King Charles stood as a prisoner at a barred window in top of Carisbrooke Castle attempting to escape. His followers had secured the means and at the bottom of the wall they waited to enable him to flee the country. On the coast ships were ready to take him to another part of world, everything necessary had been arranged for his escape. But the one important and most necessary thing was to get through that barred window. That he could not do. So it is with the poor helpless sinner, incarcerated in the bondage of sin. Everything made ready outside his prison will avail him nothing; a power greater than his must break the bars and loose the shackles if he is to escape. Now that, my friend, is the power that God provides in the Gospel of His Son Jesus Christ. Remember the words of the Psalmist, “I have laid help on one that is mighty.” The spiritually poor sinner has no merits of his own. The Lord Jesus Christ said, “They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Christ came to bring healing to those who are spiritually sick; you say that you are perfectly well, so you must go your own way, and Christ will go in another direction, towards needy sinners. The poor sinner is also without strength. He is in a state of spiritual poverty, absolutely so! He cannot pray and he can not even sense his poverty. Reading the Bible, he wishes he could read it with greater profit, he may weep over sin and feel his sin in his very tears and want to weep in penitence. They are such poor sinners that they can do absolutely nothing without Christ, and so poor that in them that is in their flesh, there dwells no good thing. They did think once that there might be something good in them, but they have searched their nature through most painfully and they have discovered that grace must do everything for them. Desperately poor sinners have this low opinion of themselves because the grace of God has taught them to think rightly and truthfully about themselves in relation to God. They have not a good word to say abut themselves, rather, do they put their finger on their lips and blush at the remembrance of what they feel themselves to be. If they must speak of themselves at all, they say, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” “All my righteousness’s are as filthy rags!” My dear friend it is the poor and needy, and he who has no helper which finds relief from the awful state of sin, “For He shall deliver the NEEDY when he crieth; the poor also, and him that has no helper” (Ps.72:12). It was said, “We have no power from God unless we live in the persuasion that we have none of our own.” You that do not know the worth of a mighty Savior I do pray that He will make you sensible of your absolute need of Him.
“A sinner is a sacred thing; The Holy Ghost hath made him so.”
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