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HomeIllustrations

9,055 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

Five Chairs and a Prayer

In 1904, Mary McLeod Bethune rented a small cottage in Daytona Beach, Florida, and opened a school for Black girls with five students, a dollar...

Acts 9:36-43Universal

213 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Courtroom That Never Adjourns

In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor walked into the United States Supreme Court chamber for the first time as a justice. She later described the overwhelming weight...

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song She Never Expected to Sing

In 2002, Renee Napier received the phone call every parent dreads. Her daughter Meagan had been killed by a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge. The...

Universalforgiveness

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Storm Cellar on Maple Street

Margaret Dunhill was hanging laundry in her backyard in Moore, Oklahoma, when the sky turned the color of a bruise. It was May 20, 2013,...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Fence That Belonged to No One

In 1961, Peter Fechter was a young bricklayer in East Berlin who watched the wall go up brick by brick — some of which he...

1 Kings 18:21Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

Wangari Maathai and the Thirty Million Seeds

In 1977, Wangari Maathai knelt in the red dirt outside Nairobi, Kenya, and pressed nine seedlings into the earth. The hills around her told a...

Isaiah 55:10-13Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hired Hand Who Came Back as a Son

In 1987, a teenager named Marcus left his father's small furniture shop in Thomasville, North Carolina — not with a blessing, but after a shouting...

Philemon 1:15-16Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nursery That Was Ready Before the First Breath

In 2019, Maria and Carlos Espinoza spent four months transforming a spare bedroom in their San Antonio home into a nursery. Carlos sanded and painted...

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Radiance of Ravensbrück

In the winter of 1944, Corrie ten Boom huddled with her sister Betsie in Barracks 28 of Ravensbrück concentration camp. The stench was unbearable. Fleas...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Prison and the Promise in Burma

In 1813, Adoniram Judson knelt on the deck of a ship bound for Burma, freshly ordained and burning with purpose. He had heard the voice...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

Tolkien's Eucatastrophe - Anglican (Jeremiah 29:11)

Tolkien, devout Anglican, coined the word "eucatastrophe"—the sudden turn in a story where everything seems lost, then unexpectedly comes right. He saw it in the gospel: crucifixion looked like the end; resurrection was eucatastrophe. Jeremiah 29:11 is eucatastrophic promise: exile...

Jeremiah 29:11Universal

Short74 words

Sermon Illustration

The Prayer He Swore He'd Forgotten

In 1988, a commercial diver named David Wardell was working sixty feet beneath the surface of the North Sea when his air hose snagged on...

Jonah 2:1-2Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

Love as Covenant Commitment - Reformed (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

1 Corinthians 13 describes covenant love—love that binds despite circumstances.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7Universal

Short85 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bakery That Never Closed Its Back Door

For thirty-one years, Rosa Taveras ran a small panaderia on Cypress Avenue in the Bronx. She opened at four in the morning and closed at...

Psalm 112:1-10Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Rescue Capsule Opened

On October 13, 2010, the first of thirty-three Chilean miners stepped out of a narrow rescue capsule after sixty-nine days trapped half a mile underground...

Isaiah 6:1-8Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

One More From the Ridge

On May 5, 1945, Private First Class Desmond Doss stood atop a jagged escarpment on Okinawa that soldiers had grimly nicknamed Hacksaw Ridge. His company...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Men Who Watched for Shackleton

In April 1916, Ernest Shackleton left twenty-two men stranded on Elephant Island, a barren spit of rock off the Antarctic coast. He promised he would...

Mark 13:24-37Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Soup Kitchen That Closed for a Building Campaign

In 2014, a church in Decatur, Georgia, shuttered its Thursday night soup kitchen. The reason was practical — they needed the fellowship hall cleared for...

Hosea 6:6Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

Twenty-Five Cents and a New Name

On the morning of June 1, 1843, a woman named Isabella Baumfree packed a pillowcase with a few belongings, tucked twenty-five cents into her pocket,...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Five Friends

In 1844, George Müller began praying for five specific friends to come to faith in Christ. He prayed every day without exception — not vague,...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Shelter on Galveston's Seawall

When Hurricane Ike barreled toward Galveston, Texas in September 2008, most residents evacuated. But Jim and Elaine Maddox, an elderly couple on 53rd Street, couldn't...

Nahum 1:7Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

Bread on the Hillside

In the summer of 1680, Scottish Covenanters gathered on a remote hillside near Irongray in Dumfriesshire, knowing that government dragoons were hunting them. They had...

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

What You See When You Step Back

In 1886, Georges Seurat unveiled *A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte*, a painting that stunned the Paris art world. Up close,...

Universalcommunity

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Trusting Beyond Our Assumptions - Progressive (Proverbs 3:5-6)

A suburban church decided to partner with an inner-city congregation. The suburban members brought assumptions about what their partners "needed"—food drives, tutoring, career help.

Proverbs 3:5-6Universal

Short76 words