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HomeIllustrations

7,545 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

Seventeen Souls in a Welsh Chapel

In the autumn of 1904, twenty-six-year-old Evan Roberts was just a coal miner from Loughor, Wales, with no theological degree and no platform. He had...

Luke 5:1-11Universal

238 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Music the World Forgot

When Johann Sebastian Bach died in Leipzig in 1750, the musical world shrugged. Critics dismissed his compositions as overly complex, hopelessly old-fashioned. His manuscripts were...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seed Bank That Starved Men Refused to Eat

In September 1941, German forces encircled Leningrad and began a siege that would last 872 days. Inside the starving city, a small group of scientists...

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Knew the Apostle's Voice

In 155 AD, the aged bishop Polycarp of Smyrna stood before a Roman proconsul who demanded he renounce Christ. Polycarp replied with words that still...

2 Peter 1:16-19Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Weather Station on Grandfather Mountain

In 2018, meteorologist Katie Nickolaou noticed something odd on her monitors in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Barometric pressure was dropping fast, wind patterns were shifting in...

Luke 21:25-36Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Casserole Brigade of Maple Street

Margaret Chen had lived on Maple Street for forty-one years, but she had never once knocked on her neighbor's door. Then her husband died on...

John 13:34-35Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stone That Didn't Look Like Much

Dr. Helen Pratt spent forty-one years at the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, California, examining stones. Over a hundred thousand passed through her hands....

Luke 2:22-40Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night the Floodwaters Rose

In June of 2008, Linda Crawley stood on the front porch of her Cedar Rapids home and watched the Iowa River swallow her street. Water...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Compass That Points to Itself

In 1707, four British warships struck the rocks off the Scilly Isles, drowning nearly two thousand sailors in a single night. The fleet's navigator, Sir...

Judges 21:25Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Martyr Who Would Not Return

In March of 203 AD, a young Carthaginian noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua sat in a dank North African prison, nursing her infant son. Her father...

Psalm 45:10-12, 16Universal

269 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse at Cape Bonavista

Margaret Rowe spent forty-one years climbing the seventy-six steps of the Cape Bonavista lighthouse on Newfoundland's eastern coast. Every evening at dusk, without exception, she...

James 1:17Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stranger at Table Nine

In 2019, a diner in Raleigh, North Carolina, called Clyde Cooper's BBQ had a regular they knew only as "the quiet man." He came in...

Luke 24:13-35Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stone That Decoded Everything

For centuries, European scholars stared at the temples and tombs of Egypt, captivated by the elegant hieroglyphics carved into every surface. They knew the symbols...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The First Light Over Tromsø

In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, above the Arctic Circle, the sun disappears entirely in late November. For nearly two months, the residents live under...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

Perpetua's Diary of Heaven

In March of 203 AD, a young noblewoman named Perpetua sat in a sweltering Carthaginian prison, nursing her infant son through the iron bars. She...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blueberry Woman of Route 9

Every Saturday morning in July, Martha Guidry set up a folding table at the end of her gravel driveway outside Houma, Louisiana. On it she...

Luke 6:38Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Runner From Kabul

In August 2021, when the last American planes lifted off from Kabul's airport, thousands of Afghan families were left behind with nothing but fear and...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Farmer Who Waited for Rain

In 2012, Tom Neuhaus nearly lost everything. His family had farmed six hundred acres outside Salina, Kansas, for three generations, and that summer the worst...

James 5:7-10Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

Leonardo's Anatomy and the Architect Who Came First

In 1510, Leonardo da Vinci hunched over a candlelit table in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence, carefully peeling back layers of muscle...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Who Couldn't Shed His Own Skin

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, a disagreeable boy named Eustace Scrubb wanders into a dragon's cave and falls asleep on a...

Universalredemption

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Parlour Maid Who Opened Gates

In 1930, the China Inland Mission rejected Gladys Aylward. At twenty-eight, she was a London parlour maid with no formal education, and the mission board...

Psalm 118:14-29Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Plant Doctor Who Needed Someone to Name the Voice

In Diamond, Missouri, around 1874, a frail orphan boy named George Washington Carver wandered the woods behind the Carver farm, whispering to sickly plants. Neighbors...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

258 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pastor Who Knelt at the Gallows

On April 9, 1945, just two weeks before Allied forces liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows. The camp doctor who...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Weight of a One-Way Ticket

In 1956, a twenty-three-year-old Hungarian cellist named Katalin Varga walked across the Austrian border carrying nothing but her instrument case and a photograph of her...

Ruth 2:12Universal

227 words