Sermon Illustrations that amplify your sermon message.
Our animating illustrations include insights, anecdotes, quotations and references to current events that help you craft a meaningful sermon.
We know that a good sermon illustration will live rent-free in the minds of your congregation for weeks or months to come. These short yet powerful insights and anecdotes from a preacher are easy for your listeners to digest. The material helps people recall material from a Sunday sermon and gives your message new life as listeners later share it with friends and family.
Every installment of Homiletics Online includes a curated collection of Sermon Illustrations. These animating sermon starters include insights and anecdotes, providing quotations and references to current events that perfectly fit the sermon material or your preaching point. Every illustration helps you as a pastor articulate the gospel excellently in the life vernacular of your membership.
If a selected illustration from the current installment is not striking your fancy, use our keyword search to find the perfect text from our collection of 17,660 illustrations -- with more being added each month! If you're looking for sermon prep and sermon writing inspiration, browse our topic list with more than 3,500 topics to choose from. With topic options ranging from accountability to illusion and neighborhoods to zeal, we know you're sure to find something that works with your weekly message.
Free Sample Illustrations
For example, the topic of "courage" includes 25 preparation illustrations from our library. We've included a few samples from this topic to give you a flavor of the type of sermon resources and sermon preparation tools you can access with a subscription to Homiletics Online.
Check out this anecdote about St. Thomas More:
Just when we think we've got it bad, we are reminded of forbearers in the faith who brought out the hidden definitions of that word "difficult." Six days after St. Thomas More was found guilty of treason on July 1, 1535, he marched to the gallows. He accepted a helping hand as he climbed the steps to the scaffold and said to the person who helped him: "When I come down again, let me shift for myself as well as I can."
Would we have as much grace and calm, not to mention humor, amid some real difficulties in life?
Or consider this wonderful poem from Ann Weems:
The silence breaks into morning.
That One Star lights the world.
The lily springs to life and not even Solomon ...
Let it begin with singing and never end!
Oh, angels, quit your lamenting!
Oh, pilgrims, upon your knees in tearful prayer,
Rise up and take your hearts and run!
We who were no people are named anew
God's people,
For he who was no more is forevermore.
--Ann Weems,
"And the Glory," Kneeling in Jerusalem,
(Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 94.
More Than Just Sermon Illustrations
Your subscription to Homiletics Online includes so much more than just access to our comprehensive library of Sermon Illustrations to write a sermon outline or for sermon planning. Your membership also includes access to 30 years' worth of sermon ideas, sermon starters, and other Bible study and preaching resources. Every week our writers, editors and artists work hard to craft cutting-edge sermon prep material that sparks your creativity and helps you write good sermons. Each issue includes Commentary, Children's Sermons, Worship Resources and PowerPoint presentations that tie everything together.
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