God's Covenant Broken by Samson

"God's Covenant Broken by Samson" - Judges 16:15-22 Samson, we can see the condition of a man who was reckless and who acted according to his feelings, which those feelings caused him to do in the flesh, which would lead to his end. His decisions led him to lose what God wanted for him.

I. The discovery, at last, of his great secret.

A. Delilah was willing to squeeze everything out of him, she didn't love him.

1. Her cunning reached the pitch so that Samson, breaking the covenant that God had made (Judges 14:3), Samson took for wife someone who was a Philistine, of his enemies. He is guided by his emotions, by his great feelings (feelings make us who we are, for feelings move the brain totally).

2. (Judges 16:16) His soul was reduced to mortal anguish.

3. It led him to psychological torture (it deals with the matter of the soul, that is, everything related to the spirit or mental activity).

4. In the end, Samson stopped resisting and revealed to Delilah the secret of his strength.

5. Although long hair was not the source of his power, it was the "external" indication (sign, warning, announcement) that he was a "Nazirite": of his separation from God.

6. It was his relationship with "God" that gave him his strength, not his hair.

7. But if his hair was cut off, he would have no power.

8. Now Delilah knew she had "the secret of her strength."

9. So, God allowed it to punish him for his sin.

10. Samson had lost his fellowship with God, "by not observing" (looking very carefully) his vow of Nazirite "with so much defilement."

11. His dedication to God was the source of his strength.

12. To discover the secret of his Nazirite was to belittle his Naziriteness: "If I be shaved, I will lose my Nazirite status and my strength will depart from me."

13. (17) As he slept on her knees, she called out to the Philistines.

14. Fatal consequences of Samson's folly (prudence, lack of good judgment and maturity before acting) when he discovers the secret of his strength.

15. The interest that Delilah took in making the money that had been promised her own, without having compassion for one of the bravest men in history, but sold it for money, like a sheep being taken to the slaughterhouse.

16. Certain that Samson had told her the truth, she made him sleep on her knees.

17. It is to be noted that Delilah herself did not cut his hair, but in order to make sure the operation was better, she sent for an expert barber to cut his hair so skillfully and quickly that he did not wake up with the maneuver.

18. (20) The little concern he felt for the loss of his knighthood, which he could not fail to notice.

19. He thought he was going to escape as he had done before.

20. "But he did not know that Jehovah had departed from him."

21. It did not occur to him that this was the reason for the change that had taken place in him.

22. It is a great tragedy to lose communion with God.

23. Worse, not being aware of this loss.

24. Those who provoke God to withdraw from them suffer the punishment of insensitivity to that withdrawal.

25. (21) The Philistines immediately took benefit of the advantages now offered to them (the Philistines) against Samson.

26. The Philistines took him away after God had withdrawn from him.

27. If we fall asleep on the knees of our passions, we will awaken in the hands of the Philistines.

28. The first thing they did, as soon as they got their hands on him, was to "gouge out his eyes."

29. The problem with the passions is: Delilah's skirts proved too strong for Samson's heart, and what a thousand Philistines could not do was accomplished by the deceitful influence of "one woman."

30. It is said that they blinded him by applying fire to his eyes.

31. They considered that even if his hair grew, his eyes would not turn back, and that stronger arms could do little without eyes to guide them.

32. His eyes had been the occasion of his sins (14:1; 16:1).

33. Now he suffered the punishment in his eyes.

34. "They took him to Gaza," so that there he would appear in all his "weakness," the same one that had given proof of his enormous strength there.

35. And they bound him "with chains" of bronze, to him who had already been bound by the cords of his own iniquity.

36. He was sent to prison to grind: to go round and round like a slave, called to be separated, a Nazirite to God, the one whom the angel of the Lord said to him plainly: Drink not wine, I am; no unclean thing; (13:4) And a razor shall not pass over his head, and that one chosen by God became a slave to the millstone of prison.

37. Poor Samson, how you have fallen!

38. How is your honor on the ground! Amen.