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Judges 16
We see Samson's foolish and reckless living: first with the prostitute and then when he trusted Delilah. Did Samson become so confident and comfortable with his power and strength that part of him actually believed he could never lose his power, even if his hair was cut? Perhaps this went on for so long, he actually believed he could never be subdued or overcome.
The very thing God said would happen, did happen: cut your hair and lose your power.
God gives us all warnings in his word as it relates to relationships on Earth, with God and with life choices. Our life is filled with choices. Bad choices results in bad consequences. We could be trapped in a sin for so long that we become so comfortable with it that we end up thinking no one will find out. Nothing bad will happen. In the meantime God gives us all kinds of warnings and we ignore them. We continue to be overconfident, overly comfortable and keep thinking no one will find out or it's no big deal.
Samson flirted with Delilah's desire to expose his power that eventually it was exposed. We can flirt with evil for so long. God will give warnings but eventually he steps back and lets our sin be exposed which humbles us and hopefully restores us back into a right relationship with the Lord and with others.
What choices are we making? What needs to stop now? Listen to the Holy Spirit before it results into something terrible for yourself and others!
Delilah complained that Samson didn’t love her because he lied to her about the secret of his strength, but if he would have stopped to think about the fact that if what he had told her about his strength was actually correct those first three times, he would have lost his power because she did exactly what he told her and the Philistines were right there for him.
Warning! Warning! Warning! Hello? Samson, she can’t be trusted! Don’t tell her the real secret!
We can see from the very first verse of this chapter that Samson wasn’t living right. We find out that the strongest man in the world was not the wisest man in the world, but eventually even the wisest man ends up getting into trouble because of his wrong relationship with women! We’ll look at that another day when we read about Solomon.
I was thinking today about Proverbs 31:10-12.
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.”
I am so thankful that God has blessed me with an excellent wife, Donna. It’s so important and I pray that as my children grow up, that they will have spouses who honor the Lord and are blessings from the Lord to each other. We can learn many lessons from Samson. One is to not mess around in inappropriate relationships before marriage, but to wait for the right mate to marry when the time is right.
One of my favorite parodies by ApologetiX is Enter Samson. This song is a parody of Enter Sandman and it goes along with today’s reading from chapter 16. The link to the video is below.
https://youtu.be/kEet-mcHAsw
Thanks for sharing the video Jim! I really liked it. And I agree there were major red flags and warning signs that Delilah did not have Samson’s best interest at heart!
Why would he continue to play with the fire of losing his strength? And eventually give away the secret to his strength… it doesn’t really make sense, but often times when in a relationship with a bad person, you focus on only the good (beauty, physical desires, etc.) and allow the negative things and warning signs to fall to the wayside.
I find it sad that Delilah would sell Samson out for shekels. How much greed and how very little love you must have for someone if you are willing to get them injured or killed to have a monetary reward. Samson was blind to that flaw in Delilah and in the end, he was literally blind because of it when they gouged his eyes out.
In the end both Samson and Delilah lost their lives for giving in to sin and putting money/love before a relationship with God. I pray whatever sin we are giving into to right now, we can turn away from as we turn towards the Lord!