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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Luthier of Cremona

In a small workshop on Via Palazzo in Cremona, Italy, master luthier Stefano Conia selects a piece of spruce he has been aging for twelve...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

244 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Shadow of the Rock

There's a well-documented phenomenon among desert hikers in places like Arizona's Sonoran Desert or Israel's Negev wilderness. When the afternoon sun pushes the air temperature...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Conductor Who Showed Up on a Tuesday

In 2019, the community choir in Millbrook, Alabama was three weeks from disbanding. Their director had moved away, membership had dwindled to eleven voices, and...

Philippians 2:6-11Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

William Wilberforce and the Promise That Outlasted Reason

In 1787, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and declared that the slave trade must end. He was twenty-seven years old, physically frail, and...

Romans 4:13, 16-18, 22Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Could Not Keep Silent

William Tyndale could read the Bible in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. But that wasn't enough. While serving as a tutor in a Gloucestershire manor in...

Psalm 40:7-11Universal

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice That Rang From the Lincoln Memorial

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stood before the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. The Daughters of the American Revolution had...

Psalm 98:1-4Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Parlor Maid in God's Quiver

Gladys Aylward stood barely five feet tall, a parlor maid from Edmonton, London, with no university degree and no missionary board willing to send her....

Isaiah 49:1-6Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Words They Carved in Stone

In the ancient catacombs beneath Rome, two kinds of inscriptions line the tunnel walls. Pagan tombs bear the letters *D.M.* — *Dis Manibus*, "to the...

1 Corinthians 15:12-20Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

A Hymn of Thanks from the Valley of Death

In 1637, the Saxon town of Eilenburg was a place of unrelenting grief. The Thirty Years' War had driven refugees behind its walls, and plague...

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Soup Kitchen That Changed Its Menu

For three years, the members of Grace Community Church in Wichita, Kansas, ran a Saturday soup kitchen. They served meals, took photos for the church...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

265 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lunch Line at Greenfield Elementary

Every Friday, Maria Sandoval packed two lunches — one for herself and one she quietly slipped into the backpack of a boy in her third-grade...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The North Star and the Conductor Who Never Looked Down

Harriet Tubman led nineteen missions through the Underground Railroad, guiding more than three hundred men, women, and children from the plantations of Maryland to freedom...

Psalm 121Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Morning in Pompeii

On August 24, 79 AD, the residents of Pompeii woke to an ordinary summer day. Bakers slid loaves into stone ovens. Merchants arranged figs and...

Matthew 24:36-44Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Call Only She Knows

Every winter in Antarctica, a mother emperor penguin returns from months of feeding at sea to a colony of tens of thousands — a roaring,...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

Nature Illustration: Seasons of Growth and Rest

Imagine a quiet morning in early spring, when the earth begins to awaken from its winter slumber. The frost lifts gently from the ground, revealing tender shoots of green breaking through the soil. In every corner, life stirs—a symphony of...

Psalm 19:1-6Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman Who Saw Light Without Eyes

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old due to a doctor's error. She lived ninety-four years in total darkness — and wrote over...

Psalm 36:5-10Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cathedral That Took Five Centuries

In 1296, workers in Florence laid the first stone of what would become the Duomo — the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. The original...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Washerwoman's Enduring Fortune

In 1995, Oseola McCarty of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, stunned the nation when she donated $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi for scholarships. She was eighty-seven...

Psalm 112:1-10Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

George Washington Carver's Laboratory of Wonder

In 1921, George Washington Carver stood before the United States Congress holding a handful of peanuts. From that humble legume, he had derived over three...

Genesis 1:1-2:4aUniversal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

Johannes Kepler and the Songs Without Sound

In 1619, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler published a work he had labored over for twenty years. He called it *Harmonices Mundi* — *The Harmony...

Psalm 19Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Earth Mover Who Reversed the Tithe

In 1935, a Texas industrialist named R.G. LeTourneau made a decision that baffled his accountants. Already giving generously to churches and missions, he restructured his...

Psalm 112:1-10Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

Nature Illustration: Seasons of Growth and Rest

There is a small garden at the edge of my backyard, a patch of earth that tells a beautiful story each year. In early spring, it bursts forth with life — delicate buds unfurling, the earth awakening from its long...

Revelation 21:1-5Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Guardian Who Never Sleeps

In 1964, a seventeen-year-old San Diego student named Randy Gardner stayed awake for eleven consecutive days as a science fair experiment. By day three, he...

Psalm 121Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Former Slave Invited to Speak at Nantucket

In August 1841, a young man named Frederick Douglass attended an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island. He had escaped bondage only three years earlier and...

John 1:43-51Universal

231 words