Samson is a mirror image of Israel. Samson wants worldly pleasure; Israel wants worldly security. When these wants are being threatened, how do they react? Samson gets vengeful, angry; Israel is afraid. Don’t you know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?
Fear blinded Israel from seeing the Lord beginning to work to deliver them. Fear keeps us from embracing the Lord’s work in our lives. When the Spirit opens your eyes to see a sin in your life, and he shows you your need to repent, to crucify that sin, does fear ever hijack your repentance? Can I go on for the rest of my life without that worldly impulse or pleasure?
Maturing in the faith, conforming more and more to the image of Christ, is costly. You have to give up the sin, you may very well have to give up the various things that lead you to that sin. But we are afraid of upsetting the status quo. We are very reluctant, at least initially, to deal with our sin head-on, and cut it off at the chokepoint.
11 Then 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock of Etam, and said to Samson, “Do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? What then is this that you have done to us?” And he said to them, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.”