Samson's Call to Holiness

Picture from Wikipedia

Called to be a Nazirite before his birth, Samson was uniquely positioned and gifted by God to walk in an important calling for the nation of Israel: judge and deliverer. God's Chosen People had been polluted by the worship of the idols of surrounding nations, those they were supposed to have completely removed from the land God gave them. 

One of our family's very favorite resources is a series of books called Character Sketches. As we read about Samson this morning, so much jumped out at me about our own call to serve a Holy God by walking in personal holiness. 

There were three parts to the vow of a Nazirite: never touching a dead body, never consuming anything from the grapevine, and leaving the hair uncut. Each part of the vow was a call to holiness, to being "set apart" as unto the Lord. The sign of the hair was the public declaration of that vow so that others would understand the calling on that life. 

I had never thought about it before, but the chapter we read this morning explained how Samson's focus was on the external problem the Israelites were facing: the oppression by the Philistines. And in his zeal to fight them, he compromised his call to holiness and ignored the true root of Israel's woes: their lack of devotion to God. The nation of Israel was not walking in holiness. The Philistines were simply the symptom of the root issue. God, in His Mercy, allows us to be placed under incredible pressures at times to get our attention and move us back into the center of His Will. 

Carelessness in personal holiness pollutes our influence and diminishes His ability to use us as fully as He could if we were completely set apart for His use. Samson compromised his vow before the Lord. He touched dead bodies as he struck down the thirty men and removed their garments to pay off the wager he had lost. It isn't stated that he drank wine, but the wedding feast he hosted for his marriage to the Philistine woman, the one his parents didn't approve of, would have been floating in wine. He may have been careless with his vow, we don't know. Once Delilah, another idolatress wife, had finally convinced him to reveal the source of his strength, he didn't recognize upon waking that God's Spirit had departed from him. God had finally removed His Hand of Protection from Samson and allowed him to receive the consequences for his lack of personal holiness. "It is a sobering aspect of God's nature that he will give us the desires of our heart, but send leanness to our soul." (Character Sketches, volume 1, p. 313)

Psalm 106:

¹³ But they soon forgot what he had done
   and did not wait for his plan to unfold.
¹⁴ In the desert they gave in to their craving;
   in the wilderness they put God to the test.
¹⁵ So he gave them what they asked for,
   but sent a wasting disease among them.

In His Mercy, the Lord received the reconfirmation of Samson's renewed vow. As he labored for his enemies, doing the work of a woman, his hair grew back. His physical blindness may have even helped him recognize his spiritual blindness. And in his last act on earth, he prayed to the Lord for strength, acknowledging his own helplessness before a Holy God, acknowledging that all his mighty strength was given to him for the purpose of accomplishing God's Will. 

How many ways each day do I compromise personal holiness? How many unkind thoughts do I entertain? How many unkind words do I speak? What unholy things do I allow to enter my mind? Is my attitude reflective of Christ? All day? Every day? Am I about my Father's business? Or is it my own "business" that consumes my resources? I cannot make myself become more holy. But I can yield to Him Who can. 

In order for Him to be Glorified in a way that beats back the darkness of the evil one in this world, His People need to be holy. We need to ask Him to purify our souls (mind, will, emotions) so that His Spirit, which indwells us, is what people see. We can't compromise with evil. And sometimes the most effective evil used against us is the ease of slipping into mediocrity. None of His People are called to be mediocre. I need to stop compromising. Nothing this world, or the ruler of it, has to offer is worth compromising our true identity as those clothed in Righteousness and the Holiness of Christ. 

Samson is listed in Hebrews 11 with others in the Hall of Fame for Faith. As Character Sketches says, ". . . Samson did recognize that his power came from God. His error was not a lack of faith in God's power but rather his thinking that God's power would never leave him regardless of his conduct."