Friday, December 14, 2007
"What more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets" (Hebrews 11:32).
IDEA: God’s forgiveness doesn’t depend on our strength but on the admission of our weakness.
PURPOSE: To help listeners accept God’s undeserved forgiveness.
Do you think that it is difficult for some people to accept forgiveness? Why?
I. Samson may have had reason for wondering whether God could forgive him.
Does it seem that God had abandoned Samson to the Philistines?
The act takes place in Gaza soon after the harvest when the Philistines held a feast in honor of their god Dagon. The god’s name in Hebrew meant “corn” or “wheat.” The Philistines believed that they had not only captured their enemy, but that their god had enabled them to do it.
Read Judges 16:21-25:
“Then the Philistines took [Samson] and put out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters, and he became a grinder in the prison. However, the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaven. Now the lords of the Philistines gathered together to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice. And they said, ‘Our god has delivered into our hands Samson our enemy!’ When the people saw him, they praised their god; for they said, ‘Our god has delivered into our hands our enemy, the destroyer of our land, and the one who multiplied our dead.’ So it happened, when their hearts were merry, that they said, ‘Call for Samson, that he may perform for us.’ So they called for Samson from the prison and he performed for them. And they stationed him between the pillars.”
How do you think the crowd thought about Samson and his God?
Wine flowed freely during this time of merriment. At the height of their celebrations, the crowd called for Samson. With a touch of irony a young boy led Samson into the temple courtyard by a chain. Everyone mocked him. They derided his God, they laughed at his clumsiness, and they demanded that he amuse them like a clown at a banquet. He entertained them not with feats of strength but by the degrading acts they made him perform.
Samson had never been lower in his life. Because of him the Philistines, God’s enemies, sneer at his God.
II. Samson believed that as low as he had fallen, God could restore him.
Samson trusted wholeheartedly in God and he called on Him to use him again. In Judges 16:28 he prayed for only the second time. (He had prayed in 15:18 when he was depleted physically from thirst.) This was the prayer of a man who had gone through God’s refining fire:
“O Lord, Yahweh, remember me, I pray, and strengthen me, I pray, only this time, O God, and let me be avenged with vengeance this once on the Philistines because of my two eyes.”
Samson used three important Hebrew names for God in his brief prayer.
Adonai – “Lord” speaks to God’s irresistible power and might.
Yahweh – the name that is used especially in regard to making and keeping a covenant.
Elohim – it shows God’s power.
Samson recognized his utter weakness. His reliance on God’s grace and power was absolute.