THS-12-12. Illustrating the Sermon

12. Illustrating the Sermon

If you have taken the work of "exposing" a passage of Scripture (such as the exposition of Ephesians 4:1 to Ephesians 5:21) seriously, you realize that the work of preparation is heavy going. You will sense the fact also that the task of delivering the results of your study to a congregation is no light one. A preacher could easily be heavy and dull with such a subject.

He need not be; he can make it interesting. That is part of his business as a preacher--not merely to touch lightly some of the more readily accessible passages of the Word of God, but to display the treasures which are hidden in the depths. No doubt most preachers have avoided this responsible duty to a large degree. Is it because we dislike the hard work involved, or that we feel unequal to the task?

Let us turn back to our exposition. It is full of essential truth. Essential truth is not always interesting--we must make it so. In so far as we can show that it is a vital message, directly concerned with the lives people live, it will be full of interest. Almost always, in this age, when people’s interests are not chiefly in the most important things of life, we shall need to resort to such expedients as are available for preachers in securing the attention of the hearers. The Art of Illustration The art of illustration is one that all preachers need to develop. The word itself is a metaphor--it means to make lustrous, to throw light upon, a subject. In the preparation of every part of a sermon, a preacher should not be concerned only with the intellectual satisfaction he himself finds in its outworking. He should ask. Will this be interesting to my people? Can I make this live? One of the surest ways to do this is to discover or create good illustrations. The first main division of our exposition was "Forbidden Paths." Can we illustrate that? There comes to my mind a story told by F. W. Boreham (the reading of whose works, by the way, would be as good as a university course in the art of illustration) of the old gardener of Versailles, who was distressed because the courtiers from, the palace constantly tramped over his flower beds and ruthlessly destroyed his seedlings. He went to the king, Louis the Fourteenth, and confided his trouble to his royal master. The king ordered that little tablets--"etiquette"--be neatly arranged along the sides of the flower beds, and a state order was issued ordering all his courtiers to walk carefully within the etiquette. "And so the poor old gardener not only protected the flowers that he loved from the pitiless feet of the high-born vandals, but he enriched our vocabulary with a new and startlingly significant word. The art of life consists in keeping carefully within the ways marked out by the etiquette." Now that is a first-class illustration of the idea emphasized in the first part of our exposition. You may say it is not easy to drop on such illustrations when you want them. No, it is not. I mused long when trying to get a fully satisfactory illustration for that section, and it came to me at last. You must not be afraid of work if you want to preach helpful and interesting sermons.

Come now to the second main division of the sermon (p. 96). The Avenue of Honor--"walk worthily of the calling." In our exposition notes an illustration has already been given (p. 92). I find many illustrations come to me from recent experiences, and they perhaps are the most serviceable of all. The third division of the sermon, The Way of Light, is sufficiently illustrated by the metaphor itself, and the use we made of it--we could hardly fail to be interesting there (p. 97). You will not find it hard to select a suitable illustration for the next division, A Difficult Track: "Look carefully how ye walk." You may know what it is to pick a track carefully over precipitous mountain paths. Personally I always look carefully how I walk over damp stones in a creek bed or valley, because once, years ago, when I was walking with preachers over the rocks near Sherbrook Falls, I slipped, and the resulting fall necessitated a visit to a surgeon. When you come to The King’s Highway, "Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you," the last section of the sermon (p. 97), it will not be difficult to select a suitable illustration. The essential thought in the text is that of sacrifice--Christ’s sacrifice. The other day the papers told of a fire in a hall at Warburton, in which a large number of people were in peril. When most of the company had escaped, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor saw two women, one of them with a baby, in a precarious position. He, rushed to the rescue, and as he passed the room where the picture films were stored an explosion took place, and he was badly burned. In spite of his injuries, he went on with his mission, and took the child, and dropped it through a window to the outstretched arms of friends twelve feet below. He risked his own life, and was seriously injured, in his work of rescue--the deed of a true pastor of the flock. During the pneumonic influenza epidemic many years ago, when many families were unable to secure help in their distress, the mayor of the city in which I lived sought for volunteers. I phoned him to ask why he did not approach the churches--it was their business to help in such emergencies. He rather scoffed at the idea that help could be had from that source, and I undertook to get him some. I found several women who were prepared to go into the stricken homes, risking their own lives, to care for the sick. These are the kind of people who walk the King’s Highway--the way of love.

Illustrations such as these not only make clear in a practical way the meaning of the passage you are expounding; they also give the human touch that lends immediate interest to the ancient word of instruction. The work of illustration must not be overdone. On a dull day you may need to pull up all the blinds in the room, but there are days when the lifting of too many blinds will produce an uncomfortable glare. There are perhaps some sermons that are of a nature to need many illustrations, but one effective illustration is usually enough for any particular lesson you are emphasizing. There are quite a number of illustrations--parables--used by our Lord in the seventh chapter of Matthew to set forth various aspects of the kingdom. They were probably not all in one sermon, however; it is generally thought that the gospel writer compiled them from different sources. Even if they were all spoken at one time, they illustrate different aspects of the kingdom and so are in order.

Famed Preachers

It is good, when we are learning how to do things, to see how they are done by the masters. Great preachers use illustrations effectively. I glanced up at my book shelves when I came to this point, thinking that I would illustrate the art of illustration by showing how world-renowned preachers did it. Whom should I choose? Gossip, Fosdick, Morrison, Drummond, Jones, Robertson, Black--any one of them would do. I took down Henry Drummond. His sermon, The Kingdom of God and Your Part in it, has this fine illustration, which completely reveals his essential message.

"Let me tell you of the work of some university men in the city of London. They went to a district in the East End--a God-forsaken and sunken place, occupied for miles entirely by working people. They rented a house and became known as settlers in that poor district. They gave themselves no air of superiority. They did not tell the people they had come to do them good. They went in there and made friends with the people. These men were not in a great hurry. They waited some months and got to know a number of the workmen, and got to understand one another. They had studied the city, and the working men were astonished at how much the young fellows knew about city government, city life and education, and sanitation, cleansing and purity in all directions. One day there came a great war of labor ... In a few months these young men were the arbiters of a strike, and at a single word from them three or four thousand families were saved from being thrown out of work on a great strike. Is not that a Christian thing to do? If you understand the conception of the kingdom of God as a society of the best men working for the best ends for the amelioration of human life, you will agree with me."

Sources of Illustration Where shall we find illustrations? Sometimes, but only rarely, in books of illustrations for preachers. They do not come with freshness and telling incisiveness from that source--not often, at any rate.

Many of them may come from the Bible itself. For years my mind has toyed with the idea of producing a book of illustrations from Bible history to illustrate Bible texts. There is scope for a fine bit of literary work in that direction. The ability to touch a Bible character into life, and make it contribute to the purpose of a sermon, is much to be desired, and it may be developed. Dr. James Black’s book, An Apology for Rogues--a book dedicated to Sunny Australia--is full of such vivid characterizations.

Here is a quotation from his sermon on Jezebel: "If we make due allowance for the natural disparity of their day and civilization, an interesting parallel may be drawn between Jezebel of Tyre and that sister queen who has been a twin enigma to historians, Mary, Queen of Scots. Both brought with them an alien outlook and culture that had no contact with the people they had to rule, and both were thrust into a somewhat passionate religious community where ’puritan’ and theological interests with which they had no sympathy were foremost ... Both were women of unbending personal will and disturbing passion, tumultuous souls, who either commanded blind adoration like Ahab’s, or unsleeping distrust like Knox’s. They were amazingly determined in their hearts, and as audacious and high-handed in their methods. Neither of them had any gift to understand an opponent’s point of view, and they had no tact or grace in expressing their own ... Though neither could brook opposition, it was their fate to be dared and frustrated by a flaming prophet. Men in their hands were like tools, and yet men broke them. Both of them had a certain non-moral element in them that shocks us, and yet both were defeated, not so much by the religion they so openly opposed, as by moral indignation at their sins."

You may draw upon all literature for your illustrations--fiction for instance. Here is a fine illustrations, which applies itself, from The Sky Pilot of No Man’s Land, by Ralph Connor. The padre is speaking, telling of the death of a corporal.

"Nothing finer in the war. There was an enemy raid coming up. The corporal had got wind of it, and called his men out. They rushed into the front line bay. Just as they got there, eight or ten of them, a live bomb fell hissing among them. They all rushed to one end of the bay, but the corporal kicked the bomb to the other end, and then threw himself on top of it. He was blown to pieces, but no one else was hurt.

During the recital of the tale, Monroe stood looking at Barry (the padre), and when he had finished his eyes were shining with tears.

’Ay, sir, he was a man, sir,’ he said at length.

’Yes, you have said it, Monroe. He was a man, just a common man, but uncommonly like God, for he did the same thing. He gave himself for us.’

Monroe turned away to his work in silence." Or poetry. There is no doubt a preacher’s mind should be steeped in poetry. Poetry is picturesque, and concrete, and makes a stimulating appeal to the imagination. What a ringing character appeal there is in Edwin Markham’s "Lincoln":

"He built the railpile as he built the state, Pouring his splendid strength in every blow, The conscience of him testing every stroke To make his deed the measure of a man."

It is impossible for me to give even the briefest selections from various sources from which illustrations may be drawn--biography, nature, science, history, and many more.

One other source, however, must be suggested--life itself. From your own experience there will come to you, once you have developed the art, rich supplies of illustrative material. The things people say to you, and do--the chance happenings of life are full of this sort of material. You walk on to the city railway platform, and see the letters in red, "Train not going." It could go, it has the seat you would like to sit on, it is headed in the direction you want to go, but "Train not going." Could you apply that to human life? I called at the home of a friend in the apple season, and he showed me an apple tree bearing half-a-dozen kinds of lovely apples. The different varieties had been grafted into the parent stock, which was able to bear them all with equal facility. Could that be made to illustrate the rich and varied fruitfulness that is possible to the life in Christ? The world is quite full of a number of things, as R. L. Stevenson suggested; be on the watch for them and see what they have to say to your homiletical mind. Your pastoral visiting will provide you with a storehouse of material for illustrating your sermons in the most helpful way, because the experiences you there have will all concern life. Only you must be very careful that you do not reveal confidences, nor stimulate curiosity in the minds of your hearers as to whom you are speaking about. Have you noticed, when you have been listening to a sermon that was moving along steadily, what a quickening of interest there was when the preacher began to describe some personal experience? Be careful not to embellish those experiences, do not adorn a tale to make it fit your need. If you cultivate the seeing eye you will discover an abundance of material for your needs. Be sure also that you do not make yourself the center of the experiences you relate. I remember the device of a well-known evangelist in America whose sermons were full of personal experience--he always made them personal, even if the only relation he himself had to one was that it happened to the niece of a woman whom his wife once met on a railway station. You do not have to obtrude yourself to make your experience either interesting or effective. Your Task

It is imperative then, if you wish to be a really good preacher, that you learn the art of illustration. Many hearers will not get your ideas unless you put them in concrete form. Not that you should make your sermon a string of anecdotes--you must not pack your sermon with illustrations. And please do not use simpering sentimental stories, nor too many of the tearful kind--if any at all. The work must be simply, finely, chastely done. You may not have the gift. Dr. James Black, one of the greatest preachers in Scotland for a generation, whose visit to Australia some of us remember with gratitude, said that his early sermons were as devoid of illustrations as a bald man of hair. He is a master of the art now, and his skill in it is one of the secrets of his success. My fear is that you may acknowledge the truth of what I say, and fail to make the effort to master the technique of discovering, creating and using illustrations in your sermons. It is not a subject merely to read about in an interested sort of way, but one to attack with enthusiastic courage that we may conquer it and make it our own. Work! That is the secret of success. "How did Dr. Fosdick become the great preacher he is?" asks Edgar De Witt Jones, himself a great preacher, and answers: "By the hardest kind of work, unceasing laborious toil, painstaking industry." He spends his mornings where no messages can get him, no telephone reach him, and no visitors are admitted. In such seclusion he "toils terribly" over his sermons. We may never be preachers of the dimensions of Dr. Fosdick, but we may be like him in some respects. We may, by diligence and hard work, become "up-to-capacity" preachers, one hundred per cent efficient in the use of the talents we possess to develop and use.

Eye and Ear

It is a common and edifying custom, when addressing children’s assemblies, to use models, pictures, or some form of illustrative material which appeals to the eye. The same method may sometimes be used with advantage in ordinary sermon work. Recently in a sermon in which I was discussing immeasurable factors in personality and life, I drew from my pocket a three-feet rule and measured my Bible--nine inches by five. I picked up another book--much larger in bulk--eleven inches by eight. This latter was an old college annual, of interest to a very limited number of people when it was published, and of rapidly decreasing interest with every year that passed, while the Bible is a book that has shaped the centuries, is published in a thousand tongues, and grows in power forever. There was no question about the quickened interest in the few moments that the illustration occupied. No doubt this is a method that should be used with restraint. Any kind of dramatic presentation that can be given to a sermon is of interest value.

Once or twice I have put my sermon into dialogue form, in which two people were represented in discussion of some living subject. It was well worthwhile, but it is a method that needs to be used with great care, for you must not seem to give one side—your side—a crushing advantage in the discussion, for it never happens that way when two strong, well informed men discuss worth-while subjects. Another method is to select a capable opponent (for the purpose of discussion), to work over the subject together thoroughly, and to present the material to the congregation in the form of a discussion. For Review:

1. Find an illustration in the form of a story to illustrate the text "A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" (Luke 12:15).

2. Illustrate in some way the statement "The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18).