PRISONERS

D. C. Brown

Matthew 27: 1, 2; Jonah 2: 6; Acts 12: 6; 16: 25; Revelation 1: 9, 10

These scriptures relate to prisoners. It has been true of the testimony throughout the ages that there

have been prisoners. Even now there are those who are literally prisoners because of their faith in Jesus. We are told to remember prisoners as bound with them. It would be upon our hearts that there are persons who have such faithfulness to the Lord. Through the grace of God that does not apply in this country now although it has done. We can think of prisoners—no doubt there were persons in prison in this city because of their faithfulness to Jesus. And there are other ways in which we can be under restraint and restriction. We can think of persons who in degree are imprisoned by circumstances of various kinds, even old age, weakness, ill-health, circumstances in their families, circumstances of employment. Indeed it is a characteristic that marks any given time that there are those who are constrained by circumstances.

I was thinking of these constraints and prisons, and firstly, that we should think of the Lord Jesus Himself, and should remember that this One, Jesus, was bound. In this occurrence here it says, “And having bound him”. Think of the Lord Jesus in the perfection of that life here; how wonderful it was, how wonderful each footstep was and how God rejoiced in it; think of God’s delight in it, and yet that is the One that men would choose to bind. Of course, we know too that what was binding Him in one sense was His committal to the will of God, like the ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. The power of His committal and His devotion to His God and Father bound Him; but men bound Him. How easily He could have set Himself free. They bound Samson with seven cords and he broke them as thread is broken (Judges 16: 9). How much more easily could the Lord Jesus have broken the bonds upon Him. With Samson it was a power from without, God’s power was working with Samson. The Lord Jesus, in His power, how could men place on Him any constraint? Think of that, He submitted to being bound by men. How often we have had our hearts affected when it was said to us that it was not the nails that bound Jesus to the cross. How true that is; men’s constraints could never hold Him. How could it be in the greatness and the glory that belonged to Him? Yet, when you think of it, the sober fact is that the nails did bind Him to the cross of wood. He had, of course, the power to save Himself, but men in their hatred would bind Him there, and He submitted Himself to that.

Think of the humiliation of Jesus where we read in Matthew—what humiliation it is for a man to be publicly led and bound. That is what they did to Jesus; they took Him and they took counsel against Him, they concluded that according to their law He should die, and they had to find a reason to persuade the governor; so they bound Him, they led Him. Through what humiliation they took Jesus, and how He would feel these things. Yet we think of how much stronger the bonds were by which He was bound by affection and devotion. Man’s greatest humiliation, how great a humiliation it was, He felt that. He bore His humiliation, yet how great His own devotion to the Father’s will.

What I wanted to speak of in Jonah was the wonderful fact that that same Person was in the grave, was in death and was held there. It says here, “The bars of the earth closed upon me for ever”. Can you think of the feelings of the Lord Jesus, to whom this passage applies prophetically, when He experienced what that meant, “The bars of the earth closed upon me for ever”? He was straitened. The waters were straitened. It has been said that the power of the torrents of the flood in the time of Noah were only a figure of the power of death against Jesus; only a figure of what power there was to imprison the Lord of glory. It has been spoken of by one we value as ‘a prison indeed’. Beloved, Jesus has been there. Jesus has been into death; He has been into the grave; He has felt the power of it.

Now you could say, of course, that He committed His spirit to the Father, and it is true. We have to leave the inscrutability of these things. God only understands them. Yet the fact remains that Jesus, the Lord Jesus, was held by death. The Father, for that period, was deprived of His Son. What did it mean to God? Have we thought of God’s experience during the three days and three nights when Jesus was in the grave? What it meant to the Father! How great and glorious the resurrection; how great the power that overcame all that there was in death, but Jesus was bound before He came forth. There was that period when the Lord was there, and in principle it would be right to say, as we read in Jonah, “The bars of the earth closed upon me for ever”, indicating the infinitude of the Lord being there in death. As entering death His confidence was in God as to resurrection, but in its absoluteness, it is as Jonah refers to it. We rejoice, rightly we rejoice, in the resurrection; the power of death is broken, the power that bound Jesus will not bind us, the power that was upon Him will not be upon us, how glorious that is. Just contemplate that He has been there, and not only that He has been there, but He has been there on our behalf. He has been there for you, He has been there for me; He lay there a prisoner in the grave because of you and because of me; because of your condition and my condition, because of the kind of man there is that is contrary to God. He took on all the liabilities, all the needs, all the responsibilities, and that meant that He had to be bound in the power of death, that He took that on too, beloved, and He did it for you and for me.

Well, we can speak of these other men as we go on. They had experience but not like the wonder of the way that Jesus has gone. These men bring out features of Christ, features that are according to God that were appropriate to the time of their imprisonment. Of men in testimony, who was greater than Peter and Paul and John under the Lord’s hand? Here we have Peter taken by Herod and imprisoned. Think of the humiliation of it, sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. I do not know in what way you might be constrained or imprisoned, but your circumstances may be such that

they constrain you from what you would desire to do, even what you might desire to do for the testimony and for Christ; it may be your weakness, it may be your circumstances, it may be problems of employment, all these things may affect you. You know what they are. Are the features seen in these three men in you?

Firstly, in Peter, there is simply his contentment before God, his trust, his restfulness whatever the circumstance might be. He was not seeking a way of escape, he was not agitated in his spirit. He was to die the next day; he was to be killed for the testimony of Jesus. What would your condition be if you were to die tomorrow for the testimony of Jesus? Would you be in agitation or would you be restful? Peter was restful. This came to my mind as we were thinking of piety “with contentment”. What does contentment mean? Would you be content if it was a prison you were in? It is all right to be content in the reasonable circumstances, the reasonable degree of affluence that marks most of us, but would you still be content if that was changed, if you were to enter into something more severe? Well, here is one who was content.

Going on to Paul, there is much that could be said about Paul and his prison experiences. We can think of him later, displaying the kind of character seen in Peter, as one satisfied in himself (Philippians 4: 11). He had been long years in prison then. He would far rather, we may say, have been preaching the gospel publicly in Rome. He would long to have a public testimony going on, but God had set him aside (partly governmentally because he had not followed the way God had directed), and yet what richness, what fulness flowed from all this, so that we can have the benefit of it from the prison epistles. Here in Acts was before his lengthy imprisonment. This period when he was in Philippi is often referred to; how precious it is! “At midnight Paul and Silas, in praying, were praising God with singing, and the prisoners listened to them”. So if you feel constrained, if you feel your

weakness, if you feel you cannot do as you would wish because of circumstances, because of whatever pressure there is upon you, are you praying? Are you praising God with singing? Is there a testimony of one who has a link with God, of praise even in the time of greatest pressure and sorrow? is that your circumstance? May we all be helped. Some of us do not have too many of these pressures. Perhaps I should be careful in saying these things, but I would commend it to myself as well as to the brethren, that it is necessary, whatever the circumstances or whatever restrictions, that there should be praise to God with singing.

Going on to John, a prisoner on Patmos, he can speak of himself as “fellow-partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and patience, in Jesus”, which, in a sense has been the testimony throughout these two thousand years. “Tribulation and kingdom and patience”; patience awaits the Lord’s coming; but tribulation works in the waiting period. Here John, not seeking a way of escape from the circumstance, says, “I became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”. It is wonderful what we enjoy on the Lord’s day among the saints; we enjoy the Lord’s supper and all that flows from it. How wonderful to participate in this! But here is a man who is alone, who cannot participate in the Lord’s supper, who cannot enjoy fellowship as far as we know; alone, isolated, imprisoned, and he says, “I became in the Spirit on the Lord’s day”.

What an escape that is; what a way of surpassing any circumstance. I cannot say very much about it but it was such a wonderful experience that John had. What it was to have the fulness of being in the Spirit on the Lord’s day; to be removed from the circumstance, to be removed from all that was around! He would not be thinking of the prison; he would not be thinking of his chain if he had one; he would not be thinking of the deprivation; he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.

The Spirit had control of him; the Spirit had all that was needed to move him, and he heard a voice, “and I heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet”. He was ready to hear the word that comes from God. If we are distracted by what there is around us and our difficulties and our circumstances, perhaps we will not hear the word of the Lord. The Lord, of course, is gracious; sometimes He will speak powerfully when we ignore His word—we can be thankful for that. How much better to be ready and waiting, in the Spirit, waiting to hear His word. How much we would have lost, this whole part of the Scripture as received in these circumstances, if John had been concerned only with the circumstances. Let us be helped to overcome these things, in the Spirit, and not be occupied with them, through the Spirit, and receive from the Lord, His own word, for His name’s sake.

Address at Dundee
31 August 1996