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HomeIllustrations

9,068 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

Bonhoeffer's Last Crossing

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in a safe apartment in New York City, surrounded by colleagues who had arranged his escape from Nazi Germany....

Luke 13:31-35Universal

251 words

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Sermon Illustration

Kagawa's Christmas in the Kobe Slums

On Christmas Day, 1909, a twenty-one-year-old seminary student named Toyohiko Kagawa walked into the Shinkawa slums of Kobe, Japan — six square blocks where fifteen...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

When Thousands of Rams Were Not Enough

In 1787, William Wilberforce sat in the garden of his estate at Holwood House in Kent, wrestling with a question that would define his life....

Micah 6:1-8Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Yes That Changed Everything

In 2015, a twenty-three-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah from small-town Missouri received a phone call that made no sense. A nonprofit director asked if she...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Prisoners Who Couldn't Stand Up

On January 30, 1945, 121 U.S. Army Rangers crawled through the grass toward the Cabanatuan prison camp in the Philippines. Inside the wire, over five...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stream from Herrnhut

In 1722, a handful of persecuted Moravian refugees stumbled onto the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They were exhausted, homeless, and few...

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

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lung Transplant on the Fourth Floor

In 2019, a thirty-one-year-old teacher named Marcus Reed received a double lung transplant at Duke University Hospital. The donor was a nineteen-year-old college sophomore who...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cobbler's Trickle That Became a Flood

In 1793, a Northamptonshire cobbler named William Carey stepped off a ship in Calcutta with little more than a printing press and a stubborn conviction...

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

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bible That Took a Hundred Hands

In 1525, William Tyndale hunched over a desk in Cologne, Germany, translating the New Testament into English for the first time from the original Greek....

1 Corinthians 3:1-9Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Monument That Had to Start Over Underground

In 1848, workers broke ground on the Washington Monument in the nation's capital. The marble obelisk rose steadily to 156 feet before political turmoil and...

1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nurse Who Kept the Night Watch

In 2014, when Ebola swept through Liberia and the world recoiled in fear, a Liberian nurse named Salome Karwah did something remarkably simple. She held...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Emergency Room at 3 A.M.

Sarah Chen had never run so fast in her life. Her four-year-old son, Marcus, was burning with fever, limp in her arms, and she burst...

Hebrews 4:16Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

A Miner's Thirst That Flooded a Nation

In the autumn of 1904, twenty-six-year-old Evan Roberts trudged out of the Welsh coal mines each evening with lungs full of dust and a soul...

John 7:37-39Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Moravians Who Would Not Wait

In October 1731, a young Moravian named Johann Leonard Dober attended a gathering in Herrnhut, Germany, where he heard Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf describe the...

Luke 2:15-21Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Wards of Scutari

In 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital in Scutari, Turkey, and found a nightmare. Wounded soldiers lay on filthy floors, neglected by...

Ezekiel 34:11-16Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Operated Without Lights

In 2010, Dr. Evan Atar Adaha stood in a makeshift surgical tent in Kurmuk, a dusty border town in Sudan's Blue Nile region. Ethiopian militias...

1 Samuel 17:45Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Couple Who Planted an Orchard in Detroit

In 2009, Mark and Olivia Covington stood on Hobart Street in Detroit's east side, surrounded by abandoned lots choked with waist-high weeds and crumbling foundations....

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

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mountain Lion on the Trail

In 2004, ranger Jim Hamm was hiking with his wife near Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Northern California when a mountain lion attacked. Every...

James 4:7Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coats She Left Behind

When Miss Rosa Lee Patterson died in 2019, the members of her small church in Albany, Georgia, expected a modest funeral. Rosa had never held...

Acts 9:36-43Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

When Sound Shapes the Dust

In 1787, German physicist Ernst Chladni scattered fine sand across a metal plate and drew a violin bow along its edge. What happened next still...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Bombs Stopped Falling

During the London Blitz of 1940, as Luftwaffe bombers darkened the skies night after night, something remarkable happened in the churches of England. Sanctuaries that...

Psalm 78:1-2, 34-38Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller and the God Whose Word Holds

In 1844, George Müller sat at a breakfast table in Bristol, England, set with empty plates and empty cups. Three hundred orphans waited in their...

Psalm 33:4-6, 9, 18-20, 22Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rescue Swimmer Who Jumped In

When a fishing vessel capsized off the coast of Cape Disappointment, Washington, in February 2021, Coast Guard rescue swimmer Chris Dean faced a decision every...

Hebrews 2:14-18Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

Wedgwood's Hammer and the Potter's Second Chance

In 1769, Josiah Wedgwood limped through his pottery works in Burslem, Staffordshire, leaning on his wooden leg, inspecting every piece that came off the wheels....

Jeremiah 18:1-11Universal

237 words