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The sermon presents Samson as a warning that God-given privilege and strength are forfeited when consecration is abandoned. Spurgeon strongly rejects human sufficiency, emphasizing that conversion and faithful service depend on God’s power. Christians are urged to dedicate their daily work, money, influence, and whole identity to God’s kingdom, while resisting pride and compromise. The sermon also calls the unconverted to seek grace in Christ before final judgment.
Theological center: Spiritual strength comes from God’s grace and is experienced through wholehearted consecration to Christ, not through human ability.
Applications: Consecrate yourself wholly to Christ · Dedicate your work and resources · Seek God’s kingdom first · Guard against spiritual compromise
Primary texts: Judges 16:20-21 · Esther 4:14 · Matthew 6:33
“And she said, the Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him. But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison house.” Judges 16:20-21 SAMSON is, in many respects, one of the most remarkable men whose history is recorded in the pages of inspiration. He enjoyed a singular privilege only accorded to one other person in the Old Testament. His birth was foretold to his parents by an angel. Isaac was promised to Abraham and Sarah by angels whom they entertained unawares. But save Isaac, Samson was the only one whose birth was foretold by an angelic messenger before the opening of the Gospel dispensation. Before his birth he was dedicated to God and set apart as a Nazarite. Now, a Nazarite was a person who was entirely consecrated to God, and in token of his consecration he drank no wine, and allowed his hair to grow, untouched by the razor. Samson, you may therefore understand, was entirely consecrated to God, and when any saw him, they would say, “That man is God’s man, a Nazarite, set apart.” God endowed Samson with supernatural strength, a strength which never could have been the result of mere thews and sinews. It was not the fashioning of Samson’s body that made him strong. It was not his arms or the fist with which he smote the Philistines. It was a miracle that dwelt within him, a continued going forth of the omnipotence of God, which made him mightier than thousands of his enemies. Samson appears very early to have discovered in himself this great strength, for “The Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan.” He judged Israel for thirty years and gloriously did he deliver them. What a noble being he must have been! See him, when he steps into the vineyard for a moment from his parents. A lion that has been crouching there springs upon him, but he meets him all unarmed, receives him upon his brawny arms, and rends him like a kid. See him afterwards, when his countrymen have bound him and taken him down from the top of the rock, and delivered him up to the thousands of the Philistines. He has scarcely come near them, when, without a weapon, with his own foot, he begins to spurn them. And seeing there the jawbone of an ass, he takes that ignoble weapon, and sweeps away the men that had helmets about their heads and were girded with greaves of brass. Nor did his vigor fail him in his later li…