Samson – The Blinded Champion (Part C)

Repentance is not a password.

It is a realization of life and in its deepest part. And God doesn't wait for us to figure that out. He just flashes before us His presence and we repent. We admit that He is God, that we are sinners, that He has the right to judge us to hell, but He also has the love to save us from that just judgment.

That's why Paul says, for with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And now here's Pastor Rick in Judges chapter 16 with a continuing message called, Samson the Blinded Champion. So docile is Samson that they have assigned a lad to lead him around as a seeing lad boy and they stationed him between the pillars.

Big mistake by God's design. The ones on the roof, they have the bird's eye view. They have turned this into a makeshift theater. This will be a high body count.

Nobody knows what's coming. Samson, I believe, knows what he wants to do. Verse 26, then Samson said to the lad who led him by the hand, let me feel the pillars which support the temple so that I can lean on them.

Euphemism. Here is our eyewitness. It reads the story does as though none of the adults survive.

This lad survives to tell the story and this indicates that he lives, the lad. Let me feel the pillars, verse 26, which support the temple so that I can lean on them. Now again, 3,000 capacity on the roof, probably 3,000, 4,000 below where the colonnades were. Samson made enough trips to Gaza to have spied out, you could say. Not with this intention, but this was likely, you know, this was the temple of Dagon.

The Jews really didn't have anything. Their temple was still a tent, so he would have observed it. Very possible because of its arena-type structure that from the outside he could see, when his eyes were still with him, he could see that the structure depended on just two columns. He could have looked at that and said, you know what, look at that. Those load-bearing beams.

Take out those two columns, the whole thing falls down. He had to have had some prior knowledge. Or he's quizzing the lad, which is not likely.

What's a little lad going to know about load-bearing columns? So he's got an idea of the battlefield that he is choosing. Most generals do. And Samson is a one-man army.

He is the general of his one-man army, of course. So he says in verse 26, let me feel the pillars which support the temple so that I can lean on them. So he specifies the ones that support the temple. You would think, when you look at some of the ancient temples, you think, well, there are many pillars, and to take out two of them is not going to fell the entire temple.

You'll get a portion of it. So Samson must have, again, known that, no, this one is a little unique. And it's probably not all stone. Could have been wooden beams that were there, very likely. But because it's not the stone that's killing the people, it's the people falling and landing on each other and the materials of the building.

You put it all together. Some of them probably died slow deaths, trapped underneath the rubble and each other. But, you know, here's Samson. It was bad to be defeated, but he was not content with that. He did not leave it at that. In the prison house of his abusers, he wanted to get even, and this was going to give him that opportunity. To get to that place, he had to retain a defiant spirit. Defiance of his enemies in his mind allowed him to make up his mind that if I ever get a shot, I'm going to do as much harm to them as I could. Because he doesn't pray that God gives him the strength to overpower his guards.

He sort of just waits when he was considering his ways. Verse 27, now the temple was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there, about 3,000 men and women on the roof, watching while Samson performed.

Now you catch that? Now the temple was full of men and women. That's one thought. All the lords of the Philistines were there, five of them, with their entourage.

That's another thought. About, and in my New King James verse, there is an end dash between the Philistines there and about 3,000 translators picking up that this is another thought. So you have the temple full, you have the lords, and then you have about 3,000 men and women on the roof, in the bleachers, watching Samson perform. Likely an atrium. There's an open space and they're surrounded, you know, and he's down in the pit, like in an arena, and they can see this. A full temple, where it says all the lords of the Philistines were there, all of the big shots.

This is not only a target-rich environment, it is loaded with high-valued targets. And it is going to be catastrophic for the Philistines when he's finished with them. He's going to buy enough time for the Jews to raise up a David to deal with the Philistines thoroughly. So, verse 28, then Samson called to Yahweh saying, O Lord, that's Adonai, then Yahweh follows, O Lord Yahweh, remember me, I pray, strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes. This is the second time we hear of Samson calling on the Lord. The first one was for water and this one's for slaughter.

One of those things that works out in the language. After he slew a thousand men, he called out to the Lord for water and God gave him water to drink. Here, he's calling on God so that he can slaughter those in revenge for taking his eyes. And so he says, saying, O Lord, remember me, I pray, strengthen me, I pray, just this once.

And this is how we know that his hair was not the source of his strength because he has to be granted this prayer, hair or no hair. He says, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines. God's going to answer this. I believe at this point he senses God's going to answer this and dispatches the lad. Well, after the last words of Samson when he says, let me die with the Philistines, the kid was scooting.

He was running for his life, I'm sure. So anyway, God's going to grant this prayer. Here in the pagan God's temple, the righteous man is praying. God is overruling the false God and granting the prayer because, of course, that's what makes him God. He overrules all the others. But he says here, for my two eyes, it's unpardonable what they've done to me, still falling short of the ideal. Instead of saying, Lord, let me execute judgment to deliver your people from these oppressors, because these people were vicious. You saw what they did with his eyes. I mean, instead of just killing him, we saw what they did with his wife and her family, burning them alive to death.

These were vicious people. And so he doesn't say that I can strike a blow on the enemy. He says, no, this is for my two eyes. He's just such a self-centered guy to the end. He can't help himself.

I don't think that made him all a bad guy. He's still not the kind of guy who would have wanted to share a room on the road with, you know, if I was on the... He probably just made you annoyed after, why are you so vain, Samson? Everything's about you.

So, verse 29, and Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right hand and the other on his left. Well, idiocy brought him here. His own idiocy, not a car.

I mean, what model do you drive? An idiot. Anyway, he's going to make it work for him. They've done this to me. I have a chance to strike them back. I don't think he was thinking, I'm going to kill them all. I think he was saying, I'm going to just kill as many of them as I can. The five lords of the Philistines are here. I'm going to take these guys out.

And he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. Not to mention this, I calculated, I think, 3,000 people at about 140, 145 pounds. You've got over 400,000 pounds of people added to the structure. They're going to be coming down, breaking the necks of many of the people down below. Verse 30, I mean, just picture that, 3,000 people falling in this collapsed building.

It's probably just like a two-story building. This is, um, glad I wasn't there, kind of a thing. Verse 30, then Samson said, let me die with the Philistines. And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that were killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life. That doesn't say 3,000 were killed, but we know the 3,000 on the roof were taken out, but there were people again below that first, below the roof floor. And here he is giving his life one attempt and one last attempt to deal with these people.

Now, I have to pause here and get a little bit serious. It's a topic we don't like to talk about, but I think we must, and that is, of course, suicide. Because I've met Christians who hold the position that if a Christian commits suicide, that's it, they're done, they go to hell. Well, I'm not ready to judge anybody's soul like that, in fact, quite the opposite.

I have a negative amazement at that opinion. My opinion is you don't know your scripture, because here we have an example of Samson. Samson could have prayed, Lord, let me exercise judgment on the Philistines and walk out of here. But he specifically says, let me die with them, and God grants it.

And that is a big part of our theology, God granting this man's prayer. There is a drastic difference between dying in the act of sin and dying in sin. To die in sin is to die without receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. To die in sin is to die committing a sin, but you still are right with God. What if you're in a car, you know, you're on the road and somebody cuts you off and you're going to die, but your last words are, you idiot, sorry, you're going to hell.

That's not the password. And that's what the view says, well, you didn't repent, you didn't repent, you called him an idiot, you didn't repent, so now you have to go to hell forever. And that's why it bothers me that somebody would dare think that. And then to say, well, if you don't teach that, encourage people to kill themselves. It is not the deed that damns the soul, it is the doctrine. It is what's in your heart and your head. That does not mean that God condones sin or that it is not without consequence. Sin has its own consequence, but repentance is not a password.

It is a realization of the life and in its deepest part. And God doesn't wait for us to figure that out. He just flashes before us his presence and we repent. We admit that he is God, that we are sinners, that he has the right to judge us to hell, but he also has the love to save us from that just judgment.

That's why Paul says, for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. What suicide illustrates for us is the activity of spiritual adversaries, hard at work to steal and to kill, to steal the life, to kill the life, dark powers of Satan. But a death in turmoil is not an automatically lost soul.

And I don't think there's anything, again, biblical or loving about that, and that's why I'm taking a moment to pause on it, because here we have Samson killing himself in the act of vengeance. Grace illustrates complete salvation in overruling the powers of darkness. That's what grace is. It overrules darkness.

It whips the snot out of darkness. In the end, it is invincible, or else we could never have assurance in our faith. And there are theologians that, you know, theologians that get to a point where they boil everything away till they have nothing left but doubt. Read their commentaries.

You'll find out. It's like, I'm not reading this guy again. Give me somebody who's filled with the Spirit and not with questions that can never be answered because they've already been satisfied by grace. So a Christian can die in an act of sin and not go to hell. Otherwise, there is a condemnation that can separate you from Christ. But my Bible says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, not walk according to the flesh but the Spirit. It means you're no longer walking without Jesus Christ. You're walking with Jesus Christ.

You have submitted to His Lordship. And if that act can damn your soul, then so can other acts damn your soul. Like I mentioned, having the last dying with the wrong words on your lips will not undo the cross unless you are announcing your faith. So when John says all unrighteousness is sin and there is sin not leading to death, this would be one. Revelation 21, 6. And he said to me, it is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give the fountain of water of life freely to him who thirsts, to him who wants it. And so, yeah, I do get an attitude because the people that I've heard it from, they've all been legalists. And legalists are Judaizers of today's church. They come in with their list of rules. They have not one unpardonable sin but about 500 of them. And they sneak them out and they judge others because it makes them feel better about themselves. And they don't bear fruit.

Wherever they go, they bring aggravation. When John says in his Gospel, most assuredly Jesus speaking, I say to you, he who hears my words and believes in Him who sent me has everlasting life and he shall not come into judgment but has passed from death into life. He who believes in me, not he who is a good boy, he who always gets it right, he who knows the password, none of that. Repentance is not a password. It is an act of the entire soul. That's what God is looking for.

Current grace, it covers outward acts. What if you went to bed with a bad attitude towards your spouse and woke up dead? Are you in hell now?

Because you didn't get the password. A lot of you are going, whew, I like that theology. Repentance is an act of Christ's victory on the cross and the believer's faith. That's what repentance is. It is an enormous victory and Satan hates it so much. He says, if I can't get your salvation, I'll just try to make you miserable in life. And if I can make you miserable, I can make others miserable through you.

That's why we fight. That's why Paul and Silas had a defiant spirit in the Philippian jail. There, I got Philippians in. They were singing hymns and praying to the Lord with the wounds on their back. I would not have been that way.

I would have been, boy, I tell you, if I can ever find the guy, I mean, my flesh would be that way. Psalm 66, verse 18. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But certainly God has heard me. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. You put that on Samson's tombstone.

That is his epitaph right there. The iniquity was not in his heart. God heard him, answered his prayer. We have the proof of that. And now he's in Hebrews 11, 32, the hall of faith, and he's in heaven.

And he's no longer shallow in a irritable person. So I hope I've covered that. And if after all of those verses and that explanation, you insist that still there's a password to be had, and if you die without it, then all I can say is you don't understand grace.

You may have it, you still may use. I'm not saying you're going to hell because of it, though if I thought like you, you would be. There's another one, you know, the rich young ruler. People in their theology, he went to hell. It doesn't say that. So Jesus loved him.

That's what it does say. We'll be getting to that in Mark. I'd rather show grace and kindness if I can. That's why we war against the flesh, because the flesh doesn't want to do that. But that does not mean we want to excuse sin. We have to deal with that too. It says here in verse 30, He pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it.

Again, the lad had to witness that. Question that I would ask is, where was Delilah? I would think she was at the festivities. I mean, where's she going to go? All that money now, she's bought new clothes, she's got to show it off. You know, this is just an old joke about, you know, the lady who went to hell, and she loved hats, and she got all the hats she wanted, and just ton boxes and boxes of hats and no mirrors. So here's Delilah.

All this money, you know, all dressed up, nowhere to go. There's a song, right? Another Saturday night, and I... What is it? And I ain't got no body, I think it goes like that.

When I just got paid. All right, anyway, I remember it when I'm driving home, I'll be singing it. Another Saturday night and... So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life.

Well, the Jews who put together the story, they couldn't get a firsthand account of how many... I'm just talking away like there's no time. When the kids come back, I'm more mindful because, you know, the teachers are back there like, when's he going to end? So I'm just helping you get rewards in heaven, you should be thanking me. Anyway, the dead that he killed, of course, at this one event, he was a walking weapon of mass destruction. And just Romans 8.28, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose. But in the end, who do those things work well for? If you are Antipas, my faithful servant, as God called him, and you are martyred for God, where it says, and we know that all things work together for good. For who's good?

Both. God and the one that is the instrument of blessing, like Antipas. And in this case, for Samson. He made this temple to Satan, a battlefield for God's people, and won.

He dies a champion. Israel would have instantly realized relief from this single event. The Philistines were so damaged after this, they didn't know what to do. So just a brief review of makeshift weapons by the Jews and conventional weapons.

The sword, the spear, of course, the staff, the arrows, the sling, the dagger, the ox goad, the jawbone of a donkey, and a building. Verse 31, and his brothers and his father's household came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father, Manoah, and he judged Israel 20 years. And so he was buried in the rubble of the heathen temple only for a little time, as is life in this world. It doesn't say his friends also came. The story never reads as though Samson had any friends. Solomon, on the other hand, Solomon did have friends.

There was Hiram, King Hiram. There were things likable about Solomon. That's one of the beautiful things about the Song of Solomon is he writes against himself.

With all that he has, it was one that he just could not capture. Her heart belonged to a lowly shepherd, not the king. Anyway, was Samson an only child? Most of the story reads that way, but here it says his brothers, and the word can mean his countrymen, but because it says in all his father's household, uncles and things like that, it does say the family came and they collected Samson's body, came down and took him and brought him up and buried him.

Notice the language. They came down and they took him up, and that's to his resting place. Proverbs 25, whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down without walls. That's the life of Samson. It says between Zorah and Eshtaol, so he's back where he started, but still a champion even in death. And Israel, the people, no doubt believed he was their champion.

They just couldn't rally behind him. They reveled in his might when they said Samson took the gates of Gaza up a hill. Kind of like makes Jack and Jill seem like, I don't want to hear that story, tell me about the guy with the gates. But anyway, at this point in the story, this man whose name had become a byword to this day, we refer to Samson-like strength, but at this point, the historical chronology of the Book of Judges ends. The remaining chapters go back into the first 16 chapters and tell us of how the people in their understanding of holiness collapsed and during the period of Judges that each man did indeed do according to his own desires. We will not get another judge until we get to the Book of Samuel when we meet Eli and then Samuel, but I want to end with this note. As I finish this, I was thinking, it's by God's hand that the man who was reckless about his service died blind, but also a champion. It's just the grace of God. To leave, from heaven's perspective, Samson, you really messed up a tremendous amount of things, but you went out with guns blazing and you served my purposes, which is what you were called to do from the beginning, to begin to deliver my people from their oppressors, the Philistines. And in that sense, the objective was met.

And so the story is a tragedy, but it is not an absolute loss. And if I were to give a study on Samson at a men's conference, it would go in a whole other direction, but it would still be loaded with grace, because that's the way it is. 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.