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HomeIllustrations

9,108 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Night John Paton's House Was Surrounded

In 1862, missionary John Paton huddled with his wife inside their small mission house on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides. Outside, hostile...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

240 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Song That Named Her

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a doctor's error left her permanently blind. The world would have written her story in a single word:...

Universalidentity

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Shepherd Who Came Back for Them

In 2018, when the Camp Fire tore through Paradise, California, school bus driver Kevin McKay refused to abandon his route. With flames closing in on...

Jeremiah 23:1-6Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Theologian Who Chose to Go Back

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in a New York apartment with every reason to stay. Friends had arranged a teaching position at Union Theological...

Luke 13:31-35Universal

209 words

Sermon Illustration

The Redwood and the Tumbleweed

Along the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt County, California, a coastal redwood named the Immortal Tree has stood for over a thousand years. It...

Psalm 1Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Songwriter Who Gave It All Away

In the 1990s, Rich Mullins was one of the most successful musicians in Christian music. His song *Awesome God* became an anthem sung in churches...

Universalsacrifice

247 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Music Rises from the Wreckage

In 1873, Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on the SS Ville du Havre, bound for Europe. He planned to follow shortly after....

Universaltrust

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Player Who Had Guts Enough Not to Fight Back

In 1945, Branch Rickey sat across from Jackie Robinson in a Brooklyn office and asked a question that would change American history. But it wasn't...

Universalpatience

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Courage to Carry What You Cannot

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, there comes a moment near the end of the long journey when Frodo Baggins simply cannot go...

Universalcourage

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn Written at the Edge of the Waves

In 1882, Louisa Stead sat on a beach with her husband and their young daughter Lily, watching the waves roll in. What began as a...

Universaltrust

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Watchmaker's Prayer That Began Decades Too Early

In 1844, Casper ten Boom began a weekly prayer meeting in his Haarlem watch shop, interceding for the Jewish people. His neighbors thought it eccentric....

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Midwife Who Knew

In 2014, a retired midwife named Margaret Abrams sat in a church pew in Bristol, England, and watched a young couple carry their newborn son...

Luke 2:22-40Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pastor Who Already Knew Why Wilberforce Had Come

In the autumn of 1785, a young Member of Parliament named William Wilberforce was in spiritual crisis. His recent conversion had left him torn —...

John 1:43-51Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Ten Thousand Galaxies in the Dark

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was reckless. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of...

Universalfaith

220 words

Sermon Illustration

The Runner Who Lifted His Cup in a Prison Camp

Eric Liddell won Olympic gold in Paris in 1924, a moment immortalized in *Chariots of Fire*. The world offered him fame, endorsement deals, a comfortable...

Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Trail That Split on Katahdin

In the summer of 1987, two hikers named Paul Engstrom and David Chae set out to summit Mount Katahdin along Maine's Knife Edge Trail. They...

Amos 3:3Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Doctor His Colleagues Drove Away

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a startling discovery at Vienna General Hospital. He noticed that women in the maternity ward...

Luke 4:21-30Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Light That Found the Tax Collector

In the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, Caravaggio's *The Calling of Saint Matthew* has stopped visitors in their tracks for over four...

Universalgrace

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song Written Over the Ocean's Deepest Grief

In 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic and asked the captain to tell him when they passed over...

Universalfaith

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The Foreclosure Papers She Never Signed

In March 2019, Maria Gutierrez drove to First National Bank in Tulsa with a folder of documents and a lump in her throat. She had...

Mark 16:1-8Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Communion Bread of Moravian Herrnhut

On August 13, 1727, the small community of Herrnhut in Saxony was fracturing. Czech Hussites, German Pietists, and Reformed exiles — all living on Count...

1 Corinthians 10:16-17Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Darkest Patch of Sky Revealed

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that many of his colleagues thought was foolish. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he...

Universalhumility

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Frequency She Learned to Hear

In 2019, a first-year medical student named Priya Chandrasekaran sat in a cardiology lab at Johns Hopkins, stethoscope pressed to a patient's chest, hearing nothing...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cell That Dies So the Body Can Live

In 2004, a team led by microbiologist Arturo Zychlinsky at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin discovered something remarkable happening inside the human body. When...

Universalsacrifice

261 words