Judges 16:21-30
God sometimes uses such sad and humbling circumstances, as with Samson here, to awaken his faithless, disobedient children, for in the prison house Samson’s Nazarite hair began to grow again. How good the Lord is! How great His restoring grace! He restored failing Peter, He restored failing David, and here He restored failing Samson. And He will restore any erring believer who turns to Him in true repentance and confession. His Word says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9.
But let us remember that even though we are fully restored to the Lord, we do not get back what we lose through a fall. This is deeply solemn. Samson was mightily used of God against the Philistines after his restoration, but he never got out of prison, nor did he get back his lost eyes. When we are away from the Lord, we may take some step which will cause us sorrow all the rest of our lives.
The Philistines, of course, did not see the hand of God in all this. They attributed their deliverance from Samson, to Dagon their god, for the world never understands the ways of God with His people. The Philistines therefore decided to hold a great feast to celebrate the binding of Samson, and then they brought him up out of the prison house to make sport for them at their feast. Now God must deal with His people Himself, but He will not allow the world to take pleasure in avenging them. But such is the world. They seek to drag the people of God down to their level, and then laugh at their profession when they have done so.
God must deal with the Philistines, therefore, and that in a very solemn way. While this feast was going on, Samson asked the young lad that held him by the hand to let him feel the pillars of the great house where it was being held. He then asked the Lord to give him the strength to pull it down upon his enemies. The Lord heard the prayer of His restored servant and down it came, so there were more slain at this time than in all his lifetime. How gracious of God to restore His erring servants, and to use them again so mightily, but, alas, Samson himself died with the Philistines, because he was no longer a Nazarite.
It might be well to speak also of the collective application of all this, as we have briefly in a previous paper. The enemy seeks to lure the Church into association with the world, and indeed has succeeded all too well in doing so. Surely we can see in the present day the sad results of Satan’s work, with the corresponding loss of power among those who ought to be separated to Christ. May the Lord stir us all up, so that we maintain a place of submission to His Word and of bearing His reproach, refusing worldly associations. If this is given up, then, like Samson, we lose our spiritual eyight and become the servants of the world. We fear there is a great danger of many doing this, and going in with the great recognized systems of things in Christendom, to escape its scorn. While God may, and does, in His grace, use His own who are faithful to Him, even in a false position, it does not justify the position. We notice here that there were more slain in the day of Samson’s death than in his life, but who would like to be in an unscriptural association when the Lord comes?
ML 01/03/1954