sunday school stories...

Remember back to when felt boards were the coolest thing in Sunday morning sunday-school? When you heard 'stories' out of the Bible that seemed much more like fable than an actual factual history being told to you? Stories about donkeys talking, about water being turned to blood and 100 year old women having babies. Stories where snakes talked, where giants walked the earth and one man could sleigh a thousand. Isn't it crazy when you put it together like that, how much the history in the Bible could seem to a young child like you're just telling them a cool story?

You sometimes miss the most simple understanding because you have somehow come to believe it is a 'story' to be learned from but not applied to your own life. Take Samson for instance. As a young kid I remember thinking about him and how funny it was that a man's hair would give him strength. And I remember thinking how silly Samson was for constantly playing games with Delilah, who was obviously not a good girl and how stupid he was for not seeing through her. I remember learning that if God tells you not to cut your hair you don't, or whatever else he tells you, you do. In turn I thought it was a lesson on obeying your parents too. I remember the part where Samson was chained up and in my memory it was God giving him a second chance to take out the bad people who cut his hair and he let his hair grow back. I know, I know childlike and completely inmature, but I read this yesterday and it struck my childlike memory of that 'story' and I realized a few new things:

The Philistines went up and camped in Judah, spreading out near Lehi. The men of Judah asked, “Why have you come to fight us?” “We have come to take Samson prisoner,” they answered, “to do to him as he did to us.” Then three thousand men from Judah went down to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are rulers over us? What have you done to us?” He answered, “I merely did to them what they did to me.” They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” Samson said, “Swear to me that you won’t kill me yourselves.” “Agreed,” they answered. “We will only tie you up and hand you over to them. We will not kill you.” So they bound him with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the LORD came upon him in power. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men. Then Samson said, “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.” (Judg. 15:9–16 NIV)

A Sunday school story? Perhaps. Though I have never heard the lesson explained, “And this, children, is what happens when the Spirit of God comes upon a man.” Yet that is clearly the lesson of the passage. Samson becomes a great and terrible warrior when, and only when, the Spirit of God comes upon him. The rest of the time he’s just short of an idiot. What does this story tell us about the God who the Spirit is? And it’s not just Samson, my friends. “So the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon,” and Gideon went to war (Judg. 6:34 NASB). “Now the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah,” and he went to war (Judg. 11:29 NASB). “And the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David,” and one of the first things he did was kill Goliath (1 Sam. 16:13 NASB). I repeat my question: What does that tell us about the God who the Spirit is?