New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 312
Delivered on Thursday Evening, May 3rd, 1860, Surrey Chapel, Blackfriar’s Road,.
“O Lord, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid thou hast loosed my bonds.”—Psalm 116:16.
THESE SENTENCES SUGGEST a contrast. David’s religion was one of perfect liberty;—“Thou hast loosed my bonds.” It was one of complete service;—“Truly l am thy servant. I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid.” Did I say the text suggested a contrast? Indeed the two things need never be contrasted, for they are found to be but part of one divine experience in the Jives of all God’s people. The religion of Jesus is the religion of liberty. The true believer can say, when his soul is in a healthy state, “Thou hast loosed my bonds. The penal fetters with which my soul was once bound are all dashed to shivers; I am free!” “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” The burdensome bonds of ceremonials are all cast to the winds. Henceforth the beggarly elements are trodden under foot; shadows have yielded to substance, and the type and the symbol cease to oppress; the true light now shineth, and the torches are quenched. “Thou hast loosed my bonds,”—that is to say, thou hast not only saved me from the penal consequences of my sin and from the heavy burden of the old Mosaic ceremonial law, but thou hast moreover delivered me from the spirit of bondage which once led me to serve thee with the fear of an unwilling slave. Thou hast taken the yoke from my neck, and the goad from behind my back. Thou hast made me thy freed man. No more do I crouch at thy feet or go to thy footstool cowering like a slave, but l came to thee with privilege of access, up to thy very throne. By the Spirit of adoption I cry, my Father. Thou dost own the kindred. For by the self-same Spirit I am sealed to the day of redemption. Thus, O Lord, “thou hast loosed my bonds.” Nor if religion has had its full sway in us, is this all. Thou hast loosed me from the bonds of worldly maxims; thou hast delivered me from the fear of man; thou hast rescued me from the stooping and fawning which made me once the slave of every tyrant who laid claim to my allegiance, and thou hast made me now the servant of but one Master, whose service is perfect liberty. Whereas before I spoke with bated breath, lest I should offend, and even my condolence had continually to yield to the whims and prejudices of another man, behold now “thou hast loosed my bonds.” As an eagle with my eye on the sun, with wings outstretched true to the line upward which I soar, bound no longer to the rooks of prejudice or the mounds of worldly maxim—free, entirely free to serve my God without let or hindrance.—“Thou hast loosed my bonds.” Vast and wide is the liberty of the believer. The Antinomian, when he essays to describe gospel liberty, only errs by forgetting that such liberty is consistent with the fullest service. But we enjoy all the liberty that even an Antinomian theology could offer. A liberty to be holy is a grander liberty than a license to be sinful. A liberty to be conscientious; a liberty to know forgiven sin; a liberty to trample upon conquered lusts, this is an infinitely wider liberty than that which would permit me to be the comfortable slave of sin, and yet indulge the delusive hope that I may one day enter the kingdom of heaven. The largest expressions that can ever be used by the boldest minister of free grace, cannot here be exaggerations. Luther may exhaust his thunders, and Calvin may spend his logic, Zuingle may utter his periods with fiery zeal, but after all the grand things that have been spoken about the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, we are freer than those men knew. Free as the very air we breathe is the Christian, if he live up to his privileges. If he be in bondage at all, it is because he hath not as yet yielded his spirit fully to the redeeming and emancipating influence of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the fullest and widest sense therefore, the believer may cry, “Thou hast loosed my bonds.” Nor is this liberty merely consistent with the profoundest and most reverent service, but the service is, indeed, a main characteristic of the exalted freedom.
“Truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of thine handmaid.” This does not convict with the sentence that follows it,—“Thou hast loosed my bonds.” This fact of my being God’s servant is to me a proof and evidence, my, and a delightful fruit and effect of my having kind my bonds loosed by the great Emancipator, the Lord Jesus Christ. Service then, as well as liberty I Service is ordained to be a constant characteristic of the true religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. “We are not our own, we are bought with a price.” There is not n hair upon our head, there is not a passion in our spirit, there is not a single power or faculty in our mind which is our own. We are all bought—all purchased,—we are all, every single particle of us, the purchased property of the Lord Jesus Christ—perfectly free, and yet perfectly the property of Jesus—supremely blest with the widest liberty, and yet in the fullest sense the property of another—the shackled servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. This service, my brethren, it appears from the text, should be true,—“O Lord, truly I am thy servant ” I fear there is very much service of God that only lies in terms and words. Men sit and sing hymns, in which they cry—