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HomeIllustrations

9,187 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 Priest Who Heard Isaiah in the New World

In 1514, the Spanish priest Bartolomé de las Casas stood before his congregation on the island of Hispaniola preparing a Pentecost sermon. The chapel was...

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20Universal

225 words

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Sermon Illustration

From Provincial Nobody to Heir of an Empire

In 44 BC, a sickly eighteen-year-old named Gaius Octavius was studying in Apollonia, a backwater town on the Adriatic coast. He had no army, no...

Galatians 4:4-7Universal

244 words

Sermon Illustration

Written in Starlight

Carl Sagan was fond of saying, "We are made of star stuff" — and he was not being poetic. He was being precise. Every carbon...

Universalsacrifice

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Weeping Man in the Baptistery

On the night before Easter, 387 AD, a thirty-two-year-old professor named Augustine stepped into the baptismal pool at the cathedral in Milan. Bishop Ambrose stood...

Mark 1:4-11Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Carpenter's Hands

In 1987, a young furniture maker named Tomás Herrera walked into a workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico, and apprenticed himself to master woodworker Don Refugio. For...

3 John 1:11Universal

226 words

Sermon Illustration

A Father's Hand on Her Face

Every night in the ten Boom home in Haarlem, Holland, the same ritual unfolded. After prayers were said and the blankets pulled tight, old Casper...

Zephaniah 3:17Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The ER Nurse Who Knew Before the Monitors Did

Veteran nurses at Johns Hopkins call it "the feeling." Maria Gonzalez, a thirty-year ICU nurse in Baltimore, could walk past a patient's room and stop...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Three-Legged Stool in Grandfather's Workshop

In a woodshop in Waco, Texas, a furniture maker named Harold Benton spent sixty years building three-legged stools. He told every apprentice the same thing:...

Ezra 7:10Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Conservator's Hands

In 2019, conservator Eliane Dotson spent fourteen months restoring Artemisia Gentileschi's seventeenth-century painting at the National Gallery in London. Every morning she arrived before dawn,...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Throne That Outlasted Rome

In August of 410 AD, the unthinkable happened. Alaric and his Visigoths breached the walls of Rome — the city that had ruled the known...

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night Marcus Counted Twice

Thomas Whitfield had been ranching outside Amarillo for thirty-one years, and he knew his sheep the way a father knows his children — by sound,...

Luke 15:3-7Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Teacher Who Knew Her Before She Had Words

In 1887, Anne Sullivan arrived at a farmhouse in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to meet a child the world had given up on. Seven-year-old Helen Keller —...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

When Courage Has a Name

In Harper Lee's *To Kill a Mockingbird*, there is a scene that stops the neighborhood cold. A rabid dog staggers down a quiet Alabama street,...

Universalcourage

249 words

Sermon Illustration

Living on Embassy Ground

When Sarah Chen moved to the American embassy compound in Amman, Jordan, her father explained something she never forgot. "This ground beneath your feet," he...

Philippians 3:17-4:1Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night the Whole Bay Burned Blue

On certain nights in Mosquito Bay, Puerto Rico, the water catches fire — not with flame, but with light. Millions of dinoflagellates, single-celled organisms no...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

217 words

Sermon Illustration

The Force at the Heart of Every Atom

In 1935, Japanese physicist Hideki Yukawa proposed something astonishing: buried inside the nucleus of every atom is a force so powerful it defies everything we...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

223 words

Sermon Illustration

Thirty Seconds on the Gymnasium Floor

Marcus DeLeon was seventeen years old when his heart stopped during the third quarter of a Friday night basketball game in Waco, Texas. He crumpled...

Romans 1:16Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Star You Never See at Night

On a clear night in the high desert of New Mexico, you can see roughly five thousand stars. But there is one star you never...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

218 words

Sermon Illustration

The Christ Hymn in Aisle Seven

In 2019, a young woman named Sarah walked into a Walmart in Hartsville, South Carolina, and started singing "Way Maker" in the middle of the...

Romans 1:16Universal

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grandmother's Quilt

When Maria Gonzalez opened the cedar chest after her grandmother's funeral in San Antonio, she found a quilt she had never seen before. Folded beneath...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

256 words

Sermon Illustration

The Sting That Killed the Stinger

Every beekeeper knows the peculiar vulnerability of the honeybee. Unlike wasps or hornets, a honeybee can only sting once. Its barbed stinger lodges deep in...

1 Corinthians 15:55-57Universal

252 words

Sermon Illustration

The Bishop Who Heard It From John

In the year 155 AD, an elderly bishop named Polycarp stood before a Roman proconsul who demanded he renounce Christ. "Eighty-six years I have served...

2 Peter 1:16-21Universal

230 words

Sermon Illustration

The Lot on Elm Street

For three years, the vacant lot at 412 Elm Street in Decatur, Georgia, collected nothing but tire ruts and fast-food wrappers. The city council voted...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ambassador Who Came in Person

For centuries, the British Crown communicated with distant colonies through letters, proclamations, and appointed governors. Messages crossed oceans slowly, often arriving months late, sometimes misunderstood,...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

230 words