Sermon Illustration

The chief mission of the church is to save souls. Anything that harms men or women or children is the deadly foe of the church. This makes the liquor industry the worst foe on earth to the modern church. Its wrecks are everywhere. In Mount Vernon, New York, a man who had once been a brilliant lawyer, had a brilliant home, a lovely wife and daughter, and more than $100,000 worth of property, walked into a barroom and ordered a drink of whiskey. He swallowed the liquor with a smack of his lips; he called for another, and then another, and then said to the bartender: I have been in a treatment center trying to cure my desire for liquor, but it’s no use. You see, I have gone back to my old habits; tonight you will find my dead body on the nearby railroad tracks. I am going to end it all!” He took another drink, and walked straight to the railroad platform, and, flinging himself in front of an express train, was crushed to death. If the church of Jesus Christ will not fight such a foe, then...

How monotonously the tragic results of the drink-curse repeat themselves, over and over, in every day’s news stories. A young man of only twenty-one years of age attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Tennessee River. Paramedics arrived at the scene promptly, and pulled him out of the river, but by the time he entered the emergency room, he was in a comatose state and virtually brain-dead. He died only a week and a half later. What makes a young person with so much potential, want to take his own life? It turns out, his father had a long bout with alcoholism and substance abuse. He had been sober for nearly a decade, but his disease left deep emotional and psychological scars on his family, particularly his children. Almost all of his children have or have had alcohol problems. This particular son was no exception. He, too, had received help from a clinic, and had been sober for four years, but the pressure of his recovery process evidently was so demanding, he had lost all...

A minister was recovering from a dangerous illness, when one of his friends addressed him thus: “Sir, though God seems to be bringing you up from the gates of death, yet it will be a long time before you will sufficiently retrieve your strength, and regain vigor enough of mind to preach as usual.” The good man answered: “You are mistaken, my friend; for this six weeks’ illness has taught me more divinity than all my past studies and all my ten years’ ministry put together.”

There was a little boy who was so crippled that he could not open his Bible, which he had always had before him. A gentleman asked him why he was so fond of reading it. “I like to read the Bible,” said the boy, “because it tells me of Jesus Christ.” The gentleman asked, “Do you think you have believed on Jesus Christ?” “Yes I do,” said the boy. The gentleman then asked, “What makes you think so?” And the boy responded, “Because He enables me to suffer my afflictions patiently.”

When Gilpin was on his way to London, to be tried because of his religion, he broke his leg by a fall, which much delayed his journey. The person in whose custody he was, took occasion from this circumstance to remind him of an observation he used frequently to make, “that nothing happens to the people of God but what is intended for their good;” asking him “whether he thought his broken leg was so.” He answered meekly, “I make no question, but it is.” And so it proved; for before he was able to travel, Queen Mary died. Being thus providentially preserved from probable death, he returned to Houghton through crowds of people, who expressed the utmost joy, and blessedness for his deliverance.

A young man who had long been confined with a diseased limb, and was near dissolution, said to a friend, “What a precious treasure this affliction has been to me! It saved me from the folly and vanity of youth; it made me cleave to God as my only portion, and to eternal glory as my only hope; and I think it has now brought me very near my Father’s house.”

As incense, when it is put into the fire, gives greater aroma; or as spice, when it is pounded and beaten, smells sweeter; as the earth, when it is torn up with the plow, becomes more fertile; the seed in the ground, after frost and snow and winter storms, blossoms into new life, the closer the vine is pruned to the stalk, the greater grapes it yields; the grape, when it is most pressed and beaten, makes the sweetest wine; and linen, when it is washed and wrung and beaten, is made so fairer and whiter: even so the children of God receive great benefit by persecution; for by it God washes and scours and educates and nurtures them, so that through many tribulations they may enter into their rest.

Noticing that window-glass exposed near the seashore soon loses its polish by the sand constantly blown against it, an American has invented a new way of grinding and etching glass. Instead of the usual acid, he uses fine quartz sand, and this is driven with great force by a blast of air against the glass, and in fifteen or twenty seconds an embossed design can be produced. The parts meant to be deadened are exposed, while those intended to remain polished are covered. The storm of wind and sand work the lovely design. So God often makes afflictions work soul-beauties in us that else would never be seen.

That blind people have extra keenness of their other senses, especially that of hearing, has been universally observed: but it is now asserted and with much show of authority, that they actually have a sort of sixth sense. The echoes made in walking are to the blind equivalent to light and shadow; the compression of air that occurs as you approach a wall or closed door, tells them of danger. All these delicate and subtle hints, unnoticed by us, trained to perfection by long years of practice, enable them to be aware of obstacles, and to recognize landmarks in finding their way.

Dr. Thomas Goodwin, who was President of Magdalen College, lost half of his library, some five hundred pounds worth of his best books, in the terrible fire of London in 1666. His son remembers how his father lamented this, and said of it, that in taking away these precious possessions God had struck him in a very tender place. Later he said, “I loved my books too well, and God corrected this by affliction.” But of this sore trial came the volume, Patience and its Perfect Work, a work that has enabled thousands to say “God’s will be done.” Goodwin’s loss has been the Church’s gain and enriching through the centuries.