Who Can Say To Him, “What Are You Doing?” No. 5

The next two points, which I will consider in separate articles, are somewhat similar, but there are enough differences to divide them. If you have not done so, please read the previous four articles in this series in order to get a full understanding.

4. Samson—“it was of the Lord.” The strong man Samson is one of the most famous characters of the Bible, and he was a great man, being included in the “roll call of faith” in Hebrews 11. But from reading the material in the Biblical book of Judges about him, we realize that the Lord knew him a lot better than we do; and, of course, we have very little information about him, relative to his entire life. But, from what we do have, we see that this man was a gambler, liar, murderer, thief, fornicator—and those were his good traits—but he killed a lot of Philistines and judged Israel for 20 years. And obviously well enough that the Lord considered him a faithful man. Again, as noted in an earlier article on “David and Bathsheba,” it is very comforting to see God’s patience with godly people who could act very, very wickedly.

In the first anecdote we have about Samson in the Bible (Judges 14:1-3), he sins, and not one of those I recounted in the paragraph above. He sees a Philistine woman, and Samson demands his father get her for him for a wife. His father protested, but Samson was insistent: “She pleases me well.” Now, that is in flagrant disobedience to Deuteronomy 7:3 where the Lord commanded the children of Israel, regarding the idolatrous Gentile people of Canaan, “Nor shall you make marriages with them.” But here is the key thought for this article. It’s found in verse 4 of Judges 14: “But his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord…” The verse subsequently says “He [God] was seeking an occasion to move against the Philistines. For at that time the Philistines had dominion over Israel.” So Jehovah will use Samson to strike against the Philistines, a wicked nation in their own right who had been oppressing His people. And Samson will certainly do a good job smiting the Philistines, although it will cost him his own life in the end when he couldn’t control himself around another woman. This guy had a female weakness deluxe, but, of course, he’s not the only man in history of whom that could be said.

Now, what’s the point? Notice again: Samson sins by marrying a pagan woman, yet “it was of the Lord.” Did God want Samson to sin? No, of course not, God never wants anyone to sin. But in His inexplicable, incomprehensible wisdom and might, God can even use sin to accomplish His purposes! I find that just short of amazing. In principle, I suppose, we’ve already seen this with the Assyrians—God employed this wicked people to do His bidding against Israel, but Assyria certainly had no righteous motive in mind (Isaiah 10, see the second article in this series). Yet we have it clearly stated here in Judges 14 that Samson’s marriage was “of the Lord”—again, not approved by Jehovah, but an act which, in His unfathomable and humanly inconceivable providence, He could use for the good of His people. The mind, wisdom, thoughts of God…again, “Who can say to Him, What are You doing?” Reader, please don’t try to understand; just stand in awe at the remarkable judgments of the Almighty.

I do trust the reader will not draw the conclusion, “Well, since God can use sin for good, I think I’ll go ahead and do it.” Such is obviously not the point of this article; again, God never wants us to sin. But the mind of God is so expansive and wise that it can take something that is even against His will and do what He wants to with it. Gentle reader, you aren’t going to defeat Him; “He does whatever He pleases,” (Psalm 115:3). Sometimes, as noted in the third article of this series, it pleases Him to answer our prayers in the affirmative; sometimes not. Sometimes we humans deliberately (or, at times, through weakness) seek NOT to please Him; Samson apparently didn’t care what God thought about him marrying a pagan woman: “she pleases ME well.” And God let him do it. Because it pleased Him well to punish the Philistines, to accomplish a purpose of His own, and Samson was the one through whom He was going to do it, sin or no sin. Amazing.

“Who can say to Him, What in the world are You doing?”…and I mean that only in the sense of scratching my head in awe at the wondrous works of God.

We shall see another example of this in our next lesson, one perhaps even more complicated and mind-bending than God’s use of Samson’s sin.