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HomeIllustrations

7,545 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 Signature on the Blueprint

In 1943, a small congregation in Birmingham, Alabama gathered in a borrowed basement to plan their first church building. They had no architect, no contractor,...

Nehemiah 2:20Universal

216 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Last Grove Standing in the Mountains of Lebanon

In the mountains above Bsharri, Lebanon, there stands a grove of cedars that the locals call the Cedars of God. Some of these trees are...

Psalm 29Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice That Was Heard Once in a Hundred Years

In 1939, Marian Anderson was denied the stage at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let a Black...

John 1:43-51Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

Restored to Factory Settings

Every smartphone owner knows the moment of dread: a device gone wrong. Maybe it happened gradually — too many careless downloads, settings tweaked until nothing...

Universalredemption

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name That Outweighed the Arsenal

In 1944, a young French nurse named Geneviève de Galard walked into a field hospital in Indochina carrying nothing but a medical bag and a...

1 Samuel 17:45Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wardrobe Door That Never Locked

In C.S. Lewis's *The Last Battle*, the dwarfs sit in a bright, sunlit field, yet they are convinced they are trapped in a dark, filthy...

Universalfreedom

239 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom and the Yielded Body

In 1944, Corrie ten Boom stood inside the delousing shower at Ravensbrück concentration camp, stripped bare alongside her sister Betsie and hundreds of other women....

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name on the Nursery Door

When Marcus and Elena Torres of San Antonio learned they were expecting their first child in 2019, everyone assumed the boy would be Marcus Antonio...

Luke 1:57-66, 80Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wisdom Hidden in Simple Rules

In 2010, researchers at Hokkaido University published a study in *Science* that stunned the engineering world. They placed a slime mold — a single-celled organism...

Universalobedience

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wardrobe Cleanout on Maple Street

Last spring, Maria Gutierrez finally tackled the hall closet in her Chicago bungalow. For years she had shoved old coats, stained shirts, and shoes that...

Colossians 3:1-11Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stranger at Table Seven

Maria Gonzalez almost didn't go to work that Tuesday morning. Her mother had died three days earlier, and the world felt emptied out — familiar...

Luke 24:13-35Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Calves of Björkliden

In the far north of Sweden, above the Arctic Circle, the town of Björkliden endures something called the polar night. From late November through mid-January,...

Malachi 4:2Universal

267 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mold That Saved Two Hundred Million Lives

In September 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from holiday to his laboratory at St. Mary's Hospital in London and found a petri dish he'd accidentally left...

Romans 1:16Universal

209 words

Sermon Illustration

The Fruit That Grew While She Wasn't Looking

In 2019, Maria Gonzalez planted a small community garden behind her church in Tucson, Arizona. She had no budget, just a patch of sun-scorched dirt...

Colossians 1:1-14Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

George Washington Carver's Conversation with the Creator

George Washington Carver, the brilliant agricultural chemist born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864, made a habit that puzzled his colleagues at Tuskegee Institute....

Psalm 104:24-34, 35bUniversal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Debt Paid in Silence

In Charles Dickens's *Great Expectations*, young Pip rises from humble beginnings to become a London gentleman. Along the way, he grows ashamed of Joe Gargery,...

Universalhumility

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The African Boy Who Taught the Professors to Pray

In 1891, a young Liberian man named Samuel Morris arrived at Taylor University in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He had no formal education. He owned no...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The House on Pilings

When Hurricane Harvey slammed into Rockport, Texas, in August 2017, entire neighborhoods were flattened. Roofs peeled away like paper. Walls collapsed into heaps of soggy...

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

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Soup That Outlasted the Sermon

When Dorothy Henderson died at ninety-three in Macon, Georgia, nearly four hundred people filled the sanctuary at First Baptist. The pastor admitted he was stunned....

1 Corinthians 13:1-13Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Redwood's Canopy

In Northern California's Humboldt County, coastal redwoods tower over three hundred feet into the fog. But something remarkable happens beneath them. Dr. Emily Burns, a...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge in the Fog

In George MacDonald's novel *The Princess and the Goblin*, young Princess Irene discovers a mysterious thread given to her by her great-great-grandmother. The thread is...

Universaltrust

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Witness Who Could Not Stay Silent

On a February morning in 1974, Soviet authorities dragged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Moscow apartment and deported him from Russia. His crime was simple: he...

Acts 2:14a, 22-32Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lady with the Lamp

In November 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital in Scutari, Turkey, and found hell masquerading as medicine. Wounded soldiers from the Crimean...

Ephesians 5:8-14Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Piano Tuner's Ear

Margaret Kimball spent forty years tuning pianos in churches across rural Vermont. She once told a reporter from the Burlington Free Press that the hardest...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

249 words