Sermons Historical Sermons On Freedom From Sin Deliverance from Sin by Catherine Booth
Deliverance from Sin by Catherine Booth
Written by Catherine Booth | 
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Note by Jeri Woods: As you read this sermon the blue underlines are mine to call attention the importance of this text, and the brown italic text are my thoughts to clarify ideas to the modern reader.
Sermon by Catherine Booth-from her book “Popular Christianty” 1887 (along with her husband she founded the Salvation Army)
Its Mock Salvation
Deliverance from Sin
Let is now consider the character of the salvation proposed by God for our race. The salvation of God embraces deliverance, restoration, preservation, and glorification.
Of course the mere idea of salvation supposes some enemy, bondage, disease, or danger; there can be no salvation where the is nothing to be saved from. All the saviours raised by God for Israel during their national existence were actual deliverers of their people fro their enemies, otherwise they could not have been saviours. Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Nehemiah and many others, were real deliverers of their people: they delivered from the outward consequences of sin: but the great distinguishing feature of our Joshua is that He delivers His people form their spiritual enemies, and from the power of sin itself. Where there is no deliverance there can be no salvation. What a mockery and delusion it is for man to profess to be saved, while he is groaning under the power of his spiritual enemies. If you are under the dominion of sin, you are yet an utter stranger to the salvation of God. If you wrestle with sin and it has power over you-you are not saved and therefore are headed for Hell. What a horror!First: Salvation implies restoration.
Salvation to a man who is sick means restoration to health; to a man who is drowning, restoration to dry land; to a man dying, restoration to life; to a man on the verge of bankruptcy it means liquidation of debts, and restoration to solvency.
The common sense of mankind has prevented any theoretical deliverances or mock salvations for these temporal maladies and destructions, but our great adversary, who lieth in wait to deceive, has succeeded, as we have already seen, in deluding men and women, as to the reality of salvation when applied to the soul. But the salvation of God is no less real and practical for the soul than any of these temporal salvations are for the body or the circumstances.
What is man’s disease? Sin, badness, falseness, spiritual death. Salvation means restoration to goodness, to truth, to spiritual life, and to God. It means deliverance from inward evil, and renewal of the heart in righteousness and true holiness. It means the right adjustment of the faculties of the soul, bringing it into harmony with the laws of its own being, with the law of god, and with the rightful claims of its fellow beings. In short, it means being put right in all its relations for time and for eternity. This setting free from sin is a actual event that happens in one life not a mere intellectual theory or theology that professes it, hopes for it, and then in ones life actually lives in sin! How delusion the American Holy Ghost church has become-She has no purity, no holiness, no deliverance from self rule(sin) and therefore she has nothing to really offer the masses of sinful man.
Second: Salvation implies preservation.
In order for the well-being and happiness of a being who has been saved from any disaster or death, there must be a provision for his continuance in a state of health or safety. It would be a small mercy to save a man from drowning, if he were under the cruel necessity of throwing himself into the water again tomorrow; and equally small would be the pardoning the sinner, and restoring him to a sense of peace and purity, if no provision had been made for his continuance in such a state of salvation. The salvation of God contemplates all the weakness and necessities of fallen human nature; hence the Christ of God becomes “the author of eternal salvation to all that obey Him.” he not only restores, but He promises to dwell in His people as the power of the endless life, enabling them to purify their hearts by faith, to love God with all their soul, and strength, and to offer themselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable in His sight. He promises to empower them to resist the devil, to keep themselves unspotted from the world, and to fight manfully under the banner of His cross till death.
Do you ask for living witnesses of such a salvation? Thank God, there are thousands who can testify that they have passed from darkness to light, that they have been delivered out of the hands of all their enemies, and are enabled to serve God, walking before Him in righteousness and holiness day by day--thousands, not of genteel, refined, religiously trained people, such as most of you here today, but from amongst the most ignorant, neglected, besotted, and openly wicked of earth’s populations. They stand forward, an exceeding great army of witnesses to the reality of the salvation Of God, and to the power of His Christ to deliver, to restore, to purify, and to keep all those who really receive and obey.
Thrid: The salvation of God embraces also glorification.
How do we know? Well first. Reasoning from analogy, and seeing that the great change wrought in true saints is in the soul, and that it manifests itself in spiritual and heavenly instincts, dispositions, and aspirations, which do not find their full development or satisfaction in this life, we conclude that there is future and more congenial sphere for such development and satisfaction.
Secondly, we have the most satisfactory evidence which mortals can give, of future glorification in the fact that many are glorified before our very eyes in death. Amidst the humiliation, pains, and agonies of physical dissolution, we see the soul emerging from the wreck of its physical environment, triumphing over him who hath the power of death, and in regal majesty pluming its wings for its final flight, and in view of such victory, human reason, no less than Divine revelation, declares: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
Are there any here who want salvation? Come and try our Saviour Lord. He can cure your disease, extract the poison out of your heart, and make you new creatures! We testify that He has dine this for some on this platform; whereas we once were children of wrath, because the children of sin, even as others, now He has made us the children of God and of light, enabling us to seek those things that are above.
Consistently with our profession, we consecrate ourselves, our whole being, our children, influence, time, life, and if need be, death, to the pressing of this salvation on the attention and acceptance of our fellow-men. We make all things bow down before this unbending resolution, to seek and save the lost.