Sermon Illustrations for the Fifth Sunday after Easter (2015)
Illustration
Object:
Acts 8:26-40
Have you ever felt a mysterious urge to go someplace and wondered why? In my country church in Canada I drove long distances from farm to farm. Once I was leaving the nearby town (some distance from my home in the country) when I had an urge to turn around and go back to the hospital where I had some members. I don’t know why I did it. I felt I could have made my hospital calls later that week, but when I entered a room, the family was all gathered around a lady who was dying. “We were praying that you would come and visit Anna, as she will not last out the day. How did you know?”
Philip may have had other plans, but the Lord told him to go down the desert road. He did not tell him what it was for. Almost by accident, he ran into an Ethiopian official who needed some scriptural advice. The Lord does not always tell us why. We find out when we get there.
My wife and I did not know why we felt called to Nepal. There was no specific assignment given us. They just said, “Come and find out.” We came and found out. Only then did we realize that the Lord was using us. We have never regretted it!
I was called to the hospital once by a nurse who said there was a man who was dying and needed a pastor to talk to. She pulled my name out of the directory by pure chance. When I came, I found him very depressed. “Pastor, is there anything after this life?” he asked. “I have not been a churchgoer and was in the military for most of my life. I have done things that would knock your socks off. What is there for me?” My mind was full of all kinds of verses, but one jumped into my mind like a gift from the Lord. I told him about the thief on the cross who was dying but who turned to the Lord at his last minute. The man looked at the ceiling and said in a puzzled voice, “Then I guess there may be some hope for me.” We had a prayer and I left, but after that he started recovering and served the Lord as he could for another year before he finally died as a happy man.
Another time I was resting after church when I got a call from the jail. A woman wanted to see me right away. When I went there, she told me a fantastic story involving herself, her husband, and her brother. It was the start of my prison ministry. She said she just put her finger on a name in the phone book to call me.
Be prepared for the Lord’s surprises!
Bob O.
Acts 8:26-40
I was a young boy when I was listening to the pastor of my church preach about Jesus and how Christ would forgive the sins of anyone who asked him. On that Sunday morning almost 60 years ago, I accepted Christ into my heart. I believed he would forgive me of the sins I had committed, and I confessed to him my sins and my desperate need of his love. When I did that, he came into my life and transformed it by his holy love and power. Not long after that Sunday morning I was baptized, testifying to the world that I had died together with Christ and received the light from Christ. Saint Ambrose wrote that the new person in Christ “received the breath of life and resurrection” through baptism.
Paul Hovey said that for the Church of India part of the act of baptism is for the candidate to place his own hand on his head and say, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” In other words, my words and my life must share Jesus with others ? and those baptismal candidates do not want to fail those who do not know their Jesus. This is truly the job of each Christian!
Derl K.
1 John 4:7-21
Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who kept returning to the South to lead hundreds of others to the freedom she so earnestly cherished, taught a song to guide people on the road to freedom:
The Drinking Gourd of this spiritual was another term for the Big Dipper. Two stars at the end of the bowl of the drinking gourd point to the North Star, and north was the direction for freedom.
We take that North Star for granted, but because the earth wobbles as it rotates along a circle that takes 26,000 years to complete, there are periods in human history when there is no North Star, including 2,000 years ago when John wrote this letter. For John, and for us, the true guiding star is Jesus Christ. In this passage John tells the people that the true guide to living is loving God, and loving each other like God.
Frank R.
1 John 4:7-21
Love makes the world go round. Famed American social ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr nicely explained why we love: “The law of love is the final law for man in his condition of finiteness and freedom, because man in freedom is unable to make himself in his finiteness his own end. The self is too great to be contained within itself in its smallness” (Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life, p. 195).
Love is what makes us more than ourselves and our narrow experiences. But this love is not something any of us is good enough to give. When we love someone else instead of ourselves, it is a miracle, a work of the Spirit in us! (Good marriages and true friendships are miraculous.) It just happens from hanging around God, John Calvin says: “The love ought to reign in us, since God unites himself to us” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XXII/2, p. 244). We become loving, love reigns in us, because God’s love makes it happen. We just go along for the ride. As Augustine once wrote: “Be the beast he [our Lord] rides. It is good for you that he rides and leads” (Love One Another, p. 68). The love God gives makes us beautiful, Augustine adds: “Through iniquity our souls, my friends, are loathsome.... The One who is always beautiful loved us first.... But it wasn’t to leave us loathsome that he loved us, but to change us and to make the ugly beautiful.... As love grows in you so does beauty, because love is beauty of the soul” (Love One Another, p. 96).
Mark E.
John 15:1-8
Pastor Roger Storms, of First Christian Church in Chandler, Arizona, tells about a Sunday morning when a car had broken down in the alley behind his church. The driver jacked the car up and proceeded to crawl underneath to find and repair the problem. However, he unexpectedly hit the carjack and the car fell on him. He screamed for help, and many of the congregation rushed out to help. Some of the men strained to lift the car off of him while someone else called 911 to get the emergency vehicles rolling. Some of the people in the church were nurses; they came out quickly, and as the man had the car lifted off him they began checking on him before the medics arrived. He was bruised, scratched, and shaken up, but otherwise okay.
Pastor Storms made the observation that when the man was in need, people did all they could to help by risking themselves. Whatever was necessary to save the man, they were ready to try. He then pointedly says: “How we need this same attitude when it comes to rescuing those in greatest peril... the loss of life eternally.”
Derl K.
John 15:1-8
We don’t stress and strain to produce fruit. We have to learn to relax and allow God’s Spirit to flow through us like the sap of a tree to produce that fruit. We don’t want to be pruned and thrown in the fire! We want to be pruned from useless endeavors so that we will bear more fruit. Jesus is our source of strength. We can accomplish nothing without him!
Jesus gives himself to us. We don’t have to strain and struggle, but we do need to allow him to clean us and prune us. What do we have to prune? Love of money, love of glory and power, love of sex, love of Sunday football. You can fill in the blanks. What keeps you from giving more to your church? New clothes? A new car? An expensive vacation? Not that we can’t have these things. They are not evil. They only become sinful when they replace God as the center of our lives.
A pastor friend was very blunt with some of his people. He was talking with a member who said he might have to reduce his giving for a while because he needed a new car for his business. My friend asked why he needed that car. He answered, “Well, I have to keep my business growing, don’t I?” Then my friend asked, “Why do you need your business to grow?” He asked the man a few more related questions, like “Why do you need your business at all?” The man replied: “Well, how else can I live?” Then my friend nailed it to the ground: “Why do you need to live?” Finally he made his point: “What is the point of living if you aren’t serving your Lord?” Serving God is our bottom line. Nothing else is as important if we look forward to an eternity with him and we don’t want to be pruned and thrown in the fire!
Another thought is that we don’t produce fruit by squeezing hard to make a branch produce. No! We have to relax and let the sap flow through us to produce that fruit. Yes, the branch has to be available for the fruit, but without God’s Spirit nothing will be generated.
In a way it can be comforting to know that our Lord provides us with all we need to serve him. We need to spend more time in prayer to receive his gifts. He gives us that great promise that he will give us whatever we need to serve him. All we have to do is ask.
Bob O.
Have you ever felt a mysterious urge to go someplace and wondered why? In my country church in Canada I drove long distances from farm to farm. Once I was leaving the nearby town (some distance from my home in the country) when I had an urge to turn around and go back to the hospital where I had some members. I don’t know why I did it. I felt I could have made my hospital calls later that week, but when I entered a room, the family was all gathered around a lady who was dying. “We were praying that you would come and visit Anna, as she will not last out the day. How did you know?”
Philip may have had other plans, but the Lord told him to go down the desert road. He did not tell him what it was for. Almost by accident, he ran into an Ethiopian official who needed some scriptural advice. The Lord does not always tell us why. We find out when we get there.
My wife and I did not know why we felt called to Nepal. There was no specific assignment given us. They just said, “Come and find out.” We came and found out. Only then did we realize that the Lord was using us. We have never regretted it!
I was called to the hospital once by a nurse who said there was a man who was dying and needed a pastor to talk to. She pulled my name out of the directory by pure chance. When I came, I found him very depressed. “Pastor, is there anything after this life?” he asked. “I have not been a churchgoer and was in the military for most of my life. I have done things that would knock your socks off. What is there for me?” My mind was full of all kinds of verses, but one jumped into my mind like a gift from the Lord. I told him about the thief on the cross who was dying but who turned to the Lord at his last minute. The man looked at the ceiling and said in a puzzled voice, “Then I guess there may be some hope for me.” We had a prayer and I left, but after that he started recovering and served the Lord as he could for another year before he finally died as a happy man.
Another time I was resting after church when I got a call from the jail. A woman wanted to see me right away. When I went there, she told me a fantastic story involving herself, her husband, and her brother. It was the start of my prison ministry. She said she just put her finger on a name in the phone book to call me.
Be prepared for the Lord’s surprises!
Bob O.
Acts 8:26-40
I was a young boy when I was listening to the pastor of my church preach about Jesus and how Christ would forgive the sins of anyone who asked him. On that Sunday morning almost 60 years ago, I accepted Christ into my heart. I believed he would forgive me of the sins I had committed, and I confessed to him my sins and my desperate need of his love. When I did that, he came into my life and transformed it by his holy love and power. Not long after that Sunday morning I was baptized, testifying to the world that I had died together with Christ and received the light from Christ. Saint Ambrose wrote that the new person in Christ “received the breath of life and resurrection” through baptism.
Paul Hovey said that for the Church of India part of the act of baptism is for the candidate to place his own hand on his head and say, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel.” In other words, my words and my life must share Jesus with others ? and those baptismal candidates do not want to fail those who do not know their Jesus. This is truly the job of each Christian!
Derl K.
1 John 4:7-21
Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who kept returning to the South to lead hundreds of others to the freedom she so earnestly cherished, taught a song to guide people on the road to freedom:
When the Sun comes back and the first quail calls,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.
The Drinking Gourd of this spiritual was another term for the Big Dipper. Two stars at the end of the bowl of the drinking gourd point to the North Star, and north was the direction for freedom.
We take that North Star for granted, but because the earth wobbles as it rotates along a circle that takes 26,000 years to complete, there are periods in human history when there is no North Star, including 2,000 years ago when John wrote this letter. For John, and for us, the true guiding star is Jesus Christ. In this passage John tells the people that the true guide to living is loving God, and loving each other like God.
Frank R.
1 John 4:7-21
Love makes the world go round. Famed American social ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr nicely explained why we love: “The law of love is the final law for man in his condition of finiteness and freedom, because man in freedom is unable to make himself in his finiteness his own end. The self is too great to be contained within itself in its smallness” (Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life, p. 195).
Love is what makes us more than ourselves and our narrow experiences. But this love is not something any of us is good enough to give. When we love someone else instead of ourselves, it is a miracle, a work of the Spirit in us! (Good marriages and true friendships are miraculous.) It just happens from hanging around God, John Calvin says: “The love ought to reign in us, since God unites himself to us” (Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol. XXII/2, p. 244). We become loving, love reigns in us, because God’s love makes it happen. We just go along for the ride. As Augustine once wrote: “Be the beast he [our Lord] rides. It is good for you that he rides and leads” (Love One Another, p. 68). The love God gives makes us beautiful, Augustine adds: “Through iniquity our souls, my friends, are loathsome.... The One who is always beautiful loved us first.... But it wasn’t to leave us loathsome that he loved us, but to change us and to make the ugly beautiful.... As love grows in you so does beauty, because love is beauty of the soul” (Love One Another, p. 96).
Mark E.
John 15:1-8
Pastor Roger Storms, of First Christian Church in Chandler, Arizona, tells about a Sunday morning when a car had broken down in the alley behind his church. The driver jacked the car up and proceeded to crawl underneath to find and repair the problem. However, he unexpectedly hit the carjack and the car fell on him. He screamed for help, and many of the congregation rushed out to help. Some of the men strained to lift the car off of him while someone else called 911 to get the emergency vehicles rolling. Some of the people in the church were nurses; they came out quickly, and as the man had the car lifted off him they began checking on him before the medics arrived. He was bruised, scratched, and shaken up, but otherwise okay.
Pastor Storms made the observation that when the man was in need, people did all they could to help by risking themselves. Whatever was necessary to save the man, they were ready to try. He then pointedly says: “How we need this same attitude when it comes to rescuing those in greatest peril... the loss of life eternally.”
Derl K.
John 15:1-8
We don’t stress and strain to produce fruit. We have to learn to relax and allow God’s Spirit to flow through us like the sap of a tree to produce that fruit. We don’t want to be pruned and thrown in the fire! We want to be pruned from useless endeavors so that we will bear more fruit. Jesus is our source of strength. We can accomplish nothing without him!
Jesus gives himself to us. We don’t have to strain and struggle, but we do need to allow him to clean us and prune us. What do we have to prune? Love of money, love of glory and power, love of sex, love of Sunday football. You can fill in the blanks. What keeps you from giving more to your church? New clothes? A new car? An expensive vacation? Not that we can’t have these things. They are not evil. They only become sinful when they replace God as the center of our lives.
A pastor friend was very blunt with some of his people. He was talking with a member who said he might have to reduce his giving for a while because he needed a new car for his business. My friend asked why he needed that car. He answered, “Well, I have to keep my business growing, don’t I?” Then my friend asked, “Why do you need your business to grow?” He asked the man a few more related questions, like “Why do you need your business at all?” The man replied: “Well, how else can I live?” Then my friend nailed it to the ground: “Why do you need to live?” Finally he made his point: “What is the point of living if you aren’t serving your Lord?” Serving God is our bottom line. Nothing else is as important if we look forward to an eternity with him and we don’t want to be pruned and thrown in the fire!
Another thought is that we don’t produce fruit by squeezing hard to make a branch produce. No! We have to relax and let the sap flow through us to produce that fruit. Yes, the branch has to be available for the fruit, but without God’s Spirit nothing will be generated.
In a way it can be comforting to know that our Lord provides us with all we need to serve him. We need to spend more time in prayer to receive his gifts. He gives us that great promise that he will give us whatever we need to serve him. All we have to do is ask.
Bob O.
