Judges 15:4-5 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, 5 lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves.
Have you ever noticed that some of the most unusual things happen and the result is the greater glory of God. We could never have imagined that set of circumstances bringing that result. It boggles our minds. We can’t connect the beginning and the end. They seem disconnected.
But this is often the very way that the LORD does things. He uses the unlikely, the non-intellectual solution.
In this account of Samson’s role in bringing freedom back to Israel there are many unusual ways the LORD works. One of them is in today’s text. The LORD used a broken human being to accomplish His will. And how did He do it?
The LORD used foxes. That’s right. They weren’t even will foxes. They didn’t want be tied together by their tails and a flaming torch connected to their tails. The were terrified as they tried to run away from the flame, but the flame just seeded to follow them.
And the result was judgment on the Philistines, Israel’s oppressive dominators. Their crops were destroyed, causing untold hardships for several years. It was one of several judgments that brought the Philistines to their knees before the Holy God.
Think about the Cross for a minute. Who would have planned to have the Creator of the Universe take on humanity, live a sinless life, and then die the death of the guilty, the vilest of society. That is not what anyone would expect. We would expect power and strength to upend the sinful order. We would expect something that makes sense.
The Cross doesn’t make sense until we see the empty tomb. The void where once lay the body of Jesus was filled with hope. Death had no grip on Jesus. The penalty He paid wasn’t for His sin, it was for ours. And he conquered sin, death, and the grave. Sin can have no grip on us.
The Arnold Journey 