For many years the University of Oklahoma had a project to teach a 15 year-old chimpanzee how to talk by combining sign language with simple recognition. Over the years the chimp learned 140 different signs.
The directors decided it was time for the chimp to learn how to do more than just imitate human words by the use of signs. They wanted her to express those words in speech. The chimpanzee had been papered, well fed, made physically comfortable and safe from harm. But when she was able to put words together to make a phrase, her first three words she could speak are three words that she used repeatedly: “Let me out!”
That chimpanzee had an innate desire to be free.
We too have an innate desire to be free because we were born in captivity and bondage.
Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
We were born in sin’s bondage; every child born into this world has no choice in the matter. Every one of us was born as a result of the act of another man and woman; we had no choice, we were born in bondage.
In sin’s bondage the shackles are tight around the ankles and you can hear the clanging of the chains. There is no bondage like sin’s bondage. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get out of sin’s bondage on your own.
A man was in prison in Sydney, Australia when he tried to escape. He climbed underneath the hood of a van that was delivering bread to the prison. When the van made its next stop, the prisoner sneaked out from under the hood – hot and dirty. He found himself in the yard of another prison just miles from the one he had escaped from.
Our own attempts at freedom often leave us in another prison just a few miles down the road of life. Our attempts at freedom leave us dejected, dirty and in another prison. We cannot save ourselves! It doesn’t matter how intelligent, how clever, or what amount of ingenuity you may have, you cannot free yourself from sin’s bondage.
John 8:36 If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
