Two Pillars

Two Pillars

(Judges 16:23-31)

Yearly Theme:  “Kindness is… Action”

Series Title:  “Kindness in the Land”

March 26^th, 2023

Something to think about:

We come to our final sermon in the series entitled “Kindness in the Land,” and we come upon a judge by the name of Samson.  Samson is the final judge in the Old Testament book of Judges before the prophet/judge, Samuel, came onto the scene.  Samson, however, was not a good judge.  Having been given great physical strength, and having taken the Nazarite vow of holiness and dedication to GOD (no wine or grapes, no touching of dead bodies, and no cutting of the hair of the head), Samson took for granted that his strength, position, and authority came from the LORD.  As a result, he became cocky and arrogant.  And with pride ruling in his heart, he was eventually destined to fail.

Instead of honoring GOD and truly devoting his life to Him, Samson flittered his life away in pursuit of women, wine, and death – completely breaking every one of the commitments of his Nazarite vow of dedication to the LORD.  In his marriage to a woman named Delilah, an ally of the Philistines (who were enemies of GOD’s people), he would ultimately succumb to the consequences of his pride and arrogance as he revealed the secret to his strength:  his uncut hair.  Having revealed his secret, Delilah took advantage of him while he was sleeping and cut his hair.  When she did this, she alerted the Philistine rulers who came and captured Samson, gouged out his eyes, and took him captive as their prisoner.

Hairless, broken, and blind, Samson had succumbed to the consequences of his pride and arrogance.  Now the amusement of the Philistines, they parade him around for purposes of laughter and ridicule.  However, on one fateful day when the Philistine rulers held a festival to their chief god Dagon to celebrate their victory over their mighty enemy Samson, the tables turn.  For only the second time in Samson’s story, he prays to GOD, but this time he is completely humbled.  Let’s take a look at how his story ends…

Turn in your Bible to:  Judges 16:23-31

Here’s the takeaway:

Key Point:  “GOD’s kindness drives us to humility.”

What can we learn about GOD’s kindness and how Samson was driven to humility?

• Samson used GOD’s gift of  for  means.

Judges 14:1-2 (NLT),  ¹  One day when Samson was in Timnah, one of the Philistine women caught his eye. 2  When he returned home, he told his father and mother, “A young Philistine woman in Timnah caught my eye. I want to marry her. Get her for me.”

Judges 14:8-9 (NLT),  ⁸  Later, when he returned to Timnah for the wedding, he turned off the path to look at the carcass of the lion. And he found that a swarm of bees had made some honey in the carcass. ⁹  He scooped some of the honey into his hands and ate it along the way. He also gave some to his father and mother, and they ate it. But he didn’t tell them he had taken the honey from the carcass of the lion.

Judges 16:1-3 (NLT),  ¹  One day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute. 2  Word soon spread that Samson was there, so the men of Gaza gathered together and waited all night at the town gates. They kept quiet during the night, saying to themselves, “When the light of morning comes, we will kill him.” 3  But Samson stayed in bed only until midnight. Then he got up, took hold of the doors of the town gate, including the two posts, and lifted them up, bar and all. He put them on his shoulders and carried them all the way to the top of the hill across from Hebron.

• Samson’s  caused him to lower his  .

Judges 16:17-20 (NLT),  ¹⁷  Finally, Samson shared his secret with her. “My hair has never been cut,” he confessed, “for I was dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as anyone else.” 18  Delilah realized he had finally told her the truth, so she sent for the Philistine rulers. “Come back one more time,” she said, “for he has finally told me his secret.” So the Philistine rulers returned with the money in their hands. 19  Delilah lulled Samson to sleep with his head in her lap, and then she called in a man to shave off the seven locks of his hair. In this way she began to bring him down, and his strength left him. 20  Then she cried out, “Samson! The Philistines have come to capture you!” When he woke up, he thought, “I will do as before and shake myself free.” But he didn’t realize the LORD had left him.

• When Samson is  is when he becomes  .

Judges 16:28-30 (NLT)  ²⁸ Then Samson prayed to the Lord, “Sovereign Lord, remember me again. O God, please strengthen me just one more time. With one blow let me pay back the Philistines for the loss of my two eyes.” ²⁹ Then Samson put his hands on the two center pillars that held up the temple. Pushing against them with both hands, ³⁰ he prayed, “Let me die with the Philistines.”

Something to take home:

In a speech made in 1863, during the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln wrote a Proclamation (Proclamation 97) appointing a day of “National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.”  In it, he declared,

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten God.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

“It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”[1]

Much like Samson and the people of Israel, we too as individuals and as a nation, have forgotten GOD.  Must we, like Samson, have our eyes gouged out in order to truly see?  Must we be humbled the way he was before we turn our hearts back to GOD? 

2 Chronicles 7:13-14 (NLT),  If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.

In Samson’s humility and humiliation, he remembered to pray.  Then and only then did GOD’s presence return to him and his strength was renewed.

Key Point:  “GOD’s kindness drives us to humility.”

[1] “Proclamation 97-Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.” Proclamation 97-Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer | The American Presidency Project, March 30, 1863. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-97-appointing-day-national-humiliation-fasting-and-prayer.