10. “The Riddle of Sampson pt. 2” (Judges 16)

In the book of Judges, we are being invited to look at something unpleasant. We’re being shown, in rather gruesome detail, the power and the consequences of sin. Repeatedly, time after time, we see Israel pulled downward toward idols by the power of sin. And, time after time, this sin causes things to spiral further and further out of control. Sin ruins everything.

It’s important for us to look at this, because sin, and the demonic powers that serve it, is our great enemy. To be ready for its attacks, we need to see it honestly: to look at its methods. To understand its gravity, we must look at the damage it brings.  

And this, we are given, not only in Judges, but in this morning’s passage. Samson, as we said last week, is in a sense the encapsulation of the story of Israel. And here in our passage we see his climactic battle with sin. If we look carefully, we will see how sin works, what it does, and why, in the end, it fails.

How Sin Works

What is sin? Today it generally has the idea of something that’s transgressive, something that you enjoy but that isn’t very good for you. Las Vegas is the city of sin. Chocolate advertises itself as being “so good it’s sinful.” It’s a breaking of rules that maybe don’t need to be there in the first place. It’s living it up. In churches, sin often is just about breaking rules, which is far closer to the truth.

And yet, even that doesn’t quite get to the heart of sin. Sin, I would suggest, is about relationship. Sin is about turning from God.

When we are faced with a choice between the way that God calls us to and a different way, that choice is about more than just a rule. It’s about trust; it’s about love: will you seek to walk with God in his way, or will you seek something different from God, moving away from him? Whether we realize it or not, at the heart of sin is turning away from God and turning towards something else.

To see what I mean, let’s look at this most famous story in Samson’s life—the story of his interaction with Delilah. Here in 4 stages, we see how sin involves moving away from God. 

Leaves God’s Protective Constraints

Samson once again loves a Philistine woman. And we should understand that this transgressive love is only possible because of the life Samson has chosen. He has chosen a life free from constraints—that’s kind of who he is. When people try to bind him, he just snaps the ropes. When people try to imprison him behind locked gates, as they do in the verses right before this, he will just pull the gates out and carry them for miles. Samson will not be bound. He will not be captured.

Importantly, this is also the attitude Samson seems to have toward boundaries that God has placed on his life. One of the clear instructions God gives his people is not to intermingle with the other nations; to keep separate from them and certainly not to marry them. And yet, again and again, the only women Samson ever is interested in are Philistine women. He will not be bound.

What’s more, Samson, at his birth, was called to be a Nazirite, that is, someone who lived a life uniquely set apart, dedicated to God. There were 3 requirements of being a Nazirite: to abstain from alcohol, to avoid contact with dead bodies, and to keep your hair uncut. And Samson appears to think little of these divine instructions—perhaps even to resent them. He hosts a wedding feast with alcohol. He scoops honey out of a dead lion carcass and eats it. Only the final instruction, to keep his hair uncut, did Samson observe.

God’s instructions give life, they lead his people in the way of goodness and protect them from harm. But that’s not how Samson views them. To him they feel limiting, constraining. He feels the need to break free of them.

I wonder how Samson’s life would have looked if he had viewed God’s instructions differently. This, we should understand, is the entry point of how sin can take hold of us. “Did God really say?” the serpent asked Eve, and underneath that was a second question, “And if he did, are we sure that what God commanded you is actually good for you?” Doubting God’s goodness and believing his instructions are overly limiting, unkind. In the life of Samson we see that turning away from God’s instructions is sin’s first movement away from God.

Captivated by a Disordered Love

And the second, we see, is to have our heart captivated by a disordered love. Our lives are shaped by our loves; sin involves misplaced love. Sometimes it involves loving something improperly. Career success is a good thing: but when you value it over your family, your life becomes misshapen.

Sometimes sin involves loving something that should not be loved. Samson, we are told, loved a Philistine woman whose name was Delilah. When Joshua, the great leader who followed Moses, gave his farewell speech, he specifically said, “Love God with all your heart and cling to him; do not cling to the people of the other nations and make marriages with them.” Yet Samson loves Delilah. Whereas Samson literally means “Sun,” the fire of the day, Delilah sounds like “night.” Sun and night do not mix. And yet Samson loves Delilah.

And notice the character of this woman that Samson loves. Immediately after we are introduced to Delilah we learn that 5 lords are willing to pay her the equivalent of millions of dollars to help solve the riddle of Samson. These lords want once and for all to “bind him and humble, which could also be translated torment him, but to do that they need to know what makes him so strong. And without blinking, she agrees to find out for the money. This is what Delilah is: while Samson might prize the lady of the night, she does not prize him. And yet Samson loves Delilah.

This is the great mystery of sin. Why does Samson love Delilah? Why do we love what is not worthy of our love? When we feel attracted to something that we know is not pleasing to God, the reality is that what we want is not good. It is not good to give in to our temper and lash out at those who hurt us—is that really the life we want? It is not good to overeat or drink too much, to scroll on our phone when we intend to pray. That’s not living well. It’s not good to break up a family because we’ve become attracted to someone at work. When we love what draws us from God, it’s never worthy of our love; it never makes sense. Our hearts become captivated by disordered love; this is sin’s next movement away from God. Samson loved Delilah.

Shuts Eyes

That brings us to the next element of how sin works. In our sinful desire, we shut our eyes.

Delilah isn’t subtle. Look at the question she asks Samson. “Tell me where your great strength lies and how you could be bound that one could subdue—again, could be translated, that one could torment you.”

Which is weird, right? You would think this would be a MAJOR red flag in the relationship for Samson. You would think that Samson might get a sense that something is up, that she is not a good woman for him.

But Samson chooses not to think carefully about it. He pretends it’s all a game. He tells her that he will lose his strength if they bind him with literally “animal sinews.” Which, of course, he knows won’t work, because he tore apart a lion. And he allows Delilah to tie him up with these sinews—it doesn’t say he’s sleeping, so, again, he treats it like a game, not realizing that Delilah has a bunch of soldiers hiding in the other room. When she says, “The Philistines are upon you Samson!” he smiles, flexes his muscles with a wink, and snaps the binding. And so, it says, his strength was not understood. The riddle wasn’t solved.

The second time he tells her to bind with new ropes, which again he knows won’t work because people unsuccessfully tried to bind him with new ropes before. Again, he allows her to do it, again, she says, “The Philistines are upon you!” and again, SNAP!

The third time is a little bit different. Like before, Samson gives an instruction that he knows is safe. Tie up his hair and anchor it with a pin. Like he was able to earlier pull out the gates he knows he will be able to   pull out this anchor. And yet for the first time, he mentions his hair. And also for the first time, Delilah, the lady of the night, waits until he is asleep before binding up his 7 braids. She again cries out “The Philistines are upon you,” and when he wakes up, he easily breaks free.

But at this point we have to be asking ourselves, “What is Samson thinking? Delilah has asked how to take strength and bind him 3 times, and each of those 3 times she has done exactly what he told her to do. Isn’t it obvious what she’s doing? Can’t Samson see that Delilah is not good for him? Can’t Samson see that he is in danger and that he needs to get out of this relationship?

Yes. And no. Obviously, deep down he knows he can’t trust her. And yet, it’s like he’s just choosing not to think about it. He’s shutting his eyes, because he doesn’t want to see what’s really going on. “It’s just a harmless game. If things get out of hand, I can leave any time.” He’s chosen darkness.

This is also how sin works. When we are tempted, there’s a part of us that says, “This is a bad idea! This will not turn out well! And yet we choose to accept what shouldn’t be accepted; we play with what we shouldn’t play with; we choose to shut our eyes to anything that tells us to do otherwise. This is sin’s next movement away from God. We shut our eyes to the truth.

Rejects God

And each of these steps of sin is leading to one final destination. A complete rejection of God.

After three times of being tricked, Delilah is not happy. She says in verse 15, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me these three times, and you have not told me where your great strength lies.” If you love me, she says, you will give me your heart.

At this point Samson knows—he knows that whatever he tells Delilah, this she will do. To this point, Samson has maintained one lasting connection to the Lord. He has continued to keep his hair uncut as a sign of dedication to the Lord. And he knows that if he gives Delilah his heart, if he tells Delilah his secret, that this last bond with God will be severed. This is why he has resisted up unto this point.

She is unrelenting, pressing him hard with her words day after day. Sin’s goal is always to disconnect us from God. And if we allow it to remain in our lives, it will not rest until it succeeds.

I had a Christian friend in college who fell in love with a girl who did not believe in Christ. He felt the incongruity, the tension between his faith commitments and his romantic attachment. And so, over time, he began to doubt his faith: maybe this is all just untrue, and eventually he gave up on it all together so that his life and his relationship with his girlfriend could make sense again. Sin had its way.

It can happen more subtly than this. You find yourself at odds with someone at church and you find yourself wanting to avoid church altogether. Or maybe you just have other things in your life, or your kids lives that keep you busy on Sunday mornings. Over time, inconsistency of attending becomes disconnection, and disconnection from church slowly becomes disconnection from God, as God is moved further and further into the periphery of life. Sin has its way.

This is always the ultimate goal of sin. It’s not only about the breaking of rules. It’s about the breaking of relationship, turning us away from God.

Delilah demands of Samson, “Love me with all your heart.” And eventually, Samson acquiesces. Verse 17, “He told her all his heart.” He told her that he was a Nazirite to God and that this is why his hair was cut. He told her that if his hair is shaved, he will become like any other man. And he told this to someone he knows, he knows will shave his head. He gives himself to Delilah, knowing deep down that this will sever his last remaining tie to God.

And so Delilah, the lady of the night, makes Samson sleep on her knees like a baby. His head is shaved until he is completely bald. And once again she says, “The Philistines are upon you Samson.” And once again as he wakes up he assumes he can just break free.

But we have already been told, “His strength left him.” For as it also says in verse 20—and these are perhaps the most tragic words in this passage, “He did not know that the Lord had left him.” Here we see it. This is the final outcome of sin: a complete severing of our relationship with God.

The Outcome

And with this, we see the consequences. For the first time in Samson’s life, he experiences what it is to be without God. And it is a terrible thing.

Romans tells us that the wages of sin is death. This is not some arbitrary punishment like being grounded for failing English class. This is the logical outcome. God is the source of all that is good. God is life. And sin is about severing our relationship with all of this.

• Samson, without God, is now bound and shackled and imprisoned. All of his life he lived with the belief that the commands of God were confining, constraining, that he needed to break free of them. But now that he has removed himself from God he finds that the life apart from God is slavery.
• For Samson to pursue the life he thought he wanted, he had shut his eyes to the truth. God offers wisdom and light, but Samson wanted darkness over light. And now he gets what he had chosen, and his eyes are gouged out.
• Samson thought he finding fulfillment, getting to be who he wanted to be. But now he has become a shadow of what he once was, weak, sightless, alone, imprisoned, treated like an animal, with his life essentially over. In God was life. Sin turned him away from God, and in exchange he found death.

Throughout Judges, again and again we see Israel choosing to turn away from God, and again and again we see God’s furious opposition to Israel’s choice. And this is why. God loves his people, and he knows that they will only have life and freedom and truth and fullness of humanity IN HIM. He knows where sin will take his people. He knows what life apart from him ultimately looks like. It looks like this.  

Sin’s Defeat

This has been a dark sermon, for it is a dark passage, reflecting on sin and its consequences. But we will not fully understand what this passage has to teach us until we notice the bright, remarkable light of grace that shines forth in verse 22: “But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.”

Which seems on one hand to be, I don’t know, kind of obvious, right? It’s a bit like saying after rain, the ground was wet. Of course his hair began to grow back. But do you see? There’s no reason the author would take time to announce this little detail unless it indicated something beyond the obvious. And of course, it does. The shaving of the head symbolized a rupture, an end to Samson’s relationship to God, what does the hair growing again tell us? Here we are meant to see the hope of a new beginning. Beyond a kind of death for Samson, we see the possibility of life.  Samson might feel he is done with God. But God is not done with Samson. As great as the power of sin is, the power of God’s grace is greater.

And so it is enormously significant when Samson, in these final verses, calls out to God. At a party of thousands of the Philistine elite celebrating what they see is the victory of their good and the utter humiliation of Samson, Samson, barely able to walk, is brought to two pillars upon which the temple rests. And there, he prays.

The prayer is messy, still tainted with selfishness: “Strengthen me that I might avenge the loss of my eyes.” But notice how it begins: “Oh Lord God:” Until now, Samson recognized no master, but now he calls Yahweh his Lord, his master. “Remember me.” He severed this relationship, but now he seeks to renew it. And when he cries out a prayer that his death would bring death to the Philistines and he stretches out his arms, it says, literally, that he “stretched out with strength.” When God had left him, his strength had left him. Strength has returned, which means so has God. God, our forgiving God, is with him. And so, with a mighty shove, he breaks the pillars, brings the temple crashing down, and destroys thousands of the most powerful Philistines.

Here, I believe, we see Samson’s greatest moment. Here, for the first time accepts his identity as belonging to God and his calling to conquer the Philistines. We are told in verse 30 that in his death he kills more than during his life. With his last breath, he fulfills his calling to begin to bring salvation from the Philistines. And we are also told that his family finds his body and buries him back where he began, in the tomb of his father. He finishes his life as a member of Israel.

And there is one more detail that encourages us to see this as a triumph. Many centuries later, when Hebrews speaks about faith, it mentions the faith of Samson and it goes on to speak of one who was made strong out of weakness. This is the conclusion to Samson’s story. In his strength, he needed to become weak, so that in his weakness, by faith, he could truly be made strong.  

In the end, as great as the power of sin was, as great as the power of sin is, the power of God’s grace is greater. This is the hopeful note in Judges if we listen. What was true for Samson will also be true for Israel. Sin will do its worst; sin pulls things apart and causes chaos; sin brings death. And yet even so, God is not done with Israel. Somehow beyond the death of sin, God is committed to bringing life.

And that, indeed, is where this story ultimately takes us. Jesus came into this world to save us from ourselves, to save us from sin, to save us from the terrible consequences of us turning away from God. And he did this by enduring all of that for us. By enduring sin’s worst, sin’s chaotic, destructive awfulness, by enduring death itself. And bringing us through death he brings all of us who are in him into a new life, a life of humility, forgiveness, and faith.

As we conclude Judges, my hope is that you are left with two lasting impressions. The first is that sin is not what you want. Judges writes this in all caps. Sin is not what you want! Sin will seek to entice us. Sin will invite us to stop thinking and just pursue it. But sin is not just wrong. It is self-destructive. It leads to misery, to the breaking of human relationships, and to disconnection from God and all the good that is found in him. If you right now are feeling the pull of temptation. If you are finding yourself beginning to walk down a pathway you know is contrary to what God instructs you, stop! Turn back! This is not where you want to go. Sin is not what you want.

But secondly, we also must see this. No matter how far down that path you have gone. No matter how great your failure and how deeply you have wronged God, what I hope you also see is that it isn’t too late. As great as your sin might be, God’s grace in Jesus Christ is greater. And it could be that you have been brought low for this very moment, that you in your weakness might turn back and find joy and strength in God.