10 Sermon Illustrations on The Importance of Scripture

The cross of Christ is the only real corrective for legalism. In Matthew 5, James rescues the law from the legalists. We human beings have discovered several ways to reject God's law. We can defy the law, taking the antinomian stance, "I am my own person, I do not need law." Or, like the scribes and the Pharisees, we can reduce the law to hundreds of rules we can keep. For example, the rabbis "fenced" the Sabbath commandment with 39 categories of possible violation. Each category was then broken down into specific rules. They debated whether one could wear a wooden leg or a brooch on the Sabbath. Would this be "carrying objects" on the Sabbath? Legalism begins with reverence for God's law and ends in making the law trivial and absurd. The legalist runs the risk of at least three sins. First, he loses sight of the Lawgiver in reducing the law to rules. Second, he reduces God's great claims upon us to manageable rules he can keep. He then loses sight of the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man. (An old African proverb asks, "How do you eat an elephant?" Answer: "One bite at a time.") Third, having lost sight of the holy God and his own sinfulness, the legalist becomes self-righteous and judgmental of others. In Matthew 5, Jesus restates the law as the Word of the holy God. He is not fighting the liberals; he is taking the legalists to task for reducing the law to bite-sized chunks. "The holy law of the holy God cannot be watered down so easily as you think," he says. "Anyone who reduces the great claims of the law is least in the kingdom. For example, you do not kill. Do you hate? You are proud because you do not commit adultery? Do you lust? You give your wives a legal paper of divorce; what about your commitment to live with them until death do you part? You stay inside the law in your business dealings, but is your word your bond? You live by 'an eye for an eye,'but do you love your enemies and pray for them? You must not reduce God's great claims upon you to a list of rules you can keep." In view of Jesus' teaching about the holiness of God and this law, what do we see in the cross of Christ? The cross was the sin of sins. But why? Because the Jews and Romans broke the law, "Thou shalt not kill?" Yes, but is that all? Was there not also a law which said that blasphemers must die (Leviticus 24:16), and did not many in Israel sincerely see Jesus as a blasphemer? What happened that day outside the walls of Jerusalem was not only the breaking of God's law, it was also the rejection of the holy and loving God who gave the law, the prophets, and even His own Son. The sin was not just the breaking of the law, but the breaking of the Lawgiver's heart. Jesus was crucified by the most conscientious legalists in town. As we stand before the cross we see a love so wide, so deep, so high that all human beings come within its reach. In the cross, God reaches out once again to those who refuse to acknowledge His law and to those legalists who trivialize His law and declare themselves righteous. All our human pride and pretension is shattered on the rock called Golgotha. The cross is the only real correction for legalism.

You find the Bible the patriot's charter-book, the child's delight, the old man's comfort, and the young man's guide. In its pages, the sick and weary find the solace which they need, and the tempted meet with timely succor. Its words whisper hope and peace to the dying, and minister daily food to the healthy and vigorous household. With the pious music of its sublime or plaintive songs, echo to the roofs of ten thousand times ten thousand Christian temples; and the child's prayer, night and morn, is lisped forth in the simple and comprehensive words which were dictated by Him who is its central light. Dr. Beard.

It has a self-perpetuating and multiplying power. Infidels have written books: where are they? Where is Porphyry, Julian? Fragments of them there are; but we are indebted even for this to Christian criticism. Where is Hume, Voltaire, Bolingbroke? It requires the world's reprieve to bring a copy out of the prison of their darkness. Where is the Bible? Wherever there is light. Speaking the language of heaven in sevenscore and three of the tongues of earth, and giving the Word of God by forty millions of voices to five times as many million ears, and in tongues spoken by six hundred millions of men, and having swept its path of storm through all time, it still walks triumphant, despite earth's dying malice and hell's eternal wrath; and like the apocalyptic angel, though it wraps its mantle of cloud around it, calmly looks out upon the world with a face as it were the sun encircled with the rainbow. Bishop Thomson.

What a pin is when the diamond has dropped from its setting, that is the Bible when its emotive truths have been taken away. What a babe's clothes are when the babe has slipped out of them into death, and the mother's arms clasp only raiment, would be the Bible if the Babe of Bethlehem and the truths of deep-heartedness that clothed his life should slip out of it. Beecher.

Sir Walter Scott, in lending a book one day to a friend, cautioned him to be punctual in returning it. "This is really necessary," said the poet, in apology, "for, though all my friends are bad arithmeticians, I observe almost all of them to be good book-keepers."