Let's open up our Bibles in Judges chapter 15. Judges chapter 15. I'm gonna read the whole chapter. This says the word of the Lord. After some days, at the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife with a young goat. And he said, I will go into my wife in the chamber. But her father would not allow him to go in. And her father said, I really thought that you utterly hated her. So I gave her to your companion. Is not your younger sister more beautiful than she? Please take her instead. And Samson said to them, this time I shall be innocent in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm. So Samson went and caught 300 foxes and took torches. And he turned them tail to tail and put a torch between each pair of tails. And when he had set fire to the torches, he let the foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and set fire to the stacked grain and the standing grain as well as the olive orchards. Then the Philistines said, who has done this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Timonite, because he has taken his wife and given her to his companion. And the Philistines came up and burned her and her father with fire. And Samson said to them, if this is what you do, I swear I will be avenged on you. And after that, I will quit. And he struck them hip and thigh, meaning completely. with a great blow, and he went down and stayed in the cleft of the Rock of Eden. Then the Philistines came up and encamped in Judah and made a raid on Lehi. And the men of Judah said, Why have you come up against us? They said, We have come up to bind Samson, to do to him as he did to us. Then three thousand men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Eton and said to Samson, Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us? And he said to them, As they did to me, so have I done to them. And they said to him, We have come down to bind you, that we might give you into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, Swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves. They said to him, 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. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came shouting to meet him. Then the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flags that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it. And with it he struck a thousand men. And Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey have I struck down a thousand men, a thousand men. As soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone out of his hand, and that place was called Ramath Lehi, which means the hill of the jawbone. And he was very thirsty. 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? And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore, the name of it was called Anhakore. It is at Lehi to this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines 20 years. Let us pray one more time. Dear Heavenly Father, we ask the blessing of your Holy Spirit upon the preaching of your word and upon the hearing of your word that we might have open eyes, open ears, and open hearts to see Christ in this passage, to learn from Him, to learn gospel truths, to learn everything that you hate about sin and that you love about yourself and about your servants. Help us, O Lord, not only to hear, to be instructed, but to apply all those things in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We're now in chapter 15 of the Samson Saga. And I would like to do a little bit of recap here from chapters 13 and chapter 14, what we saw up until this point. So first of all, in chapter 13, we have the unrequested Savior. We have, for the first time in the book of Judges, the people of God did not call upon the name of the Lord for salvation. They felt that they were pretty much well and in peace with their enemies, with the Philistines ruling over them, and they did not need to ask for a Savior. But God, in His sovereign grace, in His mercy, He brings salvation to His people, even though they were not asking for it, even though they're not praying for salvation. And he brings Samson. Chapter 13 is a birth narrative, which is pretty much similar to what we have in Luke chapter 2, the birth narrative of Jesus Christ himself. So Samson is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's a type, a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is a type? Type usually is a person, a thing, or an event that help us to learn something about Jesus Christ. So Samson is this type of Christ, not so much so by the virtue of his personality, of his person, of who he was, but by virtue of his office. The office of a judge was an office of a deliverer, a person who would bring forth salvation to the people of God over their enemies, over their oppressors. That's the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, not only in Samson's life, but also in all other judges here that we find here in the book of Judges. And not only with the office of a judge, but also with the office of a priest, the office of a prophet, with the office of a king. All those kings, all those priests, all those prophets were types of pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ was about to come. And this is what we find in chapter 13, a great promise from God to save his people from the oppressors. But then we come to chapter 14, and we have a shocking surprise. We have this deliverer of God, this promised deliverer, this Nezerite, the one who was consecrated to be God's servant, to do God's will, to deliver the people of the Lord. Now he's wanting to marry a Philistine, a Timnite woman. And he said that, she was right into my eyes. She pleases me well. I want to do what I want to do, what my flesh wants to do. This great Savior that was born was acting just like the people that he came to save from their sins. And that is the refrain of the book of Judges. The people of God were doing what was right to their own eyes. And this is what Simpson himself was doing in chapter 14. Such a discouragement, especially for their parents. And for those who are waiting for a deliverer. But we saw in chapter 14 that God was using this, was using even Samson's sins to seek an opportunity against the Philistine. To seek an opportunity to deliver the people of God from their oppressors. is a mysterious way in which God works His salvation. He uses the sinful desires of Samson to bring forth salvation. And especially to bring forth enmity between the two seeds. Remember that in chapter 13 we saw that the people of God were in peace with their oppressors. So in chapter 14 God starts to bring forth this enmity between those two seats. In the beginning of chapter 14, Samson mentions his wife and talks about her as right to my own eyes, to right to my eyes. She pleases me well. But in the end of the chapter 14, he's saying that she is my heifer. And then he just abandoned the wedding feast. God was working enmity between the people of God and the world. However, when we come to chapter 15, it seems that we have a turning point in the story of Samson, a turning point in this story, in this narrative. In chapter 14, it looks like he was very careless about his vowels, about his commitment to the Lord. But now he's acting out of his purpose, out of what he has been called to do, to deliver the people of God. However, it's not without sin that this happens here. The story of Samson is also a lot of ups and downs. We have in the birth narrative a great savior who's coming. God blesses him in the end of the chapter. He steers him up with his spirit. And then in chapter 14 he marries a Timnite woman. But then the spirit of the Lord rushes upon him and he tore Delilah in pieces. He killed 30 Philistines. He began to bring deliverance to the people of God. And then in chapter 15 that we see here, he comes back to his wife, to his Philistine wife, to have peace with the Philistines again. But as we read in the call to worship in Hebrews 11, the New Testament writer interprets this narrative that we have here as Samson being a man of faith. Samson was a man of faith, a man who had faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And how so? After reading all of this, even in chapter 14, chapter 15, we will read more in chapter 16. How so? How is he a man of faith? And this is one of the first lessons that we learn from this chapter. About faith, a lesson about faith. That faith does not save us because of the quality. The quality of the faith does not save anyone. But the object of faith? The quality of faith that's not safe? But the object of our faith? In who are you putting your faith? Is it in the Lord Jesus Christ? He's the perfect object of our faith, and if we put our trust in Him alone, In the final day, we will be regarded and considered as faithful servants. Not because of ourselves, but because of the Lord Jesus Christ and the faith in Him alone. And this is what we see here in the life of Samson. He was a man of faith. That's the New Testament confirmation about this story. We can see this very well. Because when we think about faith and faithfulness, we always think about sinlessness. Sinlessness, but this is not the mark of the believer sinlessness is that never been a mark of a believer But faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and a hatred for sin is the mark of believers And it looks like in this chapter. He doesn't have much hatred for sin we read in verse 3 that He wants to avenge And he wants to revenge himself. It looks pretty much selfish Right? And this is the beginning of what looks like to be a big snowball that is rolling and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Because his wife was given to his companion, and then he's angry, he wants revenge. And then because of this, they kill his wife and his father. And because of this, he comes and shrunk them, in verse 8, And because of this, the Philistines come to the people of Judah to try to bind him. And then it's a snowball. It's growing and growing and growing. But even in this sinful situation, even in this terrible situation, this mess, God is working out salvation to his people. Even through sin, even through this weak Savior who is Samson. And then he starts his revenge by using this, by putting fire in all those foxes, 300 foxes. He pairs them two by two and put a torch and then, and leaves them to run away. And it brings a great, the structure in their fields, in the fields of the Philistines, in their harvest, in their crops. It was not only an economic affront, but also a theological affront, because they expect that their gods, Dagon, would bring forth this harvest to them. So this is what Samson is doing. He's bringing his revenge, which looks to be selfish. And I don't deny that there is an aspect of selfishness here, because of what people had done to him. But God is working through Samson to bring this revenge because God is the one who revenged his people, who avenged his people. He's the great avenger of his people. And he's bringing this oppression upon those who are oppressing the people of God through Samson. And here we find one of the ways in which Samson is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is the avenger of His people. He is the one who will bring revenge upon those who deny the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who will avenge against all our enemies, the sin, Satan, the world, death. He will bring justice to all our and His enemies. When He comes in the second time, He's the great avenger of His people. And this is what Samson is doing here. He's acting out of his calling to instruct and to deliver the people of God from the Philistines. But then in verse 9, we see that after all of this revenge game, one coming against the other, They come and encamped in Judah, verse 9 said, amid a raid on Lehi. And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? They were quite afraid right now. They were living in peace. And now this Philistine man came to them. And there's this discussion and they said, we come here to bind Samson. We want him. We want to kill him. We want this man who is doing a terrible work here in our country. And is bringing forth this enmity between us. And then it takes three thousand men of Judah to go down to find Samson and to talk to him. Three thousand men. This brings us the idea of how Samson was feared, not only by the Philistines, but by his own people. They knew what the Spirit of the Lord could do through Samson. And look what they talk, they speak to Samson. Look what they ask to Samson in verse 11. Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is that that you have done to us? They were living in peace with the Philistines. There was everything fine. Everything was okay. And now this Simpson comes and brings this destruction over and over again. First with the wedding feast, killing 30 men. And now struck those men and bring destruction on the Philistines harvest. What are you doing Simpson? Don't you know that these men are our masters? Don't you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? The people of God who came to Canaan to conquer the land, to rule over the people, to make God great among the nations, are now subdued to the Philistines. But this, brothers and sisters, is a picture of what sin does to each one of us. This is a picture of what sin does to us. People avoid salvation. People avoid the Lord Jesus Christ. Deny the Lord Jesus Christ and His salvation because we are too much comfortable in our sins. This is the case for all of those who are not in the Lord Jesus Christ. They are ruled by their flesh. They are ruled by their wishes, by their desire, their sinful desires. And they don't want to be saved. Is that your case this evening, dear friend? Are you hiding sins? Are you delighting in your sinful activities and sinful actions? And engaging in those sinful actions? hiding from everyone. And when you hear God rebuking you, you say, I don't wanna be saved. Is that your case? You cannot let that happen. You come here to church every single Sunday and you hear over and over again the word of the Lord being preached to you. This is God coming to your encounter to meet you and to bring salvation to you. And what do you say? What is this that you have done to us, O God, bringing forth salvation, bringing forth this correction in our lives and trying to take away our sins from us? Is this so precious to me? I want to keep living in my sin? Don't you know, O Lord, that this sin rules over me? I don't want to deny myself. I don't want to deny my sins to be saved. When we deny the Lord Jesus Christ, when we deny our brothers and sisters rebuking upon our sins, this is what we are telling Jesus. This is what we are telling God. That we want to keep, live our lives comfortably in our sins. Because they rule over us. What sins rule over you, dear friend? Search your heart. What are those sins that if someone comes to you and say, hey friend, don't do this. This is sinful. Stop doing this. Don't do this anymore. Don't go this way. And you just get defensive or aggressive against this person. That's because you're loving and caring for this sin so much that you don't want to let go. You want this sin to rule over you and to be your master. But the Bible says that we can only have one master. It is impossible for us to have two masters. Either we will love one and hate the other. You cannot have two masters. So let us open our ears, open our hearts to be rebuked by our brothers and sisters. They can see better than us. Sometimes, when they are apart from us or in different situations, different circumstances, they can see better than us what we are doing. Sometimes we are blind to ourselves, we are blind to our sins. And when they come, accept the rebuking, accept what they're telling you. Don't be ruled by your sins. Don't be conformed by this world. Don't be conformed with this world. And then, what those 3,000 men of Judah did with Samson. This is what we see next. And they say in verse 12, We have come down to bind you that we might give you into the hands of Philistines. And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not attack me yourselves. And they say, no, we will only bind you and give you into their hands. We will surely not kill you. You see how coward those people were. 3,000 men. They want Samson dead. They want to end this war between them and the Philistines. But they were not even have the courage to kill Samson themselves. Because they knew that he was from the Lord. He had the spirit of the Lord. And then they gave Samson over to the Philistines. Samson was commissioned by God to save those people, to save the people of Judah. And this same people gave him over to the oppressors. Does that sound familiar to you? That's, again, a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. He came to his people. He became human. To save His people, to save Israel, to save those who Him gave His law. And all the ordinances and the covenant. And what did they do? They rejected the Lord Jesus Christ. They gave Him over to the authorities to be crucified. Jesus Christ had to fight this battle alone, by Himself. No one was praying for Him. No one was encouraging Him. No one was supporting the Lord Jesus Christ. Actually, those who were with Him to pray were slipping. And then they just abandoned the Lord Jesus Christ. This episode here of The deliverer of God, the promised deliverer of God's sense of being forsaken by His own people is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ who was forsaken by His own people to suffer and to bring forth salvation by suffering. And then in verse 14, He came to Lehi and the Philistines came shouting to Him, Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon Samson. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon Samson again. Again, that's the only time in the book of Judges where the Spirit of the Lord coming upon someone is described as rushing upon. We have the Spirit of the Lord coming upon many Judges, Gideon, Jephthah, and some others. But it only says, it came upon him, it was upon him. But with Samson, the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily. And the ropes that were in his arms became as flags that had caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. Notice that it's not talking here about the strength of the Spirit through Samson here. The ropes became as flax that has caught fire. And the bones melted off his hands. It was not him, but it was totally the Spirit of the Lord delivering him. And then he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey. Fresh because probably it was a donkey that was recently dead. And so the teeth were already there. And He uses this weak weapon to strike a thousand men. A thousand men. The Spirit of the Lord comes mightily upon Him and He brings forth this great salvation among the Philistines. Can you imagine that? A thousand men? Just one man, one Simpson, fighting against a thousand men. It's almost like this church almost filled with people, and all of you coming against me, just one person. A thousand men, and by the Spirit of the Lord, He was able to strike all of them. This was God strengthening Him to bring forth salvation to His people. God was oppressing the oppressors. He was bringing enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This is the work of the Spirit of the Lord, as we saw in chapter 14. If you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to be filled with the Holy Spirit, where is the enmity? Between you and this world? Are you friends with this world? Or not? The Spirit of the Lord rushes upon you and comes upon you. This enmity needs to be present in your life. Of course, it would look differently than that time. You would not go around with a jawbone trying to kill all the unbelievers, of course not. But it means that you would not give your heart to this world. It means that you would not give your desires to the things of this world, but the things of the Spirit, the things of the Lord. And then in verse 17, as soon as he had finished speaking, he threw away the job on his hand, and that place was called Ramath-Lehi. And he was very thirsty. He called upon the Lord and said, you have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant and shall now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised. Now after this great salvation, he's just completely tired. Extremely tired. And he is so tired that he feels that he will about to die because of his thirst. And he calls upon the name of the Lord. That's the first time that we have here in the narrative of Samson. That Samson is praying to the Lord. He's calling upon the name of the Lord. That's why I say that this is a turning point in the narrative of Simpson. Not so much so because of his sins, because we see found some sins in here. But he's now content with his calling. The calling that he was once despising in chapter 14, he now understands that this is his calling. This is why God brought him to fight against the Philistines. That's why God calls him to do. But he brings this prayer as a complaint. And I don't think it's a sinful complaint, but I think it's a complaint out of faith. It's a complaint out of faith. He said, you granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant. He's acknowledging that all that he had done to strike all the Philistines was the work of the Spirit of the Lord, was the work of God himself. He was acknowledging that God was the reason of his strength. God was the reason for all that was happening here. He was humbling himself before the Lord. How many times we call upon the name of the Lord to do our daily and mundane business or stuff? Sometimes we just forget, and we think that we are on our own. We go to practice piano, do our homework, do our job, our daily job, or whatever. We just rely on our own strength and we don't pray. We don't think that we need to pray. We don't think that we need the Lord upon us and the Lord is strengthening us to do what we need to do. This is what Samson did. He acknowledged that this great salvation came from the Lord and it's really odd to to relate all those things for 21st century Western mind this is a bloody chapter a thousand men struck a lot of blood and he struck the Philistines also again in chapter in verse 8 and all of this happening and he's saying that this was a great salvation from the Lord this is why he came for to bring this salvation And in his prayer, he continues, he said, Shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncertain sized? He was acknowledging that the promise of the Lord that he probably heard many times in his childhood and his youth, that he will be the promise, the Nazarite that will deliver the people of the Lord. And now he's almost dying, and he said, God, I believe in your promises. God, I know what you have promised to me, and I know that you will accomplish this. Why am I here in this situation? in the hands of this uncircumcised. Now he puts himself out of the picture. Before he wants to marry them, now he said, they are the uncircumcised. We are the people of God. They are not. God is working not only salvation to the people in general, but even into Samson's life. In such a way that we can call him a man of faith. A man of faith. And then God split open the hallowed place that is at Lehi, and water came out of it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. God heard the voice of his servant. And this is pretty much a similar situation to what we find in Exodus chapter 17, when the people of God was delivered from the Egyptians, and they are thirsty as well. And Moses as a mediator call upon God in behalf of the people to have water and God hears his servant This again happens here. God is hearing his servant. He already gave salvation To his people. He already gave this great salvation here in chapter 15 He can do lesser things as well. This is how should we live our Christian life. God already gave us His only Son. He can give us lesser things as well. He can give us comfort. He can give us His Spirit. He can give us His comfort through hard times, in hard situations and providences. If we call upon the name of God, He will hear His people. He will hear His people. And He called that place Ein HaKoreh. Ein HaKoreh. If you have a footnote in your Bible, it would say, means the spring of Him who called. He's the spring of Him who called, the fountain of great and eternal waters. This is Jesus Christ. He is the fountain of waters for His people. Eternal waters for all of those who call upon His name. But the word for fountain or river or spring in the Hebrew is the same word to ice. The same word to ice. And I don't think it's random here, because there's another, there are another word for rivers, for river, to the word river or springs in the Hebrew, but the author uses this word specifically. That also is a word for ice. And what we saw in the previous chapter is that there is, in the story of Samson, there is this emphasis in the ice, in the appearance. We see over and over again in chapter 13, the ice, the appearance, they saw, they watch. And then in chapter 14, that she was right in my eyes, a negative side of this vision emphasis, but now is in the positive side again. Remember, it's ups and downs, the story of Samson. And he called his name, not only the springs of the one who called, but the eyes of the one who called. As if God was opening his eyes to see his salvation, to understand his calling, and to do his will. But Samson was not perfect. Samson, just like us, he was an unfinished work of God. So he was not perfect. And then what we find when we come to chapter 16, verse 1, Samson went to Gaza. And there he saw a prostitute and went into her. Again. Now that we were expecting great things, even greater things to come, this man to deliver his people, now there's a decline again. Now there's a decline again. But God even with this situation that it looks even harder and difficult and more challenging and more sinful and more messy. God will bring His salvation to His people. God will deliver His people from their oppressors. This is a certainty for us even today. That even through many sins, even through the sins of others, even through our sins, God will bring salvation and will lead us safely at His home, at our home. And we need to to stand firm in these promises and His promises and believe in Him and have faith in Him alone for salvation. Let us pray. Oh God, we thank You for Your Word that is true, that is perfect, that does not lie, does not lie about the sins of Your people, does not lie about the sins of Simpson, But also, Lord, it is a Word that brings forth salvation through all those things. Your ways, O Lord, are mysterious ways. But we can rest on You, that even when we fail, even when we fail, even when our faith fails, You will be there to help us, to guide us, and to purify us. and to transform us into the image of Your Son. And in His name we pray, amen.