6 Sermon Illustrations on Law Of Sin

You never saw a woman sewing without a needle. She would come but poor speed if she only sewed with the thread. So, I think, when we're dealing with sinners, we maun ayo put in the needle of the law first; for the fact is, they are skepin' sound, and they need to be awakened up with something sharp. But, when we've got the needle of the law fairly in, we may draw as long a thread as you like o' gospel consolation after it. Flockhart.

One of the persecutors in Queen Mary's days, pursuing a poor Protestant, and searching the house for him, charged an old woman to show him the heretic. She points to a great chest of linen, on the top whereof lay a fair looking-glass. He opens the chest, and asks where the heretic was. She suddenly replies, "Do you not see one?" meaning that he was the heretic, and that he might easily see himself in the glass. And thus God's law is the glass that shows us all our spots. Let us hold it right to our intellectual eye; not behind us, as the wicked do (they cast God's word behind them); not beside us, like the rich worldling that called to Christ; not to turn the back of the glass towards us, which is the very trick of all hypocrites; nor, lastly, to look upon ourselves in this glass when we are muffled, masked, or cased, for under those veils we cannot discern our own complexions. But let us see the clear glass before our face, and our open face to the glass, and then we shall soon perceive that the sight of our filthiness is the first step towards cleanliness.

There are stronger things in the world than force. There are powers more difficult to overcome than strong or brazen gates. Suppose we found a prisoner condemned to die, and locked up in his cell, and we were to ask ourselves how he could be saved from execution. There would appear great difficulty in getting him out of prison. That iron door, with its great bolt; that high window, with its guard of strong bars; those thick, strong walls; those heavy gates outside; that watchful jailer, — how impossible it seems to overcome them all! Yet these are not the only difficulties, nor the greatest. There is another thing, stronger than all these, holding the poor prisoner to death: there is the sentence of the law. For, unless he would himself become a criminal, no man dares to help the condemned one out. Get the sentence repealed, and the other difficulties are removed. I will take you in thought to two houses: one is your own; but the doors and windows are all fast, and you have no key: it will be hard to get in. Beside it is another, belonging to your neighbor, — a house you know you have no right to enter, and have been forbidden to approach. The door is open, and nothing withstands your entrance, that you can see. Yet it will be harder to go in there than into your own house; for it would make you a trespasser on rights. An armed fortress belonging to an enemy might be destroyed by force if a general were sent to capture it; but, without a warrant, would that general go into the palace of the king? When Eve stood beside the tree of knowledge of good and evil, there was no fence around it, keeping her steps aloof; no shield to prevent her hand touching the fruit: yet there was a guard more powerful than walls to keep her from plucking it, till she resolved to sin. The words, "Thou shalt not eat of it," so long as her heart was right with God, were like a rampart of fire around that forbidden tree. If a father has said to a dutiful child, "There is an object you must not handle," it is more truly out of the child's reach than if he had merely placed it high up where the little hand could not get hold of it. Dr. Edmond.