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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The House on Pilings

When Hurricane Harvey slammed into Rockport, Texas, in August 2017, entire neighborhoods were flattened. Roofs peeled away like paper. Walls collapsed into heaps of soggy...

1 Corinthians 3:9c-11, 16-17Universal

236 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Lion's Breath

In C.S. Lewis's *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, the boy Eustace Scrubb is transformed into a dragon by his own greed. He is miserable,...

Universalhealing

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Wisdom of Bone

When an orthopedic surgeon sets a broken femur, something remarkable begins beneath the cast. The body launches a healing sequence so precise that no technology...

Universalpatience

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Plague That Revealed the Church

In 250 AD, a devastating plague swept through the Roman Empire. The illness — likely smallpox or measles — killed as many as five thousand...

John 13:34-35Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Surgeon Who Rebuilds What Was Broken

In orthopedic surgery, there is a remarkable procedure called autologous chondrocyte implantation. A surgeon harvests a small sample of healthy cartilage cells from a patient's...

Universalrestoration

230 words

Sermon Illustration

Michelangelo's Hidden Colors

In 1980, a team of restorers climbed scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel to begin one of the most controversial art restorations in history. For nearly...

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2Universal

220 words

Sermon Illustration

Hidden Blueprints

In 1864, German zoologist August Weismann peered through his microscope at something no one had properly understood before. Inside the chrysalis of a dissolving caterpillar,...

Universaltransformation

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Redwood's Canopy

In Northern California's Humboldt County, coastal redwoods tower over three hundred feet into the fog. But something remarkable happens beneath them. Dr. Emily Burns, a...

Psalm 91:1-2Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Altarpiece That Opens

In the early sixteenth century, the German painter Matthias Grunewald completed one of the most extraordinary works in the history of Christian art — the...

Universalhope

235 words

Sermon Illustration

The Uncovering of the Sistine Chapel

In 1980, restorer Gianluigi Colalucci climbed the scaffolding inside the Sistine Chapel and pressed a small solvent-soaked compress against a darkened section of Michelangelo's ceiling....

Malachi 3:1-4Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The First Heartbeat on the Screen

In the dim room of a prenatal clinic, a technician presses the ultrasound wand against a young mother's abdomen. The screen shows grey static, formless...

Luke 2:10-11Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Gold in Our Scars

In Japan, there is an ancient art form called *kintsugi* — the practice of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. When a...

Universalhealing

237 words

Sermon Illustration

Light in the Deepest Dark

In the ocean's midnight zone, more than a thousand meters below the surface, sunlight cannot reach. The pressure is crushing. The cold is absolute. By...

Universalcourage

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Compass They Never Learned

Every autumn, monarch butterflies launch themselves into a journey of nearly three thousand miles, flying from eastern North America to a handful of oyamel fir...

Universalobedience

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Witness Who Could Not Stay Silent

On a February morning in 1974, Soviet authorities dragged Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from his Moscow apartment and deported him from Russia. His crime was simple: he...

Acts 2:14a, 22-32Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name Above the Number

In Victor Hugo's *Les Misérables*, Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. When he is finally released, he is...

Universalidentity

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Pipeline That Built Itself

In 1857, a Scottish minister named George Muller ran five orphanages in Bristol, England, housing over two thousand children. He never once asked for a...

Zechariah 4:6Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blind Woman Who Saw Purpose Clearly

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor applied a burning poultice to her infected eyes. The treatment left her...

Universalpurpose

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Heartbeat in the NICU

In neonatal intensive care units, nurses have long observed a phenomenon they call kangaroo care. When a premature infant — tiny, struggling, hooked to monitors...

Zephaniah 3:17Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice That Belongs to No One Else

In the early 1960s, a physicist named Lawrence Kersta at Bell Telephone Laboratories developed a technique called voice spectrography — a way of visualizing the...

Universalidentity

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Old Professor's Final Lecture

In the spring of 1998, Dr. Margaret Ellington stood before her last class at the University of Edinburgh. For forty-one years she had taught philosophy...

Ecclesiastes 12:13Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Invisible Shield Four Hundred Miles Above Your Head

Every second of every day, a violent stream of charged particles races from the sun toward Earth at over a million miles per hour. This...

Psalm 121Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

His Voice Through the Smoke

When the fire alarm shrieked at 2:47 a.m., six-year-old Lily Chen couldn't see anything. Smoke filled the upstairs hallway of their Cedar Rapids bungalow, black...

Proverbs 18:10Universal

266 words

Sermon Illustration

Easter Eve at the Baptistery

On the night before Easter, 387 AD, a thirty-two-year-old rhetoric professor stepped into the octagonal baptistery beside Milan Cathedral. His name was Augustine, and he...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

226 words