Sermon Tone Analysis

God Wanted a Man

God wanted a man, and , by that unvarying law of supply and demand, a man must be forthcoming.

A man was needed, once upon a time, to contribute toward the solution for the problem of human rights; Stephen Lanton appeared with the Magna Carta in hand.

A man was needed again to vindicate the freedom of individual conscience; out of the monastery of Wittenberg came Martin Luther, unbinding his rosary and preparing to nail the thunderbolts of the Reformation to the chapel door.

A man was needed to break the chains of Jewish isolationism and bring the gospel to the Gentile world; out of a lightening encounter on the Damascus Road emerged Paul, a persecutor who became a proclaimer of the "good new" available to all people of all nations.

So, times and men come together by divine ordinance.

The clock strikes, and someone answers, "Here am I!"

The Children of Israel had taken possession of the Land of Promise.

Sadly, the settling was quickly followed by apostasy.

S now the glory had departed from Israel.

ON every hand were altar fires in honor of Baal.

Up from the southern plains came the Philistines in their war chariots, devastating the fields and plundering the villages.

The banners of God's people were trailed in the dust.

The Ark of the Covenant had been carried away into exile.

Was there no man to save?

If man's extremity is God's opportunity, surely the hour had come.

Where was the man?

In the house of Manoah at Zorah, just then a child was to be born of whom it was said,

His parents chose the name Samson which means "sunshine" and intimated a joyous parental welcome, a divine benediction, and a glorious outlook.

If we follow Samson through the years, we will learn the lessons of power: its secret, its loss, and its recovery.

The Secret of Power

Samson's mission had been set forth in the annunciation of his birth; to wit, as in 13:7 he should "begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of th Philistines."

This was "the reason of his life."

There is no life without a reason, though many, failing to discover this, live and die unreasonable.

Our power is measured by our loyalty tot he divine purpose concerning us.

This child was to be set apart from his birth as a Nazarite.

The word means "separated." the Nazarites were persons who regarded themselves as divinely called to special tasks and who shaped their lives accordingly.

They were pledged to put down every personal feeling and ambition in the interest of their vow.

The badge of this austere brotherhood was their unshorn hair, which hung over their shoulders in seven braided locks.

Samson's physical strength was a supernatural gift for a definite end.

His sturdy limbs, broad shoulders, and muscles like twisted cords were the special equipment for his appointed work.

IN his youth, he encountered a lion and ripped it jaws completely apart as easy as if it had been a baby goat.

This was just a preview of larger deeds of prowess later on, as when he lifted the gates of Gaza from their hinges and carried them away on his shoulders in grim derision to a neighboring hilltop, laughing back at them "See how your bars and bolts restrain me!" Later, when he met the enemy at Lehi, he single handedly smote them hip and thigh with the jawbone of ass or donkey.

He rejoiced in the slaughter afterward.

Was there any wonder that the Philistines wanted Samson controlled.

His endowment was more than physical, as it is written that "the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him" Judg 15:14 The spirit came mightily upon him or rushed upon him the ESV says.

What does that mean?

It means that Samson's physical equipment was practically useless save it it should be used in fulfillment of his vow.

His unshorn locks were a visible reminder of his remembered duty.

Let him, forget and he would be as weak, no weaker than other men.

Why are we Living?

Is it merely to eat and drink?

Or our lives related in some way to God's great plan?

If we ignore the constraints of the Holy Spirit and lose sight of God's plan for our lives, we will drift away form God and loose our power just as Samson did.

The Loss of Power

The fall of a soul into moral debility is usually a process of gradual decline.

How dies it happen?

The book Prophets and Kings portrays the process graphically:

A long preparatory process, unknown to the world, goes on in the heart before the Christian commits open sin.

The mind does not come down at once from purity and holiness to depravity, corruption, and crime.

In Samson's case, it began with a certain journey down to Timnath.

He had seen there a woman of the daughters of the Philistines and was captivated by her fair face.

His temptations came in at eye-gate.

IN vain did his parents remonstrate,

All he could see was that he desired her.

Get her for me, she pleases me well!

A. The beginning of the decent from strength to weakness is in self-will.

The road to Timnath leads away from consecration, away from power, away from God.

Once and again the strong man made that journey, always a little further from the serous business of his life.

We have been warned

To all who seek first to honor Him, God has promised wisdom; but there is no promise to those who are bent upon self-pleasing.

B. The snare of distractions from our mission.

The end of self-will is surrender.

Our safety is in hewing the line.

And yet, here we are in a world absorbed in the latest fashions and celebrity sightings, charmed by the music on iTunes, engrossed in our favorite TV shows, or maybe mingling with the self-seeking crowd and we have to be very careful that we aren't losing ourselves in sordid worldly cares.

Meanwhile, what of the purpose of life and what of our message?

The world is waiting in darkness, waiting for a message of hope.

Mrs. White asks in the book Christian Service, "Why are we so indifferent, so selfish, so engrossed to temporal interests ... Men and women are ready to do anything to indulge self, and how little are they willing to do for Jesus, and for there fellow men who are perishing for the want of the truth."

The story of Samson's fall is full of warning.

He laid his head in the lap of Delilah and rose up shaved of his God given strength.

But it didn't happen all at once.

Look at how he played with the symbol of his calling.

There is the sorrow of it: The most insidious diseases are those that give no pain.

Their victims, in the midst of business or pleasure, swoon and are gone.

This brings us to the last step that brought Samson down.

c.

The snare of a stifled conscience.

A sin indulged creeps like an ambushing assassin, nearer and nearer to the center of life.

Mrs White observes

Men may have excellent gifts, good ability, splendid qualifications; but one defect, one secret sin indulged, will prove to the character what the worm-eaten plank does to the ship—utter disaster and ruin!

It would doe us well to evaluate our lives to make sure that this not happening to us.

In Moscow, inside the Kremlin, is the world's largest bell.

It is 18 feet high and weighs more than 200 tons.

But its toll has never been heard.

The czar who had it built never heard it ring.

During its casting, as the hot metal was poring into its mold a fire broke out in the factory.

In the process of extinguishing the fire, a small amount of water entered the mold.

When the mold was removed, the metal was cracked, and the bell was ruined forever.

One trickle of water was all it took to silence the bell's powerful voice that was meant to sing.

What about the fine edge of our moral sense?

Is our conscience, once as sensitive as the palm of a child's hand, now seared as with a hot iron?

If these are going on, they are ominous signs of spiritual decline.

The christian can start out in the beginning with a determination to be strong, but if we play with sin, we become weak like other men.

The Recovery of Power

The man who had forgotten his vow, ignored his duty, and denied his Lord yet had and opportunity for grace.

In the prison house of Gaza Samson sits, the champion of Israel, grinding like a woman at the mill.

His eyes are gone and people walk by and make sport of him.

Fair women of Philistia walk by but he can not see them.

No more temptation for these eyes.

But as he sits he remembers.