During a period of spiritual decline, Israel needed a leader who would be set apart and strong. Today, W. Robert Godfrey depicts the expectation surrounding Samson’s rise to the office of judge. Get W. Robert Godfrey’s teaching series The Life of Samson on DVD, plus lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide, for your donation of any amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/3607/life-of-samson Meet Today’s Teacher: W. Robert Godfrey is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow and chairman of Ligonier Ministries. He is president emeritus and professor emeritus of church history at Westminster Seminary California. He is the featured teacher for many Ligonier teaching series, including the six-part series A Survey of Church History. He is author of many books, including God’s Pattern for Creation, Reformation Sketches, and An Unexpected Journey. Meet the Host: Nathan W. Bingham is vice president of ministry engagement for Ligonier Ministries, executive producer and host of Renewing Your Mind, host of the Ask Ligonier podcast, and a graduate of Presbyterian Theological College in Melbourne, Australia. Nathan joined Ligonier in 2012 and lives in Central Florida with his wife and four children. Renewing Your Mind is a donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts
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The judges have become progressively weaker, and the judges themselves have become progressively more sinful. And the fruitfulness of their deliverance has become shorter term. And so we can almost anticipate what's going to happen with this next judge who's about to come.
progressively weaker, progressively more sinful. That's the pattern of the judges and makes for a compelling narrative. I think why many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Samson, the last judge. Welcome to the Friday edition of Renewing Your Mind as we turn our attention today to Samson. These messages are from W. Robert Godfrey's series, The Life of Samson.
Over ten messages, Dr. Godfrey highlights vital theological lessons from Samson's life and explores what this judge tells us about Christian living. We'll send you this series when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, but don't delay as this offer ends at midnight. So who was Samson, and specifically, who were his parents?
We're going to turn to the need for Samson himself as it's presented to us in the book of Judges, beginning at Judges 13, verse 1. The Samson story takes up four chapters in the book, chapters 13 through 16. Of course, we know these chapters are all added later, but still they're helpful for us today to find out where we are and orient ourselves.
And there we find the book of Judges declaring in verse 1, "...and the people of Israel again..." And that certainly is the case. It's again, this is the fourth or fifth or sixth time this is said in the book of Judges. And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
Now, that's a perfectly good translation, but in light of what's going to happen in this story and happens in other stories in the book of Judges, we might have left it just a little more literally because literally what it says is, and the people of Israel again did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. Now, that's important because eyes are very important in this story.
It's going to very much revolve around what Samson sees and what Samson does in relation to what he sees and how at the end Samson loses his sight. So the theme of sight is introduced here by the author right at the beginning. It's not only going to be a story about Samson's eyes, it's also going to be a story about the Lord's eyes. And this is set down right at the beginning.
Again, the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now, you notice there's no great detail given here about what that evil was. And our expectation is that almost certainly it was just like the evil that had been done in earlier times in the book of Judges. And the most detailed statement of Israel's faithlessness is found in chapter 10.
in the description of what happened before Jephthah was raised up as the judge in Israel. And at Judges chapter 10, verse 6, we read, "...the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, or in the eyes of the Lord."
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