Sermon Illustrations

Many doctors have shown the faith they had in their discoveries by first trying them on themselves. Jonas Salk, whose polio vaccine virtually wiped out that disease, often tested serums on himself. The German surgeon Forssman, who developed the procedure of heart catheterization, did it first on himself. Who would go to a...

Dave Barry said that the solution to the health care crisis was this: "Medical science should stop coming out with new disorders. We already have plenty of disorders, but every time you open a newspaper you see an article about how medical science has discovered a new disease." Of course, we recognize the difference between...

The family was on vacation when they came upon a playground. The little girl wanted to get in but the gate was locked. Her father explained that she couldn't play there because of the locked gate. "But Daddy," she said, "you've got lots of keys." She hadn't learned yet that one must have the right key in order to open the...

In England, when they caution you about a potentially dangerous step, the sign reads: Mind the Step. If it's a low overhead that demands caution, the sign reads: Mind Your Head. They use the word mind in the sense of paying attention. We need to use the term mind in the sense of...

We all know the song Loch Lomond and many have seen that lovely lake in Scotland. The songs says, "Me and my true love will never part again, on the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond." It's not true, of course. Even in the moment a couple is joined in marriage, we say in our wedding ceremony, "till death do us part." We...

There is a place in India where their legends agree with the Bible that mankind was made from dust. But they think that the upper class (or caste) was made from the fertile soil and the lower class was made from ordinary clay. Of course, if you are going to create pottery, you want ordinary clay, not rich loam. The Bible, unlike...

In the Old Testament we often find the Israelites "murmuring." What a wonderful expression. In the church we often find people murmuring, too. The only thing some people are willing to give is advice. In 1884 in Princess Ida, W. S. Gilbert wrote a verse that must surely be the feeling of some Christians: Oh don't the days seem...

Jews believed that the first thing the Messiah would do was host a Messianic banquet. In fact, the last thing Jesus did was to host a banquet -- the Lord's Supper. The Supper doesn't seem like a banquet. There is only a crumb of bread. There is only a sip of wine. They are in our bodies for only a short time. But the memory of...

Driving through Austria, a tourist saw a policeman in the village ahead. He slowed down. Then He saw it was not a policeman but a life-size picture of a policeman. Apparently they couldn't afford an actual policeman, so they just got a picture of one. Of course, it didn't slow down the locals, but it certainly slowed down the...

A preacher I know has a daughter who keeps a daily notebook. On one page she had drawn a picture of her father and written carefully his name and address. When asked why, she explained. She had been watching a movie, Amnesia. She said, "If I ever forget who I am, I want everybody to know who I belong to." We might like...