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HomeIllustrations

9,139 Illustrations

Browse Sermon Illustrations

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Sermon Illustration

The Soldier Who Mistook God's Voice for Restlessness

In 1521, a Basque soldier named Ignatius of Loyola lay in a castle in northern Spain, his right leg shattered by a French cannonball at...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

239 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Figures Already Inside the Stone

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

Universalpurpose

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Burden That Fell Away

In John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress*, there is a moment that has moved readers for over three centuries. Christian has been carrying a terrible burden...

Universalfreedom

253 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cure Made from the Poison

At the Australian Reptile Park north of Sydney, trained handlers pin down eastern brown snakes, taipans, and death adders to milk venom from their fangs....

Numbers 21:4b-9Universal

235 words

Sermon Illustration

Stronger at the Break

Orthopedic surgeons know something that surprises most patients: a healed bone fracture is often the strongest point in the entire bone. When a bone breaks,...

Universalrestoration

219 words

Sermon Illustration

Broken Wells in Flint

In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan switched its water source from the Detroit system — clean, treated, reliable — to the Flint River, a...

Jeremiah 2:4-13Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Altarpiece No One Was Meant to Admire

In the early sixteenth century, the German painter Matthias Grünewald was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the Monastery of St. Anthony in Isenheim, a...

Universalsacrifice

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Trickle That Transformed Wales

In the autumn of 1904, a twenty-six-year-old Welsh coal miner named Evan Roberts knelt in a small chapel in Loughor, Wales, and prayed a simple...

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

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The College President Who Saw the Fifteen-Year-Old Preacher

When Martin Luther King Jr. arrived at Morehouse College in 1944, he was just fifteen years old — a skinny kid from Atlanta who had...

John 1:43-51Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Enzyme That Uses Light to Heal

In 1949, a biologist named Albert Kelner made a puzzling discovery. He had been damaging bacterial DNA with ultraviolet radiation, expecting the cells to die....

Universalforgiveness

260 words

Sermon Illustration

The Painting That Pierced a Young Count's Heart

In 1720, a twenty-year-old German nobleman named Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf wandered into an art gallery in Düsseldorf. He was wealthy, educated, and comfortable —...

Acts 2:14a, 36-41Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Restoration of the Sistine Chapel

In 1980, a team of restorers began the painstaking work of cleaning Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling in Vatican City. For nearly five centuries, candle soot,...

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

Ignaz Semmelweis and the Offense of Simple Obedience

In 1847, a young Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis made a discovery that should have revolutionized medicine overnight. At Vienna General Hospital, mothers were dying...

2 Kings 5:1-14Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Riptide at Pensacola Beach

Every summer, lifeguards along the Gulf Coast at Pensacola Beach, Florida, pull dozens of swimmers from riptides — narrow channels of water rushing seaward at...

Exodus 14:13-14Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Well That Feeds a Thousand Taps

In 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, counted down to what officials called "Day Zero" — the day the city's reservoirs would run dry. Four million...

John 7:37-39Universal

240 words

Sermon Illustration

What the Restorers Found Beneath the Soot

For nearly five centuries, the world believed Michelangelo painted in muted, somber tones. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, blackened by hundreds of years of candle smoke...

Universalforgiveness

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice He Hadn't Heard in Years

David Chen hadn't spoken to his father in twelve years. Not since the argument that ended with a slammed door and silence that calcified into...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Heartbeat Against Her Chest

In neonatal intensive care units across the country, nurses practice what they call "kangaroo care." When a premature infant — sometimes weighing barely two pounds...

Hebrews 13:5-6Universal

229 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lion Who Trembled

In C.S. Lewis's *The Horse and His Boy*, young Shasta spends most of the story running away. He is afraid of lions, afraid of the...

Universalcourage

220 words

Sermon Illustration

What to Do with the Time That Is Given

Deep in the Mines of Moria, in J.R.R. Tolkien's *The Fellowship of the Ring*, Frodo Baggins confesses something many of us have felt. Overwhelmed by...

Universalpurpose

243 words

Sermon Illustration

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Costly Yes

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer boarded a ship back to Germany in July 1939, he was walking away from safety. He had just arrived in New York,...

Matthew 1:16, 18-21, 24aUniversal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Moravians Who Sold Themselves Into Slavery

In 1732, two young Moravian men named Johann Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann stood on the docks of Copenhagen with a radical plan. They had...

Matthew 5:13-20Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cure Made from the Venom

At the Australian Reptile Park north of Sydney, handlers milk eastern brown snakes — the second most venomous land snake on earth — by pressing...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

207 words

Sermon Illustration

The Dragon's Skin

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

Universaltransformation

249 words