There are some things in life we need to do again and again. Whether its loading the dishwasher, putting out the bins or doing the ironing, they come around with a rather depressing regularity! We call them ‘chores’ for good reason! And we meet another depressingly familiar occurrence in the opening verse of our reading this morning: “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.”
Once again, for the ‘n’ th time in Judges, the narrator tells us that Israel has slid into sin, rebelled against its Lord, and been justly punished as a consequence. We are witnessing the start of yet another round of the familiar cycle of rebellion, retribution and rescue.
But if you were listening carefully, you’ll have noticed something different this time round. Because unlike previous occasions, this time Israel’s foreign occupation does not prompt them to cry out to the Lord. There is no mention of Israel ‘labouring’ under Philistine occupation, no hint of repentance for their rebellion against God, no evidence that they wanted liberation at all. Indeed, the strong suggestion is that Israel had become quite comfortable living side by side with the Philistines, adopting their culture, their religion, their values.
There is the strong suggestion, in other words, that they had been almost entirely assimilated into pagan Philistine culture, a grave danger of losing their theological distinctiveness and their ethical purity as the people of God.
(We need to on our guard, by the way, against a similar accommodation in our own day. We need to be beware of unconsciously adopting the values and beliefs of our secular culture, forgetting the higher standards to which we are called by Christ. Do re-read Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount if you ever want a reminder of what those standards entail.)
Returning to our passage, this all means that the rescue that God does proceed to provide for Israel was entirely gracious and unmerited. It was a totally benevolent act, a free gift given without being asked for, a salvation sent solely at the divine initiative. I do hope that this rings some bells for all of us. For if we are Christian here this morning we have been saved by God through an unmerited, undeserved act of Christ. For it was before we were even born that Christ came to save us. It was whilst we were still sinners that Christ died for us. God’s grace truly is amazing – a free gift we should never forget.
An angelic encounter
In today’s passage God’s gracious response to Israel’s sin and enslavement was to send another Judge – the last of the judges, in fact. But unlike all his predecessors, this twelfth and final Judge, whom we know as Samson, was chosen for his role before his birth! Even from infancy, Samson’s mother and father would know that the Lord was with him, that God would accomplish great things through him.
The reason they knew this is due to an angelic visitation that’s described for us in verses 3 to 5 of today’s passage. An angel appeared to the wife of a man named Manoah and told her she would have a child. ‘You are barren and childless’ he said, ‘but you are going to become pregnant and give birth to a son.’
Moreover, this miraculous child would be raised as a Nazirite – in other words as someone dedicated to the Lord. In particular, Nazirites were expected to abstain from certain foods and drinks as a sign of their wholehearted, holy devotion to God.
Even more remarkably, the promised child would be a leader and a liberator. It would be Samson’s God-given mission, says the angel, “to take the lead in delivering Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” Manoah’s son would redeem Israel from their enslavement to Philistine – and from all the moral, cultural and spiritual compromise that enslavement entailed.
As you might expect, Manoah’s wife rushes to tell her husband this remarkable angelic message that she’s received. To his great credit, Manoah believes her and seeks further clarification from the Lord. ‘Pardon your servant’ he prays, ‘I beg you to let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born.’
Manoah and his wife were very ordinary people, but they were a couple with great faith, a couple who knew and loved the Lord, a couple who sincerely desired to serve and obey him. And so their prayer was heard, and God once again sent his angel – who proceeds to tell them how young Samson should be raised.
This little episode should be a great encouragement to us to pray. We may not be important in the eyes of the world – we may not be a president or a prime minister, neither an archbishop nor a pope – but if we have a simple honest Christian faith, and a sincere desire to serve God, then he will delight to hear and answer our prayers. Not always in the way we might expect, but answer he will, and always for our ultimate good. So keep praying!
Returning to our passage, verses 15 to 21 describe a remarkable case of mistaken identity. Manoah and his wife think they are addressing a ‘man of God’, perhaps a prophet or maybe an angel. They offer him some food and enquire as to his name. But the angel’s response reveals that they are dealing with someone far superior. For he is no ordinary angel, but the Angel of the LORD himself, a supernatural figure who has already appeared many times in Old Testament history, including to Moses at the burning bush – and to Gideon in the winepress, as we heard just last week.
The Angel of the LORD tells Manoah that his name is ‘beyond understanding’, that he cannot be fully comprehended – something that can certainly be said of God. Furthermore, the Angel of God asks not for food, but for a sacrifice. He asks for Manoah’s wholehearted devotion, not for dinner! Just the sort of thing God alone – our Creator and Saviour – has the sole right to say. And when Manoah does set light to a sacrifice, we’re told that this angel suddenly ascended to heaven in the flames! No wonder Manoah and his wife fell face down on the floor – I think I would have fainted myself!
You see, the Angel of the LORD is the manifestation of God in human form – what scholars call a “theophany” – a visible appearance of the invisible God. Indeed, some theologians speculate that the Angel of the LORD is actually a ‘Christophany’ – a visible appearance of the second person of the Trinity, an appearance of the eternal Son of God a thousand years prior to his human birth in Bethlehem. Mind-blowing stuff!
Manoah certainly had his mind blown, and says to his wife “We are doomed to die! We have seen God!” But (as is always the case in my experience!) his wife is far more sensible! The Lord would not want to strike us down, she says, having just accepted our sacrifice and promised us a son. And sure enough, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son. A baby destined to be the redeemer of Israel, a Spirit-filled saviour named Samson.
Has Christmas come early?!
So that’s today’s story from Judges. But as it was being read, did you get a sense of déjà vu? Did the story of Samson’s birth bring back any memories of Christmas, I wonder? Did you spot all the similarities between Samson’s. birth and the birth of Jesus, described in our Gospel reading?
- After all, both readings describe an angel greeting an ordinary, humble, childless woman, and telling her that God will give her a son.
- In both passages the mother’s miraculous offspring will grow up to be a heaven-sent, Spirit-filled saviour for the people of God.
- And in both Bible stories, the child is to be ‘holy’, in the sense of being specially set apart by God for a unique redemptive mission.
If you did spot all these parallels, well done! And we are meant to notice them. For in Samson, God provided a prototype for Jesus, a forerunner of Christ. In the life of Samson, God did in miniature what he would one day do through his Son.
Samson provides us with a tantalizing glimpse of the great salvation God would one day accomplish through Christ.
We are not meant to be satisfied with Samson, you see. We should let our gaze go from him to Christ. Because Samson’s limitations should make us appreciate Jesus all the more:
- At times Samson would be impetuous, short-tempered and self-indulgent – but not Jesus.
- Samson was only a mere man – but Jesus was also fully divine.
- Samson could only save Israel from the Philistines – but Jesus came to save us all from sin.
- And Samson was only a temporary, time-limited Judge – but Jesus is our King for evermore.
So let’s praise him!