Sun.’s Devo - Jesus First Public Miracle

Read: Judges 15:1-16:31; John 2:1-25; John 3:1-21; Psalm 104:1-23; Proverbs 14:20-21 Samson got over being mad at the men at his wedding party and went back to claim his bride. When he found out she had been givens to his best man, he took revenge. He caught 300 foxes and tied their tails together in pairs. He fastened a torch to each par of tails and lit them the set the foxes free to run through the grain fields of the Philistines. He burned all their grain to the ground and also destroyed their vineyards and olive groves. When the Philistines found out who did it and why, they burned the woman and her father to death. This was the very thing they had used to threaten her to find out the answer to the riddle. When Samson found out the Philistines killed the woman he loved and her father, he went and killed many Philistines then went to live in a cave. The Philistines sent an army looking for Samson. The men of Judah saw them coming and feared for their lives. They sent 3,000 to look for Samson so they could turn him over to the Philistines to save their own lives. Samson agreed to let them do that if they promised that they wouldn’t kill him. They were to hand him over to the Philistines at a place called Lehi which means “Jawbone.” Samson snapped the ropes off his arms and picked up a jawbone of a donkey and killed 1,000 of the Philistines with it. After the battle, Samson was so thirsty he cried out to the Lord and water gushed out of a hollow in the ground. One day Samson went to Gaza in the Philistine territory and spent the night with a prostitute. The Philistines waited all night to kill Samson, but he snuck out at midnight taking the city gates with him. He carried them to a hill and set them up there. Samson eventually fell in love with the Philistine woman, Delilah. The Philistines offered her 1,100 pieces of silver to find out the secret of his strength. He told her lies three times. Eventually, she wore him down and he told her the source of his strength. She lulled him to sleep on her lap and had the Philistines come and cut all his hair off. When she woke him suddenly crying that the Philistines were there to capture him, he got up and had no idea his strength had left him. They over powered him, gouged out his eyes and forced him to grind grain in the prison. Time went by and his hair grew back. The Philistine rulers held a great festival to their god Dagon and had Samson brought out to amuse them. Samson asked to stand against the pillars that held up the temple. His strength had returned with his hair and he put his hands against the pillars and prayed for strength to bring down the temple. He brought the whole building down killing himself and 3,000 Philistine people who were watching as well as all the rulers. He killed more in his death than in his life. His relatives came and got his body and buried it with his father. He had ruled Israel for 20 years. In John, we read one of my favorite stories. I think I like it so much because the mother played such an important part. She knew who Jesus was and even though he didn’t realize this was his time, she did. She called upon him to do something he probably did all the time at home. It was now time to go public and she felt it. The six stone water jars stand for man and the transformation God does in us when He puts his new wine into our lives and brings salvation to our souls. It was God’s plan and it was the best yet. It was the time of Passover and Jesus cleansed the temple of all the money changers and those that sold sacrifices. The Jewish leaders wanted to know who had given them the authority to do that. They wanted a sign he was the Messiah. He told them that when they destroyed this temple, he would raise it up in three days. He was referring to his own body and the disciples remembered this when he did rise from the dead. Jesus did many miracles during the Passover celebration but Jesus didn’t trust man’s heart because he understood human nature. Lord, may we rise above our human nature and have the nature of God moving in us.