Portion for Reading Judges 13-15This is a very human tragedy, but it is a great deal more, and I would like to begin by explaining in a few words why it has tremendous meaning for us who are believers in the Lord Jesus, and those whose lives have been called to be devoted entirely to Him, to His use, to His service and to His glory, because there are the closest parallels between certain things about the story of Samson and the Christian life.
Samson's life had a divinely ordained purpose, to destroy the Philistines and to deliver Israel, this being clearly stated before his birth (13:5), and Samson was provided with a divine power in order to enable him to fulfil that purpose. From his earliest years the Spirit of the Lord began to come upon him and to move him at times. This was his power for the delivery of Israel from the Philistines (13:25). There was adequate power in Samson to deliver Israel from the Philistines in the presence of the Spirit of the Lord moving him when the occasion arose.
Oh how sadly the story went wrong, and the way it went wrong and the lessons and warnings for us whereby we can avoid and can be saved from going wrong are the interests of the story for us. The purpose of Samson's life was to deliver Israel from the Philistines and I would imagine that there are very few of us here of any age who could not give a pretty good explanation of what the purpose of the Christian life is ordained to be by God.
Perhaps one's mind runs first of all to the conversion of the Thessalonian believers, of whom it says they "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1 Thess.1:9-10). This was the new purpose for their new lives, to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven.
In Ephesians we read that God has created His people "unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (2:10), this is from before the creation of the world. The good works of the saints were prepared and it is a statement of the purpose of the Christian life that in that life God should be glorified by good works.
Above all things the purpose of the Christian life is to do the will of God in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ that we should in life find motive in the constraining power of the love of Christ to live not unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again. The purpose of the Christian life is easily stated but oh how we pray for each other that it might be written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit afresh in the measure in which we know it already.
Source: Biblecenter.org