Illustration results for sacrifice
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Don Haselhuhn
What makes a hero? Webster’s defines a hero as a person “of distinguished courage, moral or physical; chief character in a play, novel, poem, etc.” One of my wife and my favorite movies is “The Princess Bride.” One character of the movie, Inigo Montoya, fits the definition of hero found in the dictionary. He has distinguished courage, which is physical at the heart. He is a sword fighter who has searched years to find the men who killed his father over the price of a sword. Over the years he has dreamt of what he would say to the man and came up with “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Near the end of the movie, he finds and fights the man who killed his father. They fight, and Inigo is winning, so his enemy begins to try and bargain for his own life by offering gold and silver to let him live. Inigo tells him to offer him whatever he asks, and the man replies, “I’ll give you anything you want.” And his request? “Bring back my father.” That was the sacrifice that would have saved this man’s life, but, of course, he could not bring Inigo’s father back to life. Because of his love for his father, Inigo gave up 20 years of his life in the search. That’s a sacrifice.
Michael McCartney
McCartney’s Video Illustration: From The movie “The Great Escape” preview of the movie. The movie is about Allied soldiers who planned and executed “The Great Escape” from a German Prisoner of War camp in WWII. The movie focuses on how determined these soldiers were to escape from their present condition of bondage. These men planned their escape carefully. They worked hard and sacrificed to execute their escape plan. This plan was designed to set over 200 prisoners of war free. The escape was successful but many of the ones who got freed were recaptured by the Germans. The good news is though there were those who made it home to their land of freedom.
Spiritual Point: These men knew the risk for breaking out of their prisoner of war camp. They knew that to execute the escape would require sacrifice and hard work. They knew that if the Germans caught them as they dug tunnels or forged documents that the result would be severe punishment. But they did it any way so that they could be free. So they planned the route to freedom and executed it with their sacrificial lives. The big day came and many were freed temporally. The officers who escaped were executed and the others returned to face severe punishment but the truth was some of them made it.
There are many who are prisoners today in the current spiritual war fro the world. The warring powers are the powers of good and evil. One power wants us to yield to our sinful evil desires and the other wants us to resist the sinful way of this corrupt world. The one who resists and takes the route to freedom will be freed for all eternity. The other one who allows themselves to stay in captivity to this world will have no life and no future.
How many here have ever seen the classic movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”? George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) wonders if his life really matters. He feels like a failure. In his sacrifice for others he has not attained his dreams. At his point of crisis he meets up with an angel named Francis. In the end, George Bailey gets a delightful revelation of how God has been working all along and used his life in a marvelous way.
The lesson George Bailey learned is found in our text this morning: Prov. 3:5-6
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” NIV
Video Illustration: The Movie Rudy
The Movie:
Based on the true story of Rudy Ruettiger, this film is about friendship, courage, and sacrifice. Rudy (Sean Austin) grew up in a small steel town with the dream of someday playing football for Notre Dame. Despite many obstacles, he refused to give up, and his determination inspired his friends and helped him accomplish his goal.
This Clip: Start 1:33:44
When the captain of the football team wants Rudy to take his place in the championship game, his coach tells him to do the right thing by focusing on the game, not the friendship. Believing he is doing the right thing, the capta...
“Life is Beautiful” is a film about a little boy with a father who made life in a Nazi concentration camp livable. His father is an exceedingly joyful individual who is madly in love with his wife and his little boy. He shields his son from as much of the horror of the concentration camp as he can by making up a crazy game.
At the end of the movie the boy survives and as an adult reflects upon the time in the camp and the joy brought into his life because of his father and says, “This is the sacrifice my father made for me”. That sacrifice made life joyful in the midst of despair.
Christ’s sacrifice has brought joy to lives in despair. What joy there is to be found in the death and resurrection of Jesus! Don’t we want to know all we can about this truth? The apostle Paul did.
In The Fantastic Four and The Silver Surfer, the Silver Surfer has been sent by Galactus to take out Earth but realizes who has been serving is the true enemy. So the Silver Surfer decides to serve what is right.
(Video clip available from http://www.wingclips.com/cart.php?target=product&product_id=16615&category_id=763)
The Silver Surfer held nothing back. But here is the thing. Unlike the Silver Surfer, Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself and that was the end of the movie. Jesus rose from the dead vindicating himself and showing that he was truly the son of God.
Illustration: "Dangerous Sacrifice": What it means to go above what is required of us.
Interview with Rick and Kay Warren – They communicate the message about being a doer of the Word of God and being willing to sacrifice for others in the world.
Video from YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zQYA6OgyuM
In the movie, Brokendown Palace, Alice (Blonde played by Claire Danes) convinces her best friend, Darlene (Brunette played by Kate Beckinsale) to go to Bangkok to celebrate their high school graduation. There an attractive Australian man befriends them and persuades them to join him in Hong Kong. While waiting to board the plane, they are arrested for heroin smuggling and sentenced to 33 years in a hideous prison known as Brokendown Palace. Every effort to be freed and go home has utterly failed.
In our clip the girls’ lawyer made a deal with the prosecutor—if the girls signed an admission of guilt, the judge would let them go home. But before the ink dries on the paper, a court official announces that drug smugglers will not be pardoned.[32] Watch the sacrifice Alice makes for her friend, Darlene, and see how it illustrates substitution.
Show Ch. 11 (0:57:06) to Ch. 12 (0:59:56)[33]
I ask you this morning to put yourself in Darlene’s place. How would you feel about a person who would sa...
A FATHER'S DUTY NEVER ENDS
I went to a Saturday matinee showing of that great Sidney Poitier movie, "Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?" and I reveled in that confrontation between Poitier’s world-renowned doctor character and his inner-city postman father. The postman father plays the "I sacrificed everything for you" card and the doctor plays the "father’s duty" card. That scene epitomized my feelings. My own father had already done his duty. Why didn’t he just leave me alone?
He didn’t leave me alone because he knew that I wasn’t anywhere near as brilliant as 17-year-old me thought he was. In fact, he could see the gaping weaknesses in my armor of pseudo-sophistication, the unprotected portions of my helmet of academia. If I had been as smart as I thought I was, I would have listened to my father about a lot more things, and I might not have experienced all of those hero-to-zero rollercoaster experiences that I ended up having in my life.
Frankly, the father’s duty isn’t over until the father dies. And if the father has done well, the father’s legacy takes over when the father has gone on.
TITANIC: CODE OF HONOR
I bet a lot of you remember the movie Titanic. That song came out, and for a few days we loved Celine Dion, until we'd heard it so many times we started wishing we could put her on that boat to sink with the rest of them.
Titanic was a movie that was loosely based on the true story of the great unsinkable ship that became a living embodiment of irony. It was quite sinkable.
The movie had incredible visuals. It was a magnificent boat, and watching the boat smash into the iceberg and eventually sink was both horrible and captivating.
But as the ship began to sink, there were a couple of scenes that the writers decided to portray in ways very differently than what really happened.
When the Titanic went on its first and only voyage, passengers included most of what would have been the Forbes 400 of the time. Many of the world's wealthiest businessmen died on the Titanic. In the movie, you see some heated moments where the greedy businessmen start pushing others aside to make sure they get on the life boats. Apparently all 1st Class passengers are 3rd class human beings. It takes some of the sailors pointing guns at the rich guys to make sure that it is women and children who get onto the life rafts.
But do you know that in reality, nothing like that happened? (More like 9/11)
John Jacob Astor was the richest man in the world at the time. He reportedly fought his way to a boat, then made sure his wife and children got on. He stepped back and waved goodbye.
Benjamin Guggenheim refused to take a seat. He said, "Tell my wife I played the game straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Benjamin Guggenheim was a coward."
Why make this change to the story? It seemed too unthinkable to the movie makers that wealthy people could value a code of honor so dearly that they would be willing to give their lives rather than to break it. If you got to the top, surely you'd sacrifice a little person rather than give up an opulent lifestyle.
