Sermon Illustrations

Category: Dane Ortlund

  • The promise of the Gospel

    Here is the promise of the Gospel, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence. This is a companion whose embrace of us does not strengthen or weaken depending on how clean or unclean how attractive or revolting, how faithful or fickle, we presently are. The friendliness of his…

  • Every human friend has a limit

    Every human friend has a limit. If we offend enough, if a relationship gets damaged enough, if we betray enough times, we are cast out. the walls go up. With Christ, our sins and weaknesses are the very resumè items that qualify us to approach him. Nothing but coming to him is required – first…

  • Jesus was a sinless man

    Jesus is not Zeus. He was a sinless man not a sinless superman. He woke up with bed-head. He had pimples at thirteen. He never would have appeared on the cover of Men’s Health (he had “no beauty that we should desire him” Isa 53:2). He came as a normal man to normal men. He…

  • Restoring the natural order

    German Theologian Jürgen Moltmann points out that miracles are not an interruption of the natural order, but the restoration of the natural order. We are so used to a fallen world that sickness, disease, pain and death seem natural. In fact, they are the interruption. When Jesus expels demons and heals the sick, he is…

  • Touching the unclean

    One particularly striking part of this (Old Testament law) system is that when an unclean person comes into contact with a clean person, that clean person then becomes unclean. Moral dirtiness is contagious. Consider Jesus. In Levitical categories, he is the cleanest person to ever walk the face of the earth. He was the Clean…

  • The affectionate heart of Christ

    It is impossible for the affectionate heart of Christ to be over-celebrated, made too much of, exaggerated. It cannot be plumbed. But it is easily neglected, forgotten. Dane Ortlund – American PastorClick to TweetFrom the book “Gentle and Lowly” Available on amazon.co.uk*Available on amazon.com*

  • Cleansing mercy

    Jesus walked the earth rehumanizing the dehumanized and cleansing the unclean. Why? Because his heart refused to let him sleep in. Sadness confronted him in every town. So wherever he went,whenever he was confronted with pain and longing, he spread the good contagion of his cleansing mercy. Thomas Goodwin said, “Christ is love covered over…

  • Jesus’ yoke

    Jesus is using a kind of irony, saying that the yoke laid on his disciples is a nonyoke. For it is a yoke of kindness. Who could resist this? It’s like telling a drowning man that he must put on the burden of a life preserver only to hear him shout back, sputtering, “No way!…