3/6/55

Scripture: Judges 16: 23-30; Acts 7: 54-60

Each reading from the Scripture this morning contains a prayer. One is by an Old Testament Hebrew. The other is by one of the earliest New Testament Christians. Ernest Halliday points, in these prayers, to some similarities, and to some differences, which I want to pass along to you this morning.

Samson was one of the Judges of Israel. He knew more about retaliatory justice than he knew of some other human qualities. The story is that he was a man of some sagacity, and a man of tremendous physical strength. He was shrewd, and made enemies by his cunning. Then, when they tried to get the best of him, he went them one better -- or more! When really provoked, he could, and did, kill a thousand men at a time, single handed. He was a force to be reckoned with among his own Hebrew people. And he was a scourge to their enemy rulers, the Philistines.

Like some other smart and self-sufficient men, he was quite a man with the women! His attempt to get a wife from the Philistines went bad and he made some enemies over it. He could, and did, visit a harlot. And he finally met and succumbed to a “cute little trick” named Delilah who proved to be his downfall. For Delilah was bribed and “planted,” by his enemies, to find out the source of his great physical strength. You can read all about her cunning, and his kidding, in the early part of the 16th chapter of the book of Judges.

Three times, she thought that she had his secret, and each time he had fooled her. But he finally gave in to her nagging and whimpering and revealed that his strength was connected with the fact that his hair had never been cut or shaved.

With feminine wiles she got him asleep with his head in her lap, sent for someone to come and shave off the locks of hair associated with his strength, took the bribe money, and turned him over to the Philistines.

Finding him no stronger now than any ordinary man, they bound him, put out both his eyes, and took him off to pull at the grinding mill. As a slave he could be a good substitute for a bullock.

But his hair started to grow again. And with it, he earnestly longed for a return of his extraordinary strength. It came!

When the Philistines sent for him so that they could have some sport with him in his blinded helplessness, he decided that his time had come. Putting all his strength against the supporting pillars of the great house, and praying that he might be avenged of his eyes, he pulled down the pillars. Thousands were killed as the house fell, and he himself died among the falling stones. He “got even” and more!

Stephen is a highly interesting man whose story is set forth in the 6th and 7th chapters of the book of the Acts. The apostles had a little trouble with folk who thought that some unfair preferences had been shown in caring for the widows of Greek Christians. So, in order to continue their ministry of prayer and preaching and teaching and healing, they organized a committee of seven to look after the welfare business.

Stephen was the chairman of the committee. It turned out that he was a man of great faith and unusual character. And marvelous things happened under his regime. In fact, he got such a reputation for wonders and miracles that certain synagogue officials took unfavorable notice of him. They did not want the status quo to be upset by any young “radicals.”

These leaders procured men who would commit perjury by testifying that Stephen spoke repeated blasphemies against Moses and against God. It was not a new tactic. It had been used with like success earlier, and has been oft repeated since. But they seized Stephen and held a trial. Of course it looks better if a fellow has a chance at some kind of defense, so Stephen was allowed to speak. He made quite an effective review of their religious heritage. But he did not mince his words when he referred to his captors as stiff-necked and unregenerate in heart and ears. Calling attention to the fact that prophets had been persecuted by their fathers, he referred to the men at his trial as betrayers and murderers of his Lord, Jesus.

That did it! They stopped their ears, rushed him out to the execution pit, and threw stones on him till he died. But not before he had committed his spirit to God, as the rocks fell upon him, and even pleaded for divine mercy upon his tormentors.

Consider now the final prayers of these two men, widely different in time and temperament. Samson, putting the strength of his muscles against the stone pillars, prayed: “O Lord God -- strengthen me, I pray Thee -- that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.”

Stephen, kneeling among the rocks hurled in desperate fury at him, prayed: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”

Can you think of two prayers more diametrically opposite? About the only thing they have in common is that they are prayers of men in the closing moments of mortal life.

Samson’s was a prayer for vengeance on his enemies and tormentors. Stephen’s was a prayer for the forgiveness of those who were then stoning him to death.

Samson had been greatly injured and shamefully treated, no doubt of that! He had, himself, been the victim of vengeance. Weakened, he had been overwhelmed, cruelly blinded, loaded with chains, and harnessed to the prison mill for grinding grain. What more natural than his burning desire to get even, and more? That had always been the way with this impetuous, good-natured, vindictive giant. He responded like a trustful child to those who treated him kindly. But when he believed himself wronged, he fought back with measures to avenge the wrong with interest.

He had once set fire to the grain fields of the Philistines by firing the tails of foxes and then turning the frenzied little creatures loose. He had killed numbers of the Philistines with his own hand. When asked why he had done these things, he thought it sufficient to reply, “As they did to me, so have I done to them.” Sounds perfectly natural. Should one expect anything else?

Shakespeare’s well-known dramatic character, Shylock, is made to say, concerning ill-treatment of Jews by Christians, “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

You and I are not so far removed from that spirit that we cannot understand it -- perhaps even sympathize with it.

Remember the story of Samson pulling down the Philistine temple so that “the house fell on the lords and upon all the people that were in it. So the dead whom he slew at his death were more than those whom he had slain during his life.” And he had done away with thousands!

We have found it not too hard to adopt the view that all this was right and proper, and even in accordance with the righteous judgment of Jehovah. It is a kind of smug satisfaction to think of Samson lying there dead in the ruins having been able by his final act to settle the score (and then some!) with his enemies.

Now look again at the other scene. Stephen, a preacher of a fresh new faith, aroused the animosity of some of his fellow Jews, who stirred up the people against him. Taken, “framed” with a charge of blasphemy, and given an apparent opportunity to make his defense, he so infuriated his hearers that they rushed him, before he was finished speaking, hustled him out of the city and stoned him to the death.

Do we hear him, between the shocks of rocks striking his wounded body, imitating Samson in prayer, “Strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be avenged?” No; his prayer is vastly different. For most of us it might be too difficult. “And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’” And this was his dying prayer.

There he lies pounded to death by the rocks that had been hurled upon him -- dead among the stones like Samson in the rubble of a Philistine temple. Both dead; but how different the spirit of their last acts and their dying!

What makes the difference? Why did one man ask, above all else for vengeance? And the other plead for forgiveness? The answer is simple -- and wonderful. Stephen was a Christian -- a committed follower of the one who had prayed from the agony of his cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

It was not that Samson was irreligious. He was religious in his way. He believed in Jehovah. He prayed. But his concept of religion was too narrow to preclude retaliation. His view of a fair rule to follow was something like -- “whatsoever is done to you, do it right back -- and a little more.” He had never heard the voice that many years later urged mankind to “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” [Luke 6: 27-28].

There appears to be no place for personal retaliation in the teaching of Jesus. His followers are to be willing to forgive, not once or twice, not seven times, but “seventy times seven,” in other words -- indefinitely. [Matthew 18: 22]. Christians are expected by their Lord to realize that possession of a forgiving spirit is essential before they can expect the forgiveness of God.

It was hard for Peter to forget the old Mosaic law of justice, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, life for life.” [Exodus 21: 24; Deuteronomy 19: 21; Matthew 5: 38]. If one had to forgive, at least there must be limits to the number of times one had to control his normal impulse to retaliate. Jesus certainly stretched one’s patience a lot in lengthening out the number of times one had to forgive before he could hit back! What Peter finally had to realize was that Jesus was not talking about number of restraints at all, but about a whole new attitude. “Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” [Romans 8: 9]. That puts it broadly, and directly to us. How is it possible not to purpose or to want revenge?

Well, there may be several ways of inducing this frame of mind. For one thing one will want to see the necessity of forgiving reduced to as low a point a possible. First of all, he can remind himself that many supposed slights, injuries and insults are unintentional or imaginary. We need to make large allowance for the carelessness and the unintentional thoughtlessness of people. We need to make similar allowance for our own hypersensitiveness.

If an acquaintance approaches one on the street without a sing of recognition, it is more apt to be that he is intent on something else, or is in absent-minded study, or without his indoor spectacles, or fooled by a different hat and coat than that he really intends to “cut” you.

The amused smile across the room, which we imagine is directed at us, probably has no connection with our affairs at all. We may not be under as meticulous observation by others as our egotism indicates! If we cancel out many an item on this supposition, our forgiveness account will be less strained.

Further, we need to take account of differing opinions, frankly and honestly held, and be willing to live with them in tolerant respect. Others should be accorded the same right of freedom in thought and speech that we desire for ourselves. Viewed sensibly, there is little to get angry over in this, to resent or hence to forgive.

It is not amiss to remember that other folk, like ourselves, are not infallible. They may be anxious or overworked. Is it not better to try to appraise hasty words than to feel that one has somehow been wronged?

But after all reasonable allowances have been made, we may still encounter an irreducible minimum of malice and meanness, of hatred and spite intentionally directed against us. What ought Christians to say about that?

Some counselors say: “Explode! Blow off! Don’t bottle it up, but tell ‘em off and get it out of your system!” But isn’t the Christian counsel better? Don’t bottle up or explode. Forgive. One of the most telling tributes I heard given to a certain young woman was this: “She was warmly loyal to her friends. And for those who turned away from her she had no comment.” One could hardly imagine her ever having an enemy!

Perhaps it is not human nature to forgive what seems an intentional wrong. But is it not the divine nature?

A pagan woman who committed a terrible crime in spite against her faithless husband, exploded, “No one has ever injured me that has not suffered more than I have suffered. Only a fool, or a coward, returns good for evil.” Human nature!

But it was divine nature in Christ who “when he was reviled -- did not revile in return -- but trusted in Him who judges justly.”

“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink.” [Romans 12: 19, 20].

Samson or Stephen! Both dead among the stones. Take your choice. Samson’s face, hardened with satisfaction at the death of his 3,000 victims. Or Stephen’s face illuminated with the light of a heavenly vision! Which is the better way to die? Or to live?

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, March 6, 1955

Wisconsin Rapids, September 13, 1959