Let the Shepherd Lead

Intro:

• Right now we are in the buildup to the College World Series of baseball. I usually catch up with the sport around this time because the stations begin regularly covering the games. It is always more exciting when local teams are in the regionals like they are this year.
• Just last night one of the teams I have been keeping my eyes on was edged out forcing them into an elimination game. The other team I am really watching had an okay season, but has been playing better ball now than they did this year.
• As I have been following along with the regionals this weekend, I have been thinking that baseball is a game that can teach us many lessons about faith.
  • Baseball calls for the long view. It is a long game. It cannot be won in an inning. A team that peaks too early will almost certainly lose. God also wants us to have the long view since eternity is in the balance.
  • Baseball is a game that humbles players. Watch the pitcher for a few minutes and notice that even the best have a bad throw or two. Swing after swing; strike after strike reminds the batter about humility. Even a great hit can easily be caught by a good outfielder. God also wants humble people, so he plants both subtle and obvious reminders that we are not perfect in life.
  • Baseball is a game for generous players. Everyone might want to hit a home run, but a bunt or even a low, rolling base hit is often required to make sure that even the best teams can get a rally going. God wants us to be generous as well, giving our lives away to others like Jesus did.
  • Baseball is also a game of fundamentals. It is a game of pitch and catch; swing and hit; tagging every base. The most fundamental aspect of our faith is a day by day personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
• In years past I often made fun of baseball saying things like
  • “I would really like baseball if it were only to last four innings.”
  • “There’s a reason we call it America’s pastime. It is a game where you’re free to look for something else to pass the time.”
  • Or “I like baseball movies more than I like baseball games.”
• But lately I have begun to wonder, if my former dislike of baseball has more to do with how it reminds me of my life rather than helps me escape from it. The more I watch baseball now, the more I find that I not only like it, but it reminds me of how I want to live out my faith.

Hook:

• As we close our Samson series today, I hope that this look at his life has been for you like watching baseball has been for me this year.
• While it may not have been your first choice of characters to look at, I hope and pray that it has reminded you how to have a resilient faith.
• As we look at this last passage where Samson is mentioned today in Hebrews 11, I pray that you will know how to Finish Strong: Demonstrating a Resilient Faith.

Message Points:

• In Hebrews, the writer is trying to address key issues with a group of Jewish believers who came to believe in Christ, but at the outbreak of persecution have begun to flounder in their faith.
  • The whole book is an attempt to remind them of the reason that Christ is better than anything they have believed before.
  • It also is an encouragement to press on and finish the race set before them strong.
• So in keeping with that theme of reminding and encouraging let’s review what we have learned from Samson’s life.
  • First and foremost to finish strong we must recognize that life has hurdles.
  • Once we are clear on that fact, to finish strong, we should find and follow a godly example; always remembering that it is God who is in charge of our lvies.
  • We should not ever put on pride, but clothe ourselves in humility. Humility will help us to finish strong as we avoid mismanaging our anger as well begin to surrender to God’s will for our lives.
  • Finally, to finish strong, we should never stop growing in discernment and always be ready to give our all.
• The purpose of all these lessons from Samson’s life is that we will learn to possess the same kind of resilient faith that he had, and begin to demonstrate that in our life.
• Take the first verse of our passage for today.
  • The writer in chapter eleven, called the hall of faith has clearly been helping the Hebrew believers to see how their own heroes had resilient faith.
  • He has spoken in depth on some but in verse 11:32 he clearly tells them that he does not have time to give in-depth looks at many of the heroes of the Bible including Samson.
  • Thus he sums up the kind of activities many of these heroes exhibited by faith in three distinct categories that will be our main points today.
• Our 1st Point today is: A resilient faith is one that believes God can turn weakness into strength (11:32-34)
  • Look again at verse 33. Notice the first three words. “And through faith” tells us that the way these heroes including Samson achieved such great things is that they believed.
  • So what did they believe.
    • They believed kingdoms and nations could be conquered.
    • They believed that with God’s help they could administer justice.
    • They believe that if God had called them, he would keep his promises.
    • They believed that no opposition, even lions, or fires, or battles, or foreign armies could overcome them.
    • I left one phrase out because I believe it summarizes the essence of resilient faith in these verses. They believed that God could turn their weakness into strength.
  • All of us are sinners and sufferers.
    • Samson was certainly a sinner at times.
      • Remember he argued with his parents about the girl he wanted to marry.
      • He broke his Nazarite vow by touching the dead body of a lion, the fresh jawbone of the donkey, and the sinews or bowstrings.
      • He also was constantly tempted by Philistine influences including alcohol, revenge, and sexual morality.
    • Samson also was an immense sufferer as he was humiliated publicly, lost his eyes, and was led around like an animal.
    • We all have weaknesses, but God does not call us to wallow in our weaknesses. God calls us to believe that He can do great things by taking weaknesses and making us strong.
      • Think of the four weaknesses people like Samson overcame as four categories of doubt.
        • We have doubts about victory.
        • We have doubts about judgement.
        • We have doubts about God’s will.
        • We have doubts about           our circumstances.
      • God does not want us to live paralyzed by our weaknesses and doubts. He wants us to believe that He can turn weakness into strength. I don’t know about you, but I am glad…
        • That I have seen God work a victory in an addicts life so that his whole family wanted to know the Jesus he knew.
        • That God removed the fear that my youth pastor was judging me when he believed I was enough of a sinner that I needed to know about a Savior for sinners.
        • That I have seen God over time take small things like performing in high school to prepare the shy boy I was to be in front of people every day of my life.
        • That I have seen God work circumstances to His good and perfect purposes like He did when Robbie had his accident breaking both arms and fracturing his scull on a mission trip and asked the entire emergency room to stop so that we could pray.
      • Friends, I am glad that God does not want me to wallow in my weaknesses. He calls us to demonstrate a resilient faith by believing that He can turn weakness into strength just like He did with Samson.
• If God can make weaknesses into strengths, then what holds him back from doing even more miraculous things?
  • Notice if you will how verse 11:35 begins.
    • It speaks of women receiving back their dead raised to life.
    • It then goes on to detail how so many heroes like Samson faced immense suffering. Notice that it even says that some who were tortured refused to be released so that they could gain an even better resurrection.
    • For believers the resurrection is always in view.
  • Verses 11:36-38 relates the kind of suffering they faced.
    • It speaks of jeers, flogging, chains, and death by various means. It speaks of poverty and mistreatment.
    • But then it offers this curious phrase, “the world was not worthy of them”.
      • The word used for world in this verse refers to all of the universe. It is all of God’s creation, marred by the fall and now opposed to His will and His ways.
      • Even the best that this world has to offer is now marred by sin and suffering.
      • The point here is not so much one talking about the persecution that the world offers true believers, but about the limited joy and gladness that believers can have in the world.
      • In other words this phrase is saying that believers understand that this world is not enough or worthy for them.
• Thus we have our 2nd point: A resilient faith is one that believes that God can raise us to a better life (11:35-38)
  • Our family is a Disney family. Our favorite vacations probably have some form of mouse ears attached to them.
    • Disneyland brands itself as “the happiest place on earth.” And having been there and at Disney World with my children, I can promise you there is a lot of happiness, especially with children.
    • But even at Disney, perhaps especially at Disney we have to pay for our happiness. If all we had to look forward to eternally was the happiness that we could buy at places like Disney, we would have a very sad existence.
  • The Bible teaches us that that the price of happiness in this world as high as it is cannot even compare to the price for eternal happiness.
  • Thus, the writer of Hebrews in essence tells his audience and us not to settle for temporary happiness that we can purchase.
  • Believe instead that God can raise us up to a live bought for us by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.
  • Think for just a moment about why Samson could pray and bring down the whole temple upon the Philistines and himself.
    • It was not just because it would deliver his people and defeat his foes.
    • It was certainly not because he would have his best life now.
    • It was because finally Samson had realized that no thrill in this life could compare with the eternal blessing of God in Christ his Lord.
    • Samson believed that he would be raised, and his family affirmed that by retrieving his body and placing it in the family tomb awaiting resurrection.
  • Friends that is a lesson we all need to learn.
    • If we recognize that there is nothing in this world that can give us the same joy or happiness that we have in Jesus, we will be more ready to give and sacrifice.
    • Through giving and sacrificing we demonstrate a resilient faith that believes our eternity in Christ is better than our life here and now.
  • Before any of you might think that I am telling you not to go on vacation, even to Disney, this summer, let me state very clearly that I am not saying that at all.
    • Vacations or times of rest and refreshing are a part of the Bible’s plan from the beginning forward.
      • Remember God rested on the seventh day as an example for us.
      • He commanded the Israelites to take a journey three times a year to Jerusalem for an entire week to worship Him. Obviously their normal labors were interrupted by these celebrations.
    • This lessons helps us to see two important truths about vacations.
      • We should not live and sacrifice for our vacations.
      • Our vacations should remind us to live and sacrifice for something and Someone greater.
    • So take some time off this summer. Go to your favorite vacation spot. And as you do take time to consider how much greater eternal life will be than even your best moments on this earth.
• That leads us to consider our 3rd point: A resilient faith believes that God keeps all His promises (11:39-40).
  • Look back for just a moment to verse 11:33. It says that people like Samson gained what was promised.
  • Now as we read verse 11:39 we read that while people like Samson were commended for their faith, they did not receive what had been promised.
  • Is this a contradiction?
    • A contradiction by definition breaks the second rule of logic, known as the Law of Non-Contradiction.
    • That statement says that for two statements to cohere and be true they cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time.
    • Thus in this passage does the author means the same thing in verse 11:33 when he talks about what was promised as he does in 11:39?
    • I would submit to you that like so many other supposed contradictions in the Bible that the author did not mean the same thing.
      • Notice that in verses 11:33-34 the discussion is about the great things each of those men like Samson accomplished.
      • Samson was called to begin the deliverance of Israel from Philistia.
      • Through his life and especially in his death, Samson gained what God had promised personally about Him.
      • By the time we read verse 11:39 the scene has shifted a bit, not to the personal promises of God for each of the heroes, but to a greater promise represented in verses 11:35-38 as a resurrection or eternal life.
      • Thus Samson like all the other Old Testament heroes were not saved by faith merely in the personal promises God had made to them.
      • Samson and all of us are saved instead by faith in God’s overarching first promises.
      • In Genesis God said that everything He had made was good and then in Genesis 3:15 he promised that through a descendant of Eve he would crush temptation, sin, and suffering; even though the descendant would be bruised or marked.
      • In Christ God fulfilled this overarching promise crushing temptation, sin, and suffering on the cross and raising Christ back up, still bearing the marks of his suffering but not their effects.
      • It is Christ that Gideon, Barak, Samson, David, Samuel and the other heroes of the Bible expected. When they gave their lives to God’s personal promises they always had faith that God would one day conquer all temptation, sin, and suffering.
    • So no, this is not a contradiction, but the key to resilient faith.
  • Resilient faith is believing…
    • That God knew and promised end from the beginning as Isaiah 46:10 reminds.
    • That God does not play favorites, nor is he partial as Deuteronomy 10:17 says.
    • That God has one way for his people to be saved through Jesus Christ as John 14:6 says.
    • That God wants people to hear that Jesus is the way, and that when we share the Word of Christ with others as Romans 10:17, He is at work to bring about faith in them.
    • That God has at all times been working all things to good and to glorify Him as Romans 8:28 says.
  • Which means that even today, no matter what condition you have come into this place, you do not have to leave here that way.

Conclusion:

• As I shared with you earlier, I believe baseball can teach us a lot about demonstrating resilient faith.
  • Robbie and the McCraken choir sang the National Anthem at a Greenville Drive game earlier in the year.
  • At that game, the Drive were losing, not by much, into the seventh inning.
    • The team could have given up and stopped playing in any one of those innings. But they didn’t
    • The crowd could have gotten fed up and left but they didn’t.
    • The team and the crowd acted like I hope and pray we will as beleivers. They demonstrated resilient faith that something good could happen.
  • Then in the eighth and ninth inning a rally began. To the point where at the bottom of the ninth as the bases were near to being loaded, one of the batters had the perfect ball thrown to him so that the game would end with a Drive victory.
• Today, you might be here in what feels like the bottom of the sixth or seventh inning of your life. Do you know how you show that you are a believer?
  • Demonstrate resilient faith by forgetting the past innings and believing that God can begin a rally in your life!
  • That is why we have an invitation at this point in the service.
    • It is so that you can respond by publicly professing your faith in what God can do.
    • You can do that by coming and grabbing the hand of the preacher and allowing him to pray for you.
    • You can do that by making public a decision to follow Christ or join this church.
    • You can do that by coming to the front bowing at the front pew and asking God to start a rally in your life.
  • The point of this message and Samson’s life is that we would demonstrate a resilient faith beginning in our lives today.