Sermon Illustrations

EDISON COULDN'T MAKE LIFE

Are you extremely proud of your lifetime accomplishments? It was on November 21 of 1877 that Thomas Edison announced to the world that he had invented the phonograph. Edison's accomplishments are often forgotten. In his Menlo Park, New Jersey fix-it shop he designed the following items: the household light bulb, a motion picture device, the telephone transmitter, stock ticker improvements, the mimeograph machine, the dictating machine and much more. If anyone had a right to brag, Edison did. However, he humbly acknowledged he couldn't create the simplest form of life.

The Creator of everything and everyone has this perspective on bragging rights. He inspired: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD" (Jer. 9:23, 24 NIV). When you understand how incomparable your Creator is and then realize how your knowledge, talents and wealth are but gifts from his limitless storehouse, then and only then will you discover how few bragging rights you really have.

(AMG Bible Illustrations. 2000. Bible Illustrations Series. Chattanooga: AMG Publishers.)

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