I also want to agree with Gabby and say how wonderful it is to get together with brothers. Knowing many of you brothers over the years, it is a precious thing.
I am thinking of some verses from a psalm:
There will be silence before Thee, and praise in Zion, O God;
And to Thee the vow will be performed.
O Thou who hearest prayer,
Unto Thee all men come.
Iniquities prevail against me:
As for our transgressions, Thou wilt forgive them.
Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee,
That he may dwell in Thy courts.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Thy house,
Thy holy temple.
Lord, that is our confession as we are gathered together this morning. We do agree: it is so wonderful to be chosen by You and to be able to dwell in Your courts—to see things we never could have seen otherwise.
To see how You beautify Zion, even as we sang that song, “Great is the Lord.” It is because Your presence is in Zion that Zion is beautiful. Even as we are allowed to dwell in Your courts here this weekend, in fellowship with one another, gathered together as living stones, You enable us to see corners we have never seen before—something more of Your height and depth and width and breadth, to know Your love in our lives.
As we share the Word together, Lord, help us to see You through it all: in Your majesty, Your grace, and Your love. Make us men of God, even as the theme of this weekend is. May it be the burden of this weekend as well. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Well, actually, in my two times of sharing—this morning and this evening—I want to share out of the life of a particular man, because he has lessons to teach us about being a man of God. That man is Samson.
Now, he is not the model for us to follow. But his life is important and can teach us many things regarding our own life with the Lord. So I would like us to turn to the book of Judges. We will read part of Samson’s life and talk about it this morning.
I am sure you will see that Samson was both chosen and called by a sovereign God.
Judges 13:1-5
Now the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord: and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
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.
And the angel of the Lord appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and hast not borne children: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.
Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing:
For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come upon his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb; and he shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
Let us turn also to Judges 14 and read part of the story there.
Judges 14:1-10
And Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines.
And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said, I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines: now therefore get her for me to wife.
Then his father and his mother said unto him, Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines? And Samson said unto his father, Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.
But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord; for He sought an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel.
Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnah, and came to the vineyards of Timnah: and, behold, a young lion roared against him.
And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and he had nothing in his hand: but he told not his father or his mother what he had done.
And he went down, and talked with the woman; and she pleased Samson well.
And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.
And he took it into his hands, and went on, and ate as he went: and he came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told them not that he had taken the honey out of the body of the lion.
So his father went down unto the woman: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men to do.
Samson was chosen to be a man of God.
The story of Samson is one thing in itself, but to understand its context is just as important. This period of the judges was one of the dark ages of the nation of Israel.
Probably you know something of what happened during those four hundred and fifty years of the judges. It was a story of ups and downs, and ups and downs.
If you look at Judges 2 for a moment, you will see that the children of Israel had gone into the promised land through Joshua, their leader. They had conquered the land and divided it among the twelve tribes according to their inheritance.
Then Joshua died. Judges 2:10 says that another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.
The very next verse begins to show a problem that became chronic to Israel for four hundred and fifty years:
And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baalim.
Then the anger of the Lord burned against Israel. He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; He sold them into the hands of their enemies. This was His discipline.
Finally, they would cry out to the Lord, and He would raise up judges who would deliver them. Then the children of Israel would turn and serve the Baalim again and forsake the Lord. They would go into a period of oppression, where some outside tribe, or even some tribe still native to the land, would oppress them.
Until the oppression became so severe and they reached such a low point, they repented and cried out to God. God was always merciful. He raised up another judge and brought them back to their inheritance, restoring the parts that had been lost.
But it was only a few years before they once again turned away from the Lord—back into idolatry, back down to the bottom—and cried out for help. This cycle went on during this four-hundred-and-fifty-year period approximately seven times: up and down, and up and down.
This is a dark spot in history. You would think that once the children of Israel had possessed their promised land, the land of their inheritance, and remembered their history—how God brought them through the Red Sea, through the Jordan, destroyed Jericho, and fought for them—they would worship the Lord alone.
But it was not long until the world caught their eyes. They became worldly, and they were seduced by the world.
Now, the world does not seduce you just so that you can enjoy it for a season. Israel enjoyed going down to the temples, with the temple prostitutes and these kinds of things, but it did not take long before the very forces behind these gods oppressed them.
By the time Samson came along, they were in the seventh cycle. The Philistines oppressed them so badly that it says they ruled over Israel. In other words, Israel had to pay them taxes. Israel had to go to the Philistine army outposts in the city to get things done. They were totally dominated.
In 1 Samuel, we are told that the Philistines decided there would be no blacksmiths in Israel so that nobody could make a weapon. If you needed your scythe sharpened for the field, you had to go down to a Philistine blacksmith. Israel had no tools with which to defend itself.
When Saul became king, it was only Saul and his son Jonathan who even had a sword. How was God going to deliver His people under the oppression of the Philistines? They had taken away every tool of defense. How could God raise up someone who could defeat the Philistines with his bare hands? It was impossible—but not for God.
The part of the story for which we need to give thanks to the Lord is that the Lord came to their rescue time and time again. It is in such a period of decline and oppression that we especially see the sovereign grace of God.
In the time of Joshua, we see the grace of God. The people went in and took the land; He fought with them. They won by faith, put their feet on the ground, and took possession of the land.
But during the time of the judges, a time of spiritual decline, we see the sovereign grace of God. Why do I say that?
We see the grace of God in Joshua because Joshua and the children of Israel were faithful to obey the Lord, and the Lord blessed them and gave them land. But in Judges, we see the sovereign grace of God because even when the people were unfaithful, God was still faithful.
He would raise up deliverers to bring the people out of bondage according to His own will and for His own name’s sake. The children of Israel were not willing to stand for God in His testimony and in His name.
In order to stand for the Lord, you have to stand exclusively for the Lord—no idols. The children of Israel were not willing to do that. God had to stand for His own name, because even when man is faithless, God remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself.
Out of His mercy and pity for the people and their plight, He raised up judges in that day. I give you that background because, to me, where we are today as brothers in the body of Christ, we face much the same situation.
The church, in the wider sense, is in a cycle of going up and down, and up and down. When it gets down into a desperate spot, thank God, He raises up men who preach the Word of God, and they bring revival.
Today we call the book of Judges a picture of revival in the Christian church. The church gets worldly. The church gets low. The church gets full of sin. Finally, some people begin to cry out to God, and just when the situation gets as low as it can go, God raises up somebody.
Maybe it is Billy Graham. Maybe it is some other preacher—D. L. Moody, or somebody. They begin to preach the gospel and preach revival. The hearts of the people return to the Lord, and there is a season of refreshing.
Church history has gone up and down over the years in this kind of revival cycle. I remember, when I first came to the Lord, I was a Baptist. I was saved in a Baptist church and went to a Baptist school, so I was a Baptist.
There was one Baptist preacher whom I thought was the best preacher I had ever heard. I still think he is one of the best I have ever heard. His name was Stephen Olford. I do not know whether you have heard of him, but he was a Baptist preacher from England who lived in the United States for more than fifty years.
He wrote a book that touched my life. I remember reading it while I was still in college. The name of the book was Heart-Cry for Revival. This man always preached revival. He went to churches, conferences, and conventions, calling the church back to repentance and revival.
That was his ministry. That was his heart cry. He felt that it was a heart cry from the Lord. I am thankful for my brother because he preached the Word faithfully, and many times revival was brought to churches.
I remember he had a church in New York City, Calvary Baptist Church, right on West Fifty-Seventh Street. He was pastor there for perhaps fifteen years. When he came to that church, it was in a low spiritual state.
He brought in deeper-life speakers—Alan Redpath, Stuart Briscoe, and many other men who had written books. They had revival in that church. I remember being there. You could feel it in the air: people repenting and coming to the Lord. It was wonderful to be in that church and hear them sing hymns with all their hearts.
But that church now is looking for another revival.
In the Baptist church, we used to have a revival once a year, because we figured the spiritual blessings lasted maybe six months. Then things hit the tank, and we had to bring in a revival preacher. Perhaps he would preach, people would come up, and they would come back.
I always used to kid and say that in the Baptist church, when you have a revival, very few people get saved, because, like most churches, all the Christians are in the church. But people did rededicate their lives. This is a Baptist phrase.
Please, if you are a Baptist, excuse me. I am not trying to belittle Baptists, because they are doing what they are burdened to do, which is revive people. So they had rededication.
At the end of every meeting, I remember, I rededicated myself so many times that it was almost like one of those old washing machines with the little wringer on the front, where you squeeze the water out of the clothes. I called it a “rededicator.”
Even when I preached for Baptists—because when I became a minister, at first I was a Baptist minister, and I went and held revivals—at the end of the meeting I would turn on the rededicator. I would say, “Come on up here; we’ll squeeze you through. Get all the sins out, and you will flop down on the other side and be okay.”
People would come up, cry, and rededicate their lives. Then two years later they would need the squeezing machine again. We need revival.
Today, in the larger church, there is tremendous emphasis upon revival. In Brownsville they caught some revival down there. I really trust and pray that they really caught some revival. But, brothers, I have to say that probably, at the most, within ten years they will need the machine again.
This going up and down, and up and down—is this the way of God? Is this the sense of the church? Is this the way we are supposed to be living, even as a fellowship, a gathering of people wherever you are from?
In our own personal lives, we go through times of dryness and times of great blessing and a sense of God’s presence. That is part of life. In the life of God’s people, there are times when things seem difficult and dry, or when we are going through real dealings with the Lord; there are other times when we are free, blessed, and worship is wonderful. I am not talking about that.
Somewhere along the line, the Lord began to speak to my heart and say, “The way of revival is not My way. I revive My people out of pity and compassion, but My plan is not for My people to go up and down, up and down.”
What is missing? What is needed for there to be real progress in the Lord—not merely little movements, but not this kind of crashing?
At the very end of Judges, the last verse of the book summarizes the spiritual condition:
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
These two parts of the statement are like a chicken-and-egg question: which comes first? Everyone does what is right in his own eyes, or there is no king? Or there is no king, and therefore everyone does what is right in his own eyes?
This is the problem: they had no king. They had no sense of burden and no direction, so everybody did what was right in his own eyes.
To me, this is almost a definition of Christianity today, in the widest sense: it is a crossless Christianity. Everybody does what is right in his own eyes.
What did Jesus say? If you want to follow Him, if you want to be made into a man of God, what must you do? Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. Everybody did what was right in his own eyes. Where is the cross?
We can preach prosperity until we are blue in the face and say that is blessing: “Just believe it and you will be blessed.” But you will still go up and down. When there is no cross in your life, there is no progress.
And also, when there is no king. Every church tries to produce a king, but that is not what the Bible is talking about. In the book of Judges, God was to be their King. In the church, Jesus alone can be the Head.
I think this is one of the great issues today within the church: who really is the Head of the church? Some people have one man, some have a bishop, some have a pope, some have a pastor, some even have a board. But where is Jesus really the Head?
I think where Jesus is really the Head, there will be continual progress. I think where men and women are really embracing the cross, there will be progress.
In that context, we find the story of Samson. In Judges 13, regarding Samson’s birth, we read:
Now the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord; so that the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
The Lord had to discipline His people. After four hundred and fifty years, the people finally decided, “You know, sometimes I think we need something—maybe a king.” Four hundred and fifty years! That is about how stubborn and dull-headed we are.
In this time of decline, dominance, and rulership by the Philistines, God acted in His sovereign grace. He raised up Samson with a unique gift: he could destroy the Philistines with his bare hands. No weapons needed. That was his card: “Have no weapon, will travel.”
From his very birth, he was to be a Nazarite—separated. His hair was never to be cut; he was never to drink wine, eat grapes, or touch a dead body. He was kept separate. His mother and father raised him separately, in the truth of God’s holiness and according to the Nazarite vow.
Manoah, the father-to-be, asked the angel, “How are we supposed to raise him?” How do you raise a godly child today? The angel did not first say, “Get him to memorize Scripture,” though that would help.
The angel said to the mother, in effect, “Mother, you be godly. Do not drink anything unclean; you be holy, and your child will be holy.” There is a very interesting lesson in that about how we raise godly children.
Samson was raised as a godly child, separated to God. I am sure his mother told him what the Nazarite vow was, what it meant, and what it symbolized: “I am wholly the Lord’s.”
Does that not make it strange when we come to Judges 14? What is happening there? Samson is going down to marry a Philistine woman. What is wrong with this picture?
It is a terrible thing. It is against God’s command: do not mix with the Philistines. Here is Samson walking down the road saying, “I am going to marry a Philistine girl.” His parents say, “Can’t you find a nice Jewish girl?”
But Samson says, “She looks good to me.” Obviously, Samson was what I would call a carnal man. Would you agree with me? He was chosen by the Lord, but at this point he was completely natural and carnal. In fact, I would put it even more strongly and say he was a pretty self-willed guy.
“Mom, Dad, I am doing my own thing, and I want you to help me.” That is pretty tough for godly parents. What could they do? And what was God going to do with this man? Here was Samson, set apart for God, going to marry a Philistine.
What did God do? He protected Samson and blessed him along the way. This young man was going to do something against God’s will, and God seemed to be helping him.
Not only was he going down to Timnah to marry this girl, but he stepped into a vineyard. That was a no-no. A Nazarite was not even to eat grapes or raisins, nor touch the vine, as well as not drink wine. What was he doing in the vineyard? Probably having a few grapes on the side.
Suddenly, as he reached for a grape, a big lion came. You know the story; Hollywood has made many stories about it. The lion jumped out, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson. He ripped that lion apart as though it were a little baby lamb.
It was the most amazing thing. But this is one thing we have to straighten out with Hollywood. The most surprised person in that encounter was probably the lion.
When the lion jumped at Samson, the Holy Spirit came upon Samson and he tore the lion. But Samson was surprised too. He had no idea what he had in him.
The Spirit had begun to move him in Mahaneh-dan, in the camp of Dan, but he was not aware of the grace of God in his life. He was not aware of God’s protecting strength, nor of the power of the Holy Spirit to deliver him.
He was in the bushes, self-willed, doing what he wanted to do. The lion jumped out to grab him; he grabbed the lion. He must have been shaking—not merely from physical exertion, but because he was wondering, “What is this that God has done for me? What is this gift? What is this Holy Spirit?”
It was such a surprise for Samson: the grace of God protecting him. Otherwise, he would have been cooked.
Later, when he returned for the wedding, he saw something more gracious. He went over to the lion’s carcass, and there was a swarm of bees and honey in its body.
Not only had he been delivered from the lion by God’s grace, but by God’s grace he got to eat honey. Honey was such a treat in those days. He took some and gave it to his father and mother, but he would not tell them where it came from.
At the wedding feast, Samson had an idea: a riddle. In Judges 14:12, Samson says to the thirty men attending the wedding feast:
Let me now put forth a riddle unto you: if ye can declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out, then I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty changes of raiment:
But if ye cannot declare it me, then shall ye give me thirty linen garments and thirty changes of raiment.
Then he gave them the riddle:
Out of the eater came forth food,
And out of the strong came forth sweetness.
The Philistines looked and hemmed and hawed, but they could not tell the riddle in the first three days. They had no idea what it was about.
My point is this: by the grace of God, every Christian is a riddle to the world. This riddle of Samson is a picture of the Christian life.
The world cannot figure you out, because here is the truth of your life:
Out of the eater comes something to eat.
Out of the strong comes something sweet.
The world knows nothing about the life of a Christian. Here it is pictured in Samson’s life. Suddenly, the Holy Spirit comes upon him and delivers him; out of the eater comes something to eat.
The Christian life is called a mystery. What is that mystery? Christ is our life. The mystery is Christ. It is Christ who is our life.
Paul says:
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
He also says:
For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
And again:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
And:
For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
Do you know this life of Christ? We are saved by grace, and most of us in our young Christian days are just trotting down the road, living like Samson.
Give Samson a break: he was a young man. How many young men have you ever known who were spiritual from the beginning? Most are heading into the vineyard as fast as they can get away from their parents, looking for Philistine girls they might like to marry.
When I was a brand-new Christian, I was ninety-nine percent self. I was saved but had no idea what was going on inside me—no idea of the gifts of God and no idea of the life of Christ.
Then you stumble into an event like this, where God begins to open things up and you begin to see. This is the great mystery. The world cannot possibly understand what is going on in your life.
I want you to look at one Scripture regarding this mystery: 1 Timothy 3.
In 1 Timothy, Paul is writing to Timothy about the church of God and about how people should act—especially how men should act. In chapter 3, he deals with men who want to be overseers and men who want to be deacons. It is a noble thing for a man to aspire to these things.
But in order to be considered as an overseer or deacon, basically, he has to lead a holy life and be a man of character.
Then Paul comes to 1 Timothy 3:14-16:
These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly;
But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness;
He who was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen of angels,
Preached among the nations,
Believed on in the world,
Received up in glory.
Paul has told Timothy what needs to be in the life of an overseer and what spiritual characteristics are needed in a deacon. It is a great mystery how God takes a sinner and makes him such a man.
What is the mystery? What is it about a Christian that enables God to take such raw material as Samson and turn him into a holy man of God? Here is the mystery in a nutshell: Christ.
This little poem Paul recites is about the very life of Christ. The life of Christ is a model of how God brings holiness into our lives. He was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, proclaimed in the world, and received into glory.
In the same way, a Christian comes to the Lord, Christ comes into that life, and He begins to transform. First, He comes into our flesh; then He vindicates and justifies us by the power of the Holy Spirit, sanctifies us, and sets us apart. He gives us a testimony to speak, and then we are glorified and taken up.
Who can explain this mystery? But here it is in a nutshell: when a person comes to the Lord Jesus, Christ comes into that life. He takes you through a process that begins like an incarnation when He first comes in, and then He transforms you from glory to glory until you become godly.
How are men going to become godly men? It is the mystery of godliness. It is Christ Himself.
Let us define this a little by looking at the riddle and its two parts:
Out of the eater came something to eat.
Out of the strong came something sweet.
“Out of the eater came something to eat” is a wonderful testimony to the grace of God. Here is the first experience of the Christian that you find as you walk down the path:
Adversity makes us stronger.
How the world hates adversity. Out of the eater, the world says, comes retreat and defeat. Whenever a lion comes, the world says, “I am leaving this job. I am getting out of this marriage. I cannot deal with this situation. I am escaping. I have to get away.”
But in our weakness, we find His strength. In a crisis, we find a very present help in time of need. We find Him to be the power to deliver.
The lion is symbolic, of course. Who is the lion prowling about, seeking whom he may devour? Satan, of course.
In the Old Testament and the New Testament, our brothers had to deal with lions. Samson did. Daniel did. David did. These men found the strength of the Lord.
When David was taking care of the sheep, he was just a little boy. Suddenly, a lion came upon the sheep, and without even knowing what he was doing, the Spirit of God rushed upon David. David testified before Saul that God was with him in killing the bear and the lion.
It is when the lion attacks that you discover the life of Christ and its power within you. This matter of being filled with the Holy Spirit is an amazing thing.
A Christian has the Holy Spirit. There is never a time of crisis when the Holy Spirit does not come to the forefront to deliver. This is amazing grace: out of the eater comes something to eat.
Listen to 1 John 4:4:
Ye are of God, my little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
Imagine it: there is a greater force in you than there is in the lion. It is Jesus who overcame the enemy, Satan himself. Of course, that force is greater.
This is something you discover as you are walking down the road. The eater comes out to attack, and you discover that out of the eater comes something to eat.
Caleb said that Israel’s enemy would become their food. The children of Israel were afraid to go into the promised land because of the reports of giants. But Caleb said, in effect, “Our God is with us. He told us to go in, and our enemies will become our food. They will become our very sustenance. We will eat them up.”
That was the word of faith. They understood something about the power of God and about doing and obeying God’s will. Our enemy will become our food. What an amazing statement.
Now here is the next part:
Out of the strong came something sweet.
It is a double telling of the same story. Let us put it in words we can understand: out of a dead carcass came the very fruit of Canaan.
Canaan is a land flowing with milk and honey. Samson got honey out of the dead carcass, out of dead bones.
This is a most amazing lesson we learn by grace. Not only has Jesus come to give us life and give us life abundantly, but Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
The only people I know who can find sweetness out of death are Christians. When the world experiences death, tragedy, circumstances beyond its control—the death of a loved one, the death of a job, the death of a career—the world turns bitter, bitter, bitter.
The Christian grows and becomes sweeter, sweeter, sweeter.
That is why Romans 8:28 is one of our most familiar verses:
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
The world may say, “Things work together for good,” but no, they do not—unless people love God and are called according to His purpose. A lot of things for the unbeliever simply work out in tragedy as the result of sin. But if they turn to the Lord, He can turn it into something else.
The Christian understands that death itself leads to sweetness in life.
My oldest son died some fifteen years ago, or more, in a car accident. These kinds of tragedies do something. Up to that time, I would say I was a Christian who was basically earth-oriented.
But when I had a treasure in heaven—my son—it lifted me a little from the earth. Is earth quite as important as it was before, when somebody I loved so much is now in heaven?
Among many things the Lord did in my life at that time of tragedy, He brought some kind of sweetness. Now I can sing, “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be,” and it means much more to me now.
This is our common Christian experience. We all go through times of death, but out of death the Lord brings life because He is the resurrection and the life. What a great mystery.
I remember dear Brother Fred here, who lost his son a couple of years ago. In the tragedy that he and his wife were going through, they were so lifted up by the grace of God that, during the funeral, hundreds of people came to see them.
Brother Fred had many buddies because he was a policeman and worked in the Nassau jail. Many people came, Christians and unbelievers alike. They would come up to the line inconsolable, but Fred was comforting them.
They would say, “Fred, how can you take it? It does not make any sense. How could such a terrible thing happen?” And Fred would say, “God is in control, and He knows what He is doing.” He was comforting all these unbelievers.
They looked at Fred and could not understand. “You should be bitter. You should be shaking your fist at God.” That would be the human reaction. But we have this treasure: whatever dies becomes life.
Paul says that even though death is working in him, life is working in others. When we go through a tough time, God is producing something powerful. Even when Paul was in jail, pressed down in his own life, his testimony was liberating other Christians.
Look at Philippians 1:12:
Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel;
So that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest.
Paul says, in effect, “My incarceration is producing some spiritual food.” How can God make incarceration do a good thing?
We walk through the same wilderness as the world. We are not immune to tragedy and loss. But the difference is that, through grace, we can reign in this life through Jesus Christ and His life within us.
The world looks at us as we go through the same tragedy. A company lays off everybody—Christians and non-Christians. But the Christian can say, “Well, I have been laid off. Here, have some honey.”
Let us turn to 2 Peter 1:10:
Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble.
Be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure. What a wonderful thing this is. We are called by grace. We are chosen, just as Samson was chosen.
In the midst of a dark night in Israel, Samson was chosen by the sovereign grace of God. Samson discovered that he was chosen and discovered the grace of God’s help as he walked down the road.
This is not merely some kind of spiritual theory. God’s grace is with us. His Holy Spirit is within us. We discover this as we walk down the road. We are regular men, young people, and often totally self-willed. We have barely yielded our lives to Jesus as Savior, but we hardly know Him as Lord, Head, and Master.
What we discover is that God gives grace, and more grace, and more grace, and more grace.
Grace is basically a love word. Samson experienced the love of God in this deliverance and even in this honey.
Grace is defined in many ways, but I would like to use one little angle that is true: grace is being surprised by love.
We are always surprised by God’s love because it is so undeserved. If you really receive the grace of God, you know you did not deserve it. That is why it is so surprising.
Imagine God calls you and saves you. I know maybe why He called me, but you? What a surprise that He calls us and loves us. He calls us by name and says, “Jesus died for you.” We say, “I cannot believe this.” It is such a surprise.
Then, being saved by this surprising grace, we walk down the road of life and are surprised time and time again by His presence and His deliverance.
The devil has laid a tiger trap for every Christian. You may even hear it breaking beneath you. But just when you are about to fall in, the Lord comes and pulls you out in the nick of time. What a surprise.
Sometimes we are self-willed and heading right for that trap. It is one thing to say, “God, deliver me from all traps.” It is another thing when we even say, “God, I am going to that trap.” Somehow, God delivers us.
God delivered Samson. He never did marry that girl. Things got so bad that he walked away, and when he came back later to marry her, it was too late. God did not want him to marry that girl.
How many times do we deliberately get ourselves into trouble, and God’s Spirit is gracious and surprising? Then we get honey, and we can pass that honey on to other people. What a privilege.
People say, “Where do you get this blessing? Where do you get this stuff?” “Oh, well, just an old carcass.”
Samson could not tell where he got the honey because he was not supposed to touch dead bodies. His mother and father would have said, “A lion’s body? You took this honey from there?”
They did not understand this matter of life out of death. But this was the secret—the secret of grace.
Now the point of all this is that grace is supposed to get us somewhere. Why is God pouring all this grace upon us? We must ask ourselves that question sooner or later.
How many have been Christians for more than ten years? Have you begun to ask the question, “Why is God doing this to me? Have you wondered why?”
The first answer is this: there are no strings attached. You are His child, and He loves you. Except for real self-willed self-destruction, He will continue to deliver you. He will continue to give you gifts of the Holy Spirit. He will continue to give honey in your life.
It is because He loves you—no strings attached. Human love always has strings. “Of course, I love my wife, as long as she is good to me and cooks.” There are always strings. God’s love is because God loves.
A precious brother, Ed Miller, wrote a little verse and asked me to make it into a song. The first line is:
He loved me because He loved me,
And proved it on Calvary.
He loved me because He loved me.
That is all the explanation he could get. But there is a purpose behind everything God does. God wastes no energy. His grace has fruit on the other end, and the name of the fruit is glory.
God gives grace to find dividends of glory. When God gives grace upon grace upon grace to Samson, what should happen? Our hearts should be captured by His love.
If the Lord can capture our hearts, He can make us men of God. It is unbelievable how many things the Lord can do for us while we remain continually selfish.
Unfortunately, Samson’s life proves this. In the matter of Samson giving the riddle, this grace was Samson’s secret. These secrets were secrets from God’s love.
We can do two things with the secrets of His grace. What we should do is treasure them in our hearts.
Very practically, how does God renew our hearts? As soon as we are saved, He changes our heart and gives us a new heart. But He still has to strip away the flesh from our heart. How does He do that? By grace, by grace, by grace, by grace.
God captures our hearts. Despite the fact that everything on television today is a tell-all show, God wants us to have some secrets.
There are deliverances in your life and mine that I would even be embarrassed to tell you. But they are my secret, and one reason I love God so much. We all have these kinds of secrets, where God met us when we did not deserve it and surprised us with how much He cares for us.
That should begin to melt our hearts. This is the process of making our calling and election sure. As we walk it out and sense His grace, He begins to do something in our hearts. He captures us until we are His.
But Samson did not keep the secret in his heart. He had to brag. Why did he give the riddle? He wanted to brag. “Guess what? I killed a lion.” He was just waiting to brag; he could not wait.
Not only did he want to brag, but he wanted to put down the Philistines. He wanted to show them how smart he was. They had no idea about the riddle.
Hollywood gets Samson wrong. Hollywood shows Samson looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Samson was not Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is the whole surprise. He looked like everybody else, but when the Holy Spirit came upon him, he was supernaturally endowed.
He could not help but brag. What he did not realize was that when you brag before the world about your precious gifts of grace, they hate it worse than life.
He was playing with the world. The world does not play games; it plays hardball. These men went to his wife and said, “If you do not get this riddle out of him, we are going to kill your whole family and you.”
That is what the world thinks about the Christian riddle.
We have a wonderful opportunity. As Christians, by the grace of God, we have honey dripping from our fingers. We have the opportunity to give honey to the unsaved and to our relatives. We can say, “Here, have some honey.”
They may ask, “Where did you get that from?” We can say, “This honey comes by the grace of God.” We can even tell them, “One day I was walking and a lion jumped out. I thought I was going to die, but God was gracious to me and delivered me.” That is a wonderful testimony.
For every man here, if you are dripping honey, you can tell people that you have it because the Rock is mighty and He is a mighty Deliverer. That is how you can rejoice. This is a wonderful testimony.
But if you testify like Samson and say, “I am better than you. I have the Holy Spirit and you do not. I am God’s chosen person; I am special and better than you,” how do you think the world will respond?
There is so much braggadocio going on with gifts of the Spirit and all this kind of thing. It is a completely wrong attitude because it goes against the very nature of God.
James says:
God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.
“How did you get that gift, Samson?” He puts up his little peanut-sized bicep and says, “It is me. I killed a lion because I am a great man of God.” God resists this kind of pride.
No, humble people receive grace. When we receive grace, it should not only melt our hearts; it should humble us completely.
Here is a third insight: the grace of God applied again and again to our lives cuts us off from the world.
If you are still tempted by the world, and the world says, “Try this, try this,” it is not honey; it is bittersweet. Humble yourself and allow God to be gracious to you, because every time He is gracious to you, the things of this earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.
He cuts you off from the world by showing you the better way. It is not that He says, “The Christian life is terrible. You cannot smoke, drink, curse, be a man, or breathe on Thursdays. No more jeans; Christians do not wear jeans.”
No, no, no. By the grace of God, He teaches you His love and the fullness of His life. The more you understand the gracious fullness of His life, the more you look at the world and say, “Goodness, what are they trying to feed me here?”
Who is the person who no longer gets drunk with wine? The person who has been filled with the Holy Spirit. Once you have had the real thing—the natural high of the Holy Spirit—why would you want the cheap substitute?
How do we get cut off from the world? By the grace of God. When the grace of God comes to us, it humbles us, because we keep being surprised: “Why is God doing this? Why is God standing with me? Why is God helping me?”
There is no reason for Him to answer our prayers if we come in our own name. But if we come in Jesus’ name, He is right there. We humble ourselves and say, “I have no reason to ask on my own basis, but because Jesus loved me and died for me, I am asking in Jesus’ name.”
By the grace of God, our hearts are meant to be melted. But we are tempted to take this braggadocious attitude. There is nothing like a Christian pep rally to get people proud.
“We are special. We are special people. God takes special care of us. I live next door to my neighbor and work the same job, but I am becoming rich and he is staying poor. Thank God.” Your next-door neighbor is not going to like that testimony.
What can we say? Does the Lord prosper us? Yes. Does the Lord help us? Yes. Share your honey all around, but be humble about where it came from. Do not get arrogant. There is something so displeasing about arrogant Christianity.
I want to finish by looking at something even more incredible. Through it all, the Lord knew what Samson would do. Because His hand is sovereign, He used it for His own glory.
God had a purpose for Samson: “I want to deliver My people from the Philistines. I am going to get Samson to that point.”
Samson was self-willed. He chose to go and marry a Philistine woman. Yet Judges 14:4 says:
But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord; for He sought an occasion against the Philistines.
Does that mean God told Samson to marry a Philistine girl? Would God ever tell Samson to do that? No.
But God allows us free will, and He is wise enough to use our free will for His purpose. He knew Samson was going to be self-willed, going down to marry that girl. God said, in effect, “I will use this to stir Samson up.”
At this point, Samson was what I would call a naïve Christian. Please excuse me; Samson is only a picture, and an incomplete picture. But I will say Samson was a naïve Christian.
What was God trying to do? Wake him up to the fact that, as a chosen one of God, he was at enmity with the world.
Samson did not know there was a fight going on. He said, “What fight? I love Christians. I love the world. I am going to marry a worldly girl because it pleases me.” He had no idea that there was a spiritual battle.
Is it not interesting? As an Israelite, he had no idea that the Philistines were his enemies. God has to wake us up to the fact that there is an enemy. Many Christians think they are living on neutral ground while the enemy keeps digging in and undermining their very foundation.
Then one day God wakes you up, like Samson woke up.
The Philistines could not get the clue to the riddle from Samson, so they went to his wife. Wives have secret weapons that men know nothing about. Seven days of crying was all it took.
Samson finally said, “Okay, honey, here is the story. It was a lion, and it was honey.” She ran right back and told her Philistine friends. They guessed the riddle, and the war started between Samson and the Philistines that lasted the rest of his life.
He realized, “I am fraternizing with the enemy.” He owed them thirty pieces of clothing, so he went down to the next city, found thirty Philistines, killed them, took their clothes, and brought them back.
Then Samson came back later for his wife, only to find that her father had given her to another man. Samson went ballistic, caught foxes, tied their tails together, and burned the fields of the Philistines. Then the people went to war against Samson, and he killed a whole bunch of them.
Here is the point: because Samson gave away his secret to the world, he lost the blessing of it.
For the rest of his life, he was fighting and defending, fighting and defending. He became like one of those gunslingers in the movies who has to keep proving he is the fastest draw. Everywhere Samson went, he had to prove himself again.
The Philistines came after him all the time. The Spirit would arise upon him, he would kill some more, and then he would say, “That is it. I have had enough.” But he got into fighting again and again against his will.
Here is something we see of the sovereign hand of God. He not only knew what Samson was going to do, but He used it to cause this deliverance to begin to happen. As He said, “He shall begin to save Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”
God did an amazing thing, but there is a warning in this for me. Because we are God’s children, He will use us. Either He will work through us, or He will work in spite of us. But He will use us.
In 2 Timothy, it talks about the fact that every child of God is a vessel in God’s house. Some are vessels of honor, and some are vessels of dishonor.
God will be glorified through every vessel. Some vessels shine because God can work through them by His grace. Some vessels remain stubborn and unyielding, and they become vessels of dishonor—used to store junk, refuse, or something lowly like that.
Brothers, we are children of God. God has a chosen purpose and plan for us. In His wisdom and sovereignty, He wants to use us.
He will use us as we cooperate with Him, yield to Him, deny ourselves, take up the cross, and stop doing whatever we want in order to do what He wants. Or He will use us in spite of ourselves, as He did with Samson.
Unfortunately, this is the tragedy we follow in Samson’s life: God had to use him in spite of him. He never became a man of God.
Even with all the grace that was with him—and which remained with him through his very end—he never became the man of God. He was cut short by his stubbornness, by his worldliness, and by his self-will. It is a tragedy.
So I want to end this morning with a little question. In the days and times in which we live, God is looking for chosen vessels—vessels willing to deny themselves and claim Him as their King.
What are we doing with the grace of God? Do we feel that indebtedness to the grace of God? Has He captured your heart with His grace?
This is a very, very important step. To be truthful with you, the Lord can use us only in a very limited way until He can capture our hearts.
You remember when many disciples left Jesus and He said to the twelve, “Will ye also go away?” The disciples were captured. They said:
Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
That is the time when the Lord can really begin to shape us into men of God. Do you answer the Lord that way? “Lord, where else can I go?”
If you still think you can go into the world, take some easy way, or do something like that, then may the Lord pour out His grace upon you again and again and again until you say, “Lord, where else can we go?”
Can you imagine those twelve disciples after living with the Lord for a couple of years? What other kind of life would they want to live? Here was righteousness, truth, excitement, blessing, understanding, and a sense of the kingdom. Why would they live anywhere else?
Are we captured like that? By the grace of God, you have a riddle. Even when you and I are far from God, the world still says, “There is something different about you. I do not know what it is, but you smell different.”
Even with your self-will and everything else, there is still the aroma of Christ. Even when you hide under a bushel, the smoke still comes out from under the bushel. The world can smell that you are different.
You have honey from the Rock. You have grace abounding. The Lord is doing His work in our lives. Even like Samson, it is so surprising and so undeserved.
But what will we do with the grace of God? May the Lord capture our hearts.
Let us pray.