Judges 16:15-22 • True Strength
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Sermon Notes
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
As you've been following along with us in our "Through the Bible in a Year" series, we just left the nation of Israel facing their giants.
They do defeat them and promptly forget God, which sets up where we are now, the next chapter in the unwinding story of the gospel that the gospel writers are telling throughout the Bible, the book of Judges, the book of Judges. And I'll ask that you look at Judges, chapter 16, as we face a familiar figure who is unlikely to be able to tell us the gospel, but God means for him too.
To get ready for this judge in the period that everyone does what is right in their own eyes. That's the period of the judges.
We're introduced to a man you will recognize from an old Bobby Darin song.
You read about old Samson. You read about his birth. "Well Samson was the strongest man who ever lived on earth." Now the Bible tells us down in ancient times, he killed 10,000 Philistines.
You see, one day old Samson was walking alone and looked on the ground and spied an old jawbone.
And then he picked up that jawbone and swung it around his head. And when that jawbone came down, there were a thousand dead.
If I had my way, if I had my way in this wicked world, I would tell them.
I would tell them now.
What would you tell them about Samson?
A man of remarkable strength and fallibility.
After all, it's not just the jawbone of the ass that gets our attention.
It's Delilah and what happened with her.
You may remember Judges 15 and verse 16. And she that is Delilah said to him, "How can you say, I love you when your heart is not with me?
You have mocked me these three times and you have not told me where your great strength lies." And when she pressed him hard with her words day after day and urged him, his soul was vexed to death. And he told her all his heart.
And he said to her, "A razor has never come upon my head, for I have been a Nazarite to God from my mother's womb. If my head is shaved, then my strength will leave me and I shall become weak and like any other man."
When Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called the lords of the Philistines saying, "Come up again, for he has told me all his heart."
Then the lords of the Philistines came up to her and brought the money in their hands.
She made him sleep on her knees and she called a man and had him shave off the seven locks of his head. Then she began to torment him and strength left him and she said, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson." And he awoke from his sleep and said, "I will go out as at other times and shake myself free."
But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles and he ground at the mill in the prison.
But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved.
Let's pray together.
Together an unlikely man to teach us the good news of the gospel.
But your Word says everything that was written in the past was written for us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Show us the hope.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
The mailbox fills up every day at Frank Warren's house in suburban Maryland.
He has at this point collected over a half a million postcards from people who anonymously write him their secrets.
He's been doing it for years. When they come, he takes the mail postcards, scans them, puts it on his website, postsecret.com, and every day more secrets come.
To the class of 1977, I still hate you.
I give decaf to customers who are rude to me at Starbucks.
I had an abortion and to this day I wonder if my baby forgives me.
Everyone who knew me before 9-11 thinks I'm dead.
I like to watch Dr. Phil in the afternoons while I'm drunk.
Why do they write such secrets?
Why do they post them and send them to him anonymously?
Warren responds, "I think they're not sharing the secrets with me as much as they are sharing the secrets with themselves.
I've learned that the secrets that we're keeping aren't the greater burden.
What's constricting and what's restricting us is all the energy we put into concealing our secrets, the walls and the barriers that we develop not just between ourselves and others but between who we are and what we fear we cannot accept about who we really are.
A lot of people have secrets they just cannot face so they bury them so deep inside it's almost like your body and mind are trying to protect you because you don't want to face who you really are.
People write their secrets because they know they need to face and deal with what is destroying them from the inside."
Which strangely enough brings us to Samson.
Why in the world is Samson in the Bible?
You could hardly think of a man who is more ugly in character despite his strength of society.
Why in the world is he presented in the Bible as a hero?
Really a strange anti-hero. I mean there's some obvious reasons that we would see. We're not the first generation to be fascinated with superheroes.
He's a super strong man and so he gets our attention. But more than that we recognize he is the dirty little secret of the Bible.
We tell the Sunday School sanitized version of the strong man that God used and hardly ever read the details of his background. Why is Samson in the Bible?
No temptation has taken you but such as is common to man, says the Apostle Paul, because we will see in such a strong but flawed man our own secrets.
And God is saying as much as he reveals the secrets, they are not barriers to my love for you. You need to face the secrets so that you will understand how great is the love, to understand how we are really made. Others have said long ago, you need to understand your core, who you really are, your capacity,
what you're really capable of, and your context.
What are the plans that God has for you? Because in each of those, Samson not only has a message but the gospel is breaking through a bulldozer into the barriers of our secrets that we think says God can't help, God can't face, God can't deal with this and God is saying not only can I face it, I will show you that I can deal with it in the life of someone like Samson. What is the core of humanity being revealed in a strong man like Samson?
We all have feet of clay.
Do you remember where that phrase comes from? Book of Daniel? Nebuchadnezzar has a dream of a statue that demonstrates mighty power and strength, head of gold, shoulders of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of clay.
Which says despite the evidence of the strength of the kingdoms of man, frail, ready to fall, able to be toppled in ways that men's strength do not even recognize.
Samson is revealing what it means to be strong and yet have feet of clay. The strength is indicated in the public record. He is a dedicated man. He is special in so many ways. Like a lot of biblical heroes, he is the product of a mom who struggles with infertility. She's not supposed to be able to conceive. She hasn't been able to conceive for years. And an angel of God appears to her and says, "I have heard your prayers and you are going to be blessed with a son and he will save his people."
And in great gratitude, this woman who in that time by not having had a child will not have worth or esteem or significance in that culture, she in gratitude says, "I will dedicate my child to you, God." And so this Nazarite upbringing is instituted for him. The Nazarites would live in extreme purity, no alcohol, no touching of the dead. They would assume the obligations of priests, even though they were not priests, never cut their head as if to say the covering of God, what He provides is all that will shelter me, all my life long. I will depend upon God. And this dedicated child grows up with great strength and he grows up with great smarts. If it's our culture, he's the quarterback who makes the honor roll and his family goes to church.
Good kid.
But whatever shows on the outside is undercut by what is happening in private. What we understand is this blessed child is amazingly broken.
You just have to read the part that we don't read in the Sunday School lessons. And you recognize he is a liar, he is a thief, he is an adulterer, he sleeps around, he kills people, he is a third grade bully, though he is an adult with strength more than anybody else. We should be ashamed of him. The very first words that come out of the mouth of Samson in the Bible are, "I saw a woman."
Second set of words, "Get her for me."
And when his father says, "Can't we find someone for you who loves the Lord?"
Third set of words, "She's right for me."
Why?
Because she doesn't love the Lord. Samson is recognizable to so many of us raised in the church. The public face, the Sunday School face, to parents and to the churches. Everything's okay. I'm in my hair. I'm dedicated to God. Take my Bible to church, perfect Sunday School record. Everything's fine.
But there is another face of sexual immorality, of compromise, of getting my own way that betrays something else is deep in my heart. And the reason we're supposed to see that is to hear echoing, "No temptation taken you but such as is," common to man. And how many of us growing up in the church who are living that life of two faces ourselves are wondering, "Which is the real face?"
I myself am not even sure. Is it what I show in the settings where people see and know me in the spiritual realm? Or is the real face the way I live with friends and in private and on the Internet? Is that the — which is the real me?
And it's a secret even to us which is the real me. And as a consequence, we are scared to talk about the secrets, to face the secrets, because we're not sure God can take it if He knew what was at the core.
So a reality check, number one.
If you're wondering which is the real you, which is the real face, the Sunday school washed clean or the private, what goes by night, hopefully they won't know, you need to know you are not the only one with a problem.
Why is Samson in the Bible?
He's like us.
He faces the same issues. He has the same struggles. And so do lots of people in the Bible. Lots of them are like Samson. He wanted a woman who wasn't dedicated to the Lord. He abandons his wife. He turns to prostitutes. He seeks sexual satisfaction in the bedrooms of those who have no intention of honoring the Lord. They actually have no intention of helping him.
But he just needs a little sexual relief.
And so he goes after them. The same way that David did, and Herod did, and Judah did, and the church at Corinth did.
No temptation taken you but such as is common.
He is not alone.
And this is something we need to say in the church as fathers and group leaders to young men and to men who are our business peers to say, you know what, if you are struggling with sexual temptation, you are not alone. You are not strange. You are not weird. This is not unique to you. There are people in the Bible who went through this who wore the two faces. And what you're struggling with, people struggle with.
It's not new and it's not news. And you need to know about you. So I'm your father. And I say to my sons, you're going to have these struggles.
And I'm a pastor. And I say to young men, you're going to have these struggles. And young men ought to say to their spouses, you know what, God wired me as a sexual being. And if I am healthy, I desire my wife. I love the beauty of the sexual passion that God gives to unite us to one another, to enjoy each other, to help us work past our problems, to unite us in hearts and sometimes in body when we're struggling in different ways. That's part of God's beautiful plan. And we're wired to enjoy and appreciate that. But if I am wired to have that sexual desire, then there are people seeking to use it to hurt me, to help themselves, or to draw me other places.
If you're healthy, God made you for sexual desire.
So then men might just say, well, God made me this way. Why be concerned about it? Reality check number two, because sexual compromise in the Bible is often the gateway drug to spiritual distance.
We because we say, well, I'm just normal. I'm just human, just a man, just struggling. I'm just human. That we excuse ourselves, sexual compromise or misconduct. Think we will border off that part of our lives and everything else will be okay in the rest of our spiritual lives. But by having taken a part of our lives, we, God cannot enter here. I'm not going to make myself responsible to the Lord here. We're actually creating a pattern of behavior and thought, which is going to distance us when the pressure comes to other parts of our lives, that we need the Lord's guidance and help. Samson, David, Judah, Corinth, the sexual compromise leading a little more, a little more to the dishonor and the hurt that nobody intended with this compromise.
I said to a lot of you here last week that I had the privilege a week ago Saturday of speaking at the church that I first began pastoring in after seminary. They were celebrating their 200th anniversary and pastors were going back.
So as I'm traveling down last Saturday, I'm thinking I had to get last Sunday's message ready. I had to get that Saturday night's message ready. There were various other things at a conference this week to get ready. I am feeling pressure. So what I'm doing is I go down early, stop at a McDonald's about two-thirds of the way down and all afternoon I'm working on all the messages.
During the course of that, there was a squadron of military personnel who came into the McDonald's and in the beauty of what's happening in our culture right now, people stood as the soldiers in uniform came into the McDonald's and applauded for them. I mean, it was just a wonderful moment as you see men of strength who were giving themselves for the good of their country being honored.
But as I sat working for a few hours, they killed some time there in McDonald's.
And it was hard to listen as an off-color joke turned to an account of sexual exploits
that then others had to match, which led to greater vulgarity and more laughter. And I watched as the very families that had applauded the men coming in gathered their children and left.
And the older women who had looked so proud finished their meals looking straight ahead and stony-faced and trying not to listen.
And you recognize that that little sexual compromise had just led even these men of strength further and further from their own honor and self-respect and even the service of the very people who had applauded them just moments before.
You have to recognize that God is concerned about these things because He wants us, He wants our souls, He wants our lives, He wants closeness and fellowship and His power in our lives. And so He warns us about the realities of sexual compromise. You are not the only problem, but sex is not the only problem. It is the gateway to sometimes many more things that we don't want to face.
And we have the third reality check here, and that is men are not the only problem.
Delilah is in the story as well, isn't she? Who will use her beauty and her sexual attractiveness to gain money and to gain power over a man.
Not so long ago when Miley Cyrus released one of her more sordid videos, Pastor Trevin Wax wrote an important blog just called simply, "I weep for Miley."
And he was reciting what we know to be, the long record of young women who start out as role models for little girls, and then as they get older, turned to sexual flaunting and exhibitionism to keep the approval, to keep the attention, to keep people caring and showing me that I am important and desirable. And every generation has its people. You go, you know, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears.
Did you read two weeks ago back in rehab again?
Paris Jackson, addicted, depressed, and suicidal despite the sexual flaunting, and she's not even 20.
Trevin writes, "I weep for the little girl who was Hannah Montana, a role model to millions of little girls, and I weep for the American idol culture that promises glitter and gold to such children, and then chews them up and spits them out.
I weep for all the times," Pastor writing honestly, "I weep for all the times I have looked at women as objects and failed to see them as someone's sisters and daughters.
I weep for the fathers of Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and Madonna and all the other women who feel they have to sexualize themselves to have success or just acceptance with boyfriends or live-ins or peers or even their own husbands.
I weep for my five-year-old little girl when I think of the world that I will send her into, but then he says, I weep for the power of grace."
There's Jesus lifting the head of the woman of the night and sending her away into the light.
There's Jesus in a crowd healing a woman desperately trying to cover her shame.
There's Jesus at the well transforming a woman tossed aside by multiple men but trying again.
And then he says, "Enough of this weeping.
It's time to pray."
Why?
Because sex is not the only power on the page.
If we pray for such people, if we can be prayed for as such people, then we recognize God is saying, "Why would I mention this filthy, why would I mention this dirty little secret going through the Bible? Because it's no secret.
We are people of clay. We struggle. This is humanity. This is reality. What God made for good, we turn to evil. We warp. We hurt.
And God is saying, "You need to know if he can be prayed for, I can help it."
There's grace a-coming.
We're not there yet. I'm getting ahead of myself.
First a little more of the grit.
Samson is not just a lustful loser.
He's an attention addict.
Chuck Swindoll says, "Sampson was a he-man with a she-weakness."
And the inside of that is that despite his strength, he has to keep proving to somebody, to anybody, especially himself, "I'm still a man."
The sexual exploits are part of that. It's not so strange. We recognize it over and over again in our lives. The men at work or school or in clubs, in airport waiting rooms, in locker rooms, late night bars, disappointed in life, having to prove I'm still a man. I can still do it. I can still conquer somebody.
Not recognizing what they are often showing us at times is how great are their weaknesses that they cannot seem to control. How desperate they are for us to say, "Oh, you're really a man."
I have to give you such attention.
And it explains in some ways Samson's sexual exploits. He struts around the countryside killing beasts and men and telling riddles and telling his own story again and again. Aren't you impressed?
I need you to be impressed. I really need you to be impressed.
Because if you're not impressed, I wonder if I'm really a man.
Samson is the real life example of Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.
Think of Gaston's song in Samson's mouth.
Every guy here loved to be you, Gaston.
There's no man in town as admired as you. You're everyone's favorite guy.
Everyone's awed and inspired by you. No one's slick as Gaston. No one's quick as Gaston. No one's neck is as thick as Gaston's.
For there's no man in town half as manly. You can ask any Tom Dick or Stanley, "My, what a guy that Gaston."
Who needs the song of Gaston?
Samson.
Tell me I'm strong.
You need to know what a man I am. I conquer women.
You need to know how strong I am. I conquer men and beasts. You need to know how clever I am. I have riddles and position that no one else can match. I'm large and in charge. And you need to tell me so I'll know it's true.
I need your attention. I need your affirmation. And yet so strangely, the more he pushes for the attention, the more everybody around him backs away.
The very thing that he's addicted to, "I need your attention. I need you to tell me that I'm important. I need you to tell me," is what drives him for the sexual exploits. It's what drives him to the braggadocio, but at the same time it's driving away the people that he's trying to impress. His Philistine in-laws say, "You use our daughter?
We'll give her to someone else."
His Israelite countrymen, "You put us at risk by lighting fox's tail and sending them through our enemy's fields so now they are so mad at us they are going to kill us. We'll turn you over to them."
And they do.
And then there's Delilah, of course.
You use me?
I'll use you.
And everything he does to prove he's a man ends up in some nature or form destroying himself. It's just the way it works. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. What does that ultimately do? I got to back away from you.
Not making fun of it, but just the reality.
Last week a man fell a thousand feet in the Grand Canyon to his death. What was he doing?
Taking a selfie.
The third in the last eight weeks.
Two hundred and fifty in the last year.
Killed by selfie picture taking.
Putting themselves at risk.
You recognize that what is being said and all that is, "I am so desperate for attention, so desperate." I have somebody say, "I'm important. I'm enviable.
Respect me."
That they end up self-destructive.
It doesn't just have to happen in national parks. Those who study youth culture say that the selfie world of teens in which we portray what? "I'm good looking. I'm perfect. My family's perfect.
You need to envy me and tell me I'm enviable."
The consequence of the perfection of our imaging on Facebook and Instagram and the selfie world is creating higher rates of teen depression than any time since the drug culture of the 1960s as self-attention is the drug.
I need you to tell me that I'm okay. I need to feel okay about myself. And the way that happens is I just have to get your attention.
It's not just the young that struggle, of course.
Even in the church we know how the self-attention ends up destroying us. There can be a generation that says, "I built it, so don't change it for me."
A generation that says, "I'm paying for it, so make it comfortable for me."
A generation that says, "You want me to keep attending?
Then change everything for me."
And the me-attention drives us away from each other and out of ministry and out of the purposes of God.
As God is saying to us, "Listen, what is at your core?"
Yes, there is this sense of your lust can drive you one way, but your neediness, the attention that God alone is ultimately going to provide is what's going to provide for your attention deficit disorder.
You're not going to fix that yourself.
And the greatest evidence of that is where Samson ends up. He's not just the lustful loser. He's not just the attention addict. Ultimately, he is the vengeful victor.
The Bobby Darin song.
And then he picked up that jawbone and swung it around his head. And when that jawbone came down, a thousand men were dead.
And it sung like a joke, "Did you hear it? A thousand men dead. Why?"
Because he lost a bet he should have never taken.
I'm embarrassed.
And I don't like people thinking, "Not good at me." And so he takes it out.
What does that look like in modern life?
Did you read about the man in Washington state?
So angry at his spouse that he bulldozed her home, though his name was also on the deed.
The vengeance where we become the victim of our own anger, we become the victim of our own broken relationships.
What are we learning?
No temptation taking you such as is common.
We can be pretty strong and still have feet acling.
We can be blessed and broken at the same time.
But that's not the end of the story. What are you also learning about Samson? Why is he in the Bible? To learn not only at our core that we are people with feet of clay, but our capacity. What God has actually made us for is to be jars of clay.
Do you remember where that is in the New Testament?
The Apostle Paul writes to the church of Corinth that struggling with so many awful things, God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shown in our hearts. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. As though Paul is saying, you know, if God could take people of earth, broken, cracked, earthen vessels, and he can pour out of that the glory of heaven, it even looks better this glory, that when God takes earthen vessels and uses them to show his glory, it actually makes the gospel shine even more. And what we're supposed to see in Samson is not just somebody with feet of clay, but an earthen vessel out of which glory is going to come despite the brokenness, despite the feet of clay. How do I know that? Because why does he have all that strength? Why did God give that in the first place?
Chapter 13 and verse 5, I didn't go back that far and I read to you earlier, when the angel appears to Samson's mother, the angel says, "Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the room, and he shall begin to save Israel from their enemies."
Samson, this awful figure of a man, God said from the beginning, "I am going to use him to save my people."
Man, if only God had known what kind of a kid he was going to be.
No, God knew, right? He knows all of our days, says the Psalmist, before one of them comes to be. He knew all of that. And yet God was saying, "If I can take this filthy, dirty man and I can save people through, who's going to get the credit?
Who's going to be the hero? Who's going to be known as the one who saves ultimately but the one who could use a man like this?" This is ultimately the hope check, as we're to understand, yes, here are these awful human powers on display that are inside of us, destroying us, things like lust and pride and the anger of vengeance. But also on the page is the amazing grace and power of God. The lustful loser is still God's man.
God is still going to use him from the beginning.
And I need to hear that message of grace when I recognize the feet of clay.
And I said, "This is who I am at my very core." But God has given me a capacity that is not limited by my feet of clay. He is working beyond me. One of the most moving and honest sermons that I ever heard was from Pastor John Piper,
who was genuinely grieving for young men who were, because of the sexual sin in their lives, counting themselves out of ministry, counting themselves out of church leadership, some of them even counting themselves out of the possibility of marriage. "I'm so struggling. I'm so dirty. I'm so filthy. I can't possibly qualify for God's calling."
And what he was saying was, "You need to believe the gospel is greater than your sin.
Don't count yourself out of the purposes of God. What do you know about Samson?
He sleeps around. He brags. He kills people. And what God is saying to him is, "Yes, you are a loser, but you haven't lost me and haven't lost my purpose for you.
You're not the only one with a problem.
But sex is not the only power on the page.
There is something greater." Just for being a little risky in the moment.
I'm going to step away from kind of the simple Sunday school answers. Most of the young people are out of the sanctuary now. And just, what do you think about when you see someone like Samson and think of why he's in the Bible?
What we're supposed to say is, if someone as strong and dedicated as Samson knew sexual temptation and struggle, you will.
In this culture, with its pervasive sexual images and access, you will probably fight sexual temptation all of your life.
When I became the president of Covenant Seminary, Hudson Armoring, longtime president of Wheaton College was on our board. And he said to me, "Brian, don't you dare think that your position is going to keep you from sexual temptation." He said, "I have been the president of an institution. I've been married all these years, and I still know sexual temptation." I'm thinking, "You're 80."
All of our lives, most of us, if we are healthy, if we are healthy, we will have to fight that. It will probably, that sexual temptation, rise and fall in its power in our hearts. Just like every other temptation, rise and fall depending on where we are, our stresses, our struggles, what we're going through. And I know I'm not supposed to say this, but here you go. You'll probably lose some battles.
You will probably make choices you wished you had never made. You will probably have trouble confessing to a spouse or a child, things that are part of you that you wish were the secrets no one would know.
And you need to know that when you have fallen, God does not fail you. His grace is stronger than your sin. His love more prevailing. He sent Christ for that sin. He is not put off by the secret. He knows the secrets.
And He sent His Son to die as your Savior. Why is Samson in the Bible? Not so that we'll be glad that we're not like him. We will recognize ourselves in him. He doesn't just have strength to save. He's got a mind that's still working. Yeah, he's been crazy for a little bit. True, all true. What happened? Delilah says, "Tell me the secret." Well remember, he lied two or three times about what would actually take his strength away.
And each time he lied to her, somehow the Philistines burst into the room and tried that alternative. How in the world did they figure that out?
And then she says, "If you really loved me, you'd tell me." And he tells her again, "He's nuts!
What were you thinking?
He's not thinking.
He's just sex crazy."
But he's still got a mind.
And the God who says, "I gave you strength for a reason, and I gave you a mind for a reason," is saying, "Your hair's growing again.
I didn't walk away.
I'm still here working. My spirit is still here. I can still restore. I can still reclaim. I can still use the strength. Use your brain and figure this out." And Samson says to the boy who was holding him, "Where are the columns that hold up the temple of God's enemy?"
And what we see is God taking a man who deserves to be walked away from and says, "I'm still here and you're still mine, and I'll still use you." And the context of that is absolutely astounding. Why do we have Samson? Because he's not a one-off. He's not one man struggling. You recognize he represents the whole nation who is doing what he is doing.
They follow God for a little bit, then they fall away, they rebel, God rescues them, and then what happens? They fall away again.
And then God says, "All right, I'm going to save my people through this jerk."
But what do you know about him?
Before he was born, an angel appears to his mother. He says, "You shall conceive and bear a son, though that should actually be physically impossible. I'm going to make it happen."
And the child grows in the blessing of God.
And then despite the way in which he has been blessed, he is sold by those he loves for a few pieces of silver.
He is tortured by his enemies and then sacrifices his life to save his people.
Remind you of anyone out of the mess, a mirror of Jesus.
God is saying, "There is grace on the page.
You may have been terribly wrong. There may have been so much in your life that is not right. There is grace for you." When God says that, it is what gives us strength and power and willingness to turn and to believe that the reason the dirty little secrets are on the page is the gospel is no secret. It is what God is telling us that we should rejoice in because his grace is greater than all our sin. And that is what we need to know to rejoice in him and find strength again and turn to him again and ask his help again and forgive somebody that's hurt us again because we have feta clay too.
One of my long-term great friends in the ministry is Richard Buse, long-term pastor of St. Helens in London, powerful man with a worldwide reputation who has been fighting cancer for the last 18 months.
And he's just totally weak now, his strength gone.
If you could think of what is happening with him, not in physical terms but spiritual terms, what would you hear? His wife wrote to me, "New Year's Day."
Richard's strength has now evaporated.
He can only testify of God's strength.
He's broken but blessed and now blessed to bless.
She writes a song, "When our strength has failed, ere the day is half done, when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father's full giving is only begun.
His love knows no limits. His grace has no measure. His power no boundary known to man, for out of his infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again." Even to someone like Samson, even to someone like me, even to someone like you, he giveth and giveth and giveth again. And somehow that gives us hope again and strength again and the gospel again. One of my very first mentors in ministry was a man who had a terrible sexual fall.
And the consequences were terrible.
Family and marriage and church all evaporated. But what came to me and has held me over and over again through the years was his own testimony of after the church had rejected him, after the friends and family had rejected him, how he himself went to his own childhood minister. And that minister who had known him from childhood days met him at the airport, did not say a word to him.
But as soon as he saw him, ran to him and put his arms around him and embraced him.
And that is the gospel.
When our strength is all gone, when our reputation gone, when the secrets exposed, he giveth and giveth and giveth again. So I can get up again and say thank you Lord Jesus for the grace that pardons and the strength to help. Praise God for the gospel in Jesus name. Amen.
Father, so teach us of the one who came for us even in our mess.
Teach us that when all the things that we so fear would be revealed are revealed, the love of Jesus is greater and the grace of God more perfecting. Grant us your goodness for Christ's sake, we pray, in Jesus name. Amen.