Sermon Illustrations from mark 11

Elizabeth Elliot's story of forgiveness started in 1956 on the banks of the Curaray River in Ecuador when her husband and four other young missionaries were attacked and killed by members of the H...

In the second century, a priest from Antioch named Sulpicius had steadfastly refused to sacrifice to the gods, even under torture, and was being led away to be beheaded. As he walked, a Christian name...

Agnes Sanford relates how, as the young wife of an Episcopal minister, her child came down with a serious ear infection. It lasted for six weeks while she prayed fearfully and fruitlessly. Then a neig...

He [Jesus] was not the king they expected. He wasn’t like the monarchs of old who sat on their jeweled and ivory thrones, dispensing their justice and wisdom. Nor was he the great warrior-king some ha...

Cody is a member of our church who moved to Thailand to share the gospel with college students. One night, a student named Annan invited Cody to go to a movie. The two of them arrived and sat down in ...

In Romans 8:18, Paul describes the future of those who persevere in the faith: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us....

The entrance into Jerusalem was an acted parable. It gave the faithful the sign they had been waiting for. It inaugurated the Master’s final mission to his people and was a fitting prelude to the days...

Judged in the light of any ordinary standards of regal splendor, military display, political campaigning, or effective advertising, it was a rather pathetic and anti-climactic affair. Jesus rode from ...

Palm Sunday is the Trojan horse of the church year. You remember the story from Greek mythology: a huge, splendid wooden horse was accepted by the Trojans as a present from the Greeks (so it really ou...

Corrie ten Boom was once asked if it were difficult for her to remain humble. Her reply was simple. “When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, and everyone was waving palm...

Palm Sunday is the occasion on the Christian calendar when we commemorate Jesus’ triumphal entry in Jerusalem. The concept of a triumph requires some explanation, because it’s foreign to modern believ...

Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to ...

Just under 80 years ago, a crowd gathered on a humid August day to commence what was to be an unparalleled event for its time. Hundreds of thousands of spectators, police officers, and soldiers gather...

Right before my freshman year of high school, I was hospitalized for a severe asthma attack that landed me in the intensive care unit. It was one of a dozen such hospitalizations during my younger yea...

As a young pastor, I wanted to pray for Jean, who had been sick in bed for about a week. So I took Mike, a fellow leader in the church, with me to her home. Her husband, Jim, greeted us at the door an...

Two thousand years ago, triumphal processions were massively popular. It was, in all likelihood, the only chance most people would have to see the leaders and heroes of the day. For the Romans they t...

The British novelist George MacDonald loved writing stories about princes and princesses. At one point in his life, someone asked him why he focused so much of his writing on them. His answer was prof...

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

In his wonderful book, God’s Big Picture, Vaughan Roberts gives readers an overview of the Bible, focusing on the importance of context for developing a deeper understanding of holy scripture. In this...

In 1987 director Bernardo Bertolucci released the film The Last Emperor to raving reviews. It was based on the autobiography of the last living emperor of the Manchu dynasty in China, Henry Aisin-Gior...

Frederick William I was a king of Prussia in the early 18th century. Personality-wise, he was described as exacting, frugal and austere. He was known to beat his children when they disappointed him. H...

Forgiveness doesn’t mean “I didn’t really mind” or “it didn’t really matter.” I did mind and it did matter, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to forgive at all, merely something to adjust my attitu...

In the Middle East both the main protagonists embrace religions where forgiveness has never been seen as a duty, let alone as a virtue, but rather as a kind of moral weakness—and by “moral weakness” I...

Revenge and forgiveness are major themes of Michael Christopher’s play, The Black Angel. In it, Herman Engel is Nazi general responsible for killing over 200 French Jews. Convicted of his crimes by th...

On a Saturday afternoon in May, 13-year-old Michael Hirschbeck quickly donned his Cleveland batboy uniform and then went looking for his friend. That friend was Roberto Alomar, second baseman for the ...

Steve Jobs was one of the biggest somebodies of our time. He said, "Most people never pick up the phone and ask, and that's what separates the people who do things from the people who just dr...

“What happens here may be expressed by the quite simple and yet unfathomable word, ‘forgive.’ What occurs when I forgive another person? It does not mean . . . that I can ‘forget’ what he did to me. I...