Judges 15

I have never tried to catch a fox before but I have chased a dog around for hours. I never did catch that mutt. Yet Samson managed to catch 300 foxes in this chapter! He kills countless Philistines. Later he kills 1000 Philistines. All of this is done, not by stopping and considering the Lord's will, but through emotion.

After an emotional wedding day which involved killing 30 men for their clothes to pay off a bet, Samson heads home. He has time to rethink his actions. He comes back to get his wife. He is then told that his wife was given away to some other guy. This in turn causes Samson to catch 300 foxes and send them out in pairs. He apparently placed a slow burning fuse on their tails causing them to run wildly through the Philistines farming country and burn down their fields. Consequently, Samson's anger was extinguished, but the Philistines Fields would not be, and neither would his wife. They sent her up in flames as a result, and this rekindled the anger. He then went on a killing spree.

The stories in this lesson seem far fetched and out of control. Here is the strongest man ever to live, and he cannot control his emotions. The result: thousands die. Now I do not know about you but at first glance I think to myself, "This is ridiculous." Consider it. Emotions are a powerful thing. They can be friend and foe. They can determine what we act like. They can even cause someone to walk into a town and kill 30 men for their clothes, or perhaps walk into a university and kill 30 men because their girlfriend left them. Emotions still exist today and Satan will use them against us. Consider it, if you had no walls to hold in your emotion, what you would act like. If I were emotion controlled today, I would be in a very different place.

Jesus works beyond our emotions. Why? Because Jesus replaces our emotions. He replaces happiness with joy, in both good times and bad. He replaces calm with peace. He replaces selfish "love" with non-selfseeking love (Look up 1 Cor 13 for true definition). Most of all, he replaces us with Him. Without Jesus, I am just as capable of doing everything Samson did, except not nearly strong enough. I am just as capable of doing what that poor soul at V-Tech did, just because his emotions got the better of him. I am just as capable of ruining my life except for the fact that Jesus has restored it. The glass can only spill what it contains. Are you filled with emotion? Or are you filled with Jesus?