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HomeIllustrations

10,079 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 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

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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

The Crooked House on Elm Street

In 2019, a couple in Waco, Texas bought a charming 1920s bungalow, eager to renovate. They poured forty thousand dollars into gorgeous hardwood floors, custom...

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

233 words

Sermon Illustration

I Feel the Bottom, and It Is Good

In John Bunyan's *The Pilgrim's Progress*, Christian and his companion Hopeful finally reach the last obstacle before the Celestial City — a deep, dark river...

Universalfaith

226 words

Sermon Illustration

The Voice at the End of the Runway

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, American gymnast Kerri Strug sprinted down the vault runway with everything on the line. On her first attempt, she had...

Universaltrust

248 words

Sermon Illustration

The GPS That Led to a Dirt Road

In 2018, a couple from Chicago named Marcus and Elena drove through rural Kentucky searching for a renowned woodworker whose hand-carved furniture had gained a...

Matthew 2:1-12Universal

256 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 Heart Murmur She Almost Missed

During her third-year clinical rotation at Johns Hopkins, medical student Anita Patel pressed her stethoscope to a patient's chest and heard nothing unusual — just...

1 Samuel 3:1-10Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

The Grip That Never Loosened

In 1915, Ernest Shackleton watched the Antarctic ice slowly crush his ship, the *Endurance*, like a walnut in a vise. Stranded on frozen pack ice...

John 10:22-30Universal

254 words

Sermon Illustration

From Draining Blood to Giving It

For over two thousand years, physicians prescribed bloodletting as the remedy for nearly every ailment. Hippocrates endorsed it in ancient Greece. Galen systematized it in...

Hebrews 10:4-10Universal

227 words

Sermon Illustration

The Girl Who Walked Twenty-Five Miles for a Bible

In 1800, a fifteen-year-old Welsh girl named Mary Jones set out barefoot from her village of Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, walking twenty-five miles across rugged mountain terrain to...

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Casserole Nobody Asked For

Margaret Ellison hadn't spoken to her neighbor Deb in three years — not since the property line dispute, the lawyers, the cold silence that settled...

John 13:34-35Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Boy Whose Fingers Were Made for a Purpose He Could Not Yet See

Louis Braille was three years old when a leather awl slipped in his father's saddle-making shop in Coupvray, France, and pierced his eye. Infection spread...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

245 words

Sermon Illustration

The Name You Haven't Grown Into Yet

In 1961, a young attorney named Thurgood Marshall sat in his small office in New York, preparing yet another civil rights brief, when he received...

Judges 6:12Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

Eight Thousand Songs of Forgiveness

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a well-meaning country doctor made a devastating mistake. Treating her inflamed eyes with warm mustard poultices, he permanently...

Universalforgiveness

242 words

Sermon Illustration

Chosen Like Caesar's Son

In 45 BC, Julius Caesar did something that would reshape the Roman Empire forever. He adopted his eighteen-year-old grandnephew, Octavian — a sickly young man...

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12Universal

242 words

Sermon Illustration

The Rejected Translation That Became the Cornerstone

In October 1536, William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels, his final words a prayer: "Lord, open the King of England's...

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Ring in the Garden

James Whitfield spent three days on his hands and knees in the backyard, sifting through mulch and overturning stepping stones. His wedding band had slipped...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

228 words

Sermon Illustration

The Letter That Arrived Before She Applied

In 2019, a high school senior named Destiny Williams in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, opened her mailbox to find a handwritten note from a college admissions...

John 1:43-51Universal

232 words

Sermon Illustration

The Choir That Needed No Translator

In 2015, a video went viral from a packed church in Beirut, Lebanon. Syrian refugees, Iraqi Christians, Lebanese believers, and a handful of Filipino migrant...

Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14Universal

239 words

Sermon Illustration

The Door at the End of the Hallway

Clara Gutierrez was eleven years old when her father took a job that kept him behind a closed office door most evenings. She would stand...

Matthew 7:7-8Universal

234 words

Sermon Illustration

The Master Vintner's Barrel

In Napa Valley, master winemaker André Tchelistcheff spent decades teaching a principle that transformed California wine. A barrel, he insisted, isn't just a container —...

1 Corinthians 6:12-20Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Geneticist Who Knew Every Stalk by Heart

In the 1940s, geneticist Barbara McClintock spent her days walking the cornfields at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. While other scientists studied populations...

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18Universal

233 words

Sermon Illustration

The Barista Whose Order Was Already Waiting

When Marcus Chen walked into a small coffee shop in Asheville, North Carolina, on his first day at a new job, the barista slid a...

John 1:43-51Universal

252 words