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HomeIllustrations

9,055 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Quarterback Nobody Recruited

In 2000, a skinny kid from San Mateo, California sat in the NFL Draft green room and waited. And waited. Tom Brady watched 198 players...

1 Samuel 16:1-13Universal

242 words

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Sermon Illustration

All Thirty-Three

On August 5, 2010, the San José copper mine in Chile's Atacama Desert collapsed, trapping thirty-three miners beneath two thousand feet of rock. For seventeen...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Orchard Keeper Who Never Stopped Singing

Every morning at 5:45, before the Texas sun crests the pecan groves outside Fredericksburg, 87-year-old Margaret Townsend steps onto her back porch with a cup...

Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

A Bible Hidden Under a Dress

In September 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie arrived at Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. They had been arrested for hiding Jewish families...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell and the Body That Felt God's Pleasure

In 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell stood at the center of an Olympic controversy in Paris. He had withdrawn from his best event, the 100...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Farmer's Daughter from Owasso

In 2019, a young woman named Sarah from Owasso, Oklahoma — population 36,000 — married into one of Denmark's oldest noble families. She had grown...

Psalm 45:10-12, 16Universal

272 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper's Faith

A lighthouse keeper lived alone on a rocky island, maintaining a beacon that guided ships safely to harbor. Every night for thirty years, he climbed the narrow stairs to light the great lamp. Ships wo...

Matthew 5:14, 1 Corinthians 4:2Traditionalfaithfulnesssteadfastness

mixed

207 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Father and the Prodigal Nation

In the winter of 1944, Casper ten Boom was eighty-four years old when the Gestapo arrested him for hiding Jewish families in his Haarlem watchshop....

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Death's Duel and the Dean of St. Paul's

In February 1631, John Donne stood in the pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, visibly wasting from stomach cancer, and preached what his friends called...

1 Corinthians 15:19-26Universal

236 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 Man Who Refused to Simply Listen

William Wilberforce sat in the British Parliament for years, hearing impassioned speeches about the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade. He knew the statistics —...

James 1:22Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer's Watch Post

In April 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led into a concrete cell at Tegel Prison in Berlin, surrounded by the very injustice Habakkuk had lamented three...

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coach Who Believed First

In 2019, a high school track coach named John Woodruff in Richmond, Virginia, noticed a freshman named DeShawn sitting alone in the bleachers after school...

Titus 2:11-12Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

A Voice Carved from Stone

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and sang to 75,000 people. What most forget is what...

Universalcourage

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Paid-Off Mortgage

In 2019, a woman in Cleveland named Dana Carter made her final mortgage payment after thirty years. The bank sent confirmation: paid in full, zero...

Colossians 2:6-15Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Monday Prayers of Leipzig

On October 9, 1989, seventy thousand East German citizens filled the streets of Leipzig, carrying candles in the autumn darkness. The communist regime had stationed...

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

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Firefighters of Station 12 Who Refused to Sleep

In 1991, a wildfire swept through the Oakland Hills of California, killing twenty-five people and destroying over three thousand homes in a single afternoon. Investigators...

Jude 1:3Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bucket With No Bottom

In 2014, a financial planner named David Chen sat across from a couple in Portland, Oregon, who earned a combined $190,000 a year. They had...

Haggai 1:5-6Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Rescued by the Wreckage

In 1982, a commercial fisherman named Salvador Alvarenga set out from the coast of Mexico on what should have been a routine trip. When a...

Jonah 1:17Universal

233 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 Text That Changed Everything

On January 15, 2009, passengers on US Airways Flight 1549 braced for impact as Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger glided their crippled Airbus onto the Hudson...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

242 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 Silence Before the Shout

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, and read General Order No. 3: all enslaved people were free. The war...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rock Beneath the Foundation

In 2010, engineers in Santiago, Chile, drilled a narrow borehole 2,300 feet into the earth to reach thirty-three miners trapped in the San José copper...

Matthew 16:13-19Universal

247 words