Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Strength of Samson

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Forget the heroes. These days, we want authenticity. We want personal vision. We’ve done away with hero worship.  In the story of Samson, we see that the Bible doesn’t give us hero worship, but it also doesn’t give us hero hatred or deconstruction. Some people have called Samson an old-fashioned hero, like Superman—but he’s not. I’ve been waiting for people to call him the anti-hero—he even makes jokes when he’s killing people. Samson is physically quite strong and morally quite weak. But in spite of this, God actually judges Israel with him. What does it all mean? In the story of Samson we see that 1) hero worship does not help, 2) but hero deconstruction doesn’t help either, and 3) we need something else. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 12, 1997. Series: Pointers to Christ – Directional Signs in History. Scripture: Judges 15:9-20. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Did you know that the Bible is all about Jesus from beginning to end? But sometimes you need signposts to point you to Christ. Today Tim Keller is looking at how we can see Christ and his mission in glory. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelunlife.com and sign up for email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel change lives as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelinlife.com Read the passage with me, Story of Samson, Judges chapter 15, 9-20, or one of the stories of Samson.

The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out nearly high. The men of Judah asked, why have you come to fight us? We have come to take Samson prisoner, they answered, to do to him as he did to us. And then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the Rock of Etaam and said to Samson, don't you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you rulers over us? What have you done to us?" He answered, I merely did to them what they did to me. They said to him, we've come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines. And Samson said,

swear to me that you won't kill me yourselves. 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 let him up from the rock. And as he approachedly high, the Philistines came toward him, shouting, and the spirit of the Lord came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flags and the bindings dropped from his hands, finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey. He grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. And then Samson said,

with a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them. And with a donkey's jawbone, I have killed a thousand men. And when he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone, and the place was called Ramath Lehi. 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? And then God opened up the hollow place in Lehigh and water came out of it. And when Samson drank his strength returned and he revived. So the spring was called En Hacore and it is still there in Lehigh. Samson led Israel for 20 years in the days of the Philistines. This is God's word.

It is. When Princess Dye and Mother Teresa died at the same time, there was a lot of discussion about one thing in particular, and that is why there was so much more of a public outpouring of grief over Diana than Mother Teresa. There was a lot of discussion about that and what's interesting about it is that there really were two sides and yet they both agreed on the reason. They agreed on the reason, but they used the reason differently, one very critically about Diana's supporters and one very, very sympathetically.

The critic said, this is it. The reason for the difference in the grief is that Mother Teresa was a hero and Diana was only a celebrity. So that's what the critic said. Mother Teresa was a hero. She accomplished something. Princess Diana was just a celebrity. What did she accomplish?

And the fact that there was so much more grief over a celebrity than a hero proves the shallowness of our culture. That was what the critic said. But then on the other hand, there was a lot of sympathy. There was a sympathetic use. There was a lot of people who said, yes, of course, Mother Teresa was a hero. And Princess Thay was the only celebrity. But this is how they would go. They'd say, Mother Teresa did not care a bit how she looked. Obviously. Princess Diana did. We can relate to that.

We can't relate to Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa didn't seem to care about her happiness at all. She didn't seem to care about her comfort or happiness or fulfillment at all. Princess Diana obviously did. And we can relate to that. We can't relate to the hero. Mother Teresa seemed absolutely strong, you know, doing her duty perfectly, incorrigibly, and Princess Diana, but she was very weak, but she admitted her

weaknesses and her flaws, and we can relate to that, you see. And what you have in the two sides, both admitting the same thing, but using it differently, you have an illustration of really two kinds of public central figures. In the early part of the 20th century, we had the hero. The hero was big. Not only in reality, you know, we had heroes in reality, but you had the lone ranger, you had Superman. What are these? The heroes were the ones who did their duty, incargably, never flinching.

But in the late postmodern 20th century, you've got not hero worship, but hero deconstruction, not hero worship, but hero suspicion. We don't like heroes. We don't really trust them. One of the things I realized over the years is that when I read the village voice, they were so critical of Mother Teresa, which didn't make much sense,

because she was for the poor, and I thought maybe it had to do with her stand on abortion. But I came to realize, they just don't trust anybody who looks that noble. They just don't. We have to suspect anybody like that. And listen, this is prevalent, here of deconstruction. We don't want heroes, we want celebrities, we want celebrities who come on talk shows and tell us about their problems and even other beautiful

and even though they're athletic and talented, we can relate to them, see, they're just like us. Walter Truitt Anderson has a very interesting statement and he's a social critic and he wrote this a few years ago. He says, we no longer look for salvation in unblemished heroes. We want people who are complex, dependent and changeable. Postmodern psychology sees the individual as more changeable than stable. We don't want one dominant authority to tell us what to do. Hear that. We don't want heroes. We don't want one dominant authority to tell us what to do. Hear that? We don't want heroes. We don't want people who are so strong that crush us by the standards. We want people not who do their duty, but who are willing to say, who cares about duty

I want authenticity. See I want personal vision. I want fulfillment. That's what we want. Interestingly enough, Carol Gilligan wrote about Princess Diana in the New York Times and she said this. She says, why we like Diana, it was a relief to everyone to know that she was not an angel, that she did not sacrifice herself for the sake of her children.

The outpouring of emotion revealed how deeply was she was joined in the choices she made. Listen this, like Eve, Princess Diana came to know good and evil, but unlike Eve, she refused to be ashamed and refused to hide. She found her voice, she found her pleasure, and she shattered the icon that imprisons us. Now what does Carol Gilligan say? That's very typical of late postmodern hero hatred. Princess Diana, she says, freezes from the crushing weight of heroism, of duty. We don't want that. We can't stand that anymore. That just led to hypocrisy, or it led to incredible disaster in an sense of failure. Forget the heroes, the duty, strength. We want authenticity. We want personal vision. We want to find what really is important for us.

That's what we want. Now somebody says, I know it's coming. You're a minister, aren't you? Well, I know what you're going to say. What you're going to say is how awful. We need heroes again. We need traditional values. We need virtue instead of this self-indulgent relativistic culture. Isn't

that what you're going to do? Isn't that what you're going to do? Isn't that what you're thinking? Surprise. Surprise. Neither the modern hero nor the post-modern celebrity, neither hero worship nor hero deconstruction. Will we be able to bear? We will not be able to bear it in our personal psychology or in our corporate sociology. We will not be able to bear it. They will both destroy us. Well, wait a minute, you say, isn't that what Christians? I thought Christians lift up traditional values

and say, let's live like the heroes, let's live in virtue. Okay, let me give you an example of a guy who is really, really big on traditional values, really live in virtue. Okay, let me give you an example of a guy who was really, really big on personal, on traditional values, really big on virtue. The Apostle Paul, before he was converted, before he became a Christian, when he was killing Christians left and right. He was big on virtue. He was big on personal values. Now listen, I'm trying to confuse you by the way. It's called getting you interested. After his conversion in Romans chapter 4, verse 5, he says, and I'm paraphrasing only a

little bit, he says, now to those who do not live virtuously, but who cling to the one who justifies the unvirtuous, God, those are Christians. He says, now to those who do not perform virtuously, but who cling to the one who saves the unvirtuous, those are Christians. Listen, the Bible does not provide just paragons of virtue. It does not give you the loan ranges. Let's not get back to the loan ranger. Forget Clint Eastwoods, spaghetti westerns,

the anti-hero troubled flawed, I'm a Christian minister, I'm saying let's get back to the loan ranger, they both will kill us. They will both kill us. Here's what you need. Not hero worship, not hero hatred or deconstruction, something else. And the Bible doesn't give us either of those. Look and see who he gives, what he gives us.

Now, Samson, first of all, the Bible gives us Samson, but the Bible points to something else. And Samson himself, as weird as he is, some people have looked at Samson as an old-fashioned hero, huh? A hero, Superman with sort of hair for kryptonite. You know, and he goes there, but he's not. Oh, no, he's not. And other people might, I'm waiting for people to come along and say, he's the anti-hero, you know, you know, he has sex with everybody and he makes jokes when he's killing people. You notice where it says, when he, after he kills these people, he's need even blood. Boy, he's making a joke because in Hebrew, the word for ass and the word for heaps of bodies is the same.

And so basically, he's trying to say out of dunk, out of with a dunk, I've turned them into dunkies, something like that. He's making jokes and he's kissing women and he's jumping in and out of bed and he's following his own voice, you see. And he's following his own pleasure and he's not women and he's jumping in and out of bed and he's following his own voice, you see, and he's following his own pleasure and he's not doing his duty. Friends, he's neither of these. Here's what we find out about him. First of all, Samson was very strong. Absolutely. Quite strong. Do you notice when the Philistines come to get him, it says they camped, they spread out thousands of them to come to get a guy. And when the Israelites decide we've got to put it into this and we're going to go capture them, 3,000 go to get this guy, 3,000.

He was a man of incredible strength, enormous physical prowess. That's one of the reasons why so famous, of course, outside of the Bible, he's very, very famous. But the second, the thing that's most important to understand if you're going to get the meaning of the story is that he was deeply weak, morally and spiritually. He was tremendously flawed. And you can see part of this in verse 11 when they say, what are you doing? And he says, I'm just doing what they did to me.

And actually that is the story of Samson's weakness. He doesn't even rise up beyond the Philistines, who in verse 10 say, we're just doing to him what he did to us. The historians will tell you that that was an incredibly dangerous moment in the history of Israel. Tremendously dangerous. Why? If you read the book of Judges, you will find that the early oppressors, the earlier groups that came in and militarily conquered Israel, and then turned them into slaves and captives, the Ammonites, the Midianites, the Moabites, they were much more cruel, terribly cruel.

And because they were cruel, when Deborah or Baruch, or getting, when any of these other judges came along to try to help the Israelites to rise up, they rose up. They came up. They shook off their chains. They shook off the cobwebs from their hearts. They got their courage up and they said, yes, we've got to cast off our oppressors. When you get to Sanfson, what are they doing? What are they doing? Do you see what they're doing? Saying, we like the Philistines captivity. What are you doing to us? These are our rulers.

And the historians tell you what was so dangerous about the Philistines was that they really weren't that cruel. They were absorbing the Israelites. They were intermingling. They were intermarrying. They were interpenetrating. They were tying them in economically. And what was really going to happen to the Israelites was far more dangerous than what

would happen with the other oppressors because what was going to happen within just a generation or two is the Israelites would have through that assimilation lost their not only their distinctive culture but lost their faith. Plus, the world salvation, which by almost any standards, all sorts of people who aren't Christians recognize what the world would have lost if they had been wiped out at that point. And they were about to be. And at that time, God raises Samson up, Samson, to come and create a conflict with the

Philistines, to get the Israelites fighting them, to destroy the Philistines power. But you know how he does it? He never sees the spiritual issues. He never sees the moral issues. He's such a spiritual immature person. He marries the way he's gotten into this, the way God gets him into these conflicts with the Philistines is that he begins to, he marries a Philistine woman. And if you read the story, it goes like this.

He tells a riddle to a bunch of people at his wedding, which is a big bet. He made a bet. They couldn't get the riddle. They cheat him and beat him at the riddle. In retaliation, he kills some of them. In retaliation, the father won't let him see his Philistine wife. In retaliation, he burns their fields. In retaliation, they kill his wife. In retaliation he kills hundreds of them and that's where we are right now in the story. Samson is just doing to them what they were doing to him. That's it. That's as far as Samson has come up. But verse 20 the last verse is extremely important for the whole text. It says, but Samson did lead Israel. Now,

unfortunately, in this translation, in the NIV translation, you miss the point. You say, sure he led Israel. But you see the Hebrew word there is judged. He judged Israel. And what we're being told is in spite of his moral weakness, in spite of his lack of spiritual vision. God actually judged Israel with him. Now the reason it's so important to understand this, and we're almost done with his story here, is that judges in Israel were not people who were in some official position.

A judge was not the judiciary. A judge was not something that wasn't in office that you had to have. And we always had a judge and then he died and somebody else would, no, no, judges were saviors. Judges did Yashar, they were the deliverers. When Israel was on the brink, when Israel was under disaster, they were saved by the judges. Usually military chieftains, and what we're told is here, in spite of all the stupidity of Samson, God used Samson in spite of his wrong motives and in spite of his ego and in spite of his peak, his vindictiveness and in spite of all that, God did save them.

And how did he save them? You can see in the passage, they turned him over, they betrayed him, they rejected him. But through the rejection, you see what happened? Because they came to tie him up, even though they didn't want to get away from their captors. He was disturbing the peace of their slavery. He lets them do it. Notice, he's not a military fool. He's a spiritual fool, but he's not a military fool.

He says, if you tie me up, will you kill me? They say no. So what does he say? Fine. He says, well, I'll let you time me up. Then these guys who would never be in cautious otherwise will get all around me and I can kill them. That's what he's thinking. See, he's very smart. He says, now if you time up and you kill me, it'll all be for nothing. That's what he's thinking. And so because they hand him over, they say, we don't want you to be judged. We're gonna destroy you. It's because they try to destroy him,

because they try to avoid his salvation that they actually bring it about. And not right afterwards, he's just about to die. You notice in verse 18, this enormous power comes over him. The very thing the Israelites are trying to avoid, they actually help happen. They help it to happen. And this enormous power comes over him, the Spirit of the Lord. And in verse 18, when he says, I'm about to die, I don't think Samson's a crybaby.

I think it was happening. I think because of this enormous energy that virtually consumed his body, he was about to die and he would have died. He had actually given his life for the deliverance, but God opened a spring and he brought him back from the precipice of death. Now what does all this mean? He said, you know, he was a flawed hero, but what does it all mean? Here's what it means.

Hero worship does not help, but hero deconstruction doesn't help a bit. Not a bit. I was reading in, we need something else. I was reading an interesting book review in the Eric Times a couple of weeks ago. On the difference between diaries of teenage girls in the 1890s and the 1990s. It's called the Body Project. And you can see fascinating. In the 1890s, the young girls who wrote their diaries were really in a sense being driven by the need for heroism. But young girls in the 1990s, are they liberated? The way Carol Gilligan suggested, we're liberated. And we now can develop ourselves.

We don't need duty. Are they liberated? Listen to this. This is great. Here's a quote from the 1890s. Teenage girls, 1890s, they're diaries. This is very typical. Resolves to think before speaking, to work seriously,

to never let my thoughts wander, to be completely self-controlled in everything I do and say, and to show much more interest in others than I do to myself. Well, here, you know, good luck, you say. Thankfully, we're not into all that stuff anymore. Our heroism, okay, here, 1990s, here's a typical piece. Change, girl, I will try to make myself better in any way possible I can. I will lose weight. I will get new lenses.

I've already got a new haircut. Good makeup, new clothes, much better accessories. Christina Kelly in Sassy magazine wrote about celebrity worship and she says we worship celebrities because our society is not as religious as it once was. But celebrity worship is a warped and unfulfilling substitute. We make them stars, but then their fame makes us feel insignificant. We can never live up to their beauty. I am part of this whole process.

No wonder I feel soiled at the end of the day. She writes for Sassy. Now what's going on here? Do you think you're more liberated by the deconstruction of heroes than you were by the construction? Absolutely not. We need something else. And Samson points to it.

There was somebody, now listen, who came with a salvation and they said, we will not have you be ruler of us, we're happy where we are, and they turned him over and they tried to destroy him, but he didn't save them just in spite of their effort to destroy them, destroy him, but they saved them through it. And when he was on the cross, he was a warrior. You know why? As if they were piercing him on the cross, the strongest thing anybody could possibly say

is father forgive them. Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. I'll tell you what the easier thing would have been. A weak person would have said father cursed them as they're cursing me. But instead he said, father forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. And as a result, 50 days later,

the people who were killing him because he had been killed, were being baptized in the spirit and water by the thousands in the same city. There was one who was also handed over, like Samson, there was one who the people didn't want to be liberated. They didn't like, no people don't want salvation. People always reject saviors.

They'll tell you, in AA, they'll tell you, not just the alcoholic, but the whole family of the alcoholic gets absolutely comfortable in their sick equilibrium. They don't want him to get sober. They don't want the family to get better. They like their self-pity, they like the excuses they have for lack of transparency and intimacy, they like feeling like Mars, they like it. Somebody comes in to try to say then they'll say,

what are you doing to us? That has been true of every savior, every deliverer, many are maxi, and when the great savior of all history came, they did it. But not only does the story of Samson tell us, that God always delivers through the rejection of the deliverer, but the story of Samson also tells us that when God saves, He always saves, He can save

through one champion. If you read the book of Judges, you'll find that in the early part of the book, when the judges come along, the nation rises up, and they work for their salvation. And when you get down to Gideon, it gets worse and worse. By Gideon's time, only 300 are willing to fight. We get down to Samson, only one is willing to fight. But what's the message of not just this story, but of the Bible. God can save with just one. And here's what's so weird. The military, the military victory of Samson accrues to all the people.

Remember a little David? David stood forth all by himself to fight against Goliath as the champion. And what was a champion? A champion was one that represented the army and represented the nation. And if the champion lost, the nation lost. If the champion won, the nation won.

And you see, Samson stands forth all by himself as a champion to show that God doesn't need a nation. God doesn't need 300. God only needs one. And he can save the whole nation even a stupid nation, even a nation of fools, even a nation of people in denial, even a nation of people who like their slavery, he can save through one. One of the biggest obstacles for people to believe in Christianity is that they think they already

know all about it. But if we look at Jesus' encounters with various people during his life, we'll find some of our assumptions challenged. We see him meeting people at the point of their big unspoken questions. The Gospels are full of encounters that made a profound impact on those who spoke with Jesus. And in his book Encounters with Jesus, Tim Keller explores how these encounters can still address our questions and doubts today. Encounters with Jesus is our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life reach more people with the amazing love of Christ. Request your copy of Encounters

with Jesus today when you give at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. And you see, the saviors of the Old Testament, yes, they were champions in that their victory becomes the victory of the people. You see, the freedom they win becomes the freedom that everybody has, but the great saviour, the great deliverer, the one that this is pointing to, when Jesus Christ came, he fought. Let me tell you the two battles he fought. First of all, he fought the battle of living the life we should have lived. Last week, I took a little, I don't know if you've heard of this, the World Harvest Mission in order to make you understand where you are spiritually, asks, gives you a little thing called the tongue exercise. And the tongue exercise

basically says this, for one day, or what says one week, for one week, don't ever cut anybody down with your tongue, don't ever gossip, don't ever speak unkindly and don't ever defend yourself. Just a week, just a week, just a day, just a day. Try for an hour and you will find yourself in the fight of your life and you will be in a fight, it will be blood, sweat and tears and you will be going down in flames before you know it. Jesus Christ came though and he fought the biggest fight ever. He loved the Lord, his guy with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and he loved his neighborism himself.

He came and he fought. He did it. He did the life we should have lived. He fought that fight, but then when he died, he died the death we should have died. He wasn't bound with just the cords of rope. He was bound with the bands of death. And he did it though as our champion,

just like Samson, just like David, as our champion, which means that when he just like David, as our champion, which means that when he rose, he didn't just break the bands of the ropes, he broke the bands of death. And what it means is simply this, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, God made him sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. What's it mean? Does it mean that on the cross, God became actually wicked? No.

God treated him as if he'd done everything we had done. That means when you become a Christian, the minute you believe, is that when you become actually wonderful and pure and holy? No. It means you are treated as if you had fought those battles, as if you had lived that life, and as if you had died that death. It means suddenly the victory of the champion is yours and God treats you that way. And that's what salvation is. That's what the gospel is. Now that sounds in all those ways like David. It sounds like Samson. But there's another way in which Jesus Christ is utterly unlike them. Utterly. Because if Jesus Christ was just like him, Jesus would be a hero, but he's also very unlike him in one particular way. If you go back in the Old Testament and you'll see that the heroes, that the saviors always

fill the earth with bodies. They fill the earth with bodies. With a jawbone of an ass, he literally says, I've heaped them up, and he's reveling in that. And somebody says, this is what I hate about Christianity, is what I hate about the Bible, blood and military stuff. And this is so violent. I believe in a God of love, please stop, listen, please listen. In the Old Testament, the Savior's always heaped up the bodies.

They fill the earth with bodies. And you know, in Psalm 110, which is a Psalm that is quoted in the New Testament more than almost any other Psalm as a messianic Psalm, a Psalm talking about Jesus the Messiah. In Psalm 110, it talks about this Messiah who is to come and it says, the Lord said to my Lord, the Messiah, sit at my right hand, tell I make your enemies your foot stool. The Lord is at your right hand. He will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations.

He will heap up dead bodies. That's in Psalm 110. He will drink from the brook beside the way and therefore he lift up his head. Clearly, Psalm 110 is looking at Samson. He will heap up bodies. He will put in the enemies under his feet. He will look at that. He will drink from the brook up beside the way. Therefore, he will live up his head. But Ed Clowney, in his exegesis of this text, points out that in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul draws on Psalm 110 to say, yes, it's been fulfilled in Christ,

but look, in Ephesians chapter one it says, God has raised him up and put everything under his feet, and he seated at the right hand, which is the victory of Jesus, the victory, but then at the place where in Psalm 110 it says, and he fills the world with his body, is the old fashioned way, in Ephesians 1. It doesn't say he will lift up his head. It says he is the head. And it doesn't say he will fill the world with his body.

It says, and he will do all this for the church, which is his body, his body, which will fill all in all. Here's what Paul is saying, get this. The old saviors filled the worlds with their bodies, the bodies of the enemies, because when you kill an enemy, you've destroyed the enemy.

Well, not exactly. You've just made them impotent enemies, you made them dead enemies, and if there's any left, you've made them very, very angry enemies. But there, can you conceive there is a better way to destroy enemies? There is a more thorough way to destroy enemies. And what Jesus Christ has done is with the sort of His grace,

He's not filling the world. He's not destroying the enemies of God by filling the world with their bodies. He's filling the world with the body of Christ. He's filling the world. He's not destroying the enemies of God by filling the world with their bodies. He's filling the world with the body of Christ. He's filling the world with us. We are the slain of the Lord. What is he doing? He's doing, he is destroying your enemy-ness with his grace. In the most thorough possible way of getting rid of enemies, he's turning us into his eternal friends, joyful friends. And this is the new way to fight. And if you don't understand this, you're either going to be into the old heroism. If you believe Christianity is saying, be like Samson, be like David, it frightens me to read the commentaries by Christians on Samson and David.

They say, that's what we ought to do. Don't do the bad things. I mean, don't jump into bed with every woman like Samson, but fight. And just know that if you fight, God will be with you and things will go well. If you do that, you will think that spiritual battle means I'm right. They're wrong. We've got to get them out of power. We've got to do what we can do. Jesus Christ, when he came along, he says in John 18 verse 36, he says, my, isn't, if my kingdom was that kind of kingdom, my followers would be fighting you with the sword to keep you from arresting me.

But no, I have come in the strength of weakness. I have come to forgive you. I have come to slay the enuminess in you through grace. Don't you see when he was on the cross, this is the new way of the Spirit. And this is the new way of the Spirit, and this is the new power of the Spirit. This is the new way. This is the new way to fight. This is the new way to destroy the enemies of God.

This is the way Jesus Christ has done it. When he was on the cross, instead of saying, what you might get the impression of from Psalm 110, when he's on the cross, he says, Father now, wipe them out. He pup's on the cross, he says, Father, now, wipe them out. He pup the bodies. Instead, he says, Father, forgive them. And because of what he was submitting to, the Father could.

And because of his grace, he destroyed those enemies. He turned them into his church. I mean, thousands of the same people that were crying out for his blood, and they were delivering him over to be nailed on the cross. Just 50 days later on the day of Pentecost, we were being baptized in the spirit and baptized into the church.

And that is what we've got. We don't have a hero. The Bible doesn't give us a hero to worship and emulate. The Bible doesn't give us a deconstruction of heroes, of course not. The Bible gives you hero us a deconstruction of heroes, of course, not. The Bible gives you hero vision. Do you know what hero vision is? Hero vision is looking at Jesus Christ and having three things happen to you to turn you into the same kind of fighter he is, the same kind of warrior he is, with the same kind of spirit he has, and the same kind of warrior he is with the same kind of spirit he has, and the same kind

of weapons, which Paul says are not the weapons of the world, or the weapons of truth and love and grace. First of all, if you look at Jesus Christ, not Samson and David as themselves, but as pointers to Christ, what are you going to see? First of all, you will be humbled by the vision of the hero, of the real hero, Jesus. You'll be humbled by him. And when I say humbled, I mean, if you say, Lord, use me because I'm doing my duty, you haven't seen Jesus.

In fact, you haven't even seen Samson. Don't you realize the point of Samson? The point of Samson is God uses flawed people. God uses people who hardly know which end is up. God works in the lives of messed up and flawed people. And if you say, use me because I'm doing my duty, that's hero worship. On the other hand, if you say, use me, even though I'm going to jump in and out of bed with whoever I want to, that's hero deconstruction. You don't have that in the Bible.

Here's what you have. If you admit your lack of virtue, not say who cares about virtue and not say I am virtuous, if you admit your lack of virtue, and you cling to the one who saves those who admit they don't have virtue, God begins to work in your life in spite of all of your flaws Because then you're a Christian because then you know that he loves you as if you had done the battles of Jesus Christ lived his life and died his death And it makes you humble you'll see God working through you a bit of a very humble if somebody comes up to you and says Your words

Somebody comes up to you and says, your words helped me through my time of crisis. Your words brought me to Christ. Your words changed my life. You know what you're going to say inside? Don't say it as I say inside. Yes, the Spirit helped you, but through the jawbone of an ass. You see the jokes on Samson. He thought the job on of an ass was the joke. With an ass, I've made asses of them, but he's the job on of the ass.

He's the idiot that God is using to deliver, and you and I are the asses that if we're willing to admit who we are, our foolishness, our stupidity, God will work through us. And if somebody ever comes up to you, which does happen to me sometimes, and said, because of what you said, I've met Christ, and in my heart, I always say yes, the Spirit used the job of an ass to make you into an eternal friend. First of all, you've got to be humbled by the vision, or you'll never change. Secondly, you've got to rest. Not just be humbled by what Jesus has done, you've got to rest. Not just be humbled by what Jesus has done,

you've got to rest in it. If you go out into the world to try to be good and pre-virtuous and help people and take care of them, hoping that God will accept you, you will faint for thirst, you'll die. You won't see the real fountain, which is the gospel. Only people who know that they're already accepted

will ever be able to get out there and love as Jesus loved and change the anemones of people's hearts toward friendship to others and to God. You'll never be able to do it if you think. In your striving, that's what's going to make God happy with you. See, here a worship will crush you and turn you into a hypocrite or it'll turn you into despair. But if you want to really fight like Jesus Christ, you not only have to be humbled by what you see and admit you're not virtuous, but secondly, you have to totally rest in the fact that he's your champion, that you're saved because of what he has done, not because of anything you're going to do. And then last of all, if you see the first two, if instead of here a worship or deconstruction, you admit your

weakness and you rest in what Jesus Christ has done for you, you will move out into the world and you will now fight in the new way of the Spirit. Now what's the new way of the Spirit? If you go to the New Testament and you see places where birch or warfare languages use, it's not used the way the average person uses it in the evangelical world today. Go to Romans 12 where it says, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil. And the word overcome is, fight, beat it, destroy it. It's all with good. If somebody has wronged you, here's what you usually do. On the outside you say nothing because you're

afraid either of disapproval or you're afraid of blowing up and on the inside you hate them. On the outside you say nothing on the inside you hate them. On the outside you say nothing, on the inside you hate them and as a result evil is winning. It's evil's winning inside you and evil's winning in that person. But if you look at what Jesus Christ has done for you, if you know that he's your champion, so you're not afraid, so he slain the fear of approval in you. He slain the pride and he slain the sense of being unworthy. You know what he thinks of you, you know how much he loves you. You will do the exact opposite. You will speak up and say what you did was wrong but you'll be able to do it in love because inside

you're forgiven completely, that's power. If you can do that, you're a fighter. Like Jesus, who by saying, Jesus told the truth enough to get crucified and then he forgave the people who are crucifying them and as a result, change their lives. If you won't see what he did for you, you'll never be a fighter for him. You'll either be a towered or you will go around heaping up and filling the world with bodies instead of filling the world with his body. Somebody says, ah, that's a whole new take. Yes, of course it is. Humbling yourself by looking at who he is, resting in what he's done, then you will have the power and the strength to move out

into the world to people who don't want to be delivered and who will reject much of what you have done, but see, you'll be able to love them and check the spread of evil in yourself and in them. Well, somebody says, I just don't see how that can happen. I don't think I'm not strong enough to do it. Well, don't forget the hair. Somebody's going to say afterwards in the Q&A, what about the hair? Well, let me tell you about the hair. He gets into a relationship with Delilah. He's in love with her. And he's a Nazerite.

Now, you know what the Nazerites are? Nazerites are people who took three vows as a way of saying, I'm really committed to God. They said, I will not touch a dead body. I will not drink any alcohol and I won't cut my hair. Now, there's reasons for that, but that's where they were. Now we know this about Samson. He touched a lot of dead bodies and he drank all over the place, but he didn't cut his hair. It's about sort of the last thing

that he had left. And you see when Delilah was saying, oh, Samson, please tell me, it was a secret of your strength and every time he would tell see, when Delilah was saying, oh, Samson, please tell me, what's the secret of your strength? And every time he would tell her, he would say, well, time he with green ropes. And then, you know, she'd tie him up and then she'd let her boyfriend's come in to try to kill him and then he'd burst up and he'd kill them.

And they'd say, what was the real secret? Time he with brown ropes. So she would do it again and he'd kill them all. Time he with black ropes. And she'd do, finally, she says, what is the secret? And it says, he told her everything. He told her about the hair. Some people say, well, that was stupid. Well, yeah, she says, what is the secret? And it says, he told her everything. He told her about the hair.

Some people say, well, that was stupid. Well, yeah, it wasn't as stupid as you think. He was a fool, but he wasn't a military fool. He did not believe he was telling her the secret of his strength. He couldn't have. The only way that she could possibly be modified by knowing that this was the finally the truth,

he knew that the only way she could know was the truth. People say, oh, he was trying to tell her the truth, so she would be modified. She couldn't be modified unless she knew was the truth. She couldn't know was the truth unless she tried to kill him. And he wasn't committing suicide. He thought because they're so superstitious, they were going to cut his hair. And as far as he knew, he'd have to do it himself. If he did it himself. You see, then he knew that that would be the last straw.

Then he knew that they would probably lose the strength because at that point he would have finally said to God, there's nothing I'm doing. See, God works through flawed people and yet there's a spot at which God himself will pull the plug on you if you keep on sinning. And you see, God pulled the plug when Samson woke up and he hadn't cut his own hair, there's no particular reason why God should have withdrawn. It doesn't say he didn't know his hair was gone and therefore he couldn't win. It says he didn't know God had left him. You can read that in chapter

16. What is this telling us? God leaves you even though you're imperfect, if you keep on sinning, but that's not all it says. That's not all it says. What happens is, Samson has his eyes put out and he's put into a dungeon and when he's there, he gets it. His hair grows back because his repentance grows. And for the first time, he begins to get some kind of vision. He begins to see, and he turns to God in repentance. And of course, what you all know, the very famous story, because he's never been this weak as a result, the Philistines have no problem with surrounding themselves, and when he throws down the pillars and he destroys this great house, it says he killed more

Philistines with his death than he ever had with his life, the weaker Samson God, the stronger Samson God. And so he finally in the end proved, exactly what Paul says, when you're weak, then you're strong, when you repent, and then you're strong God will never abandon you completely. He can show you by the things that have happened

in your life that you've got to get things straight. Sometimes he will pull back and just to wake you up but he will never stay away if you repent. And if you repent, you can't muck your life up. You will become a greater instrument for him than you've ever been before. Do you understand that? You say, but I'm too weak. You can't be too weak. You can only be too hard. You can't be too weak. You can only be too hard. You can't be too weak, you can only be too proud, and if you get humility connected with that weakness, you'll be the most potent thing ever, and you'll be much more potent than you were when you thought you had your strength. You'll be much more potent before your failures than

before your failures. Do you understand the weakness of God is stronger than the strength of men and his compulsion and his service is our liberation. See, yes, Lewis said that. Let's end. Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that you would show us that it's only when we're weak, that we're strong, it's only when we give ourselves to you, that we can actually, with all of our flaws, be used to view,

but it's not just a general surrender, it's a specific faith in the one who stood forth, was handed over, broke the bands of death, fought the fight for us, and now in him, we are the righteousness of God. Show us how, by understanding the gospel, we'll have a new power to fight, and we'll have a new way to fight.

Show us what that means and make us so different than the hero worshipers with all their pride and all their arrogance and so different than the hero deconstructors with all of their nihilism and with all of their hopelessness. Make us humbly bold. Make us gentle warriors. Make us loving champions. We pray it through Jesus in His name, we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it, and it equips you to know more about God's Word.

You can find more resources from Tim Keller at GospelAndLife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel And Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at GospelAndLife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. This month's sermons were recorded in 1997 and 2017. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.