19 Sermon Illustrations on Creation

The scene was a familiar one. The young couple were going over their monthly bills. In it were ones from the drug store, department store, oil company, etc. Trying to find something humorous to say in the situation, the man quipped, "Isn't it a good thing that God doesn't send bills?" That is good, isn't it? But what if He just decided to bill us for this wonderful body He has given us? The Psalmist said, "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalms 139:14). Shakespeare said, "What a piece of work is man!" Think about what God has made: THE EARS: A piano has 88 keys, but each of your ears has a keyboard with 1500 keys. They are so finely tuned that you can hear the blood running through your vessels. The outside of your ear can catch up to 73,700 vibrations per second. THE EYES: They are both microscopes and telescopes. They can gaze into the heavens and see a star millions of miles away, or inspect the smallest insect. THE FEET: Did you know that each foot has 26 bones, none of which is wider than your thumb? But it is so "manufactured" (arched) with its ligaments, tendons, muscles and joints that a 300-pound man can put all his weight on these tiny bones. THE HEART: Its size is about like your fist, but pumps (beats) 4,320 times an hour. In a year that would mean 40 million beats. A drop of blood can make a round trip in your circulatory system in only 22 seconds. What if God sent you a bill for this marvelous body we live in? But God doesn't send us bills. He just loves us and takes care of us. Can we do any less than to return His love? We show Him our love by obedience to His Word and by faithful stewardship of that which He has entrusted to us.

A child is a man in small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted the apple. His soul is yet a white paper, unscrubbled with observations of the world, wherewith it becomes at length a blurred note-book. Ep. Erle.

A woman must not have one quality of a ship; and that is, too much rigging. Oh! what a wonder is it to see a ship under sail, with her tacklings, and her masts, and her tops and top-gallants, with her upper decks and her netherdecks, and so bedecked, with her streamers, flags, and ensigns, and I know not what. Yea, what a world of wonders is it to see a woman, created in God's image, so miscreate oftentimes and deformed, with her French, her Spanish, and her foolish fashions, that he that made her, when he looks upon her, shall hardly know her; with her plumes, her fans, and a silken vizard: with a ruff like a sail; yea, a ruff like a rainbow; with a feather in her cap like a flag in her top, to tell (I think) which way the wind will blow.

— R. Wilkinson

The air is crowded with birds,—beautiful, tender, intelligent birds,—to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety,—the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects,—those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms,—from the animalcule, so small that a hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the sea is alive with polyps, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures, and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets. Life everywhere!—on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts; all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree or shrub or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labor. We pick up a fallen leaf; and, if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. The same microscope reveals that the blood-rain, suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals, (Monas prodigiosa); and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night owe their color to the marvellous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant (Protococus nivalis). The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, our ink, and disfigures our damp walls, is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-colored fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.

— Sala

"And what thinkest thou," said Socrates to Aristodemus, "of this continual love of life, this dread of dissolution, which takes possession of us the moment we are conscious of existence?"—"I think of it," was the reply, "as the means employed by the same great and wise Artist, deliberately determined to preserve what he has made."

Scripture is no story of the material universe. A single chapter is sufficient to tell us that "God made the heavens and the earth." Man is the central figure there; or, to speak more truly, the only figure: all which is there besides serves but as a background for him. He is not one part of the furniture of this planet, not the highest merely in the scale of its creatures, but the lord of all; sun, moon, and stars, and all the visible creation, borrowing all their worth and their significance from the relations where they stand to him. Such he appears there in the ideal worth and dignity of his unfallen condition; and even now, when only a broken fragment of the sceptre with which once he ruled the world remains in his hand, such he is commanded to regard himself still.

— Trench

How numberless are the blessings we owe to the ocean, the father and sustainer of all organic life! He it is that feeds the stream, that fills the lake, that bubbles in the spring, that foams in the cataract, or rushes along in the mountain torrent. Should his eternal fountains be dried up, the blooming surface of the earth would be converted into a naked waste. To him we owe the magnificence of our forests, the verdure of our meadows, the beauty of our fields. It is his waters we enjoy in the luscious fruits of our orchards, or quaff in the juice of the exhilarating grape. They circulate in the veins of numberless animals, — of the bee, which offers us the sweet tribute of its honey; of the bird, that charms us with its melodious song; of the domestic quadruped, on whose flesh we feed, and whose services are indispensable to our welfare. Nay, our own blood is originally drawn from the wells of the ocean, and is constantly refreshed and replenished from its exhaustless sources.

In the torrid zone, snakes are sometimes domesticated to destroy vermin. The rat-snake of Ceylon is often kept as a household pet by the natives; and, what is still more remarkable, even the dreaded cobras are domesticated in the place of dogs. They glide about the house, going in and out at pleasure, a terror to thieves, but never attempting to harm the inmates. Hartwig.

Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition about his throne. Beecher.