Video Transcript: Session 27 Make it memorable illustrations

All right, we're talking about how to present your sermon in a memorable day  way making your message memorable. We've looked at several things. Today  we're going to look about using illustrations. Now, when I was a teenager, I had  a pastor who refuse to use any illustrations refused to use any gestures. In fact,  he came in I was, I was mid teen, when he came to the church from which my  family that my family attended. And the way he would preach is simply standing  up and holding a big Bible. And he never used gestures would never use an  illustration. Well, one time, small group of us teenagers were invited to meet with him in his study, we were involved in youth ministry there and writing leadership  roles as students. And somebody invited us to come and talk. And in the  process, I don't remember who asked him the question, but how did you adopt  the style of preaching that you do? And he said, he determined he would never  use an illustration he said, because people would remember the illustration  instead of the word of God. I gotta tell you, that guy was my pastor for a lot of  years. And I don't remember a single sermon that he preached, at least with an  illustration you give them something to remember. So. So today, we're going to  look briefly at why should you use illustrations? Why, and then what kind of  illustrations should you use? And then thirdly, where do you get these  illustrations? Why should you use illustrations? Well, it's a biblical principle. If  you look at anywhere in the Bible, you'll find that the speakers spoke in a way  that gave illustrations Isaiah chapter 40. One of my favorite passages is, you  know, even if you are rundown, so even you grow tired and weary, and young  men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength,  they will soar on wings like eagles, they'll run and not be weary, they'll walk and  not faint. Now, we talked a couple of sessions ago about a word pictures about  using picture language. This is wonderful picture language. But it's also an  illustration, if you say they soar on wings, like eagles, if you read anything about  how Eagle soars is that it looks for updraft, and it has a sense of where they are. And so eagle can go a long time, just soaring without hardly flapping its wings,  hardly exerting any energy, just catching the air that's there. Well, you know,  what a wonderful illustration of what it means to have a life where you've  experienced God lifting you up. Isaiah used illustrations, Moses in the first books of the Bible, Genesis, chapter 4, he comes, and he talks to Cain, the one who  murdered his brother Abel. And he warns him, he says, sin is crouching at the  door. Now, that's another wonderful picture language thing, but it's also an  illustration of how sin is waiting to destroy us, and devour us as people. That's a  powerful illustration that you can jump off from in your message. You know,  when I was thinking about that, for this lecture, I thought of a friend of mine, who is an alcoholic, and he was so devastated in his life by alcoholism, that he  ended up losing everything. And I remember when I first met him, and hearing  his story said, you know, I didn't start out to lose everything. And what he lost  was his family. He lost his job, and then he lost his family. His family wife 

divorced him, he had a daughter who had nothing to do with him. He ended up  losing his house and all of his possessions, he ended up being homeless for for  a lengthy period of time where he lived out of an old beat up car. And that's how  he lived. And that was his experience. He said, but I didn't start out thinking, oh  that's where I'm going to end up. That's where I want to be. But sin was  crouching in his life, waiting to devour him. And it did. Now thank God through  the power of the Holy Spirit and some good programs. He got sober, and he's  rebuilt his life in a wonderful way. So sin crouching at the door, boy, you can  make something out of that. There's all kinds of illustrations you can build off  that illustration. But here's, he's using an illustration of how sin acts toward us  how Satan acts toward us crouching, ready to jump. soon as there's a sign of  weakness as soon as you're within range. See, the writers used illustrations of  Jesus probably best known for that in the Bible. Wow. You know, your picture of  the parable of the sower. A sower went out to sow seed, what an illustration of  how the Word of God is being spread in the world. And the son of man, Jesus is  the spreader of the Word of God and it falls on these different kinds of soil. You  know, they're the ones that fall on the rocky soil, and so it can't find any place. to root and then it's on the shallow soil so, so it can root quickly, but it grows up  and then that doesn't have a place to root deeply. So it withers away. And then  it's in the thorns and the thistles. And so it starts to grow up. But the cares of this world as Jesus explained that begin to snuff out the word of God. And then  there's the fruitful soil. That's all just an illustration that he's giving of how people respond to the word. And you don't have to think long before you can think of  people who've responded and just those kinds of ways. And so that becomes an illustration that the people then are saying, Yeah, I know that. It's believed that  Jesus, as he was walking around preaching and teaching would be even  pointing to people say, Well, look at the sower over there, see how he's  operating? Or boy, have you considered the birds of the air, how they don't sow  or reap, they don't store up in barns, and yet your your heavenly Father feeds  them. Those are all illustrations, all illustrations. So we use illustrations, because the models we have in Scripture use them, including the Lord, just read the  parables, one after another after another, just grand illustrations of a bigger  point. So we use them because author in the Bible is use them, we use them  because they open windows for us. They allow us to see inside the word and  inside the mind of Christ I like like the picture of seeing inside a window.  Because you know, when you're outside, and you're looking from a distance, all  you see is the side of a house. But if you're going to look in a window, you'd  begin to see what's going on in there. Well, illustrations do that with the  Scriptures, they open a window on the scriptures for us, they, they make it  become real for us. Now I've got just a brief video here that I want to show you.  Again, this one is about a man who used a pottery, a breaking of a pottery to  make a point, and how it became a powerful illustration that planted itself in the 

minds of his listeners. And so he's just going to explain it. And I'll come back  afterwards. And we'll talk about it a little more. Everybody, Paul Turner here from the discipleproject.net here with a simple sermon illustration from II Corinthians  4:7, where it talks about Jars of Clay, right, we have this treasure in jars of clay  that we should know that the surpassing power that is within us is not from  ourselves, but it's from God. And so we're going to talk about this today. And I'm  going to just give you a simple illustration that I'm going to create in front of you  as to how to make it and all that kind of good stuff. And then just share a few  other ideas and how I'm going to be using this in my message. Let's get to it. All  right. So I'm doing this live on camera here, just so you can see the process of  the breakage and what it's gonna look like. So let's hope it gets into big pieces  versus small pieces. The whole goal of breaking this is so that there'll be cracks  in it. So when we put it back together, there'll be holes of these spots, and all  that kind of good stuff, where we're going to be having some light shine through  it. So it's going to give it a shot here, see how this works. You want to keep the  base intact, because you want to be able to stand it up. So really is want the the  sides and maybe get it about halfway down if possible. So I'm going to try and  see what happens. It's pretty good. Not bad, some big some big pieces there. I  may go ahead and perfect. Okay. So I think that would be sufficient. So let me  go ahead. As you can see that all the pieces here. Now, when you're doing this,  you may do this as an illustration, and actually break the pot in front of the  students say, look, life can break us, right, there's things that can break us  death, divorce, physical problems, relationships, everything can break us in  some way. And you may want to have a part already broken, that actually maybe has some of those pieces written on the actual pieces of the pottery. Another  thing you can do with this as part of a reflection piece, if you take one and you  break them into smaller pieces such as these, you can actually put these in front of a student or a student can come up as part of the altar time and actually be  able to write their name on a broken piece of of the pottery here to say look,  here's my name, that means that I am broken, I'm willing to humble myself and  say, Listen, that I am broken, sin has broken me, life has broken me all these  various things and I'm gonna put my name on this and maybe have some sort of cross. You know, you could do it as a cross pattern. And then people could take  their pieces with their names and actually put it as part of the cross pattern to  make almost like a mosaic of various pieces so you can choose to use pottery  you may even choose to use other kinds have different colored ceramic if you  choose. But I've chosen the pot here, simply because it's easiest. And this cost  of maybe a buck 25 at your local big box store. So Alright, so let's go on to the  other piece here where I'm going to put this back together and see if I can't  make it work. You see, even in putting this together, it's not going to quite fit  exactly the way it was before. It's in you know what, and many times when we're broken and something happens in our lives, it doesn't always come back 

together the way it was, in fact, the apostle Paul says, Look, I'm making all  things new again. So that which is put back together is the way God wants to  put us back together wants to put us back into a state where we're best  functioning for him to where we can shine the light out of our lives. Okay, so as  you can see, here, I have put this back together, you see, there are some pieces leftover, that don't quite fit the way the way they used to. And so that's not  necessarily a bad thing. Because sometimes our brokenness, you know, pieces  that we don't need, you know, God knows what we don't need in our lives.  These could be anything, these can be habits, they can be sins, they can be  mindsets, they can be all kinds of things that we don't need anymore. And so  God says, Well, you get rid of those, we'll put those away. And also, what we'll  do here is we'll give it a little test run here, we're just going to take a little light,  we're going to put it in here, and and then see what happens, we can also make  a comparison between this. And a regular old pot, right? The pot, we started with the perfect pot, perfect, perfect, right, the perfect pot versus the broken pot. And  we can make that as an example. So I'm going to turn the lights off and show  you what I mean. And there you go. While on the comparison, so here's what  they say. But what is the what is the major difference here? Well, the illustration I would make is this is that yes, you may have an outstanding outside, everything  on the outside is perfect and God may be able to see your light he may see from this vantage point. Yes, the light is on. I see it but what God sees what we try to  perfect what we try to show other people as a perfectness that doesn't exist. You see, vertically, God sees the light says, Yep, I sure see it, your light is lit, I get it,  he says but if you want to be effective in the world, I'm going to say that you  should show your brokenness because you can see here even in these little  cracks right here that light is shining through. Here's a big old hole right there.  So you know that's where that's where God sees and where the rest of the world gets to see what is inside of us that people know that in spite of our brokenness. The Light of Christ is in there. They know that it's not us. They know it's not us  here people that say oh, that's you look at your perfect life. Look at your money.  Look at your everything look at you have the perfect life and reality. That's not  true. Right? That's we know that's not true. But the point of the light and the  point of a broken pottery, is it so other people can see the light inside of us.  Okay, so let me step back. I'll come back with you in just a second. All right,  guys. That's it for today. I appreciate you guys hanging out. Hopefully you liked  the illustration. Feel free to leave your comments down below. How might you  use something like this illustration in your youth ministry, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe you've done something similar. What I'd like you to do if you're brand  spanking new by the way, thanks for checking out the channel appreciate you  being here. Be sure to click on my hand over here somewhere like that and you  will subscribe to this channel and that way you can click on the little bell down  below there as well. And click Notifications you'll get videos like this in your 

inbox when I upload something. Also if you're a regular thank you for hanging  out appreciate you guys being here. Don't forget I'm gonna be at the National  Youth Workers Conference upcoming 17th 18th and 19th of November I would  love to connect with you if you're going to be there. Be sure to hit the thumbs up  on this video like the video you want more of them and until next video. I'll catch  you guys later. Have a good day everybody. Did you see how all of a sudden  you know we have this treasure In clay pots, all of a sudden that became real,  and the pots are cracked, but the light shines through what a powerful  illustration that people go home and are very visual society with this planted in  their mind when he used that, or when you're talking about being broken pots  before God, or all the ways that that's that clay pot could be used as an  illustration, I'm going to share one in our later session about that too. That's  been very powerful for me. So, illustration, open windows for us, they help us to  see and understand what's going on in the mind and the heart of God. They also move us toward obedience. In other words, when we hear a scripture, the  illustrations help us get context and understanding to what that scripture require  us. So you have a scripture such as seek the kingdom, and his righteousness to seek His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these other things will be  added to you. So what does it mean to seek His kingdom? While many people  might interpret that right? Well, I'm going to read the Bible more, I'm going to go  to church more often than be faithful in my church attendance. So that might be  one interpretation of it. But what does it mean to seek His kingdom where I am?  Well, it means that affects my decisions. The kingdom of God affects my  decision, I'm offered a job somewhere else, is that God's will for me, well, how  does that allow me to seek His kingdom? And his righteousness? Where do I  go, you know, that's going to define how I spend my time if I'm seeking His  kingdom, and his righteousness. I'm going to watch you know, what, what  movies I watch on television, because I'm seeking righteousness. And so I'm  going to be very careful. And I have a man with whom I'm in an accountability  partnership relationship, but we regularly talk about what have you been  watching on TV? Because that's an important guide for me to live out that  command to seek His kingdom and His righteousness? And where am I  engaging, not just negative? What am I not doing, but what am I doing positively, to build the kingdom of God. And I can come up with all kinds of illustrations  about people I know, who are engaged in work in the kingdom, you know, some  of them are volunteering, mentoring, some kids who are at risk of not graduating from high school, and they're an elementary school students are there with  elementary students, school students, and mentoring them. So hopefully, that  doesn't happen. They're, they're seeking the Kingdom of God in this world, are  the ones who are involved in some of the agencies around where we are, we  have a medical clinic in my town, that wouldn't run it wasn't for people who are  seeking the Kingdom of God, who were seeking with those who can't afford 

medical care, to have a place where they can go, and you know, illustration,  illustration, and you can move us toward obedience. Because we understand  what it means through the illustrations, and the questions that can be asked.  And you can tell stories that you may know about that. So they also hold  attention. That's why we do it. In fact, you can notice that sometimes when  you're preaching and you'll start a story, and you'll all of a sudden, have people's attention again, they'll come back, as you create an illustration they'll all of a  sudden, have attention again, they'll be giving attention to you. So that's why  authors in the Bible have used it. They open windows for us on the mind, in the  heart of God, they move us toward obedience, and they hold our the attention of your audience. So what then do you use as an illustration, there are all kinds of  things you can use. Stories are very, very positive. Personal stories are good.  Again, the warning that you can't be the hero of your own story and be effective  very often, you do that once or twice. But this is not a time that it's about you. It's about God. And so make sure that that comes through a stories that you hear or read. When I was entering ministry, I went to my brother who was six years older than I, and was actually in pastoral ministry at that time. He went into mission  shortly thereafter. But I went to him. I said, Okay, what, what's the secret of  being successful as a preacher? He said, Read, read, read, read, read, read.  And so I read a great deal back then Well, now, there's all sorts of things  available on the internet that you could read. There's all sorts of places you can  turn that will give you further insight into a certain truth in scripture or things that  will become part of what's in your mind. So that when you're thinking about a  passage and you think how can I bring this truth home to the my listeners, all of  a sudden you'll think I remember or I read or I heard this solicited stories are  good, sometimes ask for stories. As I have told you before, I used to have, for a  brief time, a sermon preparation group that we'd get together. On Wednesday  before the Sunday I was going to preach. And I would give a brief exegesis of  the passage that I was going to preach on and say, Tell me what what do you  have to make this real? What are the stories that you give, that you can give me  to use and then I will get sometimes get very good story. I did this for a long  time. And pastors groups, in fact, one time had a dream of writing a book about  funny things that happened in ministries. And so anytime I was part of the  pastor's group, I would ask the question, what's the funniest thing that's ever  happened to you? And I've got this trove of great stories, some of them  wonderfully humorous. And I've been occasionally able to use them, but one I  haven't used yet. So you're the first ones to hear it. It came from a Presbyterian  pastor, I was part of a class on becoming a transitional pastor, between pastors  for a church. And I asked this question, there's about eight of us sitting around a  table. It's okay, what's the funniest thing that's ever happened to the Ministry of  one man told a story about communion in his church, Presbyterian Church, and  said, The woman who usually prepared communion was sick, and so one of the 

elders wives volunteered to prepare the communion. And so she went in and  didn't know where stuff was, but he eventually found it comes to Sunday, and he begins to introduce communion. And as often happens, he's holding a cup. And  he's pouring out as he's saying, you know, and after supper, Jesus took the cup, he said, you know, drink this, it's a new covenant in my blood, Do this in  remembrance of me. But he said, he noticed as it was pouring, the liquid didn't  look a whole lot like wine, it looked rather Brown. And so he was concerned. But in the Presbyterian tradition, he couldn't quite break out of the mold to say, Well,  hold on, something's wrong. They passed out the trays with all these little  glasses of juice. And when they came to the point of eating the bread and  drinking the juice, everybody went down, like, in the old church, turned out that  there's an unmarked bottle that the woman thought was the wine for communion that was prune juice in the refrigerator, all for communion that day, they all drank prune juice. But then he said, that's not the end of the story. Later, the woman  was diagnosed with cancer, and it was terminal. She got very, very sick. She  went to live with her sister for her daughter for a period of time, so that her  daughter could care for her. And then just a short time, two weeks before she  died, she came back to this church, to say goodbye to people. And as she was  there, said they, in celebration of her and her dedication to the kingdom, they all  had prune juice with their communion that morning, and what a wonderful  illustration to us about the body of Christ, and how it can come together, and  how how something that looks like disaster can be turned into something of  beauty. So solicit story, ask people and say, Wow, I'm going to do this. Other  things you can use other than story is you can use humor. Humor is a wonderful  thing, if you can find it in a variety of places. Here's a cartoon that I use once I  was preaching on prayer, and the fact that we don't think prayer is very  important. Apparently, in the United States, the average person in the United  States Christian in the United States spends about six minutes a day in prayer.  And it's always interrupted. So I had this cartoon, it was from leadership  magazine, where the pastor is kneeling. In his study, he's praying, and the  Secretary comes in and says, Oh, good, you're not busy. You see, if you're,  you're praying, you're not doing something important. And so you can be  interrupted. And so that became a wonderful illustration. There are all kinds of  powerful ways you can be involved in humorous situations or hear of humorous  stories, or use cartoons or all kinds of things like that. Observation and  metaphors. Another way, Pastor I'm working with right now, it's just really terrific  at that we were talking about sometimes in life, you just feel like, you can't get  traction. And he described as you know, you're in shallow water in a lake here in  Michigan, and often the muddy bottoms and you've put a foot down and it's  stuck and you try to take a step and you got to kind of pull the foot out and move forward. And so you're just kind of slogging through and what a powerful  illustration of being at points in your life and if you describe that in a meaningful 

way, people will understand what that's like. So, observation, what you observe  in life metaphor, all kinds of opportunities and television and movies. In fact, now there are even some, there are even some services like sermonspice.com,  where you can get sermon, sermon illustrations that are movies I used one this  past week I preached on worship in church, and talking about how worship is to  God, you know, come, let us, let us sing for joy to the Lord let a shout aloud to  the rock of our salvation, let's come before him with music and song, et cetera,  et cetera. And I was saying that worship is about God, not about, you know,  what we want or whether we like the song or not like the song, I got a clip, which was entitled me church where someone just made a spoof on this idea. What if I made all the rules in church? All kinds of those things are available. Now, where  do you get them, or you can get them in commentaries, or you can get them out  of people's sermons. And I've given you that sermon Central, that's just one of  many, many good websites that have people sermons on them, not a word  about plagiarism, before we go any further, and that is it is wrong. And in fact, in  the United States is illegal for you to use someone else's work, and pass it off as your own. I had this discussion with a man I was mentoring, he felt a call to  preach. And so I was mentoring him in preaching. And I arranged for him to  preach from the church I was serving at the time out in California, and evening  service. And he preached as he's pretending and heard this before. I've heard it  before. And sure enough, I got on some websites, and I found that he almost  preached word for word, certainly idea for IDEA, the sermon of another person,  the sermon was on this website. And so we had to have a talk about plagiarism.  And that is, I can't do that I can't use somebody else's ideas. Not just because  it's illegal. It's, it's, it's attacks my integrity. And so I've got to say, you know, I've  been really helped by this person. And this is something they said, and I want to  share it with you today. Or I've read this story in this situation, this book, this, this person's story, or this person's idea, and I want to share it with you today. So be  aware, plagiarism is a very real thing and needs to be battled. And so we're  talking about how to make your message memorable. One of the great ways to  do it is use illustrations. And people will tie in now not like the pastor that I grew  up under as a teen. They may remember the illustration but hopefully by the  power of the Holy Spirit's the illustration will help them remember the point. So  use illustrations make your messages memorable.