Romans 8:28-39 (NIV)  

²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.  ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?  ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?  It is God who justifies.  ³⁴ Who is he that condemns?  Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  ³⁶ As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Today we are going to look at the human view of hero worship, and an Old Testament hero and how he (Samson) was pointing to the coming of Jesus.

Judges 15:9-20 (NIV)

⁹ The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi.  ¹⁰ The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come up to fight us?”

“We have come to take Samson prisoner”, they answered, “to do to him as he did to us.”

¹¹ Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us?  What have you done to us?”

He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.”

¹² They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.”

Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”

¹³ “Agreed,” they answered.  “We will only tie you up and hand you over to them.  We will not kill you.”  So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock.  ¹⁴ As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting.  The Spirit of the LORD came upon him in power.  The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands.  ¹⁵ Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.

¹⁶ Then Samson said, “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them.  With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.”

¹⁷ When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone; and the place was called Ramath Lehi.

¹⁸ Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the LORD, “You have given your servant this great victory.  Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”  ¹⁹ Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it.  When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived.  So the spring was called En Hakkore, and it is still there in Lehi.

²⁰ Samson led Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

We need heroes but not human ones; we live in a self-focused culture and that’s not where we should be headed.

Romans 4:5  And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness… (ESV)

Those who don’t live virtuously, but who only cling to God who justifies the broken, those folks are Christians.

The Bible as it turns out is not a series of God’s interactions with good guys.  There is one person in the Old Testament who may be categorized as a hero and that was Jeremiah who did what God asked him to do.  Look at David, Solomon, Jonah these are men who struggled with God, difficult personality and spirituality and were all flawed individuals.

There are few heroes in the Bible, instead we are given real people, who struggled to be faithful, who struggled to trust, who sometimes stood firm, but after a time, ran away.

A sort of hero is Samson that we will examine today.  Samson sleeps with many women, kills thousands of men, and is very strong.  And his core is morally and spiritually weak.

During this time in the history of Israel, there were many groups trying to conquer and enslave Israelites, some of those people are found in the book of judges. Ammonites, Midianites, Moabites, were all cursed people in the way they handled Israel.

In the book of Judges there were people that fought the oppression like Gideon, Barak, and Deborah.

When Samson comes along, Israel has become comfortable with the Philistines because their form of control is centered around absorbing Israel through marriage, trade relationships, which creates an oppressed people that are comfortable with their relationship with the Philistines.

Israel is two generations from being completely absorbed in the philistine culture.  That is why Samson came along to create conflict in the Philistine culture.

Samson is spiritually immature and marries a Philistine woman.  At the wedding feast Samson is cheated, beaten trying to solve a riddle.  Samson in retaliation kills many Philistines.  Then his father-in-law will not let Samson see his wife.  Then Samson burns the crops on his father-in-law’s property.  Then they kill Samson’s wife and then Samson kills hundreds of Philistines.  Samson is repaying them in kind for what has happened.

This is where today’s passage begins.

God uses Samson to judge Israel despite his spiritual immaturity.  During this time in Israel’s society the judges were actually saviors of the people.  The judges would deliver the people from danger or risk.

God uses Samson to save the people by disrupting the peace of Israel.

Samson allowed Israel to tie him up and give him over to the Philistines.  The Israelites want Samson dead Israel doesn’t want to be saved and in actuality Samson saves Israel in his death.

Israel gave Samson up to be sacrificed to get back a peaceful life with the Philistines.

In Samson’s story there is a continuing theme that we have talked about previously; God saves through the rejection of the saver.

When there are 300 men willing to fight for Israel like during Gideon’s time or one man in Samson’s story willing to fight for Israel.

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NKJV)  “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

The champion Jesus won on our behalf, if we want that.

Jesus instead of filling the world with enemy bodies, He fills the earth with His body, the Church.  Instead of violence defining us, it should be love and grace that define us.

John 18:36  Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders.  But now my kingdom is from another place.”

The Cross is the new way of winning, the new power of the spirit, the new way fights and destroys the enemies of God.  God is using this to win us over and to destroy the power of sin.  Jesus on the Cross asked God to forgive the people.

Instead of a hero, where we’re told to go do what Jesus has done, we’re given a vision.  God uses flawed people like Samson, and you, and me.

Romans 12:21  Do not let yourself be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

We rest in the knowledge that we are loved by God, and we fight for God’s Kingdom through prayer, through love, through giving out hope and not condemning; we overcome evil with good.  Have a good week – remember God will and can use you in your weekly interactions with people.  God bless.