ONE OF THE SADDEST STORIES IN THE BIBLE.
"---But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him. So the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes---(Judges 16:20-21)
Samson falls in love with Delilah, a woman in the valley of Sorek, sent by Philistines to coax Samson and find out what makes his strength so great and how they may overpower him. What course did she take to deliver him up to them?
She made him sleep up on her knees (16:19). She pretended the greatest kindness even when she designed the greatest mischief, which yet she should not have compassed if she had not made him sleep. Satan ruins men by making them sleep, flattering them into a good opinion of their own safety, and so bring them to mind nothing and fear nothing, and then he robs them of their strength and honor and leads them captive at his will.
When we sleep our spiritual enemies do not. When he was asleep, his hair was silently and so quickly cut. When he awoke from his sleep, he thought, "I will go out at other times and shake myself free". But he didn't know that the Lord had departed from him.
Many have lost their favourable presence of God and are not aware of it, they have provoked God to withdraw from them, but are not sensible of their loss. When God has departed we cannot do as at other times. The Philistines took him when God had departed from him.
Those that have thrown themselves out of God's protection become an easy prey to their enemies. If we sleep in the lap of our lusts, we shall certainly wake in the hands of the Philistines. What a sad story to continue the journey of life as usual, unaware that God departed some time ago. Isn't this a postponement of burial? Is there life where God has departed?
They put out his eyes because his eyes were inlets of his sin. It would have grieved one's heart to have seen one of the bravest men then in the world sold and bought, as a sheep for the slaughter.
To God be the glory
Rev B Chinhara
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