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March 19 Today’s Reading: — Judges 13-15 “The Angel of the Lord did wondrously.” Judges 13:19
How precious such views of our dear Savior’s one grand and all-sufficient offering for sin in the sacrifice of himself for our souls! Truly, the sight Monoah and his wife beheld could not have been more wondrous. This man and his wife did nothing but look on. Faith can go no further. To lift a tool upon the altar is to pollute it (Exodus 20:25). Christ is the sacrifice, the altar (rock) on which the sacrifice is offered, the High Priest who offers the sacrifice, and God who accepts it. Well might they look on when the Lord did things so wondrously. Oh, may God give you and me eyes of faith ever to look on this great sight, —Jesus Christ crucified!
The Nazarite The promised child, Samson, was to be a Nazarite from the womb (Judges 13:4). As such, Samson was a great type of our Lord Jesus, who was not only separated from the very shadow of guilt and utterly devoted to his Father’s service, but was miraculously conceived by the overshadowing power of the Holy Ghost. Samson, though set apart from his mother’s womb a Nazarite by birth, was born in sin and shapen in iniquity. But the Almighty Samson of our salvation was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens. The earthly Samson was raised up by God to deliver his brethren from temporary affliction. But our almighty Samson, the Lord Jesus, was raised up to deliver his people from everlasting ruin and to save us from the wrath to come.
Samson’s Riddle In the men of Timnath we see the baseness, treachery, and unprovoked hatred of humanity toward Christ our King. Fallen man, like these base creatures, returns for his goodness nothing but treachery! But there is set before us in Samson’s riddle a beautiful allusion to the honey of the gospel. How unexpected honey from a lion’s carcase? What a riddle it is to the wisdom of this world that God should choose weak things to confound the mighty. Oh, give me to eat of this honey! Make it food to my soul to heal the wounds of sin and the plague of my heart!
No Danger When he was “sore athirst,” Samson cried, “Shall I die for thirst?” What a sweet thought that question suggests. — The Lord had wrought a great deliverance for Samson. Now, on a renewed pressing occasion, he makes that deliverance already accomplished an argument of prayer for deliverance again. It is as if he had said, “Can I not expect God to do the same as he has done?” Let every saved sinner reason like Samson. He who has saved us will save us! He who has delivered will deliver! Has the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, redeemed us, brought us out of the hands of offended justice, given us this great deliverance from both the guilt and dominion of sin, taken us into covenant relation with himself, opened a new and living way for us in his blood; and does he ever live to keep it open by his intercession? Has the Lord Jesus saved you, loved you, blessed you, given himself for you, and treasured up for you all fulness of grace? Has he gone before us to prepare an everlasting fulness of glory for our enjoyment with himself to all eternity? Indeed, he has done all these great things for us; and the fact that he has ought to fill our souls with constant assurance that we shall never perish. He who promised it will perform it. — “I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:26-28).
Don Fortner
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