Sermon Illustration

Two sons of an officer of the Atlanta police force were convicted of burglary on their father’s evidence and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. The two boys were arrested by their father in the act of burglarizing a store, and he appeared in court as prosecutor. The father, in giving evidence, said: “I tried to raise my boys right, and it nearly killed me when I found them trying to rob the store, but I feel it my duty under my oath as an officer to arrest them and prosecute. I told them they were guilty and they must take their punishment.” “There is indeed a real man,” said the Judge when the father had finished speaking, “and an officer who has the highest possible regard for his oath. He deserves to rank with the old Roman judge who condemned his own son.” Our heavenly Father is not only compassionate, but just. Love must yield where disobedience calls for justice.

It was my sad lot to be in the Chicago fire. As the flames rolled down our streets, destroying everything in their onward march, I saw the great and the honorable, the learned and the wise, fleeing before the fire with the beggar and the thief and the harlot. All were alike. As the flames swept through the city, it was like the judgment day. The Mayor, nor the mighty men, nor the wise men could stop these flames. They were all on a level then, and many who were worth hundreds of thousands were left paupers that night. When the day of judgment comes there will be no difference. When the Deluge came there was no difference; Noah’s ark was worth more than all the world. The day before it was the world’s laughing-stock, and if it had been put up to auction you could not have gotten anybody to buy it except for firewood. But the Deluge came, and then it was worth more than all the world together. And when the day of judgment comes Christ will be worth more than all this world—more than ten ...

In most things we are reasonable enough to withhold judgment until we have examined them in their entirety. For instance, no man attempts to judge as to the vastness and grandeur of the ocean because he has seen a cup of its water; no man judges the beauty and strength of a building from a bit of the brick of which it is built, or of the purpose of the author from a word cut here and there from one of his books. When we look at our own lives, however, logic seems to weaken, and we draw the most unreasonable conclusions. We plunge into some dark cavern and lament, “Oh that all my labor and pains should have come to this! Oh that God should have turned a deaf ear to my pleadings!” If we would wait long enough, we would see that we have been gently forced into the only avenue through which the light we asked for can be reached. Israel stubbornly refusing to look beyond for the land to which the Lord their God would lead them, is not without a counterpart in our modern life

Determination is a necessary qualification for the soul-winner, but it isn’t the only one. A man, who had more determination than devotion, heard a preacher remark that the case of a certain man was hopeless. He made up his mind to show the faithless shepherd what he could do; so he worked day and night till he had induced the man to confess Christ. The convert was, however, soon disgusted with the inconsistent life of the man who had urged him to become a Christian and fell back into his old ways. The worker had silenced the preacher, but he had not saved a sinner. The four men who brought the paralytic to Christ were not simply determined to show the crowd that when they started out to do a thing, they were not to be hindered. The fact that Christ commended their faith shows that they thought more about carrying the man than about carrying their point.

A minister, while crossing the Bay of Biscay, became greatly alarmed as he beheld what he thought was an approaching hurricane. Tremblingly he addressed himself to one of the sailors: “Do you think she will be able to go through it?” “Through what?” inquired the sailor. “That awful hurricane that is coming down upon us.” The old sailor smiled and said: “That storm will never touch us. It has passed us already.” So, in regard to the believer, judgment as to the penalty of our sins is past. We were tried, condemned, and executed, in the person of our surety, Jesus Christ.

While standing at the wharf of a quiet harbor, looking at the shipping which lay at anchor, we heard a young lady remark to a friend: “That nicely painted ship I would choose for a trip across the sea.” He replied: “I would not, but I prefer the dark old vessel near it. For that handsome ship is unsafe; she has been newly painted—but her timbers are rotten.” Very suggestive, we thought, of practical truth. There are painted ships on all seas. Upon the waters of life they are gaily sailing to eternity with an inward decay which will yield to the storm which awaits every mortal mariner.

I went to West Point, and we had an evening meeting in the old chapel. As we passed under the rear gallery to go out, one of the students stopped and said: “I wish you would look at that shield on the wall there; that is the most striking thing at the academy to me.” I looked at the wall; all around there were marble shields set in the wall, and on each shield was the name of one of our Revolutionary generals. Then I looked up at the particular shield to which attention had been called, and that shield was blank. It was there in form just as the others, but with no name on it; simply the words Major General, and the date of the unnamed general’s birth. “What does it mean?” I asked. “Well,” said the cadet, “that is the shield for Benedict Arnold. There is a shield for every Revolutionary general, and one for him too, but the nation would not cut his name on it nor the date of his death. He denied his country; his country has denied him.”

There is an old tale in Scottish history, that a bridegroom was murdered by a friend on the festal day. The cup that his friend presented to him was mingled with poison; and when death was in the castle, the culprit took the fleetest horse from the stable and plunged into the forest. All night long the hooves of that horse struck fire as he went at galloping speed through the forest. The man wanted to get away from the scene of his crime, and would not let the fleet animal rest, but plunged the spurs deep into the horse’s flanks. All night on and on, and as the dawn was breaking he emerged, horse bespattered with foam, breathless from the forest—right before the castle. He had ridden hard, but he had ridden in a circle: he thought he was going away from his crime, and in the morning he came to it. Ah, you cannot get away from your sin unless God takes you away. You cannot by speed of foot get away from your sin, your sin will go to the grave with you, your sin will go to the great wh...

A Boston shoplifter was caught in a comical way. He had stolen a hat in a department store, and ran with it to the escalators; but instead of boarding the one going down, in his haste he took the ascending stairway. He tried hard to run down, but was confronted by the ascending passengers, while all the time the merciless steps were rising. Finally, in spite of his frantic efforts, he was borne back to the head of the stairs again, where he found a policeman awaiting him. This is just a picture of the difficult ways of sinners. They try to escape with their loot, but they find all the ways of providence running against them. Everything conspires to their discovery. “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Num. 32:23). The sinner is his own detective. If there is no policeman at hand, he will arrest himself. If the police-wagon is out of commission, he will run to the courtroom. Remorse is more stern than any judge, and a guilty conscience is more terrible than any prison. Be certain...

If we are to credit the annals of the Russian empire, there once existed a noble order of merit, which was greatly coveted by the princes and noblesse. It was, however, conferred only on the peculiar favorites of the Czar, or on the distinguished heroes of the kingdom. But another class shared in its honor in a very questionable form. Those nobles or favorites who either became a burden to the Czar or stood in his way received this decoration only to die. The pinpoint was tipped with poison—and when the order was being fastened on the breast by the imperial messenger the flesh of the person was “accidentally” pricked. Death ensued, as next morning the individual so highly honored with imperial favor was found dead in bed from apoplexy. Satan offered to confer a brilliant decoration upon Adam and Eve—“Ye shall be as gods” (Gen. 3:5). It was poisoned; the wages of sin is death.

In the palace at Versailles, as if by the irony of fate, is a famous statue of Napoleon in exile. His noble brow is lowered in thought, his mouth is compressed, his chin is resting upon his breast, and his grand eye gazes into space as if fixed on some distant scene. There is something inexpressibly sad in that strong, pale face. It is said that the sculptor represented Napoleon at St. Helena, just before his death. He is looking back upon the field of Waterloo, and thinking how its fatal issue was the result of three hours’ delay. Those three short hours seem ever to write on the walls of his memory—“The summer is ended, the harvest is passed!”

Two workmen were busy repairing the roof of a factory near the opening of a large chimney. All of a sudden their scaffolding shifted and they plunged fifteen feet through the black, sooty chimney to the level below. Both men scrambled to their feet unhurt. But, in the process of falling, one man’s face had become smeared with soot. The other man had thrown one arm over his face to protect it as he fell, so his face was clean. Now, before they returned to work, the man with the clean face went and washed, but the man with the black, sooty face went back to work directly without washing. You have probably already realized why these men made the mistake they did. They looked at each other. The man with the clean face looked at the soiled face of his friend and assumed that his was sooty, too. The man with the blackened face saw the clean face of his fellow worker and assumed that his face was also clean. Both men were wrong because they were looking at each other. They were judging them...

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could. He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone! Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he ...

Ruth went to her mailbox and there was only one letter. She picked it up and looked at it before opening, but then she looked at the envelope again. There was no stamp, no postmark, only her name and address. She read the letter: "Dear Ruth: "I'm going to be in your neighborhood Saturday afternoon and I'd like to stop by for a visit. "Love Always, "Jesus" Her hands were shaking as she placed the letter on the table. "Why would the Lord want to visit me? I'm nobody special. I don't have anything to offer." With that thought, Ruth remembered her empty kitchen cabinets. "Oh my goodness, I really don't have anything to offer. I'll have to run down to the store and buy something for dinner." She reached for her purse and counted out its contents. Five dollars and forty cents. "Well, I can get some bread and cold cuts, at least." She threw on her coat and hurried out the door. A loaf of French brea...

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...

There was a little boy visiting his grandparents on their farm. He was given a slingshot to play with out in the woods. He practiced in the woods, but he could never hit the target. Getting a little discouraged, he headed back for dinner. As he was walking back he saw Grandma's pet duck. Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck square in the head, and killed it. He was shocked and grieved. In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the wood pile, only to see his sister watching! Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing. After lunch the next day Grandma said, "Sally, let's wash the dishes." But Sally said, "Grandma, Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen." Then she whispered to him, "Remember the duck?" So Johnny did the dishes. Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing and Grandma said, "I'm sorry but I need Sally to help make supper." Sally just smiled and said, "Well th...

When there's a serious accident and cars are banged up and people's bodies are battered, cut, bleeding, and lying there in the street, there are two types of emergency vehicles that arrive on the scene. The first to arrive is usually the police, and their job is to develop a safety zone to control the traffic. Then they get out their pads and look at the positions of the cars. They measure the skid marks and start interviewing witnesses. Their job is to find out who violated the law. Who's to blame for this tragedy? Their chief concern is to determine what laws were violated and who is at fault for what happened. The second type of vehicle contains the paramedics. They could care less who is to blame. There are people bleeding in the street. Their job is to minister to those bleeding people, check the heart monitor, put bandages on them, look to see if there are broken bones, get them on the stretcher, and lift them into the ambulance. They're not thinking about whose...