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"I Was In Prison..."

One of the greatest mission fields yet to be fully evangelized is our Nation's prison population. With nearly eight million souls incarcerated across the country, the real crime is that the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ as a whole has failed in her Commission to bring the message of Life and Hope to a generation of lost souls behind bars. For this, she will be judged. "For I was... in prison , and ye visited me not... Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." (Matt. 25:42, 45)

We tend to scrutinize prisoners with a stigma and often as all violent offenders far beyond hope, but the truth is far from this. The vast majority of those incarcerated today are bound by some addiction, usually drugs or alcohol. Most are scared and destitute in spirit, they are broken and at the very bottom of life as they know it, they are hurting souls demoralized by demonic powers bound in darkness. Paul said, "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." (I Cor. 6:9-11)

The Church holds the keys to setting men free through the message of our Lord Jesus Christ. The staff here at The Old Time Gospel Ministry has taken the Lord's Commission, "Go ye into all of the world" to also mean our nations prison facilities and are currently involved in evengelizing in many of our local jails, and in State and Federal facilities bringing light into some of the darkest places on earth pushing back that darkness and setting free those who are bound and oppressed, giving hope to those who have lost everything due to sin, and by the power of Christ, giving sight to those who have all their life stumbled in darkness.

Through your sincere prayers for this ministry, we can reach our generation of "both bad and good" and hear Him say, "Well done , good and faithful servant..." this is our prayer. (Matt. 22:10; 25:21)

— Randy Munter    Editor and Webmaster

Song For The Free, Hope For The Bound
by Charles H. Spurgeon

"He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their chains in pieces. Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He has broken the gates of brass and cut the bars of iron in two." Psalm 107:14-16.

MY anxious, prayerful desire this morning is that some who have been in the condition described in the text may come out of it into full redemption. They have been too long in prison and now the silver trumpet sounds liberty to the captives! Jesus has come into the world to break the gate of brass and to cut the bars of iron in two. Oh, that my prayer might be heard for those who are in bondage! I trust that some of those who are now immured in the dungeon of despondency will say, "Amen," to my prayer and, if they are praying inside and we are praying outside and the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, comes to open the prison doors, then there will be a Jubilee before long.

This passage, of course, literally alludes to prisoners held in durance by their fellow men. What a sad world man has made of this earth! With superfluity of evil, man has multiplied his Bastilles! As if there were not misery enough to the free, he invents cells and chains! One's blood boils when standing in those living graves in which tyrants have buried their victims out of sight and hearing! Could the most fierce of wild beasts display such cruelty to their kind as men have shown to men? By the horrors of such imprisonments, one must estimate the joy of being set free. To God it is a glory that, in the order of His Providence, He often provides a way of escape for the oppressed. Cruel dynasties have been overthrown, tyrants have been hurled from their thrones and then enlargement has come to those who were shut up. Liberated ones should, indeed, "praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men."

But the various scenes in this Psalm were intended to describe spiritual conditions. The second verse is a key to the whole song "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." The deliverance here intended is one which is brought to us by redemption and comes by the way of the great Sacrifice on Calvary. We are redeemed with the precious blood of Him who surrendered His own liberty for our sakes and consented to be bound and crucified that He might set us free. My grateful heart seems to hear Him saying again, as He did in the Garden of Gethsemane, "If you seek Me, let these go their way." His consenting to be bound brought freedom to all those who put their trust in Him.

I shall endeavor, as God shall help me, to speak of the text spiritually and we will consider it under the heading of three questions. First, Who are the favored men of whom the text speaks? Secondly, How has this remarkable deliverance been worked. Thirdly, What shall be done about it? The text tells us how to act. "Oh that men would praise the Lord for His goodness!"

I. First, let us ask, WHO ARE THESE FAVORED MEN?

These favored persons were guilty men, as you will see by the context "Because they rebelled against the words of God and despised the counsel of the Most High." Hear this, you sinful ones, and take heart! God has worked great wonders for a people whom it seemed impossible for Him to notice. If they came into prison through rebellion, you would expect Him to leave them there. Yet rebels are set free by an act of immeasurable Grace! The Redeemer has received gifts for men, "yes, also for the rebellious." These men were despisers of God's Word was there a Gospel of freedom for them? Yes! It is for them that Jehovah, in abounding Grace, has worked miracles of mercy.

The persons described by the Psalmist were guilty of overt acts. They were in actual rebellion against the commands of the Most High. Their rebellion was not a single hasty act their entire lives were a continuance of their wicked revolt.

From their childhood, they went astray. In their youth, they provoked the Lord, and in their manhood they disobeyed Him more and more. They were in open opposition to their Creator, Benefactor and Lord. I have no doubt that I am speaking to many who must admit that they have been actual and willful transgressors against the Lord of Love. They have turned unto Him their back, and not the face they have not been servants, but rebels.

The persons here spoken of were as evil in their hearts as in their lives, for they, "despised the counsel of the Most High." Perhaps they intellectually rejected the teaching of Holy Scripture and scorned to receive what the Lord revealed.

They refused to yield their understandings to Infallible teaching and judged their own thoughts to be better than the thoughts of God. The counsel of the Most High, though marked by the sublimity of Him from whom it came, appeared to them to be less high than their own soaring theories and, therefore, they despised it. To some men, any doctrine is more acceptable than that of Scripture. They gladly hear what doubters say, but they will not hear what God the Lord shall speak. His counsel of instruction, His counsel of command, His counsel of promise His whole counsel they cast away from them and they take counsel of their own conceit!

Now this actual and mental sin, when it is brought home to a man's awakened conscience, fills him with dismay. Because he has transgressed with hand and heart, the convicted sinner is in sore dismay. O my Hearer, are you in distress this day through your own fault? Do you wonder that you are in trouble? Did you expect to go in the way of evil and yet to be happy? Did you never hear those words, "There is no peace, says my God, unto the wicked"? Know you not that they are "like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt"? Now that you find yourself taken in the thorns of your own folly, are you at all surprised? The Scripture says, "Have you not procured this unto yourself?" Are not these the wages of sin? Thank God you have not yet received more than the earnest money of that terrible wage! But, depend upon it, sin is a hard paymaster! Sin and sorrow are wedded in the very nature of things and there is no dividing them. They that sow iniquity shall reap the same. Turn as it may, the river of wickedness at last falls into the sea of wrath! He that sins must smart unless a Savior can be found to be his Surety and to smart for him. So, then, these people who were set free were, by nature, guilty men who could not have deserved the Divine interposition.

Hear this, you consciously guilty, you that are condemning yourselves and confessing your faults! This is good news for you, even for you! The Lord sets free the men whose own hands have forged their manacles. This is Free Grace, indeed! These marvels of delivering love were performed, not for the innocent in their misfortune, but for the guilty in their rebellion. "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners."

Go a little further and you will notice that these persons were doomed men, for they "sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death." It means that they were in the condemned cell, waiting for execution. No light could come to them, for their condemnation was clear. No escape could be hoped for. Not a ray of hope came from any direction. In a short time they must be taken out to execution, so that the shadow of their death fell with its damp, dread, deadening influence upon their spirits. Do I address any such this morning? Ah, my Friend, I can sympathize with you as you sit here and feel that you are doomed! I, too, have felt that sentence of death within me! I knew myself to be "condemned already," because I had not believed on the Son of God. I recollect how those words, "condemned already," rang in my ears as I should think the bell of St. Sepulcher's used to sound in the ears of the condemned in Newgate, warning them that the time was come to go out upon the scaffold.

When the shadow of eternal wrath falls upon the heart, nothing worse can be imagined, for the conscience bears sure witness that God is just when He judges, condemns and punishes. When a man feels the shadow of death upon him, infidel arguments are silenced, self-conceited defenses are banished and the heart consents to the justice of the Law of God which declares, "The soul that sins, it shall die." My Brothers and Sisters who remember being in this state of conscious condemnation will join me in praying for those who are now in that condition, for they need our pity and love. O my Hearers, condemned in your own consciences, take heart and hope, for you are the sort of people whom Jehovah, in His Grace, delights to set free! Those doomed ones were the men of whom our text sings, "He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death." It is your condemned condition which needs free mercy and, behold, the Lord meets your need in His boundless Grace!

To the doomed, the Lord God in Christ Jesus will give free pardon this morning! I speak with great confidence, for my trust is in the God of Love. The Lord is going to hear prayer for you sinners. You shall be brought from under the black cloud which now threatens you with overwhelming tempest you shall come forth from the condemned cell, not to execution but to absolution! Blessed be the name of the Lord! He passes by transgression and does it justly through the Atonement of His Son!

But next, these persons were bound men, for they, "sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron." Their afflictions were like iron, hard and cold, and such they could not break from. The iron entered into their souls. The rust cut the flesh and poisoned the blood. They were bound in a double sense addiction within and iron without. It is a terrible thing when a man feels that he is lost and that he cannot get away from destruction. An evil habit has got him within its iron grasp and will not relax its hold. Even though he would, he cannot loosen himself from the thralldom of his sin. He has become a slave and there is no escape for him. "O my God!" he cries, "what can I do?" The more he strains, the more the iron seems to hold him. His attempts to be free from evil only prove to him how much enslaved he is. What an awful compound is described in the text "affliction and iron"! The bondage is mental and physical, too. The enslaved spirit and the depraved flesh act and react upon each other and hold the poor struggling creature as in an iron net! He cannot break off his sins. He cannot rise to a better life.

I know that some of you who are here at this time are in this case. You long to be delivered, but you are unable to cut the cords which hold you. You are greatly troubled, day after day, and cannot rest and yet you get no farther. You are striving to find peace, but peace does not come. You are laboring after emancipation from evil habits, but the habits still hold you! Friend thus bound, to you I have to tell the glad news that Jesus Christ has come on purpose that He might proclaim the opening of the prisons to them that are bound! "He has broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in two." God is able to liberate men from every bond of sin over which they mourn! Would you be free? He will open the door! There is no habit so inveterate, there is no passion so ferocious, but God can deliver you from it! If you will but trust in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, His Grace is a hammer that can break your chains! Let Jesus say, "Loosen him and let him go," and not even devils can detain you! Christ's warrant runs over the whole universe and, if He makes you free, you will be free, indeed!

To advance another step, these persons were weary men, for we read of them, "He brought down their heart with labor."

This does not happen to all in the same degree, but to some of us, this labor was exceedingly grinding and exhausting.

Our hearts were lofty and needed bringing down and the Lord used means to do it. With some, temporal circumstances go wrong where everything used to prosper, everything appears to be under a blight. From abundance they descend to need. Perhaps the health also begins to give way and from being strong and hearty men they become sickly and feeble. How often this tames proud spirits! If it is not outward sorrow, it is within that they labor till their heart is brought low. They cannot rest and yet they try all earthly remedies for ease they go to the theater, they sport with frivolous companions, they laugh, they dance, they plunge into vice but they cannot shake off the burden of their sin!

It will not be removed. As the giraffe, when the lion has leaped upon him, bears his enemy upon his shoulders and cannot dislodge him, even though he rushes across the wilderness like the wind, so the sinner is being devoured by his sin while he madly labors to shake it off. While the unconverted seek to rest themselves, they do but increase their weariness. They labor, yes, labor as in the very fire, but it is labor in vain! In vain do they hasten to every religions service and attend to every sacred ceremony! In vain do they try to mourn how can they put feeling into a heart of stone? If they could, they would make their tears flow forever and their prayers forever rise, but, to their horror, they accomplish nothing!

The whip of the Law sounds and they must get to their tasks, again but the more they do, the more they are undone. Like one that, having fallen into a slough, sinks all the deeper into the mire through every struggle that he makes, so do they fall lower and lower by their efforts to rise!

I understand those awful struggles of yours, so desperate and yet so unavailing. God is bringing down your heart with labor, but have you not had enough of this? Do you not remember that love word, "Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"? Sweet promise! Will you not believe it and avail yourselves of it?

Will you not come to Jesus and take the rest which He gives? How I wish you would come this very day! I beseech the Holy Spirit to turn you to Jesus. The Lord has come forth with power to draw you and to bring you away from your weariness unto the sweet rest which remains for the people of God! Poor doves, fly no further! Return to your Noah!

These of whom we speak at this time were as weary men as ever you can be, but Jesus gave them rest why should He not give rest to you? Though bad, and banned, and bound, and burdened, there is yet hope, for the Lord can set you free!

Again, these persons were downcast men "they fell down, and there was none to help." "We cannot go on any longer," they said. "It is useless to exert ourselves. We cannot escape God's wrath and yet we cannot bear it. We are at our wits' end. There is no use in our trying to be better. We must give it up in despair." "They fell down." This shows that they were quite spent. The captive has been grinding at the mill till he cannot go another round. Even the lash cannot make him take another step he falls in faintness as though life had gone. So have we known men forced to acknowledge that they are, "without strength." This was always true, but they did not always feel it. Now they have come to this, that if Heaven could be had for one more effort and Hell escaped for one more good work yet they could not do it! They fall down and there they lie, a heap of helplessness, dead in trespasses and sins! Where is the boasted power of their free will?

Now it is to you who have fallen down, even to you, that the word of this salvation is sent! The Lord Jesus delights to lift up those that lie at His feet. He is a great over-turner "He has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree." He that flies aloft on the eagle's wings of pride shall be brought low by the shafts of vengeance. But he that humbles himself to the dust shall be lifted up! He that has fallen down and lies in the dust at the feet of Jesus, lies on the doorstep of eternal life! The Lord will give power to the weak and increase strength to those who have no might. I rejoice when I hear any one of you acknowledge his weakness, since the Lord Jesus will now show forth His power in you!

In fact, these persons were helpless men "They fell down and there was none to help." What a word that is "None to help"! The proverb says, "God helps those who help themselves." There is a sort of truth in it, but I venture to cover it with a far greater Truth of God "God helps those that cannot help themselves." When there is none to help you, then God will help you. "There was none to help" no priest, no minister, not even a praying wife, or a praying mother could do anything! The man felt that human helpers were of no use. His bed was shorter than that he should stretch himself upon it and his covering was narrower than that he should wrap himself up in it. Now he saw that there was no balm in Gilead, there was no physician there and he looked to a higher place than Gilead for balm and medicine! The balm for such a wound as his must come from Heaven, for on earth there was "none to help." This is a fitting epitaph to be placed over the grave of self-righteousness! This also is the death-knell of priestcraft, birthright membership and sacramentarianism.

The conscience sees that there is "none to help." Is this your case? Then you are the men and women in whom God will work the marvels of His Grace and bring you out where you shall walk in light and peace!

There was only one good point about these people they did, at last, take to praying "Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble." It was not much of a prayer to hear. It was too shrill to be musical. It was too painful to be pleasant.

"They cried" like one in sore anguish. They cried like a child that has lost its mother. "They cried" like some poor wounded animal in great pain. Do you tell me that you cry, but that your cry is a very poor one? I know it and I am glad to hear you say so, for the less you think of your cry, the more God will think of it! Do you value yourself according to your prayers? Then your prayers have no value in them! When you think that your prayers are only broken words, hideous moans and wretched desires, then you begin to form a right estimate of them and thus you are on true ground where the Lord of Truth can meet you.

"They cried." Was it any credit to them to cry? Why, no, it was what they were forced to do! They would not have cried to the Lord, even then, if they could have done anything else. They cried when their hearts had been brought so low that they fell down. It is a good fall when a man falls on his knees. O my dear Hearer, whatever else you do, or do not do, are you crying to God in secret for His Grace? Then, as surely as the Lord lives, you shall come out into liberty! A praying man shall never be sent to perdition. There is that about prayer which makes it a token for good, a pledge of blessings on the road, a door of hope in dark hours. Where is the man that cries? Where is the man that prays? That is the man of whom it shall be said, and of others like he, "The Lord brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their chains in pieces."

May the Lord bless the description which I have given, so that some of you may see yourselves as in a mirror and be encouraged to hope that the Lord will save you as He has saved others like you! If you see yourself in the text, take home the comfort of it and make use of it. Do not look at it and say, "This belongs to somebody else." You Brothers and Sisters in bondage; you self-despairing sinners you are the ones for whom Christ went up to the Cross! If you saw a letter directed to yourself, would you not open it? I should think so! The other day a poor woman received in a letter a little help sent to her by a friend. She was in great distress and she went to that very friend begging for a few shillings. "Why," said the other, "I sent you money yesterday, by an order in a letter!" "Dear, dear!" said the poor woman, "that must be the letter which I put behind the mirror!" Just so and there are lots of people who put God's letters behind the mirror and fail to make use of the promise which is meant for them! Come, all you that labor and are heavy-laden, come and taste my Master's love, yes, take of it freely and be filled with heavenly rest!

Message Continued

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