Sermon Illustrations
The Strong Man
The strong man at the circus was demonstrating his strength by taking a green stick and squeezing the sap out of it. When he had squeezed out several drops, he asked if anyone from the audience would like to try, and a frail-looking little lady came forward, took the stick in both hands, and squeezed. To the amazement of the strong man, a stream of sap ran down over her knuckles.
“Who are you, anyhow, lady? he asked?
“Oh, I’m just the treasurer at the Baptist church, she replied.
Quoted from net153.com email listTen Pounds
The minister arose to address his congregation. “There is a certain man among us today who is flirting with another man’s wife. Unless he puts ten pounds in the collection box, his name will be read from the pulpit.”
When the collection plate came in, there were 19 ten pound notes, and a five pound note with this note attached: “Other five on payday.”
Quoted and adapted from the SermonFodder email list
Charity At Home
Charity begins and home and all too often ends where it begins. Horace Smith
Ten Percent Meets All The Needs
A husband and wife team of researchers, the founders of Empty Tomb, Inc., in Champaign, Illinois, have tracked American and American Christian expenditures as well as global needs. John and Sylvia Ronsvalle have estimated that $70-$80 billion a year could meet the most essential human needs around the world. “Projects for clean water and sanitation, prenatal and infant/maternal care, basic education, immunizations, and long-term development efforts are among the activities that could help overcome the poverty conditions that now kill and maim so many children and adults.”
The Ronsvalles go on to write, “That figure of $70-$80 billion may sound like anything but good news. God may be generous, you may agree, but has he been that generous? Consider this: If church members in the United States would increase their giving to 10 percent of their income, there could be an additional $86 billion available for overseas missions.”
Craig L. Blomberg, Preaching the Parables (Baker Academic, 2004) p. 51. Updated statistics from www.emptytomb.com
John Wesley’s Giving
Take John Wesley for example. He was one of the great evangelists of the 18th Century, born in 1703. In 1731 he began to limit his expenses so that he would have more money to give to the poor. In the first year his income was 30 pounds and he found he could live on 28 and so gave away two. In the second year his income doubled but he held his expenses even, and so he had 32 pounds to give away (a comfortable year’s income). In the third year his income jumped to 90 pounds and gave away 62 pounds. In his long life Wesley’s income advanced to as high as 1,400 pounds in a year. But he rarely let his expenses rise above 30 pounds. He said that he seldom had more than 100 pounds in his possession at a time.
This so baffled the English Tax Commissioners that they investigated him in 1776 insisting that for a man of his income he must have silver dishes that he was not paying excise tax on. He wrote them, “I have two silver spoons at London and two at Bristol. This is all the plate I have at present, and I shall not buy any more while so many round me want bread.”
When he died in 1791 at the age of 87 the only money mentioned in his will was the coins to be found in his pockets and dresser. Most of the 30,000 pounds he had earned in his life had been given away. He wrote,
I cannot help leaving my books behind me whenever God calls me hence; but in every other respect, my own hands will be my executors.
In other words, I will put a control on my spending myself, and I will go beyond the tithe for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. (Quotes from Mission Frontiers, Sept./Oct., 1994, No. 9-10, pp. 23-24)
Quoted from: www.soundofgrace.com/piper95/09-10-95.htm
God’s Pie
A man serves pie to all the expenses in his life. He is about to eat the last piece when he notices one more person at the table: the One who brought the pie.
Skittles Illustration
Stewardship – The Water Parable
What Is Your Colt?
Bill Wilson pastors an inner city church in New York City. His mission field is a very violent place. He himself has been stabbed twice as he ministered to the people of the community surrounding the church. Once a Puerto Rican woman became involved in the church and was led to Christ. After her conversion she came to Pastor Wilson and said, “I want to do something to help with the church’s ministry.” He asked her what her talents were and she could think of nothing—she couldn’t even speak English—but she did love children. So he put her on one of the church’s buses that went into neighborhoods and transported kids to church. Every week she performed her duties. She would find the worst-looking kid on the bus, put him on her lap and whisper over and over the only words she had learned in English: “I love you. Jesus loves you.”
After several months, she became attached to one little boy in particular. The boy didn’t speak. He came to Sunday School every week with his sister and sat on the woman’s lap, but he never made a sound. Each week she would tell him all the way to Sunday School and all the way home, “I love you and Jesus loves you.”
One day, to her amazement, the little boy turned around and stammered, “I—I—I love you too!” Then he put his arms around her and gave her a big hug. That was 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon. At 6:30 that night he was found dead. His own mother had beaten him to death and thrown his body in the trash…….”I love you and Jesus loves you.” ….Those were some of the last words this little boy heard in his short life—from the lips of a Puerto Rican woman who could barely speak English. This woman gave her one talent to God and because of that a little boy who never heard the word “love” in his own home, experienced and responded to the love of Christ…..
What can you give? What is your “colt”. You and I each have something in our lives, which, if given back to God, could, like the colt, move Jesus and His message further down the road.
Mark Adams, “The Roads He Walked – Palm Avenue”CDs at Funerals
At our local crematorium families are given the chance to chose the music CD they would like to enter the service to. One family asked to enter to Elvis Presley’s hit, “Love me Tender.”
Well the day of the funeral arrived and the music was started ready for the family to walk in to the service.
Unfortunately the wrong track number was entered into the CD player, and the family found themselves walking in to, “Return to Sender.”
From www.sermonfodder.com