Samson and the 7 churches of Asia

Now turn with me please to the book of Judges, chapter 13, and we're going to read some verses here. We'll start at verse number one. And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.

And there was a certain man of Zorah of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his wife was barren and bare not. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman and said unto her, Behold now thou art barren and barest not, but thou shalt conceive and bare a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing.

For lo thou shalt conceive and bare a son, and no razor shall come on his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb. And he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. Now verse twelve, And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass.

How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him? Verse fourteen, She may not eat of anything that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I command her, let her observe. Now verse twenty-four says, And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson.

And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Esther all. Now, just verse one in the next chapter we should read, And Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman of Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.

And he came up and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnath of the daughter of the Philistines. Now therefore, get her to me to wife. And the end of verse three again, And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me, for she pleaseth me well.

Now turn please to chapter fifteen, verse nine, Then the Philistines went up and pitched in Judah, and spread themselves in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, Why are you come up against us? And they answered, To bind Samson. Are we come up to do to him as he had done to us? Verse twelve, And they said unto him, We are come down to bind thee, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.

Chapter sixteen, verse one, Says then, went Samson to Gaza, and saw there an harlot, and went in unto her. Verse three, And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of a hill, that is before Hebron. And it came to pass afterward that he loved a woman in the valley of Surik, whose name was Delilah.

You all know the story, I'm sure, but we'll just read a couple more verses. Verse number seventeen, that's chapter sixteen still. And he told her all his heart, and said unto her, There hath not come a razor upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother's womb.

If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak, and be like any other man. And verse twenty-one, But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass, and he did grind in the prison house. Albeit the hair of his head began to grow again after he was shaven.

And let's just go to verse twenty-seven. Now the house was full of men and women, and all the lords of the Philistines were there. And there were upon the roof about three thousand men and women that beheld Samson while Samson made sport.

And Samson called unto the Lord, and said, O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may at once avenge, be avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. And he took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood. Verse thirty, And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines.

And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life. Now we know that God will bless the reading of his word with what we have already heard.

We all know, I'm sure, that history repeats itself, and things that have taken place in the New Testament, we have little illustrations of them in the Old. And we have this in Samson. We know that the book of the judges was written in a day, or describes a day when every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

And I'm sure you wouldn't argue with me if I tried to convince you that that's what's going on in the world today. Everyone doing what's right in their own eyes. And this has invaded Christendom, and as we've heard, even some of our own assemblies and some of our own people.

But you know, there was a remedy for that day, and there's a remedy for today. The remedy is the Nazarite. Now we have read about the Nazarite, they were in the land here, they needed Nazarites.

When they were in the wilderness, they needed Nazarites. And if you were to go back to Numbers chapter 6, the wilderness book, you would find that it describes in great detail the law of the Nazarite. And if you went to the previous chapter, chapter 5 of Numbers, you would find out something that's altogether opposite.

You would find there an unfaithful wife. And while that unfaithful wife in that day would speak of the nation of Israel, we know that today it resembles the church. And do we have the faithfulness that we once had? And there was a test set up, it wasn't for anyone to decide whether they were faithful or not, but God had a test, and it was the bitter waters of jealousy.

But I'm not going to go into that, but you can get from that at least one thing, that the word of God was what God used, the bitter waters, the water of the word of God. It brings upon us our guilt, if we're guilty, or God could clear the person as well. Now in what we have read here, we read first of all of a man and his wife, and she was barren.

And you know there are plenty of barren women in the Bible, and I would think all the time, if not most of the time, it speaks of the condition that existed among God's people at that time. And I'm sure you wouldn't argue too much today about the fact that we're barren in the assemblies. Now, thank God souls are being saved.

It's not like it was years ago, even in my day. And Mr. McCullough, way before that, you could always see souls saved, it seemed. And today, you might only see one or two.

But I remember one time I was talking to Mr. William Wark, and he said, how did the meetings go? And I said, well, it was only one professed to be saved. He said, remember this, one soul's worth more than the whole world. So we're still going to keep on preaching the gospel, and God can still work.

But God visited this woman that was barren. We're not even given her name. She's in the background.

We're given the name of her husband, and the Spirit of the Lord came and told the woman—actually, the Lord himself came. It's one of the theophanies or Christophanies of the Old Testament. We didn't read that part.

But the angel of the Lord, we read that. And he came down, and he said, you're going to conceive, and you're going to bear a son. And then it says, no rager will come upon his head.

And later on, just to reemphasize that, Manoah, he said, how shall we order the child? I think that's a good little verse to read if you're going to have children. How shall we order the child? Some of us have grandchildren, and maybe if we didn't do such a good job with the children, we can do with the grandchildren. How shall we order the grandchildren? And then when you get really old, like some, and you have great-grandchildren, how are we going to order them? Well, you see, God wants them to live for God.

He wants them to have that Nazarite spirit. Oh, they have to be saved, first of all. These people were Nazarites, Samson and John the Baptist and Samuel were Nazarites from their mother's womb.

But in Numbers 6, there was a vow that someone could take. It couldn't all be priests, it couldn't all be Levites in that day, but they all could be Nazarites. And that's what God was looking for in that day.

And even though Samson may have failed, I'll just mention this, that every time the spirit of the Lord came upon him, he was successful and did something that God wanted. But sadly, there were other times, just like us, we do things maybe just on our own, and that's when disaster comes in. So he said, and he emphasizes this, he did not have any strong drink.

His joy doesn't come from the things of this world. Where does our joy come from? It should be joy in the Lord. The joy of the Lord is our strength.

Here's a man that had joy in the Lord, and a man that was strong, and he wasn't to come near a dead body, and he wasn't to drink the fruit of the vine, and so on. So he got his joy from the Lord, and he was living in a world that was characterized by dead bodies, and he wasn't to cut his hair. Now, I know in number six, this applies to the women as well as the men.

I'm not sure if I could explain to you why the Lord would tell a woman to shave her head off, but maybe you have the answer to that. I think the disgrace came at the end of her vow, maybe, rather than during the time. But anyhow, no razor to come upon his head.

At the end, as I said, able to shave the hair off, and the woman, maybe that was her shame then. But why does it say no razor would come upon his head? What does long hair speak of? Again, we'd go to 1 Corinthians, wouldn't we? And the long hair was given to the sister as a covering. And I'm not going to—well, I want you to get the break in time, so we're not going to go into every little detail, but it's a covering.

So what it's teaching us here is the Nazarite was covered. He wasn't doing this to put himself forward, to be in the limelight, and say, everybody's going to look at me. It's just the opposite.

It was altogether contrary to nature. So he was hiding himself and living for the Lord. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Go hide thyself.

There's times when we need to be hidden, maybe in this way we always should be hidden. But you know, these are the instructions that were given to Manoah and his wife. And then eventually we read that the Lord blessed him, and the Lord began to move him right in his own district.

That's where we start for God, isn't it? Right where we live, and right in our own district. Now, Samson's life is an illustration—I think I could say that—of the day when the church was formed, and right down through the ages, right to the time—although the rapture's not here, but you'll see what I mean in a moment. When we go to the book of Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3, we have a little picture of the professing church down through the ages.

Now we all know it starts with Ephesus, and we know likely that Ephesus means desire. And here's Samson, and what does he say? He says, get this woman for me, she pleaseth me well. This is the one that I desire.

And we find out that in the early church, they had things that they desired that were contrary to the word of God. Instead of loving the Lord, other things came into their life. That's where the declension begins.

You know, people use that term synonymous of, you're saved, well, do you love the Lord? Yeah, I love the Lord. Well, if we love the Lord, it shows in our lives. If you love me, keep my commandments, keep my sayings.

We can't say we love someone if we don't show it in some way. You don't need to broadcast it if you love your wife. People know whether you love your wife or not, likely you don't have to broadcast that.

And the ones that broadcast it, sometimes I wonder if they really love their wives, but maybe I'm not a good judge in that. But he said, get her for me, she pleaseth me well. And that's where departure started in.

Love. Left their first love. They didn't lose their first love, but they left it.

And you can't help thinking, just to put this very practical, think of the love that you had when you first were saved. And the way you got into the word of God, if you're like most of us, we wanted to learn more about the Lord Jesus Christ and learn more of his word. Maybe our motives weren't maybe all right at the beginning, but we grow in grace and we mellow a bit, maybe as we go along, and we need to grow in the things of God.

Grow to be like him. And the more we read the word of God and the more we see the Lord in it, the more our hearts should be touched. Especially, think of Calvary.

Right at the beginning, Ephesus, away at the beginning. Think of Calvary. The precious blood that was shed.

Think of the agonies of the cross. Think of someone that loved you unto death. Many waters couldn't quench his love.

Surely that would melt our hearts. We love to sing, O Lamb of God, still keep me near to thy wounded side. Too bad we seem to be drifting away.

And there are other things that come in and they take the place. It says, she pleased Samson well. Now, when we read in chapter 15, there, why did he come up against us? And they answered, to bind Samson.

Are we come up to do unto him? The next church you know is Smyrna, which means myrrh, speaks of suffering. And I tell you, Christendom did not like Nazarites. A lot of times, you know, the Nazarite could be sitting in the pew and the man in the pulpit not even saved.

But here we see, they said, we have come up. We don't want to be too strong in our beliefs and suffering comes in. And in the early days of the church, there was suffering, wasn't it? Smyrna is a suffering church.

And do you know why they were suffering? Well, the Lord brought that upon them because they were losing their first love or leaving their first love, I should say. So he brought the sin to bring them back. And lots of times, you think of the children of Israel and all that they suffered as slaves in Egypt, that was only strengthening them.

And God allows things into our lives. And don't ever judge why God does it. I'm glad our brother read about Gaius.

You know, some people are ailing and we all have problems, some kind of problems. But, you know, he might have had a weak body. But what about his soul? That was the important thing.

He had a prosperous soul. His soul would prosper. That's what we need.

God allows things, though, sometimes it could be judgment against us. We know that, but not always. Don't ever think that.

God allows things into our lives to bring us into greater dependence upon him. But it didn't seem to work with Samson. And they came again in verse number 12 and 15, and they said, Where come to bind you? His own people, that we may deliver thee into the hand of the Philistines.

Don't you know, Samson, that the Philistines, they're really in charge? Instead of fighting against them, why don't you just go with them? We still believe in separation, don't we? We're hearing, weren't we, a little bit about the walls of Jerusalem, and we still preach the truth of separation. We believe in it. Not just separation from the world, but separation under Christ.

And separation with God's people, that helps us to be separate and be strong. But separation from the world, it's still valid. But they said, No, you're only causing trouble.

Just go in with them. And that's what things our brother has been telling us. And we concur with what he has said.

There are things coming in that belong to the thing that my folks left. I'm just a second-generation Christian. My folks saw that.

They didn't have to be told. They read the Bibles, and they found out there's something better, more scriptural than what I'm associated with, and they came out. And they paid a price, many of them.

But anyhow, that's what you have here. Just settle down. Go along with them.

Well, you can go to this meeting in the church down the road and so on. After all, they're all Christians. You can rationalize things.

God is a God of separation. They often even point out light and darkness are separate. Dry land and the sea were separate.

There was no mud. It was one or the other. And in John's epistle, where we heard John's epistles, everything is black or white.

There's nothing in between. It's either right or it's wrong. It's either saved or lost.

Well, anyhow, when we come to chapter 16, it says, He went there, saw there he saw a harlot and went then unto her. Thyatira is not where Jezebel was. Who is she? She was the one that seduced God's people to draw them away.

It might correspond to, we would say, to one of the great religions that's in the world today. I don't like to mention different groups or their titles, but you can see that there's a group, a large group, and they're honoring a woman rather than the Lord Jesus, the mother rather than the child. But here it says he went in unto her, Thyatira.

Then we come to what I would say Sardis. He lay there, verse 3, until midnight and arose at midnight. And when things were at their darkest in the world in that day, there was a man raised up, Martin Luther.

And Martin Luther was a tremendous, just think of what he did. Preach justification by faith and separate it from that large group and so on. And just look like things were lost.

God raised up a man. I'm not saying he was a Nazarite, but he had devotion to God, I'll tell you that. I don't know all about his background, but he was a brave man that stood up against the greatest group likely in that part of the world at that time.

And then it says he arose at midnight. Thank God there was an awakening out of Protestantism. There was an awakening, and not just in Ireland, but different parts, South America, different parts of the world.

There were brethren and sisters gathered together to study their Bibles. What a tremendous day that was. And that's what you have here.

He came away, he broke away. It says he took the doors and the gate of the city and the two posts and went away with them, bar and all. You ever wondered what Samson looked like? Think he was a big man like me with muscles all over? It's all solid flab.

Anyhow, what do you think he was really like? You know, they made a movie about Samson. I saw it in my unsaved days, and it was Victor Mature with great muscles. I don't think he was like that at all.

They would have said his strength is in his muscles, wouldn't they? He must have been an ordinary build. That would be a little slimmer than some of us, right? But they couldn't figure where his strength was. His strength was in his hair.

That was his devotion. That's a crown of devotion. And that's what you find when you come to Philadelphia.

Let no man or no one take thy crown. Don't let them rob you of your crown of devotion. That's what they want to do today.

You're going overboard. You're too devoted. And they call you tight or whatever they want to call you.

I don't care what they call me. I want to try and live for God and be devoted to God, no matter what anybody says. And we're living in a day when, as individuals, that's the most important thing.

Keep yourself right with God. It doesn't matter what others are doing. Even if you stand alone.

When I was first saved, my father said, you know, stand for the things of God. But he said, usually God will give you somebody to stand with you. Not too many of us have to stand alone.

But it's good to be able to stand. Take them to Hebron. What does Hebron mean? Fellowship.

Took them right up to Hebron. What a place that was. Up to the top of the hill.

There's no greater, no higher place than the local assembly, is there? I haven't found it. If you show me it, I'll go there. But I know we're not perfect.

We never will be perfect. But thank God we're trying to go according to the Word of God. And we're trying to teach others the same truths.

So we have brotherly love. And we enjoy the fellowship. And that's one thing we enjoy at a conference, as well as a ministry or the gospel.

And even if we don't enjoy all the ministry, we enjoy the fellowship. Great are fellow believers. We have them all over the world.

A lot of them you haven't met, but if you did, you'd think you knew them all their life. But then, what happens? Well, verse 4, 16. It came to pass he loved a woman in the valley of Sorok.

That means the tendril of the vine. And here's a man who shouldn't have gone anywhere near anything that would tempt him. No wine.

And here he is. And what happens? Well, he goes to the Philistine barber shop. He lost his devotion.

Oh, she coaxed it out of him little by little. We can't go into all the details. But little by little, he's giving away the secret of his devotion.

Till finally he said, if I be shaven, then my strength shall come me, and I'll be weak like any other man. Told her all that was in his heart. And what happened? They put out his eyes.

Wouldn't that remind you of Laodicea? Blind. The patriarchs. Last patriarch, Jacob was blind.

Last judge, Eli was blind. Last judge here in Judges was blind. The last church, last assembly, is blind.

But you know, we don't want to leave you in the darkness. Thank God, Samson, some of that Nazarite spirit revived in him. It's sad when a Nazarite falls, isn't it? The world makes sport.

A lot of times, those that are devoted to Christ, if they fall, others fall with them. May God help us not to lead others astray. But here he is, and they're making sport.

Why the world loves to make sport, it would make God preserve us, that we never would become. They say, look, if he's a Christian, I'm a Christian. You hear it all the time when you go around.

He's going to heaven. I don't want to go to heaven. All nonsense.

But we shouldn't stumble, people. And here's what happens. He said, oh, Lord, remember me.

That'd be a good prayer for us, wouldn't it? We're going to remember the Lord tomorrow, but we could say, Lord, remember me. I have failed many times. Mr. Dougherty, some of us preached with Brother Bruce, and I knew him well.

He always said, don't tell the Lord's people all your faults when you preach. He said, that's only giving them an excuse. It doesn't mean we don't have faults, but we don't need to tell all our faults and broadcast them all over the place.

That's not going to help God's people. But anyhow, here he says, Lord, remember me and strengthen me. Just give me some strength.

Even though he knew he was at the very end of his life. And he said, let me hold the two pillars upon which they stood. And I was thinking of this.

He was saying about 3,000. Here it was about 3,000 people on the roof. About 3,000.

You know, I noticed in Acts, it says when Paul went to Ephesus, there were about 12 men. It's interesting. Why did he not say there were 12? They didn't know the Holy Spirit was given.

Unto what then were you baptized? And in the book of Ephesians, there's 12 times, or about 12 times, because one's doubtful, whether it refers to the Spirit or not. But anyhow, be that as it may, he said, let me hold the pillars. And he bowed down himself.

I like to look at that as an act of worship. Lord, remember me. I have failed.

But help me right at the end. Some of us, we don't know how near we are to the end of our lives. Some of us may be closer than others.

But you know, I would like the last part of my life to be the best for God. We're not going to give up. And that's what Samson had in his mind.

And he bowed himself with all his might. The hair of his head began to grow again. I should mention that, of course, you know.

And old Willie Wark, Mr. Wark, he says, well, he had the root of the matter. Good to have the root of the matter. I know people have done everything to get hair to grow.

But, well, I shouldn't say things like that. I know some brethren can't help it. And I have enough just to hide some that will soon be popping through.

I'm still growing, growing through my hair. But anyhow, the hair of his head began to grow. And they neglected that.

Oh, he's blind now. He's helpless. And he bowed his head.

As I say, like an act of worship. And he accomplished more right at the last of his life than he did his whole life. So may God help us.

I'm not saying to bow down. We don't want the place to fall down around us. One time I was at a conference.

And there were some men there that we didn't maybe agree with everything they did. And some wanted some of us to protest that these men were at the conference. Mr. Paisley says, do you want us to be like Samson and pull the house down around us? They were celebrating the 100th anniversary.

And some of them wanted to create trouble. We don't want to do that. We're going to stand for the truth.

But remember this right at the end. Wouldn't it be wonderful if God would accomplish something through us? It's not what we do for God that counts. It's what he does through us, isn't it? So may the Lord help us that we might be real Nazarites and have that devotion to God.

Let no one take thy crown. No matter what they say, we want to be devoted. And the last days can be days of restoration.

And that's the reason why we come to conference, isn't it? We all need it. And the ministry all points toward that. That we might all be restored to God and enjoy the things of God.

And God would use us mightily right to the very end of our lives.