This is a part of a sermon series on the book of Judges. You can watch more here.
Some years ago, I helped lead a fellowship of young adults at our church in California. I remember the group read a book together: Don’t Waste Your Life, by John Piper. It was a very good book, encouraging young people to be intentional in how they set their goals and use their time, exhorting them to focus on the eternal things of God rather than the temporal things of the world.
Despite the fact that it was a very good book, there was a part in the Introduction which bothered me. John Piper described how there was a stubborn old man in his father’s church, for whom people have been praying many years. One day, after Piper’s father preached, the old man, to everyone’s surprise, came up to the front. He prayed with the pastor, repented of his sins and accepted Christ as his Savior. Right afterwards, the man began to sob as tears ran down his wrinkled face. “I wasted it, I wasted it,” he kept saying. John Piper said that the account gripped him. Piper writes, “The thought of my coming to my old age and saying through tears, “I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!” was a fearful and horrible thought to me.”
Now, I fully understand the point Piper is making about how important it is to be intentional in how we live our lives. We should all be asking God to help us do this. But when I read the account, questions rose in my mind. As followers of Christ, should we be driven by the fear of wasting our lives? In fact, as people of God, can we even waste our lives?
Today, we are going to look at Judges chapters 13-16, the account of Sampson, someone who pretty much did everything he could to waste his life. I think how God made use of Sampson is instructive for our own lives.
But before we look into God’s word, let’s pray together.
Auspicious Beginning
Sampson is the last judge mentioned in the Book of Judges, so understandably, we might expect a strong finish. And the life of Sampson had a very promising beginning.
Read Judges 13:1–5 (NASB95)
1 Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, so that the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines forty years. 2 There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. 3 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. 4 “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. 5 “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”
We start off with another one of the cycles Pastor has been teaching us about. Again, the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hands of a foreign oppressor, the Philistines. They ruled Israel for 40 years.
The Bible depicts the Philistines’ rule as different from some of the other oppressors. They were unlike Midian, for example, who ate up everything and caused the Israelites to starve and cry out to the Lord. It wasn’t that the Philistines were soft or anything, they would bully Israel and extract heavy burdens of tax and tribute, but they also let Israelites carry on with their lives. Often, the two nations lived in cities that were close to each other, and there was intermingling of populations. So it wasn’t that Israel liked being dominated by the Philistines, but after being oppressed by so many different groups, they became resigned and used to the rule of the Philistines. Especially as they ruled for a long time, 40 years.
So unlike the previous cycles, there is no mention of Israel crying out to the Lord, nor mention of Israel rallying around a deliverer. If you think about it, this is a more dangerous and insidious situation than with the overt suffering under the other oppressors. Israel began compromising and integrating into the society of their oppressors. God, in his covenant, had called them out to be a people of his special possession, to be holy and separate from the peoples around them. Instead, they were losing their sense of distinct identity. So God takes the initiative and begins to raise another deliverer for Israel.
I had mentioned that the beginning of Sampson seemed very promising. A woman is barren and had no children, and an angel of God appears and announces that she will have a son. And that God has a special plan for this son. Now, if you read through the Bible, similar miraculous birth narratives occur in other places. Sarah is barren and the angel of the Lord announces that she will bear Isaac, through whom all the nations will be blessed. Hannah is barren and God answers her prayers and she gives birth to Samuel, who anoints the kings of Israel. Elizabeth is barren and an angel announces the birth of John the Baptist, who prepares the way for Jesus. Each time, to a woman who is barren, a son is miraculously given, whom God uses to play a pivotal role in his salvation story. To be counted among this group, one would expect great things from the life of Sampson.
This sense of promise in Sampson’s life is further heightened by the angel’s instructions to his mother. She should drink no wine and eat no unclean food while carrying him, and he is never to have his hair cut. Because he is to be a Nazirite to God his whole life. The word Nazirite means separated or consecrated one. Numbers 6 describes how an Israelite can make a special vow to be a Nazirite, dedicating himself to the Lord for a set number of days. During those days, he is to drink no wine, to refrain from cutting his hair, and to avoid touching a dead body. He is considered holy and to be used by the Lord during that duration.
The unusual thing is that Sampson is to be a Nazirite from birth to death. He is to be holy to the Lord, dedicated to the Lord’s use his whole life, for the explicit mission of beginning to deliver the Israelites from the Philistines (verse 5).
Such a promising life. Such a high calling of whole-life dedication, to be God’s appointed deliverer. And God equips Sampson for this life task.
Read Judges 13:24–25 (NASB95). 24 Then the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson; and the child grew up and the Lord blessed him. 25 And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
The Lord blessed Sampson as he grows. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir in him. In the Old Testament, the Spirit of the Lord coming on someone describes how God temporarily empowers him with supernatural ability to accomplish a specific task. And we see God’s Spirit repeatedly falling on Sampson to strengthen him to do amazing deeds. At the same time, we see Sampson’s life consistently showing no evidence of consecration to the Lord.
Selfish Sinfulness and Divine Strength
Read Judges 14:1–4 (NASB95) 1 Then Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines. 2 So he came back and told his father and mother, “I saw a woman in Timnah, one of the daughters of the Philistines; now therefore, get her for me as a wife.” 3 Then his father and his mother said to him, “Is there no woman among the daughters of your relatives, or among all our people, that you go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?” But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me, for she looks good to me.” 4 However, his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, for He was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel.
Right from the beginning, Sampson’s actions show that he is impulsive, lustful, and self-centered. He sees a woman he likes and wants her for his wife. He totally disregards his parents’ warning. Despite being a Nazarite, Sampson, like the rest of Israel, have no qualms about intermingling his life with the Philistines. At the same time, verse 4 says that God plans to use Sampson’s disobedience to stir up a fight with the Philistines, because they were ruling over Israel.
So Sampson goes to Timnah to marry the Philistine woman. As it was customary, there is a seven-day feast and there are 30 Philistine young men accompanying Sampson, similar to what we might consider as groomsmen. Sampson makes a bet with the 30 young men that they would not be able to guess a riddle, wagering 30 suites of clothing. When the young men could not solve the riddle, they threaten Sampson’s bride.
Read Judges 14:15–17 (NASB95) 15 Then it came about on the fourth day that they said to Samson’s wife, “Entice your husband, so that he will tell us the riddle, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us to impoverish us? Is this not so?” 16 Samson’s wife wept before him and said, “You only hate me, and you do not love me; you have propounded a riddle to the sons of my people, and have not told it to me.” And he said to her, “Behold, I have not told it to my father or mother; so should I tell you?” 17 However she wept before him seven days while their feast lasted. And on the seventh day he told her because she pressed him so hard. She then told the riddle to the sons of her people.
So the young men solve the riddle, and Sampson realizes that his bride had betrayed him. The Spirit of the Lord comes upon Sampson, he kills thirty Philistines, takes their clothes and gives them to the young men to pay the wager. In his anger, Sampson leaves his bride and goes back to his father’s house. And the father of the bride marries the woman to one of the young men instead.
Some time later, after his anger has subsided, Sampson returns to see his bride, only to find out that she had been married to someone else. Sampson goes into another rage, burns all the fields and vineyards of the Philistines. And then there is a series of retribution and revenge. The Philistines kill the bride and her father. Sampson kills a bunch of Philistines and hide in Judah. The Judeans, in order to appease their rulers, bind Sampson and deliver him to the Philistines. The Spirit of the Lord falls upon Sampson and he snapes the ropes binding him. Without a weapon, he picks up the jawbone of a donkey and kills a thousand Philistines.
Read Judges 15:18–20 (NASB95) 18 Then he became very thirsty, and he called to the Lord and said, “You have given this great deliverance by the hand of Your servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 But God split the hollow place that is in Lehi so that water came out of it. When he drank, his strength returned and he revived. Therefore he named it En-hakkore, which is in Lehi to this day. 20 So he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
Sampson is dying of thirst and asks God for help. This is significant because it is the first time in the text that we find Sampson attributing his victory to the Lord and calling out to the Lord for help. The Lord answers him and splits the ground and water gushes out.
At this point, there is a literary marker, signaling a structural break in the narrative and dividing Sampson’s life into two halves. At the end of the first half, Sampson is suffering, he cries out to the Lord, the Lord answers him, and then there is a summary statement of Sampson judging Israel for twenty years. These accounts foreshadow the second half of Sampson’s life. We are going to see a similar sequence of events, the sins of Sampson, the resulting suffering, Sampson’s cries, and the Lord’s answer. And the second half also ends with the same summary statement.
Selfish Sinfulness and Divine Strength Part 2
The second half of the story begins with Sampson visiting a prostitute in the Philistine city of Gaza. Philistines shut the city gates to prevent Sampson from leaving. At midnight, Sampson pulls the gate posts out of the ground and carries the entire gate with him out of the city. Right from the beginning of this section, the biblical author shows us the same juxtaposition of the impulsive, sinful personal character of Sampson and the incredible God-given strength.
And these are not the only things that recur.
Read Judges 16:4–6 (NASB95) 4 After this it came about that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah. 5 The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, “Entice him, and see where his great strength lies and how we may overpower him that we may bind him to afflict him. Then we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver.” 6 So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me where your great strength is and how you may be bound to afflict you.”
Sampson again falls for a Philistine woman and she is offered a bribe. Now eleven hundred pieces of silver from each lord of the Philistines is a lot of money. For reference, Joseph was sold by his brothers for 20 pieces of silver. So Delilah presses Sampson for his secret. Three times in a row, Sampson gives Delilah a fake answer: if you bind me with 7 fresh cords, if you bind me with new rope, if you weave my hair into seven locks, all my strength will leave me. Each time Delilah waits for Sampson to fall asleep, hides Philistine soldiers for ambush, binds him according to his instructions, and calls out, “Sampson, the Philistines are upon you.” Each time, Sampson frees himself easily.
Read Judges 16:15–16 (NASB95) 15 Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have deceived me these three times and have not told me where your great strength is.” 16 It came about when she pressed him daily with her words and urged him, that his soul was annoyed to death.
Even if you don’t know the Sampson story, you are probably thinking at this point: this is not going to end well. Oh, come on, Sampson, doesn’t this all sound awfully familiar? What happened to “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?” How can Sampson be so foolish! We would never fall for the same thing twice!
Once in my previous company, we hired a corporate trainer, to lead us in a seminar on developing leadership skills. He had us do an exercise. He played a video showing a group of people tossing a ball to each other. He wanted us to count how many times the ball gets tossed. So we really focus on the ball being thrown around. At the end of the video, he asked, did you see anything unusual? There were 4 of us in the class. Three of us said, no, we didn’t see anything unusual, we counted that the ball was tossed 78 times. And the fourth person said, you mean the person in the gorilla suit that walked in the middle of the circle and walked out again? We were like, what are you talking about? So the trainer replayed the video, and indeed, in the middle, a guy in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the circle and walked back out. But the 3 of us were so focused on the ball being passed around, we never even saw the gorilla. We were amazed, and he explained that this demonstrates how a leader can be so focused on a particular goal that he fails to see the big picture.
And as he was explaining, something hit me. And I said, Wait, I just remembered that I did the exact same exercise with the exact same video some years back while I was in business school. And I didn’t see the gorilla back then either!
The trainer was wow, that’s a first, I have never heard of anyone doing this exercise twice and missing it both times. Well, my excuse was that it was a number of years back. Which I am sure that’s what Sampson would say also, Timan was a number of years back. Well, don’t think if we have a blind spot which causes us to mess up once, we are not capable of having the same blind spot mess us up again. It is very foolish. But foolishness can sure seem like a near-universal human trait sometimes.
Well, unfortunately, Sampson gives in again.
Read Judges 16:17 (NASB95) 17 So he told her all that was in his heart and said to her, “A razor has never come on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb. If I am shaved, then my strength will leave me and I will become weak and be like any other man.”
So Delilah calls the lords of the Philistines, who came with all the money. She has Sampson fall asleep upon her knees and had someone cut his hair while he is asleep.
Read Judges 16:20–21 (NASB95) 20 She said, “The Philistines are upon you, Samson!” And he awoke from his sleep and said, “I will go out as at other times and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. 21 Then the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze chains, and he was a grinder in the prison.
That is such a sad verse in the Bible. But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. His uncut hair symbolizes his consecration to the Lord. Allowing it to be cut shows how uncommitted he is to that consecration. So the Lord left him.
Such a promising life, such an auspicious beginning, such a high calling, such infusions of God’s power. Yet, Sampson’s life was far from being holy and consecrated to the Lord. Instead, we see Sampson behaving impulsively, lustfully, and selfishly. And he reaped what he sowed; he suffered the consequences of his many foolish and sinful acts. This unstoppable slayer of Philistines, deliverer and leader of God’s people, ends up weakened and blinded, hand grinding corn in a Philistine prison. What a wasted life, we might think.
Let’s look at how the story ends.
Read Judges 16:22–24 (NASB95) 22 However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it was shaved off. 23 Now the lords of the Philistines assembled to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice, for they said, “Our god has given Samson our enemy into our hands.” 24 When the people saw him, they praised their god, for they said, “Our god has given our enemy into our hands, Even the destroyer of our country, Who has slain many of us.”
Sampson’s hair begins to grow back. As his uncut hair is a reminder of his consecration to the Lord. The hair growing is a sign of how God is working on Sampson’s through the humble suffering, turning him to the state and purpose for which God had consecrated him. Meanwhile, the Philistine give glory to their god for their capture of Sampson. They have this great sacrifice to Dagon in the temple and during the feast, they bring out Sampson to mock him for their entertainment. Sampson, being blind is led by a boy and he asks the boy to place him between the main pillars of the temple, so that he can lean on the pillars.
Read Judges 16:27–31 (NASB95) 27 Now the house was full of men and women, and all the lords of the Philistines were there. And about 3,000 men and women were on the roof looking on while Samson was amusing them. 28 Then Samson called to the Lord and said, “O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me just this time, O God, that I may at once be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.” 29 Samson grasped the two middle pillars on which the house rested, and braced himself against them, the one with his right hand and the other with his left. 30 And Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he bent with all his might so that the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed in his life. 31 Then his brothers and all his father’s household came down, took him, brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. Thus he had judged Israel twenty years.
Just like when Sampson called out to the Lord when he was dying of thirst, now again, when Sampson is at the lowest point of his life, he calls out to the Lord. Remember me and strengthen me just one more time. And like before, the Lord hears him and answers his cry. And he kills all the lords of the Philistines and thousands more. The passage ends with the same summary statement that Sampson judged Israel twenty years.
Broken Life Used by God
So is Sampson’s life a wasted life? His life is clearly broken in multiple ways. Yet his life was also useful to God. When Israel was resigned to live under oppression, God used Sampson’s impulsiveness and temper to precipitate conflict with the Philistines. When Israel was unwilling to rebel, God used Sampsons sins and downfall to wipe out the Philistine leaders. Sampson began to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines, which if you remember, was the original stated purpose of his Nazirite life. Also, Sampson was listed in Hebrews 11:32 among the examples of faith in Israel’s history. Because he called out to the Lord in his time of need. When I was discussing this passage with my wife, she brought up an analogy. A mosaic artist takes pieces of broken colored glass and arranges them and glues them together into a beautiful work of art. Well, God takes all the broken pieces of Sampson’s messed-up life and forms them into a useful part of his beautiful plan.
I think we can consider this from an even broader context. I remember when I was in college, I took a computer programming course. I am dating myself, because this was way early in the age of programming. In fact, we did our software programing on first generation Macintosh computers, with 128 kilobytes of random-access memory. Your toaster probably has more than 128 kilobytes of memory. We used different programming languages, most of which are not in use anymore. There was one particular language which was fascinating, named LISP. It is a recursive programming language. Which means the modules within a program would call on itself and recur. And nested within each module, there are subroutines which also recur. And all these repeating cycles would work together to accomplish an overarching task.
It is an imperfect analogy, but it helps me to visualize the biblical message. We see this recurring cycle in Judges. Disobedience, Oppression, Suffering, Crying out and Deliverance. But we see this same cycle recur in Sampson’s life as an individual. And if you think about it, this is the story of humanity as a whole. It is as if on multiple levels, every nested story is a miniature of the overall story.
God’s salvation story is the overarching narrative of all creation. And we all play a part in this narrative arc of salvation history. Furthermore, in our individual lives and in our collective lives, we are also replaying that same plot over and over. Individuals are failing and suffering and calling out to God and being delivered. People groups are failing and suffering and calling out to God and being delivered. God’s people as a whole and God’s creation as a whole is failing and suffering and calling out to God and will ultimately be delivered
Messing up is sort of part of the universal human story. On an individual level, on a national level, and on a whole humanity level. Because we are inherently sinful, messing up is sort of an unavoidable part of the story. And because God is inherently loving, salvation and deliverance is also an essential part of the story. As people of God, we are imperfect people living imperfect lives, which God manages to fit into his perfect plan. Not that God desires Sampson to sin with the Philistine women, but God folds Sampson’s self-centeredness and impulsiveness and disobedience into his grand plan of beginning to deliver the Israelites from the rule of the Philistines.
And because deliverance is an essential part of the story, God sending deliverers is also an essential part of the story. And even the imperfect deliverers of Israel like Sampson play key roles in salvation history. The very imperfections of deliverers like Sampson point to the need for a perfect Savior. When Jesus is born, he is called Immanuel, God with us (Matt 1:23). God himself came as the perfect deliverer. His very presence is among as in the form of Jesus. That’s why Jesus fulfills all the Law and the Prophets (Matt 5:17). Because all the prophecies in the OT, all the imperfect deliverers like Sampson point forward, anticipating the coming of the perfect deliverer, Jesus Christ, God himself.
Conclusion
So what can we learn from Sampson? So much of Christian living involves balancing the tension inherent in various truths. We should work to avoid sin, we should strive not to make foolish choices, because sin and foolishness result in real consequences that bring pain and suffering and brokenness into our lives. At the same time, when we do mess up, even when we mess up in a big way, our mistakes do not relegate our lives to the refuse bin of waste and uselessness. Because the gracious forgiveness of God awaits us. And because God, not us, is the author of our life story. It is God, not us, who is the artist who puts together the broken pieces and constructs the picture of our lives that fits and contributes to his beautiful eternal plan.
So despite what we hear in graduation speeches, life is not all about pursuing your passion, maximizing your potential, or fulfilling your calling. Inherent in the human condition are squandered potential, wasted opportunities, and spoiled relationships. That’s who we are as fallen people, that’s what we inflict upon ourselves with our own foolish decisions and our own selfish choices. Our life goal should not be to live our best possible lives or be our best possible selves. We are not able to, regardless of how we strive. Fundamentally, it is not all about us. Just like Judges 13-16 is not all about Sampson, and his unlimited potential and superhuman feats and stupid decisions and selfish choices. It is all about God, his wisdom and ability to use Sampson’s life despite all its flaws and warts, his grace and mercy to respond to Sampson when he cries out to him for help. Likewise, for us, it is not all about living perfect lives. It is not all about how much we can achieve, for our own careers or for our own happiness or for our own ministry. It is all about God, using us as such imperfect people, living such imperfect lives, to carry out his perfect plan. That is why there is no wasted life among God’s people. Let us pray.
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