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HomeIllustrations

10,079 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 Clearing After the Summit

In 2019, Keisha Dawson stood on the stage at Howard University's School of Divinity, diploma in hand, her mother weeping in the third row. Three...

Mark 1:9-15Universal

240 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Grave That Could Not Hold the Word

On October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was led to a stake outside Brussels. His crime: translating the Bible into English so that common plowboys could...

Matthew 28:1-10Universal

219 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blueberry Woman of Route 9

Every Saturday morning in July, Martha Guidry set up a folding table at the end of her gravel driveway outside Houma, Louisiana. On it she...

Luke 6:38Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Wide Open

Every spring, ornithologists observe the same phenomenon in nesting songbirds. When an eastern bluebird parent returns to the nest with a caterpillar in its beak,...

Hebrews 4:16Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

George Müller's Breakfast Table

In 1838, George Müller sat at a long wooden table in his Bristol orphanage with three hundred children. The plates were empty. The cupboards held...

James 1:17Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coach Who Limped Every Mile

In 2019, cross-country coach Brad Holloway of Shelbyville, Indiana, watched his runner Jenna collapse at mile two of the state qualifier. She had trained all...

Isaiah 63:7-9Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Last Recipe Maria Santos Ever Wrote

When Maria Santos of San Antonio learned her cancer was terminal in 2019, she didn't spend her remaining weeks making phone calls or writing letters....

Mark 14:12-16, 22-26Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Handed the Ball to the Referee

In an era of choreographed celebrations and end zone spectacles, Barry Sanders spent ten seasons with the Detroit Lions doing something radical every time he...

Universalhumility

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The House That Marcus Didn't Build

Marcus Torres spent three years saving to renovate his father's crumbling barbershop on Fulton Street in Brooklyn. The ceiling tiles sagged. The plumbing groaned. Every...

2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

After the Locusts Came Rain

In 2004, a swarm of desert locusts descended on West Africa — the worst infestation in fifteen years. Farmers in Mali watched helplessly as clouds...

Joel 2:23-32Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lamp That Refused to Be Hidden

In 1787, William Wilberforce sat in his garden at Holwood House in Kent, wrestling with a decision that would define his life. Just two years...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

Wilberforce's Relentless Light

In 1787, William Wilberforce sat in his garden at Holwood House in Kent, turning over a decision that would define his life. He had recently...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

266 words

Sermon Illustration

Breakfast After the Worst Shift of Your Life

In 2018, a young ER nurse named David Chen walked out of Mercy Hospital in Sacramento after losing his first patient — a teenager from...

John 21:1-19Universal

259 words

Sermon Illustration

The Doors That Opened on Easter Morning

When Hurricane Helene tore through Swannanoa, North Carolina in September 2024, the floodwaters gutted First Baptist Church down to the studs. Mud caked the pews....

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bee Sting That Lost Its Power

In 2019, a beekeeper named Sarah Mapelli stood on a stage in Portland, Oregon, with twenty thousand honeybees crawling across her bare skin. The audience...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Peace Nobody Requested

On Christmas Eve, 1914, along the muddy trenches near Ypres, Belgium, German soldiers began placing candles on small trees above their parapets. Then came the...

Isaiah 7:10-16Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

Rutherford's Letters from Aberdeen

In 1636, Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford was torn from his congregation in Anwoth and banished to Aberdeen by church authorities who despised his preaching. For...

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Birdwatcher at Cape May

In October 2019, twelve-year-old Maya Chen stood on the observation platform at Cape May, New Jersey, during the fall hawk migration. Her grandmother had dragged...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

258 words

Sermon Illustration

The Intersection Where They Removed the Stop Signs

In 2009, the town of Drachten in the Netherlands tried something radical. Traffic engineers removed nearly all the stop signs, traffic lights, and lane markings...

Judges 21:25Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lead Climber's Rope

In 2013, mountaineer Conrad Anker led a team up the treacherous southwest face of Lunag Ri in the Himalayas. The route had never been completed....

1 Corinthians 15:20-27Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Map That Was Already There

In 2003, after thirteen years of painstaking work, Francis Collins and an international team of scientists completed the Human Genome Project — mapping the entire...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mountain Lion on the Trail

In 2004, ranger Jim Hamm was hiking with his wife near Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Northern California when a mountain lion attacked. Every...

James 4:7Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cartographer Who Charted Every Vein

In 1958, a young anatomist named Frank Netter sat in his studio at the CIBA pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, painting what no camera could...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Webb Telescope Cannot Show You

The James Webb Space Telescope peers thirteen billion years into the past, capturing light from the earliest galaxies. When it launched from French Guiana in...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

244 words