Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The Apostle Paul said, This one thing I do, not these twenty things I dabble at.
He had a single-minded devotion to God. Only at the end of life did Samson of old conquer his wandering heart. Today, Judges chapter 15 and lessons from the life of a strong man who needed a single-minded purpose.
Stay with us for more of We've Been Down This Road Before. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, a lot of us are like Samson, doing our own thing, but often having to call on the Lord when things get tough. You know, Dave, I want to just be very honest with all who are listening.
Here's a simple fact of history, and we've all experienced it personally, and we experience it as a nation. People usually do not call on God until they are desperate. And so what God does is he sends them a lot of trials, and of course Samson had that.
I mean, he ends up in jail and all the rest. And as a result of that finally being cornered, he called on God. The other day I was reading in the book of Psalms and over and over again it said, and the Lord sent them affliction and they called onto the name of the Lord.
Now here's my challenge. No matter who you are, will you pursue God even when you are not afflicted? We here at Running to Win are looking for people whom God has chosen to help us to become what we call endurance partners. That's people who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts.
I'll tell you more about it immediately following this message. What happens in the cave is remarkable. I think in this cave Samson really did meet God. We pick it up in verse nine. It says, the Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi, and the men of Judah asked, why have you come to fight us? They're asking the Philistines this, and they said, we have come to take Samson prisoner. They answered, to do him as he did to us. Now what do the men of Judah do? These are supposed to be Samson's friends. Well, they go down to the cave in the rock and they say to Samson, don't you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?
He answered, I merely did to them what they did to me. They've said, well we've come to tie you up and to hand you over to the Philistines. And Samson says, just swear that you won't kill me. And they said, we won't kill you, but let us bind you up. And so they take two brand new ropes and they bind Samson and he lets them do it.
Have you got the second scene in your mind? The most remarkable thing is you have 3000 men of Judah. These are the Israelites of all things. They should be standing up with Samson. They should be saying, Samson, you have been able to avenge us of the Philistines and you are our hero.
How can we help you fight? Instead what they say is, because we don't want to be hurt, we want to give you over to the Philistines. He's being given over by 3000 sniveling cowards who should have been fighting with him. And they're saying, we're betraying you to the enemy. You can see that there are some people who can make peace with their enemy. There are some people who are so absorbed in their own life that they will not fight as long as there is a struggle. And they say to themselves, I will not get involved just as long as my peace and security and my comfort is unaffected. And so they want to get rid of Samson.
They're willing to do that. Why did I tell you a moment ago that I think Samson really met God in this cave? Because of his reaction to them. Notice how he controlled his words.
He didn't lash out and say, now, as a result of what you're doing, I just can't believe this. I'm going to destroy you folks. Here it is. I lay my life on the line. I'm heaping vengeance upon the Philistines, these people who worship false gods. And what do I get in return? All that I get in return is the fact that you begin to side with the enemy and hand me over to him. That would have been a legitimate speech to give, but he doesn't give it. He's willing to be submissive.
That's why I say he's a very complex character. He controlled his words. He controlled his strength. As long as he had a promise that they would not kill him, he was willing to simply give himself up to them and to be handed over to the Philistines.
And so he was willing to do that. Humiliated, though he was, he was under the subjection of his own people. So I say Samson, the peacemaker, Samson, the avenger, Samson, the peacemaker. Now there's a third portrait of him, and that is Samson, the victor.
Let's read the text. The scripture says in verse 14 of Judges 15, as he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him, shouting and the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax and the bindings dropped from his hands. Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.
Wow, are you catching that on your video? Can you imagine Samson he's got this jawbone and there's some men, the Philistines who come against him and say, we're going to overcome you. We're going to fight against you. We're going to kill you. Then he starts swatting with his jawbone and, and people are being killed. And then there are other recruits who say, we can't let this happen. Just look at what's happening to our men.
Let's gang up on him and do it. But the more they gang up on him, the more he continues to kill them until you have, and this is difficult for us to grasp, you have there on the battlefield at Lehi, 1000 men essentially, or approximately who are lying dead. What a scene. Now you'll notice what Samson said, and there's a play on words going on here in the text, but because your Bible is open, you'll be able to follow. First of all, that word Lehi that I've spoken about before, it's the word in Hebrew for jawbone.
And so Lehi was jawbone. That was where perhaps carcasses were put. And there was a carcass of a donkey that was lying there. And that's the one that Samson picked up, but you'll notice after he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men, he said, with a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them with a donkey's jawbone.
I have killed a thousand men. Now, if you're here with a different translation of the Bible, you may wonder why the NIV translates it this way. What you need to understand is that essentially the word for donkey and the word for heap or pile is related essentially the same word. So some translations say, you know, with a donkey's jawbone heap upon heap and so forth. So translators have been a little bit challenged as to how they should translate this. This translation says with a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them with a donkey's jawbone. I've killed a thousand men. Let me just cut through all the translation problems and say that I think what Samson was trying to say is with the jawbone of a donkey, I killed a thousand donkeys.
That's essentially what he's trying to say to the people and to himself. So Samson is there having won this tremendous victory. He's the victor. Obviously it made a great impact upon the Philistine army and no doubt they are quite ready to throw in the towel at this point because the victory was so complete. Then we find that the place was called Ramoth.
Ramoth means heap or it can also mean hill, jawbone hill, Ramoth, Lehi. And because he was very thirsty, can't understand why. I mean, he's only killed a thousand people. He cried out to the Lord, you have given your servant this great victory.
Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised? And God opens up the hollow place there in Lehi and water comes out and Samson drank it and his strength returned. What we also find is that in the last part of the chapter, verse 20, he led Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines. He was a judge for 20 years. Can you imagine for 20 years the people came to him to settle their disputes? Do you see how God matured this immature man?
Also I want you to notice in the text when he prayed here, so far as I know it's the only time really that he prayed until the day of his death, at least the only recorded one, when he's praying and saying, God, you've given me this great victory. Don't let me die of thirst. I don't know about you, but I think most of us would like to die if we had to die young, to die for something significant and not just because of something silly. I remember many years ago, we had a problem in our garage where we had the freezer and I guess it was because of some electrical difficulty or whatever. I went there in my pajamas to unplug the freezer and got quite a shock.
I was reminded of the fact that electricity can be powerful. I thought later, what a, what a stupid way to die. I mean, how would you like to die doing that? If you're going to die, die for something significant. Samson says don't let me die of thirst after all this. And God graciously grants him his request.
Well, today's message has been a little unusual, hasn't it? Because all that I've been able to do so far is to tell you the story of chapter 15. We've talked about the three portraits of him in the field.
He is an Avenger with the foxes in the cave. He becomes a peacemaker and now on Jawbone Hill, he becomes a victor. So how does this transform our lives? What a difference should it make? How can we live this week differently because of the story recorded in Judges chapter 15.
I'd like to give you three life changing lessons so that the application becomes very personal and very direct. First of all, God often uses our friends and not our enemies to purify us. God often uses our friends and not our enemies to purify us.
You'll notice that as long as the Philistines were after Samson, as long as they were the ones who were fighting against him, he had no problem with him. I believe that when his own people betrayed him, it hurt him very deeply, but it also made him a more spiritual person. And I want you to know that the deepest hurts that we sometimes endure of life in life are those hurts of betrayal where we feel people who should have stood up for us have not done so and therefore it hurts. Now the Bible does say faithful are the wounds of a friend, but sometimes when we have expectations for people and we think that most assuredly they should support us, they should stand up for us, they should speak in our behalf and they don't, sometimes those hurts are used by God in the most pointed way to bring about the transformation of life that we so desperately need.
God hurts his people. God takes the pruning knife, since we're talking about a pure heart, God takes a pruning knife and he cuts back the branches. And if you could see after a vine dresser was finished pruning the branches and you would see this heap of branches cut so directly, so finely, so keenly, you would say to yourself, how mean. But the vine dresser knows what he's doing.
He's cutting back the branches that they might bear more fruit. So are you resisting what God is doing in your life? This past week I heard about someone who maintains a tremendous amount of anger to people whom he believes have wronged him. I have a different opinion as to whether or not he was even wronged, but that's a different story. That's his perspective, that he hangs onto it, he nurses it, he lets it control him, it becomes his guiding principle, it becomes his justification for the lifestyle that he's living.
Why? Because he simply will not respond to God's knife. God often uses our friends, not our enemies, to purify us. Jesus said about Judas, my own familiar friend in, my own familiar friend has lifted up his heel against me. I almost quoted the Old Testament version, that's why I had to stop. In the Old Testament it says, my own familiar friend whom I trusted has betrayed me. But Jesus left out those words whom I trusted, because he never did trust Judas.
But there's no doubt that it's still hurt. You are with somebody for three years, you do miracles, you see all of the great things that God has done, and you become a part of the picture, and then suddenly you turn against your master. There's no doubt that even though Jesus knew it was coming, he was hurt by the treachery of Judas.
But God uses our friends to prune us. Second lesson, very important, the weapons of the spirit, the weapons of the spirit are more important and more powerful than the weapons of the flesh. I can't help but be interested in the fact that God used, you know, a jawbone in the hands of a champion to kill all these people. Now God could have used, God could have used, you know, a stick or a stone, I mean his options were limitless, but he uses the jawbone of a dead donkey. I've never done this, someday I was thinking about this yesterday, I should take a concordance and go through the Old Testament particularly and study out all of the instances in which the word donkey appears.
One of the things that you would discover is that in this instance God used the jawbone of a dead donkey, but there is also a story in the Bible about how God used the jawbone of a living donkey. You do remember the story of Balaam. Balaam is riding a donkey and suddenly the donkey begins to talk to Balaam.
That's not the surprise in the story, the real surprise is the way in which Balaam responds. I just really, I read that story and I said, could this be true? How would you like to be riding a donkey and you hit the donkey with a whip and it turns back and says, now why in the world are you whipping me?
Let me ask you this, do you believe that story? A skeptic asked a Christian and said, ridiculing the story, he said, he said, I'd like to see you make a donkey talk. And the Christian responded, I'd like to see you just make a donkey. The God who created donkeys is the God who's able to make them talk. If you find the story incredible, it's because our God is incredible. Here God uses the jawbone of a dead donkey.
He's also used the jawbone of a living donkey to speak, which is a story I'm often reminded of when those of us who are in the ministry are commended for having been used of God. It's surprising some time who or what God uses. My point is simply this, that you may feel today as if you are a job on maybe even feeling as if you know you're cast out on the heap. You're, you don't feel connected.
You don't feel worthy. You don't feel a part of what God is doing. I want you to know today that indeed in the hands of God, he can use anything and anyone. That's why at the beginning of this service, I quoted the words of E.M. Bounds who said, we are continually looking for better methods and God is looking for better men. He looks upon the heart and if your heart is holy, God's, you might be surprised what God will do through you because the weapons of the spirit are more mighty than the weapons of the flesh.
There's one last lesson and that is that single mindedness begins with a heart, not the head. I have no doubt that God was working in Samson's life during this experience to try to get him rid of all of his double mindedness. Did God succeed completely? No, because next time we're going to see how he fell into sin with Delilah.
But up until this time, Samson led Israel for 20 years and God does give him special billing, shall we say, in the 11th chapter of Hebrews where he appears as one of the heroes of faith. And I want to say that however much we may be like Samson or how different from him, the fact still is that the thing that God is constantly doing in our lives is this process of purification. It is getting rid of the double mindedness, the world and God, and that process begins first of all through conversion. When we accept Christ as savior and we are born again of the Holy Spirit, there is something within us that was not there before created within us that gives us brand new desires. And while you know that you are saved based on the promises of scripture, the simple fact is these new desires are further evidence of your salvation because God gives us the desire to love him and to serve him.
That's basic to conversion. And after that, God uses two things to continue to purify us, to make us more like him. He uses time and pressure, just like diamonds are created in the earth.
He can take coal, he can transform them into diamonds with time and pressure. And as we are weaned from the things of this world constantly, we become more Christ-like in our walk. And as the years go by, the temptations and the double mindedness of our heart becomes more focused now upon Christ and God and all of the things that distracted us are being cut back. That's God's agenda in your heart and mind. You came here today maybe wondering what God is doing in your life through the particular trial that you are going through.
And I would simply say this, I know what he's doing and in your heart you know what he is doing. He's purifying your motives and your heart and it takes time and it takes pressure. You've heard me say before about the sculptor who was asked, how do you make an elephant?
And he said it's very simple actually because you just buy a block of marble and then you chip away everything that isn't elephant. And that's the way God changes us. He works in our lives to chip away everything that isn't Jesus to make us focused, committed, wholehearted followers of his. Samson was en route and so are we. Let's pray together. Our Father, we want to thank you today that you do not give up on us because as we look at the life of Samson we do see ourselves with all of our double-mindedness, with all of our silliness at times. And we pray, oh Father graciously, help us to be delivered from all those things of the world that distract us, that hold us back from full, pure, wholehearted devotion to you. Grant that as a congregation, granted individually. And we pray Father that you will not let go until your work is done. Do you need to pray today? Let's take out a moment and you talk to God if he's spoken to you.
Our Father, today we pray in grace. Bring us to the point of submission. Do us the favor of showing us ourselves in your presence and then come to purify us. Make us like Jesus, we pray.
Amen. My friend today, if you prayed that prayer you recognize of course that God may indeed bring a great deal of tribulation into our lives because Jesus had great tribulation, rejected by his culture, rejected by the religious leaders, eventually crucified. May we be as faithful as he. We here at Running to Win are looking for people whom God has spoken to about the possibility of becoming what we call endurance partners. Endurance partners are people who stand with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. They do so because they believe in our ministry.
They are people who are praying for us and at the same time recognizing that the reason that Running to Win can go around the world in 50 different countries in seven different languages is because of partners who are committed to what we're doing. May I thank you in advance for considering at least becoming an endurance partner. Here's what you can do. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com and when you're there you click on the endurance partner button or you can pick up the phone even right now and call us at 1-888-218-9337. Endurance partners are those who run the race all the way to the finish line. Go to RTWOffer.com. Click on the endurance partner button.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Pastor Erwin Lutzer has concluded Samson, a man with two hearts. The 11th of 12 messages taken from the book of Judges, all on the topic we've been down this road before. Next time join us for the famous story of Samson and Delilah. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
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