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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Mutiny on the Bounty

In April 1789, HMS Bounty sailed through the South Pacific under Captain William Bligh. The crew had spent five months in Tahiti, living in paradise...

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7Universal

245 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Stain That Kept Bleeding Through

When Maria Gonzalez bought a 1920s bungalow in Savannah, Georgia, she noticed a brown stain spreading across the living room ceiling. She painted over it....

Hebrews 9:11-15Universal

255 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

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

When the Evidence Doesn't Look Like You Expected

In 2010, a young doctor named Paul Kalanithi was finishing his neurosurgery residency at Stanford — years of grueling work nearly behind him, a brilliant...

Matthew 11:2-11Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

Known Before He Had a Name

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864. Raiders kidnapped him and his mother when he was an infant. His mother...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Monk Who Discovered God's Knitting Pattern

In 1856, an Augustinian friar named Gregor Mendel knelt in a monastery garden in Brno, crouching over rows of pea plants with a tiny paintbrush....

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

244 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

When William Seymour Opened the Doors on Azusa Street

In April 1906, William J. Seymour — a one-eyed African American preacher, the son of formerly enslaved parents — began holding prayer meetings in a...

Acts 11:1-18Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song That Shouldn't Exist

In 2002, a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge killed two young women in a Florida car crash. One of them was twenty-year-old Meagan Napier. Her...

Universalforgiveness

232 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 Voice That Changed Everything

In 2018, a video went viral of a four-year-old boy named Archer Coyle from Melbourne, Australia, who had been profoundly deaf since birth. Doctors had...

John 20:1-18Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper of Galveston

When Hurricane Ike slammed into Galveston, Texas, in September 2008, the storm surge swallowed entire neighborhoods. Streets became rivers. Homes folded like cardboard. In the...

Nahum 1:7Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Table That Held a Nation Together

During the darkest days of the London Blitz in 1940, King George VI made a quiet decision that spoke louder than any wartime speech. Each...

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mothers Who Marched in Circles

In 1977, during Argentina's military dictatorship, fourteen mothers walked to the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. They wore white headscarves and carried photographs of...

Luke 1:39-56Universal

216 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rent Receipts in Pastor Linda's Filing Cabinet

For eleven years, Grace Community Church in Tulsa held a weekly prayer breakfast every Wednesday at 6 a.m. They sang beautifully. They fasted during Lent...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Whole Room Couldn't Help but Sing

On a Tuesday evening in March 2019, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason stepped onto the stage at London's Royal Festival Hall and began playing Elgar's Cello Concerto....

Psalm 98Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Apprentice Beekeeper Who Learned to Hear the Hive

In 2019, a teenager named Marco Peña joined his grandfather's beekeeping operation outside Tucson, Arizona. His first summer, he couldn't distinguish one hum from another...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pastor Who Knelt at the Gallows

On April 9, 1945, just two weeks before Allied forces liberated Flossenbürg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led to the gallows. The camp doctor who...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Refugees Who Became a Movement

In 1722, a ragged band of Protestant refugees from Moravia arrived on the estate of Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf in Saxony. They had nothing —...

1 Corinthians 1:1-9Universal

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Young Parliamentarian Who Changed a Nation

In 1780, William Wilberforce won his seat in the British Parliament at just twenty-one years old. By his own admission, he was a lightweight —...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

A Communion That Changed the World

In the summer of 1727, the small village of Herrnhut in Saxony was tearing itself apart. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf had opened his estate to...

Acts 2:1-31Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Words That Cost Polycarp Everything

In 155 AD, the Roman proconsul gave Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna a simple way out. The elderly pastor, eighty-six years old, stood in a packed...

Romans 10:9Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pilot Above the Clouds

In 1929, Jimmy Doolittle climbed into a biplane at Mitchell Field, New York, pulled a canvas hood over his cockpit, and flew entirely by instruments....

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

229 words