314 Sermon Illustrations on Christ

A street preacher in London was preaching to a crowd that had gathered around him. It was at the time of the Shamrock races, and everyone was talking of the event. A ruffian on the edge of the crowd thought he would have a little fun, so he called three times, "Mr. Preacher! What do you know about the Shamrock?" Finally, the fourth time, not to be silenced, the ruffian called again, "Mr. Preacher! I'm asking you what you know about the Shamrock." This time the preacher paused. The crowd became very still. Pointing upward with one hand, he said, so clearly and distinctly that everyone could hear him, "On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; all other rocks are-sham rocks!"

A. T. Pierson has this to say about communion with God:

"A word is the manifestation of a thought. If I wish to communicate a thought to you, that thought takes shape in words. You cannot see my thought, but what is there comes through the channels of speech, and so travels through your ear to your mind, and becomes part of your thought. Now Christ became the Word to take the thought out of the mind and heart of God, and translate that thought so that we could understand it, so that what was before invisible and inaudible and beyond the reach of our senses comes into our minds and hearts as something that was in God's mind and heart, but now is in ours. Beautiful indeed is this as an expression of what Christ is to us. You want to know God; well, then, study Christ, and you will know all about Him. 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father' (John 14:9), said Jesus.

Here is another fine illustration by Phillips Brooks:

"The Savior Himself, surely He is never so dear, never wins so utter and so tender a love, as when we see what it has cost Him to save us.... Not merely has he conquered completely and conquered in suffering; He has conquered alone. As anyone reads through the Gospels, he feels how hopeless the attempt would be to tell of the loneliness of that life which Jesus lived. 'I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me. I looked, and there was none to help: therefore mine own arm brought salvation' (Isaiah 63:5). He had friends, but we always feel how far off they stood from the deepest center of His heart. He had disciples, but they never came into the inner circles of His self-knowledge. He had fellow-workers, but they only handed around the broken bread and fishes in the miracle, or ordered the guest chamber on the Passover night. They never came into the deepest work of His life. With the mysterious suffering that saved the world they had nothing to do.

Philippians 4:6 How many need a cure for care! The burdened man of business, the anxious parent, the struggling toiler, the perplexed man of affairs-all need some counselor that can be trusted, and some helper that can be relied upon. God is the One to whom to go "in everything." Thanksgiving is to be joined with the prayer, for even the most burdened have blessings here and hereafter. Pray in faith; then comes peace, different from what the world gives, with its pleasures, its promises, and its opiates, and that peace keeps the heart as brave soldiers keep the citadel. And all "through Christ Jesus"-blessed be His name!

-John Hall

Another illustration from J. R. Miller:

"We need Christ just as much in our bright, prosperous, exalted hours as in the days of darkness, adversity, and depression. We are quite in danger of thinking that religion is only for sickrooms and funerals, and for times of great sorrow and trial-a lamp to shine at night, a staff to help when the road is rough, a friendly hand to hold us up when we are stumbling. This is not true. Jesus went to the marriage-feast as well as to the home of sorrow. His religion is just as much for our hours of joy as for our days of grief. There are just as many stars in the sky at noon as at midnight, although we cannot see them in the sun's glare. And there are just as many comforts, promises, divine encouragements, and blessings above us when we are in the noons of our human gladness and earthly success, as when we are in our nights of pain and shadow. We may not see them in the brightness about us, but they are there, and their benedictions fall upon us as perpetually, in a gentle rain of grace."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in one of her poems, has pictured with rare beauty the effect of Christ's death upon two seraphim who lingered a little behind the hosts of heaven who had gathered that day round the cross. One of them, as he thinks of the meaning of the wonderful sacrifice, is troubled by the thought that men will now have more reason to love God than even the angels have. The other remonstrates, saying, "Do we love not?" "Yes, but not as man shall," he answered:

Oh! not with this blood on us-and this face,

Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore

In our behalf, and tender ever more

With nature all our won, upon us gazing

Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising

Their reproachful wounds, alone to bless!

Alas, Creator! shall we love Thee less

Than mortals shall?

Peter Stoner in “Science Speaks” (Moody Press, 1963) takes just eight of the Old Testament prophecies concerning Christ – not all of them, just eight – and shows that coincidence is ruled out by the science of probability. He says, “We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10(17th).” That would be one in 100,000,000,000,000,000. And then to help us understand this staggering figure, he illustrates it by supposing that “we take 10(17th) silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas (approximate area: 263,000 square miles). They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes,” anywhere in the state. But he must pick up the silver dollar that was marked. What chance would he have of getting the right one? “Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them in their own wisdom.” Evidently this business of fulfilling prophecy isn’t so easy. No wonder the psychics miss so much of the time!

[The mathematics of this cannot be verified. It will depend upon the probabilities assigned to the eight prophecies in question. What assumptions were used? What statistics were used to develop probabilities? Probability to be a science must be based on both these being valid. RGH]