Judges
13:1-5, 18-25 (NIV) Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so
the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.
2 A
certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife
who was sterile and remained childless. 3 The angel of the Lord appeared to her
and said, "You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive
and have a son. 4 Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink
and that you do not eat anything unclean, 5 because you will conceive and give
birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a
Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of
Israel from the hands of the Philistines."
. . .
18 He
replied, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding." 19 Then Manoah took a young goat, together
with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the Lord. And the Lord
did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: 20 As the flame blazed
up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame.
Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. 21 When
the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah
realized that it was the angel of the Lord.
22
"We are doomed to die!" he said to his wife. "We have seen
God!"
23 But
his wife answered, "If the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have
accepted a burnt offering and grain offering from our hands, nor shown us all
these things or now told us this."
24 The
woman gave birth to a boy and named him Samson. He grew and the Lord blessed
him, 25 and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him while he was in Mahaneh
Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol.
NOTE: One of the first things that stands out is
that Manoah and his wife did not understand the concept of Nazarite. Twice the
angel repeats the instructions concerning the Nazarite, which again emphasizes
one of the main points about Judges that the people lacked teaching and
instruction in the word of God. The second thing to stand out is that the
Spirit of the Lord stirred in Samson and yet he lived his life for fleshly
pursuits and desires. Yes, the Spirit gave him power to do some amazing things,
but it did not control his will or affect his attitude toward sin (as we will
see later in the story). I think the emphasis on this second filling of the
Spirit is oversold on this point, because twice now in Judges we have seen men
filled with the Spirit who make terrible choices. Filling of the Spirit is not
a substitute for the instruction in the word of God, and in fact, the two
should go together hand-in-hand. I always assumed that the passages in Eph
5:18-20 and Col 3:16-17 mirrored each other because the best way to be filled
with the Spirit was to let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. But now I
wonder if in fact they are separate things but best understood together. We do
need to seek to be filled with God's Spirit (not through external acts) but by
allowing the Lord to control more areas of our life, but we also need as much
as God's word in our life as possible to control our sinful responses to life.
We need both, not just one.
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