Deliverance from the Bonds of Sin

""Let my supplication come before Thee; Deliver me according to Thy word" (Ps. 119:170).

The first song of worship recorded in the Bible is found in Exodus 15. The nation of Israel had lived in bondage to the Egyptians for four hundred years. They'd been treated brutally. Then, after four hundred years of slavery, God worked miracles to deliver them from their captivity. Their worship of God must have been splendid at that time, because they had come to know Him as their Deliverer.

Some of the most moving moments of history have been the times in which people have been freed from their bondage. It must have been an awesome and inspiring moment when Jews were released from concentration camps at the end of World War II. Yet the greatest bondage known to humanity is mankind's slavery to sin. It's a bondage that's as old as Adam. People still battle slavery to immoral desires, hate, greed, drug abuse, and envy, just as they have for thousands of years. Man's will remains a slave to the destructive demands of sin.

But there's good news. And that "good news" is found in the Word of God. God's Word is able to liberate us from every spiritual and immoral prison in which our hearts are captured. Why does the Word of God have the power to liberate our hearts? First, the Bible is the written Word of God. The Bible simply points us to Jesus, who is the true Deliverer. Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). He explained further by saying, "If therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). Much of the earthly ministry of Jesus was to set the captive free. That ministry has never ceased.

Because the Bible is a testimony of Jesus, it has brought the message of deliverance to men and women for thousands of years. There was a young man who heard the Word of God in England during the mid-1800s. He described his experience years later when he said, "Personally, I have to bless God...not for good books but for the preached Word - and that, too, addressed to me by a poor, uneducated man, a man who had never received any training for the ministry, and probably will never be heard of in his life, a man engaged in business, no doubt of a humble kind, during the week, but who had just enough grace to say on the Sabbath, 'Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.' The revealed word awakened me, but it was the preached Word that saved me; and I must ever attach peculiar value to the hearing of the truth, for by it I received the joy and peace in which my soul delights."

This young man gave his life to proclaiming the Word of God. Thousands found deliverance and salvation through his preaching. By the age of 19, there was not a building in London that could contain the people who came to hear this young man preach from that grand old Book. His name was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and he never ceased to proclaim the greatness of the Savior from the Word of God.

When a person is set free from slavery to sin by the living Word of God as revealed in the written Word of God, he will always respond with joyful worship. That person will worship in truth, because he has been set free by the One who is Truth.

If we're to worship in truth, the Bible must be the centerpiece of our worship experience. TheWord of God from beginning to end will direct us to Jesus, the One worthy of our worship.