So I make no apology for taking the words before us as having their only real accomplishment in the office and working of Jesus Christ.  He is ‘the Breaker which is come up before us.’  He it is that has broken out the path on which we may travel, and in whom, in a manner which the Prophet dreamed not of, ‘the Lord is at the head’ of us, and our King goes before us.  So that my object is simply to take that great name, the Breaker, and to see the manifold ways in which in Scripture it is applied to the various work of Jesus Christ in our redemption.

I. I follow entirely the lead of corresponding passages in other portions of Scripture, and to begin with, I ask you to think of that great work of our Divine Redeemer by which He has broken for the captives the prison-house of their bondage.

The image that is here before us is either that of some foreign land in which the scattered exiles were bound in iron captivity, or more probably some dark and gloomy prison, with high walls, massive gates, and barred windows, wherein they were held; and to them sitting hopeless in the shadow of death, and bound in affliction and iron, there comes one mysterious figure whom the Prophet could not describe more particularly, and at His coming the gates flew apart, and the chains dropped from their hands; and the captives had heart put into them, and gathering themselves together into a triumphant band, they went out with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; freemen, and on the march to the home of their fathers.  ’The Breaker is gone up before them; they have broken, and passed through the gate, and are gone out by it.’

And is not that our condition?  Many of us know not the bondage in which we are held.  We are held in it all the more really and sadly because we conceit ourselves to be free.  Those poor, light-hearted people in the dreadful days of the French Revolution, used to keep up some ghastly mockery of society and cheerfulness in their prisons; and festooned the bars with flowers, and made believe to be carrying on their life freely as they used to do; but for all that, day after day the tumbrils came to the gates, and morning after morning the jailer stood at the door of the dungeons with the fatal list in his hand, and one after another of the triflers was dragged away to death.  And so men and women are living a life which they fancy is free, and all the while they are in bondage, held in a prison-house.  You, my brother! are chained by guilt; you are chained by sin, you are chained by the habit of evil with a strength of which you never know till you try to shake it off.