13 Sermon Illustrations on Regeneration

One of the most conspicuous persons at the Brooklyn Rink was a man of over fifty years, a reporter, apparently of a sensational sort. One of my friends entered into conversation with him the second evening, and found him partially intoxicated, ribald, sneering, and an infidel. Inquiring further concerning him, we found that he had been several times in the city jail for drunken brawls, although originally a man of culture and polish. Time passed, and on our last day at Brooklyn the same man, conspicuous by his commanding figure, sat in a back seat in the Simpson Church. My friend accosted him once more, and this was the answer: "I am waiting to thank Mr. Moody, who, under God, has been the greatest blessing of my life to me. I have given up my engagement, the temptations of which are such as no Christian can face. And I am a Christian--a new creature; not reformed; you cannot reform a drunkard; I have tried that a hundred times; but I am regenerated, born again by the grace and power of God. I have reported sermons many a time, simply to ridicule them, but never had the least idea what true religion meant till I heard Mr. Moody's address on 'Love and Sympathy,' ten days ago, and I would not have believed there could be so much sweetness in a lifetime as has been condensed into those ten days. My children knew the change; my wife knew it; I have set up the family altar, and the appetite for liquor has been utterly taken away, that I only loathe what I used to love." "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall," suggested my friend. "No, not while I stand so close to the cross as I do to-day;" and he opened a small hymn-book, on the fly-leaf of which was written: "I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed."

A little boy once said, "How hard it is to do right!" and so hard did he find it, that, after a while, he added, "It's of no use trying." But he was a boy who had learnt to read and understand the Bible; and one day he thought to himself, "Why! I have been trying to change myself all this time; and here I read that only God can change me. How foolish I have been not to ask him!" Rev. S. G. Green.

A miner who had lived in a deep mine in Hungary, never having seen the light of the sun, may have received accounts of prospects, and, by the help of a candle, may have examined a few engravings of them; but let him be brought out of the mine, and set on the mountain, what a difference appears! Newton.

Inspecting some young grafts on the stock of a fruit-tree, which were shown him by a friend, and which had grown with extraordinary vigor, and reached in a short time to a great height. Gotthold observed, "This also is one of the miracles of nature, which we have daily before our eyes, but seldom contemplate or improve to our edification. A wild stock has all its branches pruned away, and is hewn down to a span's length. It is then split, has foreign shoots inserted into it, and is afterwards bound; and not only does it adopt the strange shoots, and nourish them with its sap and vigor, but even permits them to gain the mastery so far as to make it forget its wildness, and bear beautiful and delicious fruit."

None go to heaven but they that are made meet for it. As it was with Solomon's temple, so it is with the temple above. It was "built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither," namely of "living stones, wrought for the self-same thing;" for they cannot be laid in that glorious building just as they came out of the quarry of depraved nature. Jewels of gold are not meet for service, and far less jewels of glory for unrenewed sinners. Beggars in their rags are not meet for kings' houses, nor sinners to "enter into the king's palace," without the "raiment of needle-work." What wise man would bring fish out of water to feed on his meadows? or send his oxen to feed in the sea? Even as little are the unregenerated meet for heaven, or is heaven meet for them.

— Boston

Regeneration is a thorough, real, change. The Lord God makes the creature a new creature, as the goldsmith melts down the vessel of dishonor, and makes it a vessel of honor. Man is, in respect of his spiritual state, altogether disjointed by the fall; every faculty of the soul is, as it were, dislocated: in regeneration, the Lord looseth every joint, and sets it right again. It is a change into the likeness of God. Every thing that generates, generates its like. The child bears the image of the parent; and they that are born of God, bear God's image. It is a universal change: all things become new. It is a blest leaven, that leavens the whole lump, the whole spirit, and soul and body... One gets not only a new head to know religion, or a new tongue to talk of it, but a new heart to love and embrace it. When the Lord opens the sluice of grace on the soul's new birthday, the waters run through the whole man, to purify and make him fruitful. Boston

The infant born into the world is the man in miniature. All the parts of the body, and all the faculties of the mind, are there in embryo. So the regenerated sinner is the saint in embryo. The new principles are there, the new affections are there, the saint is there, but in infancy.

— Wardlaw