Tues.’s Devo - Spiritual Warfare

Read: Judges 15:1-16:31; John 2:1-25; Psalm 103:1-22 Proverbs 14:17-19 It was the Spring, during the season of Passover. Samson had calmed down and was ready to go and reconcile with his fiancé. When he got to her house he learned that she had been given to his best man to be married. Samson was so angry he took 300 foxes, tied their tails together in pairs, lit their tails with fire and set them loose in the fields of the Philistines. It burned down their wheat field, their olive trees and their vineyards. It made the Philistines very mad at the Israelites. *** Three thousand of the Israelite men went down to talk get Samson. They asked him if he understood that they were under the Philistine’s rule. Samson said that he only did to them what they had done to him. He allowed them to tie him up with new ropes and hand him over to the Philistines. When he arrived at their town of Lehi, he snapped the ropes like threads and found a jawbone of the donkey and killed 1,000 of them. *** After the battle. Samson was so thirsty he cried out to the Lord. God caused a spring of water to come bursting out of the ground and he was revived. *** One time he was spending the night with a prostitute in Gaza. The Philistines locked the gates and waited at the gate all night to kill Samson when he left the next morning. Samson left at midnight and when he came to the locked gate, he just picked up the gate, post and all and carried it to the top of a hill across from Hebron. *** Later, he fell in love with Delilah, a Philistine who lived in Sorek. Delilah means “brought low; languishing”. She was bribed by the leaders of the city who promised her 1,100 pieces of silver from each of them if she would find the source of his strength. She nagged him and nagged him till finally he gave her an answer he knew was wrong. He told her to tie him up with new ropes. He already had seen he could get out of that. It didn’t work so she kept nagging. Next, he told her to put his hair in a loom and that would do it. He was getting closer to the truth. When that didn’t work she really turned on the charm and finally wore him down. He told her the truth. His hair must be shaved. *** She put him to sleep and had his hair shaved. When he woke up this time he had lost his strength. They gouged out his eyes and put him in chains. He was forced to grind grain. His hair began to grow back. *** The Philistines had a great festival to their god Dagon to thank him for letting them defeat Samson. They brought out Samson to display him to the people and make fun of him. He asked to rest against the posts that held up the Temple they were in. When he did, he prayed that God would strengthen him once again and allow him to avenge his two eyes. He pushed against the posts and brought the whole Temple down killing more people in death than in life. *** The story of Samson has so many lessons in spiritual warfare. One of them is that to bring down a strong man, good or bad, you must find the source of his strength. If you are dealing with a strong man (spirit) you must find out what gives that spirit strength - how did it get its entrance. Samson’s strong power came from the Lord and it was in his hair. Ours might be in words we have spoken, a door of sin we opened or a door of blessing that we spoke. Samson’s life was to begin bringing down the Philistines power and he accomplished that goal. God used his weakness with women to do it and God will sometimes use our greatest weaknesses to accomplish his greatest feat to remind us that it is not our ability that can do anything, but his. *** Jesus did his first public miracle at the wedding at Cana. His mother knew he could turn the water to wine because I think he did it at home. He didn’t think it was his time to come out publicly, but his mother thought differently. Right after that they went to Jerusalem for the Passover. Jesus, like Samson, got really upset at Passover and Jesus cleaned out the money changers like Samson cleaned out the harvest of the Philistines. Both suffered financially from this. *** When the Jewish leaders asked him who gave him the authority to throw out the money changers. They wanted a sign to show them who he was. Jesus told them “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.{ They were scratching their heads over this answer but replied that it had taken 46 years to build it. How could he rebuild it in three days. I’m sure Jesus was scratching his head at their ignorance. Jesus was talking about his body - his death and resurrection but he said most of what he said for the sake of his disciples who would get it much later. *** Samson was a type of Jesus. He sacrificed his body to bring down the kingdom of Dagon. Jesus would use the sacrifice of his body to bring down the kingdom of Satan. Lord, help us to understand your Word and its relevance in our lives. It is truly a living testament.