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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Brushstrokes of a Brave Woman

In 1620, the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi completed her masterpiece, *Judith Slaying Holofernes*. Where other artists of her era depicted Judith as delicate and detached...

Universalcourage

240 words

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Sermon Illustration

Monica's Thirty-Year Vigil

In the fourth century, a North African mother named Monica watched her brilliant son Augustine abandon everything she had taught him. He took a concubine...

Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Symphony He Never Heard

By the time Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Ninth Symphony in 1824, he was almost entirely deaf. He could not hear a single note of...

Universalfaith

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Map They Never Studied

Every autumn, monarch butterflies begin a journey of up to three thousand miles from Canada to a remote forest in the mountains of Michoacan, Mexico....

Universalobedience

212 words

Sermon Illustration

The Weight of a Mother's Warmth

In 1978, neonatologist Dr. Edgar Rey Sanabria faced a crisis at a hospital in Bogota, Colombia. His neonatal unit was overwhelmed — too many premature...

Universallove

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hymn Writer Who Thanked the Dark

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor applied hot poultices to her inflamed eyes. The treatment destroyed her sight...

Universaltrust

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Gym Nobody Wanted

In 2016, the city council of Brownsville, Brooklyn voted to demolish the old Brownsville Recreation Center on Linden Boulevard. The building was crumbling, its windows...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Marsh-Wiggle's Defiance

In C.S. Lewis's *The Silver Chair*, there is a scene that every pastor should know. The heroes — two children and a gangly, web-footed creature...

Universalfaith

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Counter-Signal

In 1978, Dr. Amar Bose boarded a transatlantic flight and slipped on the airline-provided headphones. The roar of the jet engines drowned out every note...

Universalfaith

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Reluctant Masterpiece

In 1508, Michelangelo Buonarroti wanted nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He was a sculptor, not a painter. He suspected rival artists had...

Universalobedience

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Couple Who Said Yes to Someone Else's Baby

In 2019, a nurse named Marcus and his wife Elaine in Memphis, Tennessee, were finishing a quiet dinner when a social worker called. A newborn...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

Susanna Wesley's Apron

Susanna Wesley raised nineteen children in a cramped Epworth rectory in early eighteenth-century England. The woman never lacked for Martha's kind of work. There were...

Luke 10:38-42Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

A Star Above the Shadow

In *The Return of the King*, J.R.R. Tolkien gives us one of literature's most quietly powerful portraits of faith. Sam Gamgee finds himself deep in...

Universalfaith

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Piano Tuner of Steinway Hall

For thirty-seven years, Bill Garlick tuned pianos at Steinway Hall in Manhattan. Visitors walked past the showroom instruments every day, hearing nothing unusual. But Garlick...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

A Star Above Mordor

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, there is a moment that has quietly sustained readers for generations. Sam Gamgee is deep in the...

Universalhope

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Brain That Refuses to Stay Stuck

For most of the twentieth century, neuroscience operated under a grim assumption: the adult brain could not grow new cells. What you had was all...

Universalfreedom

240 words

Sermon Illustration

The Altarpiece Nobody Was Meant to Enjoy

In a small monastery hospital in Isenheim, France, the sick and dying were carried past a painting that would change how they understood suffering. Matthias...

Universalsacrifice

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blood That Rewrites You

In bone marrow transplantation, something extraordinary happens that most people never hear about. After a successful transplant, the recipient's blood cells no longer carry their...

Universalgrace

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Stream Beneath the Highway

In 2003, Seoul, South Korea, made a decision that baffled the world. Mayor Lee Myung-bak ordered the demolition of a six-lane elevated highway to uncover...

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

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Debt Paid in Silence

In Charles Dickens's *Great Expectations*, young Pip rises from humble beginnings to become a London gentleman. Along the way, he grows ashamed of Joe Gargery,...

Universalhumility

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Farmer's Almanac on Margaret's Kitchen Table

Every March, Margaret Calloway of Boone County, Kentucky, set her worn Farmer's Almanac on the kitchen windowsill and planned her garden by the sun. She...

James 1:17Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wound That Sets Us Free

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the selfish boy Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's hoard and wakes to discover he...

Universalhealing

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cup She Raised

When Maria Santos stood up at her church in San Antonio last fall, her hands were shaking. Six months earlier, doctors had found a tumor...

Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18Universal

250 words

Sermon Illustration

Corrie ten Boom and the Father Who Walked Into Darkness

In February 1944, the Gestapo raided the ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland, arresting the entire family for harboring Jewish refugees. Corrie ten Boom's elderly...

Isaiah 63:7-9Universal

229 words