Our Champion

Our Champion

"And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate
of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them
upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron."—Judges 16:3.

Poor Samson! We cannot say much about him by way of an example to believers. We must hold him up in two lights—as a beacon and as a prodigy. He is a beacon to us all, for he shows us that no strength of body can suffice to deliver from weakness of mind. Here was a man whom no fellow-man could overcome, but he lost his eyes through a woman—a man mighty enough to rend a lion like a kid, yet, in due time, though himself stronger than a lion, he is bound with chains. When I think of the infatuation of which Samson was the subject, and remember how we are men of like passions with him, I can only, for myself and for you, put up the prayer, "Lord, hold thou me up, and I shall be safe." And Samson is also a prodigy. He is more a wonder as a believer than he is even as a man. It is marvellous that a man could smite thousands of Philistines with no better weapon than the jawbone of a newly-killed ass, but it is more marvellous still that Samson should be a saint, ranked among those illustrious ones saved by faith, though such a sinner. St. Paul has put him among the worthies in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews. Paul wrote by inspiration. Therefore, there can be no mistake about it—Samson was saved. Indeed, when I see his childlike faith, the way in which he dashed against the Philistines, hip and thigh, and smote them with a great slaughter—the way in which he cast aside all reckonings and probabilities, and in simple confidence in his God cast himself about to do the most tremendous feats of valour—when I see this, I cannot but wonder and admire. The Old Testament biographies were never written for our imitation, but they were written for our instruction. Upon this one matter, what a volume of force there is in such lessons! "See," says God, "what faith can do. Here is a man, full of infirmities, a sorry fool; yet, through his childlike faith, he lives. The just shall live by faith. He has many sad flaws and spots, but his heart is right towards God; he does trust in his Lord, and he does give himself up as a consecrated man to his Lord's service, and, therefore, he shall be saved." I look upon Samson's case as a great wonder, put in Scripture for the encouragement of great sinners. If such a man as Samson, nevertheless, prevails by faith to enter the kingdom of heaven, so shall you and I. Though our characters may have been disfigured by many vices, and hitherto we may have committed a multitude of sins, if we can trust Christ to save us he will purge us with hyssop, and we shall be clean; he will wash us, and we shall be whiter than snow; and in our death we shall fall asleep in the arms of sovereign mercy to wake up in the likeness of Christ.

But, I am going to leave Samson alone, except as he may furnish us with a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. Samson, like many other Old Testament heroes, was a type of our Lord. He is specially so in this case. I shall invite you to look at Christ rather than Samson. First, come and behold our Champion at his work; then, let us go and survey the work when he has accomplished it; and, thirdly, let us inquire what use we can make of the work which he has performed.

I. Come with me, then, brethren, and look at our mighty champion at his work. You remember when our Samson, our Lord Jesus, came down to the Gaza of this world, 'twas love that brought him; love to a most unworthy object, for he loved the sinful church which had gone astray from him many and many times; yet came he from heaven, and left the ease and delights of his Father's palace to put himself among the Philistines, the sons of sin and Satan here below. It was rumoured among men that the Lord of glory was in the world, and straightway they took counsel together how they should slay him. Herod makes a clean sweep of all the children of two years old and under, that he may be sure to slay the new-born Prince. Afterwards scribes and priests and lawyers hunt and hound him. Satan tempts him in the wilderness, and provokes him when in public. Death also pursues him, for he has marked him as his prey. At last the time comes when the triple host of the Saviour's foes has fairly environed him and shut him in. They have dragged him before Pilate; they have scourged him on the pavement; they drag him while his back drips on the stones of Jerusalem's streets; they pierce his hands and his feet; they lift him up, a spectacle of scorn and suffering; and now, while dying in pangs extreme, and especially when he closes his eyes, and cries out, "It is finished," sin, Satan, and death all feel that they have the Champion safe. There he lies silently in the tomb. He who is to bruise the serpent's head is himself bruised. O thou who art the world's great Deliverer, there thou liest, as dead as any stone! Surely thy foes have led thee captive, O thou mighty Samson! He sleeps; but think not that he is unconscious of what is going on. He knows everything. He sleeps till the proper moment comes, and then our Samson awakes; and what now? He is in the tomb, and his foes have set a guard and a seal that they may keep him there. Will any help him now to escape out of their charge? Is there any man that will give his aid now? No, there is none! If the Champion escapes it must be by his own single-handed valour. Will he make a clear way for himself, and come up from the midst of his foes? You know he will, my brethren, for the moment the third day is come he touches the stone, and it is rolled away. He has defeated death; he has pulled up his posts and bar, and taken away his gates. As for sin he treads that beneath his feet: he has utterly o'erthrown it, and Satan lies broken beneath the heel that once was bruised. He has broken the dragon's head, and cut his power in pieces. Solitary and alone, his own arm brings salvation, and his righteousness sustains him. Methinks I see him now as he goes up that hill which is before Hebron—the hill of God. He bears upon his shoulders the o'erthrown gates, the tokens of his victory over death and hell. Posts and gates and bar and all, he bears them up to heaven. In sacred triumph he drags our enemies behind him. Sing to him! Angels, praise him in your hymns! Exalt him, cherubim and seraphim! Our mightier Samson hath gotten to himself the victory, and cleared the road to heaven and eternal life for all his people! Ye know the story. I have told it ill, but it is the most magnificent of all stories that e'er were told. "Arms, and the man, I sing," said one of old; but the cross and of him I sing. 'Tis mine to tell of him who espoused the cause of his people, and, though for a while captive and bound, broke the green withs, and having gained the victory for himself, liberated others also, then goes at the head of his people along the way which he has opened—a way which leadeth to the right hand of God.

II. Let us go now, dear brethren, and calmly consider the work itself.

We will stand at the gates of this Gaza, and see what the Champion has done. Those are ponderous hinges, and they must have held up huge doors. We will look at these doors, and posts, and this bar. Why, it is a mass of iron that scarce ten men could lift, and it might take fifty more to carry those huge doors. They scarce were moved even on their hinges without the efforts of some dozen men; and yet this one man carried them all, and I read not that his shoulders were bent or that he grew weary. Seven miles at least Samson carried that tremendous load, up hill all the way too! Still he bore it all without staggering, nor do I find that he was faint as he was aforetime at Ramath-lehi.

I will not linger upon Samson's exploits. Rather would I draw your thoughts to the Captain of our salvation. See what Christ has carried away. I said that he had three enemies. These three beset him, and he has achieved a threefold victory.

There was death. My dear friends, Christ, in being first overcome by death, made himself a conqueror over death, and hath given us also the victory; for concerning death we may truly say, Christ has not only opened the gates, but he has taken them away; and not the gates only, but the very posts, and the bar, and all. Christ hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light He hath abolished it in this sense—that, in the first place, the cause of death is gone. Believers die, but they do not die for their sins. "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." We die, but it is not any longer as a punishment to us. It is the fruit of sin, but it is not the curse of sin that makes the believer die. To other men death is a curse; to the believer I may almost put it among his covenant blessings, for to sleep in Jesus Christ is one of the greatest mercies that the Lord can give to his believing people. The curse of death, then, being taken away, we may say that the posts are pulled up. Christ has taken away the after results of death, the soul's exposure to the second death. Unless Christ had redeemed us, death, indeed, would have been terrible; for it would have been the shore of the great lake of fire. When the wicked die they are judged to punishment. If they rise, it is but to receive in their bodies and in their souls the due reward of their sins. The sting of death is the second death—the afterwards. To die—to sleep—ay, that were nothing; but to dream in that sleep! "Ay, there's the rub!" said the world's poet; and there men will find the rub is; "for in that sleep of death what dreams shall come!"—nay, not what "dreams" but what substantial pains, what everlasting sorrows, what dread miseries! These are not for Christians. There is no hell for you, believer. Christ has taken away posts, and bar, and all. Death is not to you any longer the gate of torment, but the gate of paradise. Moreover, Christ has not only taken away the curse, and the after results of death, but from many of us he has taken away the fear of death. He came on purpose to deliver "those, who through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." There are not a few here who could conscientiously say that they do not dread death; nay, but rather look forward to it with joyful expectation. We have become so accustomed to think of our last hours that we die daily, and when the last hour shall arrive, we can only say, "Our marriage day has come."

"Welcome sweet hour of full discharge That sets my willing soul at large."

We shall hail the summons to mount beyond this land of woes, and sighs, and tears to be present with our God. The fear of death having been taken away, we may truly say that Christ has taken away posts, and bar, and all. Besides, beloved, there is a sense in which it may be said that Christians never die at all. "He that liveth and believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." They do not die; they do but "sleep in Jesus, and are blessed." But the main sense in which Christ has pulled up the posts of the gates of death is that he has brought in a glorious resurrection.

Grave, thou canst not hold thy prisoners; they must rise! O death, thy troops of worms may seem to devastate that fair land of human flesh and blood; but that body shall rise again with more blooming beauty than that with which it fell asleep. It shall upstart from its bed of dust, and silent clay, to dwell in realms of everlasting day. Conceive the picture if you can! If you have imagination, let the scene now present itself before your eyes. Christ the Samson sleeping in the dominions of death; death boasting and glorifying itself that now it has conquered the Prince of Life; Christ waking, striding to that gate, dashing it aside, taking it upon his shoulders, carrying it away, and saying as he mounts to heaven, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Another host which Christ had to defeat was the army of sin. Christ had come among sinners, and sins beset him round. Your sins and my sins beleaguered the Saviour till he became their captive. In him was no sin, and yet sins compassed him about like bees. Sin was imputed to him; the sins of all his people stood in his way to keep him out of heaven as well as them. When Christ was on the cross, my brethren, he was looked upon by God as a sinner, though he never had been a sinner; and when in the grave, he could not rise until he was justified. Christ must be justified as well as his people. He was justified not as we are, but by his own act. We are not justified by acts of our own as he was. All the sin of the elect was laid upon Christ; he suffered its full penalty, and so was justified. The token of his justification lay in his resurrection, Christ was justified by rising from the dead, and in him all his people were justified too. I may say, therefore, that all our sins stood in the way of Christ's resurrection; they were the great iron gate, and they were the bar of brass, that shut him out from heaven. Doubtless, we might have thought that Christ would be a prisoner for ever under the troops of sin, but, oh, see him, my brethren. See how the mighty Conqueror, as he bears our sins "in his own body on the tree," stands with unbroken bones beneath the enormous load, bearing

"All that incarnate God could bear, With strength enough, but none to spare."

See how he takes those sins upon his shoulders, and carries them right up from his tomb, and hurls them away into the deep abyss of forgetfulness, where, if they be sought for, they shall not be found any more for ever. As for the sins of God's people, they are not partly taken away, but they are as clean removed as ever the gates of Gaza were—posts, gates, bars, and all; that is to say, every sin of God's people is forgiven.

"There's pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black their cast;

And, oh, my soul, with wonder view, For sins to come there's pardon too."

Every sin that all the elect did commit, are committing, or shall commit, was taken away by Christ, taken upon the shoulders of the atonement and carried away. There is no sin in God's book against his people; he seeth no sin in Jacob, neither iniquity in Israel; they are justified in Christ for ever. Moreover, as the guilt of sin was taken away, the punishment of sin was consequently taken away too. For the Christian there is no stroke from God's angry hand; nay, not so much as a single frown of punitive justice. The believer may be chastised by a Father's hand; but God, the Judge of all, has nothing to say to the Christian, except, "I have absolved thee: thou art acquitted." For the Christian there is no hell, no penal death, much less any second death. He is completely freed from all the punishment as well as the guilt of sin, and the power of sin is removed too. It may stand in our way to keep us in perpetual warfare; but, oh, my brethren, sin is a conquered foe to us. There is no sin which a Christian cannot overcome if he will only rely upon his God to do it. They overcame through the blood of the Lamb, who wear the white robe in heaven, and you and I may do the same. There is no lust too mighty, no besetting sin too strongly entrenched. We can drive these Canaanites out. Though they have cities walled to heaven, we can pull their cities down, and overcome them through the power of Christ. Do believe it, Christian, that thy sin is virtually a dead thing. It may kick and struggle. There is force in it for that, but it is a dead thing. God has written condemnation across its brow. Christ has crucified it, "nailing it to his cross." Do you go now and bury it for ever, and the Lord help you to live to his praise. Oh, blessed be his name! Sin, with the guilt, the power, the shame, the fear, the terror of it, all is gone. Christ has taken posts, and bar, and all up to the top of the hill.

Then there was a third enemy, and he also has been destroyed—that was Satan. Our Saviour's sufferings were not only an atonement for sin, but they were a conflict with Satan, and a conquest over him. Satan is a defeated foe. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the church; but, what is more, Christ has prevailed against the gates of hell. As for Satan the posts, and bar, and all have been plucked up from his citadel in this sense—that Satan has now no reigning power over believers. He may bark at us like a dog, and he may go about like a roaring lion, bat to rend and to devour are not in his power. There is a chain about the devil's neck, and God lets him go as far as he likes, but no further. He could not tempt Job without first asking leave, and he cannot tempt you without first getting permission. There is a permit needed before the devil dares so much as look on a believer, and God gives him permission; and so, being under divine authority and permission, he will not be allowed to tempt us above what we are able to bear. Moreover, the exceeding terror of Satan is also taken away. A man has met Apollyon foot to foot, and overcome him. That man in death triumphed over Satan. So may you and I. The prestige of the old enemy is gone. The dragon's head has been broken, and you and I need not fear to fight with a broken-headed adversary. When I read John Bunyan's description of Christian's fight with Apollyon, I am struck with the beauty and truth of the description, but I cannot help thinking—"Oh! if Christian had known how thoroughly Apollyon had been thrashed in days gone by, by his Master, he would have thrown that in his face, and made short work of him." Never encounter Satan without recollecting that great victory that Christ achieved on the tree. Do not be afraid, Christian, of Satan's devices or threatenings. Be on your watch-tower against him. Strive against him, but fear him not. Resist him, being bold in the faith, for it is not in his power to keep the feeblest saint out of heaven, for all the gates which he has put up to impede our march have been taken away, posts, and bar, and all, and our God the Lord has gotten to himself the victory over the hosts of hell.

III. We will now see how we can use this victory. Surely there is some comfort here—comfort for you, dear friend, over yonder. You have a desire to be saved; God has impressed you with a deep sense of sin; the very strongest wish of your soul is that you might have peace with God. But you think there are so many difficulties in the way—Satan, your sins, and I know not what. Beloved, let me tell thee, in God's name, there is no difficulty whatever in the way except in thine own heart, for Christ has taken away the gates of Gaza—gates, posts, bar, and all. Mary Magdalene said to the other Mary, when they went to the sepulchre, "Who shall roll us away the stone?" That is what you are saying; and when they came to the place the stone was rolled away. That is your case, poor troubled conscience; the stone is rolled away. What! you cannot believe it? There is God's testimony for it—"Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." You want an atonement for your sins, do you? "It is finished." You want some one to speak for you. "He is able to save unto the uttermost, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for us." Canst thou believe in the mercy of God in Christ, and rest thy poor guilty soul upon the merit of his doing and the virtue of his dying? If thou canst, God is reconciled to thee. There may have been great mountains between thee and God. They are all gone. There may have been the Red Sea of thy sins rolling between thee and thy Father. That Red Sea is dried up. I tell thee, soul, if thou believest in Christ Jesus, not only is there a way of access between thy soul and God, but there is a clear way. You remember, when Christ died, the veil of the temple was rent in twain. There was not a little slit for sinners to creep through, but it was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, so that big sinners might come, just in the same way as when Samson pulled up gates, posts, bar, and all, there was a clear way out into the country for all who were locked up in the town. Prisoner, the prison doors are open. Captive, loose the bonds on thy neck; be free! I sound the trump of jubilee. Bondslaves, Christ hath redeemed you. Ye who have sold—

"Your heritage for naught, Shall have it back unbought, The gift of Jesus' love."

The Lord hath anointed his Son Jesus "to preach liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound." Trust thou him. Oh, may his mercy lead thee now to trust him, for there is really nothing to prevent thy salvation if thou restest in him. Between thy soul and God, I tell thee, there is no dividing wall. "He is our peace." "He hath made us both one, and reconciled us to God by his blood." May those few words be kept and treasured up by such as need them. Some of you want them. May the Spirit of God put them into your hearts, and lay them up there, that you may find comfort in Christ! But is there not something more here? Is there not here some ground of exhortation to Christians? Brethren, have not some of you been tolerating some sin—some besetting sin, which you think you cannot overcome? You would be more holy, but this thought makes your arm nerveless against your own sin—you are not able to overcome it. So you think that Christ has left the posts do you? I tell you, no; "he that is born of God sinneth not." He that is born of God is perfect, and he sinneth not with allowance; he sinneth not with constancy; and it is in his power, with the Holy Spirit's aid, to overcome his sin; and it is his duty as well as his privilege to go to war against the stoutest of his corruptions till he shall tread them under foot.

Now, will you believe it, brethren, that in the blood of Christ, and in the water that flowed with it from his side, there is a sovereign virtue to kill your sins? There is nothing standing between you and the pardon of your sins but your unbelief, and if you will shake that off, you shall march through the gate triumphant.

Once more, and I have done. Is not this an incentive for us who profess to be servants of Christ to go out and fight with the world, and overcome it for Christ? Brethren, where Jesus leads us it needs not much courage to follow. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." Let us go and take it for him! Nations that "sit in darkness shall see a great light." Satan may have locked up the world with bigotry, with idolatry, and with superstition, as with posts and bars, but the kingdom is the Lord's; and if we will but rouse ourselves to preach the Word we shall find that the Breaker has gone up before us, and broken and torn away the gates, and we have nothing to do but to enter with an easy victory. God help us to do so! And now, as we come to the Lord's table, let us have this vision before us of our glorious Samson achieving his mighty victory; and, while we weep for sin, let us praise his superlative power and love that has done such marvels for us. The Lord give us to enjoy his presence at this table, and he shall have the praise! Amen.