Today’s
Scripture Reading (May 21, 2019): Psalm
28 & 29
It was Samson’s error – and ours. You know, Samson, the strong guy
with the long hair from the Bible stories that you heard as a kid. Samson
believed that he was strong. We have no idea what Samson might have looked
like, or how much time he might have spent in the gym, but I suspect that he
was not a gym rat and that he did not look particularly strong, and yet he was
strong. Samson could do amazing feats of strength. And it seemed that everyone
was afraid of him.
But Samson wasn’t strong. In actuality, he was probably no
stronger than you or I. Maybe not even that strong. Part of the clue is that
his enemies spent so much time trying to figure out why he was strong. What
exactly was his secret? I know some strong men, but I don’t wonder why they are
strong. They spend hours upon hours in the gym trying to maintain their
strength. Training is their secret, and the secret isn’t all that secret. It is
rather apparent.
The second clue that Samson was not strong is that the cutting of his
long hair was the secret to his strength. Again, I know from experience as
someone who used to sport fairly long hair, that having long hair does not make
you strong, nor does possessing short hair make you weak. What the long hair
signified was a covenant that God had made with Samson which meant that God
would make Samson strong. When Samson told Delilah that the secret of his
strength was his long hair, I don’t think that even he believed it. If he did,
he was one of the stupidest men alive, because every time Samson revealed the
supposed secret of his strength to Delilah, she acted on what he told her. As a
result, Samson must have known that Delilah was going to cut his hair. Samson
thought that the secret of his strength was just that he was strong. But the
real secret was that God was his strength.
David realized what Samson had missed. God was his strength and
his shield. David’s strength had nothing to do with David and everything to do
with God. Pastor and theologian Charles Spurgeon wrote “My dear
friend, if you can say, ‘The Lord is my strength,’ you can bear anything and
everything. You could bear a martyr’s death if the Lord should be your
strength. He could make a stalk of wheat to bear up the whole world if he
strengthened it.”
I stand with David. The Lord is my strength. It has nothing to do
with me.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Psalm 30
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