Samson: The Birth of a Biblical Superhero

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bob Guys. We

are jumping into the life of Samson.

That's right, this is gonna be a fun one.

Yeah, we guy. We ended with Gideon and there was

some really cool stuff between get in and here. Sure

between Judges thirteen you can summarize that. But before we

get to that, we have a great segment for you.

Committed to deliver to you the best of the.

News, only the finest news sources.

Yes, for those of you that are new listeners, our

longtime listeners, you know you know that we bring you

valuable information and these are what kind of story would

this be? This kind of story is like a human

interest story. Yes, yes, And here's the title from The

Babylon Bat. So the Babylon b is our favorite news

sources satire, Yes, website, and the headline is I'm almost ready,

says wife, letting husband know he has time to watch

at least one entire Lord of the Rings film.

It's so funny.

Okay, So it goes Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Local woman Sarah Donaldson

informed her husband Jeremy that she was almost ready to leave,

alerting him that he had time to watch at least

one extended edition Lord of the Rings movie. Well, I

guess I'll start with Fellowship, said mister Donalds, settling down

on the couch. She's at least dressed, so may not

make it through the two towers.

We'll see.

According to sources, Frodo had made it to Mordor on

at least one previous occasion when Missus Donaldson announced her

husband that she was almost ready. While her use of

the phrase be right there appears to be correlated to

a typical feature length film, Missus Donaldson's almost being ready

consistently lands in a Lord of the Rings territory. After

learning that his wife was almost ready to go out

to dinner, mister Donaldson began deciding what to go ahead

and eat at home. No way, I can wait until

we get to the restaurant, mister Donaldson said, I could

make a lasagna from scratch, or maybe smoke a brisket.

I could probably teach myself to make dumplings. It's gonna

be a bet. At publishing time, Missus Donaldson had updated

her husband that she just needed to use the bathroom

and then she'd be ready to go, helpfully notifying him

that he could probably finish the two towers.

Oh goodness, gracious, that is so good.

Smoke a brisket takes like twelve hours, so good.

Or teach himself how to make a lasagna from scratch

or dumplings. That's really funny.

Is it that way at your house? Because because you

have two daughters, you know what.

My wife is actually excuse me, my wife is actually

really good at this, like in other words, like she's

not this way she if she says I'm gonna be ready,

she's ready. My daughter Sarah was an offender, but not

nearly as much as the offense of my youngest daughter, Tory,

a toy daughter. My wife has her name typed into

the phone, and I'm not even kidding. She used to

add a turtle, like an icon of a turtle at

the end of her name on the text every time

that she made us lad somewhere, And I think it's

now like if you look up Lizz's phone and pull

up Tory's contact, it says Tory's ARBA. And I think

there's like thirty two turtles, and it's sort of a

thing between them, right, she would just keep on adding

a turtle, adding a turtle. But then what she likes

to do is she likes to send it to toy

And then, you know, have you ever had the text

being read to you like Stey reads the text? It

says from Torri's arba turtle turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle.

It's hilarious. And so anyway, so they go back and

forth on the whole thing. So Tory is a great offender.

Yeah, I have right now, my son, my middle son,

and his wife moved back from Virginia, and so they're

staying with us for a while. And so I have

my wife, my daughter in law, and my daughter who's

twenty who still lives with us at home. And I

can't get anywhere unless we have to leave the day before.

So where we're trying to go, we have to prepare

to leave the day before because it just takes so long.

And I'm one of those, you know, to leave on time.

I was late coming to the studio today, right, and

that drives me nuts. I'm rarely ever late on my

own accord, Right, somebody's making me late. That's I'm not

a victim, and I don't play the victim. But if

I'm late, it's usually somebody else that makes me late,

not always, but ninety nine percent of time, and it

drives me nuts. I just lose my mind over I

thought we said we were leaving at five. We are

It's five forty, right, you know. So I think that

the women in my life measure time from like the

beginning of the hour to fifty nine. So if we

say five, it's five zero zero to five ninety five nine.

That's kind of how they measure time. And it drives

me crazy.

You know, do well in the countries that you visit?

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, perfectly fine. What they mean is

to ish two ish two or three ish is perfect Yep.

It's just it drives me crazy. So I can really

appreciate that those of.

You don't travel abroad as much as Jeff, which is

probably everybody. There's a lot of countries that he goes

to and that I've been at where they say, uh yeah,

if they say be ready at two, you better you

better go to the trip immediately releasing being on time

for anything.

Oh yeah, we talk about Africa. Time we talk about

Cuba time. Cuba does the same thing, the same thing.

They just say, Cuba is Cuba. That's what they say.

And it's just you.

Just wait, just wait.

Yep. So they say be on time of two. If

you're in the bus of two waiting on everybody, you'll

be waiting.

One of my African friends, I'm always, you know, looking

at my watch. I'm always trying to hustle people along.

We said too, let's leave it too, and he always

laughs at me and he says.

Time.

We have time right, So there's train Americans and Africans.

You keep time right and we have time.

Yes, they have time to do whatever they want.

We can do whatever we want.

That's really good.

So, hey, that was very useful. And again I know

that our listeners are appreciative and riveted of the important

information that we bring them. And so if if you're

a lady and you have some men in your life

that are waiting for you, just understand the pain that

we feel over it.

Right.

That's that's that's that's helping out the men on our

podcast and feel are the men that are listening to podcasts.

That's almost all men feel pain. In this area.

That's right.

So hey, it's not like men are the only ones.

Women are the only ones that are late though, just

typical guys. Guys can can do the same.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Perennially late men. Do you know any perennially late men?

Are you? Are you hinting at something? Jeff, what are

you hinting at something?

No?

No, I am a person that has not necessarily had

a reputation for being on time.

It's because you squeeze a lot into your day.

That's partly thank you that Chad.

Chad asman our executive pastor.

Yes, he's that way. He's like, okay, I had to

leave and leave in seven minutes. Let me go ahead

and balance the budget.

Real quick, right, So he's always just squeezing one more

thing out of the day.

I will definitely say that is me.

Yeah, it's not.

It's not that he's lollygagging, right right. It's not that

he's curling his hair one more time. It's not that

he's trying on one more outfit, right, It's that he's,

you know, squeezing in one more thing to do.

But I am different than Chad in that he will

choose to do something absolutely productive. I may choose to

do something not.

Nine more holes, right, exactly right.

I'd be like, let me watch one more video, right, yeah,

But either way, I'm choosing to do something.

Okay, So we are pivoting. That was a rivoting segment.

I'm sure we are pivoting now into the life of Samson.

He's a real life superhero in the Bible, and, as

you think of comic book type superheroes, deeply flawed person.

At the same time, God used him in a great

way prior to him. There's several other judges. There's an

incredible story. For those of you that are Bible readers,

you need to read the rest of the story of Gideon.

Gideon makes a few mistakes, he does some stuff. It

winds up costing all kinds of crazy stuff.

He has seventy one sons. Yeah, that's crazy, and the one.

Son kills sixty nine of the others and pulls off

a coup and it's just it's crazy, right, So read

the story of Gideon. The rest of that story. There's

some others in there. There's an incredibly difficult story of

a guy named Jeffa in there that winds up becoming

a great judge of Israel.

It's just.

Just some really neat stories. But the next highlight, guy,

he's going to be several chapters here in the Book

of Judges is Samson. And so since we're kind of

in the highlights rather than verse by verse, yeah, we

jump into the life of Samson.

Yeah, we can go back and read jet in another

series down the road.

That's right when we go verse by verse through the

Old Testament, which we haven't done yet. So we're gonna

jump to Judges chapter thirteen, and I'm just gonna read

the first twenty five verses. And this is just the

beginning of the life of Samson. It says again, Oh, hey,

the Israelites did evil on the Lord's site. Wow, it

seems to be a theme where thirteen chapters in. It

seems like this has come up thirteen times. Yeah, so

the Lord handed them over to the Philistines, who oppressed

them for forty years. In those days, a man named

Manoah from the tribe of Dan lived in the town

of Zora. His wife was unable to become pregnant and

they had no children. The Angel of the Lord appeared

to Manoa's wife and said, even though you've been unable

to have children, you will soon become pregnant and give

birth to a son.

So be careful.

You must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink,

or eat any forbidden food. You'll become pregnant, give birth

to a son, and his hair must never be cut,

for he will be dedicated the God as a Nazarite.

From birth he will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.

The woman ran and told her husband a man of

God appeared to me. He looked like one of God's angels,

terrifying to see. I didn't ask where he was from,

and he didn't tell me his name, but he told

me you would become pregnant and give birth to a son.

He must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink,

nor eat any forbidden food, for your son will be

dedicated to God as a Nazirite from the moment of

his birth until the day of his death. Then Manoah

prayed to the Lord, saying, Lord, please let the man

of God come back to us again and give us

more instructions about this son who was to be born.

God answered Manoah's prayer, and the angela God appeared once

again to his wife as she was sitting in the field,

but her husband, Manoah, was not with her, so she

quickly ran and told her husband, the man who appeared

to me the other day is here again. Manoah ran

back with his wife and asked, are you the man

who spoke to my wife the other day? Yes, he replied,

I am so. Manoah asked him, when your words come true,

what kind of rules should govern the boy's life and work.

The Angel Lord replied, be sure your wife follows the

instructions I gave. She must not eat grapes or raisins,

drink wine or any other alcoholic drink, or eat any

forbidden food. Then Manoah said to the Angel of the Lord,

please stay here until we can prepare a young goat

for you to eat. I will stay the Angel the

Lord replied, but I will not eat anything. However, you

may prepare a burnt offering as a sacrifice to the Lord.

Manoah didn't realize it was the Angel of the Lord.

Then Manoah asked the Angel of the Lord, what is

your name? For when all this comes true, we want

to honor you. Why do you ask my name? The

Angel of the Lord replied, it is too wonderful for

you to understand. Then Manoah took a young goat and

a grain offering and offered it on a rock as

a sacrifice to the Lord. And as Manoah and his

wife watched, the Lord did an amazing thing. As the

flames from the altar shot up toward the sky, the

Angel Lord ascended in the fire. When Manoa and his

wife saw this, they fell with their faces to the ground.

The angel did not appear again to Manoah and his wife.

Manoa finally realized it was the Angel of the Lord,

and he said to his wife, we will certainly die,

for we've seen God. But his wife said, if the

Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn't have been

accepted our burnt offering and green offering. He wouldn't have

appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and

done these miracles. When her son was born, she named

him Samson, and the Lord blessed him as he grew

up and the spirit of the Lord began to stir him.

While he lived in Mahanna Dan, which is located between

the towns of Zorah and Eschtahl MM hmm, there you go.

Thank you.

That's what he was.

That's my thing. I always say, there you go after

we're done. And so I was resisting it in that

moment and you threw it in.

So yeah, so pretty crazy. I mean, just the uh announcements. Uh,

you know, there's not been too many announcements think about

it in the Bible that are like this, you know,

I mean think about the even you know, even John

the Baptist. Uh. You know, there was a there's a

miraculous announcement there too, you know in in the temple. Uh,

you know, there was there's obviously a miraculous announcement to

Mary for Jesus. Abraham was told and his wife Sarah

that they were going to have a baby right by

the angel. And would this be the only other one?

Hannah with Samuel, yep, you're right about that, yep, Samuel, yep.

And then you have Mary, Mary who the mother of Jesus.

I said that already.

Oh okay, I wasn't paying attention.

I rarely paid so many marriage I was like, I

was like, oh, he's about to pull out another Mary

and Elizabeth Elizabeth yeah mentioned that one. So but other

than that, I would say, uh, this is it. I mean,

you know, this is an incredible thing. And you know,

I find it interesting how the man immediately comes to

the conclusion we're going to die because we've seen God.

And then the woman has the reasoning. You know, she's like, well,

technically he wouldn't have accepted our burnt offering, so surely

you know he's he's not going to kill us because

so she she has the she has the level headedness, right,

And I like that. I just like the fact that,

you know, the man is supposed to be the protector

of things. We're doomed, right, you know, And then the

woman's like, no, we're good.

It also shows that opposites do really attract a lot

of times, right in a married situation like this, one

of them is highly emotional, the other one's logical, you know,

and and we balance each other out and there's a

benefit there. So yeah, that's pretty great.

And so so yeah, what stands out to you?

And well, I was gonna let's just go to the

beginning of it. So here we are.

This is the sixth cycle of disobedience during the in

the Book of Judges, So from Joshua up to Samson it's.

How many years? How many years do we have these

Joshua Samson?

Holy yoh, there's gotta be what a couple hundred right, let.

Me find it. I was just looking at it a

minute ago. In that list of judges that we have

here in the Okay, so ath Neil is forty years.

E hud Is is eighty years. It doesn't mention how

long Sham went, but that's one twenty. Deborah was forty,

so that's one sixty. Oh yeah, Gideon is forty, that's

two hundred. Tola is twenty three, Jaiir is twenty two,

so that's forty five more So that's what did I say?

Two hundred and forty five?

Then?

And then six for Jephtha and seven for Yeah. So

you've got about another twenty five years. So you're tooking

tongue two hundred and fifty years, two hundred and seventy

years to Samson. And during this time they have thought,

they have these six times where they go on this

it's a cycle. So this is the sixth cycle. They

ignore God, they go back to worshiping idols. God sends

judgment and it's the Midianites or the Amalekites or somebody.

Now it's going to be the Philistines. Then they're under

oppression for a period of time. Here with the Philistines,

it's forty years of oppress, and then then there's been

two hundred in something years, two hundred and seventy years

of freedom as the judges rise up. So we didn't

count was the number of years that the oppression would happen.

Sometimes twenty years, sometimes fifteen years, sometimes forty years of oppression.

So this is one hundreds and hundreds of years of

this cycle of back and forth and back and forth.

It's dozens probably of generations. We honor God, we dishonor God,

we honor God, we dishonor God, honor God, blessing, peace,

dishonor God, cursing and oppression from the enemies of God.

So here we are, we're on the sixth version of that,

and it starts off that generation dies and again the

Israelites did evil on the Lord's site, and they keep

going back to the same gods. They keep going back

to Bail and Astra, and so the Philistines come up

and they oppress them for forty years. Now the Philistines

were all along the coast of what you think of

modern day Israel now, particularly Gaza is where the Philistines

were Palestinians being now that same area, and then up

the coast almost all the way to Tel Aviv, that

whole area, and they outnumbered Israel. They were a warrior culture,

whereas Israel was more of a pastoral you know, animals

and farming kind of a culture. The Philistines were warrior

and they had a tech. They had technology. They could

make weapons out of iron, so they knew the secret

of iron making and the Israelites did not yet. So

they had a technological advantage and numerical advantage, and then

they had a cultural advantage, that is that they're warriors,

and so they just rough up Israel all the time.

And so they're pleading, oh, God, do something, and God

decides he's going to do something, but he's going to

do it through a baby. So his promise to set

them free, it's going to take about twenty years to develop, right, right,

one man, it's going to rise up, that's right.

And you know what is interesting about this whole thing

is when you were talking about, you know, this is

the sixth cycle. I was thinking of all the movies

in my mind and that funny on my mind goes there,

but like like you saw War of the World's where

you know, like uh, Keanu Reeves ends up being the

all knowing being who watches the earth through generations. Mankind

has followed the same pattern for years, right, talking about

destroying the earth for the technology and and uh and

all all these different uh you know uh movies where

there's where there's an observation of humanity that brings you

outside of your own timeline and uh and and it's

it's exactly one of those moments right where there's not

too many times where somebody can say, Okay, let's take

a look at the pattern of humanity over two hundred years.

You know, I guess there's great thinkers that maybe perhaps

do that more often than than I do.

Well, my family does, what do you mean? So this

just this conversation just happened in my uh my wife

on Sunday wanted to go up to Port Austin, which

is at the top of the Thumb of Michigan. And

so we went up there and went fooled around the

water and on the pier, went to dinner. It was

great but all, my son and his wife, and my

daughter and her boyfriend. We all get in my wife's suv.

We go up, and on the way up, my son

started talking about it seems like humanity keeps doing the

same thing over and over and over again. And then

he said, you know the rise in the father Roman empire.

Here we are.

We're on the down side of our empire, very likely

the American empire. And then he said, you know, I

wonder what it's going to be like at the end.

And I said, well, Jesus said, at the end, it's

going to be just like the days of Noah. He goes,

what were the days of Noah? Like I said, I

was eating and drinking, being in marriage, getting married all

the time, not thinking about God at all. Every man

did what was right in his own eyes, and they

only thought of evil continually. And my son goes, well,

that's today's culture, right, Literally, the theme of today's culture

is you bu every man did that which was right

in his own eyes. Is the phrase right, you be?

It's the same they only think evil continually. You think

of the incredible evil in the world around us, just

you know, don't but you know how how full of evil,

just the Internet is and and all the crazy stuff

happened in the world. We just go we humanity, We

have clever phones. But beyond that, we're the same as

they were, right, right, we go on there. We just

keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.

And just to be clear, you don't necessarily mean evil

as in like malicious intent to kill. You say, you're

you're wickedness. Yeah, you're lumping in everything that is not

of God.

Yeah, yeah, right, that's right.

So not evil as in people might picture, you know,

pitchforks and serial killy.

It doesn't have to be that, although that's happening a

lot too. There's a lot of But anything that is

contrary to God's way would be evil, right, And they

only thought of sinful things continuously, right, right, that that's

that's the main culture. Now, even in that day, there

were some who didn't. There was no in his family, right,

they found favor in the eyes of God.

Right.

And so there are some who who even in this

culture the Bible talks about, you know, there's a remnant

there are some who say, no, we want to go

God's way. But the generality of culture is everybody does

whatever's right in their own eyes, and they only think

of sinful things continuously.

It is what the Bible says.

Yeah, yeah, so we keep repeating it over and over

and over again. So when we point this out in

the Days of the Judges, we're acknowledging it's the same

in the Days of Jeff and Chris too.

Right. Yeah, And there's also another sermon in there as well,

which is not only about the nature of mankind and

our depravity and our tendencies and everything else, but also

we can probably on a micro level, look at our

own lives and probably even look back and say, in

this season, I serve God, and then there was this

season and I certainly ran from God. Then there was

this season in my life where you know, this one

influence really brought me back to God that in this

season I really struggled and I get away from God.

And we could probably do that a lot of us

who have years on us yet a little bit of

you know, dust On, Yeah.

I've been I've been a believer for forty five years. Okay,

I got to say forty five years ago. Okay, So yeah,

it's up and up and down, up and down.

At eight eight eight, years old, So it's kind of

up and down, up and down.

Yeah.

You know, you have the high moments and then the

low moments, the high moments the low moments in your life,

it's the same.

Yeah.

Yeah, my mama is thirty something years ago, so twenty one,

the six thirty two, let's say thirty eight. I was

thirty eight years ago for me.

Yeah.

So what happens then is the cycle goes back and forth,

back and forth, and God decides, Okay, I'm gonna set

the people of Israel free, begin the process of setting

them free through this young man Samson. So he's gonna

let them go another twenty years or so, you know,

maybe thirty years, but he begins the process. So God

is working even when people feel like they're not. And

he comes to Manoa and his wife and he goes, hey,

this is the Angel Lord by the way, which we've

already talked about the character of the Angel Lord.

That's always probably Jesus.

Right, very likely, and it's a theophony. But comes and says, okay,

I'm going to use your son, but there are a

few things I want him to be wholly a Nazarite

set apart, so we're going to be careful about what

he drinks, what he eats, the things he touches, the

things he wears, what he does, how he does his hair.

I'm going to say some of these guidelines and make

sure that he follows these. And they said okay. As

a matter of fact, Manoah wanted to talk to the

angel and say, hey, are there any other guidelines?

How shall we raise this boy? Right?

And it doesn't unpack all of it then, but we

know what a Nazarite is. We know all the Nazarite

requirements from the rest of the requirements in the Bible.

And so what I love about Manoa and his wife

because there's not a ton set about Manoa and his

wife this and then there's one other one He's getting

Sampson's getting married. But what I love about Manoa is

Minoa is like, Hey, I want to do this the

right way, and God just tell me and I'll do

what you tell me to do. And as a parent,

man you might not be the one that goes and

tears up the gates and delivers all the people right

and fights the bad guys. But as a parent, maybe

the single best question you can ask is what Manoa

and his wife asked, and that is tell us how

to raise our child, and we'll do it that way.

Oh that's God, tell us what to do, and we'll

do it. And they did. They didn't cut his hair.

They did keep him away from wine and raisins and

anything from the from the grapevine. He didn't touch dead animals.

He did manage his life the way they raised him

the right way, and the Bible is going to tell us.

And just meant the spirit of the Lord came on him, and.

Manoa was excited about that, even before he knew that

the man he was talking to was the Angel the Lord.

That's exactly right, right, which means which means there was

a sense. It doesn't say so, but there was a

sense where he was so honored that even before he

realized there was the angel he was talking to, because

he said, hey, will you eat and the guy's like, no,

I'm not gonna eat. He didn't know who he was

talking to, but he was.

He was just making a sacrifice, yeah, but he was.

It was like, yes, I'm willing to do it, even

though he thought it was just some prophet. Yeah, right,

which which again is a little bit different.

So I read this story. Just to wrap up.

I read this story, and you know, we talked about

the this cycle of evil and all these crazy things

and how crazy our current world is. It's exactly how

Manoah and his wife were living same situation. It says

that Israel had rebelled against God. All Israel did evil

in the Lord's sight. So Lord Hannibal with Philistines. But

there's Manoah and his wife that apparently want to honor God.

They're eager to discover what does God want me to

do to raise my son. It's possible for you to

raise a godly son and a godly daughter, even in

a wicked culture in society today. But you got to

do what Manoah did. And Manoah did what Moses told

us to do, and that is raise them in my

words right. And remember Moses said when you get up

in the morning, when you lay down at night, when

you walk by the way, when you sit down at dinner,

when you go to sleep, he'd constantly be teaching them

my words and to obey them. And this is what

Manoah wants to do. You tell me what your words are,

and I'll raise my son that way.

And then they did.

I think they did a good job raising their son

up until he became an adult started making his own choices.

But they did they did what God said to do.

And it's possible for you to raise good, godly children

in a wicked culture if you choose to go God's

way and do what God's word says.

So a lot of sermons in just that introductory and

elecanse passage. So that's our time, and so hopefully we

will see you next time on the Bibble.

Guys,