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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Claws That Made Him New

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the boy Eustace Scrubb becomes a dragon. His greed and selfishness have literally transformed him into...

Universalrestoration

218 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Beekeeper's Lesson

Marcus Chen was seven the summer his grandfather kept bees in the backyard of their home in Asheville, North Carolina. One August afternoon, a honeybee...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Honeybee's Final Sting

When a honeybee drives its barbed stinger into human skin, something remarkable happens. The stinger tears away from the bee's abdomen, taking with it a...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Danger of Half a Prescription

Every physician knows the conversation. Dr. Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin in 1928, warned from the very beginning that incomplete courses of antibiotics would breed...

Universalobedience

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coat on the Hook

Margaret Chen had been praying for her neighbor Dorothy all winter. Every Sunday she'd bow her head at First Baptist on Elm Street and whisper,...

James 2:17Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Harriet Tubman and the Midnight Refuge

On a freezing December night in 1851, Harriet Tubman crouched with eleven fugitives in a shallow creek bed outside Wilmington, Delaware, slave catchers' dogs baying...

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Son Who Trusted What His Father Refused

In 735 BC, King Ahaz stood in Jerusalem trembling. Two enemy armies were marching toward his gates. God, through the prophet Isaiah, offered him a...

Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dying Tree That Gives Everything

In 1997, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered something remarkable beneath the floor of British Columbia's old-growth forests. Massive trees — what she came to call...

Universalsacrifice

223 words

Sermon Illustration

The Courage of One Sleepless Night

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, there is a chapter sometimes called "A Tempest in a Skull" that remains one of literature's most powerful portraits of...

Universalcourage

247 words

Sermon Illustration

Notebooks Full of Spanish

Elena Rodriguez signed up for Spanish classes the year her abuela moved from San Salvador to the apartment downstairs. For eighteen months, she filled three...

James 1:22Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Song That Answered the Prophet

Jeremiah asked a question born of despair: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" The prophet looked at a broken nation...

Universalhealing

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Neural Anatomy of Courage

In 2010, neuroscientist Dr. Yadin Dudai and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel conducted a remarkable study on fear and courage....

Universalcourage

248 words

Sermon Illustration

Written Into the Fiber

In 1979, Jim Lewis and Jim Springer met for the first time at age thirty-nine. They were identical twins, separated at birth and raised by...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

When a Star Breaks Through the Shadow

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Return of the King*, there is a quiet moment that nearly every reader remembers. Sam Gamgee lies exhausted in the land...

Universalhope

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rover That Wouldn't Quit

In January 2004, NASA landed a solar-powered rover named Opportunity on the surface of Mars. Engineers designed it to last ninety days. Ninety days of...

Universalperseverance

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Man in Black's Second Act

By the early 1990s, Johnny Cash's career seemed over. Years of amphetamine addiction had ravaged his health and reputation. Mercury Nashville dropped him from their...

Universalrestoration

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dangerous Book

In his autobiography, *Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass*, Douglass recounts the moment that changed everything. His slaveholder's wife, Sophia Auld, had begun teaching...

Universalfreedom

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blind Woman Who Saw More Clearly Than Anyone

When Fanny Crosby was just six weeks old, a country doctor placed hot mustard poultices on her infected eyes. The treatment destroyed her sight permanently....

Universalhealing

244 words

Sermon Illustration

The Figure Already in the Stone

When Michelangelo stood before a raw block of Carrara marble, he did not see emptiness. He saw a person waiting to emerge. He once described...

Universalidentity

246 words

Sermon Illustration

When a Mother's Forgiveness Became a Song

In 2002, Renee Napier received the phone call every parent dreads. Her daughter Meagan had been killed by a drunk driver named Eric Smallridge. The...

Universalforgiveness

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Longest Three Minutes

Marcus Chen had been sober for fourteen months when the craving hit him in the parking lot of a Houston grocery store. It was a...

James 4:7Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wisdom of Bones

Orthopedic surgeons know something about patience that most of us would rather not hear. When a bone fractures, the body initiates a healing process that...

Universalpatience

251 words

Sermon Illustration

The Figures Still Emerging from the Stone

In the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence, just down the hallway from the famous *David*, stand four unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo known as the *Prisoners*. They...

Universalfreedom

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Missionary Who Became Chinese

In 1855, twenty-two-year-old Hudson Taylor arrived in Shanghai wearing a black English suit and speaking not a word of Mandarin. The Chinese people regarded him...

John 1:1-14Universal

231 words