Resources > Sermon Illustrations Illustrations Vol. 17 Posted by Rev. Jeff Dixon, Senior Equipping Minister, Covenant Community Church on Jun 23, 2005, 10:29

Illustrations Vol. 17
Here are the latest illustrations and stories that are offered to inspire, enlighten, and encourage you in your journey of faith. These stories can be used for your own private devotional thoughts and moments or if can work them into a public speaking event...

Mr Eternity

Perhaps you have heard of the man known as Mr. Eternity who lived in

Australia a few years ago. Early in life he was an alcoholic derelict who

before reaching middle age was converted through a rescue mission and later

himself became a street-corner evangelist, Shortly after his conversion, he

heard a sermon entitled "Echoes of Eternity." He was so captivated by the

importance of the word "eternity" that he began using his free time to

spread the one-word message across Sidney. "Eternity went ringing through my

brain. Even though I could scarcely write my own name, I felt the divine

urge to write this word."

So, fifty times a day for over thirty years, he wrote "eternity" on the

sidewalks of Sidney, usually in the early morning, with white chalk and with

faultless script. When he passed away, the Sidney morning newspaper carried

a story of this unusual man who had chalked "eternity" on the city streets

over half a million times in that metropolis of significant population. The

thought of eternity does impress upon us the seriousness with which we must

regard our soul.

Echoes of Eternity, Dennis Kastens, CSS Publishing Co.

With or Without People?

A second grader once asked his teacher how much the earth weighed. The

teacher looked up the answer in an Encyclopedia. "Six thousand million,

million tons," she answered. The little boy thought for a minute and then

asked, "Is that with or without people?" Viewed from one perspective, it

might very well seem that people don't really matter very much. After all,

we are but microscopic inhabitants of a tiny planet orbiting a relatively

obscure star in a small galaxy among the billions and billions of stars and

galaxies that make up creation. Yet the God of creation has counted the very

hairs of our heads. Wow! What a magnificent picture of God.

King Duncan, The Love of a Father, www.Sermons.com

Chrysostom's Commitment

Chrysostom was the patriarch of Constantinople in the fourth century. One of

the stories surrounding this faithful witness concerns the occasion when the

Roman emperor had him arrested and charged with being a Christian. If

Chrysostom did not renounce Christ, then the emperor would have this

Christian leader banished from the kingdom. Chrysostom responded to the

threat by saying that the emperor could not do so, “because the whole world

is my Father’s kingdom.” “Then,” replied the emperor, “I will take away your

life.” To which Chrysostom said, “You cannot, for my life is hid with Christ

in God.” Next threatened with the loss of his treasure, this saint replied,

“You cannot, for my treasure is in heaven where my heart is.” The emperor

made one last effort: “Then I will drive you away from here and you shall

have no friend left.” But again Chrysostom responded, “You cannot, for I

have one Friend from whom you can never separate me. I defy you for you can

do me no harm.”

Living as we do in our Western, religiously-tolerant society, we may never

face a crucial moment such as Chrysostom 16 centuries ago. We do, however,

face similar temptations to renounce our faith, ignore our commitments, or

compromise our loyalties. We will be tempted to deny we ever heard of the

one called Jesus the Christ. We will be enticed to deny his power over our

lives with phrases like: “Come on, everyone else is!” or “It will be fun,

and no one will ever know.” We are daily forced to choose between the easy

way, the quick fix and the promise of glamour and the way of Christ. Those

who choose to acknowledge Christ must do so not just with lips but also with

hearts and minds.

Larry M. Goodpaster, Like a Breath of Fresh Air, CSS Publishing.

Living with the Pain

Suffering and pain are integral to life's experience but they need not

humiliate, defeat, and destroy us! A Detroit News article some years ago

carried the story of Kirk Gibson during his glory days with the Tigers. Few

really knew the price of pain and agony paid by Gibson for that glory.

According to the article, Kirk Gibson is a baseball player who knows how to

live with pain. In 1980, he tore the cartilage in his wrist. Two years

later, he had a sore left knee, a strained left calf muscle, and a severe

left wrist sprain. In 1983, he was out for knee surgery, and in 1985 he

required 17 stitches after getting hit in the mouth with a wild pitch. In

addition, he bruised a hamstring muscle, injured his right heel, and

suffered a sore left ankle. His worst injury involved severe ligament damage

to his ankle in 1986, a year predicted to be his best. When asked about

pain, Gibson was quoted as saying, "There are pluses and minuses in

everything we do in life. But the pluses for my career, myself, and my

family make it worth it. It's the path I chose."

Carlyle Fielding Stewart, III, Joy Songs, Trumpet Blasts, and Hallelujah

Shouts, CSS Publishing Company

The Importance of Rooftops in Jesus' Day

Rooftops were places of great activity in Bible times. The high, open, flat

surfaces were perfect for winnowing chaff from grain, drying fruit, storing

grain, nuts, and fruit, and sun-bleaching laundry.

Rooftops were also household gathering places because so much work was done

there, and they were sleeping places on the hot nights of summer.

But rooftops, because of their height, their openness, and frequent

assemblies of people, rooftops were great places from which to shout the news.

Renouncing Everything

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army during World War II. He

was decorated for bravery and rose to the rank of captain. In 1945, while

serving on the German front, he was arrested for criticizing Stalin in

letters to a friend and was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. After

completing his prison sentence, Solzhenitsyn was exiled to Kazakhstan, but

after Stalin's death his position improved, and his citizenship was restored

in 1956. His first novels described how grim life could be in the labor-camp

system. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was permitted publication in

1962 as a result of the personal intervention of Nikita Khrushchev. In

subsequent years, however, he was considered to be a dangerous and hostile

critic of the Soviet system. He was again arrested and imprisoned. He was

accused of treason, stripped of his citizenship, and forcibly deported to

the West. His deportation in 1974 allowed him to personally accept the Nobel

Prize for Literature, which he had been awarded four years earlier.

In his book The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn documents the operation of

the oppressive Soviet totalitarian system from 1918 to 1956 by using

personal interviews and reminiscences from his time in the camps. He tells

how prisoners were able to withstand abuse and interrogation even when they

had done nothing wrong. This is a small section from the book.

How can you stand your ground when you are weak and sensitive to pain, when

people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared? What do you need

to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?

From the moment you go in prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind

you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: "My life is over, a

little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall

never return to freedom. I am condemned to die - now or a little later. But

later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I

no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and

for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me.

Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me."

Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble.

Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.

Steven P. Loy

Not Peace, But a Sword

A young man from India was brought up in a Hindu household. A very strict

one, in fact. Due to a set of circumstances, this man came in contact with

Christians. And he was of course repelled by these people. But gradually he

realized that what they said was true. In these people, he saw Jesus

revealed, and he came to see that he was a sinner who needed a Savior, and

that Jesus had died on the cross to save him, and that he must give his life

to Jesus. Like millions and billions before him, he fell down helpless

before the cross, and repented on his sin.

When he told his parents he was to be baptized as a Christian, they were

appalled, horrified, and told him in no uncertain terms that if he went

ahead and became a Christian, he would never see them again. On the day of

his baptism, his parents, brothers and sisters, and all his extended family

held a funeral for him. And, up until the day I spoke to him, he also had

never again seen his family.

When I asked the man would he do it all again, he said, of course he would.

He would hate to go through the pain again. Yes, he missed his family. But

go back? Never! Any cost, any pain was worth it, just to be by Jesus' side.

In his joys, in his sorrows, in his laughing and in his crying, Jesus was

always there. To know Jesus - to follow Jesus - to sit at His feet, to take

up his cross and walk with Him - to climb the mountains with Him - to walk

the valleys with Him - this was his life. There was no other. He said, with

a twinkle in his eye, and also with a tear, that he prayed daily for all his

family to come to know Jesus too.

Ken Shillito, "The Cost"

The Work of the Righteous

In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman recounts a story of an

American soldier in Vietnam. His platoon was hunkered down in the rice

paddies locked into the heat of a firefight with the Vietcong.

The rice fields in Vietnam are often separated by an earthen beam, and on

this day, a line of six Buddhist monks started walking along the elevated

beam separating the field where the American soldiers lay hugging the ground

and the field where the Vietcong were also crouched in battle.

The monks walked directly toward the line of fire, calmly and steadily. They

did not look to the left or to the right, they just kept walking.

The soldier reported, "It was really strange because nobody shot at 'em. And

after they walked over the beam, suddenly all the fight was out of me. It

just didn't feel like I wanted to do this anymore, at least not that day. It

must have been that way for everybody, because everybody quit. We just

stopped fighting."

Of course, I cannot say what any of us are called to do right now. I can

only say that anyone who chooses to walk with God may well be completely out

of step with the expectations of the office, the neighborhood or the family.

Sometimes, it seems, God's people are called to walk right through the field

of fire, faithfully, sacrificially, loyally, doing what we have been called

to do.

Dr. Roger Ray, When God Won't Be Nice

Do Not Call It Sacrifice

A couple, visiting in Korea, saw a father and his son working in a rice

paddy. The old man guided the heavy plow as the boy pulled it.

"I guess they must be very poor," the man said to the missionary who was the

couple’s guide and interpreter.

"Yes," replied the missionary. "That’s the family of Chi Nevi. When the

church was built, they were eager to give something to it, but they had no money. So they sold their ox and gave the money to the church. This spring

they are pulling the plow themselves."

After a long silence, the woman said, "That was a real sacrifice."

The missionary responded, "They do not call it a sacrifice. They are just

thankful they had an ox to sell."

Bishop Ray W. Chamberlain Jr., "Season of Sacrifice"