God's Choice

Several times in the past weeks I have told you that God can use anyone. I have told you that God has a purpose for all of his children. Many people believe that God uses his followers to accomplish his will and Satan uses his followers to accomplish his will. That belief is not entirely true. God uses whoever he desires to use whether they follow him or not. We recently studied the story of Job is Sunday School, in that story God makes use of Satan himself to accomplish his purposes. Make no mistake, God is completely and wholly in charge and he can accomplish whatever he desires to do using whatever means he wants and whoever he wants to do it.

This week we will begin to look at the story of Samson in Judges 13. This story is different from the other stories in judges. The other judges each led Israel to conquer those who were oppressing Israel and then went on to judge the nation for a time. Samson never led such a battle, he died with the Philistines still in charge and he never sat at the gate and judged the nation of Israel. Yet Sampson has four chapters dedicated to his story. In comparison Shamgar gets only one verse, Tola and Elon get two verses each, Jair Ibzan and Abdon each get three verses, 5 verses for Othniel, 19 verses for Ehud, two chapters for Deborah and three chapters for Jephthah and Gideon.

So why does Sampson get so much press, is it because he is such an exceptional judge, hardly, Sampson is kind of a schmuck. He does almost everything wrong. I think he gets so much press because God is trying to show us something. After all, God picks Sampson before he is even born

Judges 13:1–7 NASB95

Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, so that the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines forty years. There was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had borne no children. Then the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. “Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. “For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and no razor shall come upon his head, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines.” Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, “A man of God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. And I did not ask him where he came from, nor did he tell me his name. “But he said to me, ‘Behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and now you shall not drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing, for the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.’ ”

Of course it starts with the well known problem, the children of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and he gave them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. A well known pattern and well repeated phrase in the book of Judges. Then God moves right into the meat of the subject. A man and a woman were trying to have a child and God sent an angel to them to tell them that they would have a son and that he would be a Nazarite from birth. What is a Nazarite you ask, in the law of Moses it was explained that if you wanted to make a vow to dedicate yourself completely to God for a period of time God had made a way for that to happen.

Numbers 6:1–5 NASB95

Again the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When a man or woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to dedicate himself to the Lord, he shall abstain from wine and strong drink; he shall drink no vinegar, whether made from wine or strong drink, nor shall he drink any grape juice nor eat fresh or dried grapes. ‘All the days of his separation he shall not eat anything that is produced by the grape vine, from the seeds even to the skin. ‘All the days of his vow of separation no razor shall pass over his head. He shall be holy until the days are fulfilled for which he separated himself to the Lord; he shall let the locks of hair on his head grow long.

This vow was so serious that you were forbidden from attending your own parents funerals if they died during the term of your vow. If someone dropped dead beside you you would have to shave your head and start the time of the vow over. When the vow was completed you went to the temple, offered a sacrifice and shaved off all your hair and burned it as an offering to God.

Samson was a Nazarite from birth. That’s what the not cutting his hair was about but it was much more than that. This vow was taken when someone wanted to completely dedicate themselves to God, to be holy, set apart, the commitment and seriousness of this vow was similar to what a monk vows when he enters a monastery or what a priest vows when he become a Catholic priest. It was a special setting apart and extra special dedication to God. If anyone was going to follow the law and be holy and be a good example it would be the Nazarites, but Sampson did not do those things. Sampson was not holy and set apart. He did not follow the law, he did keep his hair uncut, but otherwise he seemed to do whatever he wanted.

God obviously did not choose Sampson because he was such a holy man completely dedicated to God. But God did choose him, and God did use him. God did accomplish his purposes through Sampson even when Sampson did not cooperate. We will find out later that Sampson dated and married the wrong people, that he had a terrible temper, that he killed men in anger, in one case he killed several men just because he lost a bet, and the men he killed did not even have anything to do with the bet. Sampson was a schmuck. But he was a schmuck that was used by God to accomplish God’s will because God is supremely powerful and his will cannot be thwarted. Whatever God chooses to accomplish he will accomplish and whoever God chooses to use he will use.

Now maybe you think that takes the pressure off of you. If God can use someone even if they rebel against him then he can use us even if we are not very good Christians. That is true. God used the Pharaoh of Egypt to accomplish his purposes and the Pharoah was the enemy of God. If God can use his enemies and he can use Sampson who constantly disobeyed and constantly acted badly then surely God can use us even if we fail. If you think that you would be absolutely correct. God can use us exactly the way he used Pharoah and exactly the way he used Sampson. He can use you if you are hostile to him and he can use you if you are a sinful, wordly Christian. You will not prevent God from accomplishing his purposes if you choose not to serve him or if you don’t serve him well, God can overcome any obstacle.

But before you relax and lean back and do whatever comes natural let us pause for just a moment. God did use Pharoah, but thousands in Egypt suffered and every firstborn child died, including the firstborn of Pharoah, then Pharoah and all of his army died. Pharoah did not keep God from accomplishing his purposes but neither did it work out very well for Pharoah.

What about Sampson. We will find out that Sampson was a womanizer, he lusted after a woman because of her beauty, a woman who was not of his nation or his religion, a woman who betrayed him. He lost his temper and killed in anger. He was captured and imprisoned, he had his eyes gouged out, he was forced to work as a slave. His hair did grow back out, God did answer his final prayer, Sampson did get revenge on the leaders of the Philistines but it cost him his life and prior to that it cost him a period of living in prison, blinded and performing hard labors before he got his revenge and his death.

The death of Sampson and the Philistine leaders he killed at his death did spark a war between Israel and the Philistines. Israel did win their freedom although the Philistines were to be a thorn on their sides from that day forward. God was not defeated. God’s purposes were not held back. The people did return to God and God did free the people but Sampson did not have a happily ever after.

God used Sampson to accomplish his purposes. Samson did get his final prayer answered, but Sampson led a miserable life. He fought with his parents. He was betrayed by his wife and his father in law. His girlfriend betrayed him several times. He was defeated, imprisoned, maimed, and his act of revenge cost him his life. Samson was used by God but Samson surely did not benefit from it at all.

Can God use you even if you don’t really want to be used by God, He can. Of course you may not like it, you may not benefit from it, you may not even survive the process

Can God use you even if you don’t live like the bible says you should, He can. Of course if you choose to live however you want and do whatever you want God will still accomplish his purposes and God’s people will still benefit from it, you, however, may not benefit at all. In fact if you choose to disobey God and God uses you in spite of your actions and attitudes you may accomplish great things for the kingdom of God never benefit from the very things you caused to happen. You may well live a life of misery and defeat, betrayed by those closest to you and defeated at every turn. God will not be defeated but you could be. In fact if you choose to work against God rather than for him in order for God to win you will have to lose, and God will win. If you set yourself up in opposition to God you set yourself up for a fall, perhaps a great fall.

But isn’t there another way. Of course there is. It is the way God prefers. I don’t think God wanted Sampson to suffer and to die a terrible death. I think God would have preferred it if Sampson had been a Gideon of a Joshua. Someone who followed God willingly and wholeheartedly. Both of those men lived long lives that were marked with success. Both of those men impacted the lives of those around them for the better, their legacy lived long after they did, I think that is what God wants from us. God wants us to follow him and he wants to bless us and he wants to see us live a victorious life filled with blessings and honor. God wants us to succeed and he wants us to enjoy the fruit of our success.

There is something God wants more than our success though. More than our personal success God wants the success of his church and his people. He wants us to worship him and follow him. He wants us to seek him out and serve him and if we do he wants to bless us and have us enjoy our service to him. There will be tough times and there will be trials. Both Gideon and Joshua struggled and sometimes failed. Both of them overcame and succeeded, both of them relied on God and followed God’s instructions and when they messed it all up they asked for forgiveness and turned themselves around and followed God to victory.

Sampson also had his trials, and he failed them. He did not follow God and he did not ask forgiveness. Even at the end, when he asked God to remember him he did not praise God or acknowledge that he had done wrong, he only asked for the strength to avenge himself on his enemies. God gave him that strength and he used it, but it did not bring him joy or victory, only death. Samson did bring about the result that God wanted, but Sampson himself did not profit from it. Do you want to be like Sampson or like Joshua. God will win either way. You can be a part of God’s victory and enjoy the joy and success of working along side God to accomplish his will, or you can turn your back on God, maybe even oppose God and God will still win, whether you lose or not.

The question is never will God get this done or not, He will. If God wants you to play a part in his work you can be sure that you will play your part. The question is, will you work with God, serve God, seek out his will and do your best to accomplish it, or will you stand in his way. God will accomplish his purposes and you can choose to enjoy the victory of being on God’s side, or you can be part of it without benefiting from it at all. Every human being is part of God’s plan, every human being has the chance to be part of God’s victory. Sadly, most will choose not to side with God, and they will lose. God is not willing that any should perish. God would prefer that all of us live with him eternally in joy and perfection. Most will not, not because that is the way God wants it but because that is what they choose. How will you choose. I don’t like to lose, I am not all that fond of suffering and misery. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.