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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Top Rated Newest Oldest|All Sources Biblical Illustrator Spurgeon Maclaren

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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

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Sermon Illustration

The Hand That Quiets the Storm

In 2006, neuroscientist Dr. James Coan at the University of Virginia placed married women inside an fMRI brain scanner and warned them they were about...

Universallove

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blood That Remembers

In bone marrow transplantation, something remarkable happens that sounds more like theology than medicine. When a patient with leukemia receives a donor's healthy marrow, the...

Universalgrace

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Player Who Obeyed by Not Swinging Back

In 1945, Branch Rickey sat across from Jackie Robinson in a Brooklyn office and made an extraordinary demand. Rickey wanted Robinson to break baseball's color...

Universalobedience

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Well That Never Needs a Pump

In 2018, engineers drilling a water well in Coober Pedy, Australia — a remote opal mining town where summer temperatures reach 120 degrees — struck...

John 7:37-39Universal

231 words

Sermon Illustration

Blessed Assurance in the Dark

Fanny Crosby was six weeks old when a country doctor's failed treatment destroyed her sight permanently. She would never see a sunrise, never read a...

Universaltrust

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Marine Biologist Who Learned to Listen Below the Surface

In 1992, a young researcher named Michelle Fournet arrived in southeastern Alaska to study humpback whales. For weeks, she dropped hydrophones into the icy waters...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

No Junk in the Blueprint

For decades, scientists called it "junk DNA." When the Human Genome Project mapped our genetic code in 2003, researchers discovered that only about two percent...

Universalpurpose

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Healers You Never See

Every day, the DNA inside a single human cell sustains between ten thousand and one hundred thousand molecular lesions — damage from ultraviolet light, environmental...

Universalhealing

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cells That Keep the Heart Beating

In 1907, British physiologist Arthur Keith and medical student Martin Flack discovered a tiny cluster of cells in the upper right chamber of the heart...

Universalpurpose

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Slowest Healing the Body Knows

Australian neurologist Sir Sydney Sunderland spent decades studying what happens when a nerve is damaged. His landmark 1951 classification system, still used in operating rooms...

Universalpatience

221 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

Sermon Illustration

The Song That Started With a Stammer

In 1886, at a Dwight L. Moody revival meeting in Brockton, Massachusetts, a young man stood during the testimony service. He was no theologian. He...

Universalobedience

245 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Ocean Itself Became a Hymn

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic and stared down at the cold water below. Somewhere beneath...

Universalhope

234 words

Sermon Illustration

Standing Before the Stone

On Easter Sunday, 1939, Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. Seventy-five thousand people stretched across...

Universalcourage

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wound That Must Be Opened

In surgical medicine, there is a procedure called debridement — the deliberate removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue from a wound. It seems counterintuitive....

Universalredemption

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Transplant That Changes Your Blood

In a bone marrow transplant, something remarkable happens that most people never hear about. When a patient with leukemia receives healthy marrow from a donor,...

Universalredemption

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song Nobody Wanted

In 1984, Leonard Cohen finished a song that had consumed him for nearly five years. He had filled notebook after notebook with draft verses —...

Universalpatience

229 words

Sermon Illustration

When Nothing Holds Everything

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was reckless. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he pointed the Hubble...

Universalfaith

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grain of Sand That Held Three Thousand Galaxies

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that many of his colleagues considered reckless. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he...

Universaltrust

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song He Could Not Hear

By 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven was almost completely deaf. He had spent years withdrawing from society, humiliated by a condition that robbed him of the...

Universalhope

256 words

Sermon Illustration

Seeds That Refused to Die

In 2005, Dr. Sarah Sallon and Dr. Elaine Solowey did something that seemed impossible. They took a date palm seed excavated from the ruins of...

Universalhope

245 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Broken Song Becomes the Hymn

In 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the rail of a ship crossing the Atlantic. Days earlier, he had received a telegram from his wife containing...

Universalhealing

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice That Refused to Be Silenced

In 1939, Marian Anderson was already one of the greatest contraltos the world had ever heard. Toscanini himself said a voice like hers came along...

Universalcourage

246 words