Set Free by God’s Grace (Psalm 107:10-16)

Psalm 107 is a psalm about divine providence in which the author uses several common life situations to illustrate how God eventually brings spiritual blessings to those described as the redeemed. The first example is of persons who are lost in a desert without any way of discovering where to go, but when they call on God he comes to their rescue and brings them to a city where their needs are met. That example is like those who are lost in sin, but who are found by Jesus and brought into his city (the church) where all their spiritual needs are met.

The second example of persons whom God delivers are described as prisoners in a dark dungeon with no prospect of liberty. They are there because they had rejected the instruction that they had received about living for God. From that point of view, they are different from those described in the previous example because those wanderers in the desert seemed to be unaware of God’s demands. Unlike them, the ones in prison found themselves where they deserved to be because of their disobedience to his requirements. But they were not merely there because of their past disobedience. They were also there because God had arranged their circumstances so that they would eventually receive divine blessing.

There have been individuals who were imprisoned for wrong actions and found Jesus at a subsequent stage – John Newton, Chuck Colson and Jonathan Aitken come to mind. Newton had a godly mother who prayed for him, but for years his life went from worse to worse, even descending to being placed in chains by the Royal Navy and later even of slaves in a plantation. Yet God brought him to himself eventually. Colson is famous for his crimes committed in the Watergate scandal, for which he was imprisoned. During his time in prison, he was converted. After his release he founded Prison Fellowship and became a well-known Christian leader. Jonathan Aitken was a politician and journalist, was imprisoned, but became a Christian, and has written biographies of Newton and Colson as well as other writings.

In the Bible, an obvious example of such a prisoner is Manasseh, the son of good King Hezekiah but who did the opposite of his father and organised pagan religious practices, and who was captured by Babylon and put in chains by them. There he prayed to God and was restored to his throne as a different man who now trusted in the Lord.

Yet there is more than literal bondage here. In addition, the illustration of imprisonment pictures for us the state sinners can find themselves in as far as their hearts are concerned. But why are some brought this way into the kingdom? The fact is that God deals with sinners where they are, and we should not assume that he will deal with each in the same way. There is no prescribed method for coming to know the Lord.

Nevertheless, the illustration of freed prisoners is a common one in the Bible. In fact, Jesus used it in his sermon in Nazareth when he said that the prophecy of Isaiah about how ‘The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound’ (Isa. 61:1).

The sin of the people mentioned is both outward and inward. Outwardly, it was revealed by acts of rebellion and inwardly it was shown by their spurning of God’s counsel. They had become like the people in Psalm 1 whom the godly will not associate with.

What does this tell us about God?

First, he regards sin as very serious. All sin is serious, but sin against light is more serious. The people in this second example in Psalm 107 had sinned against what they had been taught in childhood or in some other way. The fact that God does not treat us as we deserve does not mean that we do not deserve more. How can the Lord do this? He can send samples of the judgement before the judgement. Punishment can include bringing conviction into our minds by him stimulating our consciences so that they condemn us constantly, and we cannot get rid of this reaction to our sins, no matter what we do.

A question arises here as to whether we think this is a good experience to have. I don’t mean that it should be regarded as pleasant, because it is not so at any stage. But is it good for the person who experiences it? Consider it this way. What can be said about the person whom God does not disturb about his sins? While we can never announce what the future of that person is, because God could speak to him later on, yet at the moment their indifference to their sins indicates that God is not currently speaking to them. And if it remains like that, there is no hope for them in a spiritual way.

Second, God wants sinners to be brought low because of their rebellion. How would we describe the person who sins? It is easy to analyse sin and say that it means to fall short of God’s standard, and we can even use the illustration of an arrow falling short of its target to illustrate what sin is. Or we can work out that some sins are transgressions of God’s law, deliberate actions that are forbidden by God. We can describe them as sins of omission and commission. Yet we can use those descriptions, all of which are true, and still not say what the sinner is.

What is a sinner? A sinner is one who exalts himself above the authority of God, who is a rebel, and who is proud of and pleased with his actions and attitudes. God works on a person until that individual realises who he is in God’s sight. That is why David in Psalm 51 concluded that he had only sinned against God. He did not mean that his actions had not harmed others, because they had, but in a basic sense he had learned that they were expressions of him putting himself into a position of saying that he was entitled to disobey God, to rebel against his laws, that he was above God’s authority.

William Plumer observed that ‘The process of humiliation is often painful. The fruit of true humiliation is most delightful.’ It is good for us to be brought low because it means that the One who brought us done can also lift us up. He does not bring us down to leave us there. As the psalmist says, God can take people from the dunghill and set them with princes, which is a remarkable contrast. More has to happen, however.

Third, God wants sinners to realise that none can help them in their lost rebellious state. There are some wrong advisers that people can listen to in order to find relief. Bunyan in his Pilgrim’s Progress describes some of those false counsellors like Mr Worldly Wiseman and Mr Legality. There are numerous helps that people can try in order to find release from the awareness they have of having done wrong. But eventually they realise that there is none to help. That is where the Lord was leading the people described in this section of the psalm.

Calling on the Lord

The first detail that we can note is that they called on the Lord from where they were – in their troubles. They spoke to him with an awareness of their burdens. Their circumstances affected what they said to him. They are like the tax collector who prayed in the temple for mercy.

That detail brings another aspect to mind, and that is that they cried with great intensity to the Lord. They were in distress. Their hearts were involved because they strongly felt the need for deliverance. Everything else in life paled into insignificance.

A third detail regarding their prayer is that they prayed with clear preciseness about what they wanted. They wanted to be delivered from the penalty of their sins, and they focussed on that. They had become like those on the Day of Pentecost who asked the apostles what they should do, or like the Philippian jailor who asked Paul and Silas what he could do to be saved. There is a remarkable specificness when someone is brought to seek salvation from their sins. Their prayers are not vague, full of religious platitudes. Instead there is definiteness and focus. Salvation is their desire, and they cry for it to be given to them.

The fourth detail is that their cry resulted in comprehensive deliverance by God from their imprisonment. They were set free. Their situation was transformed from one of darkness into light, from one of confinement into liberty. The chains that had bound them no longer did so. We should note how the psalmist describes what had happened.

First, all who cried experienced deliverance. Often, someone asks if God will listen to him or her. Such a notion can be caused by fear of rejection or by a misunderstanding of divine sovereignty. But God will not ignore the genuine desire for mercy, no matter who the person crying is or what he may have been in the past. All are welcome to experience his salvation.

Second, salvation means illumination, quickening and release. Illumination comes instead of darkness, quickening comes instead of death, and release comes instead of chains. Those three aspects may be intertwined, and while they can be distinguished theologically, they may seem to occur simultaneously in a person’s experience.

Illumination is not so much their discovery that they are great sinners, but that Jesus is a great Saviour. He is a suitable Saviour, exactly what they need. They are also made spiritually alive; they pass from the condition of spiritual death; they now have new desires, and they want to live a holy life. Moreover, they are now delivered from the power of sin. The chains that bound them have been snapped by God. Whatever sins gripped them, they had been delivered from their power because the Holy Spirit had come to indwell them.

The response

As with the other sections in the psalm, the response to this description of divine activity in providence is for us to thank God for his actions. Why did he do what he did? The psalmist tells us that the Lord did it out of his covenant love. His love was steadfast, and an aspect of his steadfastness was to persevere with those whom he needed to be bring low until they were ready to call upon him for mercy. With regard to anyone who has been converted, the Lord knew what it would take for them to turn to him. No two people are the same, and that is true with spiritual things as well.

Moreover, when God sets someone free from the chains that bound them, he provides them with real liberty. They are not half-bound, half-set free. Whatever else can be said about the imagery of shattered doors and cut bars (v. 16), it means liberty for the imprisoned. There is no excuse for anyone continuing in a life of sin if they have been converted. In fact, such a response is highly unlikely. A believer can backslide, but he will not stay there because he has been liberated from the power of sin and now has the liberator living within him.

As Spurgeon observed, ‘Dear Heart, if the Lord comes to your prison, He will not merely light a lamp in your dungeon, though that were something. He will not merely revive your spirit and give you more life, though that were something. But He will break your chains and bring you out into the liberty with which Christ makes men free! He will finish His emancipating work!’

The psalmist stresses here that when a person experiences this kind of deliverance he and others are to ensure that the Lord gets all the praise for the deliverance that has occurred. It was Jesus alone that brought the lost sheep home.

How can we summarise the message of this passage? God puts people into spiritual prisons in order to set them free. The road to spiritual liberty for some starts with divine conviction, the realisation that they are under divine condemnation, but eventually they experience divine clemency through appreciating what Jesus did for sinners. A divine change occurs that is as stark and as clear as freedom is from prison. Verse 14 says that they experience light, life and liberty from the Lord.