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Sermon Illustrations

Craig Brian Larson, a Chicago pastor, wears many hats including serving as editor of the pastors’ resource “Preachingtoday.com.” He is especially talented in providing pastors with great anthologies from the movies that are excellent illustrations for sermons.

He shares this story. “As a kid, I saw a movie in which some shipwrecked men are left drifting aimlessly on the ocean in a lifeboat. As the days pass under the scorching sun, their rations of food and fresh water give out. The men grow deliriously thirsty. One night, while the others are asleep, one man ignores all previous warnings and gulps down some salt water. He quickly dies.

“Ocean water contains seven times more salt than the human body can safely ingest. Drinking it, a person dehydrates because the kidneys demand extra water to flush the overload of salt. The more salt water someone drinks, the thirstier he gets. He actually dies of thirst.

Lusting makes us like this man. “We thirst desperately for something that looks like what we want. We don’t realize, however, that it is precisely the opposite of what we really need. In fact it can kill us.” [SOURCE: Craig Brian Larson].

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