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HomeIllustrations

9,055 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Phone Call at 2 A.M.

When the phone rang at 2:14 on a Tuesday morning, Rachel Dominguez was grading seventh-grade essays at her kitchen table in Tulsa. The voice on...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

238 words

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Sermon Illustration

Beyond the Living Room

For eleven years, Denise Watkins ran a free tutoring program from her apartment on East 71st Street in Chicago. Every Tuesday and Thursday, twelve neighborhood...

Isaiah 49:1-6Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Checkpoint No One Dared to Cross

On the night of November 9, 1989, East German border guards received confused orders: the crossings were open. Thousands gathered at the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Conversion That Wouldn't Let Wilberforce Rest

In the autumn of 1785, William Wilberforce was a twenty-five-year-old member of Parliament who had everything London's elite could want — wealth, wit, a voice...

Titus 2:11-12Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

Gladys Aylward's One-Way Ticket

In 1932, a London parlor maid named Gladys Aylward counted out her meager savings — just enough for a one-way train ticket to China. She...

Luke 12:32-40Universal

220 words

Sermon Illustration

Letters from Aberdeen

In 1636, Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford was stripped of his pulpit and banished to the remote city of Aberdeen. The authorities meant it as punishment...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

When Light Touches Skin

At the core of the sun, hydrogen atoms fuse at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit — a violence so extreme that no human eye could witness...

John 1:1-14Universal

212 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mountain Guide's Red Rope

In 2018, a group of inexperienced hikers attempted the Kalalau Trail along the Na Pali Coast of Kauai — eleven miles of narrow cliff paths...

Psalm 25:1-10Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Gate That Opened by Itself

In 2010, a Chilean copper mine collapsed, trapping thirty-three miners nearly half a mile underground. For seventeen days, no one on the surface knew if...

Acts 12:1-11Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

Maximilian Kolbe's Final Offering

In the summer of 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. The SS guards, following brutal protocol, selected ten men from Block 14 to die by...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Symphony He Could Not Hear

By the time Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony — arguably the most celebrated piece of music in Western history — he was completely...

Universalpurpose

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman Who Packed Her Bags Toward Famine

In 1943, a young Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom watched her elderly father, Casper, open their door to a Jewish neighbor trembling on the...

Ruth 1:16Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Memorial Sewn Into the Coat

On the night of November 23, 1654, the brilliant mathematician Blaise Pascal sat alone in his room in Paris when something shattered his ordinary evening....

Luke 9:28b-36Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Letter Home

In 2017, a family in Manchester, England, discovered a shoebox in their grandmother's attic after her passing. Inside were dozens of letters from her late...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Storm That Became a Doorway

On March 10, 1748, a violent storm nearly swallowed the slave trading ship Greyhound in the North Atlantic. John Newton, a twenty-two-year-old sailor who had...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Doctor They Refused to Believe

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a discovery that should have changed medicine overnight. Working in Vienna General Hospital's maternity ward,...

Luke 4:21-30Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Birmingham Jail That Became a Beacon - Progressive (Romans 8:28)

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham for leading nonviolent protests. From his jail cell, he wrote a letter that would become one of history's most important documents on justice.

Romans 8:28Universal

Short91 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge That Couldn't Agree

In 2017, crews from two countries began building the Pelješac Bridge in Croatia, a stunning cable-stayed span connecting the mainland to the Pelješac peninsula across...

1 Corinthians 1:10-18Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Marathon Runner Who Stopped at Mile 25

In November 2019, amateur runner Sarah Sellers crossed the twenty-fifth mile of the New York City Marathon and simply stopped. She walked to the curb,...

1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15aUniversal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Heard at Sixteen

On February 7, 1837, a sixteen-year-old girl sitting beneath the cedars at Embley Park in Hampshire, England, heard something she could not explain. Florence Nightingale...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

220 words

Sermon Illustration

The Three Words That Changed Everything

In 1952, a young minister named Will Campbell sat in a segregated diner in Nashville, laughing with his white colleagues while a Black seminary student...

2 Samuel 12:13Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Librarian Who Waited Forty Years

In 1983, Margaret Chen began volunteering at the Oak Park Public Library in Chicago, shelving books in the children's section every Tuesday and Thursday. She...

Luke 2:22-40Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cross of Nails at Coventry

On the morning of November 15, 1940, the people of Coventry, England woke to find their beloved cathedral reduced to a smoldering shell. German bombers...

Isaiah 2:1-5Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Storm Cellar on County Road 4

Margaret Hendricks had lived in Moore, Oklahoma, long enough to know the difference between a watch and a warning. On May 20, 2013, when the...

Proverbs 18:10Universal

244 words