Sermon Illustration

It had been a night the like of which Joseph had never dreamed could occur. Away from their home, their friends, and all familiar surroundings, his wife had given birth to a son in a hillside cave ordinarily used to shelter animals in the little town of Bethlehem. As Joseph looked at Mary, asleep now, he cried. He should have been able to provide something better for her tonight. This precious woman who was “highly favored” and “blessed among womankind” had been entrusted to his care. But the best he had been able to do tonight was a cave, a tiny cleared area, and a bed of straw. “I should have been able to do more for her,” he whispered. Then he looked at the baby. So tiny. So helpless. So dependent on Mary and him. But how could it be! This was God’s own son, not his. This baby was the God of creation, of Abraham, of Moses. He was the God of Joseph and Mary. How could he be lying beside Mary now? Many fathers feel guilty that they are unable to do more for their families. Not e...

Praise may well be given to God, even in times of trouble. He gives all spiritual blessings, and they often come through trials. “Tribulation worketh patience” (Rom. 5:3). But though our conditions change He does not. His choice was made before the foundation of the world, and He is unchangeable. He meant us to be holy, and He uses the needful means to this high end. Christ believed: that is the basis of our pardon. Christ loved and served: that is sanctification. The Father chose; the Son redeemed; the Spirit makes holy. We may well sing a doxology. —John Hall

If you are abiding in Christ, you are reproducing yourself in thousands of instances when you are wholly unaware of it. Out of the personal relationship between the soul and Christ come the fruits of holy living. The vine does not bear fruit of itself; it bears its fruit through the branches. Our unconscious influence thus becomes far more fruitful than our conscious influence. In the last great day many will bewail that they have accomplished so little, and, looking at the scanty results, will say, “When saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink?” (Matt. 25:37). To find that unconsciously their lives had abounded in fruits well-pleasing in the Master’s sight. It is from such holy lives as this that is derived our Master’s highest joy. It is when the whole body of Christ becomes instinct with His Spirit that the world is made conscious of His divine headship over the church.

I know that there is such a thing as peace to seek and find. But here is my work to do, to worry over whether I am doing it right, to keep myself restless over how it will turn out. “My work,” I say; but if I can know that it is not my work but God’s, should I not cast away my restlessness, even while I worked on more faithfully and untiringly than ever? If I could pour through all the good plan over which I am laboring the certainty that all that is good in it is God’s and must succeed, how that certainty would drive the darkness out of it! And while I worked harder than ever, my work would have something of the calmness with which he labors always. To every poor sufferer, to every discouraged worker, to every man who cannot think much of himself, and yet is too brave to despair, this is the courage that the gospel gives. —Phillips Brooks

About the year 441 a.d., St. Patrick, who has since been called the Apostle of Ireland, went over there bent upon carrying out his long-cherished plan of converting the Irish to Christianity. On one occasion, when preaching before one of their petty kings, he spoke of the Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as being not three Gods, but Three Persons in One God. The king listened in amazement, and at length interrupted him, to ask in the words of one of old, ‘How can these things be?’ St. Patrick stooped and picked a leaf of the shamrock, with which the ground was there carpeted. Then, holding it up, he said, “Do you see this leaf, O king?” “Certainly I do,” replied the king. And now, touching each lobe of the trefoil in succession, Saint Patrick asked the King, “What is this?” “A leaf.” “And this?” “A leaf.” “And this?” “A leaf.” “As, then, O King, you see and confess that this leaf consists of three leaves, and yet nevertheless is ...

A gentleman’s watch was once out of order, and it was examined. It was found that in one of them the main-spring was injured; the glass which protected the dial-plate of the other was broken; while the machinery of the third had become damp and rusty, although the parts were all there. So the lack of holiness, in some cases, arises from the lack of a desire to love God; another man has not the glass of watchfulness in his conduct; another has become rusty with backsliding from God, and the sense of guilt so clogs the wheels of his machinery, that they must be well-brushed with rebuke and correction, and oiled afresh with the divine influence before they will ever go well again.

Rev. F. B. Meyer once related how, in olden days, amid the Roman Forum, there was a little brooklet, called the “Girl’s Fountain,” which sang merrily as it broke into the light and passed on its way toward the yellow Tiber. For centuries, however, it was lost sight of; not that it had ceased to exist, but that it had become covered and almost choked by tons of rubbish, accumulated thickly on the spot, as the proud city was subjected to repeated and ruthless violence at the hands of many spoilers. But when the debris was removed, that fountain, so long choked and hindered, freed from all restraints, again took up its song and recommenced its useful ministry. Is not that a type of the work of the Mighty One within us? He has not left us; but his gracious power, which would have been put forth in us and for us, has been rendered almost inoperative and dead. What shall now hinder us from ridding ourselves of all which has hindered Him from doing His mighty works, so that He may do that whi...

In the diamond fields of South Africa a diamond was found, celebrated lately under the title of “fly-stone”; placed under magnifying glass, you see enclosed in all its brilliancy a little fly, with body, wings, and eyes, in the most perfect state of preservation. How it came there no one knows, but no human skill can take it out. So in Holy Scripture the spirit of God is found in a place from which no power of man can remove it.

Learn a lesson from the eye of the miner, who all day long is working amid the flying coal dust. When he emerges in the light of day his face may be grimy enough; but his eyes are clear and lustrous, because the fountain of tears in the lachrymal gland is ever pouring its gentle tides over the eye, cleansing away each speck of dust as soon as it alights. Is not this the miracle of cleansing which our spirits need in such a world as this? And this is what our blessed Lord is prepared to do for us if only we will trust Him. —F. B. Meyer

In South America the wind from the marshes comes charged with the germs of intermittent fever, and often the most deadly cholera accompanies stillness in the atmosphere. A storm is the best purifier of the air, and the inhabitants long eagerly for it. From the marshy places of our lower nature the fever of lust and the unsanctified passion comes. The stillness of inactivity and do-nothingness is always favorable to the cholera of doubt and unbelief. The great preventive is the soul-stirring breath of the Holy Ghost. When He comes as a mighty, rushing wind, the whole atmosphere of the life is purified.

A man has lost his way in a dark and dreary mine. By the light of one candle, which he carries in his hand, he is groping for the road to sunshine and to home. That light is essential to his safety. The mine has many winding passages, in which he may be hopelessly bewildered. Here and there marks have been made on the rocks to point out the true path, but he cannot see them without that light. There are many deep pits into which, if unwary, he may suddenly fall, but he cannot avoid the danger without that. Should it go out that mine will be his tomb? How carefully he carries it! How anxiously he shields it from sudden gusts of air, from water dropping on it, from everything that might quench it! The case described is our own. We are like that lonely wanderer in the mine. Does he diligently keep alight the candle on which his life depends? Much more earnestly should we give heed to the warning, “Quench not the Spirit.” Sin makes our road both dark and dangerous. If God gave us no light,...

Ugly Christianity is not Christ’s Christianity. Some of us older people remember that it used to be a favorite phrase to describe unattractive saints, that they had “grace grafted on a crab stick.” There are a great many Christian people whom one would compare to any other plant rather than a lily. Thorns and thistles and briars are a good deal more like what some of them appear to the world. But we are bound, if we are Christian people, by our obligations to God, and by our obligations to men, to try and make Christianity look as beautiful in people’s eyes as we can…. Do you remember the words, “Whatsoever things are lovely; whatsoever things are of good report, … if there be any praise [from men] think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). It may be a modest kind of beauty, very humble, and not at all like the flaring reds and yellows of the gorgeous flowers that the world admires…. But unless you, as a Christian, are in your character arrayed in the “beauty of holiness,” and in the holiness...

To quote the great leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, “The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.”

Not long ago an enormous fire became kindled in Virginia’s famous Dismal Swamp. It was started by hunters and spread rapidly through the undergrowth and frost-bitten shrubbery, giving forth great clouds of thick smoke. So extensive was it that hundreds of wild animals, such as bear and fox and deer, as well as many smaller animals, were driven out into the farming settlements, where they were speedily killed by hunters. When the refining fire of the Holy Spirit goes through a heart that has been the abode of sinful passions and lusts, it drives them out from their hidden lairs to be destroyed.

“For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13). The absolute necessity of the indwelling Spirit of God is demonstrated by the forester. Whitewashing and spraying never reaches some parasites attacking the tree, so the forester bores into the very heart of the tree, and introduces chemical solutions which mingle with the sap and circulate through every branch and leaf. Thus is the old tree rendered absolutely safe from its foes. Is this not exactly the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers—to so indwell them as to render them safe from their foes? His ministry is very much like that of the antiseptic. To be effective the antiseptic must come in direct contact with the putrefaction in the flesh. Just so the Holy Spirit must be permitted direct access to the innermost secret sins of the believer if there is to be real spiritual blessing.

“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22, 23). Many people are working and working, as Rowland Hill said, like children on a rocking horse—it is a beautiful motion, but there is no progress. Those who are working for salvation are like men on a treadmill, going around and around, toiling and toiling, but nothing comes of it. There is no progress. There never can be until you have the motive power within, till the breath of life comes from God, which alone can give you power to work for others. A great many think that we need new measures, new churches, new organs, new choirs, and a host of other things new. That is not what the church of God needs. It is the old power that the apostles had that men need today. At a prayer meeting in Chicago years ago, D. L. ...

“Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3) A famous and beloved university professor, in referring to an experiment in electromagnetism which he performed every year for his class, said that he never repeated the experiment without the increasing sense of the mysterious powers about and above him. The experiment was this: On an oak table was placed a pile of horseshoe nails. In one corner of the room was a powerful dynamo. When the electric current was turned on and the poles of the battery were brought up under the table, although they did not touch the nails themselves, immediately there was constituted around them a field of magnetic force. So long as this field of force was maintained the loose horseshoe nails could be built up in various forms, such as a cube, a sphere, or an arch. So long as the current was on, the nails would stay in exactly the form placed, as if they had been soldered together. But the second the current was cut off, the ...

On the Saturday night when Chicago was destroyed, I was preaching in Farwell Hall. We had an after meeting, and while the bells were ringing the alarm of fire, we were singing that verse— Today the Savior calls; For refuge fly; The storm of vengeance falls, And death is nigh. Many of the young men present, who sung that hymn, were burned to death before morning—a thousand people lost their lives that night. It seemed to me that fire burnt out all my prejudices and dislikes, and I love the whole world. —D. L. Moody

A benevolent person gave Mr. Rowland Hill a hundred pounds to dispense to a poor minister, and thinking it was too much to send him at once, Mr. Hill forwarded five pounds in a letter, with simply these words within the envelope: “More to follow.” In a few days’ time, the good man received another letter by the post—and letters by the post were rarities in those days; this second messenger contained another five pounds, with the same motto: “And more to follow.” A day or two after came a third and a fourth, and still the same promise: “And more to follow.” Till the whole sum had been received the astonished minister was made familiar with the cheering words: “And more to follow.” Every blessing that comes from God is sent with the self-same message: “And more to follow.” “I forgive you your sins, but there’s more to follow.” “I justify you in the righteousness of Christ, but there’s more to follow.” “I adopt you into my family, but there’s more to follow.” “I educate you for Heaven, ...

The pearl-diver lives at the bottom of the ocean by means of the pure air conveyed to him from above. His life is entirely dependent on the life-giving Spirit. We are down here, like the diver, to gather pearls for our Master’s crown. The source of our life comes from above. —Henry Drummond