Posted on 02/18/2011 3:10:05 PM PST by wmfights
You can generally recognize a double-minded man. He has moments of commitment to God; often surprising us with his burst of spiritual discipline and devotion. Mighty Samson is a picture of double-mindedness.
He breaks promises he intends to keep; he overrates his ability to change himself. He has not yet come to the end of self-rule. So his promises are made largely in dependence upon good intentions. It is a sincere promise, but it means little.
Second, his commitment to God was based on convenience, not convictions. When things went bad, he called on God. When God answered, he drifted back to his own ways. He calls on God to help him, but not to change him.
Third, Samson, like all other double-minded people, attempts the impossible. He wants to love God and the world; God and the self. He can’t but he tries.
Don’t overrate such half-hearted commitment. Such a person will disappoint you, sooner rather than later. He is like Ephraim, whose goodness was like the dew that was there in the morning but dissipated in the hot sun.
Yes, Christians can be double-minded. They do love God, but love the world too. They serve both God and self-will. They are the center of their own lives yet they desperately want God at the circumference so that He can be called in when needed. They are hot and cold; committed one day and undependable the next.
Samson was such a man. But God was working in his heart to lead him from immaturity to maturity. He was growing from pride to humility, from self-centeredness to God-centeredness.
The man with two hearts was growing toward single-mindedness. First, we see Samson the avenger. Recall the story. Samson felt betrayed by his would-be father-in-law who gave his daughter to another man. The family did not expect to see Samson again.
But to the surprise of all, Samson arrives to bring his bride a present. His father-in-law tries to appease Samson by offering his younger daughter to Samson as a wife.
Samson suspects that this insult happened because he was a Hebrew. In a remarkable show of self-restraint he does not retaliate directly against the family. He could have killed the whole lot. But he does vent his anger against the Philistines as a group.
His first act of vengeance was to retreat to the hills and catch three hundred foxes. He ties a thong around the tail of each, knots the tails together and then attaches a firebrand to the end of the thongs. Three hundred foxes go in 150 different directions. They run through the ripened wheat fields, setting fire to both the harvested grain and the standing grain. The fire also spreads to the vineyards and olive groves. It was a serious blow to the Philistine economy.
The Philistines form a congressional committee to investigate the arson. Even the lords of the Philistines must themselves have concluded that Samson’s proposed father-in-law had committed a great social blunder. At any rate they go and burn the young woman and her father. So much for that.
This gives Samson a second excuse for vengeance. He thinks that their action against his former wife and her father is unfair. We read, “Since you act like this, I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit. And he struck them ruthlessly with a great slaughter” (Judges 15:7,8).
What do we make of this? Yes, Samson was supposed to subdue the Philistines, but this was not the way a man of God was supposed to act. You might think it fun to catch 300 foxes and watch the field burn; but Samson is just doing his own thing; he is not following God’s lead. This man is just having himself a party.
God of course, wanted to have Samson’s whole heart. But at this point he was unwilling to surrender.
Next we see Samson the Peace Maker. He ran to a cave to hide, but there he must have had an experience with God. While the Philistines are planning their next move, he is brooding, wondering what he will do next. He does not return home because if he is found there, his family and relatives will be in jeopardy. In fact, the whole nation of Israel would be a target for the Philistines’ rage.
While in the cave, he has an experience that humbles him and suddenly we see a different side to this complex character.
The Philistines send out a search party to find Samson, giving a show that intimidated the Israelites. They announce that they are seeking to bind Samson to get revenge for all the damage he had done to them.
And now Samson’s own people, three thousand strong, join the Philistines to find one man, the strong man who was hiding in a cave. They show no loyalty to their fellow Israelite. They ask him, “Do you not know that the Philistines are ruling over us? What then is this that you have done to us?”
Just think! The people of God had become content with their slavery. Their fear of offending the Philistines was greater than their desire to trust God and assert their own independence! They should have been glad that Samson was doing something to weaken their enemies.
And it doesn’t stop there. They now ask Samson’s permission to bind him and to hand him over to the Philistines! They were saving their necks at any cost. Here now we see a different Samson.
Notice, he controls his words. He does not lash out against them for their cowardice. He does not chide them for their ingratitude for all that he had done to break the Philistine stranglehold on Judah. He just gives them an explanation for what he did and then submits to their authority.
He also controlled his strength. After getting a promise from them that they would not kill him, he allowed them to bind him. He was saddened and humiliated by this rejection. But evidently he thought it would be best to submit.
What is happening here? The Israelites knew that if he were turned over to the Philistines he would be killed, but they hand him over. Samson knew that he had been sold by his own people, the cowards. His would-be friends were giving him to his vicious enemies.
At last Samson showed that he was willing to take the risk of surrender; quite probably his trust was now in God. For that reason he could except whatever came his way.
Those who trust are in God’s hands even if they should find themselves in the hands of enemies.
Finally, we see what the Holy Spirit will do through Samson’s life. The Philistines had assembled on a broad valley called Lehi or “jawbone.” When they saw the mighty Samson being led like a lamb to the slaughter, they let out a shout that reverberated through the hills. They intended to torture him to death.
What they had not counted on is a surge of power that surged through his body. “The Spirit of the Lord came upon him.”
The ropes with which he was bound became like burned flax (16:9). Grabbing a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he hacked away at the Philistine ranks and when he was done, the dead lie in heaps about him. Tired and thirsty he expresses his contempt for the enemies. The word donkey and the word heap are the same in Hebrew. So making a play on words, he says: “With the jawbone of a donkey, Heaps upon heaps, With the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men.”
This was a miracle of deliverance. This was a blow to the Philistine army and also to their morale. The Philistines choose to let him alone, at least for now. When Samson is thirsty he cries out to the Lord; and this is the high point of his relationship with God. This is the only time we hear Samson pray; the only time that he ascribes glory to God.
“Thou hast given this great deliverance by the hand of thy servant, and now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the Philistines?” God graciously provided water. Samson drank and was satisfied.
The man with the foolish heart is now becoming the man with the faithful heart. The man who acted impulsively, is now acting prayerfully. Samson is being changed.
What is God’s cure for double-mindedness? How does God take us a people with two hearts and make us people who have only one? He wants us to be able to say, “With my whole heart I will seek you...”
Samson learned that God often uses our friends, not our enemies to break us. The people of Judah did what the Philistines couldn’t. Though Samson was betrayed by those who should have befriended him, that was the high point of his submission.
Second, we learn that the name in which we fight is more important than the number of people who have been enlisted for the battle. Of course we don’t fight today like Samson did. But spiritually we do. And when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, it really did not matter what was in Samson’s hand. It could have been stone; it could have been a stick. It could have been his own fists.
If we find this story incredible, we have forgotten that God is incredible. The Spirit can do what we can’t. “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts.”
You might feel as useless as the jawbone of a donkey. But many a spiritual battle has been won with unlikely people using unlikely gifts.
Single-mindedness always begins in the heart, not the head. It is letting God into our life that we might be like Him. The cure for double-mindedness is repentance. We must repent of all that we do. God never gives up on purifying our hearts. He will lead us to single-mindedness, making “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Sampson was a blockhead.
Samson is an interesting and intriguing character of the OT. In some ways Samson is to the extreme what we really are like; calling on the Lord when it’s convenient.
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