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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Furniture Store on the Floodwaters

When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Houston in August 2017, dumping more than fifty inches of rain in four days, the city became an inland sea....

Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9Universal

225 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Graduation Speech Nobody Expected

In 2019, a high school in Birmingham, Alabama invited two commencement speakers. The first was a hedge fund manager who flew in on a private...

Matthew 5:1-12aUniversal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Unsigned Lease

In 2019, twenty-three-year-old Desiree Martinez sat in a county social worker's office in Bakersfield, California, staring at a manila folder. Inside were the records of...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Orchard That Had to Be Cut Back

In 2019, apple grower Maria Gonzalez stood in her family's orchard outside Yakima, Washington, and made a decision that horrified her neighbors. She ordered every...

Matthew 3:1-12Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Teenager Who Spoke Before Congress

In 2019, seventeen-year-old Greta Thunberg sat in a chair far too large for her small frame, facing a room full of seasoned politicians in the...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Scientist Who Knew Every Kernel by Name

In 1944, geneticist Barbara McClintock stood in her Cold Spring Harbor cornfield and did something her colleagues found baffling. She could identify individual maize plants...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Who Kept Answering the Wrong Phone

In 2014, twelve-year-old Marcus Thompson lived with his grandmother in a narrow rowhouse in Baltimore. She had two phones — a cordless on the kitchen...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Upside-Down Trophy Case

In 2018, a high school in San Antonio made national news — not for winning a championship, but for what happened during a basketball game...

Matthew 5:1-12aUniversal

228 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 Recipe Card That Never Fed Anyone

Margaret Chen kept a wooden recipe box on her kitchen counter in Portland, Oregon — a gift from her grandmother. Inside were over two hundred...

James 1:22Universal

241 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

Forty Feet Beneath the East River

When engineer Washington Roebling began constructing the Brooklyn Bridge in 1870, the most critical work happened where no one could see it. Workers descended into...

1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night Shift Dispatcher Who Learned to Hear

Maria Chen was three weeks into her training at the Sacramento 911 dispatch center when she nearly missed the call that mattered most. A woman...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Chemistry of a Mother's Voice

In 2011, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made a remarkable discovery. Dr. Leslie Seltzer and her team found that when a stressed child hears...

Universallove

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Telescope Nobody Wanted to Look Through

In 1847, a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a discovery that should have changed medicine overnight. Working in a Vienna maternity ward where one...

Habakkuk 1:5Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Free Table Nobody Trusted

Every Saturday morning, Maria Gonzalez sets up a folding table outside her bakery on Magnolia Street in downtown San Antonio. She covers it with a...

Isaiah 55:1-9Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Crown That Echoed Around the World

On June 2, 1953, twenty-seven million people in Britain alone watched something unprecedented — a coronation broadcast live on television. Inside Westminster Abbey, the young...

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

Elizabeth Fry and the Cold Stones of Newgate

In February 1813, Elizabeth Fry stepped through the iron gates of London's Newgate Prison and into a scene that would change her life. Three hundred...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lady with the Lamp and the First Light

In the winter of 1854, the British military hospital at Scutari was a place of formless chaos. Wounded soldiers from the Crimean War lay on...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper of Matinicus Rock

In 1853, a seventeen-year-old girl named Abbie Burgess took over the twin lighthouses on Matinicus Rock, a barren granite outcrop twenty-five miles off the coast...

Malachi 3:6Universal

235 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

The Night Notre-Dame Refused to Fall

On April 15, 2019, the world watched Notre-Dame de Paris burn. Flames devoured the 850-year-old roof. The iconic spire collapsed in a shower of sparks....

Isaiah 52:7-10Universal

201 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 Last Ship Back to Berlin

In June 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood on the deck of a steamship crossing the Atlantic, heading back toward everything he had just escaped. Friends in...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

246 words