How "Thinking" And Pride Keep Geeks From God (In Search Of Truth, Hebrews 11:32. Barak and Samson)

The names listed in Hebrews 11:32 seem to represent the totality of those in history who displayed faith, since the list of deeds followed by "who" in verse 33 can probably not all be accounted for in the lives of only those on this short list of names.

With this in mind, we're going to take a brief look at each of the people listed here and make a few observations about their faith based on what the Bible says about them. We'll look at both Barak and Samson this time. Barak's story can be found in Judges 4:6 – 5:31.

In Barak's day Israel was under the rule of a foreign king because of their disobedience to Yahweh. They were oppressed by this ruler for 20 years. A prophetess named Deborah was "judging" Israel at the time, both leading them and settling disputes among them. She told Barak that God was going to give the enemy into his hand if he would go and fight them.

Like Gideon, Barak was afraid and said he would only go if Deborah came along. Deborah agreed, although she told Barak that he would not gain any glory from his actions, since God would orchestrate a woman to kill the enemy king instead of Barak doing it himself.

As the story continues this is exactly what we see play out. Barak obeys and trusts Yahweh after his initial doubt and he and his forces easily defeat the enemy, despite a non-combatant actually killing the enemy king in the end.

Barak modeled faith in the form of obedience amidst doubt. His faith was flawed and incomplete. But God still highly honors his faith in the book of Hebrews.

Samson's story is found in Judges 13:24 – 16:31. And it's a big mess. Samson is full of passion which is great. But he lets his passion lead him and guide his decisions, which is foolish and self-destructive.

Before he was born, an angel told his mother that Samson would be a Nazarite from the day he was born. The word "Nazarite" means "one separated" or "one consecrated". A person living under a Nazarite vow could not cut their hair, have grape juice, wine, vinegar or other strong drink, eat grapes, or go near dead bodies. This lifestyle demonstrated commitment to being set apart, moment-by-moment, to the purposes of Yahweh.

All Israelites had also been commanded not to take spouses from foreign people because this would cause the Israelites to adopt worship of false gods from foreign nations. (Deuteronomy 7:1-4) And though the Philistines are not specifically named with the nations mentioned in the context of this command, they were just as involved in the worship of false gods.

Despite all of this, Samson married a Philistine woman (14:2-3,15), ate honey out of a dead lion(14:8-9), slept with a prostitute (16:1), and through his own foolishness allowed someone to cut his hair in violation of his vow. From what we see in the text, not cutting his hair may actually be the only aspect of the Nazarite vow Samson kept perfectly up until Delilah cut it. But despite his lifestyle of sin, Yahweh continued to intervene and give him strength to defeat his enemies and defend himself against overwhelming odds.

Like others in the Hebrews Hall of Faith, Samson's story says less about his own "amazing faith" and more about God's faithfulness. And yet his faith is listed as an example to us. Why? I think we can make a couple observations about what faith looked like in Samson's life.

1. He persisted in faith despite his unfaithfulness. When we respond to something God is calling us to do or change about our lives, we can start out feeling inspired but then soon find ourselves abandoning what we told God we would commit to. By the look of things, Samson was a pretty lousy Nazarite. At least for a time in his adult life. But the Nazarite vow was usually only temporary. Samson committed to pursuing it his entire life, even though we might look at his inconsistency and say, "What's the point Samson? You suck at this. Cut your hair and give up!" His consistent and repeated failure did not discourage his pursuit of what God had called him to.

2. Samson did not take his strength for granted. Strength that came to him so repeatedly might have felt natural after awhile. But he knew it came from Yahweh. After killing 1,000 men who had him surrounding and tied up, Samson "called upon Yahweh and said, 'You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant'".(Judges 15:18) In the same way we can forget that both our natural abilities, and the orchestrated moments in which they thrive, are brought about by God.


SO WHAT'S IN THIS FOR GEEKS?

Lots of geeks love science. They enjoy its logic, rules and predictability. In fact we can sometimes give such priority to being able to figure things out that we don't enter into anything in life that can't be predicted and controlled, which doesn't leave much room for relationship with an unpredictable, uncontrollable God. Like Barak, God is calling us into a certain future that may look very uncertain.

And there is extra blessing waiting for us if we trust him enough to dive in where he's directing. And yet even if we're not ready to jump in head first, or without some added assurance, he's still inviting us to trust him to the degree we can. And he'll honor that. So if you can't make a leap of faith today, maybe ask yourself what STEP you can take.

As geeks we're also horribly gifted at defining ourselves through our actions, knowledge or accomplishments. It's the reason we can find ourselves actually hurt over the fact that someone thinks that something we like is stupid. It's the reason we get angry when debating trivial issues about fictional worlds. We feel worthless when we're proven wrong or when we fail at something. And then we become secretly, inwardly arrogant when a conversation sets up an opportunity for us to shine that we take full advantage of.

Like Samson, we should remember God's faithful love despite our failure to meet a given standard. We should acknowledge how little we actually contribute to our moments of strength and recognize how much God has done to give us the strengths and successes we have.

Faith is a challenge, no question. But it also takes away the pressure to manufacture our significance, and lifts away a huge burden we put on ourselves.