If you could turn with me to Judges chapter 14, and I'll be reading quite a lengthy piece of scripture because after this morning, I think that there's an emphasis on the Word of God, and so I'd like to give you a good chunk of it and think with you together about it. So again, with Judges chapter 14 in a minute, I'll also read a short verse, a short excerpt from Hebrews chapter 11, which is related to this. So Judges chapter 14, I'm reading from the New King James Version. Now Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines. And so he went up and he told his father and mother and said, I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughter of the Philistines. Now, therefore, get her for me as a wife. And then his father and his mother said to him, Is there no woman among the daughters of your brethren or among my people that you must go and get a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said to his father, Get her for me, for she pleases me well. But his father and mother didn't know that it was of the Lord that he was seeking an occasion to move against the Philistines. For at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel. And so Samson went down to Timnah with his father and mother and came to the vineyards of Timnah. And now to his surprise, a young lion came roaring against him, and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he tore that lion apart as one would have torn a young goat, though he had nothing in his hands. But he didn't tell his father or his mother what he had done. And then he went down, and he talked with that woman, and she pleased him, saying, Well, and after some time, when he returned to get her, he turned aside to see that carcass of the lion, and behold, a swarm of bees and honey were in that carcass of the lion. And so he took some of it in his hands and he went along eating. And when he came to his father and his mother, he gave some to them and they ate as well. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion. And so his father went down to the woman and Samson gave a feast there for young men to do so. And it happened when they saw him, they brought 30 companions to be with him. Then Samson said to them, well, let me pose to you a riddle. If you can correctly solve and explain it to me within the seven days of the feast, then I will give you 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothing. But if you can't explain it to me, then you should give me 30 linen garments and 30 changes of clothing. So they said to him, pose your riddle, that we might hear it. And so he said to them, out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet. Now for three days they could not explain that riddle. But it came to pass on the seventh day that they said to Samson's wife, entice your husband that he might explain this riddle to us or else we'll burn you and your father's house with fire. So if you invited us in order to take what is ours, isn't that so? So Samson's wife wept on him and said, you only hate me. You don't love me. You've posed a riddle to the sons of my people that haven't explained it to me. And he said it to her. Look, I haven't explained it to my father and my mother, so should I explain it to you? Now she wept on him all seven days while the feast lasted, and it happened on the seventh day that he told her, because she pressed him so much, and then she explained the riddle to the sons of her people. And so the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, what is sweeter than honey, and what's stronger than a lion? And he said to them, well, if you hadn't plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, and he went on to Ashkelon, and he killed thirty of their men, took their apparel, and gave those changes of clothing to those who had explained the riddle. And so his anger was aroused, and he went back up to his father's house. Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his best man. After a while, in the time of the wheat harvest, it happened that Samson visited his wife with a young goat, and he said, Let me go into my wife's room, but her father wouldn't permit him to go in. The father said, I really thought you thoroughly hated her, and therefore I gave her to your companion. Isn't her younger sister better than she? Please take her instead. Samson said to them, This time I shall be blameless regarding their follicence if I harm them. Samson went and he caught 300 foxes, and he took the torches and turned the foxes tail to tail and put the torch between each of the tails. When he set the torches on fire, he let those foxes go into the standing grain of the Philistines and burned them up, both the shocks and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and the olive groves. The Philistines said, Who's done this? And the answer is Samson, the son-in-law of Abtimnite, because he's taken his wife and given her to his companion. And so the Philistines came out and burned her and her father with fire. And I will, thus far reading of God's word, let me read to you a short passage from Hebrews. It's the only place in the New Testament that really speaks of this man Samson, who we hear so much of in our Bible storybooks. And it says, beginning with verse 30, by faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they were encircled for seven days. By faith, the harlot Rahab didn't perish for those who did believe when she received the spies and peace. And what more shall I say, for the time would fail me to tell Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, and also David, and Samuel, and the prophets, who through faith they subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped at the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, utter weakness, they were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of aliens, and women received their death back to life. Before we turn to God's Word, let me just do what Ed Blackwood calls the front porch here. A little bit of a story, I won't go into how it is that I'm standing before you tonight, but I believe that this is not a theological statement, but I think that our God has something of a sense of humor. Because when I had agreed to take on this particular evening service, I hadn't realized that we would have just finished up a series on preaching. So I was thinking, all these last three weeks, Yeah, this is fun. Then I realized actually after the morning service that the joke was actually on you guys. So there we are. We're both in this together. Now, just to complete the hook, I also want to say, Rich just asked me before he came on, he said, so I'm curious to know how you got that passage, and I'm sort of curious to know that too, actually. It came to me while we were traveling that at one of the places that we worshiped, there was a sermon on this passage, and there was something very striking about it that really struck me. It wasn't necessarily in the sermon, but it just rang very clear to me. If I could just put my finger on it, and I was sure I could put my finger on it, and here we are tonight, and I think we better pray. And that the Lord would open his word to us that we would understand it. Our Father in heaven, we thank you so much for the gift of your word. And we do pray that you would open our hearts and you would open our minds to see what it is that you have in your word, the riches, which are so boundless from end to end, even in passages such as this one that seems so obscure and so counter to what we would think are your ways. And so, Lord, we do pray that your spirit would open our eyes to see it and even more that we would see you. And Lord, you would be directing us through this. to serve you better throughout this coming week. These things we pray that Jesus Christ will be glorified in and through our time in this evening. Amen. So this passage that we have before us, I've cut it off just a little bit. But if we add the context, it's not going to really change the main thing that we have to deal with tonight. And that is simply that passages like this are a real puzzle. I think we have to. I have to admit it, when we encounter them. It's a little bit belying when we see the pictures of Samson or whatever in our children's storybooks and see him tearing up lines and stuff like that and think, yeah, it's really cool. But when we actually look at these passages, they're quite troublesome. And so I've learned that every sermon should have a main point that you're supposed to take home. So the main point, I think, is this night, is that the scriptures always have a point. And that point is usually really, really sharp, and it's usually pointing in a particular direction that we'll see unfold as we go through this passage. This story, what makes this passage obscure is not like other passages of scripture where when we read them, we're not sure what they're talking about. There's lots of scriptures like that. Some of the prophets, you read them, it's like, I don't know what that is. It's very clear what this is about. It's very easy to get the sense of what's going on. It's actually a pretty straightforward story. And in some sense, it's actually really a realistic story. It's a story which Aside from some of the cultural differences, and we don't have lions and things like that running around here, we can actually imagine this sort of craziness going on in some place like, say, the suburbs of Chicago, well, maybe downtown. places that are a little bit more lawless than what we see now, but you can imagine this kind of thing going on. It's a pretty straightforward story, and we can recount it quite easily. If we step back into chapter 13, there's an interesting thing that happens in that Samson's birth is predicted by God himself appearing to his parents. And the parents don't get it. They're just like, what? What? What? And if you read through that passage, this God comes to them and pounds into their head that this child is going to be something very special. And in this chapter, we see what that specialness turns out to be. The first thing we find out about him, which turns out to be a characteristic of his, is that he has an eye on a girl. And the girl is one of the neighbor girls. And since these people are of the tribe of Dan, if you read forward in the Book of Judges, you find out that the tribe of Dan was the one tribe that really never got their inheritance right. They never could get the Philistines out of it. And so the neighbor girl was a Philistine. Now, the parents, of course, were not happy about this at all, but he completely insisted on it, and eventually the parents give in and go down and arrange to have him married to this Palestinian woman. While going down, of course, he has this altercation with the lion, and we first see that, yeah, there is something striking about him. The guy is strong, right? I mean, he takes on a lion face-to-face. He tears him as a young goat. I've never torn a young goat, but I can imagine kind of what that would be like. And so he rips the thing apart and leaves it for dead. Later on, of course, he picks up, finds the honey, and goes, hey, that's kind of cool, eats it, goes and gives some to his parents, and then goes on to throw a big, huge party for his wedding. And then he sets up the riddle. The Fliss and companions, by the way, exactly who these companions are is really not clear. One interpretation, which I find to be sort of compelling and probably right, is that these friends were given to him probably because the Flistons weren't too keen on having this guy wandering around their town. He must have been quite a specimen if he could rip a lion apart. So when he came to town, they gave him 30 friends to be with him. And you could tell what kinds of friends they were because they had quite a hostile relationship. So they probably weren't friends, they were probably more like guards or guardians. And so he starts picking this fight via the riddle, and then eventually these people get upset. They get his wife to talk him out of the solution to the riddle, and then so on and so on. Samson finds out he's been shnuckered, he gets mad, and he goes down to Ashkelon, kills a bunch of people in the big city that's further down, kills them, and then the people from Ashkelon come up there and burn down his in-laws. Now hold on, there's a step in between there. His father-in-law decides that this guy is not exactly the one you want in your household, because the guys down in Ashkelon are likely to come up and burn your house to the ground. So he decides to try to get rid of him, but he can't get rid of him. All he does is irritate him. And so then he goes down and burns down all their crops, with his little trick with the foxes. And by the way, he doesn't just bother burning down their crops, he also burns down the vineyards. You know how long it takes to grow an olive vineyard? He essentially wipes out the local economy for years and years to come. which really got them talked off, and then they went and burned down his father-in-law's house. And that's where we stop the reading, but essentially, if you go on, it's et cetera. And the story goes on and on and on and on, and you guys know the more familiar parts later on, with Delilah and how he eventually tears, pulls down the temple of Dagon and kills some thousands of people as he dies. And there's the story of Samson. Okay, do you see the problem? The problem that this thing poses is that Samson is not exactly the guy that we want to point out as a hero or a judge, is he? He's not a character we like. And if you do, I think maybe you should check your motives. The riddle is that we have an unrighteous man who is pointed to as a hero. That's the riddle, isn't it? That's the riddle. And there's a couple of cruxes. I'm going to come back to these points, too. So these are things I think particularly to think about. First, the first thing the man does is he goes off and looks for a Philistine wife. And the second thing is as a Nazirite, he's a terrible Nazirite. Now, how are we going to solve this problem? I'm going to go through three And the first one is not going to be a good solution. The second one is going to be better, but not complete. The third one, I hope, will do it. The first solution would be to say, OK, maybe what we're doing is we're misreading Sampson. OK, this guy, maybe, you know, this will rub them some of the time. Maybe we're judging him too harshly. Maybe he's actually sort of OK, relatively speaking. And the idea, the logic behind this, then, is that what was Samson's story about is, you know, if you have holy people, God does great things with them. Right? He makes holy people and then does great things with them. You can imagine doing a sermon like this if you're quite clever about it. The problem with this is that the closer you look at the text, the worse Samson gets. And I've struggled quite a long time to redeem him, and have not been very successful at it. And to understand just how bad the situation is with this, I invite you to turn with me back, or just, we won't go through in great detail, but turn back to Numbers 6 and the first few verses. In the first few verses of Numbers, we haven't gotten here, right? Because we did a series on Leviticus and then stopped, but there's a lot more in Numbers there. And one of the things that's in Numbers is a set of laws for what's called the Nazarite. And the word Nazarite simply means somebody who's separate, somebody who's holy. So this is the law of a holy man. That is to say, there were provisions that if you, it's sort of like fasting in lifestyle, the complete life given over for a period of time. to understand and work out God's purposes in your life. That's what these laws were set there for. So they have the laws of the Nazarite. And generally the idea was that somebody would be led by the Lord to set aside a chunk of their life and dedicate it to the service of God particularly. And to do so, if you look through there, there's three particular things that are part of this process. The first one is to set aside wine or similar drink, basically any alcoholic thing, but it's more than just a prohibition on alcohol. It's also a prohibition on things like raisins and grapes. Basically, the idea was to avoid feasting of any kind. It was to avoid indulging in sort of party-like activity. That's the first part, you're supposed to adopt a very sober and fast-like lifestyle. The second part, which is quite familiar from the Samson story, is you are not to cut your hair, you're to let it grow, and at the end of the period, you're actually to cut it off in a ceremony and sacrifice it. So everything that grows in that thing is the Lord's. It's sort of like first fruits coming out of your head or something like that. And then the final thing that they say is, you need to keep away from unclean things. You have to be very careful to avoid ceremonial uncleanliness. Okay, so this is a picture that's sketched out in the Book of Numbers about when Mazraite was, well, if you look in Judges 13, his parents are told they're going to have a child before they even have the child. And the distinguishing characteristic about this guy, the one thing that he is to be, is a Nazirite. And in some sense, he's a super Nazirite. Because not only is he going to do all of these things, his parents, when he's in the womb, aren't even supposed to do this. Right? I mean, this is extreme Nazirite, is what it is. And you're thinking, as you read through that passage, oh wow, something great is going to happen. Right? And what does Samson do in chapter 14? Well, one of the things he does is he tears apart a lion, and later on he goes to the carcass and finds honey. And what does he do? He has a good Nazirite. He sticks his hand in it and eats part of what's growing on this dead body. I mean, if you think, to put yourself in this situation, this is like diving into uncleanness. It's like going out of your way to stick your head in what is forbidden. And the second thing that he does, right shortly after that, is he throws a giant feast. This is not Nazarite behavior. I mean, picture John the Baptist doing this. Right? To get the picture. That's not going to happen. As a Nazarite, he was to be holy. He was supposed to be clean and set aside for God's service. And he wasn't. The narrative makes that extremely, extremely clear. So as far as the oldest of the Nazirite, he was an abysmal failure. In fact, you have three pieces to being a Nazirite and he's broken two of them. And of course, you know, the rest of the story, when he gets his hair cut, that's strike three, he's out. The other part of it is the very first thing that he does. as he seeks a foreign wife. And of course to understand that, all we have to do is go to Deuteronomy 7 and you will see a very similar passage. Deuteronomy 7 verses 1-8 talk specifically about this, that you are not to intermarry with the nations you are moving in among. In verse 3 it says, You shall not make marriages with them, meaning your neighbors. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take your daughter for your son. You're not to be doing that. And even more interesting, as you go down to verse 6, the reasoning is what's important. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure of all the people on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you, nor choose you, because you are more in number than any other people, but you are the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loves you, because he would keep an oath which he swore to your father, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage from the hand of the king of Egypt." You see, again, the issue is holiness. The people of Israel were to be holy, and a Nazirite is to be the holiest of the holy And the first thing this Nazarite does is go after form life. Now, um, application, of course, one of the things that we can talk about here. So, you know, Samson's a pretty bad guy, right? Good thing we're not that bad, right? Now, obviously, if we take a good, sober look at ourselves, I mean, what's the point of the church? The church is to be holy, and if we look carefully at what we do, And the way that we conduct ourselves, the way that we set our affections on things like feasting, the way that we look to the world for things like brides and so on, and all the other things that would give comfort to our lives. I don't think it takes us very long to put ourselves in Samson's place. I think that we can see that. And the solution, then, to this whole puzzle as to what to do with Samson is to say, well, he's kind of okay, because he's not kind of okay. In fact, the point of this passage, I think, is that he isn't okay. And I challenge you to make him okay. I failed. If you guys can do it, let me know. So let's go to Solution 2. Solution 2, then, says, okay, we've kind of goofed up here. Let's try something like this. Maybe it isn't holiness that's the point, it's his unholiness that's the point. So the point of this passage is that God uses unholy people to work his deliverance. His gracious purpose is used through unholy people, like Samson. And of course, if he can use Samson, maybe we're going to feel a little better about our possibilities here. I think this is actually getting warmer, and the reason I think so is if you look into the passage closer, you will see some things that point this direction. The first of these is in Judges chapter 14, verse 4. If you look in verse 4, there's a little parenthetical that comes in here. So Samson said to his father, get her for me, because she pleases me well. That's a good argument. And then the parenthetical is this, but his father and his mother didn't know it was of the Lord. that he was seeking an occasion to move against the Philistines, for that time the Philistines had dominion over the entire Israel. And you see, here's the explanation as to what's kind of going on. One of the things going on in the background is that even though what Samson was doing was not right, God had his purposes. He was going to bring deliverance from the Philistines through Samson's evil desires. And it isn't just that Samson's kind of flawed and God can work around it, right? What we're saying is that he could actually use that stuff that was wrong for his gracious purposes. This also, this sort of idea, I think, is also recast in the riddle itself. In the sermon that I heard on this before, this played very prominently in what the pastor was doing with it. This whole thing is a riddle, right? And what we're doing is trying to solve the riddle. And if we look at the riddle itself, what is the riddle saying? Well, the riddle talks about this crazy reversal where out of the eater comes food. So something that you think is going to be dangerous and violent and terrible, you get sustenance. Wow! And if you look through the scriptures, there's lots of stuff like that, right? A good example of this was during the time of the Egyptians, the Israelites were working like dogs to increase the wealth of the Egyptians. And where did that wealth end up? They gave it to them to get them out of the country when they left. Right? You see that the evil that the Egyptians were doing was turned by God's purposes into good. And then the second half of the riddle is of the same type, right? It says, out of the strong comes something sweet. So the strong, in this case, is something kind of pungent, like, whoa, comes something sweet. You see? And from that, we might say, well, so he doesn't really need us to be holy to get stuff done, right? Because he's, he's very clever, right? If we look at the Hebrews passage, the Hebrews passage is particularly jarring, right, in the context of this, because it lists him as a hero of the faith. If you look at the Hebrews passage, it really does list him as a hero of the faith. You can't get around it. Hebrews 11, verse 32, we just read this, he lists out all these people, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He says, these guys, through faith, What did they do? They did things like obtain promises. That's what Samson did. Promises were to his parents. They stopped the lion's mouth. That's what Samson did. Out of weakness, they gained strength. At the end of the story, right when he pulls the temple down, That's what Samson did. Became valiant in battle. This guy had no intention of being in battle, right? So he spent his entire life killing Philistines. See? So that's what Samson did. He was clearly talking about Samson here. And then turned the alien armies to flight, which is something he did. One man army he was, he got rid of them all. So clearly this passage is talking about God using Samson, and when we look at it, it's not just in spite of his flaws, it's even through his flaws. This is despite his desire to form wives and breaking oaths. And so we might think, yes, isn't God's grace great? Yeah, it is. But I had a little pause here. Okay, now what do I do to the application? Something like this. Let's try it on and see if you guys like it. If you like it, we'll have to have another sermon on this soon. Don't worry about holiness or taming your desires. or figuring out what God wants, because God will bring deliverance anyway. OK, nobody's liking that too much. Now, before you sort of shake your head and say, OK, you're being silly with me, I actually think we do this kind of stuff all the time. I think that we go for this. And it's like the worst possible rationalization. If you're struggling with something, some sin, you shouldn't be doing it, and you shouldn't be going there at all. And you just sort of know what's wrong. What do you do? Well, one thing to do is just sort of keep them separate, right? So you get a part of your life over here, you just kind of do that. And then over here, you've got your Christian stuff, but you keep them separate. That's bad. But you know what's worse is when you try to merge the two, and you actually make it God's will that you should do what God said not to do. I do think that we do this all the time. And the idea is sort of like, you know, You know, yeah, I realize this is probably not quite cricket, but, you know, there's something good on the other end of the pipeline, I'm sure of it. You ever catch yourself saying something like that? If you do, you really, you should have a cannon go off in your head. Because you're perverting the grace of God. And solving the riddle, the way that we're trying to solve it here, is in fact perverting the grace of God. Now, to do this, to point this out from the passage, okay, so this is my intuition. Let me show a little bit more from the passage, if we take a sober look at the passage, why this is not the right approach either. The first part comes from the overall story. If you read through the whole story of Samson, what do we get out of the story of Samson? the outcome at the end of the story of Samson. Lots of dead Philistines and one dead Samson. That's what you get out of his life. And it strikes me that if you take this approach where you rationalize what you're doing and say, well, God's grace is just to work through me while I do this. It reminds me of Proverbs, Proverbs 14 verse 12, this might be a good one to stick on the fridge as it were. There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is the way of death. If we work through this sign, if we work through this story, you can see that Samson's way is the way of death. There's no doubt about it, reading that story with a sober head on your shoulders. The second part is just that as we pull back from the portion of scripture that we read and think about the larger context, I think you'll also see that this is not the right solution either. Samson was the last judge. This was it. He was also the one who led a very violent, who got a very violent death. The other judges, when they were done, they would die. And then the nation would slip off. But not Samson. Samson went straight to the slipping off. And following this story is an extended story about what happened to the tribe of Dan, basically Samson's cousins and so on. And what you'll find in there is not a pretty sight. It makes Samson look relatively good. And eventually you get to the end of the Book of Judges, And the end of the Book of Judges ends this way. There was no king in Israel in those days. And everyone did what's right in his own eyes. Including, in this case, Samson. Right? And so what we end up with at that stage, as we end up with the Book of Judges and look around a little bit, we realize that they needed a king. or the way that ends in death. That's the story of Samson. And even as we look back at Hebrews, we can read from Hebrews 11 a little earlier in the chapter. I think it leads us in the same direction. Hebrews 11 verses 13 through 16 say the following. All of these, the list of heroes, died in faith. not receiving the promises. Having seen them afar off, we're sure to them, embrace them and confess they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth. For those who see such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly, if they had fall to mind that country from which they came, they would had opportunity to go back. But now they desire better. There's this heavenly country. And so God's not ashamed. to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. I don't know about you, but I get down, you haven't worked with it as long as I have, but I get down to the story of Samson, and I'm looking for a better city. And I think that is the final solution to understanding the book of Samson. It's not something like, through our holiness, God gets stuff done. You know, you guys all got that. No, that's not it. It's not in spite of our holiness or lack thereof. God gets his stuff done. No, it's something along this line. It's through his holiness, because of who he is, that he delivers us. And that has to be our vision. You know, as we look to the story of Samson, one of the things that strikes me about what I mentioned at the beginning is it's actually a realistic story. The people in there don't behave bizarrely. These are regular people. I can see this happening. And as we look in the world around us, I think we have to recognize that that world that is described in the story of Samson is our world. And we need to have a vision to a better place. Now, what is that better place? Well, there is more to be said, okay? And that is, I think that the story of Samson doesn't just say, you know, this is really crummy, let's go do something else. But I think that the story of Samson actually does point us to that better place. So even though it has a sharp point, the point is pointing in a particular direction. The book of Judges ends, we have no king. Everyone does what's right in his own eyes. But if you look, for instance, in the book of Revelation 19, you can pick a lot of different places, but I'm going to look particularly in 19. We see things like verses 11 to 16, I saw heaven open, John writes, and there was a white horse. And he who sat on it was called faithful and true. Yeah, faithful and true because he didn't violate his Nazarene vows. In righteousness he judges and he makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head on his head were many crowns. He had a name written there, known to no one except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood. He was called the Word of God. The armies in heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations. And he himself Just like Samson, by the way, struck the nations. He himself will rule with a rod of iron. And he treads out the winepress of his fierceness and the wrath of Almighty God, as Samson did. And he has on his robe and on his thigh a name that's written, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We can step back a little bit and look at Samson more particularly. So that's the book of Judges. It pretty figures what's going on here. If you look at Samson more particularly, he was a judge, like many judges before him. But is he THE judge? Well, no. As a judge, he's pretty miserable. But there is a judge. Read from Revelation 19 some more. This is the first two verses. After these things, after John had just had a vision, of the prostitute Babylon. You can connect that with the Samson story, too, if you want, but I won't right now. After these things, I heard a loud voice in the multitude of heaven saying, Alleluia, salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God. For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged that great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication and has avenged her on her with the blood of His servants shed by her. But you see, Samson, in some sense, prefigured Christ himself, just giving the bare outline. But the real thing is there. And it is Christ that he will judge. And even more curiously, so Samson was a terrible Nazarite. He couldn't do anything that the Lord wanted. But Jesus' fundamental characteristics is he did exactly what the Lord wanted. Curious little thing that shows up, you know, maybe the one thing that Samson and Jesus have in common is they both took wives. And since they were foreign wives, So there's a big difference though, right? I mean, the wife of Samson was a Philistine woman who eventually got burned up. And the wife of Jesus Christ is us. Right? And if you think that you're a good Israelite wife, you'd be wrong about that. So you see, Samson is like Jesus. But Samson is completely unlike Jesus as well, because Samson picked his own wife, right? I mean, this was the interchange. He talked to his parents, and he said, oh, they said, you don't want her, right? And he says, no, I want her. And then they had this very recent discussion, which went something like this. No, I want her. Get her for me. Oh, OK, I get it. OK, we'll get her for you. I mean, that's the way it was, right? did what he wanted. There was no king in Israel. He did what was right in his eyes. That's exactly unlike Jesus Christ. You see that? Because in the book of John, in the gospel of John, Jesus says, look, those that you gave me, this bride, the church, I'll take care of her. And that's in Revelation 19 too. If we look at verses 6 through 9, I heard the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, the sound of mighty rumblings, saying, Hallelujah for the Lord God omnipotent reigns. Let's be glad and rejoice in giving glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come. His wife is made ready for himself, and to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen of the righteous acts of the saints. You see, the point of passage is sharp. We are an awful lot like those Israelites. And we're an awful lot like Samson. But Christ is not. And since He stood in our place, we aren't either like Samson. And if we rely upon ourselves to solve all of this, And trying to figure out how it is that we can do what God wants, you're missing the point. God is going to do what He wants. We need to pray that He will use us in that process. And so not only does scripture have a point, it's pointing in a particular direction. All the scripture is pointing to this King, this Judge. I'd have you bear that in mind in the coming week, and see what it is that that will do for your vision, what you're looking at, what you're thinking about, what you do with your time. And I pray the Lord will bless you and gain glory from it. Let's gather together in a word of prayer. Lord, we recognize that we see so little and understand so little of what you do and what you have done. And so we are thankful, Lord, that you give us your scriptures with all of the knots and hurts and everything in them to be obeyed, to be read. to be meditated upon, to be listened to. For Lord in them, we see our Lord. We pray that He would be glorified as we seek to honor Him, the true King, the Judge, the bridegroom. We thank you, Lord, for the salvation that you have gotten, the work of Christ in paying the debt of sin. We pray Lord that that salvation, we would be able to see it as it goes out to the ends of the earth. In Jesus' holy name that he would be glorified. We pray these things.