Character Over Giftedness

I am indebted to John Ortberg for much of the following:

We have been doing a series on spiritual giftedness. We began with “Invest” in which we looked at the Parable of the Talents and launched our Talent Program using our gifts and passion. We continued our series with “Not My Way Is Still a Good Way” in which we praised diversity and variety. We studied the specific gifts of serving, helping, and giving two weeks ago. And last week we studied the gifts of teaching and learning in the church. Today I want to look at the importance of character as it relates to giftedness.

As you may know, my favorite football team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. At the start of the season pundits were picking the Cleveland Browns to unseat the Steelers as division champs. The Steelers haven’t played particularly well so far this year. What’s more they have experienced a rash of injuries, losing two key players for the season and others for several games. The pundits are questioning whether the Steelers are gifted enough to last the season. And yet, after all this, the Steelers are still 3-1 and in first place in their division. Why are they in this position? Because Jesus loves them.

The Bible tells us that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. What’s more, using your God-given gifts is essential for your spiritual growth and the growth of the church. Remember, diversity is good. Diverse gifts produce growth, which produces more diversity. As important as gifts are, your gifts are not the most important thing about you. The most important thing about you is your character.

Character is who we are at the absolute core of our person.

Character determines how we relate to God and how we relate other people. It is the habitual tendencies we display. Giftedness is good and essential but it is not the greatest good. We are called to be like Jesus, not in his giftedness, but in his character.

Our culture values giftedness more than character. Giftedness gets people ahead. It gets them on magazine covers. When we see a gifted person in action we say, “Wow.” Character seldom if ever elicits that action, and if it does, it’s usually for bad character. We envy giftedness in others. How many of you have ever envied someone else for their job, their musical ability, their house, their car, their money, their waistline, hairline or bottomline? Raise your hand.

The desire for good character never leads to envy. There’s something about Christ-like character that the desiring of it cannot harm us.

There is an incredibly gifted person in scripture who did not have the character to bear their gifts. His name was Samson. His story can be found in Judges, although it really begins in Numbers 6 where Moses talks about the way of a nazarite. Moses describes how a person could devote themselves in a special way to God for a season. This is the way of the nazarite. And it is essentially involved three basic vows of obedience.

A Nazarite will:

Touch no dead body
Drink no wine or fermented drink or anything from the grapevine.
Not cut their hair

Okay, so in Judges we find a couple whom God promises a child and tells them that their child will be a nazarite and he will be great and the Lord will use him to bless Israel and throw off the oppression of the hated Philistines. Samson arrives on the scene in his young manhood and boy, is he a man. In a culture which values physical strength, Samson is the deal. Men wanted to be like him and women wanted to be with him. He had looks, charisma, and power. He was even a judge in Israel – not like our judges in black robes in the courtroom. A judge in Israel was the supreme political and military authority. In the days before the kings, the judges were it.

Samson was it. He was the big dog. He’s a renaissance man. Guys would come up to him and say Samson you are the man! And he would say, yes, I am the man. Who could we compare him to today? Well, let’s suppose there was this former world champion body builder who became an actor and made all these action-hero movies, (show picture) then he marries into a politically powerful family and gets himself elected governor of a powerful state and enjoys a new level of influence and power. Of course this person doesn’t exist in real life. But Samson did.

God uses Samson sometimes because of what he does and sometimes in spite of what he does. Let me say it again – the Bible is full of real people. They’re not completely good and not completely bad. They’re not one dimensional cardboard cutouts. And so we can’t read their stories that way. A good question to ask as you are reading Bible stories, especially Old Testament ones, is “What is God up to in this story?”

One of things we find in Samson’s story is that lack of character can never be made up for by giftedness.

“Once Samson went down to Timnah, and at Timnah he saw a Philistine woman. Then he came and told his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman at Timnah. Now get her for me as my wife. But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among your own kin, or among all our people that you must got take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’” Judges 14.1-3

That last part is a phrase you hear more than once in the Bible – uncircumcised Philistines. The Philistines were known as the sea peoples. They were not a Semtic people. They were about as different from the Israelites as could be imagined. In their religion they worshipped a god called Baalzebul and it was an evil religion that routinely featured infant sacrifice. This so repulsed the Hebrews that they called the Philistine god, “Beelzebub.” Does that ring a bell? Beelzebub means “Lord of the Flies.” The Hebrews were calling this god, the god of the dung heap where the flies hang out.

So it’s not for nothing that Samson’s parents wandered why he could not find a wife among his own. Samson’s response was, “She’s the right one in my eyes.” Why is she right in his eyes? Are they part of a book club together and he has fallen in love with her booksmarts? No, he likes what his eyes see. “Get her for me, “ he says.

Woody Allen, some years ago, divorced his wife and married his then adopted daughter. It caused quite a stir even in New York, a city not known for its strict moral code. When asked why he did it, Woody replied, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” I saw it. I wanted it. I took it.

That’s the human condition. On our own, without Jesus, the heart we follow is a devious thing. It’s a dark heart, a divided heart. It takes what it wants.

“Then Samson went down with his father and mother to Timnah, and suddenly a young lion roared at him. The spirit of the Lord rushed on him and he tore the lion apart bare-handed as one might tear apart a kid. . .and he turned to see the carcass of the lion, and there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey. He scraped it out into his hands and ate it. When he came to his father and mother, he gave some to them and they ate it. But he did not tell them that he had taken the honey from the carcass.” Judges 14.5-9

Why didn’t he tell his parents this little detail about the honey? Because he had broken nazarite Vow #1. Why did he break the vow? He was hungry, so he took. On some level he knew he was doing wrong and so he hid it from his parents, maybe from himself on some level. He “forgot” it.

Always, when there is something wrong in someone’s life there will be a prolonged period of hiding and secrecy. Don’t believe the Bible? Pick up a newspaper. Read all about it, almost any week of the year.

“and Samson made a feast there (in Timnah) as the young men were accustomed to do.”
Judged 14.10

What the young men were accustomed to do was to drink to excess. Samson joins right in. Down goes Vow #2.

And then, feeling good, Samson proposes a riddle to his fellow partygoers, his buds.

Out of the eater came something to eat
Out of the strong came something sweet

I told you he was a renaissance man. He’s a poet. And he’s a jokester. There’s this duality in him that even though he knew enough to hide his broken vow from his parents, he also takes delight in the fact that he got away with it. He makes a joke of it. He has a divided heart.


The party ends badly however. Samson ends up killing the thirty groomsmen. Sort of puts a damper on the wedding plans. So his fiancé goes to be with his best man, and he goes over to Gaza and visits a prostitute. And you thought your soaps were racy.

Samson is in Gaza, a Philistine city, and the Philistines are still trying to learn the secret of Samson’s strength. Samson sees another woman there by the name of Delilah. Again, he likes what he sees. But the Philistines plot to use Delilah to their advantage.

“Delilah said to Samson, ‘How can you say you love me when your heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not told me what makes your strength so great.’ She nagged him with her words day after day and pestered him until he was tired to death. So he told her his whole secret.” Judges 16.15-17

This great gifted man is nagged into submission by a woman. Hard to believe isn’t it?

You know the rest. She cuts his hair while he is sleeping and his enemies come and take him. The Last Vow is broken. He is no longer a nazarite. He is just a has-been strongman. And then comes one of the saddest statements in Scripture:

“But Samson did not know that the Lord had left him.” Verse 20

The lesson of Samson’s life is that character is the capacity to be inhabited by God. When you are deficient of character, your giftedness can mask that, for a time. But you can only evade character for so long. Samson could not say no to his appetites. He saw, he wanted, he took. Ironically, one of the ways the Philistines tortured Samson was by gouging out his eyes. His eyes wandered, but Samson’s main problem wasn’t his eyes. It was his heart.

Many years later a man comes along people called the Nazarene. He was not fair or overly pleasing to look at. In many ways he was the anti-Samson. But he came and promised healing and rest for the weary heart. Jesus was and is still in the heart-rebuilding business.

Samson needed a new heart. He needed a friend to tell him the truth. He needed a small group. He needed time to form character and let God fully inhabit him.

What do you need?

Are you willing to take the time and expend the effort to see Christ-like character fully formed in you?

God doesn’t love us for our gifts and he doesn’t love us for our sterling character. God loves us because He’s God. It’s who he is. He can’t help himself.