Discover The Word

Thursday, December 13, 2007, Part 2

“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: Samson not only portrays the discipline of God, but he also portrays the mercy of God.

PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate that if we truly belong to God, we cannot fall outside of his grace.

Have you ever wanted to be an obituary writer?

Could different writers come up with very different obituaries for the same person?

I. Different people write different obituaries of the life of Samson.

It strikes me that when I was growing up, those who wrote Sunday school lessons dismissed him as a spiritual failure. His death was the result of his failure to do the will of God.

Do you think there is enough evidence to slant the obituary that way?

Others wrote him up as a hero.

The Jewish historian Josephus noted how the Jewish people honored Samson’s memory. “Indeed, this man deserves to be admired for his courage and strength, and magnanimity at his death, and that his wrath upon his enemies went so far as to die himself with them. But as for his being ensnared by a woman, that is to be ascribed to human nature. . . . But we ought to bear him witness that, in all other respects, [his life] was one of extraordinary virtue.”

The write of the letter to the Hebrews mentions Samson (11:32) as an Old Testament example of faith.

If you were writing Samson’s obituary, where would you come down?

II. We might look at Samson as a restored failure.

Would you agree that while “Jesus never fails,” Christians do?

If you look at the people in the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith,” there are very few without any blemish on their life that could have destroyed them.

III. Two great doctrines in the Christian life are human depravity and the grace of God.

They are all through the Bible and all through life.