Sermon Illustrations

In the winter of 1976, John Jordan, together with three of his friends, decided to photograph Niagara Falls. They went to Goat Island to enjoy the icy beauty. While there Jordan and two others climbed the drifts that covered protective railings, then fell into the ice along the shore about 200 feet upstream from the falls.

The other two scrambled back to land, but Jordan was swept down to within fifteen feet of the brink of the Horseshoe Falls. There, somehow, he was able to grasp and cling to a chunk of ice. Patrolman James MacNeill was able to rescue the young man.

Whenever we become silent about God’s protective railings, the moral laws of God, we endanger the lives of those under our care. Right now, in the wintertime of the Church, little is said about the necessity of obeying God’s laws. But the wages of sin is still death. Let us rescue the perishing and care for the dying; but let us preach, too, the function of God’s moral law.