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HomeIllustrations

10,079 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Lawyer Who Stood Alone

In 1963, a young civil rights attorney named Constance Baker Motley walked into a Mississippi courtroom to argue for the admission of James Meredith to...

Romans 8:31Universal

220 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Breakwater at Plymouth

In 1812, engineer John Rennie began constructing a massive breakwater across Plymouth Sound in southwest England. For centuries, ships anchoring in that harbor had been...

Nahum 1:7Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn That Answered the Question She Couldn't

In 1822, Charlotte Elliott was thirty-two years old and chronically ill — bedridden for months at a time, questioning her worth, her faith, even her...

Universalidentity

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Girl Who Couldn't Say Her R's

When Amanda Gorman was a child in Los Angeles, she could barely get through a sentence. A speech impediment made the letter R nearly impossible...

Jeremiah 1:4-10Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Seventeen Souls in a Welsh Chapel

In the autumn of 1904, twenty-six-year-old Evan Roberts was just a coal miner from Loughor, Wales, with no theological degree and no platform. He had...

Luke 5:1-11Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Yes That Changed Everything

In 2015, a twenty-three-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah from small-town Missouri received a phone call that made no sense. A nonprofit director asked if she...

Luke 1:26-38Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Sunday School Teacher Who Almost Turned Back

On a spring day in 1855, Edward Kimball walked the streets of Boston with a single purpose — to find a young shoe clerk named...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dress She Never Looked Back For

When Amara Okafor left Lagos, Nigeria, in 2019 to marry David Chen in Vancouver, her mother wept at Murtala Muhammed Airport and pressed a small...

Psalm 45:10-12, 16Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn No Crisis Inspired

When we think of great hymns, we often picture dramatic backstories — shipwrecks, deathbed conversions, narrow escapes. But one of the most beloved hymns in...

Universaltrust

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tower All of Paris Wanted Torn Down

When Gustave Eiffel unveiled his iron tower for the 1889 World's Fair, three hundred of France's most prominent artists and intellectuals signed a furious petition...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

Eric Liddell's Final Lap

In 1924, Eric Liddell stood on the Olympic podium in Paris, a gold medal around his neck, all of Scotland cheering his name. He was...

Philippians 3:4b-14Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Immaculate Kitchen

In 1987, a woman named Dorothy Pennington kept the most spotless kitchen in all of Decatur, Georgia. Her copper pots gleamed. Her tile grout was...

Hosea 6:6Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Seed Bank That Starved Men Refused to Eat

In September 1941, German forces encircled Leningrad and began a siege that would last 872 days. Inside the starving city, a small group of scientists...

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

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Altarpiece Built for the Suffering

In 1516, the German painter Matthias Grünewald completed a massive altarpiece for a monastery hospital in Isenheim, Alsace. The patients there suffered from ergotism —...

Universalhealing

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Climb Above the Clouds

In 2019, mountaineer Sarah Marquis described something that every serious climber knows but few expect the first time. On the ascent of a major peak,...

Exodus 24:12-18Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bread Line at St. Gregory's

Every Saturday morning at 6 a.m., Maria Gonzalez unlocks the side door of St. Gregory's Church in the Bronx and begins slicing bread. By seven,...

Psalm 34:2-9Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The CEO Who Joined the Night Shift

In 2015, Cheryl Bachelder stepped down as CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen after transforming the struggling chain into a billion-dollar brand. But what most people...

Philippians 2:6-11Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cellar on Peshtigo's Darkest Night

On the evening of October 8, 1871, while the nation's attention would later fix on the Great Chicago Fire, something far deadlier swept through Peshtigo,...

Nahum 1:7Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Clerk Whose Genius Was Already Seen

In January 1913, Cambridge mathematician G.H. Hardy opened an envelope postmarked from Madras, India. Inside were nine pages of mathematical formulas scrawled by an unknown...

John 1:43-51Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Nets Left Behind on Lake Victoria

In 2014, a young fisherman named David Ochieng worked the pre-dawn waters of Lake Victoria near Kisumu, Kenya. Fishing was all he knew — his...

Matthew 4:12-23Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom's Hidden Room and the God Who Hides Nothing

In 1944, Corrie ten Boom sat in a cell at Ravensbrück concentration camp, stripped of every comfort — her home, her watch shop, her beloved...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Empty Barn That Held Everything

Martin Edsel planted his last seeds in April 1988 with borrowed money and a prayer. By August, the Iowa fields that had fed his family...

Habakkuk 3:17-19Universal

263 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hands That Stayed on the Keys

Margaret Ellington taught piano in her living room in Savannah for forty-one years. She never once slapped a student's hand for hitting a wrong note....

Titus 2:11-12Universal

213 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Whole Stadium Forgot Themselves

On November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years. Fans who had inherited their loyalty from...

Psalm 98:1-4Universal

232 words