Samson and Delilah (Part A)

When you say the gates of hell will not prevail, the plans of Satan will not stand. But it is a two-fold meaning, also that we are supposed to go into the world. That is, we are to be on offense, not defense, attacking the gates of hell. Because behind those gates are the lost souls of the world, and by attacking those gates with the gospel, we are used to be together. Deliverers, under-deliverers, as the judges were supposed to be for those lost souls.

This is a cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Judges chapter 16, as he begins his message, Samson and Delilah. Judges chapter 16, Samson and Delilah. It says here in verse 1, Now he saw a harlot there. This is the second Gentile woman that he entangles himself with in the record. We have no reason to think that there were only two. He kept bad company.

Delilah will be the third. And of course, from Satan's perspective, these indulgences were softening him for the kill. And it almost worked. In the end, I must insert this now, because it's not a mystery, not trying to hold back, you know, I'll wait for later, although sometimes we do try to keep your attention.

But I think that in the end, it's a victory. As tragic as it is, he inflicts heavy damage on the Philistines that otherwise would not have happened, as I mentioned in the beginning of this evening's consideration. So here he is, not surrendered, reluctant. Why wouldn't he find a nice Jewish girl?

Again, we brought this up before. Well, maybe there was nothing in him that any Jewish girl wanted. We're not told outright why. Maybe he wanted to shield the Jewish women from sin. You say, why didn't he get married to one?

A lot of questions. That's why he's such an enigma. Why did not Samson have a good friend? Why is there no mention of a buddy that could have said, Samson, what are you doing in Gaza? It wouldn't be so bad if he said, somewhat tongue in cheek, beating up Philistines. Well, that's not what the story says there in verse one. He wasn't interested in the Philistines as an enemy. He was interested in the Philistines as a place for sin. Verse two, when the Gazites were told, Samson has come here, they surrounded the place and lay in wait for him all night at the gate of the city. They were quiet all night saying, in the morning, when it is daylight, we will kill him. Well, whenever he goes into enemy territory, he's going down, both geographically and spiritually.

The territory of the Philistines was on the west coast of the land. But if you look, if you have your Bible still open, you turn to chapter 14 of Judges, in verse one, you'll say Samson went down to Timnah and saw a woman. And then again in verse five, so Samson went down to Timnah. And then again in verse seven, he went down and talked with the woman. And then again in verse 10, his father went down to the woman. Everything connected with his desire for this unbelieving wife was taking him down. This is a similar story with Jonah, of course, and Gentiles, you know, in connection with the Gentiles, God wanted Jonah to preach to the Gentiles, not to slay them.

Jonah would have nothing to do with it because of racism. And he went down to Joppa. He found, you know, dead down into the boat.

He kept going down. Those lessons are deliberate. God wants us to pick up on that, that descent, the devolution into sin.

So here he kept bad company. And Delilah being the third, interesting note in Genesis chapter four concerning Cain, the killer of his brother. God said, if you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and its desire is for you.

But you should rule over it. And those words would have been in print in the days of Samson. Remember, again, Samson's a smart, he's an intelligent man and he's very witty and he probably was a lot of fun. He's going to have fun with Delilah, but it won't be worth it.

It says here in verse two, they were quiet all night. In the morning, we will kill him. This is a first-rate personification of hell's objective in the life of every believer. As soon as we can, we're going to kill him. Now, by this time, he had already taken out a thousand men in one fight, a battalion of men. And what gave them the right to think that they could take him? Hatred, that's what. They hated him so much, but they feared him.

It would have been another slaughter. And maybe, maybe you can say, you know, the goodness of, there's something in the heart of Samson that said, you know, I don't want to kill all these guys. So he decides to do a practical joke. Verse three, and Samson lay low till midnight. Then he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two gate posts, pulled them up, bar and all, put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. While he allowed the guards, if they were posted, to fall asleep. Disciplined troops won't do that. They will stay up.

Fall asleep on guard duty is something that's not pardonable. And this Samson lay low till midnight, waiting for them to go to sleep, be caught off guard. And he arose at midnight, took hold of the doors of the gate of the city. The two gates pulled them up, bar and all.

It's almost comical how humiliating to them, the enemy. But the amount of strength necessary. Go to your fence posts when you get home. Try to pull it up.

You need a car jack to get that thing up, or a port-a-power or something. These are hundreds of pounds of just weight of gate. Then add to that that they're in the ground. Then he hoists them on his shoulders, and he probably walks ten miles uphill.

It's hysterical. The man is a beast. He's a monster to them. It brings to mind what Jesus said, the gates of hell shall not prevail. If a man of such low morality such as Samson prevails against the gates, imagine.

Of course, you don't have to, but we get the connection. The Lord says the gates of hell will not prevail. Samson has the city gates. Now, the gates are two-fold meaning for the ancient cities. The one is, it is an actual gate by which people come in and out or locked in or locked out. And the other is, at the gate is where the city council, the war council would meet. And so when you say the gates of hell will not prevail, the plans of Satan will not stand. But it's a two-fold meaning also that we are supposed to go into the world. That is, we are to be on offense, not defense, attacking the gates of hell. Because behind those gates are the lost souls of the world, and by attacking those gates with the gospel, we are used to be deliverers, under-deliverers, as the judges were supposed to be for those lost souls.

And it is an ongoing war. So, again, this is quite extraordinary and comical, and he had to be giggling, watch this. I mean, no one could do this. You'd have to use mules and horses and all sorts of stuff to get these gates up like this. He put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that faces Hebron. Now, some think that he went to Hebron with the gates. That would be 40 miles uphill pretty much all the way. Well, he'd already exercised the victory.

There's no point in really going further. You could read it both ways. I think he just went up to the hill that faces Hebron about 10 miles away from Gaza.

You can identify it there. And the mission was accomplished. He insulted the people of the city by removing the gate. And you say to yourself, what if Israel had rallied behind a man like this? Well, what if that man was someone who people would want to rally to? That makes me ask myself, am I the kind of person that people would not want to rally with or have me a part of their team?

You go back to childhood when you're picking up members who are going to play on your basketball team. I'll take this one, I'll take that one. You don't want to be the last guy.

Okay, I got him. But Samson, nobody, there's never anybody with him. All of this strength wasted. And there are people, they become prima donnas. They think that they have some talent or some skill and everybody needs to part the way for them. That's not Christianity. And that is one of the many lessons. If I were giving a Bible study to musicians who were very talented, this would be a good place to go for because they would be susceptible to this. People always coming up, you know, that's a great song.

I mean, think about it. Churches will pay thousands of dollars to have people come in and sing songs to the congregation, but they won't pay that to someone to come preach the word to the congregation. In fact, those who will preach the word will come for free. The real preachers of the word, you don't have to pay them.

If you do, they're going to take it. And these discrepancies shouldn't be this way. Well, it is this way. Can pastors become prima donnas?

Absolutely. Jesus said, don't be like the Pharisees out in the marketplaces taking vows from everybody. Ooh, there's a sighting of Rabbi So-and-so.

Hello, Rabbi So-and-so. We have to watch if we are having success in the Lord that we are not basking in fame as though we are worthy. Well, anyway, verse 4, afterward it happened that he loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah. You know, some of the valleys in Scripture, they stick out, you know, the Valley of Sorek.

Not good. The Valley of Elah, very good. David slays Goliath in the Valley of Elah. But it says afterward it happened.

Well, it really didn't just happen, not the story. The historian is saying there's been a period of time since he last visited Gaza and took their gates. Now he goes to the Valley of Sorek. Again, the haunt of the Philistines or their territory. Again, should he be going to, should the believer be going to Las Vegas for a vacation?

What is there for him? Well, to get those free meals at the hotel, at the casinos. And I don't know, I've heard that. I don't know firsthand. I've been there, but I wasn't a believer then, and even then I didn't like it.

That's pretty bad. But anyway, Sorek. It is the place of the choice vines. Again, here he is at Nazarite. He's not supposed to have anything to do with the vine. These things, I mean, he would have known that, and it doesn't bother him at all. As we read from 14, verse 1, just reading it again, Samson went down to Timna and saw a woman in Timna of the daughters of the Philistines. And here he's at it again, because Delilah is not explicitly said she's a Philistine, but it is certainly implied. It says that he loved a woman whose name was Delilah. And remember, she did not love him back, and his love was that carnal animal kind of love. It was not that genuine love, because he had, there was nothing there that he, if there was, it was just carnal. It was not spiritual.

She was not one of the daughters of the faith. So a woman in Timna, he saw her. Then he went to Gaza, he saw a harlot there, and now he goes to Sorek, the valley of Sorek, and he sees Delilah.

And again, he is more devoted to his flesh than anything else. The name Delilah, those who handle these things can't agree. Does the name mean devotee? Does the name mean delicate as in fragile?

Does the name mean of the night? Different names, because are we using the root words of the Hebrew, or are we using another language? And I say that because if you look in your Bible dictionaries, you may read it says devotee, but you look at another one, it says, you know, timid or fragile. You look at another one, and that's because they're using, taking different approaches to it.

It really doesn't matter to us. As far as we're concerned, Delilah is the one that took out Samson. And there are Delilah's today in some form for men and women, something that will destroy you, that is attractive to you. And it was easy for Samson to love this way, but we don't find of anyone loving him back except mom and dad at the beginning of the story.

And this is a good thing, I think, to read to little children, to get them to think, you know, there's a man that nobody wanted, doesn't seem to want to be with. He made sport of temptation. You don't hear him expressing something, lead me not into temptation. It's the jewel missing from his faith. In the valley of Sorek, the choice vine, the very fruit he was to abstain from. The symbolism is clear, that his dedication to God was distant, but the world was not.

And his Nazarite vows, his hair, they're just symbolic to him. Proverbs 2, for her house leads down to death and her paths to the dead. That is so tailored for Delilah in the story of Samson. Verse 5, and the lords of the Philistines came up to her and said to her, entice him and find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him, and every one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver. The lords of the Philistines came up to her and said, so once again we see that the strong men cannot be beaten by strong men, but they can be taken out by the women.

It's a fact of life, and the feminists may not like to hear it, but who cares what the feminists like to hear, or what they don't like to hear. What we care about is the word of God, and what it is telling us. And that is the purpose of the student of the word, which is to be every believer, is we come to the scripture, we read it, and we don't try to fit into what we're reading, what we want it to say, or what we want it to believe it says. We're trying to understand what it is telling us, what's coming out of the scripture, and that's how you get people misusing the scripture. The cults do that.

What's so cultic about them is they use the Bible, the same Bible we use, but they're not listening to what it's saying, they are dictating to it, looking for it to tailor fit some goofy belief. And that's why context is so critical to settling disputes as to the meaning of the verses. Now these five lords of the Philistines, they traveled to Sorek from the various major towns, Gaza, Ashkelon, that the Philistines held, because they wanted Samson that badly. They went out of their way to come to this valley of Sorek to find someone who could take, well they had spies out there, or people who would pass information to them, hey Samson's in Sorek, and he's likely living with Delilah because she pestered him daily.

And anyway, these are the voices of the devil. They came to her and said, entice him that we may find out where his great strength lies, and by what means we may overpower him, that we may bind him to afflict him. So she knows what this is about.

It's not like, oh you're just going to arrest the bad boy. She knows they're going to do damage to him. In the story, she is the flesh. She's that selfish instrument, but there's a greater enemy behind that selfish instrument. Our flesh, of course, is an instrument of hell.

It's that sinful nature that we're born with, and that's where the war is. Find out where his great strength lies. They knew where his weakness was. His weakness was with the Philistine women. They just didn't know where his strength was. I tell you, life, the more I think about it, it's rock, paper, scissors.

It's just these things, so many things that are just alternate victors, you know, what can beat you over here, can't over there, and it always goes around in a circle. Asking such a question as this, where does his strength lies, indicates that he did not look strong, because if he looked strong, nobody would ask the question. He's unusually large. No one would say to Goliath, where does your strength lie? So, how would you like to be a Goliath's armor bearer? What? No. That shield is heavy.

Get me somebody else. Anyway, also if he looked strong, his wife probably would have went to him under duress. Hey, they're trying to get to you through me.

Can you go beat them up? Though he probably looked like everybody else. None of these Philistine women, or we could put it this way, because I think this is good for ministry to the lost souls of the world. Where was the Rahab and Ruth of the Gentile world in these areas? Why didn't a Rahab stand up and say, no, no, these are God's people, and we know what they're going to do. Or Ruth, Ruth 1.17, where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.

Yahweh do so to me and more if anything but death parts you from me. Imagine if Delilah said that to Samson. Imagine if he had enough respect for women to see them as helpmates. And I must add, in a good Christian marriage, there is no greater helpmate than the one assigned by God. This is the role of the woman, which Satan is committed to destroying, and we are seeing it in our society. Men are committed to abusing it.

Well, we are supposed to be grounded in our understanding of God's design in the world that is fallen. He says here in verse 6, every one of us will, these are the Philistine lords, there were five of them, and probably their, of course, their assistants, every one of us will give you 1100 pieces of silver. That is a great deal of money. So much so when we get to the story of Micah in the next chapter, chapter 17, he gets 10 pieces of silver plus free room and board for a year.

So that was an attractive, you know, 10 pieces of silver. What she's getting, 5500 pieces of silver, if it's the same standard, which we cannot be absolutely sure, but if it is, they're going to make her rich, even if it's not the identical standard. It's enough for her to say, I'll do it. Why don't they say to her, we'll kill you if you don't do it?

We're not told, we can only guess. Perhaps they wanted, I would say that they wanted to give her incentive to do a good job. She would have come back, I just can't, he won't tell me.

We blew it, but now, you know what, let's really make this attractive to her. Verse 6, so Delilah said to Samson, please tell me where your great strength lies and with what you may be bound to afflict. So little respect for the meathead that she just comes right out, what's your pin number? I mean, it just, this is how he had to have carried him.

You know, there are certain people you know you don't ask, you don't treat them the way you might treat somebody else, because they won't put up with it. You know, you'd be looking at a fat lip, and so he must have carried himself in such a way that she felt, you know, he's dumb, I'll ask him anything. And she comes right out and says, where's your strength that I can get to it so you can be harmed?

You'd think he would have said, you know what, I will not be back tonight. Yes, you say, could she possibly have been that direct? Yes, because he was that dumb, and the story guarantees us that he was. His stupidity was born out of arrogance and recklessness.

They think dumber than the question is the one being asked the question, Samson. They wanted, and the affliction by affliction is to be conquered, and that, the implications were clear. So lust for her, arrogance for himself, and shallowness before God, that's the recipe that made him ripe pickings for the devil. Incidentally, if I didn't say it already, there's nothing good about Delilah. There's no redeeming feature in the story. You cannot make a love story out of this without butchering the text, which is to butcher the story.

And for that, just make up other names and do other things. Why give people the impression that the Bible is telling some sort of love story here? And Samson said to her, verse 7, if they bind me with seven fresh bow strings not yet dried, that's important, it's really not, but then I will become weak and be like any other man. Samson is, of course, the story that is warning all of us of our folly, that you don't joke with the enemy, because by definition, being the enemy, they're not joking with you. Samson thought that sin was something you toy with. Three times we will hear him in the story say that I will be like other men, in verse 7, 11, and 17.

And we'll probably cover it again as we get closer. Verse 8, so the lords of the Philistines brought up to her seven fresh bow strings, not yet dried, and she bound him with them. Now, it's unclear, you know, how much time is passing before these things, but you would think Samson would say, when he realizes what's happened, where did you get the seven, you know, bow strings, not yet dried?

Where did you get them? I mean, is there something a lady carries with her? I mean, you would think in the story that these things would register with him, and they don't. It's a nice girl like you doing with seven fresh bow strings, not yet dried. Silly Samson, having too much fun to think, what a lesson there for a child.

Fun, you know, we all like fun, but we have to be sober with it. Anybody, anybody close to this story would have been able to say, Samson, she's making a fool of you. Well, first off, who would dare? Well, secondly, he probably didn't have again. There's no indication he had anybody close to him. Verse 9, now men were lying in wait, staying with her in her room, and she said to him, the Philistines are upon you, Samson, but he broke the bow strings as a strand of yarn breaks when it touches fire. So the secret of his strength was not known. Now, for someone to learn that she had to have told this story, well, he might have told the story too. When he was blinded and in jail and some time went by before his end, he could have told a story, which he very likely did.

I've not been incarcerated, but my understanding is a lot of them like to talk about what happened, their version at least. But this verse 9 is suggestive of Satan's ambush, the men lying in wait. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross Reference Radio.