Samson’s failure to live a God-directed life ended up bringing a lot of pain into his life. His failure to respect his Nazarite commitment in reference to Delilah left him blinded and in shackles grinding grain in a Philistine prison. He had fallen a long way from the angel’s glorious announcement about his birth.
But this is not the final picture we have of Samson.
He obviously had a lot of time to think while grinding grain for the Philistines and he determined that he wanted to once again be used by God to bring down the Philistines. But this time, he wanted to surrender himself to this purpose and not just have God use his bad conduct. Fittingly, during a celebration honoring their god, Dagon, for helping them capture him, Samson prayed to God for strength and then brought down the temple—ridding Israel of more of the enemy in his death than he did in his life. Samson finished strong.
He finished strong because he finished in faith (Hebrews 11:32). Someone said that faith is the reaching hand of the flawed man. And it is that, but I would also add, faith is the reaching hand of the flawed and fighting man. It is the person who refuses to give up on God and because of that—they ruse to give up on themselves.
Paul Simon wrote “The Boxer” in 1969. It’s about a young man who moves to New York City and is woefully unprepared for the hard life in the big city. He’s confronted with the harsh realities of poverty, compromise, and loneliness—he wants to go home. Then the last stanza shifts to a boxer he sees. The man “carried the reminders of every glove that laid him down or cut him ‘til he cried out in his anger and his shame, ‘I am leaving, I am leaving.”
But the song doesn’t end there.
The last five words change it totally. After “I am leaving, I am leaving,” we hear “But the fighter still remains.” That’s what faith does—it remains. Look at the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 with Samson. There’s Abraham, he showed magnificent faith in God and yet buckled under pressure not once, but twice, in trying to pass his wife off as his sister in order to save his skin. Then there’s Moses who had a melt down and wasn’t allowed into the promised land. There’s Rahab the prostitute and David, the adulterer and murderer. The Hebrew writer isn’t lifting these people up so the drifting disciples he is writing will drift further—he’s writing so they will persevere (see 10:36-39). In the words of Paul Simon, so the fighter will remain.
Whatever else we might say about Samson, the fighter still remained!
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 