16 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Death

It is a dreadful thing to be choked. Those who have either by accident or design suffered partial strangulation tell us that it is one of the most dreadful experiences. It must, to the all-seeing eye of God, be a dreadful thing to behold so many of His children gasping for a breath of life, being choked by the evil weeds, thorns, and tares indigenous to the flesh or diligently planted there by the enemy of souls while they sleep. It is a sad thing to see the corners of a corn-field left unreaped during the harvest (because the grain growing there among the thorns is not worth reaping), afterward reaped down and bound in bundles and burned, the thorns and choked product of a good seed together. It is a sadder thing to behold the lives of not a few Christians all overgrown and choked with thorns and weeds just ripening for the fire of destruction, because they are shriveled and choked and not fit to be gathered into our Lord’s garner. (Text.)--_The Independent._

* * * * *

A marvelous thing for these times is reported from Weathersfield, Conn. A convict who has served a sentence of fifty years in the State prison receives his liberty at this Christmas season (1909). In 1859, when he was twenty-one, he murdered his wife, who was only a young girl of eighteen. He is seventy-one now. Every one of the great occurrences in American life which make our modern civilization what it is belongs to that half-century for which this man has been behind prison bars. Into what a changed world he will come. What can he do? His friends are dead. His generation has passed. His own State does not know him. One would suppose he would almost want to commit some crime that would take him back to his home of fifty years. What can he do? Society punished him, now what will society do for him? There is no asylum for him. He knows nothing of the business methods of the day. He is a living dead man. Would it not have been more merciful for society by capital punishment to have made him a dead man fifty years ago?

Says a writer in the _North China Herald_:

One of the facts that ineffaceably cut into my memory during my first winter in New-chwang was the finding on one morning about New Year’s time thirty-five masses of ice, each mass having been a living man at 10 o’clock the preceding night. The thermometer was a good bit below zero. The men had just left the opium dens, where they had been enjoying themselves. The keen air sent them to sleep, and they never wakened.

The freezing was only the external manifestation of a spiritual benumbing that long before existed within. (Text.)

In some parts of Africa the natives are attacked with “sleeping-sickness.” The first symptom is drowsiness, and the following days and weeks drift past in sleep. The sleep grows deeper and heavier until the sufferer has passed out into the unknown, to the sleep that knows no waking.

Sleeping-sickness, in a moral sense, is a common disease in the world. It is often as fatal to activity and character as the dread plague of Africa is to the body. The temperature of the heart falls, the soul sleep deepens, God is forgotten, Christ forsaken. (Text.)

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has one of the characters in prison

say, "The happiness of incessant victory, the happiness of fulfilled desire,

the happiness of success, and total satiety - THAT is suffering! That is

spiritual death.... [People] waste themselves in senseless thrashing around

for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual

wealth.... It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness, but

the kinship of heart to heart, and the way we look at the world."

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The First Circle," (NY: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 34.

#3247

*

One evening in 1954, Billie Sicard resigned from life. No official announcement was made, and no papers were signed. But still, she resigned. For all practical purposes Billie decided to live no longer. Her spirit died in 1954; her body died in 1979.

On that evening in 1954, Billie's only reason to live left her. Her twelve-year-old son, George, died of a brain tumor. Little George's death left Billie prisoned inside a vacuum. She had been thirty-four when she had borne him. After her husband left, little George became her life. When he died, his death became hers.

She was well-to-do. Billie had lived on the exclusive Sunset Island in Miami since 1937. After her death the house went at an auctioned price of $226,000. Yet all this was immaterial to Billie. Her life had been her child.

They said that after George died in a New York City hospital, the body was brought to her home for a wake. After displaying the body for a day in the home of Mrs. Sicard, the funeral director came to remove it. She refused to let him. For several days she mourned behind locked doors before she gave the body up.

It was nothing for Billie to go on a shopping spree and spend a hundred dollars on toys for George. In 1979 when her body was found, so were the toys, exactly as her son had left them. Nothing was packed, nothing moved. For twenty-five years Billie had roamed in a house full of toys, with a heart full of memories. When the house was sold after her death, little George's Cub Scout uniform was still hanging in the downstairs coat closet. On the wall was a child's sketch of a choo-choo train drawn in red crayon. She had never washed it off. His Mickey mouse slippers sat in the corner of his bedroom. In the garage sat a 1941 Packard, a gift she had given to little George on his tenth birthday.

When Billie resigned from life, she became a social recluse. Her yard became a jungle. Her home became a source of ghost stories and old wives' tales. She overate. She withdrew. She didn't care.

Billie resigned.

Her life stands as a quiet legacy to us all. Man must have something larger than death ... or death takes man.

-- Max Lucado

*

They were just a young fire-fighting crew, assigned to work on a relatively small brush fire in Washington State. No one could have imagined what was about to happen. Seemingly timid fires suddenly rumbled to life and then began to roar out of control. In the end, fourteen firefighters had to pin their hopes on the little tinfoil shelters designed to be the last line of protection in a firetrap. Ultimately, four young firefighters died in the fire that day. They had tried to escape the fire by heading for a nearby road - apparently, their superiors had not advised them that it was a dead-end road.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "No Escape On A Dead-end Road."

That was a horrible tragedy - made even more tragic by the fact that what they thought was a way of escape turned out to be a dead-end road. As I read about this disaster, I couldn't help but think that so many people are making that same kind of mistake - when it comes to their spiritual destiny.

Most people are counting on the fact that their religion, their spirituality is going to be an escape route from whatever judgment we all get for the wrong things we have done. To put it bluntly, a way to miss hell and make heaven. Tragically, many sincere people may be counting on a road that won't get them there.

Actually, the Bible says that is exactly what is happening in many lives. In Proverbs 14:12, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." Seems right ... leads to death - unsettling words. Because whatever road you're on to escape judgment and get to God usually "seems right." But if it isn't God's road, it doesn't matter how right it seems. It will lead to an end we didn't expect - to spiritual death.

Thankfully, God makes the way to Him very clear, throughout the Bible. One of those places is 1 Timothy 2, beginning with verse 3: "God our Savior wants all men to be saved ... There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men." This isn't multiple choice. God says that the only way to Him is through His Son Jesus.

Someone might say, "But that's not fair! You mean only one religion gets you to God?" Actually, no religion can get you to God, including Christianity. Only Jesus can because only Jesus "gave Himself as a ransom" for us. That's ransom as in the price you pay to get someone back. Because our sin has an eternal death penalty - actually described by Jesus as involving a place of fire - the price to be paid is death. That's what you and I deserve for hijacking our lives from God. But Jesus loves you too much to lose you - so He went to the cross to pay that price to remove the sin that will otherwise keep you out of heaven.

If you've been depending on any way other than total trust in Jesus the Rescuer, you're on a dead-end road. But today you can, as the Bible says, "cross over from death to life" (John 5:24) - by grabbing Jesus as if He's your only hope. If you want to begin your relationship with Him today, talk to Him. Tell Him, "Jesus, I believe You died for my sins, and beginning this day, I'm Yours." Then I'd love to send you the booklet I wrote about this called "Yours For Life." Just let me know you want it.

Jesus stands ready to lead you out of the fire. Make sure you're on the only road that will lead you to safety - and to heaven.

________________

Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'

*

Gosse, in his “Romance of Natural History,” tells us of certain animals which inhabited the coral reefs. So long as they keep the passage to the surface clear, they are safe, but when this is neglected the animal finds the coral has grown around it and enclosed it in a living tomb. So it is with the life of the soul here upon earth. The world is around us everywhere; the danger is when we let it grow between our souls and God.