Jesus was honey from a lion

JESUS WAS HONEY FROM A LION
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Honey from a Lion
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon Apr 3, 1881 Scripture: Romans 5:15From: Metropolitan
Tabernacle Pulpit Volume 27
Honey from a Lion
“But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the
grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.”—
Romans v. 15.
THIS text affords many openings for controversy. It can be made to bristle with difficulties. For
instance,— there might be a long discussion as to the manner in which the fall of Adam can
justly be made to affect the condition of his posterity. When this is settled there might arise a
question as to the exact way in which Adam’s fault is connected with ourselves— whether by
imputation of its sin, or in what other form; and then there might be further dispute as to the limit
of the evil resulting from our first parents’ offence, and the full meaning of the fall, original sin,
natural depravity, and so forth. There would be another splendid opportunity for a great battle
over the question of the extent of the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ; whether it covers,
as to persons, the whole area of the ruin of the Fall; whether, in fact, full atonement has been
made for all mankind or only for the elect. It would be easy in this way to set up a thorn-hedge,
and keep the sheep out of the pasture; or, to use another metaphor, to take up so much time in
pelting each other with the stones as to leave the fruit untasted. I have, at this time, neither the
inclination nor the mental strength either to suggest or to remove the difficulties, which are so
often the amusement of unpractical minds. I feel more inclined to chime in with that ancient
father of the church who declined controversy in a wise and explicit manner. He had been
speaking concerning the things of God and found himself at length confounded by a certain
clamorous disputant, who shouted again and again, “Hear me! Hear me!” “No,” said the father,
“I will not hear you, nor shall you hear me; but we will both be quiet and hear what our Lord
Jesus Christ has to say.” So we will not at this time listen to this side nor to that; but we will bow
our ear to hear what the Scripture itself hath to say apart from all the noise of sect and party. My
object shall be to find-out in the text that which is practically of use to us, that which may save
the unconverted, that which may comfort and build up those of us who are brought into a state of
reconciliation with God; for I have of late been so often shut up in my sick chamber that when I
do come forth I must be more than ever eager for fruit to the glory of God. We shall not,
therefore, dive into the deeps with the hope of finding pearls, for these could not feed hungry
men; but we will navigate the surface of the sea, and hope that some favouring wind will bear us

to the desired haven with a freight of corn wherewith to supply the famishing. May the Holy
Spirit bless the teaching of this hour to the creation and nourishment of saving faith.
I. The first observation from the text is this— THE APPOINTED WAY OF OUR SALVATION
IS BY THE FREE GIFT OF GOD. We were ruined by the Fall, but we are saved by a free gift.
The text tells us that “the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ,
hath abounded unto many.” “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” “Grace reigns
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Although this doctrine is well
known, and is taught in our synagogues every Sabbath day, yet this grand essential truth is often
enough forgotten or ignored, so that it had need be repeated again and again. I could wish that
every time the clock struck it said, “By grace are ye saved.” I could wish that there were a
trumpet voice ringing out at day-break both on sea and land, over the whole round globe the
words, “By grace are ye saved.” As Martin Luther said of a certain other truth so say I of this,
“You so constantly forget it that I feel inclined to take the Bible and beat it about your head, that
you may feel it and keep it in remembrance.” Men do not naturally love the doctrine of grace,
and therefore they cast it out of their minds as much as possible. The larger portion of mankind
do not believe that salvation is of grace: another part of them profess to believe it, but do not
understand its meaning; and many who do understand it have never yielded to it or embraced it.
Happy are they who belong to the remnant according to the election of grace, for they know right
well the joyful sound, and they walk in the light of the glory of the grace of God which is in
Christ Jesus.
Observe, that salvation is a free gift, that is to say, it is bestowed upon men by God without
regard to any merit, supposed or real. Grace has to do with the guilty. Mercy in the very nature of
things is not a fit gift for the righteous and deserving, but for the undeserving and sinful. When
God deals out to men his gracious salvation they are regarded by him as lost and condemned, and
he treats them as persons who have no claim upon him whatsoever, to whom nothing but his free
favour can bring deliverance. He saves them, not because he perceives that they have done
anything that is good, or have hopeful traits of character, or form resolutions to aspire to
something better; but simply because he is merciful, and delights to exercise his grace, and
manifest his free favour and infinite love. It is according to the nature of God to pity the
miserable and forgive the guilty, “for he is good, and his mercy endureth for ever.” God has a
reason for saving men; but that reason does not lie in man’s merit in any degree whatever. This is
clear from the fact that he often begins his work of grace upon those who can least of all be
credited with goodness. It was said of our Lord, “This man receiveth sinners,” and the saying
was most emphatically true. Sovereign grace selects such as Rahab the harlot, and Manasseh the
persecutor, and Saul of Tarsus, the mad zealot against Christ: such as these have been seized
upon by grace, and arrested in infinite love, that in them the Lord might manifest the power and
plenitude of his mercy. Salvation is a work which is begun by the pure, unpurchased, free favour
of God, and in the same spirit it is carried on and perfected. Pure grace, which lays the
foundation, also brings forth the topstone.
Salvation is also brought to men irrespective of any merit which God foresees will be in man.
Foresight of the existence of grace cannot be the cause of grace. God himself does not foresee
that there will be any good thing in any man, except what he foresees that he will put there. What
is the reason, then, why he determines that he will put it there? That reason, so far as we are
informed, is this, “He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.” The Lord determines to
display his love, and set on active work his attribute of grace, therefore doth he save men

according to the good pleasure of his will. If there be salvation given to men upon the foresight
of what they are yet to be, it is clear it is a matter of works and debt, and not of grace; but the
Scripture is most decided that it is not of works, but of unmingled grace, for saith the apostle, “If
by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works,
then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.” Our text is express that salvation is
“the free gift,” and that it comes to us by “the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by
one man, Jesus Christ.”
I go a little further in trying to explain how salvation is a free gift, by saying that it is given
without reference to conditions which imply any desert. But I hear one murmur, “God will not
give grace to men who do not repent.” I answer, God gives men grace to repent, and no man ever
repents till first grace is given him by which he is led to repentance. “God will not give his grace
to those who do not believe,” says one. I reply, God gives grace to men by which they are moved
to believe, and it is through the grace of God that they are brought into the faith of Jesus Christ.
You may say, if you please, that repentance and faith are conditions of salvation, and I will not
quarrel with you; but please remember that they are not conditions in the sense of deserving
anything of God. They may be conditions of receiving, but they are not conditions of purchasing,
for salvation is without money and without price. We are expressly told that salvation “is of
faith, that it might be by grace”: for faith is not to be numbered with works of the law, to which
the idea of merit may be attached. Faith is far as the poles asunder from claiming anything of
God by way of debt. Faith comes as a poor, undeserving thing, and simply trusts the free mercy
of God. It never attempts to wear the crown, or grasp a particle of praise. The believer never can
be a boaster, for boasting is excluded by the law, of faith. If a Christian should begin to boast, it
would be because his believing is failing, and his evil nature is coming to the front; for faith is of
all graces most self-denying; her song is always, Non nobis Domine, “Not unto us, but unto thy
name give praise.” While, therefore, the word of God assures us that except we repent we shall
all likewise perish, and that if we believe not in Jesus Christ we shall die in our sins, it would
have us at the same time know that there is no merit in repenting or believing, but grace reigns in
Gods acceptance of these graces. We are not to regard the requirement of faith, repentance, and
confession of sin as at all militating against the fulness and freeness of divine grace, since, in the
first place, both repentance, faith, and true confession of sin are all gifts of grace, and, in the next
place, they have no merit in themselves, being only such things as honest men should render
when they know that they have erred and are promised forgiveness. To be sorry for my sin is no
recompense for having sinned; and to believe God to be true is no work for which I may demand
a reward; if, then, I am saved through faith, it is of the pure mercy of God, and of that alone that
pardon comes to me.
Beloved, so far is God from giving salvation to men as a matter of reward and debt, and therefore
bestowing it only upon the good and excellent, that he is pleased to bestow that salvation over
the head of sin and in the teeth of rebellion. As I said before, mercy and grace are for the sinful,
for none others need them; and God’s grace comes to us when we are far off by wicked works.
“God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Free grace breaks forth like a mighty flood, and sweeps in torrents over the hills of our
transgressions, rising above the high alps of our presumptuous sins. Twenty cubits upward doth
this sea of grace prevail till the tops of the mountains of iniquity are covered. The Lord passeth
by transgression, iniquity, and sin, and remembereth not the iniquity of his people, because he
delighteth in mercy. Almsgiving needs a pauper, and grace needs a sinner. There is no
opportunity for forgiveness where there is no offence. If men are meritorious how can God be

gracious to them? In such a case it will be enough for him to be just. When good works can put
in a valid claim peace and heaven can be obtained by the rules of debt; but since it is clear that
eternal life is the gift of pure favour, you need not marvel when I say that grace comes to men
leaping over the mountains of their iniquities. Abounding mercy delights to blot out abounding
sin, and it will never lack for opportunity to do its pleasure. There is no lack of occasions for
grace in this poor fallen world, and of all the places where there is most room I know of one spot
not far from here where there is a grand opportunity for infinite mercy and superabounding grace
to exercise their power. Here is the spot— it is this treacherous, guilty heart of mine. I think, my
brother, you know of another spot that is very like it; and you, my sister, too, can say,
“Wondrous mercy! Sure there is room for all its heights and depths to be shown in this sinful
soul of mine.” Ay, and it will be shown, too, if you can but look for it through Christ Jesus; for it
is the delight of God’s grace to flow into unlikely places: mercy is the glory of God, and he loves
to bestow it on those who least deserve it.
We are saved by grace, free grace, pure grace, grace without regard to merit or to the possibility
of such a thing, and many of us have been saved by grace of the most abounding and
extraordinary sort. Some of us will be prodigies of divine love, miracles of mercy, to be
wondered at throughout eternity: we shall be set up in heaven as monuments for angels to gaze
at, in which they shall see a display of the amazing goodness of the Lord. Some of us, I said; but
I suppose that in each one of the redeemed there is some particular development of grace which
will make him specially remarkable, so that the whole body of us, as one glorified church, shall
be made known unto angels, and principalities, and powers, the manifold wisdom of God. Oh,
what a revelation of grace and mercy will be seen when all the blood-washed race shall gather
safely around the eternal throne, and sing their hallelujahs unto him that loved them and washed
them from their sins in his own blood.
Note one thing more concerning this plan of salvation, that all this grace comes to us through the
one man Jesus Christ. I sometimes hear people talking about a “one man ministry.” I know what
they mean, but I know also that I am saved by a one man ministry, even by one who trod the
winepress alone, and of the people there was none with him. I was lost by a one man ministry,
when father Adam fell in Eden; but I was saved by a one man ministry, when the blessed Lord
Jesus Christ bore my sin in his own body on the tree. O matchless ministry of love, when the
Lord from heaven came into the world and took upon himself our nature, and became in all
respects human, and being found in fashion as a man, was obedient to death, even the death of
the cross! It is through the one man, Christ Jesus, that all the grace of God comes streaming
down to all the chosen. Mercy flows to no man save through the one appointed channel, Jesus
the Son of man. Get away from Christ, and you leave the highway of God’s everlasting love;
pass this door, and you shall find no entrance into life. You must drink from this conduit-pipe, or
you must thirst for ever, and ask in vain for a drop of water to cool your parched tongue. “In him
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” All the infinite mercy of God and love of God—
and God himself is love—is concentrated be in the person of the wellbeloved Son of the Highest,
and unto him be glory for ever. Sing unto him, ye angels! Chant his praise, ye redeemed! For by
the one man Christ Jesus the whole company of the elect have been delivered from the wrath to
come, to the praise of the glory of the grace of God.
Thus I have tried to set before you God’s way of salvation.
II. Starting aside, as it may seem, from the current of our thoughts, but only with the view of
coming back to it with a forcible argument, we next note that IT IS CERTAIN THAT GREAT

EVILS HAVE COME TO US BY THE FALL. Paul speaks in this text of ours of the “offence,”
which word may be read the “Fall,” which was caused by the stumbling of our father Adam. Our
fall in Adam is a type of the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, but the type is not able
completely to set forth all the work of Christ: hence the apostle says, “But not as the offence, so
also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of
God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” It is
certain, then, that we were heavy losers by the offence of the first father and head of our race. I
am not going into details and particulars, but it is clear that we have lost the garden of Eden and
all its delights, privileges, and immunities, its communion with God, and its freedom from death.
We have lost our first honour and health, and we have become the subjects of pain and
weakness, suffering and death: this is the effect of the Fall. A desert now howls where otherwise
a garden would have smiled. Through the sin of Adam we have been born under conditions
which are far from being desirable, heirs to a heritage of sorrow. Our griefs have been alleviated
by the bounty of God, but still we are not born under such conditions as might have been ours
had Adam remained in his integrity and kept his first estate. We came into the world with a bias
towards evil. Those of us who have any knowledge of our own nature must confess that there is
in us a strong tendency towards sin, which is mixed up with our very being. This is not derived
solely from faults of education, or from the imitation of others; but there is a bent within us in the
wrong direction, and this has been there from our birth. Alas! that it should be so; but so it is. In
addition to having this tendency to sin, we are made liable to death— nay, not liable alone, but
we are sure in due time to bow our heads beneath the fatal stroke. Two only of the human race
have escaped death, but the rest have left their bodies here to moulder back into mother earth,
and unless the Lord cometh speedily, we expect that the same thing will happen to these bodies
of ours. While we live we know that the sweat of our brow must pay the price of our bread; we
know that our children must be born with pangs and travail; we know that we ourselves must
return to the dust from whence we are taken; for dust we are, and unto dust must we return. O
Adam, thou didst a sad day’s work for us when thou didst hearken to the voice of thy wife and
eat of the forbidden tree. The world has no more a Paradise anywhere, but everywhere it has the
place of wailing and the field of the dead. Where can you go and not find traces of the first
transgression in the sepulchre and its mouldering bones? Every field is fattened with the dust of
the departed: every wave of the sea is tainted with atoms of the dead. Scarcely blows a March
wind down our streets but it sweeps aloft the dust either of Caesar or his slave, of ancient Briton,
or modern Saxon; for the globe is worm-eaten by death. Sin has scarred, and marred, and spoiled
this creation by making it subject to vanity through its offence. Thus terrible evils have come to
us by an act in which we had no hand: we were not in the Garden of Eden, we did not incite
Adam to rebellion, and yet we have become sufferers through no deed of ours. Say what you will
about it, the fact remains, and cannot be escaped from.
This sad truth leads me on to the one which is the essence of the text, and constitutes my third
observation.
III. FROM THE FALL WE INFER THE MORE ABUNDANT CERTAINTY THAT
SALVATION BY GRACE THROUGH CHRIST JESUS SHALL COME TO BELIEVERS. If
all this mischief has happened to us through the fall of Adam why should not immense blessing
flow to us by the work of Christ? Through Adam’s transgression we lost Paradise, that is certain;
but if anything can be more certain we may with greater positiveness declare that the second
Adam will restore the ruin of the first. If through the offence of one man many be dead, much
more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, shall abound and

has abounded unto many. Settle in your minds, then, that the fall of Adam has wrought us great
damage, and then be as much assured that the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, in which we
had no hand whatever, must do us great service. Believing in Christ Jesus, it becomes beyond all
measure sure to us that we are blessed in him, seeing that it is already certain that through the fall
of Adam we have become subject to sorrow and death.
For, first, this appears to be more delightful to the heart of God. It must be fully according to his
gracious nature that salvation should come to us through his Son. I can understand that God,
having so arranged it that the human race should be regarded as one, and should stand or fall
before him in one man, should carry out the arrangement to its righteous end, and allow the
consequences of sin to fall upon succeeding generations of men: but yet I know that he takes no
pleasure in the death of any, and finds no delight in afflicting mankind. When the first Adam
transgressed it was inevitable that the consequences of his transgression should descend to his
posterity, and yet I can imagine a perfectly holy mind questioning whether the arrangement
would be carried out. I can conceive of angels saying one to another, “Will all men die through
this entrance of sin into the world? Can it be that the innumerable sons of Adam will all suffer
from his disobedience?” But I cannot imagine any question being raised about the other point,
namely, the result of the work of our Lord Jesus. If God has so arranged it that in the second
Adam men rise and live, it seems to me most gloriously consistent with his gracious nature and
infinite love that it should come to pass that all who believe in Jesus should be saved through
him. I cannot imagine angels hesitating and saying, “Christ has been born; Christ has lived;
Christ has died; these men have had nothing to do with that: will God save them for the sake of
his Son?” Oh, no, they must have felt, as they saw the babe born at Bethlehem, as they saw him
living his perfect life and dying his atoning death, “God will bless those who are in Christ; God
will save Christ’s people for Christ’s sake.” As for ourselves, we are sure that if the Lord
executes judgment, which is his strange work, he will certainly carry out mercy, which is his
delight. If he kept to the representative principle when it involved consequences which gave him
no pleasure, we may be abundantly assured that he will keep to it now that it will involve nothing
but good to those concerned in it. Here, then, is the argument,— “For if through the offence of
one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man,
Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.”
This assurance becomes stronger still when we think that it seems more inevitable that men
should be saved by the death of Christ than that men should be lost by the sin of Adam. It might
seem possible that, after Adam had sinned, God might have said, “Notwithstanding this covenant
of works, I will not lay this burden upon the children of Adam”; but it is not possible that after
the eternal Son of God has become man, and has bowed his head to death, God should say, “Yet
after all I will not save men for Christ’s sake.” Stand and look at the Christ upon the cross, and
mark those wounds of his, and you will become absolutely certain that sin can be pardoned, nay,
must be pardoned to those who are in Christ Jesus. Those flowing drops of blood demand with a
voice that cannot be gainsaid that iniquity should be put away. If the voice of Abel crying from
the ground was prevalent, how much more the blood of the Only-begotten Son of God, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot? It cannot be, O God, that thou shouldest
despise or forget the sacrifice on Calvary. Grace must flow to sinners through the bleeding
Saviour, seeing that death came to men through their transgressing progenitor.
I do not know whether I shall get into the very soul of this argument as I desire, but to me it is
very sweet to look at the difference as to the causes of the two effects. Look now at the occasion

of our ruin,— “the offence of one.” The one man transgresses, and you and I and all of us come
under sin, sorrow, and death. What are we told is the fountain of these streams of woe? The one
action of our first parents. Far be it from me to say a word to depreciate the greatness of their
crime, or to raise a question as to the justice of its consequences. I think no one can have a more
decided opinion upon that point than I have; for the offence was very great, and the principle
which led to our participation in its results is a just one, and, what is more, is fraught with the
most blessed after-consequences to fallen men, since it has left them a door of hope of their
rising by the same method which led to their fall. Yet the sin which destroyed us was the
transgression of a finite being, and cannot be compared in power with the grace of the infinite
God; it was the sin of a moment, and therefore cannot be compared for force and energy with the
everlasting purpose of divine love. If, then, the comparatively feeble fount of Adam’s sin sends
forth a flood which drowns the world in sorrow and death, what must be the boundless blessing
poured forth from the infinite source of divine grace? The grace of God is like his nature,
omnipotent and unlimited. God hath not a measure of love, but he is love; love to the uttermost
dwells in him. God is not only gracious to this degree or to that, but he is gracious beyond
measure; we read of “the exceeding riches of his grace.” He is “the God of all grace,” and his
mercy is great above the heavens. Our largest conceptions fall far short of the lovingkindness and
pity of God, for “his merciful kindness is great towards us.” As high as the heavens are above the
earth, so are his thoughts above our thoughts in the direction of grace. If, then, my brethren, the
narrow fount which yielded bitter and poisonous waters has sufficed to slay the myriads of the
human race, how much more shall the river of God which is full of water, even the river of the
water of life, which proceedeth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, supply life and bliss to
every man that believeth in Christ Jesus? Thus saith Paul, “For if by one man’s offence death
reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” That is the argument of the text, and to me
it seems to be a very powerful one, sufficient to dash out the very life of unbelief and enable
every penitent man to say, “I see what I have lost in Adam, but I also see how much I obtain
through Christ Jesus, ray Lord, when I humbly yield myself to him.”
Furthermore, I would have you note the difference of the channels by which the evil and the
good were severally communicated to us. In each case it was “by one,” but what a difference in
the persons! We fell through Adam, a name not to be pronounced without reverence, seeing he is
the chief patriarch of the race, and the children should honour the parent: let us not think too
little of the head of the human family. Yet what is the first Adam as compared with the second
Adam? He is but of the earth earthy, but the second man is the Lord from heaven. He was at best
a mere man, but our Redeemer counts it not robbery to be equal with God. Surely, then, if Adam
with that puny hand of his could pull down the house of our humanity, and hurl this ruin on our
first estate, that greater man, who is also the Son of God, can fully restore us and bring back to
our race the golden age. If one man could ruin by his fault, surely an infinitely greater man in
whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily can restore us by the abounding grace of
God.
And look, my brethren, what this man did. Adam commits one fault and spoils us; but Christ’s
works and achievements are not one, but many as the stars of heaven. Look at that life of
obedience: it is like a crown set with all manner of priceless jewels: all the virtues are in it, and it
is without flaw in any point. If one sinful action of our first covenant head destroys, shall not a
whole life of holiness, on the part of our second covenant representative be accepted for us?

But what is more, Adam did but eat of the forbidden fruit, but our Lord Jesus died, pouring out
his soul unto death, bearing the sin of his people upon himself. Such a death must have more
force in it than the sad deed of Adam. Shall it not save us? Is there any comparison between the
one act of rebellion in the garden and the matchless deed of superlative obedience upon the cross
of Calvary which crowned a life of service? Am I sure that the act of disobedience has done me
damage? Then I am much more certain that the glorious act of selfsacrifice must be able to save
me, and I cast myself upon it without question or misgiving. The passion of God’s Only-begotten
must have in it infallible virtue for the remission of sin. Upon the perfect work of Jesus my soul
hangs at this moment, without a suspicion of possible failure, and without the addition of the
shadow of a confidence anywhere else. The good which may be supposed to be in man, his best
words and holiest actions, are all to me as the small dust of the balance as to any title to the
favour of God. My sole claim for salvation lies in that one man, the gift of God, who by his life
and death has made atonement for my sin, but that one man, Christ Jesus, is a sure foundation,
and a nail upon which we may hang all the weight of our eternal interests. I feel the more
confidence in the certainty of salvation by Christ because of my firm persuasion of the dreadful
efficacy of Adam’s fail. Think awhile and it will seem strange, yet strangely true, that the hope
of Paradise regained should be argued and justified by the fact of Paradise lost, that the absolute
certainty that one man ruined us should give us an abounding guarantee that one glorious man
has in very deed effectually saved all those who by faith accept the efficacy of his work.
Now, if you have grasped my thought, and have drunk into the truth of the text, you may derive a
great deal of comfort from it, and it may suggest to you many painful things which will
henceforth yield you pleasure. A babe is born into the world amid great anxiety because of its
mother’s pains, but while these go to prove how the consequences of the Fall are still with us,
according to the word of the Lord to Eve, “in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children,” they also
assure us that the second Adam can abundantly bring us bliss through a second birth, by which
we are begotten again unto a lively hope. You go into the arable field and mark the thistle, and
tear your garments with a thorn: these prove the curse, but also preach the gospel. Did not the
Lord God say, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to
thee.” Through no fault of ours, for we were not present when the first man offended, our fields
reluctantly yield their harvests. Well, inasmuch as we have seen the thorn and the thistle
produced by the ground because of one Adam, we may expect to see a blessing on the earth
because of the second and greater Adam. Therefore with un bounded confidence do I believe the
promise— “Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills
shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle
tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
Do you wipe the sweat from your brow as you toil for your livelihood? Did not the Lord say, “In
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”? Ought not your labour to be an argument by which
your faith shall prove that in Christ Jesus there remaineth a rest for the people of God. In toiling
unto weariness you feel that Adam’s fall is at work upon you; he has turned you into a tiller of
the ground, or a keeper of sheep, or a worker in metals, but in any case he has made you wear a
yoke; say you then to the Lord Jesus, “Blessed second Adam, as I see and feel what the first man
did, I am abundantly certified as to what thou canst accomplish. I will therefore rest in thee with
all my heart.”

When you observe a funeral passing slowly along the street, or enter the churchyard, and notice
hillock after hillock above the lowly beds of the departed, you see set forth evidently before your
eyes the result of the Fall. You ask,— Who slew all these? and at what gate did the fell destroyer
enter this world? Did the first Adam through his disobedience lift the latch for death? It is surely
so. Therefore I believe with the greater assurance that the second Adam can give life to these dry
bones, can awake all these sleepers, and raise them in newness of life. If so weak a man as Adam
by one sin has brought in death, to pile the carcases of men heaps upon heaps, and make the
earth reek with corruption, much more shall the glorious Son of God at his coming call them
again to life and immortality, and renew them in the image of God. How blessed are those
words,— “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For
since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die,
even so in Christ shall all be made alive. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is
the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly,
such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the heavenly.” Is not this killing a lion, and finding honey in its carcase? “Out
of the eater cometh forth meat, and out of the strong cometh forth sweetness,” when from the
fact of the Fall we derive a strong assurance of our restoration by Christ Jesus.
Time fails me; otherwise I meant to have dwelt somewhat at length upon the last head which can
now only be cursorily noticed.
IV. It seems certain that if from the fall of Adam such great results flow, GREATER RESULTS
MUST FLOW FROM THE GRACE OF GOD, AND THE GIFT BY GRACE, WHICH IS BY
ONE MAN, JESUS CHRIST. Brethren, suppose that Adam had never sinned, and we were at
this moment unfallen beings, yet our standing would have remained in jeopardy, seeing that at
any moment he might have transgressed and so have pulled us down. Thousands of years of
obedience might not have ended the probation, seeing there is no such stipulation in the original
covenant. You and I therefore would be holding our happiness by a very precarious tenure; we
could never glory in absolute security and eternal life as we now do in Christ Jesus. We have
now lost everything in Adam, and so the uncertain tenure has come to an end, our lease of Eden
and its joys has altogether expired; but we that have believed, have obtained an inheritance
which we hold by an indisputable and never-failing title which Satan himself cannot dispute;
“All things are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The Lord Jesus Christ has
finished the work by which his people are saved, and that work has been certified by his
resurrection from the dead. There are no “ifs” in the covenant now; there is not a “peradventure”
in it from beginning to end; no chances of failure caused by unfinished conditions can be found
in it. “He that believeth and is baptized shall he saved.” Do you say “I believe he shall be saved
if he—”? Do not dare to add an “if” where God has placed none. Remember what will happen to
you if you add anything to the book of God’s testimony. No, it is written, “He that believeth and
is baptized shall he saved:” “He that believeth in him hath everlasting life.” “There is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” Thus we have obtained a surer standing
than we could have had under the first Adam, and our hymn is true to the letter when it sings—
“He raised me from the deeps of sin,
The gates of gaping hell,
And fix’d my standing more secure
Than ’twas before I fell.”

Our Lord has not only undone the mischief of the Fall, but he has given us more than we have
lost: even as the Psalmist saith, “Then I restored that which I took not away.”
By the great transgression of Adam we lost our life in him, for so ran the threatening— “In the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die but in Christ Jesus we live again with a higher
and nobler life, for the new life being the direct work of the Spirit, and being sustained by
feeding upon the person of the Lord Jesus, is higher than the life of innocence in the garden of
Eden. It is of a higher kind in many respects, of which we cannot now speak particularly, but this
much we may say, “The first Adam was made a living soul, the second Adam is a quickening
Spirit.”
The Lord Jesus has also brought us into a nearer relationship to God than we could have
possessed by any other means. We were God’s creatures by creation, but now we are his sons by
adoption; in a certain narrow sense we were the offspring of God, but now by the exaltation of
the man Christ Jesus, the representative of us all, we are brought into the nearest possible
relationship to God. Jesus sits upon the throne of God, and manhood is thus uplifted next to
deity: the nearest akin to the Eternal is a man, Christ Jesus, the Son of the Highest. We are
members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones, and therefore we share his honours and
participate in his triumphs! In Christ Jesus man is made to have dominion over all the works of
God’s hands, and the redeemed are raised up together with Christ and made to sit in the heavenly
places with him, above all principalities and powers, and all things else that be; for these are the
favourites of heaven, the beloved of the great King. No creatures can equal perfected men they
rise superior even to the angels who have never sinned; for in them the riches of the glory of
God’s grace is more fully seen than in pure, unfallen spirits.
O beloved, hath not the Lord Jesus Christ done much for us, and ought we not to expect that it
should be so, for the grace of God, and the gift by grace by the man Christ Jesus, are infinitely
stronger forces than Adam’s sin. There must be much more sap in the man, the Branch, than in
that poor plant, the one man who was made from the dust of the earth. Oh the bliss which opens
up before us now. We have lost Paradise, but we shall possess that of which the earthly garden
was but a lowly type: we might have eaten of the luscious fruits of Eden, but now we eat of the
bread which came down from heaven; we might have heard the voice of the Lord God walking
in the garden in the cool of the day, but now, like Enoch, we may walk with God after a nobler
and closer fashion. We are now capable of a joy which unfallen spirits could not have known: the
bliss of pardoned sin, the heaven of deep conscious obligation to eternal mercy. The bonds which
bind redeemed ones to their God are the strongest which exist. What a joy it will be to love the
Lord more than any other of his creatures, and assuredly we shall do so. Do not think that this is
an unwarrantable assertion, for I feel sure that it is the truth. Do you not read in the gospels of a
woman who washed the Saviour’s feet with tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and
anointed them with ointment? Did not the Saviour say that she loved much because she had
much forgiven. I take it that the same general principle will apply to all places, to eternity as well
as to time, and therefore I believe that forgiven sinners will have a love to God and to his Christ
such as cherubim and seraphim never felt; Gabriel cannot love Jesus as a forgiven man will do.
Those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb will be
nearer and dearer to him, and he will be nearer and dearer to them, than all the ministering spirits
before the throne, for he took upon him our nature and not theirs. Glory be unto thee, O Christ!
As I look into the awful deeps of Adam’s fall, I tremble, but when I lift up my eyes again to the
eternal heights whither thou hast raised me by thy passion and thy resurrection I feel

strengthened by the former vision. I magnify the infinite grace of God, and believe in it
unstaggeringly. Oh, that I had power to magnify it with fit words and proper speech, but these
are not with me. Accept the feeling of the heart when the language of the lip confesses its failure.
Accept it, Lord, through the Well-beloved. Amen.
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What is the significance of the honey inside
the lion's carcass?
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In Judges 14, Samson kills a lion and leaves the body there. When he comes back to it, a swarm
of bees has taken over and there is now honey there:
5 Samson went down to Timnah together with his father and mother. As they approached
the vineyards of Timnah, suddenly a young lion came roaring toward him. 6 The Spirit of
the Lord came powerfully upon him so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as
he might have torn a young goat. But he told neither his father nor his mother what he
had done. 7 Then he went down and talked with the woman, and he liked her.
8 Some time later, when he went back to marry her, he turned aside to look at the lion’s
carcass, and in it he saw a swarm of bees and some honey. 9 He scooped out the honey
with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents, he gave them
some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the
lion’s carcass.
Samson later uses this experience to create a riddle in 14:12:
12 “Let me tell you a riddle,” Samson said to them. “If you can give me the answer
within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty sets of
clothes. 13 If you can’t tell me the answer, you must give me thirty linen garments and
thirty sets of clothes.”
“Tell us your riddle,” they said. “Let’s hear it.”

14 He replied,
“Out of the eater, something to eat;
out of the strong, something sweet.”
The answer is revealed in vs 18:
18 Before sunset on the seventh day the men of the town said to him,
“What is sweeter than honey?
What is stronger than a lion?”
What is the significance of this image and Samson's riddle?
judges
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edited Apr 6 '15 at 6:20
/users/3555/susan /users/3555/susan
Susan♦
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asked Apr 6 '15 at 5:26
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• Why must the honey be symbolic, why can it simply not be understood as the means God
was using to provoke a fight as the text implies? – Jonathan Chell Apr 8 '15 at 11:20
• @JonathanChell Samson is a picture of the Lord Himself, who destroys His enemies, yet
brings the 'sweet' to those who abide in Him. One cannot ignore the allegorical reference,
especially when it is hinted at by Samson himself. – Tau Apr 9 '15 at 3:06
• @Tau you seem to be confusing allegory with typology. Simply because one may be able
to establish that Samson is a type does not imply we must allegorise every detail of his
story and I am not aware of Samson ever hinting that the honey has any signficance
beyond his riddle. – Jonathan Chell Apr 9 '15 at 18:15
• @JonathanChell While Samson is certainly a 'type', the fact that God used His
'supernatural strength' and the 'honeybee nest' along with the riddle to confound the
Philistines is allegorical to God's relationship w/Israel. There are no 'accidents' here-it is
God's determined will to set up a controversy and provide an alternative to their captivity.
Another question: was it an 'accident' that the Philistines got hemorrhoids carrying the
Ark of the Covenant? – Tau Apr 10 '15 at 5:12
• 1

@Tau I agree there are no accidents, and again even if the allegory is there (and I note
you have shown where Samson hints at it) to go from the general to the specific and find
meaning in every detail seems disingenuous to me, it is akin to looking at the parable of
good Samaritan and finding a meaning in the fact that donkey had ears :-D – Jonathan
Chell Apr 10 '15 at 6:45
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Dr. Martin Emmrich (Greek and Hebrew professor at Westminster Theological Seminary,
Philadelphia) has made an extensive explanation about the symbolism of bees and lion carcass.
I happened to read this while pondering about the contradiction of the unholy act of Samson and
the Nazarite status of his. Which also applied to Israel conquest of Canaan, since Canaan is the
land inhibited by 'unclean', as opposite to Israel's holy (set apart) status.
We have noted earlier that the lion’s cadaver was an unlikely host for a “community” of
bees. But so was Canaan for Israel. For although the promised land was introduced as a
“good land” (see above), initially God’s holy nation (cf. Exod 19:6) entered an “unclean”
zone. When Israel set foot on their new homeland, they were to destroy all traces of
idolatry, on account of which the land was “defiled” (cf. Lev 18:24–25, 27). Of course,
the defilement of the land had to do with the uncleanness of the people who used to live
in it, so that the ignominious state of the land could only be lifted by the death of its
inhabitants (cf. Num 35:33). Like bees in a carcass, Israel was to inhabit a country of
idolaters, a country that became habitable for God’s community only through the death of
God’s enemies.
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answered Apr 8 '15 at 10:50
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I will rarely put forward an idea if I can't find at least one solid commentary to argue the same
thing, however in this case I think the solution is obvious and am surprised that after checking
several commentaries I can't get a good quote to support it.
Note that 'honey' is one of the things the land was supposed to be flowing with (along with milk)
when Moses lead the people out of Egypt, and that a lion is a man-slayer, or representative of the
dangers that Israel faced in Canaan. The lion might logically represent the wicked Philistines
oppressing Israel, or the dangers that Samson (as Israel’s representative) introduces to his own
life by marrying one. Honey is the blessing to Israel that God will bring from the carcass of
the Philistines, by mingling his sweet purpose in the joining of Samson to that Philistine
woman by his amazing power.
The symbol makes sense as Samson was encountering this wonderful miracle that gave him
strength and pleasure on his journey when going to get his wife, of which no Jew should marry.
But out of ill-conceived plans and sins, God can arrange a link to his predetermined all-knowing
accomplishment of his promise to Israel.
Regarding the riddle I find it hard to believe anyone could guess it unless it was previously
known that on occasion bees might make their hive in a dead animal. Some commentators say
that the constellation Leo is where the Sun is during the season that bees are busy but I really
think this is not a plausible fact to have given someone a chance at guessing the riddle.
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answered Apr 8 '15 at 7:13
/users/616/mike /users/616/mike
Mike
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• They didn't guess, Samsons betrothed nagged the answer out of him and told them. –
Joshua Apr 8 '15 at 13:59
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St. Caesarius of Arles explains it like this:
Truly, this is very appropriate, for to us Christ is a lion in whose mouth we found the
food of honey after His death. What is sweeter than the word of God? Or what is stronger
than His right hand? In whose mouth after death is there food and bees, except His in
whose word is the good of our salvation and the congregation of the Gentiles? The lion
can further be understood as the Gentiles who believed. First, it was a body of vanity, but
is now the body of Christ in which the apostles like bees stored honey of wisdom

gathered from the dew of heaven and the flowers of divine grace. Thus, food came out of
the mouth of the one who died; because nations which were as fierce as lions at first,
accepted with a devout heart the word of God which they received and produced the
fruit.1
“Jesus Christ – the Honey of God’s Word.”
“My son, eat thou honey, because it is good: and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: so
shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there shall be a
reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off.” (Prov.24:13-14)
“And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and of a
honeycomb, and he took it and did eat before them. And he said unto them, these are the words
which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were
written n the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened
he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures.” (Luke 24:42-45)
Jesus Christ is the honey of God’s word. Christ hath loved us and hath given himself for us an
offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor. He’s the sweet savior and he’s the
word of life. He is the very center and heart of the bible. There is no truth in the Old Testament,
if he isn’t the center of it. You can get no wisdom and knowledge from God’s word if you
neglect him. “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Col.2:3).
When you are saved and born again by God’s son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then the spirit of truth
dwells in you and teaches you all truth and glorifies Jesus Christ - (John 16:14). Then you will
have your understanding opened to understand the scriptures. The bible is a spiritual book,
written by the Holy Spirit and only those who have the Holy Spirit can understand it. Jesus
Christ is the honey of God’s word and we can say about him – “How sweet are thy words unto
my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.” (Ps119:103). Praise the Lord Jesus – he is the
word made flesh. His name is called the word of God- (Rev.19)
Yes, “Eat thou honey, because it is good.” It’s good for the body and good for the soul. A strong
body and a strong soul. Food for the body and food for the soul. This is not a health food sermon
but I want to enlighten true Christians about honey.
Honey is nature’s perfect food and is the only food made by insects and eaten by man. It’s
natural sugar that need not be refined. It needs no chemical changes or additives. It’s the world’s
perfect, natural sweetener and it’s still a mystery as to how it’s made. Honey is the only food that
includes all the substances necessary to sustain life – it even has water. It has all the minerals,
nutrients, vitamins, acids and sugar in exact minute amounts. There is no substitute for honey.
Man can’t imitate honey – only God’s little bees can make this food. Do you eat honey? God
says eat it. The Lord Jesus ate it. It’s good for your body and good for your soul.
Honey is written in the bible 62 times and 18 times it is written that Israel is a land flowing with
milk and honey. Israel got God’s word and the Jewish savior which is the greatest riches and
much more precious than the Arab oil. The milk of God’s word for newborn babes in Christ and
honey, the strong meat for mature Christians who have grown up - (Heb.5:13-14). The honey

Christians become strong in the spirit and use Strong’s Concordance and ‘study to show
themselves approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the
word of truth.” (2 Tim.2:15) – Israel the land of the bible- land of milk and honey.
(Prov.26:24) says “
Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.” Yes, pleasant
words, God’s words, are as honey – healthy for body and good for soul. It’s especially healthy
for the bones, the strength of body and the frame of the body holds it together. And the honey of
God’s word will make you strong in the spirit. (Prov.24:5) says “A wise man is strong: yea, a
man of knowledge increaseth strength.” Eat honey and also be saved and then get into the honey
of God’s word.
Let’s look at the physical strong man of the bible- Samson in (Jud.14). He was stronger than a
lion when the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he killed 1000 Philistines with the jawbone
of an ass. He killed a lion with his bare hands and then ate honey from carcass of the lion. Then
he put forth a riddle concerning this and the answer was- “What is sweeter then honey. And what
is stronger than a lion?” (vs.18). A riddle is something difficult to understand and it takes the
honey of God’s word to understand the bible. Yes, honey will give you a strong body and the
honey of God’ sword will make you strong in the spirit so that you may fight against your
adversary the devil who walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Milk is
for babes but honey is the strong meat for mature Christians. Samson was strong physically but
weak spiritually and he fell into sexual fornication sin and was snared by Satan and lost his
strength. He chased after harlots. (Prov.7:26) says about a harlot. – “For she hath cast down
many wounded: Yea, many strong men have been slain by her.”
(Ps.19:10) says about God’s word – “Move to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine
gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.” Do you desire the honey of God’s word or
do you desire the riches and things of this world? You must desire God’s truth over the things of
this world. – what is the desire of your heart?
(Ex.16:31) says about manna – the bread of life – “And the taste of it was like wafers made with
honey.” Jesus said in (John 6:51) “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any
man eat of this bread, he shall live forever.” (Deut.8:8) says – “And fed thee with manna ---- that
he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only but every word that proceedeth
out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.” Bible manna – food for the soul and it tasted like
honey. – Jesus is the bread of life and he is the honey on the bread offering eternal life to all that
will be saved. Also, the total nutritional needs of three and a half million people in the wilderness
for 40 years was supplied by the manna – they ate nothing else – it was sufficient.
(Is.7:14-15) says-
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son
and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the
evil and choose the good.” This is a real honey vs.- the virgin birth prophecy of the Lord Jesus
Christ. God was with us for 33 years during his first coming and when he comes again God will
be with us for eternity. No wonder Jesus ate honey – to fulfill the scripture. The honey of God’s
word gives us the wisdom to discern between good and evil. It’s the wisdom that god gave
Solomon in (I Kings 3:9) “Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people,
that I may discern between good and bad.”

Read (I Sam.14:23-29) Jonathan, a good man of God who loved the Lord ate honey after he
finished his famous battle. (Vs.29) says – “Then said Jonathan my father (King Saul) hath
troubled the Land: see, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little
of this honey.” He ate honey and could then discern between good and evil and know his father
was evil. God enlightened his inward eyes with truth. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet a d a
light unto my path.” The honey of God’s word enlightens your soul.
“That the father may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened” (Eph.1:17). The honey is used to make
beeswax candles to enlighten- amen. Can you see the truth. Each bee has three eyes on the front
of his head and two large compound eyes on the sides of his head with thousands of eyes. Do
you want to be enlightened with the wisdom and knowledge of God? Then get born again by
Jesus Christ and eat honey and study God’s word – Amen
See (Ezk. 3:1-3 and 17) when God is about to bring the sword upon a nation, he will first raise up
a bible watchmen to warn the people of their wicked ways. And first he will prepare his
watchman by making him strong in spirit by having him eat the bible. He had to consume God’s
book – reading and studying and meditating on it until he knows it from cover to cover. God
makes him fit for his calling.
See (Rev.10:8) the same thing was done to God’s prophet John on Patmos. He too had to eat the
bible before he could preach Revelation. There is not only honey in the word but it will cause
bitterness. Most prophets were martyred. Oh the bitter death they received for preaching the
honey of God’s word.
See (Mt.3:4) “
And his meat was locusts and wild honey.” Honey is the food of preachers and especially
prophets and more especially bible watchman. John the Baptist ate honey in the wilderness and
learned the word of God. He knew the sweet honey of God’s word but he suffered a bitter death
of being beheaded by King Herod for preaching the truth. Jesus called him –
“The greatest born of woman.” What a great honor. This honey eater was enlightened with God’s
wisdom so he could look upon the Lord Jesus and say- “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29). He turned his back on the things of this world and
chose the greater riches. He won the Bible bee.
Listen to this honey vs. in (John 11:25) “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” This promise that we have in the sweet savior is
sweet as honey. Someday in Christ, Satan will once for all be defeated. Some day – no more sin
– no more sickness or pain or death. There is victory in Jesus. We’ll raise from the dead and have
eternal life. Will you take the honey of life for your savior?
Will you become the bride of Christ, the church, and take Jesus for your Honey. Two shall
become one flesh- Christ in you, the hope of glory. Will you be saved and love the Land Jesus
and go on a forever honeymoon with him. We love him because he first loved us and died for us.
He’s our honey, our sweetheart. Soon comes the rapture and then comes the marriage supper of
the Lamb and his bride. Are you ready?
The message of Christ is sweet as honey. The words of Christ are pleasant words. They are the
words of eternal life. Sweet to the soul. Receive the milk and honey of God’s word and enter
heaven, the true promised land, come to Jesus now.

Have you been born again. You must be born again- (John 3) you must be saved. “Neither is
their salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men,
whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). Repent of your sins and call upon the Lord Jesus to
save to save you.
Jesus Christ is the honey of God’s word The Sweet Smelling, Savior.
Honey from a Lion Carcass
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“Out of one who eats came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet.” Judges
14:8
Samson’s heading down the road with his parents and a young lion jumps out and attacks him.
Samson easily rips the jaws of the lion open with his bare hands. Later he passes the lion carcass
and notices a swarm of bees have made honey in the carcass so like Bear Grylls he scoops the
honey out to feed him and his parents. Funnily enough, he doesn’t tell his mum and dad where he
got the honey from.

Samson’s riddle meant that he and his family got something sweet – honey
from that which was ready to devour him – the lion
with all its strength and fury.
We have a picture here of life (bees and honey and the resulting pleasure and strength) coming
out of death.
It reminds me of the story of the bitter waters at Mara where Moses was to take some wood,
threw it in the bitter water and the bitter water became sweet. Life and refreshing came out of
bitterness once again.
It’s a great picture of the Cross where the ultimate honey came out of the carcass. From the
sacrificial death on a Cross, came sweetness of new life. A lion came with its fury and strength to
destroy Jesus as He hung on that cross but Jesus uttered that phrase “tetelestai” meaning “it is
finished”. Victory over death was finished and now new life could spring forth.
And so Samson’s riddle is a great picture (foreshadowing) of the greater victory to come through
Jesus.
And this gives us great hope for the devouring lion
experiences and bitter water experiences in our lives. “Something to eat” and “something sweet”
can come from the carcass of that lion experience giving sustenance and pleasure not only for us
but our families too. Why? Because “it is finished”! Because of Jesus’ death on the cross
devouring lions and death no longer have the final say.

Why not? Well Samson was able to kill the lion and rip its jaws open with his bare hands
because “the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him”.
And guess what? The way to destroying the lions of
trouble that come against you is through destroying them with your bear hands with the same
power and Spirit that enabled Samson.
That’s why Paul prayed you would have the eyes of your heart opened and understand the
incredible greatness of Gods power for you. But it’s only available to those who believe. Faith in
His power is the key to honey from the carcass.
“I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe
him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place
of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.”
snaisehpE 02-91:1 TLN
So lions of trouble come and attack us on the road
of life. But how can we consider these as an opportunity for great joy? Well, by faith we can see
the honey from the carcass. We believe in the power and knowledge and goodness of the all
powerful One who can bring sweetness, strength, endurance and even pleasure from the very
thing that tried to wipe you out. And the results are not just your own personal development and
growth as a person but that honey is enough for your family and friends also. James reminds us
of this bigger perspective we need to have of troubling lion experiences in our lives:
“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity
for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.
So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete,
needing nothing.”
semaJ 4-2:1 TLN
Here’s some of the verses about Samson mentioned earlier:
“As Samson and his parents were going down to Timnah, a young lion suddenly attacked
Samson near the vineyards of Timnah. At that moment the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully
upon him, and he ripped the lion’s jaws apart with his bare hands. He did it as easily as if it were
a young goat. But he didn’t tell his father or mother about it.”
segduJ 6-5:41 TLN

“Later, when he returned to Timnah for the wedding, he turned off the path to look at the carcass
of the lion. And he found that a swarm of bees had made some honey in the carcass. He scooped
some of the honey into his hands and ate it along the way. He also gave some to his father and
mother, and they ate it. But he didn’t tell them he had taken the honey from the carcass of the
lion.
So he said: “Out of the one who eats came something to eat; out of the strong came something
sweet.” Three days later they were still trying to figure it out.”
segduJ 41,9-8:41 TLN
HONEY IN A LION'S CARCASS
by Rex Yancey
Honey in a Lion's Carcass
Rex Yancey
Judges 14:8-9
Samson's colorful personality, conduct, words, and escapades would make an interesting read in
a book.
-Paul told Timothy that the Bible was given for instruction. We have a real need for instruction.
We are traveling an unknown path. If we cannot learn from the mistakes and successes of others
we have a long life ahead of us.
-One of the things I have learned in my life is the fact that everybody can teach us something. In
Andy Kapp, Andy is talking to Flo and he is really down on himself. He says "I am not worth
anything Flo." She says, "Andy, do not be too hard on yourself. If nothing else you serve as a
horrible example." Even Andy can teach us something.
-This morning I want to use this text as an example of what we can expect to face in the
Christian life. We will face conflicts, confections, and a commission.
-Let me give you the background of this text. Samson was raised by God-fearing parents. I
picture him as a strong good-looking man. Herein lay his downfall. It evidently went to his head.
Some lady told him how strong he was and how good looking he was and he had the audacity to
believe it.
Outward beauty, strength, talent, athletics, and popularity all come with a price tag attached to
them. Few people can keep their head on their shoulders. The result is they travel a downward
path. Brittany Spears is a perfect example of this.
¬I picture Samson as a high school bad boy that the girls loved. However, many bad boys never
grow up to become responsible men.

-Samson was going to see a woman he would have been better off not seeing.
He encountered a lion. He had nothing in his hand to fight the lion. He was so strong he killed
the lion with his bare hands.
-On his way back from his girlfriend's house he draws aside to see the dead carcass of the lion.
The vultures had decimated the remains of the lion and a swarm of bees had taken up residence
in the carcass. He took some ...
New International Version
He scooped out the honey with his hands and ate as he went along. When he rejoined his parents,
he gave them some, and they too ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from
the lion's carcass. JUDGES 14:9
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
Recalling Past Deliverances
Judges 14:8, 9
A.F. Muir In this case Samson is led to do so either by curiosity or the impulse of God's Spirit.
He revisits the scene of the exploit, and meets with welcome but unexpected refreshment. There
are various ways of recalling spiritual experiences of God's saving power in the past. Sometimes
an accident (?) may bring up vividly some forgotten circumstance of Divine grace, and we are
overwhelmed with the recollections that crowd upon the mind. Soldiers who have fought side by
side in famous battles have their anniversaries of fellowship and celebration. Are there no
circumstances that justify these amongst Christians? It is a spiritual education and confirmation
to recall circumstances and revisit scenes of God's saving mercies.
I. THE DUTY OF THANKFUL RECOLLECTION OF DIVINE INTERPOSITIONS.
II. THE SECRET AND UNSHARED COMMUNION OF THE SUBJECT OF GRACE WITH
HIS SAVIOUR.
III. ITS ADVANTAGE AND BLESSING. - M.

Biblical Illustrator
Samson.
Judges 13:24, 25
Samson
W. A. Scott, D. D.The history of Samson is surprising even in an extraordinary age. In several
particulars he was the most distinguished of the Hebrew judges. And though never at the head of
an army, nor on a throne, nor prime minister to any earthly potentate, it were difficult, perhaps
impossible, to name another Hebrew that loved his country with more fervid devotion, or served
it with a more hearty good will, or who was a greater terror to its enemies. I know not that there
is any biography so completely characteristic or more tragical than his. It is full of stirring
incidents and most marvellous achievements. He seems to us like a volcano, continually
struggling for an eruption. In him we have all the elements of an epic: love, adventure, heroism,
tragedy. Nor am I aware that any Bible character has lent to modern literature a greater amount
of metaphor and comparison than the story of Samson. The "Samson Agonistes" of Milton has
been pronounced by the highest authority to be "one of the noblest dramas in the English
language." It reminds us of the mystic touches and shadowy grandeur of Rembrandt, while
Rembrandt himself and Rubens, Guido, David, and Martin are indebted to this heroic judge for
several of their immortal pieces. I am aware that some look upon Samson merely as a strong
man. They do not consider that the moving of the Spirit of Jehovah gave extraordinary strength
to Samson for special purposes. His peculiarities are not remarkable, because of anything that we
perceive foreign to fallen humanity in the kind or composition of his passions and besetting sins,
but in the fierceness and greatness of their strength. Ordinary men now have the same besetting
sins — passions of the same character, but they are diminutive in comparison with him, and are
without his supernatural strength. It must be confessed in the outset that Samson's spiritual
history is very skeleton-like. We have only a few time-worn fragments out of which to construct
his inner man. Now and then, and sometimes after long and dreary intervals, and from out of
heavy clouds and thick darkness, we catch a few rays of hope, and rejoice in some signs of a
reviving conscience and of the presence of God's Spirit. "His character is indeed dark and almost
inexplicable. By none of the judges of Israel did God work so many miracles, and yet by none
were so many faults committed." As an old writer has said, he must be looked upon as "rather a
rough believer." I like not to dwell on Samson as a type of Christ. We must at least guard against
removing him so far from us by reason of his uniqueness of character as to forget that he was a
man of like passions with ourselves. We must carefully discriminate in his life between what
God moved him to do and what his sinful passions moved him to. The Lord raised up this heroic
Israelite for us. He threw into him a miraculous composition of strength and energy of passion,
and called them forth in such a way as to make him our teacher. And besides being a hero, he
was a believer. God raised him up for our learning, and made him, as it were, "a mirror or molten
looking-glass," in which we may see some of our own leading features truthfully portrayed, only
on an enlarged scale.
(W. A. Scott, D. D.)
The place of Samson in Jewish history

Professor W. G. Elmslie.1. Two things stand out in the narrative of Samson's career, as
compared with the history of at least the majority of the other judges.(1) The other judges fight
God's battles with the people at their backs. They simply give aid and point to a sense of rising
strength, of impatience of subjection, of reviving national pride and religious zeal in the Hebrew
people. Samson, on the contrary, stands utterly alone, fights his battle single-handed, is
supported by no enthusiasm for the national cause, and not even by common loyalty on the part
of his own comrades.(2) The other judges are chosen to their office as mature men, but Samson
is set apart to his career as an unborn child. From his very infancy the sense of his vocation takes
possession of him; as child and boy and youth it is making and moulding him, and preparing him
for what he is to be. The explanation of these two characteristic features of his history, which
distinguish it from that of the other judges, lies in this, that Samson's lot in life fell upon a period
of utter national demoralisation. Israel had elapsed into subjection to the despised, uncircumcised
Philistines. All national spirit was dying out, and the prestige of Jehovah was giving way before
the prestige of Dagon. Now the only hope for the redemption of a society that has fallen into a
condition of such lassitude, mental and moral, lies in the creation of a fresh and powerful
personality.
2. How, humanly speaking, was Samson prepared for his work?(1) To begin with, God made a
cradle and a home for him. Samson's mother was a woman with a great soul and a large heart, to
whom God was a reality; a woman who could not indeed fight God's battles and deliver God's
people, but who lived with the upper storeys of her being in the unseen, and was possessed with
a tremendous longing that there should be deliverance for Israel, that something heroic should
appear in history, and that God should vindicate His might and grandeur above the heathen gods.
Samson was born to a mother that longed for a boy, not that he might rise to comfort and ease,
but that he might be lofty and heroic, and fight and, if need be, die for God and God's kingdom.
To her son she transmits her hope, faith, and enthusiasm.(2) From a little child Samson felt
something mysterious stirring in his soul, ay, and in his physical nature. Samson needed
extraordinary gifts for extraordinary work. He had, single-handed, by his own solitary prowess,
to cow the Philistines and reanimate the courage of the Hebrews.Two things were needful for
him:
(1)extraordinary strength,
(2)inextinguishable joyousness.To hold his own amid the abject depression of the people round
about him it was essential that he should be possessed of exuberant mirth and jollity. It is the
men that do the most serious and earnest work that can play and romp and laugh with their
children. That is not the noisy laughter of the fool.(3) Once again; it may be that asceticism is
demanded for our age, just as Nazaritism was for Samson's. But that, remember, is the bad
remedy of a still worse evil. Jesus Christ was no ascetic, else His enemies would not have
published, as the likeliest scandal about Him, that He was a wine-bibber.
(Professor W. G. Elmslie.)
Samson: inferior influences over large minds
E. Monro, M. A.1. The Book of Judges is full of expressions of singular beauty. The springs of
human action are bared and revealed to view with wonderful power.
2. Samson was inspired and sent forth with a heavenly mission. Yet second motive was the
frequent spring of his actions.

3. There is a vigour, width, and absence of detail or accurate plan about his proceedings which
stamp him still more as a man of genius and bold conception.
4. But there is a further remarkable feature in Samson's case. He became the slave of his wife.
The same mind around which a mother wound the soft coils of maternal and home influences a
wife bound round with the adamantine chains of female plot and management.
5. But we have to account for this and see its force.(1) In ordinary terms Samson was a man of
genius. Genius is a more direct gift from God than the ordinary power of man. It is a species of
inspiration. It sees the means of deliverance from an evil without having to wade through the
tortuous windings of the labyrinth of hard-worked, plans and schemes.(2) The man of genius is
left with the simplicity of a child from never having commenced his hard task in the school of
experience and difficulty. He leans with the trust of infancy on the natural stays and supports of
life. Men of genius will be subject to the tyranny as well as consolations of inferior influences;
and will often become the slaves and victims of female narrowness and punctilio. Their
dependence on natural affections is accounted for by the same cause which accounts for their
sometimes unaccountably sinking under the extravagant exercise of that influence. Not having
had the need to manage others by elaborate plans, they are duped by overmanagement, and not
having been called on to work out schemes, they fall the ready and easy victims to those devised
by others.
6. We are often startled by inconsistencies in Samson's history. They may be accounted for by
the same reason — genius. The man of genius is not therefore of necessity a man of personal
holiness. The glass tube may be the medium of streams of water, yet not one drop will imbue the
substance forming the channel that conveys the fertilising drops from one spot to another. The
eternal truth which a man speaks, the holiness he may bear witness to, the warnings he may
proclaim, may all be declared with the utmost efficiency, and yet not influence him who is the
medium.
(E. Monro, M. A.)
The Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times
Man under the influence of the Divine Spirit
C. E. Searle, M. A.Our knowledge of that mysterious power called the Spirit has been assisted by
the well-known comparison of it with the wind, whose effects we may see, but whose rise and
courses we cannot trace. "The wind bloweth where it listeth," etc. There will, therefore, be in
human life occurrences that we can only refer to this source, which will defy scientific rules and
be beyond calculation. But though we may not search out the way of the Spirit, we may inquire
when His motions are most generally first felt. Is there any limit of age at which His visits begin
or end? Are we to wait till riper years, when knowledge is matured and the passions subdued to
reason, before we can entertain them, or may we expect this power of God to approach us early,
and move us almost as soon as the age of consciousness begins? So much more receptive is the
earlier part of a man's life that I have heard experienced preachers allege that no conversions take
place after twenty-five; but while objecting to such a limit, or indeed any limit, I would maintain
that in the young rather than in the old there is the best hope of feeling this power and becoming
obedient to it. We may take Samson's life as evidence of what a man can dare and do under the
influence of the Spirit. His strength was not his own, it was "hung in his hair," in the seven
mysterious locks in his head, which would be to him of sacramental character, outward signs of
an invisible gift. The Spirit really in him accomplished his feats. When the lion roared against

him, it was "the Spirit of the Lord" that came mightily upon him; when he finds himself among
his enemies bound with two new cords, at their shout "the Spirit of the Lord" again came
mightily upon him, and he burst the cords which became as "flax which was burnt in the fire,"
and on this occasion he slew a thousand men. The view I take, then, of Samson's life is, that it
was a witness to God's Spirit from the beginning to the end. We should lose much of the teaching
of it if we believed that such a career is altogether out of date. I do not mean, of course, that the
same feats of strength will be witnessed again, but I assert that heroic feats of physical courage
will be done, greater feats, too, of moral courage; and some such it will be good to put before
you for imitation. In every generation they are to be found, and in our own not less than others.
And for such an illustration in our own day one naturally turns to our latest modern hero,
Gordon, whose life is almost as strange and eventful as that of any of the heroes of Hebrew
history, and none the less inspired. He himself traced his superhuman faith and energy to this
source, to God working in him, enabling him to attempt any venture in His service and cheerfully
to die for Him. What a victory is scored to faith, for however eccentric his conduct may be
thought, plainly he has demonstrated that there are unseen powers that sway a man's heart much
more forcibly than any motives of the world. Such men almost equal Samson in the apparent
inadequacy of their equipment and neglect of means. But no doubt they fortify themselves with
the argument that God loves to use trivial means to effect great ends — a small pebble in David's
hand to bring down a giant, an ox-goad in Shamgar's hand to work a national deliverance, a
stone, rough from the mountains, to overthrow Nebuchadnezzar's Colossus; and, thus
encouraged, without scientific weapons, such as our theological armouries supply, they have
gone forth strong in faith alone. I am led on to commend as a priceless possession the gift of an
independent spirit in thinking and acting, such as the Judge in Israel always displayed among his
fellow-men. For this is a servile age in which we live — albeit declared to be one of liberty and
progress. Yet tending, as everything does, to democracy and equality, few men have the courage
of their opinions, few that are not ready to make a surrender of their intelligence and conscience
at the bidding of others. Where are the strong men who will act independently according to really
patriotic or godly motives, and not put up their principles to a bidding? Who now in England is
"valiant for the truth"? Who is upholding it before the people? Hitherto the grander part of
Samson's character has occupied us, but there was a weak side when the strong man was brought
low through a temptation that has cast down many strong men. The prison house, with the fallen
hero, deprived of sight, shorn of his noble locks, grinding as a slave, the scoff of the enemies of
God, is an obvious allegory that hardly needs an interpretation, for it is alas! a picture of every
day's experience when a spiritual man yields to those lusts which war within him, and enslave
him if they prevail against him.
(C. E. Searle, M. A.)
Samson, the Judge
Bp. S. Wilberforce.It was a dark time with Israel when the boon of the future Danite judge was
vouchsafed to the prayers of the long barren mother. It seems not unlikely that this may have
been a part of that evil time when the ark of God itself fell into the hands of the hosts of Philistia.
But there was a dawning of the coming day, and from this utter subjection God was about ere
long to deliver His people. Samson was to be a first instrument in this work — he was to "begin
to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines" (Judges 13:5). To enable him to fulfil this
peculiar ministry, the possession of extraordinary physical strength, accompanied by an
unequalled daring, were the special gifts bestowed upon him. These began early to manifest

themselves. From the first they are traced back in the sacred record to the working of that
exceptional influence which rested upon him as a "Nazarite unto God." In spite of actions which
seem at a first glance to us Christians irreconcilable with such a spiritual relation, the occurrence
of his name under the dictation of the Spirit in the catalogue of worthies "who through faith
subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, escaped the edge of the sword, waxed valiant in
fight, and turned to flight the armies of aliens" (Hebrews 11:32-34), establishes beyond a doubt
the fact that he was essentially a faithful man. As we look closer, we may see that passing signs
of such an inward vitality break forth from time to time along the ruder outlines of his half-
barbarous course. Surely there is written large upon the grave of the Nazarite judge, "Grieve not
the Holy Spirit of God." There are those in whom, in spite of remaining infirmities, there is a
manifest indwelling and inworking of God the Holy Ghost — men whose lives are rich with the
golden fruit of His inward life. Their life, without a word spoken, has an untold influence upon
others. Be they young or old, they are God's witnesses, God's workmen. Far outside these is
another circle. These are men of whom it is not possible to doubt that the Spirit of God "has
begun to move them at times." There are plain marks of a hard struggle going on within them;
more or less they are conscious of it themselves. The good they would they do not, the evil they
would not that they too often do. Perhaps their youth is stained with something of the
waywardness, the sensuality, and disorder which marked that of the Nazarite Samson; and yet
there is another Spirit striving within them. What a strife it is! with what risks, with what issues!
The master temptation of one may be to yield the Nazarite locks of the purity of a Christian soul
to the Philistine razor of sensual appetite; to another it may be to surrender to the fair speeches,
or perhaps the taunts, of some intellectual Delilah, the faith which grew up early in his heart; his
simple trust in God's Word, in creeds, in prayers, in Christ Incarnate. "Trust to me," the tempter
whispers, "this secret of thy strength, and I will let thee rest at peace and enjoy thy life in
victorious possession of all that thy mind lusteth after." It is the old promise, broken as of old.
Beyond that yielding what is there for him but mockery and chains, eyelessness and death? And
yet, once again, another class is visible. There are those who, though the Nazarite life is theirs,
show to the keenest searching of the longing eye no token of any moving by the blessed Spirit. In
some it is as if there had never been so much as a first awakening of the Spirit's life. In others
there is that which we can scarcely doubt is indeed present, active, conscious resistance to the
Holy One. This is the darkest, dreariest, most terrible apparition which this world can show.
Here, then, are our conclusions.
1. Let us use, simply and earnestly, our present opportunities, such as daily prayer. Let us
regularly practise it, in spite of any difficulties. Let us watch over ourselves in little things even
more carefully than in those which seem great.
2. Let us guard against all that grieves Him.
3. Let us each one seek from Him a thorough conversion. In this thoroughness is everything — is
the giving the heart up to God, is the subduing the life to His law, is all the peace of regulated
passions, all the brightness of a purified imagination.
(Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
Samson
W. G. Blaikie, D. D.Of Samson it may be said that he stands alone in the whole round of
Scripture characters. The gift of supernatural bodily strength was bestowed on no other of God's
servants. In this respect he is interesting, as furnishing one of the many varieties of form in

which God, who spoke to the fathers at sundry times and in divers manners, sought to impress
upon them the great lessons of His will. Like Jonah, Samson was a sign to Israel. His life was a
sort of parable, exhibiting in a strange but striking form what would have been their experience if
they had been faithful. Like the nation of Israel, Samson was consecrated to God. The
remarkable thing in his experience was, that while he continued faithful to his consecration he
enjoyed such wonderful bodily strength, but the moment that the Nazarite law was broken, he
became weak as other men. The nation was taught, symbolically, what wonderful strength would
be theirs if they should be faithful to their covenant. On the other hand, the life of Samson set
forth with equal clearness, what would be the consequences to Israel of their neglecting their
consecration or treating lightly its marks and tokens. There was, however, a third point in which
Samson was a type for Israel. Great though the judgment was that punished his neglect, he was
not quite abandoned in his captivity. The hair of his head began to grow. The outward tokens of
his consecration began to reappear. It was thus indicated to Israel that if, in the midst of
judgment and tribulation, they should bethink them of the covenant God and seek to return to
Him, He would in mercy return to them, and grant them some tokens of His former blessing. In
these respects the career of Samson was peculiar. In addition to this, we are perhaps to view him,
in common with the other judges, as typically setting forth the great Deliverer — the Lion of the
tribe of Judah. In one respect Samson was quite specially a type of Christ. He was the first of the
Hebrew worthies who deliberately gave his life for his country. Many risked their lives, but he
actually, and on purpose, gave his, that his country might reap the benefit. Only here, too, we
must remark an obvious difference. Both achieved salvation by dying, but in very different ways.
Samson saved in spite of his death, Jesus by His death. Let us now glance at the salient points of
his career. In his early training he presented a great contrast to Jephthah. In a very special sense
he was a gift of God to his family and his nation; and the gift was made in a very solemn manner,
and under the express condition that he was to be trained to live not for himself or for his family,
but for God, to whom he was consecrated from his mother's womb. And no doubt he was
brought up with the strictest regard to the rules of the Nazarites. Yet we may see, what was
probably very common in these cases, that while he was rigidly attentive to the external rules, he
failed to carry out, in some very essential respects, the spirit of the transaction. In heart he was
not so consecrated as in outward habit. The self-pleasing spirit, against which the vow of the
Nazarite was designed to bear, appeared very conspicuously in his choice of a wife. "Get her for
me," he said to his father, "for she pleaseth me." The thought of her nation, of her connections, of
her religion, was overborne by the one consideration, "she pleaseth me." This does not look like
one trained in all things to follow the will of God, and to keep the sensual part of his nature in
strictest subjection to the spiritual. True, it is said, "the thing was of the Lord "; but this does not
imply that it carried His approval. It entered as an element into God's providential plans, and was
"of the Lord" only in the sense in which God makes the devices of men to work out the counsel
of His sovereign will. Yielding at the outset of his life, and in a most vital manner, to an impulse
which should have met with firm resistance, Samson became the husband of this Philistine
stranger. But it was not long ere he found out his lamentable error. The shallow qualities that had
taken his fancy only covered a faithless heart; she abused his confidence and proved a traitor.
And after he had had experience of her treachery he did not cast her off but after a time sought
her company, and it was only when he learned that she had been given to another, that he dashed
into a wild scheme of revenge — catching the two hundred foxes, and setting fire to the growing
corn. Whatever we may say of this proceeding, it showed unmistakably a very fearless spirit. The
neighbouring tribe of Judah was horrified at the thought of the exasperation the Philistines would

feel and the retribution they would inflict, and meanly sought to surrender Samson into their
hands. Then came Samson's greatest achievement, well fitted to cow the Philistines if they
should be thinking of reprisals — the slaughter of the thousand men with the jaw-bone of an ass.
Like one inspired, Samson moved alone against a whole nation, strong in the conviction that God
was with him, and that in serving Him there could be no ground for fear. But the old weakness
returned again. The lust of the flesh was the unguarded avenue to Samson's heart, and despite
previous warnings, the foe once more found entrance here. It is a lust that when it has gained
force has a peculiar tendency to blind and fascinate, and urge a man onwards, though ruin stares
him in the face. Other lusts, as covetousness or ambition, or the thirst of gold, are for the most
part susceptible of control; but let a sensual lust once prevail, control by human means becomes
impossible. It dashes on like a scared horse, and neither bridle, nor cries, nor efforts of any kind,
can avail to arrest its course. So it proved in the case of Samson. He seemed to rush into the very
jaws of destruction. How sad to see a grand nature drawn to destruction by so coarse a bait! — to
see a wonderful Divine gift fallen into the hands of the enemy, only to be made their sport. Sad
and lamentable fall it was! Not merely a great hero reduced to a slave, not merely one who had
rejoiced in his strength afflicted by blindness, the very symbol of weakness, but the champion of
his nation prostrate, the champion of his nation's faith in the dust! It would seem that his
affliction was useful to Samson in the highest sense. With the growth of his hair, the higher
principles that came from above grew and strengthened in him too. He remembered the destiny
for which he had been designed, but which appeared to have been defeated. He was humbled at
the thought of the triumph of the uncircumcised, a triumph in which the honour of God was
concerned, for the Philistines were praising their god and saying, "Our god hath delivered our
enemy into our hands." Oh, if he could yet but fulfil his destiny! It was to vindicate the God of
his fathers, to save the honour of his people, and to secure to coming generations the freedom
and happiness which he himself could never know, that he laid himself on the altar and died a
miserable death. Thus it appears that Samson was worthy of place among those who, forgetful of
self, gave themselves for the deliverance of their country. Let the young be induced to aim at
steady, uniform, consistent service. It is awful work when the servants of God get entangled in
the toils of the tempter. It is humbling to have but a blotted and mutilated service to render to
God. Happy they who are enabled to present the offering of a pure life, a childhood succeeded by
a noble youth, and youth by a consistent manhood, and manhood by a mellow and fragrant old
age. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.Root, and stem, and blossom
undefiled.Samson shows us with painful clearness what havoc and misery may flow from a
single form of sinful indulgence, from one root of bitterness left in the soil.
(W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
Samson's gift
S. A. Tipple.I. HERE WAS A MAN OF SURPASSING PHYSICAL STRENGTH. His
distinction was, that in splendour of muscle and sinew none could approach him, and hence his
popularity and the high position he acquired. In a later age and a more advanced state of society
it would not have enthroned him thus. But these are the earliest masters, these are the primitive
heroes, the men who can do great things with their limbs. Afterwards, the dominion is taken
from them and given to the largest brains. Now, Samson was simply mighty in muscle and
sinew. Unlike most of the other judges he does not appear to have possessed the slightest
military genius or enterprise, nor any power of combining his countrymen in opposition to their
enemies, or inspiring them with spirit and desire to fight for liberty. There was no generalship in

him, and no gift for leading. He had but massive, magnificent limbs, and went in, straightway,
for applying them to the help of Israel without caring or aiming to be more and other than heaven
had qualified him to be. Is it not a grand thing always to perceive the line along which we can
minister, and to be willing to pursue it, and able to keep to it, however narrow or relatively
inferior it may be. Not a few would be more successful and more useful than they are were they
but more bravely content to be themselves — did they but accept more unreservedly the talent
committed to them, and study more simply and independently to be faithful to it. Samson's gift
was not much, was not of the highest kind. It was far below that of other judges in Israel, nor did
it produce any great results. Is it not possible that the reported mighty deeds of the redoubtable
Nazarite of Dan had something to do in moving Hannah to set apart her boy, the boy for whom
she had prayed, to be a Nazarite from his birth? Samson may have contributed to give to Israel
the greater Samuel. "I, too," he had stirred the woman in Mount Ephraim to say to herself — "I
too, would fain have a son devoted to work wonders in the cause of God's people; let me make
sacred for the purpose this new-born babe of mine!" and out of that came, not a mere repetition
of the same wonder-working strength, but something infinitely superior — even the wisest,
noblest, and most powerful judge the land had ever seen. And so, often, they who are doing
faithfully, in quite a small way, on quite a small scale, may be secretly conducive to the
awakening and inspiring of grander actors than themselves. There are those who, with their
rough and crude performances, with their honest yet blundering attempts, with their dim guesses
and half-discoveries, do prepare the way, and furnish the clue for subsequent splendid successes
on the part of some who come after them.
II. But observe WHAT SAMSON'S COUNTRYMEN THOUGHT OF HIS AMAZING
PHYSICAL STRENGTH, AND HOW IT IMPRESSED AND AFFECTED THEM. They
ascribed it to the Spirit of the Lord: "The Spirit of the Lord came upon him." That was how they
looked at it. Their mountains were to them more than mountains, they were the mountains of the
Lord, and the might of their mighty men was the might of the Lord. It is worth cherishing, this
old Hebrew sense of the sacredness of things; it helps to make the world a grander place, and to
enhance and elevate one's enjoyment of all skills and powers displayed by men. Samson's chief
value lay, perhaps, after all, in the one inspiring thought which his prowess awakened — the
thought that God was there; for it is a blessed thing to be the means of starting in any sluggish,
despondent, or earth-bound human breast some inspiring thought. Good work it is, and great, to
be the instrument of putting another, for a while, into a better and holier frame, of leading him to
be more tender, more patient, more finely sympathetic, or more believing in the Divine
government of things, and in the reality of the kingdom of God.
(S. A. Tipple.)
Samson
W. J. Heaton.All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, reproof,
correction, and instruction in righteousness. Especially God teaches us by recording lives of men
and women like ourselves, and leaving them there with their lessons staring us in the face.
I. Consider, then, HOW LOW GOD'S PEOPLE HAD FALLEN THROUGH THEIR
UNFAITHFULNESS TO HIM, and their many departures, though they had only been a short
time ago brought into a land flowing with milk and honey. Ammon, Midian, and Moab had all
conquered them in turn. Now it was the Philistines, with a little country bordering on the sea
coast, and with five chief cities, and yet they oppressed God's people! They would not let them
have any weapons, and their very ploughs had to be sharpened at a Philistine forge. They

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