Sermon Illustration

Cliff Barrows, song leader of the Billy Graham Crusade ministry, tells a story about his children when they were younger. They had done something he had forbidden them to do. They were told if they did the same thing again they would have to be disciplined. When he returned from work and found that they hadn't minded, his heart went out to them. "I just couldn't discipline them," he said. Any loving father can understand Cliff's dilemma. Most of us have been in the same position. He said, "Bobby and Bettie Ruth were very small. I called them into my room, took off my belt and then my shirt, with a bare back I knelt down at the bed. I made them both strap me with the belt ten times each. You should have heard the crying. From them, I mean. The crying was from them. They didn't want to do it. But I told them the penalty had to be paid and so through their sobs and tears they did what I told them." "I smile when I remember the incident," h...

Have you ever wondered whether a giant asteroid might hit our planet, like the one that may have wiped out the dinosaurs on earth? The planet Jupiter "is our first line of defense" says Allan Boss, an astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "It is something like 99.9 percent efficient at throwing dangerous space junk, asteroids, and meteorites back out to interstellar space." How does that happen? Jupiter is 318 times heavier than earth. Because of its mass, Jupiter creates a huge gravitational field that acts as a giant cosmic vacuum cleaner, drawing the "junk" that floats into the gravitational field toward it and away from other planets. Jupiter displayed its protective power six years ago when a monster comet broke into fragments and bombarded the planet Jupiter with more destructive power than all the atomic bombs on earth. Not all space particles get deflected by Jupiter, but living in Jupiter's gravitational field minim...

A boy, just about to enter his teens, sat contentedly in the coach of a train traveling through the dry belt in the West. It was a miserably hot day but always he showed a smiling countenance. Others complained of the heat and the dust. Some found fault with the equipment of the railroad. Most of the passengers seemed out of sorts. It surely was not very comfortable, and traveling was most tiresome and uninteresting. The boy, however, with a contentment which, it could be seen, had its source far beneath the surface, seemed to be enjoying the dried-out country, which to others had become most monotonous. An inquisitive motherly soul in the seat back of the boy was wondering what made the little fellow so cheerful. When she could curb her curiosity no longer, she leaned forward and asked, "Sonny, aren't you tired of this heat?" "Yes, ma'am, I am a little tired. But I don't mind it much." The little lady was about to ask why, when he finished his s...

Feeling footloose and frisky, a featherbrained fellow forced his father to fork over his farthings. Fast he flew to foreign fields and frittered his family's fortune, feasting fabulously with floozies and faithless friends. Flooded with flattery, he financed a full-fledged fling of "funny foam" and fast food. Fleeced by his fellows in folly, facing famine and feeling faintly fuzzy, he found himself a feed-flinger in a filthy foreign farmyard. Feeling frail and fairly famished, he fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from the fodder fragments. "Fooey," he figured, "my father's flunkies fare far fancier," the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, facing the facts. Finally, frustrated from failure and filled with foreboding (but following his feelings) he fled fairly fast from the filthy foreign farmyard. Far away, the father focused on the fretful familiar form in the field and flew to him and fondly flung his forearms around the fa...