Heart of the Staff
I am picking back up with this series from the last post on March 23, 2022, and Jacob’s Home-Life as a picture of Christ’s Church. The promise of God to Israel was through Jacob, even as the promise of God to the world is through Jesus. Jacob was chosen by God to become the one from whom the nation of Israel was to come and later the redeemer for the world would come through this nation.
Disappointment filled the life of Jacob when he received Leah as his wife rather than Rachel for whom he had worked. God expresses disappointment with His people as He expressed through Isaiah that they were wild grapes. The heart of man is wild and seeks its own. Even the beloved wife Rachel steals her father’s gods as they leave her father’s house of Canaan. The members of the beloved Church of Jesus allow too much of its affection to be taken up with the trivial matters of the day and the lusts of the flesh, so that the true love relationship, and the lordship of Jesus cannot be seen. But thanks be unto God, who gave His son that even the mistakes of those who have believed and taken His son as the bridegroom from heaven may be washed and cleansed through His blood. He loved to the end, even unto death for the Church, His bride. This love was given, the purchase price was given, and given for you.
We will now look at Samson and the Courtship with Uncontrolled Passions. Samson was the strongest physical man who ever lived. God made it so, so that he might deliver His people from the Philistines. He did this in part, but how much more complete it could have been if he had not allowed the secret of his strength to be revealed. This revelation came as the pressures of his loved one pressed upon him for his secret.
The first mistake of Samson’s love life is that he fell in love with one from the enemy’s camp. The Philistines held the people of Israel as captives and were therefore their enemies. Any time we fall in love with the enemy, we are treading on dangerous ground. Samson demanded for his father and mother to get the woman of Timnath to be his wife against their instructions. The wedding date was set and all things were being made ready.
The only thing about this first courtship and proposed marriage was that it was among the enemy which served to weaken him. The real destructive part in this occasion was Samson’s desire to rank above them through placing before them a riddle which they could not answer. When the Philistines could not answer his riddle, the authorities pressed his wife to be, even with the threat that she and her family would be burned with fire. His wife then became his enemy. Did not the Lord say, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Matthew 10:36 This may have brought to Samson’s wife great sorrow, but it was destructive. When Samson was forced to give payment of the changes of clothes, he went out and killed that many Philistines and gave them clothes from their own. With this he went home without making his marriage complete, and when he returned to receive his wife, he found that she had been given to another.
This love was Samson’s first love, and from the information given about him, it must have been true love in him. After finding that his wife had been given to his companion, he went out and caught foxes, tied them tail to tail, placed a fire brand in their tails, and turned them loose in the fields of corn. This he did to get revenge, because his first love had been given to another. We must remember that God was working in Samson to destroy the Philistines and that his work of vengeance was to prove that the Philistines were no match for Samson’s God. However, when a work for God is begun, we must keep clean hands and a pure heart, and be sure to keep the secrets of warfare safe. That is exactly the area in which Samson failed. The foregoing part of Samson’s life could have been described as loved and lost, a mistake, or a lesson learned by mistake, if he had opened his eyes.
Encourage One Another, Bro. Jim Graham