Judges 13:1-5 – Set Apart
1 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
2 And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not.
3 And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.
4 Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:
5 For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
Once again, Israel falls back into sin and God brings an oppressor, the Philistines, which have now been oppressing Israel for 40 years. Now the Bible introduces us to our next Judge, and one of the most well known Judges in the Bible, Samson. This passage is actually the Angel of the Lord telling Samson’s parents about his birth and how he would be meant for a special purpose. So special, in fact, that he was going to be a Nazarite starting before he was born. Back then, a person would choose to be a Nazarite for a short time to serve God. Samson was different, and his “vow” had three stipulations (just like any Nazarite vow):
- Could not touch any dead body (animal or human)
- Could not cut his/her hair
- Could not eat or drink anything from a vine (no grapes, leaves, or wine)
Life Step: Think about it…
If God has a purpose for you, how should that affect your life?
What does it mean to “be not conformed to this world”?
Study the Scriptures with Ben Jennings 
Obviously we have to live in this world. The idea here is to be in it but not of the world. Out of the three stipulations for the Nazarite vow, not cutting your hair was the most obvious. It was a visual meant to show others you were set apart for a specific purpose. When you see a police officer you can tell what his job is based on his uniform. Although following the above stipulations didn’t mean people knew specifically what the purpose was, it was still an outward expression that this person had something important to do. Today, once saved, we are set apart from the world. We are not called to wear something specific, or style our hair a certain way in order for others to know who we are. We have been changed from the inside out. We should be displaying our relationship with God in our conduct and how we present ourselves to the world. People should see something different in us because we have been transformed. They should see it in our behavior, our words, our kindness for others, in how we serve unselfishly, our readiness to forgive, giving glory to God for the things we do, being peaceful, and our generosity to others no matter who they are. To sum it up, being in this world but not of it means doing the opposite of what is worldly. This can be difficult when we are surrounded by it all the time. We live in a “it’s all about me” society. Do what feels good no matter who it hurts. As teenagers you are being bombarded with this all the time. On TV, advertizements, magazines, clothing stores, video games, in school and the list goes on and on. Not just kids, adults too. No one said it would be easy, but in this world you will be persecuted for Jesus.
God has a purpose for everyone and I think that it should affect your life in a way you think you need to stop and think about every thing you do even the little things you do you need to stop and say is this going to have a bad affect on my relationship with God.
Knowing God has a purpose for my life should change everything! It’s easy to go with what everyone else is doing, but Christians are supposed to be set apart from the everyone else, so when it says “do not conform to this world” that means we shouldn’t do what everyone else is doing. That’s hard, but like Cody said above, God has a purpose for our lives! It might be hard to see it now, but everything that we go through, and everything that happens to us is for a reason!