One day when Samson went down to Timnath, he came to the vineyards, “and behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand.” Judges 14:5,65Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath: and, behold, a young lion roared against him. 6And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done. (Judges 14:5‑6).
Samson pictures to us the Lord Jesus down in this world and the young lion is a type of Satan.
A little later when Samson again went down to Timnath, “he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion.” Samson took some of the honey and ate it as he went on his way. How sweet it must have tasted! It strengthened him, too. When he came to his father and mother, he gave them some also. But he did not tell them where it came from.
Booborowie, South Australia, is a wide treeless plain covered with fields of clover. This clover prides good flows of honey during summer months. Because of the absence of better sites, bees will establish colonies in anything which offers a shelter, from the boxes of seed drills to a roof corner of a shed, and from rabbit burrows to old drums in rubbish dumps.
I was walking over a hill on the south side of the clover field, and I came to the carcass of a horse which had died some months previously.
It was now a sun-dried hide stretched over a skeleton. What I had taken for a cloud of blowflies proved to be a swarm of bees. Looking through a gap in the hide, I found that they had established a colony inside. I did not have a veil with me nor a smoker to quiet the bees, so I received numerous stings on the face while reaching through the entrance to break off a large piece of the honeycomb. But I counted it well worth the pain because I was able to do what Samson had done over 3,000 years ago; I ate some honey from a hive which had been established in the carcass of a dead animal.
Later, and this time with a smoker and veils to protect our faces, I showed this reminder of a Biblical story to some Christian friends.
The carcass of the dead lion with the swarm of bees and the honey inside, is a picture of the power of Satan overcome in the death of the Lord Jesus on the cross. The sweetest blessings have come to us now from that very place where the Lord defeated the great enemy of God and man. Like Samson eating the honey, we, too, can taste the sweetness of knowing Satan is a defeated foe, and we will have some to share with others, too.
ML-09/02/1979