Tangled: Samson's Story of Sin and Defeat

TANGLED:

SAMSON’S STORY OF SIN AND DEFEAT

 

I once had hair. It’s true. The hair that does grow on Mount Klassen, my wife (my Delilah) shaves twice a month to keep me humble. She’s trying to keep me as weak as a kitten. 

            I once had great hair. In high school, I grew it long and visited a stylist regularly. But one awful day, a fellow classmate, my antagonist, spit a big wad of gum in my hair. I could feel it sitting lightly on top of my well-combed coif. If you have ever experienced gum in the hair, you know the trouble it brings. 

            I immediately reached for the gum to remove it from my hair. It should have been an easy extraction, I thought. But the more I tried to get the gum out, the more embedded it became. Can you imagine going to class with gum in your hair? And everyone had a remedy to offer. 

            When I got home, my mother worked to remove the gum. But she too just drove it deeper into my hair. Peanut butter, shampoo – nothing worked. Eventually, my mom had to take scissors and cut a chunk of my hair out. Even that procedure left an awkward vacancy in my hair. Gum in the hair. The only solution was to cut it out. 

            Sin in your life is like gum in your hair. When it becomes obvious how embedded sin is in your life, it is humiliating; it shames you; it reminds you of your weakness. The only way to deal with sin is to cut it out, right? Oh, if it were that easy! 

            Samson’s is the true story of how sin entangles itself in your life (like your hair) and brings you down to defeat. 

 

1. The Sin that so easily Entangles (16:1-4; Heb. 12:1)

 

In this episode, Samson goes down to Gaza, the Philistine capital. He often strayed into enemy territory; he wasn’t afraid to cross the tracks and dance on the dark side. He simply had no fear, and that was one of his many problems. A strong man like Samson is overconfident in his ability to escape trouble.

            His real problem is not his strength or confidence, however, but his eyes. Look at verse one: “One day Samson went to Gaza where he saw a prostitute. He went in to spend the night with her,” (1). This is a subtle reference to his ongoing propensity to see something and take it. Remember his wife in chapter 14? “Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines,” (14:1). We can only imagine that Samson did not fall in love with Delilah for her bookkeeping skills as well. 

            Samson is led by his desires. Desire seeks satisfaction. Desire is not evil in itself; it is a gift from God that we might seek satisfaction in him alone. What we seek in life ultimately has something to do with our desire for God. It follows then that sin can be defined as seeking satisfaction in other places. Samson was seeking soul satisfaction outside of a relationship with God. His eyes were leading him to what he thought he needed.

            We are warned in John’s first letter, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father but from the world,” (1 Jn. 2:15-16). There is a clear distinction for the Christian between relationship with God and what the world offers as an alternative. The “desires of the eyes” is but one third of the formula but is intricately connected to the desires of the flesh.

            It is often said that “lust” is a “man problem,” but I say that it is a human problem. Books and sermons have zeroed in on men as driven by the lust of the flesh. However, statistics show that 35% of online porn users are women, and the number is growing. In one country listed, 50% of porn views were women. We are all driven by what we see. It’s not just sex that drives us. We long to fill the void in our lives with sex, material things, or power, or fame, or whatever we feel would dull the ache of meaninglessness in this world. Lust is an ”us” problem.

            The Tenth Commandment is “You shall not covet…” (Ex.20:17). Someone once said, and I agree, that when we covet (when we want what someone else has) it is the root cause for breaking all the other commandments. If I covet something so bad, I will kill to get it (Js. 4:1-2). The Israelites even wanted the gods of the other nations as well as Yahweh – they coveted gods that they felt filled a need. 

            When we covet what others have, when we want it so bad it consumes our imaginations, our dreams, our longings, it leads us to adultery, murder, theft, and lying. I wonder if this is what the writer of Hebrews meant when he said, “…let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…” (Heb. 12:1b). What is the “sin”? Coveting…

 

2. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…” (16:5-14; Js. 1:13-15)

 

Sir Walter Scott penned these famous words, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” When you lie or act dishonestly, you are asking for trouble that will have a domino effect of complications. This deception will (note the certainty) run out of control.

            Samson loves Delilah. We don’t know if Delilah loves Samson. I’m pretty sure Delilah loves money because the Philistines pay her handsomely to betray Samson. 

            The name “Delilah” is a Semite name. That means it’s a Jewish name. But she’s in a Philistine city. We can only assume that she is a mixed blood woman, half Israelite and half Philistine. She is the product of intermarriage, which God forbade. Delilah thus represents the immorality of Israel. 

            And Samson toys with her. Three times Delilah tried to pry from Samson the secret of his strength, but three times he tricks her; he plays with her. Each time, she springs her trap with the words, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” And each time he snaps the bowstrings, ropes, or the loom that holds him. Samson thinks these are bedroom games. He is flirting with his life, possibly not knowing that there are men ready to jump him if his strength really does leave him.

            Samson is too confident. He has broken all his vows as a Nazirite: touching a dead body, consuming the fruit of the vine, and so on. He’s gotten away with it time after time. He’s been trapped at Gaza and walked away with the gates of the city. He believes there is nothing that will hurt him. Samson is dancing with the devil; flirting with sin; trying to find out how close he can come. Every time he crosses the morality line, he thinks, “humph, nothing happened.” Don’t we do that?

            Paul said, “…if you think you’re standing firm, be careful you don’t fall…” (1 Cor. 10:12). He’s talking about temptation. It’s dangerous. Don’t dance with it.

            Moral compromise always makes us vulnerable. It might be subtle; it might be obvious. We watch something we think we can handle and “boom” it triggers an impulse. But like an alcoholic, if you have been entangled in porn, you can never look at it again. It will grip you once more in its talons.

            Delilah was beautiful. That’s the problem – the eyes. Eve saw the fruit was good…and boom. Sin will not come to us in an ugly form but as something we desire. It can even be good in essence and fulfilling, but the timing is off, or it comes to us when we are committed to something else.

            When we toy with temptation as Samson did with Delilah, it will eventually trap us. As followers of Jesus, we have a calling. The Bible doesn’t tell us to fight temptation; it tells us to run away. To flee (see 1 Cor. 6:18; 1 Tim. 2:22; 1 Tim. 6:11).

            James counseled believers regarding temptation, “…each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death,”(Js. 1:14-15). If you play with sin, you may get away with it for a while, but it doesn’t mean that the enemy isn’t waiting in the closet for an opportunity to take you down.

3. Baldly Going Where No Man Should Go (16:15-21)

 

Finally, Delilah plays the “you-don’t-love-me” card to get Samson to spill his secret. He’s heard this before. His wife used it 20 years prior to get him to give her the answer to his riddle about the lion. Did he learn? No.

            Samson is a fool for love. Until now, Samson has escaped every trap despite his foolishness. Under pressure, perhaps sick to death of her nagging, he tells her “everything” (see 17). Why did he do it? Did he think he could trust her? Did he think he could handle the consequences? And then sleep? How could he sleep with his secret exposed?

            Our hearts belong to the LORD, but when we stray from him, we make ourselves vulnerable. Satan wants our hearts, but he knows he can’t get them head on; so, he goes through someone like Delilah. Samson gave his heart away to someone who only wanted to exploit it. That’s what sin does.

            Figure this out: Samson broke all his other vows, but he never cut his hair! Wow! There was nothing magic in his hair – it was a symbol – perhaps the last one – of his separation to God. And Delilah started shaving…

            There are jokes about baldness that recede into the “dad” category. “Don’t think of it as losing your hair but gaining face.” Or “God only made so many perfect heads, the rest he covered with hair.” I often refer to Tony Campolo’s quip, “Some people use their hormones to grow hair; I use it to grow brains.” 

            This is no laughing matter. Once more Delilah calls out, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!” (20). They seize and gouge his eyes out and make him grind their grain. 

            Isn’t it ironic that it is the eyes they take? His eyes have been his Achilles heel. Samson saw a woman – he takes her. He sees – he wants. Now his eyes are gone. He can no longer see except in his mind’s eye. He can only grieve what he has lost and mourn his captivity. 

            Ambrose, an early Christian writer, wrote, “Samson, when brave, strangled a lion; but he could not strangle his own love. He burst the fetters of his foes, but not the cords of his own lusts. He burned the crops of others and lost the fruit of his own virtue when burning with the flame enkindled by a single woman.” 

            

This is a tragic tale of sin and defeat.

            We are left with one little verse, “But the hair on his head began to grow again after it had been shaved,” (22). One little note of hope. Of course the hair grew back – it does that.

            I can relate to Samson’s struggle with sin. Can you? Sin is not something that you can chuck like a banana peel; if you dabble with it, it sticks with you. Like gum in the hair, it embeds itself into your person and it is hard to get rid of, to deal with, to eliminate. 

            Like Samson, whose hair was shorn, whose confidence was shattered and replaced with humiliation and shame, we know the feeling of futility as we pray for relief from sin’s effects. It is even more frustrating when, like Samson, we are led by our eyes to return to our sin, to know the further humiliation of being shackled to it with no hope of escape. What are we to do?

            Have you ever watched those video clips of dog owners confronting their pets? Three dogs sit in a row – one of them made a mess in the living room (either pooped or chewed up a pillow) – and the master says, “Which one of you did it?” Two of the dogs immediately look at the offending dog who at that moment looks away in shame. 

             When we sin, our natural inclination is to hide. How can I look at Jesus again after betraying his love with my chronic habit of sin? I’ve sinned again. How foolish! How shameful! But Jesus wants us to look at him…

            The writer of Hebrews, after telling us to cast off the sin that entangles, says this: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God,” (Heb. 12:2). 

            Samson’s eyes led him astray. What are we focusing on? Jesus calls attention to sinners not to look away but to consider him, gaze upon him, look him in the eye, and consider the cost of our sin. The cost of our sin, the look of love in his face, the grace that has been lavished on us, should remind us of our true desire. When you sin (again), look at Jesus fully and know that he has taken away your humiliation and shame and guilt. Do not fight your desires; run from them; and run straight to Jesus.

 

                                                                        AMEN