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Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: March 17th

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THE TYRANNY OF SIN

Every one that committeth sin is the bond-servant of sin. - John 8:34

Every wrong thing that we do tends to become our master and our tyrant. We are held and bound in the chains of our sins. The awful influence of habit, the dreadful effect upon a nature of a corrupted conscience, the power of regretful memories, the pollution arising from the very knowledge of what is wrong,- these are some of the strands out of which the ropes that bind us are twisted. We know how tight they grip. I am speaking now, no doubt, to people who are as completely manacled and bound by evils of some sort - evils of flesh, of sense, of lust; of intemperance in some of you; of pride and avarice and worldliness in others of you; of vanity and frivolity and selfishness in others of you - as completely manacled as if there were iron gyves upon your wrists and fetters upon your ankles.

You remember the old story of the prisoner in his tower, delivered by his friend, who sent a beetle to crawl up the wall, fastening a silken thread to it, which had a thread a little heavier attached to the end of that, and so on, and so on, each thickening in diameter until they got to a cable. That is how the devil has got hold of a great many of us. He weaves round us silken threads to begin with, slight, as if we could break them with a touch of our fingers, and they draw after them, as certainly as destiny, "at each remove" a thickening "chain," until, at last, we are tied and bound, and our captor laughs at our mad plunges for freedom, which are as vain as a wild bull’s in the hunter’s nets. Some of you have made an attempt at shading off sin, - how have you got on with it? As a man would do who, with a file made out of an old soft knife, tried to work through his fetters. He might make a little impression on the surface, but he would mostly scratch his own skin, and wear his own fingers, and to very little purpose.

But the chains can be got off. Christ looses them by "His blood." Like a drop of corrosive acid, that blood, falling upon the fetters, dissolves them, and the prisoner goes free, emancipated by the Son. That death has power to deliver us from the guilt and penalty of sin. The Bible does not give us the whole theory of an atonement, but the fact is seen clear in its passages that Christ died for us, and that the bitter consequences of sin in their most intense bitterness, even that separation from God which is the true death, were borne by Him for our sakes, on our account, and in our stead.

His blood looses the fetters of our sins, inasmuch as His death, touching our hearts, and also bringing to us new powers through His Spirit, which is shed forth in consequence of His finished work, frees us from the power of sin, and brings into operation new powers and motives which free us from our ancient slavery. The chains which bound us shrivel and melt as the ropes that bound the Hebrew youths in the fire, before the warmth of His manifested love and the glow of His Spirit’s power.

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