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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 Falconer's Quiet Hands

At the Carolina Raptor Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, volunteers learn a counterintuitive rule on their first day: when a wounded hawk arrives — talons...

Isaiah 42:1-9Universal

231 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Doors That Opened on Easter Morning

When Hurricane Helene tore through Swannanoa, North Carolina in September 2024, the floodwaters gutted First Baptist Church down to the studs. Mud caked the pews....

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rescue Diver Who Went Under

In 2018, Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan volunteered for the rescue mission at Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand. Twelve boys and their soccer coach...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Verdict That Changed Everything

In 2018, a Nashville courtroom fell silent as former police officer Amber Guyger was convicted of murdering Botham Jean, a man she shot in his...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn Singers on the Galley Ships

In 1686, after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, thousands of French Huguenots were arrested for refusing to abandon their Protestant faith. Hundreds were...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Composer London Had Written Off

In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. The composer who had once dazzled the courts of Europe now faced crushing...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Table She Set Every Sunday

For thirty-one years, Maria Gonzalez set an extra place at her kitchen table in San Antonio. Every Sunday after church, she cooked enough rice, beans,...

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

A Fingerprint on the Cosmos

In December 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope launched from French Guiana on a million-mile journey into deep space. Months later, NASA released its first...

Psalm 8Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Telescope Everyone Called a Failure

When NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope in April 1990, engineers expected triumph. Instead, the first images came back blurred and useless. A grinding error...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Breakfast Table

In 1838, George Müller sat at a long wooden table in his Bristol orphanage with three hundred children. The plates were empty. The cupboards held...

James 1:17Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Table Was Always Set for One More

In the years before the Nazi occupation of Holland, Corrie ten Boom's father Caspar kept an open home above their small watchmaking shop on Barteljorisstraat...

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon's Honest Prayer

In 2007, pediatric surgeon Dr. Catherine Musau stood in a poorly lit operating room in Kijabe, Kenya, staring at a newborn with a congenital defect...

2 Chronicles 20:12Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seventh Dip

In 1928, Alexander Fleming left a petri dish uncovered before going on vacation. When he returned to his lab at St. Mary's Hospital in London,...

2 Kings 5:14Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon in the Laundry Room

Maria Vargas works the overnight shift in the laundry facility at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. She folds fitted sheets with mechanical precision, sorts surgical...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

258 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tower All of Paris Wanted Torn Down

When Gustave Eiffel unveiled his iron tower for the 1889 World's Fair, three hundred of France's most prominent artists and intellectuals signed a furious petition...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Shoe Clerk from Northfield

In 1855, Edward Kimball walked into a Boston shoe store with a single purpose: to speak to a teenage stock boy about Jesus. The young...

John 1:43-51Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

Eighty-Six Years and Not Once Forsaken

In February of 155 AD, Roman soldiers came for Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna. He was eighty-six years old. A student of the Apostle...

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

236 words

Sermon Illustration

Named by Grace

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in prison, reduced to a number: 24601. When he's finally released, he carries that number...

Universalidentity

256 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Treasure

During the Nazi occupation of Holland, Corrie ten Boom and her family hid Jewish refugees in a secret room behind a false wall in their...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

One Carrier, One Cure

In 1906, health inspector George Soper traced a mysterious outbreak of typhoid fever across several wealthy New York households to a single source: their cook,...

Romans 5:12-19Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cup She Kept Raising

Maria Gonzalez almost didn't survive the surgery. When the tumor wrapped around her spine in 2019, doctors at Houston Methodist gave her a thirty percent...

Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The First Morning of Spring on the Holbrook Farm

In March of 1987, dairy farmer Ellen Holbrook of Addison County, Vermont, opened the barn doors after five months of bitter winter. Her twelve Holstein...

Malachi 4:2Universal

257 words

Sermon Illustration

The Small Boat That Crossed the Deadliest Sea

In April 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton stood on the frozen shore of Elephant Island, Antarctica, facing an impossible choice. Twenty-two of his men were stranded,...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Courage to Swallow the Truth

In 1984, an Australian physician named Barry Marshall did something his colleagues considered reckless, perhaps absurd. He believed stomach ulcers — long blamed on stress,...

Universalcourage

236 words