Isa 7:14-15 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good. ________________________________________________________________________

Perhaps you noticed that both texts today came from the Old Testament. And despite that fact, I am terribly excited about what I am preaching today. I have often wondered what it would have been like to be alive in Peter and Paul's day. To be a preacher in the Early Church when people were first learning about Jesus Christ and the whole world didn't think that they were "saved." I have often wondered if I would have been an effective preacher back then. Now I know, that this is an Apostolic Church, and I am an Apostolic preacher which means that I try to preach and live the same experience and message that the Apostles did back then: that's not what I am wondering about. I have no doubts about my message today, but I do realize that it is easier to preach Jesus Christ and His Gospel with the many New Testament books to help me out.

Think how often that we quote the New Testament in teaching and preaching today and we rightfully do so. But I want you to realize that when Peter and John and Paul preached, there was no New Testament. The original Apostolic preachers in Grace had but one message: Jesus Christ and yet they only had the Old Testament scripture to draw from. And yet even though they had, what to me would seem a serious handicap, they were able to turn their world upside down with their preaching of Christ. There are many preachers today who would not have been able to preach back then. There is a movement today that the Old Testament is irrelevant and so there is no need to really study it or understand it! Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, we are no longer under the Law of Moses, and are now under a dispensation of Grace, but yet Jesus said of the Old Testament:

It did not bother or slow down the ministry of the first disciples because they only had the Old Testament scriptures because they understood that those verses were written about Jesus Christ! Luke records how after Jesus' death and resurrection, two of His disciples were walking down a road from Jerusalem dejected, when the Savior unknowingly joined Himself to them and began to talk to Him. Not recognizing Him, they began to tell Him of Jesus' death and then Jesus began talking about Old Testament scripture:

Jesus began at the first five books of the Old Testament which were written by Moses and then continued on through all the prophets which are the culmination of the Old Testament scripture and "expounded unto them in ALL the scriptures" the things that referred to Himself! They walked together slowly about seven and a half miles and all the way Jesus was showing how that the Old scriptures were written about Him and to learn about Him. Later the disciples said "didn't our heart burn within us, when He spake of the scriptures?"! That day upon that lonely road those disciples learned a great truth about God's Word: that there is nothing there by accident and every story and every life and every tale recounted in even the most obscure Old Testament books are written because they reflect something about Jesus!

I would have liked to been able to hear the teaching of Jesus on that day more so than any other day. I'm sure Jesus mentioned the rock that followed Israel around in the wilderness giving water every time they grumbled to Moses with thirst. Paul also wrote about that rock and said "that rock was Christ!"(1 Corinthians 10:4). Not that Jesus was in a stone that rolled around the desert, but the reason that God allowed that precious water to flow from that particular source was to teach us something about the "Rock of Ages" Jesus Christ who would come forth one day and would be "struck" or "crucified" and in doing so would pour the living water of the Holy Spirit upon the earth so that we could have our spiritual appetites fulfilled! I'm sure that Jesus spoke of the sacrificial lamb that was killed upon the many altars of the followers of God. Those verses spoke of Christ; He was the sacrificial lamb! They were about Jesus! If you read the Old Testament and learn all of the Hebrew History and yet fail to see Jesus in the story, then you have missed the real point! Everything is really about Jesus Christ!

Why did Jonah have to stay in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights? To teach us about Jesus' burial and subsequent resurrection. Just when the disciples had gotten as low as they could get, they should have remembered that just like Jonah, after three days and three nights, Jesus was again going to be up and walking around on the top side! There's a tremendous principle here that I am taking a little time to point out: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- what we call the Gospels -- are very important books and think God for them. They are indispensable. But don't fall into the trap that only those four books, or only the New Testament is about Jesus Christ. The whole Bible was to teach us about our great Savior who loved us enough to come to the earth that He created and die for us! From the sacrificial lambs to the story of Jonah and the "whale" all of scripture speaks of Jesus Christ! Don't miss the point: it's all about Him!

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With all of that in mind, rewind back to the book of Judges and the man named Samson. If you are familiar with the story of Samson, then you would immediately think that he is not a good representation of Jesus. Jesus was sinless; Samson had many faults. Jesus stayed faithful to the laws of Moses; Samson lusted after Gentile women. Sadly, there are some people who are forever viewed through what they had the potential to be, and Samson is one of those people. Blessed with a tremendous anointing by God, He was supposed to be the savior of the Jews from the oppressive hand of a nation of great warriors named the Philistines. You may recall years later, Israel was still fighting against the Philistines in the time of Saul and it was a young David who withstood a giant named Goliath and wrought a great victory through the help of the Lord. Goliath was a Philistine. Most people don't realize that God had to raise up David to fight those people because Samson didn't complete the job that God had given him. If Samson would have stayed faithful to God, there wouldn't have been any Philistines left for David to fight. What Samson didn't do, God rose up David who did. King David spent his entire life fighting the Philistines. And so did several other kings of Israel. Because Samson didn't kill them when they were small, they grew into a much bigger problem than they should have been. So it is even with small problems and sins in our lives today. If we do not remove them and allow God to take care of them when they are small, they become much harder to deal with as time goes by!

Because of Samson's many shortcomings, most preachers use him as an example of a person not living up to their potential and as a warning to not play with sin. Samson is a perfect example of all of those things. BUT, because we focus on his negatives, most people never realize what God was trying to do in Samson's life. Most of them don't realize that Samson's life -- if he had stayed faithful to God's will -- was supposed to be a perfect and mighty representation of Jesus Christ. Today, let's do something that perhaps you've never done before: let's ignore the faults and mistakes and bad traits of Samson and let's focus on his strengths and victories. Not only will it be good practice for us to learn to see the good in others, but a picture of Christ will emerge from an Old Testament story!

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Before Samson was born, an angel appeared to his mother who at the time had no children. The angel told her that she would shortly have a son upon whom would rest a mighty calling and that her son would save Israel from their enemy, the Philistines. When the woman told her husband what the angel had said, he didn't really believe her until the angel appeared a second time unto him. The angel confirmed that his barren wife was really going to have a son and that the son was to be special and mighty and a savior of Israel from the enemy.

Sound familiar? In the Gospels we find that an angel appears first to a women that had no children named Mary and announced that she was to have a son who would be mighty and would be the savior of Israel. When Mary told her fiance', Joseph, he really didn't believe her until an angel appeared a second time to him personally! The strange circumstances of Samson's birth are too close to those of Jesus' to be coincidence. It is obvious that Samson's life was to tell of the one who was to come: a mighty man indeed named Jesus Christ!

The angel told Samson's parents that the boy was to be a life-long Nazarite. The term meant "consecrated" or "separated unto the Lord." Under Moses' law, male Israelites could choose to take "the vow of the Nazarite" for either 30, 60, or 90 days. What this meant was that the person wished to grow closer to the Lord and wanted to "separate themselves" as a living sacrifice to God. When they took this vow, they were not to cut their hair for the length of the vow, thus marking themselves as looking different from the other men of Israel who wore their hair short. They needed this mark because for the length of the vow, they had two other stipulations: they could not drink any alcoholic beverages, grape juice, or even eat grapes or raisins; they could not touch a dead body, even to the point if their parents died during the time of their vow, they were not allowed to go to the funeral. In response to their separation, God would give the person taking the Nazarite vow a special anointing or blessing for the time of their vow. When the days of the vow were finished, the man would completely shave his hair and offer it with a lamb upon the altar unto God as worship.

Samson was the first person ever designated as a "life-long" Nazarite. God ordained and called him to be separated for the work of God and to have a special anointing before he was ever born. In response, God's Spirit would move upon Samson in a mighty way unheard of ever before. God's Spirit would equip him with supernatural strength with which God intended for Samson to use to defeat the enemies of Israel: the Philistines. Samson looked normal and was normal, except for his vow. But when the Spirit of God would move upon him, we find him killing thousands of armed and trained enemy soldiers with no other weapon but the jawbone of a donkey. We find him surrounded once in a city by an entire army and the Spirit of the Lord comes upon him and he rips the huge gates of the city, weighing thousands of pounds, right out of the wall and ground and walks UP a hill with them on his back and with a mighty heave shoves them into the ground on top of the hill as if they were built to go there and then stands in front of the strange sight of those gates in the middle of nowhere and turns to the enemy army and basically says "anybody want to fight?" Those guys took one look at those gates that were built to withstand an entire army on top of that hill and ran as fast as they could away from such a man with so much power!

In our text, we read about one other fascinating story of Samson's life. He was traveling through the vineyards of Timnath (which means "appointed place -- keep that in mind) and suddenly a young lion jumped out and attacked him. Younger lions are known to be more fierce than older lions because they are not wise enough to fear human being's weapons and they do not tire as easily as the older ones. Here Samson is going through an appointed place in a vineyard bare-handed and suddenly this vicious roaring animal attacks him. But the scriptures say that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson and he tore it apart as if he was holding a new-born goat! What power that this man had through the power of the Lord! And the crazy thing about this story is that months later, Samson is walking home through the same spot and he notices that bees have made their home in the dried carcass of the lion. Reaching in, Samson finds that the one fierce lion is now home to a world of sweetness and not only does Samson eat the honey, but he takes some home to share with his parents! Only he did not tell them that the honey came from a lion that he had ripped apart with his bare hands!

Time and time again we find that Samson demonstrated a tremendous power that could only come from God! And that power came from the fact that from his birth, he had kept faithful and separated himself unto God and His purpose.

The strange thing about Samson's strength, is instead of the Jews being "gung ho" for him, they were scared to death of him. In my way of thinking, I would be glad to have somebody like Samson on MY side in a fight. Yet, in Judges 15, we find the Jewish people go to Samson and tie him up with ropes and delivered him to the Philistines. They were afraid of someone who had so much power, so much that they essentially rejected his rule! Samson, of course, had the power to kill all of the Jewish army that came to bind him, but he allowed himself to go along with it and allowed himself to be captured and delivered into the hand of the enemy as if he were totally defeated. And just when the enemy was gathering around him and celebrating his defeat, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he ripped the ropes and chains apart as easily as if it were wet yarn and proceeded to single-handedly utterly defeat the entire army of Philistines that were surrounding him! Never before someone of such power come to Israel! Never before had the enemies of God seen one man who was as strong as this anointed one!

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Let me preach to you Jesus from the story of Samson! Jesus did not take the Nazarite vow exactly according to the law of Moses, but He did in Spirit! 1 Corinthians 11 tells us that to God our hair represents our submission to Godly authority in our life. And we find Jesus stayed faithful to the plan of God his entire life, faithful to the will of the Spirit of God that resided within Him! The reason that the Nazarite was forbidden to drink grape drinks even to the point of not eating grapes and raisins was representative of the fact that he was to only yield himself to the spirit of God and no other spirit was to have control of his body. The reason that the Nazarite could not touch a dead body was representative of once a person is separated unto God, they are not to go back to their "old life style" and touch the "dead body" of what they used to be. There is to be a change in our lives when we are born again and if you will repent of your sins, be baptized in the name of Jesus, and allow God to fill with you the precious gift of the Holy Ghost, there WILL be a change. Paul wrote:

Jesus Christ makes you a new creature, but just like the Nazarite had to separate himself from the dead, you and I then must be willing to stay in this new life and refuse to touch the "dead body" our past life and sins. We must not return to such a lifestyle! And in doing so the power of the Holy Ghost will bring a fresh anointing and strength in our life! As our perfect example, Jesus was not a Nazarite under Moses' law but He fulfilled all of the requirements in a spiritual way and stayed true to them all of His life! Today the Nazarite vow is not just for a select few of God's people, but if you are born again into this kingdom of God, then God ordained before your new birth, that you were to be a separated people unto Him! And so, like Jesus, we fulfill the law of the Nazarite in a spiritual way. We obey 1 Corinthians 11 and submit to Godly authority and wear our hair in such a way that shows our obedience. We refuse to go back and touch the dead body of sin that we used to be. And we obey the command of Paul and I quote it in the New Living Translation:

The Holy Ghost is all the "spirits" that we need! Why? Because we are choosing to live our lives separated unto God and I can testify: when you live according to this way, you will receive a mighty anointing and blessing and power from God in your life!

So even though He was not technically under the Nazarite vow of Moses, we find that Jesus set an example for us by obeying in a spiritual sense the stipulations of the vow. It is funny to note, that Jesus was also known as a "Nazarite" not because of the vow, but because He grew up in the town of "Nazareth!" There can be no coinicidence! Obviously Samson was just a forerunner was just a "shadow" of a really powerful man to come: Jesus Christ! Their lives are far too similar!

And so it is no stretch to point out Jesus in the life of Samson. Because like Samson, Jesus also trudged up a hill outside the gates of a city with a tremendous burden upon His back. But it was not the burden of wood and metal upon the back of Jesus Christ, but the burden of the sins of the world! He walked up that hill under physical duress but that was nothing to compare with the weight of the world upon His shoulders, and yet with a strength that could only have come from God, Jesus faced that long hill and willingly trudged up it in the face of adversity. And, oh, it was so much more than just the gates to an earthly city that stood upon that hill of Jesus' death, but it was the door to eternal life! It was the entrance into an heavenly! And even though the enemies of Christ had to turn and flee, there are some that have willingly even thousands of years later willingly ascended that hill with Him by bowing a knee in repentance, and have buried their old man in the waters of baptism, and have walked through that door into a blessed life far greater than anything that we can imagine! And I can tell you that Jesus Christ is far greater than Samson ever dreamed of being! He is God Almighty!

And you must realize that even though like Samson, the Jewish people rejected this powerful savior, and even though Jesus certainly looked defeated being arrested and led to Calvary and being hung upon that cross by Roman soldiers. Even though it looked like He was utterly defeated and had fallen into the hands of the enemy, realize that -- like Samson -- Jesus chose to ALLOW Himself to be captured and chose to ALLOW the enemy to think that they were winning. And -- like Samson -- Jesus allowed Himself to be wrapped with the bonds of death! Indeed, He even allowed it to bind Him for a short time. But just when His enemies were celebrating the loudest, after three days and three nights of being in the grave, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jesus and He BROKE open the chains of the grave that were holding Him and He gained victory over death, hell, and the grave and sent His enemies fleeing for their very lives with His resurrection! Samson the strongest man in the Bible? You've got to be kidding! Let me introduce you to someone much stronger! A much stronger savior than Samson and His name is Jesus Christ!

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So perhaps now you can understand why, when I wanted to preach Jesus Christ to you today, that I started off with an Old Testament passage about a man named Samson! And perhaps now you understand why I was so excited to read to you the story of Samson in our text. In this simple story is such a truth so profound that it's the answer to every one of your problems and situations! I want to finish this sermon by pointing out to you that there are four things present in this story: Samson, the vineyard of Timnah, a roaring lion, and eventually honey. Got that? the anointed of God, an appointed place in a vineyard, roaring ugly, and sweet honeycomb.

One more extra scripture and we are ready to roll:

The story of Samson and the lion is not in the scripture by accident because it illustrates a tremendous lesson for all of us about the power of Jesus Christ!

Jesus Christ was the anointed one who was even stronger and more powerful than Samson! And as He approached an appointed place in His life, the devil pounced upon him with everything that he had trying to devour this man Christ Jesus. But to the devil's surprise, when he attacked Jesus Christ with great strength and power, Jesus "ripped" that vicious lion apart without a gun or spear, but did it with "His bare hands!" And that appointed place we call "Calvary" that was supposed to be the place of Satan's greatest victory suddenly turned into the place of His worst defeat! That roaring lion, you see, was torn apart by someone much stronger through the power of the Spirit of the Lord! And out of what was supposed to be His death and defeat, Jesus Christ drew something sweet as honey! He brought salvation and healing and hope and deliverance! Now you know why the prophet Isaiah said about the Messiah:

When you have tasted the sweet blessings of the Spirit of God, then you know that the bitter offerings of this world hold no appeal to you! The power of the Spirit of God within our lives is sweeter than anything that this world has to offer! When Jesus appeared to His disciples after His resurrection in a locked up room, some of them were having trouble realizing that He had actually rose from the dead and was really before them in a glorified body. The scriptures say that to prove to them that He had really risen, that Jesus ate "fish and honeycomb." His eating that honeycomb was saying "the devil came at with me with everything that he had, but with my bare hands I tore him apart and hear I am eating honey just as the scriptures said that I would!" Out of the strong and fearful lion came a salvation and a hope as sweet as honey!

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I close with this:

Jesus said to His disciples "greater works than these shall ye do" (John 14:12). Even Samson didn't keep the honey to himself but took of it and shared it with his family! Remember the time that the people were trying to elevate Mary beyond what she should have been and they stopped Jesus' ministry by telling Him "your mother is here." Jesus responded:

When you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, and are "born again" of the water and the Spirit you become "family" to the One who was stronger than Samson! You become separated unto God. You receive a powerful anointing upon your life in response to that separation! And the sweet victory that Jesus pulled from the carcass of the lion, He is willing to share it with you!

I don't care how much it seems as if the devil has been roaring against you! I don't care how strong Satan seems in your life. I don't care how fearful and afraid you are in your situation, and even if it seems that your whole life is just moving toward an appointed place of destruction. Fear Not! Get Your Head Up! Separate yourself unto God! Let the Spirit of the Lord come upon you! You will find a powerful anointing come upon you! You will find that God will not let the devil destroy you! You will find that He is more powerful than even Samson! And you will find that after you have gotten the victory over the dreaded, that in time, something sweet will flow from out of it! God has a way of getting honey from a lion! Of getting sweet blessings from a bad situation! Of turning an appointed place of devastation in your life to a place of powerful victory! Trust in Jesus and give your life wholly to Him! He is more powerful than the devil. He is more powerful than any situation. Let that lion roar! God will cause honey to come from it! Jesus is strong enough to give you honey from the lion!