The Minister’s Workshop: How to Light up a Sermon

A good illustration can drive away the shadows that may obscure a truth

Someone has said that “a sermon without illustrations is like a house without windows.” And that in itself is a good illustration, for the word illustrate is taken from the Latin word illustrare, which means “to light up,” just as a window lights up a house.

The first recorded word of God was, “Let there be light.” The first step in the transformation of chaos into cosmos was the shedding of light. Just so, the wise preacher will give first concern to shedding light on his subject matter by the use of illustrations. The good illustration becomes a shaft of light, giving clarity and force to the message. The preacher can repeat a sermon within a year without the congregation’s detecting it if he uses all new illustrations, for it is the stories used to illustrate truth that the congregation remembers.

An ever-pressing problem for the minister is to have new and apt illustrations for his sermons each Sunday. This is even more important than choosing the theme for the message, for without proper illustration the theme will be neither understood nor remembered.

No one source will supply all the illustrations needed. True, many books of illustrations are available, and they often prove helpful. But secondhand illustrations are never so effective as those that come out of the minister’s own experience and observation.

It is not only the dramatic or unusual experiences that are useful as sermon illustrations. Take for example this experience of my own. When I went away to college, I was given an allowance with which I had to meet my necessary and incidental expenses. Like all boys of college age I was playing Romeo a bit, and when a birthday or Christmas came around, I would buy a present for the current Juliet. Then I went to seminary and met the girl who is now my wife. When the first occasion for gift-giving came, I found myself approaching the situation in a new way. Always before I had met all my necessary expenses and then bought a gift with what was left over. But now I found myself trying to find out what would please her most and buying it without regard to cost. Then I got along on what was left. What made the difference was that I had found the girl I really loved. When we really love God, we try to find what will please him most, and we give it to him and find our supreme joy in doing it.

If we have eyes to see and hearts to feel, we all can see in our own experiences illustrations that will light up deep spiritual truths. A close and penetrating observation of nature can perhaps be the greatest source of illustrations. Surely Jesus turned to natural things for most of his parables. He used salt, light, water, wind and clouds and the flashing lightning, flowers and trees, birds and fish, fruit, and the growing grain to illustrate spiritual truth. Nature is a storehouse of spiritual symbols.

I grew up in the hills of West Virginia, and I well remember the red oak trees that so often grew out on the rocky points. In the fall, when the other trees shed their leaves, the leaves of the oaks would merely turn brown and remain on the trees. The forces of nature would combine during the winter months to try to make the leaves fall, but to no avail. However, with the coming of the warm days of spring, these leaves would loosen, and begin to flutter down to the ground. What the wind, snow, and rain had been unable to do was accomplished by the rising of the sap in those red oak trees. So the Spirit of God can accomplish in our lives what all other powers fail to do. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts” (Zech. 4:6b).

The third main source of illustrations for the preacher is his reading. He can find illustrations in everything he reads, from the Bible to the daily paper. Biography is perhaps one of the most fertile fields.

One can, of course, read too much and think too little. However, excessive reading is not a fault that many American pastors have time to acquire. The counsel of Alexander Whyte, the noted Scottish preacher—“Sell your shirt and buy books”—is still good counsel.

Wide reading in search of illustrations will be of little lasting good if the minister does not develop a method of cataloguing and filing his illustrations. A cross-reference file by subject and by text is very helpful.

Perhaps even surpassing the art of finding illustrations is the art of using them. They must never be sprinkled on the sermon like colored candies on a birthday cake. They must enter the sermon naturally and gracefully, rather than being dragged in or added on.

There is a pitfall that the preacher needs to guard against in using illustrations. Because he is continually reading and studying religious writings, he may be inclined to assume that his hearers too are conversant with the Bible and Christian literature. He may say: “You remember Jephthah’s foolish vow to the Lord.” But if over half of his listeners don’t even know who Jephthah is, let alone what the nature and consequences of his vow to the Lord were, the point of a good illustration will be lost.

He should also remember that the authority of a quotation is lost if he does not identify the person quoted. It is hard to realize that we are preaching to a generation for which the names Dwight L. Moody and Charles Haddon Spurgeon have little significance.

We are becoming more and more conscious of our problems in communicating the Gospel to modern man. Well-chosen illustrations can do much to break through these communication barriers.

—DR. M. JACKSON WHITE,

First Baptist Church of Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.