Sermon Illustrations from isaiah 1

We all have shadows and skeletons in our backgrounds. But listen, there is something bigger in this world than we are, and that something bigger is full of grace and mercy, patience and ingenuity. The...

At a Christian high school, a theology teacher strode to the front of the classroom, where he drew a heart on one side of the blackboard and a brain on the other. The two are as divided as the two sid...

In Isaiah 43:25, God says, “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” Here God uses two absolute terms to assure us of the complete removal...

Hope remains possible even amid our failures—whether we disappoint God, let down our families, or fall short of our own expectations—because divine compassion operates like an inexhaustible well. Each...

The Enlightenment was, among many other things, a protest against a system that, since it was itself based on a protest [the Reformation], could not see that it was itself in need of further reform. (...

Many Christians know John Newton as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace and other beloved hymns. Fewer know that Newton’s own life matches the beauty of transformation written in Amazing Gra...

Desegregation was one of the big goals of the civil rights movement. “Separate but equal” in the South became “separate and unequal.” The disparities were in things as small as water fountains and as ...

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War ...

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

Mark Rutland humorously recalls a survey asking Americans which words they most long to hear. As expected, the top response was, “ I love you. ” The second was, “ I forgive you .” ...

One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and powe...

In Rockland, Maine, two men attempted what can only be described as a full-fledged Grinch heist—trying to steal a Christmas tree straight from a hotel lobby. And, of course, there’s footage. ...

To help us in our confession we may want to picture a path littered with many rocks. Some are small pebbles, others are quite large, and still others are almost completely buried so that we cannot kno...

Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish economist and diplomat deeply committed to his Christian faith, served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations during some of the most turbulent times of the Cold Wa...

David Seamands (1922-2006) was an author, scholar, evangelical renewal leader and counselor. In an article for Christianity Today , he shares his earnest experience of many of his patients who we...

The first thing to notice is that violence is intentional. For example, one of the most brutal forms of violence affecting millions of poor women and girls in our world is sex trafficking. Lured a...

The United States retains a basic respect for religion though it may be following European trends: surveys show a steady rise in the “nones” (now one-third of those under the age of thirty), that is, ...

A missionary family who has started organic churches in some of the most dangerous fields in the world once returned to the states for furlough. On the first Sunday back, they visited a large Baptist ...

Many people have misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that religious views shouldn’t play a role in public discussions and lawmaking. Someone might say, “We shouldn’t restrict abo...

Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent urban problems. To cities filled with the homeless and im...

In U2’s song “One,” Bono sings, “Have you come here to play Jesus / To the lepers in your head?”2 Yes, if you are involved in justice work, you probably have. So have I. This isn’t bad. Just honest. W...

The pyschologist Carl Rogers, a person who would know quite well the interior lives of others, has this to say of our inmost thoughts: I have most invariably found that the very feeling which has see...

When something has gone wrong, justice needs to be done and seen to be done. Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement examines exactly this same dynamic. The central character, Bryony Tallis, makes a grave mista...

In his excellent book, Just Courage , founder and CEO of the International Justice Mission, Gary Haugen articulates some of the realities behind the systemic oppression of the poor around the world...

Imagine celebrating a birthday party for your child. You buy a cake, invite guests, and give her presents. Now imagine discussing the party with your spouse later that night. Your spouse asks you what...

For biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well. And social righteousness, as we learn from the law and the prophets, is concerned with ...

Hobart Mowrer was Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. Mowrer critiqued Freudian psychology and its assertion that guilt was merely a pathology to be dispensed with. In this...

In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...

When did the topic of justice become important to you?” Gideon Strauss posed that question to two dozen people crammed into our living room one fall evening in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Some of us wer...

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...