The Restoration of a Failure
Judges 16:20-22
Today I want to start by looking at some Famous Failures.
1. He was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of creativity and imagination.
2. He did not speak until he was 4 and didn’t read til 7, his teacher called him "Slow"
3. He went broke 5 times before devising the first assembly line produced automobile.
4. 12 times he failed in business and in politics before he became the 16 President of the United States
5. In grade school he did so poorly that his teachers gave up trying to help him… today teachers teach his theory of gravity and call him Sir.
6. As a young man his teacher said, “As a composer he is useless.” During his not so bright career he went deaf. What good is a deaf composer… what kind of music can he compose? He did his best work… Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
7. He was a very poor student. His teacher said he was… “ too stupid to learn anything.” He failed 9000 times before he created the first incandescent light bulb.
8. His high school coach cut him from the team because of his “Lack of skill.”
9. She was cut in the first year of her contract with 20th Century Fox because her producer said she was “Unattractive and cannot act.”
For 40 years she has been the poster child for Unattractive Women
Today, I want to talk about one of scripture’s most famous failures... Samson.
Last week we looked at
The Blessing of a Godly Start
The Destruction of Godless Choices
The Contagious Nature of Sin
and
The Destructive Wake of Sin
We left Samson in the quagmire of his own sinful nature.
We looked at 3 sad verses in the 14th chapter
V. 1 Samson went down
V. 5 Samson went down WITH his parents
V. 10 Samson’s father went down
Chapters 14, 15 and 16 tell the story of Samson’s continued descent into the abyss of moral decline.
The verses get sadder and sadder, until we reach the saddest verse in the whole story
verse 20... "But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him."
This is a solemn warning to all people... lost and saved.
God is holy and righteous and he will not dwell in an evil and sinful place.
Samson’s life had degenerated into such a sorry state of affairs, so sinful, so unrepentant, so ungodly that God withdrew his presence, his blessings, his strength and his protection.
God has given us a warning that "My spirit shall not always strive with a man." Gen 6:3
If you are lost… God will send His Spirit to convict you of sin and to lead you to repentance. He will have patience and strive long and hard with you.
But there comes a time when the Spirit no longer convicts, no longer afflicts, no longer calls. That man is hopeless.
If the Spirit is dealing with you, praise God.... listen and heed while he calls.
If you are saved, God has promised "I will never leave you and never forsake you." Heb 13:5
But neither can He be a part of sin and ungodliness.
He will not be a party to your sin.
He will not ultimately leave you or forsake you... he will be there at the judgment.
However…He WILL withdraw his presence, his power, his peace, his protection, his guidance.
ILLUSTRATION: AS a child I remember watching a movie about a little boy who got sprayed by a skunk. His parents nearly scrubbed the skin off him but they could not get rid of the odor. So for a couple of days, he had to sleep in the barn and eat his meals outside the house. He could see his family inside the house eating at the table, laughing and talking. When it got dark he sat in the yard and watched through the window as Pa read a story to the other kids and watched his Ma tuck the others in bed. It broke his heart to be excluded… on the outside looking in.
I guess if you could multiply that hurt to about the tenth power… you would understand what Samson felt as he sat in the darkness of that prison cell or as he was tied to the handle and walked in circles to grind corn.
Samson did not know that he had fallen so far that God had withdrawn.
Many Christians today do not realize that God has withdrawn and taken with Him His Spirit, His strength, His peace, His blessings and His protection.
Samson had flirted with evil, befriended evil men and engaged in evil activities.
He had become desensitized to evil.
And ignoring the prompting of the Spirit of God, the warnings of his Father and the tears of his mother… he had toyed with sin until he thought it could not hurt him.
He told a prostitute the secret of his strength.
What was the secret of Samson’s great strength?
Not his hair!!!!
His hair was the outward evidence of a internal reality..
Samson was to grow his hair TO REPRESENT OR SYMBOLIZE his being a Nazarite.
His strength came from his relationship to God.
Not drinking strong drink was a symbol to remind himself and others that he was different, set aside by God to do something special.
Not touching anything dead… ever set him apart as special.
They were all symbols that Samson had a special relationship with God.
The relationship was broken by Samson’s continued and repeated sin.
The relationship, the source of his Strength was gone and all that remained was one last vestige of that earlier relationship.
But God continued to bless Samson as long as the symbol remained.
However, when the hair was gone, there was nothing left, no reason for God to bless him.
God did something that ripped his heart out… He left Samson.
Illustration: I watched another movie where a teenage delinquent let his life spiral out of control because of drugs and bad friends. It tore his family apart. His parents were on the verge of divorce, his younger brother was experimenting with drugs, his sister had gone from honor role to in-school suspension. Finally, the delinquent had been driving his little brother to a game but stopped and talked to some friends. They got into a fight over drugs, a gun was drawn and the brother was shot. Leaving the hospital, where one son was in critical condition, the father drove to the police station. When he arrived his son was very penitent. He cried and begged for his father to get him out of jail. His father told him that he was finished being an enabler. He would not get him out. He would have to get a court appointed lawyer and pay whatever the court decided. And when he did get out, he was no longer welcome at home. He would have to find somewhere else to live. Then the father stood up and walked away. As he go into his car, he leaned on the steering wheel and wept like a baby.
As sad as it was to see God departing from Samson, shoulders drooped, heartbroken and tears streaming down his face…
The saddest thing is that Samson did not even see him go.
He was so busy partying and carousing that he did not know that God had left.
Delilah coaxed him to sleep, bound his hands, called the barber, the hair was cut, she said, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you.”
Samson leaped to his feet, expecting to break the chains like paper… BUT HE COULD NOT!
His Strength… like his hair… like God’s spirit… WAS GONE!!!!!
There are MANY Christians today who are in the same fix.
God made a major deposit into their spiritual bank account when He saved them.
Some had deposits from their parents and friends.
For years they laid up spiritual treasures as they served God and grew in a relationship with him
Friends made deposits
Then one day, they ceased to make deposits. Stopped going to church, praying, or living for God. Slowly they spent their way through their spiritual principle. Now they are living on the interest. Some others have used it all up and are bankrupt spiritually and are only getting by on handouts from others and spiritual credit from God.
They are spiritually bankrupt and God has withdrawn from them.
They are living in their sin, in their death, and are without God.
Nothing is sadder than to watch Christians who don’t know that the Spirit of the Lord has departed from them.
Some of you here today may be like that.
You wonder why you feel so alone, so powerless, so far away, why your prayers are just words, why you have no victories, why your spiritual life is like a dry and barren land.
The reason is your sin, your unrepentant sin.
You have fallen so far that God has left.
AND GOD IS GONE FOR GOOD!!!!!
Some of you felt your spirit cringe at that thought.
God left you for good.... to bring about good.
His hope is that your weakness, and your loneliness and your unhappiness will serve to bring you to your senses.
He is like that father that allowed his son to wind up in that pig sty... for good for his own good.
And it did for the prodigal
and it did for Samson.
Samson is in prison, being used the way they would use a dumb animal, the object of ridicule and scorn.
1. THE HOPE OF REVIVAL
And the greatest verse in this whole story is found in the 22nd verse... "However, the hair of his head began to grow again… after it was shaved.
The prodigal had to wind up with the pigs, Samson had to wind up with the Jackasses
Now, in verse 22.... after coming to his senses in a prison cell, Samson called on God for help.
First he had to ask for forgiveness.
And God gave him a sign of his forgiveness, of his acceptance.... his hair began to grow.
The hair was a symbol. Growing symbolized Samson’s repentance, his return to godliness, HIS REVIVAL.
***There are some of you here today who are like Samson before the haircut....
You still have the symbol... membership, church attendance, reputation, history
But the essence is gone, the reality of relationship is gone, it is just a sham, just an act.
You need to return, you need to repent... why wait until everyone knows it?
*** Some of you are like Samson after the barber....
even the outward appearance, the symbol is gone
You have stopped going to church
you’ve stopped trying to act Christian
you have left your Christian friends
And you need to return to God
You need to confess your sin
acknowledge your powerlessness.... weakness
ask God to forgive you of your sin, your disobedience
ask God to forgive your witness that has doomed others
confess that you know God has withdrawn
Ask God to return to you
to return you to your former place
to return you to the joy, the power, the presence
No matter how far you have gone... you grab hold of verse 22 and claim it for your own
"However, the hair of his head began to grow after it was cut."
And you come today and do as Samson did... call on the Lord
He heard and answered Samson.... and he will hear and answer you too.
I have a powerpoint for this sermon and will email iyu if you contact me at reverick57@hotmail.com
