It’s a good thing I put at the end of my last post where I
was intending to take this series, because as you can see my month got away
from me! Now I am in the car in the middle if hilly Tennessee as my dad drives
us back to Dallas, through a rainstorm at the moment.
As I stated previously, this post will cover the sermon I
heard my first Sunday in the DC/Maryland area, which was June 10. The pastor
was finishing a series about Samson, and his focus was on Strength and Weakness
– the fact that our Failure can lead to Opportunities. Anyone who knows the
story of Samson knows he messed up plenty. (Sounds familiar to my life!) As the
pastor pointed out, Samson broke every part of the Nazarite vow that he was
supposed to live by.
Rather than conquering the Philistines, he ended up as their
slave. Rather than being a moral leader for the Israelites, he engaged in
almost every type of detrimental behavior possible. I can’t imagine how disappointed
and confused his parents were about all of this. Samson was a failure because
he did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it rather than following God’s
leadership.
And so as a consequence of his failures and his focus on
himself, Samson found himself at the bottom, in a position of forced humility
and servitude. Samson had chosen not to submit to God, and as a result he
became enslaved and in a position of submission to the morally depraved
Philistines.* They naturally saw their sudden victory over him as a sign that
their god was more powerful than Yahweh.
BUT God was not done with Samson. Even though he had decided
to depend on himself (and to some extent on his hair perhaps?), God did not
write him off as useless. Yes, Samson’s actions had serious consequences, which
God did not save him from. He lost his eyes – he lost the freedom he thought he
had. During those long days circling around and around grinding the Philistines’
corn, Samson evidently came to a clearer understanding of how he should relate
to God.
What happened next was proof that God doesn’t force us to be
defined by our failures. Yes, failure impacts our relationship with God and
with other people – but it doesn’t confine us to fail forever. Instead, God
provides forgiveness and grace for those times when we depend on ourselves and
as a result fail. As the pastor said, “We cannot undo the bad things we have
done, but we can choose to be faithful from this point on” – though I would add
that choice cannot be something that we drum up based only on our own strength.
The whole point of this sermon was that depending on ourselves
leads only to disappointment. But at the end of the day, it is still so very
easy to look at ourselves as the solution! In reality, only God’s strength and
indwelling Paraclete Holy Spirit can save us from the failure into which we so
easily stumble. But that does take action on our part: We must recognize our
deep need of God and actively choose to submit – as contradictory as that
sounds sometimes.
At the end of Samson’s story, God got the glory. As the
pastor pointed out, Samson’s self-sacrificial choice to bring down the temple
on himself and the Philistines was a heavy blow to that nation. The Philistines
are not mentioned another single time in Judges. Through Samson, God brought an
end of an era to a people who had turned their backs on Him. Out of Samson’s
initial failure came an opportunity for God to be glorified. When Samson chose
to give up his faith in himself, God used him to bring about His plans and
purposes.
God can do the same for every one of us, and for anyone who surrenders.
*This ties in perfectly to the sermon I heard today, which
is what I will talk about next!
