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157 Sermon Illustrations on Consequences of Sin

157 illustrations Page 4 of 4

The consequences of sin in Christian preaching highlight the inevitable destruction and alienation that follow disobedience to God’s law. Sin leads to ruin not only spiritually but also in practical life, as selfishness, greed, and wrong choices bring harm and loss (Galatians 6:7-8; Romans 6:23). Illustrations often use images of ruin, reaping a whirlwind, and the collapse of prosperity to convey these truths.

A Warden'S Testimony

Most criminals were Sabbath-breakers, linking Sabbath neglect to moral downfall.

A gentleman, who has had charge of more than one hundred thousand prisoners, and has taken special pains to ascertain the causes of their crimes says, that he does not recollect a single case of capital offence where the party had not been a Sabbath-breaker. And in many cases they assured him that Sabbath-breaking was the first step in their downward course. Indeed, he says, with reference to prisoners of all classes, nineteen out of twenty have neglected the Sabbath and other ordinances of religion. And he has often met with prisoners about to expiate their crimes by an ignominious death, who earnestly enforced upon the survivors the necessity of an observance of the Sabbath, and ascribed their own course of iniquity to a non-observance of that day.

Says the keeper of one of the largest prisons, "Nine-tenths of our inmates are those who did not value the Sabbath, and were not in the habit of attending public worship."

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine conviction of sin

Voice From Auburn Prison

Few prisoners had kept the Sabbath, showing its neglect correlates with crime.

Of twelve hundred and thirty-two convicts who had been committed to the Auburn State Prison previously to the year 1838, four hundred and forty-seven had been watermen, either boatmen or sailors—men who, to a great extent, had been kept at work on the Sabbath, and thus deprived of the rest and privileges of that day. Of those twelve hundred and thirty-two convicts, only twenty-six had conscientiously kept the Sabbath.

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine conviction of sin

Criminals In Mass. State Prison

Most inmates habitually violated the Sabbath and neglected public worship.

Of one hundred men admitted to the Massachusetts State Prison in one year, eighty-nine had lived in habitual violation of the Sabbath and neglect of public worship.

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine conviction of sin

Murderers In New

Many condemned criminals blame their ruin on forsaking God's house and Sabbath rest.

GATE.—In the evening, says a writer in an English Magazine, I stepped into St. Sepulchre's, Snow-hill. Dr. Rudge, a preacher of some note in the metropolis, is evening lecturer here; and we had a sermon from him in behalf of a parochial charity, by which fifty-one poor boys of the parish are supported and educated. He took occasion to remark, that his official situation (as chaplain to Newgate) often led him to hear the confessions of malefactors, under sentence of death; and that in almost every instance, they ascribed their ruin to their desertion of the house of God, and the violation of the day of rest.

### 184. Various Evils.

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine conviction of sin

Failures Of Sabbath

Working on the Sabbath leads to failure and loss, as observed by merchants.

BREAKERS.—The following fact, communicated by a respectable merchant of New-York, is well worthy of notice:—"I have particularly observed," says the gentleman, "that those merchants in New-York who have kept their counting-rooms open on the Sabbath day, during my residence there (twenty-five years), have failed without exception."

In another part of the country an old man remarked, "I can recollect more than fifty years; but I cannot recollect a case of a man, in this town, who was accustomed to work on the Sabbath, who did not fail or lose his property before he died."

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine

Old Man'S Remark

Working on the Sabbath brings no gain, evidenced by men who lost everything.

An old gentleman in Boston remarked, "Men do not gain any thing by working on the Sabbath. I can recollect men who, when I was a boy, used to load their vessels down on the Long Wharf, and keep their men at work from morning to night on the Sabbath day. But they have come to nothing. Their children have come to nothing. Depend upon it, men do not gain any thing, in the end, by working on the Sabbath."

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine

The Reward Of War

Victory in war can bring little reward compared to the cost of human bloodshed.

The Duke of Marlborough observing a soldier leaning pensively on the butt-end of his musket, just after victory had declared itself in favor of the British arms at the battle of Blenheim, accosted him thus: "Why so pensive, my friend, after so glorious a victory?" "It may be glorious," replied the brave fellow, "but I am thinking that all the human blood I have spilled this day has only earned me fourpence."

from Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes · Kazlitt Arvine

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