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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 Boy Preacher of Southwark

In the winter of 1854, a nineteen-year-old walked into New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London, and stepped behind a pulpit that had intimidated seasoned...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

242 words

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Sermon Illustration

The First Morning of Spring on the Holbrook Farm

In March of 1987, dairy farmer Ellen Holbrook of Addison County, Vermont, opened the barn doors after five months of bitter winter. Her twelve Holstein...

Malachi 4:2Universal

257 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hammer That Never Stopped Swinging

In June 2023, Jimmy Carter entered hospice care at ninety-eight years old. The former president had spent nearly four decades after leaving the White House...

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Slave Who Could Finally Read

In 1834, when the British Emancipation Act took effect across the Caribbean, a formerly enslaved man named James Williams in Jamaica reportedly wept not because...

Jeremiah 31:27-34Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bucket List That Never Filled

In 2014, Marcus Elliot retired from thirty-one years at a packaging plant in Toledo, Ohio. He had saved carefully. He had plans. A screened-in porch....

Haggai 1:5-6Universal

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hundred-Year Stream From Herrnhut

In August 1727, a small community of religious refugees gathered in the village of Herrnhut, nestled in the hills of Saxony. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf...

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The GPS Said You've Arrived

In 2018, a paramedic named Rachel Torres responded to an overdose call in a Tucson apartment complex. She had been on dozens of these runs,...

Acts 9:1-6Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Sea That Became a Desert

In 1960, the Aral Sea straddled the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the fourth-largest lake on earth. Fishing boats crowded its ports. Children swam...

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Face That Preached Before He Spoke

In 1836, twenty-three-year-old Robert Murray M'Cheyne arrived at St. Peter's Church in Dundee, Scotland, as its new pastor. What happened over the next seven years...

Exodus 34:29-35Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dive That Brought Them Home

In June 2018, twelve boys and their soccer coach crawled into Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand. Monsoon rains flooded the passages behind them, trapping...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Load-Bearing Wall

In 2019, a couple in Charlotte, North Carolina, hired a contractor to open up their cramped kitchen. They wanted the wall between the kitchen and...

1 Corinthians 15:12-20Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Love That Stopped a Plague

In 251 AD, a devastating epidemic swept through the Roman Empire. Historians call it the Plague of Cyprian, and at its peak, it killed five...

John 13:34-35Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Midnight Train to Freedom

In 1850, a young enslaved mother named Harriet Tubman made a desperate choice. Word had reached her that she was about to be sold further...

Matthew 2:13-23Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Missionary Who Crossed the Mountains with a Hundred Children

In 1940, as Japanese forces advanced through China's Shanxi province, Gladys Aylward faced an impossible choice. The small English missionary had been caring for nearly...

Psalm 121Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The First Word Spoken Over the Clay

In 1987, master potter Magdalena Suarez stood in her workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico, at four in the morning. The kiln had gone cold overnight. No...

Genesis 1:1-3Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

Basil's City of Mercy Outside Caesarea

In 369 AD, a devastating famine swept through Cappadocia. Bishop Basil of Caesarea watched the wealthy of his city continue their feasting while peasants collapsed...

Isaiah 58:1-12Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pastor Who Sang Underground

In 1948, Romanian secret police dragged Richard Wurmbrand from his family and buried him in a cell three floors beneath Bucharest. For three years he...

Acts 16:16-34Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Price of Thirty Pieces

In 2018, a photograph surfaced of a former bodyguard testifying against the very person he had sworn to protect. Reporters noted how he avoided eye...

Matthew 26:14-27:66Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Teacher Who Saw Her Reading in the Cotton Field

In 1885, a seven-year-old girl named Mary McLeod walked five miles each day to a one-room schoolhouse in Mayesville, South Carolina. She was the fifteenth...

John 1:43-51Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Alarm on the Night Shift

Dr. Maria Santos still remembers her first overnight shift at Johns Hopkins in July 2019 — hallways humming with fluorescent light, monitors beeping from every...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

264 words

Sermon Illustration

The Shoe Clerk Who Needed a Nudge

On a spring afternoon in 1855, eighteen-year-old Dwight Moody stood behind the counter of Holton's shoe store on Court Street in Boston, wrapping boots in...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The River That Brought a Desert Back to Life

In 1935, the Tennessee Valley was dying. Decades of poor farming had stripped the soil bare. Rivers ran brown with erosion. Families abandoned homesteads where...

Ezekiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Flowers That Never Reached the Kitchen Table

In 1987, Margaret Ellison of Tupelo, Mississippi, kept a pristine house. Every Sunday she arranged fresh-cut hydrangeas on the foyer table, polished the silver until...

Hosea 6:6Universal

213 words

Sermon Illustration

Singing Through the Storm

In January 1736, the ship Simmonds pitched violently in the North Atlantic as a winter gale tore its mainsail to shreds. Seawater poured across the...

Isaiah 12:2-6Universal

245 words