Amen. If you turn with me please to Judges 14, beginning at the first verse.
Samson went down to Timna, and at Timna he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, ‘I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timna; now get her for me as my wife.’ But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all our people that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.’
His father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord, for he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines at that time. The Philistines ruled over Israel. Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timna, and they came to the vineyards of Timna, and behold, a young lion came toward him, roaring. Then the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat. But he did not tell his father or his mother what he had done.
Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she was right in Samson’s eyes. After some days he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion and honey. He scraped it out into his hands and went on eating as he went. And he came to his father and mother and gave some to them, and they ate, but he did not tell them that he had scraped the honey from the carcass of the lion.
His father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, for so the young men used to do. As soon as the people saw him, they brought him thirty companions to be with him. And Samson said to them, ‘Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes. But if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes.’
And they said to him, ‘Put your riddle that we may hear it.’ And he said to them, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet.’ And in three days they could not solve the riddle. On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, ‘Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’
And Samson’s wife wept over him and said, ‘You only hate me; you do not love me. You have put a riddle to my people, and you have not told me what it is.’ And he said to her, ‘Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?’ She wept before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her because she pressed him hard. And she told the riddle to her people.
And the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, ‘What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?’ And he said to them, ‘If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.’
And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the garments to those who had told the riddle. In hot anger, he went back to his father’s house, and Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his best man.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, there is so much to see and hear and understand, to enjoy and appreciate, and to encourage us found in your word. Give us today what you mean and need for us to hear from your lessons. Help us to hear with open and faithful hearts and to be encouraged in faith of you. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It is reasonable now for us to assume that this is the moment when the judgeship of Samson begins with his request that his parents arrange a marriage for him to a Philistine woman. However, what we do not need to assume is that after this occasion, the Philistines and Samson will become and remain the greatest of enemies, and that their rivalry and struggles will echo, foreshadow, and prefigure as a type, the long-lasting struggle between Jesus Christ and Satan.
And the woman bore a son and called his name Samson. And the young man grew, and the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him in Mahaneh Dan, between Zorah and Eshtaol. See, Samson was born according to the good news proclaimed by an angel of the Lord, and Scripture leads us to believe that Manoah and his wife were faithful and obedient to the angel’s instruction, that they raised Samson according to the rules which govern Nazarites, that they taught him to fear the Lord and to preserve his own personal holiness, because it tells us that the Lord blessed him, and the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him. Surely God was with Samson. God chose Samson, he elected him, selected him, and equipped him for the Lord’s purposes and the deliverance of Israel.
However, we must remember that even while it is the Lord who gives each of us certain spiritual, physical, or emotional gifts, we decide how to use those gifts. The Lord God, the Holy Spirit, is never responsible or culpable in how we use or how we misuse these gifts. We possess free will after all, but that will is bound by and bound to sin because of our fallen human nature. Even the wills of the elect, who are regenerated in Christ Jesus, will still lead us to sin, although we have been blessed to now have the ability to choose to not sin, unlike the reprobate.
So the Lord empowered Samson for his work of deliverance. The Spirit of the Lord stirred him and rushed upon him, and Samson was left to freely choose how he would respond, react, and use the abilities that God gave him as his choices worked to fulfill the Lord’s decorative will. And Samson went down to Timna, and at Timna he saw one of the daughters of the Philistines. Then he came up and told his father and mother, ‘I saw one of the daughters of the Philistines at Timna; now go get her for me as my wife.’
See, one day Samson decided to get married, as young men tended to do, and according to their cultural norms and traditions, he asked his parents to arrange the marriage for him. However, instead of asking them or allowing them to select a bride for their son as would have been proper for an Israelite, Samson told them that he had already selected a woman to be his match. What he needed now from his parents was help in negotiating the terms.
His parents were understandably upset and outraged because of what he was asking them to do. They tried to reason with him. They argued with him, asking, ‘Is there not a woman among the daughters of your relatives or among all of our people that you must go take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ Because not only should it have been unthinkable and forbidden for an Israelite to marry outside of their faith and the people of Israel, but it was even more unthinkable for a person vowed to such an exceptional decree of personal holiness, as a Nazarite set apart for the Lord, for them to go outside of Israel to find himself a wife.
Samson was breaking the rules, not only defying cultural norms, but also going outside apparently of the Lord’s revealed will for his chosen people. See, the story was not a case of love at first sight. Samson and the girl did not meet, fall madly in love, court in secret, and pledge themselves to one another. No, such a situation is presented as being clinical and is empty of an emotional choice by Samson, as going down to the local meat market and choosing that evening’s steak dinner.
But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, for she is right in my eyes.’ There was no talk here of love or devotion or faith on Samson’s part, only that she was right in his eyes. Why did Samson choose this girl? Samson judged her and decided that she was the right wife for him according to his own standards, his desires, wants, and needs—not according to anyone else’s and certainly not according to the Lord’s standard. I mean, I sincerely doubt she was a Proverbs 8 kind of woman.
Samson’s selection was made according to her appearance, satisfaction of his wants and preferences, without any consideration of her possible needs, wants, desires, or even really any consideration of her will at all—all because she was right in his eyes.
See, Samson will be the final judge written about in this book, and with him we begin to see just how dire the straits were that Israel was in through the reason of Samson’s choice. The narrator is preparing us for the final refrain since it exemplifies precisely what is wrong with God’s chosen people, Israel, during the whole time period of the judges, because then everyone did what was right in their own eyes, including God’s own chosen judge.
So whatever Samson’s personal feelings or specific reasons for making this particular choice were, by his request he was achieving God’s will, as his father and mother did not know that it was from the Lord that he was seeking an opportunity against the Philistines, because at that time the Philistines ruled over Israel. The time had now come for Samson to begin his calling and save Israel from the hand of the Philistines. Why did Samson do all this? Because through his choices God was working to provoke the Philistines.
Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timna, and they came to the vineyards of Timna, and behold, a young lion came toward him, roaring. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done.
See, the original text here is kind of unclear regarding who all went into the vineyard at Timna, but it’s through the narrative of the story that it becomes clear that at some point while they were on their way to negotiate Sam’s marriage, Samson became separated from his parents when he was attacked by this roaring lion. When he was attacked, the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he ripped the animal to pieces with his bare hands, because he had no weapons.
Despite this being such an impressive feat of courage and strength, there was no one around to witness it, nor did he tell anyone about what had happened. Thus it was Samson’s secret; was it his silence? Here, humility? Was it fear of other people’s disbelief? Perhaps he was hiding the fact of the encounter to conceal his great strength, or perhaps he was already thinking ahead to the upcoming wedding feast.
Because immediately after this, Scripture says, ‘Then he went down and talked with the woman, and she was right in Samson’s eyes.’ Although Samson confirms his selection of her as being good, I find it hard to imagine how their introductory conversation could have gone without her finding out about his encounter with the lion. He had just torn a living animal in half; how would he have remained clean afterward? Or did he just carry on going along his way, maybe pausing for a moment just to wipe the blood off of his hands before he met his intended bride and her family?
Being what kind of first impression must he have made upon them, being sweaty, disheveled, probably wearing torn and blood-stained clothes? And despite how he must have looked, smelled, and seemed, her family still agreed to their marriage.
Then, after some days, he returned to take her. So soon thereafter, Samson came to collect his bride, and as he traveled to claim his fiancée, he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion. And behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion and honey. He scraped it out into his hands and went on eating as he went.
See, he stopped to inspect his handiwork, and I suspect that any one of us would have been a little curious. Certainly, most every guy here should have wanted to take a peek just to see what the lion’s remains looked like after a few days, because, well, guys, we’re just like that. He stopped to see what should have been a gruesome sight—a decaying or decayed animal corpse—but instead he found that a swarm of bees had established a hive in and around the cat’s body, a hive where honey had already begun to collect. Something that was out of the norm for sure.
Samson did what many people would have thought reasonable; he scooped out some honey and enjoyed himself a sweet and tasty treat as he walked. And he came to his father and mother and gave some to them, and they ate. He was such a nice guy, wasn’t he, that he gave—he got enough honey to share with his parents.
I mean, Samson was such a nice and thoughtful son, wasn’t he? First, because by touching the lion’s carcass, Samson made himself ritually unclean, and the honey gathered from an unclean source was also ritually unclean.
Then, giving this unclean honey to his parents and allowing them to eat it, he also made them unclean, even though they were ignorant of its source. And although the honey itself was good and sweet, taking it from an unclean source and sharing it around put Samson and his family into a ceremonially unclean status according to the law of God. They were required to have an atonement for sin according to the ceremonial law, yet somehow, this did not actually violate Samson’s Nazarite oath.
I mean, really, what Samson was doing here was he brought himself and his parents down to the same spiritual level as the Philistines, much as Jesus would do by his incarnation. Perhaps like Jesus, he possessed the understanding that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile them since it answers not his heart but his stomach and is expelled; that is, what comes out of a person, that is what defiles them.
So in the grand scheme of holiness, the honey itself was neither unclean nor prohibited despite its source. Yet the point remains that rather than going to show and teach the Philistines a better, the harder way to live and expect them to raise themselves up to his same spiritual level, Samson brought himself down to their level.
I mean, his faithful Israelites—Samson’s parents—were called to holiness and ritual cleanliness, and Samson, he was called to an even higher standard as a Nazarite. Yet he made himself out to seem little better and hardly any different from the Philistines.
See, Samson was acting as a type of Christ, prefiguring the work of Jesus, who emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. See, Jesus came down to our level to live and suffer as we do, joining us to him and uniting us with him, making us his holy bride, sharing with us his glory and his eternal inheritance.
And Samson, he chose a wife from among the Philistines, the enemies of the Lord and his people. He chose her not by any ordinary, reasonable, or discernible manner, but merely according to his own will and good pleasure, by deciding that she was right in his eyes.
Jesus came to Earth and became incarnate as a man because he had chosen himself a bride—the church—out of his enemies. God chose us out of his own sovereign will. Then marrying this girl, Samson would have been bringing her into God’s people, into the people of Israel. And Jesus, he sanctifies us; he has sanctified his bride and is making us holy by uniting us to himself. We were like the unclean, unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines, yet Jesus still chose us to be his bride against every social convention, norm, or reasonable expectation.
Therefore, I pray that we are all more faithful to and trusting of our Bridegroom than Samson’s Philistine bride was, because we are really no more deserving of God’s grace and favor than she was.
So his father went down to the woman, and Samson prepared a feast there, for so the young men used to do. As soon as the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. See, since Samson didn’t have any friends among the Philistines as he prepared the wedding feast to celebrate his nuptials, guests were brought to come and join him in celebration.
I mean, likely, they were invited by the bride’s family as part of the festivities. Samson said to them, ‘Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes. But if you cannot tell me what it is, then you shall give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of clothes.’
And they said to him, ‘Put your riddle that we may hear it.’ See, the answering and telling of riddles was a popular pastime then, just as it has been up until our recent past. I mean, those of us who are more familiar with Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are well aware of their fondness for riddle games.
However, another point here: although Scripture does not say it, it is improbable that this was the only riddle being told during the feast. Now, riddles are brain teasers which work the mind, and almost anybody can participate and enjoy them. They may be challenging and difficult; they may be humorous and fun.
They’ve been used to help people pass the time. Riddles should cause a person to think around corners or outside the box. They must also be solvable. A riddle’s answer should not be dependent upon privileged or secret information, but it could be based on common information used in an uncommon way.
Like, what has roots that nobody sees, is taller than trees, up, up it goes, and yet never grows? What has roots? We usually connect the idea of roots to trees or weeds or other plants, but the riddle plainly tells us that the answer is not a tree since it’s bigger than a tree. It should also not be another kind of plant; the answer rises high up into the sky but never gets any bigger than it already is. The answer is a mountain. An answer which feels quite obvious once you hear it.
Or perhaps, ‘Thirty-two white horses on a red hill. First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.’ But hills are not normally red, making that one a dilemma to solve. Thirty-two; that’s a very specific number, and by the phrasing of the riddle, we know that we’re not actually talking about horses.
So what kind of things are thirty-two and white, and which can champ, stamp, and stand still? I mean, those are interesting verb choices because they’re likely descriptive of particular movements. The answer is teeth. Humans have thirty-two permanent adult white teeth, and the red hill stands for our tongue, while champing and stamping well seems to describe the act of chewing.
So it’s easy to see that while riddles are fun and difficult, they become obvious once the answer is known. So here during the wedding feasts, Samson suggested that they play the riddle game and make it a celebratory friendly competition with the attachment of a relatively small wager, the provision of one suit of clothes. If Samson won the wager, then he would be a very well-off individual, while his guests would have been set back slightly.
Yet if his guests won, then Samson would have been in a bad financial position while each of his guests would have been doing all right. So accepting his wager proves that these guests were not really Samson’s friends, allies, or even friendly acquaintances, because they were willing to take advantage of this backwoods hill country Israelite, potentially impoverishing him. I also sincerely doubt that if they won, they would have been willing to give Samson any grace or even forgive his debt.
I expect they would have exploited his indebtedness as far as they possibly could. But Samson was not an all-brawn, no-brain kind of guy, and he shows caniness here. See, he invited the Philistines into a wager which should be relatively low risk and high reward for them. I mean, they had thirty people working to solve a riddle with seven days to figure it out; it was an offer which they could not, should not, and must not refuse.
And he said to them, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat; out of the strong came something sweet.’ And in three days they could not solve the riddle.
I mean, the answer to the riddle is obvious to us since we know the first part of the story because the narrator decided that it was something which we ought to know already. But to Samson’s Philistine guests, the riddle would have been impossible to answer. We really can see Samson’s cunning brain at work here; his riddle sounded like any other normal riddle. His guests did not object to it when he posed the question; everything about it was technically above board, but it was impossible for anyone to answer his riddle correctly.
Samson was not really being fair to them, but they were also not really being fair to him, either; being strangers pretending to be his friends, taking advantage of his hospitality and accepting the wager in the first place.
However, one bad turn does not deserve another. Retribution and revenge always lead to escalation and reprisals, and Samson’s riddle was very much like Bilbo’s final query to Gollum during their riddle game when he asked him, ‘What have I got in my pocket?’ Just as Bilbo was the only one who could possibly know just what was in his pocket, Samson was the only person who could know the answer to his riddle because no one else knew about the lion and no one knew where he had found the honey that he had shared with his family.
So of course they had trouble solving his riddle; that was the whole point. Samson did not mean for them to solve it. Then desperate Philistines resorted to cheating. On the fourth day, they said to Samson’s wife, ‘Entice your husband to tell us what the riddle is, lest we burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’
They asked his wife for the answer, but even she did not know it. They insinuated that she was taking advantage of them and trying to ruin them, even suggesting that she was being disloyal to her people by seeking their financial ruin. They threatened her life and the lives of her family, so she may not be entirely to blame for what she does next.
She went and asked her husband, and Samson’s wife wept over him and said, ‘You only hate me; you do not love me. You have put a riddle to my people, and you have not told me what it is.’ And he said to her, ‘Behold, I have not told my father nor my mother, and shall I tell you?’
She went before him the seven days that their feast lasted, and on the seventh day he told her because she pressed him hard. She used her feminine wiles to get the answer out of him, an answer which she had not even given to his parents, because Samson knew that the only way to keep a secret was to not tell anybody. She turned on the waterworks and cried; she accused him of hating her.
She kept this routine up throughout the whole week of the feast until he finally relented, broke down, and told her. And then she told the riddle to her people. After she had coerced the answer out of her husband, she immediately betrayed him for love of her family. The sad irony is that although she may have saved the lives of her family, she was impoverishing her husband in the process, and her betrayal proved that Samson was right in not trusting her with a secret.
And we find the seed of his many misogynistic tendencies here in her betrayal. His wife is the reason for his later distrust of women, and so we shall discover that Samson’s greatest weakness is women.
But after she gave her guests the answer, the men of the city said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, ‘What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?’ He said to them, ‘If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.’
See, the Philistines, they correctly answered Samson’s impossible riddle, and Samson knew that they had gotten the riddle’s answer from his wife. And although technically they were not guilty of cheating, because there were no hard and fast rules for the riddle game, he was still honor-bound and obligated to pay his side of the wager.
The Philistines did Samson dirty while Samson was trying to do them dirty; they beat him at his own game, they were better than him at being bad. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the garments to those who told the riddle. In hot anger, he went back to his father’s house, and Samson’s wife was given to his companion who had been his best man.
Finally, we observe three consequences to Samson’s wager. First, being filled with the Spirit of the Lord, Samson attacked, struck down, killed, and robbed thirty Philistine men down in the city of Ashkelon in order to satisfy his debt. It’s very probable that Samson violated his Nazarite vow when he killed those Philistines, which says, ‘If any man dies suddenly beside him and he defiles his consecrated head, then he shall shave his head on the day of his cleansing. The previous period shall be void because his separation was defiled.’
But although Scripture doesn’t say he went through the required ritual cleansing and atonement for his sin, the Lord did not abandon Samson. God showed him grace and mercy despite his sin and continued to give him his great strength. The Lord was patient with Samson despite his sinfulness and his unrighteous actions because God wanted him to call upon the one who strengthened him.
But remember, just as with Ehud, the Lord does not approve of or endorse our wicked and sinful methods; nevertheless, he will use them and turn them to his good somehow. Samson’s death to the Philistines was paid, and the Lord had found an opportunity to act against Israel’s Philistine rulers. His justice may have been satisfied, but since it was not satisfied righteously, we may only expect that the situation will become worse.
Remember that the way we do things matters oftentimes as much as the things which we do, and that we will be held accountable for all of our evil actions, even those done with the best of intentions.
Secondly, Samson went home to his father’s house. He did not establish his own household with his bride. See, he appeared to have abandoned her for her betrayal, because from his perspective she chose her former people, associates, and family over her new husband, his family, and his people. However, we should not rush to judge against Samson for his leaving.
I mean, he left in hot anger after violently exerting himself against a group of Philistines, so it’s reasonable to think that he left town to cool off. It’s doubtful that he wanted escalation because the Philistines would surely be angry with him for his crime in Ashkelon when it became widely known. Considering all of that Samson had done and gone through to gain his wife, it’s unlikely that he truly abandoned her.
He left as he did because it was better for both of them that he leave, and return when he was not expected. Thirdly, his wife was given to his companion who had been his best man. Contractually and legally, this Philistine woman was Samson’s wife. His father and her father had had an agreement, but apparently, their marriage was not consummated during the seven days of the feast. Thus another man gained her as a bride.
She was reclaimed by the Philistines because as far as they were concerned, Samson had abandoned her and surrendered any rights or claims to her, forfeiting the bride price which had been paid. However, just because he left town for a little while did not mean that he was not going to return and claim her.
The story of Samson’s wedding is a thrilling tale that’s filled with intrigue, deception, and danger, but it’s also so much more than that. When we look at the story from another angle, we see something deeper. We can also see here, within the story of Samson’s wedding, a vision of the church’s marriage to Christ, showing Samson as a type of Christ, prefiguring Jesus.
We see a groom freely and sovereignly choose a bride for himself from among his father’s enemies, just as Jesus freely and sovereignly chose the church from among sinful humanity—every one of us the enemy of God according to our fallen nature in Adam. The groom did not choose her according to any perceived earned merit or benefit that she could offer him, as Jesus chose us according to his own will and good pleasure, not according to any merit or deservedness upon our part, nor for any possible benefit that we could give to him.
The marriage was arranged by the groom’s father, and it’s implied that the terms were satisfied by the groom and/or his father, as every person chosen in Christ is given to the Son by the Father. We are purchased and redeemed from our sin through Jesus paying a price for us.
The wedding feast was attended by guests from among the bride’s relations, friends, and people—all enemies of the groom— instead of the groom’s people. Just as everyone is invited to come to church to taste and see that the Lord is good. However, not everyone who attends a weekly worship feast of preparation belongs to our heavenly groom; still, they come and hear his word and behold his glory. Therefore, when Jesus returns in judgment, they will have no excuse.
We see questions being asked and answered during this feast, as Jesus was questioned and spoke in parables and riddles to the confounding of his enemies. Finally, faced with an impossible task, the guests being unable to answer the riddle conspired against the groom rather than ask him for mercy. It said they tried to place him in their debt, as the Lord Jesus Christ gave us his commandments, the law, and they are something which fallen humanity has found impossible to keep or obey.
Therefore, we are called to repent and ask God for mercy. Ever since Christ came, lived, died, was raised, ascended, and now sits at the right hand of God our Father, we may come to him as our great high priest, him who is interceding for us even now because we are given the confidence to draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.
But even though the guests seem to triumph over the groom, he remained honorable and faithfully satisfied his debt and gave them everything which he had promised, despite their cheating. Although it might not have been precisely as they expected, as the wicked in the world presently seem to prosper, and we witness the Lord giving blessings and his good provision to those who hate and revile his holy name, this only serves to increase their knowledge of him and his goodness.
It is a heaping of burning coals upon their heads, increasing their condemnation to come for their failure to honor him. Jesus does not hate the wicked, and God does not take pleasure in punishing them. He pities them, and he loves them, even though he shall judge them; he shall judge them, and they shall be dealt with justly.
Why do the wicked always seem to prosper in life? It’s because this is as good as it will get for them. It’s because the goodness and grace that they receive from God is meant to cause them to turn to him, to seek his forgiveness, show him their thanksgiving and gratitude, and cause them to praise him. Then the groom left, and his bride was wrongfully taken by another.
Although sometimes it feels as if Jesus has left us and abandoned his people, we believe and know that he will return one day. He has promised us, ‘Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age, and I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me, because I live, you also will live.’
So we must continue to wait patiently and faithfully until he comes again. Meanwhile, the world will continue to attack us and keep trying to give us over to the prince of this world, Satan. And remember that no matter what we suffer now—our pains and our troubles, our slips and our falls—God will preserve us for himself.
We must not fear the world or anything that it may try to do to us. We shall not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, because since we have been claimed by Jesus Christ, Satan cannot snatch us away and give us to another, or take us for himself. And although this part of his tale does not seem to end very well for Samson, we know and trust that our ending with Jesus will be an ending far better than we can even imagine. Amen.