“The Things That God Sees” Judges 13:1-25

The Story of Samson

A Sermon Series

“The Things That God Sees”

Judges 13:1-25

 Introduction

1 Samuel 3:1-3 “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.”  This was a day when God’s people did not follow the Lord, His law, or even seek after Him – He was not central in their lives.

How God Sees Things Is Always True (v. 1)

And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.

Samson is the last of twelve judges that are given to the nation of Israel. The book of Judges ends with the words, “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” V. 1 of our text shows us the people of Israel did what was evil, in the sight of God – what is important for humanity to understand that it really doesn’t matter what you think is right, or moral, or just. It is God’s view point (The sight of the Lord) that ultimately matters.

This idea of doing what is right in my own eyes, or doing what is right in the sight of God helps us to define what sin means. Sin is not when we “violate our conscience or our personal standards, or even a community’s standards for behavior – but rather sin is violating God’s will for us, violating our relationship with Him. What God says is sin, is sin.”[1] There is a deception to sin in that humans make sin mean what they want it to mean “in their own eyes.” Whole communities, and even nations will call something good – which is absolutely horrific and evil in God’s eyes.

When God gave them into the hands of the Philistines, that means they came into the Promised Land and conquered them, subjugating them. They became slaves of the Philistines for forty years. Normally, there is a cycle of sin that we see in the OT, God’s people sin, God sends a prophet to warn them, They suffer in some way, they cry out, and God hears their cry and restores them. So, we find God’s people (again) in this cycle of doing evil in the sight of God, and they are in the middle of this repeating cycle.

But instead of crying out, they had become complacent to the way things were. Similar to the Israelite people when they are forced to gather their own straw when making bricks in Egypt, or when they were in the wilderness after the Exodus from slavery, Exodus 5:6 “They (the elders of the Israelite people) met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; 21 and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

Instead of thinking about not being slaves and how God was working to free them, they were focused on how to make slavery bearable. God’s people were content to be slaves – but God has a better plan for them. And it was God who came to them. This is a picture of our own sin – we become complacent to live in sin because we don’t see any way out, or we have deluded ourselves into believing that its actually not that big of a deal (self-delusion, enslaved, and hopeless).

In Judges 15:11 the people of God just accept that they are ruled over by the enemy, “Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” Israel’s deliverance is not based on their repentance (they never cried out), but God’s grace and kindness to step in and make the first move. 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”

 God’s People are Apathetic Toward Their Relationship With Him.

 God Calls A Couple To Help Others See Him (vv. 2-7)

2 There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children.

There is a pattern followed in the Bible; a barren woman, an angelic announcement, and the birth of a hero or Savior. We see from the very beginning that Samson has been given precious and loving parents, his very life is miraculous, and he has a purpose that is about to be laid out before he is even born.[2]

This signals that this is a special leader, who will have a special purpose. But it also shows us that God saw the condition of His people and stepped in – He also saw the condition of this woman and did something.

3 And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. 4 Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, 5 for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.” 6 Then the woman came and told her husband, “A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name, 7 but he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’”

 (v. 3) “the angel of the Lord,” – to help us understand who or what the Angel of the Lord is, we can look at other places where He is mentioned, earlier in Judges 2:1-2 “Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2 land you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice.”

Also in Judges 6:11-24 “Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites.” . . . “(v. 16) And the Lord said to him, “But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man.” So it is God, specifically the preincarnate Son, who is also called the angel of the Lord. God is appearing to this couple and giving them instructions about their son.

Samson was to be born a Nazir, Numbers 6:1-8 “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord, 3 he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink. He shall drink no vinegar made from wine or strong drink and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. 4 All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins. 5 “All the days of his vow of separation, no razor shall touch his head. Until the time is completed for which he separates himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. He shall let the locks of hair of his head grow long. 6 “All the days that he separates himself to the Lord he shall not go near a dead body. 7 Not even for his father or for his mother, for brother or sister, if they die, shall he make himself unclean, because his separation to God is on his head. 8 All the days of his separation he is holy to the Lord.” Big Three: 1) Don’t consume drink from a vine, 2) Don’t cut your hair, 3) Don’t go around anything dead.

The purpose of the vow was to ask for God’s special help during a crucial time. It was a sign that you were looking to God with great intensity and focus. It was a vow made voluntarily and for a definite period of time.[3] For, Samson the vow started immediately, in his mother’s womb – so she was to follow the same requirements, because what she consumed would be passed on to the child.

“There was good reason for God’s imposing this life-requirement on Samson (and his family). Samson was to be highly honored by entrustment with a continual miracle of life. He would be endowed with greater physical strength than any other man. To put it so, he would be a living miracle all the time he lived. This meant that God was extending to Samson, a high privilege, but at the same time a heavy responsibility.”[4]

Because of this oath, he would be set apart so that others could see that his unique gift was from the Lord. His strength was a gift from God (from the womb) to be used for the glory of God. This couple had a God given task – follow the ways of God (specifically the law as it related to the Nazarite vow), until the child could follow them for himself.

 Seeing God’s Plan Completed Requires a Relationship With Him (vv. 8-14)

8 Then Manoah prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born.” 9 And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her. 10 So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” 11 And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to this woman?” And he said, “I am.” 12 And Manoah said, “Now when your words come true, what is to be the child’s manner of life, and what is his mission?” 13 And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful. 14 She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe.”

3 “And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman,” and then again in v. 9, even after the man prayed that God would appear to him, “And the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman,” – why? She was the one who was barren, and she was the one responsible to keep the law with what she did with her body (prenatal care). In this culture, a woman’s value was measured by her ability to have a child (see Gen. 30:1; 1 Sam. 1:1-11).

If the child were to accomplish his job as a judge, he must be set apart to the Lord – He would have to have the empowerment of God to accomplish his task. Manoah asks for further instructions, “teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born.” Which seems to be honorable – “tell us the rules that we can follow that will guide this child to become what God intended.” Instead of pointing the parents to more rules, but he doesn’t give them more rules – He points them back to what he has already said, “Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful.” All he needed to know had already been given. Anything else was not his to know.

15 Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “Please let us detain you and prepare a young goat for you.” 16 And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, “If you detain me, I will not eat of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the Lord.” (For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord.) 17 And Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, “What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?” 18 And the angel of the Lord said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?” 19 So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the Lord, to the one who works wonders, and Manoah and his wife were watching. 20 And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the Lord went up in the flame of the altar. Now Manoah and his wife were watching, and they fell on their faces to the ground. 21 The angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife.

Monoah then tries to give the angel something to eat, and he asks him his name. In response to food, he refuses, and then tells him that his name is too wonderful to comprehend. Then the angel points the couple to worship God with a burnt offering, and then as the flames go upward, “the angel of the Lord went up in the flame of the altar.” Redirecting back to the previous instructions, not eating with them, pointing them to have a burnt offering, and then ascending in a flame was all pointing them to the greatness of God.

The answer to raising this child was for them to do what they already knew to do according to the Word of God, and to focus on the greatness and majesty of God – not to focus on more and more rules; instead to focus on their relationship with God. If their relationship with God was right, He would work out all the details.

The more you (personally) know who God is,

the better equipped you will be to parent your children.

Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. 22 And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, for we have seen God.” 23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering at our hands, or shown us all these things, or now announced to us such things as these.”

Manoah assumes that because they had seen God, then they would die. But then his wife points out, why would God go through all this (telling them the instructions, appearing to them twice, giving them instructions about a burnt offering, and then disappearing into a flame – just to then kill them? God came close to this couple, but not to wipe them out; instead to offer them and their people hope.

Seeing God’s Plan Completed Requires A Stirring By The Holy Spirit (vv. 24-25)

24 And the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him. 25 And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh-dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.

“This word stir is found five times in the Bible, always signifying a troubled spirit. Nebuchadnezzar’s and Pharaoh’s dreams disturbed The very first thing said about adult Samson is that right from the start, the Spirit of the Lord troubled him, disquieted him. He begins with an agitated disposition. There is a divine unsettling in his mind – making him impulsive.”[5] Ultimately dissatisfied with how things were.

 Think of all the things going for Samson, “His birth was predicted by the angel of the Lord; he had godly parents who loved him greatly; he was uniquely dedicated to God as a Nazarite; and he experienced the power of God’s Spirit as a young man.”[6]

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[1] Timothy Kellar, Judges For You (USA, The Good Book Company, 2013) 125.

[2] Samson, Samuel, John the Baptist, Jesus.

[3] Kellar, 126.

[4] Leon Wood, Distressing Days of the Judges (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Zondervan Publishing, 1981) 307.

[5] George M. Schwab, Right in Their Own Eyes, The Gospel According to The Book of Judges (Phillipsburg, New Jersey; P&R Publishing, 2011) 160.

[6] Herbert Wolf, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Volume 3 (Grand Rapids, Michigan; Zondervan Publishing, 1992) 465.