A BAD HAIR DAY! Agape ICA, Taipei, Taiwan, 22 February, 2009

Introduction: The American idiom “A bad hair day,” is when everything in life is going wrong on that day. It can cover a short or long period of time, but the results are the same – bad.

I. Most Well Known “Bad Hair Day” in the Bible Occurred with Sampson, one of the Judges in the Scriptures.

A. Some Background on Sampson. Judges 13:1 – 16:31.

1. Family History. Samson was born to aged parents, Manoah and (wife’s name unknown.)
a. They were a godly family for the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman with a message. She
was barren, but would give birth to a son who should have a Nazarene Vow.
b. Judges 13;24, “Then the woman gave birth to a son and named him Samson, and the child grew up
and the Lord blessed him.

2. He was a Nazarene (meaning to separate or abstain).
a. A Nazarene is a lay person of either sex who was bound by a vow of consecration to God’s service
for a specific period of time or in some cases for life. Sampson’s vow was a lifetime vow.
b. He could drink no fruit of the vine.
c. He could not cut his hair.
d. He could not defile himself by going near a dead person.
3. These public outward signs swerved as a public testimony of his dedication.

B. Sampson Did Great Exploits For God.

1. He was a very powerful man. His exploits included:
a. Tearing a lion apart with his bare hands,
b. Killing a company of the men of Ashdod, setting fire to their fields and orchards
c. Slaughtering a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass.
2. The Start of a Bad Hair Day.
a. Sexual attraction for either men or women have been the
downfall for many a vow to God.
b. Playing with sin gets you ready for a bad hair day. Judges 16:15, “How can you say, “I love
you,” when your heart is not with me? You have deceived me these three times and have not told me
where your great strength is.”
c. Ground work for a bad hair day. Judges 16:17, “So he told her all that was in his heart and said to
her, “A razor has never come on my head, for I have been a Nazirite to God from my mother’s womb.
If I am shaved then my strength will leave me and I shall become weak and be like any other man.”

d. Compromise is a big factor here.

(1) He was playing with a strange Philistine woman.
(2 He was compromising his Godly vow.
(3) He was forgetting the true God and playing with the false God’s of the Philistines.
(4) His constant play with Delilah showed that he was above any religious vow with God.
(5) The Philistines gouged out his eyes, bound him with strong fetters, and set him to grind at the
mill in the prison. Sin has a strange way of making slaves of us.
3. A bad hair day does not have to mean all is lost!
a. But Samson's hair, the secret of his strength, began to grow again. The day came when the Philistine
lords sent for the blind Samson to laugh at him.
b. Samson’s revenge. Samson felt for the pillars on which the house rested, pulled them down, and
died along with 3,000 Philistines.
c. Notice the final price Samson paid for his folly. “HE DIED ALONG WITH MANY PHILISTINES.” God
allowed him to grow his hair back, and with it restored his strength, but how sad that he paid a bigger
price with his death.
4. Burial With Honor: Judges 16:31, “Then his brothers, and all his father’s household came down, took him,
brought him up, and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of Manoah his father. Thus he had
judged Israel twenty years.”

Conclusion: Next week we will look at a city which had “a bad hair day.”