Samson Suffers

I want to start at the place where Samson became a hero and that wasn’t when he carried away the gates of a city, or killed a thousand with the jawbone of a donkey. No Samson became a hero after he was captured because of his weakness. It was at this point, the point of complete weakness, that he began to find his true strength.

He had been captured and bound with metal shackles, normally it would have been leather but his reputation was too great to allow the risk so the put iron bands on him.

His eyes were put out. This was usually done to captives of great importance. The greater their renown the more dangerous they were and the greater the humiliation they must be put to.
He was turned into an animal or a slave grinding out grain in the prison house.

The after a time the Philistines had a holiday to worship their God Dagon. Dagon was a fish God, since the Philistines were a sea-going people whose power was derived from trading in the Mediterranean. He was usually depicted as a being with the upper body of a man but a lower body of a great fish.

At the festival Samson was brought out to make sport of, to humiliate. The Bible is not specific but it would usually involve any activity that would seem the most humiliating to a once great enemy now reduced to a blind animal. People would taunt him with insults and challenges. He would be struck by thrown objects. They would match him against small weak opponents like children or dwarves or sic dog on him to torment.

It was now here, at this point that Samson becomes a Hero, not earlier when he had great power, health and respect but now when he is blind, weak, humiliated and shamed. It was this terrible suffering that changed a foolish man into the hero recorded in God’s Hall of Fame.

True Heroes Suffer

I believe that part of being a true hero is having to deal with sorrow and suffering.

True heroes whether they be in the nation’s army or in the Lord’s army are men and women who have learned that victories are never easy and that they must endure suffering and hardship no matter the cost.

Heroes are Moms and Dad who sacrifice and go without so that their children will have what they need to grow up. Heroes are Missionaries who give up their homes and lives to go where God sends them. Heroes are pastors who despite opposition, poor wages, and poor attendance keep on preaching the word of God. Heroes are soldiers who after enduring enemy fire come home to endure fire from their own countrymen.

They all suffer but they do not walk away, they do not give up because they are heroes and true heroes do not quit!

2 Timothy 2:1-3 Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.