Wednesday October 5th 2022
Part of October 22 Notes

Impuslive, Unteachable

Judges 13 &14

Judges 13.1
Again the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines, who oppressed them for forty years.
…
5 You will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and his hair must never be cut. For he will be dedicated to God as a Nazirite from birth. He will begin to rescue Israel from the Philistines.”
…
24 When her son was born, she named him Samson. And the Lord blessed him as he grew up. 25 And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he lived in Mahaneh-dan, which is located between the towns of Zorah and Eshtaol.

Judges 14.1
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 13.25 says the Spirit of the Lord began to stir in him…. 14.1 says Samson’s loins stirred louder.

  • How can the Spirit of the Lord be stirring and not producing anything of God’s character in Samson?
    Well, there’s a difference between the gifts of God that allow us to DO and the gifts of God that allow us to BE.

1 Corinthians 12
4 There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. 5 There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. 6 God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.
7 A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.
8 To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. 9 The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing.
…
28 Here are some of the parts God has appointed for the church:
first are apostles,
second are prophets,
third are teachers,
then those who do miracles,
those who have the gift of healing,
those who can help others,
those who have the gift of leadership,
those who speak in unknown languages.
29 Are we all apostles? Are we all prophets? Are we all teachers? Do we all have the power to do miracles? 30 Do we all have the gift of healing? Do we all have the ability to speak in unknown languages? Do we all have the ability to interpret unknown languages? Of course not! 31 So you should earnestly desire the most helpful gifts.
But now let me show you a way of life that is best of all.

1 Corinthians 13.1
If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Galatians 5
16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.

  • Samson is Impulsive - He has superhuman strength, he can DO things no one else can do but his heart is doing what he sees as right and it’s incredibly wrong and sinful, it makes a mockery of the things God could DO through him.

Judges 14
3 His father and mother objected. “Isn’t there even one woman in our tribe or among all the Israelites you could marry?” they asked. “Why must you go to the pagan Philistines to find a wife?”
But Samson told his father, “Get her for me! She looks good to me.”
4 His father and mother didn’t realize the Lord was at work in this, creating an opportunity to work against the Philistines, who ruled over Israel at that time.

  • Unteachable
    Samson wouldn’t listen and respond to the Word or the promise of God. Will we?

Michael Wilcox, “The Message of Judges” p.139
“The force of 14.4 is that the two communities are so interlocked that even the Lord can find nothing to get hold of to pry them apart. He uses Samson’s weaknesses, therefore, to bring about the relationship with this irresistible girl from which so much ill - feeling will flow.”

  • Everyone will do impulsive evil and they’re each responsible for those choices. God just makes sure that the two parties - Samson and the Philistines - will be the catalyst for such confrontation that makes sure they stay separate, even when Israel is content to be ruled by the wicked Philistines.

  • At this time, different than the other times of the Judges in the book, Israel is NOT crying out for rescue or even relief.
    Inure: to accustom to accept something undesirable

  • God is NOT okay with Israel being tolerant, accepting, winsome and welcoming to the wickedness of the Philistines. Israel is shrugging it’s way to serfdom and service of evil idols. Their God is not shrugging.
    “God in his mercy is using his people’s weaknesses to make sure there is NOT peace between them and the surrounding cultures. God’s people, today as then, need to not be at peace with the world because
    “friendship with the world is hatred towards God” (James 4.4)

  • “The Israelites do not groan and resist their captors now because they have completely adopted and adapted to the values, mores, and idols of the Philistines. Like Samson himself, the Israelites were eager to marry into Philistine society, probably as a way to “move up” in the culture.”

  • “There is no such thing as harmonious co-existence between the church and the world for where there is no conflict, it is because the world has taken over.”
    -“The Message of the Judges” p.142

From “Judges for You” p.139
“In the first half of the 20th century, mainline Protestants made a very bold move to be “relevant” to modern people who could not believe in the supernatural. Rudolph Bultmann, a major theologian said: “No one who uses modern technology can believe in the ancient world of spirits and miracles.” It was thought that modern people would eventually completely lose all belief in a supernatural world. So many churches began the project of “de-supernaturalizing” the Christian message. The Bible was no longer seen as an infallible revelation from God, but as inspiring - though flawed - ancient stories. The very concepts of ‘conversion’ and ‘the new birth’ were dropped. Now, to “become a Christian” meant to live a good life of mercy and justice. This took away the “conflict” between Christianity and those who could not believe in miracles, a divinely revealed Bible, or a physical resurrection. But of course, this meant that scientific rationalism was now the real “ruler”.

  • Everyone is doing what is right in his own eyes and the children of Israel Judges 13.1 “did evil in the Lord’s sight” and so he handed them over to the Philistines and they didn’t mind that. They got used to it. They accepted it.

Judges 15
9 The Philistines retaliated by setting up camp in Judah and spreading out near the town of Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked the Philistines, “Why are you attacking us?”
The Philistines replied, “We’ve come to capture Samson. We’ve come to pay him back for what he did to us.”
11 So 3,000 men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam. They said to Samson, “Don’t you realize the Philistines rule over us? What are you doing to us?”

  • The Lord is working with an impulsive, unteachable, horrible man - Samson - to stir up trouble between Israel and their preferred cultural, civic, and religious leaders, the Philistines.
  • What a picture of the church today!

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