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HomeIllustrations

7,545 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Hands of the Healer

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, after the catastrophic Battle of the Pelennor Fields, three beloved characters lie dying in the Houses of...

Universalhealing

255 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Coach Who Had Already Watched the Game Film

In 2019, a high school point guard named Marcus Davis from Gary, Indiana, showed up uninvited to a basketball camp at Valparaiso University. He had...

John 1:43-51Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coach Who Wouldn't Back Down

Marcus Thompson had coached football at Eastside High for eleven years, and every Friday night brought the same unwelcome visitors. By the fourth quarter, a...

James 4:7Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Burden That Finally Fell

In John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress*, one of the most striking moments comes early in Christian's journey. He has been walking with an enormous burden...

Universalfreedom

266 words

Sermon Illustration

The Well That Broke Through Every Fence

In 1904, in the coal-dusted hills of Loughor, Wales, a twenty-six-year-old former miner named Evan Roberts stood in a small chapel and prayed with such...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Remedy They Refused to See

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis stood in the maternity ward of Vienna General Hospital, haunted by a devastating pattern. Mothers were...

Numbers 21:4b-9Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Untrained Preacher Who Shook London

In 1854, a nineteen-year-old with no seminary degree and no formal ordination stepped into the pulpit of London's New Park Street Chapel. The deacons who...

1 Corinthians 1:18-31Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

When God Renames the Future

In 1843, a woman born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree stunned everyone who knew her. After decades of answering to a name given by masters,...

Luke 1:57-66, 80Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Kingdom That Lasted Twelve Years

In 1934, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl released *Triumph of the Will*, a propaganda film designed to immortalize the Third Reich. The footage showed endless columns of...

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Manuscript Room at Chester Beatty

In 1950, a fire broke out in a small library near Dublin where the Chester Beatty collection of biblical papyri was stored. A young curator...

Jude 1:3Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Two Carpenters of Appalachia

In the 1930s, two carpenters worked side by side in Harlan County, Kentucky, building homes for families displaced by mine collapses. Elmer Sizemore cut corners...

3 John 1:11Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Girl Who Walked Twenty-Five Miles for a Bible

In 1800, a fifteen-year-old Welsh girl named Mary Jones set out barefoot from her village of Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, walking twenty-five miles across rugged mountain terrain to...

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rhythm of Every Breath

A paramedic in Nashville named David Chen once explained to a group of students why CPR works. "People think breathing is one action," he said,...

Romans 10:9Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Cottonwood Knows

Along the dry creek beds of eastern Colorado, where summer temperatures routinely hit triple digits and the soil cracks into puzzle-piece patterns, the cottonwood trees...

Hebrews 13:5-6Universal

258 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Taught the Dust to Bloom

In April 1935, Hugh Hammond Bennett stood before a skeptical United States Senate, pleading for a radical new approach to saving America's ravaged Great Plains....

Isaiah 43:16-21Universal

261 words

Sermon Illustration

The Quicksand Lesson at Morecambe Bay

Along the tidal flats of Morecambe Bay in northwest England, local guides have led travelers across the shifting sands for over five centuries. Cedric Robinson,...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hidden Internet Beneath the Forest Floor

In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard planted seedlings in a British Columbia forest and covered some with shade cloth. What she discovered stunned the scientific community....

Psalm 104:24-34, 35bUniversal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

When Sound Became Light

In 1934, two researchers at the University of Cologne noticed something that seemed impossible. When they directed sound waves through a flask of water, tiny...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

209 words

Sermon Illustration

The Thank-You That Couldn't Wait

When Marcus Rivera's truck slid off an icy bridge outside Duluth, Minnesota, in January 2019, he hung upside down in the cab, pinned by the...

Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

Florence Nightingale's Diary Entry, February 7, 1837

On a winter morning in Embley Park, England, sixteen-year-old Florence Nightingale sat in her family's parlor and heard something she could not explain. She later...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

Two Shoemakers on a Danish Dock

In August 1732, two young Moravian men — Johann Leonhard Dober, a potter, and David Nitschmann, a carpenter — stood on a dock in Copenhagen,...

Matthew 28:16-20Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Surrendered Appetite

In 1825, a young German student named George Müller was living recklessly in Halle, drinking heavily, running up debts, and treating his body as a...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Thermometer and the Thermostat

Every home has both a thermometer and a thermostat, but they serve fundamentally different purposes. A thermometer reads the temperature. It registers the heat, displays...

James 1:22Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Stars Left Behind

Every atom of calcium in your bones, every molecule of oxygen in your lungs, was forged inside a dying star. This is one of astrophysics'...

Universalsacrifice

229 words