57 Sermon Illustrations on Lincoln

While some opponents of “same-sex marriage” argue that this is a state issue, I believe at its heart it is a national issue. In fact, I believe events in American history support this position.

I suspect that Abraham Lincoln was a staunch Federalist. While he believed most issues should be decided at the state level, there are some issues that are so compelling and basic (“first principles”) that they have to be decided at the federal level. Lincoln understood the moral dilemma that would unfold if each state was able to decide for itself whether it would be “slave” or “free.”

In a speech delivered June 17, 1858 -- before he became president -- Lincoln said the issue of slavery was a “crisis” that the nation could not ignore.

Quoting the Bible, he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matt. 12:25).

“I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,” Lincoln continued. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

I have ancestors who fought for the Confederacy as well as ancestors who fought for the Union, and I appreciate the fact that the Civil War was more complicated than just the issue of slavery. There are people who assert the war was about states’ rights and not about slavery. What do you think was the precipitating cause that made people talk about states’ rights? It was some people’s belief that it was a state’s right to allow some people to own other people. The fact is, without the issue of slavery, there never would have been a Civil War.

The slavery analogy is apt when it comes to the marriage issue. America’s families -- and the culture at large -- cannot survive as a union of states with half embracing “same-sex marriage” and half accepting only traditional marriage. The U.S. government will not disintegrate, but eventually the nation will have one definition of marriage binding us all.

Lincoln gave his speech in the same year of the infamous Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. The sensibilities of many Americans of that day were outraged by this immoral decision that said, for the purposes of law, that slaves were not people, but property.

The Dred Scott decision was not what you would call a close decision. The 7-2 verdict said the right to own slaves was a fundamentally guaranteed constitutional right that could not be limited by the states.

Lincoln, in an 1860 address, pointed out that the slaveholders would not be content to continue owning slaves in the states where they held them. They wanted to force everyone in the country to acknowledge their right to have slaves anywhere in the United States. In other words, they wanted to make slavery legal in every state of the union.

So less than six months after the end of the Civil War, what did the people of the United States do? They adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which said once and for all that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Slavery was outlawed in the federal Constitution. It was not going to be an issue decided by each state.

I respect the Constitution, and I don’t believe it should be amended unless it is absolutely necessary. We have reached the point regarding marriage that we once reached regarding slavery. Rulings like this one in Iowa reveal the urgent need for a federal Marriage Protection Amendment.

At least one person has said to me that while banning slavery expanded personal liberty, prohibiting “same-sex marriage” would contract or limit personal liberty. Yet while the ban on slavery expanded liberty for the slaves, it inhibited and constricted liberty for the slaveholders.

In fact, the emancipation of the 3 million African Americans held in involuntary servitude until the end of the Civil War was the largest property expropriation without any kind of indemnity or compensation to the slaveholders that has taken place anywhere in the Western world in modern history.

No longer was an American free to own another human being. Liberty was secured for the slaves and constricted for slaveholders. Never has justice been better served.

Forbidding same-sex couples from marrying may be a constriction of their liberty, but more importantly, it is an expansion of the people’s liberty to define what constitutes marriage.

Whether or not the “same-sex marriage” issue becomes a topic of discussion among those running for president depends on all of us. If we make the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman an issue, it will become an issue among the crowd of candidates reaching for the golden ring.

It takes courage to set aside jealousy and rejoice with the achievements of a rival. Would you like an example of someone who did?

Standing before ten thousand eyes is Abraham Lincoln. An uncomfortable Abraham Lincoln. His discomfort comes not from the thought of delivering his first inaugural address but from the ambitious efforts of well-meaning tailors. He is unaccustomed to such attire - formal black dress coat, silk vest, black trousers, and a glossy top hat. He holds a huge ebony cane with a golden head the size of an egg.

He approaches the platform with hat in one hand and cane in the other. He doesn't know what to do with either one. In the nervous silence that comes after the applause and before the speech, he searches for a spot to place them. He finally leans the cane in a corner of the railing, but he still doesn't know what to do with the hat. He could lay it on the podium, but it would take up too much room. Perhaps the floor ... no, too dirty.

Just then, and not a moment too soon, a man steps forward and takes the hat, returns to his seat, and listens intently to Lincoln's speech. Who is he? Lincoln's dearest friend. The president said of him, “He and I are about the best friends in the world.”

He was one of the strongest supporters of the early stages of Lincoln's presidency. He was given the honor of escorting Mrs. Lincoln in the inaugural grand ball. As the storm of the Civil War began to boil, many of Lincoln's friends left, but not this one. He amplified his loyalty by touring the South as Lincoln's peace ambassador. He begged Southerners not to secede and Northerners to rally behind the president.

His efforts were great, but the wave of anger was greater. The country did divide, and civil war bloodied the nation. Lincoln's friend never lived to see it. He died three months after Lincoln's inauguration. Wearied by his travels, he succumbed to a fever, and Lincoln was left to face the war alone.

Upon hearing the news of his friend's death, Lincoln wept openly and ordered the White House flag to be flown at half-staff. Some feel Lincoln's friend would have been chosen as his running mate in 1864 and would thus have become president following the assassination of the Great Emancipator.

No one will ever know about that. But we do know that Lincoln had one true friend. And we can only imagine the number of times the memory of him brought warmth to a cold Oval Office. He was a model of friendship.

He was also a model of forgiveness.

This friend could just as easily have been an enemy. Long before he and Lincoln were allies, they were competitors - politicians pursuing the same office. And unfortunately, their debates are better known than their friendship. The debates between Abraham Lincoln and his dear friend, Stephen A. Douglas.

But on Lincoln's finest day, Douglas set aside their differences and held the hat of the president. Douglas heard a higher call.

Wise are we if we do the same. Wise are we if we rise above our hurts. For if we do, we'll be present at the Father's final celebration. A party to end all parties. A party where no pouters will be permitted.

I’ve often heard that we should keep our views on various moral issues out of the public square.

My first contention is that it is impossible to do so. Judgments offered from either side of the discussion have a fiercely moral tone. While the moral indignation of gay marriage and abortion opponents is well-known, none can doubt a similar indignation in gay marriage and abortion affirmers.

Who has not seen the fires of perceived righteousness burning in the eyes of their ideological opponents? Sometimes it is a righteous fire born of concern; other times it is the smug fire of self-righteousness. But we cannot deny that the indignation is moral in its nature.

One can hear moral overtones when President Obama, who has done more to promote both gay marriage and abortion-on-demand than any president in history, follows up a proposal with his trademark, “It’s just the right thing to do.” His statement, of course, is usually met with applause from those sharing his moral outlook. But right according to what?

Furthermore, we typically laud those who operate according to their convictions -- unless, that is, those convictions are wrong. Few of us admire those who contend that “colonialism is good for the underdeveloped” or that “separate-but-equal is the best way to treat the race problem in America,” even when arguments arise from genuine moral conviction.

Abraham Lincoln has the nearly-unique privilege of being seen by both left and right as a moral giant -- a courageous man of conviction who led America out of its moral quagmire with slavery. But where did Lincoln’s moral impulse, which our country found so contagious, come from? Elton Trueblood shows in his classic “Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish” that Lincoln’s convictions came from the root conviction that “the divine order can be ascertained and followed.” This is what gave him the undaunted courage to lead the nation despite fierce opposition.

Trueblood wrote of Lincoln: “While he is remembered primarily for his difficult political decisions which kept the Union intact, the more we study them, the more we realize that all of them were reached at a level far deeper than that of politics. Underlying all particular decisions was a moral revulsion against human slavery ... and an abiding conviction that the divine order can be ascertained and followed.”

In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, arguably his greatest political work and perhaps the greatest political speech in American history, Lincoln declared that he would never give up on the quest to make men free, despite any political or military setbacks, because he trusted that “right makes might” and that we must proceed in our conviction toward the “right as God enables us to see it.”

Lincoln’s position was not popular then, and the severe winds of opposition withered many of Lincoln’s allies in the fight against slavery. Lincoln did not waver, however, because he believed that God’s view of right and wrong could be known. Rather than ask if God is on our side, Lincoln famously contended, we should ask whether we are on God’s side. And how do we know that? By whether our convictions cohere with His known will.

In today’s gay marriage or abortion debates, can we really know what side is God’s? The popular though flaccid answer is that we cannot. And why? Because the divine will, some say, is unknowable, and if we claim to know the divine will we will surely become theocratic terrorists. If that is true, then Lincoln must be included in that number. He firmly believed that the divine will about slavery could be known.

But if we can know the will of God, then the questions of “How does God define marriage?” and “When does God say life begins?” are as relevant as “Did God create all races equal?” If Lincoln was correct, these kinds of questions form the essential and necessary bedrock of our public discussions.

There is no enduring moral fortitude or intellectual consistency apart from the conviction that the divine will can be known.

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J. D. Greear is the lead pastor at the Summit Church in Durham, N.C.