Judges 15:18 And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?
Samson is one of the most interesting and perhaps conflicted characters in all the Bible. He is an interesting man. On the one hand, you find that “the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him.” On the other hand, you find that Samson was a man who seemed to be totally governed by his flesh, by his passions. If he was hungry, he ate. If he was mad, he took revenge. If he saw something he wanted, he took it. He never thought about the way he thought; he just thought and acted. There was no gap between what he wanted and what he did. He wasn’t even aware of it. So, Samson was a man who had no perspective whatsoever.
When you get to Judges 15, the story is all about revenge, the revenge of Samson on the Philistines. In verse 7 Samson says, “Yet will I be avenged of you, and after that I will cease.” He is speaking of the Philistines, and the back and forth battles he had had with them. His story here is all about getting revenge.
After God gave Samson a miraculous victory over the Philistines, he was worn out and thirsty. The Bible says, “And he was sore athirst, and called on the LORD, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised?” He is saying, “Hey, I’ve had this great victory over an entire army and now I’m going to die of thirst. Does that make sense, God?” He called upon God, and God provided for him.
Later, when Samson was taken by the Philistines because of the trickery of Delilah, the Bible says that he woke and said to himself, “I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself.” And the Bible comments, “And he wist [knew] not that the LORD was departed from him.” In one story he had a great victory and despaired of dying and in another story he was about to suffer his greatest defeat and thought he was fine.
When he was thirsty, he was self-absorbed. It led to despair. He said, “I die.” When he was arrogant, he was not self-aware. He wist not. He made assumptions. Samson’s entire story is a story that is not about Samson. It is about God and His provision for Israel over the Philistines, yet Samson seems never to have known that. God was using Samson to gain victory over the enemies of Israel, but in Samson’s mind he was just getting revenge because the Philistines made him angry. He was a man governed by his passions, yet God used Samson.
You learn from Samson that it is difficult for self-absorbed people to have perspective. Now we should be self-aware and realize the way we are. Ironically, Samson was not aware of God in his life to the extent that he should have been. He wasn’t self-aware, yet he was self-absorbed. He was so consumed with himself and what he wanted he just couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
It is kind of like when a photographer takes a picture of a flower with the camera set for a close-up shot. The rest of the background is thrown out of focus, but if you could see it, you would realize that the flower is but one of an entire field of flowers. If you could back up further, you could see there is an entire forest behind that field. If you could have a drone-type shot, you would see there is a mountain range behind the forest that is behind the field that is behind the flower. But all you can see is that flower. A lot of people are like that. They literally cannot see the forest for the trees because they are self-absorbed. Here is Samson gaining victory over hundreds of Philistines, yet he didn’t know why he was swinging the jawbone of a donkey. In short, he had no perspective.
You and I can do better. It is difficult for self-absorbed people to have perspective, but that changes when we realize that there is a God, that He made us, that there are other people, and that God wants to use us in the lives of others every day.