Lehi ( Jawbone)...Samson pt 9

https://billrandles.wordpress.com/2021/11/16/lehi-jawbone-samson-9/ ^ | 11-15-21 | Bill Randles

[pastorbillrandles]

And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men. ( Judges 15:14-16)

Samson had been arrested and turned over to the Gentiles by the men of Judah, as we saw in the previous segment. They wanted peace with Paganism, even if it mean repudiating their high calling as children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and allowing pagans to rule over them and dominate their culture.

But God raised up Samson to stir things up, and to show Israel what could be, if she(Israel) would but dedicate herself to the LORD. What would a nation of ten thousand or a hundred thousand Samson’s look like? Would the Philistines be able to bridle such a people? As Moses had told Israel, that if she would be faithful to God, “One would put a thousand to flight, and two would put ten thousand to flight…”. Samson was a living object lesson of this truth.

But Judah wanted none of that, like Samson’s wife, she believed in the Philistines more than in God.

When the three thousand man Jewish posse brought Samson, bound into the hands of the Gentiles, the Philistines fell on Him immediately to slaughter Him once and for all.

To their own shock, the Holy Spirit of God fell mightily upon Samson, and the flaxen ropes by which his own people had bound him, snapped as if they were in the fire!

Samson picked up a Jawbone, and using it as a weapon, (perhaps a battle axe), He commenced a Holy War, in the power of the Spirit upon the Philistines, killing a thousand of them.

The Philistines thought that they finally had Samson and would kill Him, but instead his ‘death’ was reversed, and when the Spirit of the LORD came upon Him, they died. Had the LORDs of the Philistines known what was going to happen to them, they might not have rushed in so confident that they would be able to slay the anointed of God.

The Apostle Paul, by the same Holy Spirit would write of Christ, that if the “Princes of this world had known, they would not have crucified the LORD of Glory…”.

Now the battle was over, and the victory was won, and all around the exhausted Holy Warrior were lying bodies, hacked to death in heaps and piles, by the Jawbone of a new Ass, wielded by Samson, in the Spirit of God.

As Samson surveyed the gruesome sight of piles of bodies, He prophesies in a poem which comes to Him,

With the Jawbone of an Ass

Heaps upon Heaps,

I have slain a thousand men

With the Jawbone of an Ass...

The Hebrew text reveals a kind of pun in this song, for the Word for “Heaps” sounds very similar to the word “Ass” . Samson likens the Philistines to Asses. The Ass is an unclean animal, which either needed to be redeemed or killed according to the law of Moses. One after another, Samson killed the uncircumcised invaders into the Holy Land, with the Jawbone of an Ass.

Then Samson threw the Jawbone away from Himself. He then realized with a terrible urgency that He was thirsty, enough that he felt He would die of thirst,

And he was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived: wherefore he called the name thereof Enhakkore, which is in Lehi unto this day. And he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines twenty years.( Judges 15:18-20)

The Messiah that Samson was a shadow of, would also win the ultimate battle, over sin and evil, then He too would cry out for thirst,

After this, Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. ( John 19:28)

Samson turned to see that the rock of Lehi had been cleft, and water flowed out of it. Water from the Rock? Sounds Like Exodus all over again. When Samson drank, He was revived and restored after his great victory.

[LS]

I am always reminded that when John Adams got his legislative victory to build six frigates because of the fumbling by the pro-French Republicans, the saying in Philadelphia was that “John Adams slew a thousand Frenchmen with the jawbone of a Jefferson.”