Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2371
“To proclaim liberty to the captives.” Isaiah 61:1.
I DO not know whether you generally read the daily newspaper. I think we might get up a “Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge.” A great deal that appears in the newspapers amounts only to that—and much time is wasted reading the paper. But sometimes we get a gem among the news and, to my mind, there was a gem contained in a Reuter’s telegram, from Rio Janeiro, May 10th—“The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has voted the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery in Brazil.” My heart rejoiced as I read that paragraph! I hope it does not mean that this vote can be defeated in some other Chamber, or the abolition can be prevented by some other power. But if it means that slavery is to be immediately and unconditionally abolished in Brazil, I call upon you all to thank God and rejoice in His name! Wherever slavery exists, it is an awful curse, and the abolition of it is an unspeakable blessing. All free men should praise God and especially those whom Christ has made free, for they are, “free indeed.”
I am not going to preach about the slavery in Brazil and yet the message about its abolition will be a great part of my theme. There is another slavery, a slavery into which we were born, a slavery in which we have lived and, alas, a slavery under which some of us still smart. And Jesus Christ has come, as the Great Liberator, “to proclaim liberty to the captives.” There is no question about that emancipation! It is not a Chamber of Deputies which has voted it and it is not a thing which may be thrown out by another parliamentary body. Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, has, Himself, come with Divine authority—authority never to be questioned or disputed—to proclaim liberty from the slavery of sin!
When there was a royal proclamation to be made in the olden times, they used to employ men to go with trumpets through the streets of the city and to the villages and towns in the country, to summon the people to the market cross, to hear the king’s message. That is what I am here for tonight—to sound the Gospel trumpet as best I can, and to make this proclamation—“O yes, O yes, in the name of the great King of Kings, there is liberty for the bond slaves of Satan, deliverance for those who are under captivity to sin.” I am going to proclaim that good news with all my might and with joyful earnestness to tell the slaves of sin and Satan that there is liberty for them through the Great Emancipator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!
I. I shall begin by describing THE NATURE OF THIS LIBERTY. Let me turn to my newspaper paragraph again— “The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has voted the immediate and unconditional abolition of slavery in Brazil.”
So the proclamation which I have to make, tonight, concerns immediate liberation. You have been the slave of sin long enough! You need not be sin’s slave any longer. Christ has not come to work out for you a deliverance which will take hours, days, weeks, or months to complete—He has come to knock your fetters off with a single stroke and to set you free at once! If His gracious power is manifested in this assembly, the former slave of sin will go out of the Tabernacle door free—not half-free, with one or two of his fetters broken—there shall be for him immediate liberty! It does not take any time to work in the human heart the great change which is called regeneration. There may be a great many things going before it and coming after it which take up much time, but to pass from death to life is the work of an instant! It must be so. If a man is dead and he is made alive, there can be no interval between the state of death and the state of life. There must be a second in which the transition takes place. When a blind man’s eyes are opened, it may be that he does not see for some time very clearly, but there is an instant in which the first beam of light enters the eyes and falls
upon the retina, and in which the eyes become conscious of the power of light. So, in a moment, while I am speaking, the Lord can save you! In an instant, you slaves of sin and Satan, He can make you free! It is the immediate abolition of slavery that I have to proclaim to you!
I believe that, in Brazil, they have been trying a system of apprenticeship. It was the Emperor’s intention—and God bless that Emperor—he thought that all slaves should be free, but he thought that a little time ought to be taken to prepare them for liberty, to educate them up to the state in which they could act as free men. So they were apprenticed and liberation came gradually to certain of them after a period of servitude. But this act of the Deputies, if it is really carried, is for immediate abolition and no apprenticeship. Now, I do not want any of you to be apprenticed, as it were, and to wait awhile before you get free! I know that, with regard to the slavery of drunkenness, men think that they will drink a little less, and a little less, and gradually give it up. Do not drink any at all! Have done with it right now—you ought not to need to have any apprenticeship to the evil thing! So is it with the lusts of the flesh—men suppose that they can gradually subjugate their passions and lift themselves out of that slavery. No, dear Sirs, it must be done at a stroke! And it will be if it is really done! You shall be immediately and on the spot set free!