Revisiting the Story of Samson

Recently I was reading through the book of Judges and came across the story of Samson, one of the people God raised up to deliver His covenant people from oppressors in turbulent times. Samson was an unprincipled fellow. His parents were informed before his birth that he had a special calling and were given principles by which Samson was to live. Instead of reserving himself for God’s calling, he chased after what his eyes found attractive but did not fit within God’s principles, and he brought terrible ruin on himself. Have you ever heard of the woman named Delilah? With the amazing strength God gave him, he had wonderful potential, but he refused to live a principled life and inherited grief and loss (Judges 13-16).

Satan attempted to lead Jesus to adopt a similar devotion to visibly attractive things and thus to abandon the principles by which a holy Messiah was supposed to live. In the third temptation recorded in Matthew 4, Satan took Jesus to a high mountain and then somehow presented from there a glimpse of the most prestigious and impressively advanced achievements of human ingenuity and civilization. Then he said to Jesus, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me” (see verses 8-9).

Just like Samson was enticed to live by sight, chasing attractive things and sacrificing principles that would reserve him for divine purposes, Satan desired that Jesus would follow the same pattern. Maybe Samson’s weakness is not yours. But you likely know what is – poor time management, excessive gaming, endless grazing on the internet (Psalm 119:37 should be printed on our electronic devices – “Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way”), inordinate food or spending, neglecting opportunities to expose others to the beauty of Jesus, etc. None of us lives a perfectly principled life. But thankfully Jesus did in our place, and as we in faith give place to Him to be our Savior, He extends to us a new life, and we begin to live more and more by the principles He perfected. And so we are confirmed on a path to share the joy He presently does.

If we fail to live by principles that cause us to reserve ourselves for heaven and to carry out the mission He has planned for us on earth, we will chase what looks good to our old nature, and we will fail to find the type of satisfaction that lasts forever. We need to cling to Christ who alone can redeem us from worthless ways of living and an empty eternity that would result from living by sight instead of by faith in God’s Word. Realize Satan is out to destroy all humans because we are made in God’s image. And realize that we are worse off than we realize. Our hearts are deceitful. We hide things even from ourselves. Yet Christ is powerful to redeem and to make beautiful.