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HomeIllustrations

7,545 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Women Who Ran First

On Easter morning 1945, Corrie ten Boom sat in a displaced persons camp near the German border, recently freed from Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her sister...

Matthew 28:1-10Universal

235 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Condemned Man Who Found Life

In 1918, Tokichi Ishii sat in a Tokyo prison cell awaiting execution. He had murdered multiple people without remorse, and the Japanese courts had pronounced...

Genesis 3:9-15, 20Universal

281 words

Sermon Illustration

The Playwright Who Believed in a City Reborn

In 1979, Václav Havel sat in a Prague prison cell, convicted for the crime of speaking truth under communist rule. Czechoslovakia had endured decades of...

Jeremiah 33:14-16Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The King Who Stayed in the Ruins

In September 1940, German bombs struck Buckingham Palace while King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were inside. Advisors urged the royal family to evacuate to...

Matthew 3:13-17Universal

255 words

Sermon Illustration

The Priest Who Chose the Colony

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a cargo ship onto the rocky shore of Kalaupapa, a leper colony on...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Almost Wasn't

When Ben Carson was thirteen years old, he was the worst student in his fifth-grade class at Higgins Elementary in Detroit. His classmates called him...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

Wonderful Things

When Howard Carter pressed his face to a small hole chiseled through ancient stone on November 26, 1922, his patron Lord Carnarvon called out impatiently...

Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Detour That Built a Church

In 2014, Pastor Marcus Rivera planned a mission trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. His team of twelve from a small church in Durham, North Carolina, had...

Acts 16:9-15Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Emperor Who Could Not Outrun Their Love

In 362 AD, the Roman Emperor Julian set out to destroy Christianity — not with lions or fire, but by trying to out-love the church....

John 13:34-35Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Refuge

In the winter of 1943, Corrie ten Boom's modest home in Haarlem, Holland, became something extraordinary. Behind a false wall in her bedroom, a cramped...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Final Word From Mission Control

On July 20, 1969, when Apollo 11's lunar module began its descent toward the Sea of Tranquility, dozens of voices filled the communication channels. Engineers...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Glad Procession to Mother Bethel

In 1794, Richard Allen — a formerly enslaved man who had purchased his own freedom — opened the doors of a converted blacksmith shop on...

Psalm 122Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Letter She Couldn't Open

When Hurricane Katrina swept through Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2005, Margaret Trosclair evacuated with nothing but her purse and her dog. She spent eleven days in...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Emergency Room That Runs on Everyone

On a Friday night in March 2023, a five-car pileup on I-75 outside Atlanta sent eleven patients flooding into Grady Memorial Hospital's trauma bay within...

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Door Finally Opened

For three deployments over seven years, Staff Sergeant Maria Reyes communicated with her daughter Sofia through every means available. First came handwritten letters from Kandahar,...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

Elizabeth Fry and the Cold Stones of Newgate

In February 1813, Elizabeth Fry stepped through the iron gates of London's Newgate Prison and into a scene that would change her life. Three hundred...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Who Kept Answering the Wrong Phone

In 2014, twelve-year-old Marcus Thompson lived with his grandmother in a narrow rowhouse in Baltimore. She had two phones — a cordless on the kitchen...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night Enfield Wept

On July 8, 1741, Jonathan Edwards stood before a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut, and read from a manuscript in his characteristically quiet, measured voice. He...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41Universal

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Open Source Life

In 1983, a programmer named Richard Stallman launched the GNU Project with a radical idea: software should be free — not free as in no...

Universalfreedom

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name on the Tablet

When Maria and Carlos Gutierrez adopted their daughter from foster care in Houston in 2019, everyone assumed they'd rename her. That's what families did —...

Luke 1:57-66, 80Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nurse Who Worked by Candlelight

In 2010, after the earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, a American nurse named Sarah Collins arrived at a makeshift clinic built from tarps and scrap wood. Generators...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

A Communion That Changed the World

In the summer of 1727, the small village of Herrnhut in Saxony was tearing itself apart. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf had opened his estate to...

Acts 2:1-31Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Whole Room Couldn't Help but Sing

On a Tuesday evening in March 2019, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason stepped onto the stage at London's Royal Festival Hall and began playing Elgar's Cello Concerto....

Psalm 98Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Table That Held a Nation Together

During the darkest days of the London Blitz in 1940, King George VI made a quiet decision that spoke louder than any wartime speech. Each...

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

246 words