GRACE IN THE RUINS

Transcript

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Hello everyone. This is Pastor Dean Thompson with a word of hope. Encounters with grace. Grace in the ruins. O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once. Judges chapter sixteen verse twenty eight. Samson is one of Scripture's great tragedies, a man of colossal gifting and colossal appetite, a Nazarite set apart from birth, who squandered his calling on his own indulgence. His downfall comes in the Philistine city, its temple dedicated to dedicated to Dagon, the grain and fish god of the coastal peoples. The Philistines, a seafaring people who had settled the coast with superior iron weapons, filled Israel, held Israel Israel in subjection. To have captured Samson, blinded him, and set him to grinding grain like an animal was for them proof that their God had triumphed. They bring him out to be mocked at a great festival, the temple packed with celebrants. Samson stands blind and shackled between the temple pillars, everything wasted, his strength, his calling, his sight. And here at the absolute bottom he prays the only recorded prayer of his life. O Lord God, remember me, strengthen me only this once. It is not an eloquent prayer, and his motives are still tangled with personal vengeance. But grace answers the prayer. The God who could have written Samson off honors the broken cry of a ruined man. Samson's here, the sight of his consecration had begun to grow again, a quiet symbol that a wasted life is not beyond restoration. Even a life mostly wasted is not past grace. Samson's story is a warning about the cost of unchecked appetite, but it ends in the hall of faith, Hebrews chapter eleven, because at the last he turned back to God. If you feel your best years are spent, your gifts squandered, your calling ruined. Remember the man in the temple, grace can hear the prayer of only this once, and accomplish more through a broken, repentant end than a proud, self sufficient middle. And I say amen. O Lord God, please remember us. Though we have wasted much, strengthen us even now. Let the end of our story glorify you more than our strength ever did. Amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters.