Sermon Illustrations on Temptation

The story is told that hunters in the far north would coat a blade in animal blood, let it freeze, coat it again, and set the handle in the ice with the edge upward. A wolf finds it, starts licking the frozen blood, and warms it enough to keep going. Somewhere in the process the blade opens its tongue, and the blood it now tastes is its own. It does not stop, because the taste has not changed. It bleeds to death standing over the thing it was enjoying.

Sourcing: This circulates in many versions and no primary source or ethnographic record has been identified for it. Tell it as "the story is told that", and do not attribute it to a named people or place: most retellings do, and the attribution is invented.

You have heard that a frog dropped into boiling water leaps out, while a frog in water heated slowly will sit there until it is cooked. As biology this is false. A real frog notices and climbs out. But as a description of how a conscience adjusts, it is exact: nobody consents to the final temperature, they consent to one degree, and then to one more, and each degree is only slightly warmer than the water they had already accepted. So use the picture and say plainly that the frog part is not true. The human part is.

Sourcing: The boiling-frog claim is not zoologically accurate and has been tested and rejected. Present it as an image, not as a fact about frogs: congregations increasingly know it is a myth, and being the preacher who says so first buys you credibility.

In the wilderness the second temptation comes with a text. The devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and quotes Psalm 91: he will put his angels in charge of you, and they will bear you up. The quotation is not garbled. It is scripture, correctly cited, aimed at a real promise of God. Jesus does not answer it by disputing the verse. He answers it with another verse that supplies what was missing.

Genesis 39 gives the escape and then gives the price. Joseph refuses, and when he is grabbed he leaves the garment in her hand and runs out of the house. That is the textbook response, and it lands him in prison for years on the strength of the garment he left behind. The text does not tidy this up. Doing the right thing here produced a worse outcome for a long time.

2 Samuel 11 opens with a note about the calendar: it was the season when kings went out to battle, and David sent Joab and stayed in Jerusalem. Everything that follows happens to a man who had nothing to do and nowhere to be. He gets up from a nap and walks on the roof in the evening. The narrator sets the trap in the first sentence, before Bathsheba is mentioned at all.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus wants to hear the sirens and survive them. He does not attempt this by being strong. He plugs his crew's ears with wax, has himself lashed to the mast, and orders them to ignore any instruction he gives while the singing lasts. He assumes in advance that the version of himself who hears the song will not be trustworthy, and he arranges his life so that his future self cannot act on what he will want. The decision that saves him is made hours before the temptation is audible.

Sourcing: From Homer's Odyssey, book 12: an ancient poem, not an event. Introduce it as a story from Homer and it carries no factual risk at all.

Peter's denial is preached as a collapse of nerve, and it was. But look at where it happens: he has followed at a distance into the high priest's courtyard and sat down among the servants, warming himself at their fire. He is in a place where he can only stay by not being who he is. The three denials are not three separate decisions. They are the consequence of one earlier decision about where to sit.

What is a good illustration about temptation?

Anything that shows a gradual process rather than a single choice. The opening line of 2 Samuel 11 does it in one sentence, and the wolf licking a frozen blade does it as an image, with the caveat that the second is an unsourced story and should be told as one.

Where do preachers find illustrations?

The text you are preaching is the most reliable source and the most underused. After that: ordinary life, checked history, and pastoral experience with permission. Anything you found on an illustration site with no attribution needs verifying before it goes in a sermon.

How many illustrations should a sermon have?

Two or three in a normal sermon. On temptation specifically, one strong image repeated at each move usually outperforms three different ones, because the theme is about a single process unfolding.

Do I need to cite an illustration's source?

Yes, at whatever level of detail keeps the claim honest. Note that both of the vivid stories on this page are flagged as unverified or biologically false, and saying so out loud makes the point land harder rather than softer.

How do I preach about sexual temptation without making it the only sin in the room?

Name several categories in the same breath, money, drink, resentment, the phone, quietly building a case against someone. Congregations that hear only one category conclude either that they are uniquely disgusting or that the sermon is not about them.

Should I use my own failures as illustrations?

Only ones you are finished grieving, only where the other people involved are unidentifiable, and never as the emotional climax. A confession from the pulpit puts the congregation in the position of caring for you, which is a reversal of what they came for.