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HomeIllustrations

7,545 Illustrations

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Top Rated Newest Oldest|All Sources Biblical Illustrator Spurgeon Maclaren

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Sermon Illustration

Guts Enough Not to Fight Back

In August 1945, Branch Rickey sat across from Jackie Robinson and laid out an impossible assignment. Rickey wanted Robinson to break baseball's color barrier with...

Universalobedience

230 words

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Sermon Illustration

Six Days Before the Voice

In 2018, mountaineer Adrian Ballinger sat at Camp 4 on Everest — 26,000 feet up — waiting. The summit was close enough to see, but...

Exodus 24:12-18Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Kept His Oath When It Cost Him Everything

In 1534, Sir Thomas More stood in the Tower of London, stripped of his title as Lord Chancellor of England — once the most powerful...

Psalm 15Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Race That Changed Everything

In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond lined up for the 400-meter semifinal. He had trained for years, endured multiple surgeries, and overcome...

Universalperseverance

240 words

Sermon Illustration

Wilberforce's Forty-Year Wait

In 1789, William Wilberforce stood before the British Parliament and delivered a three-and-a-half-hour speech calling for the abolition of the slave trade. The vote failed....

James 5:7-10Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Prisoner Who Took Another Man's Place

In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. As punishment, the SS deputy commander Karl Fritzsch selected ten men from Block 14 to die by...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Race He Refused to Quit

On August 3, 1992, British sprinter Derek Redmond lined up for the 400-meter semi-final at the Barcelona Olympics. He was running the race of his...

Universalcourage

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Salt Mine Beneath Detroit

Six hundred feet below the streets of Detroit lies a salt mine stretching across 1,500 acres. Since 1910, workers have descended into those depths to...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Finish Line He Never Expected to Run Alone

On July 3, 1992, at the Barcelona Olympics, British sprinter Derek Redmond lined up for the 400-meter semifinal. He had trained for years, endured twenty-two...

Universalhope

228 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Signal Goes Silent

NASA's Mars rover *Perseverance* cannot call home when it gets into trouble. The radio signal between Earth and Mars takes anywhere from 5 to 20...

Universalcourage

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Furniture Maker Who Never Abandons a Piece

In 2019, master woodworker Sam Maloof's workshop in Alta Loma, California, became a museum — but his apprentice, Larry White, kept working. Larry once told...

Psalm 138Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Water Beneath the Drought

In the 1880s, Australian settlers in the parched Queensland outback faced a brutal irony. Their cattle were dying. Their wells had gone dry. The red...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seawall of Fudai

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 earthquake shattered the ocean floor off Japan's coast, unleashing tsunami waves that obliterated entire coastal towns. Over eighteen thousand...

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Knock No One Expected

In 2010, thirty-three Chilean miners were trapped 2,300 feet underground in the San José copper mine near Copiapó. For seventeen days, no one on the...

Acts 12:1-11Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Deepest Dive

In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh climbed into the Trieste bathyscaphe and descended nearly seven miles into the Mariana Trench — the deepest known...

Universalcourage

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Watchman ofEli Cohen

In the autumn of 1884, a young Scottish minister named George Matheson — blind since the age of eighteen — set out on a walking...

Psalm 121Universal

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Note He Could No Longer Hear

In 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven stood on stage at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna for the premiere of his Ninth Symphony. He faced the...

Universalgrace

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mountain That Gave Fair Warning

On March 20, 1980, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake shook Mount St. Helens in Washington State. Over the next two months, the north face of the mountain...

Zephaniah 1:14-15Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grocery Store at Mile Twenty

In 2018, ultramarathon runner Courtney Dauwalter was thirty hours into the Moab 240 — a grueling 240-mile race across the Utah desert. Her body screamed...

Luke 4:1-13Universal

261 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper of Moelfre

On the night of October 27, 1859, a hurricane-force storm slammed into the Welsh coast at Moelfre. The Royal Charter, a clipper ship carrying 450...

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Morehouse Moment

In May 2019, billionaire Robert F. Smith stood at the podium during Morehouse College's commencement and made an announcement nobody expected. After delivering a standard...

Luke 4:14-21Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The River That Jumped Its Banks

In the spring of 1927, the Mississippi River swelled beyond anything the Army Corps of Engineers had planned for. For decades, they had built levees...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The News That Reached Galveston

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger stood on the balcony of Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and read General Order No. 3...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Father Who Came Back to the Table

In 2018, a restaurant owner in Memphis named Frank watched his teenage son steal $4,000 from the register and disappear for three weeks. The money...

Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9Universal

255 words