Sermon Illustrations on The Christian Faith

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An Appeal for Mercy at the Heart of our Faith

Author

Keywords

Scripture

James 2:13, Titus 3:5, Hebrews 4:16, Ephesians 2:4-5, Lamentations 3:22-23, Matthew 5:7

When Johann Sebastian Bach sought to convey the heart of Christian truth through music, he chose the Mass as his foundation. His B Minor Mass begins with a heartfelt plea from the full chorus and orch...

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Two Contexts for Worship

Author

Mike Cosper

Keywords

Worship

Scripture

Hebrews 4:16, Romans 8:15, John 7:37

Participating in God’s glory-sharing life, then, happens in two contexts: scattered and gathered. Worship scattered is the Spirit-filled life of the Christian in the world, and worship gathered is the...

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The Bringer of God

Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 2:24, John 1:17, Galatians 2:21, Hebrews 4:16, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Titus 3:5

The Christian religion as a religion is not of God. It is on the contrary another example of a mortal road to God like the Buddhist or any other, although of course different in form. Christ is not th...

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Writing out our Faith

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35

We all desire to learn from our role models, but some take this ambition to the next level. The writer Hunter S. Thompson was so obsessed with the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and specifically his...

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Agreeing with God’s Words

Author

Richella J. Parham

Keywords

Scripture

1 John 1:9, Romans 10:9-10, Hebrews 4:14, Matthew 10:32, 2 Samuel 12:

I missed that confession is not just a commandment, not just one of the “steps to salvation”—it is a means of God’s grace. The word confess, which means to assent or agree, is the English translation ...

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The Power of Scripture

Author

Mahatma Gandhi

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 4:12, Jeremiah 23:29, Isaiah 55:10-11, Romans 1:16

Mahatma Gandhi speaking to Christians, “You Christians have in your keeping a document with enough dynamite in it to blow the whole of civilization to bits; to turn society upside down; to bring peace...

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Grace Turns our World Upside Down

Author

Jacob Traeger

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:14-15, Colossians 1:13-14, Luke 6:37, Titus 3:5, Hebrews 4:16, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 3:23-24

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

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I am a Christian

Author

Christian Wiman

Keywords

Scripture

Mark 15:39, Hebrews 4:15, John 11:35, Luke 22:44, Psalm 22:1, 2 Corinthians 4:8-10, Isaiah 53:5

I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? . . . The point is that he felt huma...

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The Bible a Great Comfort

Author

Andy Cook

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 41:8-10, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Psalm 46:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Samuel 19:, 1 Samuel 20:, 2 Corinthians 11:23-30, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Acts 21:27-36

For seven years, Terry Anderson was held as a hostage of Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. The former reporter for the Associated Press had been taken captive and held as a political prisoner, and for se...

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The Crucial Bridge in the 10 Commandments

Author

Walter Brueggemann

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 20:3-7, 12-17, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:27-28, Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5, Hebrews 4:9-10, Isaiah 58:13-14

Interpretation series editor Patrick Miller has shrewdly observed that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the “crucial bridge” that connects the Ten Commandments together. The fourth commandment loo...

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Eat This Book

Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35

Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our li...

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All Knowledge Requires Some Presumed and Final Authority

Author

Craig Gay

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 2:8, 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Isaiah 55:8-9, Hebrews 4:12

What we need to realize, however, is that there is no such thing as autonomous or “self-grounding” knowledge. All systems of interpretation and all claims to true knowledge are ultimately grounded out...

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A Surprising Conversion

Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:1-48, Matthew 6:1-34, Matthew 7:1-29, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35

After a sojourn in the United States where he experienced the vibrancy of Black churches, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931 to teach at the University of Berlin. His pastoral ministry co...

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Can you Grasp the Word of God?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Jeremiah 20:9 , Deuteronomy 6:4–9, Isaiah 55:10–11, Hebrews 4:12, 2 Timothy 3:16–17, Psalm 119:105

There’s a story that used to make the rounds about the German theologian Paul Tillich. Tillich’s theology was considered dangerous by many Christians in the U.S. Supposedly one time after delivering a...

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Drawing From the Infinite Well of Joy

Author

Eunice McGarrahan

Keywords

Scripture

Hebrews 4:16, 2 Corinthians 12:9, 1 Peter 5:10, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Revelation 2:10

In Jonathan Kozol’s book, Amazing Grace , he tells of the struggles and sufferings of people in a community in the Bronx, New York. He is amazed at the courage and resilience he found there. He then ...

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A Change of Priority

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:9-11, Luke 11:2-3, Romans 8:15, Hebrews 4:16, Philippians 4:6-7

The Lord’s Prayer is designed to help us make this change: a change of priority, not a change of content. This prayer doesn’t pretend that pain and hunger aren’t real. Some religions say that; Jesus d...

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Brother Lawrence and Trusting God in Failure

Author

Ryan Bundrick

Keywords

Scripture

2 Corinthians 12:9, Isaiah 40:29, 2 Corinthians 3:5, Hebrews 4:16, James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:6-7

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

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From Atheist to Metropolitan: Andrei Bloom Meets Jesus

Author

N. T. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

John 20:29, Romans 10:17, Luke 24:31-32, Acts 9:1-6, 1 Corinthians 15:17-20, Hebrews 4:12, John 20:24-28

From his start in life, you would not have expected Andrei Borisovich Bloom to have ended up Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, founder of the Russian Orthodox diocese for Great Britain and Ireland. Bo...

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The Christ is a Man as Well

Author

Jonathan Edwards

Keywords

Humility

Scripture

Revelation 5:12, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Colossians 1:15-16, Isaiah 53:2-3, Hebrews 4:15-16, Philippians 2:5-8, John 1:14

It is true that he [Christ] has awful majesty; he is the great God, and is infinitely high above you; but there is this to encourage and embolden the poor sinner, that Christ is a man as well as God; ...

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God’s Inexhaustible Mercies

Author

Paul David Tripp

Keywords

Mercy

Scripture

Lamentations 3:22-23, Psalm 103:17-18, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Isaiah 40:31, Psalm 23:3, Romans 8:38-39, Hebrews 4:16

One of the stunning realities of the Christian life is that in a world where everything is in some state of decay, God’s mercies never grow old. They never run out. They never are ill timed. They neve...

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Take up and Read

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 13:13-14, Psalm 119:105, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 4:12, Isaiah 55:10-11

In Book Eight of Confessions , St. Augustine recounts how, in a state of deep inner turmoil, he “heard from a nearby house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not which, chanting repeatedly, ‘Ta...

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Seeking a Spiritual Home in the Bible

Author

Kathleen Norris

Keywords

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35

Many people these days feel an absence in their lives, expressed as an acute desire for “something more,” a spiritual home, a community of faith. But when they try to read the Bible they end up throwi...

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An Invitation

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 11:28-30, Psalm 62:1, Isaiah 30:15, Romans 12:2, Galatians 5:1, John 15:4, Hebrews 4:9-10

He invites us to leave our burdensome ways of heavy labor—especially the “religious” ones—and step into the yoke of training with him. This is a way of gentleness and lowliness, a way of soul rest. It...

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Where is God? Hanging From the Gallows

Author

Jonathan Cornell

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 27:46, Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 3:18, John 19:30, 1 Peter 4:13

In Elie Wiesel’s Night , Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressi...

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Hearing God in our Deepest Struggles

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 34:17-18, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Hebrews 4:15-16, Hebrews 2:18, Matthew 26:38, Matthew 11:28-30

When do we hear God’s voice most clearly? It is often in our deepest struggles that we hear God’s voice. In the 1640s, George Fox, who would later establish the Quaker or Friends movement, wandered th...

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Not a Painting on the Wall, but a Window

Author

John Piper

Keywords

The Bible

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35

In the book A Peculiar Glory , John Piper describes how he maintained a traditional view of scripture, even after he went on to advanced theological studies in California and Germany. He describes hi...

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A Vast Geographical Basin

Author

Richard J. Foster

Keywords

The Bible

Scripture

2 Timothy 3:16-17, Psalm 119:105, Hebrews 4:12, John 4:14

The Bible is like a vast geographical basin in which tributary streams feed into the currents of a parent river on its course to the ocean. The riverbanks are interspersed with openings where the trib...

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The Forgotten French Soldier

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 142:4-5, Isaiah 49:15-16, Psalm 34:18, Hebrews 4:15, Matthew 28:20, John 14:18, Romans 8:38-39, Lamentations 3:21-23, Psalm 40:1-12

This story is probably apocryphal, but conveys a truth nonetheless. During the early 19th century, following the Napoleonic Wars, a French soldier was captured and imprisoned. He was thrown into a...

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The Great Bell that Rings Above the Ears of God

Author

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Keywords

Scripture

1 Kings 18:41–45, Daniel 9:3–19 , Matthew 7:7–8 , Luke 18:1–8, Hebrews 4:16 , Psalm 145:18–19

“The Prince of Preachers”, Charles Haddon Spurgeon once shared a thoughtful analogy for the life of prayer in most people’s lives: Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above i...

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Restoring Love for Scripture

Author

Adam S. McHugh

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 , 1 Kings 19:11-13 , Nehemiah 8:1-12, Luke 24:13-35 , Hebrews 4:12, Psalm 119:9-16

After I graduated from seminary, I stopped reading the Bible. It’s been said that for all the gain that comes from dissecting a frog, all the hands-on knowledge one amasses from cutting out the organs...

Sermon Illustrations on the christian faith

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