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HomeIllustrations

9,108 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Top Rated Newest Oldest|All Sources Biblical Illustrator Spurgeon Maclaren

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Sermon Illustration

The Great Change of William Wilberforce

In the autumn of 1785, William Wilberforce was a twenty-five-year-old member of Parliament — wealthy, witty, and restless. He had everything London's high society could...

Romans 8:6-11Universal

246 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Coach Who Limped Every Mile

In 2019, cross-country coach Brad Holloway of Shelbyville, Indiana, watched his runner Jenna collapse at mile two of the state qualifier. She had trained all...

Isaiah 63:7-9Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Breakfast After the Worst Shift of Your Life

In 2018, a young ER nurse named David Chen walked out of Mercy Hospital in Sacramento after losing his first patient — a teenager from...

John 21:1-19Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lead Climber's Rope

In 2013, mountaineer Conrad Anker led a team up the treacherous southwest face of Lunag Ri in the Himalayas. The route had never been completed....

1 Corinthians 15:20-27Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Farmer Who Waited for Rain

In 2012, Tom Neuhaus nearly lost everything. His family had farmed six hundred acres outside Salina, Kansas, for three generations, and that summer the worst...

James 5:7-10Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Testimony Walked Into the Room

Before Frederick Douglass ever stood on a platform, abolitionists in the North had heard plenty about slavery. They read pamphlets and printed testimonies. They studied...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cellist of Sarajevo

During the siege of Sarajevo in 1993, mortar shells had reduced the city's beloved National Library to a smoldering skeleton. Bread lines became killing fields....

Habakkuk 3:17-19Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mother Who Prayed While Her Son Read the Tract

In June 1849, seventeen-year-old Hudson Taylor wandered into his father's library in Barnsley, England, looking for something to pass the time. He picked up a...

John 1:43-51Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell's Contentment at Weihsien

In February 1945, Eric Liddell was dying of a brain tumor inside a Japanese internment camp in Weihsien, China. The Olympic gold medalist who had...

Psalm 16Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Roommate Who Came Back Different

In 1987, Marcus Chen dropped out of the University of Michigan halfway through his sophomore year. His roommate, David Okafor, woke up one Tuesday to...

Philemon 1:15-16Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale and the Voice She Could Not Yet Name

On February 7, 1837, a sixteen-year-old girl sitting in the garden of Embley Park in Hampshire, England, heard something she could only describe as "God...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

Moravian Love That Changed the World

In August 1727, a fractured community of religious refugees gathered at Herrnhut, a small estate in Saxony owned by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf. These...

John 13:31-35Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Moment Augustine Put On the Light

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping in a garden in Milan. Augustine of Hippo had spent years chasing ambition,...

Romans 13:11-14Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Casserole Brigade of Elm Street

When Dave Hernandez collapsed in the produce aisle of the Kroger on Fifth and Elm, he had no church, no family in town, and a...

John 13:34-35Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Twenty-Six Days in New York

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stepped off a ship in New York Harbor, leaving behind a Germany descending into madness. Friends had arranged everything —...

Luke 4:1-13Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Knew the Alpha and Omega

In 155 AD, the Roman proconsul in Smyrna — one of the very churches John addressed in Revelation — dragged an elderly bishop named Polycarp...

Revelation 1:4-8Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The First Harvest at Davis Bend

In 1864, along a bend of the Mississippi River, formerly enslaved men and women walked rows of cotton and corn they had planted with their...

Joshua 5:9-12Universal

261 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cricketer Who Counted It All Loss

In 1884, C.T. Studd was the most celebrated cricketer in England. Captain of the Cambridge team, national sporting hero, heir to a vast fortune —...

Philippians 3:4b-14Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

What Astronauts See

When astronauts aboard the International Space Station orbit Earth, they witness something that reshapes how they understand light and darkness. From the ground, we watch...

James 1:17Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Artesian Wells of the Great Basin

In 1882, settlers in South Dakota's James River Valley were desperate for water. The surface creeks ran dry each summer, and shallow wells produced only...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Soup That Kept Showing Up

When Marcus Chen was diagnosed with ALS in 2019, his neighbors in a small subdivision outside Raleigh, North Carolina, didn't organize a single grand fundraiser...

John 13:34-35Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hammer That Never Stopped Swinging

In June 2023, Jimmy Carter entered hospice care at ninety-eight years old. The former president had spent nearly four decades after leaving the White House...

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Sea That Became a Desert

In 1960, the Aral Sea straddled the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the fourth-largest lake on earth. Fishing boats crowded its ports. Children swam...

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tracker Who Read Footprints Like Sentences

In the Kalahari Desert of southern Africa, a San tracker named !Nate can identify every member of his community by their footprints alone. Not just...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

243 words