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The sermon presents Christian joy as the fitting response to Christ’s saving deliverance rather than a feeling dependent on circumstances. Believers are urged to remember God’s mercies, praise Him in suffering, and regard former sins as defeated through Christ’s blood. The church should face opposition with confidence in God’s sustaining power and past victories. Salvation is explicitly offered to sinners who believe in Christ at the cross.
Theological center: Jesus Christ is the Redeemer who liberates His people from sin, gives them rest and salvation, and triumphs over spiritual powers.
Applications: Awaken every power to praise · Praise God through trials · Lead sin captive · Stand courageously in spiritual battle
Primary texts: Judges 5:12 · Psalms 46:8 · Hebrews 4:3
“Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake, utter a song: arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinoam.” Judges 5:12 MANY of the saints of God are as mournful as if they were captives in Babylon, for their life is spent in tears and sighing. They will not chant the joyous psalm of praise, and if there be any who require of them a song, they reply, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” But my brethren, we are not captives in Babylon, we do not sit down to weep by Babel’s streams, the Lord has broken our captivity, He has brought us up out of the house of our bondage. We are freemen, we are not slaves, we are not sold into the hand of cruel taskmasters, but “we which have believed do enter into rest,” Hebrews 4:3. Moses could not give rest to Israel, he could bring them to Jordan, but across the stream he could not conduct them, Joshua alone could lead them into the lot of their inheritance, and our Joshua, our Jesus, has led us into the land of promise. He has brought us into a land which the Lord our God thinketh on, a land of hills and valleys, a land that floweth with milk and honey, and though the Canaanites still be in the land, and plague us full sore, yet is it all our own, and He has said unto us, “All things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,” 1 Corinthians 3:21-23. We are not, I say, captives, sold under sin, we are a people who sit every man under his own vine and his own fig tree, none making us afraid. We dwell in “a strong city, salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks,” Isaiah 26:1. We have come unto Zion, the city of our solemnities, and the mourning of Babylon is not suitable to the palace of the great King, which is beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. “Let us serve the LORD with gladness, and come before his presence with singing,” Psalm 100:2. Many of God’s people live as if their God were dead. Their conduct would be quite consistent if the promises were not yea and amen, if God were a faithless God. If Christ were not a perfect Redeemer, if the Word of God might after all turn out to be untrue, if He had not power to keep His people, and if He had not love enough with which to hold them even to the end, then might they give way to mourning and to despair, then might they cover their heads with ashes, and wrap their loins about with sackcloth. But while God is JEHOVAH, just and true, while His promises stand as fast as the eternal mountains,…