I would ask you kindly to turn with
me to the passage from which Mr. Lowe
has just read, and I would like to
read again those closing words, which will be
the focus of our meditation this evening.
Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his
eyes, and took him down to Gaza.
Binding him with bronze shackles, they set him
to grinding in the prison.
But the hair on his head began to
grow again after it had been shaved, giant,
un-gianted.
Samson's public life as a judge in ancient
Israel stretched over a period of twenty years
or so, though the biblical record covers only
a few chosen excerpts, a few chosen incidents
from the entire history, and the perusal of
the material may well stagger us.
Not one incident really serves to show Samson
as a man of God, or a man
of spiritual stature.
There are indications here of what might have
developed into spiritual maturity, but they never did.
The record of this life is probably one
of the saddest, one of the most tragic
in the entire annals of Holy Scripture.
And I have a distinct fear in my
heart as I speak about Samson tonight, but
I'm constrained to do so, and I feel
I must share with you some of the
sordid facts of the case, in order that
we may discern something of God's grace, and
hear perhaps God's warning to an age that
is very similar indeed to the age in
which Samson lived.
Now there are aspects of Samson's life then
which are positively nauseating to read.
I've no doubt that as Mr. Lowe began
to read that sixteenth chapter tonight, some of
you found a little jerk in your spirits,
because of the things to which it refers.
But that's just it.
The Word of God addresses things exactly as
they are.
God is the faithful witness, and the Word
of God is true.
And it is a mirror of life as
it has been, and as it is.
And on that account of course, this passage,
like every other passage, has its own way
of addressing us in our very sordid civilization
in 1985.
Now the first thing I would like you
to notice in the life of this man
Samson is the almost total rule of lust.
It's a strange thing to have to say
it.
It sounds terrible to have to announce from
a pulpit, but there was a man in
the Old Testament who ruled the ancient people
of God, who was almost completely dominated by
his own lust.
Lust is passion run wild.
It's the mastery of life by what was
meant to be its servant.
The exercise of unlimited rule by a power
that was meant to be under constant control.
In consequence of such a reversal of the
divinely ordained order of things, chaos inevitably and
invariably follows.
When controlled or righteously of course, these latent
human desires given us by the Creator have
a high and a noble intention and goal
in mind.
But once they get out of control, they
turn man into a beast and they turn
society into a moral jungle.
They bring kings from their thrones and angels
from their thrones likewise.
Kingdoms and civilizations that have long and successfully
withstood the power of mailed armor have withered
to the scrap heap because of infernal lust
within.
Now believe it or not, Samson was the
son of a God-fearing father and mother,
and this is where the sad story begins.
If he was a child of some of
our modern homes, then you might not be
so surprised at the issue.
But Samson was the child of a very,
very godly home.
His parents were, one might almost say, peculiarly
godly.
He was a very special gift of God
to a couple who were bent on the
glory of God in an age when very
few people were.
You know, I feel one should interject here
and say this.
Some children of godly parentage need to be
told that they have not arrived in this
world simply due to the turn of biological
processes, but they have come by the intervention
of God in answer to prayer.
Some children need to be told that.
Samson was a case in point.
He was born, he was conceived in the
womb in answer to prayer, and he was
a gift of God to his parents and
to his nation.
Because he was thus given, his parents dedicated
himself to the service of the Lord from
the very beginning.
I have no doubt it was a very
lovely, a very wholesome, and perhaps a very
holy occasion when his father and his mother
brought him, and whatever the nature of the
service exactly, they dedicated the boy to the
glory and the service of the God who
had given him to them.
I personally, I'm reading in, maybe when I
say this, but I have in my heart
the feeling that that they really expected something
from this boy when they called him Samson.
You see, the name Samson is somehow or
other, never mind how quite, but it is
somehow or other related to the Hebrew word
for sun, s-u-n, shemesh, and somehow
or other they looked upon this little bundle
of babyhood in their hands as if the
sun was risen.
And here has come someone into the darkness
of the hour to bring light and life
and hope and joy and a new day.
Samson is born, a sun is risen, but
actually a sun never shone.
It was under a cloud from the very
beginning apart from one or two minor incidents
when something extraordinary seemed to manifest itself.
Actually there were only one or two such
promising signs emerging in the early years of
Samson as far as we can read from
the record, causing his parents perhaps to believe
that their dreams were true, but only to
be disappointed a little later on.
We read, for example, in Judges 13 verses
24 and 25, just after it records the
birth of the boy, he grew and the
Lord blessed him.
So the Lord's blessing was upon him in
his youth, and the spirit of the Lord
began to stir him.
That's a very remarkable statement.
The spirit of the Lord began to stir
him while he was in Mahanedan between Zorah
and Eshteroth.
Doubtless all this raised the hopes of his
parents that we can't say exactly what it
meant, but something happened.
They were doomed, as we have already said,
to disappointment in due course.
Those early promises were not fulfilled.
They came to nothing.
On the contrary, Samson became more and more
body and less and less soul.
Almost everything thereafter recorded of him depicts his
soul becoming more and more shriveled and impoverished.
Even as his body became stronger, he became
physically a giant and his soul shriveled to
a dwarf state.
Wherever he went, he brought darkness rather than
light, dishonor rather than respect and hope.
You know, it is a sad spectacle to
see this judge of Israel proving to be
more morally dangerous to Israel's enemies than militarily
so.
He was a moral nuisance more than he
was a military nuisance.
And so deterioration having set in rather early,
though we cannot give the details, scripture does
not tell us, but that deterioration continued.
The process we have briefly hinted at continued
apace throughout the years of his life.
The deterioration took the form of an ever
-increasing desecration of everything that was holy.
You saw the man growing into a physical
giant, but every inch of his massive frame,
every gift he possessed, all the potentiality of
body and soul, everything seemed to be harnessed
just to give vent to his lust and
his passion.
Though everything was dedicated to God in his
early days, now everything is used to dishonor
the Lord.
It's a very sad picture.
Reared in a Nazarite, as a Nazarite by
parents whose hearts were set on this, he
was disciplined, you remember, not to touch, as
every Nazarite was, not to touch anything that
was unclean, not to drink wine or shave
his head as a symbol of his spiritual
dedication to the Lord.
There was meaning to this, I shall mention
it before we close, more than I can
now.
Yet one by one, Samson desecrated every single
gift.
He broke every single vow, and he used
everything that he was and had for his
own evil purpose.
And he became physically involved in one orgy
of passion after another, until you really wonder
what's going to happen next.
And it is, as one ancient commentator put
it, it is with a sense of great
relief that one sees Samson as a corpse,
dead.
Thus Samson's energies and gifts became wholly dissipated.
I repeat, what was dedicated to God became
completely desecrated by sin.
And with thoughtless, frivolous self-satisfaction, he went
from one escapade to another, until he finally
ended up in the tragedy reported at the
end of Judges chapter 16.
Now in all this we see him defying
the Almighty God, to whom he owed his
life, and to whom he was dedicated from
his childhood.
His every deed seems to have been a
provocation of God's holy wrath.
And it is, it is, it is awesome,
really awesome, it is frightening to find that
wherever Samson appeared, in all these records, wherever
he appeared, it is either to destroy men
or to debase women.
And you read the story, you read the
story.
It is either to destroy men or debase
women, folk.
Either or.
There is very little else in this man's
life.
And so we come to what I would
refer to as an almost total loss of
luster altogether.
I say almost, because there may well have
been features in his life that the scriptures
don't tell us about.
I would love to think that.
The picture, as far as we see in
scripture, is a terribly dark picture.
Knowing his spiritual pedigree, we might be tempted
to hope still for some change.
But the record progresses only to show the
tragedy getting, as we've said, darker and darker,
bleaker and bleaker, until the end comes in
ignominy and shame and death.
Now the record moves gradually towards that climax,
stressing the character of, at that stage, the
ignoble women whom he befriended.
And particularly, of course, the one whose name
is Delilah.
Her nationality is more in doubt than her
character.
Though she has actually spared the disreputable title
given to another of her class in the
first verse of chapter 16, she is no
better than a prostitute.
And she is in league with the Philistines.
Whether she was a Philistine or not, we're
not quite sure.
But she was in league with the Philistines,
who hated Samson and hated the Israelites.
And you remember, as soon as Samson became
involved with her, she began her beguiling ministrations
with insidious mastery.
Here was most certainly a woman who was
under demonic control.
She had her inspiration.
She knew how to do what she wanted
to do.
She enticed Samson so completely that his capacity
for rational thought seems to have been completely
overwhelmed.
It's uncanny.
He just wouldn't believe it if it weren't
in the book.
But a man who could be the ruler
of his people should lose control over his
capacity to think rationally.
But he does.
And passion can do that.
Unbridled passion, passion run wild, can so wreak
havoc in the realm of person's thinking that
he becomes incapable of rational thought.
And here is one of the tragic cases
that the Bible refers to.
He was as a man bewitched, mesmerized by
this woman.
He slept with his head on a lap.
He became insensitive to obvious warnings that were
given him from one source or another until
he finally opens to her the secret of
his heart and of his great strength.
Now the story is a pathetic one as
you read on in chapter 16.
And here it is that we come to
the climax, the awful climax.
Lulled into insensitivity by the enticements of Delilah,
Samson, albeit a little reticent at the beginning,
he led her astray twice.
He lied to her.
He was unwilling at the beginning, but he
couldn't withhold.
His passion was too great.
He loved her too much.
And her charms, finally he gave in.
And he told her, if you shave the
hair of my head, I will be exactly
like another person.
I will have no more strength than anybody
else.
And there's a reason for this, because I'm
a Nazarite.
And he tells her, he opens his heart
to her, and probably says more, enlarges upon
what we have here in a kind of
shorthand report in scripture.
And then when he's told her everything, she
gets him to sleep.
We're not told again how all this happened.
We have to read between the lines.
You see, it's a shorthand record.
But she got him to sleep all right.
She knew how to do that.
And when he was asleep, she said, Samson,
the Philistines are upon you.
What?
And you can see the big old giant
shaking himself.
Big of body, masculine of body, and muscular.
Here he shakes himself free of his sleep,
and he stands on his two high legs.
And he says, I will go out as
at other times.
But there was something he didn't know.
A spirit of God had departed from him.
And because the spirit of God, the source
of his strength, was vanished, he was not
the man he was.
He has lost something.
He did not know that the Lord had
left him.
Grieved a thousand times, the Holy Spirit now
withdrew his benefits.
And he let the man slip into the
self-chosen prison house of his own carnality,
leaving him to himself to cope with the
things to which he had wedded his own
soul.
Now the result was fatal.
You see, when robbed of his physical strength,
poor Samson had nothing left.
What would you have left if you lost
your physical strength?
Anything?
Brother and sister, I suggest to you this
is a very important question.
What would you, what would I have left
if I lost my physical strength?
Anything?
Nothing?
Samson had nothing.
He was all body and no soul by
this time.
His whole being was demuted of its every
semblance of glory and every human prospect of
reclamation, lusterless.
He falls prisoner to a people he would
otherwise have ground to powder.
And the tragedy proceeds.
You see the landslide.
You see, you see the movement.
He's going down, down, down.
There is a bottomless pit that awaits him.
With his head on the lap of the
ignoble Delilah, we can see Samson moving towards
this sad state of affairs.
And then his captors got him.
And the first thing they did is to
gouge out his eyes.
This of course in Philistine, it was the
Philistine way of saying, we treat you with
the utmost disrespect.
It was symbolic of their total mastery over
him and their total disrespect for any person.
This is what they did.
They gouged out both eyes.
The Philistines gouging out of Samson's eyes then
exhibited their total anger and disrespect for him.
It was another way of spitting into his
face.
Many another Samson has lost his vision along
the same path, not physically perhaps.
This is one thing that happens when unbridled
passion rules in a life.
A man or a woman loses his or
her vision.
Time was when God was evident in his
providence, in his grace, in his will, in
everything.
God and God's will was clear.
But when passion rules and holds the reins,
vision vanishes.
Haven't you seen it?
I have.
Not only did they gouge out his eyes,
but they bound him with bronze shackles.
He was deprived of liberty.
Having so long been a man who was
subject to no one else's requirements, moving where
he would and how he would and whenever
he would, a man who was master of
himself, complete master of himself in one sense,
though slave to himself in another sense, who
chose what he would do and obeyed no
one else.
Here he is at last deprived of movement,
deprived of liberty.
Samson the giant in prison and his feet
in bronze shackles that he could not break.
He tore everything, but he couldn't tear these.
Put new cart ropes over his hands and
bind his wrists and his arms.
They were just like a little bit of
flax before the flame, but he couldn't touch
these.
These stayed on, though Samson was a giant.
All the philistines knew what they were doing.
They were determined to humble him to the
very dust if they could.
I've seen others move in that way, spiritually
if not physically.
They've got into a prison house from which
they have cried to get out and wept
and wept.
But it seemed that they too were in
bronze shackles.
But look, it doesn't end there.
The philistines set him in the prison to
grind corn in the prison house.
Now this may not mean very much to
us, but it does mean much in its
own context.
It really is the climax of the whole
thing.
We miss the shame involved in this in
a philistine society because we do not commonly
appreciate that a woman really took a subservient
place in philistine society.
This was a woman's work or the work
of an ass.
Sorry ladies, that's not me, but that's history.
The woman was unquestionably inferior in philistine thought
at this time and it was the woman's
job or the job of an ass to
grind out the corn in the prison house.
And you see what they're doing to Samson
is this.
They're going to humble him to the very
dust and ashes.
They'll give the giant a woman's work to
do or the work of a donkey.
They not only rob him of vision and
liberty, but they set him to do a
maid's work in a prison house.
How completely unjointed is this once great leader
of Israel so-called.
The way of the transgressor is hard.
Neither was Samson the only one you know
who has walked that way.
Do you know your history?
If you do, you will know of many
many illustrations of men who have gone this
way.
This is not the time nor the place
to advertise this kind of thing, but I
will refer to one as we go.
The Greek giant Hercules, to mention one only,
dandied and played so long with Omphale, queen
of Lydia, that he became something in her
lap very much what Samson became in the
lap of Delilah.
Hercules spent his massive energies, believe it or
not, winding and carding wool for his mistress.
That's how he spent his time.
Could anything be more humiliating?
Especially, especially whilst Omphale wore the skin of
a Nemean lion.
So history tells us, which Hercules had killed
to procure for her at great peril to
himself.
Now imagine the man.
Here is the giant who killed the lion
just as Samson did, and she's wearing the
skin of the Nemean lion, and he is
content, he is content to be carding, carding
wool and winding wool into a ball with
his mistress.
Of all the creatures one sees caged in
a zoo, one's heart, my heart at any
rate, goes out very specially to the eagle.
I don't know how you feel.
When I visit the zoo, I'm very happy
with, with animals, but my heart aches for
some of them.
Oh, you may say they're very contemptive.
Well, I wonder.
But I'm always very sorry when I see
in the zoo, in a cage, an eagle
caged, an eagle of all creatures, made with
vast pinions, capable of soaring into highest heaven,
with eyes to look into the very brightness
of the sun itself, and there it is
in a cage.
And it matters very little whether he's spending
his strength to hurt himself against the bars,
or whether he's settled down to it all,
and agreed to become a prisoner without any
fuss.
It doesn't matter.
It's a tragedy writ large.
Did I say there was no greater tragedy?
If I said that, I made a mistake.
There is one greater.
It's the child of godly parents, dedicated to
the Lord, upon whom the Spirit of God
began to move.
And a work of grace began to appear,
and it seemed as if it was the
dawn of a new day, and you could
almost say there's light there.
But the sun never shone.
The day never dawned.
The promise was never fulfilled.
On the contrary, it seemed as if the
train was set in reverse, and the movement
was not forwards, but backwards, and backwards, and
backwards into shame, and catastrophe.
The last thing I have to speak about
is the partial recovery of this lost power
and luster.
Thank God the story does not quite end
there.
There is not much more to add, but
there is something, and that something is very
significant.
I'd like you to notice this very specially.
Scripture does not end the record in terms
of a recovery so great, and so glorious,
and so complete, that anyone can get the
impression that sin does not matter.
You cannot read the story of Samson and
then come to the conclusion a man can
sin as much as he wants, and rebel
as far as he can.
God will forgive.
All will be well at last.
It doesn't matter very much.
You can't read that here.
But then there is something one has to
put alongside of that.
Neither can a man read the story of
Samson without seeing a glimmer of hope for
the penitent.
And you see there is a balance here.
This morning we were talking about another kind
of balance in scripture.
Well we're with it again tonight.
You see sometimes we preachers can so preach
about the forgiveness of God that we can
convey the impression, sin as much as you
can, or as much as you will, or
as much as you must, though no one,
there is no must to sin.
But we say it's all right.
God will forgive, and God will forget, and
we convey the awful impression, the false impression,
the mad impression that sin does not matter.
Now our fathers could preach the gospel better
than we can.
Somehow or other we moderns have lost the
art of preaching forgiveness so sweet, and so
full, and so free on the one hand,
and yet conveying the certainty to men, sin
is a loathsome sin, a loathsome thing, a
horrible thing.
Here you find the Holy Spirit leading the
writer of scripture to walk this narrow ledge
without veering to the one or to the
other.
I just want to say a word about
both of them before we close.
My heart yearns as I conclude this message
that the episode will strike the fear of
sin more into my own soul and into
yours.
I feel that we need a little more
of this, the fear of sin, the dread
of sin, in myself especially, but in others
also.
You know there is a hymn of Charles
Wesley's.
We don't sing it very often.
It's not, yes it is in our book,
but it's set to a tune which is
unmanageable as far as Knox is concerned.
We've tried it out a few times, and
it really, it's unmanageable.
But there are two stanzas in this hymn
which go like this.
I want a godly fear, a quick discerning
eye that looks to thee when sin is
near and sees the tempter fly, a spirit
still prepared and armed with jealous care, forever
standing on its guard and watching unto prayer.
Listen to this.
I want a true regard, a single steady
aim, unmoved by threatening or reward to thee
and thy great name, a jealous just concern
for thine immortal praise, a pure desire that
all may learn and glorify thy grace.
I have a yearning for that, for me
and for this congregation, and for the people
of God at large, a dread of sin
that runs away from it.
More than that, however, I sincerely pray that
the perusal of the dark bit of biography
of an Old Testament character will not leave
anyone who may have yielded to some of
the same temptations in unrelieved gloom.
Now, Samson experienced partial recovery.
The hair of his head began to grow
again.
I don't think I shall ever get over
the electric shock, spiritually speaking, of reading and
recognizing what that meant for the first time
not all that long ago.
The hair of his head that had been
shaved by the Philistines began to grow again.
You see, Samson's long hair was symbolic of
his commitment and consecration to God, and on
its adverse side, of the strength that he
enjoyed as he honored his Nazarite vows.
That strength was not in his hair itself.
This is where people go astray.
You see, the strength was not in the
hair itself.
By the time this passage was written, Samson's
hair must have been down to his hips.
But the strength was not in the hair
itself.
The hair was symbolic of something.
It was symbolic of his commitment and of
his dedication, which of course he was not
loyal to.
But God in mercy, nevertheless.
You see, God's mercy is always greater than
our sin.
God allowed him to have strength, even when
sin had come in.
And for a long time, God's mercy was
gracious.
God's mercy continued, and he had strength.
But the hair was only a symbol of
all that.
That strength was not in his hair itself.
It was God's gift.
The hair was symbolic.
Now, it is my conviction that when Samson's
hair began to grow again, that this is
not something natural and normal.
When you cut your hair, it grows again.
And even people like myself have to go
to the hairdressers every now and again.
I don't give him a lot of trouble,
but I have to go and see him.
And some of you are in the same
category, I see, from this vantage point.
But you know, even if you shaved your
head, your hair would grow again, naturally.
But I don't think that's what we've got
here.
I think that what we've got here is
something supernatural.
I believe that when this man found himself
in prison and humiliated, and when he lost
his physical sight, his two eyes were gouged
out, he began to see things morally and
spiritually for the first time, when truth began
to dawn, and realities broke in that never
had broken into his benighted soul.
And for the first time, I believe, this
man showed some measure of penitence.
Now you say to me, I can almost
hear you.
I don't know who it is, but there's
somebody here who says, why do you say
that?
How can you say that?
It doesn't say that in Scripture.
I know it doesn't say that in Scripture.
Well then, how can you say it?
I'll tell you.
One reason for my believing that lies in
the fact that we find Samson among the
worthies of Hebrews 11.
Huh?
Did you remember that?
Samson, this man.
Hey, take your breath away.
Samson in Hebrews 11.
A man of faith.
One of the great.
Well now, where did Samson's faith come in?
Where did Samson manifest faith?
Anywhere.
Not in the early part of his life.
It never came to anything.
Not in the middle of his life.
It could not have been, if the record
is accurate, and I believe it is, until
the very end.
And it must have been during that prison
scene in Gaza, when he was reduced to
rubble and to nothing.
It must have been there, when without any
hope apparently, the man began to experience the
grace of penitence, of repentance in some measure.
And God, oh merciful Father, God granted that
the hair of his head should grow again.
The symbol is coming back.
And little by little, along with the symbol
that became evident, became the strength that was
not yet evident to the Philistines, until at
last on that day, he asked the slave
that was leading him around as a blind
man, take me to the pillars on which
the temple depends.
And he put his two massive hands upon
those two pillars, and you remember what happened.
How he tore the whole place down, and
the three thousand on the gallery, and the
multitudes underneath, the Philistines died with him.
Samson's experience of partial recovery.
Partial recovery.
And you see, this makes a world of
difference to an understanding of Samson's life now.
You see, if this is true, then Samson's
death at the end was not a suicide,
neither was it a matter of altogether unqualified
revenge against his captors, though that is an
element the scriptures tell us.
But it was more than that.
It was Samson acting as a man of
faith, as the leader of Israel, to cause
some indication to the enemies, the enemies of
his own self and of his nation, that
Jehovah is God.
You see, I'm coming towards the close, so
I must summarize what I wanted to say.
God and Samson's parents working together under divine
command, the parents working under the Lord's command,
had brought him up as a Nazirite, as
we've already indicated.
And this was a special calling.
It had two orders to it.
There was a temporary order of Nazirites.
You became a Nazirite for a period, or
you might become a permanent Nazirite, and there
are only three mentioned in scripture, Samson, Samuel,
and John the Baptist.
The Nazirite calling was to fortify the future
judge against the fierce temptations that the Philistines
would bring.
Let me enlarge a little upon that.
Why was Samson brought up a Nazirite?
What was the divine purpose?
This, that he should be prepared from a
youth not to touch anything unclean, not to
drink anything that would take his senses away,
not to do things that would make him
less than a giant, not only physically but
spiritually and morally.
That's the purpose of it.
In order that he might make the God
of Israel known to the people of the
plains, the Philistines.
But you see, Samson's calling was not fulfilled.
His divine mission was not fulfilled.
His passion robbed him of his calling.
And even though something of his luster or
of his power was returned to him at
last, I want you to notice this, and
this is one of the serious elements of
it all.
It was not to rule over Israel.
It was simply to deal a blow at
Israel's foes.
Samson missed his calling.
Even so, God, the God of mercy, granted
him a sense of shame that was altogether
a new factor in his life.
And with that came a token of hope.
But the last thing of all with which
I must conclude is this.
Samson was only partially recovered and restored.
As I've said, he never recovered his sight
again.
His feet were never liberated again whilst he
was alive, only after he died.
And the only thing he was allowed to
do, the only thing he was allowed to
do, was to give the enemies of God
and of Israel one mighty stroke.
And he died with them.
Brothers and sisters, sin is a terrible thing.
Oh, God forgives.
Oh, God's grace is wide as the ocean,
high as the heavens, deep as the ocean.
But that does not give any man liberty
to go on in sin.
Shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound?
God forbid.
How can we that have died to sin,
and that's the meaning of becoming a Christian,
live therein?
No, no, no.
We've died and risen again.
That is the Christian experience.
Sin is a terrible thing.
And though God's grace may come to us
and renew us partially in the closing days
of our life, and grant us the grace
of penitents who have wandered far on passion's
way, there will be some things that we
will not have been able to do with
our lives.
A mission incomplete, if it's even if started.
When the seas are calm and the sun
is bright, we don't need a lighthouse along
the shores.
But when the skies are dark and the
gale is blowing, and we know that there
are sunken reefs and quicksands, oh, it is
a welcome sight, if you're sailing on a
ship to see a lighthouse flashing, flashing, flashing,
and it tells you, don't come too near.
Samson is such a life.
Every flash of experience tells you, man, woman
of God, don't follow me.
Don't come too close.
Keep away from here.
There are quicksands.
There are perils.
There is danger.
Steer your buck another way.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
I bid you to life.
Take a good look at Samson.
In this debauched age of passion run riot,
take a look at this man who let
it rip, and in all the wild orgy
of his life, got everything he wanted, missed
God's purpose, landed in a dungeon in more
senses than one, and was saved by the
skin of his teeth.
He's saying something.
Do you hear what he says?
God grant it.
For his name's sake, let us pray.
Oh, Lord, our God and Father, we never
cease to thank you and never will cease
to thank you for your word.
We are amazed that the Holy Spirit has
recorded some of these episodes, and yet we
seem to sense the reason why.
When we look at ourselves in the mirror
and when we, in the mirror of your
truth, and when we consider the nature of
society around us.
Heavenly Father, grant us to hear the voice
of this wreck of a man, this wreck
of a giant who was un-gianted, and
who, apart from your almighty grace, would have
been utterly and irretrievably and eternally ruined.
Blessed God, let us hear what he's saying
to us, or rather, what you are saying
to us through him.
And may we follow the light and be
obedient to the heavenly vision, for your glory
in Christ, your Son, our Lord.
Amen.