Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
We are jumping into the life of Samson.

Jeff:
That’s right. This is going to be a fun one. Yeah.

Chris:
Tough guy. We ended with Gideon and there was some some really cool stuff between Gideon and here. Sure. Between Judges 13. You can summarize that. But before we get to that, we have a great segment for you committed to deliver to you the best of the news.

Jeff:
It’s only the finest news sources. Yes. For those of you that are new listeners, our longtime listeners, you know, you know that we bring you valuable information. And these are, what kind of story would this be? This kind of story is like a human interest story.

Chris:
Yes.

Jeff:
Yes. And here’s the title from the Babylon Bee. So the Babylon Bee is our favorite news source. It’s a satire website. And the headline is, I’m almost ready, says wife, letting husband know he has time to watch at least one entire Lord of the Rings film.

Chris:
It’s so funny.

Jeff:
Okay, so this goes Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Local woman Sarah Donaldson informed her husband Jeremy that she was almost ready to leave, alerting him that he had time to watch at least one extended edition Lord of the Rings movie. Well, I guess I’ll start with fellowship,” said Mr. Donaldson, settling down on the couch. She’s at least dressed, so may not make it through the two towers. We’ll see. According to sources, Frodo had made it to Mordor on at least one previous occasion when Mrs. Donaldson announced to her husband that she was almost ready. While her use of the phrase, be right there, appears to be correlated to a typical feature-length film, Mrs. Donaldson’s almost being ready consistently lands in a Lord of the Rings territory. After learning that his wife was almost ready to go out to dinner, Mr. Donaldson began deciding what to go ahead and eat at home. No way I can wait until we get to the restaurant, Mr. Donaldson said. I could make a lasagna from scratch or maybe smoke a brisket. I could probably teach myself to make dumplings. It’s gonna be a bit. At publishing time, Mrs. Donaldson had updated her husband that she just needed to use the bathroom and then she’d be ready to go, helpfully notifying him that he could probably finish the two towers.

Chris:
Oh, goodness gracious. That is so good.

Jeff:
Smoke a brisket takes like 12 hours.

Chris:
That’s so good. Or teach himself how to make lasagna from scratch or dumplings. That’s really funny.

Jeff:
Is it that way at your house? Because you have two daughters.

Chris:
You know what? My wife is actually, excuse me, my wife is actually really good at this. Like in other words, like she’s not this way. If she says I’m going to be ready, she’s ready. My daughter, Sarah, was an offender, but not nearly as much as the offense of my youngest daughter, Tori. My youngest daughter, Tori, my wife has her name typed into the phone. And I’m not even kidding. She used to add a turtle, like an icon of a turtle at the end of her name on the text every time that she like made us late somewhere. And I think it’s now like if you look up Liz’s phone and pull up Tori’s contact, it says Tori Zarbugha. And I think there’s like 32 turtles. And, and it’s sort of a thing between them, right? And she would just keep on adding a turtle, adding a turtle. But then what she likes to do is she likes to send it to Tori. And then, uh, you know, have you ever had the text being read to you? Like Siri reads the text. It says from Tori Zarbaugh, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle, turtle. It’s hilarious. And so, uh, anyway, so they, they go back and forth on the whole thing. So Tori is a great offender.

Jeff:
Yeah. I have a, right now, uh, my son, my middle son and his wife moved back from Virginia. And so they’re staying with us for a while. And so I have my wife, uh, my daughter-in-law and my daughter, who’s 20, who still lives with us at home. And, uh, I can’t get anywhere unless we have to leave the day before. So wherever we’re trying to go, we have to, we have to prepare to leave the day before. Cause it just takes so long. And I’m one of those, You know, leave on time. I was late coming to the studio today, right? And that drives me nuts. I’m rarely ever late on my own accord, right? Somebody’s making me late. I’m not a victim and I don’t play the victim, but if I’m late, it’s usually somebody else that makes me late. Not always, but 99% of the time. And it drives me nuts. I just lose my mind over, I thought we said we were leaving at five. We are. It’s 5.40, right? You know, so I think that the women in my life measure time from like the beginning of the hour to 59. So if we say five, it’s 5-0-0 to 5-9-5-9. That’s kind of how they measure time. And it drives me crazy.

Chris:
You know, they would do well in the countries that you visit.

Jeff:
Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Perfectly fine. What they mean is two-ish. Two-ish. Two or three-ish is perfect. Yep. It drives me crazy. So I can really appreciate that.

Chris:
For those of you who don’t travel abroad as much as Jeff, which is probably everybody, there’s a lot of countries that he goes to and that I’ve been at where they say, yeah, if they say be ready at two, you better go to the trip immediately releasing being on time for anything.

Jeff:
Oh yeah. We talk about Africa time. We talk about Cuba time. Cuba does the same thing. They just say, Cuba is Cuba. That’s what they say. And it’s just, you just wait, just wait.

Chris:
So if they say be on time at two, if you’re in the bus at two waiting on everybody, you’ll be waiting.

Jeff:
One of my African friends, I’m always, you know, looking at my watch. I’m always trying to hustle people along. We said, two, let’s leave it two. And he always laughs at me and he says, you, you keep time. We have time. Right. So just between Americans and Africans, you keep time. Right. And we have time.

Chris:
Yes. They have time to do whatever they want.

Jeff:
We can do whatever we want. That’s right.

Chris:
That’s really good.

Jeff:
So, hey, that was very useful. And again, I know that our listeners are appreciative. And riveted. Of the important information that we bring them. And so if you’re a lady and you have some men in your life that are waiting for you, just understand the pain that we feel over it, right? That’s helping out the men on our podcast.

Chris:
All men feel pain. Almost all men feel pain in this area.

Jeff:
That’s right. So, uh, Hey, it’s not like men are the only ones or women are the only ones that are late though. Just typical guys, guys can, uh, can do the same. Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah, for sure.

Jeff:
Perennially late men. Do you know any perennially late men?

Chris:
Are you, are you hinting at something, Jeff?

Jeff:
What’s that?

Chris:
Are you hinting at something?

Jeff:
No, no.

Chris:
I am a person that has not necessarily had a reputation for being on time.

Jeff:
It’s because you squeeze a lot into your day.

Chris:
That’s partly, thank you. That’s Chad.

Jeff:
Chad Asman, our executive pastor? Yes. He’s that way. He’s like, okay, I have to leave in seven minutes. Let me go ahead and balance the budget real quick. Right. So he’s always just squeezing one more thing into the day.

Chris:
I would definitely say that is me.

Jeff:
Yeah. It’s not that he’s lollygagging. Right. Right. Right. But it’s not that he’s curling his hair one more time. It’s not that he’s trying on one more outfit. Right. It’s that he’s, you know, squeezing in one more thing to do.

Chris:
But I am different than Chad in that he will choose to do something absolutely productive. I may choose to do something not productive.

Jeff:
Play nine more holes.

Chris:
Right. Exactly. Right. I’ll be like, let me watch one more video. Right. Yeah. But either way I’m choosing to do something.

Jeff:
Okay. So we are pivoting. That was a riveting segment. I’m sure. We are pivoting now into the life of Samson. He’s a real life superhero in the Bible. And as you think of comic book type superheroes, deeply flawed person at the same time, God used him in a great way. Prior to him, there’s several other judges. There’s an incredible story. For those of you that are Bible readers, you need to read the rest of the story of Gideon. Gideon makes a few mistakes. He does some stuff. It winds up costing all kinds of crazy stuff. He has 71 sons. Yeah, that’s crazy. And the one son kills 69 of the others and pulls off a coup. And it’s just, it’s crazy, right? So read the story of Gideon, the rest of that story. There’s some others in there. There’s an incredibly difficult story of a guy named Jepha in there that winds up becoming a great judge of Israel. It’s just, just some really neat stories. But the next highlight guy, he’s going to be several chapters here in the book of Judges, is Samson. And so since we’re kind of taking the highlights rather than verse by verse, we jump into the life of Samson.

Chris:
Yeah. We can go back and read Jephthah in another series down the road.

Jeff:
That’s right. When we go verse by verse through the Old Testament, which we haven’t done yet. So we’re going to jump to Judges chapter 13, and I’m just going to read the first 25 verses. And this is just the beginning of the life of Samson. It says, again, oh, hey, the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. Wow. It seems to be a theme with 13 chapters in it. It seems like this has come up 13 times. Yeah. Uh, so the Lord handed them over to the Philistines who oppressed them for 40 years. In those days, a man named Manoah from the tribe of Dan lived in the town of Zorah. His wife was unable to become pregnant and they had no children. The angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah’s wife and said, even though you’ve been unable to have children, you will soon become pregnant and give birth to a son. So be careful. You must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink or eat any forbidden food. You’ll 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. The woman ran and told her husband, a man of God appeared to me. He looked like one of God’s angels, terrifying to see. I didn’t ask where he was from and he didn’t tell me his name, but he told me you will become pregnant and give birth to a son. You must not drink wine or any other alcoholic drink nor eat any forbidden food for your son will be dedicated to God as a Nazarite from the moment of his birth until the day of his death. Then Manoah prayed to the Lord saying, Lord, please let the man of God come back to us again and give us more instructions about this son who is to be born. God answered Manoah’s prayer and the angel of God appeared once again to his wife as she was sitting in the field. But her husband, Manoah, was not with her. So she quickly ran and told her husband, the man who appeared to me the other day is here again. Manoah ran back with his wife and asked, are you the man who spoke to my wife the other day? Yes, he replied, I am. So Manoah asked him, when your words come true, what kind of rules should govern the boy’s life and work? The angel of the Lord replied, be sure your wife follows the instructions I gave her. She must not eat grapes or raisins, drink wine or any other alcoholic drink, or eat any forbidden food. Then Manoah said to the angel of the Lord, please stay here until we can prepare a young goat for you to eat. I will stay, the angel of the Lord replied, but I will not eat anything. However, you may prepare a burnt offering as a sacrifice to the Lord. Manoah didn’t realize it was the angel of the Lord. Then Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, what is your name? For when all this comes true, we want to honor you. “‘Why do you ask my name?’ the angel of the Lord replied. “‘It is too wonderful for you to understand.'” Then Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered it on a rock as a sacrifice to the Lord. And as Manoah and his wife watched, the Lord did an amazing thing. As the flames from the altar shot up toward the sky, the angel of the Lord ascended in the fire. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell with their faces to the ground. The angel did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Manoah finally realized it was the angel of the Lord and he said to his wife, we will certainly die for we’ve seen God. But his wife said if the Lord were going to kill us, he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering and grain offering. He wouldn’t have appeared to us and told us this wonderful thing and done these miracles. When her son was born, she named him Samson. And the Lord blessed him as he grew up, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he lived in Mahana Dan, which is located between the towns of Zorah and Eshtal. There you go. Thank you.

Chris:
That’s what you wanted to say.

Jeff:
That’s my thing. I always say, there you go after we’re done. So I was resisting it in that moment and you threw it in.

Chris:
Yeah. So pretty crazy. I mean, just the announcements, you know, there’s not been too many announcements. Think about it in the Bible that are like this, you know, I mean, think about the, even, You know, even John the Baptist, you know, there was a, there was a miraculous announcement there to, you know, in, in the temple, you know, there was, there’s obviously a miraculous announcement to Mary for Jesus. Abraham was told in his wife, Sarah, that they were going to have a baby. Yeah. Right. By the angel. And, and would this be the only other one?

Jeff:
Hannah with Samuel.

Chris:
Yep. You’re right about that. Yep. Samuel. Yep.

Jeff:
And then you have Mary. Mary who? The mother of Jesus. I said that already. Oh, okay. I missed that one. Yeah. I wasn’t paying attention. I rarely pay attention to things you say. There’s so many Marys.

Chris:
I was like, Oh, he’s about to pull out another Mary. And Elizabeth. Yeah. Elizabeth. Yeah. You mentioned that one. So, but other than that, I would say this is it. I mean, you know, this is an incredible thing. And, you know, I find it interesting how the man immediately comes to the conclusion, oh, we’re going to die because we’ve seen God. And then the woman has the reasoning, you know, she’s like, well, technically he wouldn’t have accepted our burnt offering. So surely, you know, he’s not going to kill us because so she she has the she has the level headedness. Right. And I like that. I just like the fact that, you know, the man is supposed to be the protector of things. We’re doomed, you know? And then the woman’s like, no, we’re good.

Jeff:
It also shows that opposites do really attract a lot of times, right? In a married situation like this, one of them is highly emotional. The other one’s logical, you know, and we balance each other out and there’s a benefit there. So yeah, that’s pretty great.

Chris:
And so, So yeah, what stands out to you?

Jeff:
Well, I was going to, let’s just go to the beginning of it. So here we are. This is the sixth cycle of disobedience during the, in the book of Judges. So from Joshua up to Samson, it’s how many years, how many years do we have these?

Chris:
Joshua to Samson? Holy cow. There’s gotta be what?

Jeff:
A couple hundred, right? Let me find it. I was just looking at it a minute ago. In that list of judges that we have here in the… Okay, so Othniel is 40 years, Ehud is 80 years. It doesn’t mention how long Shamgar went, but that’s 120. Deborah was 40, so that’s 160. Gideon is 40, that’s 200. Tola is 23. Jair is 22, so that’s 45 more. So that’s, what did I say? 245. Then… And then six for Jephthah and seven for, yeah, so you’ve got about another 25 years. So you’re talking 250 years, 270 years to Samson. And during this time, they have these six times where they go on this, it’s a cycle. So this is the sixth cycle. They ignore God. They go back to worshiping idols. God sends judgment and it’s the Midianites or the Amalekites or somebody. Now it’s going to be the Philistines. Then they’re under oppression for a period of time. Here with the Philistines, it’s 40 years of oppression. And then there’s been 200 and something years, 270 years of freedom as the judges rise up. So what we didn’t count was the number of years that the oppression would happen. Sometimes 20 years, sometimes 15 years, sometimes 40 years of oppression. So this is hundreds and hundreds of years of this cycle of back and forth and back and forth. It’s dozens probably of generations. We honor God, we dishonor God. We honor God, we dishonor God. Honor God, blessing, peace. Dishonor God, cursing and oppression from the enemies of God. So here we are, we’re on the sixth version of that. And it starts off, that generation dies. And again, the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight. And they keep going back to the same gods. They keep going back to Baal and Ashtoreth. And so The Philistines come up and they oppress them for 40 years. Now the Philistines were all along the coast of what you think of modern day Israel now. Particularly Gaza is where the Philistines were, the Palestinians being now that same area. And then up the coast, almost all the way to Tel Aviv, that whole area. And they outnumbered Israel. They were a warrior culture, whereas Israel was more of a pastoral you know, animals and farming kind of a culture. The Philistines were warrior and they had technology. They could make weapons out of iron. So they knew the secret of iron making and the Israelites did not yet. So they had a technological advantage, a numerical advantage, and then they had a cultural advantage and that is that they’re warriors. And so they just rough up Israel all the time. And so they’re pleading, Oh God, do something. And God decides he’s going to do something, but He’s going to do it through a baby. So his promise to set them free, it’s going to take about 20 years to develop.

Chris:
Right. Right. One man is going to rise up. That’s right. And you know what is interesting about this whole thing is When you were talking about, you know, this is the sixth cycle, I was thinking of all the movies in my mind. Isn’t that funny how my mind goes there? But like, like you saw War of the Worlds where, you know, like Keanu Reeves ends up being the all-knowing being who watches the earth through generations. Mankind has followed the same pattern for years, right? Talking about destroying the earth with technology. And all these different, you know, movies where there’s an observation of humanity that brings you outside of your own timeline. And it’s exactly one of those moments, right? Where there’s not too many times where somebody can say, okay, let’s take a look at the pattern of humanity over 200 years. I guess there’s great thinkers that maybe perhaps do that more often than I do.

Jeff:
Well, my family does. What do you mean? So this conversation just happened in my, my wife on Sunday wanted to go up to Port Austin, which is at the top of the thumb of Michigan. And so we went up there and fooled around in the water and on the pier, went to dinner. It was great. But my son and his wife and my daughter and her boyfriend, we all get in my wife’s SUV, we go up. And on the way up, my son started talking about, it seems like humanity keeps doing the same thing over and over and over again. And then he said, you know, the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire, here we are, we’re on the, we’re on the downside of our empire, very likely the American empire. And then he said, you know, I wonder what it’s going to be like at the end. And I said, well, Jesus said at the end, it’s going to be just like the days of Noah. He goes, what were the days of Noah like? I saw us eating and drinking, being in marriage, getting married all the time, not thinking about God at all. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. And they only thought of evil continually. And my son goes, well, that’s today’s culture, right? Literally the theme of today’s culture is you be you. Every man did that, which was right in his own eyes, is the phrase, right? And you be you, it’s the same. They only think evil continually. You think of the incredible evil in the world around us. Just, you know, don’t, but you know, how full of evil just the internet is and all the crazy stuff happening in the world. We just go, humanity, we have clever phones, but beyond that, we’re the same as they were. Right? We go on and we just keep repeating the same things over and over and over again.

Chris:
And just to be clear, you don’t necessarily mean evil as in like malicious intent to kill. You say you’re lumping in everything that is not of God.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. Right. That’s right.

Chris:
So not evil as in people might picture, you know, pitchforks and serial killers.

Jeff:
Yeah. It doesn’t have to be that, although that’s happening a lot too. But anything that is contrary to God’s way would be evil. Right. And they only thought of sinful things continuously. Right. That’s the main culture. Now, even in that day, there were some who didn’t, there was no one in his family, right? They found favor in the eyes of God. Right. And so there are some who, even in this culture, the Bible talks about, you know, there’s a remnant. There are some who say, no, we want to go God’s way. But the generality of culture is everybody does whatever’s right in their own eyes. And they only think of sinful things continuously is what the Bible says. Yeah. Yeah, so we keep repeating it over and over and over again. So when we point this out in the days of the judges, we’re acknowledging it’s the same in the days of Jeff and Chris, too.

Chris:
Yeah. And there’s also another sermon in there as well, which is not only about the nature of mankind and our depravity and our tendencies and everything else, but also we can probably on a micro level, look at our own lives and probably even look back and say, in this season, I served God. And then there was this season and I certainly ran from God. Right. Then there was this season of my life where, you know, this one influence really brought me back to God. Then in this season, I really struggled and I get away from God. And we could probably do that. A lot of us who have years on us, a little bit of dust on the bottle.

Jeff:
I’ve been a believer for 45 years. Okay. I got saved 45 years ago. Okay, so yeah, it’s up and down, up and down. What is it? Eight? Eight. Eight years old? Yeah. So it’s kind of up and down, up and down. Yeah. You know, you have the high moments and then the low moments, the high moments, the low moments in your life. It’s the same.

Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. And that was 30 something years ago. So 21 to 6, 32, let’s say 38. That was 38 years ago for me. Yeah. So,

Jeff:
What happens then is this cycle goes back and forth, back and forth, and God decides, okay, I’m going to set the people of Israel free, begin the process of setting them free through this young man, Samson. So he’s going to let them go another 20 years or so, you know, maybe 30 years. But he begins the process. So God is working even when people feel like they’re not. And he comes to Manoah and his wife and he goes, hey, this is the angel of the Lord, by the way, which we’ve already talked about the character of the angel of the Lord. That’s always probably Jesus, right? Very likely. And, It’s a theophany. But he comes and says, okay, I’m going to use your son, but there are a few things. I want him to be wholly a Nazarite, set apart. So we’re going to be careful about what he drinks, what he eats, the things he touches, the things he wears, what he does, how he does his hair. I’m going to set some of these guidelines. and make sure that he follows these. And they said, okay, as a matter of fact, Manoah wanted to talk to the angel and say, Hey, are there any other guidelines? How shall we raise this boy? Right. And it doesn’t unpack all of it then, but we know what a Nazirite is. We know all the Nazirite requirements from the rest of the requirements in the Bible. And so what I love about Manoah and his wife, because there’s not a ton said about Manoah and his wife, this, and then there’s one other when he’s getting, Samson’s getting married, but, What I love about Manoah is Manoah is like, Hey, I want to do this the right way. And God just tell me and I’ll do what you tell me to do. Right. And as a parent, man, you might not be the one that goes and tears up the gates and delivers all the people, right. And fights the bad guys. But as a parent, maybe the single best question you can ask is what Manoah and his wife ask. And that is, tell us how to raise our child and we’ll do it that way. Oh, that’s God. Tell us what to do and we’ll do it. And they did. They didn’t cut his hair. They did keep him away from wine and raisins and anything from the grapevine. He didn’t touch dead animals. He did manage his life the way they raised him the right way. And the Bible is going to tell us just meant the spirit of the Lord came on him.

Chris:
And Manoah is excited about that, even before he knew that the man he was talking to was the angel of the Lord.

Jeff:
That’s exactly right.

Chris:
Which means there was a sense, it doesn’t say so, but there was a sense where he was so honored that even before he realized it was the angel he was talking to, because he said, Hey, will you eat? And the guy’s like, ah, no, I’m not going to eat. He didn’t know who he was talking to. But he was making a sacrifice. Yeah. But he was like, yes, I’m willing to do it. Even though he thought it was just some prophet. Yeah. Right. Which again,

Jeff:
So I read this story, just to wrap up, I read this story and we talked about there’s this cycle of evil and all these crazy things and how crazy our current world is. It’s exactly how Manoah and his wife were living. Same situation. It says that Israel had rebelled against God, all Israel did evil in the Lord’s sight. So the Lord handed him over to the Philistines. But there’s Manoah and his wife that apparently want to honor God. They’re eager to discover what does God want me to do to raise my son? It’s possible for you to raise a godly son and a godly daughter, even in a wicked culture and society today. But you got to do what Manoah did. And Manoah did what Moses told us to do. And that is raise them in my words, right? Remember Moses said, when you get up in the morning, when you lay down at night, when you walk by the way, when you sit down at dinner, when you go to sleep, he constantly be teaching them my words and to obey them. And this is what Manoah wants to do. You tell me what your words are and I’ll raise my son that way. And then they did. I think they did a good job raising their son up until he became an adult, started making his own choices. But they did what God said to do. And it’s possible for you to raise good, godly children in a wicked culture if you choose to go God’s way and do what God’s word says.

Chris:
So a lot of sermons in just that introductory passage. So that’s our time. And so hopefully we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.