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HomeIllustrations

7,545 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Couple Who Said Yes to Someone Else's Baby

In 2019, a nurse named Marcus and his wife Elaine in Memphis, Tennessee, were finishing a quiet dinner when a social worker called. A newborn...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

246 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Crossing Guard on Maple Street

For eleven years, Dorothy Chen stood at the corner of Maple and Third in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, guiding children safely across the street. She knew...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Village That Refused to Go Dark

In the winter of 1941, Pastor André Trocmé stood before his congregation in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a small village in the mountains of southern France, and...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Signal the New Ham Couldn't Decode

In ham radio, a mentor is called an Elmer. That's who fourteen-year-old Marcus found when he joined the amateur radio club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa....

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

270 words

Sermon Illustration

Called Out from the Gulag

In 1945, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was dragged from the front lines of World War II and sentenced to eight years in Soviet labor camps for privately...

John 11:1-45Universal

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Love That Puzzled an Emperor

In 362 AD, Emperor Julian — whom history remembers as "Julian the Apostate" — sat in his palace writing a frustrated letter to a pagan...

John 13:31-35Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Diary She Kept in the Dark

In the year 203 AD, a young noblewoman named Vibia Perpetua sat in a Carthaginian prison, nursing her infant son through iron bars. She was...

1 Peter 1:3-9Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Password You Were Given

Every iPhone ships with a unique identifier burned into its hardware at the factory — Apple calls it a UDID. You cannot change it. You...

Universalidentity

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Easter Eve at the Baptistery

On the night before Easter, 387 AD, a thirty-two-year-old rhetoric professor stepped into the octagonal baptistery beside Milan Cathedral. His name was Augustine, and he...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

Olaudah Equiano and the Price Already Paid

In 1766, a young African man named Olaudah Equiano stood on a dock in Montserrat, West Indies, clutching forty pounds sterling — every coin he...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

255 words

Sermon Illustration

The Refugees of Herrnhut

In 1722, a ragged band of Moravian refugees stumbled onto the estate of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They had nothing but the clothes...

1 Corinthians 12:1-11Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Frog That Thaws Back to Life

Every autumn in the forests of northern Canada, the wood frog does something that should be impossible. As temperatures plunge, its body freezes solid. No...

Universalfreedom

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Frescoes No One Was Meant to See

In the 1440s, a Dominican friar named Fra Angelico received an assignment from his prior: paint the walls of the monks' cells at the Convent...

Universalobedience

235 words

Sermon Illustration

I Feel the Bottom, and It Is Good

In John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress*, Christian and his companion Hopeful finally reach the last obstacle before the Celestial City — a deep, dark river...

Universalfaith

226 words

Sermon Illustration

A Star Above the Shadow

In *The Return of the King*, J.R.R. Tolkien gives us one of literature's most quietly powerful portraits of faith. Sam Gamgee finds himself deep in...

Universalfaith

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bones That Know Where to Grow

In 1892, German surgeon Julius Wolff published a discovery that still guides orthopedic medicine today. He found that living bone is not static — it...

Universalobedience

256 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blood That Carries Another's Name

In bone marrow transplantation, something remarkable happens. After the donor's marrow engrafts, the recipient's blood cells begin carrying the donor's DNA. Hematologists call this "chimerism"...

Universalfaith

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song Written Over the Wreckage

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford received a telegram from his wife Anna that read simply: "Saved alone." Their four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and...

Universalhealing

274 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rabbit Who Was Loved Into Being

In Margery Williams' beloved children's story *The Velveteen Rabbit*, a stuffed toy asks the old Skin Horse a question that haunts every human heart: "What...

Universalidentity

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lion's Song in the Darkness

In C.S. Lewis's *The Magician's Nephew*, there is a moment that has quietly shaped how generations of readers understand courage. The children Digory and Polly...

Universalcourage

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Noblewoman and the Slave Who Walked Together

In the spring of 203 AD, two women sat in a Carthage prison cell waiting to die. Vibia Perpetua was twenty-two, educated, from a respected...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Beneath the Dragon Skin

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, a selfish boy named Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard, clutching a golden bracelet,...

Universalidentity

264 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dragon Skin He Couldn't Remove

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his...

Universalrestoration

226 words

Sermon Illustration

From Stone to Flesh: Eustace's Unbearable Skin

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the insufferable boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and wakes to discover he...

Universaltransformation

238 words