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HomeIllustrations

9,055 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

We Lepers

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a boat onto the rocky shore of Molokai, Hawaii. He had volunteered to...

Isaiah 63:7-9Universal

215 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Medic Who Carried No Weapon

When Desmond Doss enlisted in the United States Army in 1942, his commanding officers wanted him gone. A Seventh-day Adventist from Lynchburg, Virginia, Doss refused...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

Light from the Very First Dawn

On July 12, 2022, NASA released the first deep field image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Scientists had pointed the most powerful telescope ever...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The John 3:16 Sign Guy - Baptist (John 3:16)

For decades, a man named Rollen Stewart appeared at major sporting events holding a sign: "John 3:16." Cameras couldn't avoid him. Millions saw those numbers without knowing what they meant—and many looked it up. His methods were controversial, his later life tragic.

John 3:16Universal

Short92 words

Sermon Illustration

The Donor Who Knew His Name

In 2018, a young paramedic named Marcus Cole responded to a stabbing in Memphis. The victim was a teenager named Darius, bleeding out on the...

Romans 5:5-11Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Architect Who Moved to His Street

Marcus Webb spent three years designing the Westfield Tower, a mixed-use complex in downtown Cleveland. He drew sightlines and traffic flows, calculated natural light angles,...

John 1:1-14Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge That Held Through Every Storm

In 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge finally opened after fourteen years of construction, skeptics lined the shore and shook their heads. They said the cables...

Psalm 89:2-5, 27, 29Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Watchmaker Who Lived to See the Hour Strike

In 1787, a young British parliamentarian named William Wilberforce first introduced a motion to abolish the slave trade. It failed. He introduced it again the...

Luke 2:22-40Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Sky Reveals What Was Always There

On April 8, 2024, millions of Americans drove hundreds of miles to stand in the path of totality. In Fredericksburg, Texas, a retired science teacher...

Mark 9:2-10Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hire That Changed Everything

In 2019, a restaurant owner in Richmond, Virginia named Marcus had every reason to say no. A young man named Derek walked into his café...

Philemon 1-21Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The Desert That Learned to Sing

In 2018, photographers from around the world descended on Chile's Atacama Desert — the driest place on Earth, where some weather stations have never recorded...

Isaiah 35:1-10Universal

251 words

Sermon Illustration

Pascal's Night of Fire

On the evening of November 23, 1654, Blaise Pascal — the brilliant French mathematician who had already invented the calculator and proved the existence of...

Isaiah 6:1-8Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hen They Found After the Fire

In 2012, a wildfire swept through the foothills outside Colorado Springs, consuming over 340 homes in the Waldo Canyon blaze. When a rancher returned to...

Luke 13:31-35Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice That Broke a Long Silence

In 1837, seventeen-year-old Florence Nightingale sat in the garden of her family's Hampshire estate and heard what she described as the voice of God calling...

Luke 1:57-66, 80Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

When Father Damien Said "We

In 1873, a thirty-three-year-old Belgian priest named Damien de Veuster stepped off a boat onto Molokai, a Hawaiian island that had become a colony of...

John 1:1-14Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

When Evan Roberts Wept in a Chapel

In the autumn of 1904, a twenty-six-year-old Welsh coal miner named Evan Roberts stood before seventeen people in a small chapel in Loughor, Wales. He...

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman at the Red Door

In the spring of 1943, a young mother named Clara Simmons stood outside the offices of the War Department in Washington, D.C. Her husband had...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blacksmith of Gornji Vakuf

In 1997, two years after the Bosnian War ended, a blacksmith named Zajko Hadzimuratovic returned to his shop in Gornji Vakuf, a town split between...

Isaiah 2:1-5Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mercy We Never Wanted to Share

In 1995, a South African woman named Pearl Faku sat in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in East London and listened to the police officer...

Jonah 4:2Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pastor Who Had Been Praying for Years

When William Wilberforce was a young member of Parliament in 1785, he found himself in spiritual crisis. Ambitious but restless, he secretly began reading the...

John 1:43-51Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Midnight Telegram at Tremont Temple

On the evening of December 31, 1862, three thousand people packed into Tremont Temple in Boston. Frederick Douglass stood among them, his eyes fixed on...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

From the Ruins of Robben Island

In 1964, Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, a windswept rock off the coast of Cape Town. The anti-apartheid movement appeared...

Isaiah 11:1-10Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Candles of Copenhagen

On the evening of May 4, 1945, a BBC announcer read a single sentence that changed everything for the people of Denmark: "The German forces...

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Love That Reached Ravensbrück

In the winter of 1944, Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsie huddled together on a flea-infested mattress in Barracks 28 of Ravensbrück concentration camp....

Psalm 36:5-10Universal

222 words