Psalms 126:1-4 - Homiletics

Spiritual bondage.

In the Divine deliverance from spiritual captivity, of which the return from Babylon may be regarded as a type, we have a crowning kindness from his gracious hand. It is said that there is no sensation so exquisitely delightful as that we experience when there is a sudden cessation of acute pain. Similarly, we may say that there is no spiritual joy which is quite equal to that of finding ourselves freed from an intolerable evil. Perhaps there is no moment of such surpassing pleasure as that when one who has long lain in captivity comes out of his prison door and breathes once more the air of freedom. When the Jews found themselves outside Babylon, actually on their way home to Jerusalem, they " were like them that dream;" they were lifted up to such ecstasy that they could not believe it was a solid fact; they would not have been surprised if they had awoke to find themselves again in the hands of the heathen. It was too good to be believed, too great a blessing to be realized; it was the surpassing mercy of God, his crowning work of pity and of love. We have, therefore—

I. THE SUPREME VALUE OF SPIRITUAL DELIVERANCE .

1. We can see what it is for a man to be saved from some one enslaving vice. To what depths of misery and shame does the drunkard go down! in what hateful toils he is held by that cruel craving! There is no object on earth so utterly pitiable as is a man who is bound in the hard bondage of any guilty and degrading habit. The man who is paralyzed, at home, or he who is immured within four narrow walls, is a free man in comparison with such a slave. And when that Divine Redeemer, who came "to preach deliverance to the captives," breaks the bonds which hold him, sets him at large, gives him the victory over his evil passion, so that he is no longer "held in the cords of his own sins," then there is a brightness brought to the life, and a joy given to the heart, that cannot be told in words. "The Lord hath done great things for him," he feels to the depth of his spirit. "The Lord hath done great things for him," his kindred, his neighbors, his true friends, affirm. He will never have occasion for such profound gratitude again.

2. We may all experience what it is to be saved from the bondage of sin itself. Though we may never have known the bitter bondage of any one particular iniquity, yet we have known what it is to be under the power and pressure of sin itself . And sin itself, in its essence, is enslaving. It holds us back from being what we would be, and from doing what we would do in the service of Christ. It fetters the energies and hampers the activities of the human soul. When God, by the power of his Spirit, in the gospel of his Son, gives us spiritual freedom (see 2 Corinthians 3:17 ; John 8:36 ), we enter in, and we enjoy a precious and noble heritage. God has done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Our own souls rejoice in it. Our neighbors bear witness to it; for our freedom reacts on them; they are the better for it in many ways.

II. ONE INVARIABLE ACCOMPANIMENT . The fourth verse of the psalm naturally, if not necessarily, follows the third. How could the returning (or returned) exiles tail to remember those whom they had left behind in the land of bondage? It was not a singular, perhaps not an uncommon, thing for a slave who had escaped from the Southern States, when he had experienced the joys of liberty, to go back again into the country where he might have been captured and held in bondage, running that terrible risk in order to help mother, or sister, or brother, to escape, and to share the blessings which his own soul had tasted.

1. With what holy yearning should we regard our relatives and friends who are still in the bondage of sin!

2. What should we not be prepared to suffer, what toil should we not be willing to undertake on their behalf! 3. How fervently should we pray the prayer of these returning exiles!