Let’s say that you are an artist, and a Christian publishing company has commissioned you paint book jacket. The book, in this case, compares the lives of two great Old Testament servants of God. The book will be entitled “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.” Your job is to use your imagination to paint Moses and Samson in such a way as to illustrate the text. You might take each of them at the prime of their lives – Moses on Sinai and Samson before his fall. You might depict them at the most famous point in their lives. Or you might use them at their lowest points. How would Moses at 80 years of age appear in your painting? He has just spent 40 years in desert. Maybe he should be bearded and probably somewhat grizzled. Samson on the other hand, might be extraordinarily handsome. Our question is – is that the way that each of these men looked to the Lord?
What does the Bible say about beauty? Doesn’t the Word of God say somewhere that beauty is skin deep? That is a quotation from a poem by Thomas Overby written in 1613. “All the carnall beauty of my wife, Is but skin deep.” We don’t have her reply, but it could be interesting. Scripture says the opposite – that beauty has nothing to do with the skin. In one of my books of quotations, I found this written by a lady named Deirdre Budge, “There is only one kind of beauty that can transcend time, and many women possess it. It is, of course, beauty of the spirit that lights the eyes and transforms even a plain woman into a beautiful one. Women with charm, and warmth, who are interested in others and forget themselves, and who accept each stage of life gracefully, are the lasting beauties of this world – and the happiest.”
Physical beauty – beauty of the face is like a butterfly that the little boy caught. Hold it more than a minute, and it will die and leave only a film of dust in his hand. Here is another quote – this time from the preacher, Thomas Adams, “Beauty like the Almanac will last a year if you are lucky.” The Bible teaches that the pursuit of physical beauty is the pursuit of vanity. It is not only vain, but it is vanity – a waste of time. That eighteen-year-old beauty queen will likely one day be an ordinary looking middle-aged woman. And when she is 55, she will be beautiful only to the one who deeply loves her. And girls, the best of men want women of inner beauty, lasting beauty, real beauty. Girls who spend as much time in the Lord’s beauty shop as they do before the bathroom mirror will reap the dividends for better part of a century. The more outwardly beautiful a girl is, the less likely she is to find a lasting deep relationship. There are exceptions, but this is a fact which easily provable in New York and Hollywood. “But,” say the girls, “beauty is what the boys want.” Someone has said, “Beauty is more important to a woman than brains – because most men can’t think as well as they can see.” But thinking men want more in a woman than beautiful shin and high cheek bones. Spiritual men, want more than physical beauty.
Yet, there is a beauty which the Lord gives to His people – male and female. “For the Lord taketh pleasure in his people; he will beautify the meek with salvation.” Isaiah said that it was the ministry of the coming Christ, “to give… beauty for ashes.” He said in the next breath, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” The Psalmist prayed, “Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.” If we only desire a beautiful face or body, in either a man or a woman, we are either going to be disappointed or we are going to eventually change our mind. And as is ever the case, now is the time to agree with the Lord.
But back to Moses and Samson.
When Moses came off Mt. Sinai, he had a God-given beauty.
What was the primary characteristic of that grizzled old face? It radiated some sort of brilliance. How did it shine? Was there a light which shone through his beard in some sort of strange way? Was the beard too, like some modern filament, glowing at the ends of each hair? Was it like the transfigured face of Jesus – translucent with an interior 5,000 watt bulb? Will we ever see a face like that again? Will that be the face of Heaven or will it be a millennial sort of face? For the sake of this message, how it glowed is not important.
What I’d like you to notice is that Moses “wist not that the skin of face shone.” At that moment, there was not a more beautiful face in all the world, but Moses was not aware of it. Didn’t it burn like a bad sunburn? Didn’t the glow of his face reflect off the rocks as he descended the mount, blinding his own eyes? Perhaps it did, but Moses was so preoccupied with the Lord that he didn’t notice.
Moses’ beauty that day, and his strength, came from communion with the Jehovah. Years ago, before television, Ted Malone hosted a nation-wide early morning radio broadcast. He got a letter from a sheepherder living in the wilds of Idaho, believe it or not. The letter explained that he lived alone, with no one but his sheep. He had a radio with a limited number of batteries, and he had his old violin. The violin was so out of tune that even the sheep didn’t like to hear it. and then he came to his point, “Mr. Malone, would you be so kind as to play an ‘A’ on the piano for me?” Ted explained the request over the air and then spent a few seconds hitting “A” over and over again. Weeks later the radio station got a thank you note: “Now my life is once again in tune; my violin is beautiful once again.” That is what communion with the Lord does for the soul. It puts us in tune. It makes us beautiful in the eyes and ears of the Lord, and even the sheep around us recognize it.
And what do I mean by communion with the Lord? Well, what did it mean to Moses on Mt Sinai? It meant separation unto the Lord for over a month. It meant a special supply of food, a spiritual sustenance. It meant the delivery of the Word of God to man. There is a fellowship and communion of conversation – prayer. There is a fellowship and communion of counsel – the Lord speaking to us through His Word. There is a fellowship and communion of concern – the fellowship of suffering. And there is a fellowship and communion of service.
If you and I had more time with the lord, we’d be more beautiful people. I think that Daniel was one of the most beautiful people in the Old Testament. That was due to the fact he spent much time in the Word and fellowship with the Lord three times a day. We should long to be as beautiful as Moses and Daniel.
But then we have to compare Moses to Samson.
Samson was a Nazarite, which means he should have epitomized a man in fellowship with the Lord. There were the food and drink restrictions in his life. And there was the shameful uncut hair which marked him as peculiar. Ordinarily it is a shame for a man to have long hair. And I think that it was as true in a Nazarite as would been in me. But that Nazarite had long hair for the Lord, not for Himself. Outwardly speaking, Samson was not pretty, but within resided a Nazarite. He was a beauty to the eye of the Divine beholder.
Until one very eventful day when his inner beauty vanished away. His locks were shorn, and the symbolism of his relationship to God was broken. If he knew about his shortened hair, he certainly wasn’t aware about his spiritual shame.
Think about what Samson really lost when Delilah cut his hair. Did he loose his strength? Well, there is a sense in which he didn’t have any strength in the first place. Think about this – He may not have had any physical evidence of strength at all. He is depicted with the body of an Olympic weight lifter, but that may not have been the case. All the might that came from his body came by power of Jehovah – it was miraculous. And his beauty was not in his biceps and triceps, it was in his relationship to Lord. He had no beauty in long blond hair; it was probably unkempt and a dirty brown. Perhaps there was no beauty at all in him that we should desire him. Samson’s real beauty before the Lord was in the God initiated-covenant between them.
What was it that brought about his ugliness and loss? Generally speaking it was his broken fellowship with Christ. He was governed by his lust for the flesh – perhaps even the physical beauty of others. He was dazzled by the beautiful Philistine women. There perhaps are two words which could be more widely used today – “Philistine women.” Women of the world; women whose standards are different from the Christian.
Samson lost his beauty and his power before God, because he tarried too long in place temptation. Whether or not he knew what his weaknesses were, he should have fled from the presence of that woman the way Joseph did from Potiphar’s wife. But no, he defied disaster; he stuck his tongue out at the world, the flesh and the Devil. He was filled with pride, because there had been a few God-given victories in his life. He was filled with hubris – a pride which leads to rebellion and defeat. He refused to flee his youthful lusts.
Samson neglected his God-given responsibility. He had been called and raised up by God to destroy the Philistines, not to fellowship with them. Rather than destroy them, he lived in their homes, ate their food and married their daughters. And he simply had too much self-reliance rather than dependence upon the Lord.
And “Samson wist not that the Lord was departed from him” He knew not that the power and beauty was gone. Isn’t this a description of the modern church of Christ? “He wist not that the Lord was departed from him.”
Isn’t that a description of the average Christian? Don’t we use the world’s standards trying to measure ourselves? When we aren’t strong or beautiful, according to the world we moan and groan. What we should mourn is our ugliness in the eyes of the Lord.