Psalm 146:7-9 Which executes judgment for the oppressed: which gives food to the hungry. The LORD looses the prisoners:… Liberty — a free country! Those are words dear to us all. We love and honour the memory of those who in the old days fought for England's freedom, We read with pride of the Swiss hero who flung himself upon the Austrian spears and made a way for liberty. But what shall we say of Jesus, who gives us the truest liberty, whose service is perfect freedom, who loosest men out of prison? There are few words which have been more misused than that word liberty. Well might the French woman, victim of the Revolution, point to the Statue of Freedom, as she came to die upon the scaffold, and say, "O Liberty, how many crimes have been committed in thy name!" "Truly," says one of our great preachers, "there are two freedoms — the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where a man is free to do what he ought." "The Lord looseth men out of prison." He looseth out of the hard prison of the ancient law, and setteth our feet in the large room of grace, and bringeth us into a wealthy place. He looseth out of the prison of sin and death, the prison of the curse. He who went down into Hades, and preached to the spirits of the fathers in prison, hath broken for us the gates of brass, and smitten the bars of iron in sunder. Are there none of us who are prisoners — captives and slaves to our own bad passions, our own undisciplined will, evil habits of our own making? If so, and if we have the will to be free, Jesus, the Liberator, will loose us, even though we be in the innermost prison of sin, and our feet made fast in the stocks of evil habits. But we shall never be free till we know that we are in prison, till we feel the chain. The young man following his own lusts and pleasures, walking in his own way, talks to us of his freedom; he knows not that he is a prisoner, and so he will not cry to the Lord to set him free. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:WEB: who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. Yahweh frees the prisoners. |
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