4/15/07
Gal 5:1
1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
(KJV)
"His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins."—Proverbs 5:22.

THE first sentence has reference to a net, in which birds or beasts are taken. The ungodly man first of all finds sin to be a bait, and, charmed by its apparent pleasantness he indulges in it, and then he becomes entangled in its meshes so that he cannot escape.
That which first attracted the sinner, afterwards detains him.
Evil habits are soon formed, the soul readily becomes accustomed to evil, and then, even if the man should have lingering thoughts of better things, and form frail resolutions to amend, his iniquities hold him captive like a bird in the fowler’s snare.
You have seen the foolish fly descend into the sweet which is spread to destroy him, he sips, and sips again, and by-and-by he plunges boldly in to feast himself greedily: when satisfied, he attempts to fly, but the sweet holds him by the feet and clogs his wings; he is a victim, and the more he struggles the more surely is he held.
Even so is it with the sins of ungodly men, they are at first a tempting bait, and afterwards a snare.
Having sinned, they become so bewitched with sin, that the scriptural statement is no exaggeration: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."
The first sentence of the text also may have reference to an arrest by an officer of law.
The transgressor’s own sins shall take him, shall seize him; they bear a warrant for arresting him, they shall judge him, they shall even execute him.
Sin, which at the first bringeth to man a specious pleasure, ere long turneth into bitterness, remorse, and fear.
Sin is a dragon, with eyes like stars, but it carrieth a deadly sting in its tail.
The cup of sin, with rainbow bubbles on its brim, is black with deep damnation in its dregs.
O that men would consider this, and turn from their delusions.
Leave a man to his own sins, and hell itself surrounds him; only suffer a sinner to do what he wills, and to give his lusts unbridled headway, and you have secured him boundless misery; only allow the seething caldron of his corruptions to boil at its own pleasure, and the man must inevitably become a vessel filled with sorrow.
Be assured that sin is the root of bitterness. Gild the pill as you may, iniquity is death.
Sweet is an unholy morsel in the mouth, but it will be wormwood in the bowels.
Let but man heartily believe this, and surely he will not so readily be led astray. "Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," and shall man be more foolish than the fowls of the air? will he wilfully pursue his own destruction? will he wrong his own soul?
Sin, then, becomes first a net to hold the sinner by the force of custom and habit, and afterwards, a sheriffs officer to arrest him, and to scourge him with its inevitable results.
The second sentence of our text speaks of the sinner being holden with cords, and a parable may be readily fashioned out of the expression.
The lifelong occupation of the ungodly man is to twist ropes of sin. All his sins are as so much twine and cord out of which ropes may be made.
His thoughts and his imaginations are so much raw material, and while he thinks of evil, while he contrives transgression, while he lusts after filthiness, while he follows after evil devices, while with head, and hand, and heart he pursues eagerly after mischief, he is still twisting evermore the cords of sin which are afterwards to bind him.
The binding meant is that of a culprit pinioned for execution.
Iniquity pinions a man, disables him from delivering himself from its power, enchains his soul, and inflicts a bondage on the spirit far worse than chaining of the body.
Sin cripples all desires after holiness, damps every aspiration after goodness, and thus, fettering the man hand and foot, delivers him over to the executioner, which executioner shall be the wrath of God, but also sin itself, in the natural consequences which in every case must flow from it.
Samson could burst asunder green withes and new ropes, but when at last his darling sin had bound him to his Delilah, that bond he could not snap, though it cost him his eyes.
Make a man’s will a prisoner, and he is a captive indeed.
Determined independence of spirit walks at freedom in a tyrant’s persecution, and defies a prisoners guard; but a mind enslaved by sin builds its own dungeon, forges its own fetters, and rivets on its chains.
It is slavery indeed when the iron enters into the soul.
Who would not scorn to make himself a slave to his baser passions? and yet the mass of men are such—the cords of their sins bind them.
Here, then, stands the riddle, that man is so set against God and his Christ that he never will accept eternal salvation until the Holy Spirit, by a supernatural work, overcomes his will and turns the current of his affections; and why is this?
The answer lies in the text, because his own iniquities have taken him, and he is holden with the cords of his sin.
For this reason he will not come unto Christ that he may have life; for this reason he cannot come, except the spirit draw him.
It is a terrible mystery that man should be so great a fool, so mad a creature as to be held by cords apparently so feeble as the cords of his own sins.
To be bound by reason is honorable; to be hold by compulsion, if you cannot resist it, is at least not discreditable; but to be held simply by sin, by sin and nothing else, is a bondage which is disgraceful to the human name.
It lowers man to the last degree, to think that be should want no fetter to hold him but the fetter of his own evil lusts and desires.
Let us just think of one or two cords, and you will see this.
One reason why men receive not Christ and are not saved, is because they are hampered by the sin of forgetting God.
Think of that for a minute. Men forget God altogether.
The commission of many a sin has been prevented by the presence of a child.
In the presence of a fellow creature, ordinarily a man will feel himself under some degree of restraint.
Yet that eye which never sleeps, the eye of the eternal God, exercises no restraint on the most of men.
I might also speak of sins against the Holy Ghost that men commit, in that they live and even die without reverential thoughts of him or care about him; but I shall speak of one sin, and that is the mystery that men should be held by the sin of neglecting their souls.
You meet with a person who neglects his body, you call him fool, if, knowing that there is a disease, he will not seek a remedy.
If, suffering, from some fatal malady, he never attempts to find a cure, you think the man is fit only for a lunatic asylum.
But a person who neglects his soul, be is but one of so numerous a class, that we overlook the madness.
Your body will soon die, it is but as it were the garment of yourself and will be worn out; but you yourself are better than your body as a man is better than the dress he wears.
Why spend you then all thoughts about this present life and give none to the life to come?
It has long been a mystery who was the man in the iron mask.
We believe that the mystery was solved some years ago, by the conjecture that he was the twin brother of Louis XIV., King of France, who, fearful lest he might have his throne disturbed by his twin brother, whose features were extremely like his own, encased his face in a mask of iron and shut him up in the Bastille for life.
Your body and your soul are twin brothers.
Your body, as though it were jealous of your soul, encases it as in an iron mask of spiritual ignorance, lest its true lineaments, its immortal lineage should be discovered, and shuts it up within the Bastille of sin, lest getting liberty and discovering its royalty, it should win the mastery over the baser nature.
But what a wretch was that Louis XIV., to do such a thing to his own brother! How brutal, how worse than the beasts that perish!
But, sir, what art thou if thou doest thus to thine own soul, merely that thy body may be satisfied, and thy earthly nature may have a present gratification?
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—Proverbs 3.
