Leaders don’t come from Mars, they come from those they lead. They are like their constituents. But in His mercy, God sometimes ordains a leader the people don’t deserve.
Judges shows what happens when a nation neglects God. Yet God graciously gave them deliverers but who were more flowed and unfaithful to God, just as those they were sent to deliver! God sent Samson to begin delivering sinful Israel, but who would deliver sinful Samson? Only a perfect Man could redeem sinful mankind to God.

I. A Sorry Nation (Judg 13:1). For the seventh time in Judges we read that Israel continued to practice the evil in the sight of the Lord [literal]. Evil isn’t what man finds distasteful or unpopular, but what is abhorrent to God. After all God did for Israel, they continued to find wickedness uncontrollably alluring. This is the insatiable power of sin over the human heart (Gen 6:5)!
Israel’s response to the deaths of the three minor judges was to rebel against God and to run after other gods. When a person or nation rejects the worship of Jehovah, all other gods lead to sin in all its forms. The result was God handed His people over to their enemies, this time the Philistines, who would afflict Israel almost 100 years to the reign of King David (2 Sam 5:17-25).
There is no mention of crying in distress or repentance, and serves to warn how sin hardens the heart. When we hear God speak in His Word, we either turn to Him or away from Him (23-Ps.139.24" class="scriptRef">Ps 139:23-24; Lam 3:40; Heb 3:12-13). Our relationship with Him never stands still. We always harden our hearts like Pharaoh (Ex 7:13, 23; 8:15, 19, 32; 9:7) before God hardens us (Ex 9:12).
God’s grace reached out before anyone cried, prayed, repented, or even knew their desperate need. God would send a deliverer because of His character. Oh how great is God’s grace, love, faithfulness, and patience with His people! The covenant making God never fails to keep His covenants. He is wholly faithful; nothing less. How eternally miserable and lost we would be if God didn’t intervene to seek and to save His people, extending grace, forever greater than all our sins. There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us (Richard Sibbes).

II. A Sad Woman (Judg 13:2-5). The un-named wife of Manoah was visited by the Angel of the Lord. His message began with words of personal sorrow, desperation, and misery: barren ... borne no children, but brought hope: you shall conceive and bear a son. There was nothing in her or about her to warrant the son; she was without strength, deprived of hope, even nameless, but God’s grace reached her (Rom 5:1-11)!
In the Bible, when God was ready to begin a new era in His redemptive work, He often sent a baby: Isaac (Gen 15:4-5, 21:1-3), Moses (Ex 6:20), Samuel (1 Sam 1), John the Baptist (Lk 1), and ultimately Jesus, who was born in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4). Babies are conceived with great potential, are fragile, dependent, and take time to grow; all evidence of God’s patience working out His will.
Samson was called by God, even before his conception, as a deliverer. All of grace! He was set apart (nazir) by God, and though he was carried, born, and raised by the woman and her husband, he belonged to God before birth. He wasn’t a clump of cells, a cancer, or a parasite as abortionists proclaim. Samson was a separate, living, human being ordained by God from conception!

III. A Sublime Saviour (Judg 13:5). The promised son would begin to deliver Israel, the work demanding time and labor of other ministers. Why did God choose Samson? Why Manoah and his wife? Why Noah, Abraham, Moses, the nation of Israel … or you? To the praise of the glory of His grace (Eph 1:6, 12, 14).