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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/aj-higgins/samson-potential-and-power-of-sonship/
I don't know whether it's the acoustics or the company, but singing is very nice. We're going to turn now to the book of Judges and chapter number 13. This is the story of Samson, and we'll just have to break in without reading all of the relevant or pertinent portions.
You recall that an angel appears to Manoah's wife to tell her that she will bear a son, and that son will be a Nazarite to God from the womb. And then she comes and tells her husband what has happened.
And verse 8, and Manoah, that's her husband, entreats the Lord and says, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again unto us and teach us what we shall do unto the child. And verse 11, Manoah arose one after his wife and came to the man and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman?
And he said, I am. And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the child? How shall we do unto him? And the angel of the Lord said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto a woman, let her beware.
She may not eat of anything that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her, let her observe. And so on. Look down the chapter, verse number 24,.
And the woman bare a son, and she called his name Samson. And the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to move him at times in a camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshter.
Chapter 14, verse 1,. And Samson went down to Timnath and saw a woman. Verse 5,. And Samson went down. Look down the chapter and, sorry, look at verse number 15. Came to pass after a while after in the time of wheat harvest that Samson visited his wife with a kid.
And so on. And then we have his dealings with the Philistines. And verse, chapter 16,. Then Samson went to Geza and saw a harlot. Verse 4,. It came to pass afterwards that he loved a woman in the valley of Surah whose name was Delilah.
And you know the sad story there. And down the chapter further, again, I know we're jumping quite a bit. Look down the chapter at verse number 25. It came to pass when their hearts were married, they said, Call for Samson.
And then, of course, Samson is brought. Then they celebrate Samson's capture, ascribing it to their God. And verse 28, Samson called unto the Lord and said, O Lord, God, I remember me. I beseech thee and strengthen me.
I pray thee only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand and the other with his left.
And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.
And his brethren and all the house of his father came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtal in the burying place of Manoah, his father. And he judged Israel 20 years.
Now, we trust that God will add his blessing once again to the reading of familiar scriptures along with what you are already very, very familiar with in the life of Samson. As I mentioned, the main takeaway from the life of Samson is the potential, the potential for every son.
You could subtitle this the trajectory of tragedy or the tragedy of a trajectory. He began on a course and tragically ended where that course would take him. But I want you to think of the bright hope, the bright hope of a good beginning, the bright hope from a good beginning.
The wonderful thing is that every one of us, every one of us had the very same beginning. Sorry if this bothers you, but you got the same thing the Apostle Paul got the day he got saved. So did I. Same amount of the spirit of God, Paul had.
The same Christ, Paul had. In fact, we have more of the word of God than Paul had in a sense. But you understand what I mean when I say that we all had the same beginning, divine life, a resident spirit of God dwelling within, the word of God before us, all the resources of God at our disposal.
Every one of us was born into the family of God with a bright hope of a good beginning. I want you to think, first of all, of the sovereign dealings of God that made it all possible. God's sovereign dealings.
God obviously had a purpose in this life. He appeared to Manoah's wife and he appears to Manoah and his wife. He makes clear she is going to have a son that has divine purposes for God. Wonderful to realize that every individual who was born into the family of God, everyone who was a son has potential for God and God has saved you for a purpose.
Now, that purpose could take one of two avenues that we could speak of. Number one purpose, the ultimate purpose is to be like his son. That is God's great purpose. Romans chapter 8, whom he foreknew, you recall that he justified.
Whom he justified, rather he predestinated to the adoption to the position of sons that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. He wants us to resemble his son and his son will have the place of preeminent.
So, we were saved with this great purpose in view of being like the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the potential that every believer has. And the challenge to my soul, the challenge to every soul is, I can be as much like Christ as I want to be.
The big barrier, of course, is wanting to be and paying the price. One of the most dangerous things to pray is to pray that God will make me like his son because the process can be extremely costly and painful.
But that's the potential. And we could also think of the purpose not just of likeness to Christ, but living for Christ and something that we can do for him. Now, both are worthwhile themes and both could be traced with great profit.
And we may be mixing them a bit as we move ahead. But there were sovereign purposes for God. Here was a man who was going to be a Nazirite by birth and not by choice. You've got to distinguish those things.
You go back to Numbers 6 and the vow, the law of the Nazirite. Here was a man or woman, a brother or sister, who would willingly, voluntarily make a vow of Naziriteship. But both Samson and Samuel were Nazirites from birth.
Choices, and likely John the Baptist as well, choices made by others for them to live this way. So here was a boy with tremendous purpose to his life. But not only were there the sovereign dealings of God, there was the spiritual character of parents.
Here were parents that had secret dealings with God about their child before the child was ever born. Now, spiritual parents do not guarantee spiritual children, tragically. But nevertheless, it is a tremendous start, tremendous start for a life to have parents whose lives are such that they are a tremendous example.
These parents made great sacrifices because for Samson to be a Nazirite, the angel said, first of all, your wife has to be a Nazirite. Let her eat. And he goes into the restrictions for the Nazirite. And so she had to be Nazirite in character so that her son could be Nazirite in character as well.
But then there was the lovely expression, the child grew and the spirit of God began to move him. Not only the sovereign dealings of God, not only secret dealings of his parents in the presence of God, but there was the stirring of the spirit of God in this young man's life.
God was blessing. We read that, didn't we? The child grew and the Lord blessed him. And the spirit of God began to move him at times. Here was a young man with everything that was needed to be useful for God.
I look at young believers, young sisters, young brothers, you've got everything needed. God has fully equipped you with everything that is needed to become like his son and to live for his son. And I speak to my own heart as well.
But here was one, the spirit of God began to move him. So there was the purposes of God in his life. There was the preparation by his parents. There was the power of the spirit of God in his life. So there was the bright hope from a good beginning in life that he had.
God began to move him locally where he lived. Began to work for God where he was. Not further afield, not highs in the distant parts of the world, but in fact, I think most of you realize that when you're reading through the judges, you're probably looking at judges or individuals, men or women, who really just served in a very limited geographical area.
They weren't so much saviors for the whole nation, but likely were just local in their sphere of influence. So that while Samson is busy up in the north in Dan, very likely around the same time, there's a young boy being born in Rama by the name of Samuel.
Likely their lives overlapped quite a bit. Lovely to think. I think it's wonderful to think that while there was apostasy in the nation almost on a whole scale level, very likely what we read in the book of Ruth was occurring simultaneously.
That there was a remnant faithful to God. Even though there was generally a drift in the nation, there was a Boaz. And there was a little remnant that was faithful for God. So here though was a man and God was using him locally.
Could you just let your imagination run for a moment though? Could you imagine Israelites sitting around their campfire at night and they would be talking, have you heard of the young man Samson over there in Dan?
And they say he is moving for God and they say he is really gifted and he is really able. And maybe, just maybe, he is going to be the one who is going to really change the nation and bring us back to God.
And there would be tremendous hopes invested in this young man. And all of Israel would begin soon hearing about a young man that God was raising up and the Spirit of God was beginning to use. Small way, limited geography, but yet there he was and God was using him.
And the Spirit of God was working in his life. And hope would be born in the hearts of all the godly that maybe here, maybe here was the man that was going to be useful for God and really turn the nation around so that men would have tremendous hope that here would be the man.
If you have been in assembly testimony any length of time, tragically you can look back and think of those both young men and young women who showed tremendous potential for God and they became shipwrecks.
All their potential lost for God. All of their potential usefulness sidetracked. We're going to look at some of the reasons. But here was an individual with tremendous potential who never really fulfilled it.
I don't think there's anything more tragic than looking back at the end of life. I know we'll all have regrets, but I think there could be no regret greater than to think that I've wasted my life for God.
What I could have been, what I should have been. Yes, God can make it again another vessel. But wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to accomplish, to be like a David who served his own generation by the will of God and fell on sleep just to feel like you've done what God gave you to do.
Maybe not perfectly, maybe not as well as it could have been done, but you've done it for God and closing life with some sense of satisfaction. The bright hope from a good beginning. You could liken it to the assembly at Corinth if you had time.
I mean, there has never been, I think I can say this, and there certainly will never be, there has never been an assembly that was as gifted as Corinth. Paul said they came behind in no gift. You name the gift, they had it.
All the signed gifts, all the miraculous gifts, everything was all in one assembly. Now, maybe you have an assembly that comes behind in no gift. God bless you if you do. I don't know many assemblies like that, but an assembly that came behind in no gift, and yet they were almost shipwrecked.
They were almost imploding on themselves. And so we can see that all of this, the purposes of God, the preparation by parents, the power of the Spirit of God, all of that is of no avail if I fail to rise and to commit myself to what God has given.
So from the bright hope of a good beginning, I want to talk about the gathering clouds of fleshly behavior, the gathering clouds. You begin to see problems arising. Those of you who travel to any extent may at times have to fly into an airport in Washington, D .C. known as Dulles, Dulles International Airport.
Now, for those of you who did not live back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, let me tell you who it was named after. John Foster Dulles, in fact, there were two brothers. One was the head of the CIA, the other was the Secretary of State.
John Foster Dulles honed to a fine skill the diplomatic maneuver known as brinkmanship. Brinkmanship. What that means is this was during the Cold War, that time when, you know, all your enemies were communists and all your friends were, you know, Republicans and, you know, that was the world in those two colors.
And John Foster Dulles developed the policy of whenever there was a crisis, bringing things to the very brink of war, watching if the other man blinked and then stepping back. Bring it to the brink of war, step back.
In other words, get as close as you could to something and then just kind of try to step back so you didn't get into it. That's brinkmanship. That's John Foster Dulles. That's Samson. Samson lived a life of brinkmanship.
The only problem is Samson went over the brink in the end. Now, let me just show you that. First of all, you remember the Nazirite and his requirements. Come at no dead body. He was to touch neither the husk nor the wine, stay away from all of that, hair long, and on and on you go.
All the requirements, okay? First of all, I want you to think of the friendships he made with the world. We didn't read it. And again, I apologize for not reading all of this. You'll have to go back over it yourself.
But he decides to marry a Philistine woman and he goes down and he plays games with the Philistine men. He's having a party with them, plays games with them. And, you know, guessing games, riddles, friendships with the world.
Now, there is a vast difference. I know probably some young minds are, you know, flags are going up. He's going to talk about separation, that horrible topic that is so restrictive and so legalistic. Perhaps I am going to talk a bit about separation, but I'm not going to tell you what separation, how you have to separate yourself.
That's your own personal conviction. You'll have to decide in the presence of God where you draw the line. But I will say this, we should be friendly to everyone, but we should be careful with our friendships.
Big difference. You may say, well, is it wrong to spend time with unsafe people? Well, it depends. If like Samson, you are going there for them to meet your needs, for entertainment, for amusement, for occupation.
If you're going to them for them to meet your needs, then maybe it's wrong. If you're trying to establish a relationship to meet their needs, that's a different story altogether. So, yes, I think Christians should invite unsafe people into their homes to be able to establish, to build bridges, make relationships so they can meet the unsafe person's need.
But for me to go to them to enjoy their sport, to enjoy their entertainment, to enjoy their amusement, to have my needs met, whether my social needs, or my entertainment needs, or my relaxing needs, I'm on dangerous ground.
You see, Samson went to them to enjoy their company rather than to bring something spiritual. Now, I don't mean you've got to preach to your neighbors or preach to your friends, but it does mean that eventually you're building bridges with some goals in view relative to their needs rather than your needs.
So, he makes friendships with the world that were dangerous. But then, if your Bible's still open, look at chapter 14 and verse number 5. Then went Samson down and his father and his mother to Timnath and came to the vineyards of Timnath.
And behold, a young lion roared against him. Brinkmanship. Why would a Nazarite who was not to drink wine nor to have anything to do with the husks or the currants, why was he in a vineyard? He was getting as close to the thing as he could without actually drinking it.
He's getting close. I mean, there was the vineyard. And he was getting as close as he could to what was not allowed and hoping he would be preserved. Bible's filled with people who went as close as they could and ended up...
Why did Abraham end up in Egypt and end up with a Hagar and an Ishmael and centuries of problems that have ensued? Because he got as close to Egypt as he could. He kept going down to the south of the country, and when the famine came, he just crossed the border.
What about Elimelech? Naomi's husband, he goes down, and he's just there for a few years, but his sons, they marry Moabitish women. And what about David? And he's discouraged, and he goes into the Philistine land, and he almost ends up having to do what he spent probably 20 years avoiding doing, and that was slaying Saul.
If the Philistine lords hadn't complained, you know, why is David here? He's just going to side with his Israelite friends when we go to battle, and they caused him to leave. If it hadn't been for that, he would have gone to battle with the Philistines when they slew Saul and his sons upon Mount Gilboa.
Got as close as he could. Don't get as close to things as you possibly can and then think, well, I can control it. I can manage it. I'll get close, but I know when to draw a line, a life marked by brinkmanship, relative to his friends, relative to the vineyard.
But then you recall when Delilah is trying to get the secret from him, right? What does he do? Well, he starts out with binding me with, you know, with wits and so on, but then he gets to his hair. Now, he doesn't begin by saying, you know, if you shave my hair, I'll be weak like other men, but he does touch on the secret of his strength.
He gets to his hair, and he says, if you weave my hair into locks, you know, if you had been there, you would say, Samson, you're getting awfully close. Samson, back off. Don't get anywhere near the issue of your hair.
That's where your strength is. Don't even mention it. No, no, not Samson. He'll get as close as he can. So he says, if you weave my hair into locks, that's the secret of my strength. And it is only a small step from that to shaving my locks.
He got perilously close, and he crossed the line. Now, you can apply that in your own life. It could be applied in some very, very solemn ways. But remember, when you get close to the line, when you play brinkmanship games, you are playing with tremendously high stakes.
Your future usefulness for God, we know God is a God of restoration, God is a God of consideration, but you will understand that you are getting perilously close to sacrificing likeness to Christ and living for Christ.
The principle of brinkmanship. But also, he's marked by blindness, isn't he? Spiritual blindness. What happened when he was in the wrong place? What happened when he was walking through the vineyard? Says a lion roared against him.
It's as though God was warning him. Samson, what are you doing here? Wake up. The lion roars against him, and he doesn't seem to appreciate it, doesn't seem to recognize that he's in the wrong place. I don't know if you ever noticed this.
Just a small little thing, and I might be on not dangerous ground, but imaginative grounds in telling you why I think it occurred. But you read in Matthew and in Luke and in John about the cock crowing and Peter realizing what he had done, and Matthew and Luke tell us he goes out, he goes out and weeps and so on.
John just mentions it. But when you're in the gospel of Mark, Mark says something that at first glance seems to be a contradiction. Mark says the cock crowed twice, whereas Matthew and Luke and John say the cock crowed once.
Why does Mark say the cock crowed twice? Hard getting all that out. Well, don't forget, Mark is the gospel that has Peter's influence. Mark tells you all the wrong things that Peter did. Peter was telling Mark all about his failures.
And I think that the other writers were kind to Peter. They just mentioned the last cock crowing. Peter says, actually, I had a warning. I had a warning. The cock crowed once. That should have reminded me what the Lord said, but I ignored it.
And in the end, the cock crowed the third time, and then I realized I have really failed. Samson here, the lion roared and he ignored it. Listen, sometimes when you are into things, God makes a lion roar.
It may be even an unsafe friend that says, I never thought you would do that. I thought you said you were a Christian. Or it may be that something hits your conscience like a ton of bricks, and it's a lion roaring, and you just keep sailing on.
In the wrong place. When he was with the wrong people, he lost his wife. His wife was given to another man. It's as though God is saying, Samson, you've gained nothing by what you've done. And as he got close to his secret, he should have realized that the Philistines were trying to capture him.
But he seems blind to all of this. I should mention, because it is balancing a little bit, because it may sound like I'm being awfully hard on Samson. There is this difference of Samson with every other judge in the book of Judges.
Samson is the only judge that Israel did not rally around. All the other judges, the nation rallied around them. Samson is a loner. It's as though the people are so helpless and so hopeless that, okay, Samson, if you can do it, fine, just don't expect us.
In fact, we didn't read it, but there's an occasion when Judah actually delivers up Samson to the Philistines. And here, you take him, we don't want him. And if you'll leave us alone, we'll give him to you as a captive, and so on.
So Samson is kind of a loner, and he's in it alone. So he is different than the other judges. He doesn't have much support. So there is that to balance things. But he's marked by bondage. His gift became subservient to his flesh.
He will use his gift, I'll use the word spiritual gift, his special strength, he will use it to serve his own needs. Rarely, you know, if it fits in, if defeating the enemy fits in with his own desires, his own agenda, he'll use it.
But it seems like every time he uses his strength, it's for Samson. Even at the end of his life, avenge me of my two eyes against the Philistines, he's concerned with Samson. And his actions were all prompted, all prompted by self-interests.
Let me just mention, it might be a tad of a bypass here. Let me just mention four things that can hinder, four attitudes that can hinder, especially your development as a believer and hinder your development in terms of likeness to Christ and usefulness for Christ.
One is the destructive, destructive attitude of self-pity, self-pity. Poor me. Probably the quintessential example in Scripture is a man named Saul. He actually says, doesn't anybody feel sorry for me that my son has conspired with David and everybody's against me and life is so hard and nobody feels sorry for me?
And of course, there's a doe-egg, the Edomite there, and you know the whole story. But self-pity. And you begin to think life has been so cruel, and nature has been so unkind, and circumstances of life are so negative, and I'm not getting what I deserve.
And since I'm not getting what I deserve, I'm going to go out and get it myself, and I don't care about other people. And someone has said that self-pity is, it feels so good to feel so bad. But that only lasts for a few seconds, right?
And then you need something else to feed your self-pity. But that's a destructive thing, and it will hinder you in your life for God. Self-pleasing, that was Samson. I'll do it if it fits in with my agenda.
I'll do it if it pleases me. Yes, I'll serve the Lord, but if it fits in with my agenda in life, I'll do it. And so he lives to please himself. We could talk about self-promotion like a haze-eye. We could talk about self-vindication and so forth, but just those things to mention, and we'll have to leave them right now for the purpose of time.
So the bright hope of a good beginning, the gathering clouds of his fleshly behavior, and the dark night, the dark night of Philistine bondage. He's taken captive by the Philistines. His hair is shorn.
He's taken captive by the Philistines. And his life closes with a man grinding corn for the Philistines. I want you to notice a couple of things. A man who constantly saw, we didn't read all of them, he saw a harlot.
He saw a woman. He saw, he saw, he saw. And yet he didn't see when God was speaking to him. You know what happens? He ends his life blind. His weakness, God finally had to deal with it in a severe way.
His whole problem was things that he saw in life. And God says, Samson, the only remedy, the only remedy is not to see. You've been spiritually blind, you'll be literally blind. It is the principle we're going to see in Samson, the principle of sowing and reaping.
Now, that principle, that inviolable law of the government of God is something that believers have to face as well. Not just for the unsaved. We may well... Now, God is a God of infinite mercy and grace.
But we must remember that we stand at risk for sowing and reaping as well. So the man who was always seeing what was wrong, failing to see what was right, ends blind. And it's often pointed out, the last judge, the last king, the last church, all blind.
Right? Whether you're looking at Samson, whether you're looking at Eli, whether you're looking at Zedekiah, whether you're looking at Laodicea, all blind. The danger of spiritual blindness. So the man who could not see ends as being blind.
The man who was a slave to his own passions ends his life as a slave to the Philistines grinding corn for them. The man who was imprisoned by his own sin becomes imprisoned by his captives. The experience in the prison house, the end of a very, very disappointing life.
Imagine becoming a source of praise for heathen idols. Imagine men gloating over you and your fall and ascribing it to their God. That's exactly what happens to Samson here in the house of the Philistines.
He was a source of sorrow to his family. Now, I didn't point it out, but let me just point it out again. There are perhaps five times, depending on the version you use, maybe as many as seven, that this little expression is used relative to Samson.
He went down. He went down. He went. He went down. It's as though his life is a constant downward spiral. When we come to the end, did you realize what we read? They brought him up. They brought him up.
But where did they bring him to? Look at what it says in Chapter 13. Go back to Chapter 13 and the very last verse. And the Spirit of God began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtael.
Okay? Now, look at the end of Chapter 16. And they brought him up. Verse, the very end of the chapter, they brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtael. He made no progress. Where he began is where he ended.
He began there and he was buried there. A life that made very little progress for God. What a tragedy. God intended to expand his horizons. God intended to move him into greater spheres of usefulness.
And yet, he went down, he went down, he went down, he went down. And in the end, as a corpse, he's brought up and he's buried where he began. Is that the way you want your life to be? Is that how you want life to end?
To write over your life? No progress? Saved? Home in heaven? Yes. Absolutely secure, but a life of likeness to Christ, a life of usefulness for Christ. The dark night of Philistine bondage. But I have to ask you to turn to one other scripture.
Hebrews 11. Look at verse 32. What shall I say more for the time will fail me to tell of Gideon, of Barak, and of Samson, of Jephthah, and David, and Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promise, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, and look at the end, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of aliens.
The bright hope of a good beginning. The gathering clouds of his fleshly behavior. The dark night of Philistine bondage. But amazingly, amazingly, the eternal day of unexpected honor. Would you have put Samson in Hebrews chapter 11 as a hero of faith?
I wouldn't. Put him in the same verse with David and Samuel? I would have never. Spirit of God does. Spirit of God says, here's a man who did have faith. Now, you may say, where's his faith? I would take it that because they were so concerned and so obsessed with finding the secret of Samson's strength, that Samson probably looked like any one of us, just an average, ordinary individual.
He didn't have big biceps that were bulging and that everybody took photographs of. He didn't have abs that people admired and wondered how they could get abs like that, you know? He didn't work out every day pumping iron.
I think he must have looked like an average individual. And every time he sought to do something for God, he did it in faith, depending upon God, because he didn't have the natural strength. He didn't naturally, physically have the ability in himself.
God gave him unusual strength linked with his Nazarite ship. And so, what I learned is this wonderful truth. And I don't want to introduce this to somehow make you feel, well, if God could honor Samson, then I'll live the way I want to and God will honor me.
I don't want to introduce it for that reason at all, but I want to say this. We have a God of amazing grace. A God who seeks to find whatever he can in his people that brings him pleasure, despite their failures.
Who among us would have ever thought of using Jonah as a picture of Christ? And not just using Jonah, but using Jonah in his failure. You may say, where's that? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ says, just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so now it'll be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
There's a picture of what is going to happen to me in Jonah. Well, Jonah was failing, Jonah was fleeing, Jonah was false to his... And you would use Jonah? Yes, you would use Jonah. Your God and my God is a God of incredible kindness and grace.
Wherever he can, whenever he can, he will look for what he can in his people to appreciate, and to honor, and to recognize. So there may be in many, many lives, huge blank pages that God has to choose not to remember.
And here and there, he will find something that he can appreciate. He does that with Sarah, Abraham's wife, and he does it again at a most incredible moment of time. You recall, don't you, that the three visitors came, and rather on this occasion, God comes to Abraham and says to him that, Sarah, your wife is going to have a son, and Sarah is in the tent behind, and Sarah laughs.
So, number one, she laughs at God. And number two, when the Lord says, wherefore did Sarah laugh? Sarah says, I didn't laugh. So she not only laughs at God, but she lies to God. Now, just that's the scene, okay?
Now, when Sarah laughed, she said, imagine my Lord finding pleasure in me at my age. I know I'm paraphrasing it, but shall my Lord find pleasure in me and so forth? Now, fast forward to 1 Peter 3. Even as Sarah called Abraham, Lord, the only time you'll find Sarah ever addressing Abraham as Lord is in the context of lying to God and laughing at God.
And yet from that, from that, God takes what he could appreciate and says, I want to tell you about Sarah, and I want all of you women to be just like a Sarah. You see, there are two great statements that punctuate, and I'll have to close with this, that punctuate the epistle of Hebrews.
Number one, their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Number two, God is not unmindful to forget your work and labor of love. Their sins I will not remember, God is not unmindful to forget. God chooses not to remember all the empty blank spaces in our life that have failed and have not brought him pleasure.
He chooses to remember whatever he can of a life where he can find pleasure. What a God we have. Rather than make me want to just sit back and coast, it makes me want to serve him all the more, to realize that in his kindness, in his goodness, he looks for whatever he can to find pleasure in.
God is looking in every life. What is there in that life that resembles my son? I just want to enjoy it. Imagine that. Imagine God looking in your life and mine for what there is of Christ likeness so that he can enjoy.
And imagine God looking at your life and mine, searching for what he can find pleasure in, in our service to him. May God bless his word and encourage us as we have considered the potential of every life, of every son reached by divine grace.
Shall we speak to God in prayer?