45 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Blindness

A forester near Hamburg, Germany, found an unusual bird's nest. It was a tiny tin can in which a full-grown cuckoo was imprisoned. Apparently the can had been used by some smaller bird for a nest, and the cuckoo egg had been left there in accordance with the custom of the cuckoo of leaving eggs in other birds' nests. When the eggs hatched, the foster parents discovered that they had a stranger in their home-a cuckoo. When flying-time came, all were able to leave the nest but the cuckoo who was too large to get through the opening in the can. So the foster parents continued to feed the imprisoned bird who, for lack of exercise, had become so fat that it filled the entire can. Its misery was ended only when the forester opened the can and let the bird out. Many men never fly, spiritually speaking, because they are never able to break the bonds that hold them to the narrow restrictions of the single viewpoint of truth they have chosen. God will break the bonds of the man of faith who deliberately opens his heart and mind to "the whole counsel of God" as found in His Word from Genesis to Revelation.

A preacher wrote: "Last summer I stood looking over a Highland river valley lit with a beautiful sunset, and I marveled at the work of God in nature. I turned to a farmer friend and said, 'What a privilege it is for you to live amid such beauty!' He thought for a moment and said, 'Aye, man, it's grand sheep country.' I have many farmer friends who would have bared their heads at the very thought of the wonders of God in nature, but this man's sense of the beautiful was clouded by the pursuit of the material. Oh, how often we lift our eyes from the face of the vision God gives us and turn them on our mirrors and see only self; self counting the sheep and the cattle; self getting rich, climbing the ladder of earthly success; self winning favor in the eyes of men. Not that these things are not worthwhile in their place on earth-they are! But when we make them our only end in life, we miss all that is best and most beautiful."

A friend of mine went into a drugstore the other day and pointed to some toothbrushes on a rack. "Let me have a pink one," she requested. To her surprise, the clerk took down an orange one. "No, pink," she reminded him. This time he selected a lavender one. My friend began to sense the difficulty. "No, I said pink," she repeated pleasantly; the clerk's finger hovered uncertainly over the rack and neared the desired color, "That one," she declared emphatically. "I see you're color-blind," she remarked as he wrapped her purchase. With a sheepish smile he confessed, "I always call blue 'green.' " But this same friend had a color-blind relative who doggedly insisted that certain colors were a figment of other people's imaginations because he could not distinguish them. Do not be surprised when those who do not know God cannot accept as real the spiritual truths He has revealed through His Word. The "eyes of their understanding" have never been opened. To Each His Own Public opinion has its own valid functions, but it is inappropriate and insufficient in guiding a Christian worker. A broom, for instance, is not adapted to clean an oil painting. It has its own function, that of cleaning a floor, and it discharges this much more efficiently than if it were a paintbrush. How disastrous it would be if a body of well-meaning and earnest persons, armed with brooms, were to burst into an art gallery with a view to improving the paintings. The best intentions won't enable a rough instrument to accomplish work for which it is unfit. Similarly, public opinion, by reason of its conglomerate nature and massive force, is unfit to deal with the secrets of the kingdom of heaven. No God/No Morals Two friends, meeting after a long time, were discussing the current breakdown in morals, especially among the younger generation. "What do you suppose really causes it?" asked one who in the past had openly declared she felt no need of God in her life. Her Christian friend hesitated, feeling it would be useless to give her own opinion as a believer since the other had so often rejected her attempts in the past to speak of religious matters. Before she could formulate a reply, however, her friend advanced her own theory. "Don't you think the breakdown in religious values has something to do with it?" "Yes, I do," agreed the other quickly. "If young people have turned their backs on religion and feel that God doesn't exist, they no longer have any absolute standards of right and wrong, no authority to turn to for direction, and the result is confusion. Everyone does that which is right in his own eyes." Surprisingly, her friend agreed with her. Even unbelievers are beginning to realize that if God doesn't exist, society has nothing on which to base its ethics.

Suppose a robbery had been committed in a store in your neighborhood; you join the crowd standing outside and ask, "What happened?" Someone starts to fill you in on what's going on, though he hasn't been inside the building himself. Then the storekeeper comes out, and you ask the same question. His account differs in many details from that of the bystander. Whom would you believe? The answer is obvious. You realize that the man who stands outside a building is a very poor judge of what is taking place within. Yet, frequently the man who stands outside the circle of born-again Christians refuses to enter or even listen to what is going on inside the circle of those who are in Christ. Unfortunately, when he desires to get information on spiritual things, he doesn't go to those who have experienced the indwelling of the Spirit of God, but turns to worldly philosophers and rationalists, those outside of the circle of believers. Therefore the information he gets of what is going on inside is totally perverted. No Man Is an Island One day a man was hiking in the mountains when he came upon the hut of a hermit who had isolated himself from other human beings. He struck up a conversation with the hermit who told the visitor that he was completely self-sufficient to meet his own needs. He said, "I cut the trees and hewed the logs for my cabin, and I put it together with wooden pegs. I grow or hunt all my own food, and I get along just fine. I don't need anybody else." The man looked at him for a moment, then said, "Tell me, how did you cut the trees you used for your cabin?" The hermit replied, "With my axe." Then the visitor said, "But wasn't someone else responsible for making that axe and your other tools, and for mining the iron that was used to make them? What about your clothes, do you make all of them?" "No," replied the hermit, "I have to make a trip outside about once a year to get new clothes." "Then," said the man again, "what about the shells that you use in your gun when you hunt your food, and what about the gun itself? Weren't you dependent on someone else for both?" "Well," said the hermit reluctantly, "I guess so." "The truth is," said the visitor, "that you are not as independent of others as you like to think. Even if you could sustain yourself completely without any of the things we've mentioned, you're still forgetting one vital thing which you could never supply or maintain by yourself." "What's that?" asked the hermit. Looking him full in the face, the man said, "Your own life." Whereupon the hermit fell silent and had little else to say.

Christopher D. Green writes: "I cannot explain why I do it, but I have always walked in the dark. When I was a kid I used to do it more as a challenge; an adventure. Now as an adult, I suppose it is more out of habit than anything else. "If I get up in the middle of the night, I refuse to turn on the lights. Instead of simply flipping a switch and lighting my way, I wander around in the dark, relying on my sixth sense to guide me. Usually, I guess from all these years of practice, I can get to my intended destination without incident. However, a few nights ago proved to be one of exception and painful consequence. "After being in bed for an hour or so, I got up to get a drink of water. With my mouth as dry as the inside of a Kleenex box, I shuffled down the hall half asleep but still awake enough to enjoy the tickling feeling the carpet made on my feet. As I cleared the end of the hall, it felt good to pause by the heater. Continuing on only a few shuffles more, I met my doom. I think I actually felt the pain before it happened. With one fairly innocent shuffle, I crashed my foot into the dining room chair. The force was so great it knocked the chair over, and left me in a painful pile on the floor. The scream was muffled only because I had a mouth full of plush pile carpet. If I had only turned on the light, I would have avoided the pain! "Too often Christians forget that they should not spiritually walk around in the dark. Not only should they avoid the darkness, they should also be a light that exposes the evil that is found in darkness. "Remember that if we 'walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from every sin' (1 John 1:7)."

A minister was asked by a Quakeress, "Does not thee think that we can walk so carefully, live so correctly, and avoid every fanaticism so perfectly, that every sensible person will say, 'That is the kind of religion I believe in?'" He replied, "Sister, if thee had a coat of feathers as white as snow, and a pair of wings as shining as Gabriel's, somebody would be found somewhere on the footstool with so bad a case of color blindness as to shoot thee for a blackbird."

A little boy who had been born blind underwent an operation to restore his sight. The light was let in slowly. Then one day his mother led him out of doors and uncovered his eyes, and for the first time he saw the sky and earth. "O Mother!" he cried, "Why didn't you tell me it was so beautiful?" She burst into tears and said, "I tried to tell you, dear, but you could not understand me." Sinful man is also blind to the splendor and the glory of the light of the gospel. The only way he can comprehend it is to let the light in, through the enabling of the Holy Spirit.

“If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.” 2 Corinthians 4:3

In an English village a Sunday school entertainment was being held in a small church. The place was crowded and in darkness as a stereopticon exhibition was being given. A knock at the door summoned an usher, who made his way to the front and announced, “Little Mary Jones is lost. Her family and the town officers have been searching everywhere for her. If anyone has seen her or knows of her whereabouts, will he please go to the door and communicate with the friend who is inquiring.” No one moved and the lecturer went on with his address and pictures.

At the close, when the lights were turned on, a lady noticed Mary sitting on a front seat. Going over to her, she said, “Why, Mary, didn’t you hear them inquiring for you? Why did you not let them know you were here?”

Surprised, the child asked, “Did they mean me? They said Mary Jones was lost. I am not lost. I knew where I was all the time; I thought it was some other Mary Jones.”

She was lost in the church and did not know it. How many others are like her. They have a name that they live, but are dead. Though members of some local church, they have never seen their need of Christ, nor have they believed the message of the gospel.

"In marshy countries we do not expect a clear air; so sensual persons have seldom any clear and elevated thoughts of God. Men given to pleasures can taste meats and drinks, but not doctrines." Hence the folly of being swayed by their censures. Learned men are to be respected when they express opinions upon subjects which they understand; but when they are known to be without grace and spiritual light their opinions upon divine truth are not to be regarded. They have not the capacity to

appreciate such things, and they had better let them alone. A blind man may be a first-rate musician, and in his own department he may be a master, but if he ventures to dogmatize upon colour and artistic portraiture he is more worthy of ridicule than of reverence. Carnal men have not the needful taste by which divine doctrine is discerned. Their minds are as to religion a mere marsh land, breeding fog and mist, and to hope for clear and expansive views of the gospel from them is in vain. May God of his great mercy uplift the great, sunken intellects of our day, and give a holy taste and discernment to those who now know nothing of the bread of heaven or the new wine of the gospel. Meanwhile it will be as well to take as little notice as possible of their opinions upon religion, which must of necessity be valueless.

"When unrenewed nature putteth on the spectacles of art she is still blind. Nowadays men must needs be philosophers, and reason and argue; but their conclusions as to spiritual things, wherein they come into conflict with divine revelation, are not one whit more to be respected than the conclusions of utter ignorance. Blind men blunder enough in the dark; add light, and they see no better; add spectacles, and the case is not altered; what is needed is the seeing eye. Till God gives eyes it is in vain for opticians to lend their glasses. So unregenerate men, when they are ignorant, are full of error; set them in the light of the gospel, they are in truth no wiser, for they have no spiritual perception of it; then add learning and sharp reasoning, and the case is by no means altered; they see no more than before, for they are still stone-blind. We have in this day many famous learned men, whose talk about the things of God is as idle as that of illiterate blasphemers. Whatever they know as to other matters, they can know nothing of divine truths, for they have no faculty with which to perceive them. Let them put on their great goggles of science, they see no more of Spirituals with them than without them. Lord! let me not go about to fit spectacles to blind eyes; but whenever I meet with a birth-blind Bartimæus, help me to bring him to thee, for it is a mark of thy Messiahship that from thee the blind receive their sight."

David Rittenhouse of Pennsylvania was an astronomer. He was skilful in measuring the sizes of planets, and determining the position of the stars. But he found that such was the distance of the stars, a silk thread stretched across the glass of his telescope would entirely cover a star; and, moreover, that a silk fibre, however small, placed upon the same glass, would cover so much of the heavens, that the star, if a small one, and near the pole, would remain obscured behind that silk fibre several seconds. Thus a silk fibre appeared to be larger in diameter than a star. Every star is a heavenly world, a world of light, a sun shining upon other worlds as our sun shines upon this world. Our sun is 886,000 miles in diameter; and yet, seen from a distant star, our sun could be covered, obscured, hidden behind the thread that was near the eye, although in a telescope. Just so we have seen some who never could behold the heavenly world.

The angel bade Tobias to unbowel the fish, and to take out the gall, as being useful in medicine, and a special means to recover his eyesight. The story is apocryphal; but the application is canonical, and agreeable to the doctrine of the inspired Scriptures. If we unbowel worldly pleasures and carnal delights, and take out the gall of them (that is, seriously think upon the bitterness of them, — the bitterness which they leave behind them), it will prove a sovereign remedy against our spiritual blindness.

— Spencer

A shipwrecked voyager once told his experience. Tossed for nearly eighty days in an open boat, and tortured by hunger, sleep came but rarely; yet it always brought the same dream of a well-laden table, welcomed with lively shouts of joy. "Every one of us," said the voyager, "dreamed this at least ten times. The waking-up to the truth of our situation was horrible."

A company of wretched beggars, who in a dark night stand at the door of a wedding-feast, though they see not the stately preparations, the furnished tables, the costly ornaments, of the married couple and guests, so fully and clearly and distinctly as the guests themselves, who sit at the table, yet by lights in the windows, the voices of mirth and musicians, with the confused sounds of instruments, the passage to and fro of attendants with their cheer, they cannot but observe enough to think themselves, being excluded, very miserable in comparison of those who are attended at the table, and in the midst of all their mirth and plenty. Christ makes the application. Jenkyn.

Fanaticism is the most likely to prevail where the public mind is brought under any powerful excitement. But, far from real piety not being found in any sort of connection with enthusiasm, the fact is, that fanaticism rarely enters except where piety abounds. It is the strong and full habit of body which has the strongest tendency to fever. It is the full river which overflows its banks. It is the lofty genius which is commonly lashed on to madness.

— J. W. Cunningham

Virgil describes the River Lethe as flowing through the tranquil landscape and waving groves of Elysium. On its banks wandered a countless multitude, who ever and anon drank of its waters. These were supposed to wash away all memory of past life.

When the painter Rigo was in Cairo, he engaged a freshly-arrived Nubian to sit for his picture. As soon as the colors were laid on the picture, he uttered a loud cry of horror, and escaped to his home, where he related that his head and half of his body had been taken away by the painter. Some days after, Rigo led another Nubian into his workshop, who was no less struck with horror at seeing the picture than the man whom it represented had been, and told all his countrymen that he had seen a great number of lopped-off heads and limbs in the Frenchman's house. They laughed at him. However, to satisfy themselves about the matter, six of them went to visit Rigo. They were seized with the same panic at the right of his paintings; and no entreaties could prevail upon them to remain in the house. Percy.

IMITATION, Snare of Some Brazilian hunters are reported to have captured a number of monkeys by having small boots made for them, which they filled with pitch. The hunters sat down in sight of the monkeys, and pulled off and on their own boots; then retired, leaving the small ones. As soon as they were out of sight, the monkeys descended from the trees, and began doing as they had seen the hunters do. The hunters sprang upon them. The boots stuck to their feet, they could not climb, and were easily caught. Many young people are caught in the same way.

Blind-man's-buff is played everywhere, — not merely by children and youths, but likewise, although unconsciously, by the old and wise. I here recollect the pleasing fancy of an ingenious author, who figures the human soul as a shepherdess at play with Worldly-Wisdom, Wealth, Fame, and Pleasure, and suffering these her playmates to bind her eyes in sport, ignorant that they are all the time in secret league with Satan, who slips from a wood, and catches the soul rushing blindfold into his arms. This beautiful allegory portrays the manner in which man, blinded by the world and his own fleshly desires, departs from God, and unconsciously falls into the snares of the Devil.

— Spencer

The ways of religion are not and cannot be pleasant to irreligious men. It is to renewed and holy persons that the assertion refers, and to them only; for our pleasures must be suitable to our prevailing disposition and predominant temper. Light itself affords no pleasure to the blind; nor can the most exquisite music yield any gratification to the deaf. An idle man has no enjoyment in labor; nor a glutton or a drunkard in temperance and sobriety. Those very things which the spiritual mind most relishes and desires are to the carnal mind distasteful and offensive. Dr. Bunting.

A man entered a dark and winding cave, carrying with him a lamp, and ball of twine. That he might find his way out of the cave, in case his light went out, he fastened one end of the twine outside, and unwound it as he walked into the cave. In this manner, he had gone a long distance into those dark recesses. At length, he entered a large apartment, and for a moment set down his lamp and ball, to break off a stalactite of peculiar beauty. Suddenly his lamp went out. He immediately endeavored to find his ball; but all his efforts were vain. His lifeless body was found long afterwards in the dark cavern.

A child tried to put together the parts of a dissecting-map, but, not knowing the place of each, failed. He then broke them up to make them fit; and his failure was greater than ever. The child is human reason attempting to put together the plans of God. The more it tries, the worse its confusion.

It happened in a town with which I am somewhat acquainted, says a gentleman in England, that three gentlemen met together in an omnibus, which was going a few miles out of the town. One of these three gentlemen was a grave and venerable divine, the others were Universalists; there were several other persons in the carriage.

First Universalist. (Addressing his friend,) Well, sir, was you at the Hall last evening to hear our friend Rushey?

Second Universalist. No, I was not.

F. U. That was a pity, for Rushey did the business most manfully; you know the subject was whether there is any evidence of the being and personality of the devil. I assure you he gave the most solid and positive proofs that there is no devil. And, indeed, there cannot be found, now-a-days, any man of common sense who believes in the existence of the devil, or who will attempt to prove such a doctrine; I say, (looking our divine full in the face,) I say, no man of common sense can believe in such an absurdity.

Divine. Sir, I lay claim to common sense, without pretending to any thing more, and I believe that there is a devil.

F. U. Ah! do you, sir? do you, indeed? I am astonished! I am astonished! Believe there is a devil! believe there is a devil! after what Mr. Rushey has said, and many others beside, who have with equal clearness proved the contrary? O, no sir, there is no devil; it is only a trick of the priests: there is no devil.

D. I suppose, sir, you believe in the Scriptures.

F. U. O yes, sir, to be sure I do: it was from the Scriptures that Mr. Rushey gathered his proofs.

D. Well, then, do we not read again and again of the devil in the Scriptures?

F. U. Truly, sir, truly! but devil means only an evil conscience!

D. Ah, indeed! an evil conscience; an evil conscience; let us try it: "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them"—an evil conscience came also among them! "and the Lord said unto Satan"—and the Lord said unto an evil conscience.

F. U. O, sir, you need not go any farther there—to be sure, it does not mean an evil conscience there.

D. Well, sir, we will try it in another case: "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil"—to be tempted of an evil conscience.

F. U. (A little mortified,) Why, yes, it does not seem to hold good there neither.

D. Let us try it once more: "And there was a good way off an herd of swine feeding. So the devils"—the evil conscience—"besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine; and he said unto them, Go; and when they"—the evil conscience—"were come out, they"—the evil conscience—"went into the herd of swine."

I have only to add, that the quotation was arrested here, and that the evil conscience of the Universalist was so provoked, that you would have supposed him possessed, rather than the swine!