Now, I want to turn to you, turn
you to Psalm 124, verse 7, a wonderful
verse.
I wonder, have you heard it before?
Have you heard anybody speak on it?
It's a lovely verse.
Psalm 124.
It's the testimony of persecuted and opposed Israel,
who proved the help of the Lord.
And their testimony expresses ours too.
124, verse 7.
Our soul is escaped as a bird out
of the snare of the fowler.
The snare is broken, and we are escaped.
Now, I'm not a countenance.
I'm a plain, straightforward townie.
And I don't quite know what poachers do,
for this is a verse about poachers.
But I do know that they do, used
to, and perhaps still do, lay snares to
catch game, which they shouldn't catch.
And very often the snare is in the
form of a wire which is in a
loop.
And somehow or other, the unwary bird is
enticed into this loop.
And as it moves and catches its leg
on it, the loop tightens.
And the more it struggles, the more it
tightens.
And that bird is caught.
Its leg is bleeding.
And there it remains, struggling and struggling, until
either it is found and caught by the
poacher, or it dies.
And this is the situation which Israel said
they found themselves in.
Like a bird caught in a snare, unable
to get free.
But this verse tells us, gives us a
picture of a passer-by, who sees this
pathetic bird struggling for its life.
And he reaches down a kindly hand, and
he breaks the snare.
And the bird escapes.
What a wonderful relief for that bird.
And the psalmist says that Israel's experience is
that they were like that.
Our soul is escaped out of the snare
of the fowler, out of the poacher.
The snare is broken, and we are escaped.
And I believe this is not only illustrative
of Israel's experience years ago, but it surely
is the testimony of the soul that's been
set free from the Lord Jesus.
It pictures a soul struggling under the power
of sin, caught in the snare of sin.
And the harder it tries, the more it
gets entangled.
Until that soul is brought to complete despair.
And then the kindly hand of the Lord
Jesus from heaven reaches down and breaks that
snare.
And that soul is set free and says,
my soul is escaped as a bird out
of the snare of the fowler.
The snare that held me is broken, and
I am escaped.
I believe that this, the subject that this
verse would introduce us to, is what I
may call freedom from sin.
And this is one of the great things
that the Lord Jesus in the Gospel prophesied
to men, freedom from sin.
If you will turn to Romans 6 and
have it open on your knee, I want
you to look at this phrase.
It occurs three times in this great chapter,
Romans 6.
Verse 7.
He that is dead, or he that hath
died, is freed from sin.
The snare is broken, and this man's escaped.
He's freed from that which ensnared him.
He's freed from sin.
And then in verse 18, you get the
next step on.
Being then made free from sin, what happens?
He became the slaves of righteousness, gladly and
happily.
And then in verse 22, a further stage.
And now being made free from sin, and
become the slaves of God, you have your
fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life,
further consequences from being made free from sin.
Before we think of being made free from
sin, let's see that which enslaves us.
This verse of the bird, as I say,
pictures for us a Christian or a non
-Christian, matters not who, under the power of
sin.
Gripped by it, and unable to get free.
Now what do you conceive to be the
power of sin?
When you say that a man's under the
power of sin, what do you envisage?
Do you mean a man with a number
of bad habits which he can't stop?
He vows to be different and can't?
And he keeps on committing certain sins?
Is it only then that a man is
said to be under the power of sin?
I don't think so.
You can be under the dominion of sin.
You can be under the power of a
certain sin, and not be committing it every
day at all.
Indeed, we've only got to commit a certain
sin once in our lives, and to be
under the dominion of that sin for years
to come.
Because the power of sin, as I see
it, does not lie in its ability to
fascinate us, and to form itself into a
habit.
That is the least of its power.
It does that.
The basis of the power of sin over
man lies in its guilt.
Sin always leaves the entail of guilt.
A heart that condemns you.
A conscience that represses you.
And the passage of time does nothing to
remove that guilt.
I've often used the illustration, I use it
again, of the cup of coffee, which you
had before you go to bed, we'll say.
And you're too tired at home to wash
it up that night, so you leave it.
In the morning, there's the cup.
The coffee's gone.
But the stain is there, always there, quite
simple.
I'll leave that for a day or two.
But the passage of a day or two
has done nothing to remove the stain.
You can leave it a week or a
month, but the stain is still there.
You haven't got to be forever putting new
coffee in and drinking it and leaving further
stain.
That one stain remains.
And so it is with us.
This is what the hymn writers, how they
describe guilt.
How right our hymn writers are so often.
The stain talks about sinners losing their guilty
stain.
What does that picture?
Why guilt?
The sense of reproach, the accusing heart, the
accusing conscience.
And you don't have to be repeating a
sin to be under its power in that
sense.
There may be some things that happened years
ago, or happened fairly recently.
Maybe you're not repeating them.
But you're under their power.
To this very day, if only because of
their guilt.
If only because there's a heart that isn't
quite at peace about them.
If only because there are certain things in
your life about which you don't want anybody
to ask you awkward questions.
Toplady, who wrote the famous hymn, Rock of
Ages, says, It saved me from sin's guilt
and power.
And I suppose he thought that sin's guilt
was one thing, and sin's power was another.
Well, who am I really to take issue
with such a man as he?
But I don't think that's correct.
The power of sin lies basically in its
guilt.
And that's a bigger power.
Forgetting it doesn't do away with it.
Trying to be better does nothing to remove
it.
And this is a soul here, in the
snare of the fowler.
It doesn't mean to say he's still committing
those sins again and again.
He doesn't need to, to be caught.
And there may be things in our lives,
all of us, of one sort, larger or
smaller matters.
And your heart accuses you.
Your conscience reproves you.
And even if that isn't a very acute
experience, there's a vague sense of wrong.
And you'd only need to ask God the
reason, and he would itemise.
Sin after sin after sin.
And we are in that condition, under the
dominion of sin.
Now, when we're in that condition, what is
the thing we normally would do?
When a man feels himself out of touch
with God, and uneasy, and in that condition.
Why, the normal thing is to try to
be better.
To turn over a new leaf.
To embrace higher standards in his Christian life.
To perhaps give more time to prayer, and
that sort of thing.
To improve.
In other words, the natural thing then, is
to apply to what Paul calls in his
epistles, the law.
That is, the moral standard.
And if I can approximate to those moral
standards, if I can become a better Christian,
and a more earnest worker, then I shall
be happy and free once again.
But actually, the law, the moral standards which
we seek to embrace, only strengthen sin's power
over it.
You can see that if you have it
established in your thinking, that the power of
sin is its guilt.
Right, I say, I want to be different.
I'm going to come up to this standard
or that.
Fine, if you do.
But what if you fail to, and you
are going to fail to?
Then you've just got so much more about
which to be condemned.
And you've found you've played more into the
hands of sin by your vows and consecrations
than you ever did before.
If you don't feel bad about yourself, it
is you haven't tried hard enough.
Let a person really try, and face up
to the demands of God, and he will
very soon find he's more under the power
of sin than he was before he tried.
That's exactly what Paul found in Romans 7,
if you like to turn over to it.
He says in verse 10, the commandment which
was ordained to life, I found to be
unto death.
Do you understand that?
The commandment which promised me life if I
could keep it, I found to be unto
death because I failed to keep it.
The law pronounces a blessing on the man
that will come up to it, demands.
But it cannot but pronounce a curse upon
the sinner who fails to.
And the next result of my attempts to
measure up, if I'm sensitive enough to realise
it, is that I thought more under the
power of sin than I ever did when
I was careless.
In other words, as the bird tries to
pull itself out of the wire, it gets
tighter and tighter and tighter.
I've seen a picture of a great elephant
that was caught in such a snare, and
as it tried to pull itself out of
this wire, it must have been a huge
cable.
It bit itself more and more into its
limb, and ultimately the picture showed us that
great beast dead.
And that's exactly the effect that our attempts
to be distant, to use the doctrinal word,
the law, has upon us.
And this is what Paul meant in 1
Corinthians 15 when he said, the strength of
sin is the law.
If you like to look at it there,
1 Corinthians 15 verse 56.
The sting of death is sin, and the
strength of sin is the law.
What gives sin strength?
What gives it its ability to accuse us?
Why, the very standards we've espoused as Christians.
And he says, look, do you remember what
you promised?
Do you know the sort of person you
should be as a Christian?
Do you remember what you said to God
at Cleveland?
Now look at you.
It were better not to have made a
promise than having made it fail, because you
just play into the hands of the power
of sin the more.
And so here's this poor bird caught in
the snare of the fowler.
And the more you try to get out,
the more surely you are in.
I remember years ago we had in our
garden a rat trap.
It wasn't a snare like this, but I
suppose something similar.
But this illustrates my point rather well, I
hope.
This was a wire rat trap.
And it had an entrance into this big
square thing, through a sort of funneled entrance.
It was broad, at the beginning they got
very narrow, and inside there was some food.
And the rat, in its anxiety to get
the food, would squeeze through the entrance.
But having got in, it couldn't get out.
And having got into sin, the plight of
the sinner is he cannot get out.
You and I have a limitless power to
commit sin.
When it comes to the commitment of sin,
every one of us are giants.
But having committed sin, having done what we
have done, we have got no power at
all to extricate ourselves from the plight in
which we are.
That is what is meant in Romans 5
when it says, when we were yet without
strength, Christ died for the ungodly.
Without strength, all the revised versions put it,
when we were yet helpless.
You and I are not only sinners, but
we're helpless sinners.
We've got ourselves in a position, and try
as you will, you can't get back.
You can't get right.
You've got in, but you can't get out.
This is the sinner's plight.
And inasmuch as we're all sinners, this in
measure is the plight of every one of
us who as yet has not found this
wonderful grace of God adapted to a need
like that.
But back of all this situation is, of
course, Satan.
This is a situation which, of course, he
engineers.
He delights in this because it gives him
his opportunity to do his great work which
is accusing the brethren.
He is the great one who having got
you to fall, and got you into that
predicament, then begins to tell you what a
rotter you are, and how hopeless the situation
is, and you can never get right.
He's called the accuser of the brethren.
And this is the reason why the devil
gets us to sin.
It isn't merely that he wants you to
do something unethical, or something beastly, or something
bad-tempered, or to manifest a wrong spirit
to somebody.
He's glad to see that happen, he likes
to see all the misery it causes.
But his main purpose is to give himself
the opportunity on those sins to build his
superstructure of accusation.
And that can go on over years, and
be added to by every other further phase.
Indeed, that superstructure can blot out the sun
from our sight.
Very often, the superstructure which Satan builds is
out of all proportion to the foundational wickedness.
That's his purpose in getting men to sin.
In order that he may say, I've got
you now.
And there's no way out.
And if you think there is a way,
he magnifies what seem to be the conditions
of getting out, so much that you feel
you just cannot make it.
I've known people who said, I can't get
right with God.
There have been people in Clevedon, in past
years, they know they're wrong, they know they
ought to get back to God, but they
say, I just can't.
And I'm thinking of one case because the
necessary steps of restitution, and apology, and confession,
seem to be to them so enormous that
they just couldn't face it.
They got in to that trap, but they
just couldn't get out.
Some years ago, I remember there being with
us a certain Christian leader and his wife.
And she came under great conviction of sin,
although she was a minister's wife.
And I remember it bringing down on the
fan, seeing her there in such agony of
soul, that she was almost writhing there, in
agony of mind, on the fan.
She says, I can't get back.
I can't get right.
Oh, what a fine time the devil had
with that poor soul.
The reason was quite simple.
Since girlhood days, she'd been a secret kleptomaniac.
And her greatest joy was to visit Woolworth's
or some such store and take things off.
And she'd been doing that for years, secretly,
right up to coming to Clevedon, yet she
was a converted woman.
Could speak of the Lord most sweetly.
And you know, she never saw that to
be sin, until one day at least.
And then she said, well, how can I
get back?
How can I put it right?
What will happen when I tell my husband?
What will happen when I go to whoever
I need to go to?
Poor soul, her soul was snared in the
snare of the Father.
And said, I can't get right.
And that is an outstanding thing.
Many a one said, I can't get back.
I can't make it.
That's exactly what the devil wants us to
believe.
So here is the picture of a bird
in the snare of the Father.
And the harder it tries, the tighter that
snare becomes.
Well, has God an answer for this?
Of course He has.
And this situation, whenever we're in it in
any degree, and it hasn't got to be
major matters, all sorts of things you feel
you can't find your way out of, this
situation doesn't make Him loathous.
But if you will, it evokes His love
for us.
You know He loves the sinner, wildly the
sinner, as a sinner.
You and I as much love when our
performance is bad as when it's good.
And there's many a verse that says that
the Lord is the one who looks down
from heaven and hears the sighing of the
prisoner.
There's a story told of Richard Cur de
Leon, who on the way back from one
of his crusades was captured by an alien
power somewhere in Europe and never came back.
And he was incarcerated in some European castle.
And England longed to have their king back.
They were willing to pay any ransom to
get him back, but they didn't know where
he was.
And he had a friend, can't remember his
name, his court musician, and Richard court, Blondin
was it?
Yes, and Richard Cur de Leon loved music.
And his court musician travelled Europe, and outside
every castle he sang Richard Cur de Leon's
favourite song.
There's no result.
Until one day, from within a certain castle,
he heard an answering voice singing it with
him.
What a picture of the Lord Jesus, who'd
come to find captive those who snared him.
And do you know what England did?
To get their king back, they paid an
absolutely colossal ransom.
They'd almost beggared the country for the time.
Although their king was in prison, he was
still loved.
And they sought him.
And Jesus is coming around us these days,
singing a song of freedom, the song of
a soul set free, as the choir have
sung to him.
I wonder if he hears any little faint
desire on your part?
Maybe you've given up hope, you've despaired, I
can't be any different.
But that's only Satan who tells you that.
Yes, I like to think in this story
of the bird, a kindly hand reached out,
and broke the snare, and set the bird
free.
And the great hand of God has stretched
itself down into this world where we're all
in this condition, in one degree or another.
And in the Lord Jesus, he's broken the
snare, and made us free.
What is the snare?
Sin, and that which gives sin its power,
the law.
And how has this great emancipation been accomplished
for us?
Listen, if you will, from Galatians 4, verse
4.
But when the fullness of the time was
come, God sent forth his Son, made of
a woman, made under the law, to redeem
them that were under the law, that we
might receive the adoption of sons.
And in the previous chapter, listen to this.
Christ, verse 13, chapter 3, has redeemed us
from the curse of the law being made
a curse for us.
For it is written, cursed is everyone that
hangeth on a tree.
As I said, the law cannot but pronounce
a curse on the man who fails to
attain its standards.
Therefore, every one of us is under the
curse.
And the law can condemn every one of
us, every Christian among us it can, if
we stand on that ground.
But the Lord Jesus has robbed sin and
the law of its power to condemn it,
in that he became a curse for us.
That's why the Jews said he died on
a tree.
The Romans said he died on a cross.
That was their form of punishment.
But the Jews said, oh no, it's a
tree.
And about seven times in the New Testament,
he said he died on a tree.
And that's because in Old Testament times, if
a man was stoned to death, they were
then, as an example, to hang his body
on a tree because it was understood in
the Old Testament that everybody who hung on
a tree was accursed of God.
And they want people to see that such
a wrongdoer was accursed of God.
And Jesus hung on a tree.
Thou hast fulfilled the law.
And we are justified.
Ours is the blessing, thine the curse.
We live, for thou hast died.
And I believe some of us are seeing
a new meaning in Talmud and in the
blood of Jesus and in the cross.
That there, Jesus, on our behalf, exhausted the
curse for us.
So there's none for us.
And the simple fact is this, that sin
and the law and the devil have lost
their power to condemn the sinner.
Did you but know it.
Did I but know it.
The snare that's got me has already been
broken by the hand of grace.
And every bird can go out free.
Very quickly, would you look at Romans 6
again?
Look at those three references to free from
sin.
He that is dead is freed from sin.
What was that unsavoury case that doctor had
up on those terrible immoral charges?
And the judge was about to decide on
the sentence, which was obviously a foregone conclusion,
when he committed suicide, and the sentence never
passed.
For he that is dead is freed from
all such legal penalties.
And this verse says he that has died
is freed from sin.
Freed from sin in this sense.
Not free from sin's solicitation.
Far from it.
You may still be solicitated to sin.
But free from its guilt, its ability to
condemn you.
But you say, I'm not dead.
Oh yes, you are in God's sight.
Because the Lord Jesus died for us.
I mean to say if I owe a
debt and can't pay it and somebody else
pays it for me, I get the receipt,
and in the eyes of a creditor, it
is as if I'm paying the debt.
And I'm free.
And that's what God wants us to understand.
That God accounts you to have already paid
the utmost of your sin and mine, we
have, in His beloved Son.
We sang the other night that wonderful hymn,
O Christ, what burdens bow thy head?
And I must read you that, because I
know no better exposition of this point than
these words.
Let me just read you those words.
For me, Lord Jesus, thou hast died, and
I have died in thee.
Thou art risen, my bands are all untied,
and now I live in thee.
Now I know if you're like me, you've
puzzled over Romans 6, you think that they're
dying to sin is some extraordinary thing that
has to take place in you.
The acme of sanctification, as I see it,
is nothing to do with that, personally.
It is.
He that's died, is freed from sin.
In the Lord Jesus, I've died to sin's
condemnation, it cannot go on condemning me.
The snare's broken then.
And when it says reckon yourselves to be
dead indeed to sin, dead indeed to the
accusations of sin.
Because it's all over.
And He's risen, and my debt's being paid.
Oh, I know there are moral attitudes that
take up consistent with that, towards sin, but
basically, that's what I see it to mean.
After all, Jesus is in Romans 6 said
to have died to sin.
Likewise, you died to sin.
Does it mean that Jesus died to sin's
solicitations, and thereafter He couldn't be tempted?
He was never alive to sin's solicitations.
It couldn't mean that.
What did it mean?
What does it mean when it says He
that in that He died, He died unto
sin once.
But having done the work, He couldn't be
condemned again.
There was enough for the whole universe.
Died to it, in the same way you
and I are asked to take the same
step back with regard to our sins and
our doubt.
And then it goes on.
He that is dead is freed from sin,
then the next result is, verse 18, being
made free from sin in this way, you
become slaves of righteousness.
He that's forgiven loves much.
And you become the willing slave of the
one who's reached down and broken the snare.
And you don't want to go on with
the things that grieve and hurt him.
This is God's great motive for holiness.
Simply that He that's forgiven much loves much,
and He that loves much wants to walk
in the ways of holiness.
This is why the way of grace achieves
holiness in a way that the way of
law never does.
And then in the third stage, verse 22,
it's a perfect argument, being now made free
from sin, and also slaves to God, there's
fruit.
And this is God's way of holiness.
The way of being forgiven much, and that
continually.
Therefore I love much, and gladly make myself
His slave.
And fruit of holiness and sweetness and grace
appears on our lives.
And so it says, Jesus has broken the
snare to set us free, and has robbed
the power of sin, robbed sin of its
power to condemn us.
And it's useful.
Sin and Satan have lost, as an old
hymn says of Wesley, their mortal power.
The snare is broken, and the bird is
escaped.
But, if we confess our sins, not if
we hide them.
Grace only is operative when I take the
sinner's place desperately and specifically.
That says to somebody, that's my problem.
I fear what that's going to mean.
That's why somebody says, I can't get right
with God.
In some cases, the devil can magnify the
necessary restitution so much that you feel, I
could never make it.
What use for Jesus to have died and
made the way of life, if I can't
taste it.
I only want to tell you two stories
as I close.
I want to complete the story of that
one who was rising on the sands in
such misery of mind.
I said to her, you know, can you
stay another week?
I think you need to hear more of
what God is saying.
And we were able to find a bed
for her.
Her husband had to return home and she
stayed for another week.
Not everybody knew her condition, very few.
I was amazed at the way in which
God directed the ministry.
Every message it seemed in that week was
grace for sinners, the grace of God for
sinners, the grace of God for sinners.
It came from every conceivable angle, every speaker.
And from the platform I sometimes watched her.
And I saw the strain begin to go
from her face.
I began to see peace come.
The day came when I saw joy.
Why that's for me.
I'm loved as a sinner, I'm forgiven as
a sinner, I'm welcomed back as a sinner.
Just because I am a sinner.
And Jesus loved me and gave himself for
me.
And she found her way back to God.
Such an easy way.
There's a way back to God from the
dark paths of sin, the door that is
opened and you may go in.
And then without any difficulty, she found herself
sharing the whole dark story with a dear
friend in the conference, another friend who knew
her well and her whole family.
And then it was made clear to her,
as to putting it right, she was to
let Jesus lead her.
She had got peace.
She was ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
Now, in the light of that grace, God
would show her what she had to do.
Sometimes the devil can accuse a naggy to
take specific actions in some costly case.
The day came when that husband failed in
a certain matter and he was very, very
humble before God.
And his wife took her place alongside her
and said, and I'm in the tomb, in
a deeper way than you are, steeper than
me, yes.
And he said, and he was able to
see her, my soul is absorbed to the
bone out of the snare of a fowler.
The snare is broken and I'm escaped.
My friend, Victor Monagorum, in India, told me
once how a man came to him in
the council.
He said, I want to tell you something,
but on one condition.
Will you promise me you will never tell
anybody?
He said, surely I will.
And he told some dark story that was
on his heart.
And that day, Victor led this dear man
to the fountain filled with blood to Jesus.
And the burden from his heart rolled away
and he knew his ransom, healed, restored, forgiven.
And the next thing he did was to
go to Victor and tell the folks there,
he summoned the Lord and told them, do
you know what I've been doing?
And it all came out.
The very thing.
He said, you mustn't tell anybody.
When grace had reached him, he was glad
to give his testimony to whosoever will.
And it'll be the same with us.
Someone who's got into the trap and can't
get out, but listen, Jesus has come, he's
broken the snare, and the bird can escape.
Don't you let the devil tell you, you
never can, you can.
Don't you let him magnify excessively.
Oh yes, there are steps.
Doubtless, there doubtless will be things you'll need
to be put right, but not in order
to get right with God, but because at
the foot of the cross you've let the
grace of God love you and forgive you
and ransom you and set you free.
And then you and I glad.
We'll find ourselves doing what the devil said
we never could.
And we'll be under blue skies once again.
Lord Jesus, we've all had times when we
felt that we were caught in the snare
of a fowler.
And the more we tried to get better,
the tighter the sense of guilt was fastened
on us.
And we've despaired.
Lord, some of us have come to almost
welcome that state of despair.
For we've come to realize that it's always
the trellis of the door.
It's that necessary exercise of heart that qualifies
us for this marvelous, natural grace of God.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for breaking the snare,
for robbing sin and the law and Satan
of their piety and purity.
Oh Lord, may we come into the good
of what you've done for us on the
cross.
Help us to be straight and honest with
you.
And Lord, may some of us know you've
reached us and set us free.
We ask this in thy name.
Amen.