Transcript of Radio Show #402:
Book of Judges, Part 6
Continuing on our study in the Old Testament, with the book of Judges, now Part #6...

Radio Show...

This program continues on various series of different topics of Bible studies and theology such as end times, prophecies, Old Testament, New Testament, daily living, etc. as the subject matter comes up.

The e-book on End times, Prophecies and Revelation, answering the questions “where are we in the events of the end times?” and “Are we now in the tribulation?” is available on this web site, which you can find throughout the pages.

Opening Narrative

Hello and welcome to another exciting radio program today on end times and prophecies and scriptures to live by... which is all about old-time gospel and worship music, praying for needs and preaching the Word of God....

And remember this radio programs Virtual Church for the Spiritual Unchurched is broadcast every Sunday at 7 am and 7 pm pacific time... and if you unfortunately miss it for whatever reason at any time, you can hear the program any time after that for 4 weeks...at my web site TimingRevelation.com

And I did mention to you before that with this series begins the start of the 9th year of these radio programs Virtual Church for the Spiritual Unchurched.

So, we continue today, with the new series from the book of Judges in the Old Testament, which is the book following Joshua.

We will begin here right after this opening music, prayer and worship...

Prayer
Praise God Doxology
Worship music

Narrative 1

Alright so as we saw last week, all what we read so far in the book of Judges took us to where we are now, in chapter 13 of the book of Judges...

This period of the Judges covers the chaotic time of Israel following Joshua... as chronologically presented in the Bible... detailing cycles of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance by the judges of Israel...

So today we will read about the last judge – Samson -- which will end this period just before Saul became king...

And the first verse of that time period that we will get into says:

“And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years...

So let's go there right now...

... chapter 13 of the book of Judges... verses 1 to 23:

The announcement of the conception of Samson

v.1_”Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years.

2 Now there was a certain man from Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children.

3 And the Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.

4 Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean.

5 For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”

So here we see the Lord speaking to the wife of a man called Manoah...

and she came to her husband and retold the story of what she had experienced with the visiting angel... all of which is quite lengthy and you are encouraged to read chapter 13 later on after this program...

But like in the previous reading in the book of Judges we find that here also, these two were afraid to die because they had seen what seemed to them as a manifestation of God or a theophany...

So in verse 22, we read,

22 And Manoah said to his wife, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!”

23 But his wife said to him, “If the Lord had desired to kill us, He would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would He have shown us all these things, nor would He have told us such things as these at this time.”

and then in verses 24 and 25, we read of the
birth of Samson...

24 “So the woman bore a son and called his name Samson; and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him.

25 “And the Spirit of the Lord began to move upon him at Mahaneh Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.

Music Interlude

Narrative # 2

Alright, so then, in chapter 14, the story of Samson begins... unlike many of his predecessors whom God raised to judge Israel, Samson was an erratic and unstable individual. The story of his exploits and flaws begin as he became a man and demonstrated a serious weakness for women which can be read in the following chapters...

...including the three major episodes of his tumultuous life as outlined in the Jewish Voice Study Bible:

1_Judah's attempt to appease the Philistines by binding Samson over to them (chapters 15:9 – 17);

2_God's rescue of Samson from life-threatening dehydration (chapters 15:18 to 19);

3_Samson's escape from Gaza, the gates of which he deposits on a hill overlooking Hebron (chapters 16:1 to 3).

... and there is so much more than this which includes Samson in Gaza and his vengeance on the Philistines, his encounter with Delilah and the story of how she tried to find the mystery of his strength to report back to his enemies... which you can read, again, in your own time after the program...

and finally the story of his death which we can read here to conclude this period of Samson's judging Israel for 20 years – if we can call it that...

so chapter 16 verses 23 to 31:

headed “Samson dies with the Philistines” in the New King James Bible:

v.23_”Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice. And they said:

“Our god has delivered into our hands Samson our enemy!”

v. 24 When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said:

“Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy,
The destroyer of our land,
And the one who multiplied our dead.”

and of course the word “god” here is small “g” because it is the god of the Philistines.

v.25 So it happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, “Call for Samson, that he may perform for us.” So they called for Samson from the prison, and he performed for them. And they stationed him between the pillars.

So by that time Samson had been captured by the Philistines and put into prison.

26 Then Samson said to the lad who held him by the hand, “Let me feel the pillars which support the temple, so that I can lean on them.”

and the reason why he said that is because by now he was also blind the Philistines had taken out his eyes out of him...

v.27 Now the temple was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there—about three thousand men and women on the roof watching while Samson performed.

So “the lords” means all the Philistines officials...

v.28 Then Samson called to the Lord, saying, “O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!”

v. 29 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left.

v.30 Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords (or the officials) and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his lifetime.

v.31 And his brothers and all his father’s household came down and took him, and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel twenty years.

And I will read here some commentaries, again from the Jewish Voice Study Bible, on this:

1)_Re. Chapter 16 verse 30 – “Samson pushed the wooden pillars from their stone bases. Archaeologists have discovered a Philistine temple at Tell Qasile with a pair of closely spaced pillar bases.”

2)_”Samson previously had slain well over 1,000 people (see 15:15; also 14:19; 15:8). His final exploit was a mighty demonstration that the Philistine celebration of their god's victory over the Lord's champion was premature.”

3)_”If the Nazarite vow was violated and the uncut hair marking special dedication to God became “defiled”, that hair had to be cut off and the period of consecration started over again (see book of Numbers 6:9–12). When Samson's hair was cut off by Delilah, God showed that it had been defiled by Samson's many defiling acts. But when his hair “began to grow again” (v.22), a new time of consecration began.”

32:35

Music Interlude

Narrative #3

Then, next in the book of Judges, in chapter 17, we read of a man called Micah...

The breakdown of this final passage of scripture of the book of Judges is summarized as:

1)_Lawless conditions during the period of the Judges (chapters 17:1 to 21:25) which includes:

A)_The idolatry of Micah and the Danite Migration (17:1 to 18:31)

B)_The crime at Gibeah and the war against Benjamin (19:1 to 21:25)

In this final passage of the book of Judges again shows how over and over again the people of Israel did as they saw fit...

It describes the corruption worship by telling of Micah's establishment of a local place of worship in Ephraim with the aide of a Levite who claimed descent from Moses. But this was a pagan worship of God that was taken over by the tribe of Dan when it abandoned the appointed inheritance and migrated to Israel's northern frontier.

It is broken down under 5 basic headings according to the New King James Bible:

1)_Micah's idols (chapter 17)
2)_Micah and the Danites (chapter 18)
3)_The Levite and His Concubine (chapter 19)
4)_The war against the Benjamites (chapter 20)
5)_Wives for the Benjamites (chapter 21)

Again you are encouraged to read these final chapters of the book of Judges on your own after the program, but here I will cover a summary of each one:

Chapter 17:
First, these last five chapters of the book of Judges are out of sequence. They cover chronological events of the rest of the book according to most commentators. These events are part of this history of Israel revealing the condition of the people's spiritual life in between the times when God provided judges for specific times.
One commentator says of this particular chapter, following the story of Samson who was of the tribe of Dan, that it seems to have been placed here in logical rather than chronological order, speaking of this man from Ephraim named Micah.

Chapter 18:
This chapter begins by noting again that there was no king in Israel and therefore every man did as he saw fit. It is a reminder of the lack of spiritual and political common sense and direction that would lead the national periods of the people to one unified under a wishful monarchy.

Chapter 19:
Again this chapter also points out that there was no king at the time and therefore there was a lack of authority and spiritual direction.

Chapter 20:
According to the Liberty Commentary Bible, “it seems that this was the only incident in all of the time of the judges when the entire nation and all the tribes rallied in a concerted effort for any reason.”

Chapter 21:
Again from the Liberty Commentary Bible, the tribe of Benjamin was now in danger of extinction when there were six hundred men remaining, but they had no wives and no children. So we read how the elders and congregation resolved the situation.

Alright so this period of the Judges covers the chaotic time of Israel following Joshua... as chronologically presented in the Bible... again and again... detailing cycles of sin, oppression, repentance, and deliverance by the judges of Israel...

Alright, so all this takes us to the end of the book of Judges, about 300 years, from 1,350 to 1,050 BC... this period covers the chaotic period of Israel after the book of Joshua, as chronologically presented in the Bible detailing cycles of sin, oppression, repentance and deliverance by the judges of Israel...

Music Interlude

Closing Narrative…

Oh how wonderful to appreciate what Jesus has done in our lives to save us from sin by Grace... and how He continues to keep us by His on-going and unlimited Grace...

...that wonderful Grace that comes into our life the moment that we receive Him as for who He is -- the Saviour of mankind and of every individual like you and me personally...

... and this Jesus the Son of God who came to give His life for you and me is the same Jesus who's life we've been reading about in these series of programs right now, and who's death on the cross we will see as we go through the gospel story to where He gave Himself as the sacrificial Lamb of God that took the sin of the world...

...but right now, the question is:

...do you know this Jesus that we're talking about? If you don't know the Lord...

...Just say this prayer, “Lord come into my heart, come into my life, I turn to you right now and ask for forgiveness, I repent of my sins and receive your work on the cross... I receive your gospel as it was delivered through your blood shed on the cross in my place, and I thank you, Amen...

The Blessing

Before I dismiss the service today, I want to read to you the Blessing that was read to the people of God in Numbers 6:24-26 which is the benediction from God to you today:

“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace."

I hope and pray that you will come back next Sunday at SpiritFM.ca, 7 am and 7 pm pacific time. And if you want to hear the service again at any time, you can go to my website at TimingRevelation.com, and click on the Radio Shows navigational tab along the left side. The replays are available there for five weeks, then they are transcribed into articles as new radio shows are put up.

I encourage you to go to your Bible and read further on the scriptures that were given throughout the program today. And if you like these programs and you've been blessed, call or write the station and let them know... if you said the prayer and have accepted the Lord or you've been healed or touched in some way by the Holy Spirit, write to me on the contact form of this web site...

...and this web site is also where you will find the Free Offer of the “Christian Growth and Maturity Chart” that I talked to you about in the last weeks... you will see the graphic on any page called “Get your free CGM Chart”, click on it and it will take you to a page that will tell you about it and how you can subscribe to my newsletter to get your free copy of the Chart sent to you.

Until next week, Maranatha, the Lord is coming, very soon. Goodbye and Blessing.

/DMH

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Blessings,