10 Sermon Illustrations on Divine Grace

A father sees his child drowning. If he remains indifferent and does not come to the rescue of his child while he can, I am sure the law will condemn him. He will be punished because he did not save his child while he could. That is a case where power carries with it the responsibility of saving action. The father has to save his child whether he wants to or not. It was not so, however, with God. God could save you and me, but He did not have to, since He knew the tremendous cost of saving man. Remember, He did not do what He did under the compulsion of some law, but out of His pure free will and sovereign grace. When we think of that, how much more we appreciate what He has done for us.

"As one that would gladly open a door, trieth key after key will he hath tried every key in the bunch, so doth God try one method after another to work upon man's heart." His persevering grace will not be baffled. He frequently begins with the silver key of a mother's tearful prayers and a father's tender counsels. In turn, he uses the church-keys of his ordinances and his ministers, and these are often found to move the bolt; but if they fail, he thrusts in the iron key of trouble and affliction which has been known to succeed after all others have failed. He has, however, a golden master-key, which excels all others: it is the operation of his own most gracious Spirit by which entrance is effected into hearts which seemed shut up for ever.

Wonderful is the patience and long-suffering of the Lord, or he would long since have left hardened and careless sinners to themselves. He is importunate, whether we are so or not. We take pains to resist his heavenly grace, but he abideth faithful to his own name of love. O Lord, we bless thee that thou hast opened our hearts, and we pray thee now that thou hast entered, abide in our souls for ever, as a king in his own palace-halls!

In a certain town in Rhode Island, there lived two young men, who were intimately acquainted. The one was truly pious, and the other, a shopman, paid no regard to divine things. On one occasion the shopman took up a leaf of the Bible, and was about to tear it in pieces, and use it for packing up some small parcel in the shop, when the other said, "Do not tear that: it contains the word of eternal life." The young man, though he did not relish the reproof of his kind and pious friend, folded up the leaf, and put it in his pocket. Shortly after this, he said within himself, "Now I will see what kind of life it is, of which this leaf speaks." On unfolding the leaf, the first words that caught his eye were the last in the book of Daniel: "But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." He began immediately to inquire what his lot would be at the end of the days, and the train of thought thus awakened led to the formation of a religious character. By means so various are the purposes of Divine grace accomplished.

When the celebrated Whitefield was addressing an immense crowd with his accustomed fervor and eloquence, under the shade of a venerable tree in the meadows at Edinburgh, a poor creature, thinking to turn him into ridicule, had perched himself on one of the overhanging boughs right above the preacher's head, and, with monkey-like dexterity, mimicking his gesticulations, endeavored to raise a laugh among the audience. Guided by the looks of some of his hearers, Whitefield caught a glance of him, but without seeming to have noticed him, continued his discourse. With the skill of a practised orator, he reserved the incident for the proper place and time. He was expatiating at the moment on the power and sovereignty of Divine grace. With gathering force and earnestness he told of the unlikely objects it had often chosen, and the unlooked for triumphs it had achieved. As he rose to the climax of his inspiring theme, and when in the full sweep of his eloquence, he suddenly paused, and turning round and pointing slowly to the wretch above him, exclaimed, in a tone of deep and thrilling pathos, "Even he may yet be the subject of that free and resistless grace." It was a shaft from the Almighty. Winged by the divine Spirit, it struck the scoffer to the heart, and realized, in his conversion, the glorious truth it contained.

Mr. Nathan Davies, the eldest son of a respectable Christian minister in Wales, was a youth of wild and dissolute conduct, and thereby occasioned much grief to his pious parents. Neither the mild nor the severe methods used to reclaim him had the desired effect. At length, a period arrived when the aged and venerable father must die; and, like Jacob, he desired that his children should be called to his bedside, to receive his dying admonitions. Having addressed them all, one by one, except the profligate son, in a very affectionate and solemn manner, he concluded by warning them to shun the bad example and wicked ways of their eldest brother, and advised them to act towards him with caution and forbearance, adding, that he feared they would experience from him nothing but sorrow and trouble. He then dismissed them, and soon after died.

The circumstance of the father's silence made a deeper impression on the mind of Nathan than all the reproofs and exhortations he had before received; and, to use his own expression, he thought at the time that his heart would have burst. He was then about twenty-seven years of age; and, through the Divine blessing, a great change became visible in him; he abandoned his former ways and companions, became a serious hearer of the word, and, in a short time, a member of the church over which his late father had been pastor. A few years afterwards he was called to the ministry, succeeded his father in the pastoral office, and was blessed in it with eminent success until the day of his death, which took place in the year 1726.