14 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.
15 And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.
16 And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
17 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking, that he cast away the jawbone out of his hand, and called that place Ramathlehi.
18 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?
19 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.
Judges 15:14-19
One thing that is always interesting to me about the story of Samson will be how this man who was used mightily by God was so completely controlled by his flesh. When Samson has an opportunity to choose between what he wants or what God wants, he chooses himself almost every time. Take, for instance, his location. At the end of Judges 13, we see that the Spirit of the Lord would move him between the camp of Dan, and Eshtaol, two very specific locations, and when he obeyed God, it says “the LORD blessed him” (Judges 13:24), which is a phrase we never hear again in his life, after he leaves those places. See, Samson wanted to go down to a place called Timnath, known for it’s vineyards (he wasn’t supposed to eat/drink anything from a vine, see Judges 13:7), to marry a girl his parents didn’t approve of (Judges 14:3). This is a man who decided what HE wanted was more important than what GOD wanted in his life, and acted on it.
Now to the passage: look at what Samson did – the Spirit of the Lord came upon him (God can still use you even when you don’t let him bless you), and he took the jawbone of an ass and killed 1000 enemies (read numbers 6 to see whether a Nazarite like Samson was supposed to handle dead things like that). The interesting thing here though is the names. Samson immediately names the place Ramathlehi, or Jawbone Hill, completely removing God’s hand in this victory. Then, when he becomes thirsty, he blames God for “delivering him into the hand of the Philistines” despite the great victory. When God gives him water, he names the place Enhakkore, or The well of him who cried, again removing God from the equation. This is the ultimate work of a self-centered man who is controlled by his flesh. He minimizes God, and always finds something to complain about. Think about this in the workplace. Are you the kind of person who takes all the credit and complains about everyone else? Perhaps you need to shift your focus and priorities.
Compare this man to the Christians of Acts 2. If you read through the chapter, you’ll notice a few things. First, you’ll see the Holy Spirit was moving people and swaying their hearts. Second, you’ll see that the Jewish people were responding, and were even “pricked in their hearts” (Acts 2:37), and that over 3,000 people were saved/added to the church. To almost everyone, this is a great victory! The only thing though, is that this number is missing context. See, the Jewish holiday of Pentecost occurs at the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles, one of three feasts where all Jewish men were supposed to travel to Jerusalem and worship to observe the holiday.
At this time in history, the estimated adult Jewish population was approximately 7 million people. Assuming a 50/50 split between men and women, that means there were about 3.5 million men who were supposed to be there. If everyone showed up, that means only .086% of the people who heard the apostle’s message received it and “got saved”. That’s 1 in 1,200 people. If only a third of the people who were supposed to be there were there, that would be 1 in 400! Think about it, by almost any metric this event was a failure, and yet it is widely looked at within Christianity as a massive victory! So what’s going on? Right here is an active demonstration of what happens when you take the wins you can get, and stop focusing on yourself, your numbers, and your results. Sometimes it can be more worthwhile to focus on what God gives you, rather than on what he has withheld from you, and the results speak for themselves.
Despite this “bad start”, the men and women of the early church were grateful for God’s help with the little they had, and now Christianity is one of the largest religious belief systems in the world! Think about how this applies to you – are you the kind of person who sees defeat in everything? Or can you cultivate the ability to take what you’ve been given and use it to grow? One kind of person can only tear down the people around him even when things are good, and the other can build up those around him even when things aren’t going well. Who do you want to be?
