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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

The Voice Behind Every Postcard

For eleven months, seven-year-old Maria Espinoza knew her father mostly through postcards. Staff Sergeant David Espinoza was deployed to Kuwait, and every week or two,...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

220 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Butterfly's Liquid Freedom

In 1669, the Dutch naturalist Jan Swammerdam became the first scientist to carefully dissect a caterpillar chrysalis and document what he found inside. What he...

Universalfreedom

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Painter's Repentance

In the world of art, there is a term that bridges the studio and the sanctuary. It is called pentimento — from the Italian pentirsi,...

Universalforgiveness

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rip Current

Every summer, lifeguards along Florida's Gulf Coast pull hundreds of swimmers from rip currents — narrow channels of water rushing away from shore at speeds...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Forensic Report That Changed Everything

In 2004, forensic pathologist Dr. Frederick Zugibe published his decades-long study of crucifixion at Columbia University. He had spent years analyzing what happens to the...

John 19:31-37Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

The Potter's Wheel on Main Street

In downtown Asheville, North Carolina, a ceramics studio called Earth and Fire offers a class they call "Second Chances." Instructor Maria Gonzalez takes pieces that...

Isaiah 64:1-9Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

Twelve Minutes on Highway 9

For eleven years, Marco Salinas drove his three children to Westfield Elementary in a dented silver Corolla that smelled like coffee and pine air freshener....

Deuteronomy 6:6-7Universalparenting

256 words

Sermon Illustration

The Little Church on Vine Street

In 2019, a tornado carved through Joplin, Missouri, and left First Community Church as nothing but a concrete slab and a splintered cross. When the...

Haggai 1:15b-2:9Universal

264 words

Sermon Illustration

The Codebreaker Who Couldn't Explain How She Knew

During World War II, a young clerk named Mavis Lever arrived at Bletchley Park with no formal training in cryptography. The seasoned mathematicians around her...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Manual on the Shelf

Margaret Chen kept her Red Cross first aid manual on the kitchen shelf between a cookbook and a potted basil plant. She had taken the...

James 1:22Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Forest That Feeds Itself

In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard at the University of British Columbia made a discovery that changed how we understand forests. She found that trees in...

Universalcommunity

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dragon Who Couldn't Shed His Own Skin

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...

Universaltransformation

231 words

Sermon Illustration

The Undragoning

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

Universalhealing

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wardrobe Door Nobody Believed Was Real

In C.S. Lewis's *The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe*, young Lucy stumbles through a wardrobe into the magical land of Narnia. When she returns...

Universalfaith

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bend in the Wood

In the hill country outside Asheville, North Carolina, a furniture maker named Harold Rigsby spent forty-three years bending white oak into Windsor chairs. His workshop...

Proverbs 22:6Universalparenting

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Forest That Speaks in Whispers

In 1997, ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered something remarkable beneath the forest floor of British Columbia. What looked like a collection of individual trees standing independently...

Universalcommunity

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Time That Is Given Us

In J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Fellowship of the Ring*, young Frodo Baggins sits in the shadows with Gandalf, overwhelmed by the weight of the Ring he's...

Universalpurpose

257 words

Sermon Illustration

Two Seas and the Secret of Living Water

In Israel, two bodies of water are fed by the same river, yet they could not be more different. The Sea of Galilee receives the...

James 1:22Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

Gladys Aylward and the Call No One Else Could Hear

In 1920s London, Gladys Aylward was a parlor maid — barely five feet tall, with little formal education and no connections to the missionary world....

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grandmother Who Knew Before Anyone Else

In 2019, a young teacher named Rosa Gutierrez walked into her abuela's kitchen in San Antonio carrying a secret she hadn't told a soul. She'd...

Luke 1:39-56Universal

222 words

Sermon Illustration

The Moravians Who Took Him at His Word

In 1732, two young men from a tiny Christian community in Herrnhut, Germany, did something the established church considered insane. Johann Leonhard Dober and David...

Matthew 28:16-20Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Doctor Who Listened for the First Breath

In 1952, Dr. Virginia Apgar sat in the delivery room at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York and did something no physician had systematically done before....

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

224 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bones That Rebuild Themselves

In 1892, German anatomist Julius Wolff published a remarkable discovery that still shapes orthopedic medicine today. Wolff's Law states that bone remodels itself in response...

Universalobedience

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman Who Fought Without a Weapon

In Harper Lee's *To Kill a Mockingbird*, Atticus Finch tells his children about the bravest person he ever knew. It wasn't a soldier or a...

Universalcourage

233 words