A Sermon by Rev Donald MacLean
Psalms 68:18,19. Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captive captivity, Thou hast received gifts for men: yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
It is generally understood that this Psalm has in view the removal of the ark of the covenant to the hill of Zion in the days of David. But we know from the New Testament that this particular part of the Psalm also has a reference to the ascension of the divine Redeemer, when He had finished the work that the Father gave Him to do, when He took His disciples out to Bethany and blessed them and ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high: “Thou hast ascended on high”.
We have this brought before us clearly in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where Paul applies these words to the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The ark was the symbolic presence of God, but the Redeemer is the One in whom God is, and through whom God reveals Himself. The ark – just like the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night – was symbolic. They were all part of the symbolic teaching that was given to the Church of God in its infant days, before it came to maturity in the New Testament dispensation. Therefore we find these various symbols in the ceremonial law. They were shadows of the realities which were to be made known in due time, through the coming of the Saviour. It is from that point of view and that we wish to make some remarks: that the Messiah has ascended on high and that He is now doing what the Father said, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou at My right hand,” that He is beyond all the power of His enemies; He is beyond all pain, suffering and sorrow; He is anointed with the oil of joy above His fellows and is enjoying the pleasures at God’s right hand for ever.
Bound up with the ascension of the Saviour to heaven in His glorified humanity, we also have the great fact that he who ascended also descended. Therefore we find that when He led captive captivity, when He ascended on high, He did so because He was the one who descended. It was because He was the One who descended that He now leads captive captivity. And the expression here, “led captive captivity”, points particularly, we believe, to His overcoming all that was opposed to His people and to their salvation. The Psalmist is referring to God as the God of our salvation, making known His salvation through the Saviour, the One who is mighty. His descending was absolutely necessary that He might take a captivity captive. The salvation
1The first part of a sermon, probably preached in Glasgow.
of His people is their being set free with the liberty wherewith Christ sets sinners free, as He said, “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed”.
We shall consider: (1.) The captivity which Christ has taken captive. (2.) It was necessary for Him to descend, to come into a state of humiliation. (3.) This Person has also ascended.
1. The captivity which Christ has taken captive.
We take the captivity to be these particular powers which hold sinners in captivity, these particular powers from whom deliverance had to be wrought before any of these sinners could enjoy spiritual freedom. Before they could come to that liberty, they needed to be delivered from the captivity in which they were held. There could be no spiritual freedom as long as they were held by these powers that had taken them captive. First of all, there is the power of sin, that reigns unto death in the souls of sinners. The Word of God teaches us that we are born in sin and shapen in iniquity. That is to say, sin is on the throne of our souls; it reigns in the faculties of our souls. We may regard the will as the throne of the soul, because the power that reigns in the will affects all the other faculties of the soul. And by will we mean the exercise of the soul in making choices; there is a capacity in the human soul to make choices and, according to the reign of the will, the choices are made. Since we are born in sin and shapen in iniquity, the will chooses according to the nature of the soul, according to the sin that is in the soul.
You may have read about what is called the freedom of the will. Now the true view is that man is free to choose according to his disposition, according to his desire. Those whom we call Arminians regard the will as in some equilibrium, so that it can choose contrary to the prevailing disposition of the soul; this is called the power of contrary choice. But this is not the true freedom of the will. By nature, we are in captivity, as we read here, because it is in the nature of man to sin, to be rebellious against God, to choose evil and to refuse what is good, to love sin. Consequently, when we sin, we sin freely. The captivity referred to here is one in which we are by nature at ease, under the reign of sin – when we choose to sin against God. We do so because that is our disposition, and therefore we do it freely; we do it willingly. We cannot blame Satan for it. We cannot blame anyone for it. We must take the blame ourselves. It is essential that we understand that when we sin against God, as we do by nature, we sin freely. We do so because we wish to do so.
We may say, I wish I did not do that; but that is remorse. The fact of the matter is that we did what we did because we wished to do it. Every sin we commit against God is a sin we commit willingly. Under the preaching of the gospel, our conscience may trouble us, and we may regret what we have done. But when we committed these sins, we did so willingly. We did so because it was our prevailing desire.
I come now to illustrate this further by speaking of the gracious man, who has grace in his soul. Now he has a new disposition, but he still has sin in his soul. See what David says, “Iniquities, I must confess, prevail against me do”. There were times when the old disposition prevailed against the new nature; then sin prevailed, and David sinned. That was real sin, and David was guilty. The sin came from his heart, because the prevailing desire at that time was to sin. And he confessed that iniquities prevailed against him. And Paul says, “When I would do good, evil is present with me”; and “the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do”.
There you have the contest in the gracious soul between indwelling sin and indwelling grace. But – and this is very important for us to understand – when a gracious soul sins it is real sin. And it is sin because that was the prevailing desire at the time even in this gracious person’s soul. In the natural man, there is no contest because there is no grace. There may be flickerings of conscience, but sin reigns. It reigns unto death, and man must be delivered from that captivity, the reign of sin in his soul. He must be delivered from sin. When the gracious soul comes to a state of glory, there is no desire to sin. They are made perfect in holiness, and their choices and their wills are completely under the power of spiritual life and spiritual love. They have no indwelling sin there. But as long as God’s people are in this world, they groan because of this tyranny, in the degree in which it still remains in them. That was true of Paul: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”, the One who descended and ascended and shall finally deliver His people completely.
They are held in captivity to sin in their wills and, as I said, this has its effects in all the faculties of the soul. There is the darkness of ignorance in the understanding, hardness in the conscience, hatred to God in the affections; and the nature of sin is hatred against God. When the Saviour was in this world, He could ask the Jews, “Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” and none could do so. But He went about doing good. God was in Him. He was the Son of God, and therefore the heart of man, instead of receiving Christ, hated Him “without a cause”. That is to say, there was no cause in Him why they should hate Him, but because sin reigned in them and in their affections.
Whatever we may imagine, we need to be delivered from the power that holds us in captivity, a power that no man can break. It is not in the power of parents, even if they are godly, to break the reign of sin in their children. It is not in the power of ministers to break the reign of sin in those who listen to their preaching. This is a captivity altogether beyond the power or the wisdom of man to deliver from it.
We are also held captive in the sense that we are under the sentence of eternal death. It is something we cannot deliver ourselves from, a captivity we cannot get out from. We cannot possibly be released by any desires of our own, by any righteousness of our own, by any reformation in our character, by anything that we may think that we are able to do. We are altogether helpless. We must be convinced of this, but as long as we have some idea that we can deliver ourselves from the reign of sin, or from the sentence of death, by doing what pleases God, we will never understand our real need of salvation, in which the glory of God is declared to be exceeding great.
Further we are led captive by the devil at his will. Because of indwelling sin and of our disposition, we are much more prepared to listen to the voice of Satan than to the voice of God. That was bound up with the first sin, although there is certainly a great mystery about it. But it was when Eve turned her ear away from God’s word, to what Satan had to say, that doubt was first implanted. Then the voice of Satan was heard in the souls of men: Did God say so? Then he went on to say, “Ye shall not surely die”. Eve listened to that, and so she was led step by step until the first sin was committed and Adam too fell in with her in committing this sin.
This is true of us too: we are held in this captivity, even in connection with the gospel, “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not”. But he has this capacity. Of course, man is spiritually blind by nature. But what Paul is there speaking about is a Satanic activity blinding the minds of men, so that they cannot perceive the glory of Christ and of the gospel. That this is an exercise of his power blinding men – as he did in tempting the Saviour – by holding up the glory of the world and the appeal of the world and worldly activities, of worldly riches and of worldly companions and so on. So he blinds men where the light of the gospel is and the gospel is being preached, and this activity goes on. In that way, Satan holds men captive to his own will, because it is his will that every sinner will reject the gospel of Christ, that those who hear the gospel will reject it. The Saviour could say, “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me”. There was nothing in Christ that Satan could find to work upon because He was holy, harmless and undefiled. But there is plenty in you and in me for him to use and continue to hold us in this captivity.