Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: May 2nd

DELIVERANCE FOR THE CAPTIVES

He hath sent me , . . to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. - Isaiah 61:1

Many of us know not the bondage in which we are held. We are held in it all the more really and sadly because we conceit ourselves to be free. Those poor, light-hearted people, in the dreadful days of the French Revolution, used to keep up some ghastly mockery of society and cheerfulness in their prisons; and festooned the bars with flowers, and made believe to be carrying on their life freely, as they used to do; but for all that, day after day the tumbrils came to the gates, and morning after morning the jailer stood at the door of the dungeons with the fatal list in his hand, and one after another of the triflers were dragged away to death.

And so men and women are living a life which they fancy is free, and all the while they are in bondage, held in a prison-house. You, my brother, are chained by guilt; you are chained by sin, you are chained by the habit of evil with a strength of which you never know till you try to shake it off.

And there comes to each of us a mighty Deliverer, who breaks the gates of brass, and who cuts the bars of iron in sunder. Christ comes to us. By His death He has borne away the guilt; by His living Spirit He will bear away the dominion of sin from our hearts; and if the Son will make us free, we shall be free indeed. Oh! ponder that deep truth, I pray you, which the Lord Christ has spoken in words that carry conviction in their very simplicity to every conscience. "He that committeth sin is the slave of sin." And as you feel sometimes - and you all feel sometimes - the catch of the fetter on your wrists when you would fain stretch out your hands to good, listen as to a true Gospel to this old word which, in its picturesque imagery, carries a truth that should be life. To us all "the breaker is gone up before us, the prison gates are open." Follow His steps, and take the freedom which He gives; and beware that you "stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again with any yoke of bondage."

Some of you are the slaves of your own lusts. Some of you are the slaves of the world’s maxims. Some of you are held in bondage by some habit that you abominate, but cannot get away from. Here is freedom for you. The dark walls of the prison are round us all. "The Scripture hath shut up all in sin, that He might have mercy upon all." Blessed be His Name! As the angel came to the sleeping Apostle, and to his light touch the iron gates swung obedient on their hinges, and Roman soldiers who ought to have watched their prey were lulled to sleep, and fetters that held the limbs dropped as if melted; so, silently, in His meek and merciful strength, the Christ comes to us all, and the iron gate which leadeth out into freedom opens of its own accord at His touch, and the fetters fall from our limbs, and we go forth free men.