Sermon Illustration

An old fable tells of a man cursed with the power of seeing other human beings, not in the beauty of flesh and blood, but as skeletons gaunt and grisly. Some saints seem to have taken upon themselves this curse. Do you feel that you are the only one who is right with the Lord—that everybody else is a spiritual skeleton because he is not of the same denominational stripe or has not the same scruples of conscience as you? Take him or her into your circle of believers as Paul did, as long as they are calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Many years ago in Germany, so the story goes, there lived a shoemaker who had a habit of speaking harshly of all his neighbors who didn’t think quite as he did about religion. The pastor of the parish in which he lived heard of this and felt he must give him a lesson. So he went to the shoemaker one morning and said, “Will you please take my measurements for a pair of boots?” “With pleasure, sir,” answered the shoemaker. “Please take off your boot.” The clergyman did so, and the shoemaker measured his foot from toe to heel and over the instep, and wrote it all down in his notebook. As he was writing up his measurements, the pastor said, “My son also needs a pair of boots.” “I’ll be glad to make them, too. When can I take his measurements?” “Oh, that’s not necessary,” said the pastor. “The lad is only twelve, but you can make my boots and his from the same last.” The shoemaker looked at him with a puzzled smile and said, “That would never do. They would never fit such a youn

The story is told of a man and an angel who were walking along together. The man was complaining about his neighbors. “I never saw such a wretched set of people,” he said, “as are in this village. They are mean, greedy, selfish, and careless of the needs of others. Worst of all, they are forever speaking evil of one another.” “Is it really so?” asked the angel. “It is, indeed,” said the man. “Why, only look at this fellow coming toward us! I know his face, though I cannot remember his name. See his little shark-like, cruel eyes, darting here and there like a ferret’s, and the lines of hardness about his mouth! The very droop of his shoulders is mean and cringing, and he slinks along instead of walking.” “It is very clever of you to see all this,” said the angel, “but there is one thing that you did not perceive—that is a mirror we are approaching.”

What does the criticism of others do to our inner self? Take the case of Col. George Washington Goethals. While contending with the manifold problems of geography and climate in the building of the Panama Canal, he had to endure the carping criticism of countless busybodies back home who freely predicted he would never complete his task. But he pressed steadily forward in his work and said nothing. “Aren’t you going to answer your critics?” a subordinate inquired. “In time,” Goethals replied. “How?” The great engineer smiled. “With the canal,” he said.

An officer on the battlefield aimed his cannon toward what he thought was the distant enemy. Just before he fired, the commander, looking through his field glasses, shouted, “Your aim seems perfect, but stop! They are not the enemy; they are our own people.” Did you ever think that when you aim criticism at God’s people so thoughtlessly, you are actually aiming your cannon at the Lord of your brethren?

A man came up to Moody once and criticized him for the way he went about winning souls. Moody listened courteously and then asked, “How would you do it?” The man, taken aback, mumbled that he didn’t do it. “Well,” said Moody, “I prefer the way I do it to the way you don’t do it.”