushes upon him, and then he immediately breaks his Nazarite vow with the Spirit of the Lord? Something that initially just comes to mind without having thought about it too deeply is the fact that Samson is mentioned in the Hall of Faith in the Book of Hebrews. And it makes me think, praise God that there are examples of extremely unfaithful, tainted men who continually I mean, if I didn't have these stories in the Bible, and I only had people who were faithful all the time, I might think that when I went to the Word, I would not be encouraged. But in fact, I would be in dismay, because I'm just surrounded by everyone else who is faithful, and yet I get to see every day how I fail. Okay, so we'll probably have to come back to a couple of the verses in chapter 15 next week. Which one specifically? Oh. Tell me now, please, since we brought this topic up. 16, right? So I'll leave it up to Do I have a volunteer to pray us out? Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we've had together to worship, to study the word, and specifically in Judges chapter 15, a real wild chapter as we struggle to completely understand what is being commanded As we go through this next week, we'll prepare for that. And thank you for all that you have done for us and will continue to do for us. In Jesus' name, amen.