Marilyn and I were talking this week about the current series of sermons. And as we talked, we realised that all the stories we’ve looked at have been stories of grace. We’ve been seeing that the people in the faith hall of fame in Hebrews 11 are actually normal people, with all kinds of flaws. What gets them into that list in Hebrews is not that they are so special, but that God works in and through their lives. There are people there that we would recognise from our own experience. We all know people like Jacob, who was just too slick for his own good, or Gideon, who was too timid to take risks, or Rahab, who had been pushed to the edges of society. More to the point, we can see ourselves in these stories. And the good news is that these are the people, people with weaknesses and failures and struggles, these are the people that God uses.
When I started this series my intention was simply to review some of the big stories of the Old Testament; stories that some of us have known since we were kids, but that others of us might never have even heard before. However, one of the amazing things about studying the Bible is that, if you read it with an open mind and open heart, it can be so much more than just an educational experience. I never intended to make this a series of stories of grace, but the reality is that grace is so much a part of who God is, that you can’t tell stories about him without them being stories of grace.
“Grace” is one of those theological terms that people throw around, but simply means receiving something good that we don’t deserve. It’s the flip side of mercy. Mercy is not receiving something bad that you do deserve, usually in terms of punishment or some other kind of consequences. Grace is receiving good things that we don’t deserve. And God is a God of mercy and grace who will work in and with people that we might be tempted to write off, including ourselves. That’s important to remember this week as we look at the story of Samson.
I would encourage you to read all of Samson’s story in Judges 13-16. It makes fascinating reading. Here was a man who was chosen before his birth to do something special for God, and he blew it again and again.
Samson’s story starts off in the same way as so many in Judges. We talked about this last week. The cycle in which people are blessed by God, after a generation or so they become proud, God has to remove the blessing and replace it with calamity, the people call out to God, he sends a deliverer, everybody goes “Yea God,” God blesses the people, and around we go again.
The difference with Samson’s case is that
the story gets stuck after stage 3. The people were blessed (stage 1), they
became proud (stage 2), God send calamity (stage 3)… then… nothing. The
Israelites didn’t call out to God. In fact they seem quite willing to have the
Philistines ruling over them. [Philistines from
Anyway, after 40 years God got tired of waiting for someone to care enough to cry out to him for deliverance and he took matters into his own hands. (I know that technically God can’t get tired, but in the prophetic books he does speak of being tired of our behaviour in the same way as a parent gets tired of a child being consistently disobedient.) He comes to a woman whom we only know as “the wife of Manoah” and tells her she’s going to have a child and that he will begin the people’s deliverance from the Philistines. And he gives her clear instructions on how the child is to be raised.
Have you ever noticed, ladies, that some men can only understand English when it comes out of the mouth of another man? Manoah was one of those. His wife goes home and tells her husband what just happend, repeating all the instructions verbatim, and Manoah’s response is “I wish the Lord would have told us how we should raise him.” She had just told him that, but obviously he wasn’t listening. So the angel comes again, to the wife (after all she’s the one that’s going to have the baby.) She runs and tells her husband “That guy’s back.” Manoah asks the angel how they should raise the child and the angel says, “I told your wife!” and then goes on to repeat the instructions for the third time.
You have to love the humour in the Bible, and it’s often used to undercut the prevailing culture. According to the patriarchal culture, Manoah is supposed to be the wise family leader, but he really isn’t that bright. It’s his wife who comes out as the wise one. Again, when Manoah realises he’s been talking with God he has the same reaction as Gideon last week, “I’m gonna die!” and his wife has to tell him not to be silly. God isn’t going to tell you his plans for your future then turn around and kill you! She’s a wise, practical lady. She reminds me of Marilyn.
But in the process of the story we get to hear God’s plans for Samson three times. We’re told he is to be a Nazirite.
A Nazirite vow was a way in which Jewish people could devote themselves completely to God for a limited time. It was voluntary, time limited (a few weeks to a few years), and was symbolised by having nothing to do with dead bodies of any sort, nothing to do with grapes, and not cutting your hair. But Samson was a special case. His Nazirite status wasn’t voluntary. God chose it for him. And it was to be for his whole life.
Now that may not seem fair. He had no choice in the matter. But the reality is that there are things we can choose and things we can’t. We can’t choose our parents. We can’t choose our ethnicity. We can’t choose when or where we’re born. And we can’t choose what level of society we’re born into, or what level of privilege we have at birth. Those are all given to us at birth and we have to deal with them as they come.
However, just because God sometimes arranges the details of some people’s births for his own reasons, does not mean that he does that for everyone. The Bible tells us that God planned the births of Samson and Samuel and John the Baptist, because he had a particular plan to use them for a particular purpose. You cannot jump from there to say that he lays out plans for everybody from their conception to their death. If you do, you have the problem of making God the author of sin. That’s especially clear in situations where, for instance, a woman becomes pregnant as the result of rape.
What the Bible does teach is that God chooses to be absolutely committed to love every human being conceived on the Earth, no matter what the circumstances of their conception or birth. In fact I believe the Bible teaches that he has a special place in his heart for those born into poverty, or oppression, or disability, or the margins of society.
But that wasn’t the case for Samson. He was born into a caring family and his parents were told of his special destiny. Unfortunately, as we will see, he didn’t live up to it. You see, when God puts a call on your life you can either cooperate with it or you can fight it.
[Ordination council – people telling of how they were called to ministry – the choice was still theirs to cooperate or not]
[Korean WECer, dedicated to missions as baby, father had fishing business, million dollar boats, multiple houses, lost everything when he was 12, living in a squatters house, attempted suicide, invited to a Christian camp, met the Lord, gave himself to missions, now in training here in Hamilton]
That doesn’t just refer to a call to some kind of “full-time ministry.” Something that the Reformation rediscovered, and that many churches have since lost, is the idea of “vocation.” Being in service in the church is not a higher call than (say) being a politician or an engineer, or a good mother or father, or a business person. Part of being a parent is helping your children discern who they are and what their vocation (their call) is.
Each one of us is shaped differently. God had shaped Samson for a special purpose, for which he was specially gifted. Samson fought against his call and used his gifts selfishly. As a result he accomplished so much less than he could have.
Samson’s story is characterised by three things that our society worships; Selfishness, Sex and Violence.
How was he selfish? God had gifted him with great abilities. Every other judge that God raised up used those abilities to lead the community into freedom. Samson only ever used his abilities to serve himself.
He despised his Nazirite status. In chapter 14 he kills a lion then later eats honey out of its carcass. There goes one aspect of his vow. Later on in verse 10, he made a feast, the word means a drinking party, so much for abstaining from anything to do with grapes.
And, far from seeking to liberate the Israelites from the Philistines, he was best buddies with them. When he saw a cute Philistine woman, he brow beat his parents into arranging the marriage. (Note that there’s no mention of anybody from his side, other than his parents, at the wedding.) Samson knew Philistine culture really well. So well in fact that he could beat them at their own drinking song games.
[Indian and Pakistani youth play game of going through the alphabet singing the first line of a Bollywood song, can go on for hours.]
When the Philistines cheated to save face, he stormed out and killed 30 innocent men to cover the debt. He only became their enemy when they personally insulted him.
[parallels to William Wallace – peace loving, educated in the culture of the oppressor (spoke English, French and Latin as well as Gaelic) until his wife was killed. The difference is that Wallace became a statesman and leader of a nation. Samson only ever became an angry hothead.]
As for sex; Samson never led an army into
Philistine territory, he always went alone, because he was looking for women.
That’s true in chapter 14 and it’s true in chapter 16 when he goes looking for
a Philistine prostitute and when he meets his match in Delilah. Now 14:4 says
that when he went to get a Philistine wife, “His parents did not know that this was from the
Lord, who was seeking an occasion
to confront the Philistines; for at that time they were ruling over
That doesn’t necessarily mean that Samson
was doing what God planned, only that God would use Samson’s disobedience to
accomplish something of what he had planned in the first place. We can’t stop God
from accomplishing his purposes. But we can delay them, usually because he has
to detour around our disobedience. That, in a nutshell, is the story of
And as for violence, whereas the other judges led campaigns to free others, Samson only ever acted in his own self interest, to avenge himself for his sense of being offended.
Look at the whole of chapter 15. After he stormed out of the wedding the Philistines give Samson’s bride to his best man. (That was actually quite appropriate. The marriage had not been completed so she was still single, but her reputation was at stake.) In retaliation Samson burns their crops. So they burn the woman who was to have been Samson’s bride, and her father. He kills a whole bunch of them – then hides in a cave. A thousand of them go to get him and the Israelites hand him over. (In their minds he’s a loose cannon, rocking the boat, but not a leader.) He breaks free and kills all the Philistines.
[We had a sad example of this kind of violence
this week in Hamilton. A spilled beer A SPILLED BEER escalates to the point
where two young men lie dead on
Violence feeds on itself. On Friday night
Rick Tobias of the
Samson never learned to control himself. He wanted what he wanted, and he wanted it now. When something or someone crossed him, he became violent and lashed out. That led to a senseless cycle of violence. Tit for tat. Samson shows no leadership, just a focus on his own desires and his own anger. Remember what James 1:20 says, “Man’s anger does not bring about God’s righteousness.” God can use it, but I don’t believe it’s God’s intention.
That “I want what I want” attitude is what led to Samson’s downfall. Again it’s about a woman, Delilah, who manages to get Samson to tell her the secret of his strength, the fact that he never cut his hair. I think Samson never really saw women as people, just as objects of desire, so he always seemed to be surprised when they actually acted on what he told them. So Delilah cut his hair. The Philistines captured him, gouged out his eyes and put him in prison.
Of course he was wrong about the secret of his strength. There was nothing magical about his hair. It was the last remaining mark of his Nazirite vow. It was God’s special relationship to Samson that gave him his strength. When his hair was cut, so was the relationship and Samson fell.
I’m still really not sure why Samson is in
Hebrews 11. All the rest we’ve looked at ended well, even Jacob the Jerk, but
not Samson. We’d like to think he learned his lesson, but at the end of the
story his strength has returned and he’s brought into the Philistine temple for
display. Here is his prayer just before he brings the roof down on the
Philistines, “O God, please strengthen me just once more, and let me with one blow
get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.” It’s still all about
Samson.
There is nothing magical about following God. Samson thought his hair was magical, but it was actually symbolic of his special relationship to God. We can fall into Christian magic when we think we have to do certain things in certain ways in order to be blessed. If I say this prayer, this many times, then God has to (you fill in the blank.) That’s not how it works. God is looking for a relationship with you, not for you to seek to manipulate him.
God’s will isn’t the only one at work in the world. The Bible is clear that there is a battle between light and darkness, between God and the Devil, and that we can lend our wills to help one side or the other. God’s ultimate victory is sure. How we get there, and how long it takes, has a lot to do with our responses.
Great potential doesn’t always lead to great performance. Samson was born to be a great leader, but he never gained control of himself. So God had to work through Samson’s selfish, lust-filled anger. And so all Samson ever did was bother the Philistines, not deliver the Israelites.
Samson can be a picture of God’s people, whether the Israelites or the church. We have a great destiny - to change the world for the good - and access to great power to accomplish it. But we get caught up in our own petty desires, and in the process we blow the opportunity to bring to “preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed.”