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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 Spring That Broke Through Every Fence

In 2016, hydrologists in Edwards County, Texas, watched something remarkable unfold after years of drought. When the rains finally came to the Edwards Aquifer, the...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

235 words

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Sermon Illustration

The Sunday School Teacher Who Walked Into a Shoe Store

On a spring afternoon in 1855, Edward Kimball paced the sidewalk outside Holton's Shoe Store in Boston, nearly talking himself out of going inside. He...

John 1:29-42Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Water Pump at Ivy Green

For nearly seven years, Helen Keller lived in a world of fragments. After losing her sight and hearing at nineteen months old, she grasped at...

Hebrews 1:1-4Universal

246 words

Sermon Illustration

The Refugee Who Planted a Garden

When Hawa Abdi arrived in Clarkston, Georgia, in 2016, she wanted to go home. The Somali Bantu refugee missed the red soil of her village,...

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Factory Girl Who Said "I Will Go

In 1876, a twenty-eight-year-old factory worker named Mary Slessor sat in a Presbyterian church in Dundee, Scotland, and heard a call she could not explain....

Luke 1:26-38Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grandmother Who Stopped Reading the Recipe

For forty-three years, Maria Cristina Alvarez made her mother's tamales every Christmas Eve in her small kitchen in San Antonio. In the early years, she...

Jeremiah 31:27-34Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Woman Who Thanks God for Tuesdays

Margaret Chen was fifty-three when the oncologist in Portland gave her eight months. That was six years ago. She'll tell you about the morning she...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

249 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name No One Knows Yet

Every year, the U.S. Marshals Service relocates hundreds of people through witness protection. Their old identities are erased — bank accounts closed, records sealed, obituaries...

Colossians 3:1-4Universal

221 words

Sermon Illustration

The Mathematician Nobody Expected from Madras

In 1913, G.H. Hardy, the most distinguished mathematician at Cambridge, received a letter from an unknown clerk in Madras, India. The envelope contained page after...

John 1:43-51Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

When the Desert Remembers How to Bloom

In Chile's Atacama Desert — one of the driest places on earth — seeds lie buried beneath cracked, barren soil for years, sometimes decades. They...

Joel 2:28-29Universal

219 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ropes Came Down

In the spring of 1953, Billy Graham arrived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for a crusade and found the auditorium divided — ropes strung down the center...

Acts 10:34-43Universal

237 words

Sermon Illustration

The Fingerprint That No One Chose

In 2004, forensic scientist Dr. Kasey Wertheim testified before a congressional committee that no two fingerprints have ever been found to match — not in...

Psalm 139:1-3, 13-15Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Elder's Command

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's *The Brothers Karamazov*, young Alyosha Karamazov has found everything he longs for inside the monastery walls. He loves his Elder, Father Zosima,...

Universalobedience

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Cure Hidden in a Lemon

In 1747, aboard the HMS Salisbury, Scottish physician James Lind watched sailors die slow, agonizing deaths from scurvy. Their gums blackened, their teeth fell out,...

John 8:32Universal

236 words

Sermon Illustration

The Fireflies of Elkmont

Every June in the Great Smoky Mountains, thousands of visitors crowd into the Elkmont campground for one of nature's most astonishing displays. Synchronous fireflies —...

John 13:34-35Universal

243 words

Sermon Illustration

The Closet That Preached a Funeral

When Miss Ernestine Hayes of Tupelo, Mississippi, died at eighty-one, her family expected a modest service. She had never held office, never led a committee,...

Acts 9:36-43Universal

241 words

Sermon Illustration

The Blind Piano Tuner of Nashville

For thirty-two years, Gerald Morrow tuned pianos along Music Row in Nashville without ever reading a note of sheet music. Born blind, he never attended...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

261 words

Sermon Illustration

Nature Illustration: Harvest and Gratitude

As the autumn sun dips low in the sky, a farmer stands in the midst of a golden field, the air rich with the scent of ripened grain. Each stalk, heavy with its bounty, tells a story of hard work...

Colossians 1:15-20Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ceremony Where Every Flag Became One

Every September at Fenway Park in Boston, something remarkable happens. During a single naturalization ceremony, hundreds of people from over fifty nations rise from their...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

247 words

Sermon Illustration

Susanna Wesley's Kitchen Table Dynasty

Susanna Wesley never stood behind a pulpit. In early eighteenth-century Epworth, England, she stood behind an ironing board, a kitchen table, and a houseful of...

2 Samuel 7:4-5a, 12-14a, 16Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Coffee Shop on MLK Boulevard

When Tina Rodriguez opened a small coffee shop on a neglected stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Stockton, California, her friends thought she...

Matthew 4:12-23Universal

238 words

Sermon Illustration

The Night the Quiet Man Stood Up

On a frigid January evening, Marcus Thompson sat in the back row of a packed school gymnasium in Flint, Michigan. For three years, he had...

Acts 2:1-31Universal

225 words

Sermon Illustration

The Hidden Center of Every Snowflake

On any winter morning in Vermont's Green Mountains, billions of snowflakes drift silently to earth, each one an intricate crystal of breathtaking symmetry. But here...

Colossians 1:15-17Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Tinker Who Wrote What Oxford Could Not

John Bunyan mended pots and pans in the villages around Bedford, England. He had no university degree, no library of classical texts, no patron among...

1 Corinthians 2:1-16Universal

231 words