8 Sermon Illustrations on Election

I can imagine some men saying, "Mr. Moody has not touched my case at all. That is not the reason why I won't accept Christ. I don't know as I am one of the elect." How often I am met with this excuse--how often do I hear it in the inquiry room! How many men fold their arms and say, "If I am one of the elect I will be saved, and if I ain't I won't. No use of your bothering about it." Why don't some of those merchants say, "If God is going to make me a successful merchant in Chicago I will be one whether I like it or not, and if he isn't I won't." If you are sick, and a doctor prescribes for you, don't take the medicine, throw it out the door, it don't matter, for if God has decreed you are going to die, you will: if he hasn't, you will get better. If you use that argument you may as well not walk home from this tabernacle. If God has said you'll get home, you'll get home--you'll fly through the air; if you have been elected to go home. I have an idea that the Lord Jesus saw how men were going to stumble over this doctrine, so after He had been thirty or forty years in heaven, He came down and spoke to John. One Lord's day in Patmos, He said to him, "Write these things to the churches." John kept on writing. His pen flew very fast. And then the Lord, when it was nearly finished said, "John, before you close the book, put in this: 'The Spirit and the Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say; Come.' But there will be some that are deaf, and they cannot hear, so add, 'Let him that is athirst, Come;' and in case there should be any that do not thirst, put it still broader, 'Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.' '' What more can you have than that? And the Book is sealed, as it were, with that. It is the last invitation in the Bible. "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." You are thirsty. You want water. I hold out this glass to you, and say, "Take it." You say, "If I am decreed to have it, I am not going to put myself to the trouble of taking it." Well, you will never get it. And if you are ever to have salvation, you must reach out the hand and take it. "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name, of the Lord."

In the smiling plains of primitive Christianity, you have God's election without Calvin's reprobation. Here Christ chooses the Jews, without rejecting the Gentiles, and elects Peter, James, and John to the enjoyment of peculiar privileges, without reprobating Matthew, Thomas, and Simon. Here nobody is damned for not doing impossibilities, or for doing what he could not possibly help. Here all that are saved enjoy rewards through the merits of Christ, according to the degrees of evangelical obedience which the Lord enables, not forces, them to perform. Here free wrath never appeared. Our damnation is of ourselves, when "we neglect such great salvation" by obstinately refusing to "work it out with fear and trembling." But this is not all: here free grace does not rejoice over stocks, but over men who gladly confess that their salvation is all of God, who, for Christ's sake, rectifies their free agency, helps their infirmities, and "works in them to will and to do of his good pleasure." J. Fletcher.

Like as if an astrologer could or should tell an ambitious cardinal that he should be pope, although he did put an undoubted trust therein, yet, for all that, he would not be idle, but would use all the means he possibly could to attain and come to that dignity; even so the children of God, the surer they are that Christ hath redeemed them, so much the more they understand the great good will of God towards them, and therefore they are always forced more and more, by godly conversation of life, to make certain unto themselves the knowledge of their election and redemption by Christ.

— Cawdray

Signs of. Make your calling sure, and by that your election; for, that being done, this follows of itself. We are not to pry immediately into the decree, but to read it in the performance. Though the manner sees not the pole-star, yet the needle of the compass, which points to it, tells him which way he sails; thus the heart which is touched with the loadstone of divine love, trembling with godly fear, and yet still looking towards God by fixed believing, points at the love of election, tells the soul that its course is heavenward, towards the haven of eternal rest. He that loves may be sure that he was loved first, and he that chooses God for his delight and portion may conclude, confidently, that God hath chosen him to be one of those that shall enjoy him, and be happy in him forever; for that our love and electing of him is but the return of the beams of his love shining upon us. Leighton.