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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Night Nurse on the Third Floor

Margaret Healy worked the overnight shift at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids for twenty-three years. Her patients would drift off around ten, and through...

Psalm 121Universal

232 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Lighthouse Keeper of Flannan Isles

In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished from the Flannan Isles station off the Scottish coast. To this day, no one knows what happened to...

2 Thessalonians 3:3Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cobbler God Sent to the Nations

In 1792, a young cobbler named William Carey stood before a gathering of Baptist ministers in Northampton, England, and proposed that Christians had an obligation...

1 Samuel 16:1-13Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

When Thousands of Rams Were Not Enough

In 1787, William Wilberforce sat in the garden of his estate at Holwood House in Kent, wrestling with a question that would define his life....

Micah 6:1-8Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Saved His Enemy on the Ice

In 1569, a Dutch Anabaptist named Dirk Willems sat locked in a prison tower in Asperen, Holland, awaiting execution for the crime of being rebaptized...

Romans 5:5-11Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Violin Maker of Cremona

In Cremona, Italy, a small workshop still builds violins by hand, following methods passed down since the days of Stradivari. When master luthier Stefano Conia...

1 Corinthians 1:3-9Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

Seeds for a City That Was Starving

During the 872-day Siege of Leningrad, as Nazi forces strangled the city and nearly a million civilians starved, a small group of Soviet scientists faced...

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bridge They Built Through the Floodwaters

In June 2016, the Brazos River in Texas swelled beyond anything residents of Simonton had seen in over a century. Floodwaters swallowed roads, turned neighborhoods...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Notebook the Teacher Kept

In 2014, a young woman named Priya Chandran walked into a community college writing class in Fresno, California, convinced she had nothing worth saying. She...

John 1:43-51Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Deep Ran Dark

In November of 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring at the cold water passing beneath him. Two...

Universalhealing

258 words

Sermon Illustration

Augustine's Tears in Milan

On the night of April 24, 387 AD, in the great basilica of Milan, a forty-two-year-old rhetoric professor named Aurelius Augustinus stepped down into the...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Small Boat That Crossed the Deadliest Sea

In April 1916, Sir Ernest Shackleton stood on the frozen shore of Elephant Island, Antarctica, facing an impossible choice. Twenty-two of his men were stranded,...

1 Peter 3:18-22Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Second Foreman

On March 17, 1977, George Foreman shuffled into his dressing room in Puerto Rico after losing a grueling twelve-round decision to Jimmy Young. Foreman was...

Universaltransformation

229 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Spirit Fell on Azusa Street

In April 1906, William Joseph Seymour — the son of formerly enslaved parents, blind in one eye, once forced to listen to Bible school lectures...

Joel 2:23-32Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stockbroker Who Became a Father to 669

In December 1938, a twenty-nine-year-old London stockbroker named Nicholas Winton canceled his skiing holiday and traveled to Prague instead. What he found in the refugee...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tide Pool at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

On a fog-laced morning in Moss Beach, California, a kindergarten class crouches around a tide pool at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. Their teacher points to a...

Psalm 104:24-34, 35bUniversal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon's Honest Prayer

In 2007, pediatric surgeon Dr. Catherine Musau stood in a poorly lit operating room in Kijabe, Kenya, staring at a newborn with a congenital defect...

2 Chronicles 20:12Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Empty Hands

When the Gestapo raided the ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland, on February 28, 1944, Corrie ten Boom lost everything in a single afternoon —...

Hebrews 13:5-6Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man Who Fed Ten Thousand Without Asking

In 1836, George Müller opened an orphanage on Wilson Street in Bristol, England, with exactly one shilling in his pocket and no wealthy donors on...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Smoke Jumper Who Learned to Read the Wind

In 2003, rookie wildland firefighter Jason Ramos reported to his first season with the Arrowhead Interagency Hotshot Crew in the San Bernardino Mountains. His superintendent,...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Love That Would Not Let Him Go

In the summer of 1882, a Scottish minister named George Matheson sat alone in his family home while his sister's wedding celebration filled the rooms...

Universallove

240 words

Sermon Illustration

More Than a Voice on the Phone

For two years, six-year-old Emma Reyes knew her father only as a voice on a satellite phone. Staff Sergeant David Reyes had deployed to Afghanistan...

John 1:1-14Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

Churchill's Black Dog and the Gentle Voice

In May 1945, Winston Churchill stood as the lion of the free world. He had rallied Britain through the Blitz, stared down the Nazi war...

1 Kings 19:1-4, 8-15aUniversal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hiker Who Refused to Run

In 2019, Kyle Burgess was jogging a trail near Slate Canyon, Utah, when a female cougar stepped onto the path ahead of him. Every instinct...

James 4:7Universal

234 words