It is well that you cry out for deliverance, for you are in a sore plight if witchcraft curses and evil spirits have a hold upon you. But let me ask you, what do you know of the Comforter? Each one of you, before descending the steps of this chapel, let this solemn question thrill through your souls, What do you know of the Comforter? O! poor souls, if ye know not the Comforter, I will tell you what you shall know, You shall know the Judge! If ye know not the Comforter on earth, ye shall know the Condemner in the next world, who shall cry, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire in hell.”
Dare you sleep tonight under the curse? Will you wake tomorrow and go forth to your business under the curse? Can you sport and laugh and frolic under the curse? God grant we may be sufficiently sensible to be filled with anguish at the sound of these dreadful words, "under the curse"! Every offender comes under the curse. Is it the king, the priest, the nobleman?, he is under the curse. Or is it the poorest of the land, the slave, the beggar, the fallen woman?, sin brings them under the curse. But I began by lamenting that we are under the curse. If you will trust in my Lord, I shall conclude by bidding you rejoice that, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law." The manner of our deliverance is this, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, being made a curse for us." I do not understand language at all, unless this means substitution. Christ was made a curse for us. That is to say, in our place He bore our sins and the curse which came of it.
Do you look for deliverance from evil spirits? He that is in Christ discerneth spirits, and separateth between the excellent and the reprobate. “The spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” Deliverance from the power of sin is as much the work of God as deliverance from the guilt of sin! Where we look for justification, there must we also look for sanctification, for as we are justified through Jesus Christ, we must also expect to receive sanctification from a heavenly source. And if I can sometimes go into sin, just occasionally by way of pleasure, it proves that I am a stranger to the deliverance which Jesus Christ gives to His really called and regenerated people!
Look now upon your wretchedness; there is an evil heart of unbelief within you. Thy sins are as evil as thou sayest they are, and a great deal more so. Depend on it, thou art worse than thou thinkest thyself to be. Thou thinkest thou art bad enough, but thou art not so bad in thine own estimation as thou really art. But this arrow of doubt shot at you, suggesting that God’s ear is shut and He will never move His arm to work deliverance for thee, look it in the face, Christian, and see if it has not got the horns of the Evil One stamped on its brow? Does not the cloven foot peep out? Look at it; why, it is the devil’s own child. Why, bethink thee, this Evil One is making thee doubt thy own Father.
For my own part, I can truly say that none of the novelties of this present evil age have any sort of charm for me. I am still content to abide in the old way, myself always a poor, needy, helpless sinner, finding everything I need in Christ. Nobody would have thought of that way of the deliverance of a sinner from the pit of Hell through a ransom if God had not thought of it! Notice, next, that God has not only invented a way of deliverance, but he has found a ransom. So that it is a gift of Divine Love. Sinner, do not doubt your deliverance, for God has said it, "I have found a ransom."
He feels that if he ever rises from his despondency, he can never dare to take an atom of the honor of deliverance to himself, it must be of Free Grace only. He can do nothing and he knows it! Let us recount the righteous vengeance of Calvary, the terrors that God cast forth upon his Son when he cursed our sins by making Christ to be a curse for us, though he knew no sin. This is a subject upon which we should delight to dwell. The clock of mercy struck in Heaven the hour and moment of my deliverance, for the time had come! Thus had the eternal purpose of Jehovah decreed it!