1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The
message from God’s Word this 4th Sunday in Lent is taken from Judges
16:23-30 (READ TEXT), it’s entitled, “Weakness
& Strength,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Appearances can deceive. Time and
again in Scripture people seem strong, yet they prove weak. On the other hand, those
who appear weak can have spiritual strength. You’ve seen examples of this
kind of thing in the world, haven’t you? A big corporation goes bust, while a
small business grows by leaps and bounds. The bragging blowhard turns out to be
worthless in a crisis, and a shy and retiring type steps up and impresses
everyone by rendering unexpected service. What
seems strong is weak, and what seems weak is strong. The Bible has many such cases, spiritually
speaking. The prodigal son may have looked like he was at the top of his game
and sitting on top of the world when he was spending away his inheritance, but
at that time he was in truth weak. He may have looked weak when he came
groveling back to his father, but then he was embraced by the strength of his
father’s strong welcoming love.
3.
Our text describes the death of a judge
of Israel mentioned in the Book of Judges, Samson. His life story is told in
the greater detail than those of the other judges. Samson presents a classic
case of seeming weakness and real strength. Yet at first he had looked
exceptionally strong. This appearance proved deceptive. For though there was a
time when Samson seemed to have it all together, at that point he turned out to
be ever-so- weak. The last sermon noted that after Joshua’s faithful
generation, there followed several generations of spiritual adolescents.
Samson’s story shows what happened when one of those adolescents ended up in
charge. Time and again, he operated more on emotion than anything else.
4.
From before his birth Samson was
supposed to live under the Nazirite
vow, which had three components: no
strong drink in his mouth, no contact with ceremonial uncleanness by his body,
and no razor on his head. Samson violated all three points of his Nazirite
vow. Still worse, it seems he never really took any of them very seriously.
Despite remarkable powers of body and even of mind, spiritually speaking he was
something of an overgrown kid. Toward
the beginning of his story, Samson made physical contact with a dead lion’s
body. Under Old Testament ceremonial law, that was unclean. Samson also seems
to have fully participated in the merriment at his own wedding party, where
strong drink was present. He almost certainly consumed to excess. In other
words, early on Samson broke two of the three parts of his vow. Still, he
judged Israel for 20 years. His strength was legendary and his exploits were
celebrated. He stood out as the people’s choice. Samson was the strong guy you
wanted to have close by, and you wanted to be close to him. But his appearance
of strength masked genuine weakness.
5.
This weakness showed up most when
Samson’s enemies the Philistines paid a woman named Delilah to try to wheedle
the secret of his strength out of him. She asked him about it three times, and
all three of those times he gave her a false answer. Every time, a gang of
Philistine thugs jumped him. Here was a strong clue for Samson that Delilah
meant him no good. He made short work of the thugs every time, so he continued to
play with the temptation. You see, though Samson appeared to be so strong, he
was really very weak. Samson finally
told Delilah about his Nazirite vow and the only part of it that still remained
intact, namely, that a razor had never touched his head. As soon as he fell
asleep, Delilah had him shaved. Once more Philistine thugs set upon him, and
Samson thought he would shake himself as before and defeat them. The Lord was
no longer with him, though. Can you imagine anything quite as pathetic as
someone who thinks he is strong when he is actually quite weak?
6.
How about us? We like to look as if
we have it all together. While we may not be able to compete with Samson in the
category of physical strength, giving knuckle sandwiches to all comers, there
are many forms of strength in this world. We respect them and try to join in
them. We certainly don’t want to seem weak.
Regardless of how strong you and I may appear to be, however, as sinners
we have a fatal weakness. It’s not even disobedience as much as unbelief. In
unbelief we don’t take the Lord all that seriously. Nor do we take seriously
the problems that we make for ourselves when we fail to take him seriously.
7.
Every pastor has heard expressions
like these: “It’s been quite a while
since I’ve been in church, I know, but I’ll be back. I can pick up again any
time, right where I left off.” Or: “Thanks
for telling me about spiritual help from the Lord, but I am getting along just
fine.” Or consider this one, which we may not even want to put into words
in our own minds: “I’m fascinated by this
particular sin. So I’ll play with it for a while. Still, I’m not worried. I can
stop any time.” All this is Samson’s kind of thinking. These sentiments can
be as pathetic as him saying to himself, “I’ll
simply shake myself as before.”
8.
The Philistines grabbed Samson,
subdued him, and gouged out his eyes. They reduced him to forced labor in one
of their capital cities. On the occasion described in our text, a meeting of
the Philistine high command with some three thousand people present, Samson was
brought out before the crowd. He was supposed to be the evening’s entertainment.
He looked weak, weaker than he had ever looked in his life. In this wretched
condition, what could he do except become the butt of their jokes?
9.
People find this part of Samson’s
story off-putting. It’s even more off-putting when we have to admit that
despite all our pretenses of strength, we are in fact weak. We want what is
attractive, what is strong. We want it for ourselves. Maybe we are even
thinking to do something for God, something really special. But, he is not
impressed with works that sinners like us do in unbelief. He finds unbelief and
what it does to be worthy of condemnation.
10.
In Samson’s case, his weak
appearance before the Philistine high command turned out to be the time when he
was spiritually strong. For then he was completely depending upon the Lord.
Sinners don’t want such dependence. They detest a kingdom that as Martin Luther
says, “condemns and rejects all their
outward works and ways in which they trust and asks them instead to trust in
God’s grace, which is mysterious and concealed, being promised solely by His
Word and comprehended only by faith.” Yet this was exactly what Samson was
counting upon.
11.
The big man prayed for the Lord to
be with him one more time. In a final act of strength, Samson pushed apart the
key pillars of the building. He literally brought down the house. Samson
sacrificed himself and eliminated the Philistine high command. We can talk a
lot about the theology of the cross, but in this case Samson was living it. When the Philistine guards had first brought
Samson out for the crowd’s amusement, he was no doubt mocked. So was the
seemingly weak Christ on the cross. Precisely as Psalm 22 predicted a thousand
years ahead of time, people called out to Jesus, “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now” (Matthew 27:43). They also
said things like, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross”
(Matthew 27:40).
12.
In the instances of Samson and
countless others, the Lord had worked through the evil committed by human
beings. But in Christ, God was dealing with the evil once and for all. He was
taking it upon himself. Jesus was undergoing the penalty for your sin and mine
as he hung on that cross. He looked so weak, yet he was strong. This strength
consisted in much more than human power or strength. It was the strength of God
himself. Some of the Church Fathers compared the divine nature of Christ to a
metal fishhook that is hidden by a worm when the hook is baited. The human
nature of Christ can be likened to the worm. Along comes the devil, who like a
predator fish determines to get that worm. It seems so weak, so easy to eat. Then
the fish bites, and discovers that he has bitten off so much more than he can
chew. That hook proves to be too strong. The divine power of the God-man, Jesus
Christ, turns out to be what defeats the devil. The seemingly weak One turns
out to be incomparably strong.
13.
In the text Samson could only die,
even though his death was a noble and self- sacrificing one. Jesus not only
died—not only gave himself as a sacrifice—but he also continued his work when
he rose from the dead to save you and me. He fills the spiritual “power void” with himself, and he still
does so through his Word. “We preach
Christ crucified,” wrote St. Paul. This message may be “a stumbling block to
Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is
wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1
Corinthians 1:23–25).
14.
It may have seemed that Samson could do
nothing but destroy in his final dramatic act of pushing down the pillars, but
not exactly so! This act stood in contrast with his previous hot-headed binges.
Samson did of course bring about destruction when he pushed those pillars
apart, but he was not merely eliminating a negative. He was bringing about a
positive for Israel, which enjoyed peace from the Philistines for a time. As it
turns out, Samson was beginning a work that would be brought to completion by
none other than King David himself, ending the Philistine menace.
15.
Jesus bringing about the forgiveness
of our sins is doing far more than simply eliminating a negative. With
forgiveness come life and salvation, peace and fellowship with God, hope and
joy, the fulfillment of everything for which the Lord made us human beings.
Christ doesn’t merely forgive sin; He gives us all the blessings of God. “Where there is forgiveness of sins,” the
catechism reminds us, “there is also life
and salvation.” Strong is weak in
God’s accounting, but weak is strong. Just look at Samson. Despite the
adolescent hijinks that marked his career as a judge, Samson ended up as one of
the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. Much more in the case of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the seemingly weak One hanging on a cross turns out to be incomparably
strong.
16.
Like Samson, Christ great strength employed And conquered hell, its gates destroyed
. . .Oh, let us sing His praises! (TLH 211:3) Looking at our lives, you and
I find can much weakness. We find fear, doubt, worry, sin, and shame. God
knows, there is much more besides. If we worked strictly on the basis of
emotion, we might get discouraged over all these things. We would be tempted to
despair. But we walk by faith in God’s promises, not by sight or emotion. In
the crucified and risen Christ, when we are weak, then we are strong. Amen.
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