9 Sermon Illustrations on Divine Design

9 illustrations

Divine design in Christian preaching highlights God's intentional order and purpose in creation, emphasizing the wisdom behind His laws and patterns. Illustrations often draw on natural or human-made systems that demonstrate balance and sustainability, underscoring the importance of honoring God's ordained rhythms (Genesis 1:31; Psalm 19:1).

Physicians Of Rochester

Working seven days without rest harms health and leads to premature aging and death.

Dr. F. Backus and seven other respectable physicians of Rochester, New-York, have given the following testimony: "Having most of us lived on the Erie Canal since its completion, we have uniformly witnessed the same deteriorating effects of seven days' working upon the physical constitution, both of man and beast, as have been so ably depicted by Dr. Farre." They are more sickly than others, bring upon themselves, in great numbers, a premature old age, and sink to an untimely grave.

Man, Slow Development Of

Man's development is a long process shaped by nature and divine purpose.

Robert Loveman takes a wide view of man in this verse:

A thousand years doth nature plan Upon the making of a man; She sweeps the generations through, To find the patient, strong, and true; She rends the surge of seven seas, Rearing an humble Socrates; She burns a hundred years of sun, Sealing the soul of Solomon.

A thousand years doth nature plan Upon the making of a Man; She sees the ages dawn apace, Ere Moses rouse his shackled race, Or Homer or sweet Shakespeare sing, Beside his deep eternal spring; The centuries rise in reverence when Buddha doth come unto his men.

A thousand years doth nature plan Upon the making of a man; She fills his heart with fire and faith, She leaves him loyal unto death; She lights his lustrous, loving eye With flashes of immortality; She adds one more undying name Upon the heated scroll of fame.

--“Songs from a Georgia Garden.”

Pattern, The Divine

God’s unseen work produces a perfect pattern only revealed when life is complete.

“Tapestry Weavers,” the poem by Dr. A. G. Chester, on page 535, has been translated into Japanese and published in the leading magazine of the country, which circulates over 50,000 copies, and the lines have also been printed in its English form upon large cards, which are distributed throughout the schools of Japan.

A returned missionary from China, who was recently introduced to Doctor Chester, remarked: “I am delighted to make the acquaintance of the author of ‘The Tapestry Weavers,’ a poem I have loved and admired and used by way of illustration for many years.”

In connection with a fair lately held at the Waldorf-Astoria, New York City, for the benefit of the Home for Crippled Children, a number of copies of the poem, printed upon tinted paper and bearing the author’s autograph, sold readily and realized a handsome sum.

Let us take to our hearts a lesson--no lesson can braver be-- From the ways of the tapestry weavers on the other side of the sea.

Above their heads the pattern hangs, they study it with care, The while their fingers deftly move, their eyes are fastened there.

They tell this curious thing besides of the patient, plodding weaver; He works on the wrong side evermore, but works for the right side ever.

It is only when the weaving stops, and the web is loosed and turned, That he sees his real handiwork, that his marvelous skill is learned.

Ah, the sight of its delicate beauty, how it pays him for all his cost! No rarer, daintier work than his was ever done by the frost.

Then the master bringeth him golden hire, and giveth him praise as well, And how happy the heart of the weaver is, no tongue but his own can tell.

The years of man are the looms of God, let down from the place of the sun, Wherein we are weaving ever, till the mystic web is done.

Weaving blindly, but weaving surely, each for himself his fate-- We may not see how the right side looks, we can only weave and wait.

But, looking above for the pattern, no weaver hath need to fear, Only let him look clear into heaven--the Perfect Pattern is there.

If he keeps the face of the Savior forever and always in sight His toil shall be sweeter than honey, his weaving is sure to be right.

And when the work is ended, and the web is turned and shown, He shall hear the voice of the Master; it shall say unto him, “Well done!”

And the white-winged angel of heaven, to bear him thence shall come down; And God shall give him gold for his hire--not coin but a glowing crown. (Text.)

Selection By Purpose

Purposeful selection leads to improvement, applicable to both plants and people.

Some years ago a cotton-planter in Georgia observed that the leaves on one of his plants was unlike the usual leaf; it was divided as if into fingers. So far nature had gone. The planter added his intelligence. He concluded that such a divided leaf would let in more sunshine on the cotton; also such a leaf would not be comfortable for caterpillars. So he searched out one or two of these peculiar plants, transplanted them to a field by themselves. As they propagated, he plucked up those with the old leaf, cultivated those with the new, and now these new cotton plants, finer than the old, free from caterpillars, are spread through many regions. That is human selection, based on natural selection, securing the fruits of evolution. It is just as applicable to man as to vegetation. A better man may be bred as well as a better kind of cotton.

— MONCURE D. CONWAY, The Monist

Talents Differ

Different talents have unique roles, all necessary and wisely placed by God.

Ralph Waldo Emerson teaches the lesson that everything is needed in its own place, in this quaint bit of verse:

The mountain and the squirrel Had a quarrel; And the former called the latter, “Little prig.” Bun replied, “You are doubtless very big, But all sorts of things and weather Must be taken in together, To make up a year And a sphere; And I think it no disgrace To occupy my place. If I’m not so large as you, You are not so small as I. Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I can not carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.” (Text.)

Design In Nature

The complexity of the human eye points to intelligent design by God, not chance.

A student of the phenomena of vision, Professor Pritchard, speaks thus of the argument from the structure of the human eye:

From what I know, through my own specialty, both geometry and experiment, of the structure of lenses and the human eye, I do not believe that any amount of evolution, extending through any amount of time consistent with the requirements of our astronomical knowledge, could have issued in the production of that most beautiful and complicated instrument, the human eye. There are too many curved surfaces, too many distances, too many densities of the media, each essential to the other; too great a facility of ruin by slight disarrangement, to admit of anything short of the intervention of an intelligent Will at some stage of the evolutionary process. (Text.)

Nature As A Model

The human mouth’s structure models sound reflection, inspiring architectural design.

The voice of the singer travels forward more abundantly than backward, because he uses the roof, and, to some extent, the walls and floor of his mouth, as a sound reflector. The roof of his mouth being made of concave plates of bone with a thin velarium of integument stretched tightly over them, supplies a model sound-reflector. Every architect who has to build a concert- or lecture-room, or theater, should study the roof of his own mouth, and imitate it as nearly as he can in the roof of his building.

Nature As A Model

Architecture draws inspiration and decoration from natural forms and landscapes.

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The analogies which furnish means of expression to the art of building find their models in nature. That which we feel at the sight of an edifice, the artist has felt a hundred times in contemplating the shifting curves of a hill, the bold edge of a haughty peak, the immensity of an even plain, a ground hollow, or gently undulating sheet of water which loses itself in the mists of the horizon. All the effects produced by architecture are only an interpretation of natural ones. What is a pyramid? A hollow cavern in a mountain. What is a Greek temple with its porticoes and columns? A memory of the sacred woods where were drest the first altars. What do we feel in entering a Gothic cathedral? The shudder felt at the divine awfulness of the forests. And it is also from the natural world that architecture has taken its decorations. Columns and capitals, rosettes, flowers intertwinings, ovals, foliage medallions, all remind us of something seen in the fields and in the woods, in plants and animals.--VICTOR CHERBULIEZ, _Revue des deux Mondes_.

Plan In Nature

All creatures follow God's design, never deviating from their created nature.

There are several hundred thousand different kinds of animals living on this globe of the different types. Every one of them has its line of development. Every sparrow begins with the egg, and goes through all the changes which are characteristic of sparrow life, until it is capable of producing new eggs, which will go through the same change. Every butterfly comes from the egg, which produces the caterpillar, which becomes a chrysalis, and then a butterfly, laying eggs to go through the same changes. So with all animals, whether of higher or lower type. In fact, the animal kingdom as it is now, is undergoing greater changes every year than the whole animal kingdom has ever passed through from the beginning until now; and yet we never see one of these animals swerve from the plan pointed out, or produce anything else than that which is like itself.

— PROF. LOUIS AGASSIZ

In the Plain of Jordan Did

by F.B. Meyer

We are conformed to the image of Christ by obeying from the heart the teaching of the Apostles, and trusting that all things work together for our good in eternal life.

These illustrations have been gathered from many sources over many years and are offered to preachers as a study aid. Each is credited wherever the source is known, and we have made every effort to respect the rights of authors and publishers.

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