Ellen has an interesting post about Samson which she uses as an example of how God uses imperfect people deliberately to bring glory to Himself. In the comments section there was a comment about how it was surprising that the Protestants view the people of the Old Testament as flawed. I find it surprising that the it’s not univerally accepted that they are flawed since the entire Old Testament demonstrates the truth of the following verse:

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

I believe that when we look at the Old Testament we see God and His people interacting with each other in a real and personal way. The authors of the books of the Old Testament didn’t hide the imperfections of their patriarchs and their kings. Abraham lied, Jacob was a liar, Joseph’s brothers tried to kill him and they lied to their father, Moses killed a man and was disobedient to God, and in the book of Judges we see that judge after judge was flawed and that the people of Israel sinned against God. David and his descendants are written as real people with real character flaws.
Should we be surprised by this? Not if we believe our Bible:

Romans 3:9-12 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

God uses imperfect people because that’s all that’s available 🙂 and when we view someone as righteous and the OT states that someone is righteous (Abraham, Job, Noah), it’s with the understanding that they are righteous through the imputed righteousness of Christ. The OT saints, in and of themselves have no righteousness apart from Christ.
The Old Testament saints were flawed but they were God’s people and over and over again when they sinned, He still remained their God and He still used them to bring forth their Messiah. He didn’t abandon them for a more righteous people, He kept His promise to Abraham, that He would be their God and they would be His people.
And God continues to use His people today, to share the good news of His salvation with others. He doesn’t have to but He does. Praise be to God that He has given us a part in His wonderful plan of salvation even though we do so in an imperfect way.