The Bible does not aspire to provide checks for the excesses of freedom, but to instruct us in the nature of freedom, to stimulate an appetite for it, to make us ashamed of our contentment without it, to explain under what conditions we may obtain the highest measure of it.
I. Do we not hear men complaining continually that they cannot do what they would, or be what they would? Each may shift the burden on a different place, but each feels it. If the sigh for pardon has not yet risen out of our hearts, that sigh may yet be working in another form apparently, not really another. We may cry for an Absolver,for One who will set us free from the bonds of those sins which by our frailty we have committed. The voice of God, be sure, is not monotonous; it does not speak in one accent only, and that one measured, and adapted, and reduced by human art. Whatever a man's perplexity is, whatever it be which makes his actions irregular, his thoughts unquiet, his life contradictory, that is a band which needs to be broken for him, and which, after infinite fretting, he will find that he cannot break for himself, not if he has all the machinery of nature and art to help out his individual weakness. He must turn to the Lord of his will, to One who can meet him there, in a region which the vulture's eye has not seen.
II. It is the Son who makes us free, because He brings us the adoption of sons. It is the faith that in Him these spirits of ours may claim God for their Father, because He has in Him claimed them for His sons and given them His Spirit, that they may cry, "Abba, Father" it is this faith which raises us above the flesh that has claimed to be our master, when it was meant to be our slave; above that world of which we were intended to offer the fruits to God, but which has demanded our worship for itself; above that spirit of evil which would persuade us that there cannot be freedom in the service of a loving God, and if we listen to it, would make us the slaves of self-will and hatred.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. iii., p. 149.
References: Psalms 107:14. G. S. Barrett, Old Testament Outlines,p. 142.Psalms 107:17-20. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1824.Psalms 107:19. Preacher's Latern,vol. iii., p. 117. Psalms 107:20. H. Thompson, Concionalia,2nd series, p. 529; Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts,p. 271.Psalms 107:21. J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., pp. 312, 321, 341, 357, and 375.Psalms 107:23; Psalms 107:24. C. Kingsley, Discipline, and Other Sermons,p. 23.Psalms 107:23-31. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 236. Psalms 107:30. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms,p. 323.Psalms 107:34. J. Keble, Sermons Occasional and Parochial,p. 101.Psalms 107:40. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 369. Psalms 107:40; Psalms 107:41. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms,p. 238. Psalms 107:43. E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons,vol. i., p. 392.Psalms 108:4. Pulpit Analyst,vol. i., p. 213.Psalms 108:12. G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons,p. 242.Psalms 108 Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 121.Psalms 109:4. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 15.