We come now to the preaching of God's word. Let's open up our Bibles in Judges chapter 16. Judges chapter 16. I'm going to read the whole chapter. It's a bit long. This says the word, the living word of God. Judges 16. Samson went to Gaza, and there he saw a prostitute, and he went into her. The Gazites were told, Samson has come here, and they surrounded the place and set an ambush for him all night at the gate of the city. They kept quiet all night, saying, let us wait till the light of the morning. then we will kill him. But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders, and carried them to the top of the hill that is in the front of Ebram. After this, he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 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 might overcome him, overpower him, that we might 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 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 an inner chamber. And she said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he snapped the bowstrings 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 buy me with new robes that have not been used, then I shall become weak and be like any other man. So Delilah took new robes and bound him with them and said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson. And the men lying in ambush were in an inner chamber. But he snapped the robes 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 wove them into the web, and she made them tight with the pin and said to him, The Philistines are upon you, Samson. But he awoke from his sleep and pulled away the pin, the loom, and 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 this 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 waxed to death. And he told her all his heart, and said to her, A razzer has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. In my head, if my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me, and I shall become weak and be like any other man. When Delilah saw that he had told her 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 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 fullest sins are upon you, Samson. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go out at other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. And the Philistine sized him and gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with bronze shackles. And he groaned at the mill in the prison, but the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their god, and to rejoice. And they said, Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hand. And when the people saw him, they praised their god. For they said, Our god has given our enemy into our hand, the revenger of our own country who has killed many of us. And when their hearts were merry, they said, Call Samson, that he might entertain us. So they called Samson out of the prison, and he entertained them. They made him stand between the pillars. And Samson said to the young man who held him by the hand, Let me feel the pillars on which the house rests, that I may lean against them. Now the house was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, and on the roof there were about 3,000 men and women who looked on while Samson entertained. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and he leaned his weight against them, his right hand in the one and his left hand on the other. And Samson said, let me die with the Philistines. Then he bowed with all his strength, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he had killed. during his life, that his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Ishtar in the tomb of Manoah, his father. He had judged Israel 20 years. Let us pray one more time. O Holy Spirit, we ask that you might enlighten our hearts and our minds and our eyes to see the beauty of the victory of Jesus Christ. in the story of Samson, and also to learn from Samson's mistakes to our own lives. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Dear congregation, when we think about victory in a battle or in a war, how do you imagine it? Usually, we tend to think about people who are powerful than those who they defeat. The victors maybe might be glad for the victory, they might celebrate. This is how we imagine a battle and someone coming out victorious in a battle. Tonight we will take a look in a victorious episode. After 20 years of faithfully judging the people of Israel, Samson's story comes to an end. But that victory is not like we imagine, like we normally imagine, or like we see in the movies. It is a victory through death. It is a victory through shame. It is a victory in weakness that we are seeing here in the life of Samson. Tonight we will see how Samson's death brought victory to Israel over the Philistines, over their oppressors. and how this will point to the Lord Jesus Christ and His victory over His enemies. There are some parallels here. But first, let's just recap a little bit from the previous chapters, previous servants. Chapter 13 starts the narrative of Samson by the promise of a Savior. They were being oppressed by the Philistines for quite a long time. They do not ask for God to help them, but God sends them a promise of a Savior. And it's Samson. He comes in a pre-incarnate form, Christ himself, to give the good tidings to Manoah and his wife. He gives all the Nazarite vows, what he's supposed to do, how he's supposed to conquer the enemies. And there is a positive emphasis in vision in this chapter, as we've seen before. Manoah and his wife saw the angel of the Lord. The appearance of the Lord was great. They watch the angel of the Lord coming up in the flame of fire. There is this emphasis in the senses of the eyes. And then we turn to chapter 14, we see again the same emphasis and vision in the eyes, but it's a negative one. Chapter 14 starts with Samson looking at a Timnite woman, a Philistine woman, and wanting her to himself, to delight in his fleshly desires. Their parents were very disappointed. They had many good and positive expectations about him. But he surprisingly disappoints them. But even so, we saw in chapter 14 that God was at work even in Samson's sinful actions. God was working enmity between the Philistines and the Israelites in chapter 14. And then we come to chapter 15, and we see Samson taking revenge of the acts of the Philistines upon himself. And he brings great destruction among the Philistines twice in this chapter. And the chapter ends in a very good way. When Samson is hunger and thirst, and he calls upon the name of God, he calls upon the name of the Lord, and God brings to him water from the rock, a very common episode that already happened in Exodus that happens again in the life of Samson and he calls that place the vision of the one calling of the one praying or the flowing of the waters of the one calling the one praying And so the life of Samson has this ups and downs ups and downs he's a man of faith as we read in Hebrews 11 a man of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to come and But he was not perfect. He has these ups and downs in his life, just like you and I. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ, we are not perfect. We have our ups and downs as well. If a book had to be written about our lives, what would be there? Yes, it could be faithful to God in many ways. There would be our sins there as well. And then we start chapter 16 after this positive ending in chapter 15 with verse 1 that says, Samson went to Gaza and there he saw a prostitute. Again, this aspect of what he saw with his eyes. He saw a prostitute and he went into her. The chapter begins with Samson living by sight. The chapter starts with Samson leaving by sight. But notice that the first information that we have here is that he went to Gaza, which is a good thing. Many commentators said that it was not a good thing because he was going to the territory of the enemies, of the Philistines. But this is exactly the point of his mission. He was called by God to go there and to conquer the oppressors, to conquer the Philistines. So it's not clear in the text, but I believe that this is telling something good about he's going to Gaza to conquer the Philistines. However, he's stopped by a prostitute. As he's going to fulfill his mission, he's stopped by a prostitute. It's a very similar description of what we have in chapter 7 in Proverbs. I would like to open there just for a little while. Proverbs chapter 7 says in verse 6, it's talking about the father instructing his child about the adulterous woman. And in chapter 7 of Proverbs verse 6 it says, For at the window of my house I have looked out, and I have seen among the simple, I have perceived among the youths, a young man lacking sense, passing along the street near her corner, the corner of the adulterous woman. taking the road to her house. Verse 10, And behold, a woman meets him, dressed as a prostitute, willy of heart. And then in verse 22, All at once he follows her, as an ox goes to a slaughter, or as a stag is caught fast. Verse 25, "...let not your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths, for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are mighty thrown." Or in other translations, all those who she slain are mighty men. This is exactly what is happening here with Samson. He was going to his mission, he was going to Gaza, probably to defeat more Philistines, to kill more of them, to conquer them. but he is stopped by a prostitute. Many times this happens even with ourselves. It's not because we are willing to do the will of God, we are willing to go in His paths, to obey His commandments, to do His will. This does not mean that we will not face temptations. This would not mean that we will not fall into those temptations. We have to be watchful. It's not because you go to church, you leave the life of the church, the Christian life, that you will never be tempted. It happens with us every single day. The question is, will you turn aside, turn from the path of the Lord to go to her house, to give ears to the enemy, and to distract yourself doing what you were not calling to do? This is what happened with Samson. And it was the beginning of his downward spiral. We see in the first verses the display of his strength carrying the gates of the city through a hill. He was going up in a hill, holding in his own shoulders the city gates. And what was the purpose of this? Apparently, no purpose at all. And notice that every time that God fills Samson with strength and power in the other chapters, it's for him to do the will of God, it's for him to do what he was called to do, to conquer and to kill the Philistines. But right here, no purpose at all. It's not aligned or connected to his purpose, to his mission. Maybe it's just to show off himself. And also the Holy Spirit is not mentioned here. It's not mentioned here. We have displays of sense and strength in this first verses, verses one through three, and also with the Delilah episode. But in none of those times, the Holy Spirit is mentioned there when He displays His strength. The beginning, this was the beginning of His downward spiral in this chapter. And then in verses 4 to 21, we see this famous account of Samson and Delilah. And it's important to notice that she's not the prostitute of verse 1. There are two different women. And she's the only woman named in this story. This is very interesting. Because we have the mother of Samson, a very godly woman. She was not named. We have the Timnite woman in chapter 14, not named. We have this woman, this prostitute in the beginning of chapter 16, not named. But Delilah, she has her name here in the Scriptures. And what is happening here in this very famous episode? What is happening here? They start to play a game. They start to play a game. Both of them, Samson and Delilah, they are playing with each other. In verse 5 we see that, verse 4, that he loved her, he loved Delilah, and the Philistines took advantage of this, in verse 5 we see, and they promised to give her a lot of money to seduce him. The second part of verse 5 says, seduce him and see where his great strength lies and by what means we might overpower him. Notice again that he was not a muscle man, a huge man, because they were wondering where this strength comes from. It was not something apparent in him. That's why they were puzzled and they wanted to take him, to size him, to kill him. And they use Delilah to do this. And they start to play this game. It's a very strange game, right? If we read verse 6, Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and how you might be bound that one could subdue you. It's a really silly question, right? It's obvious what she wants to do. She wants to get him. She wants to size him, to bound him. She wants to subdue Simpson. It's pretty obvious. It's so obvious that in the next verses, she would do exactly what he told him. So she asked, what could I do to bound you? And he tells her, and she does the exact thing that he told her. But he's not dumb here. I've read some commentaries saying that this is the power of sin in our minds, darkening our minds. in the way that we become dumb. But I don't think it's what is happening here. I think what is happening here is that He is willingly, He is willfully playing this game with her. He knows exactly what she is trying to do and what He will do after He tells her this. He was using the gift that He received from God to play with Delilah, with the Philistines. He's playing with his own enemies on purpose. I want to show that nothing can hold him. And he is powerful enough and he's in control of the whole situation. He is mocking her. This is what he's doing. He's mocking her. Even she understands this later. She says that, you were mocking me, telling me those lies. And from here, we can see a clear application about what we should not do with our sins, that we should not play with our sins. Don't think you can control your sins. Don't think you have power over your sins to say when it's enough to deal with it, to engage or not with your sins. Don't think you can trust in your own gifts to overcome and overpower your sin. Don't think that you can trust in the things that God already done to you in your life because you are a pastor or because you are an elder or a deacon or because you are a pretty much mature Christian with many years of experience in Christian life. Don't think that you can rule over a sin without the power of the Holy Spirit. When we play with our sins, we are mocking God. But God is not mocked, Galatians 6, 7 says, for whatever one sows, he will also reap. What should be our reaction against our sins? Matthew 5.29 says, if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. We are called to be radical against our sins, against the temptations that come to us. Not to play with it, not to think that we can control our sins. That we can play with them and said I can stop whatever I want. This is not true. This is a lie that Satan wants you to believe to keep you in your sins. Samson was playing with his eyes and he lost his eyes. He was playing with his strength and he lost his strength. He was also presuming on God's blessings. He was being presumptuous about the Holy Spirit. He has taken the power of the Holy Spirit for granted in his life. Look at verse 20. After he mocked Delilah three times, and after he finally gave away the secret of his strength, look what we read in verse 20. And he awoke from his sleep and said, I will go loud as other times and shake myself free. But he did not know that the Lord had left him. He presumed that just because God had strengthened him for so many times, He would do it again, even though He just gave away the, so to speak, secret of His strength. How many times we do the same with God? That just because God has helped us in the past, He will help us now, even though we are playing with our sins? We would think that He will come and save us even when we are engaging willfully into our sinful desires. God should not be mocked. He told Delilah the secret, the sign of his strength. And notice that the hair was not something magic in his hair. The hair was just the sign, the sign of the Nazarite vow, the sign that he was chosen by God to deliver the people, to have strength to deliver the people from the Philistines. But however, the sign sometimes, when we take out the sign, we are taking out the thing signified by the sign. The hair was not magic, but the hair was a token of that God was with him and strengthening him. And when he despised the sign of his Nazareth vow, he was despising God himself and the power of the Holy Spirit himself. That's why he lost his power when he lost the hair. It was being presumptuous about God and about his blessings. And we have a sign too, right, as Christians. What is the sign of the Christians? It's our baptism. We've been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This is a symbol that we belong to Christ, that we are united with Him, that we have been cleansed by His blood. And how we despise our baptism. Living a careless life, indulgent. Indulgent life, indulgent in sin. This is how we despise our baptism, the vows that we made in our baptism. Just like Samson. And this was how he lost his eyes. You see in verse 21, and the Philistines sight him and gouge out his eyes. Verse 20 says that the Lord left him. The Lord left Samson. It was a total abandonment from God. This is something tricky as well because we cannot understand this the spirit in him as he was regenerated and then he's not regenerated anymore he's talking about the empowering of the spirit he's not talking about regeneration so when the text says he did not know that the Lord had left him it's not because he was once converted and now he's not converted anymore but that the empowering of the Holy Spirit was not with him anymore and we have a plot in the story now Verses 23 to 31, we have now the description of a seeming victory from the Philistines over the Israelites. There's celebration. There's a great feast to Dagon, their god. Verse 23 says, Now the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon, their god, and to rejoice, and they said, Our god has given Samson, our enemy, into our hand. But there is an irony here, isn't it? Samson was literally without his physical eyes, but the Philistines were the ones blind here as well. They were blind, they did not see, and they did not know that God himself and the Holy Spirit was making up this scene to deliver powerfully the people of Israel through this seeming defeat of Samson. They were praising their gods, saying that they were responsible for this. But in fact, God Himself was the one who made this up for His own glory and for the sake of His own people. But they were there mocking God, mocking also Samson, humiliating him and laughing at him. and worshiping their God over the God of Israel. So when the people is mocking Samson, they are actually mocking God. They are mocking the anointed one of God. They are mocking God himself. Samson's shame was also God's shame. This means that if it's God's shame, he will do something about it. He would definitely do something about it. And then God's strength will be displayed in this situation, but it will be through weakness. God's victory will come through a seeming defeat. There was sense and powerless without his eyes being mocked. But as he prayed to the Lord, As he called upon the name of the Lord, God heard his prayer and delivered him. Read verse 28 with me. Then Samson called to the Lord and said, O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I might be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. He's not being selfish here. He knows that he is the one called by God to represent God and to display God's glory to the people and to the enemies. So to mess up with Simpson is to mess up with God himself. And there, in this place, without his eyes, Simpson acted out of faith. And what is faith? Hebrews 11 verse 1 says to us very clearly, faith is the assurance of the things hoped, the conviction of things not seen. There he was without his eyes, blind, fleshly blind. but with his eyes open, his eyes of faith open, looking unto Jesus, looking unto God and having faith that he can do something in this situation for his name's sake. In this situation, he starts to see clearly than ever before, because he was looking at God with faith, not being presumptuous, but in a total dependence upon God. Saying, God, I depend upon you and upon your Holy Spirit to do something here. Please help me and strengthen me one more time. He's acknowledging that God is the one to give him strength to accomplish his mission. And there he destroyed God's enemies and the Philistines. The end of verse 30 says, so the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life. He was not trying to kill himself. He was not in distress. It was not a suicide. But it was an act of sacrifice, a sacrifice for His people, a sacrifice for His mission. He gave His own life for His people, even the people who despised Him and rejected Him in chapter 15, giving Him over to the Philistines. He was sacrificing Himself for the mission that God had given to Him. And this reminds us, dear brothers and sisters, of our Lord Jesus Christ. Very similar situation. It was an apparent, seeming defeat. There was Jesus in the cross, naked, weak, humiliated, bleeding. But at the same time, He was in that cross. He was crushing the head of the serpent in His death. Christ was the one who spoiled principalities and powers, and He puts His enemy to open shame in the cross, triumphing over them in the cross. This is what Colossians says. He was not the one being humiliated, but He was bringing shame to death and to Satan on the cross of Calvary by His own death, by the seeming destruction, by the seeming defeat. And this victory, the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ, accomplish our righteousness, our sanctification, and the Holy Spirit in us, within us. In the death of Christ, we find our victory. This is the parallel of the Gospel. The Gospel is full of paradoxes, actually. A lot of paradoxes. That in His weakness we find our strength, in His death we find our life, and in shame we find glory. And although there is a lot of parallels between Samson and Christ, of course we know that Samson was not a perfect picture. Until he get to this point where he sacrificed for the people, where he sacrificed for his mission and for God, he went through a lot of suffering that he indulged, he put himself in affliction because of his own sins. This was not the case with the Lord Jesus Christ. And one more thing, in the end of verse, by the end of verse 31 we read that, They took him and buried him between Zorah and Eshto. Samson's victory was a great victory. He killed many of the Philistines. But he's still there between Zorah and Eshto. But not Christ. Christ rose from the dead and he is alive right now, the hand of the Father. Christ is alive, He arose from the dead so that we could have life in Him and life everlasting. We can have victory over death because He conquered death and Satan and sin for us. Congregation, we've learned so many things in this story of Samson, but I want us, I want you to remember about this story. That even through our weakness, God will accomplish his saving purposes in our lives, in the lives of those who choose. He will work in us and in our hearts through his Holy Spirit. And He will accomplish this, and He already accomplished this with His death, with His victory, and His death, and His resurrection. And we can be victorious in our Christian life as well, when we die to ourselves. This is the way to live for Christ. Dying to ourselves. Being weak. Denying ourselves. Taking up our crosses. forsaking our lives here in this earth and living to God. Let us not be presumptuous about God's grace and work in us, but let us live by faith in the Son of God, looking unto Jesus, founder and perfecter of our faith. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, what a glorious way to live, dying to ourselves every single day, denying ourselves as Jesus Christ denied Himself and died for sinners, to live His glory, to came down to earth, to live our lives, and to give us life. Help us, O Lord, to always remember this, to not be presumptuous about the Holy Spirit, to not play with our sins, but rule over them by the power of Your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.