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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 Candlesticks That Bought a Soul

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, a convict named Jean Valjean stumbles to the door of Bishop Myriel after nineteen years in prison. The Bishop feeds...

Universalpurpose

238 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Painter Who Kept Painting in the Dark

By the time Claude Monet began his most ambitious work, he was going blind. Cataracts clouded his vision so severely that the world dissolved into...

Universalhope

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Butterfly's Liquid Freedom

In 1669, the Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam became the first scientist to carefully dissect a caterpillar chrysalis and document what he found inside. What he...

Universalfreedom

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Repair Written Into Every Cell

In 2015, Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for mapping something extraordinary: the mechanisms by which our cells...

Universalforgiveness

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Healing Written Into Your Cells

In 2015, Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich, and Aziz Sancar received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for a breathtaking discovery: your body is repairing itself right...

Universalhealing

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song Born from Five Years of Resistance

For five years, Judson Van DeVenter said no to God. A gifted art teacher in Michigan in the 1890s, he loved painting, loved his students,...

Universalobedience

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Search That Stopped a City

In March 2018, a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway wandered away from his grandmother's backyard in Craven County, North Carolina, and disappeared into dense, freezing...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The GPS That Only Works When You Follow It

Every smartphone comes with a GPS app that can guide you anywhere — across cities, through unfamiliar countryside, even around construction detours you never saw...

Universalobedience

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name No One Knows Yet

Every year, the U.S. Marshals Service relocates hundreds of people through witness protection. Their old identities are erased — bank accounts closed, records sealed, obituaries...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Signature on the Radar

In May 2013, intern forecaster Kendra Williams sat at her workstation in the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma. Three times that afternoon, she...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Plant Doctor of Diamond, Missouri

In the 1870s, a frail orphaned boy named George Washington Carver wandered the woods near Diamond, Missouri, cradling wilted plants in his small hands. Neighbors...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

268 words

Sermon Illustration

Carved Into the Family Name

In 1865, Moses and Susan Carver sent a neighbor on horseback into the night to recover an infant stolen by raiders from their Missouri farm....

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The River That Refused to Stay in Its Banks

In 1966, the Arno River in Florence, Italy, burst through every barrier the city had built over centuries. Floodwaters did not check credentials at the...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

A Thousand Tiny Dots of Light

If you visit the Art Institute of Chicago, you will find yourself standing before Georges Seurat's masterpiece, *A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La...

Universalcommunity

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hobbit Who Found His Purpose

In the opening pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Hobbit*, Bilbo Baggins is perfectly comfortable. He lives in a cozy hole in the ground, eats six...

Universalpurpose

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Crack in the Sidewalk

Walk down any sidewalk in Chicago or Charlotte, and eventually you will spot it — a thin green shoot splitting through inches of concrete. A...

Romans 1:16Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Well That Feeds a Thousand Taps

In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, counted down to what officials called "Day Zero" — the day the city's reservoirs would run dry. Four million...

John 7:37-39Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Riptide at Pensacola Beach

Every summer, lifeguards along the Gulf Coast at Pensacola Beach, Florida, pull dozens of swimmers from riptides — narrow channels of water rushing seaward at...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Painting That Pierced a Young Count's Heart

In 1720, a twenty-year-old German nobleman named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf wandered into an art gallery in Düsseldorf. He was wealthy, educated, and comfortable —...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Trickle That Transformed Wales

In the autumn of 1904, a twenty-six-year-old Welsh coal miner named Evan Roberts knelt in a small chapel in Loughor, Wales, and prayed a simple...

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

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Altarpiece No One Was Meant to Admire

In the early sixteenth century, the German painter Matthias Grünewald was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim, a...

Universalsacrifice

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Soldier Who Mistook God's Voice for Restlessness

In 1521, a Basque soldier named Ignatius of Loyola lay in a castle in northern Spain, his right leg shattered by a French cannonball at...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

From Caterpillar Soup to Cathedral Wings

In 2019, biologist Andrei Sourakov at the Florida Museum of Natural History placed a monarch caterpillar inside a CT scanner to watch what happens during...

1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Rancher Knew About Coyotes

Tom Hernandez ran cattle on four hundred acres outside Marfa, Texas. He told his new ranch hand something on the first day that the young...

James 4:7Universal

225 words