13 Sermon Illustrations on Godly Love

"Your child will walk again," said a wise physician to a polio victim's parents, "if you keep up a regular course of exercise that I will prescribe for him, and if you do not wait on him more than necessary, but insist that he try to help himself." At first the exercises were painful, and the child cried out. But though the parents' hearts were full of pity, their concern for his future would not let them give in. They continued hour after hour, day after day, month after month, kindly but firmly encouraging their little boy to exercise his partly paralyzed legs, and to follow as nearly as possible the routine of a normal child. Now a young man, this once crippled youngster walks without the trace of a limp. Is this not an illustration of the way that God loves us, and the way we are to love and help others?

A number of years ago, before any railway came into Chicago, they used to bring in the grain from the Western prairies in wagons for hundreds of miles, so as to have it shipped off by the lakes. There was a father who had a large farm out there, and who used to preach the gospel as well as to attend to his farm. One day, when church business engaged him, he sent his son to Chicago with grain. He waited and waited for his boy to return, but he did not come home. At last he could wait no longer, so he saddled his horse and rode to the place where his son had sold the grain. He found that he had been there and got the money for his grain; then he began to fear that his boy had been murdered and robbed. At last, with the aid of a detective, they tracked him to a gambling den, where they found that he had gambled away the whole of his money. In hopes of winning it back again, he then had sold his team, and lost that money too. He had fallen among thieves, and like the man who was going to Jericho, they stripped him, and then they cared no more about him. What could he do? He was ashamed to go home to meet his father, and he fled. The father knew what it all meant. He knew the boy thought he would be very angry with him. He was grieved to think that his boy should have such feelings toward him. That is just exactly like the sinner. He thinks because he has sinned, God will have nothing to do with him. But what did that father do? Did he say, "Let the boy go"? No; he went after him. He arranged his business, and started after the boy. That man went from town to town, from city to city. He would get the ministers to let him preach, and at the close he would tell his story. "I have got a boy who is a wanderer on the face of the earth somewhere." He would describe his boy, and say, "If you ever hear of him or see him, will you not write to me?" At last he found that he had gone to California, thousands of miles away. Did that father say, "Let him go"? No; off he went to the Pacific coast, seeking the boy. He went to San Francisco, and advertised in the newspapers that he would preach at such a church on such a day. When he had preached he told his story, in hopes that the boy might have seen the advertisement and come to the church. When he had done, away under the gallery, there was a young man who waited until the audience had gone out; then he came toward the pulpit. The father looked and saw it was that boy, and he ran to him, and pressed him to his bosom. The boy wanted to confess what he had done, but not a word would the father hear. He forgave him freely, and took him to his home once more.

I tell you Christ will welcome you this minute if you will come. Say, "I will arise and go to my Father." May God incline you to take this step. There is not one whom Jesus has not sought far longer than that father. There has not been a day since you left Him but He has followed you.

There is a very good story told of Rowland Hill and Lady Ann Erskine. You have seen it, perhaps, in print, but I would like to tell it to you. While he was preaching in a park in London to a large assemblage, she was passing in her carriage. She said to her footman when she saw Rowland Hill in the midst of the people, "Why, who is that man?" That is Rowland Hill, my lady." She had heard a good deal about the man, and she thought she would like to see him, so she directed her coachman to drive her near the platform. When the carriage came near he saw the insignia of nobility, and he asked who that noble lady was. Upon being told, he said, "Stop, my friends, I have got something to sell." The idea of a preacher becoming suddenly an auctioneer made the people wonder, and in the midst of a dead silence he said: "I have more than a title to sell--I have more than a crown of Europe to sell; it is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Is there anyone here who bids for it? Yes, I hear a bid. Satan, Satan, what will you give? 'I will give pleasure, honor, riches--yea, I will give the whole world for her soul.' Do you hear another bid? Is there any other one? Do I hear another bid? Ah, I thought so; I hear another bid. The Lord Jesus Christ, what will You give for this soul? 'I will give peace, joy, comfort, that the world knows not of--yea, I will give eternal life.' Lady Ann Erskine, you have heard the two bidders for your soul, which will you accept? And she ordered the door of her carriage to be opened, and came weeping from it, and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. He, the great and mighty Saviour, is a bidder for your soul to-night. He offers you riches and comfort, and joy, peace here, and eternal life hereafter, while Satan offers you what he cannot give. Poor lost soul, which will you have? He will ransom your soul if you but put your burden upon Him. Twenty-one years ago I made up my mind that Jesus would have my soul, and I have never regretted the step, and no man has ever felt sorry for coming to Him. When we accept Him we must like Him. Your sins may rise up as a mountain, but the Son of Man can purge you of all evil, and take you right into the palaces of Heaven, if you will only allow Him to Save you.

Suppose a mother should come in here with a little child, and after she has been here a while the child begins to cry, and she says, "Keep still," but the child keeps on crying, and so she turns him over to the police and says, "Take that child, I don't want him." What would you say of such a mother as that? Teach a child that God loves him only so long as he is good, and that when he is bad the Lord does not love him, and you will find that when he grows up, if he has a bad temper he will have the idea that God hates him because he thinks God don't love him when he has got a bad temper, and as he has a bad temper all the time, of course God does not love him at all, but hates him all the time. Now God hates sin, but He loves the sinner, and there is a great difference between the love of God and our love.

The Dutch endeavored to monopolize the spice-trade, by co-ahing the nutmeg-tree to the narrow limits of Bonda, and extirpating it from all other islands where it naturally grew; but the wild pigeons scattered the nuts over the Moluccas and adjoining islands, thus propagating the tree, and defeating the selfishness of the Dutch.

I go into my library, and, like some great panorama, all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet linger in it, when it was thickened only by the sigh of Eve. I see the Pyramids building. I hear Mennon murmur as the first morning sun touches him. I see the Sphinx when she first began to ask her eternal question. I sit as in a theatre; the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! what kingly pomp! what processions pass by! what cities burn to heaven! what crowds of captives are dragged at the wheels of conquerors! I hiss, or cry "Bravo," when the great actors come on shaking the stage. In my solitude I am only myself at intervals. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syriac plains, the outcomings and outgoings of the patriarchs Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral-procession, — all these things I can find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in these old books! what green pastoral rest, and yet what indubitable human existence! Across the brawling centuries of blood and war that lie between, I can hear the bleating of Abraham's sheep, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels. O men and women, so far separated, yet so near, so strange, yet so well known, by what miraculous power do I know you all! Books are the true Elysian fields where the spirits of the dead converse, couched on flowers; and to these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom? All the wit of all the world is glancing and flashing there. There is I'm's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Sitting in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down, and it immediately speaks with me, — it may be in a tongue not now heard on earth, it may be of men and things of which it alone possesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary; but sometimes I think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Tamerlano or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library; but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.

— Encas Sage

To have a portion in God is to possess that which includes in itself all created good. The man who is in possession of some great masterpiece in painting or sculpture need not envy others who have only casts or copies of it. The original plate or stereotype is more valuable than any impressions or engravings thrown off from it; and he who owns the former owns that which includes, is capable of producing, all the latter. . . . Surveying the wonders of creation, or even with the word of inspiration in his hand, the Christian can say, "Glorious though these things be, to me belongs that which is more glorious far. The streams are precious, but I have the Fountain; the vesture is beautiful, but the Weaver is mine; the portrait in its every lineament is lovely, but that great Original, whose beauty it but feebly depicts, is mine, my own. 'God is my portion; the Lord is mine inheritance.' To me belongs all actual and all possible good, all created and uncreated beauty, all that eye hath seen or imagination conceived: and more than that; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, what God hath prepared for them that love him. All things and beings, all that life reveals or death conceals, every thing within the boundless possibilities of creating wisdom and power is mine; for God, the Creator and Fountain of all, is mine." Dr. Caird.

The saints are God's jewels. They are highly esteemed by him, and are dear to him. They are comely with the comeliness that he puts upon them, and he is pleased to glory in them: they are a royal diadem in his hand. He looks upon them as his own proper goods, his choice goods, his treasure laid up in his cabinet, and the furniture of his closet: the rest of the world is but lumber in comparison with them.

— M. Henry