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Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Good morning, church.
[00:00:05] What a joy to be together today. Amen.
[00:00:10] We are taking a little break today from Matthew.
[00:00:15] We're going to do a short little series coming out of Easter. We'll head back into Matthew in just a little bit. But for the next few weeks we're going to take some time to talk about peace, peacemaking and how the gospel speaks into the conflict in our own hearts. This serious title is obviously right. It's taken from the beatitudes. We just studied those semi recently. Right. Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God. I think the truth of this kingdom statement is becoming more and more relevant in our cultural moment.
[00:00:54] You know, as we, as we pastors were praying over what the best things were to spend our time digging into and praying over as a church, what are we going to bring to the pulpit this year? This is one idea that just kept coming back to my own heart, is just how increasingly divided and isolated our culture is. I think you add in the fact that it's an election year on top of that, and I think we all know that division hurt, broken relationship, everything that goes with it is going to ramp up in the coming months and that's how it's been the last couple election cycles. Right? Even within the church, I think we get this moment of shock and surprise and we realize that not everyone we worship with on Sunday votes the way we do. And then all of a sudden things just tend to get real spicy and it's really, really difficult to navigate that. But guys, here's the thing. We all know this. Like, I'm not going to say anything new. I'm just going to say some stuff that's hard.
[00:01:54] We all know followers of Jesus are called to a different way.
[00:01:58] We know that we don't have to live controlled by divisive rhetoric or continual conflict or hurt or broken relationship. So how does the gospel speak into these kind of hurts and conflicts and broken relationships? This won't surprise anybody. But guys, the gospel speaks into all of it, every kind of conflict. Jesus is the answer to conflict between believers, conflict within families, conflict between friends, conflict with those in the world, all of it. And the answer may seem really obvious and basic when I say it, but I think this is just one of those areas of faith and practice where there is oftentimes just a really big disconnect between what we know the gospel to teach and how we actually choose to live day to day. Amen. We can agree on that one. So let's be real for a minute. We pretty much all know what Jesus says about conflict and hurt and broken relationship. We know what he says about forgiveness. It's hardcore.
[00:03:06] Right. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says, for if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don't forgive others, your father will not forgive your offenses.
[00:03:22] It's intense.
[00:03:24] Jesus pulls no punches when he speaks about how kingdom people, followers of Christ, are to process and handle conflict and hurt and betrayal and broken relationships. He pulls no punches. And here's the thing, guys, we've all heard these passages.
[00:03:41] We all know this. We know the gospel itself hinges on extreme forgiveness and reconciliation when it's not deserved, right? That is the gospel story.
[00:03:53] But how deeply does this actually affect our day to day interactions with those around us?
[00:04:00] That's the challenge.
[00:04:03] Because the reality is, because of sin, every single one of us, we're not just bent toward conflict, we're bent toward hearts of vengeance.
[00:04:12] We really are.
[00:04:14] The curse has wired us such that each and every one of us, we're bent towards seeking our own justice and taking our own vengeance.
[00:04:25] And, guys, that rots your heart.
[00:04:29] Vengeance rots you.
[00:04:32] Rots you, destroys you. Jesus treated us differently. And because of him, guys, because of him, we can treat others differently.
[00:04:42] The gospel frees you from the need to be a person of vengeance. We can trust Jesus for our peace, and here, this church, we can trust Jesus for real justice and trust him for that. And because of that, you can live at peace. So turn with me over to judges 14.
[00:05:01] If you have a Bible with you, go ahead and turn. If you don't have a Bible with you, I'd encourage you to grab one of the house bibles. They're under the seats around you. Judges 14, we're going to look at a really long passage today and kind of meander through it, looking at some key texts so that we can kind of follow along the story. Why don't we do this as you guys turn there? Why don't you pray with me really quick and we're gonna work through this kind of chunk by chunk. We're not gonna have time to read the whole of this text, but we'll get through the story and the important bits. Jesus, we ask this morning that you would be our disciple or, Lord, I pray right now that you would cut through spiritual warfare and noise and flak that is in our hearts and our heads and keep keeping us from fully engaging the challenge you have for us today. Lord, I just. I just. I feel so strongly that these kind of unhealed wounds of broken relationships and hurt and conflict that have festered for days, months, years. Lord, this is just one of these ways that satan gets his claws in us as believers, diminishes our effectiveness, diminishes our intimacy with you. Lord, I pray today that you would bring us to a place of sober awareness.
[00:06:12] You would bring us to a place of repentance. You would remind us of the amazing grace of the gospel. Lord, speak to each and every one of our hearts today. We need you to cut through and speak to us afresh. We love you, Jesus. Amen. Okay, so, judges 14, we're jumping into one of the biggest stories in the book of judges. This is the story of the judge, Samson. So let me give you a little bit of context for this book as a whole before we read. Judges is an absolute hairy mess for theologians and interpreters. It is a mess of a book. And some of you are going, how can that be? Like, this is the one I remember from Sunday school. And that's really the problem, guys, is it has all these stories that are really easy to pull out for little kids, for, like, kind of superhero Bible stories. But when you go back and read judges as an adult, you go, huh, this is actually pretty terrible. Pretty much everything I'm reading is way worse than I. It's like when you go back and show your kids the goonies and you go, I did not think they cussed that much in this movie. Did they cuss that much? Yes, they cussed that much. You just didn't remember it. Same thing with judges, guys. It's a nuts book, and it's difficult to interpret it theologically as well. I mean, just applying it to your life, I think, is even more difficult. Judges takes place immediately following the death of Joshua, who led Israel to capture the promised land after the death of Moses. Judges gives us a picture of this unique moment in Israel's history when Israel is still really tribally defined. It's immediately following their conquering of the land. And what we see about the tribes of Israel in the era of the judges is that they are petty, they're divided, they're adulterous, they're violent, they're vindictive, and they are downright evil at times.
[00:08:07] For those of us who grew up with the Sunday school fodder stories, it's just. It's weird to go back to it. It follows the stories of these various judges who essentially function as tribal leaders to various parts of Israel. Over the course of. Of several generations, some judges gave leadership to basically all of Israel, but most of them were just to one or two tribes. Some have long drawn out stories. A whole bunch of them get like a single sentence. In spite of that diversity, however, pretty much all of them who get any actual story time, with the exception of Deborah, and we don't have time to dig into the why on that. But with the exception of Deborah, all of them who get a story turn out to be terrible people.
[00:08:52] They're all awful. They're not people you should emulate. They're without exception, awful. The judges are violent, they're cowardly, they're idolatrous, they're sexually immoral, they're liars. They're not the kind of people that we want to emulate. And yet consistently, the story of Judges tells us that the spirit of God anoints them and uses them to lead Israel out of oppression. It's very weird.
[00:09:18] It's a weird story. Judges also introduces us to Israel's sin cycle. You guys remember Israel made a covenant with God himself and Mount Sinai. I am your God. You're my people. This is deuteronomy 28. You can read about this. He says, you follow my covenant, I'll give you all these blessings. You break my covenant, I'll give you all these curses, and then you can repent and come back and get all the blessings. And judges introduces us to this cycle where Israel wanders away from God, falls into idolatry, receives all the curses of deuteronomy 28, then cries out to God for mercy and repentance. God raises up a judge who frees them from oppression. They follow God until the death of that judge, and then as soon as the judge dies, they fall back into their idolatrous cycle and experience all the curses of deuteronomy 28, rinse and repeat for the entirety of the book. The only exception is that it gets worse.
[00:10:05] In judges, you see this escalation of things, never quite getting back to the previous cycle of holiness. They descend into worse and worse and worse idolatry. Judges tells the story of a promise keeping God who is faithful to his covenant even when his people are beyond faithless.
[00:10:25] And there is no greater picture of this tension than we see in the story of Samson. Samson's the last judge narrative we get, unless you count Samuel. But Samson's the last judge narrative we get. And essentially his parents are told, your son is going to be a judge when they're still pregnant. So they say, you're going to set him aside for a nazirite vow for life. Now a nazarite vow is a thing the ancient Israelites could do where they essentially take. It's kind of like self imposed lent. Basically, they would take a vow to abstain from Alcohol, to abstain from cutting their hair, to abstain from any uncleanliness for a season of time so they can focus in on spiritual disciplines. And when they fulfill the time of their vow, there's this whole ceremony where they cut their hair and they drink wine. It's a beautiful thing. But Samson's parents decide, because this angel spoke to them, that Samson will be dedicated as a nazirite for the entirety of his life, meaning never cutting his hair, never touching anything dead, ever, even when his parents die, no ability to go to their funeral, never drinking any alcohol or even touching the fruit of the vine, the entirety of his life, because he is set aside as God's instrument to free Israel from the oppression of the Philistines. And so we're going to pick up and we're going to read some of Samson's story starting in judges 14. In the first verse, we read this.
[00:11:38] Samson went down to Timnah and saw a young philistine woman there. He went back and told his father and his mother, I have seen a young philistine woman in Timnah. Now go get her for me as a wife. But his father and mother said to him, can't you find a young woman among your relatives or among any of our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines for a wife? But Samson told his father, no, get her for me. She's the right one for me. Now, his father and mother did not know that this was actually from the Lord, who wanted the Philistines to provide an opportunity for a confrontation. At that time, the Philistines were ruling over Israel. So here's what we have going on thus far. Samson, an anointed judge over Israel at the call of God. From before his birth, God had promised, I will use him to free my people. He's been dedicated as a nazirite, right? Like, he's supposed to be living this set apart life, and he wants to get married. And so he picks out a philistine woman to marry and demands that his parents arrange the marriage. Now, this is awkward for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is the Israelites are subjects of the Philistines right now. They're at some kind of workable peace, but they are subjugated. But, guys, it's also his parents are upset because marrying a philistine will break his nazarite vow, will make him ceremonially unclean. This is not something he's supposed to do. And so they go, you can't marry a jewish woman. You can't marry someone, like, from our actual clan. Nope. This is the woman I want. And God lets us know in the story, he kind of, like, winks at you through the narrator and goes, I'm using this. Like, trust me on this. Fuck. Follow the story. Trust me on this. And by the way, judges as a whole is a picture of this. But this is a biblical concept. It's a really painful one, but it's an important one, which is that God anoints sinful people to accomplish his sovereign will in the world. I mean, that's a part of the biblical narrative. Nebuchadnezzar was given by God, essentially the same title as the anointed kings of Israel. Nebuchadnezzar, the guy who destroyed Jerusalem, the guy who enslaved all sorts of Jews, the guy who claimed himself to be a God, right? Yet God used him as an anointed one. And so God is sovereign, right? And he can work his sovereign will, even through people's idiocy and rebellion and sin. So in our story, Samson's parents were lent. As the story progresses, if you keep reading, in 14, they head down to town so that Samson's dad can set up the whole marriage. And while they're walking down there, Samson's off by himself and comes across a lion, and he rips it apart with his bare hands, as you do when you find a lion in the wilderness.
[00:14:22] He doesn't tell anyone. I guess. I assume he just wanders back from his little side journey, you know, lion blood on him. Parents, like, everything all right over there? Don't sweat it, mom and dad. Let's go get my wife. So they get down there, his parents arrange the marriage. They go home, and when they're heading back down for the actual wedding, Samson gets this moment where he's like, hmm, I want to see that lion I killed. I want to see if his bones are still there. Which, by the way, I'm going to say, out of all the Samson things, that's got to be the most relatable thing in the story. If I killed a lion, and four months later, I was wandering by, I'd be like, I wonder if his bones are still there. I won't see it. So Samson wanders over to the lion's bones. It's been months, and he finds a beehive in the old, dried up bones of this dead lion and goes sick. Pulls out some of the honey, breaking his vow, touching an unclean dead body brings some of the honey back to his parents, who's like, hey, you guys want this honey? I found it out in the wilderness. And they're like, yeah, there's nothing weird about it or anything, right? Nah, just try it. So he gets his parents to eat the unclean dead body honey, but they make their way down to the wedding, and when they get there, you have to remember, these guys are Israelites, and they don't live in this community. And so who knows what bride price the dad has set up to arrange his wedding, but he's set it up. And when he gets there, Samson has no friends or family to support him. So the community assigns groomsmen to Samson. So a bunch of philistine guys become his groomsmen for the wedding. And these ancient jewish weddings were feasts that would last roughly a week. And so they get a couple days into it. It's a little raucous. Things are going on. Young men partying. You kind of get the vibe, and they end up with this really weird bet. Samson makes a bet to his grooms and races. Hey, if I tell you a riddle and you can't figure it out before the end of this wedding, you've each got to give me a fancy set of brand new clothes. But if you figure it out, I'll give each of you a fancy set of brand new clothes.
[00:16:27] And you got to look at this at this point, and you're like, I get it, right? Young guys at a wedding, they're partying, there's drinking, dumb bets. All of it kind of makes sense at this point. It's not outside the realm of our normal understanding, right? But as the week winds on, they can't figure out the riddle. And so here's how they decide to handle it. If you jump down to verse 15, on the fourth day, they said to Samson's wife, persuade your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father's family to death.
[00:17:01] Did you invite us here to rob us?
[00:17:04] Now, guys, here's what we have. We have our first instance of what I'm going to call escalation.
[00:17:11] You're with me on that, right? Situation has escalated a little bit. We've gone from a bet to we're going to kill your whole family if we lose this bet. If you're hoping the story gets, like, somehow better from this point on, I have terrible news for you. This is probably the highlight. Like, it's gonna get worse from here, Samson's wife, who, by the way, never even gets named in this entire narrative, understandably goes to Samson and asks him to tell her the answer to the riddle. He relents, he tells her, she tells the goons, and they confront Samson. You can skip down to verse 18. On the 7th day before sunset, the men of the city said to him, what is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion? So he being Samson, said to them, if you hadn't plowed with my young cow, you wouldn't know my riddle, man. The spirit of the lord came powerfully upon him. He went down to Eshkolon, killed 30 of their men, stripped them, and gave their clothes to those who explained the riddle. In a rage, Samson returned to his father's house, and his wife was given to one of the men who had accompanied him. Wow. Okay, well, first off, his line there, had you not plowed with my young cow, you wouldn't have figured out my riddle. Okay, Samson, that kind of tells us a little bit about you and the way you think about your wife.
[00:18:29] But here we get our second escalation.
[00:18:33] We move from threats of murder to murder. Right? Samson is so mad that his scheme got figured out and he owes these guys what amounts to money that he gets the clothes he has to give them by going off to a different town and killing 30 random philistines.
[00:18:53] Just seeks them out, kills them, takes their stuff and brings it back and gives to the guys. And then he's so mad at this point that he just leaves his bride at his own wedding and stomps home.
[00:19:07] Now, the woman's dad has already spent a fortune on this wedding feast, and so he's kind of like, why let a perfectly good wedding go to waste? So he marries his daughter off to one of the groomsmen, which I feel like some of the dads in the room right now are like, yeah, I get it. Weddings are expensive. I actually vibe with him on this one. You're not going to waste the whole wedding just because everyone got in a fight.
[00:19:31] I'm kidding.
[00:19:35] When you jump over to chapter 15, the story continues.
[00:19:39] Months later. Samson decides to go back to his wife.
[00:19:45] Just in case you're not sold on the whole, Sampson is a jerk in this storyline, yet he stomps out of his own wedding before it's completed, and then months later is like, oh, shoot, yeah, I'm married. And heads down there with a goat to, I guess, bribe her back into his good graces.
[00:20:01] He walked on his wife before their wedding's over. Months later, he thinks to himself, I need to go. I need to go live as a married man. So he grabs his goat as you do, heads to his in law's house, and then he gets to the dad goes, oh, man, this is awkward. Do you remember how you literally walked out of the wedding before it was over? Remember that part? Yeah. Well, she married someone else.
[00:20:24] Do you want to marry her younger sister? She's still single. Samson is not okay with this. So jump over to verse three of 15 with me. Says this. Samson said to them, well, this time I will be blameless when I harm the philistines. So he went out and caught 300 foxes. He took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each of their pairs of tails. Then he ignited the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and the standing grain, as well as the vineyards and the olive groves. Okay, so for those of us who are keeping track of our escalation meter here, Samson walked out on his wife.
[00:21:08] And since she married someone else, his response is, well, this time I'm justified in what I'm about to do, because obviously this offense against me is so great. So what does he do? He destroys the community's food supply.
[00:21:24] He captures a bunch of foxes, ties them together, lights them on fire, and lets them loose amongst the food to burn up the food supply for the whole community. We've moved from wronging him in his marriage to destroying an entire community's food supply. Continue in verse six. Then the Philistines asked, who did this? They were told it was Samson, the Timnite son in law, because he took Samson's wife and gave her to his companion. So the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death. So the Philistines respond by burning the family to whom Samson was supposed to marry into. Literally, like, think, locking them inside their houses and burning it down around them. This is our fourth escalation of this situation. And now the result is a family being burned to death in their house. Verse seven. Then Samson told them, well, because you did this, I swear that I don't rest until I have taken vengeance on you. I love how Samson finds a way to feel shocked at their escalation of the conflict. Right? Oh, well, since you're willing to do this as though it's somehow worse than the things he's already done in this moment. Right. Well, then I'm totally justified in my vengeance.
[00:22:38] By the way, in our translation, this reads, a little more dramatic, right? Like, I won't rest until I've taken my vengeance. But in the Hebrew, the literal phrase here is, I'll take my vengeance and then I'll quit.
[00:22:51] I love that. That idea in mind that Samson goes, I've escalated up to this point, but after this one's enough, after this one, I'm done. This is a good enough one, right, man?
[00:23:03] So what does he do?
[00:23:05] Well, his response is to go on a killing spree amongst the philistines.
[00:23:10] He goes out and just hand to hand starts beating people's skull in and killing them all over the community. After this, he has to hide out. So he runs off into the wilderness. He hides in a cave. The philistines at this point muster their entire army.
[00:23:26] The entire army at this point is involved in the Conflict. They approach the Israelites. Remember the Israelites, under who, like, who are under their control, right? Like these oppressed people. And they basically say, hey, give us Samson or we're going to wipe you all off the face of the planet.
[00:23:43] So now we've looked, we've moved to the army at threatening all of Israel.
[00:23:48] The Conflict has escalated in a ludicrous sense. The Israelites convinced Samson to surrender. They tie him up and they give him over to the Philistines. And we get this in verse 14, in chapter 15.
[00:24:01] Then he came to Lehi. The Philistines came to meet him, shouting, the spirit of the lord came powerfully upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off. He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed a thousand men with it. Then Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, I have piled them in heaps with the jawbone of a donkey. I've killed a thousand men. When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Jawbone Hill.
[00:24:33] So he chucks away his bloody, broken jawbone, and now the conflict is finally over. Happy ending or whatever.
[00:24:44] And just in case you're wondering, this is the kind of thing I think about when I'm reading these stories. A relatively fresh hearing that non dried out and brittle jawbone of a donkey actually makes a really good weapon. It was actually a pretty common thing in the ancient near east to use these donkey jawbones. I have a picture of one because you could turn it into kind of halfway between an axe and a club. And they're pretty, pretty brutal, pretty big. They got a little kind of natural handle in them, but anyway, yeah. So he takes this, he goes nuts, he kills a bunch of people. But I want us to reflect for a moment on what happens when this conflict is resolved through these escalations of vengeance, because this story is almost a dark comedy and how extreme and terrible it is.
[00:25:32] As we reflect on this for a second, let's start with the obvious, right? Vengeance does not resolve conflict. It escalates it, right?
[00:25:43] That is one of the things that we just see as true as day in this tale. But let's look at some of the stuff under the surface and move beyond that for a second. Because a story like this, man, you're beat over the head with the reality that vengeance escalates conflict.
[00:26:01] But I question, right? Like, how can the people involved not see how just pointlessly destructive this is? I mean, truth be told, right? The text tells us that ultimately God is using this whole affair. Samson's eventual death and the Philistine king's death are what God used to free the Israelites from oppression in this particular season of Israel's history, right? Like, that's true. But this is just evidence that God can sovereignly work even in our destructive sin, in rebellion, right? Remember, Nebuchadnezzar was an anointed vessel of God. Let's not use God as an excuse to not deal with the pointed parts of this story.
[00:26:49] God is sovereign, and he will work his ultimate will on earth, even if you are totally selfish and sinful and destructive in the way you live, right?
[00:26:58] God is sovereign even over your rebellion and idiocy. But beloved, beloved, do you want God's will on earth as it is in heaven, in spite of your lifestyle?
[00:27:12] Is that what you want from your life?
[00:27:14] For God's sovereignty to have to work against how awful you are to bring about his will on earth? No, let's look at a couple truths about vengeance in this story and see just what it illuminates to us of the gospel and our own lives. I think first one we need to focus on is this. Guys, vengeance is always self focused.
[00:27:35] It's always self focused to justify revenge, we have to laser focus on the injustice we've experienced.
[00:27:45] It has to come back to, I've been wronged.
[00:27:49] Look what's been done to me. Look at Samson's own response, right? I shall be innocent in regard to the philistines. If this is what you do, then look what I'll do. Oh, they did this to me, so I'll do this to them. These are the sorts of words Samson uses to justify his revenge. And it all comes back to their wrongdoing against him.
[00:28:10] It comes from a heart that demands justice for yourself but completely ignores justice for others.
[00:28:21] Right.
[00:28:23] You have to come back to some form of hypocritical, distorted justice that demands a perfect accounting for the wrongdoings of others, but graciously overlooks your own failures because you're trying your best. And who wouldn't respond that way, right?
[00:28:41] When in the story does Samson address his own sin?
[00:28:45] I'll give you a hint. Never.
[00:28:48] Never. Simpson lied to his parents. He blasphemed God. He abandoned his wife at his wedding. He killed multiple people. He burned a whole people's food supply. When does he own any of this? He doesn't.
[00:29:01] And it's not because Samson is some pure evil supervillain.
[00:29:07] It's not because he's some bastion of all that is satanic in the world. No, guys, it's because when you're that focused on yourself, you cannot see others, pure and simple. That is human nature.
[00:29:22] When you are so zoned in on yourself and the wrongs and hurts you've experienced and you're hyper focused on keeping track of every little hurt and every little wrong because no one else is, then you become blinded to others.
[00:29:37] Samson was so infatuated with himself that he was blinded to the trail of destruction surrounding him.
[00:29:45] Guys, as vengeance escalates, it only gets worse. With every escalation, stakes get higher. Vengeance requires more of yourself, more of your energy. With each round. You have to give that much more attention to yourself and your case against your enemy. When is there time to think of others?
[00:30:10] There isn't. There isn't. The more you're in there, the worse it gets. Think about our story for a moment, guys. Think about this for a moment. This started with a couple guys at a party making a dumb bet.
[00:30:25] That's where our story started. Sort of. With a couple guys at a party making a dumb bet. Where does it end?
[00:30:32] With armies on the battlefield with a thousand people beat to death with a club.
[00:30:40] I mean, guys, that's. That's intense. Take everyone in this room, multiply it by ten, crush their skulls in, and leave them out in the field. That's how the story ends.
[00:30:51] That's insane.
[00:30:54] It begs the question, where are you caught in the cycle of vengeance, beloved?
[00:31:01] Where are you caught up into this self focus that cannot see the other?
[00:31:07] Because I want to. Humbly. I say humbly because I am in this boat as well. I want to submit that we are significantly, significantly more obsessed with vengeance than we are willing to admit.
[00:31:21] And here's what I mean by this.
[00:31:24] We often hide our vengeance, our anger, our bitterness behind statements that sound godly and wise.
[00:31:34] Oh, I don't know. I'm just a justice minded person.
[00:31:37] I just. I really care about right and wrong and, like, what the rules are. But that person actually hurt me. They did a real injustice to me, you guys. I mean, I don't know. My work is just toxic. I can't do anything about it. Fill in the blank.
[00:31:52] Many of us live our life wandering from vengeance cycle to vengeance cycle, and often we don't even know it.
[00:32:00] Because I would tell you guys that we don't know it for a couple reasons. The first one is the big one we've already talked about, which is that vengeance blinds you. It requires so much energy and self obsession that you literally lose sight of the fact that you're doing it. But the second reason that I think is probably even more dangerous is that we seek vengeance in ways that are just so much more quiet and subtle than Samson that we give ourselves a pass.
[00:32:26] See, we see Samson's vengeance. We see this guy yelling and screaming. We see violence and burning things down and killing people, and we go, oh, yeah, yeah, that dude's super evil. That's awful. I would never do that. And the reality is most of us would never do that. Right?
[00:32:43] But here's the thing, guys.
[00:32:45] You can't just look at an extreme case like Samson and think to yourself, well, I'm not doing what he does, so I'm good. I don't know, beloved, nothing could be further from the truth. The reality, guys, the reality is that any relationship or conflict where we turn inward, we will eventually get caught up in a cycle of vengeance.
[00:33:06] It may be outward and public, maybe not like Samson, right? But you may blow up in some sinful, mean way, say things and do things you regret. You often see this in broken romantic relationships, ones that end married marriages that end in divorce, or even just breakups, right? Where all of a sudden the x is evil. And every time they're brought up, it's all biting and back and forth. When what really happened most of the time is that you guys tried, but it didn't work.
[00:33:36] And guys, by the way, don't hear me. Please don't hear me. Like, diminishing real cases of suffering and abuse, those are things that really happen 100%. And those need to be dealt with and dealt with honestly.
[00:33:48] But I think oftentimes what happens in a romantic relationship, especially a dating one, is you got into it and you're like, eh, it doesn't really work.
[00:33:56] But the way it's talked about afterward is that person's evil, awful, manipulative, blah, blah, blah. And they're demonized because that's vengeance.
[00:34:03] You may not want to call it that, but that is. It is. It's vengeance. It's operating out of the hurt you received seeing yourself and not the other.
[00:34:12] Oftentimes, the reasons relationships don't work are very mutual. Right.
[00:34:18] There's a common form of vengeance that I think we seek that really has to be called out for what it is. And this is. I'm walking a careful line here, guys, because the reality is, setting boundaries in your life for the purpose of safety and protection are very important.
[00:34:34] You are important.
[00:34:36] You have dignity. You are made in the image of God, and you deserve to live a life where you are not in danger and not threatened. And if you are in relationships where those things happen, you should act upon them. You should invite your church to come alongside you and help you be safe and protected from those things. Never hear me discounting that.
[00:34:53] But I think we all know that we live in a cultural moment where those same concepts are taken to a pretty intense extreme, and people like to use language like relational toxicity, and I'm just setting healthy boundaries. And what they really mean is I'm hurt and angry by someone, so I'm going to demonize them and I'm going to cut them out of my life very publicly. Right.
[00:35:15] We can admit that that's true. You see those in social media posts where people say things like, I've just decided that I'm going to set the boundaries. I'm going to set those sorts of things. You guys know what I'm talking about. And listen, there are times when that's a really appropriate response for the purpose of safety, for the purpose of protecting yourself. But I would argue that a really large amount of the time, a really large amount of the time, we're just very angry and vengeful and too cowardly to do anything besides our words. Right? Right. Maybe you wouldn't go to the trouble of lighting a fox on fire in their backyard, but you can label them toxic, and you can subtly tell your friends how toxic they were and talk bad about them every chance you get. Or maybe it's even more passive than that. Maybe you're not willing to say a word about that person, to be openly bitter toward them, but you develop this just really brutal indifference where you would never say a word out loud about them. But if you heard that something bad happened to them. You'd be like, eh, karma's a thing, right?
[00:36:22] Beloved, we may call this an understanding of justice or the principle of reaping and sowing, but I want to challenge us to be honest for a moment.
[00:36:32] That is just a coward's vengeance.
[00:36:35] It's what that is. I won't do anything to hurt you. But I really do hope something bad happens to you that I'm not responsible for.
[00:36:45] That's coward's vengeance. And I say this, beloved. I am as guilty of it as you are.
[00:36:51] It's an easy thing to do, beloved.
[00:36:56] We all realize this is not the way of our sweet Jesus. Amen.
[00:37:00] Like, we can say this safely, we can say this confessionally, because we know this is not how Christ treats us.
[00:37:08] God himself said that the prophet Ezekiel, tell them as I live, this is the declaration of the Lord. I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked person should turn from his way and live. Repent. Repent of your evil ways. Why would you die? You didn't have to. House of Israel.
[00:37:29] God does not desire vengeance. He longs for repentance and life.
[00:37:33] That is not how he treated us.
[00:37:37] What wretched folk we are, right?
[00:37:40] How are we to address this poison that lives within our souls? Because we know it does. We know that's there.
[00:37:47] Like, we know it's not what God did for us. We know it's not the gospel truth. We know it's not how we want to be treated. But that lurks within all of us.
[00:37:58] That temptation, that movement towards self preservation, toward assuming no one else is keeping track of the wrongs and hurts and injustice done to us. So we have to keep track of it. We have to keep the accounting of it, because no one else is.
[00:38:13] We're all bent toward that. We fall into that.
[00:38:18] But, beloved, you must know vengeance will always escalate.
[00:38:24] It will always go further in your heart than you think it will, and it rots you.
[00:38:31] There's never enough vengeance to write the scales.
[00:38:36] There's never enough to write the scales. Look at Samson. He says, I will do this one more thing, and then I'll stop. A paragraph later, he's murdering a thousand people.
[00:38:47] It will always grow. It will always get out of hand. It will always be terrible. And, beloved, it will always rot you from the inside out.
[00:38:55] You need to know Samson's vengeance did eventually find an end.
[00:38:59] He did eventually settle his accounts. Do you know how his story ends?
[00:39:04] It ends a couple chapters later with his eyes gouged out with him enslaved in a prison, being tortured and mocked, isolated, alone, away from his friends. And in a final moment of vindictive justice, he kills himself and kills 3000 people alongside him. You know what the text says of Samson's legacy?
[00:39:28] The dead whom he killed at his death were more than those whom he killed during his life. That that's the legacy, spiritual, historical, of Samson the judge, that he figured out how to kill more people at his death than he did during his life.
[00:39:46] Beloved, I am here to tell you it does not have to be this way.
[00:39:52] You don't have to live like this. You don't have to live clutching onto your ledger of every wrong, keeping an account, being the one who makes sure that person knows what they did to you, being the person who keeps you don't have to. You don't have to let your heart be rotted away by vengeance. I'm going to kind of close us with a text that we're going to come back to each week over the next three weeks in romans twelve. If you want to turn there, you're welcome to romans twelve. Starting in verse 14, it says this.
[00:40:24] Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Don't be proud. Instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone's eyes. Verse 18, if possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, friends, not avenge yourselves. Instead, leave room for God's wrath, because it is written, vengeance belongs to me. I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for in so doing, you will be heaping coals on his head.
[00:41:06] Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.
[00:41:13] In the middle of a passage where Paul is describing kingdom life, he says, don't avenge yourselves.
[00:41:20] Instead, leave room for God's wrath, because it is written, vengeance belongs to me. I will repay, says the Lord. Chris, if you want to come back up, I want us to land with this idea and this reflection, because God has made a way for you.
[00:41:37] God saw your sin and your brokenness and your evil, and he met you, he approached you.
[00:41:46] He made a way for you to not just be forgiven.
[00:41:50] Hear this. To not just be forgiven, but to be reconciled, to be restored, to be elevated.
[00:42:01] Christ painted a picture through his accomplished work on the cross, through his resurrection of what the real answer to conflict is it's not riding the scales. It's not vengeance. It's not getting them back for what they did.
[00:42:14] It's loving them so well that Christ changes them.
[00:42:20] The Christ draws them out of their sin, draws them to repentance, draws them to life. Because we worship a God who does not delight in vengeance or death of the wicked, but delights in repentance and life and reconciliation and restoration.
[00:42:33] That person who wronged you, I mean, I'm sorry. I am genuinely sorry, deeply sorry.
[00:42:41] I know that a lot of you guys have experienced hurts that are really stinking heavy. They're hard to manage.
[00:42:47] You've experienced hurts from people who you shouldn't hurt. Any family, church people, friends.
[00:42:54] I know there's a lot of. A lot of weight to what I'm talking about.
[00:42:59] And it feels like the hardest thing in the world to consider letting go of that.
[00:43:03] But you need to know something.
[00:43:06] You don't have to avenge yourself.
[00:43:10] You don't have to keep track of the scales of justice.
[00:43:14] You know why?
[00:43:16] Because one day Christ will return and every single evil and sin and wrong and hurt will be accounted for.
[00:43:25] There is no sin that has ever been done that will not be accounted for in the day of judgment. And you need to know that evil will be destroyed.
[00:43:36] The evil that harmed you, the evil that hurt you, it will be destroyed one way or the other. The wrath of God. God will pour out on it one way or the other.
[00:43:45] It will either pour out upon that person or upon Christ, but it will be paid for.
[00:43:53] It will be.
[00:43:55] You don't have to keep track of it.
[00:43:58] You. You can walk in freedom.
[00:44:04] You can walk in freedom.
[00:44:06] You can pray that God would do in their heart what he did in yours.
[00:44:11] You can walk toward people in their sin, in their evil, their betrayal.
[00:44:18] You can be someone who seeks real forgiveness, real reconciliation. Listen, reconciliation takes two to tango.
[00:44:26] You can't force someone else to repent. I'm not telling you to put yourself in a dangerous situation.
[00:44:32] I am saying that you can live a life where you actually create space for other people to walk in. The same reconciliation you walk in.
[00:44:41] And I'm telling you guys, the gospel does amazing things with broken and dead relationships.
[00:44:49] Your Jesus delights to resurrect the dead.
[00:44:52] So here's what I'm going to invite you to do to end out. This is something I want to encourage you to do that will carry us through the next couple weeks. I put little cards and I didn't do it. Several ladies put cards and pins around the room.
[00:45:05] I want to encourage you to take a minute as we pray and land out today in your moment of reflection, as you connect with Christ, as you consider your own heart.
[00:45:13] I really want you to take a minute to be honest about your own heart of vengeance.
[00:45:19] I want you to think through those who've harmed you, those who harmed you, and as much as you are able, I want to encourage you to actually write down the ledger you carry in your heart on that paper.
[00:45:34] You don't have to do anything with it right now. You can.
[00:45:38] I want to encourage you, bust out that ledger and figure out some names.
[00:45:46] What are some wrongs, some hurts that you've experienced that still carrying with you? What would it look like for you to name those right now?
[00:45:54] Put them on that paper, put it in your bible.
[00:45:58] Let that sit with you in your spiritual walk this week, in your prayer life this week, and we'll see if maybe together in the coming weeks and months and the lifetime of following Christ, if we can figure out how to actually walk in forgiveness for those things. And those people will be peacemakers.
[00:46:18] Take a few minutes to pray, to consider, to write, and then we'll continue on in our response.
