59 Sermon Illustrations on Assurance of Faith

The accent of conviction is indispensable if you would convince. The approbation of God is more than the admiration of nations. The arrows of calamity are aimed at your sins. The believer has abiding arguments for abiding consolation. The Bible in the memory is better than the Bible in the bookcase. The Bible is the treasury of heavenly knowledge, the cyclopedia of divine science. The Bible is, to many a man, God's unopened letter. The blank of nothingness stood not in God's way when He came to create. ' The Constable of the Tower of London stands in relationship to it, and is concerned for its preservation. Now the Lord is not only the keeper and guarantor of my mercy, but the God of it. The Cross is the last argument of God. The cure for vain glory is true glory. The devil's bread is all bran. The divine blesses the human, or the human could not bless the divine. The door of repentance opens into the halls of joy. The doorstep of the palace of wisdom is a humble sense of ignorance. The good Bible student has lips like a springing well. The great loaves of wisdom must be broken and crumbed into a basin of milk for the children. The high road of truth to the heart runs through the ear. The "ipse dixit" of the Son of God suffices us. The lance with which we reach the hearts of men is that same lance which pierced the Savior's heart. The line of truth is narrow as a razor's edge. The little things of God are more precious than the great things of man. The Lord gives unlimited credit at the Bank of Faith. The Lord is never voiceless except to the earless soul. The Lord loves adverbs as much as adjectives. The Lord loves to use tools which are not rusted with self-conceit. The mercy seat is no place for the exhibition of your abilities. The novelties of "modern thought" are a Dead Sea, but our gospel is an ocean of living water. The path to Heaven lies by the dens of the leopards, and the haunts of the young lions. The privileges of the gospel are the stumbling blocks of legalists. The rankness of sin destroys the sweet odors of this world. The real eloquence of prayer is a believing desire. The safest truth is the simplest. The simple gospel which saves sinners also feeds saints. The star of to-day will be the sun of tomorrow. The thing we glory in, though it be a dear child, may turn out to be a scourge for our backs, a Cain and not a consolation. The treasury of heaven lies open to faith.

A noted Duke had two sons. The eldest fell into consumption when a boy, which ended in his death. Two ministers visited him, and after prayer the youth took his Bible from under the pillow and turned to the language of our text, and said: “This, sirs, is all my comfort.” When death approached, he called his younger brother and spoke to him with much affection, and ended with these words: “Douglas, in a little time you will be a Duke, but I shall be a King.”

“I have heard folks say, ‘I hope I have religion, but I don’t know’; but I never heard a man say, ‘I hope I have money, but I don’t know.’ That sort of religion that you hope you have, but don’t know, isn’t going to do any more good than the money that you hope you have but don’t know.”

A caviller in an omnibus said to a Christian man one day, "Why, you have nothing after all to rest upon. I can prove to you that your Scriptures are not authentic." The humble Christian man replied, "Sir, I am not a learned man, and I cannot answer your questions; but I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I have experienced such a change of character, and I feel such joy and peace through believing, that I wish you knew my Savior, too." The answer he received was a very unexpected one: the unbeliever said, "You have got me there; I cannot answer that ." Just so, we have got them there. If we know what has been wrought in us by grace, and know assuredly the sustaining power of that grace, they cannot overcome us. The full assurance man baffles the very devil.

The apostle who said “I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able, &c.,” had a far better assurance than the philosopher who trusted in a meaningless omen.

Rousseau, in his celebrated “Confessions,” records that he was one day sitting in a grove, meditating whether his soul would probably be saved or lost. How could he settle the question? A supernatural voice seemed to suggest an appeal to a singular kind of augury. “I will,” said he, “throw this stone at that tree. If I hit the tree, it shall be a sign that my soul is to be saved. If I miss it, it shall indicate that I am to be lost.” Selecting a large tree, he took the precaution of standing near to it, and threw his stone plump against the trunk. “After that,” naively says the philosopher, “I never again had a doubt respecting my salvation.”